Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Religion
Foreword To 'Sermons From Mind And Heart: Struggling To Preach Theologically', Brad Kallenberg, William Trollinger
Foreword To 'Sermons From Mind And Heart: Struggling To Preach Theologically', Brad Kallenberg, William Trollinger
Brad J. Kallenberg
One does not flip through a car manual and mistake it for poetry. Nor does one pick up the Sunday comics and mistake them for a Physicians' Desk Reference. That is because native speakers seldom make mistakes of genre when reading ordinary English texts. Yet pick up a collection of sermons, and one may feel at a loss: What is going on here? What am I to make of these sentences? What sort of genre is this? What am I, as a reader, to expect (or not to expect) from a sermon, especially from a printed sermon? Should I expect …
The Descriptive Problem Of Evil, Brad Kallenberg
The Descriptive Problem Of Evil, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
Language is like the cane in the hand of the blind person. The better one becomes at getting around with the cane, the more he or she is apt to forget the cane but through the cane perceive the objects scraped and tapped by the other end. A defective cane may distort the world perceived by the blind person. So too, defective use of language threatens to muddy our understanding of the things we talk about. When discussing something as difficult as natural evils, a frequently undetected defect in our language use is “overly attenuated description.” In this piece, I …
A Member Of No Community? Theology After Wittgenstein, Brad Kallenberg
A Member Of No Community? Theology After Wittgenstein, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
The study of Wittgenstein has spawned a new sort of Christian theology. A growing list of theologians have discovered in Wittgenstein a therapy for conceptual confusion and tips for how to go on, not only in religious faith and practice, but also in the practice of theology as an academic discipline. This is not to say that such thinkers have succeeded in turning Wittgenstein into an instrument of apologetics or that Wittgenstein has “delivered” them from the grip of their own religious particularity. No; they have learned from Wittgenstein the skill of silence. Their theology, like Wittgenstein’s philosophy, comes to …
The Master Argument Of Macintyre's 'After Virtue', Brad Kallenberg
The Master Argument Of Macintyre's 'After Virtue', Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
In September of 1995 the Associated Press released a wire photo showing Russian lawmakers of both genders in a punching brawl during a session of the Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament.' Is this behavior an ethnic idiosyncrasy? Do only government officials duke it out over matters of great importance? Or have fisticuffs suddenly become politically correct? No, on all counts. Pick a topic, any topic -- abortion, euthanasia, welfare reform, military intervention in the Balkans -- and initiate discussion with a group of reasonable, well-educated people and observe the outcome. Chaos ensues. Of course the volume of the debate …
Defending Hauerwas, Brad Kallenberg, Terrence Tilley, M. Lysaught
Defending Hauerwas, Brad Kallenberg, Terrence Tilley, M. Lysaught
Brad J. Kallenberg
The commentary begins: Jeffrey Stout and Stanley Hauerwas have long been friends and conversation partners. One would not know that from reading Stout’s “Not of This World” (October 10). Nor does one emerge from Stout’s essay with an accurate sense of Hauerwas’s position. Stout’s presentation is incomplete in many ways. For example, he labels Hauerwas’s ethic as “perfectionist,” implying that it is, in the words of the article’s title, unrealistic or “not of this world.” However, Stout fails to mention Hauerwas’s untiring emphasis on human sinfulness and-most crucially- the subsequent centrality of the practices of forgiveness and reconciliation. This is …
The 'P'-Word: Conversion In A Postmodern Environment, Brad Kallenberg
The 'P'-Word: Conversion In A Postmodern Environment, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
Allow me to write frankly about the “P”-word. There is great concern about the proliferation of the “P”-word. In the past decade, over 1,500 articles and 2,000 books have come into print bearing the "P"-word in their titles. Nearly 1,000 of these books are still in print. Everywhere we turn we find that we have been inundated with the “P”-word. And so we have come to fear for our culture. The "P"-word? “Postmodernism.” Granted, postmodernism is a slippery concept; there are many versions, many postmodernisms. But should Christians fear postmodernism? To be sure, the modern era proved to be no …