Perichoresis

For MTC second year students who still want to keep thinking about Doctrine ("why bother, the exam is more than a year away" I hear some of you say), Halden at http://inhabitatiodei.wordpress.com , has had an interesting series on perichoresis this month. Halden, (prodigious if somewhat controversial) is always worth a read

The best writer of short books

Richard Bauckham is about to release his tome on Christology, "Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity".
It looks like it will be an expansion on God Crucified, a short book on Jesus' divine identity that rocked my world a few years back. It really is one of the best short books around.
Just about anything by Bauckham is worth a look, but he seems to have a knack with short books that hit the nail on the head.
I highly recommend " Bible and Mission: Christian witness in a post modern world".
In 112 pages, Bauckham gives an excellent biblical theology of mission, and then, get this, and then he bothers relating that to our current globalized context. Fantastic! One gets the impression that the area of the world most in need of truthful witness and mission is the affluent West.
On 1 Corinthians 1:26-29
"At Corinth- and Paul certainly does not mean only at Corinth- God singled out the poor and the powerless, choosing to begin his work with them, not because God's love does not extend to the cultural and social elite, but actually for the sake of the wealthy and the powerful as well as for the poor and the humble. God's love has to reach the strong via the weak, because the strong can receive the love of God only by abandoning their pretensions to status above others" pp50

If this is the case, perhaps a church plant to reach the business people of Sydney CBD should be started by the homeless of the CBD.
We should view the poor, useless, untrained, unteachable and ungifted in our churches as our greatest evangelistic asset.

.......on church and world

"The Universal Church is today, it seems to me, more definitely set against the World than at any time since Pagan Rome. I do not mean that our times are particularly corrupt; all times are corrupt. In spite of certain local appearances, Christianity is not and cannot be within measurable time, 'official'. The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide."

How patient should the church be?

Guess the author and date

Volf on judgement

“God will judge, not because God gives people what they deserve, but because some people refuse to revieve what no one deserves; if evildoers experience God’s terror, it will not be because they have done evil, but because they have resisted to the end the powerful lure of the open arms of Jesus”
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 298

Barba on training

" Let us understand each other, however: it is not by killing oneself with exhaustion that one becomes creative. It is not on command, by forcing, that one opens ones self to others. Training is not a form of personal asceticism, a malevolent harshness against oneself, a persecuting of the body. Training puts one's own intentions to the test, how far one is prepared to pay with one's own person for all that one believes and declares. It is the possibility of brisging the gap between intention and realization. This daily task, obstinate, patient, often in darkness, sometimes even searching for a meaning for it, is a concrete factor in the transformation of the actor as a man and as a member of the group. This imperceptible daily transformation of one's own way of seeing, approaching and judging the problems of one's own existence and that of others, this sifting of one's own prejudices, one's own doubts- not through gestures and grandiloquent phrases but through the silent daily activity- is reflected in one's work which finds new justifications, new reactions: thus one's north is displaced"
Eugenio Barba ' Words or Presence'

Of course, he is speaking of actor training.

But hey, if corporate training types are allowed to lecture us about training and development, why not a director?

Especially on the role of disciplined practice (so here I'm thinking especially meditation on the scriptures and prayer) "thus one's north is displaced"!

Spirituality?

What do you think of when you hear the word 'spirituality'?

We were having a discussion at college about this a couple of days ago. Most of the responses were fairly negative.

I threw in the view that is gently pushed at my church, that spirituality is the shape of your life before God, so that mundane things, like serving others morning tea, is part of your spirituality.

The lecturer liked it.

One student called out from across the room. "Michael goes to a hippy church"

I mustered my best Cartman voice

"AYY!, SCREW YOU!"

Most unspiritual

Brueggemann on Quarrels

"The insistence of gospel-rooted social action is a dream of a genuinely covenantal community of neighbors. That finally is what the "kingdom of God" means. But covenantal neighborliness is a demanding alternative in the world, one deeply at odds with our conventional ways of thought and life. I submit that our work is to bring every aspect of our life together under the neighborliness of God.
In doing so, I dare suggest, there are only two difficult questions. One is sex. Sexuality has to do with intimacy and power; the Bible, so it seems to me, intends covenanted sex and not promiscuity or exploitation. The other hard question is money, for money is about freedom and control, and the Bible is for covenantal economics that are not promiscuous or exploitative. It strikes me as odd- but predictable- that conservatives, people who tend to stress evangelism, care a lot about covenantal sexuality but seem strangely naive about promiscuous, self indulgent economics. Conversely, liberals, those who seem to care about social action, have some sure sense of covenantal economics but tend to mumble about sexuality. Why not a recognition that money and sexuality are twin manifastations of our lust for power, our refusal of commitment, our will to live otherwise, but also our chance for genuine neighborliness as intended by God? I cannot think of a reason to choose up sides on these issues, for such choosing is silly and obsolete."
Walter Brueggeman ' Together in the Spirit- Beyond Seductive Quarrels' in "Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested truth in a post-Christian world" pp39

Martin Esslin-Advertising Religion

"There can be no doubt about it: the TV commercial, exactly as the oldest known types of theatre, is essentially a religious form of drama which shows human beings as living in a world controlled by a multitude of powerful forces that shape our lives. We have free will, we can choose whether we follow their precepts or not, but woe betide those who make the wrong choice!
The moral universe, therefore, portrayed in what I for one regard as the most widespread and influential art form of our time, is essentially that of a polytheistic religion. It is a world dominated by a sheer numberless pantheon of powerful forces, which literally reside in every article of use or consumption, in every institution of daily life. If the winds and waters, the trees and brooks of ancient Greece were inhabited by a vast host of nymphs, dryads, satyrs and other local and specific deities, so is the universe of the TV commercial. The polytheism that confronts us here is thus a fairly primitive one, closely akin to animistic and fetishistic beliefs. We may not be conscious of it, but this IS the religion by which most of us actually live, whatever our more consciously and explicitly held beliefs and religious persuasions may be. This is the actual religion that is being absorbed by our children from almost the day of their birth."
Martin Esslin 'Aristotle and the Advertisers- The Television Commercial as Drama' (1974) in "Meditations" pp240

This isn't a Christian speaking, but a secular drama critic. He argues that the commercials don't create these belief systems, but are highly sophisticated and scientifically developed responses to the beliefs of society.

In all our responses to various 'spiritualities', surely this one is neglected the most.

It's a matter of life and death

"For Jesus lives as the One who was put to death for me, as the one in whom I am put to death, so that necessarily His life is the promise of my life. But with His life, my life too, the life of man who is not himself Jesus Christ but only his younger brother, is an exclusive act of God, a pure divine revelation, a free act of divine grace”
K Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 356

Over the next few weeks I want to think through (ie. rant about) the idea of Jesus' representative death and resurrection, and the idea that as Christians, we have died with Christ.

Martyr complex- what I cynically mutter that others have...woops

Early last year I sat silently eavesdropping on a conversation a friend was having with a political mover and shaker in church circles. One phrase that the M&S'r kept repeating was that he was a 'die on every hill' kind of guy. What he meant was that he was willing to fight on every issue, every issue was of supreme importance, there could be no thought of compromise. Which got me to thinking, why is the phrase ' die on every hill' used. Why not be more realistic and say, ' I'm a "kill on every hill" kind of guy' or ' I'm a strategically retreat until I can crush you and then take your position...kind of guy'
I guess saying that sounds less and less like Jesus.
Of course, I said nothing. I left feeling vindicated as the martyr who would never stoop to such barbarity.. ha!

This quote, stolen from inhabitation dei, serves as a great rebuke to both our church culture, which loves to posit big bad enemies for us to fight valiantly, and a rebuke to quiet cyynical people lik me for keeping my mouth shut.

“The pathology of a martyr complex is often a heavy-handed attempt to escape the vulnerability of speaking the truth without the means of convincing others that it is true. It signifies impatience with the freedom of others not to believe. It betrays an insecurity that cannot bear its own knowledge without compulsion for everyone else. In a word, it expresses doubt. Such doubt may explain why martyrdom is sometimes misconstrued and applied to the deaths of fighters. For the New Testament, martyrs do not die because they fight for what is right but precisely because they refuse to fight for what is true. A fighter fundamentally doubts whether his truth is true and anxiously grasps at it, preferring secure knowledge to uncertain promise made certain only through faith. Fighters do not stand by the truth of their convictions.”
~ Craig Hovey, To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today’s Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 148.

Heavenly Father, give us such a faith in your resurrection power that we don't kill others to defend it