Roland Boer's Blog, page 73

Neutral Historical Criticism?

Something has been bothering me about this post from April de Conick at Forbidden Gospels. It reads on the one hand like a version of ideological criticism, but the real problem is that it assumes historical criticism, as the basis of all methods, is a neutral method that can uncover bias, theological agenda, falsehoods and so on, indeed, that it is a counter to such bias. This is just keeping your head in the sand - the nineteenth century sand of positivism.

As anyone who has bothered to stud...

Criticism of Heaven: book launch with the lefties in the basement

Now it's time for the paperback book launch of Criticism of Heaven.


Those great lefties who run the New International Bookshop in the basement of the Trades Hall in Melbourne have organised it: 6pm on 28 October. More details at the NIBS website. Anyone who is in the area is more than welcome to attend.

Of course, if you want to find out more about the book, chase it down on the left of the page.

A new low at universities? Cardiff bans drinking

John Lyons put me onto this one, which constitutes a new low in university life. It's from the Times Higher Education Supplement:

It may not constitute a grave threat to academic freedom, but the freedom of academics to get drunk in their own time is being curtailed at Cardiff University.

A new policy that warns against drunken behaviour out of hours has led to complaints that managers are trying to impose a teetotal lifestyle on staff.

Cardiff's policy on the use of alcohol and drugs says...

And another one of those new language delights

Once again from those anal Danes: Du ligner en røv der er træt af at skider

Translated: You look like an arse that's tired of shitting.

The Pleasure of Learning a New Language: Gross Sayings

It really is one of the great pleasures of learning a new language, the reason in fact that I keep on doing it. Here's a favourite saying from Danish:

Hvis jeg slapper mere af, så skider jeg i bukserne

Rough translation: if I was any more relaxed, I'd shit in my pants.

From Wagons in a Circle to Rubber Stamps: On Theology in Australia

Looks like I'm on a bit of a serious streak. Won't last, I can assure you. Anyway, here's an effort to assess the various compromises and deals that have characterised the teaching of theology in Australia over the last couple of hundred years. Theology ends up being caught, as always and usually to its detriment, between church and university. I'm especially interested in the fate of biblical studies.

Types of Independent Theological Colleges

1. Wagons in a Circle

Nature: Independent theologica...

Back to Defining Theology - and Back to My Debate with Miss Marx

I'm writing a chapter on theology, Marxism, theism and atheism for the last book (out of five) in my Criticism of Heaven and Earth series. So I began trawling back through the blog debates that raged back in August and September and found this post from Missives from Marx:

This post isn't intended as a critique of what Roland's been saying about theology, but as a moment of second order reflection on what the two of us have been doing (at least as I see it—he might disagree).

It might help...

Australian Fauna

Had to repeat this one after John Lyons's comment a couple of posts back. There are, as someone once observed, three kinds of animals in Australia: poisonous, sheep and odd.

Gift of the Gab

Every now and then you stumble across a book that makes it into your top half a dozen of books ever read. I'm reading one of them now: Ernst Bloch's Spuren. Mesmerizing, makes you want to read every page twice. So here's a story from it:

A delegation from Mycenae appeared before the council of elders in Sparta [a few years ago now:]; their orator talked and talked, broadly, vaguely, concluded only with effort. The eldest of the gerusia replied: Your speech was too long. When you were in the mid...

Now for some more substance: Marx, atheism and faith

While Marx admitted that he had a particular dislike of Christianity – 'so specific is my aversion to Christianity,' he wrote to Lasalle – and even though he is guilty of occasional moments of crass materialism, he also argued that atheism is not a prerequisite for socialism.

One reason was theoretical, for as Marx points out already in his response to Bruno Bauer's program to abolish religion, atheism is 'the last stage of theism, the negative recognition of God'. In other words, atheism is ...