Blogs, birthdays and books

Thought I might mention several thoughts and plans for this blog which will be a year old on January 10.

I've revised the list of blog destinations I regularly visit. The initial enthusiasm for Blogging seems to have cooled off, and some folk are now doing different things, or have other priorities. I've added two theological blogs that I often visit. Don't know the full name of Halden, over at Inhabitatio Dei, but he is writing some important and thoughtful stuff on a number of theological issues I'm interested in. You might want to look in and see if it's your kind of thing.

I've resisted the long lists of "just about everybody who blogs", and rely on several existing bloggers on my own select list for taking me further afield - mainly Ben Myers at Faith and Theology and Cynthia Nielsen at Per Caritatem. If you click on their names in my sidebar and browse their sidebars a very large and varied blogging community opens up.

As I think through what I want to do with this blog for the coming year I'd be interested in suggestions, comments from regular readers and anyone else who happens by. But I reserve the right to go on posting a mixture of the serious and whimsical, the book stuff and theological reflection, and to 'have a view' on some of the issues, stories and happenings that seem to me to be significant clues to what it might mean to live wittily in the tangle of our minds, seeking by so doing to live faithfully after the pattern of Christ.

Now and again I want to take time to write a more substantial post, which I hesitate to call an essay since that sounds too much like an assessment instrument! Yet the essay is a long established and honourable forum for developing ideas, building persuasive argument, educating and shaping and challenging commonly accepted values, tastes, and perceptions - and that process includes the wiriter. I mean the kind of reflective, meditative, inquisitive question-raising such as I posted on forgiveness on Thursday Jan 3rd.

Those who know me know books are an essential element in my humanity, as vital to my life quality as heat and light, food and drink, friendship and work. Books are, as Philip Toynbee once admitted, 'My royal route to God'. Of course not everyone is book daft - not everyone's mind works the same, not all personalities learn best through literary forms, not everyone finds verbalised concepts interesting or that ideas interiorised through reading are easily processed into practical wisdom that is life transforming. But for me spiritual discipline, theological reflection, the journey of self-discovery, sympathetic human understanding, intellectual maturity, and contemplative humility before the mystery of God, are some of the blessings of reading - hence the literary bias of this blog!

In the last week or two I've come across several claims that such and such a book is a theological classic. Confining suggestions to the 20th Century, there are those in the blogosphere who nominate (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) P T Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, H R Mackintosh, The Person of Jesus Christ, H R Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, Elisabeth Johnson, She Who Is, G Guttierez, A Theology of Liberation, J V Taylor, The Go-Between God, D Bosch, Transforming Mission, and T F Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God. I suspect most of these reflect personal enthusiasms, but none of them are lightweight either. Suggestions - either supporting some of the above or other nominations - which books would you argue is a 20th C theological classic?  Of course at some stage we have to define 'classic' - but for now just go by your own definition.

Comments

[Catriona]

Happy Birthday!

Is it a year already? Time certainly flies when you are having fun.

I look forward to seeing what this year brings by way of posts. I've really enjoyed the diversity of what you post and I lurv the picture of those wonderful old books, she says drooling all over the keyboard!

Also suitably honoured and humbled to remain in your sidebar! That and hoping to see you in Manchester in August (unless you're in Prague in July of course)

[Jason Goroncy]

Twentieth century classics? It's probably too early to tell for the latter decades, but pride of place must go to Dr Barth's Church Dogmatics. Everything else is a way second (and possibly will be for centuries, short of the Lord's return). After Church Dogmatics, probably Balthasar's Theo-Drama, Jenson's Systematics Eberhard Jüngel's work, and Rahner's Theological Investigations - basically those trying to come to terms with Barth's work. But I'd also like to see the following: Zizioulas' Being in Communion, Thielicke's A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, TF Torrance's The Mediation of Christ and The Trinitarian Faith, Bloesch's Christian Foundations (7 vols) and, of course, Forsyth's The Cruciality of the Cross, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, The Soul of Prayer. Unless all the Anglicans and Catholics die off, unfortunately Forsyth's The Church and the Sacraments stands no chance of making the list.

[Jim Gordon]

Thanks Catriona how could your blog not be on my sidebar when skinny fair trade latte is my wife Sheila's preferred comfort drink. (I do the fair trade bit). And your blog is a pastoral narrative in two important senses - the narrative of a pastor, and reflection on what it means to share the life of a community as a theological companion whose calling is to care thoughtfully and think carefully!

Now Jason. Barth, Von Balthasar, Rahner, Jungel, Jenson. This is where it gets hard to use the word classic at all, or without some helpful qualification. So let's say 'single volume classic'. And I'd have been disappointed if you didn't suggest a few Forsyth nuggets of Australian gold. I do agree about Zizioulas whose new book is on my must get round to it soon. And Thielicke like Moltmann wrote out of profound political disillusion trnasmuted into theological passion about the Gospel as the power of God unto salvation. Have you read his Man in God's World, which like Dogmatics in Outline by another theologian, was delivered as lecture / sermons to a congregation of stunned and bewildered people on the brink of despair, gathered in the bombed out shell of their church. It ranks alongside his When the World Began as a remarkable collection of sermons which do what a good sermon always should - save people by pointing them to a grace and mercy that transcends our human capacity for self destruction

[Jason Goroncy]

OK then Jim. Single volume classic' it is. Since I'm primarily a IV and not a I, II or III guy, I'd have to take my hat off to 'Church Dogmatics IV/1'!

Regarding Thielicke, I've read everything of his in English ... and would be happy to do it all again. My favourite: 'How to Believe Again'.

[Ian Thomson]

I've been reading your blogs with interest and enjoyment for months now! They're so often thought-provoking and stimulating - and I, for one, would welcome longer essay-type posts from time to time.

[Laney]

Happy first year, and ta much for all posts, it's been good to look in, like Catriona I also like the pictures but have got to say in agreement with Margaret the one with the wee face and pointy wooly bunnet cracks me up every time :) Books eh...........what would we do without them, I love them too although compared to your good self I'm still at the Janet and John stage of reading christian classics. I look forward to your essays.