The emphasis of the new project, “Vocation of First Call Congregations,” was to study the characteristics of congregations that do a good job supporting first call pastors as they start their ministry following completion of their seminary education.
via Vocation of First Call Congregations – Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
When looking at merit of historical sources, there are five criteria that are of most importance.
Concerning those who call themselves Cathari, if they come over to the Catholic and Apostolic Church, the great and holy Synod decrees that they who are ordained shall continue as they are in the clergy. But it is before all things necessary that they should profess in writing that they will observe and follow the dogmas of the Catholic and Apostolic Church; in particular that they will communicate with persons who have been twice married, and with those who having lapsed in persecution have had a period [of penance] laid upon them, and a time [of restoration] fixed so that in all things they will follow the dogmas of the Catholic Church.
via CHURCH FATHERS: First Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325).
When reading through The Canons of Nicaea from 325, it is surely interesting how structures and hierarchy take over and questions of righteous and holy living become secondary. As part of that the Canons address very thoroughly the right way of the clergy, reminds us that:
Let all such practices be utterly done away, and let the deacons remain within their own bounds, knowing that they are the ministers of the bishop and the inferiors of the presbyters. Let them receive the Eucharist according to their order, after the presbyters, and let either the bishop or the presbyter administer to them. Furthermore, let not the deacons sit among the presbyters, for that is contrary to canon and order. And if, after this decree, any one shall refuse to obey, let him be deposed from the diaconate.
One wonders how the word “inferiors” made it to a Christian document in 4th Century, and how this rule of sitting in groups fits with Paul.
I suggest in short, that the Temple and YHWH’s return to Zion are the keys to gospel Christology. Forget the titles, at least for a moment; forget the pseudo-orthodox attempts to make Jesus of Nazareth conscious of being the second person of the Trinity; forget the arid reductionism that is the mirror-image of that unthinking would-be orthodoxy. Focus instead, if you will, on a young Jewish prophet telling a story about YHWH returning to Zion as judge and redeemer, and then embodying it by riding into the city in tears, by symbolizing the Temple’s destruction, and by celebrating the final Exodus. I propose, as a matter of history, that Jesus of Nazareth was conscious of vocation, a vocation given him by the one he knew as “Father,” to enact in himself what, in Israel’s scriptures, Israel’s God had promised to accomplish. He would be the pillar of cloud for the people of the new Exodus. He would embody in himself the returning and redeeming action of the covenant God.
via The Historical Jesus and Christian Theology by N.T. Wright.
N.T. Wright gives an example of how we can look at Jesus from Nazareth. Another article by N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God, addresses Christology or the notion of Jesus as God.
This means that a people’s sovereignty is diminished inasmuch as that people lack any one valued human characteristic, namely whiteness or maleness. For instance, to be both white and male affords one the highest level of political, social, economic and ecclesiastical privilege and dominance. To be white and female eliminates the claim to gender (i.e., male) privilege but preserves the right to race (i.e., white) privilege. To be black and male portends a “racialized” male privilege. Specifically, black men are able to exercise sovereignty only in relation to black women. To be black and female is to have virtually no claim to the privileges accorded in a white patriarchal society and/or Church. …
The underside are better situated to see the radical and revolutionary change required to ensure that all human beings have access to what is needed to live and to fulfill our full human potential.
It is obvious that modernism as an ideology of Western culture is in serious trouble. At the present time, however, no one knows for certain what will arise to take modernism’s place. The postmodern is the name given to this space between what was and what is yet to be.
Still another aspect of the postmodern is what one social scientist has called the “unsecularization of the world.” Not only are new religious movements coming into being, but even more significant is that traditional religions are experiencing revival and renewal.
via Toward a Theological Understanding of Postmodernism, by Daniel J. Adams.
Daniel J. Adams offers a readable and accessible overview of postmodernism, calling theologians to avoid the tendency of fragmentation.
The notion that God is to be known through Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience. This is an extension on the notion of “three-legged stool” claiming that God can be known through Scripture, Tradition, and Reason.
The believe that God acts differently towards God’s people and different time in History. This is usually connected to an understanding of different covenants between God and God’s people throughout the Bible. This understanding of dispensationalism is important for many Christians to make sense and even predict the end of times as we know it.
Some kind of dispensationalism is contained in all Christian interpretation, due to God’s salvific work in Christ. An historical event which, according to most Christians, changed the way God and God’s people relate.
In the article Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline (subscription needed), Joseph Bottum seems to come to the conclusion that well educated liberals in charge of the mainline denominations headquarters are to blame not only for the church’s decline but for rising division in God’s chosen country it self.
Many Americans are profoundly patriotic, no doubt, and many Americans are profoundly critical of their country. We are left, however, with a great problem in combining the two, and that problem was bequeathed to us by the death of Protestant America – by the collapse of the churches that were once both the accommodating help and criticizing prophet of the American experiment.
Mr. Bottum is right when he brings attention to the new unity in the religious spectrum.
The horizontal unity of Mere Religion cuts across denominations. Serious, believing Presbyterians, for example, now typically feel that they have more in common with serious, believing Catholics and evangelicals – with serious believing Jew, for that matter – than they do, vertically, with the unserious, unorthodox members of their own denomination.
However, I would not use words like serious and unserious believer, implying that those that don’t belong to the conservative, orthodox, “right-wingishy,” world that Mr. Bottum seems to lean towards are somehow not taking their faith seriously. It is actually possible to claim the oposite as a fact.
The heart of the Joint Declaration is surely paragraph 15, and more particularly the sentence: “Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.” This consensus does not go beyond the clear conclusions of the dialogues. While it is in perfect accord both with the Augsburg Confession and with the Decree on Justification of the Council of Trent, it dispels some false stereotypes inherited from the past. Lutherans have often accused Catholics of holding that justification is a human achievement rather than a divine gift received in faith, while Catholics have accused Lutherans of holding that justification by faith does not involve inner renewal or good works. By mentioning both faith and works, both acceptance by God and the gift of the Holy Spirit, this sentence strikes an even–handed balance calculated to satisfy both sides.
via Two Languanges of Salvation: The Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration.
Avery Dulles addresses critically the difference in languages used by Lutheran Churches and The Roman Catholic Church when it comes to interpreting what JDDJ really says.
* Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.
It is worth looking at how Consultation on Church Union (COCU), became Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC) and how ecumenical bodies like Christian Churches Together in the USA (CCT-USA) interact with each other.
It is important in this context to look at how different bodies focus on different aspects of ecumenism. Is it about working together or doing theology together?
David Murrow offers a valuable and perhaps helpful narrative to counteract the niceness in the mainline churches, at least in the US, in his book Why Men Hate Going to Church. What he uses to encounter the “be nice” and “be irrelevant” theology of the mainline churches, is the boyish theology (isl. strákaguðfræðin), which I learned in Vatnaskogur Summer Camp in Iceland. Theology of action and fun, lay driven, running thru puddles, getting dirty and wet, competing for the price like Paul, solution based, focused on results rather than community “goody-goody” feeling. Its contains an “Onward Christian Soldiers” worship style, with stories of heroic adventures.
In his writing it is clear that Mr Murrow is surely not a theologian, his glorified thoughts about the early church is way off base, and John Gray’s pop-psychology, Mr. Murrow quotes, is not worth the paper its written on.
However, Mr Murrow is right that there is more to Christianity than kumbaya-ish be good to some, singing about our love to Jesus, and helping out in the nursery. If we are to live Christlike, we have to stop being polite and nice, become risk takers, step up and out, and be ready to get dirty and wet as we run for the price. Or as they say in Vatnaskogur: “Press on towards the goal.” (Phil 3:14)
Working with LATEX involves writing in one application (TeXShop, TextMate, etc.) and viewing your document in a pdf reader (Acrobat Reader, Skim, etc.). To see the result of your work, to correct or improve it, it is often practical to quickly go back and forth between the working text and the resulting pdf.
via Using SyncTeX with LaTeX | FourSenses.net. (link is currently broken 01/31/2014)
A part of a blog, written by a theologian, which uses LaTeX as a text processor.
Why do I remain in the church? Because of the just foundations of the church. I am inspired by Jesus Christ himself, his Spirit. I do not live as a solitary individual. I stay in a community, my community of faith. Wherever I go–Japan, Pakistan–I always find people of my community. This is the community in which I was born and baptized, in which I have had so many positive experiences, a community of 2,000 years. Why should I be alienated from this? As a Canadian you may have some problems with your government but you will not go away seeking a better country. I shall remain in the Catholic Church and in Christianity.
via Hans Kung: happy to stay in the church; happy to change it – page 2 | Catholic New Times.
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Few years ago I wrote a short presentation about the theologian Hans Kung for a class in Systematic Theology. I decided to focus on his connection to the RCC, and his connection to the current pope. Here are few links on articles.
David G. Horrell looks in his paper at how the Pauline literature moves away from using sibling language (άδελϕοί) and starts to refer to the Christian community as a household (οἰ̑κος θεου̑:) and wonders whether this is an indication of growing hieararchial tendencies in the early Christian church, as the household was a hierarchically structured entity.
From άδελϕοί to οἰ̑κος θεου̑: social transformation in Pauline Christianity – University of Exeter.
Luther suffered from lifelong constipation and urine retention. Thus, “In this creative moment the tension of nights and days of meditation found release throughout his being – and nobody who has read Luther’s private remarks can doubt that his total being always included his bowels.” Thus, for Erikson, there is something profoundly physiological in Luther’s new understanding of God as one who is “no longer lurking in the periphery of space and time,” but is rather “moving from inside” of us, and is thus, in a very real sense, “what works in us.”
From “The Soul as the ‘Coreness’ of the Self” by Donald Capps.
Hans Kung focuses in his studies on Paradigm Shifts in Christianity. Here is a pdf that showw how Kung sees the historical process of Christianity through the ages.
Theology is not unrelated to socio-political realities of existence; and that historically it has been used to maintain the social and political advantages of the status quo.
When we use the father concept about a priest. What kind of a parent is that? Is it the one that makes his children independent but still invites them to a steak on Sundays?
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The creeds that we confess are priestly, focused on sacrifice, structure, and systematic worldview, no room for spirit, peace, or justice (innri samþykktir þjóðkirkjunnar, anyone).
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LeBron James does not run Clevaland Cavaliers. However, that does not mean that basketball is secondary on the clubs agenda (or does it?).
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Decision making through dialogue, in the presence of a strong charismatic leader has a strong bend towards monarchy.
“The mission of the Church is to love Jesus Christ. Everything else is just strategy.” Mark Allan Powell
