Body

This book by Paula Gooder is an exploration of Judeo-Christian conceptions of the body and its relation to spirituality, as expounded in the Bible, with particular focus on the writings of Paul the apostle. She finishes her introduction with a very helpful and nuanced glossary of Hebrew (eg. nephesh) and Greek (eg. pneuma) words that she places under systematic consideration throughout the book - I found myself returning to this list multiple times throughout reading but you get used to the fine-tuned differentiations in definition as you go. Several chapters deal with biblical conceptions of the soul and how it relates to the body, both in life and in eternity, and having never read anything about this before I found these particularly illuminating chapters. The text overall makes a brilliant case for inclusion of our consideration of the body in holistic Christian spirituality. Would recommend for anyone interested in these topics; it's academically written but not inaccessibly so.

Orthodoxy & Heterodoxy

This book by Orthodox pastor Andrew S. Damick is, essentially, a more-or-less [as far as I can tell with my limited knowledge] comprehensive survey of Every Christian Denomination And Why They're Not As Correct As Mine [i.e. Orthodoxy]. Instead of cherry-pickingly flattening every different interpretation of Christianity to form a new questionably-coherent picture of orthodox faith as some have, Damick is serious in his assertion that the Orthodox Church is the sole inheritor of an unbroken apostolic succession all the way back to Pentecost and therefore has the best claim today of being the most Christian Christianity out there. Obviously, such a project would lend itself quite naturally to spiritual pride & factionalism, but in my opinion Damick approaches the task with a humility & a generosity of understanding that, while far from ecumenical in scope, lays foundations for conversation such that ecumenical projects in the future might learn about & respect other traditions better.*

   The book's contents, thus, are as follows:

• introduction: brief reflections on the nature/purpose of religious truth.
• Orthodoxy: a portrait of the Orthodox Christian faith - we get the essential non-negotiable doctrines laid out in a mere two pages. This is followed by a listing of all the major heresies, the majority of which were stamped out [or at least argued into ridiculousness] in the earliest centuries of Church history.
• Roman Catholicism: an explanation of the Schism & the differences that both led up to it & developed after it, then going on to discuss the most major of these - those relating to the Pope, the sacraments, the nature of salvation, and the filioque.
• Protestantism: starting with a dissection of the five solas which emerged in the Reformation & the new traditions that sprang up around them - Lutheranism, the Reformed churches, Anglicanism [and its baby Methodism] - but oh no, this revolution won't stop! - as the Magisterial Reformation gave way to the Radical, ecclesiology itself was deconstructed & reimagined, as new denominations continued to proliferate - Anabaptists & Baptists, Moravians, Puritans [including my homefolk Quakers, who don't get nearly enough discussion in here] etc - flippin' 'eck it still won't stop, we get past The Great Awakening & Protestantism is continuing to question itself into fragments along lines of individualistic experiential faith, with this new Evangelical thrust developing theologies like restorationism, adventism, dispensationalism, etc - all the way up into the present & the foreseeable future.
• Pentecostalism: many would lump this in with the rest of Protestantism [even though it's already had three chapters to itself, greedy] but Damick makes a pretty solid case that it's different enough to constitute a whole new fourth paradigm of Christian expression - from its origins in the Holiness movement to its global reach as a charismatic denomination.
• Non-mainstream Christians: i.e. the kind of denominations that most other Christians agree don't count as actual Christians because they're so weird - for a few examples the Unitarian Universalists, Christian Science, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, etc.
• Non-Christian religions: this is easily the weakest chapter of the book - Damick is in his element discussing theological heterodoxies within the umbrella of Christ but his perfunctory surveying here leaves a lot to be desired - Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism & Scientology all only get three pages each [atheism is relegated to an appendix] - but then I suppose this book never claimed to be a full guide to world faiths, rather an apologetic project for Orthodoxy.
• Concluding remarks: a very reasonable & Christlike consideration of how an Orthodox Christian should relate to anyone from any other faith.

   I do consider myself an orthodox Christian, and following reading this book I am highly amenable to Orthodox Christianity - I checked Google Maps to find my nearest such church & it's half an hour down the motorway, which rules out a weekly shuttle as I don't drive, so however much theological unlearning I've been able to do with Father Damick's help I will still be worshipping as a Protestant** for the foreseeable future. This book is one I would recommend as a resource to help those confused about Christianity's internal diversity navigate the complex tangles of difference; just don't use it as such if you don't want whoever you're getting to read it to find Orthodoxy the most compelling expression of the faith.

* Although within the text itself Damick only uses the phrase thrice, the general thrust of potential spermatikos logos is littered throughout - he discusses both all heterodox Christianities as well as other religions not as if they were false, but as if they were incomplete. Very helpful little clarificatory nudge there.

** I'm a member of an Anglican parachurch community as well as a regular attender at both an FIEC church & Quaker meetings. Put me in a box.

Being Good

This book by Simon Blackburn (author of Think) is, as was his other book, a general introduction to some key philosophical issues and themes; it's also one that I had already read before I started this blog but I'm re-reading it now to see whether it's worth giving to my youngest brother who has just started studying philosophy for his A-levels.

   Anyway - Blackburn, in three large chunks, covers:

• Threats to ethics
• The death of God
• Egoism
• Evolutionary theory
• Determinism & futility
• Unreasonable demands
• False consciousness
• Some ethical ideas
• Birth
• Death
• Desire & the meaning of life
• Pleasure
• The greatest happiness of the greatest number
• Freedom from the bad
• Freedom & paternalism
• Rights & natural rights
• Foundations of ethics
• Reasons & foundations
• Being good & living well
• The categorical imperative
• Contracts & discourse
• The common point of view
• Confidence restored

   And that's the book.

   Though I have a lot of nits to pick with Blackburn in the minutiae, every philosopher has to come to their own conclusions, and he does to be fair present the things he discusses with a certain detachedness that enables the reader to continue their own explorations without being too bogged down with any of the biases found in what may well be their introductory text. A good book to kick off a habit of thinking about ethics with.

Think

This book by Simon Blackburn is a general, broad, accessible introduction of some of the key areas in philosophy. I had read it before, but shortly before I started my undergraduate in philosophy and therefore before I started this blog - but decided to re-read it because my youngest brother is currently studying philosophy for his A-levels and I want to give it him for his birthday but also make sure that it was an appropriate text for his level.

   Blackburn writes well, as eruditely as accessibly - he never introduces jargon terms without pre-empting them in common sense language, he never presumes that his readers are familiar with any particular thinkers or concepts, etc. Anyway, throughout the bitesize-enough-but-still-meaty eight chapters of the book he deals with: knowledge, mind, free will, the self, God, reasoning, the world, and 'what to do'. Across the brief sketches of philosophical history he outlines in these chapters he does manage to convey a largely helpful picture of some of the key themes that philosophers have been wrestling with for millennia, as well as diving somewhat deeper into particular thinkers who seem to shed further insight (though if you ask me, Blackburn has a bit too much of a hard-on for Hume).

   I'm confident that this book will be helpful to my brother - and in saying such, I'm saying I would probably recommend it as an introductory text for anyone of the age of fifteen or up starting to study philosophy from scratch. One small gripe I have is that this book barely deals with ethics, that being only around half of the final chapter - but Blackburn has written a whole other book similar to this one on that topic, my copy of which I am also re-reading to see if it's worth gifting to my brother, so watch this space.