A Thinking Reed

  • Friday metal – Faith No More, “Digging the Grave”

    I’m not sure FNM should properly be called a metal band, but they definitely have metal influences. But, more importantly, they’re one of my favorites and it’s my blog. So there.

  • The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society 2: The trouble with liberalism

    In Part I of his The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society (see previous post), Murray Jardine traces the trajectory of modern liberalism from its beginnings with Locke and Hobbes to the present. His argument is that liberalism embodies the contradictions of the technological society in that it recognizes humanity’s capacity to alter its physical…

  • What’s wrong with Pelagianism?

    In a comment to this post bs asks: Having followed the blog and its comments for a while, I’ve noticed that Pelagianism is taken (by Lee and commenters) to be a dirty word. Embarassingly, I didn’t know what it was and googled it. While I can’t say that I necessarily agree with Pelagius, I admit…

  • …and Justice for All

    James Hetfield detained at a UK airport for looking like a terrorist. “Death to America!!”

  • The problem with air power

    Powerful piece by Tom Englehardt on the problems with relying on air power in war, something that has become more central to the US’s way of war over the last half-century or so. The problem, in essence, is that so-called collateral damage, the “unintentional” killing of large numbers of civilians, is such an inextricable part…

  • Monday metal – return of DSL edition

    Sepultura – “Refuse/Resist”

  • Farm bill victory

    A while back I blogged about opposition to section 123 of the proposed 2007 farm bill from animal welfare and environmental groups, including the Humane Society. The section was widely understood to pre-empt at the federal level any state efforts to regulate or ban food items and animal products over and above the standards set…

  • Placher’s Triune God

    I see that William C. Placher has a new book out on the Trinity. Placher’s long been a favorite of mine – his Domestication of Transcendence and Jesus Our Savior in particular. Does anyone know anything more about this?

  • Justification and liberation

    Since the previous post on Braaten’s soteriology made it sound like he had a completely negative view of Liberation Theology, I thought I’d try to set out the position he sketches in his chapter on the Two Kingdoms principle, which tries to put liberation in the context of eschatology and the coming Kingdom of God.…

  • Jardine’s Making and Unmaking of Technological Society

    One of the pleasures of moving is that in going through all your earthly possessions you rediscover books that you either hadn’t read or hadn’t fully digested. One such book of mine is Murray Jardine’s The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society. I think I may have blogged about it a bit a few years…