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In David Ford’s excellent ‘A Very Short Introduction to Theology‘, there is a typology for theologians.I thought it might be fun to turn it into a one of those personality/movie character type quizzes (or at least for me to see if I could make one).
So instead of which super hero are you, what kind of theologian are you?
So click the quiz link, find out what kind of theologian you are and post your result here.
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There has been a shift “from a world in which beliefs held believers to one in which believers hold beliefs”
This is a quote from one of the best books I have read on consumerism and religious belief, by Vincent Miller, ‘Consuming Religion’ (p90). It’s a quote I often reference when teaching theology students about the nature, process and relationship of people to beliefs.
The force of it still hits me every-time I use it, and reflect on it. And I’m pondering it again today, as I have been doing some more reading about the nature, and process of belief, in our western consumer culture.
To be an individual used to be about the capacity to have beliefs, things external to you, truths and realities that lay claim to your life, and form you, and for you come alive to them and live them out, to embody them.
When we meet someone who literally has beliefs that hold them, our material secular liberal society cries ‘ fundamentalist’. We live in a world that seems to see believing deeply in something a priori (something independent of and prior) to ourselves as dangerous, and then fosters an alternative relationship to beliefs, where we are trained, encouraged, and nurtured to believe in nothing deeply.
Except ourselves, our self creation (autopoesis), that the only thing to believe in deeply is that it is wrong to believe in anything deeply, that all believes are a lifestyle choice, personal, and relative.
Our strongest belief, is that it is we, the believer that holds beliefs, not beliefs that hold us.
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Psalm 8
“3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,4 what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?”The BBC today are hosting a video of images from the 18 year old Hubble Telescope of galaxies colliding.
You can read, listen, and watch videos and images, and explanations of the mind-boggling nature of these collisions at the Hubble’s own web site.
With on average 500,000 Million stars in our Galaxy alone, and an estimated 100 Billion galaxies in the universe, that’s 70 sextillion or 7 × 1022, stars in the universe (70 thousand million million million).
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I’ve known this was brewing for a while, but it was announced this week, that Alistair McGrath is joining the faculty at Kings College London, in a newly created chair in ‘Theology, Ministry and Education’.
In other words he’s well known and will pay for himeslf many times over in attracting grant money and new students to Kings.
Exciting times for anyone thinking of studying theology at Kings College London. I can’t wait to hear him at some research seminars.
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Katharine writes… I’ve just returned from the States where I gave a paper at the “Postmodernism, Truth, and Religious Pluralism” conference of the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology. This theme attracted a diversity of papers across disciplines such as philosophy, theology, psychology, education, history and politics. I thought I’d blog here about some of the papers presented at this conference which might be of interest.
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Late last december I talked about and then posted a draft of an article that the Bible Society had asked me to write on the renewal of liturgy.
It’s now gone into print to 20,000 people, as part of a theme/topic for the whole magazine on ‘Rythms & Ritual’.
You can download my article as a pdf here, and view and download the other articles at the Bible Society web site here.
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I’m a card carrying charismatic. My conversion involved a dramatic experience of the Holy Spirit, the baptist church I was in practiced the gifts of the spirit, and soon after I got involved in Vineyard Churches, and the whole Third Wave movement.
An understanding of The Kingdom of God, and the power and ministry of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, with an expectation of that continuing today in my life and that of my church community, is still very much part of my faith.
Most of the international emerging church comes from non charismatic backgrounds, or those that do often describe themselves as post-charismatic, seeing most of what happened in their church experiences as cultural and sociological manifestations rather than the Spirit at work. (That is a loaded paragraph that I don’t have space here to detail you’d need to dig into the archives of my blog).
In my emerging church journey, I have questioned many of the charismatic ministry practices I inherited, but haven’t wanted to throw the baby out with the bath-water. I hope my understanding of the Spirit has deepened, that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is something that I see and experience in so may other ways.
But theologically and in terms of praxis, I still believe we need the dynamic encounters of the Kingdom of God, by and through the Holy Spirit, for conviction, conversion, formation, empowerment, and the enabling of mission.
So to the book recommendation to-day by Robby Mac, ‘Post-Charismatic?’
It represents a small selection on my book shelf, and emerging church books, that explore the charismatic and holy spirit. In fact it’s the only book of it’s kind on my shelf, and if you know of any more please let me know.
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I love reading, and have far more books than I could ever read. By that I mean reading them from cover to cover, word for word.
Most people on seeing my small library of books, often ask ‘have you read them all?’, meaning, have I read every word of them. The answer I give is yes and no.
There are many ways to read books, and I get to teach some study skills courses that help students find different ways to read books for different purposes.
When I’m on holiday I have to slow down to read a good sci fi book from cover to cover, I’m so used to reading a book quickly.
So my interest was piqued when I heard this book reviewed on BBC radio 4. A best seller in France, and translated into English, it has been provocative and controversial.
This small, slim, witty book is far more than a study skills book in reading approaches. It is about our relationship with books, the ones we read, the ones we don’t but are aware of and talk about, our status as ‘non readers’, and as readers of books we have forgotten.
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I’m going to this conference at Calvin next month (20-22 May). The title is ‘Philosophy and Liturgy: Ritual, Practice, and Embodied Wisdom’.
Anyone reading this going? I’ve had a couple of people who are going email me after reading the piece I wrote for the Church and Postmodernity site.
Would be great to meet any of you who read this who are going, or are in the area. Would be great to find some more people to drink beer and process the event with.
The event is described as “bringing together leading scholars in philosophy and theology to investigate key themes in worship with the tools of philosophy, with the ultimate goal of informing practice. There is also the reciprocal goal of letting liturgical practice become a fund for philosophical reflection on classic questions and themes. The conference will thus stage a reciprocal encounter between philosophy and liturgy, with the goal of generating a liturgical philosophy, and a philosophically-informed liturgy.”
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Part II of the Deep Church podcast I did with Nick & Josh, is now online.
If you missed part I, you an catch my post about it and link to it here.
