The Age of Television - a Eulogy

The great age of television lasted in Australia from 1960 to 1997. These were the years after the age of the radio and before the internet. It was a generation long, perhaps two. My parents worried that I watched too much TV, but I watched far more than my children do. I have to encourage them: 'do you wanna watch TV?' TV producers recognise this and retread 70s programmes like Doctor Who. Increasingly, TV combs back over its own archives and creates 'classics'.

It is still the case that our lounge rooms are arranged with the seats facing the TV screen, as they would have once been arranged around the fire. The TV is that warm glow against which we warm ourselves - that little box of radiance and enlightenment.

In that period, television had the power to make events as well as record them. We sometimes scoff at the expression ‘television history’; but I don’t think it is an underestimation. The presence of TV cameras made Vietnam an unwinnable war in the public imagination. The Moon landings would not have happened without TV. It is said that the Berlin Wall fell because a TV news reporter mistakenly declared that it had fallen – and so the huge crowds surged to the gates and tore it down.

Television united human beings in single moments more than was ever thought possible. We can be part of a bigger crowd than can actually gather together in one spot- it gives us the ability to be present when we are distant. The thought of 100 million people watching the same event beggars the imagination. But TV made it possible. I remember growing up in Britain in the 70s when there were only three stations for 60 million people. 20 million people would watch the same drivel on Saturday night!

Now that power has largely dissipated; the audience has fragmented. bloggers and tweeters do it better. TV’s great weakness was that it didn’t allow its audience to answer back. It preached at us. Only latterly has it woken up to the possibilities of breaking through the glass and inviting us to take control – through reality TV and through associated technologies like the mobile phone.

In case there is any doubt....

http://himanintroduction.blogspot.com/2008/12/hell-of-problem_15.html

let the reader understand.

Compiling a freedom of speech reading list

I am contemplating some research on freedom of speech and its relation to Christianity (naturally), and its (partial) roots in a Christian understanding of persuasion.

Reading suggestions anyone?

Current Reading List for Theological Anthropology MA

(gold star to anyone who can add up how many pages this is).

Barth, Karl. "The Humanity of God." In The Humanity of God. London: Collins, 1967, pp. 33-64 (32pp)

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge. London: SCM, 1999, pp.3-17, 294-300, 369-70 (15pp)

________. Ethics. Translated by R. Krauss, C. West and D. Stott. Vol. 6 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, ed. Clifford J. Green. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005, pp. 76-102 (27pp)

Calvin, Jean, A Harmony of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. 3 vols. Calvin's Commentaries (Oliver & Boyd). Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1972, pp. 133-143 (11pp)

Cameron, Andrew J.B., G.J. Clarke, and Michael P. Jensen. "Towards a Christian Understanding of the Concept of Human 'Community', with Special Reference to the Praxis of a Non-Government Human Services Delivery Organisation." Evangelical Review of Society and Politics 3, no. 2 (2009): 22-41. (19pp)

Carroll, John. The Wreck of Western Culture : Humanism Revisited. Rev. ed. Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe Pubications, 2004, pp.1-9, 51-59 (20pp)

Cavanaugh, William T. Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ Challenges in Contemporary Theology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998, pp. 34-58 (25pp)

Coakley, Sarah. "The Eschatological Body: Gender, Transformation and God." In Powers and Submissions : Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002, pp. 153-167 (14pp)

Darwin, Charles, and J. W. Burrow. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection : Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 1985, pp. 65-69 (5pp)

De Botton, Alain. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2009, pp. 106-128 (23pp)

Erasmus, Desiderius, Martin Luther, E. Gordon Rupp, A. N. Marlow, Philip S. Watson, and Benjamin Drewery. Luther and Erasmus : Free Will and Salvation. London: S.C.M. Press, 1969. pp. 41-42, 89-91, 139-143 (10pp)

Gaita, Raimond. The Philosopher's Dog. London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 39-64 (26pp)

Gregersen, Niels Henrik. "Trial and Temptation: An Essay in the Multiple Logics of Faith." Theology Today 57, no. 3 (2000): 325-343. (18pp)

Gregory, of Nyssa. "On the Making of Man." In Select Writings and Letters, Tr., with Prolegomena, Notes and Indices, by W. Moore and H.A. Wilson ed. William Moore and H.A. Wilson,. Oxford, 1893, pp. 387-406 (19pp)

Irigaray, Luce. "Equal to Whom?" In The Postmodern God : A Theological Reader, ed. Graham Ward, 198-213. Cambridge, Mass. ; Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, pp. 198-213 (15pp)

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience : A Study in Human Nature Penguin Classics. New York ; London: Penguin Books, 1985, pp. 485-519 (35pp)

Jensen, Michael P. "In Spirit and in Truth - Can Charles Taylor Help the Woman at the Well Find Her Authentic Self?" Studies in Christian Ethics 21, no. 3, (2008), 325-341 (16pp)

Jensen, Michael P. "White Teeth and the New Humanity." Sydney: CASE, 2004. (8pp)

Kafka, Franz, and Nahum Norbert Glatzer. The Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka. London: Vintage, 2005, pp. 150-177 (27pp)

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Coming of God : Christian Eschatology. London: SCM Press, 1996, pp.323-339 (17pp)

Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 25-29 (5pp)

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. "Human Being: Individual and Social." In The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. C.E.Gunton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 158-188 (30pp)

Volf, Miroslav. Work in the Spirit : Toward a Theology of Work. New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 89-122 (34pp)

Williams, Rowan. ‘Being Alone’ in Open to Judgement : Sermons and Addresses. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1994, pp. 143-149 (7pp)

Bizarrely, more Turretin

Turretin argues strongly that the doctrines of faith and practices can be legitmately proved by 'consequences' drawn from Scripture. Which is to say: the lack of an express word of Scripture about a certain doctrine is not a sufficient argument to countersay the claim it makes. Turretin points to the famous heretics of the church who have used exactly this strategy - the Arians and the Macedonians in particular. The Arians denied the homoousion just because it was not contained in so many words in Scripture (says FT). Gregory of Naziansus called the Macedonian (who denied the divinity of the Spirit) 'an ABC Sophist and a pettifogger of words'. In Turretin's time, he observed this strategy being used by his Catholic opponents.

A thing may be in Scripture kata lexin or kata dianoian: expressly, or implicitly. To say that all things necessary for Christian doctrine are contained in Scripture and that Scripture is sufficient means the latter rather than the former. So the sufficiency and perfection of the Scriptures does not consist in their condemning all errors and heresies by name, but only in their announcing all positive doctrines clearly (1.12.7).

Turretin could point to a number of evidences for the use of consequences to establish authoritative teaching and practice - and even the practice of Jesus and the apostles as they read the OT. Proving that Jesus was the Messiah was not a matter of explicit statement in the OT, but rather inference.

It is appropriate for the theologian to use reason in the development of consequences from Scripture because, though fallible reason is an inappropriate foundation for knowledge, it is a suitable instrument for it. In adducing theological conclusions, there is need for faith and the operation of the Holy Spirit; but reason may be the means for the operation of these. So:

Although reason concurs in educing consequences, it does not follow that faith is established by reason; as, although faith cometh by hearing, yet the senses are not the foundation of faith; faith uses readon, is not built upon it. It uses it as an instrument of application and mode of knowledge, but is not built upon it as a foundation and rule of things to be believed.

All wonderful and interesting stuff.

William Perkins: the Golden Chaine

Here is the great Elizabethan 'Puritan' (it is a somewhat anachronistic term) William Perkins on Scripture and Theology:

The body of Scripture is a doctrine sufficient to live well. It comprehendeth many holy sciences, whereof one is principal, others are handmainds or retainers. The principal science is theology. Theology is the science of living blessedly for ever. Blessed life ariseth from the knowledge of God and therefore it ariseth likewise from the knowledge of ourselves, because we know God by looking into ourselves. Theology has two parts: the first of God, the second of his works.

You can see Calvin's great opening to the Institutes coming back here. The emphasis on theology as a practical science and not just a theoretical one is a theme that comes from Calvin and returns in Turretin, too.

Introducing... Francis Turretin

I have been researching the doyen of Reformed Scholastic theologians, Francis Turretin, for a course called Reformed Greats. Of course, Richard A Muller's writings have been my constant companion on the journey.

Descended from Italian stock, Francis Turretin was the son of a leading Swiss theologian, Benedict Turretin, who had himself been a proponent of the kind of Calvinism formulated at the Synod of Dordt. Though he was educated in a variety of European faculties – Leiden, Utrecht, Paris, Saumer, Montaubon and Nimes – Turretin was a man of Geneva through and through. He was born and died in the city, and spent the greater part of his career there.

Appointed the pastor of the Italian congregation in Geneva in 1647, he became a professor of theology in 1653. He was a co-sponsor of the Helvetic Formula Consensus (1675), in which the views of Moses Amyraut were rejected – and which all candidates for the ministry were required to sign. His major work, the four volume Institutes of Elenctic Theology were published in 1688.

Turretin provides a great example of a rigorous attempt to think through the prolegomena to theology - a topic the Reformers had somewhat neglected. What kind of thinking is theology? It can be considered either systematically as a discipline or, more subjectively, as 'a habit residing in the intellect'. Systematically, theology can be classified as doctrine. But Turretin insists that the types of mental disposition or habitus need an analysis. The question is: what habit of mind leads to the due reception of the doctrine of the church for our salvation?

Turretin outlines a trio of mental dispositions - knowing, believing and supposing. For each habit or disposition there is an appropriate act of assent. If assent depends on reasoning, then the habit in question is scientia; if it depends on testimony, then the habit is fides; if it is a question of opinion or probability, the opinio. (I am cribbing from Muller here).

Theology appears to depend for assent on testimony, and so its habit is that of fides. Theology is only roughly similar to scientia-type disciplines - it has a supernatural basis stemming from divine revelation, and it mixes both pratical and theoretical knowledge in a way unlike the intellectual disciplines.

It's the truth

Ok, so it's been a long, long time between blogging drinks. I have to say, I lost my blogging mojo for a while there. Went on holidays...



While there, I read Raimond Gaita's A Common Humanity, and was struck there by an intriguing essay on truth and knowledge. Gaita asks: are we entitled to dismiss the claims of the flat earth society without even investigating them? Ought the teaching of David Irvine, holocaust-denier extraordinaire, be suppressed? Or ought we allow him full airplay and answer his claims one-by-one? Can I just dismiss climate change sceptic Ian Plimer - or does his mantra 'you aren't a scientist!' actually mean I can say nothing? Trouble is of course, I am called upon to have an opinion on these matters in which I am clearly not even remotely expert. Neutrality isn't possible. Given that I am interested in believing what is true and not being fooled - what am entitled to believe?



See, the thing is: I bet Irvine would have me for breakfast in a debate. He knows far more about German history than I ever will. He is an experienced debater and speaker. He has spent years with the sources. Likewise, I am sure that a flat-earth society member can marshall geological arguments far better than I will be able to. Plimer would chew me up and spit me out.



So am I entitled to just dismiss their claims out of hand? Isn't this unscholarly, and even dishonest? And further: isn't it the case that great scientific advances in the past have frequently come from mavericks, eccentrics and oddballs? If I dismiss Irving and the flat-earthers, could it not be said of me that I would also have dismissed a Galileo or a Luther?



Well perhaps. But the fact that mavericks are sometimes right does not mean that mavericks are always or even usually right. In fact, the opposite is the case. Human knowledge is a shared exercise, necessarily. It depends on many small acts of trust. We ought to recognise this and be appropriately modest about what we claim. Scholarly consensus CAN be skewed, or plain wrong. Truth is not an exercise in democracy. But that does not entitle us to dismiss what the clear majority of experts are saying in our time. And we are completely entitled to treat Irving, and flat earthers as eccentrics and oddballs.



Further, the nature of the human grasp of the truth is that there will always be space for Irvings and Plimers. Scientific knowledge proceeds far more precariously and contentiously than we sometimes imagine - let alone the business of history. The very nature of the way we know things - indirectly, by report, by building on premises we haven't got time to test, by following the best opinions to which we have access - means that it will always be possible to through mud in the air.



Which leads me to creation science. Am I entitled to dismiss the claims of the creation science movement? Creation scientists (so-called) have an enormous amount of apparently scientific and apparently theological detail at their disposal. Some very intelligent people with degrees in the appropriate areas hold to young earth creationist views. It is sometimes the case that the wider scientific community has got important data wrong. Consensus hasn't always worked as a lodestone for the truth.

But that doesn't make young earth creation science right, or even remotely plausible. In fact quite the opposite is the case. It trades on the uncertainty we have with all knowledge, and uses some highly charged theological rhetoric to bully Christians into believing it. I think it actually that it is high time that evangelical Christians stopped tolerating it in our midst. We have to stop saying 'some very godly people hold to this view' as if this some excuse for it. The godliness of the people concerned is not the point. We don't have to embrace unchecked credulity when it comes to what scientists claim as an alterative.

Frank Turner on John Henry Newman

In preparation for teaching in 2010, I have been reading Frank Turner's biography of John Henry Newman. Last year I read Ian Ker's biography, which was as detailed as it was unenlightening- comprehensive, but lacking in insight.

Turner is quite the opposite. He seeks to understand the Newman of the Oxford movement, before his self-justifying autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua and his own revisions of his early works. His view is that the early Newman was driven chiefly by a visceral hatred of evangelicalism.

Here is Turner:

Asceticism, not antierastianism, lay at the core of Tractarianism. more than any othe rsingle factor, the desire for the pursuit of obedience through novel, ascetic devotional practices led Newman and the others first to reject evangelical theology as manifested among both Dissenters and fellow members of the Church of England, then to press for a broader reading of the 39 Articles, an dfinally to undertake a monastic experiment with the English Church. (p. 109)

Tractarian hostilty to evangelical teaching on justification by faith, ecclesiology, scripture's authority and assurance were at the centre of the movement, then. Turner reminds us that in Victorian England the evangelical movement was at its height in and out of the established church. It is hard to believe that if you have grown up in the mid/late twentieth century context, in which Liberal Catholic Anglicans convinced the Anglican world that its novelties were traditional and that evangelicalism was aberrant and somehow 'not Anglican'.

Gender and langauge

My recent article on Unleashed prompted some of the most inane commentary I have ever read. I really didn't think the article was that complicated, but the point seems to have eluded most of the commenters.

One person even chided me for using the feminine pronoun in this paragraph:

The scholar with this sort of claim - and believe me, they aren't modest about it - imagines herself sublimely objective in this, uniquely capable of divesting herself of all vestiges of her home culture and its variety of faith.

This was, she claimed, further evidence of Sydney Anglican misogyny. Because I had chosen the feminine pronoun to describe a generic person who I was viewing negatively, ergo, I am being chauvanistic. She said 'gender-neutrality' is the only way forward here.

I accept the diagnosis that gender-specific langauge is problematic and needs to be changed as far as possible, especially in cases where no specific gender is meant. Consistently to say 'he' when I mean 'a person' is not a pratice I wish to continue. I cannot fathom why people insist that their Bible translations continue to display a gender-specificity not found even in the original languages.

However, I don't think gender-neutrality is desirable or even possible. Human beings are gendered! Added to which, the gender-neutral options (h/she, they etc) are clunky. So, my solution - and it is certainly not my original solution - is to alternate 'he' and 'she'. That means that sometimes a 'she' will be a villain. Fair enough?

I have seen this practice in academic writing all over the world, though not universally.

I don't think this will work with 'Man' as a generic term, however. It is still the case that if you said 'Woman' when you meant 'Humankind' you would miscommunicate. And I note that Germaine Greer recently said 'mankind' on TV!

BTW, my absolute pet hate when in comes to prescriptive changes in linguistic usage is the word 'Godself' as the alternative to the reflexive pronoun 'Himself'. It makes me want to barf with the self-conscious holier-than-thou political correctness of it.

The Humanity of God - Karl Barth

What does it mean to speak of 'the humanity of God'? Barth says:

...it is bound to mean God's relation to and turning towards man. It signifies the God who speaks with man in his promise and command. It represents God's existence, intercession, and activity for man, the intercourse God holds with him, and the free grace in which He wills to be and is nothing other than the God of man.

In the nineteenth century, theology spoke rather of the divinity of man. This was disastrous for theology, as it was indeed for the whole culture. In response, the dialectical theology of the 1920s sought to recapture the deity of God - his abosolute otherness and strangeness to humankind. That is: 'God's independence and particular character, no only in relation to the natural but also to the spiritual cosmos; God's absolutely unique existence, might and initiative, above all, in His relation to man.'

If this is to be developed or revised, it is in no way the case that this God-ness of God is to be jettisoned. But Barth admits that it was still the case that in this return to God's deity there was the possibility that all human activity and even existence would be rendered void. What he needed to remember was that God's sovereignty is a matter of God's sovereign togetherness with man - grounded absolutely and utterly in God alone, but a togetherness with man nonetheless. It is precisely God's deity which, rightly understood, includes his humanity.

This is of course a Christological statement. Actually, if we had begun (says Barth) from Christology the problem would have been non-existent. In Christ man and God are not isolated from one another - we see man exalted and God humbled in this one Person. And Jesus Christ is the Revealer of them both - he tells us what, or who, God is, and he also declares what or who Man is. In the existence of Jesus Christ there is no doubt that the priority rests with the free action of God in his condescension. 'Superiority preceding subordination.'

BUT: God's freedom in Jesus Christ is his freedom for love. God's sovereignty is what it is in light of his love for people. 'God's deity is thus no prison in which He can exist only in and for Himself'. [This seems to be counter to the emphasis in some latter US New Calvinist thought, which pictures God as always utterly self-reflexively self-interested.] When we look at Jesus we can see that God's deity includes (therefore) his humanity. In God's deity there is enough room for communion with man. God does not exist without man - not because God has any need for man to be truly God, or because in any sense he exists merely for the human being, but becasue it is in fact the case that he chooses to be with man as his partner.

So: 'in this divinely free volition and election, in this sovereign decision... God is human.'

Imagine no religion

At ABC unleashed - my article.

Let the thing be what it is

Two questions to ask pastors:

1) Why is it that in wedding sermons these days almost no mention is made of marriage and that the wedding sermon is a naked attempt to sneak in an evangelistic talk to the pagan relatives? Isn't this almost entirely counterproduction AND an opportunity to reflect on scripture's teaching about marriage lost? And why does such a sermon have to go for 20+ minutes - it's a wedding for heaven's sake!

2) Why, on the one day of the year that non-church goers venture into a church building, that day when they come in the (it turns out) vain hope that they might get to sing some Christmas carols, do we insist on singing as few Christmas carols as possible? What the?

Lifted by Sam Allberry

A new book has just been published by IVP in the UK on a subject that will immediately interest any Christian.

It’s on the resurrection. It’s called Lifted, and it’s written by Sam Allberry, whom I got to know in Oxford. Sam has had a powerful ministry amongst undergraduates at Oxford University for a number years. And he knows how to cook Thai food like no-one else I know.

Sam hasn’t just written about the details though – about the eyewitnesses and the empty tomb and the appearances and so on. He tells us of how, as he started to consider the Bible’s teaching about the implications of the resurrection, whole new vistas opened up before him:

It has shed light on a Christian landscape that I’d spent so much time in without even realizing it. The contours, twists and turns that I’ve been navigating for years – sometimes with frustration, sometimes with exhilaration – are now more visible. I can now make sense of them in the light of this extraordinary doctrine. The truth and reality of the resurrection illuminates the detail of so much of our everyday Christian experience.

It’s a book about having a changed perspective, because we can see how things really are. That’s what the resurrection of Jesus gives us. This experience then drives the books four chapters: ‘Assurance’ ‘Hope’ ‘Transformation’ ‘Mission’.

I think the chapter I found most helpful was the one on hope:

The Bible speaks of hope as something we have. It is about looking forward to something that is certain. I have the hope of eternity with Christ. We still don’t control the thing for which we have hope, but God does and has promised eternity to us. There is no degree of risk or disappointment. This hope cannot be frustrated by anyone. Unlike all our other expressions of hope, this is hope that won’t disappoint us (as Paul says in Romans 5:5). It is guaranteed by God himself and bears his signature: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This sort of hope makes living possible, for it gives us a future. Part of what makes us human is the ability to consider the future. We can’t help but be conscious of it. And we need to be. We need to have a future which is, to some extent, sorted out. We need to have hope.

All Christian people need to know the great joy of living in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Sam has done us all a favour in writing such a engaging and readable book about such a vital subject. It is by turns amusing, moving, encouraging and profound. Truly, Sam helps us to look to a familiar horizon with fresh eyes. Lifted is a book that could easily form the centre of a discussion group, but any individual reader will be – well, ‘lifted’! – by what they find here.

Psalm 119:89-96 audio

Psalm 119:89-96

Psalm 119:9-16 audio

Psalm 119:9-16

5. Psalm 119:9-16

5. The beginning of an affair: learning to love the Bible
Can the words of this Psalm become our words? Can we see where he is coming from? We live in very different circumstances to this Psalmist – but we have the same God who speaks. For him ‘the word of God’ meant the Bible he had, which was the first five books of our Bible. But even from them he knew God as a God who promises and commands, a God whose word is powerful to create and powerful to redeem.

Of course we now know this reality in 3D – because we have in Jesus Christ the final and decisive and most glorious Word of God, whom the law and the prophets foretold. We know from him not only that God is holy and righteous, and takes our sin very seriously, but also that he is merciful and kind and will in him forgive us our sin and lead us into all kinds of acts of righteousness. When come to the word about Jesus Christ we find that God himself meets us there. And so even more than this nerdy Psalmist, we have reason to delight in the word of God!

So – how can we learn to love the Bible like this guy does?
1. We need to remember the remarkable benefits we have from this book. We have in it an insight into the mind of our creator. We have in it his means of telling us, turning us and tethering us to himself. We have no other lifeline than we find here in its pages, no better guidance. We can’t live on bread alone – but we need the word of God. And here we have it! How could we ignore it?

2. It is right to have habits and practices that embed the word of God into your life – that make it part of you. We are rightly afraid of a dry legalism that makes us think we are right with God just because we perform certain activities. Even reading the Bible can become like that. But that shouldn’t put us off – as human beings we need all the help we can get. We get tired, distracted and bored. Like anything else, reading the Bible takes practice – and practice makes it all better.

Thirty Nine Articles - new pieces

I have been blogging vigorously on the Thirty-Nine Articles - which explains some of the extended silences here.

Article 24

Article 25

Article 26

Article 27

Article 28

Article 29

Article 30

Article 31

Article 32

Article 33

Article 34

Article 35

4. Psalm 119:9-16

4. The Word in heart bursts out through delighted lips vs 13-16
So, in the second half of our passage today we see that the Psalmist can’t contain himself – his heart, filled with the word of God overflows onto his delighted lips. He puts the laws that come from the mouth of God into his own mouth, and recounts them, speaking them aloud to himself (vs 13). He ‘rejoices in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches’ (vs 14) – he’s like a lottery winner in his elation. As he reads and mediates, he rejoices and delights. And why wouldn’t he, knowing what these words contain – not condemnation, but life.

That word ‘meditate’ distracts us a bit, because we are used to associating it with the more Eastern practice of meditation, in which you are supposed to clear your mind of all words and thoughts and listen to the sound of one hand clapping (or whatever it is), or by humming a mantra, which is a meaningless sound like ‘Om’.
In Biblical faith, there is a place for solitary contemplation. But in the Bible, meditation is inescapably a verbal thing – it is always a matter of relating the Word of God, since that is how God chooses to relate to us. Its focus is the text and what it says. If God has revealed himself in words, then the way to know him and to be known by him is not to rid yourself of words – rather, it is to immerse yourself in them. If these words have a divine origin, then to know God is to know these words – and to know them deeply is to know God deeply.

And what our ancient poet does is to read these words aloud to himself. Truth be told, the practice of silent reading is a relatively recent one – about 1000 years old. Ancient libraries would have been very noisy places, because even reading to yourself was still reading aloud. But there’s something we miss by not reading aloud – when we read or sing or recite the words of God, the words in a sense become our words. These words are not magic formulas, or spells – but when we say them, even if only to ourselves, they are powerful and effective. These words can so possess us that they become our words.

New Moore site!

Hey, I shoulda said so a week or so back -

but Moore College has an exciting new very Newtowny website.

One of the absolute highlights is the 'featured resources' section - in which you can access mp3s of talks and sermons given at Moore over a period of 30 or 40 years or so. Look out for a lecture by Helmut Thielicke which should be popping up soon.