A Thinking Reed

  • Competing goods, sympathy, and democracy

    The Obama administration’s decision, as part of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, to require religiously affiliated institutions to provide contraception coverage in employee health plans has, not surprisingly, caused quite a stir. Personally, I’ve had a hard time forming a strong opinion on the issue, despite the fact that both conservatives and liberals…

  • In the midst of a great revolution

    One of the interesting things about H.R. Niebuhr is that he is often trying to walk the middle ground between a liberal or “natural” theology based on reason or experience and a Barthian “revelational positivism” that limits our knowledge of God to what is revealed. For Niebuhr, philosophical reasoning, religious experience, psychology, and history all…

  • H.R. Niebuhr on revelation, ethics, and nature

    For Niebuhr, revelation is not a revelation of divinely inspired propositions–as some theories of biblical inerrancy would have it. Instead, it is a fundamentally personal encounter–a revelation of God’s self. In this encounter, we don’t apprehend an object; it is more accurate to say that we are apprehended by–in judgment and love–the ultimate Subject. But…

  • H.R. Niebuhr’s principles

    In the preface to his The Meaning of Revelation, H. Richard Niebuhr outlines three convictions that he says underlie his argument: –self-defense is the most prevalent source of error in all thinking and perhaps especially in theology and ethics; –the greatest source of evil in life is the absolutizing of the relative, which in Christianity…

  • Absu, “Ontologically, It Became Time and Space”

    Sheer insanity.

  • Do we need a Christian party?

    Today I came across this article (via Crystal) arguing that American Christians should abandon the Republican and Democratic parties and form a “Christian party” that embraces something like Phillip Blond‘s “Red Tory” or “Big Society” program: British theologian and political philosopher Phillip Blond correctly notes that, “the current political consensus” in the United States is…

  • Silly season

    I haven’t been following the Republican primaries all that closely–partly because it’s too depressing, but also in part because I’ve been convinced virtually from the get-go that Mitt Romney will ultimately be the nominee. Nevertheless, what’s apparent even to the casual observer is that the G.O.P. intends to rerun the playbook they used in the…

  • Corrosion of Conformity, “Albatross”

    This probably calls my metal cred into question, but I prefer the later, Southern-rock-influenced version of CoC to the “classic” more punk-oriented sound. Ah well. BONUS: Here’s a more uptempo track from the same album:

  • Updated thoughts on Christianity and capitalism

    A while back I wrote a post called “What’s a Christian to do with capitalism?” in which I tried to outline some principles for a Christian approach to economics. I’ve since thought that those principles weren’t stated as clearly or exactly as they should have been, and I’ve updated the post to try and reflect…

  • Gojira, “Adoration for None”

    From the awesome French, eco-metallers, who are supposed to be putting out a new album this year, I think. This song features guest vocals from Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe.