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Showing posts from February, 2020

Why am I still a Theologian? - Terry Eagleton on Theology

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For a while I taught a class called “Faith & Reason.” It was a good class that tackled the intersection of revelation and reason in the Western tradition (inclusive of some Jewish and Muslim thinkers), and I enjoyed teaching it. But then some administrative reorganization happened and the course was redundant, etc. But one of the things that I liked most about that course was ending the semester with Terry Eagleton’s book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate . Those who follow me carefully on social media (blessings be upon you, since you clearly need them if you’re following me carefully on social media), or spend time with me offline talking about theological things, know that I’ve come to really enjoy Eagleton, and this book is where that started. I need to figure out another place to work this book into my teaching, or else find a way to resurrect this class. But, alas, administrative duties mean that I don’t teach all that much anymore. Changing ta

How to Remember What’s Where in Barth, with St. Hereticus

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Robert McAfee Brown (ed.?), The Collected Writings of St. Hereticus (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1964). The last time we heard from St. Hereticus - or simply “The Saint,” as I am wont to say – we undertook a detailed study of his “Christmas carol.” Today, however, we turn to a subject that is near and dear to DET and its readership – Karl Barth. Bet you didn’t see that one coming. What with knowing the blog. Oh, and reading the title of this post. But I digress… If you look at the DET post labels there on the left-hand menu, toward the bottom, you’ll see that Barth has waaaaay more entries than anything else. More than twice as many as the next contender, in fact. So I think it’s safe to say that DET has a lot to say about Barth, and long-time DET readers have picked up at least the basics of what he was on about. But do you know exactly what can be found in each part volume of Church Dogmatics ? Perhaps you remember when Ben Myers composed a tweet for each part vol