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On Blake and the Bible (and Milton)
2008-12-10 22:31:00
A post by Kim Fabricius (This was Kim’s “vote of thanks” after Christopher Rowland’s lecture yesterday for the Theological Society in Swansea. Rowland spoke on “William Blake and the Bible ” – if you’re interested, you can download the lecture as a PowerPoint presentation from the Oxford website.)William Blake was my first true literary love. (Before Blake I’d merely slept around.) We met when I majored in English. I still have my copy of Northrop Frye’s magnificent study of Blake, Fearful Symmetry. And after I’d graduated and hit the road to Europe and Asia in 1971, along with Shakespeare the only other book I carried in my rucksack was a one-volume collection of the works of Blake and John Donne. (And if that seems an unlikely pairing, you obviously don’t see the connection between the two most interesting things in life: God – and sex!)And then, homeless and broke in London a few years later, crashing and sponging at a friend’s flat in Pimlico, I used t...
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Is T. F. Torrance a Barthian?
2008-12-10 17:48:00
Last month, I made a short (impromptu) video for the Sydney discussion group, Theology & Praxis. My talk was entitled “Why I Think T. F. Torrance is Not a Barthian.” Although the video is no longer available online, Travis has provided a summary of my talk, together with a very thoughtful, detailed response. When I can find a few spare moments, I might try to write a brief response to Travis as well – but in the meantime, be sure to check out his excellent post: Why I think Ben Myers is not quite right about Torrance.

Celebrating Milton's birthday: on Milton and politics
2008-12-09 22:40:00
Four hundred years ago today, England’s great poet was born: John Milton . I celebrated privately this morning by solemnly reciting the opening 50 or 60 lines of Paradise Lost. So why don’t you pause for a moment to read it as well. To read this poem is to participate in a miracle.By way of celebration, the New Zealand journal, The Turnbull Library Record has devoted a special issue to Milton, including the public lecture which I presented in Wellington earlier this year: “Milton and the Theology of Secular Politics ,” The Turnbull Library Record 41 (2008), 3-15. The article discusses Milton’s political thought in the context of contemporary political theory (with special reference to Rowan Williams’ lecture on sharia law). Here’s an excerpt:“If Milton’s work discloses contradictions inherent in rights-based political doctrines, it would be a complete misunderstanding to imagine that we could somehow “fix” these contradictions simply by being still more tolerant ...
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The church and Britain: a homily for Christ the King Sunday
2008-12-09 01:59:00
A guest-post by Andrew Brower Latz (Ben’s note: Sorry, I’m a couple of weeks behind with this – but I still wanted to post this excellent sermon, which Andrew Brower Latz, an F&T-reader, preached recently for Christ the King Sunday )Today is the feast of Christ the King, or the Reign of Christ, the last Sunday of the Christian year. It was established by the Roman Catholic Church in the 20th century in response to the rise of fascism. It proclaims, in the words of Paul, that Christ is ‘far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named.’ Powerful stuff, but what does it mean for us today, living in a 21st-century liberal democracy?Let me begin with two examples from the media, one recent and one not so recent. The first, on Thursday on Radio 3, was a discussion with Trevor Philips, director of the Commission for Racial Equality; someone towards the left of the political spectrum, who describes himself as progressive and libertarian. ...
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On children and technology
2008-12-07 17:45:00
My six-year-old daughter told me that she is old enough now for her own laptop. I explained that we didn’t even have computers when I was growing up. “Wow,” she replied. “So how did you send your emails?”
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Walk the plank
2008-12-06 06:29:00
Halden has posted a brief review of Kim’s new book of propositions – and if you’re looking for Christmas ideas, I notice the book is now 28% less at Amazon… Here’s another quote from Mike Higton’s delightful preface: “Proposition by proposition, aphorism by aphorism, this book provides a solid training in how to think theologically – how to break and remake your thought in the light of God’s grace…. Think of each proposition as a hammer blow – and realize that you would do well to pause after each, just to check whether anything is broken.”
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New Zealand conference: trinitarian theology after Barth
2008-12-05 20:22:00
Next year’s conference on Trinitarian Theology after Barth is now open for registration. The conference will take place in the lovely city of Auckland, 14-15 May 2009. Speakers will include Bruce McCormack, Paul Molnar, John McDowell, Ivor Davidson, Murray Rae, and several others (including myself).You can get a registration form by contacting Myk Habets.
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William Stringfellow: career vs. vocation
2008-12-04 18:18:00
“I had elected then [in my early student years] to pursue no career. To put it theologically, I died to the idea of career and to the whole typical array of mundane calculations, grandiose goals and appropriate schemes to reach them…. I do not say this haughtily; this was an aspect of my conversion to the gospel…. “[Later] my renunciation of ambition in favor of vocation became resolute; I suppose some would think, eccentric. When I began law studies, I consider that I had few, if any, romantic illusions about becoming a lawyer, and I most certainly did not indulge any fantasies that God had called me, by some specific instruction, to be an attorney or, for that matter, to be a member of any profession or any occupation. I had come to understand the meaning of vocation more simply and quite differently. “I believed then, as I do now, that I am called in the Word of God … to the vocation of being human, nothing more and nothing less…. Within the scope of the calling to ...
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William Placher
2008-12-02 20:47:00
I was sad to hear that William Placher died this week, aged 60. There are reports here, here and here. Placher was an important Reformed theologian and a leading representative of Yale-school “postliberal” theology. He once said: “The way we best show our love to the whole world is to love with a particular passion some little part of it.”

Have yourselves a conservative Christmas!
2008-12-02 00:47:00
A guest-post by Scott Stephens (originally written for an Australian newspaper)Conservative politics is now everywhere in retreat. Or rather, it has been routed. Across the Western world, conservative parties are in disarray after suffering a catastrophic series of electoral defeats. Just think of the fate of the Liberal Party after Howard, or the Republicans after Bush, or New Labor in these final, dying gasps of the Blair-Brown regime (which has been overtly Thatcherite in its approach to economic policy).Conservatism’s now dismal outlook is due, in large part, to the rather fickle affections of the free-market economy to which it has wedded itself. Even during the bad times, it finds itself in a position where it has to keep talking up the benefits of capitalism for fear of losing its political pedigree – that of being the best at managing the economy and generating massive surpluses.But while political conservatism is everywhere being rolled back, many commentators and even ...
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Tom Waits: Silent Night
2008-11-30 17:20:00
Here’s some nice music for Advent: a rare recording of Tom Waits singing “Silent Night .” Click here to listen online.

Adrian Johnston: Žižek's ontology
2008-11-28 04:28:00
Those of you who are into Žižek (yes, I’m looking at you, Shane) will be interested in Adrian Johnston’s very fine new book, Žižek’s Ontology : A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (Northwestern UP, 2008). The book is a fascinating account of subjectivity and ontology, and it’s far and away the best and most interesting thing I’ve read on Žižek. (Actually, the best part of the book is Žižek’s humorous endorsement on the cover: he expresses some anxiety about the question whether Johnston “is the original and I am a copy.”)To summarise Johnston’s argument very briefly: While Badiou wants to think subjectivity as something that can never emerge from being, Žižek tries to understand subjectivity as emerging from flaws that inhere in being. For Žižek, subjectivity occurs as a kind of monstrous mistake, a malfunctioning produced by the cracks and imbalances in being: “this malfunctioning occurs because substance is shot through with openings ...

Moving to Sydney
2008-11-27 00:06:00
A couple of months from now, I’ll be moving to Sydney to take up a position as Lecturer in Systematic Theology at United Theological College (a university-based seminary in Parramatta: it’s both a seminary of the Uniting Church and part of the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University). So I’ll be teaching undergraduate and Masters students, as well as supervising doctoral research. Needless to say, I’d be glad to talk to any of you Sydneysiders who might be considering doctoral work in theology. I’m told that my great, great, great (etc) grandfather was Governor of the Parramatta jail, way back in the 19th century – and he was such a despicable tyrant that the inmates rioted and killed him. I trust my own time in Parramatta will be just as memorable.
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Around the traps
2008-11-26 16:52:00
Some poignant autobiographical reflections on the pathology of theology: “I believe I’ve found something out about myself that I’ve always secretly feared: Theology isn’t fundamentally a noble exercise.”Unhappy booksellers at AAR (things would have been different if I had made it to AAR...)What makes for an adequate ecclesiology?Blumenberg and SchmittViolence and Christian anarchism. This reminds me of a conversation about pacifism with some Barthian friends at the pub last night: I agreed with them that the world is irreducibly violent – but when I concluded my argument by appealing to “the church” as the inbreaking of peace, I was greeted with a roar of laughter! (I take this to be an indictment not of my ecclesiology but of the church’s apostasy...)Another new book from Australia’s most prolific scholarA series of posts on the people of God in the Book of RevelationA series responding to Nate Kerr’s bookCall for papers: Foucault and St PaulA short film inspi...

Iron & Wine and Augustine: on grace and mothers
2008-11-24 23:58:00
One of Augustine ’s favourite biblical texts was Paul’s question to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 4:7): “What do you have that you did not receive?” – Quid enim habebat quod non acceperat? Against Pelagian conceptions of grace, Augustine insists on the absolute priority of God’s action towards us in Christ. Even when God rewards us for good works, God is merely “crowning his own gifts.” There is, in other words, a sheer incommensurability between God’s gift to us and the gifts that we return to God. Even the best of our gifts are always derivative and dependent on the grace that we have already received.I think there’s a nice illustration of this concept in the Iron & Wine song, “Upward over the Mountain” (from the 2002 album, The Creek Drank the Cradle – you can hear the song in this clip).The song is an achingly beautiful depiction of the relationship between a son and his mother. The son is united to his mother through the gift of life and through the histo...
More About: Grace , Mothers

William Stringfellow: theology at the circus
2008-11-21 14:25:00
Some time ago, a reader here at F&T recommended the work of William Stringfellow – a writer I had never really come across till then. And when Kim Fabricius came to visit recently, he told me that he had also started reading Stringfellow. So this week I finally started reading him too, beginning with the excellent Eerdmans anthology. This is astonishing stuff – Stringfellow’s analysis of the principalities is especially good. I’m also intrigued by his love for the circus (he and his partner Anthony Towne once spent the summer traveling with a circus!). Here’s an excerpt of Stringfellow’s theological reflection on the circus:“The circus is among the few coherent images of the eschatological realm to which people still have ready access and ... the circus thereby affords some elementary insights into the idea of society as a consummate event. This principality, this art, this veritable liturgy, this common enterprise of multifarious creatures called the circus enacts a h...
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Dishonest money: what the financial crisis tells us about ourselves
2008-11-19 04:54:00
A guest-post by Scott Stephens (originally written for an Australian church newspaper)Credit is the lifeblood of the modern economy. It saturates our lives – from the personal credit we each use to purchase household items or to buy our homes, to the shadier, more mysterious world of credit default swaps (CDSs) and other derivatives that commercial banks now trade like a currency.But it’s the very ubiquity of credit that prevents us from seeing its true nature, like being unable to see the wood for the trees. Credit is, in essence, the promise of limitless, indefinite, unfathomable wealth. And we need credit is because of the kind of lives that we have become accustomed to living, or the size of the profit margins your investors demand. Credit is, like most facets of our economy, an invention, a form of technology for generating more money. But the real innovation of the last two decades has been the willingness of banks to trade debt and risk itself, and thereby to make the eco...
More About: Money , Financial , Crisis , Tells

At Vanderbilt
2008-11-19 03:35:00
If you’re in the Nashville area this week, I’ll be giving a paper on Thursday at Vanderbilt Divinity School (time: 6.30 pm / venue: Tillett 
Lounge). The paper is entitled “Grace Interrupts Nature: Towards an Apocalyptic Revision of the Doctrine of Creation.” Here’s an excerpt:From the standpoint of “nature” as such, I think we can therefore regard the death and resurrection of Jesus as a fundamentally disordering intrusion into history. It is worth considering here Slavoj Žižek’s – admittedly rather startling – identification of “love” and “evil.” For Žižek, love enters the world as an alien principle, a contradiction of the very order of reality. Ethically, love is a refusal of the Kantian categorical imperative. It is an absolutely ungrounded choice of the one over the many. Love opposes all natural law; it is against nature, and as such can be described formally and ontologically as “evil,” as the precise opposite of the ethical “good”. ...

Yoder against Kuyper
2008-11-15 19:01:00
The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper advocated “sphere sovereignty” – a theory famously summed up in his statement, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” The political implications of this theory are articulated in Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism (and, more concretely, in the social and legal arrangements of apartheid in South Africa).John Howard Yoder rightly argues that such a concept of Christ’s lordship – in which Christians are called to participate in every sphere of life – represents a complete reversal of the New Testament witness. In his book Discipleship As Political Responsibility (Herald Press, 2003), Yoder writes: “It is remarkable how the meaning of Christ’s lordship has been reversed in modern ecumenical discussion. In New Testament times the lordship of Christ meant that even that which is pagan, the state, was under God’s rule. Today exactly t...

And the winner is...
2008-11-12 22:52:00
Okay, using a highly advanced technique of random selection, I’ve decided to give the free copy of Nate’s book to Chad Marshall. But don’t despair, dear readers – everyone’s a winner today! If you head on over to the Wipf & Stock website, all F&T readers can now (for a limited time) purchase Nate’s book at a special 40% discount – from $28 down to $16.80! Just add the book to your shopping cart, and then enter the special coupon code KERR40. So don’t delay, get your apocalypse now: Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission.
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Once more with Nate Kerr: liturgy as dispossession
2008-11-09 20:39:00
I was glad to hear that Nate Kerr ’s new book, Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission, was quick to sell out at AAR last week. I’ve got one more copy to give away, so leave a comment here if you’d like a copy (I’ll just randomly choose someone from the comments-thread to receive a copy).Here’s another quote from this remarkable book:“Marked by the excess in history that is Jesus’ ongoing historicity, ‘church’ no longer names either a stable site of production, nor does it possess a proper place of its own. Rather, as that work which binds us ever again to the particularity of Jesus, liturgy is precisely the practiced loss of a historical ‘place’ or ‘identity’…. Such is the Spirit’s own apocalyptically irruptive work, by which we are called ever anew into subversive openness to that reality which arrives as always in excess of every social ‘site’ as such: the ‘original revolution’ of God’s reign that is Christ’s cro...

Bruno Forte: on music and apocalyptic aesthetics
2008-11-07 05:30:00
In my posts on popular culture here at F&T (on films, music, or whatever), I’m often looking for ways to talk about aesthetics in terms of disruption and dissonance – “form” as a kind of apocalyptic grotesqueness; “beauty” hidden sub specie crucis. There are some helpful ideas along these lines in a new book by the Italian theologian and archbishop, Bruno Forte : The Portal of Beauty: Towards a Theology of Aesthetics (Eerdmans, 2008). I went along tonight to a public lecture by Forte, and it was quite stunning – the Catholic archbishop presented a kind of “aesthetics of the cross,” with numerous colourful digressions into Luther and Karl Barth. So now I’ve now been devouring his book – here’s what he has to say in the chapter on music:“Transposing this understanding of the Spirit to the musical event … one can hypothesize a form of music in which interruption, transgression, and silence are no less eloquent than harmony and sound. It is a matter, that is, ...
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Art and theology with Edward Knippers
2008-11-06 05:46:00
The series on the paintings of Edward Knippers is now underway over at Theology Forum (including my own post), with plenty of nice pictures to look at. Here are the links so far, with a brief excerpt from each post:First, Edward Knippers discusses his own work in relation to a theology of incarnation and embodiment: “I hope that my cubist-type language suggests a multi-dimensional world quite different from our own as it keeps the eyes in constant motion through transparent overlappings. I have tried to use this visual metaphor to hint at the movement behind the veil – to uphold the truth that for those in Christ there is glory beyond the edges of our comprehension.”Next, Fred Sanders discusses the visual language of Knippers’ work: “Up close, a Knippers painting is a revelation: in your space, in your face, confrontational and aggressive. His pinkish giants don’t stay in a polite middle distance in his images, but crowd the foreground. A room with three or four of them ...

Electing not to vote?
2008-11-04 06:50:00
In The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923), Carl Schmitt argues that, while the foundational principle of modern parliamentarism is “openness and discussion,” the situation of parliamentarism has become critical today since “the development of modern mass democracy has made argumentative public discussion an empty formality.” Parties no longer face each other discussing opinions, but they face each other “as social or economic power-groups calculating their mutual interests and opportunities for power, and they actually agree compromises and coalitions on this basis” (p. 6).Further, public opinion is not won over through open discussion; instead, “the masses are won over through a propaganda apparatus whose maximum effect relies on an appeal to immediate interests and passions. Argument in the real sense that is characteristic for genuine discussion ceases. In its place there appears a conscious reckoning of interests and chances for power in the parties’ negoti...
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Art and incarnation: the art and theology of Edward Knippers
2008-10-30 22:56:00
Next week, Theology Forum will be hosting a “blog exhibition” showcasing the art of Edward Knippers. Starting Monday, they’ll be posting several pieces of Knippers’ work each day, accompanied by short essays which engage theologically with these paintings.My own essay on “Knippers and the Resurrection of the Body” will be posted on Wednesday. I’m very excited to be contributing to this excellent series – so make sure you stop by next week at Theology Forum, and join the discussion about God, paint, and bodies.
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Caption contest winners
2008-10-29 17:54:00
Thanks for all the terrific entries in our latest caption contest. Since the contest is a celebration of Nate’s new book, I asked him to pick the two winners. So here are his selected winners:Aniu was a clear winner, with his extraordinary and hilarious list of 50 captions from Dylan’s song titles. You can read all 50 captions in Aniu’s comment – here are a few highlights:Bob: ‘Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You’
Pope: ‘Tell Me That It Isn’t True’Bob: ‘Saved’
Pope: ‘I Don’t Believe You’Bob: ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’
Pope: ‘Idiot Wind’Bob: ‘You’re Gonna Quit Me’
Pope: ‘Going, Going, Gone’Bob: ‘Lay, Lady, Lay’
Pope: ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’Bob: ‘Tryin’ To Get To Heaven’
Pope: ‘Up To Me’Bob: ‘You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go’
Pope: ‘I Shall Be Free’And the second winner is Kurt, with this delightful caption: “The fact that the former pontiff did visibly shake to the noise emanating f...
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Around the traps
2008-10-28 22:14:00
Troy has a very interesting discussion of a recent seminar with John WebsterAndrew Sullivan talks about why he blogsDan Reid talks about reading prefaces (I was horrified to learn that there are in fact some people who don’t read a book’s preface: the world is a strange, strange place…)David reviews a book on Barth and DostoevskyEvan talks about the new German edition of Ratzinger’s complete worksKyle has more thoughts about Jonathan Edwards and church historyT&T Clark are looking for a new editorial assistant I’m now reading the new English edition of Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology – the translation feels a bit clunky, but it’s still exciting to see that the most explicitly theological of all Schmitt’s writings is now available in EnglishAnd did you know there’s a mountain in New Zealand named after Karl Barth? It’s all true. Choice, bro.

Caption contest: Bob Dylan and the Pope
2008-10-26 19:25:00
Thanks to the kind folks at Cascade Books, I now have a couple of giveaway copies of Nate Kerr’s new book. So it’s time for another caption contest – here’s a photo of Bob Dylan ’s performance for Pope John Paul II in Bologna, 1997:The best two captions will win a free copy of Nate’s wonderful book, Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission.
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Nate Kerr: Christ, History and Apocalyptic: the politics of Christian missi
2008-10-24 04:06:00
As a regular contributor to our discussions, Nate Kerr is well known to F&T readers. His forthcoming book Christ , History and Apocalyptic is one of the most exciting theological works I’ve read in quite some time. This is mind-expanding, first-rate stuff: it’s both a brilliant critical reading of modern theology (moving through Troeltsch, Barth, Hauerwas and Yoder), and a compelling constructive argument for an “apocalyptic” approach to Christian theology. Really, it could be read as a kind of manifesto: it points the way towards a new way of doing theology, and towards a distinctively theological way of thinking about history and the church’s mission. The book will soon be released in the UK by SCM (as part of their new Veritas series), and in the US by Cascade (as part of their new Theopolitical Visions series).Nate has kindly given me permission to post an excerpt here. So let me whet your appetite – this sample is from Chapter 5, entitled “John Howard Yoder: T...
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How to read Karl Barth: George Hunsinger's foreword to the German Edition
2008-10-20 16:07:00
A guest-post by George Hunsinger[This is the foreword to the new German translation of his book, How to Read Karl Barth – the German edition is titled Karl Barth lesen: Eine Einführung in sein theologisches Denken, and will be published next month by Neukirchener.]This book started out twenty years ago as my doctoral dissertation at Yale, written under the supervision of Hans W. Frei. I had already developed the idea of “motifs” as a way of introducing students to Barth. When I sat down to write my dissertation, I had expected to discuss them only briefly in the preface. As it turned out, however, the preface took over the work!Since then I have continued to read Barth and teach his theology on a regular basis. I have found that explaining these “motifs” still helps students to gain a better grasp of his theology and to read him without becoming discouraged by the difficulties. It is almost always better to read Barth than to read about him. But reading him, as everyone k...
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