Peter Frick captures well from Bonhoeffer’s (and Barth’s) posture towards academic theology how DB felt about so-called academic theology indeed. Bonhoeffer’s “unease” with academic (or university) theology resonates with me deeply. I often, as you’ve noticed, rail against academic theology, and the academic theological subculture (of glory) that funds it. It is for the very […]
The broken body of Jesus Christ and His shed blood is not supposed to be a thing of academic categorization; it is not to be a thing of liturgical sacramentology. The Eucharist of Christ’s body is to be the very ground and lifeblood of the Christian’s esse, of her very existence. When I turned to […]
Karl Barth writes the following as he is tailing off on a development on God’s power: “’The Almighty’ in abstracto [in the abstract] has probably more to do with that revolutionary and tyrannical spirit than with God. The constitution of the Swiss Confederacy is right when it begins with the words: ‘In the name of God, the […]
I was recently in a brief interaction with a former acquaintance I once had through Facebook. This particular engagement took place on Twitter, and this guy who has an anonymous Twitter handle mocked me, at first rather passive-aggressively, for being on the “Trump-train.” I didn’t recognize who this person was, and since they insulted me, […]
I am attracted to Barth’s theology for a variety of reasons. I am quite minimalist when it comes to theology. In other words, as a Protestant (Reformed) Christian I am interested in doing theology of the Word. This is why I am so acutely allergic to speculative theologies of the sorts that we find under […]
I am continuing to read through Paul Hinlicky’s book Divine Simplicity: Christ the Crisis of Metaphysics. In a discussion on the scandal of particularity, and how that problematizes, even wrecks the more ethereal complexes of how divine simplicity has often been thought in the Great Tradition. Hinlicky, offers a nice sketch on Gnosis, and how […]
I wanted to respond to a sentiment that is rather pervasive, particularly among younger academics (and “experts”), in regard to preserving the concept of expertise.[1] Am I against the idea of expertise? Nein. Am I against expertise when it is appealed to to shutdown non-specialist critique of expertise? Yes. There are extremes everywhere, no doubt; […]
In one of Martin Luther’s famous treatises he speaks of the church’s Babylonian Captivity. In his context this was in reference to the way the Gospel (and thus the church) had become conditioned to be what it was, programmed is even better, to imagine that the way people had been told things are by the […]
Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness […]
For me, natural theology continues to be one of the most significant theological loci that the Christian thinker must (and ought to) consider. If you have read me for any length of time you know that I am severely opposed to natural theology; in particular, so called: Christian natural theology. If I ever actually get […]
Athanasian Reformed 