A Thinking Reed

  • Is penal substitutionary atonement the “core of Christian faith”?

    According to this story, the Southern Baptist Convention just adopted a resolution at its annual meeting that re-affirms the “penal substitutionary” view of Christ’s atonement. This was passed in the face of what were described as efforts to “weaken” the doctrine. Proponents of PSA (penal substitutionary atonement)–the view that on the cross God was punishing…

  • A brief case for #MedicareforAll

    I’ve long believed that people in a wealthy society (such as our own) have a right to health care regardless of their ability to pay. To me, this arises from a Christian conviction (though certainly not an exclusively Christian conviction) that each human being has intrinsic worth as creature made in the image of God.…

  • The cross as sacrifice and gift

    In chapter two of his small book on the cross and resurrection (see previous post), Rowan Williams turns to the important but controversial motif of sacrifice. He reminds us that “there is no pre-cross Christianity”: that is, as far as we can tell, there was no early Christianity that regarded Jesus only as a charismatic…

  • Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose

    Comparing America’s patchwork health care system to Europe’s social democratic paradise is a bit of a hackneyed genre at this point, but this op-ed by writer Anu Partanen does a good job of re-framing the rhetoric of “freedom” that Republicans have used as a rationale for reducing government’s role: The trouble with a free-market approach is…

  • The cross as a sign of freedom

    Here is a divine love that cannot be defeated by violence: we do our worst, and we still fail to put God off. We reject, exclude and murder the one who bears the love of God in his words and work, and that love continues to do exactly what it always did. The Jesus who…

  • The populist bait-and-switch gets more obvious every day

    Who could’ve predicted (in fact, a lot of people did) that Donald Trump’s alleged working-class populism would turn into bog-standard right-wingery once he took office? The first two big legislative pushes of this administration involve kicking millions of people off their health insurance and a budget proposal to gut programs that help vulnerable people and…

  • The debate over the Democratic future

    After a shellacking at the hands of someone like Donald Trump, it’s only natural that the Democrats (and liberal or left-leaning people in general) have spent a lot of time since the election wondering What Went Wrong? and What Do We Do Now? Broadly speaking, two main approaches have emerged. One, associated with folks who…

  • (Why) does the debate about divine (im)passibility matter?

    I’ve spent a fair bit of time reading up on the debate over whether God can be said to suffer, and if so in what sense. I haven’t come to any firm conclusions about this, but I think it’s helpful to understand what religious commitments may motivate the debate. In particular, this is not just…

  • Jesus and Rome

    Were Jesus and the early Christian movement foes of the Roman Empire? This common claim is critically examined by biblical scholar Christopher Bryan in his thought-provoking book Render to Caesar. He takes issue with those who regard Jesus as primarily concerned with opposing Rome in the name of “home rule” for Israel. Bryan examines the…

  • And yet they are not three gods but one God

    I recently re-read Keith Ward’s Christ and the Cosmos, which was published in 2015, but which I didn’t feel like I really digested upon my first reading. (Not that I fully digested it this time either!) In this book, Ward offers a multi-part trinitarian theology, fleshing out in more detail arguments he’s made elsewhere (particularly…