Time To Go

I originally created this blog to grapple with what I was learning in seminary. Since then, I have become a contributor to www.mockingbirdnyc.blogspot.com. Presently, that is where I am posting most of my thoughts and the action over there is hot, hot, hot.

With that in mind, I think it is time to say goodbye to Ontological Goo. And a sad goodbye it is. There have been many wonderful discussions and debates. That, and I have been able to read back and see how much I have learned through the years.

Hopefully, you will join me over at the Mockingbird blog.

The Fruits of Justice

April 22 (Bloomberg) -- Freddie Mac Acting Chief Financial Officer David Kellermann, 41, was found dead early today in his home in the Washington suburbs, police said.
There were no signs of foul play, and the death is under investigation, Fairfax County, Virginia, Police Officer Shelley Broderick said. Broderick said early reports from others in the department indicated Kellermann’s wife reported a suicide, though the cause of death hasn’t been determined.

Read the article here.

The Theology of the Cross, Sovereignty, and Crimson Tide Basketball

This is an article from sports Illustrated:

THE CLOCK STARTS WHEN THE SHOOTER CATCHES the ball, on the left wing, 24 feet from the basket. Two seconds left. He has run off a screen from the baseline, so his momentum carries him toward midcourt. He pushes hard off his right foot and pivots back to the left. One-point-four seconds. When he rises off the floor, the force of this hard cut is still carrying him left. One second. He believes Jesus will guide this shot.

The shooter flicks his right wrist at the peak of his jump, and if you photographed him now, you could put it in a textbook. Eight tenths of a second. The ball is still airborne when time expires and the horn sounds. The shot is almost perfect. But the shooter was drifting left, as you recall, and the ball lands just left of the target. It hits the back of the rim, the boxy part with the springs, and the springs rattle. The ball caroms from back rim to front, seeming to gain speed as it goes, and it suddenly leaps out of the cylinder.

The secret things belong unto the Lord our God. The shooter believes this because his King James Bible says so, and because of what he has seen, and soon he will believe it more deeply than ever. The ball sails toward the backboard, hits the center of the white square, and falls through the net.

This shot does nothing to change the game's outcome. And yet, for pure utility, it may be as great as any play in the history of sports. Eight minutes later, on the evening of March 14, 2008, during this Southeastern Conference tournament game between Alabama and Mississippi State, a tornado will roar through downtown Atlanta, and high winds will breach the Georgia Dome, and metal will strike the hardwood, and players will flee for cover, and it will seem to be snowing indoors. By morning Mykal Riley's three-pointer will be known as The Shot That Saved Lives.

Each life turns on a trillion silent hinges, and every act has an infinite series of prerequisites. For Mykal Riley to be where he was and do what he did, an incalculable number of things had to happen just so.

Before he could play for Alabama, he had to quit two other colleges and happen upon a third.

Before he could play in high school, he had to wash sweaty uniforms and sweep the gym floor.

And before he could learn the jump shot, someone else had to fire a gun.

Read the whole thing here. This is an amazing article. - DOB

The Great Martin Luther

“A good tree needs no instruction or law to bear good fruit; its nature causes it to bear according to its kind without any law or instruction. I would take to be quite a fool any man who would make a book full of laws and statutes for an apple tree telling it how to bear apples and not thorns, when the tree is able by its own nature to do this better than the man with all his books can describe and demand. Just so, by the Spirit and by faith all Christians are so thoroughly disposed and conditioned in their very nature that they do right and keep the law better than one can teach them with all manner of statutes; so far as they themselves are concerned, no statutes or laws are needed.”
- Martin Luther

The "Nominal Christian"

Here is part of a post from a seminary professor of mine:

"I have become more and more suspicious of the concept of the nominal Christian. Our parish churches are supposed to be full of nominal Christians who are just going through the motions, of half-believers who are relying on their good works and who have not really surrendered to Christ and accepted the Gospel. In any parish church there are a few real apostates, and a few real scoffers and perhaps a few who genuinely hate God. Their numbers are routinely exaggerated. Most of the people who come to the church Sunday by Sunday know they are dying and are placing their hope in Christ. It may be an inarticulate hope, it may be a confused hope. Often there are huge brambles of misunderstanding that must be cleared away before the whole power of the good news can come in upon them. Often there is real darkness into which the light of Christ has not yet come and which cries out for a light-bearer. Yet, they come. When Jesus saw such as these gathered in their multitudes on the hill side, the sight provoked in him not contempt for the nominal but compassion, “for they were like sheep without a shepherd.”.
- Leander Harding (read the whole thing here)

Here is a follow-up comment from a friend of mine:

"This quote directly addresses something I recently heard at a diocesan clergy meeting where a rector of a large church talked about how most of the people in our church were not true "disciples" but just "consumer Christians" looking to have their needs met. Now, I am not lauding narcissism or praising the "me-first" sort of Christianity. But I found this pastor's comments so contemptuous, so lacking in compassion. Shouldn't we praise God that there are actually people coming to church on Sunday, instead of lamenting their level of so-called discipleship? Anyways, I love Leander."

Steppin' Into Tomorrow

Low Church

In the C of E and the C of I traditional evangelical Anglicanism (at least historically speaking) is clearly defined. The Scriptures are the final authority in all matters. The Three Creeds and the XXXIX Articles define the biblically derived summations of precise Christian doctrine. The BCP, ordered after the received theology of the Creeds and Articles, defines matters liturgical. Ceremony and clergy attire is traditionally evangelical, Morning Prayer and monthly communion…no bells or incense…no sacrificial vestments. The XXXIX Articles are more than minimally assented to, they are believed wholeheartedly. In earlier times English and Irish evangelicals would have read Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Ussher, and Ryle, and would unreservedly agree with Dean Litton’s assessment that (quoted by Dean Paul Zahl, in his work ‘The Protestant Face of Anglicanism’), “The Anglican Church, if she is to be judged by the statements of the Articles, must be ranked amongst the Protestant Churches of Europe.”

Really nice article about the ebb of the low church evangelicals in our Anglican tradition. Read it all here. - DOB