You have to be kidding me...

This website is ridiculous. Plough Publishers gives away all their books for free as pdf downloads. You are probably asking yourself, "Which of these books should I download?" The answer is all of them. But if you do not want to download them all, I would download all the books by either of the Blumhardts. Johann Christoph Blumhardt was a late 19th, early 20th century pastor, politician, preacher, evangelist, faith-healer, and theologian from southern Germany. "Why should I care about this Blumhardt fellow?" is the question you should probably be asking yourself at this point. Have you ever heard of Karl Barth, maybe Dietrich Bonhoeffer, surely Jurgen Moltmann? What do these three theologians have in common? Well, besides their German heritage and prominence as theologians, each of these three were deeply influenced by the life and work of both Johann and Christoph Blumhardt. Enjoy my friends!

God and Guinness

This looks like a fun read for a religionist and home brewer such as myself!

Here I come again

I have decided to start blogging again. I will be blogging about theology, movies, and school. That is the goal. Please feel free to interact.

Let me begin by saying that I find conservative evangelical psuedo-theological discourse to be completely bankrupt and quite absent of any constructive and therefore liberative meaning. When I speak of conservative evangelicalism, I have in mind my alma mater Biola University in mind. Proponents of this tradition represent nothing more than a history of muddled anti-intellectualism, chauvinist imperialism, and ideological intolerance. This tradition claims to seek after God, but has found only its backward self.

Some Black Eschatology

"Black theology does not scorn Christian hope; it affirms it. It believes that, when Christians really believe in the resurrection of Christ and take seriously the promise revealed through him, they cannot be satisfied with the present world as it is. The past reality of the resurrection and the future of God disclosed through it make Christians restless with regard to the imperfections of the present. It is not possible to know what the world can and ought to be and still be content with the excuses for the desolation of human beings. Christians must fight against evil, for not to fight, not to do everything they can for their neighbor's pain, is to deny the resurrection."

-James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 140

On Speech and Silence

"The assigned purpose of our words, in unity with the word of God, is to express the real, as it exists in God; and the assigned purpose of our silence is to signify the limit which is imposed upon our words by the real as it exists in God."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 332.


This short essay by Bonhoeffer on "Telling the Truth" in his Ethics was a very encouraging and insightful read. It is only 9 pages long so I would recommend picking up the book from the library and reading through this short little chapter.

A Quote From Some of My Reading...

"He who has thought most deeply, loves most vigorously."

In other words, the telos of an academic life must be love.

Apologetics as Refutation of Faith

It is completely asinine, in my opinion, for Christians to debate the question of the existence of God. To even begin to engage in such a discourse is to undermine a central assertion of Christian theology. God’s existence is a matter of faith. Faith cannot be proven or even believed but only experienced as an encounter with the immanent Other. So much intellectual time and effort is wasted by certain segments of the Church on the counter productive task of apologetics. Instead of refuting faith through our efforts to transform faith into knowledge, we should instead pour efforts into practices and notions that foster encounter with the just Other in the world.