Peripatetic Pastor

Tag: Fall story

  • THE INFANTILIZATION OF THE HUMAN RACE

    How Theology Reduces Us to Children A couple of posts back (available here), I reflected on biblical views of evil—evil as the coming apart of things. I mentioned in that essay that the T of Tulip (total depravity) in Reformed theology has a way of letting us off the hook. We need not, in fact in…

  • TAKING EVIL SERIOUSLY

    RETRIEVING A BIBLICAL VIEW OF EVIL We who grew Reformed pride ourselves in taking evil seriously. Total depravity, and all that. The doctrine of total depravity does make us wary of anyone who claims too much righteousness. We were taught that pious talk often serves as a cover for dishonorable motives. We expect people, religious…

  • THE WORK OF THEOLOGICAL RETRIEVAL

    Thinking Old Thoughts in New Ways In theology, as in much else in life, you can’t go back. Take human origins. Once the stories in Genesis were taken naively by many as the way things happened: Once upon a time there was a garden, a man, a woman, and a snake . . ., that…

  • THE HISTORICAL ADAM AND OTHER MYTHS: MEDITATIONS ON THE PAST, PART 3

    The importance of the past In his introduction to Athanasius’s On Incarnation, C. S. Lewis suggested that one should read at least one old book for every new one. By old, he had in mind books from the previous century and beyond. He mentions in a single breath St. Luke, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas,…

  • SEEING WHAT’S THERE: THE NEED FOR THEOLOGICAL RECONSIDERATION

    When a few years ago I set out to read some of the great writers of the American West, I started with Wallace Stegner. It turned out to be a good choice. The first Stegner I read, Angle of Repose (1971), was a revelation. In the book, 1972 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Stegner adopts…

  • Barbie and Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights

    I’ve been away. Hence, the silence from this quarter. Among other things, while away, I had the opportunity to ponder again Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights at the marvelous Prado in Madrid. I was delighted to discover that it includes a Barbie house and predation in the Garden of Eden, both of which I’ve…

  • THE PERVERSITY OF PERFECTION

    The Nicodemus Problem The church has a Nicodemus problem. Perhaps you remember the fraught dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3:1-21. Nicodemus, introduced in the story as a Pharisee and one of the “rulers of the Jews,” politely approaches Jesus as a miracle worker, presumably leading up to some theological question or challenge, but…

  • BARBIE AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN: WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN

    The best biblical movie of the year is Barbie. An additional nod in the way of biblical movies should go to Oppenheimer. Together these summer blockbusters—they are jointly saving Hollywood—mine biblical themes to explore the human condition. They are secular sermons preaching to a secular audience truths the church too often neglects or buries under…

  • GETTING UNSTUCK: A WAY FORWARD

    For the past month, we—you, my readers and I—have gotten distracted by another synod, this 2023 version of the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), which doubled down on its opposition to most if not all expressions of LGBTQ+ sexuality. It’s important to keep in mind that the synod is not the church. And…

  • SPEAKING TO THE PRESENT AGE: TIM KELLER AND MARILYNNE ROBINSON

    I’ve been writing about Calvin and Calvinism lately, and I mean to write more. I have lately been spending time reading and rereading Calvin’s chapters on divine providence with which he concludes the first book of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. I’ll get back to that and to Calvin’s approach to scripture in subsequent posts, but…