Giving to God: learning from children

One of the beautiful things about small children is their generosity.
My nephew is an excellent giver.
When you make him lunch, he will take a bit of his food and put it on you plate, because he loves you. And somehow, those second hand chips taste so much better.
When he was younger he would come to my house, find shiny things there and present them to me as gifts.
The stupidly cynical would say 'the stuff was mine anyway' or 'I can make my own lunch', but the reality is, I love my nephews 'gifts'.

Likewise, it is stupidly cynical to say 'what could we ever offer God'.
Though God has made his Son the heir of all things, he joyfully allows us to take what is his and present it back to him as a token of our love. 'present your bodies as a living sacrifice'. Since God has made all things good, we don't even have to fix up the gift, or add value to it. The very act of presenting God's good creation back to him, of relishing it together, adds the value. But more than relishing together, in some private feast, we give back to God when we recognize his gift as 'gift' and give to others.
(which is like, hmmm, me and my nephew feeding the ducks together or something)

Dawkins Makes Sense

For mission we had a panel on atheism and God's existence. Wasn't really the issue of the day. For most people the real issue was whether God could be known only through Christianity or not. ie. Why is Christianity exclusive?

But on the way I read half of Dawkins' God Delusion. He argued very strongly that religion was not what made people moral. Rather the morality of people need to be understood in their historical context: Abraham or the crusades. This sounds familiar. Morality is progressing so we no longer have slavery, women are free, etc. I totally agree with his historical arguments but want Christianity to make Christians more moral than their historical times - a very very hard thing to prove.

Dawkins' argument appears to be that evolution and natural selection better explain this historical evolution of morality and we should stop imagining that religion had anything to do with it.

I know he is fairly vitriolic, uses horribly emotive language, and conflates ideas in Nazi-like propaganda... (this sentence is supposed to be emotive and ironic!!!)...BUT his argument is reasonable.

I've been reading a bit of the history of churches in Australia. And I do not think calling Australia a Christian country does any service to the faith. A reading of history that sees good as Christian and evil as non-Christian (although subtly) does no justice to the role of the gospel in shaping lives. We are blessed with key Christians in the history of our society. But that does not make us a Christian (or post-Christian) society.

What Dawkins rejects is SIN. Sin effects rational thinking so people argue for their own morality against God's plan for humanity. (Rom 1:18-24)

In simple human terms, a love that is inseperable from an interest in the other is always more commendable, more truly selfless, than the airless purity of disinterested expenditure, because it recognises the otherness and deleights in the splendor of the other. The Christian thought of God's creative agape has nothing to do with the sublime and sublimely disinterested abyss of the One, but belongs to the thought of the Trinity: it is a love always of recognition and delight, desiring all and giving all at once, giving to recieve and recieving to give, generous not in thoughtlessly squandering itself, but in truly wanting the other. Thus the 'ethical' must belong, for theology, to an aesthetics of desire: of gratuity, grace, pleasure, eros, and interest at once. A christian ethics cannot help but concern itself with the cultivation of desire, with learning to desire the other because the other is truly desirable, because the other is truly beautiful, the moral task is to love because one truly sees and to see because one truly loves. To educate vision to see the glory of this particular one

Parish Christian

I'm a parish christian.
I was raised and converted in a local church, by people raised and converted in local churches.
I was nurtured in sunday school and youth bible study.
I learnt to serve in a parish.
I was never really involved with a Uni group.
Part of me regrets that fact. But part of me doesn't.
Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends were in Uni christian groups, they are an amazing opportunity for christians to grow and think.

But, since I've never been part of one, I'll never regret that my church isn't like a Uni group, hopefully I'll never expect my parishoners to be like uni students. And I hope I'll be able to see the gifts and leadership potential of a wide variety of people.

I like being a parish christian

Practice makes preacher

I was listening to a prominent preacher yesterday bemoaning the banality of preaching in Sydney.
One of the (many) issues he raised was practice..
I have a hunch that many of our best preachers come from youth ministry backgrounds, simply because they get a lot of practice speaking.
Some guys come into theological college, having done a heap of Bible studies, lots of 1-1 ministry and 5 or 6 talks.
I was blessed with the opportunity to do youth and childrens ministry. I did the figures last night, I'd done nearly 400 christian talks before I came to college. I have no doubt many of them were pretty crap.(still have doubts about my current talks) But it would take a few years out of college to have that many learning experiences.

How can we give our preachers more practice?
If you are at college, how many talks did you do before coming to college?

More street observations

If you went missing who would know?
Who would care enough to find you?
And if there was a problem, how long would they care?

Chatting to a man today, was obviously a bit of a loner.
A few years ago was working.
One night he was beat up.
Spent two weeks in a coma and thirteen weeks in hospital.
Thirteen weeks without work (actually more), and the bills keep coming in.
With no family or support structures he found himself on the street.

How important is community?

Patience

Jesus flat out heals people.
He is a healer.
He takes broken lives and puts them back together
He salves wounds.
But it can take time.

Today I spoke with a man who turned to Jesus after he had run away from home, fleeing all sorts of abuse. A friend had accepted Jesus to be the boss and plead with him to accept Jesus too, and he did. That was 1983, and he was a messed up man in need of healing.
The next ten years saw alcohol problems, mental illness, a marriage, a divorce, multiple jobs, as Jesus went to work on his mind and life.

The ten after that saw gambling, another marriage breakup and finally homelessness, as Jesus did a bit more work.

Now he is a very gracious man ministering to many others.
Some wounds wont heal. Swathes of time will never be returned.
but we wait in true hope for the day when there will be no more tears.
That day will come, and we see glimpses now.
But we must wait patient, patient, patient for Jesus to do his healing.

The city is full of scary scary people

Why is it that I'm more comfortable approaching a tattooed, slightly dishevelled, possibly drunk, possibly homeless, possibly mentally unstable man, who swears at me and tells me about the fight he was in last night, than approaching a neatly dressed city worker who is quietly having their lunch on the grass?
Maybe it is because I can imagine how I could get there.
Getting on and then getting off drugs, I can see how that happens, so I feel at home with people on methadone. Mental illness, well, I know how that works, soI can talk with crazypeople.But could I imagine myself in an office?
Hmm maybe.
So maybe it is just I know the rules for getting respect in those communities. You don't have to be like a 'done guy to win his respect (in fact, probably better if you aren't).
I don't know the rules for office people, and I'm not one of them, so enlighten me.
How does a city worker respect someone who isn't a city worker?

God's agency and ears in preaching

Most of us who preach are aware of the terrifying reality that God may speak through our words. As we get up to preach, our hope and prayer is that God may use our unclean lips to speak. It is a strange and genuinely humbling thought, though eventually we come to be comfortable with the idea of shared divine and human agency in preaching as we speak to our congregations.

Reading Hebrews 1:8 I was struck by an even scarier thought

"But unto the Son he says "Your throne O God, is forever and ever"

God speaks through David (psalm 45), not simply to the people of Israel or Christian congregations, but to his Son.
How scary is preaching if we conceive it this way. That the Father might speak to the Son through us.
The idea of 'preaching to an audience of one' is sometimes bandied about, though usually simply meaning 'careful what you say because God is listening. But is it dodgy to say that our preaching may be caught up into the divine conversation, of the Father saying 'I give you these people' and the Son's reply, 'I hand them back.'

Scary

Intersex

um, what does the Anglican church in Sydney do with intersex for its sexuality policy?

Factions, ecumenical, Papacy etc

Hans Kung bravely (for a Catholic) has a go at the whole office of the Pope in the Roman Catholic church. Perhaps, says Kung, if the Papal office were more about serving the church and less about securing power, protestants and the Orthodox would rejoice. He lists Peter three temptations as those that tempt those in the Petrine office: the temptation to pull Jesus aside and tell him better (papal infallibility), the temptation to assert unfailing devotion to Jesus, the very moment the denials come, and the temptation to look at the task and of others (in John), instead of loving Jesus and caring for his sheep.

"In this respect, it must be pointed out finally that each Church in virtue of its history has its own peculiarities which are not accepted in the same way by others: each has, so to speak, it's "speciality". These "specialities" however are of varying importance. The Catholic "speciality" of course is the Pope. But Catholics are not alone in this. The Eastern Orthodox also have their "Pope": this is the "tradition". For Protestants it is the "Bible". And finally "freedom" for the Free Churches. But as the "papacy" of the Catholics is not simply the Petrine ministry of the New Testament, neither is the "tradition" of the Orthodox simply the apostolic tradition, not the "Bible" of the Protestants simplt the Gospel, nor the "freedom" of the Free churches simply the freedom of the children of God. Even the best password is misused if it becomes a party program with which men march out to fight for power in the Church. A party program that is often linked with the name of a leader. A party program which necessarily excludes others from their own church....... If we were to permit ourselves an anachronism here, we should undoubtedly indentify the Catholics with the party of Cephas, which would any case be right as against all the rest in virtue of his primacy, his power over the keys and his pastoral power. The Eastern Orthodox would be the party of Apollos, explaining revelation in light of the great tradition of Greek thought more spiritually, more thoughtfully, more profoundly and even 'more correctly' than all the others. The Protestants would certainly be the party of Paul, who is in fact the Father of their community, the apostle par excellence, the unique preacher of the cross of Christ, who laboured more than all the apostles. Finally the Free Churches would be the party of Christ himself, free from the constraints of all the other Churches, their authorities and confessions, relying solely on Christ as the one Lord and Master and in the light of this developing the fraternal life of their congregation"
Hans Kung "On Being a Christian" pp502

What is Paul's answer in Corinthians? All things are your in Christ Jesus. All the gifts of God belong to all of God's church. To guard the gospel is not to assume that you 'own' it.

'Two trinitarian perspectives' or 'Jesus still hears you'

The distant father, seperated by transcendence
The historical Jesus, stowed away in the centuries
The unknown spirit, hiding in ambiguity

My living brother-Lord
your joyous presence
I'm wagered on the Fathers raising.

How to change and stay the same

" a church can lose its soul by being so progressive that it fails to remain what it is in all the change, or by being so conservative in remaining unchanged that it does not become anew what it ought to be"
Hans Kung "On Being a Christian" pp35

This book is beautiful (so far). It has one of the most compelling introduction I have ever read.

The political agenda of Christians

"But might there not be an enormous significance for both the individual and secular society, for the whole field of public and political life, for people in evey position, in every office and in all ranks, as also for structures and institutions,...in the light of Jesus Christ

on the identification with the weak, sick, poor, underpriveleged, oppressed and even the moral failures?

on forgiveness without end, mutual service regardless of rank, renunciation without a quid pro quo?

on the removal of barriers between associates and non-associates, distant people and neighbors, good and bad, in a love that does not exclude good will even to opponent and enemy?

on the norms, precepts and prohibitions, which exist for the sake of men, and on the men who do not exist for the sake of norms precepts and prohibition?

on the institutions, traditions and hierarchies, to be relativised for man's sake?

on God's will as supreme norm, which aims at nothing but man's well being?

on this God himself who identifies himself with the needs and hopes of men, who does not demand but gives; who does not oppress but raises up; who does not punish but liberates; who establishes the absolute rule, not of law , but of grace?

on this death finally and it's forsakenness and on the hope of new life and the consumation in God's kingdom?

Does it need much imagination to see that things would look different, not only in man's heart, but also in society, its structures and institutions, if this message were really lived? or indeed that things look different even now whenever this message is lived? We do not really lack a fundamental Christian program, there is nothing wrong with this Christ Jesus himself: it is entirely the fault of Christians if too little is changed in the world.

Christians

themselves are the strongest argument against Christianity: Christians who are not Christians. Christians themselves are the strongest argument for Christianity: Christians who live a Christian life. Faced with the familiar and hardly pleasant history of the Church, we often forget the very much more encouraging history of Christians- unfortunately only to a very limited extent an object for the historian"
Hans Kung "On Being a Christian" London:Collins, 1977. pp558

The Trinitarian basis of sacrifice

Sacrifice is not something that, in the first instance, begins as an activity of human beings directed to God and then, in the second instance, become something that reaches its goal in the response of divine acceptance and bestowal of divine blessing in the cultic community. Rather, sacrifice in the New Testament understanding- and thus in its Christian understanding- involves, so to speak, three 'moments'. The first 'moment' is the self offering of the Father in the gift,, the sending of his Son. The second 'moment' is the unique 'response' of the Son, in his humanity and in the Spirit, to the Father and for us. The third 'moment'- and only then does Christian sacrifice begin to become real in our world- consists in the self-offering of believers in union with Christ by which they share in his covenant relation with the Father. The radical self-offering of the faithful is the only spiritual response that constitutes an authentic sacrificial act according to the New Testament (Romans 12:1). In other words, Christian Sacrifice is a profoundly personal, eschatological, and trinitarian event, an event in which we Christians, in the power of the same Spirit that was in Jesus, and in our concrete humanity, begin to do in this world what we will be able to do completely only in the next: we begin, namely, to enter into that perfectly self-giving and self communicating relationship of Father and Son"
Edward J. kilmartin 'The Eucharist in the West: History and Theoloy' Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1988. Pp 381-383

I'd probably want to include the presentation of Creation to the Son and the Sons handing back of the kingdom as the bracketing 'moments' but otherwise scintillaating stuff.

Church is like a swimming pool

The church is like a swimming pool

all the noise comes from the shallow end

W H Vanstone

Hospitality as feeding God

From
Jason


"The challenge of hospitality as a surrender of oneself is well illustrated in the example of God’s hospitality at the exodus. In the biblical texts, hospitality to strangers is portrayed from the very beginning as a theological relationship mirroring the human companionship with God: hospitality to others is hospitality to God. The bread shared with the stranger is a service directed ultimately to God. John Chrysostom placed particular emphasis on this aspect:

This is hospitality, this is truly to do it for God’s sake. But if you give orders with pride, though you bid him take the first place, it is not hospitality, it is not done for God’s sake. The stranger requires much attendance, much encouragement, and with all this it is difficult for him not to feel abashed; for so delicate is his position, that whilst he receives the favor, he is ashamed. That shame we ought to remove by the most attentive service, and to show by words and actions, that we do not think we are conferring a favor, but receiving one, that we are obliging less than we are obliged.

Chrysostom stressed the idea that the motivation for hospitality among God’s people is born not only out of an identification of oneself with the stranger but also out of an identification of the stranger with God. Hospitality is the challenge to see in the stranger also the presence of God. In other words, the Israelites are asked to share their bread with strangers not because they are a people of bread but because they are the people of God. The freedom of extending one’s companionship to the marginalized and outcasts of society is a gift from God that establishes a testing ground for hospitality in commemoration and imitation of God’s companionship with the world. Hospitality thus becomes a means of both service to the world and worship of God, as we are reminded in this third-century homily:

For if you really wish to worship the image of God, you would do good to humans, and so worship the true image of God in them … If therefore you wish truly to honor the image of God, we declare to you what is true; that you should do good to and pay honor and reverence to everyone, who is made in the image of God. You should minister food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, hospitality to the stranger, and necessary things to the prisoner. That is what will be regarded as truly bestowed upon God.

For the people of God, the primary challenge of hospitality is not only to abide by the rules of social and economic equality and solidarity but also to acknowledge God as the recipient of their moral actions. The bread shared with the stranger is companionship with God extended to the world as a reflection of God’s justice and righteousness."

(end Jasons bit)

So christian sacrifice is no more 'spiritual' than Jewish sacrifice. The bread and meat and offerings we present to God are just as tangible. They are simply presented at a different temple, his people. To fail to care for his people is equivalent to failing to sacrifice correctly. Is this why ananais and saphirra are struck down in Acts? Is this the great sin of 1 corinthians, leaving no food at the feast for the poor? Is this how we can say that the faithful fed and visited Christ inprison? Why looking after widows and orphans is considered true religion?

If this is the case, what does the Calvinist 'we can never be sure who the elect are'do to our 'true sacrifice'? Does it limit it, we never recognize God in anyone? Or does it enhance it; there is always a possibility that God is in someone.

And why are Muslims better at this kind of hospitality?

Augustine on sacrifice, ethics and the church

"thus the true sacrifice is offered in every act which is designed to unite us to God in holy fellowship, every act, that is, which is directed to that final Good which makes possible our true felicity. For that reason even an act of compassion itself is not a sacrifice, if it is not done for the sake of God...the whole redeemed community, that is to say, the congregation and fellowship of the saints, is offered to God as a universal sacrifice, through the great priest who offered himself in his suffering for us-so that we might be the body of so great a head-in the form of a servant....This is the sacrifice of Christians, who are many, making up one body in Christ'. This is the sacrifice which the church regularly celbrates in the sacrament of the altar,a sacrament well known to the faithful where it is shown to the church that she herself is offered in the offering which she presents to God"
St Augustine City of God Book X chapter 6

I should have known that Augustine would have nutted out my problem of christians and sacrifice. He picks up the important detail of Romans 12, that it is ONE sacrifice that is offered to God, and that this sacrifice is the community. The will of God that is to be ascertained by this one sacrifice is that the church is one body under christ, which is quite appropriate given what Paul has been concerned with in ch 9-11 and with what he will go on to say in 12-15.

The bit we might get edgy with as Protestants is his reference to the Lords supper as sacrificial. But Ausustine isn't talking about atoning/taking away sins sacrifice here. He is talking about the church presenting herelf to God. What better time to express that unity and love than by retelling the story of the moment of their unification, Jesus death and resurrection. What better way of expressing her oneness than sharing in Christs death?
I feel like the Catholic thinkers who have picked up the social and ethical importance of the Eucharist are doing better than us at seeing the God directed, sacrificial nature of Christian life together.
The key difference is whether we say the 'whole of life' is a sacrifice, or , the 'whole of the church' is a sacrifice. Not that you could seperate them too much, except that one has an individual focus and the other a social. The social (kingdom) one just seems to fit better with Romans tp me

More Knox

Since we are reading through Knox, let's pick up another of his issues.

The language he uses sounds familiar to many exhortations we hear

"Unfortunately many of our community who call themselves christians do not recognise any obligation to find out or follow the mind of God on this matter, and think that they are at liberty to do what they like.."

What could he be talking about? Sexuality perhaps, or the role of the gospel?

"Everyone has an absolute obligation to conform to the will of GOd, and this obligation is not altered by whether or not we acknowledge the obligation"

Not only that, as Christians who know the mind of God, we have a duty to urge others in our community to conform to the will of God (though not in social justice, as we saw before). What could this be? This is something that our great forebear felt strongly about. I guess that disagreeing with this great one on this matter at the time must have looked like rejecting the Bible as the Word of God, a terribly liberal thing to do.

"Christians who know that the Bible is the Word of God have an unchanging duty to testify to what God's will in this matter is and to call on the whole community to conform to it"

"We should be alert to preserve ......, writing to members of parliament if there is any attempt to erode..... by legislation"

Is it marriage?

Nope. It is keeping Sunday as an equivalent of a Sabbath.

Now to a certain extent, I'm with Knox here. I like the idea of people structuring their lives for a day together praising God.

What I find fascinating is how this is now virtually a non-issue in Sydney circles.
What was so clear as the revealed mind of God, which was to be accepted as a marker of accepting the Bible as the Word of God, was to be fought over with the government, was written into the fabric of creation, is now loosely seen as a nice idea.

Now ,what I would love to know is: how were people who disagreed with Knox on this matter treated? How were they viewed? What positions were they denied? What was said about them at meetings?
And would we be happy for those same things to happen to us now.

Why don't Sydney Anglicans care about social justice?

A week ago I reflected on why the Anglican church in Sydney has neglected the south west by looking at DB Knox's approach to racial segregation. The bottom line of his argument is that it is ok as a social policy, as long as it is done justly.

Reading further in his book "Not by bread alone" on how the church might approach justice however, we find this

"The teaching and actions of Jesus nowhere show a concern for 'social justice'. The reason is that the call for social justice springs from envy rather than from compassion"

On the one hand, Knox makes a fair point, compassion achieves far more than anger (though funnily enough righteous anger is ok to stir up when it come to war for Knox).

He argues that we should show compassion as people 'come into the orbit of our lives'.
This is good as far as it goes.
But what happens when we support the social segregation of peoples, on the basis of race or class. Those in need are separated off from 'the orbit of our lives'.
If we stay with this emaciated view of compassion, it is perfectly ok for the wealthy to privatize their compassion to those in front of their eyes, even while they do relate, through social and economic structures, to those they never see. On this view, the resources given by God to the wealthy are their natural right, which they may dispose with compassion, rather than gifts from God which they are obligated to use for his glory.

As David Hohneargues, this view of compassion has nothing to do with the missionary God who searches us out in generosity.

What is bizzare in all this is Knox's heavy commitment to the concept of justice elsewhere "Justice is giving people what is due to them". This is ok as a basis of punishment, or war, but the link is never made that God will punish people for their lack of generosity.

Has the Anglican church ever repented for these views?
Or we still supposed to tell people to be happy with their station?
Will Sydney Anglicanism become a North Shore sect in 20 years?

On Hope: The Beatitudes

Thought I'd share some reflections from an Exegetical paper on the Beatitudes.

I came to them thinking they would give a picture of Christian discipleship. I discovered that they rather give a picture of Israel in exile reflected spiritually (the 'poor in Spirit'). The context is Jesus preaching the gospel into the land of darkness (Matt 4:16-17).

The structure of the beatitudes I decided on was:
A - the spiritually poor recieve the kingdom of heaven
B --- the mourners are comforted
C ------ the meek inherit the land
B' --- those craving righteousness are satisfied
D --- those acting mercifully are shown mercy
E ------ those maintaining purity of heart see God
D' --- those who act as peacemakers are sons of God
A' - the persecuted for righteousness recieve the kingdom of God.

So whether this is definately the structure or not, I like it so I'll give some observation from it.

1. Both A and A' promise the kingdom of heaven now. They function as introduction and conclusion to the beatitudes (both in present tense while the six in the middle are future tense). A summarises BCB' and A' summarises DED'. A' also connects the beatitudes to 5:11-12.
2. The six in the middle are really two groups of three. In each the central promise has a active verb and the other two are passive. This focuses us on the central beatitudes.
3. C, inheriting the land and E, seeing God both follow desciption of Jesus at his birth, saviour (1:21) and Immanuel (1:23). They also fit the context of the kingdom of God preached to Zebulun and Naphtali, the first tribes to have been taken into exile.

Key issue: Is the kingdom of God a present reality or only partially present and fully experienced future?

Given my analysis I take the kingdom of God to mean the life, preaching, death and ressurection of Jesus. So yes, the kingdom is a present reality for the disciples - in Jesus Christ. The future tense verbs function to show the full picture of the kingdom which is now offered in Christ.

My second conclusion is that spiritual povery, mourning, meekness, craving righteousness, merifulness, purity of heart, peacemaking, and persecution HERE are primarily about the experience of those awaiting the Messiah in exile. Christians are not seeking to go back to an exilic experience but to follow Jesus, who embodies Israel in exile (himself taking on these characteristics).

The beatitudes primarily bring relief for those awaiting God’s salvation. They introduce the Sermon on the Mount.

This means that they model discipleship only because as disciples we follow Jesus. We have the fullness of spiritual blessing and those who seek first God's kingdom and righteousness recieve all other blessings.

To answer a now well-worn question on this blog: What may a Christian hope for in this life?
The full kingdom of heaven now in Jesus Christ.

The corrective to over-realised eschatology comes from Jesus taking the way of the cross to glory. Not from downgrading what is promised. Following Jesus does not preclude suffering!

Charity: when love comes too late

Charity:
when love's come too late
net catches the larger scraps we left for the dogs
couldn't let you fall
too far
lest you made a mess



Apparently SydAngs are alright at social welfare but suck on social justice.



Here is David Hohne on a similar vein

'that's how people become liberals'

I hear this phrase all about the place. Sometimes on the lips of evangelical leaders. uUsually people become liberals by disagreeing with whatever point the leader is talking about. Does anyone know of any research on this? What factors contribute to evangelical beleivers becoming liberal beleivers?

I haven't done the research, but the anecdotal evidence I've seen has more to do with behaviour than ideas. That is , the person becomes a christian through evangelicals, but then finds the behaviour of evangelicals, even evangelical leadersdoesn't fit with the gospel they are proclaiming. Without the resources or opportunity to critique that behaviour and still consider themselves evangelical, they go looking elsewhere.

To me this implies that, if I want my congregation to be protected from liberalism, the best strategy isn't to beat them into submission on every point. Rather it is to preach Jesus as the centre of beleif and make myself open to critique, opposition, even rebuke from my congregation members.

Again, has anyone seen any research on this?

knowing others according to the way of the cross

"the new way of knowing is not in some ethereal sense a spiritual way of knowing. It is not effected in a mystic trance, as the pseudo-apostles claimed, but rather right in the midst of rough and tumble life...it is life in the midst of the new creation community, in which to know by the power if the cross is precisely to know and to serve the neighbor who is in need... Thus at the juncture of the ages the marks of the resurrection are hidden and revealed in the cross of the disciples daily death, and ONLY there"
JL Martyn 'epistemology at the turn of the ages'

Work, 'communication' and alienation

Hi MTC 4th years, especially those doing social ethics!

Lets think about what we communicate

That dinner you are eating, do you think the people who made it got paid a minimum wage? Do you think they were bullied by their boss for even mentioning the word super? Do you think the produce that went into it was picked by well paid labour or contract slaves from overseas? Do you think the supermarket that sold it to you actually pays its workers for the hours they do?

What are we communicating when we consume? Usually, F**k you.

'but aren't there laws against these things michael?'
Ha ha ha what planet do you live on.
Even if you were stupid enough to ever take your boss to task, the legal costs are so prohibitive, it is never worth the individual workers while. The law is for the wealthy
But lets not blame the employers, because it is those with the purchasing power that have asked them to pass on the message.

This is a form of communication, it creates social bonds (tight ones). It just so happens that they are toxic.

aaaaaargh!

aaargh aargh graaarg sharb breffen..... shlek!

Church and Race

What would you say to a church leader who argued for geographical seperation of different ethnic groups because of the inevitable tension between them?
Who argued that the church's vision is spiritual and not social?

At the moment a bunch of us are thinking through the shrinking of the Anglican church in Sydney's south west.
Part of that has been looking at attitudes to race and immigration.
Both these attitudes above, and a support of limited immigration can be found in a short article on race by D B Knox.

While Knox is arguing that justice is the primary category that we need to defend, I wonder what his defence of racial separation has done for Anglican churches?

Umberto Eco on the relationship of signs to reality

"A sign function correlates a given expression to a given content. This content has been defined by a given culture irrespective of whether a given state of the world corresponds to it. 'Unicorn' is a sign as well as is 'dog'. The act of mentioning, or referring to,them is made possible by some indexical devices, and 'dog' can be referred to an individually existent object, whereas 'unicorn' cqannot. The same happens with the image of a dog and the image of a unicorn. Those which Pierce called iconic signs are also expressions related to a content; if they possess the properties of (or are similar to) something, this something is not the object or state of the world that could be referred to, but rather a structured and analytically organized content. The image of a unicorn is not similar to a 'real' unicorn; neither is recognized because of our experience of 'real' unicorns, but has the same features displayed by the definition of a unicorn elaborated by a given culture within a specific content system"
Umberto Eco The Role of the Reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts Bloomington:Indiana University Press,1984. pp 179
Eco then explains the ability of signs to lie and falsify. Because signs only relate to the object they describe vicariously, signs can project a false world. This isn't to say that language has no extensional capability, but that is firstly an internal system of codes, which may or may not be true.


Understanding signs only comes from navigating the enourmous encyclopaedia of possible meanings attached to each term, by grasping what sort of discourse it is used in. The universe of discourse stops the meaning of any representation from falling into an infinite regress.
quoting Pierce
"An unlimited universe would comprise the whole realm of the logically possible...Our discourse seldom relates to this universe: we are either thinking of the physical possible, or of the historical existent, or of the world of some romance, or of some other limited universe"
pp189.
Nor can we reduce signs simply to their qualities and not their effects. Even perception takes place as a temporal sequence of sense and judgment.

After providing a long definition of lithium that goes beyond its atomic weight to the various interactions it has under experiments, Eco can answer the question
"How can one link a sign to an object, since in order to recognize an object one needs a previous experience of it and the sign does not furnish any acquaintance or recognition of the object? The answer is already given at the end of the definition of lithium: "the peculiarity of this definition- or rather this precept that is more servicable than a definition- is that it tells you what the word 'lithium' denotes by describing what you are to 'do' in order to gain a perceptual acquaintance with the object of the word" The meaning of a symbol lies in the class of actions designed to bring about certain perceptible effects" pp191

On this theory, if we want to understand the way Paul uses sacrificial imagery for his ethical instruction, we will need, at the very least, to live out the instruction he gives.

Eco outlines Pierces understanding of reality as Result rather than simply datum.

The final interpretation of a sign is the established 'habit', a regularity of behaviour.
"But the category of 'habit' has a double sense, a behavioural (or psychological) sense and a cosmological one...Therefore coming back to the definition of lithium, the final interpretation of it stops at the production of a habit in a double sense: there is the human habit to understand the sign as an operational precept, and there is the cosmological habit according to which there will always be lithium every time nature behaves in a certain way" pp 192

This view is sometimes sneered at as medieval realism, but Eco emphasises it's pragmatism, that the final interpretant is the way of acting or being in the world is changed by the exchange of signs. The objectivity of this pragmatism is that it is intersubjectively testable (at least for lithium).
By final, he doesn't mean chronologically final though, since these habits always create new signs, new systems of meaning.

Eco sums up

"A semantic theory can analyze the content of an expression in various ways: by finding out the equivalent expression in another semiotic substance (the image of a dog vs the word 'dog'); by finding out all the equivalent expressions in the same semiotic system (synonymy); by showing the possibility of mutual translation between different codes within the same semiotic substance (translation from one language to another); by substituting an expression with a more analytical definition; by associating to an expression all the emotional connotations conventionally recognized by a given culture and therfore specifically coded... But no semantic analysis can be complete without analyzing verbal expressions by means of visual, objectal, and behavioural interpretants, and vice versa"
197