The Craft of Innovative Theology

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Группа авторов. The Craft of Innovative Theology

The Craft of Innovative Theology

Contents

Guide

Pages

The Acknowledgments. From the Editors

From John Knight

From Ian Markham

Contributors

1 Introduction

Approaching the Book

Research Levels

For the Student: Basics of Writing for Publication

Every Good Piece of Writing is an Answer to a Question

Every Good Piece of Writing Has a Beginning, a Middle, and an End. A Beginning: The Introduction

B Middle: The Argument

C End: The Conclusion

Process

Read, Read, Read!

Decide on a Journal

Formulate a Good Question

Outline

Write

Revise

Proofread

Submit!

Revise and Resubmit!

Celebrate!

In Conclusion

Notes

1 Knowing God through Religious Pluralism

RESEARCH LEVEL 2. Editors’ Introduction

Radical Fallibilism: The Principle of Humility

Radical Flexibility: The Principle of Indeterminism

Radical Openness and Poesis: The Principles of Contingency and Attraction

Radical Risk: The Principle of Irony

Objections and Responses

Notes

2 Is It Possible for the Eternal Word to Be Made Manifest in a Person with Down’s Syndrome?

RESEARCH LEVEL 1. Editors’ Introduction

Christology, Intelligence, and Omniscience

Divine Wisdom

Incarnation and a Person with Down’s Syndrome

Incarnation and Jesus

Conclusion

Notes

3 Racial Stigma and Southern Baptist Public Discourse in the Twentieth Century

RESEARCH LEVEL 1. Editors’ Introduction

The Use of Biblical Teachings in Arguments about Slavery. Biblical Teachings on Christian Charity and the Golden Rule

Proslavery Arguments Concerning Christian Charity and the Golden Rule

Southern Baptists and Racial Stigma in the Jim Crow Era

Southern Baptists and Racial Stigma after the 1954 Brown Decision

The SBC’s Change of Heart: The 1995 Apology

Stigma: A Reciprocal Process

Conclusion

Postscript

Notes

4 The Plugged-in Church Is it Appropriate to Baptize Artificial Intelligence?

RESEARCH LEVEL 1. Editors’ Introduction

Mind and Body: The Debate

The History and Possibility of AI

Theological Implications

Anticipating the Future

Notes

5 Humanity Where on Earth Have We Come From and Where Are We Going To?

RESEARCH LEVEL 1. Editors’ Introduction

The Unique Status of Humanity

Ecological and Evolutionary Challenges to Human Uniqueness

Insights from Evolutionary Anthropology

Re-thinking Imago Dei

Concluding Remarks

Notes

6 What Challenges Does the Theory of Biological Evolution Pose to Christian Theology?

RESEARCH LEVEL 3. Editors’ Introduction

Notes

7 Sin and the Faces of Responsibility1 (see Box 7.1)

RESEARCH LEVEL 4

Editors’ Introduction

Introduction

Attempts to Resolve the Tension: Reconsidering Claims 1 and 3

Attempts to Resolve the Tension: Rejecting or Revising Claim 2

Responsibility Revisionism: Taking Stock and Further Implications

Conclusions

Works Cited

Notes

8 A Good Story Human–Animal Friendship and Meat Eating

RESEARCH LEVEL 2. Editors’ Introduction

A Good Story?

The Detour: Distancing Ourselves from Animals

Hachikō, the Famously Loyal Dog

Learning from Hachikō

Summary

The Biblical Story

Biblical Veganism?

Biblical Agriculture

Biblical Law

Summary

Domestication

Domestication and Meat

Evolution and Veganism

Summary

Is Domestication Slavery

Conclusion

Notes

9 Just Business It’s Not What You Think

RESEARCH LEVEL 2. Editors’ Introduction

Introduction

The Case of COVID-19

Just Business in Scripture and Tradition, Reason and Experience. Scripture

Tradition

Reason

Experience

What, Then, Is Just Business?

Notes

10 Relentless Love and the Afterlife

RESEARCH LEVEL 2. Editors’ Introduction

Extraordinary Reasons for Belief in the Afterlife

The Old Testament and Life after Death

The New Testament and Life after Death

The Logic of Love

Afterlife as Heaven or Hell

Universalism?

Annihilation?

Relentless Love

The Guarantees of Relentless Love

Notes

11 Hell Retributivism, Escapism, and Universal Reconciliation

RESEARCH LEVEL 3. Editors’ Introduction

Introduction

The Problem of Hell

Vagueness

Proportionality

Diminished Capacities

Morally Culpable Procreation

Religious Practice

Job Objection

Clarifying the Proportionality Objection to Retributivism and the Issuantist Alternative

A Skeletal Case for Escapism

Salvific Universalism: Dare We Hope?

Conclusion

Works Cited

Notes

12 Christ Will Come Again

RESEARCH LEVEL 2. Editors’ Introduction

Introduction

The Final Unity of All Things in Christ

The Prophetic Imagery of the Bible

The Vision of the Cosmic Christ

Works Cited

Notes

13 Theological Language and Method in Liberal Theology Schubert Ogden’s Response to the Falsification Controversy

RESEARCH LEVEL 4. Editors’ Introduction

Meaning, Reference, and the Falsification Controversy

Wisdom’s Parable and the Descriptivist Argument that Statements about God are Meaningless

Schubert Ogden on the Task and Method of Theology

Schubert Ogden’s Response to the Falsification Challenge

Concluding Remarks

Notes

14 Does Culture Determine Belief? The Relationship between the Social Sciences and Theology

RESEARCH LEVEL 3. Editors’ Introduction

Grounding Doctrine and Belief

Ecclesial Culture

Theology and Culture

Conclusion

Notes

15 Theological Reference and Theological Creativity in Judaism

RESEARCH LEVEL 4. Editors’ Introduction

Introduction: Theological Creativity and the Peculiar Contours of Jewish Theology

Theological Reference and Rabbinic Theology

The Restriction of Theological Reference in Modern and Contemporary Jewish Thought

Theories of Reference as a Source for Jewish Theological Creativity

Conclusion

Notes

16 Marshall’s Slingshot Truth Theory, Realism, and Liberal Theological Method

RESEARCH LEVEL 4. Editors’ Introduction

Introduction

Marshall, Postliberal Theology, and Correspondence

The Slingshot Argument

Marshall’s Use of the Slingshot Argument

Problems with Marshall’s Slingshot

Concluding Remarks

Works Cited

Notes

Glossary

Index

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Argument and Process

Edited by John Allan Knight and Ian S. Markham

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Kierkegaard considered the basic facts of a religious life to be absurd. Christians are supposed to believe in an eternal, simple, infinite, transcendent God who simultaneously became incarnate as a temporal, composite, finite, human being. There are two possible responses to this paradox: to have faith or to take offense. What we cannot do, according to Kierkegaard, is to believe by virtue of reason. If one chooses reason, the absurdity of the choice causes offense and dismissal. If one chooses faith, one must suspend reason in order to believe in something which is higher than reason. Belief then can only be had by virtue of the absurd.25

What this means is that one must decide to believe, as an act of will, in something one knows to be unreasonable, illogical, preposterous, inappropriate, and incongruous: that is, the absurd. To do this one is required to regularly and constantly renew one’s commitment to God, repeating the decision to believe and form one’s life according to the teachings of Jesus. The act of belief is a continual, repeated, decision to follow Christ. Repetition is the substance of faith, for Kierkegaard, and the only way to become one’s true self. But in the face of absurdity these decisions cease to be decisions at all, for deciding in itself requires the existence of decidables, that is, options which express sensible propositions. The absurdity of the options amounts to either believing in something which is paradoxical, or taking offense at an irrelevant paradox. The former is clearly nonsensical, the latter utterly foolish. In either case these are not “live options,” as William James puts it.26 Absurdity evacuates the decision of its weight; it ceases to be a decision at all. The only way out of this conundrum is to embrace, as a knight of faith, irony.

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