gdp's Comments

The Reader : Friday poetry - Thomas

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 02:03:38 +0000

Thanks Frances, that was an unexpected joy. "In the fiercer light of the thorns’ halo" - that took me there. dan

papermind : How to apply the Old Testament: New Testament Contexts

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 11:28:29 +0000

On this evidence I'd be Catholic or Orthodox :)

papermind : A Time for Everything: Lent: Part 1

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 03:58:14 +0000

Thanks Bruce, I'm enjoying the music. d

papermind : A Time for Everything: Lent: Part 1

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:23:27 +0000

Hey Chris, Thanks for the link! I'll check it out. dan

papermind : A Time for Everything: Lent: Part 1

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:24:28 +0000

Hi Alison, it was thinking about people with different levels or styles of literacy that first got me interested in thinking about the importance of symbolic action in learning the word. I've seen first hand the value of concrete actions and illustrations in teaching children, international students, cross-cultural mission. It reminds me that we need to preserve symbolic action (some kinds of properly gospel oriented ritual) even when it doesn't necessarily directly appear to serve the majority of people in our congregation. We should do it even if only for the sake of our descendants in the faith who may live in a world far different from ours, where our levels of literacy and education can't be taken for granted. Of course, all this comes with the caveat that symbolic action is never separable from gospel word. Word and act must always remain intertwined.

papermind : Our story... so far.

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:51:55 +0000

Thanks Anna, We really need to skype with you guys and catch up. Our days are so disjointed at the moment that we\\\'re finding it hard to get into routines. Hopefully we can find a place to live this week and start to settle down.

papermind : Our story... so far.

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 03:03:53 +0000

Hi Tim, I'd love to catch up. I could probably use some tips on navigating post-graduate philosophy as a Christian. We've just had our post-grad orientation day and I'm really looking forward to it. Find me on facebook, or email dan at andersonpost dot org.

papermind : Our story... so far.

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:16:39 +0000

Thanks Dave, really appreciate it. Dan

papermind : What it means to preach.

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:51:29 +0000

Thanks Kath, I guess that's the first rule of theology, and preaching, and life: Love Yahweh your God with all you've got. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself. Thanks for the encouragement. Dan

papermind : What it means to preach.

Wed, 9 Feb 2011 02:57:54 +0000

Hey Chris, thanks for your impressions. I was just trying to capture a feeling I had. We\\\'ve been having wild time in Oz lately - floods, bushfires, cyclones. Nothing near us in Sydney though. Was really hot here last week. You should come and escape the German winter. Dan

papermind : True Grit: Review Part 3

Wed, 2 Feb 2011 01:31:54 +0000

Chris,

Yes, almost certainly, we've misunderstood it.

How we've misunderstood, and how to hold them together correctly is a very big question. I also reckon you'd do a better job of answering it than me :)

Some thoughts:

The problem comes with viewing grace as primarily an action 'after the fact' - as entirely responsive to evil and/or oriented towards escaping the consequences of moral law. Grace thus functions in opposition to Law and can't help but appear subversive to Law, both because it helps the offender to escape just consequences of his or her offence, and even more deeply, because in its operations Grace appears to appeal to a higher good not captured by Law.

If Grace is conceived within an a posteriori opposition to Law, then, as an un-lawful action, un-rule bound, it becomes difficult to distinguish from randomness. If it is conceived as an appeal to a higher, mysterious, Law, it becomes destructive of our operative conceptions of justice. This is a problem that perversions of Augustinian theology have fallen into regularly.

But if:

1. Grace is bound up with God's eternal freedom to give himself in love to whomever he finds to love - a freedom conceived as potency rather than randomness (this fact being established in the life and presence of Jesus).

2. This freedom to love is also capable of expression in law, not as God's obedience to a higher morality, but as an expression of his indefectible potency. (God's freedom to constantly love whomever he finds to love is both the potency and goal of law).

3. Grace, then, doesn't overthrow the law but flows from the same foundation in God's freedom that underwrites the goodness and power of the law.

4a. It is the severing of both law and grace from the personal freedom of God that makes both Platonic/Stoic and Epicurean/Existentialist conclusions about moral action conceivable.
4b. It is the fact that we inhabit a world where we have a natural inclination to deny God's existence which makes Stoic and Existentialist conclusions believable.
4c. It is the fact that these two sets of opinions are so thoroughly opposed and have been in unresolved struggle for millennia which makes little Existentialist skirmishes (like the Coens') entertaining.

Anyway, there's some thoughts.
I'm looking forward to reading your blog post (series) on the topic... ;)

(seriously, that would be cool!).

papermind : True Grit: Review Part 3

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 05:45:44 +0000

Thanks Ali, I read that review a while ago. It really whet my appetite for the movie. I don\\\'t quite agree with all Fish\\\'s reading but his understanding of the role of grace in the movie was great. Thanks for the link, it\\\'s a good resource.

papermind : For God's Elect in Shopping Malls.

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 00:17:37 +0000

Thanks Alison, You're very kind. Feel free to re-post it. It's my own work and I'm still not entirely happy with it, so it might get updated at some point... you know how it is... d p.s. I skipped over to your blog - really liked it. We must know a lot of the same people. weird.

papermind-old : Expecting God.

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:38:07 +0000

Hmm, yes. I read that when I was at Uni. Found it a very helpful idea.

papermind-old : Grieving the Future

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 22:58:30 +0000

Hi Sophie, Of course not! Thanks for the kind words as well.

papermind-old : The Language of Friendship

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 07:44:32 +0000

Hi Arthur, Thanks for the comment. To be brief and to the point. I disagree with Mister Witherington the Third. The fact that the word 'philos' can denote patron/client relationships in the NT is perfectly true, but it doesn't follow that all references to 'philos' have this reference. There is very clearly another strand within Greco-Roman thought that views friendship in terms much closer to how our modern concept functions (Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and Cicero's De Amici are clear examples). Context is therefore very significant for NT usage. The fact that Jesus says, "Greater love has no man that this, that he lays down his life for his friends" suggests a context in which intimacy and love are on view. "Greater love has no man than this, that he lays down his life for his clients" just doesn't really fit (to my mind anyway). Thanks for the heads up though, I'll have to go and read Witherington's stuff properly. Dan

papermind-old : Grieving the Future

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 07:37:39 +0000

"Grief is certainly our reaction to loss." Yes, but the loss of what? My point is that grief is tied up with the loss of an anticipated future, and thus the experience of grief is bound up with our experience/consciousness of time. With respect, you've misread me. (I don't for a moment maintain that grief is time, and thus the charge that I'm conflating them is a little premature). I'm not making a general argument that our experience of time is always an experience of grief. If I had written something along those lines your objection would be sound. My argument was precisely the other way around: that our experience of grief is an experience of time, in particular of lost time. There are many other experience of time and change that do not involve grief, but my observation (which may be incorrect) is that our experiences of grief always involve an awareness, consciousness of the loss of a future which we had (more or less reflectively) anticipated. My reason for drawing attention to this is the way in which it helps to explain the profound experiences of grief many people undergo when nothing tangible has been lost. Or rather, when the only thing that has been lost is an anticipated future. I fear that our inability to provide effective pastoral ministry to many of these people arises precisely because we fail to grasp what they are grieving, and to acknowledge that the future (in whatever particular guise, as expectation) is something legitimately grieved. And yes, I've got more to say about improper grief, and about the kind of comfort God can provide...

papermind-old : David and Jonathan

Mon, 6 Dec 2010 03:14:12 +0000

Hi Alison, thanks for reading, enjoying and taking the time to tell me about it. I'd love to hear your thoughts anytime.

papermind-old : The post-rapturous vision: empty mega-churches

Fri, 5 Nov 2010 01:19:41 +0000

BTW, nice job on commenting on a year old post :)

papermind-old : The post-rapturous vision: empty mega-churches

Fri, 5 Nov 2010 01:18:52 +0000

That is a truly wild sentence. Care to unpack it? Church is a fractal in the sense that it consists of a constant, stable pattern of relationships which are replicated all the way down from the universal Church to the gathering of two or three believers? I'm sensing that your reference to 'the fractal is a person' might be a reference to Christ, but is it that case that every person mediates transcendence by virtue of their personhood, i.e., that to be a person is to be more than the total of my encounters with the world? The fractal is a person in the sense that an individual is also a constant, stable pattern of relating to others and through this pattern of relating and individual identity is established and communicates transcendence? If so, our hunger for transcendence doesn't arise from a genuine impoverishment, but from an inability to see the manifestations of the transcendent in the everyday interactions we have with each other. Likewise, our desire for 'spiritual' experiences doesn't arise from an absence of Spirit in the world, but from a wilful blindness to the manifestations of the Spirit in the life of Christ and in us as churches and individuals who are united with Christ? Am I close?