Geoff's Miscellany

One of my favorite poets is George Herbert.

One of the most important spiritual disciplines is practicing God's presence (in the sense of calling God and the things pertaining to him to mind throughout the day).

Thus, one of my greatest delights is this poem:

The Elixir

TEach me, my God and King,
        In all things thee to see,
And what I do in any thing,
        To do it as for thee:
        Not rudely, as a beast,
        To runne into an action;
But still to make thee prepossest,
        And give it his perfection.

In a previous post I proposed the gospel message (or the kerygmatic traditions) as the center of New Testament theology, not as a theme but as the historical reality behind the rhetoric and theological reasoning found in our New Testament. Now I propose a helpful distinction within the New Testament itself:

Gospel Saying vs Gospel Describing

In our New Testaments we have the four gospels, the sermons in Acts, and the brief allusions to the gospel's actual content in Paul's letters. But we also have sections wherein the gospel is not referred to by name, but is nevertheless the referent.

One gets the impression in the vigor of youth, that growing up is a restless evil and filled with meaningless trivialities. And while certain versions of growing up like growing weak-willed, being obsessed with sports, or having an unhappy marriage really are silly and should be avoided, other parts really aren't all that bad. It's almost as if, in the absence of certain evils that destroy the beauty of life for many around the world, that growing up is wonderful.

I propose that at the center of New Testament Theology, descriptively, lies the gospel about Jesus.

This means that though the gospel message is expressed differently among the NT authors or even is not mentioned by name in some books, it is the controlling narrative or central notion of all of the books in the New Testament. Here's how it looks:

1. The four gospels are the gospel of the early church in biographical format.
2. Acts is a summary of how the apostles spread the gospel of Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. Also, Acts contains several sermons that follow the same outline as the four gospels (despite how weird John is).
3. The epistles and the apocalypse are all, in some way, a call to show fidelity to the message of Jesus and his apostles.

This has several advantages:

Last night we held my great-grandfather's memorial service. Here's his obituary.

He made it to 101. I got to officiate the service, though his Catholic funeral will be held this morning.

We had time for members of the family and community to express their fond memories, but I asked especially for stories of Grandfather's service to others after a reading from Mark 10. He had a tendency to keep his service to others quiet. A legend even circulated in my youth, that turned out to be true, that he gave land to the school system, but didn't want the school named after him so he deeded it to a friend in secret so that he wouldn't be named. His friend spilled the beans, but it was a noble effort.

http://avery-reflectivejourney.blogspot.com/2014/08/re-thinking-ordinary.html

Here's my favorite bit:

I’ve had to re-think how I view the Christian life and one thing I’ve had to admit to myself is that my desire to do big things and have an impact was driven in large part by the desire to feel significant. And the motivation to feel important and significant is drawn towards words like radical and runs from words like ordinary. The desire to make an impact might have more to do with boosting my self-esteem than it does with calling or vocation or long-term commitment. It’s not that these desires are wrong. They are wired into all of us.

Jim West, in a post I cannot find, says that the two presuppositions for understanding the gospels aright are:

1. Jesus was God in the Flesh
2. Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi.

I've been reflecting upon these. Whatever you think of Jim West (I think he's from outer space, some think he is as timeless as the moon and stars, and others think he's fairly eccentric), I think he's got this right. More in the future.

This week I restart college in a very official way. Yesterday I got off of work at 4, took a brief break, then went to Calculus 3 until 9pm.

Today I learn, or rather re-learn because what I know is dated, computer programming. Then I take fundamentals of engineering, followed by Physics. Working as a teacher 3 days a week and going to college four days a week may prove to best me. But I have a feeling that my hypothesis remains true: If you can learn to read Greek and Hebrew, you can learn anything. There is simply no reason to suppose that school, though long and tiresome, won't prove fairly easy once again.

The imaginative atheist

The Historically Errant Atheist

As has been pointed out by many esteemed thinkers, this is the insidious nature of "moderate" religion. It makes it all so reasonable to respect and treasure "fantastic propositions" that can be believed without evidence and that it's only extremists who distort the "truth".

The Potentially Violent Atheist

The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to some people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified in killing them in self-defense. This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.

The Historically Errant Atheist

I am teaching a class on the gospels. My first tendency is to think: the content of each book, it’s relationship to the Old Testament, and then a synthesis of all four seems best. It will keep things interesting as we focus on Jesus and we can compare intertexts with the rest of the New Testament. But, then people won’t learn all the stuff that is kinda important but really doesn’t help you read the gospels because it is so much conjecture: dating, who copied who, what sources lie behind the texts etc.