Published by DWM at August 30, 2007
That’s the claim made by Preaching Without Contempt: Overcoming Unintended Anti-Juadaism (2006), a short volume by Marilyn J. Salmon, NT prof at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Salmon stakes the claim, following recent Pauline scholarship, that the Gospels are inherently Jewish texts, that Jesus’ Judaism is at the core of his mission, and that a good deal of Christian hermeneutics, theologizing, and subsequent preaching has notoriously failed to recognize such.
Continue reading ‘Inadvertent Anti-Judaism in Christian Theology? A Reading Group Proposal’
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Published by A.D. at August 26, 2007
The Old Testament reading for today was powerful, and I’d like to start by quoting it in full:
Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scoffers, who rule this people in Jerusalem! Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we have an agreement; when the overwheliming scourge passes through it will not come to us; for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter”; therfore thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am laying in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation; ‘He who believes will not be in haste.’ And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plummet; and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter.” Then your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overwhelming scourge passes through you will be beaten down by it. As often as it passes through it will take you; for morning by morning it will pass through, by day and by night; and it will be sheer terror to understand the message. For the bed is too short to stretch oneself on it, and the covering too narrow to wrap oneself in it. For the LORD will rise up as on Mount Pera’zim, he will be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon; to do his deed–strange is his deed! and to work his work–alien is his work! Now therefore do not scoff, lest your bonds be made strong; for I have heard a decree of destruction from the Lord GOD of hosts upon the whole land.
Continue reading ‘Harry Potter and Christianity, part 3–Renouncing Eternal Life’
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Published by A.D. at August 24, 2007
I hope to answer some of the questions in the comments about exactly how we should understand Word as Virus (I’m not terribly interested in what Burrough actually meant by it, though he did explicitly state that written language came first. Derrida too, right Janet?), but I’m going to start from a faraway place, Ignatius of Antioch, taken from Rowan Williams’ great book, The Wound of Knowledge:
‘My labor pains have begun’ (Romans VI). So Ignatius advances to the torture and humiliation of his death in the confidence that there in the arena his true life, his humanity, his reality, begin. The truth has appeared in human flesh and suffered human death and thereby created afresh for all humanity the possibility of ‘truth in its flesh and its death, of a real and stable (’incorruptible,’ in Ignatius’s languge) life constituted by what the world seees as meaningless–silence, failure, death.” Continue reading ‘Harry Potter and Christianity, part 2–The Body of Life’
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Published by DWM at August 23, 2007
I was meeting with my advisor yesterday, and we spoke briefly about JH Newman. The prof asked me where I saw myself fitting in theologically in the Anglican tradition. I didn’t quite know how to respond I remain poorly read in many of the Anglican theologians with whom I would align myself. I guess I could have answered Rowan Williams, but that would have been to evade the obvious question. I think he was asking me if I align myself with a robust (ahem, catholic) theological tradition that looks to Aquinas, etc. for its systematic and philosophical guidance. Seeing as how he is a Newman scholar, I suppose he would have expected something like Newman. Guessing that, I sincerely noted that I hoped to be better read in Newman upon the end of my degree. Add to that Hooker, Cranmer, Taylor, all the Cambridge Platonists, Farrer, Blake, and Herbert - and those are just the Anglicans!
DJW at ipsumesse has offered two meaty posts on Newman - the first is a brief, but helpful introduction to Newman (the man and theologian) that will help you develop a coat hook, so to speak, upon which you can hang the content of … the 2nd post, on Conscience. His exposition of conscience in Newman leads to an interesting comment on Intelligent Design:
It is interesting to note the contrast between Newman’s view and that of contemporary ‘Intelligent design’ proponents. Newman states flat out that “I believe in design because I believe in God; not in God because I see design”. Perhaps all ‘ID’ theorists should bear in mind that “The Almighty is something infinitely different from a principle, or a centre of action, or a quality, or a generalisation of phenomena”.
I imagine the difficult thing for some of us (Anglicans) with Newman is reconciling our appreciation for his work, and maybe even pursuing it on either academic or personal levels, with his conversion to Roman Catholicism.
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Published by A.D. at August 20, 2007
I’ve been talking to a lot of people recently about the relationship of the Harry Potter books to Christianity. When I started talking to my Mom about this, she said I should write something that she could give to a friend of hers who is interested in this subject, so here is the first of, I hope, a number of posts addressing some of the most interesting connections in that regard. So, first of all, Hi Mom, and second of all, howdy to William Burroughs who, though deceased, speaks through his words, one of which was that the word is a virus. Continue reading ‘Harry Potter and Christianity, part 1–The Word is a Virus’
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**Spoiler alert: I reveal key plot points in this commentary. If you wish to see Sunshine without having any surprises spoiled, please skip my piece for now.
I saw Sunshine not as an avid sci-fi fan, but as an avid moviegoer trying to find something to watch that would fit my schedule one evening. Catching Sunshine was something of a happy accident and a sad surprise. It’s one of the better science fiction films I’ve seen in the past few years, even if its conclusion fails maddeningly to live up to the promise of its beginning. The film has a lot energy, develops characters fairly well, poses interesting ethical dilemmas, and offers spectacular visuals that do not merely function to overcome narrative shortcomings. Here’s the story: some time in the future, our planet has plunged into a solar winter because the sun is dying. Continue reading ‘Scorched by Zealotry: A Review of and Commentary on Sunshine’
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Published by DWM at August 13, 2007
Lubac wants to reorder the structure between Christianity and philosophy, not only to protect Christianity, so to speak, but also to see philosophy as something more than the technological principle he thought it had become in its attempt to rationalize the unrationalizable. In other words, philosophy begins not (only) with the rational, and thereby proceeds in some mechanistic fashion to rationalize everything else, to bend all to its will. Not only should it not do this, but it does not in fact. Rather, all philosophy begins “by being more or less orphic, or Christian, or Buddhist, or the like…” and is then “open[ed] by its essence to Christianity”… “philosophy itself must by a necessity of law be finally Christian.” Continue reading ‘Henri de Lubac “On Christian Philosophy”, part 2′
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Published by DWM at August 12, 2007
August 13th is the day that Anglicans, especially Irish Anglicans, remember Jeremy Taylor (d. Aug 13, 1667) whose various clerical posts included serving as chaplain to Charles I and, later in life, as Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland. I first learned of Taylor last year in an article by Edmund Newey titled “The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Wichcote, Ralph Cudworth, and Jeremy Taylor”. Newey’s central thesis relates to the concept of theosis, also called deification, in four Anglicans and the Cambridge Platonists movement in Anglican theology (Wichcote and Cudworth often being considered the first of the Cambridge Platonists). Tonight, I’ll look at Newey’s introduction and exegesis of Hooker. Continue reading ‘Theosis among some Anglicans, part 1′
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Published by DWM at August 12, 2007
As our readers seem to have a penchant toward Potter-y, I imagine many will enjoy one of Joel Garver’s recent posts on a rock concert at the Free Library of Philadelphia. The artists in performance took their names from characters and themes of the Harry Potter series. Wizard rock, as Joel points out, is quite a growing phenomenon.
What’s more, you can download some of the songs for free.. a whole album, actually, of which two of the songs, tracks 5 and 14, are based on the Harry Potter series. The album, called Fanfiction by the Shorthand Phonetics, can be downloaded by ctrl+clicking here, and included such magical hits as “All too Platonic” and “Lady Hermione’s Library is On Fire because of the Burning Minds Sparking Each Other to Ignite and It’s Consuming My Flammable Ashen Heart”
enjoy
P.S. this post from kottke.org on Chinese adaptations of Harry Potter is hilarious.
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Published by DWM at August 10, 2007
Update 9/14/07: Per Caritatem has a new post on the Orombi’s article here.
So much has happened this week in several blogs that we all frequent, not to mention outside or prodigious circle. Moreover, several noteworthies from the summer escaped my mention one way or another. Take this posting as my unofficial and abridged “I Don’t Know What You Did This Summer, But Here’s What You Should Have Been Reading.” I reserve the right to add to this list, to expect you all to follow up on the items herein, and to mock the many, dare I say most, of you who don’t. We’ll start with this week and work backward.
August 8. Fr. Edward T. Oakes published a charming and timely piece on the First Things blog on Wednesday called “On Canons”. If you’ve been keeping up with Janet and the most recent discussion over at Deep Grace of Theory, or you’ve been following the discussion on the nature of Christian philosophy or the comments under the Balthasar podcast, or you haven’t had your head buried in the sand, you might find his article illuminating. You’ll at least be tickled by such lines as: “No one disputes Hegel’s status as a canonical philosopher; but anyone who has tried to work through his rebarbative prose quickly comes to see how little literary merit counts when it comes to admittance in the ranks of canonical philosophers.” Ok, that’s hilarious to me. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t know what “Rebarbative” means. Hell, my spell checker doesn’t even recognize it. So, for all you playas out there -
Rebarbative: adjective; from French rébarbatif, from Middle French, from rebarber to be repellent; REPELLENT, IRRITATING
Continue reading ‘Friday Wrap up’
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