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The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” (live, from The Kids Are Alright, 1979)
The AV Club posted a nice beginner’s guide to The Who this week.
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A non-review of Francis Spufford’s “Unapologetic”
I’ve been having trouble thinking of something to say about Francis Spufford’s Unapologetic other than “I really, really liked it.” It’s not like any other “religious” book I can remember reading. The closest analogue I can think of are the books of Anne Lamott, who similarly writes about the life of faith with brutal honesty…
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Francis Spufford on the “gnostic Jesus”
The Jesus of the orthodox story treats people with deep attention even when angry. [The gnostic] Jesus zaps people with his divine superpowers if they irritate him. Orthodox Jesus says that everyone needs the love of God, and God loves everyone. Their Jesus has an inner circle you can be admitted to if you collect…
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“Physical” vs. “spiritual” resurrection?
Liberal Christian icon Marcus Borg recently joined the blogosphere, and one of his first posts was an attempt to clarify his views on the resurrection of Jesus. Borg has been accused of denying the independent reality of the resurrection, reducing it to a subjective experience the disciples had after the crucifixion. But Borg maintains that…
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La Visitacion
Yesterday I took my daughter to the museum at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown. It’s privately funded and thus was not affected by the (recently concluded) government shutdown. The museum is small, but it features a wonderful collection from the Byzantine Empire and an impressive exhibit of pre-Columbian American artifacts. It also has, tucked away in…
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Tillich: Why the “historical Jesus” is not the foundation of faith
Paul Tillich’s discussion of historical Jesus research in volume 2 of his Systematic Theology is a minor tour de force and could still apply today without too much change. The problem of historical Jesus research, Tillich says, is that you can’t get “behind” the New Testament documents to the “real” historical Jesus of Nazareth because…
