Kirjahaku

How might one live the Christian faith within a culture that idealizes and privileges Christianity while also relativizing it, rendering it redundant and innocuous? Arguing for a reconceptualization of the theology of the cross and radical communal practices, this book brings together two clusters of critics of Christian acculturation and accommodation: (1) Lutherans such as Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer who lift up radical discipleship against the propensity toward "cheap grace," and (2) various "Anti-Constantinians," including nee-monastic communities, who resists the church's collusion with power politics, symbolized by the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century. Mahn provocatively imagines alternatives to conventional Christianity - ones whereby the church embodies an alternative politic, where it commits to cruciform non-violence, appreciates gifts by giving them away, and knows its boundaries well enough to learn from those on the other side.

For more than 1,500 years, the claim that Adam's Fall might be considered 'fortunate' has been Christianity's most controversial and difficult idea. While keepers of the Easter vigil in the fifth century (and later John Milton) praised sin only as a backhanded witness to the ineffability of redemption, modern speculative theodicy came to understand all evil as comprehensible, historically productive, and therefore fortunate, while the romantic poets credited transgression with bolstering individual creativity and spirit. Jason Mahn's compelling study examines Kierkegaard's ''para/orthodixical'' language of human fallibility and Christian sin. Mahn breaks down and reconstructs the concept of the fortunate Fall in Western thought, in context of Kierkegaard's later writings, examining Kierkegaard's blunt critique of Idealism's justification of evil, as well as his playful deconstruction of romantic celebrations of sin. Mahn also argues, though, that Kierkegaard resists the moralization of evil, preferring to consider temptation and sin as determinative dimensions of religious existence. In relation to the assumed ''innocence'' of Christendom's cultured Christians, the self-conscious sinner might be the better religious witness. Although Mahn shows how Kierkegaard finally replaces actual sin with human fragility, temptation, and the possibility of spiritual offense as that which ''happily'' shapes religious faith, he cogently argues that Kierkegaard's understanding of ''fortunate fallibility'' is at least as rhetorically compelling and theologically operative as talk of a fortunate Fall. Mahn's insights into Kierkegaard's playful maneuvers encourages Christian theologians can speak of sin more particularly and peculiarly than in the typical discourses of church and culture.

Neighbor Love through Fearful Days is a reflection on pandemics--the Covid-19 pandemic, the accompanying economic collapse, a summer of climate chaos, and the pandemic of white supremacy--as well as on the calling to serve thy neighbor and work toward the common good, even and especially in times of crisis. Mahn's real-time reflections begin with an entry dated March 17, 2020, after the college where he teaches moved online and his family began sheltering in place; they end with an entry dated August 31, 2020, when the college reopened for an unprecedented fall term. Through the intervening entries, he reflects on perennial questions about purpose, faith, and vocation as they take on a newfound urgency as cities lock down, economies reopen and close again, and our fractured country teeters on the edge of civil war. Each entry grapples with the anxieties and opportunities, the suffering and sense of being summoned, that characterize that same period. Jason A. Mahn's evocative narrative is a story about living through a time when the world as we know it is being leveled by pandemics--and it is also a deeply philosophical exploration of what it means to live well. In the pages of this book, Mahn invites readers to muse on the difficult balance between self-care and other-care; _the role of love in social justice, and how white privilege might be atoned for; and how, amid intense suffering, to practice a faith that is not escapist, but embraces a hope more durable than optimism and a public, strategic love more fierce and enduring than previously imagined. Ultimately, these reflections acknowledge the immense challenge of living a purposeful life in the middle of crisis but invite readers to the shared hope that from the ashen stillness, we may just hear new callings to imagine healing, cultivate hope, and love neighbors in creative ways.