Theology is Political: Deal with It

Fukuyama’s famous thesis was that, with the ruin of communism, there remained no viable alternative to Western liberalism on the stage of history. We are still sorting through the rude awakening from this fantasy. What seems clear, however, is that the bland, narcotic world that Fukuyama envisioned, the “victory of the VCR” over sectarian strife, has not come to pass. Theological voices have been instrumental in opposing that vision. Theological discourse has
refused to stay where liberalism would prefer to put it. Theology is politically important, and those who engage in either theology or politics ignore this fact at a certain peril.

William Cavanaugh, The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, p. 1

Thoughts on Oxford Study Bibles

In my freshman year in college I bought a red hardback Revised Standard Version, Oxford Study Bible. The translation itself was beautiful, haunting English. I still read it at times today for the literary style. The notes were unbelief. But that's not entirely fair. The notes were written in the aftermath of older German liberalism. They were bad on several levels. On level one they simply didn't give you that much information. But on the second level they were written on the premise of naturalism: miracles and supernatural simply strain belief.

But as bad as that is, they are still useful. They are a good illustration of presuppositional apologetics. One's cultural assumptions will dominate how you look at the text. See how they translate Isaiah 7:14.

Recently I have been reading the New Revised Standard Version, Oxford-ish study Bible. The translation is jarring. It is dominated by feminism. It is almost laughable to anyone who knows Greek. That being said, the study notes are decent. They are more in-depth and have better articles. Brueggemann's intro to the prophets, despite a few quirks, was very good.

Just some recent thoughts

RO on the Messiah State

Recently, and quite surprising, was the rise of a new movement which included a new critique of Statism. Radical Orthodoxy is an anglo-catholic, left-wing postmodern, Parisian Augustinianism. For reasons I cannot figure out, they have also offered a critique of statism independent of Bahnsen/North/Rushdoony. Surprising given that most Left-wing movements are statist.Even more importantly, their books are published by Oxford and Cambridge.

Quote:
The modern state is founded on certain stories of nature and human nature, the origins of human conflict, and the remedies of such conflict in the enactment of the state itself...Thus the modern state is best understood...as a source of an alternative soteriology to that of the church (RONT, 182)...The state does not take a merely temporal regulatory role and leave salvation in the hands of the church; rather, the modern state seeks to replace the church by itself becoming a soteriological institution...As a result, while political rhetoric may suggest that the state is confined to a "public" sphere or that the reign of the secular is circumscribed, in fact the modern state demands complete allegiance, and the reign of the secular does not tolerate territories of resistance. The State is happy to absorb all kinds of private pursuits under the umbrella of a civil society, but it cannot tolerate a religious community that claims to be the only authentic polis and proclaims a KING who is a rival to both Caesar and Leviathan...This the state cannot tolerate. It is in this sense that "every worship service is a challenge to Caesar.

James K. A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology, 132, 133.