Posted on January 8, 2016
Liam Byrnes
being renewed in our minds through practise
Friday Link List | 8th Jan 2016
Every Friday I’m posting links to things I’ve read this week that I think you might find interesting too, next week I want to start sharing some links readers of the site are finding interesting…If you read something you think should be featured here submit it here, starting your message LINK LIST SUGGESTION.
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What I posted recently
Theology
- Who speaks for islam – It’s a difficult question those of us who want to join in that denouncing of terrorism need to honestly answer.
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An entertaining excerpt from Leithart book on Solomon that explains the contrasting visions of modernity and post modernity;
“Modernity unifies diverse groups into a nation-state, an ethnically and culturally homogenous national community, organised by a central bureaucracy, perpetuated by universal public education; postmodernity diffuses into a multiethnic nation that threatens to fragment into a loose confederation. Modernity drums out regular rhythm, like a piston; postmodernity is syncopated … Modernity shops for goods in a one-stop department store; postmodernity shops for pleasure in a megamall of speciality shops. Modernity systematises theology and declares popes infallible; postmodernity says theology is more like poetry, turns the priest around to face the congregation, and gives him a banjo.”
- Don’t murder your minister by Jim Martin – This is a great piece on how and how not to relate to leaders of spiritual communities.
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Pre-millenialists are often lambasted for being “defeatist, spiritualist, gnostic” but Leithart reviews Martin Spence’s book and makes some interesting claims for the opposite;
Earlier Evangelicals had linked poverty to personal vice, but premillennial Evnagelicals took “a more progressive view of the environmental causes of social and spiritual deprivation” (6). In important respects, Evangelical premillennialists were drawing inspiration from the Romantic culture of their day, which emphasized “time, history, movement, and development” (7). Historians have missed these connections, and to that degree have misconstrued Evangelicalism and premillennialism.
And
To victorian Evangelicals…premillennilism was “a radical, optimistic and often liberalizing creed, which transformed the thinking of these individuals away from older Evangelical assumptions about the gulf separating God and humanity, about the dissimilarity about time and eternity, and about the divide between ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit.’” Premillennialism went hand-in-hand with “a softening of the doctrine of hell, a high view of the human body, an interest in temporal development and progress, a focus on the humanity of Christ, and a robust view of the created order” (6).
Since college I’ve come to agree with Helmut Thielicke: “In countless talks about Christ it has been my experience that what stands between men and Christ is not intellectual arguments but sins.”
- I haven’t come across this yet, but maybe you have. Their is a new translation (read paraphrase) that is playing fast and loose by the looks of it. I wrote about some implications of our English translations here. Read more about the passion translation here on “What’s wrong with the passion translation”
– by Andrew Wilson
Despite all these (and many, many other) examples of why it isn’t a translation, it presents itself as if it is. This, frankly, is the big problem. I don’t see anything wrong with dynamic readings or performances of biblical texts, in order to make them fresh to readers or hearers; I’ve done it myself. But when we do this, we are not translating the text: we are inserting all kinds of glosses, interpretive opinions and explanatory notes, and producing something more like a targum than a translation.
- I haven’t read any of Richard beck, but have many friends who named his book Unclean as their favourite read of the last year. He blogs prolifically online and created a list of “must reads” for 2015. The titles are alone are enough for me to subscribe to the RSS feed! Read more here
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What is the sacramental significance of burial over cremation? This is an interesting unpacking of something I have thought about for a couple of years now – ashes to ashes on think theology
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And then part two he includes a quote from Russell Moore;
“Can’t I be resurrected from an urn as easily as I can from a casket?” they ask. Of course. That’s not the point. God can resurrect me if my body is eaten by alligators, but I wouldn’t dispose of Aunt Gladys that way, shrugging and asking, “What does it matter? See her in heaven.” The way we treat the body is a sign of what we believe about the future. The women around Jesus cared for his body, anointing it with spices, because it was him; they knew that the body is important because it will be part of the new creation, whether that resurrection happens in a matter of days or after billions of years of decay. Christians respect the body because we believe our material bodies are part of God’s goal for us and for the universe. ”
- This is a pretty interesting consideration of literary character formation and where Jesus fits in at all – faith and theology
Technology
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My friend Brandon Jones posted an interesting and highly readable review of the Tortuga travel backpack. It seems like it is in a completely different category (read size) to my Tom Bihn Synapse bag which I researched and reviewed here.
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Review of Sonos’ Play:5 wireless speaker – I’m pretty pleased with my bose sound dock portable that is 7 years old and my latest addition of the UK Roll, but this review of the sonos speaker and it’s eco-system was pretty attractive.
Miscellany
- The unhaunted graveyard – This is a fascinating, if not morbid (literally) reflection of the sociology of death. How in a secular age we cannot disenchant how we treat those who die.
And even by the end of his long, careful book, he can find no better answer than that circular explanation: We do it because we do it. “The charisma of the dead . . . exists in our age as in other ages,” because death has never successfully been disenchanted—not by ancient philosophers and not by modern science.
- a thoughtful review of the new movie released that details some events surrounding the Catholic Church of Boston abuse cover up; Spotlight.
Images
rights; Shaun O Boyle
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