The cry of the smart

"How the world works" alerted me to this story about an economic affairs reporter who inspite of his inside knowledge of the shennanigans on Wall Street just could not find his way out of involvement in not one but three crippling mortgages.

I know this is finger pointing but does'nt it look like a "proof story" for the thing I learnt from the scripture about how the intelligence of men is not a measure of how well they arrange their lives.

Impossible love

.... 'In this is love, that we become pathetic nothings. Forlorn, forsaken, foolish, empty, and pathetic. Only so do we live. In any sense whatsoever. According to the gospel, the pathetic life of love is the only truth, the only way, and the only life."

Halden

Economists and the quest for virtue

A Question for the Economists is a great article in which Harvey Mansfield talks sense about how we often take economic advice without thinking too much about what it means and how this economic crisis is part of that.

Led Zep in the CSI Sunday School

A long time ago when I was a Sunday School teacher, I had to teach something to my kids for the Anniversary program. So I decided to write up a song with the tune I really liked. The song was called, "A Stairway to Heaven" and I did not know who sung it. I loved the tune but did not know or could not figure out the words (this was long before Googling). In any case it reminded me about the vision of Joseph's ladder which he saw while running away from home.

I thought it appropriate to put this vision into words to this tune. Then I played the song to the children but they were not too enthusiatic about the song and about my being able to teach them. So they abandoned it and instead chose a song of their own to present.

Reading this made for a really interesting read of the history of that song.

The story of the Trinity

This is something I have to learn by heart.
At the beginning of the fourth century, there were many models by which Christian theologians attempted to grasp the nature of the interrelations of Father, Son, and Spirit, and to determine to which of the three Persons—and in what manner—it was correct to apply the name “God.” Scripture made it impossible, of course, to deny Christ at least some ascription of divinity, and equally difficult to reject the divinity of the Spirit. But it was by no means clear to all that the three divine Persons should be understood as co-equally, co-eternally, or “co-essentially” one and the same God. Hence, the most appealing, intellectually sophisticated, and plausible fourth-century alternative to what would become Nicene orthodoxy was some variant of “subordinationism.” This was the school of thought (especially well established in the great city of Alexandria) that saw the Son and Spirit as derivative and lesser emanations of the Godhead of the Father—“economically” reduced versions of God mediating between the transcendence of the Father, who dwelt in light inaccessible, and the darkness of the material world.


Quoted from David B. Hart at First Things.

Wendell berry on land and farming

"“We are talking about organic artifacts, organic only by imitation or analogy. Our ability to make such artifacts depends on virtues that are specifically human: accurate memory, observation, insight, imagination, inventiveness, reverence, devotion, fidelity, restraint. Restraint–for us, now–above all: the ability to accept and live within limits; to resist changes that are merely novel or fashionable; to resist greed and pride; to resist the temptation to “solve” problems by ignoring them, accepting them as “trade-offs,” or bequeathing them to posterity. A good solution then, must be in harmony with good character, cultural value, and moral law.”"

Wendell Berry in "The gift of Good Land" (thanks to Geoff Wells)

Updike on Joy

A very nice article from which I stole the quotes below.

It was a Saturday and...

...the men from the sulphur works were getting drunk. From within the double doors of a saloon there welled a poisonous laughter that seemed to distill all the cruelty and blasphemy in the world, and he wondered how such a noise could have a place under the sky of his father's God....

Then Caldwell remembers...

...his father turning and listening in his backwards collar to the laughter from the saloon and then smiling down to his son, "All joy belongs to the Lord."

It was half a joke but the boy took it to heart. All joy belongs to the Lord. Wherever in the faith and confusion and misery, a soul felt joy, there the Lord came and claimed it as his own; into barrooms and brothels and classrooms and alleys slippery with spittle, no matter how dark and scabbed and remote, in China or Africa or Brazil, wherever a moment of joy was felt, there the Lord stole and added to His enduring domain....

The Centaur (New York: Knopf, 1963) p. 296

Toward the end of his career, Karl Barth spoke of "the happy science" of evangelical theology, making it clear that, thanks to the covenant of grace, the first and last and decisive word about human life is this same irrepressible word of joy

...what God wills for us is a helpful, healing and uplifting work, and what God does with us brings peace and joy. Because of this, God is really the God of the euangelion, the Evangel, the Word that is good for man because it is gracious. With its efforts, evangelical theology responds to this gracious Yes.... It is concerned... with Immanuel, God with us! Having this God for its object, it can be nothing else but the most thankful and happy science!

Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (Anchor Books: New York, 1964), pp. 9-11

Translating Faith

A quote from a very nice contemplation at a church (re)Wired by Andrew Prior. Please read the whole. Its quite short.

"'Loving God' is not about belief in some set of propositions. It's about living right. Not living right to be good enough for 'God,' but as a response- as a thanksgiving for life. It's about treating the creation well; people, plants, animals, rivers, the air the earth and the sea. 'Faith,' in a Christian context, is acting on the trust that the stories of Jesus point us to 'God' and to 'what God wants.'"


I would add the word "just" in the first sentence before the word "about".

Why ever did I study Architecture

Faith and Theology: Ten virtues for theological students:

After reading this post I regret no one explained this to me before I went of to study architecture for 5 years. Not that I am much of an architect.

Most of the 10 points Ben notes would certainly give meaning to any kind of technical education as well. It is a pity neither the students nor their teachers bother about this when they teach their subjects.

On the objective Knowlege of God

“The danger of … abstractionist thinking [we can gain "objective knowledge" of God] has always been that things are viewed as existing in themselves without taking into consideration the relationships in which they stand to other things. It asks, What is God in Himself? No movement can be applied to God; therefore we confess that he is immutable and eternal. No limitations can be applied to God; therefore we hold that he is infinite, almighty, and invisible. No composition can be ascribed to God; therefore he is simple and good. Finally, no essential multiplicity can be ascribed to God; therefore God is one.” (p. 218)

Harvie Conn in his book "Eternal Word Changing Worlds" (h.t. to Peter Enns)

72 Rules

+Rowan Williams said in his talk on Benedictine spirituality.

The holy person is not simply the one who keeps the commandments with which the catalogue of tools (referring to the 72 tools in chapter 4 of the Rule) for good works begins, but he who struggles to live without deceit, their inner life manifest to guides and spiritual parents, who makes peace by addressing the roots of conflict in him or herself, and, under the direction of a skilled superior, attempts to contribute their distinctive gifts in such a way as to sustain a healthy 'circulation' in the community.

Judgement of Work done

The quote below from Thomas Merton below goes well with another from Dan at PoserorProphet where he quotes a letter he received from the theologian Moltmann to the effect, "I do not judge my self" (referring to his own work)

"It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with
everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being
we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must
withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from the effects that are beyond our control
and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of
our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to
work without expecting any immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous
satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition. "
Source: No Man Is an Island

(thanks to inward/outward for the quote)