Showing items filed under “September 2016”

Following Where the Words Go

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Questions about the afterlife are back (our own NT Wright notwithstanding)!  Magazines explore post-death experiences. Protestant theologians wonder if purgatory is a useful thought (the 39 articles notwithstanding)!  Genocide makes the doctrine of hell more urgent.

Behind these varied thoughts, we can discern truths at one and the same time. The victory of Christ provides ‘a sacrifice... For the sins of the whole world.’  Our lives have eternal consequences. How can these be true together at one and the same time?

On the book-report front, I've been reading Maurice's On eternal life and eternal death.  I have been thinking about the theme in his thought with a strong Johannine streak. I would call it an ‘inherent’ emphasis. Here is what I mean by this:  the one who rejects Christ in that judges himself or herself. To confess Christ is eternal life, since by grace we are joined to the one who is life. These are not subsequent rewards or punishments.  

We can add to this more inherently truths. God has access to past, present, and future. His eternity is precisely His immediacy to them all and their abiding reality in His mind (to risk an analogy). Above all things, and at the end of all things, what is most real is God in Christ at the center of all things, and those who rejoice to behold His appearing are there saved. We can also find use in what was called the ‘privative’ theory, that hatred of God, choosing isolation from life, in a real sense isn't.  

Of course mysteries envelop all we are imagining. To God not only does all creation have an in-going reality, but it is transformed!  A new kind of life springs forth, and is not static, but with a finality and perfection.  The corruptible is still real, our pasts not erased, but now ‘puts on incorruption.’  When Christ the real Heart of all things is made transparent, they are changed, as if restored from the dead.

The purpose of such squinting into a glass darkly is to take our faith seriously as the most real part of our life, and to engender in us hope.

Peace

+GRS

 

Living Up or Down?

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    I have recently finished the British philosopher (and Anglican) Roger Scruton's prestigious Gifford Lectures (called 'The Face of God'), and commend them as beautiful, accessible, and deep. He is really addressing the most basic of theological questions: how can we speak of God who is, utterly unlike us, 'immortal, invisible, only wise.'  All the answers in theological tradition work by analogy: God is in some degree like x (e.g. reason, being, love), but also unlike them in that He is more and beyond. In answer to this question, and so as a commentary on the claim in Genesis 1:26 that the human is 'in the image of God,' Scruton focuses on three words that capture what it is to be a human: 'I', 'you,' and 'why.’ What is it about these three features of humanness that offer a window on God?

    Scruton begins with the now common materialist and scientific account of the world and so ourselves, as a collection of entities and forces determined by scientific law and genetics. This account is true enough in its own sphere - it answers well certain questions. The trouble is there are things it just can't get at. We have a direct experience of ourselves, of deciding to do things, of speaking to others. To give a reductive account of them doesn't explain them.  As a result we 'live down' to such an account of human nature, rather than account which addresses what is most distinctive of us.

      We ourselves as persons are a perspectives on the things of the world, on the 'edge' of the world of things, not separate from nor dissolved into the world of things. We as persons speak to and hear from other persons - as separate things we are bodies but not persons, though we are embodied too. And all of this doesn't say anything yet about God, only that the world is stranger...than is dreamed of (in a reductionist) philosophy.

    We are persons, inclusive of but not reducible to our bodies. As such we have an angle of approach to who God is, for He is a person too, and addresses Thous, and beginning and end of our 'why's'. But we have only an inkling thereby- His I, Thou, and why are real but far beyond ours (as a reading of Exodus 3, according to Scruton, shows).

     I offer these thoughts as a commendation of the work of Scruton, who offers a readable natural theology in this personalist and aesthetic tack. I look forward to a chance to hear this important Christian philosopher here in Dallas.

 Peace

+GRS

12Next

Complete the Race (II Timothy 4:17)

At the end of our vacation we find ourselves in Chicago for its Marathon weekend (the fastest, I have read this morning, perhaps because it is cool and relatively level). Marathons offer many good things. You can see world-class athletes from places like Ethiopia and Kenya. There is a feel of fiesta with signs by family members, getups by some for-fun runners, and food for sale.

But as I looked out my hotel window at 7:30 a.m., I watched the race of competitors who have lost legs or their use. Wheeling vehicles by arm for 26 miles means serious fitness and determination.

Those competitors were to me, this morning, a symbol of the Church too. For each is wounded. The larger family cheers them on. Each by grace has risen up to run the race. Ahead is the goal, the prize, the welcome home. We find the companionship of Jesus the Lord, there, and along the route too.

Amen.

GRS