The ABC's of Theology

July 15, 2014 7:10 PM

Atonement, Baptism, Christology, Deconstruction
The ABC's of Theology, an ongoing blog series from the folks at Homebrewed Christianity. (previously)

Also recently on the podcast, "God is Not a man, and other not so shocking things you learn in Religion 101", a fantastic two part series with professor Greg Horton.

posted by womprat78 (6 comments total)

Smart. What I love is the conversational perspective - informative without being preachy. Still, I have real disagreements: I wouldn't call the atonement irrelevant but necessary. What doesn't matter is what kind of atonement one chooses. Baptism seems non-geographical, but it is deeply concrete and material.

Certainly the blog is a popular way of deepening theological thinking without the cultural baggage. It's helpful.
posted by john wilkins at 8:26 PM on July 15, 2014

Interesting, though it does look a little Christian-centric.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:30 PM on July 15, 2014

It's an interesting situation: to return Christianity to the mainstream of public discourse means eliminating the blind adherence to the less realistic parts of the teachings, treating them in a secular humanist fashion, as it were. Which I think would be great for the religion and people's understanding of it. Instead the loudest and dominant ones are the ones blindly and antagonistically refusing to consider anything other than a certain almost reactionary interpretation. And thus damning themselves, as it were, to being unapproachable in any meaningful sense.
posted by emmet at 10:31 PM on July 15, 2014

I'm not a Christian, but the response to that criticism isn't unpersuasive, which is basically that the churches that accept modern humanist ideas (Episcopalian, ELCA, etc.) are shrinking in membership and influence basically because they don't really offer anything different than modern secular humanist society. Many people don't just want a space to explore spirituality with like-minded people, they want strong claims and direct spiritual guidance. If you're being uncharitable, they want to be told what to do.

This blog interests me because they seem to be charting a different path: they're willing to engage with modern thought, but they are Christians first, while the goal of many modern liberal Christians seems to be to squeeze Christianity into modernism however they can.
posted by vogon_poet at 12:17 AM on July 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

they want to be told what to do.

I think it's rather: feel that they are doing the right thing, vis a vis associating with folks to reinforce the mindset/beliefs. Most I know aren't in the "want to be told", rather "want to belong", where belong is shared belief, mindsets, etc. (That have the unfortunate side effect of easily becoming us vs them, which is antithetical to the religion, but that's a much longer story..)
posted by k5.user at 8:20 AM on July 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

The alphabet was completed today. Here's the full link list:

A is for Atonement
B is for Baptism
C is for Christology
D is for Deconstruction
E is for Empire
F is for Fideism
G is for Genre
H is the Hermeneutics
I is for Infallible, Inerrant, Impassible, Immutable
J is for Justification
K is for Kenosis (and Kingdom)
L is for Liberation (and Logos)
M is for Metaphor (and metaphysics)
N is for Neoplatonism
O is for Open & Relational
P is for Perichoresis
Q is for Quest for the Historical Jesus
R is for Revelation and the Book of Revelation
S is for Salvation
T is for Theopoetics
U is for Universalism (and Ultimate Concern)
V is for Vatican II
W is for the Word of God
X is for X-ray
Y is for Y2K
Z is for Zebra
posted by womprat78 at 7:25 PM on August 12, 2014 [1 favorite]