A Thinking Reed

  • Augustine’s Enchiridion 8: The Fall and its Consequences

    Chapter 8 of Augustine’s Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love delves into one of the most influential, but also controversial, aspects of Augustine’s theology/philosophy: his doctrine of the Fall. Remember that a cardinal principle of Augustine’s thought is the essential goodness of creation. All things are, considered in themselves and their essential natures, good. Creation…

  • Jesus and Judaism revisited

    Jason Byassee of the Christian Century has taken issue with the comments offered by several bloggers (including your scribe, in a previous incarnation) on this article by Professor Amy-Jill Levine, which sharply criticized the Christian church for “divorcing Jesus from Judaism” (via Marvin). Mr. Byassee is certainly right to oppose “shear[ing] Jesus of his Jewishness,”…

  • Augustine’s Enchiridion, 5, 6, & 7

    In these three chapters Augustine deals with the questions of error, lying, and certainty, especially with respect to matters of faith. In particular, Augustine here seems concerned with what later philosophers have dubbed the “ethics of belief.” In other words, he’s focusing more on what our moral duties are with respect to belief rather than…

  • Some good contemporary theology – one layman’s opinion

    This meme asking for nominations for the best contemporary (=published in the last 25 years) theology books has been making the rounds of many of the blogs I read regularly. I’m not learned enough in theology to nominate books that are, objectively speaking, the best theology or the most influential, but I’ll mention some books…

  • Augustine’s Enchiridion 3 & 4

    Chapters 3 and 4 are compact but rich summaries of the heart of Augustine’s metaphysics. He deals here with God, creation, the goodness of created things and the problem of evil. It’s surely one of Augustine’s great accomplishments as a thinker to clearly establish the basic outline of a sound Christian metaphysics. While Augustine clearly…

  • Ivy Bush throwdown!

    Ok, not really. But current Ivy Bush blogger Jonathan and former Ivy Bush blogger Marvin are both blogging about the vexed question of the church’s attitude toward gay and lesbian Christians (see here, here, and here). They come down in different places (to the extent that either are definitively “coming down” anywhere), but both are…

  • Augustine’s Enchiridion 2

    In chapter 2 Augustine discusses faith, hope, and love in the light of the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed. “In these two we have the three theological virtues working together: faith believes; hope and love pray. Yet without faith nothing else is possible; thus faith prays too.” Faith is here defined by Augustine as…

  • New year, new beginning

    Well, after more than two and a half years, I think it’s time to put this humble blog to bed. I didn’t know exactly what direction I wanted to take this blog when I started it in July of 2004, but looking over the archives there definitely seems to have been a trend away from…

  • Augustine’s Enchiridion 1

    Partly inspired by Derek’s post on first steps with the fathers, and partly out of a desire to get back to basics, I’ve decided to inagurate this blog with a series on Augustine’s Enchiridion, or “handbook on faith, hope, and love.” This very brief text was written as a response to one of Augustine’s correspondents…

  • If I was better looking I could be a TV news anchor

    What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you’re a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big…