Must-Read Theological Books From 2014
Here are a few books from the last year that I particularly enjoyed. Not all are from 2014, mind you, but you might nevertheless find them interesting enough to add to your reading list if you haven't already. As always, these are mostly books of theology, philosophy, and history that span my somewhat eclectic tastes, and so aren't for everyone. However, if you enjoy those topics, or are looking to start, read away! These are listed in no particular order.
D. Stephen Long, Saving Karl Barth: Hans Urs von Balthasar's Preoccupation (Grand Rapids: Fortress Press, 2014), 272 pp.
Friendships between intellectually powerful theologians have always fascinated me. Whether it be Aquinas and Bonaventure, or Henri de Lubac and Etienne Gilson, the historical meeting of minds provides the rest of us a profound opportunity to listen in. Here the conversation lay between two giants (giants among giants) of the twentieth century, Barth and von Balthasar. Long does not just represent the dialogue between these two but presses a somewhat polemical point: Bruce McCormack's (and what Long in general calls the "post-metaphysical" Barthians) thesis that von Balthasar misread Barth, is false. This perhaps seems a small thing, but it strikes at a very distinct and ready-to-hand difference regarding just how to interpret Barth: as more in line with traditional theology and in particular our ability to read Barth as a radically anti-nominalist theologian, or more akin to the Modern environment in which Barth wrote. While parts of the book drag a bit in detail, and in other portions show that Long is more familiar with Balthasar than Barth, it is a wonderful, and wonderfully stimulating, read.
James K. A. Smith, How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's Publishing, 2014), 161pp.
A quick breath of fresh air compared to Taylor's own writing, in some sense I wish I had the opportunity to have this volume in hand before I spent several months working my way through Taylor's behemoth that is A Secular Age. If you are looking to figure out the Catholic philosopher and sociologist, this is the definite place to start. Smith hits all of the major points, and adds several of his own quite germane (and occasionally whimsical) observations to show how often our supposedly "secular" existence is "haunted" by God in the "thin places" where transcendence shines through.
Oliver Crisp, Deviant Calvinism: Broadening Reformed Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 192pp.
Continuing our selection of books with covers of old white guys (this one artfully painted by Oliver Crisp himself), Crisp's Deviant Calvinism follows other recent historical revisionists within the Reformed tradition like Richard Müller, and notes that the Reformed tradition is much broader than many who simply want to adhere to the so-called TULIP want to admit. This gives me some (deviant?) pleasure, since, although I have sympathies with the Reformed tradition, by some strange happenstance they also seem to be a most hard-nosed and dogmatic lot. But Crisp's work goes a long way to demonstrate that Reformed theology cannot simply be equated with John Calvin (or more accurately: Calvinism). Indeed, as Müller has pointed out elsewhere, the TULIP itself cannot be traced back beyond the 19th, and indeed perhaps the 20th century! To narrow his immense topic, in this book Crisp focuses on the (broad enough!) concepts of election, justification, and particular atonement (that is: did Christ die for everyone? Or just the elect?). His fascinating historical investigation also includes lengthy commentary on Karl Barth's particular version of the doctrine, which makes for some very gripping reading--or perhaps: apoplectic, for those who are hesitant to even admit Barth into the pantheon of Reformed theologians.
Terry Eagleton, Culture and The Death of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 248pp.
"The Almighty has proved remarkably difficult to dispose of," writes the atheist literary-critic Eagleton, in his latest work. Indeed, the broad thesis of this typically witty and insightful monograph is that atheism is "by no means as easy as it looks." Again and again, says Eagleton, where Divinity appears absent, or unthinkable, life is not merely business as usual, or so easy to re-think apart from Christian tradition; all too often "what seems like authentic atheism turns out to be nothing of the kind." Transcendence, in denuded and ersatz forms, or in the negative outlines of willful and churlish denial, appears again and again, unbidden. Much like Thomas Nagel in the sciences, here Eagleton performs the oft neglected duty of intellectually honest atheist: one who certainly does not believe in God, but doesn't find those who do irrational. Indeed, the living of life seems to require transcendence of some sort--even if it is only living "as if..." it were real. This is a must read--not just because it is endlessly insightful and entertaining--but it also reveals how difficult it is to live as an atheist. If you feel you must--then certainly do it. But we must be rid of the easy "North-Oxford" mentality of those like Richard Dawkins and the bus ads he ran along with A.C. Grayling: "There's Probably No God, So Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life." God is not merely the "worry" that lurks over one's metaphysical shoulder, but often the implicit horizon that shapes and enflames the possibility of ordinary life itself. Though Eagleton, like Nagel and other "friendly atheists" like Slajov Zizek and Michael Ruse, can all-too-easily be embraced and become "false friends" to Christianity, nonetheless we do well to heed their interesting and often candidly revealing insights.
Rowan Williams, The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 224pp.
Rowan Williams is eternally affixed in my mind as the real-life equivalent of Dumbledore: a kindly, tall, elderly, all-knowing and excellently bearded authority, whose deep voice always commands my attention. This book, one of his latest works, is the result of his appearance as a Gifford Lecturer on science and theology. As ever, Williams takes after his favorite philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and tackles the issue from a linguistic direction: God, it often appears to us, is a subject and issue often seemingly divorced from ordinary life, making belief that much more difficult. Yet, argues Williams, if we pay attention to how language actually functions, its strangeness opens the world to God in extraordinary ways. How strange is it, asks Williams, that if materialism is true, that our language can nonetheless represent the world in immaterial ways? In metaphor, in story, simile, synecdoche? We might say, putting it slightly crudely: materialism is false because poetry exists. For if the world can be represented to us in non-referential discourse, the world itself, it seems, is not "merely there" to be references and indexed. Rather, human courage can become "lion-like" for example, not merely because language conjures the analogy--but because the world is somehow pregnant with resemblances that gesture beyond the material. In this sense, our language referencing God does not, perhaps, become less strange, but it does become less unprecedented. After logical positivism's attempt to dismantle the ability of theology to even coherently talk about God, the immense task of rehabilitating our conceptions of how language operates is incredibly needed and welcomed. There are lines, edges, aporias, oceans, silences. It is to William's credit that he gestures toward the fact that God perhaps walks among them, as in the cool breezes of Eden.
John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 576pp.
Though definitely not a 2014 release, it nonetheless still remains unparalleled as a historical recounting of the relationship of science and religion (read: Christianity), though this is already touted to be equalled if not surpassed by Peter Harrison's forthcoming work. Utterly destroying the absurd "Warfare Thesis" (i.e. that science and religion have been perennial enemies) Brooke advocates a "Complexity Thesis" (to simplify it) by looking at not only the diverse ways Christianity and science interacted, but also the shifting boundaries between definitions of the two. If you are at all interested in the history of science and Christianity, this is the place to start. It is not an easy read, but it is incredibly engaging and nuanced. Brooke examines how Christian natural theology contained a multitude of functions in relation to science--sometimes it served as a presupposition, sometimes as justification, sometimes as research program. Though Brooke himself has recently recommended a work by Stephen Gaukroger as "unparalleled" in regard to this history, and one might also want to consult Brooke's own work co-authored with Geoffery Cantory, Science and Religion remains an indispensable antidote to the naive anti-intellectual historicism that passes for academia in the New Atheist literature like that of Richard Dawkins or Victor Stenger.
Myles Werntz, Bodies of Peace: Ecclesiology, Nonviolence, and Witness (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 272pp.
The idea of Christian pacifism is often represented as merely another ethical option in the smorgasbord of ethical possibility. Which is to say, it is displayed as an individual's decision in a moment of unenviable ethical decision. While it certainly has an aspect of this dimension, Werntz argues that pacifism is irreducibly tied to the Church as a way of life, a community, a people. To argue this, Werntz spends lengthy individual chapters on the pacifist theologies of John Howard Yoder, Dorothy Day, William Stringfellow, and Robert McAfee Brown. In doing so he argues there is no such thing as "Pacifism" but only plural "Pacifisms." The different approach of various ecclesiologies should not be seen as a competition, but as a complementary and multi-faceted ecumenical gesture toward Chrisitan unity. This in essence is a book that argues for a Pentecost of Pacifism.
Mikael Stenmark, How to Relate Science and Religion: A Multidimensional Model (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's Publishing Company, 2004), 307pp.
If Brooke's work Science and Religion is the quintessential example of current historical work on the relation of science and religion, then we might say Stenmark's work How to Relate Science and Religion is the most pertinent work in the philosophy of science and religion. Like Brooke, Stenmark calls for something of a "complexity thesis" regarding the interaction of science and religion: for one cannot say there is the relation when science itself goes through multiple strategies and models depending on whether it is in a mode of research, justification, or paradigm shift. Thus even within any given scientific pronouncement there can be multiple relations to theology. In this sense Stenmark's work seeks to upgrade Ian Barbour's models of the science-theology relation (themselves reminiscent of Reinhold Niebhur's five-fold relationship of Christianity and Culture).
Friendships between intellectually powerful theologians have always fascinated me. Whether it be Aquinas and Bonaventure, or Henri de Lubac and Etienne Gilson, the historical meeting of minds provides the rest of us a profound opportunity to listen in. Here the conversation lay between two giants (giants among giants) of the twentieth century, Barth and von Balthasar. Long does not just represent the dialogue between these two but presses a somewhat polemical point: Bruce McCormack's (and what Long in general calls the "post-metaphysical" Barthians) thesis that von Balthasar misread Barth, is false. This perhaps seems a small thing, but it strikes at a very distinct and ready-to-hand difference regarding just how to interpret Barth: as more in line with traditional theology and in particular our ability to read Barth as a radically anti-nominalist theologian, or more akin to the Modern environment in which Barth wrote. While parts of the book drag a bit in detail, and in other portions show that Long is more familiar with Balthasar than Barth, it is a wonderful, and wonderfully stimulating, read.
A quick breath of fresh air compared to Taylor's own writing, in some sense I wish I had the opportunity to have this volume in hand before I spent several months working my way through Taylor's behemoth that is A Secular Age. If you are looking to figure out the Catholic philosopher and sociologist, this is the definite place to start. Smith hits all of the major points, and adds several of his own quite germane (and occasionally whimsical) observations to show how often our supposedly "secular" existence is "haunted" by God in the "thin places" where transcendence shines through.
Continuing our selection of books with covers of old white guys (this one artfully painted by Oliver Crisp himself), Crisp's Deviant Calvinism follows other recent historical revisionists within the Reformed tradition like Richard Müller, and notes that the Reformed tradition is much broader than many who simply want to adhere to the so-called TULIP want to admit. This gives me some (deviant?) pleasure, since, although I have sympathies with the Reformed tradition, by some strange happenstance they also seem to be a most hard-nosed and dogmatic lot. But Crisp's work goes a long way to demonstrate that Reformed theology cannot simply be equated with John Calvin (or more accurately: Calvinism). Indeed, as Müller has pointed out elsewhere, the TULIP itself cannot be traced back beyond the 19th, and indeed perhaps the 20th century! To narrow his immense topic, in this book Crisp focuses on the (broad enough!) concepts of election, justification, and particular atonement (that is: did Christ die for everyone? Or just the elect?). His fascinating historical investigation also includes lengthy commentary on Karl Barth's particular version of the doctrine, which makes for some very gripping reading--or perhaps: apoplectic, for those who are hesitant to even admit Barth into the pantheon of Reformed theologians.
"The Almighty has proved remarkably difficult to dispose of," writes the atheist literary-critic Eagleton, in his latest work. Indeed, the broad thesis of this typically witty and insightful monograph is that atheism is "by no means as easy as it looks." Again and again, says Eagleton, where Divinity appears absent, or unthinkable, life is not merely business as usual, or so easy to re-think apart from Christian tradition; all too often "what seems like authentic atheism turns out to be nothing of the kind." Transcendence, in denuded and ersatz forms, or in the negative outlines of willful and churlish denial, appears again and again, unbidden. Much like Thomas Nagel in the sciences, here Eagleton performs the oft neglected duty of intellectually honest atheist: one who certainly does not believe in God, but doesn't find those who do irrational. Indeed, the living of life seems to require transcendence of some sort--even if it is only living "as if..." it were real. This is a must read--not just because it is endlessly insightful and entertaining--but it also reveals how difficult it is to live as an atheist. If you feel you must--then certainly do it. But we must be rid of the easy "North-Oxford" mentality of those like Richard Dawkins and the bus ads he ran along with A.C. Grayling: "There's Probably No God, So Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life." God is not merely the "worry" that lurks over one's metaphysical shoulder, but often the implicit horizon that shapes and enflames the possibility of ordinary life itself. Though Eagleton, like Nagel and other "friendly atheists" like Slajov Zizek and Michael Ruse, can all-too-easily be embraced and become "false friends" to Christianity, nonetheless we do well to heed their interesting and often candidly revealing insights.
Rowan Williams is eternally affixed in my mind as the real-life equivalent of Dumbledore: a kindly, tall, elderly, all-knowing and excellently bearded authority, whose deep voice always commands my attention. This book, one of his latest works, is the result of his appearance as a Gifford Lecturer on science and theology. As ever, Williams takes after his favorite philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and tackles the issue from a linguistic direction: God, it often appears to us, is a subject and issue often seemingly divorced from ordinary life, making belief that much more difficult. Yet, argues Williams, if we pay attention to how language actually functions, its strangeness opens the world to God in extraordinary ways. How strange is it, asks Williams, that if materialism is true, that our language can nonetheless represent the world in immaterial ways? In metaphor, in story, simile, synecdoche? We might say, putting it slightly crudely: materialism is false because poetry exists. For if the world can be represented to us in non-referential discourse, the world itself, it seems, is not "merely there" to be references and indexed. Rather, human courage can become "lion-like" for example, not merely because language conjures the analogy--but because the world is somehow pregnant with resemblances that gesture beyond the material. In this sense, our language referencing God does not, perhaps, become less strange, but it does become less unprecedented. After logical positivism's attempt to dismantle the ability of theology to even coherently talk about God, the immense task of rehabilitating our conceptions of how language operates is incredibly needed and welcomed. There are lines, edges, aporias, oceans, silences. It is to William's credit that he gestures toward the fact that God perhaps walks among them, as in the cool breezes of Eden.
Though definitely not a 2014 release, it nonetheless still remains unparalleled as a historical recounting of the relationship of science and religion (read: Christianity), though this is already touted to be equalled if not surpassed by Peter Harrison's forthcoming work. Utterly destroying the absurd "Warfare Thesis" (i.e. that science and religion have been perennial enemies) Brooke advocates a "Complexity Thesis" (to simplify it) by looking at not only the diverse ways Christianity and science interacted, but also the shifting boundaries between definitions of the two. If you are at all interested in the history of science and Christianity, this is the place to start. It is not an easy read, but it is incredibly engaging and nuanced. Brooke examines how Christian natural theology contained a multitude of functions in relation to science--sometimes it served as a presupposition, sometimes as justification, sometimes as research program. Though Brooke himself has recently recommended a work by Stephen Gaukroger as "unparalleled" in regard to this history, and one might also want to consult Brooke's own work co-authored with Geoffery Cantory, Science and Religion remains an indispensable antidote to the naive anti-intellectual historicism that passes for academia in the New Atheist literature like that of Richard Dawkins or Victor Stenger.
The idea of Christian pacifism is often represented as merely another ethical option in the smorgasbord of ethical possibility. Which is to say, it is displayed as an individual's decision in a moment of unenviable ethical decision. While it certainly has an aspect of this dimension, Werntz argues that pacifism is irreducibly tied to the Church as a way of life, a community, a people. To argue this, Werntz spends lengthy individual chapters on the pacifist theologies of John Howard Yoder, Dorothy Day, William Stringfellow, and Robert McAfee Brown. In doing so he argues there is no such thing as "Pacifism" but only plural "Pacifisms." The different approach of various ecclesiologies should not be seen as a competition, but as a complementary and multi-faceted ecumenical gesture toward Chrisitan unity. This in essence is a book that argues for a Pentecost of Pacifism.
If Brooke's work Science and Religion is the quintessential example of current historical work on the relation of science and religion, then we might say Stenmark's work How to Relate Science and Religion is the most pertinent work in the philosophy of science and religion. Like Brooke, Stenmark calls for something of a "complexity thesis" regarding the interaction of science and religion: for one cannot say there is the relation when science itself goes through multiple strategies and models depending on whether it is in a mode of research, justification, or paradigm shift. Thus even within any given scientific pronouncement there can be multiple relations to theology. In this sense Stenmark's work seeks to upgrade Ian Barbour's models of the science-theology relation (themselves reminiscent of Reinhold Niebhur's five-fold relationship of Christianity and Culture).
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