Resident Theologian
About the Blog
Carr, Sacasas, and eloquent reality
A long reflection on an essay by Nicholas Carr engaging L. M. Sacasas about enchantment, reality, and contemplation.
Subjunctive scholarship
If you read enough biblical scholarship, you come to realize that one of the guild’s endemic features—for at least a century, probably two—is an overweening confidence in its claims. Such claims usually partake of a rhetoric of calm certainty; all too often what are contestable judgments based on slim evidence are instead asserted as facts, or at least as bearing a supreme likelihood of being true.
Axioms of Christian exegesis
I … rejoice, as any interpreter of scripture should, to find such a clear case of prima facie contradiction [in the text]; such instances are efficacious in prompting theological thought because of the axiom that the canon of scripture is not incoherent.
The catholicity of art
In Jamie Smith’s latest monthly newsletter—to which I recommend you subscribe—he has a reflection on the relationship between art and faith. In particular he has a bone to pick with those well-meaning Christian writers and artists whose approach to art is (in my words) variations on, or elevated versions of, the God’s Not Dead approach.
Piranesi and Decreation
Last month I read Piranesi, Susanna Clarke’s belated follow-up to her best-selling Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Piranesi is as wonderful as advertised, a bona fide mystery box of pure prose, genuine wonder, and spiritual imagination. It’s also best to go in without knowing anything, so unspoiled readers who prefer to remain that way ought to stop here.