Recent Posts
Recent Posts Tagged With 'humanities'
Deconstruction
A few people have asked about the concept and practice of postmodern deconstruction. The best (read: most concise) explanation I have come across follows. Again, I can’t recall where I actually found this explanation. I stumbled upon it online...
The Truth of Myth
The Truth of Myth Myth, as defined by Frank S. Frick in “A Journey through the Hebrew Scriptures,” reads as follows: “…myth makes reference to a story that narrates profound truth in story form, the kind of truth that escapes ...
A Treatise on Atonement by Hosea Ballou
Hosea Ballou Peter Newport, a colleague and friend, tagged me via Facebook with the following excerpt from “A Treatise on Atonement” by Hosea Ballou (Treatise was originally published in 1805). The earth, in time of drought, ceases to be...
Do the Evolution
Jesus May Be the Answer, But What Is The Question? If you want to trace Jesus of Nazareth’s slow transformation from a universally relevant social, political, and religious activist/reformer to a historically and culturally relative and somewha...
The Sacred Literature of Sanatana Dharma
Hindu A myriad of spiritual paths crisscross over the terra firma of the Indian subcontinent. A few of these paths could be called unified systems; Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, for example, are properly unified systems. The majority of these paths...
The Sacred Stories of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
The Sacred Stories of Indigenous People If God camps with the oppressed, downtrodden, and spiritually humble, then God’s tent must be perpetually pitched with the world’s indigenous peoples. Many of the ancient and sacred ways of indigeno...
Six Good Reasons to Question Church Tradition
The Copernican Revolution The Christian Church has passed along a lot great things via tradition, but has it passed along enough greatness to be given a complete and unexamined pass on everything it cites as tradition? I would hope not. I believe in ...
The Buddha’s Parable of the Raft
The Buddha's Parable of the Raft The Buddha’s Parable of the Raft challenges one to consider the spiritual journey. Specifically, it asks us to be mindful of our present and what we need to journey through this very moment. The parable is a...
Robert Bellah’s Theory of Progressive Forms
Robert Bellah My copy of Michael H. Barnes’ In the Presence of Mystery: An Introduction to Human Religiousness finally arrived from the equally mysterious and always entertaining Amazon Used and New Book Store. Purchasing a used book from an Am...
On Battlefield Kuru
Arjuna and Krishna I am stuck on the Battlefield of Kuru, perilously parked between two warring clans of a royal family in northern India. Rest assured, it’s a poem; in case any of you are wondering what what I’m talking about, or fearing...
The Christian Reformation’s Four Soteriological Groups
Pelagius Art The age-old question concerning how individuals are actually reconciled with God haunted Martin Luther during his formative years as a Christian until he finally and stubbornly submitted to grace. Grace, he finally realized, was the only...
Homosexuality and the Bible
Is Homosexuality Really Condemned by the Bible? “There is not a sexual ethic to be found anywhere in this Bible,” proclaimed the confident professor from the front of his seminary classroom. “If you can find such an ethic between th...
Pitching Parabola: Parables of Kierkegaard
What the world rejects, casts away, despises, the kernel - precisely upon that God sets the greatest store, and treasures it with greater zeal. Related posts:Kierkegaard On Continued RevelationThe Relationship between Philosophy and TheologyTowards...
Emerson Divinity School Address
Address to the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, on Sunday July 15, 1838, by American essayist, philosopher, and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Related posts:Midweek Meditation on Matthew 25:31-39Schleitheim Article IV: Concerning Separation...
The Theologian’s Nightmare
The Theologian's Nightmare by Bertrand Russell, philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic, from: Fact and Fiction, 1961). Related posts:Adopt an Alien from Planet Naratuko!Novelist, Playwright, and Theologian Dorothy Sayers...
Exploring Emerging Theology: The Connections between Emergence and John D. Caputo’s The Weakness of God
Emergent theology is deep, challenging and informed by scholars like John D. Caputo and his idea of "The Weakness of God," and "Event Theology." Related posts:A De-centralized and Emerging EcclesiologyPagitt’s Three Categories of Emerging Min...
The Modern Charge of Postmodern Relativism
Postmodernism is often branded as meaningless relativism. Reducing postmodernism to relativism without understanding it is unfortunate, to say the least....
Certeau’s Perpetual Eruption of Inquietude
Michel de Certeau (1925-1986) is fascinating. His life’s work is as deep as it is broad. I am only beginning to dive into it and most of the material I am sifting through regarding the man is not primary. I’ll get to those primary sources...
The Church of Benjamin Franklin
I picked up my old copy of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography this morning. It’s been some time since I opened it. Perhaps my neglect has something to do with it’s uninspiring title? It’s plainly titled The Autobiography of Ben...
Postmodern Interpretation
It’s not an exaggeration to say that most biblical literalists who rail against postmodern theology and postmodern biblical interpretation have neither seriously read, nor studied postmodernism or postmodern interpretation. I can say so, becaus...
The Wandering Womb
This book should be on a shelf in everyone’s library: The Wandering Womb: A Cultural History of Outrageous Beliefs About Women. The author, Lana Thompson, a freelance medical writer based in Boca Raton, Florida, and a specialist in anthropology...
A Case Study in Objectivity and Interpretation
I need no further convincing as regards the myth of objectivity. Ministry offers countless lessons, no doubt. A few of the more important ones have to do with the myth of objectivity. Ministers are introduced to this particular myth everyday in a var...
A Mezuzah and a Bodhi Tree
It does not take long for questions concerning the relationship between world religion(s) and Christianity to be raised by people living in cosmopolitan settings. The city is a diverse place. It is an urban mash up of ethnicity, culture, religion and...
A Division in Biblical Studies
Interpretive Smackdown: Historical-Critical vs. Literary-Critical A fascinating article concerning the contentious gulf separating Historical-Critical and Postmodern interpretations of the Bible appears in the Summer 2009 edition of Journal of Biblic...
A Random Theology Terms Dump
God: The ground of all being, existence, and reality (hat tip: Paul Tillich). Panentheism: Panentheism is the belief that God is the animating source/force behind the universe. Panentheism differs from Pantheism in that it does not equate God with th...
Kierkegaard On Continued Revelation
Soren Kierkegaard - aka the father of modern existentialism - emphasized God’s continued revelation as the basic foundation of his religious experience. Kierkegaard suggests that the Christian experience is found in the sort of subjective passi...
