A quote today from Hans-Georg Gadamer:
"(H)istory does not belong to us; but we belong to it." (Truth and Method p 276)
One implication is that we have no chance of understanding what others mean in their writing and speaking without first coming to appreciate our own historical way we arrived here today.
(A comment on Reforming Project Management)
Just think of this in terms of the gospel, where an historical context is provided in the chain of ontological dependencies reaching back to creation where both God and we are grounded and given our setting, and why we are in the mess requiring salvation. We belong, through Christ, to the history that links us in real time and space to the events of creation and fall. Deny this, as does the SAD, and we end up endorsing the behaviour of the settlers Stan Grant mentions, who see in evolution the encouragement of genocide: the fruit of 'evolution' is death (and its requirement), not life as it is of the gospel and the God who created the very good.
Showing posts with label Death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Death. Show all posts
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Random Acts of Violence
Waiting for my morning coffee I let my eyes graze across the pages of the Daily Telegraph: all trouble and strife, as one would expect from a tabloid.
It was, of course, full of reports of random acts of violence; or random violent acts (some were the result of accidents, not intention). I got to thinking: in the SADist world, this is how God brought his creation into being; it is this that forms the first step of faith (Heb 11:3), it is this that constituted the 'making' (John 1:3) and in it the Word was intimately involved (John 1:3b), in flagrant contradiction to John 1:4, of course: the contrast between 'life' and 'light of men' and the darkness and horror of violence cannot be more marked.
But that's the SADist world for you: ill-digested biblical support for a badly thought out theology (in this respect anyway). And there we have it, the God who is love, who went to the cross to overturn the last enemy and who made everything very good, did so by using random acts of violence.
I wonder what SADists think the new creation will bring?
It was, of course, full of reports of random acts of violence; or random violent acts (some were the result of accidents, not intention). I got to thinking: in the SADist world, this is how God brought his creation into being; it is this that forms the first step of faith (Heb 11:3), it is this that constituted the 'making' (John 1:3) and in it the Word was intimately involved (John 1:3b), in flagrant contradiction to John 1:4, of course: the contrast between 'life' and 'light of men' and the darkness and horror of violence cannot be more marked.
But that's the SADist world for you: ill-digested biblical support for a badly thought out theology (in this respect anyway). And there we have it, the God who is love, who went to the cross to overturn the last enemy and who made everything very good, did so by using random acts of violence.
I wonder what SADists think the new creation will bring?
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Mad about death
It just came back to me. One of the maddest things I'd heard about death, creaton and the Bible, in years.
I was at a talk given by a Christian academic who, when asked about the significance of death in his theolgy (his idea was that God 'created' using evolution), pooh-poohed the notion of there being no death before Adam, by saying something along the lines of:
"Of course there was death before Adam, eukaryote cells were dying all the time, that's how organisms work".
How he betrayed his minor knowledge of Genesis, and his willingness to challenge scripture to maintain his argument. A not even careful reading will reveal that 'death' refers to those creatures with 'soulish' life, not cells!
I was at a talk given by a Christian academic who, when asked about the significance of death in his theolgy (his idea was that God 'created' using evolution), pooh-poohed the notion of there being no death before Adam, by saying something along the lines of:
"Of course there was death before Adam, eukaryote cells were dying all the time, that's how organisms work".
How he betrayed his minor knowledge of Genesis, and his willingness to challenge scripture to maintain his argument. A not even careful reading will reveal that 'death' refers to those creatures with 'soulish' life, not cells!
Thursday, March 13, 2008
The short run to Nihilism
Last quote from Scruton, p. 157 (its a short book):
...nihilism is the other side of religion: it is the disappointed howl of the believer on discovering that God is dead. The true nihilist is incapable of settling for a world of compromise [he speaks here of politico-religious things]...since it is a world deprived of absolutes. The death of God leaves only one remaining absolute, which is Nothingness. The duty to annihilate is the last remaining glimpse of the transendental in the heart of the one who has lost all belief in it and who cannot live with the loss.
I couldn't help but connect this wonderfully succinct analysis with that which lies at the heart of evolution, its negative engine: death. Read, and feel the irony.
...nihilism is the other side of religion: it is the disappointed howl of the believer on discovering that God is dead. The true nihilist is incapable of settling for a world of compromise [he speaks here of politico-religious things]...since it is a world deprived of absolutes. The death of God leaves only one remaining absolute, which is Nothingness. The duty to annihilate is the last remaining glimpse of the transendental in the heart of the one who has lost all belief in it and who cannot live with the loss.
I couldn't help but connect this wonderfully succinct analysis with that which lies at the heart of evolution, its negative engine: death. Read, and feel the irony.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Against God
From Before Darwin:237
...since time immemorial, the most obvious argument against God's existence and source of doubt about his unique and universal goodness has been the manifest imperfection of nature, and especially the misery of a great deal of existence that tells of nothing but a bleak purposelessness. As Darwin wrote: 'it revolts our understanding to suppose that [God's] benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time?'
This is from the chapter that deals with evil, goodness, and natural theology. Both the author and the natural theologians he studies are oblivious to the problem of the fall and its central position in Christianity.
Did I write 'problem'? Rather, the fall is the great rend in creation, it is the obliteration, the undoing, of the very-goodness declared by God, and rejection of relationship with God; it is man ejecting God from his life and world. If our theology of God is deficient because of a failed hermeneutic of creation (and I suspect it is in neo-evangelical circles), then our understanding of the fall and the radical besmirching of life with death that came in its train is also inadequate.
Oddly, I don't think that atheism or its materialist cousin has a helpful position on this.
What contemporary 'natural theology' is doing, (and Thomson touches on this, albeit without really understanding it, in my estimation) is to go behind the results of the fall and look at the structure of life and earth history, reading it in the knowledge of history in the Bible, but also seeing, on its own terms, its dependence. Materailism claims that life has its life in itself, finally, but it is not evident! Ironically, materialism now relies upon a certain extended 'vitalism' to explain life, the very thing for which it criticises pre-modern biology!
I met some clients of my employer recently who are profoundly disabled. It was heartbreaking to think of the frustration and bitterness of their experience, and of their parents. The materialist can offer them only dust and blank-faced emptiness in the despair of their position; our Creator God offers new life; restoration to the 'very good' and acknowledgement in Christ that all is not just not well, with the creation but that it is broken; yet his grace shines through to the re-creation.
...since time immemorial, the most obvious argument against God's existence and source of doubt about his unique and universal goodness has been the manifest imperfection of nature, and especially the misery of a great deal of existence that tells of nothing but a bleak purposelessness. As Darwin wrote: 'it revolts our understanding to suppose that [God's] benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time?'
This is from the chapter that deals with evil, goodness, and natural theology. Both the author and the natural theologians he studies are oblivious to the problem of the fall and its central position in Christianity.
Did I write 'problem'? Rather, the fall is the great rend in creation, it is the obliteration, the undoing, of the very-goodness declared by God, and rejection of relationship with God; it is man ejecting God from his life and world. If our theology of God is deficient because of a failed hermeneutic of creation (and I suspect it is in neo-evangelical circles), then our understanding of the fall and the radical besmirching of life with death that came in its train is also inadequate.
Oddly, I don't think that atheism or its materialist cousin has a helpful position on this.
What contemporary 'natural theology' is doing, (and Thomson touches on this, albeit without really understanding it, in my estimation) is to go behind the results of the fall and look at the structure of life and earth history, reading it in the knowledge of history in the Bible, but also seeing, on its own terms, its dependence. Materailism claims that life has its life in itself, finally, but it is not evident! Ironically, materialism now relies upon a certain extended 'vitalism' to explain life, the very thing for which it criticises pre-modern biology!
I met some clients of my employer recently who are profoundly disabled. It was heartbreaking to think of the frustration and bitterness of their experience, and of their parents. The materialist can offer them only dust and blank-faced emptiness in the despair of their position; our Creator God offers new life; restoration to the 'very good' and acknowledgement in Christ that all is not just not well, with the creation but that it is broken; yet his grace shines through to the re-creation.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Songs of Praise
The BBC's great program of traditional hymn signing and gentle witness.
On today's broadcast a man was telling of the death of his young adult daughter from an accident in Africa, while on short term mission. She was eaten by a croc.
As an indication of the state of Christian theology, all he could do was say that it was an accident; he didn't seem able to attribute it to the result of a broken creation: which I think the Bible would indicate; and therefore link to the new creation heralded by Christ!
I am also reminded of the very sad report on Craig's blog about a couple loosing their child to miscarriage. My parents had a similar experience, so I can share some of the impact; the report of this troubled me. The grieving father put it down to 'God's will'. But I don't think that God is a killer! I would put it down to the, once again, broken creation against which stands God's glorious and astonishing salvation in Christ; not only of us, but of the whole creation to be remade. Like the creed says: it it to a bodily resurrection we look forward.
On today's broadcast a man was telling of the death of his young adult daughter from an accident in Africa, while on short term mission. She was eaten by a croc.
As an indication of the state of Christian theology, all he could do was say that it was an accident; he didn't seem able to attribute it to the result of a broken creation: which I think the Bible would indicate; and therefore link to the new creation heralded by Christ!
I am also reminded of the very sad report on Craig's blog about a couple loosing their child to miscarriage. My parents had a similar experience, so I can share some of the impact; the report of this troubled me. The grieving father put it down to 'God's will'. But I don't think that God is a killer! I would put it down to the, once again, broken creation against which stands God's glorious and astonishing salvation in Christ; not only of us, but of the whole creation to be remade. Like the creed says: it it to a bodily resurrection we look forward.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
