A Thinking Reed

  • Is "Open Theism" heretical?

    Several people in the blogosphere have darkly pointed out that Pastor Greg Boyd, who made headlines for his renunciation of any close identification between Christiaity and a particular political party (which shall remain nameless…), is also a proponent of “open theism.” Some of these same folks have also alleged that open theism is heretical. Is…

  • Warblogging at FT

    The First Things blog has come alive over the last day or so with posts from several contributors beyond the usual entries from Richard John Neuhas and Jody Bottum. Currently there’s a lively debate about the current war(s) going on with Ross Douthat taking what I would call a sober just war perspective, Frederica Mathewes-Green…

  • "This madness must stop"

    Sen. Chuck Hagel breaks with Bush on the Middle East. Hagel is about the only Republican I could see myself voting for in ’08. Well, I guess I’m still agnostic on Romney since I don’t know anything about his foreign policy views.

  • Womenpriests and women bishops

    I am strongly in favor of women’s ordination and full participation at every level of the church’s ministry, but I have to say I don’t really understand this. Secret ordinations, skirting bishops’ jurisdictions and so forth ironically seem to assume a far more “mechanical” concept of ordination than even those of their antagonists. Plus, it…

  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

    Saw this over the weekend at a $5 matinee. I thought it was pretty good, actually. Lots of swashbuckling fun, cool special effects, Johnny Depp being weird and funny, etc. About a half hour too long and not quite as much fun as the first one, though. Plus, I find Orlando Bloom/his character to be…

  • Impotent omnipotence

    Jonathan Schell has a lengthy piece in the Nation arguing that the U.S. can’t be an empire even if it wants to. He attributes this to the fact that recent history has imposed limits on the use of force which prevent any country from being the new Rome or British Empire. The two most important…

  • Nagel’s "War and Massacre"

    I was at our local Good Will store yesterday perusing their 79-cent paperbacks and picked up a copy of an anthology of essays on war and morality which were originally published in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs. Last night I sat down and read Thomas Nagel’s “War and Massacre,” which is a qualified defense…

  • The nationalist temptation, part III

    Interesting NY Times article about a megachurch pastor in St. Paul who preached a series of sermons against the identification of Christianity with American nationalism and how it cost him a fifth of his congregation. The Times article sort of tries to spin it as a conservative vs. liberal thing, but the pastor, Gregory A.…

  • The nationalist temptation, part II

    Exhibit A Exhibit B Granted that neither of these authors is a Christian, they are both writers well within the mainstream of American conservative politics. And both essentially advocate an “anything goes” approach to waging war. Again, I’m not interested in arguing whether the Israeli response in the current situation is “proportionate,” or meets other…

  • The nationalist temptation

    I’ve noticed in recent days, mostly in various blog comment threads about the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, that whenever anyone brings up traditional just war notions like proportionality or non-combatant immunity, almost inevitably someone will say, with an air of triumph as if delivering an unassailable argument-stopper, something like “So, you’re saying the Allies were…