May 2003
The Archives
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Wisdom literature
05.31.03 | Permalink | Comments Off on Wisdom literatureThe Happy Tutor has graciously provided us with twenty free aphorisms, in the key of Nietzsche. Like all wisdom literature, you do not read it; it reads you.
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Cynicism doesn’t mean a damn thing
05.30.03 | Permalink | 5 CommentsMatt Bai’s piece on Howard Dean is harmfully cynical. He presents a false dilemna: the unelectable liberal voice of rage versus the electable wishy-washy Washington insider. This is a disservice to all candidates, but especially to Howard Dean. If I believed Dean was just another Brown or Kucinich, I would not support him. Dean combines […]
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A short history of dogma
05.29.03 | Permalink | Comments Off on A short history of dogmaLight gathers moths as saints swell churches. The light blown out, what moths remain make doctrines of the dark, and rest their wings in ashes. (By Gene Fendt)
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‘Radical’ orthodoxy
05.29.03 | Permalink | 11 CommentsThe newest trend in god-talk I’ve heard of calls itself “radical orthodoxy.” The tagline is deliberately provacative, an apparent oxymoron that demands more attention. In many ways, radical orthoxy builds itself upon the edifice of another recent mini-movement, “postliberalism.” Proposed by George Lindbeck and several of his Yale colleagues, postliberalism positions itself as the resolution […]
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Recent movements in god-talk
05.28.03 | Permalink | 2 CommentsFor readers interested in recent theological trends, three major movements in post-Vietnam god-talk stand out as worthy of attention: liberation theology, political theology and process theology. “Liberation theology” started out as a sympathetic reinterpretation of Christianity from a marxist standpoint. Founded by Latin American theologians like Gustavo Gutierrez and the Boff brothers, liberation theology flowed […]
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Stagnant god-talk
In the twentieth century, formal, university-based god-talk tended to react to major movements in philosophy, particularly to the three great “masters of suspicion:” Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Some god-talkers sought to do theology in philosophical language, hoping to reach the wider, non-religious audience of the modern world. Other god-talkers used philosophy to find a sturdier […]
