A Thinking Reed

  • Drones aren’t the (only) problem

    Arni Zachariassen has a good post responding to Jack Hunter’s article at The American Conservative on why pro-lifers should oppose drone strikes. Arni points out that drones are more precise and kill fewer innocent people than conventional war, so unless you’re a pacifist, simply opposing drones on “pro-life” grounds doesn’t wash. If, on the other…

  • For election day–music to vote to

  • Thinking about the nature of religion with Schleiermacher

    Although I don’t agree with Schleiermacher on everything, I do think his overall approach to religion is a fruitful one. To get clear on what this is, it’s helpful to think of his position as occupying a middle ground between two unpalatable extremes. On the one hand, it’s possible to think of religion as a…

  • Midnight Oil, “My Country”

  • Why I voted for President Obama (again)

    I voted today–D.C. started early voting last Monday–and, not surprisingly, I pulled the lever (or rather pushed the touchscreen) for the Obama-Biden ticket. This wasn’t at all a hard decision. On every issue I care about, the Romney-Ryan G.O.P. is significantly worse than the Democrats. And this includes those areas where Obama has most disappointed–peace,…

  • Baroness, “Sea Lungs”

  • Schleiermacher on the authority of the Bible – 2

    The New Testament writings, Schleiermacher says, are the first in the ongoing series of presentations of the Christian faith, but they are also normative for all succeeding presentations. He writes, “all that has approved itself in the way of oral presentation of Christian piety in later ages of the Church has kept within the lines…

  • Schleiermacher on the authority of the Bible

    According to Schleiermacher, the authority of the Bible cannot be the foundation of Christian faith. The notion that it is, he says, is more often implied than asserted, for instance by how books of doctrine and confessional documents present the doctrine of Scripture. Nevertheless, we need to get this misconception out of the way. So,…

  • The Bible as fallen and redeemed

    Kenton Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture cuts to the heart of how Christians understand revelation and the truth of the Bible. This is a more popularly pitched version of an argument that Sparks, a professor of biblical studies at Eastern University, made in his book God’s Word…

  • Sympathy for the damned

    Most interesting of Schleiermacher’s arguments against hell is his deeply felt conviction that the blessedness of the redeemed would be severely marred by their sympathy for the damned. This is precisely the opposite of the conviction of many earlier theologians that the blessedness of the redeemed would be actually enhanced by their contemplation of the…