Archive for the 'Theology Notes' Category

A Deeply Embedded Mystery

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

As humans we are beings in becoming, and what we will be is not yet revealed. Human essence is an eschatological reality that is fully realized in Jesus Christ, and is called forth in each one of us through him in whom humanity is fully realized. It is for this reason that human nature is […]

This Golgotha of Nuanced & Subtle Academic Theology

Monday, September 26th, 2011

The following is an email I sent to my theology students for the Intro to Theology and Ethics class that I am teaching this semester. I sent this email because we just took a turn from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity to a text titled, The Essentials of Christian Theology, edited by William Placher, which is […]

Salvation in the Body of Jesus

Monday, September 19th, 2011

Salvation is not an individual affair. It is not a direct line from God thrown to the individual soul. Our salvation is located in the body of Jesus, for he worked out our salvation in his body through utter reliance upon the Spirit. And through reliance upon this same Spirit we are incorporated into the […]

Betray Him With A Kiss

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

The Church in the flesh can love God for her own reasons and in her own ways, but ultimately she will betray him with a kiss.

Ethics As Unveiling

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Throughout this summer I have been primarily reading in the field of Christian Ethics in preparation for a class I will be teaching in the fall. In doing research for this class I was excited to discover a new anthology edited by noted theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, which is described as “an innovative exposition of […]

The Flesh

Thursday, May 19th, 2011

The flesh is a big sucking vacuum of rapacious desire guided by a giant mass of proud stupidity.

Confessions of a Theological Elitist

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Aren’t you all entitled to your half-assed musings on the Divine. You’ve thought about eternity for twenty five minutes and think you’ve come to some interesting conclusions. Well let me tell you, I stand with 2,000 years of darkness, and bafflement, and hunger behind me. My kind have harvested the souls of a million peasants, […]

Two All-Too-Typical Spiritual Errors

Sunday, March 13th, 2011

Here are two all-too-typical spiritual errors. The first is to absolutize that which is provisional and relative. The second is to relativise that which is absolute. Conservatives are prone to the first error, and liberals the latter.

Recapitulating the Original Sin

Monday, February 28th, 2011

In the Genesis narrative the original sin happened when Adam and Eve believed, each in their own way, that they had to look after themselves because God was holding out on them. We recapitulate this sin when, in various ways, we act out of the same belief.

Meditations on Primordial Poverty

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

Jesus died naked on the cross. His nakedness was an expression of our nakedness and poverty, a nakedness and poverty we have violently tried to cover through the works of our hands. It was this violent covering that was at work through the religious hands of the Jews, and the civil hands of the Romans […]