Identity

"The gospel's central message -- that God loves us enough to die for us -- severs self-serving spiritualities like Moralistic Therapeutic Deism at the root. Christian identity comes from worshipping a God who loves us enough to suffer on our behalf, and who calls us to enact this kind of love for others: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." - Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian.

I'm reading this and getting lots of good data...and having to ask myself lots of hard questions about how to articulate what I believe.  I have been trained with a vocabulary that I don't find useful anymore (it's heavily focused on penal substitutionary atonement), but I haven't been in another school long enough to be able to talk about it much.  Yesterday I was wrestling with this some and now maybe I'll stat getting some new vocabulary, too.

Did You Know?

Did you know that I have a tattoo?

I've had it for two years now, and yesterday's Isaiah reading from the Daily Office made me think about it and if I'd blogged it when I got it.  I got it the day after I'd been made a postulant...and it was kind of spur of the moment, I'm going to be spontaneous and break of out my routine, this is something I'd never do so I'm doing it.  Here's yesterday's text with bold for what my leg now says.

Isaiah 6:1-13 (NRSV)

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.

And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!"

And he said, "Go and say to this people: 'Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.' Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed." Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said: "Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate; until the LORD sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land. Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled." The holy seed is its stump.

Tuesday Teaser, Part 2

So even though I finished my book yesterday morning and made a recommendation, I started another one. I just didn't have time to get to a computer and share my "teaser" bit.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I stared Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums yesterday.

"He don't see you, Vena Mae. He's got his highfalutin mask on," said my grandmother. "Call him Arlene and you might get an answer out of him."

Tuesday Teaser

I was going to do my first Tuesday Teaser today, but I just finished my book. _Supreme Courtship_, which I tore through in basically three days. Good humor, quick read. I got it on clearance at B&N. Look it up.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Raymond Brown on Orthodoxy

"When the charge of heresy is raised in Christian communities today, there is a tendency to associate that stigma with wild-eyed radicals proposing new ideas. IN Christian history, however, some of the most significant heresies have been conservative rather than radical -- the tendency to hold on to old theological answers when new questions have caused the main body of Christians to move on to new answers. The Jewish Christians, as we detect their presence in John and know their presence in the second century, were holding on to oder and more primitive views on such subjects as Christology, the eucharist, and relations to Judaism, views that were widely held early in the first century but were now no longer deemed to be adequate expressions of truth. At the Council of Nicea ([325 CE]) the lower Christology of Arius was more primitive than the higher Christology of Athanasius. Arius was content with the scriptural formulations of Jesus' identity, e.g., 'In the beginning was the Word,' which meant for him that the Word had a beginning. Athanasius had to persuade the Council to accept newer, non-Scriptural formulas, e.g., true God of true God, coeternal with the Father. But he did this with insight: The Scripture answers were no longer adequate because now a question was being asked that had not been asked in [New Testament] times, and the new answers he proposed were true to to the direction of the Scriptures. "Orthodoxy," then is not always the possession of those who try to hold on to the past. One may find a truer criterion in the direction toward which Christian though has been tending, even if that direction suggests that past formulations of truth have to be considered inadequate to answer new questions." (Bold emphasis added, italics in original)

pp.80-81, The Community of the Beloved Disciple by Raymond Brown.

The Community of the Beloved Disciple

"The exalted Johannine christology is not some abstract test of orthodoxy that has nothing to do with community living. If it is crucial to believe that Jesus is the pre-existen Word of God who has come from God and is of God, it is because then we know what God is really like --- He really is a God of love who so love the world that He was willing to give of Himself, in His Son (3.16;I John 4.8-9), and not merely send someone else. And such an understanding of God and of Jesus demands that the Johannine Christian, who is the child of God, behave in a way worth of his Father and of Jesus his Brother: 'By this will all identify you as my disciples -- by the love you have for one another' (John 13.35)."

pp.60-61The Community of the Beloved Disciple, by Raymond Brown.

St. Gregory the Great on Governing While Not Fulfilling the Appropriate Way of Life

Read: Gregory the Great's words are applicable to clergy abuse scandal.

Hence again, the Lord says by the Prophet concerning the priests: They were a stumbling block of iniquity to the house of Israel. For no one does more harm in the Church than he, who having the title or rank of holiness, acts evilly. No one presumes to take to task such a delinquent, and the offense, serving as an example, has far-reaching consequences, when the sinner is honoured out of respect paid to his rank. Yet everyone who is unworthy would flee from the burden of such great guilt if with the attentive ear of heart he pondered on that saying: He that shall scandalise one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depths of the sea. By the millstone is symbolised the laborious round of worldly life, and by the depth of the sea final damnation is referred to. Therefore, if a man vested with the appearance of holiness destroys others by word or example, it certainly were better for him that his earhtly deed performed in a worldly guise, should press him to death, rather than that his sacred offices should have pointed him out to other for sinful imitation; surely, the punishment of hell would prove less sever for him if he fell alone.