Selected highlights…
Articles from my mags and journals
1. In the latest Christianity Today, several articles not yet linked on the website (I’ll update when they become available). First, an article on the “new perspective” on Paul. For more on that movement, check “The Paul Page.” And second, the next installment in the Christian Vision Project series in this magazine–an interview with Ruth Padilla DeBorst by Andy Crouch.
Books
1. Finished St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation (amazon, or read it online).
2. Finished The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.
3. Read chapter 9 in Jesus Mean and Wild, by Mark Galli, for a men’s bible study I lead on Wednesday mornings before work. Wrestling with the uncomfortable reality of the modern church–that Jesus’s parables, strangely, both reveal and conceal God and the Kingdom. Rather than being simple stories to help people understand God’s truth, as the popular understanding goes, we see them for the complex snippits of literature they are. Yes, some are revelatory proclamation and help us understand God. But more of them are conveying mysteries to us, not systematically explaining and de-mystifying them. Galli’s point is that when we come to Jesus with our questions, we most often find ourselves walking away with a few answers and even more questions. But this contributes to a longing for more of God, which is not unlike falling in love… Intrigue, encounter, learning more, wanting to know even more–fascination. This is the stuff of falling in love with someone. All the more, intimates Galli, when that someone is God in Christ.
Online: blogs, news/commentary, etc
1. First, more on The Simpsons Movie. The Slate.com review is titled “Enter the Donut.”
2. More from Slate.com… They appreciate that Obama is willing to answer hypotheticals. The article’s author writes: “We’ve all been asked to imagine how these candidates will behave in office—the grandest hypothetical of them all. It’s only reasonable to ask that they imagine it, too.” Good point. He admits that it may be a move that comes back to haunt him, but that it’s good for the campaign. After all, these aren’t personal or irrelevant: “The hypotheticals that candidates have been avoiding are the interesting, substantive ones. Anyone running for president should have thought through those questions, and if they haven’t, we should know about it.”
3. On the hot topic of Harry Potter and theology, here are three blog posts from GetReligion.org, Faith & Theology, and Inhabitatio Dei on the subject.
Guy M Williams 