A Thinking Reed

  • Bonus Friday Metal: Cynic, “Cabron-Based Anatomy”

    I love the band Cynic. They started out in the late 80s as a progressive death metal band akin to other stalwarts of the Florida metal secne (Death, Atheist), put out an awesome album (“Focus”) in 1993, broke up a year later, and got back together and put out an even more awesome album (“Traced…

  • Hammers of Misfortune, “A Room and a Riddle” (plus album stream)

    I’ve been enjoying NPR’s stream of the new album from San Francisco’s Hammers of Misfortune (listen here; the album comes out next Tuesday). Here’s a clip from one of their earlier albums: HoM is a project of John Cobbett, formerly guitarist of the excellent black metal-ish band Ludicra (who sadly broke up earlier this year).…

  • Immolation, “Majesty and Decay”

    Death metal with a capital “D.”

  • Structural sin and the ways of death-dealing

    Christianity Today ran a rather silly article trying to undercut the claims of the Occupy Wall Street protesters: Occupy Wall Street protest signs seek to ignite a revolution of the 99 percent against the (richest) 1 percent, who are responsible for our troubles. Christians of course are forbidden from supporting this kind of worldview. The…

  • “In the struggle between ‘labor’ and ‘capital,’ capital has basically won.”

    I haven’t blogged about the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” (and other) protests, but I did want to share a couple of recent pieces that I found helpful for putting them in context. Using a plethora of charts, this post at Business Insider lays out about as clearly as you could ask the problems with how…

  • The God of Israel and the King Jesus gospel

    Scot McKnight of Jesus Creed (the book and the blog) has a new book out called The King Jesus Gospel, which purports to recover the “original good news.” What does this mean? I haven’t read the book, but on his blog, McKnight says that the way we typically think about the gospel–as a scheme for…

  • Mastodon, “Emerald”

    A cover of the Thin Lizzy classic.

  • God of Israel and Christian Theology: Wrap up

    Soulen is, in my view, largely persuasive in recasting of the scriptual meta-narrative as one of blessing and consummation, wherein sin and redemption plays a subordinate, though still important, role. Further, I think he’s right to avoid a certain kind of “Christocentric” reading of the Bible. If the churches are serious about overcoming supersessionism, then…

  • Somerset Maugham’s list of the 10 greatest novels

    The great 20th-century English novelist W. Somerset Maugham was once asked by an American magazine publisher to make a list of the ten greatest novels in the world. Maugham reluctantly agreed, recognizing that any such list was bound to be somewhat arbitrary. Eventually, he wrote a set of prefaces for the ten books, to be…

  • “There is neither Jew nor Greek…”

    Soulen’s interpretation of the gospel within the entire canonical framework allows him to characterize the life of Christian discipleship as cruciform–without negating the OT’s very this-worldly promises of blessing. “Jesus…frees his disciples to live in such a way that the blessing of others knows no bounds” (p. 167). This is consistent with the divine economy…