“Solitude.” “It is the most foundational of the disciplines of abstinence, the via negativa. The evangelical passion for engagement with the world is good. But as Thomas à Kempis says, the only person who’s safe to travel is the person who’s free to stay at home. And Pascal said that we would solve the world’s…
Category
Theology
A weak force, like a kiss.
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,…
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…
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….
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…
The ones who know don’t talk and the ones who talk don’t know.
In general, Loquacity (rambling talk) opens the doors of the soul, and the devout warmth of the heart at once escapes. Empty talk does the same, but even more so… Empty talk is the door to criticism and slander, the spreader of false rumors and opinions, the sower of discord and strife. It stifles the…
Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time.
Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogeneous, to whom all hours are alike, qualitiless, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given…
Mumford & Sons, Descartes & Unchanging Substances part 1
And death is at your doorstep And it will steal your innocence But it will not steal your substance Above is an excerpt from the song Timshel by Mumford and Sons, the folk rock band from the UK which continues to grow exponentially in adoration. Put simply, I find their music to be exceedingly brilliant….