Here’s a juicy morsel from Terry Eagleton’s recent book, On Evil: The damned refuse to be saved, since this would deprive them of their adolescent rebellion against the whole of reality. Evil is a kind of cosmic sulking. It rages most violently against those who threaten to snatch its unbearable wretchedness away from it. Only by persisting in its fury and proclaiming it theatrically to the world can evil provide damning evidence of the bankruptcy of existence. It is living... Read more
According to the theory formulated by Terror Management Theory, we fight because of self-esteem. Self-esteem creates a buffer against our innate anxiety of death. This seems rather ironic, doesn’t it, because it would seem that fighting wars is not a good way to avoid death. However, we (nations, factions, people running from home and surreptitiously crossing borders to join apocalyptic and brutal sects like ISIS) get sucked into battle because we (or they) buy into cultural worldviews or ideologies that... Read more
Yesterday I came across a blog post by Justin Massey, a gay Christian student at Wheaton College. He reflects on a recent disturbing episode during a “Town Hall Chapel” Q&A session with the college’s president, Dr. Phillip Ryken. From Massey’s account, the discussion was lively and positive, until the moment that Philip Fillion, a heterosexual, married student, asked a question to Dr. Ryken regarding what he (the student) perceived as theological inconsistency in its covenant documents. As a recent Time... Read more
I’m glad Birdman won best picture last night. It’s a strange film, to be sure. Unsettling, too. By now most people reading this know the basic premise of the film: A former Hollywood mega-actor who played a superhero in the heyday of one rendition of that superhero franchise (during the 1990s) finds himself struggling to discover a sense of significance in his waning years. The glory of the”Birdman” has faded. Now he wants to do something serious to prove himself... Read more
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Ash Wednesday is a time for reflecting on our mortality. We are dust, we are ashes. We came from the ground, we will go back to it. I’m thinking about my mom a lot today. She has entered the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, is a neurodegenerative disease. This means that my mom’s brain cells are progressively dying. As the cells die,... Read more
Martin Luther distinguished a theology of glory from a theology of the cross. A theology of glory looks to avoid suffering and sacrifice, and takes “victories,” accomplishments, and political or social stature to be signs of God’s favor. A theology of glory is comfortably nestled in Christendom, with all the comforts and pleasantries it provides. A theology of glory works well when things are going well. A theology of glory can be a marvelous way to assure the self-assured and... Read more
I’m working through Sarah Coakley’s God, Sexuality, and the Self text right now, and came across her distinction between a “linear” and an “incorporative” model of the Trinity. In the “incorporative” or “reflexive” approach, the Spirit is not seen as a distant third member of the Trinity who come into the picture later, so to speak. She patterns this model after the Pauline Romans 8 passage, in which the Spirit comes to the fore. This is a major piece of... Read more
The quotes below are taken from Kierkegaard’s extensive review of a novel, Two Ages, by the Danish author Thomasine Gyllembourg (though she published it anonymously). His review, published in 1846, was nearly as long as the novel itself. Kierkegaard offers not just a review of a book, but a lengthy and incisive cultural critique. In the section below, he identifies the situation of nineteenth-century Denmark as being devoid of passion (such as the passion of the previous Revolutionary age) and... Read more
Last week, Owen Strachan wrote a post in which he wrung his hands over the announcement by two evangelical mega-church pastors that their churches would henceforth take an inclusive position on the GLBT issue. Owen is a good writer and wields a prickly pen. He can come off as calm and measured while assuring people that they are tools of Satan and are going straight to Hell unless they repent in sackcloth and ashes. Providing the watching world a direct... Read more
The first comment I received on my first post in this series of reflections on Richard Beck’s The Slavery of Death was about suicide. The question was brief and to the point and, I readily admit, I didn’t quite grasp the implications. But as we dialogued further, I understand that this is the problem: According to Becker, Beck, and Terror Management Theory, the fundamental problem of humanity is that we are alienated by our fear (or neurotic anxiety) of death... Read more
Unsystematic Theology
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In