“We must summon the audacity to say that modernity’s scientific/metaphysical metanarrative―at the moment told by astrophysicists and neo-Darwinians―is not the encompassing story within which all other accounts of reality must establish their places, or be discredited for failing to find one. It is instead a rather brutal abstraction from reality. The abstraction has proved to be magnificent in its intellectual power and practical benefits. Nevertheless, by these disciplines’ methodological eschewal of teleology, they prevent themselves from describing what actually is. As pop scientists urge over and over, the tale told by Scripture and the creed finds no comfortable place within modernity’s metanarrative. It is time for the church simply to reply: this is certainly the case, and the reason it is the case is that the tale told by Scripture is too comprehensive to find place within so drastically curtailed a version of the facts. Indeed, the gospel story cannot fit within any other would-be metanarrative because it is itself the only true metanarrative―or it is altogether false.”
- Robert Jenson, Canon and Creed (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 120.
“Modernity,” according to Root, “is the constant process of speeding things up.” 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 →
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.” Continue reading Performance of Identity →
September 5 marked the passing of the Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson. Widely regarded as the leading American theologian of his generation, and perhaps, as some maintain, the greatest American theologian since Jonathan Edwards, Jenson was a leading influence in advocating for a theological renewal of the church that was, at one and the same time, profoundly evangelical and catholic. Continue reading Robert Jenson: Servant of the Church, Evangelical and Catholic →
This past week marked the start of a course I am teaching at Tyndale Seminary called “Integrative Seminar II.” Don’t let the nondescript title fool you; this course may very well be the most enthralling course that I’ve had the privilege to be involved with at Tyndale. There’s a variety of reasons for this, including the fact that the course occurs near the end of the MDiv In-Ministry program and provides an opportunity for the students to bring together what they have learned and the skills they have developed over the course of the entire program. Probably the biggest factor, though, is the compelling character of the subject matter itself. “Integrative Seminar II” is shaped around exploring the life and thought of six twentieth century Christian pastor-leader-theologians: Lesslie Newbigin, John Perkins, Vinay Samuel, Dorothy Day, Desmond Tutu, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Continue reading Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – Introduction →
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