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| Alright, those of you who know me know that this is hardly the first time I've taken such a step, but I've gotten a new blog. I have a good excuse this time, though. This blog will be shared by my three apartment mates, and between the four of us there should hopefully be lots of juicy bits to keep you all entertained. Anyway, this is Eric once again signing off!
ET
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| Everyone seems to be talking about the Gospel of Judas "controversy." Give me a break. What we have here is a text written about 150 years after Jesus, by an author that could not have known Judas Iscariot's grandchildren, much less been him. Its clearly gnostic and adoptionist (read: heretical), and contains nothing which hasn't already been proposed. Lots of gnostics claimed the lineage of their thought from Judas. Am I supposed ot be shocked that one of them wrote it down and we happen to have it today?
Sufjan is coming out with a new CD! Granted, "The Avalanch" is only a CD of songs which didn't make it on Illinoise, but its still Sufjan goodness, and its also 21 songs long. Here's the track list:
01 The Avalanche
02 Dear Mr Supercomputer
03 Adlai Stevenson
04 The Vivian Girls Are Visited in the Night by Saint Dargarius and His Squadron of Benevolent Butterflies
05 Chicago (Acoustic Version)
06 The Henney Buggy Band
07 Saul Bellow
08 Carlyle Lake
09 Springfield, or Bobby Got a Shadfly Caught in His Hair
10 The Mistress Witch From McClure (Or, The Mind That Knows Itself)
11 Kaskaskia River
12 Chicago (Adult Contemporary Easy Listening Version)
13 Inaugural Pop Music for Jane Margaret Byrne
14 No Man's Land
15 The Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake
16 The Pick-up
17 The Perpetual Self, or "What Would Saul Alinsky Do?"
18 For Clyde Tombaugh
19 Chicago (Multiple Personality Disorder version)
20 Pittsfield
21 The Undivided Self (For Eppie and Popo)
I've also been informed that Sufjan has talked about several of these songs in interviews and says the only reason they didn't make the album is he felt they didn't flow with it right, which only makes me more excited.
Tonight I had the opportunity to watch an LCS production of Oliver. It reminded me of both the things I miss about high school (like being in plays) and the things I don't (like the entire culture which accompanies it). I have to say, however, that the page-length letter from the director on the program which explained how Christians ought to think about Oliver was a little much, and the statement before the play that the cast working together was good because it provided them with a microcosm of the body of Christ was downright silly. Can't we be content to glorify God with good drama without over-spiritualizing everything?
However, despite that minor rant, I had a most enjoyable day. Until next time.
ET
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| When you know the war on terror has gone too far.
ET | | |
| I'm playing the "Let's Make A New Mix CD" game. Here's the finished product:
1. Gold Lion - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2. Ooh La La - The Ditty Bops
3. Side to Side - Blackalicious
4. Sister Jack - Spoon
5. A New Name for Everything - The Weakerthans
6. Fool in the Photograph - Sunny Day Real Estate
7. Suffrafette City - Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
8. Ashes on the Highway - David Dondero
9. Between the Bars - Elliott Smith
10. Hard to Get - Rich Mullins
11. Love is Like a Bottle of Gin - The Magnetic Fields
12. Be Gentle With Me - The Boy Least Likely To
13. Storm the Legion - !!!
14. Faster Gun - The Wrens
15. For Real - Okkervil River
16. Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung - The Flaming Lips
17. Seas Too Far To Reach - Okkervil River
18. Sodom, South Georgia - Iron & Wine
It never ceases to amaze and engourage me how transparent and full of grace some of the people in my life are. In our quest to encourage each other, I feel like many Christians get it all wrong. Ipretend as if I'm better than I am, as if my life is together and I'm doing well, even when I'm not. I'm convinced that to do otherwise would hurt others and tear them down. However, I find myself the most encouraged by those who are the least like this. Instead, they are willing to open up the messes in their hearts and show them to me. We pray together, cry together, hurt together, and through this I get the incredible privilege of seeing Jesus work to bring them healing and grace. There is no better way to learn about the gospel than to see it at work in the lives of others, and no better way to minister to them than to let them see it working in you.
Deus est .
. . una essentia, substantia seu natura simplex omnino
I have lately been pondering the so-called "simplicity of the divine." For those of you not familiar with the idea, it is that God is one absolutely simple substance or nature, rather than a collection of seperate attributes or features. If we were to say A (say, love) is a characteristic of God, and B (say, justice) is also a characteristic of Him, we would not actually be talking about two different things. A and B would actually be the same thing. Thus, in discussing God's attributes, words like merciful and jealous would not describe seperate conflicting parts of God but instead be ways of our hinting at the single, unified thing that is God. The two questions that occur to me are as follows:
1. In discussing God's attributes, how do we approach it in such a way that we recognize this (and thereby avoid statements like "Your God is too X") while still maintaining our ability to discuss God in a meaningful way?
2. How does this relate to to the "mind" of God--his knowledge and ideas. Are all ideas withing God's mind of necessity all actually the same idea because God is perfectly one?
Any thoughts would be welcome.
ET
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