A little bibliographical widget (I despise the term "meme") has been shooting around. I think my list of influential texts explains a lot about my theological perspective. These five books, in no order of priority, have been the most influential for how I think my theology is constructed today:
- Simone Weil – Waiting for God. In particular is her essay "The Love of God and Affliction." If you have not read it, do so. Rest your mind for a good while and read it again. Repeat this process until you grasp it and you will be blessed. I do it yearly.
- Mary Douglas – Purity and Danger. To understand why we create the theologies we do, one must understand what the distinctions of purity and profanity are and why those distinctions are there.
- Calvin O. Schrag – The Resources of Rationality. With this text I dropped a three year love affair with all things postmodern and became a pragmatist with a good dose of critical theory. It really was that dramatic and the light went on pretty bright.
- Peter Berger – The Sacred Canopy. It has some flaws today, especially with the proposal for secularization as something quite inevitable in Western cultures. But the idea of the social construction of religion is stilll very powerful and explains a lot of behaviors in the worlds of religions.
- H. Richard Niebuhr – The Meaning of Revelation. A small book that moved my view of revelation from something static to be understood only through orthodox propositions rooted in a reading of Scripture to a more fluid and progressive understanding of revelation as something living and continually evolving through human history and societies.
Interesting that the most influential books to my theology and even the way I read the bible are from a philosophical theologian, an anthropologist, a pragmatist philosopher, a sociologist, and a pragmatist theologian. Guess the subtitle of my blog makes a lot of sense…
So how about you? What five books have been the most influential for how your theological worldview is constructed today?
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Heh. I love the term "meme": every time I use it it's like a little flick at Dawkins' forehead!
[...] Tatusko, of Notes from Off-Center: Simone Weil, Mary Douglas, Calvin O. Schrag, Peter Berger, H. Richard Niebuhr (he also posted an [...]
true. i guess i don't even have the stomach for that!
true. i guess i don't even have the stomach for that!