It is in or under the name of God that the event calls upon us. It is not what we call God that is at issue, but what God calls. Then again, it is not what God calls that is at issue, but the response, which is the first and only testimony to the call,…
Category
Christianity
The Golden Echo by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear, gallantry and gaiety and grace, Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace— Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath, And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver…
Freedom and Sweet, Sweet Love Making
Love requires freedom…..this means that God’s actual goal for creation, to bring it to fruition within the divine love (Paul’s ‘all-in-all’), requires creation to have genuine freedom. Even Calvinists pretend its true in their daily lives. For example, when two lovers consummate their marriage in a passionate act of sweet love making, freedom, vulnerability, and…
A Persuasion, A Form Evoking Desire: David Bentley Hart and the Aesthetics of Christian Truth
Christ is a persuasion, a form evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace: that the desire awakened by the shape of Christ and his church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to…
When The Answer is Also The Question
An image Bell returns to often in Love Wins is that of Jesus being the rock that gives water, an image from Hebrew scripture where Moses, leading the Israelites through the desert, called on God to give them water. God told Moses to take his staff and smack a rock with it. The rock cracked…
A Defective Love
What makes us humans is, of course, being more loving. And sin is a defect in this love. To say that Jesus was without sin just means that he was wholly loving, that he did not put up barriers against people, that he was not afraid of being at the disposal of others, that…
Heaven is NOT a Utopia
I’ve been following Kester Brewins “Dirty Heaven” series over at his blog (1, 2, 3). It’s basically him reflecting on the above RSA video. What a great read! Here are a few things I’m thinking about after watching the video: I’m pretty much agreeing with Kester that the typical “Utopian” view of Heaven needs re-thought….
What does a good artist do?
Good artists are people who can stick things together so that they stay stuck. They know how to gather things into formal arrangements that are intelligible, memorable, and lasting. Good forms confer health upon the things that they gather together. Farms, families, and communities are forms of art just as are poems, paintings, and symphonies….
Will you lie to vindicate God?
Will you lie to vindicate God? Will you perjure yourself for him? Will you blindly stand on his side? Pleading his case alone? What will happen when he finds out what you are doing? Can you cheat him as you would a man? Won’t he judge you severely if your testimony is false? Your answers…
Real Jesus vs. Republican Jesus
Illustration via the PBH Network