Worship: an acorn of ritual that grows into the oak of daily life

Vocation: the being of a person in-the-creation, directed to the ends for which they are fitted

Gideon Strauss: a man who brings them together

From the pen of Joel Garver, talking in the WrightSaid list about a rejoinder to Michael Horton given by John Milbank:

"Also, he [Milbank] suggested that Horton's emphasis on hearing and Word--
without sufficient attention the liturgical and sacramental context
of that Word as enacted and made visible--is dangerous. It leaves us
with a de-contextualized "voice of God" with no "face" (to use
Levinasian terminology). While we don't yet see God face to face, we
do look into each others faces and find God's glory reflected therein
as people being recreated in Christ.

To emphasize the Word at the expense of the sacramental, personal,
and liturgical runs the danger, Milbank suggested, of leaving us with
a bare Word that is too easily manipulated to mean whatever we want
it to mean and which we can deploy to our own ends. If this is what
Horton is saying, Milbank asserted, then he's just at a different
place on the same trajectory as Osama Bin Laden."

This is a perfectly fascinating and very insightful argument. I share its view because my eyes have seen it in practice. Exactly this kind of decontextualisation of the word from its covenental, sacramental (MOST of all sacramental), and personal manifestations is what the worst of intellectualised, platonic 'christianity' is all about. And there is a strong streak of it in the Reformed Churches of New Zealand - quite possibly in betrayal of our heritage. People - the very images of God - are trampled all over and beaten down in the name of an abstract, de-peopled 'truth'.

It was never meant to be so.

Embracing post-modernism's limitations for understanding literature (from A&L Daily)

Some propositions:

Commonalities and 'universal appeal' exist because we are created by one God.

But postmodernism seems to suggest that somehow, each community is its own creation, with all that implies. This is not a trustworthy view, it seems to me. Yet is still a helpful corrective to the arrogant intellectual colonialism of modernism, which seems to suggest that 'truth' and 'understanding' may be reduced to the cultural expressions of a single dominant community. This, too, is vanity - an untrustworthy view.

Truth and understanding lies in healthy relationship, community, form-of-life. And it cannot be reduced to propositions, nor to any single expression of whatever form, though of course propositions (as understood by those who speak them) may partially give expression to it.

Thus, what I have written is not 'the truth', though it may be one way to express it, using the tool of language.

Every day I am thankful for the gift of music. It's so moving, mood-capturing, invigorating. How blessed are we, to live in an age that can put a band or orchestra or vocalist in my head on demand?

David coins a new word...

pweb

Once upon a time I would bridle at someone calling me an idiot. But having seen a bit more of the world and recognising that I'm not the font of all (or even some) wisdom, I'm as likely to call myself an idiot as get upset when others think I am.

It's a strange thing. Recognising one's own limitations and foibles - what has been called not taking yourself too seriously - is oddly liberating.

I am pleased to have grown up that wee bit more.

There is a hint in the account of King David's adultery that he began the process long before he actually slept with Bathsheba. In spring, when other kings were off to war (as were his own armies), this king was not. Why not? The text doesn't say; perhaps it was 'read in' that he fancied a certain neighbour.

And then - surprise! When Bathsheba was taking her bath, just what was David doing up on his own roof? Getting an eyeful. Certainly not turning away.

Your mother was teaching you something very important when she said, in response to your being hurt, "well if you'd been behaving, that wouldn't have happened". Your mother was a wise prophet.

David was definitely not behaving. Well before Bathsheba was between his sheets, he'd set up the situation, step by step. There's a lesson here. Big events, like sleeping with someone else's wife, do not come along out of the blue, all big and shockingly bold, easily resisted on that account. No, we set them up until the final act is just one more tiny and o-so-natural step.

It is possible to imitate David in the Wellington of 2004. It is possible to be a fool. Thankfully, though, not all mis-behaviour leads where it might. A mother's love sometimes judges it better to turn the situation away from your hurt, rather that letting you learn the hard way. But a wise son would know what could have happened.

The ridiculous degree to which my emotions go up and down due to fluctuations in 'the business' is...well, ridiculous. A roller-coaster seems a very apt metaphor.

But it occurred to me last night (during which I went from a big down to a quite high peak) that perhaps the secret to better stability is to recognise the depths and enjoy them as if I'm looking on - "Gee, now that's an exciting kind of desperation you've got yourself into, isn't it?"

Which may be utter balderdash. But such are the temporarily useful things that get me through dark periods.

Some time ago I bought a book entitled I Suffer Not a Woman: Rethinking 1 Timothy 2:11-15 in light of ancient evidence. The book had two points in its favour:

(1) It advocated the (non-conservative) position that I wish, in my heart of hearts, was the biblical one,
(2) I could detect no playing-fast-and-loose with the text, which is the usual method of (liberal) argumentation for non-conservative positions. Which method I do not approve of in the least.

The introduction, however, has been unimpressive. It's basically an overview of some of the conservative positions held on the matter, all dismissed (or seriously questioned) with rejoining arguments. Unfortunately, at nearly every point I wanted to say "but hang on, that's not quite fair...". Still, such is the nature of an introductory overview. And even if the joint authors' characterisation of other positions is completely and utterly wrong, the real test will be how they positively establish their own position from the biblical text. I look forward to that.

Addendum: the section in question reads (in the NIV): A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

It may be worth noting (or those not already familiar with the issue) that the argument of the book is precisely that these words should not be read as they are translated and as we would give them their usual sense.

Joy

I have to say that the time I spent in the New Year with Dan Flinn and Bernie & Alex Vaatstra in Chch was spectacularly fantastic. I'm a simple man and simple things make me very content. Our time together was uncomplicated, relaxed, and (sorry about the cliche) - edifying. Thank you, guys.

Life is made marvelous from such things.

Bare-faced honesty

I am thinking of moving. I like

1. Sun
2. Biking
3. Friends & togetherness
4. Expansion, welcome
5. Being close to work
6. Self-determination

1. Sun: I like being in it, and being warm, especially in the afternoons and evenings. Not being in the sun when I want to be is depressing. My current flat loses the sun compleetly at about 3pm.
2. Biking: Now that I've fixed my bike, I want to be able to use it. My current flat is about 70 steps up from the road. Not bike-friendly.
3. Friends & togetherness: I am quite content just being around the people I love. For me, most of the point of experiencing something is that you do it with others. Man was not made to be alone, and I am very man. My current flat is composed of 4 strangers under 1 roof, and they're strangers because they belong to different people. I want to be with my people.
4. Expansion, welcome: I'd like to think 'my people' are good at welcoming others and making them belong. Hopefully our-way-of-life is healthy & trustworthy. But I'm sick of preaching welcome and not being able to do it. I want circumstances in which I can help do it.
5. Close to work: I like walking places & not having a car. I hate the thought of being inconveniently far from work.
6. Self-determination: An example will do. Say I want to cook something with spices in it; perhaps invite others over for dinner. If I can't build up a stock of good spices, then I can't cook good food, not share the experience. I want a place where I can.

All in all, I want my own house, preferably with others in it. But I can't afford that yet. What I can afford to do is move. I've only got one life, and I am not going to let it be less than it could be any longer.

So there's a room under Dave & Ange's flat in Petone. I think it's about the same price as mine ($85/wk). It's big, on the ground floor of a flat section, and it gets the afternoon sun. There's a huge big shared space in between the other rooms (that nobody else seems to use) with a great table that should be used for meals. Dave & Ange have already made their part of that building a great place to be. What could we do if I was there too?

Isaiah 58 is one of the most misunderstood passages in the bible. In a classic case of failing to grapple with the context, the last section is virtually always misread:

“If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly [NASB: 'speaking your own word']; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Most folk, especially conservative folk, read "doing your pleasure" etc as a reference to 'things we find enjoyable'. In the back of our minds we often think but can I really go swimming (or feast, or sleep, or read, or watch a movie etc), taking my own pleasure, on the Lord's Day?

But this reading has lost its anchor. The entire passage is taken up with God's rebuke of his people because they will not do what he wants them to. (see matt's excellent summary.) The call of God to do justice to the needy, the poor, the oppressed - it is all being ignored. God's summons to a relief-giving, ministerial lifestyle among his people is being trampled underfoot while they continue to 'worship' correctly. But God hates that worship; it is false in the most horrible way. It proclaims in public what is manifestly untrue everywhere else: that the people love God and their neighbour. The truth is that the people have an idol in their hearts: their own advancement, their own comforts, their own riches, and they love neither God nor their neighbour.

And thus we come to Isaiah's final call and promise: if God's people will do HIS pleasure, will speak HIS words of relief and love, will return to faithfulness and justice because of the Sabbath, then God will open the floodgates of heaven's blessings for them.

Before Isaiah's challenge I come up short. Not because I have watched a movie on Sunday, or bought some item of food, or gone swimming, or failed to attend the second worship service, or simply spent the day among friends. It is because I have so often not done what worship MEANS. In fact, I have spent most of my Christian life ignoring it. So - have I and my people really turned our foot from our own pleasure because of the Sabbath, and done the Lord's? For a couple of hours each Sunday we have worshipped God with the right rituals; perhaps we even say grace before meals. But are our tables and communion closed to any but ourselves? (see Jesus' comments in Matt 5:46-47: "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?") Would anyone around us (let's say the immediate environment of our church building) know the God we worship? That is, do they know relief from loneliness, poverty, oppression, ill-health, despair, or social exclusion? Are we effectively irrelevant to their troubles? If so, God isn't impressed with our rivers of oil and ten thousand rams. He calls us to forsake our own pleasures.

THAT is the challenge of Isaiah 58.

An excerpt from my day at the desk (during a SWOT analysis):

Strengths

1. streamlined activities / low-cost production
2. profitable, scalable, sustainable business model
3. innovative approach to problems
4. natural IP protection through time-linked growth in value
5. good financial control
6. application-neutral enabling technology

(of course, this latter is not completely true. It’s application-bounded in that it’s designed to solve a particular problem (the structured association of terms). And, the more we become experts in a particular method of solving that problem, the more we will make either/or choices about HOW to solve it. So it becomes even less application-neutral. Competitive advantage = narrow value scope. That will be a balance that we must play delicately, with an eye to the future. We want the advantage of expertise & focus; we don’t want be ‘fixed’ into an eventually immovable & uncompetitive position. We don’t want to be disrupted out of existence by something better!)

By the way...

I am thankful and grateful for those members of my church community (local and national) who attempt, in ways individual and corporate, to embody our hospitable, welcoming Lord. To them (and the clusters of them, wherever they are), I say Amen and well done. Light shines through you.

Now, if only those of us who think that Lord's Supper should actually reflect this hospitality (rather than its exact opposite) could win the day! Let us hope!

A prophetic word

A secure [worldview] structure is, in biblical tradition, always open to deconstruction when it serves a self-protective community with a fortress mentality.

Biblical faith is clear on this. The secure home of covenantal life before the face of God is not for self-enclosed protection but for ministry. This home is characterized not by the locked doors of ideological fear but by the open and risky hospitality of a community that is open to the world because it confesses that Christ died for this world.

So says Brian Walsh, reflecting on the nature of worldviews. In another part:

"A community formed and continually reformed by a radically biblical worldview is secure enough in the power of love, reconciliation and grace - indeed, in the power of its Lord - that it dares to risk hospitality to people of other faiths, other worldviews, and dares to risk hospitality to ideas, issues and questions that might make members of the community uncomfortable."

This a profoundly important article if ever you have wondered about the clash between ideologies and life.

Too often, conservative Christians reduce the death of Christ to a matter of theological systems and personal deliverance. What they fail to do is die with him. Instead, they enthrone themselves as kings.

Hear ye all, ye who would be kings, of Jesus and his death. Repent!

(thanks to matt for the link)

My sister, who's pregnant with her second child and due in March, was told a few days ago that the baby was not only far too small, but the head was too small even for that, and - there's more - that the amount of fluid around the baby was far too little.

I dunno if you can imagine the gut-wrenching nausea that one feels at such news - and I'm only the uncle. It still makes me want to cry.

But thank God for mistakes (when the alternative is even worse). Whoever did the measuring got almost everything wrong. Turns out that the baby's fluid is fine, and that its size is within the normal range, albeit right on the lower end.

Whew. And Catherine said that almost the whole church was praying for them. Lovely, to live in such a community.

It seems,

dear and gentle readers, that one of your number feels that it's entirely wrong, poor form, and all manner of other horrors, to split the first sentence in the fashion above. Without wishing to suggest that I will do anything about it, that's half my readership already disgruntled ;).

Does the other one of you have any views on this?

I have been told

She is back in town, perhaps for a while
and I -
I am obsessed with the thought of Her.

She is the standard against which
All others are measured:
Strong, weak, intriguing, talented, beautiful, vulnerable.

One imprinted scene, tremulous notes
(and hidden plays)
A woman vexed

The dance went on
into the night
Without us,
For - we were elsewhere.

What is this 'we'? It is not. She may be.
Yet if I - even I - can be moved to love her, then at the least -
We shall talk again.

Is this the hour
for mysteries to awaken
And stalk the dark?

A happy thing

is when a potential client you've been chasing for ages seems to be on the verge of signing, for real. Especially when they've gone through a change of management right at the time you submitted a proposal, and the new management's first reaction was "HOW much??"

'Tis a good feeling.

I had last night

the inestimable pleasure of seeing Mr. Benjamin Minnee again, latterly in NZ with his bride, Henriette. There are surely few things as glorious as friendships which ignore the barriers of both temporal and geographical distance - not to mention vastly changed circumstances - and simply pick up where they left off.

In an amusing overview,

Cory Doctorow puts metadata in its place and calls it metacrap. Alas, the utopia of perfect search isn't just around the corner...

Actually, reflecting on the post below makes me think that when men are gods they will inevitably know each other as sexualised food. What a horrible, dehumanising, degraded condition. But Yahweh, the trustworthy god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so different to men, is the the giver of food, the great sower, harvester, and sharer of all good things. His attention to man teaches us that we are beautiful and glorious creatures full of life, objects of his love and therefore charged to serve and enrich each other. Now that is a philosophy on which to base the behaviour of consenting adults.

When men are gods they eat each other

I'd much rather be looked after by Michael Jackson than most of his critics: sleeping with boys

I love being with friends in totally relaxed circumstances. It's quite simply one of the best feelings in the world.

In comparing Van Til with Kant,

John Frame notes that both thinkers describe the necessary preconditions for, or presuppositions of, knowledge and rationality. This involves asking what conditions would have to be true in order for the process of knowledge to begin at all.

The crucial difference between the two is their anchor-points. Kant's anchor is the human mind: his chief theme (to quote Frame) is that: "the human mind can never and must never subject itself to any authority beyond itself". Thus, the mind alone is the source of all knowledge and all experience. In his view the mind is ultimate - the technical term is autonomous. Thus, Kant was the non-Christian's best friend: giving an explicit account of how knowledge was possible without depending on traditional Christian theism.

Van Til, on the other hand, places the source of all knowledge, meaning and rationality in the self-contained ontological Trinity - God. Nothing, including the posibility of knowledge, can exist without the prior existence of the Creator. So, to cut a long story short, Van Til did for the Christian theory of knowledge what Kant did for the non-Christian theory. Therefore, one can think of this debate as some nearly 2000 years of philosophical reflection drawing toward ultimate points of conflict: two irreconcilable traditions finally working out what they are respectively all about. They reach epistemological self-consciosness. They know what they know, and moreover, why they know it. Kant says man; Van Til, God.

There's a lot to be said here, but I am struck by one rather radical point, which I intend to keep in mind and test as I continue to study Van Til through John Frame. It's that the concept of 'knowledge' being discussed here is western, and specifically, philosophically western. The Hebrew (ancient middle-eastern and pre-philosophical) conception of 'knowledge' is something quite other than an investigation of justified factual statements about the world. As I understand it, Hebrew knowledge is something like a 'way of being' in the world. It sums up all that one does with respect to a thing. It is not so much an abstract reflection upon the true 'nature' or 'essence' of a thing, such that propositional facts would describe, but rather a relationship with it, expressed by two things in particular: names and actions. Both these can be seen in Adam and Eve's relationship: Adam first called Eve what she was to him ('woman' - later on 'Eve'), and then he acted in accordance with that - he had intercourse with his wife. The Hebrew phrase for that act used to be translated "And Adam knew his wife."

The point is that both Kant and Van Til may be arguing about a 'something' (they call it 'knowledge') which is quite beside the concerns of the biblical texts. It may well turn out, taking the longer-term view of history, that the development of 'epistemology' (theories of knowlege) in the Western tradition was really just an excursion in a philosophical conception of knowledge, and has precious little to do with the development of or application of Hebrew knowledge.

This has far-reaching implications, because much in the Christian tradition has been built on the philosophical conception of knowledge - not the least being ideas about 'saving knowledge'. This is held to be the reciept of and assent to certain facts about "the gospel" - a proclamation about what God has done to reconcile (individual) sinners to Himself, through the Lordship of Jesus. Involved in this is what is often called a "personal knowledge of Jesus Christ". Now, in Reformed circles at least (but also in all conservative traditions), this knowledge can be (and is) tested by expanding the number of facts about "the gospel" that one has straight. This quickly becomes, for some, a test that covers the entire gamut of settled Christian theory - the being and work of God. Thus, when people disagree about these 'facts', churches split, and heretics are labelled. The protestant tradition is riven by exactly this pattern.

But consider the alternative, Hebrew approach. If the proclamation that "Jesus is Lord" is responded to by someone who thereby ceases to oppress his neighbour, that someone has come to know the Lord. The state of his mind with respect to propositions about biblical text-interpretation, including the exact way that he is reconciled to God, is beside the point (although it may be relevant to an account of his biblical accuracy). In a Hebrew sense, God has made Himself known to that person, and he has responded appropriately.

There's at least some potential in this observation for addressing some contemporary church problems. 'Conservative' Christian fellowships tend to be highly intellectualised, whose unity is based in an agreement on 'the facts', and this they take to be a God-derived 'knowledge' that proves true faith. 'Liberal' fellowships, on the other hand, tend to eschew intellectualised faith and the 'facts' of the bible. But, being still in the Western tradition, they think that's all there is, and so fail to see unity as an agreement in Hebrew knowledge - the community response to Jesus as Lord. If we retained the intellect as a tool of life, but based our unity on the knowledge of God in a Hebrew sense, we could have the best of both worlds.

When I was a student
I hated the process of catching the bus. Always the terror of missing it, and with me late most of the time terror was omnipresent. Getting a car was a great relief. But a car has its own evils - apart from being voracious eaters of cash, they're accompanied by a constant terror of tickets - or more specifically, the evil parking warden backed by the evil stupidity of various laws and regulations (and social engineering schemes that create ridiculous 'safety compliance' standards for WoFs - what a crock THAT is). In so many ways, you have to be pretty rich to be free of terror.

But now I'm selling the car. And in the last 24 hours I have suddenly been cast back into the horror of old nightmares. However, perhaps I can face these things with a little more humour these days. I sure hope so.

Chiding me
I have, of course, stayed up far too late. Again.

It is now raining and I shall enjoy walking home in it. Carefree.

Opening...

Righto. Moments when I don't want to go to bed...

Writing is like creation. The more you say, the more stuff forms, seemingly ex nihilo.

Writing is also (therefore) personal, revealing the author - albeit in a mere snapshot of thought. So while it reveals, it also hides. In writing you neither see nor experience a relationship, person-to-person. And that, I think, is what counts most.

So this is but a small token of me.

And as the enormously funny (but somewhat ris-kay) Julian Clary once said, I thank you.