Feb 12
For those tracking the progress of my pre-Easter reading project, I do continue to pick away at N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God (my pace has slowed considerably over the last few weeks—that’s going to have to be addressed if I’m to finish in time). Right now, I’m in the middle of his discussion of various views of the resurrection in the Hebrew Bible and how these differed from the views of the ancient Greeks. Read more
Last Friday a pastor from the mainland phoned me up and asked if I would be willing to do a graveside ceremony for a family who was returning the body of their loved one to Nanaimo for burial. I still find it very strange to be entrusted, in however minimal a fashion, with these significant events in people’s lives, but I also find it very difficult to to say no to a friend. So, today I was off to say a few words at the burial of a stranger, hoping and praying that something I said would be of some comfort to those present. Read more
If you’re anything like me, you tend to accumulate books far beyond your capacity to read them. In my case, these books tend to migrate from the nice brown Chapters box (always so exciting to see these boxes arrive!) to the coffee table in our living room (where they are daily in plain view, crying out: “read me”) to a pile of books on another table in the living room (a pile in which they steadily descend to the bottom over a period of weeks), to my office where they sit on the side of my desk where my “really should have a look at this” file is located, to the top shelf of my desk (in order to make room for other things I really should have a look at), and finally to my bookshelf, their final resting place, where they sit side by side with any number of other books which have undertaken the same sad journey. It’s kind of pathetic. Read more
One of the more beautiful quotes I’ve come across in quite some time—from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead:
I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.
I finally finished Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed last week. It’s a heart-wrenching and tragic story. One reviewer compared it to Dostoevsky’s novels and while I’m not sure I would go quite that far, it certainly does share similar pathos-inducing qualities. In the story, a normal, reasonably happy life for a normal, reasonably happy couple is slowly and steadily reduced to a tale of pain, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and anger. There is hope, as well, but in very measured and cautious doses. Read more
This week a friend sent me a link to an event taking place just down the road in Victoria this fall. The University of Victoria is hosting an evening with two prominent Canadians—singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn and the former head of UNAMIR (the United Nations peace-keeping mission to Rwanda), Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire. The proceeds from this event will be going to help fund the Child Soldiers Initiative in Africa, an international research and intervention effort focused on the eradication of the use of child soldiers. The price-tag for this event might prove prohibitive ($81.50), but I’m hoping to find a way to get down there for this. Read more
I’ve just finished Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance this week and thought I would post a few thoughts provoked along the way (the book was highly recommended independently by two trusted friends so I was able to overcome my customary aversion to reading anything from “Oprah’s Book Club”). The book is brilliantly written—a really well told story in every way, one that presents you with the full spectrum human experience from the most abject misery and suffering to the heights of joy. Read more
I recently had an interesting conversation about the relationship between history and truth with a group of UBC students with whom I’m going through Lesslie Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. We arrived yesterday at what is, in my opinion, one of the most important chapters in the book—”The Logic of Election.” In this chapter, Newbigin challenges our assumptions about what election is for, arguing that God never chose a specific group of people—whether the nation of Israel or the church—to be the objects of eternal salvation but rather to be his instruments of extending his redemption to others. According to Newbigin, we do not encounter God as isolated individuals; he has always used other people—both now and across time—to communicate his purposes to us. Read more
So how does the future non-remembrance of wrongs suffered inform the way in which we live in the here and now? By showing how reconciliation reaches completion: a wrongdoing is both condemned and forgiven; the wrongdoer’s guilt is canceled; through the gift of non-remembrance, the wrongdoer is transposed to a state untainted by the wrongdoing; and bound in a communion of love, both the wronged and the wrongdoer rejoice in their renewed relationship. In the here and now this rarely happens—and for the most part should not happen. In a world marred by evil, the memory of wrongdoing is needed mainly as an instrument of justice and as s shield against injustice. Yet every act of reconciliation, incomplete as it mostly is in this world, stretches itself toward completion in that world of love. Similarly, remembering wrongdoing now lives in the hope of its own superfluity then. Even more, only those willing to let the memory of wrongdoing slip ultimately out of their minds will be able to remember wrongdoing rightly now. For we remember wrongs rightly when memory serves reconciliation.
Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory
I suppose at some point every student of theology has their own “pet theologian”—someone who they think just “gets it” in such a profound way, and who has such a knack for explaining things in a coherent, cogent, and compelling manner. Usually, of course, they also happen to share one’s own theological outlook, or to have proven instrumental in shaping it. While I typically find this kind of “groupie” mentality a little distasteful (“I’m a Barthian,” “I’m an Augustinian,” “I’m with N.T. Wright…”), I’m starting to think that if I were to pick one theologian who is currently exerting considerable influence upon the way that I think, it would be Miroslav Volf. Read more
A few final thoughts about The Ethical Imagination…
Somerville concludes her reflections upon how and why we must find a well-grounded basis for a shared ethic with a plea for a return to “past virtues for a future world.” Our humanness ought to be held in trust for future generations—in other words, we have an obligation not to radically alter, through our various technologies, the essence of what it is to be human. Trust, courage, compassion, generosity, hope—these are all thought to be vital components of thinking and acting ethically in a context where human beings possess unprecedented capabilities to alter what it means to be human. Read more
More on The Ethical Imagination…
Somerville exhibits a virtual reverence for “the natural” in her quest to argue for the “secular sacred” as a potential universal grounding for ethics. In situations of ethical ambiguity, our default position should always be to “the natural.” Let me give you an example. Read more
More on Margaret Somerville’s The Ethical Imagination…
For those who remember, Somerville’s project is to argue for a shared ethic based on what she terms “the secular sacred” (a term that I continue to have reservations about). I read her take on “truth” a couple of days ago and while my initial reaction was somewhat negative, I now find myself wondering if there may be some pragmatic merit in what she says. Read more
One of my philosophy professors at the University of Lethbridge once said something to the effect that all higher education is, in some form or another, about learning how to read a book, and the farther I have gone in my academic journey, the more I have realized the truth of this statement. I have actually found blogging about the books I read to be a helpful way of learning how to do this, both in terms of processing them more fully, and learning how to articulate their arguments more adequately through the discussions that sometimes follow. So, having said that, on to what’s currently distracting me from my studies… Read more
I’ve posted a few reflections on Peter Rollins’ How (Not) to Speak of God in the last couple of weeks, and I alluded to some views of his which might find their way into a post at some time. Well that time is now. Rollins has some interesting ideas about how human beings are to love in response to God—ideas that I am having some difficulty going along with (I promise this will be my last post about this book, so maybe you can humour me for a while longer…). Read more
I’ve finished reading the “theory” part of Peter Rollins’ book that I brought up in a previous post and I have to say that it was a bit of a mixed bag for me. There are times when Rollins is really insightful, and offers a genuinely illuminative way of looking at or understanding the nature of faith. At other times, I was completely baffled at why he would introduce certain ideas into his scheme. I’ll post about the latter another time… Read more
I’m currently reading through a little book by Peter Rollins called How (Not) to Speak of God. Rollins seeks to lay out some of the theory and praxis behind the movement known as the “emerging church,” and in so doing attempts to re-emphasize what is sometimes referred to as the “apophatic” strand of Christian tradition. Put briefly, this tradition sees God as so radically transcendent that it is more appropriate to speak of him in terms of negation—what he is not—because all of our positive statements fail to capture his essence, and communicate only our own understanding of God. Read more
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Rumblings 