rain and the rhinoceros

Out of all the new theology book releases this year, one of the most promising works is Gary Dorrien’s Social Ethics in the Making. Dorrien is the world’s leading expert on the American liberal theological tradition. He is a wonderfully balanced and insightful historian of modern theology and this book will almost certainly become the history of modern Christian social ethics.

Here’s a glimpse at the table of contents:
Introduction
1 Inventing Social Ethics: Francis Greenwood Peabody, William Jewett Tucker, and Graham Taylor
2 The Social Gospel: Washington Gladden, Josiah Strong, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Harry F. Ward
3 Lift Every Voice: Reverdy C. Ransom, Jane Addams, and John A. Ryan
4 Christian Realism: Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, John C. Bennett, and Paul Ramsey
5 Social Christianity as Public Theology: Walter G. Muelder, James Luther Adams, John Courtney Murray, and Dorothy Day
6 Liberationist Disruptions: Martin Luther King Jr., James H. Cone, Mary Daly, and Beverly W. Harrison
7 Disputing and Expanding the Tradition: Carl F. H. Henry, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, Michael Novak, and Jim Wallis
8 Dealing With Modernity and Postmodernity: Charles Curran, James M. Gustafson, Gibson Winter, Cornel West, Katie G. Cannon, and Victor Anderson
9 Economy, Sexuality, Ecology, Difference: Max L. Stackhouse, Dennis P. McCann, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Marvin M. Ellison, 10 John B. Cobb, Jr., Larry Rasmussen, Daniel C. Maguire, Sharon Welch, Emilie M. Townes, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, María Pilar Aquino, and David Hollenbach
11 Borders of Possibility: The Necessity of “Discredited” Social Gospel Ideas
Index

This may prove to be a most difficult question, but if you could name one book that dramatically changed your life what would it be? For me, this is a difficult question because a number of books have changed me in a variety of ways. And as I look back I realize that certain books have helped prepare the way for the impact of others. The most important book for my personal and theological development has to be Rowan Williams’ book Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel. In all honesty, this book more than any other was fundamentally integral to my faith journey. Reading this (after four years of heavy doses of biblical criticism) I began to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus again. Runners up include William Cavanaugh’s Theopolitical Imagination and Stanley Hauerwas’ The Peaceable Kingdom. Again, I’m not limiting this to theology books, so let’s hear it. What is the one book that dramatically changed your life? Why and in what ways?

This past week the theology library at St. Thomas was selling some books. For seven dollars I scored John Howard Yoder’s The Priestly Kingdom, Schillebeeckx’s Jesus, Käsemann’s The Testament of Jesus, Hengel’s Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity, Perrin’s Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom, and Gerd Theissen’s The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity. So, you’re probably wondering what the big deal is and why I’m devoting an entire post to telling you this news. Okay, here’s why. So, there was also a “silent auction” which included a number of rare books and multivolume sets. Well, the silent auction included 12 volumes of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics in hardcover in almost perfect condition. I had conceded a while back that I’d probably never own any of the Dogmatics because it is one of those things that is just plain difficult to justify spending money on. Not that I wouldn’t love to have it, but just that it is expensive and I will probably never specialize in Barth. Well, when I saw these volumes sitting there I realized that this could be a rare opportunity to score a set of the Dogmatics for really cheap. I attend one of the most Thomist seminaries in the country and usually (not always), but usually, Thomists aren’t so keen on Barth. Good news for me! I bought the whole set for $175!

Over at Fors Clavigera James K.A. Smith notifies us of the fascinating Guardian series of photographs of Writer’s Rooms and Night Visions.

Personally I’ve never been able to create a space of my own to read and write. I guess when I was at SSU my roommate Zach and I did have a good set up. We had what we called the “corner chair” which was located right next to our window located on the third story of Park Hall. I also had a huge oak desk that I loved and we managed to have nice lighting. Since moving to Minneapolis I do most of my work at coffee shops. Although we’ve set up a nice work area for me, I have difficultly getting stuff done there.

What about you? What does your work area look like? Are you happy with it?

I just discovered this new interesting looking book by David Burrell just released entitled Deconstructing Theodicy: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering.

I pulled this blurb off the Brazos websites:

Maimonides called Job a “strange and wonderful book.” For many readers, “strange” might well suffice. Though Job has been characterized as a theodicy, to the sincere reader the book can fail to satisfy the soul’s longing for answers to the problem of suffering. Perhaps that in fact is the point of Job–there are no satisfactory propositional arguments for why people suffer.
In this compact-yet-rich volume, philosopher of religion David Burrell shows that Job actually deconstructs the theories of theodicy proposed by commentators over the centuries. This is seen in the fact that Job’s three friends themselves offer theodicies, but are rebuked in the end; whereas Job, who seeks only to speak to God, is granted his audience. Rather than providing an exegetical commentary, Burrell engages in theological and philosophical reflection on the major movements of the book. Deconstructing Theodicy also contains an interfaith perspective with the inclusion of a chapter by Islamic scholar A. H. Johns on the reading of the Job figure in the Koran. Burrell then goes on to examine the treatment of Job in four classical commentaries and finally explores Job’s contribution to faith and theology as an affirmation that God hears and heeds our cries of anguish.

I’m aware that I’ve missed a few days of blogging. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post more frequently in the coming months. Today is my first day back at work and school after a wonderful month break. This past month I had the opportunity to read some more Wendell Berry (I attempted to read his fiction, but ended up reading his work on modern agricultural). I also read Stanley Hauerwas’ new book The State of the University, which was great. I began Charles Taylor’s massive A Secular Ageand began Marvin and Ingle’s Blood Sacrifice and the Nation. I read a wonderful book by the late Herbert McCabe entitled God Still Matters, which I bought at the best theological bookstore in the world Loome Theological Booksellers in Stillwater. McCabe got me excited again (actually, for the first time really) about Thomas Aquinas. I’ve got some other books on the go too (I really should finish the books I’ve started!), but I’ve got some required reading now for the courses I’m taking and so I’m trying to focus most of my attention on that. Anyway, I hope to post more frequently from now on, but things might be a little slow starting up here again. Bear with me… This semester I’m only taking two courses: Christianity Since the Enlightenment and Fundamental Moral Theology. Assuming that I’ll be somewhat interested in the class readings and discussion, I’ll probably be posting on these subjects soon. In the meantime, go out and vote. . . for the ugliest theologian that is.       

I’ve been reading Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and am finding it quite enjoyable and compelling. Beginning a book this size is always daunting, but to my surprise, Taylor’s work is very accessible. The central question he poses is this: “why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?” (Taylor 25). Five hundred years ago people rarely if ever doubted the existence of God. Our predecessors lived in an “enchanted” world, a world in which personal forces such as spirits, demons and God existed outside of the human subject and were actually involved in the natural world. In this enchanted world, “atheism comes close to being inconceivable…It just seems so obvious that God is there, acting in the cosmos, founding and sustaining societies, acting as a bulwark against evil” (Taylor 26). Today, of course, we live in a “disenchanted” world, that is, a world in which God is not a given, a presupposition, to all things. What caused this paradigm shift? Taylor argues against the common story “subtraction” story, that is, that with the rise of science God and spirits simply left the picture. Instead, something had to fill the void as it were, what Taylor calls the human spiritual and moral aspiration for “fullness.” Taylor identifies “exclusive humanism” as the rising dominant worldview, which arose with the aid of science. As scientific worldview “disenchanted” our world, exclusive humanism could fill the role for the human aspiration for fullness. The rise of exclusive humanism was conditioned on a shift in understanding of the self. Humans no longer saw themselves as “porous” that is open to possession by outside forces or “vulnerable to a world of spirits and powers.” The new sense of self was a “buffered” self, that is, persons lived in a universe autonomous from outside forces that could possess them. According to Taylor more than disenchantment needed to occur in order for the new self to arise; “it was necessary to have confidence in our own powers of moral ordering” (27).Taylor writes,

Where an exclusive humanism was undoubtedly available was in Epicureanism. And it is no surprise that Lucretius was one of the inspirations for explorations in the direction of naturalism, e.g., with Hume. But Epicureanism just as it was couldn’t really do the trick. It could teach us to achieve ataraxia by overcoming our illusions about the Gods. But this wasn’t what was needed for a humanism which could flourish in the modern context. For this was becoming one in which the power to create moral order in one’s life had a rather different shape. It had to include the active capacity to shape and fashion our world, natural and social; and it had to be actuated by some drive to human beneficence. To put this second requirement in a way which refers back to the religious tradition, modern humanism, in addition to being activist and interventionist, had to produce some substituted for agape (Taylor 27, italics mine).

Thus, according to Taylor, the rise of exclusive humanism, which is the dominant worldview of secularism, did not simply appear after the world was disenchanted. It wasn’t as if science came in and stripped away all myths only to find beneath the surface an obvious humanism. Instead, modern humanism was imagined. Of course, as Taylor notes, this didn’t happen overnight. Much of Taylor’s book is devoted to telling the story of how this shift occurred and I hope to blog some more on it as I continue to read the book.For now, I just thought I’d post on this idea of the paradigm shift from “enchantment” to “disenchantment,” a porous to a buffered self, and the idea that exclusive humanism did not come about negatively, but was imagined and serves as a substitute for agape.

Taking a cue from some others, I’ve decided to post a list of the top 10 books I have read this past year. At the beginning of this year I decided to change my course of study. I had just finished my first semester of an M.A. in Biblical Studies at St. Stephen’s University in New Brunswick, Canada, when I came to the realization that my interests were more in systematics than biblical studies. This was extremely difficult for me to concede, for Marcia and I had just moved our whole life out to New Brunswick and Owen had just been born a few months earlier. However, after much prayer and discernment, we came to the conclusion that I should try to change the direction my studies a bit. I spent the next semester reading a lot of different material, mostly on theology. Although I did my undergraduate in theology, to be honest, much of the material I was reading was quite new to me. Because my interests had always been in biblical studies, I spent most of my time reading historical-critical volumes and flipping through Greek and Hebrew flash cards. Over the summer of 2007, after I had finished a year of my M.A. (I only had my thesis left!) I decided to do a strange thing. I decided to apply to the M.A. program at St. Thomas, my alma mater. The main reason I decided to transfer was because I felt like I needed more theological training before heading into a PhD program. After one semester at St. Thomas, I am happy to say I feel good about the decision to transfer.

The following books mark a distinct shift in my reading from biblical studies to theology. I have had a wonderful time diving into some heavy hitting material, but it has not been without some major challenges. I attempted to tackle Zizioulas’ two volumes this semester and he was certainly a challenge to get through. I found that struggling through his work was a worthwhile endeavor. Robert Jenson’s two volumes of his Systematic Theology blew me away.
Daniel Bell Jr.’s book on liberation theology raised important questions about the nature of capitalism and modes of resistance. I had a terrible time reading Milbank’s book but I found much of it quite persuasive and so I had to add it to the list. Gary Dorrien’s book on Barth was the most compelling read of the year. Rowan Williams’ book on the Resurrection was my favorite book of the year.

1. Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel by Rowan Williams
2. Being as Communion by John Zizioulas
3. Communion and Otherness by John Zizioulas
4. Systematic Theology Volume 1 and 2 by Robert W. Jenson
5. Liberation Theology After the End of History by Daniel Bell Jr.
6. Divine Economy: Theology and the Market by D. Stephen Long
7. For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy by Alexander Schmemann
8. With the Grain of the Universe: The Churchs Witness and Natural Theology by Stanley Hauerwas
9. Theology and Social Theory by John Milbank
10. The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology: Theology Without Weapons by Gary Dorrien

Well, I finally finished my semester at St. Thomas and I’m thankful to have come out of the mess mostly alive. I have about a month off now to relax and hang out with Marcia and Owen. Although I find it deeply disturbing, I’m thoroughly enjoying Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag by Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle. Lately, the notion of American ”civil religion” has been on my mind and I think Marvin and Ingle do a superb job of bringing to light the deeply religious character of nationalism.    Here are a few interesting quotes from the first couple chapters:

 ”Though [religious] denominations are permitted to exist in the United States, they are not permitted to kill, for their beliefs are not officially true. What is really true in any society is what is worth killing for, and what citizens may be compelled to sacrifice their lives for. . . despite a sturdy American tradition of separating sectarian faith from the state, national faith is inextricably wedded to governance, which is ultimately the question of who shall live and die. Only nationalism motivates the sacrificial devotion of citizens, without which there can be no effective governance. In relation that faith, sectarian religion is best understood as a jealous competitor” (9-10).  

The purpose of Marvin and Ingle’s work is to “show that the totem system of American patriotism is a symbolically coherent, deeply primitive, powerfully religious enterprise organized around a violent identity-crystallizing mechanism. We propose that the totem is the violently sacrificed body symbolized by the flag. The flag ritually transformed is the god of society renewed” (11).  

The Director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, Miroslav Volf, is a brilliant and original theologian. I read his latest book this summer entitled, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World and found it quite compelling. The book is largely based on a number of lectures Volf delivered at Calvin College in 2002. You may listen to the Stob Lectures here.