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An idea for future development: I'm reading chs. 9-10 in Ratzinger's Jesus of Nazareth right now in preparation for class tomorrow. In ch. 9, he's talking about the texts of Peter's confession of Jesus as Messiah/Christ and the Transfiguration, and the connected texts in the gospels about Jesus' prediction of the Passion, with Ratzinger mentioning ( Read more... )

It's been an interesting few days of time-traveling back to the first century. I've been re-immersing myself in The Odes of Solomon, a set of later first century song lyrics that comprises one of our earliest (perhaps the earliest) Christian texts that we possess outside of the New Testament. I've had a thing for these since I discovered them ( Read more... )

Huh. I just had a thought. A Thought, if I be flamboyant enough to capitalize it. I've been unpacking after a tiring separation from my luggage for a day, resulting in me just getting it a little while ago.

In the background is Vienna Teng's oddly exultant "Augustine," which, as I mentioned earlier, had been the occasion for my and Mike's ( Read more... )

Friday marked an anniversary. Actually, it marked two. I didn't really observe either in an explicit way, as my day was mostly directed toward gathering with the gang over at Dan and Amy's, and all that food and talk and play really took over my attention. Then I came home to, among other things, a surprise late-night online conversation with ( Read more... )

Oof. Too burned out to write out replies to comments and mail tonight. So, I jot for my memory a list of the last few days' recent notables:Just got in from dinner over at the famed Miss Katie's Diner with Barnes after hours and hours of theology. Good talk on my dissertation, on the impact on our lives of people suffering from severe mental ( Read more... )

Still digging away in the literature review, and being compelled to re-write tons of material as I dig deeper and learn more, constantly having to revise my earlier impressions and interpretations regarding the development of a Catholic understanding of spiritual gifts or "charisms." The idea of "charismatic" theology is more complicated to talk ( Read more... )

And the world loses one of its great voices again.


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Here's a few lines from Rahner's The Dynamic Element in the Church that struck me yesterday. They were interesting not just in themselves, and in how they may tie into the dissertation, but also for some ideas I've been having about that phrase people say sometimes, that they dislike "organized religion." I suspect that this phrase has become one ( Read more... )

Karl Rahner, S.J. and I have been spending a lot of time together this week, which is weird, I suppose, given that he's been dead for 24 years. But that's the kind of thing my job makes me do. It's an obvious contrast that the man considered perhaps the most influential Catholic theologian of the 20th century should also be its most horrible ( Read more... )