Experimental Theology

...trudging into the distance in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus...the Lord out of dust had created him, had made him blood and nerve and mind, had made him to bleed and weep and think, and set him in a world of loss and fire... --Flannery O'Connor

5.07.2021

Pascal's Pensées: Week 7, The Great Mending

869. To make a man a saint, grace is certainly needed, and anyone who doubts this does not know what a saint, or a man, really is. /// I lam...

5.06.2021

Save Me From Myself

Lord... I only say I trust You. My actions prove that the one I trust is myself — and that I am still afraid of You. Take my life into You...

5.05.2021

Love as Impassibility

In theology there is a debate that roils regarding what is called God's divine impassibility. Divine impassibility is rooted in the beli...

5.04.2021

The Purity Culture of Progressive Christianity: A Retrospective

In 2015 I wrote a post entitled "The Purity Culture of Progressive Christianity." That was only six years ago, but it now seems l...

5.03.2021

Shame, Self-Esteem, and Idolatry

Biblically, you can make a good argument that idolatry is our primary spiritual struggle. Israel's Shema and the first of Christianity&#...

4.30.2021

Pascal's Pensées: Week 6, The Contradiction

130. If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. And I go on contradicting him Until he understands That he is a...

4.29.2021

The Politics of Seeing

On one my office desks I have a photo book, a collection of the work of Dorothea Lange. Lange was a photojournalist and is best known for he...

4.28.2021

God Is In All Things

God is in all things...Now since God is very being by His own essence, created being must be his proper effect; as to ignite is the proper e...

4.27.2021

The Ethos of the Extraordinary: Self-Esteem in a Post-Christian World

I saw this quote on Alan Jacobs blog , from Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's book Plato at the Googleplex : Kleos means both “glory” or “f...

4.26.2021

Reading the Bible: Part #3, Error Toward Love and Grace

Summarizing, I told my students that there will be times, in reading the Bible, where you can't avoid making a hermeneutical decision. A...

4.23.2021

Pascal's Pensées: Week 5, Strange Organs

55. We think playing upon man is like playing upon an ordinary organ. It is indeed an organ, but strange, shifting and changeable. Those who...

4.22.2021

Reading the Bible: Part #2, God Has Your Back

Once you become hermeneutically self-aware there's no going back to a state of interpretive innocence. From now on, and forever afterwar...

4.21.2021

Reading the Bible: Part #1, Make Your Call

In one of my classes we had a discussion about how to read the Bible. Specifically, we were wrestling with the ubiquitous problem of multipl...

4.20.2021

Strike Three!: Evangelicals, Vaccines, and Science Denialism

I say, three strikes and you're out. Evangelicalism's quarrel with science started with evolution, going way back to the Scopes Monk...

4.19.2021

Bursting Illusions: Part 3, Except for the God-Damned Bloody Corpse

Poor Freud. We'll been picking on him pretty hard. But given Freud's ignorance about faith, this has been pretty easy. True, the no...

4.16.2021

Pascal's Pensées: Week 4, We Do Not Prove That We Ought To Be Loved

298. The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses its principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one. We do not p...

4.15.2021

Bursting Illusions: Part 2, The Cozy Joy of Loving Your Enemies

Another line of argument that Freud sets out in The Future of an Illusion is that humanity needed religion, in our evolutionary infancy, to...

4.14.2021

Bursting Illusions: Part 1, Love Those Comforting Whirlwinds

You can make a good argument that Freud's The Future of an Illusion is the single most devastating critique of religious faith that has...

4.13.2021

Hunting Magic Eels on Audible. Plus a Study Guide!

Hunting Magic Eels is my first book to appear in audio format. Today the audiobook of Hunting Magic Eels releases on Audible. For years re...

4.12.2021

Lessons from Leviticus: Part 8, Contagious Holiness

One last post in this series. I hope you've enjoyed it. It could go on and on. If you want to explore more, pick up Jacob Milgrom's ...

4.09.2021

Pascal's Pensées: Week 3, Welcome to the Ache

6. First part: Misery of humanity without God. Second part: Happiness of humanity with God. /// A large part of Pascal's strategy in th...

4.08.2021

Lessons from Leviticus: Part 7, Death, Animals, and Protecting Our Humanity

A lot of our reaction to Leviticus depends upon what we are comparing it to. Comparing Leviticus to modern, liberal sensibilities makes us p...

4.07.2021

Lessons from Leviticus: Part 6, Guilt, Restitution, and Stereotypes

Stereotypes are everywhere, and we even have stereotypes of books of the Bible. When I say "Leviticus" what comes to your mind? Bi...

4.06.2021

Lessons from Leviticus: Part 5, Theodicy and Collective Responsibility

One of the interesting observations Jacob Milgrom makes in his commentary on Leviticus is that Leviticus functions, or at least embodies, a ...

4.05.2021

Lessons from Leviticus: Part 4, Detergents

In Leviticus there are four substances that act as "detergents," to use Jacob Migrom's evocative description. The four deterg...

4.04.2021

The Crack Running Through All Things

Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they, and certain other women with them, came to the tomb bringing the spices w...

4.02.2021

Pascal's Pensées: Week 2, Transcendence Matters

Recall that Pascal was going to turn his collection of "thoughts" into a book arguing for and defending the Christian faith. But d...

4.01.2021

Lessons from Leviticus: Part 3, Holiness and Grace

The Hebrew verb that animates the book of Leviticus is hivdil , meaning "to divide." All through the book, the Israelites, and es...

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