The Secular Frontier

I'm continuing my reading of the Caputo anthology Cross and Khora, which is the first book in the Postmodernism and Ethics series that was left unfinished after David Goicoechea died. The deconstructive reading points to a context without privileging t ... Read Article

As I've noted previously, traditionally, such as in the Gorgias, the Greeks saw Being as presence, and so we see houseness is “present” with the house.  But Derrida’s point is that presence is not just in itself, but is qualified (e.g., “merely p ... Read Article

I have been working on this long series of the Caputo postmodern religious anthology Cross and Khora. Today, let's begin with the holy atheist, Have you ever wondered about all the potential mates you’ve had in your life why they thought you were gr ... Read Article

Kearney notes “The experience of God,” writes Caputo, “is to ‘see’ the hand of God in the course of things . . . to find a loving hand, a providential care where others see chance, so that when things happen they happen as a gift, not fortui ... Read Article

Goicoechea (Key passages) The key is to be altruistic toward widow, orphan, stranger, and enemy as more important than yourself. But serving and suffering for each other is fraught with a symmetry that excludes the other: Judas, the Pharisees, and ... Read Article

Caputo agrees with Sanders that the cross as a message about service no matter what: When Sanders goes on to say so very nicely that “the cross as a sacrifice is Jesus’s determination to live his life in the service of God come hell or high water ... Read Article

The Catholic liturgy held on Good Friday can seem puzzling if not positively repellent. Norms for the liturgy stipulate that during that day’s worship service a cross be displayed and that the priest and congregation “make a simple genuflection or pe ... Read Article

Sanders analyzes Paul’s cross of Christ not as a substitutionary atonement payment but akin to the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. Paul does indeed use the language of the priestly temple sacrifice to explain the meaning of the death of Jesus. A ... Read Article

Jesus as Philosopher: The Moral Sage in the Synoptic Gospels by Runar M. Thorsteinsson (2018) To end this mini-series, I'd like to talk a bit about Jesus and Philosophy. In the previous posts I looked at atonement vs forgiveness with Plato and ... Read Article

Last Time: (1/2) Analysis: The Weakness of God and the Iconic Logic of the Cross by John Caputo I practice astrology; voodoo; am a Pentecostal snake handler; an evangelical fundamentalist; Baptist; Catholic; etc.  As bafflin ... Read Article

LAST TIME: New Blog Series – Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) In looking at the first half of Caputo’s opening essay, we are introduced to the idea of a cross that goes be ... Read Article

From the Blurb: This volume poses the question of the relationship between the two main influences on the thought of John D. Caputo, one of the most well-known philosophers of religion working in North America today: Jacques Derrida and Jesus Chris ... Read Article

It's interesting Paul wants a reconciliation of the various factions in 1 Corinthians, and yet singles out the super apostles in 2 Corinthians as teaching another Christ and another Gospel. One solution may be that the various groups in 1 Corinthians were ... Read Article

As I mentioned with the Ehrman/Goicoechea posts, one of the great problems the apostle Paul had was he was not reconciled to the other Christ factions. Paul appeals for unity and reports what he has heard about the quarrels: “Now I appeal to you, b ... Read Article

Do you know what these people have in common: The widow of Zarephath's son The Shunammite woman's son An unnamed man — After Elisha's death and burial, some men burying another body threw the corpse into Elisha's tomb to escape raiders. When it ... Read Article

Jesus said to sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you would be judged by how you treat the destitute. We are pretty confident he said this because it goes against the bias of the gospels to promote salvation through the cross/res ... Read Article

Some time ago in my Nina Livesey essays I wrote about Detering and Price placing the abomination of desolation reference to the time of Bar Kokhba in the second century (a pagan statue erected in a Jewish holy site) – providing a late date for the Gospe ... Read Article

PREVIOUSLY: EHRMAN / GOICOECHEA BLOG SERIES LANDING PAGE For the most part, in this series I have left alone the second half of Ehrman's book and Goicoechea's last chapter on Paul, so if the reader is interested those are the places to go next. Here i ... Read Article

This blog series looks at Bart Ehrman and David Goicoechea on the central concept of Agape (love/self-sacrifice/altruism), typified by Jesus dying to save his enemies. The Posts: Bart Ehrman on the Absence of Atonement in Luke-Acts Ehrman ... Read Article

Ehrman notes the peculiarity of Luke-Acts is that it does not have the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, but rather repentance and forgiveness (e.g., the soldier at the cross declares Jesus innocent; The destruction of the temple is seen as God's pun ... Read Article

In Galatians 5:13–15 Paul writes: My brothers, you were called, as you know, to liberty, but be careful, or this liberty will provide an opening for self indulgence. Serve one another, rather, in works of love, since the whole of the Law is summariz ... Read Article

Goicoechea introduces the concept of reconciliation as one of Paul’s key concept that is worked out also in his own life with the other competing Christ factions of his day, So Paul’s task is to love his enemies, Cephas and Apollos, and yet to con ... Read Article

Goicoechea's Lukan Jesus and his Universalism will frustrate substitutionary atonement and should, as such philosophy entails the absurdity that if Hitler converted on his deathbed he gains paradise, whereas if a good and noble atheist is unable to find f ... Read Article

Ehrman draws a helpful distinction between the traditional view of Jesus dying on the cross as atonement vs the forgiving dying Jesus and Stephen of Luke-Acts where no payment to God is needed or implied. The argument is the historical Jesus taught forgi ... Read Article

(An AI representation of the donkey-carrot idiom) As I noted, Ehrman argues that much of what we understand as an altruistic society reflects Jesus’ ethical innovations and how his followers spread a watered-down version of them throughout the Ro ... Read Article