A Yearning For The Hearth

The BBC has a mini-series about Jesus’ last days it’s airing called “The Passion” (the same as Gibson’s original title for his film, The Passion of the Christ). I watched quite a bit of it, and I actually quite liked what I saw. They did quite a good job of showing the kind of conflict and strife Jesus and the people around him would have gone through, and explored the characters much more than you might see in a more pious film. It also skims over vital points of the plot - things like miracles - and I haven’t seen the last portion, so I don’t know how they treated the resurrection.

It could be that it treats it as the many Jesus documentaries airing right now treat the Jesus story - as pious rubbish. There’s been a barrage of documentaries about Jesus and the Bible, and most of them are focused on debunking every aspect of the traditional story they can manage. Tradition says Jesus was a carpenter, but we’ve found a stone mine near Bethlehem, so there were probably lots of stone masons, so we think Jesus was a stone mason. Tradition says Herod had the male children of Bethlehem killed, but he couldn’t possibly of been as cruel as that! (no mention of the fact that we know that he had his own wife, children and the rest of his own immediate family slaughtered in an obsessive attempt to keep power for himself). These are real examples of the kind of knit picking they do. If it’s in the Bible it’s probably not true, by virtue of its being in the Bible. We don’t trust any other ancient document this way - if we did we’d believe the opposite of everything we know about history. Annoys me.     

Have you ever heard of Top Gear? I hadn’t…until I moved to Ireland. It takes a boring and formulaic TV format and makes it wonderful by testing supercars and putting its hosts through challenges, like driving a 1000 pound (as in price) car across the desert, or having them build their own aqua-cars. Here’s a clip.

Here’s a snippit of a debate between Richard Dawkins and the now disgraced Ted Haggard. I hate it when I’m on the side of someone I disagree with! But Haggard is just such a tool…

I sense a trend in Evangelicalism that there’s a disenchantment in the way the church is manifesting itself. There have been a couple of responses, I think the Emergent Conversation is one, but there’s another quite different response.

I came across this article in the Washington Post which discusses ways in which Evangelicals are tapping into the ancient traditions of the faith. The Ancient Evangelical Future is an organization which is grouping theologians and liturgists together and talking about what they believe to be the future of Evangelicalism, which consists of a recovery of the forms and practices of the ancient faith.

One of the things that I find interesting is that the people forming these groups are not turning to the denominations which have maintained these practices in large part; the Mainline Protestant churches. Why do their numbers continue to deplete, even while members in the growing Evangelical movement are searching for foundations? From my perspective, the Mainline churches appear to be too caught up in their own worlds, and their own agendas, to notice.

Since starting my latest round of studies I’ve had a few things introduced to me, and a few things clarified. Mostly in regards to Roman Catholic Theology since this is a Catholic school.

The first is natural law. The natural law tradition is a strong strain within the RC tradition and I did not have a good understanding of it until now (and I’m my understanding is still incomplete).

Natural Law is the order of things built into the Universe. It’s deducible by reason, so it’s possible for us to get to the heart of it. It also informs us intuitively in our conscience. All of this is part of an interplay with the Divine, although knowledge of God is not in and of itself necessary to make moral judgements based upon the natural law.

This sent my Protestant alarm bells off because, of course, our depravity is so grave that we can’t be trusted to make moral deductions. The natural order too has itself been disordered so that it cannot be trusted as a source of truth. So, what’s really at the heart of the issue is conflicting theologies about the fall.

Just how far have we fallen? What did that fall entail? theologians have varied quite a bit on this point. Protestants have tended to favour Augustine’s tradition, (ie, pretty far) whereas Catholics have held a somewhat more optimistic view…that while sin has twisted and distorted God’s creation, but it’s still God’s creation and it’s still got a lot of good left to it. This contrasts strongly with the teaching of the main reformed theologies, which heavily emphasize the ‘total depravity’ of man.

So, where am I settled? Well, I haven’t yet. I’m inclined to think there’s something to natural law, and since I never bought Calvinism, it doesn’t jar too badly with where I’m at.

More to follow…

As you may know, I’ve relocated to Ireland since Christmas, and I’ve been pretty busy and that coupled with not having a connection for a while means that my blogging has been non-existent. Well, I’m going to see if I can come up with some interesting stuff. I’m studying again so I’m doing lots of thinking and reading.

I’m also trying out a new way of posting to the blog, so we’ll see how it goes.

Watch this space!