Engaging the Doctrine of God

The doctrine of God it seems to me is an increasingly contested and increasingly important area of dogmatics. Actually, that seems like a silly thing to say - isn't it always?

A great collection of essays has been released, edited by Bruce McCormack, under the title Engaging the Doctrine of God. What I have read so far has been of very high standard - stimulating and very interesting.

Particular high on my list are the essays by John Webster and Henri Blocher, followed by an excellent one by Don Carson on 'The Wrath of God'. McCormack, as the editor of the book has allowed himself twice the room of everyone else, and I haven't yet tackled his piece. NT Wright has a piece, though it is rather light on footnotes and sounds very derivative of his other stuff - not a fresh piece of research it seems to me.

What is interesting is that there is a tension between those authors who are committed to classical theism (Helm, Crisp, Carson) and those who want to modify it without falling into open theism (McCormack, Blocher, Stephen Williams). And, as always, Barth is the point of depature...

Some holiday reading

Sacha gazes out over Prague.

Prague Castle with St Vitus' Cathedral from the Charles Bridge.

OK - we are are back. Czech Republic was great. Sadly, the churches seems to be emptied out shells, and I could see no evidence of Protestantism at all. The land of Jan Hus is no longer a place of the kind of preaching he was known for, even though his statue is in the Old Town Square.

I read while I was away:

Michael Ondaatje - Anil's Ghost. I went through an Ondaatje phase back in the mid 90s - I read all his poetry and novels. Loved his poetic style and his depictions of love and pain. He is a writer who really knows about the human body. Then I never got around to this novel which he sets in his native Sri Lanka. It is brilliantly written - three or four terrific, wounded characters. And more suffering of an appalling kind mixed in with illicit and licit love. The narrative has a kind of CSI flavour which is becoming a bit tired now after all those TV shows (the main character is a forensic anthropologist).

Franz Kafka - The Trial. OK, I tried here and failed again. I have tried several times to enjoy this book and where better then in Kafka's home town? But frankly, it is a dull book. Perhaps it is badly translated...

Will Self - The Book of Dave. I enjoyed this immensely. I am a self-confessed Self fan (??). He is a real surrealist. This is a kind of dystopian fantasy of what England would like if the mad, racist and misogynist ranting of a London cabbie of today were written on metal plates and found in a post-apocalyptic future and then treated as a divine revelation. It is a non-too-subtle satire of revealed religion and its capacity to wreak havoc. But Self also endears us to Dave, who by the end of the novel has been redeemed sufficiently to have written a second, more humane book... Wonderful passages written entirely in Cockney.

Sam Wells - God's Companions. I have to review this book - as I said before, I think it is frustratingly cheesy. I won't put it like that in my review...the best thing is that Wells has discovered the local church as the site of theo-praxis. Evangelicals I think have know that the local church is where the action is for years. The emphasis on symbolic practices is curious to me: Wells wants us to practice foot-washing, for example. It is funny that ritualists read scripture literally at this point, and non-ritualists read it metaphorically...

Charles Taylor - Modern Social Imagineries. Interesting take on the way in which revolutions come about and why or why not they are successful. There needs to be a vision of what a society could be under a new regime - merely opposing the current ruler will produce chaos unless there is a deeply felt sense of an alternative national/social/political identity. Why did the Velvet revolution succeed in 1989 without bloodshed? Because it was obvious to the Czechs that there was another and better way of being Czech, without communism. Maybe Taylor is only saying what is obvious in different words... also, he clearly feels he has earned the right to make sweeping historical statements without footnotes or evidence. It is hard to challenge him when he is writing like this.

Roger Scruton - Modern Culture. Scruton is a fabulous English conservative. The real thing. And thoroughly Kantian. His thesis in this book is that without religion 'high' culture will die. He mounts a sterling defence of high culture against the dominance of 'cultural' 'studies' in our schools and universities. I have to say he has my sympathies: good writing just is good writing I am afraid. You can't make pop culture better by clever criticism of it I am afraid. One of his best points is that the canon of Western culture is already a tolerant and diverse and self-critical canon - and is so because of Christianity. To present as a single monolithic ideology is simply false. Scruton is an unabashed Kantian, and I feel this is his great weakness - because he presents Kant's view of religion rather than the really Christian one. Christianity for Scruton seeps out of the English soil and is the natural accompaniment to Englishness. Only an Anglican of a certain blinkered and rural kind could think that.

Must reads?

So, help me out here: what are the must-read theological books that are coming out soon or have recently appeared?

I take many of my recommendations from Ben (or from people on his site) I must admit. I am looking to pick up Paul DeHart's The Trial of the Witnesses though it seem to be dealing with a meta meta discourse. Peer group pressure is a wonderful thing!

I still have much of The Beauty of the Infinite to deal with, too. Hmm.