Book catch-up

Happy New Year...belatedly.

For those who still catch up on the occasional posts that appear here, I thought I'd give a pointer to an interesting post reviewing (mostly in brief) a bunch of books that the reviewer thought worthy of commendation from his past year's reading.

Byron Borger (I think that's the person who's written the post) runs a Christian bookshop in Dallastown, Central Pennsylvania; it's nominally Presbyterian, but like OC Books (which also began life as a Presbyterian bookshop) he's wide open to Christians of all denominations.  However, this isn't a plug for the shop, but for the books he's commending in his post, which has been done in something of a rush by the look of it, as there are a number of typos scattered throughout (!)

Be that as it may, this list is well worth checking up on, because even if you don't go as wholeheartedly for the whole collection as he does.  There are several books in the list that I've either had my eye on for a while or now plan to get - pensioner's finances willing - and I'm sure you'll find something of interest there too.

N T Wright makes the cut (dare I say, of course) as does Rob Bell (though it seems that the study guide to Love Wins may be even more interesting than the original book, given its list of contributors).   Abraham Kuyper gets a look in twice, Richard Mouw is there, Tim Keller, Philip Jenkins, Craig Bartholomew, Walter Brueggemann, Scot McKnight, and Richard Hays.

Then there are a bunch of authors whose names I don't know (I might if I was still running the bookshop!) but whose books look very intriguing, and there's a variety of publishing houses, well-known and unknown.   The range of topics is broad, and there should be at least one book to satisfy every taste - for me there'd be far more than one book.

Here's the link: Hearts & Minds Bookstore

Reflecting on disaster

The three most recent posts on Jason Goroncy's blog relate to the devastating second Christchurch earthquake.

One offers two poems/reflections by Walter Brueggemann, the second is called, Christchurch: a pastoral reflection, and the third is reprint of a theological reflection by Frank Rees on his own experience of disaster called God of the Tsunami.

Rees is Principal and Professor of Systematic Theology at Whitley College in Melbourne, and this paper was first presented at a conference in South Korea.

God's irascible self

(First a bit of name-dropping.) I once heard Walter Brueggemann preaching at Knox Church in Dunedin and was expecting an academic talk full of words I might or might not understand.

Instead he gave a wonderful and accessible sermon. I've forgotten the content (!), but not the effect.

Jason Goroncy has just posted a copy of 19 theses by Brueggemann on his Per Crucem ad Lucem site (the site's title, by the way, is translated as towards the light by way of the cross on another site, though I'd prefer something as succinct as the original Latin: from Cross to Light). These 'theses' are entitled, A Script to Live (and to die) by.

Brueggemann replaces the commonly-used word, 'worldview,' with 'script,' which is a helpful change, and then points out in the 19 statements how we follow a script in our society of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socialises us all, liberal and conservative. You may or may not agree.

He goes on to say that this script not only makes us unhappy, it is a failure. He then goes on to say that the alternative script is rooted in the Bible and offers a counter to the prevailing script. The key character in the script (and I think he means us to read 'character' as like a character in an ordinary play or film script) is God, the God of the Trinity.

I like what follows in thesis 12:
The ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent quality of the counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed or made seamless because when we do that the script gets flattened and domesticated and it becomes a weak echo of the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism. Whereas the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism is all about certitude, privilege, and entitlement this counter-script is not about certitude, privilege, and entitlement. Thus care must be taken to let this script be what it is, which entails letting God be God’s irascible self.

Great stuff! (Photo is of an exhausted Brueggemann after having nailed his 19 theses to a local church door - just kidding!)

Abundance

The Bible starts out with a liturgy of abundance. Genesis I is a song of praise for God's generosity. It tells how well the world is ordered. It keeps saying, "It is good, it is good, it is good, it is very good." It declares that God blesses -- that is, endows with vitality -- the plants and the animals and the fish and the birds and humankind. And it pictures the creator as saying, "Be fruitful and multiply." In an orgy of fruitfulness, everything in its kind is to multiply the overflowing goodness that pours from God's creator spirit. And as you know, the creation ends in Sabbath. God is so overrun with fruitfulness that God says, "I've got to take a break from all this. I've got to get out of the office."

Walter Brueggemann
"The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity"
on Religion Online

(I heard Brueggemann speak when he came to Knox Church in Dunedin, a number of years ago. I expected him to be as theological in his preaching as he was in his writing; in fact, he preached a simple but profound message which reached all those who attended.)