Two posts in two days?!

Well, sort of. :-) I noticed this article on a friend's Facebook page and decided it is worth re-posting. I am not a proponent of 'moral realism', and this article outlines one of the reasons why:

http://catholicmoraltheology.com/mn-marriage-amendment-and-the-church-weve-already-lost/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mn-marriage-amendment-and-the-church-weve-already-lost

Kierkegaard on Christian 'primitivity'...

"I could really be tempted to think that providence permits the scholarly, exegetical, and critical skepticism to get such a strong upper hand because providence is tired of the hypocrisy and all the mimicking which is carried on with the historical and historical proof and it wants to force men out into primitivity again. For primitivity, being obliged to be primitive, alone with God, without having others up front whom one mimics and appeals to—this men do not want at all. And with each century the historical millions and millions grow more and more numerous, and men also become more and more spiritless. Therefore it has pleased God that the critics who are degrading Christianity also get more and more power with the centuries."

It's been too long...

Well, look at that, it's been over a month since I've posted anything new.  That's just not right.  I do have good excuses though -- I was teaching this summer, and then immediately began working on a paper (as previously mentioned) which I presented at the International Kierkegaard Conference in Copenhagen.  Returned from the conference to immediately pack up my things and move into my new accommodations at Wycliffe Hall, where I am now a Junior Dean for SCIO (Scholarship and Christianity In Oxford), a Scholar's Semester in Oxford programme that brings undergraduate students from North America to study at the university.  So far it's been great -- but also understandably busy, as I've been helping the students get settled in their new environment.  In any case, this blog has been somewhat neglected.  So, to get things rolling again, here is a provocative bit from a book by Mark Vernon (Religion, Science, and the Meaning of Life) which, although written by a professed agnostic, offers some valuable insight for Christian believers:

Just a quick word...

Still busy, as usual. :-)  So, it looks like I should have some rough mixes of a few acoustic "indie/folk" songs I've recorded recently.  I'll be putting those up on bandcamp.com for people to check out, and download on a 'pay what you want' basis.  Hopefully I'll have a full album to release by the end of the year, if not sooner.  So, watch this space for more info!

In the meantime, I'd highly recommend a couple other recent pieces of musical brilliance: the new albums from Anathema, mewithoutYou, and If These Trees Could Talk.  All different styles, but all three are great rock bands.  Oh, and if you haven't heard the side project from Derri Daugherty of The Choir and Michael Roe of the 77's, check out Kerosene Halo.  Wonderful mellow alt-country kinda stuff.

Ok, that's all for now!

Busy summer...

So, I've gotten busy with a variety of projects this summer... First, I'm teaching again for a couple of different summer school program/mes (choose your spelling depending upon location ;-D), and that's been great both for experience and $$.  Also, I finished recording some new music a couple weeks ago, which I will soon (hopefully) be making available for the world -- or at least the few people who are interested -- to hear.  I am working, slowly, on a paper that I will be presenting at the 2012 Soren Kierkegaard Conference in Copenhagen... that happens from August 21-24, so I've got to finish that!

But, at the moment, I also have to finish an article for the Kierkegaard Resources series.  I had been delaying that to work on other things.  But I received an email saying that the publisher wants to get things rolling, so I have to get it done in the next few days!  So... all that to say, I'm feeling a bit busy right about now!  All good things, of course, but it does mean I don't have time to do things like update this blog regularly.  Not that I've been doing a good job of that, anyway.  But, I like making excuses. ;-)  hehe.  Ok, back to work!

Eberhard Jüngel on Theological Conceptions of Actuality and Possibility...

This is great stuff:

"The future actuality of the world is not a matter of hope; it is made.  It belongs to the context of worldly action; it is a matter of calculation and cannot do with hopes any more than we can work with hope in constructing an aeroplane or in pursuing historical-critical inquiry into the past.  The future actuality of the world is something which can be made.  As such it does not originate immediately from the word of promise, but from the work of the diviner, who, according to Kant, truly represents 'things imminent in future time', if he 'himself creates and continues the events which he announces in advance'...

What can be made does not become, in the strict sense of 'becoming ex nihilo'.  We make actuality out of that which is actual.  We change, we transform.  In this way, we make the future.  God, however, is not one who transforms; he is the creator, who allows possibility to move toward actuality.  But this possibility arises from the divine distinction between the possible and the impossible, arises, that is, ex nihilo.  The world's possibility is not within but external to its actuality.  And its being is external to its futurity."

Eberhard Jüngel - "The World as Possibility and Actuality" (from his Theological Essays)

Kierkegaard on predicative being...

Wow, this is a deep bit of writing:

"Jehovah says: I am who I am; I am. This is the supreme being. But to be in this way is too exalted for us human beings, much too earnest. Therefore we must try to become something; to be something is easier. Roguish, as everything related to humanity is, we express it in this way: earnestness is to be something.

Most men, or at least almost everyone, would die of anxiety about himself if his being should be—a tautology; they are more anxious about this kind of being and about themselves than about seeing themselves. So their situation is mitigated. The alleviation might be, for example: I am Chancellor, Knight of Denmark, member of the Cavalry Purchasing Commission, Alderman, Director of the Club. In a deeper sense all this is—diversion.

But, to repeat, man is probably not able to bear true earnestness. What I am inveighing against is merely this lying, this making diversion into earnestness. And yet perhaps I am wrong here, too; for generally men would never be able to last it out if they weren't permitted to live in the illusion that this is earnestness; they would die of anxiety about life and about themselves at the mere thought that their earnestness is diversion, without, however, being deprived of this diversion.

But no doubt all these numerous predicates are actually diversions, distractions, which prevent a man from the deepest impression of this to be. And how infinitely far men now are from being able to bear the actual impression of earnestness is best seen from the fact that they have even made this predicative being into—Christianity."