I'm studying postliberal theology and imagination this term and it's highly fascinating. It's all Brueggemann and Lindbeck and Green for me. This class on imagination that I'm taking this term is growing my world and I only wish I had more mulling time to look at it more closely. But I don't, and it just keeps coming at me and clogging up my brain with many Interesting Things that it barely has the capacity to connect together. I remember when I wrote my PhD dissertation that I felt it was on the verge of what my brain could figure out - I would scribble things immediately I thought of them because otherwise they would disappear without any guarantee I'd make those connections again. All very Beautiful Mind. It feels like that again - except I'm ten years older now than when I started that (am I really? Wow.) On the other hand, I'm substantially more interested and motivated so that has to count for something.
I'm also reading William James because the professor that read my paper last term on the phrase 'I believe' told me I sounded like William James so I have a dusty hardback copy of
The Will to Believe from the library. So far I like the cut of his jib, and I've added a wonderful quote from Benjamin Blood. Certainty is so fossilized, so static.
Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
~ William James The Will To Believe
Reason...is but one item in the mystery; and behind the proudest consciousness that ever reigned, reason and wonder blushed face to face. The inevitable stales, while doubt and hope are sisters. Not unfortunately the universe is wild...Nature is miracle all.
~ Benjamin Blood The Flaw in Supremacy (quoted by James)
2 comments:
Got to admit I love that quote. I'm forever wanting to rant against the prison of rationalism and empiricism. They're useful, sure, but do they really provide truth in the end?
I've just added a second quote that you might like too.
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