"Forced to Choose"

I have posted a video from the collossian forum website before, and I really like how they handle the questions of science and faith. Here is another short clip from them about the integration of science and faith...it makes me wonder about how I am presenting the issue to my students in SBS when I teach Genesis.

Weekly Talk- Andy Crouch on Power

Andy crouch on power at Qideas

This is a 17 minute talk by Andy Crouch entitled "when Christians have power". Thats not really what he talks about though, he just talks about "jussive power"...they "let it be" power in Gen.1-3, power and idolatry and some interesting stories at the end about Steve Jobs and a "hero/idol" of Crouch's.

I really like it because it is just an appetizer to crouch's new book Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power. A book that looks really good, this is just a small appetizer of that new book.

Augustine on Youthful Lust and Marriage

I really enjoyed these thoughts by Augustine from the confessions on youthful lust and marriage. I am blessed to have "found the shore of marriage".

"I did not keep the moderate way of the love of mind to mind- the bright path of friendship. Instead, the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh, and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and overcast my heart that I was unable to distinguish pure affection from unholy desire. Both boiled confusedly within me, and dragged my unstable youth down over the cliffs of unchaste desires and plunged me into a gulf of infamy....I was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured out, and I boiled over in my fornications...If only there had been some one to regulate my disorder and turn to my profit the fleeting beauties of the things around me, and to fix a bound to their sweetness, so that the tides of my youth might have spent themselves upon the shore of marriage! Then they might have been tranquilized and satisfied with having children, as they law prescribes, O Lord..."

I love the contrast between the "hot imagination of puberty" and the solid real shores of marriage! I read this from a book called "Readings in Christian Thought" by Hugh T, Kerr. It compiles snippets of writings from throughout church history, and I believe this one is compiled from both the confessions and "enchiridion". The ending paragraph is also worth quoting...a biting revelation of the disgustingness of sin:

"Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart- which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error- not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself."

Weekly Talk- The Bible in Modern Society

I have not posted a weekly talk for a few weeks, because I was teaching Isaiah in SBS and then playing catchup the week after, but during that time I did listen to This talk on Q Ideas about what is the role the Bible should play in our modern society. It really is a mixed discussion going through several topics. My favorite part about it is probably the people involved in the talk: Tim Keller, Brian Mclaren, Allister Mcgrath and a catholic priest from NY city. It is a diverse group and it's worth the 40 minutes just to see these guys interact, but they also have some good stuff to say about the modern usage of the Bible.

F.F. Bruce on a Holistic Pauline Theology

I am teaching a bible study on Ephesians, and for part of my preparation I am reading through a commentary on Ephesians by F.F. Bruce. It is written for the laymen who is serious about studying the bible, and I really enjoy it's simple and straightforward introduction and explanation of Ephesians. I really enjoyed one paragraph and wanted to quote it in full:

"In many protestant circles it has been customary to look upon the doctrine of justification by faith as the be-all and end-all of Paul's teaching. Justification by faith is certainly fundamental to all of his thinking, and it comes readily to the surface no matter what subject he is dealing with. Even in Ephesians it is uncompromisingly affirmed: 'by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory' (Eph. 2:8). It was inevitable and salutary in the Reformation age that the attention of Christians should be directed afresh to the ground on which men and women are accepted as righteous by God. But it is a pity when Paulinism is identified so exclusively with the emphasis of Galatians and Romans that the corporate and cosmic insights of Colossians and Ephesians are overlooked, or felt to be un-Pauline. True Paulinism has room for both, and our Christian thinking must similarly make room for both if it is not to become lop-sided and defective." (pg.15)

Bruce goes on to explain how Ephesians and Colossians are connected thematically around the "cosmic christ" and the implications of Christ's supremacy on the nature of the Church. I had never quite connected these two books together to see how they pair together theologically, and really enjoyed seeing him weave some strands between the two. And he really does not force these connections or pull them from a hat, but just points out what is there. The connections make most sense when we consider that both were written when Paul was in prison in Rome and that both were carried by Tychicus. After Paul wrestled with the "collosian heresy" and asserted the cosmic, supreme and divine nature of Jesus in the book of Collosians, he further explored and meditated on Christ and his church in the book of Ephesians....and the result of these two books is a strong theological strand that should not be overlooked.

Liturgical Time vs. Clock Time

Read an interesting blog by Dr. Matthew Tan on the difference between liturgical/kairos time and clock/chronos time. It was something I had never really thought about before, and for that reason I found myself intrigued. Anytime I read something that brings an idea to me I have never even thought about or heard, I am intrigued..once again realizing the depths of learning and thought that are to be explored...especially when it is a thought about such a simple and taken for granted thing as time.

Tan questions the modern and post modern idea of "empty homogenized" clock time, where all of time is measured out into single and impartial moments that can be controlled. For me i was struck by the reality that not everyone always had clocks on there wall, and for all of time...time has not been measured by the passing of measurable moments. Another way of looking at time is as "liturgical", filling time with meaning....here are some of my favorite quotes from the blog:

When time becomes defined by an endless string of moments, what becomes denied is the possibility of radical transformation, what Walter Benjamin calls a “Messianic cessation of happening”. Things are always the way they are, and things will always be the way they are. There is a despair that becomes particularly acute when you consider that in postmodernity, the essentially modern search continues for individual security. There is a hyper-emphasis on the isolated monad, which heightens the sense that social relations are, as Daniel M. Bell observes, merely relations of “combat and sheer assertion”.

 both modern and postmodern time requires stripping time of any significance. Liturgical time, by contrast, in following a liturgical calendar, actually fills the time with meaning. 

Tan's thoughts are interesting and deep, and I enjoyed reading through it. I just got onto Tan's work today, but I like what I initially see of him. Tan is a professor of theology and philosophy at the Australian Catholic University, he edits a blog called the "divine wedgie" and already I have found his doctoral thesis and another paper he wrote online: thick stuff that I am looking forward to getting into at some point. 

Whose afraid of Relativism? (Weekly Talk)

A friend of mine recommended this lecture series by James K.A. Smith entitled "Whose Afraid of Relativism". I have only listened to the first lecture which runs 38 minutes and is entitled "It Depends: Creation, Contingency and the Specter of Relativism." The 38 minutes is jam packed full of challenging, informing and transforming (the last adjective is spoken in light of James K.A. Smith's thoughts on education that he talks about in his book "desiring the kingdom") content and though it may be a bit over the heads of some people who have not read or thought much about postmodernism, philosophy or the sort of things he talks about, it is still much more valuable then 40 minutes on facebook.

Smith's thoughts on postmodern relativism will likely not be accepted by all, and they definitely should not be accepted unquestionably by anyone, however I think they are really valuable and worth listening to. Smith does not see relativism as a dangerous enemy of the church today, instead what he says as dangerous is the answer/medicine many churches throw in the face of the challenges of relativism...the certain and hasty declaration of "absolute truth". Smith says that while some forms of radical relativism can go too far by denying all truth claims, it also can be helpful in reminding us that we are finite, contingent, dependent and culturally conditioned people. Relativism attacks the "naturalism and realism" of the modern enlightenment and therefore can be an aide in the church's proclamation of a metaphysical reality beyond the scientific method. I have heard this message spoken by alot of people lately, and I think there is really something to be learned from this. Has the church given too much to modernism? Are we answering arguments from a rationalism which is already being debunked by postmodern philosophers? While some postmodernists do certainly say some things that go against the christian faith...it is so much more refreshing for me to hear people like Smith dialogue with the thinkers and ideas of current postmodernism instead of just clogging the ears and damning them to hell.