Resident Theologian
About the Blog
I’m in First Things + on a podcast
Links to a new essay in the latest issue of First Things and an interview on a new podcast called The Great Tradition.
Reunion
Reading theology from the previous century has the power to trick you into thinking that reunion between the divided communions was, and remains, a live possibility. As late as 1999, when Robert Jenson published the second volume of his systematic theology, the bulk of which is a fulsome ecclesiology in close conversation with both Vatican II and the most recent ecumenical dialogues, you would be forgiven for getting the impression that reunion—between Rome and Wittenburg, between Rome and Canterbury, even between Rome and Constantinople—was conceivable within our lifetime, even right over the horizon.
“The slow death of the Protestant churches”
Fifteen years ago, in a journal article on Karl Barth’s christology and Chalcedonian doctrine (among other things), Bruce McCormack concluded his article with the following paragraph (my emphasis): It remains only to say a word about the situation—and the motives which have led me to elaborate precisely this form of Christology in the present moment. The situation in which Christian theology is done in the United States today is shaped most dramatically by the slow death of the Protestant churches.