Contents
Thomas Aquinas
Berdyaev: On Choice and the New
Nicolas Berdyaev is a 20th century Russian Orthodox theologian. Like Vladimir Lossky, he was exiled from Russia on the philosophers’ ships in 1922, and ended up living in France, where he stayed through the German occupation during the Second World…
Reviewing Aquinas
Well, we’re finishing with Aquinas forever for now. It’s not quite the end of the Prima Pars, but we’re close enough – 45 posts in total, counting this one but not the ContraPoints article. It’s just about a year of…
Aquinas: On Miracles
Only a couple more weeks with Aquinas now. I’ll round off with a few comments on Aquinas generally, just talking about some of his ideas that I like or don’t really like. Might get a few in-between articles on some…
Aquinas: Is God Hot?
We’re still working with Q105 this week. Last week we did 105.4, on whether God can change human will, and this week it’s 105.5, on “whether God is active in every agent cause.” There’s quite a lot from 105, which is why…
Aquinas: Does God Mind-Control You?
We’re drawing to a close with Aquinas here. I’ve said before that I’ll finish with the end of the Prima Pars, but frankly I’ve had enough. I’ve done quite a bit of Aquinas – much more than any other writer…
Aquinas: Can God Wreck Shit?
So last week we talked about how for Aquinas, all of creation depends on God for its existence. Not just in a ‘God created everyone and wandered off’ kinda way, but as in ‘Everything’s existence actively depends on God continuing…
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Hannah Arendt
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold: Culture and Perfection
Culture and Anarchy is an 1869 book by Matthew Arnold, a Victorian poet and social critic. Originally published as a series of essays in periodicals, and later collected into book form, the central piece, ‘Culture and Anarchy’, starts by responding…
Augustine of Hippo
Basil the Great
Basil the Great: Eat the Rich
So I thought I was all finished up with that St Vlad series of patristics books. I’d bought a couple, and really enjoyed them, but I didn’t want any more on my shelf. And then I go into the local…
Maurice Blondel
Blondel: History and Dogma
We’ve been talking over the past few weeks about the role of history in the church. First we had Harnack, who argued that the church – especially the Catholics – had introduced a whole bunch of changes and developments, taking…
Bonaventure
Bonaventure: Humility and Hagiography
The text: The Life of St FrancisThe author: BonaventureRead it yourself: I’m using this version from the Paulist Press, but it’s a popular enough text that you’ll be able to find it online or in hard copy. It’s not a…
John Calvin
Calvin: On Government
It’s our last week with Calvin! I was going to write something about his views on infant baptism (he likes it), but I don’t really care that much – if you want to read it, it’s Book 4, Chapter 16,…
Calvin: Fasting
Did people in your church ever do the Daniel Fast? I’m showing my heritage here – in the States you’d associate it with the evangelicals. It’s very much a pop-Christianity phenomenon. I didn’t think Calvin would have anything interesting to…
Calvin: Discipline
A couple weeks back I wrote about Calvin and cancel culture – it was a pretty straightforward run at unity and politics and leftists online, using one very specific bit of Calvin as the base for the conversation. Today I…
Calvin: Conscientious Objections
In Book 4, Chapter 10 of The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin bashes the Catholics for making up religious laws and acting as if they “enjoined things necessary to salvation” (4.10.2). As far as he’s concerned, one of the…
Calvin: Who Run The Church?
Girls! Girls! I know this one. Calvin spends Book 4 of the Institutes of the Christian Religion expounding upon the proper structure of the church. We talked about it a bit last week, with his idea that the one unified…
Calvin on Cancel Culture
I spend a lot of time bashing Calvin for being a shithead, so when he’s right about something, in the spirit of goodwill and charity, I want to spend just as much time talking about how great it is. In…
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Desert Fathers
Desert Fathers: Monks Telling Lies
The text: The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian MonksThe translator: Benedicta WardNotes: Because this book records an oral tradition, it doesn’t have an ‘author’ per se. It’s a collection of sayings that were handed down within these communities,…
Desert Fathers: On Women
The text: The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian MonksThe translator: Benedicta WardNotes: Because this book records an oral tradition, it doesn’t have an ‘author’ per se. It’s a collection of sayings that were handed down within these communities,…
Desert Fathers: On Solitude
The text: The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian MonksThe translator: Benedicta WardNotes: Because this book records an oral tradition, it doesn’t have an ‘author’ per se. It’s a collection of sayings that were handed down within these communities,…
Meister Eckhart
Meister Eckhart: Request or Receive?
The text: The Talks of InstructionThe author: Meister EckhartRead it yourself: I’m reading the Penguin Classic version, which has a collection of Eckhart’s sermons as well. There’s a copy of the same book on the Internet Archive. What is the…
Adolf von Harnack
Harnack: Protestants vs Catholics
So last week we talked about the difference between faith and doctrine. For Adolf von Harnack, a German Lutheran theologian from the start of last century, faith is your valid personal belief in Jesus Christ, and doctrine is kinda this…
Harnack: Faith vs Doctrine
So it’s pretty commonplace now to draw a distinction between being a good person and following a particular set of rules. People who follow the rules just for the sake of following the rules are often depicted as legalistic, as…
Harnack: Was Jesus God?
Alright: last week I ended with a Shock Twist Ending about how Harnack doesn’t believe that Jesus was actually God. It’s actually a pretty common strain of thought within liberal Christianity – which we haven’t really touched on explicitly so…
Harnack: Jesus and Economics
Was Jesus a communist? Throughout the twentieth century, a range of scholars and theologians were concerned to look for any economic systems or doctrines put forward by the Bible – just in case there’s anything in there that might speak…
Harnack: The Gospel of John
You know, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to approach some of this stuff. I don’t want to be locked into explaining the basic tenets of why racism is bad, but I also don’t want to disappear…
Adolf von Harnack: How Do You Read the Bible?
Ah, I’m glad to be working with twentieth century theology. It’s just so good. The thing about twentieth-century theology, right, is that it makes the arguments that we all use in our everyday lives, but it actually explains the underlying…
Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen: On Mystic Visions
When I was an undergrad, I took a couple theology papers. Nothing exotic – just introductory stuff. Early in one course, my lecturer announced that God’s revelation was complete. At the time it didn’t make much sense – doesn’t God…
William James
William James: Spiritual But Not Religious
The text: The Varieties of Religious ExperienceThe author: William James, late 19th century psychologistNotes: This book is made up of a series of lectures delivered in 1901, in Edinburgh. We’re taking bits from Lecture 18, ‘Psychology’.Read it yourself: I’m using…
William James: Mortification
I don’t know if anybody else has this, but whenever something bad happens in my life, I get a bit obsessed with all the different theologies and religious strategies and such that are put forth as coping mechanisms. There’s the…
William James: Happy / Sad Religion
Alright, time for some more William James. Last week we talked about James’s basic approach in The Varieties of Religious Experience: in short, he’s out looking at the psychology of religion. In Lectures 4 – 7, James explores two different…
William James: Religion and Neurology
I’ve had a bit of a bum run with the reading lately. I had another Maximus book on the go – On The Ecclesiastical Mystagogy – great title, not very interesting. Then I read a book of poems by Gregory…
Julian of Norwich
Julian of Norwich: In and Out of Space
If you’ve been reading this blog for more than five minutes, you’ll note that I tend not to write about secondary sources. I’m not looking at the best, most up-to-date scholarship on Calvin – I just read his Institutes. That…
Soren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard: Faith and Ethics
So last week we ripped through Fear and Trembling at something of an indecent pace. I’d like to return to the idea of faith, and do it again in more detail, specifically digging into the idea of subjectivity. If you’re not familiar…
Kierkegaard: Abraham Did What?
Let’s get on with Fear and Trembling, then. There’s a bunch of other stuff from Either/Or to cover, but some of it will come up in other books, so I’m not desparately worried. Fear and Trembling was published in 1843, and it covers the story…
Kierkegaard: Living Theology
I’m going to call a halt on the Psalms – we might come back to them later, but I’m far enough ahead with Kierkegaard now that we can get into it. I started off reading Either/Or, which was a mistake, because it’s…
John Locke
Locke: On Religious Tolerance
Alright, let’s get back to Locke. The other week we talked about A Letter Concerning Toleration, where Locke suggested that Christians concerned with burning heretics should also go around burning other Christians for moral crimes. This week we’re dealing directly…
Locke: Burn Bad Christians
I’ve lately been reading John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration, which – if you’ve seen the last few articles, this scattered, jumpy sort of reading is indicative of how I normally read, outside of any major project that I’m working…
Alfred Loisy
Loisy: Faith Changes
So we’ve been talking for the last few weeks about Adolf von Harnack, a twentieth-century Lutheran theologian and historian who argued that the church had changed over time, and that this change had taken the faith away from its historical…
Martin Luther
Von Balthasar: Anxiety and the Church
In The Christian and Anxiety, the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar largely focuses on the relationship between anxiety and the individual. However, in the closing pages, he touches on anxiety and the church. We might when we’re feeling…
Luther: Warning, Contains Math
Alright, final week with On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. I’m about halfway through On the Freedom of a Christian, which is the third one of the 1520 publications, and I don’t currently have anything to say about it, so we…
Luther: On Marriage
As in the last few weeks, we’re continuing on with Luther’s Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. This week we’re dealing with Luther’s views on marriage, which, depending on your perspective, are either quite surprising, or not.
Luther: By Faith Alone
If you know anything about Luther, you’ll probably be familiar with his idea of justification by faith. It’s basically the idea that you don’t get justified or saved by your actions, but by faith alone. You might also be familiar…
Luther: Wine’s Fine
This week we’re dealing with the second of Luther’s three 1520 texts, A Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. It’s a great example of what’s at stake for Luther in writing these tracts. Strictly speaking, this is a text…
Luther: You’re a Priest and So Am I
So Luther has three major texts that all come out in 1520. 1520 is kinda his year – he gets ordered to renounce a bunch of his books, produces these three major works, and then in 1521 he gets excommunicated.…
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Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain: On Human Rights
I’ve been supposedly talking about Jacques Maritain for four weeks now, and I don’t feel like I’ve said a damn thing about what he’s actually writing. I’m going to try and do that today – not with reference to Christianity and…
Maritain: Gay Marriage in Australasia
Okay so last week I started talking about Maritain and got carried away with an example and ended up talking about free speech. I’m still pretty riled up, but I’ll try and stay on topic today. Let’s talk about how…
Gays, Christians, and Democracy
So I’ve started reading Jacques Maritain’s Christianity and Democracy, and – holy shit, we’re not even going to get to talk about the actual text today, because the introduction goes right for the hard sell. It’s the old ‘gays are hijacking…
F.D. Maurice
F.D. Maurice: Books, Words, Friends, God
So I mentioned I’ve been travelling recently. You know what that’s like – you’re away from home, you’ve got Bonaventure in your suitcase, and then you get distracted and end up reading about 19th century Anglican socialists. John Frederick Denison…
Maximus the Confessor
Maximus: The Use of Death
I’m starting to develop a bit of a pattern with my theology articles. I usually aim for one of two reactions: ‘what’ or ‘huh’. The ‘what’ articles focus on wacky nonsense from major theologians – as, for instance, when Aquinas…
Maximus: When God Tried to Murder Moses
Okay so if you’re not super familiar with Exodus you might not know this, but there’s this whole thing during the Ten Plagues where God tries to murder Moses. It’s right after the burning bush episode. God’s all ‘ooh I’m…
Maximus: The Singularity
You know how you always hear Christians talking about, oh, it’s all God’s plan – it’s not my success, it’s God’s success. It sometimes comes out as this weird humble brag, as if they think they really do deserve the…
Maximus: The Sixth and Seventh Days
Alright so last week we talked about how Maximus treats the Sabbath as a symbol of our perfection. It’s a spiritual, metaphysical process: in his view, it’s possible for humans to come to a state of perfection or even divinity…
Maximus: The Passive Sabbath
I didn’t do this last week, because I wanted to do the wax thing, but I guess we should take some time to introduce this book in a little more depth. Maximus the Confessor, our current author, is a 7th…
Maximus the Confessor: Wax and Clay
Alright so Maximus the Confessor is this old-ass theologian – we’re talking church fathers, 7th century kinda guy. He’s a Confessor because he was tortured for the faith, but not actually killed – it’s like a consolation prize for not-quite-martyrs.…
John Owen
John Owen: The Sexy Bride of Christ
There’s a scene in Keeping Mum where Rowan Atkinson and Maggie Smith are talking about Song of Songs. Rowan’s playing an Anglican priest, and he explains all about how it’s a metaphor about God’s love for His people, and Maggie…
John Owen: Planning To Be Human
I said last week that I’m writing mostly here about the public side of Christianity – about the structures and systems of Christian thought. Following that, this week we’re going to talk about some of the most niche abstract hypothetical…
On the Hidden Things
You know, I like John Owen, but I like him in a way that isn’t super interesting to talk about. I’m currently reading an abridged version of Owen’s Communion With God – from the same series as when I was…
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Psalms
Pseudo-Dionysus
Richard Rohr
Richard Rohr: On Criticism
Well, this is my last post before leaving town. The video games queue is pretty far ahead – I’ve been setting up Wolfenstein articles through to July – but this is where we’re up to with the theology queue. Around…
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Niebuhr: On Belonging
So we’ve been looking over the past few weeks at Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture (Niebuhr: On Christ and Culture). I won’t go over the basic argument of the book again, except to say that it’s about how believers understand…
Schleiermacher: What Does the Bible Mean?
So if you’re a little edgelord, and if it’s your first time saying anything mean about Christianity, your first port of call might be the authority of the Bible. Christians claim the Bible is the Word of God, but how…
Schleiermacher: Sin is Communal
The text: The Christian FaithThe author: Friedrich SchleiermacherNotes: The text is organised by sections, and also ‘paragraphs’ – where each paragraph, so-called, is essentially one doctrine. Today we’re talking about paragraph 71. Read it yourself: I haven’t found any freely…
Schleiermacher: God and The Multiverse
When people talk about God’s omniscience, we generally have a vague idea of what they mean. God just knows everything – He knows all the stuff that exists, and all the thoughts that people have, and He probably knows the…
Schleiermacher: What’s a Miracle?
The text: The Christian FaithThe author: Friedrich SchleiermacherNotes: The text is organised by sections, and also ‘paragraphs’ – where each paragraph, so-called, is essentially one individual argument. Today we’re talking about paragraphs 46 and 47, in the First Section. Read…
Schleiermacher: The Protestant Tradition
So we’ve been talking recently about this idea that spiritual experience is at the heart of religion – that all of the different religions that exist, with all their systems and explanations, are essentially laid over the top of the…
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Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor: Defending Tolerance
I wrote a post a while back on an introduction to Charles Taylor, and immediately after finishing that post I put the book down for, uh, a month or so. But I picked it up again today, and now I’m…
The Structure of Apologetics
I’m currently reading an introduction to Charles Taylor – it’s part of an obscene stack of Christmas books. There was an interesting comment about why apologetics is stupid, and I want to investigate it further. Basically the argument is that…
Vatican
Reflecting on Practice: The Catholics
I’ve been writing about some Catholics authors lately – people like Loisy and Blondel, and some of the documents and encyclicals issued by the Vatican – and I feel that in the interest of transparency, we should maybe stop to…
Lamentabili Sane: 65 Banned Beliefs
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring the responses of different thinkers to the development of historical criticism in the Church. The first thinker, Adolf von Harnack, a Protestant theologian, argued that the church had changed over time, that…
Pope Benedict XVI Vs Yoga
Alright, I teased about this a couple weeks back, and today we’re doing it: Pope Benny XVI having a go at yoga. The text: ‘Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation’, 1989The author:…
A.N. Wilson
A.N. Wilson: Jesus in History
I spotted a book on reading the Bible by A.N. Wilson in the library, so I picked it up and decided to give it a go. As it turns out, it’s a good read – although there’s one particular point…
Death is a Whale 