Recently, while reading a highly regarded commentary on the Book of Numbers, I realized a fairly common preaching “trope” I have heard for years from the pulpit was indeed quite erroneous. That trope, or “commonly repeated conventional view,” has to do with the reason God prevented Moses from entering into the promise land. It is an exegetical point that may not seem all that important. After all, we realize that Moses, like everyone, was a sinner. And, we know that... Read more
In this series I am looking at three different interpretations of history. In part 1, I discussed the view of history that claims history is an endless cycle of recurrence and repetition. This idea of an endlessly recurring world of either eternally repeating identical histories, or of endless, variant histories, has both ancient and modern proponents. The most famous of these were the Greek Stoics and the German philosopher Nietzsche. It is noteworthy that most Stoics, as well as Nietzsche,... Read more
This is the third of a four part series in which I explore theologians of the previous two centuries who contributed to the theology which today influences progressive Christianity. In the previous article we looked at a successor to the liberal theologies of the early 1800s, Walter Rauschenbusch. Here we explore one of Rauschenbusch’s contemporaries, the German theologian Adolf von Harnack. Adolf Harnack and “Theology from Below” Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) was a German theologian whose thinking and writing became... Read more
In this series, I am discussing three views of history. This is not to say I am writing about how to do history or about what counts as evidence in trying to come to a conclusion about a proposed historical event or person. This is a philosophical question about the nature of history: about the cosmic, natural and anthropological features of a “tensed,” or temporal, world. In other words this is a metaphysical question, albeit one related more to meaning... Read more
At a church in Southern California, not far from the U.S.-Mexico border, two Middle Eastern men made their way onto the stage. One of them, a Kurdish-American pastor, began to share his life story in Arabic, as the other, a minister from Israel, translated it into English. “Love Your Enemies” The pastor who shared his story is Azad Barwari. Over twenty years ago, Azad was a nominal Muslim, living over seven thousand miles away, in Iraqi Kurdistan. One day he... Read more
My first run-in with postmodern literature was back in college. During my writing undergrad, I’d become familiar with the work of literary modernists like Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Faulkner and eventually started testing postmodern waters. Cormac McCarthy was my first point of contact, and soon after Mark Z. Danielewski, Thomas Pynchon, and William Gaddis. The challenge many postmodern texts posed to me in reading them was alluring, and I started imitating their work in my own fiction writing.... Read more
This is the second of a four part series in which I explore theologians of the previous two centuries who contributed to the theology which today influences progressive Christianity. In the last article we looked at the father of progressive Christianity, Friedrich Schleiermacher. Today we look at one of Schleiermacher’s theological grandchildren, Walter Rauschenbusch. Who was Walter Rauschenbusch? Walter Rauschenbusch was born in America to German immigrants in 1861. After completing high school he studied in Germany before returning to... Read more
What is history? In one sense, history could just be the accumulated facts of natural and human events since the beginning of the universe. In this sense, there would be a history of physics, a history of chemistry, a history of geology, a history of biology and a history of animal life on earth; all culminating in “human” history. This last history would be neatly separated into two categories: “pre-history,” pertaining to human history before the invention of writing, and... Read more
This is the first of a four part series in which I will explore theologians of the previous two centuries who contributed to the theology which today influences progressive Christianity. Understanding these historical predecessors allows contemporary theologians to differentiate between what may be societal values and a Christian critical viewpoint based on theological method. The Founder of Modern Liberal Theology: Friedrich Schleiermacher Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834) wrote at the beginning of what is widely considered to be the Modern Era.... Read more
There are some bedrock facts about Jesus Christ that all people, regardless of theological or political persuasion, must confront. One of these is the historical fact that Jesus of Nazareth was a man. This is indisputable, whether Jesus was God incarnate or, as the pantheist Spinoza claimed, merely the greatest philosopher to ever live (“Christum ait fuisse summum philosophum”). Either way, Jesus was male. This means that there is at least something we might call “biblical manhood,” since most of... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In