In preparation for an upcoming paper I will be delivering at the annual conference of the Canadian American Theological Association entitled, “Reimagining Ethical Preaching,” I have had the opportunity to immerse myself in Garrett Green’s insightful work on imagination. Here is a particularly rich passage from his recent book Imagining Theology: Continue reading The Theological Task Today
Category Archives: Quotes
Pelicans!
One of the delights of moving to Manitoba was the discovery that pelicans are annual summer residents on the drainage pond behind our house. Pelicans have long been one of my favorite birds, even before I learned of their Christological significance some years back. Continue reading Pelicans!
Calvin on Faith and Hope
“For if faith, as has been said above, is a sure persuasion of the truth of God – that it can neither lie to us, nor deceive us, nor become void – then those who have grasped this certainty assuredly expect the time to come when God will fulfill his promises, which they are persuaded cannot but be true. Accordingly, in brief, hope is nothing else than the expectation of those things which faith has believed to have been truly promised by God. Continue reading Calvin on Faith and Hope
Root on Transformation vs. Change
“Modernity,” according to Root, “is the constant process of speeding things up.”1 Under the accelerating forces of modernity, human beings and communities are constantly scrambling to keep up with the rapid rate of change, leading to increasing levels of anxiety and depression. Root illuminatingly contrasts change with transformation: Continue reading Root on Transformation vs. Change
- Andrew Root, The Church in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2021), 14. ↩
Performance of Identity
I had a wonderful week last week with the Doctor of Ministry cohort at Providence Theological Seminary teaching a course called, “Thinking and Interpreting Theologically.” The students read several insightful texts in preparation for our time together. The one that seemed to generate the most conversation was Andrew Root’s The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life (Baker, 2021). It is the third volume in Root’s Ministry in a Secular Age trilogy. In the trilogy Root is dialoguing with the work of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, in particular Taylor’s seminal A Secular Age. At the heart of Root’s project is the concern for developing ways for Christians to speak about and recognize the presence of divine action within the midst of a “social imaginary” that has reduced its vision to the “immanent frame.”1 Continue reading Performance of Identity
- These are terms Taylor introduces in A Secular Age. I briefly engage with Taylor around some of these themes in For the Life of the World (215-216). ↩
Living within the Mystery of God
An arresting passage from Fritz Bauerschmidt’s sermon for the Baptism of the Lord entitled, “Hope for Everything,” found in his book How Beautiful the World Could Be: Christian Reflections on the Everyday. Continue reading Living within the Mystery of God