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Small government for thee, not for me
Smart take from Matt Yglesias on the GOP’s “Pledge to America”: Perhaps the most telling thing about where the modern conservative movement is now, however, is their pledge on spending which says that “with common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels.” Of course once…
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A God of life
The God of the Bible creates, re-creates, and ultimately redeems life. This God, whatever the other so-called “gods” might be like, loves life, rejoices in it, is concerned about it, not only creates it for the purpose of blessing it, but saves it, and in between discloses to God’s covenanted people the way of life…
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A story of blessing
Clark Williamson’s systematic theology Way of Blessing, Way of Life is less focused on Jewish-Christian relations than his earlier work A Guest in the House of Israel (which I blogged about previously), but the project of re-connecting Christianity to its Jewish roots is still a major concern. One point Williamson makes is that the way…
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Clark Williamson on revelation
God is the proper subject of revelation, God’s self in God’s being and works. In revelation, God reveals God’s self and we are dependent on God’s revelation of God’s self for our knowledge of God. All human efforts to gain knowledge of God by independent inquiry are fruitless (1 Cor. 1:21: “The world did not…
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CotC on Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood
Elliot at Claw of the Conciliator seems poised to return to at least semi-regular blogging (or so we can hope!). The other day he had a good post on Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood, the second book in what I believe is supposed to be a projected trilogy about a world of bioengineering and…
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An example of the wrong approach to other religions
I don’t mean to pick on this blog in particular, but this post exemplifies an all-too-common tendency of Christians to put an apologetic slant on their approach to non-Christian religions. The post purports to offer five reasons why “a thoughtful person would start their religious quest with Christianity,” and in a relatively short space it…
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Priorities
So, making it impossible to challenge secret government kidnappings (and possible torture) seems like it might be a way bigger deal than whether some nutjobs in Florida want to burn a Koran. Naturally, it’s gotten about 1/1000th the media coverage. Do check out this post at Lawyers, Guns & Money for some good analysis, though.
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Come home, America
I finished Andrew Bacevich’s Washington Rules last night, and it’s a worthy successor to his New American Imperialism and Limits of Power. Bacevich tells the story of how the “rules” that govern the U.S. foreign policy consensus–in brief, the imperative to maintain American military hegemony and capability for “power projection” at all costs–have been maintained…
A Thinking Reed 