I Love My Library

Phase One of paper writing is complete. I've effectively defended Rudolf Bultmann against his Barthian detractors, interpreted the liturgy's Gloria as the foundations of an ecclesiological ontology of peace, reviewed Tuomo Mannermaa's Two Kinds of Love: Martin Luther's Religious World, and shown how Augustine can claim that the mountains in Psalm 36 are an allegory of the apostolic witness of Church tradition and those shaped by it without being merely arbitrary or insane - as well as outlining my STM proposal and preaching a sermon last Sunday in which I contrasted the Church as spoken of in Psalm 122 as a pilgrim peace march of participation and praise whose purpose is that none be left behind, with the world's tendency towards a trail-of-tears death marching conquest, which destroys, consumes and ravages everything in its concupiscent path - think MLK/Gandhi vs General Sherman, who I'm very much starting to resemble facial-hair-wise given the obligatory abstinence from shaving inherent to all paper-writing periods - the Southerners loved it! Which is all to say: I really have been busy. Sorry for the lack of postings, and thanks to those of you who extend your Advent patience and prayers in my direction. Five papers down, five to go...

In the meantime, I wanted to continue a During the World tradition of praising LTSS' fantastic Lineberger Memorial Library, whose fantastic collection has provided much fuel for this blog's inspiration. This past weekend, Lineberger held its semi-annual book sale, selling off overflows from their collection and from pastoral libraries at the profound pricing of $.50 for paperbacks and $1 for hardbacks. For a mere $20, I snagged a mini-condition hardcover set of Wolfhart Pannenberg's three-volume Systematic Theology, half a dozen hardcover editions of Kierkegaard's works, several paperback copies of Barth's Dogmatics in Outline (to be distributed to unwitting Lutherans for their conversion, er, edification) Yoder's Barth and the Problem of War and The Politics of Jesus, two volumes of Eberhard Jungel's Theological Questions, five different essential works of Karl Rahner, a handful of selections from the Classics of Western Spirituality series, the Early Church Fathers and Christology of the Late Fathers volumes of the Westminster Christian Classics series on Pietism, Gregory of Nyssa and Luther, Bultmann's Hermeneia commentary on the Johannine Epistles and Kasemann's Jesus Means Freedom, a complete set of John Chrysostom's homilies on the Gospel of John, several Hauerwas classics including A Community of Character and The Peaceable Kingdom (again, for evangelistic purposes), several works on 20th-century Lutheranism for my seminar with Michael Root in the Spring (even one by Forde!), Obermann's Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, and yes, I even picked up a few books on Methodism by Duke's Randy Maddox, Richard Heitzenreiter, and Thomas Langford...ah, Responsible Grace! All this on the SECOND day of the sale (I missed the first due to aforementioned paper-writing responsibilities). All this really just reveals me as a complete and total nerd, but there's is something of a foretaste of the feast to come in scoring such a range of works from such a broad spectrum across the history of the Church and still having a couple bucks left over to pay for our CSA crops. Not that I'll have time to read them any time soon, of course, but ah, the bliss...thanks Lineberger Memorial Library, for continuing to make Columbia, SC a better place. If there are in fact indulgences for Lutherans that the Pope is holding in reserve as a surprise on the Day of Judgment, well, surely you shall be first among many to receive them. Thank God you were up the hill so Sherman couldn't level you with all the rest of the city's churches that he kept mistaking for being the site of the initiation of secession. Thank God.

I bid you good evening, completely cognoscente of the obvious fact that this was an almost completely self-obsessed, self-promoting post that will hold absolutely no interest to anyone not equally obsessed with either theology or my attempts to earn a second Masters of its sacred iteration. Even so, thanks for reading, and for keeping me in prayer during this crazy time. Advent Blessings, and grace and peace.