The Blogging Parson

This post reminds me of one of my favourite passag...

2012-05-22T12:56:15.509+10:00

This post reminds me of one of my favourite passages from "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead". Ros & Guild are trying to determine which way is north....

Guildenstern: If [...]the sun is over there for instance, that would be northerly. On the other hand, if it's not morning and the sun is over there, that would still be northerly. To put it another way, if we came from down there, and it's morning, the sun would be up there, but if it's actually over there and it's still morning, we must have come from back there, and if that's southerly, and the sun is really over there, then it's the afternoon. However, if none of these are the case...
Rosencrantz: Why don't you go and have a look?
Guildenstern: Pragmatism. Is that all you have to offer?

The great 20th Century Hindu Sage pointed out that...

2012-05-22T10:35:45.677+10:00

The great 20th Century Hindu Sage pointed out that we really only have one real choice - to identify with the body or remain in the always already state of prior Consciousness.

As soon as one identifies with the mortal meat-body every aspect and dimension of ones being becomes patterned by fear. And by the unconscious patternings created by ones childhood emotional-sexual Oedipal script. And by the the way in which you were propagandized and even brain-washed by the culture in which you live into becoming a dreadfully sane normal citizen.

One thus always becomes the unconscious "victim" of the yes/no, positive and negative phasings of the various energy-systems of the body itself, especially the hormonal cycles and urges. Teenagers of course dramatize their hormonal urgings in very spectacular fashion.

Fascinating and thought-provoking as always! One ...

2012-05-18T05:41:07.529+10:00

Fascinating and thought-provoking as always!

One point caught me and stopped me: "the decisive place in which God was at work – in Christ revealed in Scripture." In Christ, absolutely. But Christ is revealed not only in scripture, but in his body the Church. If Christ, revealed in the gospels, bequeathed anything to the world it was not scripture (he came to fulfil it; he never mentions perpetuating it, strictly speaking); rather he bequeathed his body, the Church, built on the rock, in which believers are connected to him as the branches to the vine and sheep to the shepherd.

St Paul never mentions the primacy of scripture but rather than of the church, and he was strident in his avowal of the need to be in communion with it.

I just wonder if, when belief/faith was seen as a primarily personal act after the Reformation, faith was then necessarily cut off from the fertile and sustaining soil of communion in the church which Christ left his followers. If faith is a me-thing, then I do not need you really, do I?

Sorry - I have taken an incidental point and not your main one. I do not mean to derail things.

Blessings.

Hugh (aka Scott!)

Nice post! I heaps like these bits: "Philos...

2012-05-16T20:08:58.626+10:00

Nice post!

I heaps like these bits:

"Philosophers like the great medieval writers St Anselm and St Thomas Aquinas offered their famous arguments for the existence of God not because they imagined that they would convince an non-believer but because they saw them as confirming what believers (that is, everybody) knew to be already true."

"It is true that science has provided alternative explanations of the workings of the world which at many points make appeal to a divine power apparently unnecessary. But that would be to miss the story of the how the scientific world-view come to prominence in the first place; and how it depended for its emergence on certain changes in the way faith and belief were thought of in Western Europe. The scientific world-view did not cause the change in the nature of believing, since it arose at the same time as the changes themselves took place."

But what happened to move us from "faith [as] an act of the will – a reality decided upon. Mine to choose, mine to reject" to the "unchosen choice"? You mention about the power of childhood nurture/shaping. But do you think there are also other factors at play?

such an interesting post thank you br.Freddy

2012-05-15T01:45:33.515+10:00

such an interesting post
thank you
br.Freddy

Those who say that Christ died for every sinner th...

2012-05-04T00:55:20.938+10:00

Those who say that Christ died for every sinner think that they honor Christ by saying that the decree for Christ to die is before the decree to elect some sinners. They claim in this way to put Christ before election.

It's not only Barthian Lutherans (Forde) who want to equate election with preaching, and who teach that the atonement was not restricted to the elect. They may think of election as something that causes some to believe, but they will not teach an atonement only for the specific sins of the elect.

But election in Christ is first! The death of Christ is not the cause of God’s election in love. God’s election in love is the cause of the death of Christ.

Jesus, the incarnate, the eternal Son of God in the flesh, is the foundation of election by being Himself the object of election. “All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things.”

Jesus Christ is not simply the one who makes election work. Jesus Himself is first.

Jesus Himself is chosen first, in priority to all the other elect. All the other elect were chosen in Jesus Christ, and not apart from Jesus Christ. Those God loves are “chosen in Him”. Ephesians 1:4

God only has one purpose in history, and that is to bring glory to Jesus Christ. God does not have a second cultural or creational purpose which doesn’t have anything to do with Christ.

Like the baptist Andrew Fuller and the New England...

2012-05-04T00:44:13.890+10:00

Like the baptist Andrew Fuller and the New England theology which followed Edwards, Blocher denies that guilt itself can be transferred.

I notice how intransigent people can be when it comes to saying not only that salvation is conditional on the sinner, but also in denying that we can talk about the imputation of the GUILT of the elect to Christ.

Volf, Free of Charge, p147, “ I cannot assume his moral liability, as I can assume a loan he might be unable to pay. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. It is uniquely his. Moral liability cannot be transferred. (See Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Reason, p88).”

And then comes quickly the desired conclusion. I mean that “desired”. To be a politically correct member of the faculty at Yale, to be “wide-angled” in the way that “liberals” can approve, you cannot afford to believe in legal imputation. (Perhaps you could have it as a “shelf-doctrine”, like Richard Mouw has “definite atonement”, so that you can say that you are still a Calvinist, but with a wide angle that has shoved imputation of guilt off into the narrow margins.)

Volf of course has a system of cultural engagement which is attempting to do now what neither Adam nor Christ got done. But in Volf’s case, he is not simply domesticating the idea of individual salvation (keeping it on the shelf). Volf is against a legal transfer of guilt. He doesn’t want there to be such a transfer.

Kant and Volf deny that a transfer can happen. They say that the man Christ Jesus cannot bear another person’s guilt, and that God does not make Christ to be a sinner by imputation. Possibly Christ can be made to bear the punishment of sins in general.

And of course academics can always be relied on to pick the same old battle against individualism. To change lives, they think, we need to change the culture, and to do that, we need to water the infants and take up our vocation to be the elites with influence. Anglicanism is from the top-down.

Wow. I truly enjoyed reading this post. I never kn...

2012-05-02T05:09:26.554+10:00

Wow. I truly enjoyed reading this post. I never knew about her spiritual journey!! Thanks for sharing!

Scribere Est Agere

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2012-04-06T00:37:26.030+10:00

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Thanks for writing this blog. Excellently written!...

2012-04-05T02:13:12.542+10:00

Thanks for writing this blog. Excellently written! I just stayed at an Anglican monastery and was a bit disappointed by what I saw, by the state of religion there. What I was seeking by going there, I could find in my heart, the Holy Spirit. It was an eye opening experience, and rather sad. The cross of Christ and all that it means isn't found in the physical image - and reverence made to a crucifix - but in the sinner's heart that is changed by its power. Thanks again for sharing!

I'll be interested to know your ongoing though...

2012-03-28T03:40:20.061+11:00

I'll be interested to know your ongoing thoughts on this, Michael. I'm going through the book myself at the moment on my own blog.

All this should remind us that as teachers, we not...

2012-03-20T10:19:21.219+11:00

All this should remind us that as teachers, we not only have a responsibility for what we say, but also how it is received.
Our statements may be careful and balanced, but if we allow our students to take them, popularise them and end up spouting rubbish, then we haven't really done our job very well.
Worse still is when we use our careful, balanced statements to defend the rubbish being spouted.

To pick a controversial one, I've never heard a college lecturer explain Penal substitutionary atonement in a way that sounded like divine child abuse, but it is regular fare in our churches. And so sitting in the pews, the lecturer may have been careful and thoughtful, but, as Michael says 'who cares', because this is what has been passed on.

Interesting post. How far can we take the idea he...

2012-03-14T08:11:13.779+11:00

Interesting post. How far can we take the idea here? I thought of inserting a random guy called Paul into your statement in the place where you had Augustine. It reads:

Now, 'Paul' is somewhat similar to Paul, but not the same. Sure, find me an unread and untranslated sermon that shows that he didn't really think xyz, but in the final analysis, who cares?

Whoever this Paul character was, I think we should do what we can to present him in his own right for the sake of those who continue to read and develop upon "Paul’s" thoughts, who, all the while thought it was Paul who they were dealing with.

Perhaps Paul was an important theologian that we should work to get right. I think other theologians like Augustine, Owen and whoever else we might like to name should be understood in the same way: that the truth that they were trying to convey is the measure by which we understand the divergence or not of their thinking in the legacy that is attributed to them.

The whole discipline of historical theology does not need to be undermined because we cannot know exactly what a theologian believed. And with regard to the theologians changing their ideas and contradicting themselves, etc., surely this is one part of the historical theologian's work - to express this change and to show that, for example, Owen and ‘Owen’ is not univocal on all things atonement. In a sense keeping other theological disciplines accountable.

What is the role of the historical theology? I see at least four tasks: firstly, finding out what A believed; secondly, finding out what C believes; thirdly, finding out how C arrived from A; and fourthly, comparing and contrasting A and C.

Then of course, one would have to differentiate be...

2012-03-12T23:26:43.323+11:00

Then of course, one would have to differentiate between how theologians are traditionally thought to have been received, and how they really were received. For instance, there is a distinction between the Fathers and Calvin's use of 'the Fathers'... and also between 'Calvin's' use of 'the Fathers', and Calvin's use of 'the Fathers'. And there is also a contrast between 'Barth's' understanding of Calvin's use of 'the Fathers', and Barth's understanding of Calvin's use of 'the Fathers'.

This is why I'm in Biblical Studies...

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So Michael what do you think about this essay? I ...

2012-03-04T10:44:25.472+11:00

So Michael what do you think about this essay? I would be interested in your thoughts. I have not read it yet but only heard about it referenced in another talk and it does not seem to be in the public domain (that I can find).

For my part if the contrast is Morality as an outworking of Religion (like the Pharisees) vs. the Christian who relies totally on the grace and forgiveness of God and just gets on with the job in free and open relationship with God, then I agree, morality is not a useful working concept for the Christian.

Morality only leads to pride or self condemnation but we have no basis for pride, and how can we condemn ourselves if God does not?

regards Klaaky

Hi Michael, Thanks for this and looking forward t...

2012-03-01T00:11:51.701+11:00

Hi Michael,

Thanks for this and looking forward to continue our study on Luther in class.

Q, in regards to the scholary debate about the dating of Luther's discovery (or realizatin) of 'righteousness of God' in passive sense; don't you think (though we may never be able affirm it perfectly) it matters in the sense that

1) if Luther's discovery was early & instanteneous --- we could say that it was the doctrine of 'justification' which was the driving force and the origin of what drove Luther and the reformation

2) whereas if we say that Luther's discovery was gradual with later dating (1517-20), we will draw an inference that what drove Luther at first was the misconception of people that they could buy God's grace cheaply and in the process of these disputes Luther came to a new/rediscovery of 'justification by faith alone' which came to be at the heart of his theological system.

What do you think?

Hank

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