Category: Reading Theology
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Thoughts on *A Book of Uncommon Prayer* by Brian Doyle
I wish everyone could read this book. I understand that not everyone would think they would want to, for different reasons. But I wish it, anyway, because it is a beautiful book that has the effect of opening a reader’s (my) eyes to the delightful, marvelous, wondrous, good, true, vital things, ordinary things, that surround…
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Hold Fast to What is [Truly] Good
![Hold Fast to What is [Truly] Good](https://hermeneutrix.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/crop-trinity-college-dublin-reading-room.jpg?w=1016)
Shared with my by a friend: this careful reminder not to be beguiled, but to be steadfast in the face of temptation, and not to conclude that suffering must be good, somehow. Good to have in mind as we head down the road of Holy Week.
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Olde Tyme Religion Goes Viral
Martin Luther’s letter “Whether one may flee from a deadly plague” has started to feel so timely that people are talking about it on Twitter. The Lutheran Reporter has kindly made the full text available online with the permission of Fortress Press. It is definitely worth reading. Faith Lutheran Church in Radcliff, Kentucky (right down…
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How Free is the God of Constructive Theology?
Schneider, Laurel C. and Ray, Stephen G., Jr., editors. Awake to the Moment: An Introduction to Theology. Westminster John Knox Press, 2016. My recent reading and reflecting on The Freedom of God and Human Liberation prompted me to revisit and reconsider Awake to the Moment, an introduction to constructive theology. Would that text look different…
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What Kind of Free Do We Want to Be?
Alexander J. McKelway. The Freedom of God and Human Liberation. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990. [An Installment of the “Read Me” Project; discussions of earlier chapters of McKelway’s book are here, here, and here.] Alexander J. McKelway concludes his reflections on The Freedom of God and Human Liberation with a consideration of human freedom: what…
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How Do We Read the Word of a Free God?
Alexander J. McKelway. The Freedom of God and Human Liberation. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990. [An Installment of the “Read Me” Project; discussions of earlier chapters of McKelway’s book are here and here.] The project of The Freedom of God and Human Liberation is to demonstrate that only divine freedom provides an adequate ground for…
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Can We Trust the Theologians?
Alexander J. McKelway. The Freedom of God and Human Liberation. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990. [An Installment of the “Read Me” Project.] Alexander J. McKelway’s lectures on The Freedom of God and Human Liberation have challenged me to think and work through the implications of his argument more closely. [An earlier reflection is here.] In…
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A Criterion for Liberation?
Alexander J. McKelway. The Freedom of God and Human Liberation. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990. [An Installment of the “Read Me” Project.] This book sat on the “Read Me” Shelf for a long, long time. It’s a short book. But it’s one of those books that I started more than once, got part way through,…
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Thanking Another Thinker for Thoughts about the Trinity
Elizabeth Sands Wise has written a profound and beautiful reflection on the Trinity, and vocation, and grace, which I commend and which I hope many will read.
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Around “A Bigger Table”
[Sharing reflections on John Pavlovitz. A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017.] The adult class at our church has been reading and discussing A Bigger Table by John Pavlovitz for the past several weeks. Pavlovitz “went viral” in 2014, with his blog post “If I Have…
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More on “Tradition in Action”
Notes on Awake to the Moment1, “Tradition in Action” (69-104): The second chapter of Awake to the Moment discusses Christian “tradition” as a resource for constructive theology. What most readers probably think of as tradition, “sets of shared meanings and practices that repeat, or have continuity with, the past” poses both “problems and possibilities” for…
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Notes on “Tradition in Action”
As I continue slowly wending my way through Awake to the Moment1 in the short breaks between working on class, here are a few summary notes of the first couple of pages in the next chapter, “Tradition in Action”: Tradition needs to be flexible enough to enable its adherents to respond to a changing world…
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Meeting the Cloud of Unknowing in the Union Hall
Finishing up the first chapter of Awake to the Moment1, “What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? Context and Questions,” here are my summary notes and comments: It is difficult to know anything, but particularly difficult to know God, who is infinite and mysterious. The doctrine of revelation doesn’t eliminate the need…
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Past Ways of Knowing
Still engaging with Awake to the Moment1 and still looking at “what resources and ways of thinking we might bring to bear” on addressing the central questions of theological knowledge from a constructive theological point of view (26); the third “suggestion” on this score is “Learn from Others in History Who Have Thought about Knowing”…
Matters of Interpretation 