A Thinking Reed

  • Nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving

    Today’s Daily Office reading from 1 Timothy (4:1-16) gave me pause, verses 1-5 in particular: Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2 through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron. 3 They…

  • Blasphemous bloggers?

    My only comment on the John Edwards/bloggers brouhaha is to note how deeply even “conservative” religious groups have drunk from the well of liberal interest-group ideology. For consider: all parties to the argument implicitly agree that the issue is one of bigotry – whether hatred was expressed toward a particular group of people – rather…

  • Cluster bombs and discrimination

    Jeremy at Eating Words blogs on this Christian Science Monitor story detailing the dangers posed by unexploded cluster bombs used by the Israelis in the recent conflict in Lebanon. One of the more hideous aspects of this problem is that it’s children who are disproportionately the victims. Kids have a tendency to pick up the…

  • Smartest thing I’ve read all day

    From Brandon at Siris: I think blogging constantly about politics is mentally unhealthy, inevitably warps one’s priorities, and distracts from the fact that politics is merely one necessary condition of the good life, and not even the most important.

  • Augustine’s Enchiridion 13 & 14

    Augustine concludes his Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love with a discussion of Christ’s saving work, the forgiveness and new life we receive in baptism, and a brief meditation on the final judgment. Recall that for Augustine we are condemned on account of original sin – the guilt imputed to us because of our first…

  • Better copyediting needed

    Oxford University Press is publishing a pocket version of Phyllis Tickle’s popular Divine Hours series (an adaptation of the Daily Office/Liturgy of the Hours), which sounds like a worthwhile project. I couldn’t help, though, but snicker at this line on the book’s website page: “Tickle draws her texts primarily from the Book of Common Prayer…

  • As the Anglican Communion turns (and turns, and turns…)

    I’m sure others better informed than I am will have plenty to say about this NT Wright interview, but I have a couple of questions for Anglican/Episcopalian readers: Has the Episcopal Church violated its own canon laws in proceeding with the election of Gene Robinson? And in what sense does the structure of the Anglican…

  • Augustine’s Enchiridion 12: The Incarnation and the Holy Spirit

    In chapter 12 Augustine considers the role of the Holy Spirit in the Incarnation. Though we say that Christ was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, we don’t call him the son of the Spirit. Should we say that his divine nature is the Son of the Father but that his human…

  • Christian peace bloggers

    I’ve joined a “Christian Peace Bloggers” webring started by Michael Westmoreland-White of the Levellers blog. I think I properly fit into the catergory of “someone who believes war is a very last resort” and “that Christians are commanded to be working for peace so that such a resort doesn’t come.” In other words, I’m not…

  • Faith seeking understanding

    Deconstructionist theologian Don Cupitt urges the church to trade in its traditional reliance on western metaphysics, the view that “behind the flux of experience there had to be something Real, one, intelligible to us, and perfect” with a radical rethinking of Christian faith based on a kind of post-Derridean anti-realism: We used to assume that…