POSTS
TheArchive.
A chronological record of essays, thinking tools, and interventions.
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Christianity and the social contract: preliminary reflections
The paper below was prepared for the Jubilee Centre taskforce on the role of the state in the post COVID-19 world. Its intention is to provide a brief overview of classic social contract theory and identify some ways in which the social contract paradigm relates to Christian theology. Enjoy! Christianity and the social contract “Contemporary
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Camus, Christ and COVID-19 Q&A now on YouTube
The full video of my seminar ‘Camus, Christ and COVID-19’, including Q&A, is now available from Christian Heritage on YouTube: The original video I prepared for the presentation part of the seminar (minus the introduction and post-presentation Q&A) is available here:
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Albert Camus, Literature, and The Plague
This is the script of a video I prepared for the “Camus, Christ and COVID-19” event hosted by Christian Heritage Cambridge on 20 May 2020. I aim to address three questions: the place and importance of literature during a time of crisis such as COVID-19 the meaning of Albert Camus’ story The Plague (he withdrew
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More unacceptable reasons to enjoy the pandemic
For the full series of “Lets read Camus’ La Peste” posts, please click here. In the previous post in this series I reflected on how literature can reveal the hidden side of a pandemic. Attitudes that would be incendiary if voiced in the first person can be exposed and explored in literary texts, absent
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The unspoken pandemic: on the illicit enjoyment of plague
For the full series of “Lets read Camus’ La Peste” posts, please click here. Everyone is writing about the pandemic right now, but we are not writing everything. There are some some impulses, some reactions, some fleeting thoughts that we prudently keep under our hats at a time like this. Once the COVID-19 pandemic
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COVID, Camus and the Cross: An Easter Meditation
For the full series of “Lets read Camus’ La Peste” posts, please click here. I have come across an impressive amount of self-styled insight in the past few days: what the world will look like after the virus, how we should reshape it, what an opportunity this is, how things will never be the
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Statistics in a time of pandemic: sublimity, mysticism, and the illusion of exactitude
For the full series of “Lets read Camus’ La Peste” posts, please click here. There has been much talk over the past weeks of COVID-19 being an “invisible enemy”. Setting the war metaphor aside for a moment, it is illuminating to reflect on the ways in which we make pandemics visible. In La Peste figures and
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Sir Donald Hay on Being a Christian Academic
Over on the DCM at Oxford blog there is an excellent article entitled ‘On Being a Christian Academic‘, written by Donald Hay, retired professor of Economics and fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, former acting Pro Vice Chancellor for Planning and Resources for the university, and founder of the Developing a Christian Mind programme at Oxford. Hay says
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The threefold biblical scandal of the personal, the material and the historical. Extract from my forthcoming book on Deleuze and theology
This is the seventh in a series of extracts from my forthcoming book on Deleuze (to be published in the same P&R ‘Great Thinkers’ series as the Derrida and Foucault volumes). It argues that the Bible has a radical view of history, the material world and the human person that set it apart from almost
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Do you know what is most shaping your desires and beliefs? This quick exercise can help you find out… and change it
In a recent post we briefly discussed the way in which the media we consume shapes to a significant extent what we desire, what we think, and how we feel about ourselves and our society. The issue merits further reflection for Christians studying or working in an academic setting. Christian academics are, so to speak, professional consumers and interpreters
