Last night, I kicked off my winter semester “Systematic Theology I” course at Tyndale Seminary. It seems like a quite wonderful group of students called together from a wide cross-section of locales, denominational backgrounds, and life experiences. Some of the ground I covered last night reminded me of the inaugural post I wrote for this blog a little over a year ago. Since it was posted before things really got rolling on the blog and because it might be of interest to my newest batch of students, I thought I’d re-post a large excerpt from that first post. The original post was entitled, “Beginning in the Middle.”
Continue reading Theology as Thinking After
Tag Archives: Barth
Fire is Still Coming!: Some Josh Ritter for Advent
The one year anniversary of Thinking After is fast approaching. Right around the time I started the blog, I preached an Advent sermon at Tyndale Seminary for the MDiv In-Ministry students. The sermon was one of my first blog postings. The theme of judgment sounds forth mightily from many of the traditional texts for the first week of Advent. Having been encountered afresh by these Scriptures, it seemed like it might worthwhile to re-post last year’s sermon, both for those who may have missed it and those who might like to read it again. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a sermon on 2 Peter 3, much less one that includes appearances by the Toronto Blue Jays, Westboro Baptist Church, Karl Barth, Glen Soderholm, a Pizza Pizza theologian, and that has the music of Josh Ritter as its soundtrack. Continue reading Fire is Still Coming!: Some Josh Ritter for Advent
Beginning in the Middle
Theological reflection always begins in the middle. After all, theological reflection is the work of a people who find themselves on pilgrimage (in via) as a result of being claimed by the address of the Triune God. There is no getting back to square one – to some primal location – for we are historical creatures who cannot escape our positioning in a good, but fallen world that started long before we arrived and, God willing, continue for long after we’ve died. Furthermore, if God is truly God, then God is not simply there to be discovered like helium or hydrogen, mites or mandrills. If theological reflection is to be truly theological it can only be, as Karl Barth famously maintained, a “thinking after” (Nachdenken in German) the reality of God’s self-revelation in the person of Christ. Continue reading Beginning in the Middle