January 2012
1 post
Need the Press: The Isolated Medieval World
When my alarm sounded this morning I immediately jumped up and turned on the TV to watch the morning news. After a quick breakfast, I listened to ESPN Radio as I pedaled to the library, and, upon arrival, I immediately pulled out my computer and checked the politics section on Huffington Post. Even now, as I write this essay, I’m fighting the urge to check my RSS feed reader as the bold, red “78”...
August 2011
2 posts
Barack Obama on Faith and Politics →
June 2011
4 posts
Travel- #Think30
If we live truly, we shall see truly. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not everyone wants to travel the world, but most people can identify at least one place in the world they’d like to visit before they die. Where is that place for you, and what will you do to make sure you get there?
I have wanted to visit Europe for a few years now, but my reasons have shifted away from merely site-seeing or trying...
"One Strong Belief" #Trust30
Here’s today’s prompt (and my response) from the #Trust30 30-day writing challenge. You can learn more and join in on the challenge here.
“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” - Ralph...
“Today is a day to live among beloved friends.”
May 2011
3 posts
The Good and the Bad of Richard Hays, 'Moral...
I just finished reading Hays’s work that has become an instant classic in the world of NT Ethics. Hays is a renowned scholar in the area of New Testament biblical ethics and an important voice among conservative New Testament biblical studies professors and theologians.
Here’s my rapid react to the work. I tried to be fair about what I thought was good, and then give some detail...
A Protestant Learns to Love the Church Fathers
I agree with you, and I like the analogy. It took me a very long time to finally get over a “patternistic”reading of the Bible that sees it as a blueprint or map for Christian living. Making that realization and then actually growing beyond it in to a new understanding are very different. I gave up on reading the Bible as THE source of Christian identity, but now I see the Bible as...
HuffPo: A Protestant Learning to Love the Church... →
Here’s a link to a piece of mine on Huffington Post. It was really born out of my class with Fred this semester that was designed to teach us how to constructively appropriate materials from within the Christian tradition.
April 2011
6 posts
WatchRachel & @Trippfuller Talking about Sex, Science & Salvation….and how those relate to Scripture (by tripp fuller)
“Judgment begins in the house of the Lord (1 Peter 4:17), and many of the first...”
– Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 45.
Niebuhr: Jack's Ethic
I’m finally getting around to watching the final season of 24. I’ve been a 24 fan since the beginning, for the same reason that everyone is a fan of 24—Jack Bauer.
About half way through season 7, I remember having a conversation with Josh Linton about Jack Bauer’s renegade tactics. Josh said, “I want to believe in an ethic that allows for Jack Bauer.” I never...
The Emerging Church, Postmodernism, and...
There might be a serious problem with postmodern emphasis on truth-relativity and anti-realism, but conservative responses usually suck.
Before describing what I mean, a brief aside…
I find myself in a really weird place. As I am still in the period of “theological puberty,” a time when I am still growing and changing and developing almost exactly at the moment of exposure to...
Fred Aquino on the rationality of belief in God →
Hey, hey, a 30-minute lecture from Fred about Religious Epistemology. Good stuff.
Resident Theology: Reflections on a Chief... →
Interesting post breaking down the different types of students at graduate schools of theology and how that potentially effects pedagogy.
From the post:
Keeping in mind [that there is a wide array of types of students in a given school] does good work in softening cynicism for institutional choices that prove so annoyingly common, as well as in tempering impatience with fellow students who just...
March 2011
18 posts
Maximus, Moser, and Religious Epistemology
I’ve finally landed on a writing topic that I think is manageable and that I will enjoy that I will turn in for both Philosophy of Religion and Theological Explorations.
In P of R, one of our emphases was on the topic of Religious Epistemology, part of which was reading Paul Moser’s The Elusive God, in which Moser argues that religious epistemology should be reoriented away from the...
Rob Bell: The Good News Is Better Than That:... →
“I never set out to be controversial.”
Review: Fearless
Lucado’s well known book is about how the Christian faith handles the debilitating forces of fear. Lucado works through many of the different sources of fear (insignificance, unworthy to God, overwhelming challenges, etc.) and speaks the Christian message into these situations in a deep and meaningful way. Lucado shows how the surprising command, “do not fear,” reaches into all...
Niebuhr on Ethics
We have no come to the fairly general conclusion that there is no “Chrstian” economic or political system. But there is a Christian attitude toward all systems and schemes of justice. It consists on the one hand of a critical attitude toward the claims of all systems and schemes, expressed in the question whether they will contribute to justice in a concrete situation; and on the...
Daily Lenten Meditation: Saturday, March 19
But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad; many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray. (Luke 5:15-16)
I love the idea of Jesus sneaking off to pray. I picture him quietly ducking out a side door when everyone is caught up in conversation. In the very midst of his ministry, teaching and healing, Jesus...
Christ & Culture: The Problem
It’s hard to say exactly when I became interested in the question of the relationship between Christ and culture. Clearly, every religious person is deeply invested in this question whether they have reflected critically upon it or not. As a Christian, there are certain allegiances that are given to Christ, yet each of us simultaneously lives in culture. By lives, I mean that life is culture,...
Watchpeterrollins.net
“It is most lively and productive to think of one body of literature, the Bible,...”
– This quote is form the previous link: Yoder, “The Use of the Bible in Theology“
Thinking about what place the Bible can serve, after its “authority” has been deconstructed through lit theory and historical-criticism, is one of those “lingering questions” for...
Yoder, "The Use of the Bible in Theology" →
Great article. This website is full of great theological resources.
Lectures By Metropolitan Kallistos Ware - Ancient... →
I try not to put up links for hour long talks very often—mostly because I, personally, don’t typically listen to links of that length when other people suggest them.
But, in this special circumstance, these are AWESOME. The discussion of the Jesus Prayer in the first lecture is inspiring, and the discussion of what Orthodox and Evangelical Christians can learn from one another in the...
“A Niebuhrian hockey player tries to win the game, but does not assume victory...”
– What is a Niebuhrian?
(via Obama’s Favorite Theologian? A Short Course on Reinhold Niebuhr - Pew Research Center )
More from Lohfink
Here’s the next section of Lohfink’s chapter on the Synoptic Problem:
III: The Bible: God’s Word in Human Words
Why the humanity of God’s word? There is a simple answer to this question, and, in fact, [it is] out of the center of our Christian religion: The Word of God is thus human, so our history is arrested with humanity, because God himself became human. We contemplate, what...
Recent Books
I got a $50 Amazon Gift Card for Christmas from Meredith’s parents. It took me 2 months and 13 days to spend every cent of it. But I think I came away with some good books. Here’s what I got:
H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture. This is because of my fascination with the question he takes up, and my newfound obsession with both of the Niebuhr(s).
Vegan Cooking for Dummies. My...
Christian Tradition & Emerging Conditions
Here’s an excerpt from Phillip Turner’s article on the “tradition of the church” as a source for Christian ethics in the Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics. Turner tries to deal with the tension of emerging conditions and historical beliefs in the Christian tradition.
Within Christianity, the staying power of tradition depends upon maintaining a dynamic tension between...
The Synoptic Problem
I thought it’d be fun to post my translation from German class of a chapter out of Gerhard Lohfink’s The Synoptic Problem.
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We come after (have addressed) the treatment of translation problems and, after [that], the problem of...
More on Using non-Canonical Books in Church
My friend Josh Linton wrote a response for a grad class he’s in about biblical canon. After he sent it to me I thought it had some interesting overlap with my last post about the Acts of Paul so I asked him if I could put up some of it up here for continued reflection. Enjoy.
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In...
February 2011
12 posts
Talking Lions and Man-eating Seals: The OT/NT...
In writing a paper for my NT class about the Acts of Paul (particularly the section about Paul and Thecla), I’ve run across an interesting double standard. Many of the “apocryphal” Acts that were written, circulated, and read in churches for the first few centuries after Paul include grandiose stories including talking animals and, in one case, Paul actually baptizes a lion.
...
The Current Epistemological Mayhem in...
A quote from Billy Abraham’s Crossing the Threshold of Divine Revelation. It’s a great book for an introduction to theological/religious epistemology.
Current efforts to weave together bits and pieces of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience are ad hoc measures to shore up the tottering edifice that Protestantism has become. By the twentieth century Protestantism could no...
A New Kind of Bible Reading →
A chapter of ANKoC that Mclaren left out. Brian offers a few constructive suggestions for how to read the Bible once you have abandoned the cruel and problematic “constitutional” reading of Scripture.
Staying or Leaving
Whether you stay or leave a place is not always up to you. Sometimes choosing to leave is more like being shown the door. This has been a relatively constant struggle for me over the past 3 years or so to know if I should leave my particular denomination of churches of Christ and, furthermore, how I’m supposed to know that I know it’s time to leave.
Mostly for myself, I wanted to try...
Brian D. McLaren: The Egyptian Revolution and... →
Brian Mclaren asks:
What would happen if Christians (who make up about 33 percent of the world’s population) and Muslims (who make up about 24 percent) were to join with Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, atheists, and agnostics in this shared spirit (or Spirit), risking ourselves for one another, working together for the common good, opposing the tyranny of political war-mongers and economic...
“My church is currently looking for a worship minister. Really? That’s what...”
– Richard Beck
Among Us
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us… (Luke 1:1)
The entire prologue to Luke-Acts is intriguing because it gives a brief and unusual glimpse into early Christian communities and the occasion for why different gospel accounts were written. At least one of those reasons was to understand what was accomplished (or...
Ben Griffith: What the Tea Party And Evangelicals... →
If you haven’t seen it yet. Here’s a piece that I submitted to Huffington Post.
I think the wide range of interpretations of my article found in the comments proves the point I was trying to make :)
Le Reve des Pistes →
Follow the link to watch Kyle’s newest movie.
Ben Griffith Weekly →
Here’s a link to a weekly newspaper that is automatically generated from my Twitter account.
“This is why I dislike fundamentalism so much: it ruins the person both while...”
– Via James Mcgrath
January 2011
17 posts
Mark's Gospel
Mark’s Gospel is aimed at our assurance of who Jesus is and what we know about him. As much today as 2,000 years ago we want to think that we’re “in” and those who don’t understand Jesus as we do are “out.” Mark’s Gospel is about a paradoxical Jesus and an inadequate community of followers. Jesus is hard to understand and purposefully tries to...
Religions diagram according to Google →
As my modernist friends say… CAN’T ARGUE WITH FACTS!
(via J Jenkins)