Resident Theologian
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Publication round-up: recent pieces in First Things, Journal of Theological Interpretation, Mere Orthodoxy, and The Liberating Arts
I've been busy the last month, but I wanted to make sure I posted links here to some recent pieces of mine published during the Advent and Christmas seasons.
Peter van Inwagen on disciplinary hubris, relevant expertise, expectations of deference, and ordinary prudence
In the early 1990s the philosopher Peter van Inwagen wrote an essay called "Critical Studies of the New Testament and the User of the New Testament." It is a long, detailed philosophical investigation of the epistemic nature, or status, of academic biblical scholarship; specifically, it asks whether…
New piece published in Mere Orthodoxy: "Befriending Books: On Reading and Thinking with Alan Jacobs and Zena Hitz"
I'm in Mere Orthodoxy with a long review-essay of two new books: Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs and Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. Here's a section from the opening:
New piece published in LARB: an essay review of N. T. Wright's Gifford lectures
This morning I'm in the Los Angeles Review of Books with a long essay review of History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology, which are the book form of N. T. Wright's Gifford lectures. Here's the opening paragraph:
Between pandemic and protest: introducing The Liberating Arts
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to join a group of gifted Christian scholars with an idea for a grant proposal. The idea was to respond to the crisis facing institutions of higher education, particularly liberal arts colleges, proactively rather than reactively.
On “anti" films that succeed, and why
More than one friend has pointed out an exception or addendum to my last post on "anti" films, which makes the claim that no "anti" films are successful on their own terms, for they ineluctably glorify the very thing they are wanting to hold up for critique: war, violence, misogyny, wealth, whatever.
No such thing as an anti-war film, or anti-anything at all
There is no such thing as an anti-war film, François Truffaut is reported to have said. In a manner of speaking, there is no such thing as an anti-anything film, at least so long as the subject in question is depicted visually.
2021: the year of Martin, Rothfuss, and Williams?
Could 2021 see the publication of long-awaited sequels to three major fantasy series?
Louis Dupré on symbolism and ontology in religious language
Religious language must, by its very nature, be symbolic: its referent surpasses the objective universe. Objectivist language is fit only to signify things in a one-dimensional universe. It is incapable of referring to another level of reality, as art, poetry, and religion do.
François Furet on revolutionary consciousness
[T]he revolutionary situation was not only characterised by the power vacuum that was filled by a rush of new forces and by the 'free' activity of society. . . . It was also bound up with a kind of hypertrophy of historical consciousness and with a system of symbolic representations shared by the social actors.
10 thoughts on colleges reopening
1. Not every college is the same. There are community colleges, private colleges, public colleges. Some have 1,500 students, some have 50,000 students. Some are in rural areas and small towns, some are in densely populated urban centers. Some have wild and uncontrollable Greek life, some (very much) do not.
David Walker on slavery and the justice of God
And as the inhuman system of slavery, is the source from which most of our miseries proceed, I shall begin with that curse to nations, which has spread terror and devastation through so many nations of antiquity, and which is raging to such a pitch at the present day in Spain and in Portugal.