With a steady stream of new work coming out on Rudolph Otto’s notion of holiness, Otto, it seems, is as popular as ever. Here is a wee series of reflections on Otto’s notion of The Holy which I contrast with Forsyth’s (for who else would be up to the task!)
Holiness According to Rudolph Otto – Part 1
Holiness According to Rudolph Otto – Part 2
Holiness According to Rudolph Otto – Part 3
Here’s a series of posts on Forsyth on the Power of the Resurrection:
Forsyth on ‘The Power Of The Resurrection’ – Part 1
Forsyth on ‘The Power Of The Resurrection’ – Part 2
Forsyth on ‘The Power Of The Resurrection’ – Part 3
The Barth-Brunner debate on natural theology continues to be as important as ever. Here is a series that I posted a while back in which I returned to the famous Barth-Brunner debate of 1934 in order to explore what it might mean to speak of the Imago Dei post-fall:
Barth-Brunner Revisited 1
FYI: I have added a video collection to the sidebar. I hope that the videos there are an encouragement to many. If you come across videos that you think should be there, please let me know. Obviously, the list will grow.
Clint, over at Dadventure has posted the following. It was just too brilliant to not post somewhere else and here seemed as good a place as any:
Apparently, according to an Austrian doctor, picking your nose and eating it might be good for you. According to Dr. Friedrich Bischinger, an Innsbruck-based lung specialist:
“Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do. In terms of the immune system the nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria are collected, and when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine.”
However, like many other parenting issues, there is always another side; the dangers of digging for gold.
If the skin inside the nose is broken while picking away, the veins in that region are situated in such a way that sometimes an infection can migrate inward to the base of the brain and inhibit the blood flow, a serious condition known as cavernous sinus thrombosis.
To let the kids pick and eat their way to health and happiness, or risk a brain hemorrhage and social isolation? Damn, this parenting thing is never easy.
If you’re really fascinated and you just need to keep reading, there’s more here.
‘And thus we shall have to posit the incarnation itself precisely in the fact that he, the eternal Son of God, the second person of the deity, gave himself over into the form of human limitation, and thereby to the limits of a spatio-temporal existence, under the conditions of a human development, in the bounds of an historical concrete being, in order to live in and through our nature the life of our race in the fullest sense of the word, without on that account ceasing to be God. Only so does there occur an actual entrance into humanity, an actual becoming-one with it, a becoming-man of God; and only so does there result that historical person of the mediator which we know to be the God-man’. – Gottfried Thomasius, ‘Christ’s Person and Work. Part II: The Person of the Mediator’, in God and Incarnation in Mid-Nineteenth Century German Theology (ed. Claude Welch; A Library of Protestant Thought; New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 48.
O where, o where have all the good kenoticists gone? Christology needs them now more than ever.
Those back in Melbourne may be interested to know that the Melbourne College of Divinity is hosting their 2007 Occasional Lecture 2007. The speaker will be Professor Kevin Hart, the Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies, Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Professor Hart will speak on …
‘Bonhoeffer’s “Religious Clothes”: The naked man, the secret, and what we hear’
The details:
Sunday 15th July 2007 at 7.30pm
Buzzard Lecture Theatre, Evan Burge Building
Trinity College, Royal Parade, Parkville.
All Welcome.
Just having a break at the moment and decided to pick up a book that’s been on my ‘Books I really Want to Read and Hope I Get Around to Doing So One Day’ list. The one I picked up was Mister God, This is Anna. Here’s a few words from Verna Sproxton’s ‘Introduction’:
‘There are good books, indifferent books, and bad books. Amongst the good books some are honest, inspiring, moving, prophetic, and improving. But in my language there is another category: there are Ah! Books …. Ah! Books are those which induce a fundamental change in the reader’s consciousness. They widen his sensibility in such a way that he is able to look upon familiar things as though he is seeing and understanding them for the first time. Ah! Books are galvanic. They touch the nerve-centre of the whole being so that the reader receives an almost palpable physical shock. A tremor of excited perception tipples through the person … Ah! Books give you sentences which you can roll around in the mind, throw in the air, catch, tease out, analyse. But in whatever l way you handle them, they widen your vision. For they are essentially Idea-creating, in the sense that Coleridge meant when he described the Idea as containing future thought – as opposed to the Epigram which encapsulates past thought. Ah! Books give the impression that you are opening a new account, not closing an old one down’. – Vernon Sproxton, ‘Introduction’, to Fynn. Mister God, This Is Anna (London: Fount, 1979), 1–2.
Wow. Now I can’t wait to keep reading …
Trying to come up with a concise 3-4 sentence statement on the relationship between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ humanity created in Christ (with particular attention to sanctification) is not easy. In the hope of getting some help with this one, I offer the following scribbles:
To be sure, there is a narrative continuity (historical and physical) between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’. Just as with the ‘new’ and ‘old’ creation itself, the ‘new’ Humanity is the healed and restored ‘old’, born again in holiness with the promise of no return. This continuity depends entirely upon the continuous activity of the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit who acts in both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’. Understood individually, ‘Jason’ remains ‘Jason’, and is not made into ‘Jeremy’ or ‘Jenny’, but the ‘new’ Jason is ‘born again’ into life – holy and eternal – in such a way that his history is sanctified with him.
Some might be tempted to say, citing Galatians 2:20, ‘Isn’t Jason made into Jesus? Doesn’t Jason die?’ If 2:20a was the end of the story, there may be some argument to be made here, though the problems that such a conclusion might create have humungous consequences for how we are to understand creation. However, even in this one verse, it seems, Paul goes on to qualify in v. 20b what such a life of crucifixion might entail. Whether we go with the subjective genitive reading or not makes no difference here. A literalist reading of v. 20a creates problems that I don’t think are implied in the text. Are the KJV and the NJB helpful here?
Taken with v. 19, yes ‘Jason’ dies. He dies to a particular way of being, that is, being after himself. The new person created in Christ is fundamentally restructured away from a personhood of ‘self-centredness, ‘closedness’ and alienation, towards one of reconciliation, and a new ‘openness’ of self-giving love to neighbour. They are a person lifted from the centre of their own egoism and planted with Christ in God. Life itself is now defined by faith in the Son of God. (Whether we translate here the ‘faithfulness of the Son of God’ or ‘faith in the Son of God’ (NIV), in either case it is Paul (not Saul, to be sure) who is living in it … ‘in the body’!). With all its continuity, however, there is something ‘new’. In Christ, God really has created new life and not just patched up an old laspe. The new shoot comes out of an old stump, even if the old stump is dead and unable to bring forth any life of its own.
An implication: While there is a sense in Campbell, Moberly and Barth that everything important for Humanity happens in Christo – i.e. that Christ has done whatever is necessary to consummate the perfect condemnation of sin – I also want to maintain with Forsyth and Gunton that if we are to take seriously not only the dignity of creation but also the respons-ability of the moral order, then genuine human response to God is imperative and cannot be offered vicariously. Although apart from Christ’s work such response is impossible, Christ does not do it all for us.
To be sure, all Humanity is in Christ and his act, and there can be no experience of assurance except by trust in an objective something, done over our heads, and complete without any reference to our response or our despite. But while salvation does happen over our heads, and attests to the tetelestai cry from the Cross, this does not mean that salvation happens behind our backs: while no one can believe by themselves or unto themselves every person must believe for themselves if grace is to come home.
So Yes, I believe that in Jesus Christ, who never leaves his incarnation, Humanity is gathered up into the perichoretic life of the Triune Family; but this happens without loss of creaturely status. There is no blurring of Creator-creature distinctives. God remains God. Creation remains creation. It is God who makes Creation. It is God who keeps making creation. And it is God who keeps creation creation. Some accounts of theosis appear more than a little skewed here.
Any thoughts?
Of late, I’ve been reading Moberly’s Atonement and Personality. For all the mileage that has been made in trying to identify the differences between Moberly and Forsyth – mainly on the issue of vicarious repentance – the fact is that they have much more in common than has been given credit. Here’s a taste:
‘He condemned sin – that is, there is an aspect of the Atonement according to which it can be summed up as a pronouncing, by Jesus Christ, of the judgement and sentence of eternal Righteousness against all human sin. It is He who is the judging and condemning Righteousness. He was made sin – that is, He the eternal Righteousness, in judging sin, judged it not in another, but judged it rather, as a penitent judges it, within Himself; He surrendered Himself for the judgement that He pronounced; He took, in His own Person, the whole responsibility and burthen of its penance; He stood, that is, in the place, not of a judge simply, nor of a mere victim, but of a voluntary penitent – wholly one with the righteousness of God in the sacrifice of Himself’. – Robert Campbell Moberly, Atonement and Personality (London: John Murray, 1901), 110.
The following is a review by David Crowley of the book The Power of Play by David Elkind.
As a teenager, driving by empty ballparks would launch my Dad into childhood stories of playing daylong pick-up games. He’d complain about how “kids these days” only play baseball as part of an organized team. Well, that trend of children spending their time in scheduled activities has continued over the past twenty years, with the consequence that they spend little time enjoying unstructured play. David Elkind’s The Power of Play makes a compelling argument that this reduction of spontaneous play comes at a significant cost for children.
Elkind is a Professor of Child Development at Tufts University. This is his first book that I’ve read, but I gather that he has written influential books in the field for many years, notably The Hurried Child and All Grown Up and No Place to Go. This new book does a good job of blending practical advice with broader analysis of childrearing trends and their implications. If you’re looking for a how-to parenting book, this would disappoint; but if you’re interested in placing your parenting experience in a broader social context, I’d recommend giving this a read. Though Elkind is an academic, this book is written for a general audience and is a pretty quick read. His points are often supported by personal anecdotes from his family and practice, thus adding an easily accessible quality to the book.
Elkind’s central thesis is that spontaneous, unstructured play is crucial for children’s healthy development. He begins by noting that children have lost around twelve hours per week of free time over the past twenty years, including eight hours of outdoor play. Factors driving this trend include overzealous parents trying to push their children to achievement, rampant consumerism, and too much time spent in front of computers and televisions. Unstructured play allows children a chance to develop their imaginations. This important informal play with others, absent coaches and referees, helps children develop their social skills.
Throughout the book, Elkind relates the benefits of play to well-understood stages of development (well-understood for anyone who’s taken a psych course that mentioned Piaget or Erikson). He derides efforts to teach children academic and other skills for which they are not ready. For instance, according to Elkind, pushing academic skills like reading with a preschooler is likely to frustrate her. Moreover, such premature focus on reading both takes her away from developmentally appropriate activities that build confidence and reduces free playtime that builds imagination.
I found chapters on toys and media especially instructive. Elkind’s comments on the abundance of toys many kids have today resonates—our son has so many toys he can forget about something for a few weeks then discover it again like it’s a new toy. The author expresses concern that children aren’t called upon to use their creativity with the abundance of electronic toys today that don’t require the imagination like the simple toys of times past. Elkind reviews popular educational videos and computer games, finding the educational claims of most videos ranging from unproven to ludicrous. Our son isn’t yet of age to play computer games, but when he does get interested in them, I’ll certainly want to test them out first after reading how inappropriate many of them are.
Elkind’s final chapters suggest another direction we can go with our children, one that would encourage more play and its related benefits. “Lighthearted parenting” encourages parents to relax a bit, and focus on sharing our passions with our children. “Schooling with the Heart, Mind and Body” argues for educating the whole child rather than teaching to the test. According to Elkind, achievement and learning, as well as emotional development, would follow if parents and educators heeded this advice.
I generally agreed with most of Elkind’s views, and feel that his is an important voice, given the educational and parenting norms of the day. There were times, however, when I would have liked to have seen a little bit more of the research basis for his arguments, rather than just backing a point with an anecdote. My other critique of the book is that Elkind frequently referred to a framework of “play, love and work” as being critical to the development that can be fostered through play. While this concept makes sense, the repetition of this theme felt a bit forced to me at times.
These small critiques aside, The Power of Play is an important book for parents, educators and everyone else concerned about children in today’s society. If enough of us read this book and take it to heart, our children would be happier and healthier as the book’s subtitle suggests. And perhaps my dad will one day pass by a ballpark and see his grandson playing an unscheduled pickup game with some friends.
Review by David Crowley, President of Social Capital Inc. and father of an almost two-year old boy. David is a graduate of Harvard College. In his free time David enjoys playing ball, exploring the outdoors and reading with his son. (HT: Dadlabs)
On the 5th of September 1930, Dietrich Bonhoeffer left his native Germany for his first visit to the USA. In his first sermon before his American audience, Bonhoeffer chose to speak on 1 John 4:16, the love of God. Part of that address included these words:
Under the cross of Christ we know that we all belong to one another, that we all are brethren and sisters in the same need and in the same hope, that we are bound together by the same destiny, human beings with all our suffering and all our joys, with sorrows and with desires, with disappointments and fulfilments – and most important, human beings with our sin and guilt, with our faith and hope. Before the cross of Christ and his inconceivable suffering all our external differences disappear, we are no longer rich or poor, wise or simple, good or bad; we are no longer Americans or Germans, we are one large congregation of brethren; we recognise that nobody is good before God, as Paul says: ‘For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace.’ Let us look at the love of Christ, who without guilt bore the cross – why? Because he had loved his people more than himself. And then let us consider our own feebleness and our own want of courage, our anxiety when sorrow and grief threaten, our selfish desire to live a comfortable and careless life. In profound and serious abashment we Christian people must confess that we are not worthy of such great love of God.’ – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords: Letters, Lectures and Notes 1928-1936 from the Collected Works, Volume 1 (ed. E. H. Robertson; trans. J. Bowden; London: Harper & Row, 1970), 73.
As promised here, I will post a number of thoughts/quotations from Gisela Preuschoff’s Raising Girls. For my wee review of the book see here.
A father is the first man in the life of a little girl, and his role is vital. He represents the masculine, the facinating ‘other’, and his daughter will compare every man who plays a part in her life to him.
If you (the father) and your daughter have a close relationship, she will probably choose men who are similar to you, although some women choose men who are in radical contrast to their fathers. For example, a woman who has had a difficult relationship with her father may look for a man who is very different in temperament and personality. And some women find themselves repeating patterns of experience and behavior from childhood in their adult relationships.
As with mother-daughter relationships, if the issues in a strained father-daughter relationship are not worked through and resolved, those issues will be passed from generation to generation …
The ‘positive father complex’ … occurs when a girl admires, respects, loves and trusts her father. And, in turn, her father is consistently proud, supportive, understanding and encouraging of his daughter. It is important to remember that detachment of children from their parents occurs during puberty, and that it is an essential process for the transformation to healthy, independent adulthood. If detachment doesn’t happen, a daughter risks spending her life in the shadow of her parents and will not develop her own identity. If her attachment to and identity with her father are particularly strong, her adult self-esteem may greatly depend on the extent to which she can win the admiration of men. You can easily picture the drama that occurs when such a girl loses her father, or such a woman loses her husband.
The woman who did not experience consistent parental love from both her parents in childhood, on the other hand, will suffer where her self-esteem is concerned. The kind of woman who feels unworthy of love will spend her life unconsciously offering herself as a victim because she believes that she doesn’t ‘deserve’ any better. (pp. 169–70)
Here is the series of posts from my series, Developing A Reading List. Please note that this list will be regularly updated as I come across suitable material.
Developing a Reading List – Theological Method and Prolegomena, Systematics/Dogmatics, Biblical Theology, Theology Proper
Developing a Reading List – Patriology, Christology, Pneumatology, Revelation
Developing a Reading List – Creation, Soteriology, Ecclesiology, Anthropology
Developing a Reading List – Prayer and Meditation, Missiology, Ethics, Doxology
Developing a Reading List – Pastoral Ministry, Preaching, Theology and the Arts, Eschatology
Or you can access each category here:
1. Theological Method and Prolegomena
2. Systematics/Dogmatics
3. Biblical Theology
4. Theology Proper
5. Patriology
6. Christology
7. Pneumatology
8. Revelation
9. Creation
10. Soteriology
11. Ecclesiology
12. Anthropology
13. Prayer and Meditation
14. Missiology
15. Ethics
16. Doxology
17. Pastoral Ministry
18. Preaching
19. Theology and the Arts
20. Eschatology
Here is a list of posts from my series, Holy Communion: An Invitation To Life:
The Journal for Christian Theological Research has just published an article by Guenther “Gene” Haas, ‘Creational Ethics is Public Ethics‘. The paper presents the framework and key doctrines relevant to public moral engagement as found in the Reformed or neo-Calvinist tradition shaped by Abraham Kuyper and his disciples. Haas’ thesis is that Christian ethics is public ethics because it is creational ethics. Christian ethics has a place in the public arena because it is the articulation of the creational moral order that constitutes and guides all human beings. Neo-Calvinism considers the creation order as foundational. The fall of creation and its redemption must be understood in relation to this foundational doctrine. But the creational order also shapes the nature of Christian involvement in the public domain. The final section highlights some implications of this for involvement in public life.
The latest CT has two articles/interviews with Sinéad O’Connor in the wake of her latest – and brilliant – album Theology (I have posted about the album here). The articles are a generous touch on the corny side (North American evangelicals trying to claim another as theirs or make it clear why she’s not) but well worth reading, whether you like O’Connor’s latest album or not. The two articles are: Sinéad O’Connor’s Theology and ‘Theology’, and Jesus Is ‘Like an Energy’.
She says about Theology, ‘I hope this record would make someone think that perhaps God is not an angry, punishing, war-making God and is in fact a gentle and compassionate God who actually is upset at the loss of us’.
Here is a list of posts on my series Baptism: An Evangelical Sacrament.
jasongoroncy.com 