Playing catchup
Blogging’s been sparse around here lately, so here’s a big catchup post of various things that have caught my eye recently.
There’s a new blog over at Dekhomai, centring around the “spirituality” banner but from a Christian perspective. Should shape up into something interesting. They’ve just been at the London “Mind, Body, Spirit” fair and it sounds like they made an impression. From them, a link to WorldPrayers – a website that supplies prayers from various faith traditions around the world. It’s good to see through someone else’s eyes sometimes.
Alastair has posted a picture of the Abomination that causes desolation. On a more serious note, he’s made some good points about how we can, almost by accident, recentre our thinking around issues that should be tangential to our faith. Once we do this, we become more liable to make certain kinds of mistake. For example:
The recentering of the faith around the doctrine of (individual) justification that occurred in many areas following the Reformation made Protestant churches especially vulnerable to certain errors that churches centred on a more catholic (with a small ‘c’) reading of the Nicene Creed would not be. This recentering led to weaknesses that could later be exploited by such movements as liberalism, modernism, secularism, individualism and sectarianism.
Sven, by contrast, has been concerned with issues of inspiration and assurance, making his usual cogent contributions to both spheres. I’m interested to see where he goes with both of these strands.
I can see the arguments for both the Calvinist and Arminian position, yet both have one major flaw in common in that neither of them offer complete assurance in the present. A Calvinist never completely knows if he or she is truly one of the elect, and an Arminian can never be completely confident in his or her “saving” decision or subsequent obedience. This flaw is, I think, really only a symptom of a bigger problem with both systems which is namely that their Christology is inadequate
On a more political note, Tony at Storyteller’s World pointed out a campaign that’s got wider reporting as well – Amnesty International’s Irrepressible. This is an effort to show the amount of silent censorship that is going on online, censoring of dissent or criticism, and to raise its profile by making available a simple script that will disseminate material that governments have tried to suppress. Here’s one of the ways it can look:
And finally (!), The Register has been reporting on Envirofone, a recycling organisation that pays you (or a charity of your choice) for your old mobile, reconditions it and sends it off to places where mobile phones are needed as the only viable method of communication. They’ve spent £285 000 already this year on obtaining phones, so they’re doing pretty well. If you’ve got a phone that you’re replacing, why not send the old one to Envirofone?
pax et bonum
Unicorns and rhinoceri
Alastair discusses the importance of recognising the limitations of our own categories. Otherwise, we are too likely to fail to engage properly with people whose positions differ from our own, whether because they’re separated from us by time (like the apostle Paul) or culture.
Unicorns only exist in the imagination, as do many of the theological positions that Reformed Christians categorize in terms of (Roman Catholicism, Arminianism, Judaism, etc.).
This is one of the reasons why questioning the helpfulness of the categories of our confessional documents is important. Reformed people have been seeing unicorns in the writings of the apostle Paul, for example, for far too long. Much of what they are seeing is there (just as unicorns share certain prominent features in common with rhinoceri), but we really need to question whether our traditional confessional categories are really sufficient.
pax et bonum
The Big Boat which cannot be sunk
Kathryn at Good in Parts posted this snippet from Jesus of the Deep Forest, which I’ve not read but I would dearly love to. It describes a Jesus from a deeply African point of view. This snippet shows us powerfully how Christ can be apprehended by a different culture without being in any way diminished or corrupted.
All powerful Jesus who engages in marvellous deeds, he is the one called Hero Okatakyi. Of all earthly dominions he is master; the Python not overcome with mere sticks, the Big Boat which cannot be sunk.
Jesus, Saviour of the poor, who brightens up our faces! Damfo-Adu: the clever one. We rely on you as the tongue relies on the mouth.
The great Rock we hide behind: the great forest canopy that gives cool shade: the Big Tree that lifts its vines to peep at the heavens, the magnificent Tree whose dripping leaves encourage luxurient growth
pax et bonum
Witness to community
Father Jake posts an essay Steve Charlston on witness, especially as it relates to the way we Christians conduct our oh-so-public debates on current issues.
As the Episcopal Church, the most important question before us is not about schism or sexuality. It is about witness. What witness will we make?
Christian witness is the public affirmation of faith. It is how we let the world see that we practice what we preach. Today those of us in the Episcopal Church are being called on to make our witness. We have the opportunity to be what we say we are. The world is watching. What will we do?
The answer is a matter of faith. We witness to what we believe.
In the Episcopal Church, we believe in Jesus Christ. We believe in the Bible. We believe in the Good News. In fact, we believe so strongly in all of these essential parts of our shared faith that we are not afraid to disagree with one another about what they mean to us.
We welcome difference as the active presence of God’s Holy Spirit moving amongst us. Our witness is not to conformity but to community.
Let me repeat that, because I think it’s crucial: our witness is not to conformity but to community.
pax et bonum
Let us love one another
When Jesus summarized the law in his commandment to love God and neighbor, when he taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves and to do unto others as we would be done by, he meant what he said, and he gave us both a task and a promise. Those in Christ who love their sisters and brothers in this way – doing for them as they would be done by – have observed God’s commandment. All the rest is commentary.
(From In a Godward direction.)
pax et bonum
Prayer and sunbathing
Kathryn at Good in Parts quotes Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury) discussing prayer, and the interesting analogy that he makes.
pax et bonum
Iranian president asks Bush, what would Jesus do?
Ekklesia is reporting the letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to US President George W. Bush. More than anything, perhaps, it illustrates the gulf between these two leaders, and their respective cultures. Ahmadinejad is clearly a thinker who is concerned with what he sees as right. Bush, by contrast and for all his talk of the importance of his faith, clearly is unable to connect his politics to that faith. It’s sad, and more than a little worrying, that these two leaders seem unable to communicate at all. And it’s also an odd feeling that I actually have much more empathy for what Ahmadinejad is saying.
pax et bonum
Our doctrine IS love
Maggi shares her view that, far from being enemies, true doctrine and true love are two faces of the same thing.
surely there is never, in reality, a need to choose between love and doctrine. For if doctrine leads us to act in a way that is contrary to the love of God, that doctrine is either false or mis-applied. And love is not against truth, but the fulfilment of it.
pax et bonum
The ID debate - moving forward (III)
With our ground rules in place and the issues of metaphor outlined, I now lay out my own thoughts about how we can better think about the relationship between Creator and Creation. Fundamentally, I want to avoid the pitfalls of the common descriptions – reductionism, concern primarily with malfunction, one-dimensionality and the subordination of the Creator.
As I mentioned in the previous article in this series, one metaphor that I believe to be very useful in thinking about our own life is the idea of journey. However, this idea can be applied much more widely than simply on an individual level. Indeed, I believe that it can be applied very successfully to Creation as a whole.
(click for more)
Five theological crises
David at The Great Giveaway has a list of five theological issues that he believes are crucial to moving the Church forwards through the end of Modernity. That is, as Modernity dies out as a worldview, how does the Church reinterpret its core ideas and beliefs in light of the criticisms of the framework in which they were most recently understood? (And, we should note, the Modern interpretation of those ideas is by no means the “historical” position of the Church – that framework is only a few hundred years old at most.)
- Scripture – its authority and interpretation by the Church community.
- Salvation – restoring the balance beteen justification and sanctification, moving beyond individualism.
- Justice – restoring the idea of justice as part of the character of a Christian, not merely the duty of a Christian.
- Pluralism – how do we proclaim “Jesus is Lord” to people of other faiths in a meaningful way?
- Ecclesiology – how do we rescue the Church from fragmentation and restore its centrality to Christian faith?
It’s a good list, and David makes some good points as he expands it. He deals with central theological issues and with the issues of love between Christians, and between Christians and everyone else. Indeed, it seems to me to be one of the best such lists I’ve seen.
pax et bonum
Two Sides of the Same Coin?
David at The Great Giveaway makes some cogent observations about evangelical fundamentalism and protestant liberalism – that, far from being opposites, they are actually very similar. The problem is that both work within the Modernist worldview. Their “opposites” are only opposite within that framework – they are concerned with the same limited set of questions and use many of the same assumptions (including the primacy of the individual). As a result, neither can deal effectively with criticisms from outside that framework, nor criticisms of the framework itself. This means that moving beyond this axis of thought involves more than sythesising these two positions (as some seem to be doing). We need to be genuinely imaginative and to generate new models that answer the new questions.
(_Thanks to Maggi for the link._)
pax et bonum
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