Andy Rowell

Author: Andy Rowell

  • Julian Hartt’s Four-sided Theological Analysis

    I have found myself over and over returning to this quote: 

    Hartt knew that the Christian church could not make gospel sense of its own life apart from the culture in which it was immersed.  In this regard he reversed his senior Yale colleague H. Richard Niebuhr.  For Hartt, Niebuhr's pure dichotomy ("Christ" over against "culture") never existed.  In its stead Hartt developed a four-sided theological analysis:church, world, kingdom, and gospel were each to be distinguished yet always to be related to one another, and the task was to recognize their mutual involvement, sorting out the contemporary living gospel whose "preachability" would shape the church and inform the world for the sake of the kingdom of God.

    McClendon is referring to Hartt's book: 

    McClendon relies heavily on Carey Theological College professor Jonathan R. Wilson's dissertation on Hartt written at Duke.

  • Books I’m Reading in March 2010

    BOOKS I'M READING (MARCH 2010)

    • William H. Willimon: Conversations with Barth on Preaching

      William H. Willimon: Conversations with Barth on Preaching
      This is the most academically rigorous of all Willimon's books and reflects deeply on what we should get from Barth and what we should press him about.

    • James William McClendon, Jr.: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1: Ethics

      James William McClendon, Jr.: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1: Ethics
      After Barth, Bonhoeffer, Yoder, MacIntyre, Newbigin, and Hauerwas and Volf, I am now enjoying working through the three volumes by baptist theologian McClendon (1924-2000). The Christian Century obituary includes these statements, A widely admired theologian with Southern Baptist roots, one who moved comfortably in ecumenical circles, had the pleasure of viewing a finished copy of the third and final volume of his life work, Systematic Theology, shortly before his death at age 76. James William McClendon Jr. died on October 30 at his home near Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where he was distinguished scholar-in-residence for the past ten years. "He saw the book just before he lost consciousness," said wife Nancey Murphy, professor of theology at Fuller . . . Theologian Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School said McClendon's three volumes–titled Ethics, Doctrine and Witness, in that sequence–"will acquire increasing significance and regard" among theologians. "It's the first presentation of what a theology would look like that takes very seriously the work of [the late] John Howard Yoder," he said. See also the fascinating profile of James Wm. McClendon, Jr. by Michael L. Westmoreland-White.

    • George Eliot: Middlemarch

      George Eliot: Middlemarch
      Eugene Peterson has said about it, "The tangle of spiritual intimacy and vocational pride that is the worm in the apple of the Christian life is diagnostically narrated here in an unforgettable story." This week Alan Jacobs highlights Rebecca Mead's comment that "Sometimes I feel as if everything that is worth knowing about love and marriage (and maybe about everything else, too) can be learned from reading Middlemarch.”

  • 15 Parenting Badges

    Parenting badges shall be earned by people who accomplish the following tasks:

    1. Enduring labor

    2. Being pregnant

    3. Breastfeeding

    4. Cleaning up puke.  (Eligible for additional medal if puked upon).

    5. Trying to comfort coughing baby in the middle of the night.

    6. Changing a poopy diaper in an airplane.

    7. Responding appropriately to child having meltdown in public place.

    8. Accompanying screaming child to dentist.

    9. Accompanying flailing child to haircut. 

    10. Accompanying berzerk child to get shots at doctor.  

    11. Engaging imaginatively with the game or scenario a child has thought up.  

    12. Cleaning up rice from under the table after eating.  

    13. Cleaning up child after beach or sandbox.    

    14. Putting sunscreen on child.  

    15. Reading child's favorite book (Good Night Moon or Rolie Polie Olie) for 50th time.

    Note: babysitters, nannies, grandparents, child care workers, uncles, aunts, teachers, etc. are eligible.