Gerald McKenny on Barth

I haven't much time to say anything substantial on this (I will do in coming days) but I have recently been reading and re-reading this excellent new book on Barth's moral theology. McKenny is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at the University of Notre Dame. The book is thoroughly engaging and hugely accessible for those wanting to get a grip on the contraversial area of Barth's ethics, and the point he advances - that the analogy of grace is central to Barth's theological ethic - is an intesresting one. What I particularly enjoyed is that McKenny is not an avowed Barthian, but an interested reader who is in some places indebted to Barth and in others not at all. If your library has a copy then I'd say find a quiet afternoon and read it, even if you're not interested in Barth's ethics you will find the engagement between McKenny's keenly trained ethics mind and Barth's ethics-in-the-genre-of-dogmatics hugely rewarding.

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Paul Nimmo on Schleiermacher

Once again it's been a while since I blogged anything, but I thought I would flag-up this clip from the increasingly successful Modern Theology Timeline created by Tim Hull at St John's College Nottingham, UK. This is a recent interview Tim did with the Edinburgh based scholar Paul Nimmo on Friedrich Schleiermacher. It is a really good interview, and will go a long way to rehabilitating FDES for those who mis-read Barth and reject him outright. Happy watching!

Theology and globalization...call for papers

A new open-access journal, Soma, is calling for papers on the subject of theology and globalization for its first edition in 2011. Go here for details. Established scholars and previously unpublished scholars are eligible to submit...so go have a look

Floor tiles, theology, and divine interruption

Today I have had quite a cultured day: we had a family trip down to the Tate Gallery at Liverpool's Albert Dock. It was a welcome relief after a long and difficult week. One of the exhibits at the gallery got me thinking - as I guess art should - and also got me chuckling. Finally it got me theologizing. The exhibit was this: It is, as you can see, a series of floor tiles laid out in a square pattern. It's called "144 Magnesium Square" by American artist Carl Andre (b.1935). If you are thinking that there must be more to it, you are wrong. That's it. Tiles laid out and cemented to the floor (not exactly very well either - my dad, who is a professional tiler, would not be pleased). And that's what got me thinking and chuckling. The inevitable question to ask when you witness something as plain and ordinary as floor tiles is "is this art?" For many people viewing the exhibit alongside me today, it plainly wasn't: they were saying so quite aud

Michael J. Leyden

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