Various Things

Ordinary Time
Philip, Apostle and Deacon

I'm back at LTS today. Before me rest several issues of the International Review of Mission, some recent Christian Century editions, a Bible, and Samuel Wells' Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics. To which blogs or publications do you turn when you want book reviews in theology and popular religion? I just found Christian Book Reviews.

As Roger likes to say, "Kyle. Back to ecclesiology." We've been talking about how we've really got to do business with the Fathers, because they are the first interpreters of the Christian witness that would later become Holy Scripture. We can't just assume that we're going to read better or more faithfully than they did. However, acknowledging that the Christian tradition develops (and is to a considerable degree developed by the Holy Spirit!) doesn't mean it can't go back to go forward in some ways. Like the canon, or the creeds of the first five centuries. You can re-interpret, but you can't replace or re-write. Sorry.

(Finger wants to have an open discussion on that here.)

Roger says I'm just afraid of becoming a Baptist again. Maybe I am. Afraid, that is. I'll write more on that later.

Blake's offering more discussion on the liberalism thread. I'm pretty proud of this post, if you've never read it.

Jen and I have been discussing the nature of "testimonies." She's also introducing you to some of my favorite people in Oxford. I miss them so. *sniff*

Andy Goodliff cites Colin Gunton on renaming the Trinity.

I mostly don't talk about this stuff anymore, but Internet Monk just says it so well...

There is nothing I resent more than the insistence that I cannot find Jesus genuinely present in other traditions or in the lives of Christians with whom I disagree. The attempt to “launder” and purify evangelicalism down to a “100%” error free expression of the true church is a project I want nothing to do with. I do not need a theo-babysitter to keep me away from Christians, books and expressions of the faith that might be tainted. This is, in my view, little more than human pride and the desire for power over others expressing itself in the denouncement of all who are not identical to our own current level of understanding.

- "What is a Post-Evangelical?" (Part 2)

Holy cow.

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