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"Billy Hathorn at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons While finishing this post, I learned that the eminent German theologian – and truly gracious human being – Jürgen Moltmann had died. Early in his career, Moltmann’s Theology of Hope helped launch a new genre of political theology that sought to retrieve the doctrine of the resurrection to foster projects of liberation and social transformation. William Stringfellow – sadly, to my mind, without real critical engagement – expressed suspicions of the early political theologies of the 1960s, particularly in their dependence upon Marxist theory, but I do find a congruence between him and Moltmann in their respective affirmations of the power of the resurrection to renew the churches and the world at large. In this spirit of gratitude, I offer the following reflections. Like many modern Christian thinkers, William Stringfellow refused to speculate about the possibility of conscious personal existence after d

I’ve been reading George Hunsinger’s (my doktorvater , for anyone who might be new around here) entry in the Brazos Theoloical Commentary on the Bible series on Philippians. Anyone who has studied with George will find this book to be a compendium and application of many of his most characteristic and beloved analytical tools and patterns, and I’ve been enjoying it immensely. But one of the things that really stood out to me was how he glossed the so-called “Christ hymn” of Philippians 2. George Hunsinger, Philippians , Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: BrazosPress, 2020). The gloss that Hunsinger provides is not a historical-critical interpretation. Rather, it is an ecclesial, ecumenical, and theological interpretation that attempts to fill in the blanks for how to understand this proto-liturgical formulation in light of the later formulations of the ecumenical creeds. In order to achieve this gloss, Hunsinger engages in “ecclesial hermeneutics” and makes “