Theological Implications of being an "Abrahamic Faith"??

Just how related are the religions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity?


On the Inhabitatio Dei blog, a wonderful question was posed related to the theological implications of these three "Abrahamic" faiths being connected to 'Father Abraham':


from Inhabitatio Dei

Here is my question: what theological significance, if any, does the common Abrahamic heritage of Judaism and Islam have from a Christian theological perspective? Clearly we cannot think about Judaism and Islam the same way we think about, say, Hinduism. At some level our stories are connected. What theological difference does this connection make?


read the entire post HERE

Pre-Seminary Reading List from Inhabitatio Dei

I found this posting by Halden over at Inhabitatio Dei to be excellent, and got me thinking about Pre (and Post!) - Seminary Reading...!

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Pre-Seminary Reading List

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Halden

Recently I was asked by a friend who is going to seminary in the next year or so to give him a list of theological books that I would recommend for reading prior to seminary. Here’s what I gave him. I can’t help but wonder how much better off I would have been if I had read these books before I started seminary.

• Rowan Williams, Resurrection; The Wound of Knowledge
• Alan Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection
• David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite
• Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology I & II; The Triune Identity; Story and Promise
• Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom; A Community of Character
• John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus; The Priestly Kingdom
• Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society; The Household of God
• Colin Gunton, The One, The Three, and the Many
• William Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist; Theopolitical Imagination
• James Torrance, Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible; Mysterium Paschale
• Chris Huebner, A Precarious Peace
• John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory
• Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio; Discipleship; Ethics
• Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology; Dogmatics in Outline

Of course, these books are really just some of the ones that I have found particularly formative and which have shaped my vision in a significant way. They are not necessarily the most important theological books ever written, though I think they are some of the most helpful in terms of shaping the kind of theological vision I think the New Testament calls for.

The first annual Bonhoeffer Blog Conference

I am a huge fan of Bonhoeffer, who is a theologian who challenges me and pushes me to places where I don't really always want to go in terms of the ways that I live out my faith. His theology is very "thick" and has levels of nuance that I cannot say that I fully grasp even after spending most of a year working on a M.Div. honors thesis that considered his work and the ways that it might relate to the work of Rowan Williams and James Cone. I realize now how daunting my task was last year to try to find the points of integration and the points of conflict between these three giants of theology, but a wonderful result of my investigations was that I have found three theologians who I will be reading for my entire lifetime, and who each challenge me and push me in some uncomfortable, but important, ways.

I found a link to an online "Bonhoeffer Conference" called the "First Annual Bonhoeffer Blog Conference" which I hope to check out and perhaps even offer a comment or two (we'll see how courageous I might be). If you have read any Bonhoeffer, you may, indeed find this to be an interesting "conference" to check out. It was advertised on the Inhabitatio Dei blog, which is a wonderful theology blog to check out, if you are so inclined.