Isn't Feeling More Spiritual Than Reason?

Right now I'm reading After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, a book on Christian purpose and ethics by N. T. Wright. In it he stresses over and over again the need for Christians to think out what it means to be "in Christ." The following quote displays one of the central arguments of the book, and one that should be taken seriously by all of us--we who stumble along through this lovely life claiming Jesus as Lord.

"Part of the problem in contemporary Christianity, I believe, is that talk about freedom of the Spirit, about the grace which sweeps us off our feet and heals and transforms our lives, has been taken over surreptitiously by a kind of low-grade romanticism, colluding with an anti-intellectual streak in our culture, generating the assumption that the more spiritual you are, the less you need to think.

"I cannot stress too strongly that this is a mistake. The more genuinely spiritual you are, according to Romans 12 and Philippians 1, the more clearly and accurately and carefully you will think, particularly about what the completed goal of your Christian journey will be and hence what steps you should be taking, what habits you should be acquiring, as part of the journey toward that goal, right now. Thinking clearly and Christianly is thus both a key element within the total rehumanizing process (you won't be fully human if you leave your thinking and reasoning behind) and a vital part of the motor which drives the rest of that process."

The Joy of The Gospel: Pope Francis' Missionary Exhortation

I've been reading through the Pope's recent exhortation to the Church, The Joy of the Gospel (Evangelii Gaudium in Latin), and have been refreshed at every turn.  It's a long document (something like 250 pages), but Francis has written an exhortation that can be taken into consideration not only by Catholics, but by all who call themselves followers of Jesus.  How dangerous would it be if we refused to hear wisdom simply because of it's speaker's denomination (1 Corinthians 1:10-18)?  The exhortation is full of scripture and, as far as I've read, contains nothing that a Protestant might find unorthodox.  To be quite honest, this is, at its core, an evangelical document.  It is an exhortation to the Church to preach the Gospel to all, to do everything in love and mercy and truth for the sake of making Jesus known to all people, especially the poor. This is my favorite quote so far:

48. … We have to state, without mincing words, that there is an inseparable bond between our faith and the poor. May we never abandon them.
49. Let us go forth, then, let us go forth to offer everyone the life of Jesus Christ. Here I repeat for the entire Church what I have often said to the priests and laity of Buenos Aires: I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security. I do not want a Church concerned with being at the centre and which then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures. If something should rightly disturb us and trouble our consciences, it is the fact that so many of our brothers and sisters are living without the strength, light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, without a community of faith to support them, without meaning and a goal in life. More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: “Give them something to eat” (Mk 6:37).

Edit: At the end of the exhortation Francis includes his prayer to Mary.  I do understand that we all have our differences, but the prayer that Francis includes goes above and beyond devotion, and elevates Mary to a recipient of the praise only due the triune God.  Especially when the New Testament is read as a Jewish document, which it certainly is (Jesus was, in fact a Jew), to praise Mary to the degree that Francis does is certainly not biblical.

A Letter To Phil Robertson: On Gentleness and Wisdom

Mr. Robertson,

One part of me wants to encourage you for your boldness in the face of a cultural war, speaking out on an issue that's important to you.  Going against the grain, if you will.  One part of me wants to say, "Yeah!  You should be able to say whatever you want to say about whoever, whenever!  This is the United States of America and you've got the right to free speech!"  And I think, in one sense, this is true.

Consider this, if you will:  "Existing power structures would have loved to silence Nelson Mandela (and Martin Luther King while we're at it) because of his views. I don't think anyone can propose media restriction while discussing huge ideas... What if someone deemed this conversation "lacking in character" or "dangerous" and deleted it?" That's a quote from a Facebook conversation with a friend of mine earlier this month--he makes a great point, doesn't he? The Germans and Russians who opposed their power structures were deemed dangerous and silenced. And things escalated quickly from there.

Another point to consider, however, is this:  A&E, the television business that suspended you, is just that--a business. And just like you have the freedom to say what you want, they have the freedom to present their own views with their own business.  (But then I wonder, can someone legally be suspended from their job for talking about their religious convictions?)

But Phil, if you don't care about anything I've said thus far, please do consider this final point:

Click to read more »

Pope Francis I: Time Magazine's "Person of the Year"

This morning, Time named the Pope the "Person of the Year." While Time admittedly is just a magazine and publisher, this decision is remarkable. Since when does the leader of the Catholic Church win the top spot on a pop-culture list of the best people ever? Since this morning, I guess.

What's most amazing to me is not that a Pope won this contest, but that this Pope did.  Apparently the attributes of Jesus Christ are, even after 2,000 years of human failure in his name, still desirable to our culture. A few weeks ago Francis I wrote an eighty-something page document called "The Joy of the Gospel." In it he emphasizes and reemphasizes his desire for "...a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security."  Yes.

If this man does what he says he'll do, if he continues to change the face of the Church into one of kindness, humility, and self-sacrificial love, while holding fast to the principles of God's created order, he's my man of the year, too.

On the controversial issues, the Time article had this to say of the new Pope:

And so Francis signals great change while giving the same answers to the uncomfortable questions. On the question of female priests: “We need to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman.” Which means: no. No to abortion, because an individual life begins at conception. No to gay marriage, because the male-female bond is established by God. “The teaching of the church … is clear,” he has said, “and I am a son of the church, but”—and here he adds his prayer for himself—“it is not necessary to talk about those issues all the time.”

And to the divorced and remarried who have been disallowed the sacrament of Communion in the Catholic Church, Francis says this: Communion "is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak."  Wonderful.

As Anthony LeDonne said in his post on this same article, "...I care that the Pope is attentive to the longstanding portrait of a humbled and humbling Jesus."

Here's to the Pope.

Albert Einstein and Faith

While reading Dale Allison's Constructing Jesus, I came across this enlightening little quote by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld:

In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism.

And so we are left with theories and models of reality that cannot be proven.  And so we, even if the best of scientists, are left with faith.

In other news, check out this NPR article about the discovery of particles that may move faster than light, thus perhaps leaving E=MC^2 as an old, incorrect theory.

Eyewitness Accounts in the New Testament?

I came across a gem of a post on the blog of historian Larry Hurtado. He quotes Richard Bauckham commenting on a new book he's working on.  Bauckham has written some incredibly influential books (here and here) on the history of the first century Greco-Roman and Jewish world, and his comment on Hurtado's blog makes me wonder in anticipation what this new project might add to Bauckham's influence on the understanding of the New Testament.  Here's the comment:

“I guess I ought to clarify my position on eyewitness testimony in the Gospels, since it has been raised and you, Larry, say: ‘As I understand him, he doesn’t mean that the Gospels are “eyewitness testimony” such as a court transcript would provide, but that the Gospels draw on “eyewitness testimony” as it circulated in early Christian circles.’ Well, no, certainly nothing like a court transcript, more like “oral history.” But my point was that the Gospels are CLOSE to the eyewitnesses’ own testimony, not removed from them by decades of oral tradition. I think there is a very good case for Papias’s claim that Mark got his much of his material directly from Peter (and I will substantiate this further with quite new evidence in the sequel to [my book] Jesus and the Eyewitnesses that I’m now writing). I think that the ‘Beloved Disciple’ himself wrote the Gospel of John as we have it, and that he was a disciple of Jesus and thus an eyewitness himself, as he claims, though not John the son of Zebedee. Of course, his Gospel is the product of his life-long reflection on what he had witnessed, the most interpretative of the Gospels, but still the only one actually written by an eyewitness, who, precisely because he was close to Jesus, felt entitled to interpret quite extensively. Luke, as well as incorporating written material (Mark’s Gospel, which he knew as substantially Peter’s version of the Gospel story, and probably some of the “Q” material was in written form), also, I think, did what ancient historians did: he took every opportunity to meet eyewitnesses and interviewed them. He has probably collected material from a number of minor eyewitnesses from whom he got individual stories or sayings. Matthew is the Gospel I understand least! But whatever accounts for Matthew it is not the form-critical picture of anonymous community traditions, which we really must now abandon!”

Here's the link to Hurtado's post: 

http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/bauckham-on-eyewitnesses-and-the-gospels/

And here's another little treat.  Bauckham explaining Jesus and the Eyewitnesses:

Noah: The Upcoming Epic Film

"The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." (Genesis 6:5-8, ESV)

This should be entertaining.  Even if Hollywood twists the biblical storyline for the sake of moviegoer's awe, Russell Crowe, Anthony Hopkins and Hermione--I mean Emma Watson--is a team that is not likely to disappoint.  According to IMDb the director and primary writer, Darren Aronofsky, has been intrigued by the Noah figure since childhood because of his experience with survivor's guilt.  The film will be based on the recently published French graphic novel by Aronofsky & Handel, Noé: Pour la cruauté des hommes ("Noah: For the Cruelty of Men").  Below are the trailers for both that graphic novel and the 2014 epic film, Noah, as well as some images from the graphic novel.

If I had to guess, based on the director's past, the content of the trailer, and the images from the graphic novel, this film will be quite dark and violent.  Perhaps it will, then, do a better job at capturing the nature of humanity.  John Byron said the following in expectation: "The film starring Russell Crowe and Emma Watson seems to promise a technological feast for the eyes and ears as Hollywood tries to do a better job of destroying the world than God."  So it continues.


Edit (bit of a spoiler here): I've done a bit more research and have found some interesting little tidbits about the thrust of the film.  Apparently the earth is destroyed because humankind disrespected the plants and animals.  That is, our current global-warming debate has been handed off to Noah and friends.  Here's what Aronofsky said: "It’s about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what’s going on on this planet. So I think it’s got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist."  Basically, it looks like Noah is going to be the good guy, and God and everyone else will be the bad guys.  For a lengthy summary of the script, click here.

Some pages from the French graphic novel: