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Posts from the ‘Theology’ Category

Apr 7

72 Comments

Offended by God?

Over the course of my thesis research over the last year or so, I have come across a lot of different reasons for doubting the existence of God. One major stumbling block for those who reject Christianity is those parts of the Bible which seem to justify actions that we consider to be culturally backward, confusing, and irrelevant or, even worse, immoral. And I think that most Christians, if they’re honest, will agree that there are parts of the Bible that they find baffling, frustrating, or, possibly, just plain offensive. Read more

Feb 12

Coming to Peace with History

I recently had an interesting conversation about the relationship between history and truth with a group of UBC students with whom I’m going through Lesslie Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. We arrived yesterday at what is, in my opinion, one of the most important chapters in the book—”The Logic of Election.” In this chapter, Newbigin challenges our assumptions about what election is for, arguing that God never chose a specific group of people—whether the nation of Israel or the church—to be the objects of eternal salvation but rather to be his instruments of extending his redemption to others. According to Newbigin, we do not encounter God as isolated individuals; he has always used other people—both now and across time—to communicate his purposes to us. Read more

Jan 31

11 Comments

My Thesis in a Nutshell

I suspect that anyone who has ever written a thesis, a dissertation, or done any other kind of sustained writing on a particular subject may, at times, come to dread the inevitable question presented when someone learns of the nature of your task: “So what are you writing about?” Typically, when I am asked this question, I will begin to scratch my head and, if I can’t manage to change the subject, mumble something to the effect of, “well I’m trying to interpret the rise of the new atheism through the lens of theodicy.” Read more

Jan 27

15 Comments

(Grateful?) Cognitive Minorities

I count it a good Sunday morning at church when I leave the building empowered with good ideas for living well. Among other things, I think, the Sunday morning service ought to provide people with tools for interpreting their experience (at an individual or collective level) through the lens of the biblical narrative. Church ought to be a place where people can go to have both the world, and their beliefs about it (religious or otherwise) rendered in intelligible terms, and in a manner that both challenges and encourages the way in which they participate in it. No small task, to be sure, but this morning’s service managed to accomplish all of these things, benefiting greatly from a little “outside help.” Read more

Jan 24

4 Comments

The Real Thing

I’m rather loathe to hop on two horses that have been ridden as promiscuously and enthusiastically within some Christian circles as U2 and C.S. Lewis, but coming across both in the same week is bound to be at least somewhat thought-provoking, right? I’ve been a U2 fan for quite a while now—at least since The Joshua Tree was immortalized as my first “secular” music purchase in 1987 (by “secular music purchase” I mean the first cassette tape (!) that was not selected from among the six meager offerings at the local Christian bookstore). While I’m not one of these rabid fans who think that life as we know it began with U2, or that Bono is going to save the world, I do enjoy their music immensely (and I’m not quite as cynical as some re: the perceived endless moralizing of Bono). Read more

Jan 21

3 Comments

Truth and Beauty

A couple of interesting conversations over the last couple of days have got me thinking about the relationship between truth and beauty. First, I had the chance to talk over a couple of ideas related to my thesis with my brother during a rare visit out to Saskatchewan this past weekend. We spent some time last night on the nature of the new atheism’s protest against God/religion, and how as human beings we simply do not and cannot know as much as we might like prior to making decisions about ultimate matters such as these. The “what if we’re wrong about all this?” question still comes to mind now and then (at least my mind) and I suspect that this is a normal part of life for most people, whichever side of the atheist/theist divide they find themselves on. Read more

Jan 10

3 Comments

Living Under Hope’s “Roof”

Mike, over at Waving or Drowning, has posted a thought-provoking and challenging quote from Barbara Kingsolver regarding the power of hope and the effect it ought to have on those who embrace it. Often hope—at least of the Christian variety—is presented or conceived as some vague, incorporeal utopic state which has very little, if any, connection to the lives we live on this planet. It’s for whatever comes after this life, and has very little to say about what takes place between now and then. Read more

Dec 19

Death, the Enemy

Sitting here in the library on a dreary, rainy December day, I find myself thinking about death—which is ironic, and perhaps a little morbid considering the fact that we’re in a season of the year which is focused on the birth of Christ, who came to give us new life. Nevertheless, I’ve been mulling over a conversation I had with a student on the last day of the class I taught at CBC this past semester—a conversation in which she wondered why I had presented death as the ultimate “enemy” of humanity in my final lecture. “Why do we need to see death as an enemy?” she asked. “Why not just look at it as a normal part of life and make the most of the time we have?” Read more

Dec 14

3 Comments

The Adopted God

I’ve been reading John Swinton’s Raging with Compassion off and on for the last couple of weeks, and have appreciated his challenge to move past the logical problem of evil in order to focus on active resistance of evil. Swinton is less interested in a series of disembodied arguments about evil than he is in reflecting on how evil can be resisted and transformed within the life and practices of the Christian community—how we can live faithfully in the midst of an ambiguous world where unanswered questions remain as we wait God’s redemption of the whole of creation. Read more

Dec 11

7 Comments

A Two-Pronged Hope

A lot of the reading I am doing for my thesis is related to the idea of hope—how it provides an account both of the “unfinished” or “unsatisfactory” state of the natural world and the existence of human beings who expect and long for better from the world. I recently came across this quote from Nicholas Wolterstorff, from a chapter in The Future of Hope, which I feel captures these two themes well: Read more

Nov 29

20 Comments

Which Story?

One of the things we’ve talked about in the course I’m teaching out at Columbia Bible College this semester is the importance of understanding how all world-views—whether they consider themselves to be “religious” or not—offer their own set of explanations to questions about the nature of the world, the nature of human beings and the problems that plague us, and the potential remedies that are available. The nature of the story one accepts about the world will determine both the kinds of questions one will be inclined to ask and the nature of answers that will be deemed acceptable in response to those questions. Read more

Oct 24

5 Comments

Theodicy for the “Onlookers”

I have spent and continue to spend a good chunk of time thinking and writing about the problem of evil in some form or another. I’ve been told on occasion that this is unhealthy, unproductive, or just plain weird. My thinking about evil has ranged from the purely abstract (the “logical” problem of evil) to the more pastoral (what do you do/say when someone close to you is suffering?) to the theological/philosophical (what is it about human beings and the world that leads us to expect better?) to the sociological (What role does theodicy play in the adoption of and adherence to this or that worldview?). What is notable about all of this thinking/writing is that it has, thus far, been undertaken by one who has remained virtually untouched by suffering. Read more

Oct 18

2 Comments

A Determined Hope

As always, reading Jürgen Moltmann is proving to be an illuminating and challenging experience. The following three quotes from In the End—The Beginning: The Life of Hope struck me on the bus ride home today. First, on the nature of Christian hope: Read more

Oct 15

2 Comments

Gospel, Culture, and Church (and Gnosticism)

This past weekend was spent at a study conference entitled “Culture, Gospel, and Church” held in Abbotsford which was put on by the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren churches. Among the highlights of the conference, from my perspective, was Bruce Guenther’s lecture on how Anabaptists in general, and Mennonite Brethren (MB) in particular have historically engaged or, more often, failed to engage the broader culture. Read more

Sep 15

6 Comments

The Political and the Divine

A couple of weeks ago I posted about an article by Columbia professor Mark Lilla which addressed, among other things, the persistence of religion in a post-Enlightenment age and what might account for it. For those who are interested, his book—The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West—is now available, as noted in this morning’s review in the New York Times. In an age where religion is frequently portrayed as the enemy of all that is good and true, any effort to provide clarity on the subject of the historical interaction between religion and politics seems (to me) to be a welcome one indeed. Read more

Jul 23

18 Comments

What are People For?

I’ve been meaning to write a few (!) words about this article since I came across it in The Globe and Mail several days ago. It’s a review of a book called The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, and while I’ve not read the book yet, I find the premise of the book to be a curious one—one that I’m not sure is best suited for what it is trying to accomplish. Read more

Jul 17

1 Comment

Redemption as Imitation

Well, I apologize for the lack of activity here over the last couple of weeks. The infrequency of my posting is due to the fact that we are out in Alberta and Saskatchewan visiting family and friends. We’ve been out here for just over a week now, and so far we’ve been having a very enjoyable time. Read more

Jun 25

2 Comments

Moltmann on the State of the World

I came across these powerful lines, which conclude Moltmann’s Theology of Hope, this morning and thought they would be worth sharing in light of my previous post on the inappropriateness of perpetual happiness in a world plagued by sin and evil. I think that this is a much better (and much more realistic) way of understanding the state of the world and what we ought to do and expect in it:

This means, however, that the hope of resurrection must bring about a new understanding of the world. This world is not the heaven of self-realization, as it was said to be in Idealism. This world is not the hell of self-estrangement, as it is said to be in romanticist and existentialist writing. The world is not yet finished, but is understood as engaged in history. It is therefore the world of possibilities, the world in which we can serve the future, promised truth and righteousness and peace. This is an age of diaspora, or sowing in hope, of self-surrender and sacrifice, for it is an age which stands within the horizon of a new future. Thus self-expenditure in this world, day-to-day love in hope, becomes possible and becomes human within that horizon of expectation which transcends the world. The glory of self-realization and the misery of self-estrangement alike arise from hopelessness in a world of lost horizons. To disclose to it the horizon of the future of the crucified Christ is the task of the Christian Church.

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