Sunday, November 7, 2010

Coffeehouse Theology

The second book, also from viralbloggers.com, was Coffeehouse Theology by Ed Cyzewski. I have to say that I enjoyed this considerably more than The Colors of God and it was a very different book as well. While the title for the book seems silly and the explanation for it was somewhat nonsensical, there are some good ideas in this that I truly believe are crucial in interacting with the Bible.

The two main things I took from here which were exciting to potentially get in the hands of a population outside the scholarly world:
1. Being aware of all that you bring into reading the Bible. How does your context shape the way you interpret it?
2. Based on how you come at the Bible, how does that correspond(or not generally!) with the original recipients of the Bible in its various forms.

I believe being conscious of both of these is extremely radical and crucial if we hope to truly study the Bible. The other facet to this, which is part of the first, is how much the church or other community you have that has "helped" you interact with the Bible previously affects you. I think if we can be this honest with God in how we face it we can approach it with much more humility than is often done. The texts were not meant to be plucked out individually in shaping some topic, but we are to try and find the currents and rhythms throughout that give us an idea of the nature of God and God's interaction with us all.

With that said, I believe Cyzewski did get many things right, however there was still some exegesis throughout that was not given as much attention as you'd hope. Additionally, if I remember correctly the name of a leading scholar was butchered in this as well which is an extremely unfortunate error. I believe this can be an important gateway for many and I do truly hope it is able to take this shape in people's lives.
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2 comments:

  1. ed cNovember 8, 2010 at 5:26 AM

    Thanks so much for reviewing my book. I appreciate the critique and the interaction with my ideas. It's good to know you saw how it could help the church. I am curious which scholar you think I "butchered" and what exactly constituted a butchering... I always appreciate critiques of my book, since it certainly has shortcomings, but I want to make sure the critique is clear and substantive.

    Blessings!
    Ed Cyzewski

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  2. JD JespersenDecember 2, 2010 at 3:44 PM

    Ed,

    Hello. My apologies, but I did not even notice this until recently. The author in question I believe was James Dunn. Butchering may have been too harsh of a word but it did seem a grievous error. Spelling errors are sort of a pet peeve on my part, so that's also the angle I take in reviewing books. With that said, I will surely have a grammatical error in this response!

    I truly do think what you're saying is a necessary pill the church needs to swallow and am grateful that you are adding to the possibility of this increasing. I have been on this journey of recognizing the importance of context in trying to understand the meaning in the text. It needs to be broached carefully and humbly and there are few people doing this today.

    I hope you have had significant interactions upon the release of your book.

    Thanks,
    J.D.

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