1. Both of our new publications are now available on Amazon! Click here to order Churchy and here to grab More Theology & Less Heavy Cream.
2. Yesterday Commonweal posted a wonderful exchange between theologians Simeon Zahl (no relation) and David Bentley Hart about Hart’s recent salvo for them, “Christ’s Rabble”. Recommended not just as an example of two extraordinarily nimble minds at work, but in a tone befitting the subject matter. A favorite passage from Simeon’s entry:
Indeed, the New Testament reveals an unbearable moral standard on a great many topics—we are commanded never to be angry and never to lust, for example (Matthew 5)—and that is precisely why “at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Viewed through this lens, Hart’s point about Christian ethical mediocrity in the era of late capitalism can be transfigured into an argument for why salvation is better understood as preceding moral transformation rather than as enabling it (“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” [Romans 5:8]).
Loved the Zahl/Hart exchange. (One was [predictably] more polite than other, though, don’t you think?)