mike d | 
06 26th, 2008| 
For any folks who may be checking bloggishly for new stuff sorry for the lack of posts. Things picked up at the day job and at home and I decided to take a break from the blogosphere. Should be back to blogging in a week or two.
May
28
Later this Summer Per Caritatem will be hosting a Blog Conference on Conversations with Augustine, Past and Present. Posts will explore Augustine’s influence on theologians and philosophers from the Middle Ages, Reformation, and 19, 20th & 21st Centuries. The line up looks great and appears to be shaping up to be a very interesting blog conference. Cynthia R. Neilson was kind enough to include me in the tentative line-up; I’ll be writing on Augustine’s influence on the thought of contemporary philosopher Alvin Plantinga.
As a point of clarification she has my affiliation down as St. John’s Episcopal Church, Detroit. I’m in the early stages of pursuing Ordination through St. John’s but am not on staff; just a parishioner and volunteer. But since I’m between schools (on the path to seminary) St. John’s will do just fine as a stand in for an institutional affiliation (see my about page for all the info on that).
Here’s the full line-up at present:
Augustine and the Middle Ages
1. Garrett Smith, doctoral student, Notre Dame (Augustine and Scotus)
Respondent: Shane Wilkins2. Shane Wilkins, doctoral student, Fordham University (Augustine and Henry of Ghent)
Respondent: Dr. Jonathan McIntoshAugustine and the Reformation
1. Dr. Phillip Carey, Professor of Philosophy at Eastern University. Dr. Carey is a noted Augustine scholar, whose published works include, Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist; (Augustine and Luther)
Respondent: Dr. Joel Garver2. Jason Ingalls, M.Div. Vanderbilt University; (Augustine, Luther and Barth)
Respondent: Dave Belcher3. Michael Vendsel, doctoral student, Villanova University (Augustine and Calvin)
Respondent: Bret SaundersAugustine and 19th Century Thinkers
1. Michael Jones, doctoral student, University of Dallas; (Augustine, Kierkegaard and Hegel)
Respondent: Dr. Victor SalasAugustine and 20th-21st Century Thinkers
1. Mike Dagle, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Detroit; (Augustine and Plantinga)
Respondent: James Gibson2. Bret Saunders, doctoral student, University of Dallas; (Augustine and Marion)
Respondent: Dr. Joel Hunter3. Mary C. Moorman, PhD candidate, Southern Methodist University; (Augustine, von Balthasar, and de Lubac)
Respondent: Dan McClain
May
23
From an interview in the undergraduate Notre Dame journal; Vita, Dulcedo et Spes, Peter Van Inwagen comments on the project of Christian apologetics:
CT: What do you think of the prospects of apologetics, i.e., the sort of apologetics that seeks to establish that Christianity (or even theism) is the correct religion, like what C.S. Lewis is trying to do at the beginning of Mere Christianity ?
PvI: I don’t see any real prospect of “establishing” Christianity as the correct religion (that is, as the one religion all of whose teachings and doctrines are true). Christian faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. What Christian apologists can and should do is to meet particular challenges to Christian belief — the various arguments from evil, the charge that “God is an unnecessary hypothesis,” the various arguments for the conclusion that it’s irrational to believe in miracles, the contention that the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation are logically self-contradictory, the thesis that modern, objective scholarship has undermined the authority of the bible, depth-psychological or Marxist “exposures” of the true basis of religious belief. . . It’s the business of Christian apologetic to dismantle the various intellectual barriers that the enemies of Christianity have tried to erect between those who are beginning to consider Christianity seriously and their becoming Christians — that and nothing else. As to theism, establishing that theism was the correct position, that would come down to producing arguments for the existence of God, wouldn’t it? You can try to find such arguments if you like, but all arguments for the existence of God will be philosophical arguments, and therefore inconclusive — as inconclusive as arguments for the existence of free will or an objective moral standard. If there were a “successful” argument for the existence of God, an argument that would force anyone who understood it to become a theist on pain of irrationality, it would be the first successful philosophical argument. I don’t think that such arguments are of much apologetic value — except no doubt in a few special cases (there’s just about nothing that wouldn’t be effective with anybody).
May
22
“The promise which was made” by Edward C. Bairstow, based on Acts xiii 32,33; The Song of Solomon ii.11,12; and Psalm cxiv. 21 (Book of Common Prayer). Offered by the St. John’s Episcopal Church choir, under the direction of Dr. Huw Lewis FRCO. Organist - Mr. Richard Newman, Soloist - Mary Grivas
May
21
“This book discusses and exemplifies the philosophy of religion, or philosophical reflection on central themes of religion. Philosophical reflection (which is not much different from just thinking hard)…” (emphasis added)
–Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1977), 1.
May
19
As found in the 1940 Hymnal and sung on Trinity Sunday:
I bind unto myself today
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.I bind this day to me for ever,
by power of faith, Christ’s Incarnation;
his baptism in Jordan river;
his death on cross for my salvation;
his bursting from the spicèd tomb;
his riding up the heavenly way;
his coming at the day of doom:
I bind unto myself today.
May
15
“To love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of publick affections.” (Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.)”
“In a Calvinistic sense we understand hereby, that the family, the business, science, art and so forth are all social spheres, which do not owe their existence to the state, and which do not derive the law of their life from the superiority of the state, but obey a high authority within their own bosom; an authority which rules, by the grace of God, just as the sovereignty of the State does.” (Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism: The Stone Lectures, 1898.)”
“It is this natural impulse which binds men together in civil society; and it is likewise this which leads them to join together in associations which are, it is true, lesser and not independent societies, but, nevertheless, real societies.” (Pope Leo XIII, RERUM NOVARUM, 1891)
“Hobbits are unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-armed countryside was their favourite haunt,” (J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954)
The importance of civil society and its little platoons, sovereign institutions, haunts, and free associations has long been affirmed by various political and religious thinkers (and fantasy authors). Civil society constitutes the mediating structures that temper both the individualistic impulse in man as well as the tyrannical tendency of the state. It is from this reality, this germ, that political life springs (or perhaps ought to).
May
12
How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago? Hour by hour planes fly there, ships steer their course there, and trains thunder off to it — but all with nary a mark on them to tell of their destination. And at ticket windows or at travel bureaus for Soviet or foreign tourists the employees would be astounded if you were to ask for a ticket to go there. They know nothing and they’ve never heard of the Archipelago as a whole or of any one of its innumerable islands.
Those who go to the Archipelago to administer it get there via the training schools of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Those who go there to be guards are conscripted via the military conscription centers.
And those who, like you and me, dear reader, go there to die, must get there solely and compulsorily via arrest.
Arrest! Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you? That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity?
The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: “You are under arrest.”
So begins Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956. I just noticed a forthcoming book, smartly titled, The Soul and Barbed Wire on the Russian critic of communism and all ideological (and so totalitarian) regimes being published by ISI Books (pic above). One of the authors, Edward E. Ericson, co-edited the comprehensive and needed The Solzhenitsyn Reader also published by ISI.
Solzhenitsyn doesn’t seem to be as important a thinker now that the world seems to have put communism aside. He seems dated and reactionary to many. That’s a shame; his warnings to the West are as timely now as they ever were. Perhaps the recent books will foster a resurgence in interest in his work.
May
3
Mark Galli (author of the recent Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy) writes at Christianity Today:
A recent book on the missional church argues that we need to “reinvent the church” in “revolutionary” ways so that we can “incarnate the gospel within a specific cultural context.”
I found one example of such a church on the Internet, a congregation in Florida whose very name is Relevant.
It is precisely the point of the liturgy to take people out of their worlds and usher them into a strange, new world—to show them that, despite appearances, the last thing in the world they need is more of the world out of which they’ve come. The world the liturgy reveals does not seem relevant at first glance, but it turns out that the world it reveals is more real than the one we inhabit day by day.
“Relevant is a casual, contemporary, Christian church meeting at the Italian Club in Ybor City, Florida. Our service is designed specifically for college students, urban professionals and young families. At Relevant, we feel that it’s our responsibility to “clear the way” for you to come to church. We want you to be able to experience the great music, encouraging messages, friendly people and enjoyable atmosphere that are a part of Relevant.”
The church recently made a media splash with its “30-Day Sex Challenge,” encouraging marrieds to have sex every day for a month—a reverse Lenten discipline, I suppose. This church, like many others, is no doubt making a difference in the lives of “urban professionals” and “young families” in large part because it appears to be relevant.
Put the liturgical church in this context, and it’s easy to see why liturgy is a stumbling block to many. We’ve recently featured in CT’s pages a story about evangelicals who are attracted to liturgical worship, but in the context of American youth culture, many wonder why. The worship leaders wear medieval robes and guide the congregation through a ritual that is anything but spontaneous; they lead music that is hundreds of years old; they say prayers that are scripted and formal; the homily is based on a 2,000-year-old book; and the high point of the service is taken up with eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a Rabbi executed in Israel when it was under Roman occupation. It doesn’t sound relevant.
Yet many evangelicals are attracted to liturgical worship, and as one of those evangelicals, I’d like to explain what the attraction is for me, and perhaps for many others. A closer look suggests that something more profound and paradoxical is going on in liturgy than the search for contemporary relevance. “The liturgy begins … as a real separation from the world,” writes Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. He continues by saying that in the attempt to “make Christianity understandable to this mythical ‘modern’ man on the street,” we have forgotten this necessary separation.
Apr
30
A good post on The Christian Year at Inhabitatio Dei includes these five theses:
1. The Christian calendar forms the church to understand herself as a community who is a participant in the story of the triune God disclosed in Scripture and to understand that biblical story as the context in which the world is interpreted and engaged.
2. The Christian calendar recasts the Christian understanding of personal identity within a narratival and ecclesial frame of reference.
3. The Christian calendar invites the church to order its daily life, seasonal celebrations, and familial and communal events in a Christocentric manner, relating all aspects of the ordinary to Christ’s lordship and offering them to him as worship.
4. The Christian calendar nurtures a distinctively eschatological imagination, inviting the church to understand her own being and actions as bearing witness to, participating in, and anticipating the fullness of the triune God’s eschatological kingdom.
5. The Christian calendar orients the church to see her primary vocation as the worship of the Triune God, finding the summit and center of her life in the proclamation of the Word of God and the communion of the Eucharist.
Each thesis is elaborated further on the post; worth the read.