Wednesday, June 30, 2004
On Driving
I was working on another blog post, but I'm posting this instead right now, just because it's time for Chris to rant. This country's government is so totally obsessed with speed limits that people can get away with dangerous driving so long as they don't go over the speed limit. There seems to be a concrete concept of "not speeding = not dangerous". Very rarely do I see traffic police, ever since they became totally dependent on speed cameras to bring in revenue... oops, I mean make roads safer by making sure everyone's glued to their speedometer, rather than whats going on on the road in front of them, and I've never heard of anyone being booked for driving dangerously, unless they're drunk. (By the way, I have no quarms about speed cameras in residential areas or before sharp turns in the road and other dangerous areas, but some of them already in use are just placed to raise money, and some of the most dangerous roads in Britain have no speed cameras or traffic police monitoring them). So now we get people who crawl along, especially so in the middle lane on motorways but not just there, so slowly that everyone else on the road has to switch lanes to get around them. Has no one told them of this thing called "considerate driving". A driver not behaving sensibly on the road and keeping the flow with other traffic, is in danger of causing an accident as people try to avoid him/her. Then there's those who think that it's safe to move between lanes without indicating or looking just because they're doing less than 25 in a 30 zone with an open road ahead of them. I just nearly had a minibus drive into me because the driver paid no attention to his mirrors or the lane boundaries as I was overtaking upon entering a 50 zone. That guy will never get a speeding ticket, but he'll probably cause an accident sooner or later. But that's ok, of course. He doesn't speed.
Suffice it to say, neither do I, but I keep to the speed limit when I can in consideration for other drivers.
The moral of this story for all whom it may concern: Just because you're not speeding, it doesn't mean you're not driving like an idiot.
But while we're on this driving theme...
In the UK, I think there's a Borg collective-like mindset to driving in that a decent driver will be aware of what other cars are doing around him. British drivers read the "body-language" of another car. We have to, in this land of hills and twisty-turny roads, lest we die. Occasionally, some upset this (see above... plus 17-year olds who think they look cool in cheap cars with lowered suspension and overly-loud stereos), but in general, things work pretty well. In my journeys to the US, however, I notice that there's significantly more occurance of people not using their indicators/blinkers/whatever you call them, and I at least, don't sense the same level of awareness of the intentions and actions of other cars. I think maybe it's perhaps because the driving test in the US is much more basic than in the UK, our roads being more busy and complicated, etc. I don't know. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. But I think it would definitely take me a while to get used to driving there.
I hereby throw down the usual "what thinkest thou?" to those who have driven on both sides of the pond.
I was working on another blog post, but I'm posting this instead right now, just because it's time for Chris to rant. This country's government is so totally obsessed with speed limits that people can get away with dangerous driving so long as they don't go over the speed limit. There seems to be a concrete concept of "not speeding = not dangerous". Very rarely do I see traffic police, ever since they became totally dependent on speed cameras to bring in revenue... oops, I mean make roads safer by making sure everyone's glued to their speedometer, rather than whats going on on the road in front of them, and I've never heard of anyone being booked for driving dangerously, unless they're drunk. (By the way, I have no quarms about speed cameras in residential areas or before sharp turns in the road and other dangerous areas, but some of them already in use are just placed to raise money, and some of the most dangerous roads in Britain have no speed cameras or traffic police monitoring them). So now we get people who crawl along, especially so in the middle lane on motorways but not just there, so slowly that everyone else on the road has to switch lanes to get around them. Has no one told them of this thing called "considerate driving". A driver not behaving sensibly on the road and keeping the flow with other traffic, is in danger of causing an accident as people try to avoid him/her. Then there's those who think that it's safe to move between lanes without indicating or looking just because they're doing less than 25 in a 30 zone with an open road ahead of them. I just nearly had a minibus drive into me because the driver paid no attention to his mirrors or the lane boundaries as I was overtaking upon entering a 50 zone. That guy will never get a speeding ticket, but he'll probably cause an accident sooner or later. But that's ok, of course. He doesn't speed.
Suffice it to say, neither do I, but I keep to the speed limit when I can in consideration for other drivers.
The moral of this story for all whom it may concern: Just because you're not speeding, it doesn't mean you're not driving like an idiot.
But while we're on this driving theme...
In the UK, I think there's a Borg collective-like mindset to driving in that a decent driver will be aware of what other cars are doing around him. British drivers read the "body-language" of another car. We have to, in this land of hills and twisty-turny roads, lest we die. Occasionally, some upset this (see above... plus 17-year olds who think they look cool in cheap cars with lowered suspension and overly-loud stereos), but in general, things work pretty well. In my journeys to the US, however, I notice that there's significantly more occurance of people not using their indicators/blinkers/whatever you call them, and I at least, don't sense the same level of awareness of the intentions and actions of other cars. I think maybe it's perhaps because the driving test in the US is much more basic than in the UK, our roads being more busy and complicated, etc. I don't know. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. But I think it would definitely take me a while to get used to driving there.
I hereby throw down the usual "what thinkest thou?" to those who have driven on both sides of the pond.
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Lutheran and Calvinist Cosmology and the Communicatio Idiomatum:
A prototype section from my upcoming dissertation
So here's something I've been thinking about lately which will, in some shape or form, be included in my dissertation, "A Comparative Study of Lutheran and Reformed Christologies". I only have 8000 words in which to produce the final draft so whatever I write here is going to have to be edited and compacted down, but hopefully conciseness (woah, I just checked, and that's actually a real word.. I didn't just make it up! w00t) won't remove too much of the content. This is gonna go somewhere in the middle of my dissertation, so I understand that some things mentioned will appear weakly argued -The solidarity of their argument will be made earlier. In this section, I'm pretty much running with the arguments of David Scaer's work in the "Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics" series, vol. VI, "Christology", and padding things out with Martin Chemnitz' "The Two Natures in Christ" and "The Lord's Supper" (both translated by J.A.O. Preus), and Warner Elert's “The Structure of Lutheranism” (trans. W.A. Hansen). I've still got more reading to do, but from the Reformed perspective, I've drawn upon Calvin's "Institutes of the Christian Religion", Donald Macleod's "The Person of Christ", and Scaer's own quotations of Karl Barth. Well, without further ado, I'll try to make some sort of start.
Macleod states that Calvinists insist that the communicatio idiomatum is purely verbal and in respect to the person, rather than the natures (Macleod 1998, p. 196), quoting from Calvin:
This contradicts the belief of Luther, who taught that from the moment of the conception of Jesus in Mary's womb, the human nature fully shared in the Trinitarian life of God. (Luther's Works 37:229, 232). [Possible discussion of alloiosis from Sasse's "This is My Body" may go here] Scaer (1989 p. 24) criticises Calvinism for sharing the same philosophical presuppositions as Nestorius, leading them to believe that God was so transcendent that real and true communication of attributes between the two natures was impossible. [Indeed, Cyril of Alexandria was at pains to bring Nestorius to the understanding that "[the divine Logos] appropriated to Himself and made His own the birth of His flesh" (Cyril's 2nd Letter to Nestorius; Stevenson, Frend 2000, p. 296)]. Barth, remaining true to his Reformed heritage in this respect, tried to resolve this philosophical problem by positing certain human characteristics to God prior to the Incarnation, claiming that God can act as God both in an absolute way and a relative way, exalted and lowly, active and passive, etc. His gracious presence with the Israelites was the foreshadow of the eternal Logos' dwelling in the man Jesus. (Barth, Dogmatics, IV, I, 188). Lutherans have always maintained that Reformed Christology, especially the maxim, finitum non est capax infiniti (the finite is incapable of the infinite), if consistently applied, would result in a denial of the Incarnation, since the finite human nature of Christ would be incapable of true communion with his infinite divine nature. Scaer points out that if the finite is incapable of entering into union with the infinite, then when taken to the extreme, we are left with pure agnosticism, since any relationship between Creation and Creator is impossible. (Scaer 1989, p. 26) While Calvin held that the Scriptures are able to be understood by mankind, he held that it was the parallel, but unconnected, immediate working of the Spirit which produced saving knowledge (Institutes III,I,1) rather than the Spirit directly working through the Word, as Lutherans hold. When it came to the Incarnation, he concluded that
The same mode of thought is operative in Barth's distinction between the “becoming” and “assuming” of flesh. Gustaf Wingren commented that
This leads onto the issue of Christ's Mediatorship. Lutherans state simply that it is sin which separated man from God (Isaiah 59), and that before sin came into the word, God walked and conversed with man (Genesis 1), whereas the Reformed see a natural gulf between Creator and creation, even before the Fall. Christ then becomes not only the mediator between sinners and a holy God, but the mediator between the Infinite and the finite. The immediate working of the Holy Spirit, for them, bridges this gulf in matters of revelation and the creation and sustaining of faith.
The emphasis in Calvinist philosophical presuppositions on the transcendence of God can be seen in their cosmology. Traditionally, Reformed thinkers, from Calvin onwards, have understood heaven, earth, and hell in spatial terms, whereas Lutherans had always conceived of the spacelessness (Unräumlichkeit) of heaven. The Reformed confession of the Consensus Tigurinus, inspired by Calvin and intended to refute the Lutheran position of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, declares that the body of Christ, after the Ascension, “must be as far away from us as the heaven is from the earth” (Elert, Hansen 1962, p. 312). The Reformed preacher, Georg Spindler, discussing the Lutheran understanding of the spacelessness of heaven, in 1594 spoke of it, perhaps crudely and polemically, but correctly in essence, “angels and devils run around higgledy-piggledy, and the angels carry their heaven around with them, just as the devils carry their hell around with them.” (ibid. p. 416). Such an understanding does, however, echo Paul's speaking of demonic forces “in the heavenly realms”, not as distant and above the world, but to be wrestled with (Ephesians 6). Calvin spoke of the humanity of Christ, even after the ascension, as having the limitations common to all human beings, and therefore his body was “contained in heaven where it was once for all received” (Institutes IV,XVII,12). [It is worth noting that, despite one wing of contemporary Reformed theologians acknowledging the Real Presence, they often criticise the Lutherans for neglecting the role of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist, Who is said to join the body of Christ in heaven to the external elements on earth. I believe that this misunderstanding is the assumption that, between the Reformed and the Lutherans, a common cosmology exists, whereas this traditionally has, in fact, not.] Confessional Lutheran Christology operates with both earth and heaven, but within the sense of the Nicene Creed's categories “things visible and invisible”. Chemnitz spends several paragraphs dealing with how pagan philosophical concepts must not be used to speculate on the nature of heaven, or to judge what God can or cannot do in Christ with his humanity to remaining intact -He can do above and beyond what we imagine (Chemnitz, Preus 1979, pp. 198-214). The Incarnation and Resurrection do not involve a form of “space travel”, as Scaer calls it, from heaven to earth. Christ was manifested in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16) and appeared to His disciples (1 Corinthians 15:5-8). Under this understanding of the universe, not divided into spaces, but the visible and the invisible, the Formula of Concord predicates divine natures to the human nature of Christ, not merely that they work in parallel to each other (the genus maiesticum), but the divine works in and through the human (the genus apotelesmaticum), so that the human nature, by virtue of the hypostatic union, receives all the majesty which the Son had from eternity. The human nature receives all glory, honour, and power, in time, and is exalted to God's right hand. In the Lutheran understanding, the mystery of the Incarnation which Paul speaks of in Phillipians 2, is not that God expresses a natural relationship with His creation, but that He assumed a form with the same limitations imposed by sin on His creation, assuming the nature of all human beings, and redeeming it. (Scaer, p. 29).
Now, I'm not going to be this negative of Calvin and the Reformed all the way through my dissertation. I still need an A, which by the way, is about 72% but that's not easy to get in British universities, so I'm going to have to spend a lot of time covering common ground, and dishing out praise and criticism to both sides. (Meaning there's enough Reformed thought in many more recent Lutheran theologians for me to criticize them). At any rate, this section is just a potentially good discussion starter, which is why I posted it. By the way, I'm saving most of the Chemnitz material (because there's so darn much of it) for the debate which is certainly going to follow this post.
A prototype section from my upcoming dissertation
So here's something I've been thinking about lately which will, in some shape or form, be included in my dissertation, "A Comparative Study of Lutheran and Reformed Christologies". I only have 8000 words in which to produce the final draft so whatever I write here is going to have to be edited and compacted down, but hopefully conciseness (woah, I just checked, and that's actually a real word.. I didn't just make it up! w00t) won't remove too much of the content. This is gonna go somewhere in the middle of my dissertation, so I understand that some things mentioned will appear weakly argued -The solidarity of their argument will be made earlier. In this section, I'm pretty much running with the arguments of David Scaer's work in the "Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics" series, vol. VI, "Christology", and padding things out with Martin Chemnitz' "The Two Natures in Christ" and "The Lord's Supper" (both translated by J.A.O. Preus), and Warner Elert's “The Structure of Lutheranism” (trans. W.A. Hansen). I've still got more reading to do, but from the Reformed perspective, I've drawn upon Calvin's "Institutes of the Christian Religion", Donald Macleod's "The Person of Christ", and Scaer's own quotations of Karl Barth. Well, without further ado, I'll try to make some sort of start.
Macleod states that Calvinists insist that the communicatio idiomatum is purely verbal and in respect to the person, rather than the natures (Macleod 1998, p. 196), quoting from Calvin:
There is a communication of idiomata, or properties, when Paul says, that God purchased the Church “with his own blood,” (Acts 20:28), and that the Jews crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8). In like manner, John says, that the Word of God was “handled.” God certainly has no blood, suffers not, cannot be touched with hands; but since that Christ, who was true God and true man, shed his blood on the cross for us, the acts which were performed in his human nature are transferred improperly, but not ceaselessly, to his divinity... on account of the union of a twofold nature, [the writers of the Scriptures] attributed to the one what properly belonged to the other.
(Calvin, Institutes II,XIV,2)
This contradicts the belief of Luther, who taught that from the moment of the conception of Jesus in Mary's womb, the human nature fully shared in the Trinitarian life of God. (Luther's Works 37:229, 232). [Possible discussion of alloiosis from Sasse's "This is My Body" may go here] Scaer (1989 p. 24) criticises Calvinism for sharing the same philosophical presuppositions as Nestorius, leading them to believe that God was so transcendent that real and true communication of attributes between the two natures was impossible. [Indeed, Cyril of Alexandria was at pains to bring Nestorius to the understanding that "[the divine Logos] appropriated to Himself and made His own the birth of His flesh" (Cyril's 2nd Letter to Nestorius; Stevenson, Frend 2000, p. 296)]. Barth, remaining true to his Reformed heritage in this respect, tried to resolve this philosophical problem by positing certain human characteristics to God prior to the Incarnation, claiming that God can act as God both in an absolute way and a relative way, exalted and lowly, active and passive, etc. His gracious presence with the Israelites was the foreshadow of the eternal Logos' dwelling in the man Jesus. (Barth, Dogmatics, IV, I, 188). Lutherans have always maintained that Reformed Christology, especially the maxim, finitum non est capax infiniti (the finite is incapable of the infinite), if consistently applied, would result in a denial of the Incarnation, since the finite human nature of Christ would be incapable of true communion with his infinite divine nature. Scaer points out that if the finite is incapable of entering into union with the infinite, then when taken to the extreme, we are left with pure agnosticism, since any relationship between Creation and Creator is impossible. (Scaer 1989, p. 26) While Calvin held that the Scriptures are able to be understood by mankind, he held that it was the parallel, but unconnected, immediate working of the Spirit which produced saving knowledge (Institutes III,I,1) rather than the Spirit directly working through the Word, as Lutherans hold. When it came to the Incarnation, he concluded that
Even if the Word in His immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that He was confined therein.
(Institutes II,XVIII,4)
The same mode of thought is operative in Barth's distinction between the “becoming” and “assuming” of flesh. Gustaf Wingren commented that
We find a line of thought in Barth which strongly emphasizes that the gulf between the divine and human remains unbridged even in the Incarnation. Thus the idea was presented... that the humanity mirrors the divine in Jesus Christ. The idea of a mirror or reflection occurs frequently in Barth's writings, and it means everywhere the same: a distance between two spheres; and, in addition, a reflection of the relatively higher sphere in the lower.
(Wingren, Theology in Conflict, pp. 30-31, quoted by Scaer, p. 27)
This leads onto the issue of Christ's Mediatorship. Lutherans state simply that it is sin which separated man from God (Isaiah 59), and that before sin came into the word, God walked and conversed with man (Genesis 1), whereas the Reformed see a natural gulf between Creator and creation, even before the Fall. Christ then becomes not only the mediator between sinners and a holy God, but the mediator between the Infinite and the finite. The immediate working of the Holy Spirit, for them, bridges this gulf in matters of revelation and the creation and sustaining of faith.
The emphasis in Calvinist philosophical presuppositions on the transcendence of God can be seen in their cosmology. Traditionally, Reformed thinkers, from Calvin onwards, have understood heaven, earth, and hell in spatial terms, whereas Lutherans had always conceived of the spacelessness (Unräumlichkeit) of heaven. The Reformed confession of the Consensus Tigurinus, inspired by Calvin and intended to refute the Lutheran position of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, declares that the body of Christ, after the Ascension, “must be as far away from us as the heaven is from the earth” (Elert, Hansen 1962, p. 312). The Reformed preacher, Georg Spindler, discussing the Lutheran understanding of the spacelessness of heaven, in 1594 spoke of it, perhaps crudely and polemically, but correctly in essence, “angels and devils run around higgledy-piggledy, and the angels carry their heaven around with them, just as the devils carry their hell around with them.” (ibid. p. 416). Such an understanding does, however, echo Paul's speaking of demonic forces “in the heavenly realms”, not as distant and above the world, but to be wrestled with (Ephesians 6). Calvin spoke of the humanity of Christ, even after the ascension, as having the limitations common to all human beings, and therefore his body was “contained in heaven where it was once for all received” (Institutes IV,XVII,12). [It is worth noting that, despite one wing of contemporary Reformed theologians acknowledging the Real Presence, they often criticise the Lutherans for neglecting the role of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist, Who is said to join the body of Christ in heaven to the external elements on earth. I believe that this misunderstanding is the assumption that, between the Reformed and the Lutherans, a common cosmology exists, whereas this traditionally has, in fact, not.] Confessional Lutheran Christology operates with both earth and heaven, but within the sense of the Nicene Creed's categories “things visible and invisible”. Chemnitz spends several paragraphs dealing with how pagan philosophical concepts must not be used to speculate on the nature of heaven, or to judge what God can or cannot do in Christ with his humanity to remaining intact -He can do above and beyond what we imagine (Chemnitz, Preus 1979, pp. 198-214). The Incarnation and Resurrection do not involve a form of “space travel”, as Scaer calls it, from heaven to earth. Christ was manifested in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16) and appeared to His disciples (1 Corinthians 15:5-8). Under this understanding of the universe, not divided into spaces, but the visible and the invisible, the Formula of Concord predicates divine natures to the human nature of Christ, not merely that they work in parallel to each other (the genus maiesticum), but the divine works in and through the human (the genus apotelesmaticum), so that the human nature, by virtue of the hypostatic union, receives all the majesty which the Son had from eternity. The human nature receives all glory, honour, and power, in time, and is exalted to God's right hand. In the Lutheran understanding, the mystery of the Incarnation which Paul speaks of in Phillipians 2, is not that God expresses a natural relationship with His creation, but that He assumed a form with the same limitations imposed by sin on His creation, assuming the nature of all human beings, and redeeming it. (Scaer, p. 29).
Now, I'm not going to be this negative of Calvin and the Reformed all the way through my dissertation. I still need an A, which by the way, is about 72% but that's not easy to get in British universities, so I'm going to have to spend a lot of time covering common ground, and dishing out praise and criticism to both sides. (Meaning there's enough Reformed thought in many more recent Lutheran theologians for me to criticize them). At any rate, this section is just a potentially good discussion starter, which is why I posted it. By the way, I'm saving most of the Chemnitz material (because there's so darn much of it) for the debate which is certainly going to follow this post.
Sunday, June 13, 2004
I Kissed Dating Goodbye 4!!!:
The Rise of the Machines
I'm not sure what that title.. had to do with... anything.
Well, maybe something in there was kinda relevant to this post... I've only really had the chance to speak about this with a few close friends one-on-one or online. But now I'm sharing it with my blogging audience because it's just me and thee for the moment. I am in control now.
I am in control of the horizontal...
_
uh...I am in control of the vertical...
|
WTF, mate?
"Ok, Chris, shut up and just get on with it"
Why dating sucks: The incomplete inconclusive thoughts of The Chris plagiarized from at least 4 different sources
Another reason why I'll never be President is that I'll never be popular. I'll never be popular because I have a habit of questioning things many people take for granted then setting myself up against those things without having enough time to explain myself when such a common concept is raised. I've done that with dating. I'm not going to argue along the same lines as Joshua Harris did in his famous (among evangelicals) books, so don't worry. What my problem is, is that the whole thing seems so... artificial. The ideal story goes like this:
Boy meets Girl
Boy asks out Girl
Boy and Girl eventually believe that they are "committed" and proceed to throw themselves emotionally headlong into the relationship
Boy/Girl does something stupid
Boy and Girl break up
Boy and Girl are sad... :'(
...FOR ABOUT 5 SECONDS BEFORE THE WHOLE PROCESS STARTS ALL OVER AGAIN!!!! :D
w00t!
Dating is taken way too seriously today. (As opposed to marriage, of which today much of the world sees little sanctity therein). Face it, as my good friend Duncan (who I think still reads this blog occasionally) said, "there's no such thing as a commitment that can be ended by saying, 'I'm breaking up with you'". Contrast this with marriage, which is for life.
A better alternative would be to just get to know someone as a friend, and if both of you enjoy spending time together, spend more time hanging out together, til it happens that you're gladly choosing to spend time with each other. The "dating" contract often involves some unofficial but still somehow binding premarital restraints and constraints of how much time is spent together, and how much time is spent with other people. But the simple unofficiality of this idea often leads to tensions when one or the other party chooses to spend his/her time with someone other than his girlfriend/her boyfriend. Might it be more sensible to believe that there are really no restraints or true commitments, other than Christian decency and integrity, for both parties [why the heck am I calling them 'parties'?] to understand this and just be happy for one another if the other person decides to spend his/her time with someone whose company he/she enjoys more.
The alternative listed above has the fundamental problem that it would involve 2 people getting to know each other first as friends then slowly and gradually, and most of all, naturally, getting romantically involved with the end of marriage in sight, if it works out. But alas, how high is the boundary fence between "friends" and "dating". Now, I don't understand "THE FRIENDS ZONE!!!" but it seems to be ein feste concrete structure... and I've never heard a male speak of the ethical toil of transgressing such a well-established boundary. I've heard the condition of people in "THE FRIENDS ZONE!!!" being described as so delicate that any upset caused by a single romantic thought by a person, usually male, strangely enough, also usually called Chris, towards another person in "THE FRIENDS ZONE!!!" that such an imbalance would destroy the universe. Other ideas thrown around are that "you don't see your friends as male or female" (WTF?), and that "it would break up our friends group". Now this latter concept has some truth to it but only in the framework of the emotional headlong self-throwingisms of the world's concept of dating.
So, anyways, why does dating have to be taken so seriously, and why put so much emotional security into something with someone you don't know that well which could fall apart in months? Why put up such a barrier between friends you can trust and anything more? -which in my opinion, really should be built on a good, well-established friendship, rather than with a complete stranger you hardly knew but you liked the look of.
Am I totally out of my mind with all of this?
What doth ye thinkest thee thou?
The Rise of the Machines
I'm not sure what that title.. had to do with... anything.
Well, maybe something in there was kinda relevant to this post... I've only really had the chance to speak about this with a few close friends one-on-one or online. But now I'm sharing it with my blogging audience because it's just me and thee for the moment. I am in control now.
I am in control of the horizontal...
_
uh...I am in control of the vertical...
|
WTF, mate?
"Ok, Chris, shut up and just get on with it"
Why dating sucks: The incomplete inconclusive thoughts of The Chris plagiarized from at least 4 different sources
Another reason why I'll never be President is that I'll never be popular. I'll never be popular because I have a habit of questioning things many people take for granted then setting myself up against those things without having enough time to explain myself when such a common concept is raised. I've done that with dating. I'm not going to argue along the same lines as Joshua Harris did in his famous (among evangelicals) books, so don't worry. What my problem is, is that the whole thing seems so... artificial. The ideal story goes like this:
Boy meets Girl
Boy asks out Girl
Boy and Girl eventually believe that they are "committed" and proceed to throw themselves emotionally headlong into the relationship
Boy/Girl does something stupid
Boy and Girl break up
Boy and Girl are sad... :'(
...FOR ABOUT 5 SECONDS BEFORE THE WHOLE PROCESS STARTS ALL OVER AGAIN!!!! :D
w00t!
Dating is taken way too seriously today. (As opposed to marriage, of which today much of the world sees little sanctity therein). Face it, as my good friend Duncan (who I think still reads this blog occasionally) said, "there's no such thing as a commitment that can be ended by saying, 'I'm breaking up with you'". Contrast this with marriage, which is for life.
A better alternative would be to just get to know someone as a friend, and if both of you enjoy spending time together, spend more time hanging out together, til it happens that you're gladly choosing to spend time with each other. The "dating" contract often involves some unofficial but still somehow binding premarital restraints and constraints of how much time is spent together, and how much time is spent with other people. But the simple unofficiality of this idea often leads to tensions when one or the other party chooses to spend his/her time with someone other than his girlfriend/her boyfriend. Might it be more sensible to believe that there are really no restraints or true commitments, other than Christian decency and integrity, for both parties [why the heck am I calling them 'parties'?] to understand this and just be happy for one another if the other person decides to spend his/her time with someone whose company he/she enjoys more.
The alternative listed above has the fundamental problem that it would involve 2 people getting to know each other first as friends then slowly and gradually, and most of all, naturally, getting romantically involved with the end of marriage in sight, if it works out. But alas, how high is the boundary fence between "friends" and "dating". Now, I don't understand "THE FRIENDS ZONE!!!" but it seems to be ein feste concrete structure... and I've never heard a male speak of the ethical toil of transgressing such a well-established boundary. I've heard the condition of people in "THE FRIENDS ZONE!!!" being described as so delicate that any upset caused by a single romantic thought by a person, usually male, strangely enough, also usually called Chris, towards another person in "THE FRIENDS ZONE!!!" that such an imbalance would destroy the universe. Other ideas thrown around are that "you don't see your friends as male or female" (WTF?), and that "it would break up our friends group". Now this latter concept has some truth to it but only in the framework of the emotional headlong self-throwingisms of the world's concept of dating.
So, anyways, why does dating have to be taken so seriously, and why put so much emotional security into something with someone you don't know that well which could fall apart in months? Why put up such a barrier between friends you can trust and anything more? -which in my opinion, really should be built on a good, well-established friendship, rather than with a complete stranger you hardly knew but you liked the look of.
Am I totally out of my mind with all of this?
What doth ye thinkest thee thou?
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Brief thought on the Nativity
Maybe our Lord was born of a woman, rather than formed from the dust of the earth, because we are sinful from birth, fallen dead in the Garden, having no Life in us. Those who say of other infants, "this child is innocent and holy" or was "not accountable for any sin" are proven wrong in the simple fact that infants, even in the womb, die. They are very much sinful and very much accountable. In fact, in more ancient times, such tragedies were much more commonplace than they are now, and yet, our Lord has walked through this valley over which death has cast its shadow, and he has redeemed it. In Baptism, children are truly forgiven their true sins, and truely given true life. There's no need to mince words.
"Sinner, Christ has died for you...
Now God receives you as His son"
Maybe our Lord was born of a woman, rather than formed from the dust of the earth, because we are sinful from birth, fallen dead in the Garden, having no Life in us. Those who say of other infants, "this child is innocent and holy" or was "not accountable for any sin" are proven wrong in the simple fact that infants, even in the womb, die. They are very much sinful and very much accountable. In fact, in more ancient times, such tragedies were much more commonplace than they are now, and yet, our Lord has walked through this valley over which death has cast its shadow, and he has redeemed it. In Baptism, children are truly forgiven their true sins, and truely given true life. There's no need to mince words.
"Sinner, Christ has died for you...
Now God receives you as His son"
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Another thing I don't understand
A while ago, I read this on Daniel's blog:
The First British Lutheran with a Blog: Chris Williams commented on a post I had made about the ELCE. Next thing I know, he's blogging. If you are into deep theology, his posts will intrigue you. If you're not, he'll probably give you a headache.
Do I really give people headaches when I blog? Honestly, compared to some of the people in the Christian blogosphere, I feel totally stupid. Some people seem to be able to read 500 pages of a book in a night and tell others all about it the next day, and just spawn essays from their thoughts whereas my approach seems to be more along the lines of... "this is what I'm thinking, in no particular order, and I'm 70% of my way to forming a conclusion... I think... maybe... help"
Oh well, the current king of my blog links list is the newly formed "Here We Stand". I think a tag-team Lutheran blog like that has a lot of potential. I'm especially glad Josh is back, and the team-setting of "Here We Stand" seems to be a good alternative to the problems he faced as the sole-blogger of his former, very high-profile blog.
A while ago, I read this on Daniel's blog:
The First British Lutheran with a Blog: Chris Williams commented on a post I had made about the ELCE. Next thing I know, he's blogging. If you are into deep theology, his posts will intrigue you. If you're not, he'll probably give you a headache.
Do I really give people headaches when I blog? Honestly, compared to some of the people in the Christian blogosphere, I feel totally stupid. Some people seem to be able to read 500 pages of a book in a night and tell others all about it the next day, and just spawn essays from their thoughts whereas my approach seems to be more along the lines of... "this is what I'm thinking, in no particular order, and I'm 70% of my way to forming a conclusion... I think... maybe... help"
Oh well, the current king of my blog links list is the newly formed "Here We Stand". I think a tag-team Lutheran blog like that has a lot of potential. I'm especially glad Josh is back, and the team-setting of "Here We Stand" seems to be a good alternative to the problems he faced as the sole-blogger of his former, very high-profile blog.
Friday, June 04, 2004
You might be a KJV-onlyist if...
...your Bible actually has the correct translation of verses such as 2 Kings 9:8:
"For the whole house of Ahab shall perish: and I will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel" (KJV)
Contrast:
"The whole house of Ahab will perish. I will cut off from Ahab every last male in Israel-slave or free." (NIV)
"For the whole house of Ahab shall perish, and I will cut off from Ahab every male person both bond and free in Israel." (NASB)
"For the whole house of Ahab shall perish, and I will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel." (ESV)
"For the whole house of Ahab shall perish; and I will cut off from Ahab all the males in Israel, both bond and free." (NKJV)
"and perished hath all the house of Ahab, and I have cut off to Ahab those sitting on the wall, and restrained, and left, in Israel" (Young's (ahem) Literal Translation)
Guess which best reflects the Hebrew?
Why does 20th-21st century pietistic "holiness" mentality still cloud accuracy of translation? Are translators afraid of offending people with the Word of God?
The Word of God is human. Get over it.
...your Bible actually has the correct translation of verses such as 2 Kings 9:8:
"For the whole house of Ahab shall perish: and I will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel" (KJV)
Contrast:
"The whole house of Ahab will perish. I will cut off from Ahab every last male in Israel-slave or free." (NIV)
"For the whole house of Ahab shall perish, and I will cut off from Ahab every male person both bond and free in Israel." (NASB)
"For the whole house of Ahab shall perish, and I will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel." (ESV)
"For the whole house of Ahab shall perish; and I will cut off from Ahab all the males in Israel, both bond and free." (NKJV)
"and perished hath all the house of Ahab, and I have cut off to Ahab those sitting on the wall, and restrained, and left, in Israel" (Young's (ahem) Literal Translation)
Guess which best reflects the Hebrew?
Why does 20th-21st century pietistic "holiness" mentality still cloud accuracy of translation? Are translators afraid of offending people with the Word of God?
The Word of God is human. Get over it.
IT'S OVER!!!
My final exam, Hebrew, was today... Memorising a year's work in less than 48 hours after I walked out of my Greek exam was not the easiest thing I've ever done in my life.
Now I plan to spend a week using only English... ok, at least the weekend, before starting on my summer reading and language-learning rampage. And I haven't touched either of my guitars in months.
And I really need to renovate my blog.
More posts coming soon... whenever my brain starts working again. Until then, my closing thoughts from these exams:
THEY MAY TAKE MY FIRST CLASS HONOURS...
BUT THEY CAN NEVER TAKE...
MY FREEEEEEEEDDDOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!!
*runs down a hill, gets in car, goes to gym*
My final exam, Hebrew, was today... Memorising a year's work in less than 48 hours after I walked out of my Greek exam was not the easiest thing I've ever done in my life.
Now I plan to spend a week using only English... ok, at least the weekend, before starting on my summer reading and language-learning rampage. And I haven't touched either of my guitars in months.
And I really need to renovate my blog.
More posts coming soon... whenever my brain starts working again. Until then, my closing thoughts from these exams:
THEY MAY TAKE MY FIRST CLASS HONOURS...
BUT THEY CAN NEVER TAKE...
MY FREEEEEEEEDDDOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!!
*runs down a hill, gets in car, goes to gym*
