What is atonement theory?

Recently I’ve had the occasion to tell a few different people who were not theologically educated what my dissertation was about. “Atonement theory” is not a very intuitive term, obviously, and people are often taken by surprise that arguably the central question of Christianity — why was Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection the necessary means of salvation? — has never received the same kind of “official” answer that questions about Christ’s precise relationship to God have. Thus telling someone about the topic in a more casual setting can easily lead to more detailed explanation than is appropriate.

Thinking it through over the last few days, however, I believe I have finally come up with an elegant and economical way to introduce the topic to a generally educated audience: “As you may be able to tell, Jesus has always been something of a solution in search of a problem…”

Grading as performative speech act

In my feminist theology class last year, I had occasion to explain the notion of performative speech acts to them. I used the standard examples: an oath exists simply by virtue of someone swearing an oath, the act of getting married consists of saying “I do” (under the appropriate circumstaces), etc.

And then it occurred to me — their grades are performative speech acts as well. They get the grades they get by virtue of me, the recognized instructor of the course, saying that’s what they get.

The hardest-working man in academia?

Some people sometimes mistakenly identify me as a model of academic productivity. In order to correct this impression, I’d like to quote from a post of Roland Boer’s in which he announces he’s completed the manuscript of Lenin and Theology:

But that made me realise that I have a few other books appearing this year. In another instance of shameless self-promotion, here they are:

Criticism of Earth: On Marx, Engels and Theology. Due out with Brill in May this year.

Nick Cave: A Study of Love, Death and Apocalypse. Also due out in May, now with Equinox.

The Earthy Nature of the Bible: Fleshly Readings of Sex, Masculinity and Carnality. Published by Palgrave Macmillan and due out in October this year.

Criticism of Heaven: The Author’s Cut. Published by CCLM in Taiwan, in the Sino-Christian Studies Supplement Series, and due out soon.

Finally, the paperback of Criticism of Theology: On Marxism and Theology III. Also due out in May, with Haymarket.

Lucifer Writes a Letter

This afternoon I read for the first time since high school C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. As it turns out, it is a lot better read when believe in letters more than you do devils. I somehow had completely forgotten the random bit where Wormwood turns into a caterpillar and requires a secretary to dictate the rest of his letter. (Too bad for Gregor Samsa he didn’t think of that.)

I got it in my head that I wanted to write my own evangelistic tract, but from the perspective of Lucifer. Using Lewis and the weird world of free tracts available online as my guide, I came up with the following. Should there be any budding graphic artists, maybe we can create these and distribute them at the AAR in Chicago (but not the Hilton):

Easter Bunnies and Existenz: “Hop”; “The Last Temptation of Christ”

I just finished whatching “Hop” with my kids.  Early on, as my son was telling me how great he thought the movie was (he had seen it before) and I thought he was describing the themes of The Last Temptation of Christ.  “The Easter Bunny needs to choose to becomethe Easter Bunny!” 

I am Larry David: Good Friday, Weddings, “Is Interim Ministry Biblical?” Edition

My spouse always says to me, “You are Larry David” because of the weird situations in which I often find myself personally, academically, professionally, ethically, vocationally, and pastorally.  I’ve decided to share some of these experiences. 

My Good Friday began with a phone call from a bride for a wedding a couple weeks from now calling to ask me to lower my wedding fee because they found someone willing to officiate their ceremony–using my liturgy, of course–for much less than my typical fee.  This isn’t the first, or even the fifth time, this has happened, it’s kind of common, and I always immediately ask who the other minister is and then remind the beautiful bride that in most cases these ministers who find brides and try to underbid their pastors aren’t legally able to sign wedding licences in Pennsylvania. 

In a world…

Waiting for Godot is one of the greatest classics of the 20th century. Its lovable characters and unique setting have been capturing imaginations for over a half-century. Yet so many questions remain unanswered at the end! This summer, all those mysteries will be revealed, in Waiting for Godot II: They Also Serve… Who Kick Some Ass!

This ground-breaking sequel begins with a flashback, exploring how Vladmir and Estrogon met — and came to be lovers. Similarly, we learn of their time in college with Pozzo, a pretentious child of privilege, and Lucky, a budding scholar with a passion for tennis. Yet this group of friends is divided by the revolutionary movement led by the charismatic Godot.

A sign of the end times

A bizarre coincidence has occurred. In my Humanities 4 class, almost all the students submitted their papers via e-mail. According to the e-mail timestamps, all six of those students turned in their papers in alphabetical order by their last name. One student e-mailed me to let me know that he had left a paper copy at an agreed-upon location; the timing of his e-mail put him in his appropriate place in alphabetical order. Finally, one student asked for an extension and thus hasn’t turned in his paper yet; he is also the last person in alphabetical order on the class list.

Even with such a small class, this seems like a major statistical anomaly. I can only conclude that it’s a sign of the end times — the purpose of this post is to let you know that I’m available to take care of your pets if you get Raptured.

Toward a definition of “pretentious”

I am not a fan of the word “pretentious.” In American English, it appears to mean “at all intellectual.” For instance, I imagine that there’s someone out there who, hearing that I intend to finish a book of Italian philosophy this afternoon, would regard that as pretentious. Yet I really am the kind of person who reads books of Italian philosophy. I’m not pretending! Similarly, there are people who sincerely enjoy opera, or modern art, or postmodern novels — Occam’s razor would dictate that the continued existence of those things cannot result solely from a felt obligation to perform fake intellectuality by pretending to like them.

And yet it seems as though there’s still a useful concept attached to the word. For instance, how else are we to describe the type of film that usually wins an Oscar?

The apostrophe: A challenge

I am teaching a writing-intensive course this semester, and one challenge is how to deal with students who “aren’t good at grammar.” On the one hand, one does want to help them write in the way generally recognized as “proper.” On the other hand, there is a level at which one must admit that there is something unjust about the way arbitrary conventions are used to judge intelligence — someone who writes in a non-standard way is not regarded simply as non-conformist, but is often judged as being somehow dumb.

In reality, however, it seems that many of our conventions are not only dumb in themselves, but superfluous. For instance, take the use of the apostrophe to designate either possessives or contractions. It seems to me that these apostrophes do not actually add any information that is not already supplied naturally by the context — if you left out all apostrophes, you could still tell which words were contractions (as opposed to homographs like “wont” and “cant,” which are rare to begin with) and, even more radically, I contend that you could tell whether it was a plural, a possessive, or a plural possessive.

To demonstrate this bold claim, I challenge our readers to come up with a sentence that is (a) somewhat plausible and (b) could be genuinely ambiguous if plurals/possessives were not distinguished using apostrophes.