Hermeneutica has moved, at least for now...

Blogging will now contniue through WordPress at the new address. So, redirect you bookmarks, and lets continue the discussion!

I will keep this site up and running in case I find that WordPress is not as good as I thought it would be.

So i cant handle being away from blogging....

ok maybe thats a bit of an overstatement, but if anyone comes across perhaps by accident after I said it is over, I will be picking it up again after semester is over.

partting is such sweet sorrow

Did I say slowed down..? Perhaps I should have said stop. Yes, im far too busy to keep up with this. Its been fun, and I anticipate that I will return to the blogosphere later in the year. But for now I bid my fairwell.

Eddie

Things have slowed down here and will continue to be slow for now as I work through some issues and sort out my life. Times are stressful, and I would appreciate your prayers for my family.

Eddie

quote - Bonhoeffer on community

Every principle of selection and every separation connected with it that is not necessitated quite objectively by common work, local conditions, or family connections is of the greatest danger to a Christian community.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (London: SCM Press, 1972), 24

quote - Hauerwas and Willimon on community

Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon have this to say about community:

When people are very detached, very devoid of purpose and a coherent worldview, Christians must be very suspicious of talk about community. In a world like ours, people will be attracted to communities that promise them as easy way out of loneliness, togetherness based on common tastes, racial or ethnic traits, or mutual self-interest. There is then little check on the community becoming as tyrannical as the individual ego. Community becomes totalitarian when its only purpose is to foster a sense of belonging in order to overcome the fragility of the lone individual. Christian community, life in the colony, is not primarily about togetherness. It is about the way of Jesus Christ with those whom he calls to himself. It is about disciplining our wants and needs in congruence with a story, which gives us the resources to lead truthful lives. In living out the story together, togetherness happens, but only as a by-product of the main project of trying to be faithful to Jesus.

Hauerwas, S. and Willimon, W. H., Resident Aliens (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), 78

Relating to Jesus

In Evangelical Christianity today, there is a rising emphasis placed upon the believer's relationship with Jesus. It is thought that at the centre of what it means to be a Christian is to have a "personal relationship with Jesus". Yet I have been wondering for some time now, why is this conviction not reflected in the New Testament? Or perhaps in my search I have just missed it?

Granting the perspective the benefit of the doubt, could it simply be that the New Testament documents (bio about Jesus and letters to churches, as well as a few to individuals), due to the "accidents of history", were not concerned with it? Should the absence of the notion caution our giving it such significance and centrality?

Now Im no stiff, and I have a growing connection with God through prayer, which I am comfortable terming a 'relationship' as both give and take. But in the desire to stay true to the New Testament, I am un-easy about granting it the centrality in both proclamation and theology that others are so happy to do. Perhaps in our following Jesus, this is something that we emulate of him. Your comments are greatly desired on this issue.

The Unattainable Authority of Scripture?

Amidst contemporary debate over the authority of the Bible and how it should shape our faith, I suggest we should just get on with following Jesus, and that means reading the gospels with ears to hear (and obey).

Too often the biblical writings have been turned into vice grips and sqeezed the life out of God's people. But Jesus came to give life in God's ongoing act of renewal and re-creation. Too many rules, far too many rules.. and not enough life in the Spirit...

What do we mean by "Community"?

In a Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren writes: 'Community has become a buzzword in the church in recent years. Overbusy individuals hope they can cram it into their overstuffed schedules like their membership to a health and fitness club (which they never have time to use). Churches hope they can conjure it with candles, programs, or training videos' (208). He then goes on to speak of the Anabaptists practice of 'community in creation' (208-210).

The issue I wish to raise here is What exactly do we mean by "community"? Has it simply become a word so often thrown around without careful thought as to what is being meant? And does this problem exist within the work of scholarship, the talk of the church, or both?

In contemporary everyday usage, the term refers to a group of people associated by way of some shared characteristics. Most naturaly, a community is a group of people who live within a certain proximity to one another, thus I am part of the community of Glenfield. Beyond this, shared characteristics can range from religion (e.g. the Muslim community of London) and ethnicity (e.g. the Polynesian community of South Auckland), to shared interests (e.g. the aggressive skating community of New Zealand). Even where the community is defined by something other than proximity, locality always plays a role in the defenition as seen above. If I was to make a statement about the Polynesian community, your liekly to ask which one, whereas if I was to say something about Poynesians you would not. I may speak of the skating community of Auckland, or New Zealand, but I would rarely speak of the global skating community. Even when I do, locality comes into play (hence 'global'). It seems that locality or proximity (however wide) is never truly perged from our use of the term as community is a term used to limit the scope of our reference.[1]

However, within Christian discourse I get the impression that the term is being used to point to some ideal state of human affairs or relationships. We are told that we need to 'build' community, that this is what is lacking in our church life, we are missing whatever would make it or us a community. What then characterizes community used in this sense? What are we missing?

Here we see the ambiguity of the term. Are we looking for proximity? Certain practices that we do not all yet share? Or is it some other aspect of 'community life'? If it is the latter, where do we get these characteristics from? What actual 'community' would we wish to model it on or Who would we wish to emulate as living this ideal state of affairs?[2]

If the call for community is indeed a biblical one, then we should not be looking for communities to emulate. But the term community is an english one, what we find in the New Testament is ekklesia, and perhaps what we need is not community in need of defenition but a re-worked vision of church?

E. Stegemann and W. Stegemann examine ekklesia in the NT and conclude that 'the Christ-confessing ekklesia is an assembly in which its members come together, and it is a community or group whose members are bound together even outside their actual meetings through reciprocal social interaction.'[3] Who needs the ill-defined term community when we have ekklesia, complete with instructions as to how life within this group should function (e.g. hospitality, service, assistance, etc.)??


Notes
[1] Steve Reilly protests the wide scope given the term and offers a more restricted definition: 'This abused and ill-defined term refers to associations of individuals bound together by a shared local environment, rather than by consious interests or by links defined by a single characteristic such as class or ethnicity. Its exact boundaries are unclear, but set by scale and accidents of geography rather than by choice. A community is said to be a source of identity beyond family and close personal life, but with great intimacy and more subtle obligations and and rewards than those of national identity.' 'community', 144, in Bullock, A. and Trombley, S. (eds.), The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (London: Harper Collins, 1977, [2000, Third Edition paper back])
[2] Perhaps what is being looked for is some extended involvement in each others lives, akin to what would be experienced in a small isolated town where everyone knows everyone else. But here proximity is the catalyst and what sustains the life style, something that so many Christians do not experience in regard to their fellow church goers.
[3] The Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 264

I feel the need to blog something, but I have nothing to blog...

Still reading through Marriane Meye Thompson's The Promise of the Father which I am finding helpful. Thank you to those who have provided suggestions for reading on evangelism.

I came across this through someones link which I now cannot find. Anyhoo, over at Heart, Mind, Sould, and Strength, Weekend Fisher reflects on Promiscuity in terms of sexual homelessness. And over at Chrisendom, Chris Tilling offers the best list of things to read before commencing theological studies to date.

Books on Evangelism

This coming semester I will be taking a course on Evangelism and Church Planting. As this is largely a new area for me, I am wondering which books people have found most helpful, most inspiring, and most biblically informative and sound.

Of course a book need not meet all these criteria to be of value, but if anyone knows of any that do I would love to know!

Knowing God

For those of us who spend a significant proportion of our lives seeking God in the study, here are some refreshing words that may help keep us from forsaking our first love:

Jesus has taught us that the way to know what God is like is not by determining our philosophical boundary conditions/ definitions/ delineations before departing, but rather the way to know is by embarking on an adventure of faith, hope, and love, even if you don't know where your path will lead (think of Abraham, Hebrews 11:8). The way to know God is by following Jesus on that adventure. One doesn't learn what God is like in a library or a pew and then begin to love God in real life. One begins to love God and others in real life. In the process one learns what God is like-and one might be driven to the library or pew to learn more. Anyone who doesn't embark on the adventure of love doesn't know God at all, whatever he can say or define or delineate, for God is love.

B. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Zondervan, 2004), 185

Words from the Fathers

Speaking of the incarnation, Ignatius of Antioch writes:

Mary's virginity was hidden from the prince of this world; so was her child-bearing, and so was the death of the Lord. All these three trumpet-tongued secrets were brought to pass in the deep silence of God. How then were they made known to the world? Up in the heavens a star gleamed out, more brilliant than all the rest; no words could describe it's lustre, and the strangeness of it left men bewildered. The other stars and the sun and moon gathered round it in chrous, but this star outshone them all. Great was the ensueing perplexity; where could this newcomer have come from, so unlike its fellows? Eveywhere magic crumbled away before it; the spells of sorcery were all broken, and superstition recieved its death-blow. The age-old empire of evil was overthrown, for God was now appearing in human form to bring in a new order, even life without end. Now that which had been perfected in the Divine counsels began its work; and all creation was thrown into a ferment over this plan for the utter destruction of death.

Ignatius of Antioch, The Letter to the Ephesians, 19

Missional Theology

Recently I've been reading Brian McLaren's A Radical Orthodoxy: Why i am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished christian (Zondervan, 2004).

Its packed with food for thought and here is something which I have begun to ponder. He writes, "rather than seeing missiology as a study within theology, theology is actually a discipline within Christian mission. Theology is the church on a mission reflecting on its message, its identity, its meaning." (105)

Does this defenition of theology resound with you? How would you define theology? If theology is indeed a 'missional' task, then what implications does this have for how we go about it and why? Post a comment...

quote - Marinus De Jonge, christology and theology

When early Christians spoke about the nature and the effects of Jesus' mission, they had to speak, at the same time, about his relationship to God. In him God had spoken and acted; he continued to do so and was about to crown his dealings with humanity by fully establishing his rule on earth. The proper framework to keep theology and christology together, it would seem, is eschatology-eschatology in the sense of reflection on God's final, definitive intervention in human history, long expected by many in a variety of ways, and now believed by Jesus' followers to have taken place, or rather to have started taking place, in Jesus Christ.

Marinus de Jonge, God's Final Envoy: Early Christology and Jesus' on View of His Mission (Eerdmans, 1998), 111

Words from the Fathers

I found this interesting:

The end of all things is near. From now onwards, then, we must bear ourselves with humility, and tremble at God's patience for fear it shuold turn into a judgment upon us. Let us either flee from His future wrath, or else embrace His present grace; no matter which, so long as we are found in Jesus Christ with our true life before us.

(Ignatius of Antioch, The Epistle to the Epesians, 11)

Words from the Fathers

I recently had jury service, and although I didnt end up partaking in a trial, the bus rides to and from the city and the sometimes lenghty times of simply waiting, gave me the oppertunity to do some relaxing reading. So I decided to read the works of some of the 'Apostolic Fathers' as found in Maxwell Staniforth's Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers (Penguin, 1968, 1975). Iv'e decided to post those that I found interesting or challenging.

The first is from Ignatius of Antoich's Epistle to the Magnesians. Loving each other can often be a difficult thing, especially when the Other has caused us hurt in some way. Here are some wise words, which once again point to a truly valuable sort of love, that which looks beyond oneself for the sake of the Other:

Everyone should observe closest conformity with God; you must show every consideration for one another, never letting your attitude to a neighbour be affected by your human feelings, but simply loving each other consistently in the spirit of Jesus Christ.

(Ignatius of Antioch, The Epistle to the Magnesians, 6)

quote - Tom Wright on the authority of scripture

To affirm the 'the authority of scripture' is precisely not to say, 'We know what scripture means and dont need to raise any more questions.' It is always a way of saying that the church in each generation must make fresh and rejuvinated efforts to understand scripture more fully and live by it more thoroughly, even if that means cutting across cherished traditions.'

N. T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God (SPCK, 2005), 67-8

I read this book just after completing my own research paper on the topic, and found that it said everything I was trying to say and more and but with more flare clarity. Not that im trying to make myself look good, I drew on Wright's ealier work and that of many others in my research. But its a must read for Christian leaders, and all those who grasp the importance of critically reflecting on how we use the Bible.

Sin, Rearson, and Virtue

The ability to reason, to think, to contemplate, and to understand is a fundamental part of the human person. But I often hear it said that because of (S)in, our reasoining (like every other part of our humanity) is fallen. But if this is so, in what way? How does (S)in affect our reasoning? Is it fundamentally flawedbecause of (S)in? Does this make 'truth' beyond our grasp? I find the comments of Stephen C. Evans suggestive and helpful. He writes:

Insofar as sin is supposed to express itself in the desires and emotions of individuals, if reason is affected by those desires and emotions, then it is plausible that reason is affected by sin. We should be careful not to think that emotions always have a negative effect on reason... However, it is certainly true that emotions and desires can distort our rational faculties. If these emotions and desires are themselves distorted, which is atleast part of what it means to claim that humans are sinful, then it is logical to think that our reason may be distorted as well.[1]

We are all aware of the reality of presuppositions, and how these affect our reasoning. Presuppositions can determine the direction of our reasoning from the beginning, they are inevitable (but not beyond scrutiny). Yet desires and emotions can be decisive in how honest we will be in our reasoning. Dispositions such as pride and arrogance can prevent us from honestly seeking the truth. The belief that we are right and cannot possibly be wrong can result in our refusing to listen to other prespectives because we feel that we already have the truth.

Kevin Vanhoozer writes that 'the fall into noetic sin implies that our knowing is corrupt, thus necessitating the counter-measure of epistemic virtue; and sanctification implies the cultivation of one virtue in particular-humility-for "redeeming" ones interpretative claims.'[2]

In terms of interpreting texts (a significant activity in reasoning), Vanhoozer draws attention to what he refers to as 'Interpretive Virtues', 'disposition[s] of the mind and the heart that arises from the motivation for understanding, for cognitive contact with the meaning of the text.'[3] He outlines four interpretive virtues: Honesty, Openness, Attention, and Obedience.[4] Honesty consists in our being honest in acknowledging our presuppositions. Openness consists in our being 'open-minded', listening to other prespectives, being 'open' to the possibility that they are correct. Attention consists in attentiveness to details, a commitment to serious enquiry rather than jumping to quick conclusions. And obedience consists in taking what is grasped seriously, as something to act upon.

All too often we hear talk of axe-grinding, we read of how some scholars conservative or liberal background has apparently steered the course of their enquiry to confirm what they already believed. True, no-doubt it happens. But here is a call to Humility, to Honesty, and to Openness. To listen to the voices of others with the hope that what they have to say will take you beyond your present understanding, ever-closer to truth.

[1] Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account (Eerdmans, 1998), 10
[2] 'The Voice and the Actor: A Pragmatic Proposal About the Ministry and Minstrelsy of Theology', 89, in Stackhouse, J. G., Evangelical Futures: A Conversation on Theologicl Method (Baker, 2000)
[3] Is There A Meaning In This Text? The bible, the reader, and the morality of literary Knowledge (Apollos, 1998), 376
[4] Ibid., 377

...

...so, i havnt posted in a while. But I have been quite busy, just moved house over the past two days and am settling in.

Blogging WILL resume soon...