Requiescat in pace: Robert Webber

By -
A household name to many American evangelicals, Robert Webber died on Friday, April 27, 2007. More information can and will be found here -> http://www.aefcall.org/robertwebber.htm.

UPDATE (4/30/07): Christianity Today has a nice piece on Webber in memory of his life and work. Read it here.

Popular Posts

Abortion, Authoritarian Self-Deception, Evangelicals, and Trump: a collected Twitter essay from Christopher Stroop

By -
Image
I was kickin' it on Twitter last Wednesday night while doing some grading and then some editing, and I caught a Twitter essay from Christopher Stroop in my feed that leaped off the screen at me. It pulls together a number of issues that have been bouncing around in my head, many of which I fit in the title. Stroop's reflections merge political and psychological analysis, and helps us understand how there could have been "good Germans" and how we might end op with "good Americans." Let us hope that we do not, and work to make that hope a reality.

Anyway, I wanted to share this Twitter essay with you, gentle readers, because there are enough people who read DET or follow me and DET on social media who are within or close to evangelicalism and will be aided by this analysis. Stroop was gracious enough to allow me to collect his tweets and make them available. If you've made your way here on a mobile device, however, you would probably prefer to read this …
Keep reading

Does God "Exist"? Meh. (With Apologies to my Atheist Friends)

By -
Image
In the coffee shop recently, I noticed that an older man was staring at me. I tried to ignore him and took a restroom break. When I came back to the bar-style table, I noticed he was thumbing through the 1928 Book of Common Prayer I had been reading. Slightly creeped out, I decided I should make verbal contact with this interloper (stalker?). We exchanged greetings. He asked me if my book was a Bible. I explained it was a prayer book, but it contained selections from scripture (As the cliche goes: The Bible quotes The Book of Common Prayer...bada bing).

"Do you believe in God," he asked me.
"Yes," I said, without hesitation. "But it's hard sometimes." And indeed it is. Nonetheless, I didn't balk at answering affirmatively. That's not to say I don't struggle with doubts, for certainly I do. Rather, though, I have to admit the question of whether God exists simply doesn't interest me. Maybe that's because, by temperament and training…
Keep reading

Marilynne Robinson on Theology

By -
Image
Marilynne Robinson, novelist and essayist, is one of my literary heroes. She is witty, wise, and unabashedly Reformed. In April 2016, Robinson was in Princeton, NJ, giving a lecture as part of the University’s Comparative Literature lecture series. In her lecture, titled “Beauty and Grace,” Robinson made this elusive comment regarding her theological commitments:

“I hold to theology because only theology embraces the true, tenable, and flawed as reality holds them.”
Naturally, this statement shocked me, as I have never in my seven years of theological inquiry heard theology defined as such. Theology, as it has classically been construed, is systematic, ordered, and dogmatic. Mashing together the true and the flawed is a systematic theologian’s worst nightmare. Shocking as her statement may be, I think Robinson is on to something profoundly relevant for the current state of theology, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about its ramifications. What if Robinson is right? What if theo…
Keep reading

Reversing Theology—A Personal Reply to Torres and Roberts, by David Congdon

By -
Image
By David W. Congdon

I am grateful to both Juan C. Torres and David Roberts for their thoughtful responses to my book, The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch (hereafter TGWS). I wish to repay their generosity by offering some further reflections on my work.

This was a very personal book to write, and it has become even more personal to me in the months since publication. The book cost me my job, forced my family to relocate, and has been the cause of great, enduring pain. In a way, the book’s theme of cocrucifixion and existential abandonment has become more real to me since writing it. But I do not regret a single word. It was something I had to write; the words were almost drawn out of me, as if I were more their amanuensis than author.

Roberts suggests that TGWS might have been a kin to the book that Dietrich Bonhoeffer proposed writing at the end of his life. This observation means more to me than Roberts could have realized, for it was reading Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers in Priso…
Keep reading

Ents, Hobbits, and Salvation in the Shadow of Charlottesville: David Roberts on "The God Who Saves"

By -
Image
By David Roberts

There is a scene in the film adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s The Two Towers (it plays out a little differently in the book) where Treebeard – an Ent – shares an exchange with Merry – one of the Hobbits (if you don’t know what Ents and Hobbits are then you are beyond my sympathy).

Treebeard, having decided along with the other Ents to forgo the ongoing war of the ring, tells Merry:

Treebeard: “We Ents cannot hold back this storm. We must weather such things as we have always done.”

Merry: “How can that be your decision?”

Treebeard: “This is not our war.”

The sort of detachment latent in Treebeard’s response reminds me, a white, cis-het male, of the same sort of privilege that I am afforded in relation to the recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, and much more so the centuries of systemic oppression that preceded those vile demonstrations. As someone born into an advantageous position in relation to western culture’s pre-existing power structures, my response to thi…
Keep reading