A Thinking Reed

  • John Macquarrie’s dialectical theism

    In his Gifford Lectures, published in 1984 as In Search of Deity, Anglican theologian John Macquarrie develops a view of God that he calls “dialectical theism”–to provide an alternative to what he calls “classical theism.” According to Macquarrie, classical theism has over-emphasized certain attributes of God, resulting in a less-than-satisfactory concept of divinity from both…

  • Some extremely belated observations on Rob Bell’s “Love Wins”

    With my unerring penchant for striking while the iron is stone cold, I read Rob Bell’s Love Wins over the weekend. I liked it–Bell has a knack for getting theological concepts across in friendly conversational prose without dumbing them down. He homes in on the heart of the Christian gospel–God’s abundant, overflowing love–and conveys it…

  • Four more years

    I didn’t even watch the inaugural festivities live on TV, much less attend them in person. But I did catch the president’s speech in re-runs, and like many others I thought it provided a persuasive articulation of his brand of pragmatic progressivism. It’s not a creed I fully share, but in terms of current American…

  • Support for same-sex marriage from unexpected quarters

    High-profile U.K. evangelical minister Steve Chalke describes how he came to an “affirming” position on same-sex relationships. Folks familiar with these arguments won’t find much new here, but Chalke provides a lucid overview of the bibilcal issues, and he frames the debate in a sensitive and sensible way. Meanwhile, farmer-poet-novelist-essayist Wendell Berry, who’s always been…

  • Paul Tillich’s proto-“new perspective” on (the other) Paul

    Luther believed that his was a restatement of the New Testament, especially of Paul. But although his message contains the truth of Paul, it is by no means the whole of what Paul said. The situation determined what he took from Paul, that is, the doctrine of justification by faith which was Paul’s defense against…

  • The Gospel as the basis of prayer

    The good news of the Gospel is that God in Christ meets us where we are and accepts us as we are, that God has come to us when we could not go to God, that we are right with God through God’s gift in Christ, that we are justified by faith, by trust in…

  • Lord Fowl, “Streets of Evermore”

  • Models of God and the Christian life

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately–partly inspired by my recent reading of Schleiermacher and my re-reading of Paul Tillich–about how the way we “model” God affects our understanding of the Christian life. As is well known, Tillich defined God as “the Ground of Being” or “being-itself.” These, he said, were the only non-literal terms applicable…

  • Capitalism, liberalism, and the good life

    I enjoyed this review by philosopher Gary Gutting of Robert and Edward Skidelsky’s How Much Is Enough? (I haven’t read the book.) The Skidelskys, according to Gutting, argue that, under capitalism, we find ourselves with relative material abundance but without enough time to pursue “intangibles such as love, friendship, beauty, and virtue”–which are essential ingredients…

  • Reading highlights of 2012

    This was the year I finally got into Civil War history. My reading of McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, mentioned in the last post, was a follow up to reading Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery earlier this year. I really enjoyed Foner’s book, but felt that I lacked an understanding…