A Thinking Reed

  • Globo-democracy?

    In making the case for a “global parliament,” George Monibot concedes something that seems to undercut his entire argument: Global democracy has a special problem – the scale on which it must operate. The bigger the electorate, the less democratic a parliamentary body will be. True democracy could exist only in the village, where representatives…

  • Our farm policy: bad for animals, bad for the environment, bad for the poor, bad for our waistlines…

    Michael Pollan writes about how US farm policy keeps the prices of fattening and unhealthy foods artificially low, while allowing prices on things like fruits and vegetables to rise. Why, he asks, would we want to encourage such a situation, especially if we face an “epidemic” of obesity? He also points out how this connects…

  • Once more into the breach…

    At the risk of boring readers to tears, Robert Jenson’s article on the atonement prompted me to write something about the oft-made criticism that Anselm imports the conceptual apparatus of feudal law into his theory of atonement and that this distorts the idea of God by replacing it with a deity who is an easily…

  • Cross talk

    I haven’t read either of these yet, but they’re bound to be of interest: Robert Jenson, “On the Doctrine of the Atonement” N.T. Wright, “The Cross and the Caricatures”

  • D.M. Baillie on the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith

    This weekend I re-read Donald Baillie‘s brief book God Was In Christ. Though originally published in 1948 it still strikes me as fresh and contemporary, not least in the way that it treats the problem of the “historical Jesus” and/vs. the “Christ of Faith.” Baillie is waging a two-front war here. On the one side…

  • The least of these

    From Stephen Cottrell’s ‘I Thirst’: A further interpretation of this story [Jesus’ parable of the final judgment in Matthew 25] touches powerfully upon the way we treat the whole created order, particularly our fellow-creatures. ‘The least of these’ can refer to animals abused and exploited in so many atrocious ways. The food scares that have…

  • The thirsty God

    This book I’m reading by Stephen Cottrell is really terrific. It’s part theology, part mediation, part devotional, and incorporates a section on Christian practice into each chapter, connecting the meditation on Christ’s cross with Lenten practices like fasting, almsgiving, Bible reading, prayer, etc. (which really are just Christian practices). He takes the passion according to…

  • PBA ban

    While I’m in sympathy with the spirit of such a law, I’m a bit skeptical of the logic. After all, the point is to ban a certain procedure, rather than to, say, ban all abortions after a particular point of development. It’s hard to see why it’s not ok to kill an unborn child by…

  • Blast from the past

    I decided this clean break stuff is overrated so I’ve imported all the posts from the old blog over to here should anyone be interested in perusing them. If nothing else it’s more convenient to have it all in one place.

  • On the road again (random notes)

    I’m in Washington, DC on a top secret mission and thus haven’t had time to post the past couple of days. I did get a chance to visit the National Cathedral which, in addition to being very lovely, has a really nice gift and theological book shop. While there I picked this up. It was…