The Valley of Love and Delight
Ellen T. Charry"Christian theology began life when God was real and some knowledge of him and wisdom through him were possible. Under these conditions, the goal of reflecting on God and the things of God was to understand them for the sake of a happy or blessed life, as the beatitudes put it. Theology rapidly became philosophical, that is to say, a way of life—a spiritual pathway that read the good life through the life of Israel and events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth. Reports of his appearance after his death presaged escape from death and bodily corruption for others (1 Cor 15). Theology articulated a vision of God and a way of life following from it that contributed to a more just and benevolent community—at first, within a larger, hostile culture and later, in the institutional church that led the culture. In the early centuries, doctrinal specificity—meant to suppress doctrinal deviance—was in the service of promoting this social good, informed by eschatological hope. Normative Christian theology of this primary, sapiential sort asks who we should become and how we should live in light of who God is, informed by what God has done. It rests on the close link between knowing God and using that knowledge to live rightly, that is, well and wisely. To use oneself well is to be happy—or at least as happy as possible in a world fraught with instability and insecurity."
Control Is Good—Trust Is Better: Freedom and Security in a "Free World"
Jürgen Moltmann
“In the sad old days of the Soviet Union, everyone was able to marvel over the socialist police-state already at its very frontier: Having finally, after prolonged effort, acquired a visa and, after presenting a multiplicity of documents, one had to show one’s passport to not just one official but, as a rule, four. The first official checked whether the visa was correct and the passport still valid and properly stamped; the second official checked that the first one had checked correctly; the third checked the second; and the fourth, finally, had to check the third, second, and first officials. The precept of Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) ruled supreme: Trust is good but control is better.”
Reclaiming Creation in a Darwinian World
Michael Hanby
"The protestations of fundamentalists notwithstanding, most Christians, and certainly those who fancy themselves intellectuals, have made their peace with Darwinism. And, while most Christians no longer think a theological engagement with Darwin is necessary, a great many people do not even think a real theological engagement with Darwinism is possible. The Darwinian worldview has become cultural orthodoxy in Anglo-American society, enforced by a scientific, legal, and media apparatus whose presuppositions define for all participants the terms of a now meager and stupefying debate. To contend against this orthodoxy, on these terms, is only to confirm it. To contradict this orthodoxy is to risk the invitation of public ridicule. It is worth the risk to say that this is a dangerous peace, which leaves hanging in the balance not simply a proper understanding of God as that full and superlative act of being—the I AM of Exodus and the Fourth Gospel—who grants existence to the world out of the sheer, pointless gratuity of his love, as if that were not serious enough. This “peace” also wagers the very intelligibility of the world and of human life. . . . A world known and loved into existence by God and for our enjoyment of God is, in its very meaning and essence, a different place from an intrinsically meaningless, machine-like world—merely the accidental product of blind forces governed by scarcity and force and patiently awaiting our free and arbitrary assignment of quality and values to it."
Carmen Dei: Music and Creation in Three Theologians
Peter J. Casarella
"Carmen Dei, which can be translated as God’s poem or song, analogizes the harmony, order, and beauty with which an all-powerful God created the world. In what follows, I will extract a thread from the Christian tradition that links the North African bishop of Hippo, St Augustine (354–430), the medieval Franciscan, St Bonaventure (1221–74), and the contemporary British physicist-theologian, John Polkinghorne (1930– ). This is no Ariadne’s thread, for it is not reaching the endpoint but assaying the entire length that matters. If there is sufficient commonality among these Christians to warrant a serious exchange of views, then the patient discovery of the connections illuminates a common theological reality."
Iconoclastic Immunity:
Possibilities for Reformed/Orthodox Convergence in Theological Aesthetics
Matthew J. Milliner
"The weaknesses of the Reformed theological tradition, if they are plain anywhere, are so in the aesthetic realm. Alain Besançon suggests this overall contribution of the Calvinist aesthetic to the history of art:
That the idolatry of the artist that overwhelmed western art history can be traced back to Calvin is a grand accusation that Besançon shrinks from posing directly, but Calvin may nevertheless have seriously contributed to a most unfortunate outcome. This essay addresses that weakness, proposing that it is based to a significant extent upon easily correctible historical misperceptions. While there have certainly been fine attempts at elaborating a Reformed aesthetics in the recent and not so recent past, this essay takes a different approach. Other strategies acknowledged a Reformed deficiency, then sought to compensate for it constructively. Here I will simply acknowledge the deficiency, then look to another, misperceived tradition for theological remedy. This approach furthers the ecumenical opportunities of our era, in which the way toward Christian unity is not through asserting the uniqueness of particular strands of the Christian tradition, but rather through individually admitting inadequacy on certain points and seeking theological support on those points from theologically more robust traditions, thereby fostering enhanced Christian communion."
The "Naked" University: What If Theology Is Knowledge, Not Belief?
James R. Stoner Jr.
"Back in the heyday of deconstruction, a decade or more ago, I remember being amused by the confidence with which some colleagues in English intoned about politics, blithely unaware, it seemed, that there was a discipline at the university that actually studied the subject. To be sure, I was glad no one called my bluff, for precious few of my fellow political scientists who were busy running multiple regression equations were likely to take interest in the analysis of literary texts, but there are nevertheless things about the forms of government, the distribution of power, the nature of elites, and public opinion that every political scientist takes for granted—and awareness of these facts might have spared my literary friends a little embarrassment, not to mention helping them sort out trend from truth. What I mean to propose in this essay is that, for the most part, those in the modern university speak of religion as the English professors spoke of politics: They assume that everyone knows what religion is and maybe even that everyone has religious opinions (like political opinions), but they are oblivious to the body of knowledge and field of study devoted to the question of religious truth. I do not have in mind the sociology of religion or the history of religion, though these are valuable ancillary fields. I am referring to theology, the discipline whose name means, literally, discourse or reasoning about God."
THE MEDIUM & THE MESSAGE
Google® of No Return?
David R. Stewart
“During a vacation in a remote part of Vermont a few years ago, I picked up a nineteenth-century history of the local area where we were staying. . . . This little community’s history provided one of the most vivid examples I have seen of how a technology can emerge, appear to transform things, then abruptly be eclipsed by a greater tide of change. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, a “horsepower” factory in the village made equipment to exploit the power generated by a horse walking on a treadmill by attaching the drive shafts, pulleys, and belts required to power various farm implements. It looked, I suppose, like the next big thing, and yet, in the space of only a few years, it was gone forever, a subject of passing interest only to local historians and (in my case) curious occasional tourists. Libraries, librarians, and what they do have been the subject of more hype, dire predictions, and amateur speculation than almost any other “outpost of culture.” And it seems never to end, not least because of the cycle of perpetual change in which we all live. My purpose here is to give some consideration to the latest, and possibly most substantial, change in digital resources for research in the humanities, including theological studies. The aim is to raise some thoughtful questions about why this shift might not be such a sure thing, and to make a case that, among all the vocations, it may be theologians who should have the greatest interest in the whole matter.”
CROSSING BOUNDARIES
Gregory of Nyssa: The Life of Moses
Robert Jenson
“Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses is remarkable in three roles. First, as commentary on the book of Exodus, it is a paradigmatic example of premodern Christian exegesis. Second, it is a handbook of spiritual practice, and one well suited to confound contemporary notions of piety. Finally, it makes, along the way, a variety of striking systematic-theological points, some of which I long ago appropriated from Gregory’s more systematic writings.”