A Thinking Reed

  • Summer reading list, updated

    Finished: Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity Jay McDaniel and Charles Pinches (ed.), Good News For Animals? Christian Approaches to Animal Well-Being Michael Ramsey, God, Christ and the World Started: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick Started but moved to the back burner: Bill McKibben, Eaarth John Haught, God After Darwin To start: Paul Krugman, The Conscience of…

  • Purpose and design

    …the question of whether there is a point or purpose to the universe is not answered simply be reference to evidence for or against a designer. Purpose is a much wider notion than design, and it can live much more comfortably with chance, disorder, and the abyss of cosmic time than can the all too…

  • On the righteousness of Jesus

    From Michael Ramsey’s God, Christ, and the World (p. 85): So the righteousness of Jesus is the righteousness of a Godward relationship of trust, dependence, receptivity. It is a terribly hard kind of righteousness. It is sometimes hard because it involves the calls of sacrifice and self-renunciation which Jesus gives. But it is more often…

  • Attention must be paid

    There have been a couple of articles recently on the “slow reading” movement, one in Newsweek and one in the Guardain. Actually, “movement” may be a bit strong; it seems to be more of an impulse, or a reaction against our 24-7 ultra-connected, multitasking, information-saturated lives. (Where “we” are a relatively small minority of affluent…

  • On “existential” Christianity

    One of the chapters of God, Christ and the World is a critical appreciation of the thought of Rudolf Bultmann. (The earlier quote on demythologization was taken from the same chapter.) Bultmann’s project of demythologization was tied to his desire to unearth the essential message – the kerygma – of Christian faith. He reinterpreted the…

  • Ramsey on the Resurrection

    More from Archbishop Michael Ramsey’s God, Christ and the World (p. 78): The Resurrection is something which ‘happened’ a few days after the death of Jesus. The apostles became convinced that Jesus was alive and that God had raised him to life. It is not historically scientific to say only that the apostles came to…

  • Michael Ramsey on “demythologizing” the Bible

    From Ramsey’s* God, Christ, and the World (pp. 48-49): Demythologizing was taking place in the apostolic age. In the teaching of Jesus there were pictures of a future coming of the Son of Man on the clouds and of the establishment of a divine kingdom described in vivid apocalyptic imagery with the details of a…

  • ATR summer reading list

    I have several books going now, and I always feel guilty if I don’t finish a book I’ve started. But I also have a bad habit of borrowing books from the library before I’ve finished other books I’ve started (or buying books at used bookstores, or from online vendors…). Anyway, here are the books I…

  • Heart of Christianity 5 – Jesus

    Marcus Borg made his name as a scholar (and popularizer) of the “historical Jesus,” so it’s not surprising that his chapter on Jesus has some rich material. (His book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time is well worth reading, though hardly the last word on the topic.) One common way to talk about the…

  • Heart of Christianity 4 – God

    In chapter 4, “God: The Heart of Reality,” Borg continues his now tried-and-true approach of contrasting aspects of the earlier paradigm and the emerging paradigm. Here he discusses the nature and character of God. Borg calls the earlier paradigm’s concept of God supernatural theism. This concept identifies God as a transcendent, personal being who created…