A while ago, during the good old days of the Brexit debates, when all in the world was peaceful and calm (such innocent days), I read this line from Mark Twain in his first volume of his autobiography, that I believe he forbade publishing until 100 years after his inevitable death, quite an instruction, but... Continue Reading →
How God judges
We may now turn to the final component of our critique of traditionalism. We have looked at the entailments of implicit parent-child models of church authority, of the ‘de-relationalisation’ of biblical wisdom, and of the substitution of indoctrination for education. Now, we turn to consider the danger of grossly disproportionate responses to self-designated homosexuals. In... Continue Reading →
Undermining biblical wisdom
Abstract Rhetoric: Schism between Academic Theology & Biblical Wisdom Third, there is even a sense in which abstract pious rhetoric that suppresses relational wisdom has come to pervade academic theology. In particular, as Thiselton reminds us, the influence of Kant and neo-Kantianism has reduced the status of biblical language to mere ‘human projection’ for some.... Continue Reading →
The preacher and the counsellor
Abstract Rhetoric: Schism between Preaching & Counselling First, interpreting the Bible so as to systematise it without hearing its relational wisdom tends to split Christian discourse into two - between the discourse of the pulpit and that of the counsellors. Whilst there should be a distinction between the private specifics of counselling and the public language of preaching, the two should... Continue Reading →
You can be blind and see; You can see and be blind
From Wrong Forms of Critical Judgement to Right Forms of Critical Judgement So then, on the basis of Jesus’ teaching, it seems to me that self-designated church ‘traditionalists’ should be trying to be self-critical before pouring judgement on any view they oppose. Conversely, they also should be trying to be self-critical before pouring judgement on... Continue Reading →
How not to be a pig or a dog
The Choice: Self-Criticism First, or, “Pigs and Dogs” So, it is largely an absence of self-criticism that Jesus is largely attacking in Matthew 7:1-6. For if, in the case of ‘honour’, we lift up the other first and ourselves second, then it is the other way round with criticism. We are to criticise ourselves first,... Continue Reading →
Propaganda
Two farmers were leaning against a fence staring intensely at the horizon of a field where you could just make out the sheep, and there seemed to be a problem, but they couldn't quite see it, so one famer said to the other, "I'm going to go over there and 'ave a proper ganda!" A... Continue Reading →
How secularism ‘avoids discussing what is good’
From the second chapter entitled 'On the Negative Spirit' of G. K. Chesterton's book Heretics, he majestically dismantles the secualrized notion of "progress", an idea that on the surface of things sounds mature but as Chesterton shows, is actually devoid of a telos, a true goal that most of human history (until the modern age) has been concerned with. In... Continue Reading →
All this light and so much darkness
Concluding his astonishing Introductory Remarks in his book Heretics, G. K. Chesterton spins a yarn: "I revert to the doctrinal methods of the thirteenth century, inspired by the general hope of getting things done. Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A... Continue Reading →
Gralefrit Theology 