A Thinking Reed

  • Keith Ward on the sacrifice of Jesus

    In his book What the Bible Really Teaches, Keith Ward spends a chapter on “the sacrifice of Jesus.” He wants to contest the popular view that Jesus had to die as a kind of blood sacrifice to appease or deflect God’s wrath–a view, Ward argues, that’s at odds with the biblical view of what sacrifice…

  • Friday Links

    –Ludwig von Mises versus Christianity. –20-plus years of Willie Nelson’s political endorsements. –The media has stopped covering the unemployement crisis. –The Stockholm Syndrome theory of long novels. –An interview with Edward Glaeser, author of Triumph of the City. –Why universal salvation is an evangelical option. –A debate over Intelligent Design ensares an academic journal of…

  • Friday Metal: Graveyard, “Hisingen Blues”

    It’s probably not accurate to call these guys metal–70s-influenced bluesy hard rock is more like it (although they do mention Lucifer!). Still, good stuff. The singer sounds like the love child of Robert Plant and Chris Cornell.

  • The logic of divine love

    I was thinking a bit more about Clark Williamson’s question whether Jesus “constitutes” our reconciliation with God “such that we cannot be reconciled to God without him” or “disclose[s] to us that we have always been reconciled to God.” And I wonder whether there might not be some convergence of positions here, at least at…

  • Yet another perspective on atonement

    This one’s from Clark Williamson, whose work I’m a fan of. The article is called “Atonement Theologies and the Cross.” Williamson surveys some of the main atonement theories and defends a semi-Abelardian view by way of Luther and with a tip of the hat to Girard and process theology. He emphasizes that the cross is…

  • More on Anselm and atonement

    I just finished listening to this presentation by Fr. Thomas Williams–an Episcopal priest, distinguished philosopher, medieval scholar, and blogger–on Anselm and the atonement. Fr. Williams does a terrific job of clearing up some misconceptions about Anselm’s soteriology, and he provides a spirited defense of some of its essential elements. One interesting and I think important…

  • Friday Links

    –With the death of bin Laden, the U.S. has accomplished the aims that justified the war in Afghanistan. Time to leave. –An interview with “eco-economist” Herman Daly: Rethinking growth. –A primer on Christian nonviolence. –The collapse of the “progressive Christian” big tent? –The Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to allow non-celibate gay and lesbians to serve…

  • Friday Metal: Enslaved, “Alu Misyrki”

    The Norwegian progressive black metal band Enslaved, whose album Axioma Ethica Odini was one of the best releases of 2010, have put out a brand-new five-song EP called The Sleeping Gods. And the really cool thing? They’re giving it away for free! The EP is being distributed by Scion AV, which is an in-house record…

  • Thoughts on atonement (with some help from Gerald O’Collins, James B. Torrance, and C.S. Lewis)

    I’ve been reading and thinking about the Atonement (i.e., the work of Christ in reconciling us to God) again lately, so I thought I’d jot something down on how I see things. The view I’m now inclined toward is that “Abelardian” and “Anselmian” theories of atonement are complementary rather the mutually exclusive. An Abelardian view…

  • Friday Links

    –A challenge to libertarians on the coecivene power of private entities. –A.O. Scott on superhero movies as a Ponzi scheme. –Richard Beck of Experimental Theology on why he blogs. –A political typology quiz from the Pew Research Center. (I scored as a “solid libera.l” Although I’d take issue with the way some of the choices…