I’m interested to see that Joe Rigney’s book “The sin of empathy” is continuing to generate a lot of passion. New Testament scholar, Robert Gagnon has posted a short article on facebook reacting to an article under the headline “Christian nationalists decided empathy was a sin, now it’s gone mainstream”. He complains about the … Continue reading Is the empathy debate really just about “untethered empathy”?
Tag: Joe Rigney
Empathy and the balancing of virtue
Joe Rigney ends the first chapter of his book “The Sin of Empathy” by writing: “What then can we conclude from this initial survey? To begin, as Christians, we ought to resist any move to disparage biblical virtues. Sympathy, pity, compassion—these are biblical words with a long and well-developed history in the Christian tradition. The… Continue reading Empathy and the balancing of virtue
Muddying the waters of empathy
Joe Rigney in his book “The sin of empathy” suggests that “empathy” is a difficult word to define. He observes that it is a fairly recent entry into the English language. “The term “empathy” itself is very recent. It was introduced into English in the early twentieth century in the field of aesthetics. It originally… Continue reading Muddying the waters of empathy
The sin of root fallacy
In the first chapter of his book, “The Sin of Empathy”, Joe Rigney’s starting point is that in Hebrews 4:15, the writer talks about Christ sympathising with us in regards to our weakness. However, the NIV uses the word “empathise.” Rigney writes: .” The Greek word in question is sympathizo, which makes the English cognate… Continue reading The sin of root fallacy
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