Reignite

I'm currently doing some thinking about Unitarian tradition, and bringing in some ideas from the history and philosophy of science, particularly the idea of the "paradigm shift." The concept of a paradigm shift is one first postulated by Thomas Kuhn in explaining times when science has radically changed the theoretical underpinning of its work. The shift from Newtonian physic to the physics of relativity and quantum mechanics is a classical example of this. This suggest the question - has a similar shift happened in Unitarian theology - from a basically Christian framework of God, Jesus, Bible to - something else? In addressing the question I am attempting to keep quite closely to Kuhn's understanding of "paradigm shift" and not using it in the imprecise way the phrase has dropped into language of common usage. It may be tempting to make this argument. It is a helpful explanation for why the theology of a contemporary Unitarian might be different from ...

If you haven't seen it already thought I would link here to my lecture in May, "Some Foundations for Unitarian Theology"

I'm currently on sabbatical so have a bit more time for thinking and writing, so you can expect a lot more content on this blog over the next few months. The first thing I'd like to share is the book I've just finished reading "A Free Religious Faith" a report created by a commission of the Unitarian General Assembly and published in 1945. This book has been gathering dust on my shelf for many years (and many other people's shelves before that probably, it's a second/third/fourth-hand book and I can't remember where I got it). But having read it, I think there's a number of things that are really fascinating about it. First, that it was written at all seems quite remarkable. In a way it is an attempt to write a coherent description of Unitarian theology, published by the denomination. True, there's always a bit of a freedom clause thing in the preface to say this isn't a once-and-for-all-official-theology, but still it is a denomin...