Selaphiel

You should be.

We'll see. I don't really know if I can, to tell you the truth. Trying to figure some things out. But thanks.

Wow, what a week. Sorry for the delays. I haven't been on TOL much at all lately.

Thanks for giving the contents. Definitely looks interesting. I think I'll pick it up. :up:

I agree that it's hard to have Christianity without a final and full triumph by God. Do you know of any major theologians that not only say it's possible like Welker but fully deny it?

Glad things are going well for you. How's the internship preparation going?

Speaking of Luther, I read an interesting short article recently about Jan Hus who tried to reform parts of the Catholic Church about 100 years prior to Luther's 95 Theses. He was burned at the stake and some followers around him eventually became the Moravian Church. He was executed July 6th so the anniversary is tomorrow.

I haven't done much reading the past couple weeks. Want to get back into Chesterton this week.

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I didn't think you were posting much these days but it's good when you do. I hope it's a good sort of 'busy'?

Just muddling through as usual here.

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lain:

I agree with you on not liking the idea of God being completely self-determining. It seems to affirm 'might makes right', or something along those lines.

The 4th of July is coming up and H&G came home today with several boxes of fireworks. I'm a bit worried about what they have planned. :noid:

Hope you are having a good week. :e4e:

I've been alright. Still reading Chesterton's Orthodoxy. I've been enjoying it. He has some interesting thoughts. I also got the new issue of Scientific American and there is an article about the longest proof in mathematics. The entire proof is stretched out on 15000 pages of papers. :shocked:

Thanks for the recommendation on the Jenson book. I looked it up on Amazon but couldn't find any copies with a table of contents or a description. If Welker doesn't deny a future eschaton then what does he think we're living in now? Or how does he differentiate between now and that future?

Congratulations on your thesis. No surprise on the grade.

No, I'm not back, just stopping in for a visit.

Thanks so much for saying hi, it's good to see you. Best wishes on all future endeavors/adventures, maybe I'll be by this way again sometime to check in with you again. Take good care, Sela.

That's an interesting question (Logos asarkos). I think I'd disagree with Barth. Wouldn't it at least have to be contingent on there being a Creation? Man, specifically. Not contingent on the Fall, but contingent on there being a creature that was made in God's image. Would Barth say that Creation was not a contingent event?

:chuckle: Quite bizarre. I really need to read the biography I have about him.

Congrats! Good job. I know you worked very hard on that. I'm sure it's very rewarding to know the hard work paid off. :first:

The final test and the Father saying 'yes' to that make sense, but what connection does he see between that and our salvation, what it implies? Is it that in saying yes to Christ's sacrifice he's also saying yes to us who Christ died for?

I came down with a cold/sinus problem. Not feeling very well at the moment. Hope it ends quickly. I really need to go to work tomorrow but I'm considering taking Friday off so I have a 3-day weekend and can hopefully get extra rest to fight it off. I ended up starting Chesterton's Orthodoxy last night. If I stay home from work I could try to read a lot of that. :think:

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In America it seems like many Christians act like the opposite is the case (though perhaps it's just the most vocal ones, the ones you see in the news). In other areas he talks more about Christian hope. More might agree with that narrower focus. But even if he isn't denying any political involvement I think he has some good warnings about focusing too much on politics.

Another essay makes a similar point about how getting involved politically can easily compromise the Church's message and image.

I'm not sure what I'll read next. :think: I might read bits and pieces of Pannenberg's Jesus - God and Man.

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Glad you are doing well. Anything from the soteriology stand out to you?

I'm doing alright. Still very busy at work. I finished that collection of essays on the church's political responsibility. Here's something that stood out to me from an essay called "The Church's Political Hopes for the World": Put another way, what does that church ask of the world? And does that asking suggest certain hopes - or, perhaps better, prudential judgments - about the right ordering of that part of the world...?
Here it might seem is where we discover the 'church's agenda for the world'. But there is no such agenda. Or at least there is no agenda such as suggsted by {list of statements/documents by churches}. These artifacts may be interesting or boring...wise or stupid. But they are not, in the struct sense of the term, ecclesial statements.....The church is not one political possibility, one political ideology, among many thousands of such possible contestants..

I watched Norway beat Thailand in the Women's World Cup. Then I started to watch Germany vs Ivory Coast and it was 4-0 for Germany in the first 30 minutes.

How are you doing?

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Check out Bing's pic of the day. Some days I just think about how I should have gone to school for something different. lain:

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I can see what you say about Luther too, and I think that he provides an important critique or check against a view that is too lofty and focused on power/glory.

I agree with you that both sides are important. Revelation has the ultimate importance but reason can be a gateway.

I went to a comic store today and came across a small section of Christian themed comics. I bought one that is about St Francis. :chuckle: Surprisingly, it was put out by Marvel. Never would have guessed that.

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Yes Braaten mentioned Barth a few times as being one of the primary theologians who had no use for natural law. Braaten's reason(s) for the departure from natural law was/were post-Enlightenment changes in philosophy like utilitarianism and positivism. "There was a loss of belief not only in a special divine revelation through Scripture and the church but also in the ability of reason to discern a natural moral order in human affairs." Law became an instrument of power. He says that these changes led to atrocities and after WWII Protestants began to reconsider things. He mentions a couple theologians (Helmut Thielicke and Walter Kunneth) that moved away from Barth but still hesitated to accept natural too much because of the power of sin.

One of the essays in this book is about natural law. The author (Carl Braaten) was talking about how natural law hasn't always fared very well in the Protestant tradition, Catholics have made it a significant piece in their moral theology. I haven't seen that before. Is that true in your experience? I can see how Calvinists might not be too friendly to natural law, perhaps weakening Total Depravity, but beyond that I'm not sure why Protestants/Reformers would have any fundamental problem with it. Braaten does make the point that the primary reformers like Luther and Calvin don't speak against it. He outlined a way to revive natural law in Protestantism which is by keeping it within a strong eschatology. Natural law isn't an end of itself, God doesn't save through natural law, and preaching natural law isn't our mission. That's where Jesus and the gospel are effective. Natural law is just a way for God to order creation in the meantime and shows man's innate pursuit for justice.

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Thanks for the recommendation. I looked it up on Amazon and it does look interesting. :up: Never heard of her.

Now I'm picturing H&G in deep sea diving suits with specially made helmets so their ears can stick out. :crackup: No way that ends well. :noid:

Glad you are well.

An article on the trinity that is abstract and difficult? I'd have never guessed. :chuckle:

You mentioned Walter a while back and I watched a couple short talks by him. If he has something on the Church's responsibility for the world I'd be interested. Once I'm through this book I'll try to remember to look him up.

Was at a used book sale the other day. Didn't find too much that sparked my interest. I got Crossing The Threshold Of Hope by JPII, The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman, and a book about the history of deep sea exploration called Descent: The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss. That last one is quite random but I came across it and thought it might be fascinating. :chuckle:

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How have you been?

I started a new book the other night, a collection of essays on 'the Church's responsibility for the Earthly City" and the first essay was by Robert Jenson. He was also one of the editors of the book. I thought it was quite the coincidence since you had been reading some stuff by him. He says that the starting point for talking about the Church's responsibility is by recognizing that were it not for the church there would be no world at all. The world exists for God to have a community of redeemed creatures, i.e the Church. He says the Church's job is to preserve the being of the world. It can do this through cultivating community that is anchored by the Decalogue, correcting the world's incorrect ideology, and by giving the world hope. I've read two of the essays so far and I haven't encountered any explicit calls for the laws to reflect Christianity (though it could be implied at times) but I'm interested to see where that side of things go.

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That's nice. I'd enjoy the work more too when it wasn't my own paper. Not as much pressure. I think that's part of why I can enjoy reading the various things I do. It doesn't really mean anything and I'm not obligated to do it.

I'm not very familiar with Jenson. I looked him up on Amazon quickly. A couple stand out, like his Visible Words: The Interpretation and Practice of the Christian Sacraments.

Don't worry, what good is history anyway.

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