The Start of Abolition

The abolition of slavery as an institution didn't begin with William Wilberforce in the early 19th century, but with Gregory of Nyssa's Easter sermon in 379:

If man is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and
has been granted authority over everything on earth from God,
who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs
this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious
gifts, it says, are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). God would not therefore
reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we
had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom.
But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his
own power above God’s?

Historians have searched in vain for a predecessor to Gregory, so I guess we will have to take Gregory's word for it. He must have gotten this from the Bible.

The Sucking Canvass of Nothingness

I heard a portion of an interview with Woody Allen on NPR on my way to teach class. Allen confessed that it is hard to find any pleasure in life because of the human predicament hanging over every happy moment.

This means, for Allen, that every enjoyment is not pointing beyond itself to the Joy of joys but is, in his words, "ephemeral." Allen has made atheism the canvass of his life. Whatever pleasing strokes he brushes on are immediately absorbed by the sucking canvass of nothingness.

This has reminded me that life without God is painfully subjective. But life with God guarantees an objective reality that our senses were created to know, and Scripture declares that God has personally entered that reality and we are part of his business of redemption. Let's join the family business!

A Reformation Day Sermon

I preached this sermon on Reformation Sunday at New Life Presbyterian Church in Muncie, IN.

http://www.newlife-pc.org/media/20111030-WorshipService-1.mp3

Reason and the Logic of Revelation

Thomas Aquinas believed that reason can prove what faith accepts when the books of nature and Scripture overlap. When special revelation stands alone however, reason receives it and may serve to show its logic.

The Queen of the Sciences

"Everyone [in the Middle Ages] agreed that theology was by far the most important and highly skilled profession of all. Only the most rigorously trained individuals could practice it. It took seven years to qualify as a theologian, and that was after spending at least four years working on a first degree.... If a philosopher did want to tackle matters of faith, then he was perfectly entitled to join the theology faculty and train as a theologian" (Hannam, The Genesis of Science).

We Are Lovers, This Is True

We are basically lovers. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength," says Jesus. I'm one who tends to lead with my mind, which isn't necessarily bad. But when I reduce man to mind that's bad. Especially when I look down on my less cerebral brothers and sisters.

So I need to remember that the life of the mind is important to an abundant Christian life but not the be all end all. In other words, we all have our primary, secondary, and tertiary love languages when it comes to loving God. We must proactively promote the love languages of our brothers, especially when they are different than ours.

Language and its Detractors

We tend to forget that the postmodern skepticism about language is communicated through language.

Why Religion Gets to the Heart of Things

Ken Myers has a good quote on why theology is still the queen of the sciences. Whether it is acknowledged or not, it is the science behind all the sciences:

"Virtually all the major disagreements between rival theories in the sciences and in philosophy can ultimately be traced back to the differences between the religious beliefs that guide them" (Roy Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories, Revised edition, University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.