:: M squared T ::

:: Monday, December 29, 2003 ::

The Monster Paper's Done

This latest blogging hiatus was to complete the paper that inspired the previous post. It is also the reason that I have not been answering e-mail very often recently. It became a 62-single-spaced-page paper on Evangelical Ecclesiology. Maybe I'll get to publish it!

:: Matt 12/29/2003 11:32:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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How and Why Do I Connect (Church) History and Ecclesiology?

The following is a quote from an e-mail I sent

Short answer: If you don't know where you've come from, you have a heckofa time determining where "here" is. (Church) history is a frame of reference.

Beyond that, I see several essential reasons for seeking and finding connections between history and ecclesiology.

1. The way we describe and define the church is based upon our culture. We must define the church both over against certain cultural elements and in continuity with others. The church throughout history has done this, consciously or unconsciously.

2. We are all in some level of continuity or discontinuity with the church traditions, whether we admit that or not. Each of our churches interprets the New Testament through some tradition, even if it is the tradition of "the Bible as the sole authority." Most of the time this is invisible to us, until it starts to cramp and chafe. Then we have to take a look at not just our current practice, but the history of our tradition, however we define "tradition."

3. The history of the church is rife with statements about the nature of the church. Most of this involves "reading between the lines" - looking through the assumptions and presuppositions about the way life in God is to determine what our older brothers and sisters thought about the church.

4. When we, as "postmodern Christians" (whatever *that* means), choose to create a certain level of discontinuity with the current or former tradition of the church, we are not (or should not be) doing so for discontinuity's sake. We are doing so in an attempt to either recover, rediscover or live out the Faith of the Apostles in this day and time. However, that Apostolic Faith is knotted in a tangled mass with traditional accretions that have, over time, moved from the margins into "that which is essential." History helps us to untangle that knot (insofar as it is possible in the first place) so that we can take the Apostolic Faith and tangle it in a new web of thought so we can understand it and put it into practice for today. But the main point is this: the discontinuity we are intentionally creating with the tradition is only useful inasmuch as it re-forges continuity with the Apostolic Faith.

5. Our ecclesiological traditions, acknowledged or unacknowledged, have created the ecclesiological situation we are now in - both good and bad. Unless we have some sense of what those traditions are (with their fundamental assumptions) we may either never go far enough (changing assumptions behind traditions) or we may go too far and end up losing the message of the Cross.

As you can perhaps see, my presuppositions about history and about what is essential to Christianity mandate that an emerging ecclesiology emerge from the whole history of the church and not just the last 20 - 50 years or so.

:: Matt 12/18/2003 03:59:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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The Return of the King

I saw this cartoon on a web page a few minutes ago.

In advent, one of the two things we're looking forward to is The Return of the King, is it not? Thus, I correct the cartoon for theology - "It could be any day now for the Return of the King!"

:: Matt 12/15/2003 01:15:00 AM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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Buy Nothing Christmas

Due to poverty restrictions, I will be joining Buy Nothing Day indefinitely. I will be buying one Christmas gift for someone in my family since that's all the more gift-giving we do.

I was just reading Tertullian and he commented (On Idolatry, 11) that most of what we consider "trade" is just covetousness with a layer of cultural respectability veneered over it. He connects it with idolatry.

Isn't it amazing how powerful visual advertizements are? When we see something advertized, with its photo, illustration or video taken so beautifully, we begin to salivate. The image awakens in us desire - and since it is a "licit desire" - not for p**n and the like - we see no problem serving it!

And serving images - that which we see - is the root definition of idolatry.

Nowhere is this more the point than in our furniture arrangements. Before the advent of television, rooms were set up for conversation or for music or for reading - with a seat or a piano or library table the center of attention. Living rooms, family rooms and parlors were set up with a circular seating arrangement - for the ease of conversation.

But now it has transformed. Our rooms are now semi-circular, with reading and music relegated to the margins. All our seating faces the glowing bulb on one wall. Our lives have been re-shaped to serve the ultimate image - the television.

This physical shift in our interior decorating is indicative of another "interior shift." Our lives, once shaped by respect for people (in conversation), respect for virtue (in reading) and respect for beauty and talent (the arts - especially music), have taken on a new form. We have exchanged the image of God in real people doing real activities whom we respect for a false image - and the couches and chairs of our souls have been turned. We have changed from activities that are substantive to those which exist only invisibly, beaming through the air.

Lord, free us from our service to images - our idolatry.

:: Matt 12/13/2003 07:02:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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SpellCheck

Suggestions for "Tertullian" - "Tortellini" and "Tortilla"
Suggestions for "Galatia" - "Gelatin"
Suggestions for "Irenaeus" - "Irene's" and "Ironies"
Suggestions for "Donatists" - "Dentists" and "Demotists"


:: Matt 12/10/2003 09:25:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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Paul Simon, 1928 - 2003

No, not the singer in Simon and Garfunkel.

Illinois lost a legacy yesterday in Paul Simon. Simon was a Liutenant Governor of Illinois under opposite-party leadership and a three-term U.S. Senator. He was widely respected by people of both parties for being a straight-shooting, honest man devoted to the causes for which he stood, no matter which way the wind was blowing. As he wrote in Our Culture of Pandering, "In too many areas we have spawned 'leadership' that does not lead, that panders to our whims rather than telling us the truth, that follows the crowd rather than challenging us, that weakens us rather than strengthening us." In a state where politics on both the right and the left are controlled by big-city political machines, Paul Simon was the man from rural southern Illinois who consistently won the day.

We will miss you, Paul Simon. Rest in peace.

:: Matt 12/10/2003 09:52:00 AM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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Piano Tuner

The first thing the piano tuner said today when he put his meter-gadget on the piano was, "It's got about three or four years of flat in it." But it will be brought up to tune - eventually. :)

:: Matt 12/09/2003 02:51:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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Two Down, One to Go

I just finished the Galatians Exegesis paper on Galatians 1:6 - 9. In it, I describe how this passage is the "opening summary argument" for the whole letter and how that argument shows the centrality of the term "gospel" for the whole letter.

Tomorrow, it'll be time to write the paper on Ecclesiology in Campus Ministry. At least I have extensive notes.

:: Matt 12/08/2003 12:26:00 AM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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One Down, Two to Go

Whew! The Discipling and Mentoring paper is complete. In it, I analyzed our work at UBC and presented a holistic strategy outline for the professor to review. The staff will read it eventually as well. (That might be scary!)

Now I've got the Galatians Exegesis Paper and the Ecclesiology paper to do. Galatians is due first, and I'm in total writer's block. Ecclesiology I could write in one or two sittings. It'll just flow out of the keyboard.

No more Biblical Studies classes though. I've had enough of them!

:: Matt 12/04/2003 11:39:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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Classes over, now paper writing begins in earnest

Yes, I had my last set of classes for this quarter yesterday. Now I have to complete the 50-some pages of papers for the classes. One very well may be done tonight, if I can manage it.

More later.

:: Matt 12/02/2003 01:40:00 PM :: permalink :: comments (0) ::
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