“Being incarnate was an embarrassment, a design-fault that God may have intended in the Italians but surely not in the English.”
On the English supposed “quiet suspicion of sensuality” that he saw in the old English. It made me laugh out loud.
“Sexual puritanism is an attempt to safeguard possessions more valuable than pleasure. The good that it does outweighs the evil, the English knew this. They were seriously repressed, largely because repression prevented them from carelessly throwing away those things—chastity, marriage and the family—which slip so easily from the grasp of people whose natural tendency is to keep each other at a distance.”
This captures why my sexual ethics.
“Much as we should be grateful for the language and liturgy of the Anglican Church, we must deplore the weird interdiction which killed of polyphony at the very moment when Tallis and Byrd…had learned to rival Palestrina and Victoria in this supremely religious art form.”
If we’re to take 1 Corinthians 15:22 as making any sense at all, and if we agree that all have sinned/died (in Adam), how can we not end in Universalism?
To not end there is to make Adam more powerful than Christ.
In reply, I wrote:
me:
I suppose one might interpret “made alive” in a very literal sense, affirming that everyone will be resurrected, but allowing that some of those resurrected will be wholly condemned.
But yes, I agree with your take below. Romans 5:18 is very similar.
Have you read “Universalism and the Bible” by Yale philosopher Keith DeRose? Reading it was probably the last straw for me.
As I read the words of Jesus as he talks about the afterlife or the “judgement day”, I do not think he got the memo of “Saved by Grace”. In the classical gospel representation, if you confess with your mouth, and believe in your heart that Jesus is lord, you will be saved. That “saved” is most often interpreted as “from the judgement”. All through the new testament it talks about having our sins washed away by the blood of Jesus, etc.
But Jesus in John 5:28 talks explicitly about those with good deeds being raised to life, and those with evil deeds to judgement. Matthew 25 gives the same criteria - how you lived, not what you believed. I would say that if you just read Jesus' words, you would never come away with a “his blood covers all my sins and makes me alright with God”. But I readily admit that the new testament authors did strongly imply this relationship - 1 John 1:7, Hebrews 9, Romans 10.
love verb1 to esteem someone or something as to be gladly willing to donate of one’s self (e.g., attention, energy, time, material resources, money) for the their good 2 to esteem someone or something as to prioritize their needs
Carla[complaining that her coffee tastes bad when she is sick]: You don’t know because you forget all negative experiences. Scott: Actually, I don’t have any negative experiences.
Is it possible that the anxiety that arises in me when I read the opinions of folks on the Internet about God arises because I overestimate other people’s reasonability?
In reply to an entry a year ago about “God sending a deluding influence” on people, I understand there to be a possible better translation: “And because [they refused to love the truth], God will abandon them to the strong influence of delusion, leading them to believe the lie, so that they…will be judged or condemned” (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12; see this hermeneutics Stack Exchange comment). This is God playing the, “OK, children, I give you over to what you already seem given to. It’s not going to turn out well for you.”
“Sexual puritanism is an attempt to safeguard possessions more valuable than pleasure. The good that it does outweighs the evil, the English knew this. They were seriously repressed, largely because repression prevented them from carelessly throwing away those things—chastity, marriage and the family—which slip so easily from the grasp of people whose natural tendency is to keep each other at a distance.”
— Roger Scruton, “English Character” in England: an Elegy
From church last week in greatly abbreviated form: Jesus’ lesson of the fig tree is not embarrassing in the slightest if we hear Him to be saying, “Guys, don’t marvel at this. This is God we’re talking about. If you know God has set to do something, to intervene in some way in the created order, then know that He is God and that therefore all you’ll have to do is say the word, and He’ll do it. Fig trees? Mountains? No problem. He is God.” Jesus’ words aren’t carte blanche. They are carte divine, and while we get to sign it, God is the one who does the deed.
minimal workday appointments for household business,
no more than four midevening engagements, including no more than one that pulls me away from the children,
no more than one late-evening appointment (e.g., movie night, phone conversation) if I have more than one project going, but up to three such appointments when I am keeping to my one-project-at-a-time limit,
anything I care to Saturday & Sunday before dinner, and
anything appealing that I care to schedule that presents itself same day.
In a given month, I will schedule no more than two travel weekends, whose evenings count toward the midevening engagement constraint.
Additionally, I will not forget the Sabbath.
Finally, to stick to all the above, I will become well-rehearsed in saying, “Let me get back to you.”
For us who are heterosexual, the task as it regards the sexual behavior of our brethren who are homosexual or bisexual is to support their clean conscience. If I am open and affirming of chaste homosexual expression but my gay friend is not, I will not try to persuade my gay friend toward my point of view. I will support him in his efforts to keep to the ethic he thinks is right. See Romans 14.
It’s time to build house, home, and family. It’s time to say no to other stuff. It’s time to bang out a deer or two, bang out a website for the Houserville Community Garden, then one for Mike, then one for church. It’s not time to travel. It’s not time to sing out. It’s time to prepare to be foster parents again.
Éa, shooting the cereal boxes with her finger, “Patchoo! Patchoo!” Carla remarks that her own gun sound when she was a little girl was equally un-gun sounding while the boys always seemed to have advanced sound machines in their repertoire. Éa responds that her gun shoots sneezes, not bullets. “Patchoo! Patchoo! That’s how it started the Cold War.”
Scripture is not a room filled with clairvoyant theologians who have the same ideas and agree on every point. It is better understood as a room of wise elders, each an invited guest because of his unique voice and relation to God. Every elder has insight, but no elder has all of the answers, nor are any of them wholly liberated from humanity’s broken, sinful condition. Every voice is of value, but each will perhaps push too far in one direction and not enough in another, and each will push, in some way or another, in the wrong direction. When we read Scripture well, we listen in on the conversations of these elders, and, in conversations with other readers, seek as best we can to understand God’s voice. It is through this communal reading experience that God points us to his one and only solution for our broken condition: Jesus Christ.
—Kent Sparks, “Genesis 1-11 as Ancient Historiography,” from Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither?, via Pete Enns