There is an interesting series on Larry Hurtado's blog here http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com about Wright's latest quick read (1700 pages) in his Christian Origins and the Question of God series, titled "Paul and the Faithfulness of God."
1) I have made the obvious point several times that N.T. Wright has made many important contributions to Christian thought during his career.
2) I have also made the point that, despite his substantial credentials, and my substantial lack of credentials, I cannot reconcile some of his Pauline viewpoints.
3) Luckily, others with credentials cannot either.
Hurtado here http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/paul-and-the-faithfulness-of-god-2nd-posting/ has something quite significant to say underlying a fundamental difference in Wright's understanding and his (mine). Wright contends that it was the Jewish expectation at the time that YHWH would appear in person, forming the lens that Jews at the time would identify Jesus. Contrast with Hurtado, who maintains with other scholars that Jesus was placed by 1st century Jews within the "divine identity".
Clearly, during this time, there was a very hard turn from classic understanding of God to one that began to include Jesus in it's composition. How this, as Hurtado puts it, "mutation" in Jewish monotheism occurred is an interesting question. Surely part of the problem is the tension even within single authors, such as Paul, as to what exactly Jesus' place in the Jewish tradition was, and where that place intersected with gentiles. One thing is for certain, if Paul got it wrong, then we were set very early on a strange and muddled trajectory, one that was crystallized in the idea of the Trinity. It seems to me, that, Wright continues to put a lot of confidence in Paul and his theology, as if he was acting in isolation, able to take early Jewish/disciple understanding of whom Jesus was, and in some ways, reshape that to the "triadic shape" that has become the idea of the Trinity.
I'm not sure if that makes a lot of sense. Taking his letters in whole, it seems to paint the picture of a very bright Pharisee whom was reliable on early disciple instructions on what exactly was going on with the Jesus he met on the road to Damascus, and not one that was in position to re-interpret early Jewish consensus on what exactly the person of Jesus meant to traditional Jewish monotheism. Through his re-interpreations of Paul, it also seems to be that Wright is forever giving Paul too much credit in forming early Christian thought, and not enough credit to Peter and those that spent several years with Jesus during his ministry. Morover, to use an analogy, he is setting Paul up as a mutagen, and not the natural development of religion in Mesopotamia. It again seems to me that this is the much more well-traveled road with God, a God that is, at least on some levels, okay with allowing nature to run its course through evolution to bring us to a point of emerging awareness of His Creation and Presence. As humans fail over and over, nature priming the brain and conscience is always the better route to bring God into our field of vision, in this case aided by Jesus' words, stories and actions. Why God needed Paul at all is not so abundantly clear to me and will remain a mystery. Why N.T. Wright insists Paul restructured the way Jews thought about Jesus, remains just as much a mystery.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Top 50 list of contemporary Theistic thinkers
Here is an interesting list from the best school folks of their 50 leading Theist intellectuals in 2013. While DBH was surprisingly on that list, who I think is still a bit of a hidden jewel, conspicuously missing is six other thinkers I would round off my top 10 with, never mind top 50 (Rene Girard, Rosalind Picard, Tim Keller, Hilary Putnam, John Behr and John D. Barrow). It's also interesting that they have physicists like Chris Isham, Don Page and Michael Heller on the list, but not Nobel laureates like William Phillips, Charles Townes (who is almost 100 by the way), Arno Penzias and Tony Hewish (all very outspoken Christian physicists). At any rate, I love that they took the time to create this list, and hope it becomes an annual thing. You can follow the link here:
http://www.thebestschools.org/blog/2013/01/06/50-smartest-people-faith/
Just for posterity, and b/c there is not much funner than making top 10 lists of anything, my top 10, would, not in order, go:
1) WLC -- if you needed one guy to defend the Theist worldview, it would have to be this guy.
2) Girard. I think he has a chance to change how a lot of fields think about themselves, not just the anthropology of religion.
3) Plantinga. He probably would be the guy you would want to fill in for Craig if Craig was too busy working on that upper body or embarrassing Sam Harris or Peter Atkins
Atkins debacle ->-> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIuua7HZRxw
4) Putnam and 5) DBH. Other notable philosophers that would just be outside my list: Bas van Fraasen, who is on their list, Edward Feser, who is a rising star, and Peter van Inwagen, who can tackle the problem of evil, the most credible challenge to Theism, better than anyone I have read.
6) Tim Keller and 7) John Behr would be my theologians/pastors on the list. These guys, because of their trade, are probably grossly underrated as pure thinkers. They both can talk and write about things in ways most people cannot, and, most importantly, take the human tapestry and how it relates to the Sacred in ways that make us understand how Sacred the Sacred is, yet how near it is and can be. I don't always agree with him, but N.T. Wright would have to be a honorable mention. A great, great speaker, and "The Resurrection of the Son of God" is the most important Christian apologetics book written in the last 100 years.
8), 9), and 10) You could pick a lot of scientists. I would add Rosalind Picard, not just because she is obviously brilliant, but because there are so many vocal Christian scientists from MIT today (Hutchinson, Van Vooris, come to mind) that someone from MIT should be on the list. I love John D. Barrow, so he is in. He is also the funniest guy on this list. I would round off with Jennifer Wiseman, an astrophysicist who is at NASA and is in charge at AAAS to better bridge science and religion. Honorable mention to all the nobel laureate scientists that could be on my list and all the other obvious choices like Knuth and Francis Collins. Also, I really think Polkinghorne will go down as one of the best critical thinkers of our time, mostly because he is highly visible and because he has the respect of both honest theologians and honest scientists.
So what's your top 10?
http://www.thebestschools.org/blog/2013/01/06/50-smartest-people-faith/
Just for posterity, and b/c there is not much funner than making top 10 lists of anything, my top 10, would, not in order, go:
1) WLC -- if you needed one guy to defend the Theist worldview, it would have to be this guy.
2) Girard. I think he has a chance to change how a lot of fields think about themselves, not just the anthropology of religion.
3) Plantinga. He probably would be the guy you would want to fill in for Craig if Craig was too busy working on that upper body or embarrassing Sam Harris or Peter Atkins
Atkins debacle ->-> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIuua7HZRxw
4) Putnam and 5) DBH. Other notable philosophers that would just be outside my list: Bas van Fraasen, who is on their list, Edward Feser, who is a rising star, and Peter van Inwagen, who can tackle the problem of evil, the most credible challenge to Theism, better than anyone I have read.
6) Tim Keller and 7) John Behr would be my theologians/pastors on the list. These guys, because of their trade, are probably grossly underrated as pure thinkers. They both can talk and write about things in ways most people cannot, and, most importantly, take the human tapestry and how it relates to the Sacred in ways that make us understand how Sacred the Sacred is, yet how near it is and can be. I don't always agree with him, but N.T. Wright would have to be a honorable mention. A great, great speaker, and "The Resurrection of the Son of God" is the most important Christian apologetics book written in the last 100 years.
8), 9), and 10) You could pick a lot of scientists. I would add Rosalind Picard, not just because she is obviously brilliant, but because there are so many vocal Christian scientists from MIT today (Hutchinson, Van Vooris, come to mind) that someone from MIT should be on the list. I love John D. Barrow, so he is in. He is also the funniest guy on this list. I would round off with Jennifer Wiseman, an astrophysicist who is at NASA and is in charge at AAAS to better bridge science and religion. Honorable mention to all the nobel laureate scientists that could be on my list and all the other obvious choices like Knuth and Francis Collins. Also, I really think Polkinghorne will go down as one of the best critical thinkers of our time, mostly because he is highly visible and because he has the respect of both honest theologians and honest scientists.
So what's your top 10?
Thursday, December 19, 2013
The Leader of the PayPal Mafia
In 2002, EBAY purchased a small, then recent IPO for 1.5 billion dollars, a high price for a company making a fraction of that. More than 10 years later, the investment in PayPal was clearly a good one. Co-founder Peter Thiel was a big part of that transaction happening.
Peter Thiel is an interesting guy. He's on my radar because of his involvement in disseminating Rene Girard's work, whom, as I have written previously, may have the great, orignal contribution to Religion in the 20th century.
Thiel met Girard at Stanford, from where he obtained his law degree from. Amongst Thiel's accomplishments was his $500,000 early investment in Facebook, which gave his VC a 10% stake-- that is worth billions now. He also is a big supporter of biomedical science, and provides grants for ideas that, believe me, won't normally get funded by national institutions.
Thiel also is openly gay. a through-and-through libertarian, and a Christian. Not a combination that is too prevalent in the human population.
Thiel is clearly a fascinating and brilliant guy. And for me, I am quite excited he is involved with Girard. As I am going through "I see Satan fall like lightning", it is encouraging to know that a guy with the resources, worldview and intelligence like Thiel will be around to help spread the Girardian viewpoint.
Peter Thiel is an interesting guy. He's on my radar because of his involvement in disseminating Rene Girard's work, whom, as I have written previously, may have the great, orignal contribution to Religion in the 20th century.
Thiel met Girard at Stanford, from where he obtained his law degree from. Amongst Thiel's accomplishments was his $500,000 early investment in Facebook, which gave his VC a 10% stake-- that is worth billions now. He also is a big supporter of biomedical science, and provides grants for ideas that, believe me, won't normally get funded by national institutions.
Thiel also is openly gay. a through-and-through libertarian, and a Christian. Not a combination that is too prevalent in the human population.
Thiel is clearly a fascinating and brilliant guy. And for me, I am quite excited he is involved with Girard. As I am going through "I see Satan fall like lightning", it is encouraging to know that a guy with the resources, worldview and intelligence like Thiel will be around to help spread the Girardian viewpoint.
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