A Book Meme (via the Crimson Rambler)

The Crimson Rambler invited me to participate in a book meme (thank you!).

The meme is as follows:
1) Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
2) Find page 123.
3) Find the first five sentences.
4) Post the next three sentences.

Unfortunately, I did this in my living room, and I didn't have a book in front of me and so had to grab the book on the top of a stack on a shelf behind me. (I say unfortunately because...well, you'll see.)

The nearest book of at least 123 pages was Prolégomènes à la charité par Jean-Luc Marion (3e édition, La Différence, Paris, 2007)

The 'next three sentences' are, as follows:

Le regard donc où s'expose l'autre comme tel ne peut, en pesant sur le mien, que lui enjoindre de s'exposer, en retour, à l'insubstituable individualité. Le regard qui accomplit en lui l'insubstituable ne peut m'enjoindre que d'accomplir, en me projetant dans un regard, mon insubstituable. Si dans son regard, l'autre (se) risque a sa dernière individualité, il ne peut m'enjoindre qu'à me risquer, en retour, à mon ultime individualité - à rendre l'insubstituable à l'insubstituable.

So, moving right along, I invite the following to participate:

Jane Ellen
Marshall
Eric George - Il est un pasteur de l'Eglise Réformée de France; je lis son blog depuis janvier.

And, as a way of saying 'welcome back':

Jon Taylor
and
The Scandalous One

I know, it's not the list of usual suspects; if you're one of them, and you'd like to (and have time), jump on in.

Best Contemporary Theology Meme: Two more tags, if you haven't been tagged already

Two more to be tagged for the Best Contemporary Theology meme:

Andy Goodliff &
Marshall Montgomery

(Sorry I forgot you, but even had I remembered at that hour, I would have had trouble continuing the 5-for-3 theme.)

Best Contemporary Theology Meme (In which I demonstrate that I don't 'get' threes)

Well, as Patrik (who started this all) insists, it's more than a meme. (Information also available at Theology Blogs.)

He has challenged people to name the three best theology books they've read that have been published over the last twenty five years. Since I am stubborn and find it difficult to follow directions, I am instead providing three lists of five each:

First, my list of five superlative works of theology which I suspect may not make it onto other people's lists, in no particular order:

* William Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ.
David F. Ford, Self and Salvation. (And, in May, Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love.)**
* R.W.L. Moberly, Prophecy and Discernment.
Eugene Rogers, Jr., After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Sources Outside the Modern West.
Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel. (A deceptively slender volume. I read it years ago and it still has an impact on my thinking and preaching on the resurrection.)

And, secondly, five books which are superlative works of theology which I am pretty sure will be found on other lists:

*Hans Urs von Balthasar The Glory of the Lord
Colin Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology.***
David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite.
John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory.
John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (2d ed.) (The first edition is 1972, but the second is 1994.)
George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine is in, if Yoder is disallowed.

And lastly, because I just can't stop: five works of theology from the last twenty five years that, when I get a chance to take them off of my shelf and read them, will very likely find their way onto one of the above two lists:

David Brown, God and Enchantment of Place: Reclaiming Human Experience.
Timothy Gorringe, A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption.
Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible)
Nicholas Lash, The Beginning and the End of 'Religion'.
Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology.

But, because I know that Patrik is planning on doing more with these nominations, I know that I should really just pick three so that my entry isn't invalidated: so I choose the three above that I have placed asterisks to the left of (i.e. von Balthsar, Cavanaugh and Moberly).

And now, to tag three other people to participate in this madness: Gaunilo (I doubt it), Maggi, Thunder, Marshall, and Emily. See? You ask for three and you get five.

And, since Gaunilo is no doubt more profitably employed, why don't we ask Clifton to weigh in, instead?



** I'm not just blowing smoke; I've had the pleasure of reading it in manuscript, and let me be the first to tell you: it's good. It's funny about Professor Ford -- he's deeply influential in English language theology in many ways, but he does not make a 'splash' in publishing in the same way that others have. He's publishing, of course -- extensively -- but his work is not as easy to categorise as, say, John Webster or Robert Jenson. He works at seams and interfaces of theology with other things, more than at Christian dogmatics per se. I suspect that that actually makes his work more influential over the long term (not to disparage or disrepect the work of others, of course). I certainly find it deeper, more creative, and more closely tied to lived life than most.

*** I have a funny relationship with Gunton. When I first encountered him this last autumn, I remember thinking, repeatedly, 'why didn't anyone tell me about this guy?!?' And then I got to one point in the book where the whole thing just goes pear-shaped and he's just grunting out the Reformed party line, after doing some amazingly creative (and faithful) re-thinking of Creation. (It was his Didsbury lectures.) And last month I read his book Act & Being which was by turns brilliant and awful. But he is one of the major figures in the last 25 years to put the Trinity back on the table as central to theologising, which makes a massive contribution to the current state of theology. (Of course, Barth started that some fifty years ago, for those with ears to hear...)

God in a Shrinking Universe: Best Contemporary Theology Meme

Check out how the meme is doing here.