Fallen Into Knowledge

"According to the biblical Jewish and Christian traditions, God created the world for his glory, out..."

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:02:14 -0700

“According to the biblical Jewish and Christian traditions, God created the world for his glory, out of love; and the crown of creation is not the human being; it is the sabbath. It is true that, as the image of God, the human being has his special position in creation. But he stands together with all other earthly and heavenly beings in the same hymn of praise of God’s glory, and in the enjoyment of God’s sabbath pleasure over creation …. Even without human beings, the heavens declare the glory of God. This theocentric biblical world picture gives the human being, with his special position in the cosmos, the chance to understand himself as a member of the community of creation. So if Christian theology wants to find the wisdom in dealing with creations which accords with belief in creation, it must free that belief from the modern anthropocentric view of the world.”

- Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation, 31

A note on Alexander Kojeve

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:40:10 -0700

I may be the only one who finds this interesting, but: Alexander Kojeve, a Marxist philosopher whose lectures on Hegel have been so influential, also edited two volumes of “The Library of Christian Classics”: “The Later Works of Augustine” and “Early Medieval Theology.”

"To say that a theology or a philosophy is only a personal expression is to give up the enterprise..."

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:40:36 -0700

“To say that a theology or a philosophy is only a personal expression is to give up the enterprise altogether.”

- Paul Holmer, About “Understanding”

"I am working reasonably hard and wish I were a better man and had a better mind. These two things..."

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:35:58 -0700

“I am working reasonably hard and wish I were a better man and had a better mind. These two things are really one and the same—God help me!
AND
I am clear about one thing: I am far too bad to be able to theorize about myself; in fact, I shall either remain a swine or else I shall improve, and that’s that! Only let’s cut out the transcendental twaddle when the whole thing is as plain as a sock on the jaw.”

- Wittgenstein, in response to being criticized about his lack of faith.

Engelmann, Letters from Wittgenstein, pp.5,11.

"Most students in a modern university can be taught to read Hebrew and some will read a great deal...."

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:56:43 -0700

“Most students in a modern university can be taught to read Hebrew and some will read a great deal. Some will read so widely in ancient lore that they will have access to the history hidden from the rest of us. But if Kierkegaard is right, these skills and all the attendant advantages they bring will not add up to the capacity to understand Abraham. The difficulty here is not to be met with more information or even with an historical empathy.”

- Paul Holmer, “About Being a Person: Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.”

Possibly the best book I have read this year, and certainly the...

Fri, 27 May 2011 19:59:10 -0700

Possibly the best book I have read this year, and certainly the best book I have read on the book of Revelation.

Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Cambridge UP, 1993.

A Question for Students and Scholars

Tue, 17 May 2011 17:52:17 -0700

I’ve started a master’s degree in church history, and immediately I’ve been confronted with a technical problem: a proliferation of pdfs. Journal articles, book chapters and papers all delivered to me as pdf’s. This is clearly much better than having stacks of papers littering my office, but still presents and organizational challenge. My question for you fellow students and scholars: How do you organize all of these pdfs, specifically on OSX?

"The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products used every day..."

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 13:37:39 -0700

“The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products used every day have an effect on people and their well-being.”

- Dieter Rams (via putthison)

Spring, you are most welcome!

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:21:00 -0700

Spring, you are most welcome!

"…Suddenly all of them standing around the gallows know it: he is gone. Immeasurable emptiness (not..."

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 14:07:00 -0700

“

…Suddenly all of them standing around the gallows know it: he is gone. Immeasurable emptiness (not solitude) streams forth from the hanging body. Nothing but this fantastic emptiness is any longer at work here. The world with its shape has perished; it tore like a curtain from top to bottom, without making a sound. It fainted away, turned to dust, burst like a bubble. There is nothing more but nothingness itself.

The world is dead.

Love is dead.

God is dead.

Everything that was, was a dream dreamt by no one. The present is all past. The future is nothing. The hand has disappeared from the clock’s face. No more struggle between love and hate, between life and death. Both have been equalized, and love’s emptying out has become the emptiness of hell. One has penetrated the other perfectly. The nadir has reached the zenith: nirvana.
Was that lightning?

Was the form of a Heart visible in the boundless void for a flash as the sky was rent, drifting in the whirlwind through the worldless chaos, driven like a leaf?

Or was it winged, propelled and directed by its own invisible wings, standing as lone survivor between the soulless heavens and the perished earth?

Chaos. Beyond heaven and hell. Shapeless nothingness behind the bounds of creation.

Is that God?

God died on the Cross.

Is that death?

No dead are to be seen.

Is it the end?

Nothing that ends is any longer there.

Is it the beginning?

The beginning of what? In the beginning was the Word. What kind of word? What incomprehensible, formless, meaningless word? But look: What is this light glimmer that wavers and begins to take form in the endless void? It has neither content nor contour.

A nameless thing, more solitary than God, it emerges out of pure emptiness. It is no one. It is anterior to everything. Is it the beginning? It is small and undefined as a drop. Perhaps it is water. But it does not flow. It is not water. It is thicker, more opaque, more viscous than water. It is also not blood, for blood is red, blood is alive, blood has a loud human speech. This is neither water nor blood. It is older than both, a chaotic drop.

Slowly, slowly, unbelievably slowly the drop begins to quicken. We do not know whether this movement is infinite fatigue at death’s extremity or the first beginning - of what?

Quiet, quiet! Hold the breath of your thoughts! It’s still much too early in the day to think of hope. The seed is still much too weak to start whispering about love. But look there: it is indeed moving, a weak, viscous flow. It’s still much too early to speak of a wellspring.

It trickles, lost in the chaos, directionless, without gravity. But more copiously now. A wellspring in the chaos. It leaps out of pure nothingness, it leaps out of itself.

It is not the beginning of God, who eternally and mightily brings himself into existence as Life and Love and triune Bliss.

It is not the beginning of creation, which gently and in slumber slips out of the Creator’s hands.

It is a beginning without parallel, as if Life were arising from Death, as if weariness (already such weariness as no amount of sleep could ever dispel) and the uttermost decay of power were melting at creation’s outer edge, were beginning to flow, because flowing is perhaps a sign and a likeness of weariness which can no longer contain itself, because everything that is strong and solid must in the end dissolve into water. But hadn’t it - in the beginning - also been born from water? And is this wellspring in the chaos, this trickling weariness, not the beginning of a new creation?

The magic of Holy Saturday.

The chaotic fountain remains directionless. Could this be the residue of the Son’s love which, poured out to the last when every vessel cracked and the old world perished, is now making a path for itself to the Father through the glooms of nought?

Or, in spite of it all, is this love trickling on in impotence, unconsciously, laboriously, towards a new creation that does not yet even exist, a creation which is still to be lifted up and given shape? Is it a protoplasm producing itself in the beginning, the first seed of the New Heaven and the New Earth?

The spring leaps up even more plenteously. To be sure, it flows out of a wound and is like the blossom and fruit of a wound; like a tree it sprouts up from this wound. But the wound no longer causes pain. The suffering has been left far behind as the past origin and previous source of today’s wellspring.

What is poured out here is no longer a present suffering, but a suffering that has been concluded–no longer now a sacrificing love, but a love sacrificed.

Only the wound is there: gaping, the great open gate, the chaos, the nothingness out of which the wellspring leaps forth. Never again will this gate be shut. Just as the first creation arose ever anew out of sheer nothingness, so, too, this second world - still unborn, still caught up in its first rising - will have its sole origin in this wound, which is never to close again.

In the future, all shape must arise out of this gaping void, all wholeness must draw its strength from the creating wound.

High-vaulted triumphal Gate of Life! Armored in gold, armies of graces stream out of you with fiery lances. Deep-dug Fountain of Life! Wave upon wave gushes out of you inexhaustible, ever-flowing, billows of water and blood baptizing the heathen hearts, comforting the yearning souls, rushing over the deserts of guilt, enriching over-abundantly, overflowing every heart that receives it, far surpassing every desire.

”

- Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988)

Reposted from TitusOneNine

A dusting of snow makes the city beautiful.

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 09:24:27 -0800

A dusting of snow makes the city beautiful.

"If authors and publishers could ever agree on a ‘Ten Commandments for Biblical..."

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 14:49:57 -0800

“If authors and publishers could ever agree on a ‘Ten Commandments for Biblical Commentaries,’ they should certainly include ‘In thy commentary thou shalt always include indices.’”

- “Book Reviews.” JBL 102 (1983): 4

"Faith, hope, and love are three aspects of our patience with God; they are three ways of coming to..."

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:40:55 -0800

“Faith, hope, and love are three aspects of our patience with God; they are three ways of coming to terms with the experience of God’s hiddenness. They therefore offer a distinctly different path from either atheism or ‘facile belief.’ In contrast with those two frequently proposed shortcuts, however, their path is a long one indeed. It is a path, like the Exodus of the Israelites, that traverses wastelands and darkness. And yes, occasionally he path is also lost; it is a pilgrimage that involves constant searching and losing one’s way from time to time. Sometimes we must descend into the deepest abyss and the vale of shadows in order to find the path once more. But if it did not lead there it would not be the path to God; god does not dwell on the surface.”

- Thomas Halik, Patience with God

Photo

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 16:53:56 -0800

Christianity Today - "Polling Evangelicals: Cut Aid to World's Poor, Unemployed."

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 15:35:51 -0800

Christianity Today - "Polling Evangelicals: Cut Aid to World's Poor, Unemployed.":

“The top choices among evangelicals for the chopping block are economic assistance to needy people around the world (56 percent), government assistance for the unemployed (40 percent), and environmental protection (38 percent).”

"If we wish to state who Jesus Christ is, in every separate statement we must also state, or at least..."

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 11:54:00 -0800

“If we wish to state who Jesus Christ is, in every separate statement we must also state, or at least make clear - and inexorably so - that we’re speaking of the Lord of heaven and earth, who neither has nor did have any need of heaven or earth or man, who created them out of free love and according to His very own good pleasure, who adopts man, not according to the latter’s merit, but according to his own miraculous power. He is the Lord who in all His action is always Himself entirely and unalterably, in a manner free of all complications or ties, who in His works in the world and on man never ceases in the very slightest to be God, who does not give his glory to another. In this, as Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer, He is a truly loving, serving God. He is the King of all kings just when He enters in to the profoundest hiddenness in “meekness of heart.” This has to be said in every statement we make about Jesus Christ.”

- Barth, CD I/2 p133

Wisdom vs. Revelation

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 15:11:36 -0800

I’ve been thinking of ways of knowing and how “christian reasoning” works on a practical level. Here are a couple rough categories that I am working on:

Revelation: knowledge from outside, divine knowledge

Revelation is a knowing that interrupts our knowing, it needs neither logical explanation or “good sense:” Take 300 men and go fight against Midian” Revelation is self-authenticating, the revealer guarantees the efficacy of the revelation: Thus saith the Lord

Wisdom: Knowledge from below, earthly knowledge

Wisdom is knowing from below, it is human knowing - logic, experience, these are the pools from which wisdom pull. Wisdom requires authentication, requires reference to some system that certifies the wisdom; reasoning has to be sound, experience is probabilistic knowing and has to be vindicated by new reality.

Christians appeal to both of these categories in the context of decision making. We say:

“It seems that X is right” (Wisdom)

“We know that X is right” (Wisdom)

“The Lord told me X” (Revelation)

“Scripture says that we should do X” (Wisdom)

“I’ve prayed about X and feel led” (Revelation)

One distinction between these ways of knowing, at least as it concerns “Christians reasoning,” is that wisdom is public knowing, revelation is (mostly) private knowing. Another distinction: Revelation is a higher order of knowing than wisdom for Christians: If God tells us to water the garden, it does not matter whether it is raining. I really don’t want to exclude either forms of knowing from “christian reasoning.”

I am wondering how revelation functions when Christians discuss together about a decision that needs to be made: in public decision making. Perhaps an illustration is in order: A church committee is tasked with deciding whether the church should buy a new building, since they have outgrown the current building. During one of the committee meetings John says, “our budget cannot sustain this move.” Steve says, “I think that, based on Matthew 28:19, God would want us to move to a bigger space.” Stacy says, “I was praying about this move and I am certain that God is telling us to move to the building on 4th street.”

John and Stacy make different kinds of claims, and their claims have different effects on the committee’s ability to make a decision: If I were to disagree with John’s claim, I have only to demonstrate how the budget can sustain a move: we appeal to a document available to the whole committee. Steve’s claim works much in the same way; if I disagree I can explain how his interpretation of Scripture is inadequate. How could I disagree with Stacy’s claim? It seems that I can only agree or disagree that Stacy has, in fact, heard from God. And, how can any other committee member know? When one person makes an appeal to revelation in the process of making a decision, that person seems to exclude their conversation partners from the reasoning process, we can only trust the veracity of the report of revelation (and its content). How can the conversation continue?

Here’s my question: Is it (and when is it) appropriate for christians to appeal to revelation in the course of group decision making?

Zizek; "Europe must move beyond mere tolerance"

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 11:35:21 -0800

Zizek; "Europe must move beyond mere tolerance":

Zizek understands the political significance of Paul’s comments in Galatians 3 and Colossians 3 better than most Christians, it seems. Unfortunately he hopes for a revolutionary community without Christ.

"When I really give anyone my time, I thereby give him the last and most personal thing that I have..."

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:13:18 -0800

“When I really give anyone my time, I thereby give him the last and most personal thing that I have to give at all, namely myself. If I do not give him my time, I certainly continue to be his debtor in everything, even though in other ways I give him ever so much. The difference at once to be noticed between out having time for others and God’s having time for us is twofold, that if God goes us time, He who deals with us is He who alone has a genuine, real time to give, and that He gives us this time not just partially, not with all sorts of reservations and qualifications, such as are habitual with us when giving to others, but entirely. The fulfillment of time that took place in Jesus is not just an alms from the divine riches; if, according to Gal. 4:4, Jesus Christ is the “pleroma [fulness] of the time,” we have to remember that, according to Col. 2:2, “in him dwelleth all the pleroma of the Godhead bodily.””

- Karl Barth, CD I/2 p.55

Section 14 provides explanation of this statement: “God’s revelation in the event of the presence of Jesus Christ is God’s time for us.” Or, more briefly: “God has time for us.”

So far, a fascinating section. I am looking forward to exploring the relationship between Barth’s “revelation time” and Benjamin’s “messianic time.”

This is pretty much what I imagine heaven will be like. Books...

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:26:20 -0800

This is pretty much what I imagine heaven will be like. Books and an Eames Lounge chair.