Keller quotes Iris Murdoch

Tuesday 26 August 2008 at 11:37 pm In the opening sermon on Worship on the call to worship Keller has a great quote from a philosopher named Iris Murdoch. He uses two quotes from her that are both found on this page. Good stuff.

history of the mainline

Monday 25 August 2008 at 8:25 pm A really meaty article on the history of mainline protestantism in the USA.

Luke 9

Friday 22 August 2008 at 6:02 pm Luke 9 begins with Jesus calling the 12 together and giving them power and authority over demons and to cure diseases. I think I have tended to understanding this in a rather Pentecostal way. In fact, it is a very creation, restorative way. Central here is Jesus restoring the cultural mandate giving in the image of God in humanity's rulership over the creation.

NT Wright on our part in God's plan to save the universe

Monday 18 August 2008 at 10:48 pm But the most important thing to say at the end of this discussion, and of this section of the book, is that heaven and hell are not, so to speak, what the whole game is about. This is one of the central surprises in the Christian hope. The whole point of my argument so far is that the question of what happens to me after death is not the major, central, framing question that centuries of theological tradition have supposed. The New Testament, true to its Old Testament roots, regularly insists that the major, central, framing question is that of God's purpose of rescue and re-creation for the whole world, the entire cosmos. The destiny of individual human beings must be understood within that context—not simply in the sense that we are only part of a much larger picture but also in the sense that part of the whole point of being saved in the present is so that we can play a vital role (Paul speaks of this role in the shocking terms of being "fellow workers with God") within that larger picture and purpose. And that in turn makes us realize that the question of our own destiny, in terms of the alternatives of joy or woe, is probably the wrong way of looking at the whole question. The question ought to be, How will God's new creation come? and then, How will we humans contribute to that renewal of creation and to the fresh projects that the creator God will launch in his new world? The choice before humans would then be framed differently: are you going to worship the creator God and discover thereby what it means, to become fully and gloriously human, reflecting his powerful, healing, transformative love into the world? Or are you going to worship the world as it is, boosting your corruptible humanness by gaining power or pleasure from forces within the world but merely contributing thereby to your own dehumanization and the further corruption of the world itself?
This reflection leads to a further, and sobering, thought. If what I have suggested is anywhere near the mark, then to insist on heaven and hell as the ultimate question—to insist, in other words, that what happens eventually to individual humans is the most important thing in the world—may be to make a mistake similar to the one made by the Jewish people in the first century, the mistake that both Jesus and Paul addressed. Israel believed (so Paul tells us, and he should know) that the purposes of the creator God all came down to this question: how is God going to rescue Israel? What the gospel of Jesus revealed, however, was that the purposes of God were reaching out to a different question: how is God going to rescue the world through Israel and thereby rescue Israel itself as part of the process but not as the point of it all? Maybe what we are faced with in our own day is a similar challenge: to focus not on the question of which human beings God is going to take to heaven and how he is going to do it but on the question of how God is going to redeem and renew his creation through human beings and how he is going to rescue those humans themselves as part of the process but not as the point of it all. If we could reread Romans and Revelation—and the rest of the New Testament, of course—in the light of this refram-ing of the question, I think we would find much food for thought.
pg. 184

NT Wright on common use of the word "heaven"

Monday 18 August 2008 at 10:44 pm

From Surprised by Hope p. 168

 First, as I said earlier, the resurrection is still in the future. This is the official view of all mainstream orthodox theologians, Catholic and Protestant, East and West, except for those who think that after death we pass into an eternity in which all moments are present. We should recall in particular that the use of the word heaven to denote the ultimate goal of the redeemed, though of course hugely popularized by medieval and subsequent piety, is severely misleading and does not begin to do justice to the Christian hope. I am repeatedly frustrated by how hard it is to get this point through the thick wall of traditional thought and language that most Christians put up. The ultimate destination is (once more) not "going to heaven when you die" but being bodily raised into the transformed, glorious likeness of Jesus Christ. (The point of all this is not, of course, merely our own happy future, important though that is, but the glory of God as we come fully to reflect his image.) Thus, if we want to speak of"going to heaven when we die," we should be clear that this represents the first, and far less important, stage of a two-stage process. Resurrection isn't life after death; it is life after life after death.

A nice Keller summary

Sunday 10 August 2008 at 11:09 pm This may be in some of Kellers handouts that he makes but it's nice to have it on the web.

Keller on centering your life

Sunday 10 August 2008 at 11:02 pm From the endnotes in his book. more...

Gerasene Demoniac

Friday 08 August 2008 at 6:12 pm This week: the Gerasene Demoniac:

Subtle and often erroneous expectations about God and his restorative work in our lives and in this world:

1. It will be pleasant.
2. It will be welcome.
3. It will be obvious, popular and widely accepted.
4. It will be understandable.

Instead we will see some very strange things:

1. God’s work seems wildly inefficient.
He crosses the lake to save one pitiful man and not even to take him back over to “God’s country” at the end.

2. God’s mission is a strange combination of ruthlessness and graciousness
The man doesn’t ask to be saved. Jesus shows mercy to demons. The town’s pig economy literally goes into the drink. Jesus acquiesces to the request of the fearful townsfolk and heads home. “Mission Accomplished”. Jesus once again seemingly launches a fully convinced disciple to do gentile missions while his chosen 12 remain clueless despite an astounding theophany.


3. Even his results are both miraculous and inscrutable at the same time.
Jesus’ newly minted star witness is sent without the benefit of the discipling, teaching, experience, support, exposure to give a full explanation of “what God has done for me”. In the end, however, the Luke 4 manifesto once again bears fruit and is proven to be spot-on.

Passing bad report in the Internet age

Friday 08 August 2008 at 5:24 pm Nice piece.

Understanding Hell by understanding Satan's dilemma

Thursday 07 August 2008 at 01:02 am Part of the difficulty in talking about hell is our difficulty in figuring out our problem. The problem is deeply connected with another mysterious Biblical assertion that somehow we cannot look upon God or we would die. more...

Calvin Summer Lecture 2008

Wednesday 06 August 2008 at 5:43 pm

Science, Philosophy and Belief.

Some well respected and accomplished academics discuss these issues. pvk