I have been tagged by what seems to be the weblog version of a chain letter, except no one has promised me untold riches if I play along. Tre tagged me and the price of release is to answer a couple of (not so simple) questions and tag some people myself:
How many books do you own?
hehe. I think I’ll pass on counting, thank you - I am certain the number is well over a thousand:
I have more than that, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, on the floor…you get the idea.
Last book I read:
Well, beside the bible, the last book was the recent Harry Potter book. Right now I am working on Walter Bruggemann’s book, The Creative Word: Canon as a Model for Biblical Education. I am really excited about this one, I already know that I recommend it.
Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me:
Oh boy, I refer you, dear reader to the above picture: only five?! Besides the Bible:
Stanley Grenz: The Social God and the Relational Self: A Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei.
I read this book a week after it was published, I grieve Dr. Grenz’s recent passing partly because the series of which this book was to be the first volume will not be completed. I read this book as I was myself starting to think about how theology might be done after modernism (and after its characteristic mode of hermeneutics) and after rejecting the notion that humans can be autonomous agents. Grenz came along at just the right time exploring what Human identity might look like in light of a robust Trinitarian theology and as shaped by a community. Good material to think on.
John Howard Yoder: The Politics of Jesus and Walter Bruggemann: The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith.
I’m cheating, I know; but these two books belong together in my mind. Not because I read them at the same time, but because they represent a major shift in the way I read the Bible; Bruggemann in the Old Testament and Yoder in the New. I just taught a class wherein I explained the rough outlines of this shift and it took 5 weeks, so I will not even attempt it here: suffice it to say that the Promised Land is perhaps the most important Theological Symbol in the whole Bible, and we cannot understand what Jesus was up to sufficiently until we understand Him as speaking from within a collection of questions regarding Second Temple Judaism’s relationship to the Promised Land
Neil Postman: Conscientious Objections; Stirring up Trouble About Language, Technology, and Education
I have read this book dozens of times; and I regularly assign portions of it to my students to read. Postman alerted me to several ideas, all of which are critically important:
Language - it is the means by which we render the world sensible. Everything we know is the result of a question (consciously or unconsciously asked), every one of those questions was made possible by our capacity as language users. It is therefore very important to study how language works, how we mean things, how we use it to make sense of the world, and the assumptions about the world embedded in the language we use.
Education: Is primarily concerned with learning languages; that is, ways of talking about the world - modes of discourse. For example, a scientific truth is not the same thing as a literary truth - learning the difference (and in which situations each is appropriate) is very important.
The Medium is the Message: being one of Marshall McLuhan’s star pupils (along with Walter Ong), Postman understood that the technology we use to say something (be it oral speech or television) determines what we can and cannot say about that thing. Technologies are not neutral: they always give and take away.
Jorge Luis Borges: Labyrinths; Selected Stories and Other Writings.
Along with Umberto Eco and George Steiner, Borges is, for me the ideal scholar. His knowledge was vast - when reading his stories one gets the unshakeable feeling that he might know everything. His knowledge was general - that is rather than following the herd and specialising in one thing (thus making knowledge a career) all three of these people sought to understand the world in which they lived. And finally, knowledge and the world were for Borges a playground, infinitely interesting; this interestedness made their vast knowledge welcoming, as if they were saying “come along and let me show you around.” This attitude is sharply contrasted by another man who may have known everything, but who used that knowledge to lord it over his readers: James Joyce. Borges stories are endlessly fascinating and thought provoking.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: I Have a Dream; Writings and Speeches that Changed the World.
One of my two Heroes (the other is Bonhoeffer). Dr. King’s revolutionary actions were a direct result of his faith. his writings clearly show that he saw his actions as being the logical result of the Gospel. Bonhoeffer was exactly the same way, and as a consequence of their Faithful and Radical lives, when they speak they truly speak with Moral Authority. If Protestants had Saints (like Catholic ones, people who the church recognizes as living exemplary Christian Lives) these two should be included in their number.
Whew. Now I get to Tag Five People:
Joyce: Because I know she thinks and reads, and I got to her first.
Ian Durias: Because I have no idea what would be on his list and would like to know.
Brad Jenkins: You are always asking for book suggestions, now it’s your turn: What are you reading, brother?
Grant Watson: Who is very bright, and who reads a lot. As far as I know he does not have a weblog of his own (though he is more than capable of making this site look like a virtual Yugo) so he can post in the comment section.
David Horstkoetter: Who can also post in the comment section, and who I would also like to know about
Also, please feel free to place unsolicited responses in the comments: I am always on the lookout for good books
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