DET

I felt inspired today, noting the inexorable march of the calendar toward a new year, to check and see what you all have been reading here at DET over the past year. Then, having checked, I thought: “Hey, this would make a good post!” So, there we are… The posts are listed in descending order of traffic (i.e., #1 has the most traffic). Types of Theology - This one is a pleasant surprise. It has always received respectable traffic, but it was far and away the most traversed page at DET this past year. I should probably go back and update it… So, You Want to Read Karl Barth? - A perennial top-performer, this post is approximately 4.5 years old! I could think of a couple newer secondary resources to add, but I still stand by the advice given there. DET: 1 Year Blog Birthday - No surprise here. I wrote this post to mark the first year of this blog’s existence, and it functions as a sort of manifesto for the whole enterprise. Although it is also approximately 4.5 years old, it still ...

The big news from DET is that its proprietor now holds a PhD in systematic theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. That’s right, gentle reader, yours truly defended his dissertation on December 16th, thus giving himself what is perhaps the best Christmas present ever. Here is a picture of my setup in the PTS Center for Barth Studies as I prepared on the 15th for the defense. For related images, click here , here , and – of course – here . Anyway, what does all this mean for you, the faithful DET reader? Allow me to enumerate… You can expect a post about my dissertation early in the new year. I’ve kept it pretty well under wraps as far as the theo-blogosphere goes, but there is no longer any reason for that. So I plan to throw up the abstract to let you all catch a glimpse of what I’ve been preoccupied with for a very long time… My dissertation isn’t the only thing that I recently finished. I also finished my first semester of teaching. That semester was incredibly busy ...

The conservative religio-political propaganda has been flying today. Various initiatives are underway to combat it. But I could not resist throwing up something brief on one of them... Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council. The "Belief" blog on CNN.com published a piece from him today entitled, My Take: Jesus was a free marketer, not an Occupier . I could spend ages taking this article apart, but I think the best thing to do would be to juxtapose a few pieces of text. First, Perkins highlights the parable of the servants in Luke 19 who are given resources by their lord and left for a time to oversee them. From this parable he draws the following conclusion: "Jesus rejected collectivism and the mentality that has occupied America for the last few decades: that everyone gets a trophy – equal outcomes for inequitable performance. There are winners and yes, there are losers. And wins and losses are determined by the diligence and determination of the i...