Theo-Logic

A collection of resources growing out of my studies in various sectors of theology, where Divine and human logic meet. (I'm trying to be consistent with tags so you can press a tag and find all the posts about a particular theologian easily)

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I am the Way...

“I am the way… no one comes to the Father except through me”, says Jesus, using a turn of phrase which expresses movement (Jn 14:6). The Father is the goal of our walk following Christ, on the way that is Christ.

It is good, I think, to eliminate a serious misunderstanding that today very often surrounds these words by which Jesus describes himself as the way, the only way! These words are contested because they are misunderstood, considered controversial because there are other ways besides Christianity which lead to God, which is true. The interreligious dialogue causes us to pay more attention to the diversity of spiritual paths. But these words of Jesus say something else, something much deeper. Jesus does not say that he leads us to God but “to the Father”. It is not a man who leads to God but God the Son who leads to God the Father. Jesus is not a great teacher or the founder of a religion who leads to God but God who leads to God, the Son who leads to the Father, into the bosom of the Trinity. In that sense, within the bosom of the Trinity, Jesus is indeed the only one who can say: “No one comes to the Father except through me!”. If we neglect the deeply Trinitarian dimension of the gospel of John, these words of Jesus are prone to be misunderstood, they are even incomprehensible, unacceptable. But when we take this Trinitarian dimension into account, we avoid such misunderstanding.

(~Daniel Bourguet. Becoming a disciple. Cascade books, 2016) (I translated this bit from French but it should be similar in the English version)

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Another end of all true theology is the cultivation of a most holy and sweet communion with God wherein lies the true happiness of mankind.

John Owen (1616-1683)

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“I’ve always believed in heaven.  But it was so hard to lean on that understanding after my father passed away.  I was a Daddy’s girl.  His death was an emotional clusterfuck.  I could close my eyes and imagine he was somewhere else.  But for the first time in my life, I couldn’t pinpoint his location on a map.  And even though I’d taken an astronomy class in college, I couldn’t find him with a telescope.  His absence was so much more real than I thought it would be.  And it really shook my beliefs.  I had to form a deeper understanding of what exactly ‘heaven’ means.  And I’m still working on that.  But I do still talk to him everyday.  And I still believe that I’ll see him again.”

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Online Access to Biblical Studies, Theology, and Religious Studies

A lot of resources including journals

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Interesting slides from a lecture on being a Christian in the workplace

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In a few hours I will be boarding a bus from the Heygensgebouw just near my flat, it will take me ...

Dio describing in some detail the content of his thesis work - considering the meaning of forgiveness from different angles

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The more than ten million Arabic speaking Christians of the Middle East can trace their origins to the day of Pentecost, where some of those present were from Arabia and heard the preaching of Peter in Arabic. Two Bishops from Bahrain attended the council of Nicaea. Arabic-speaking Christian theologians and exegetes from roughly A.D. 900 to 1400 produced five centuries of the highest quality Christian scholarship, quality that is also found in the present."

Kenneth E Bailey (~Jesus through Middle Eastern eyes, SPCK 2008)

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A comparison between Biblical and Quranic views of scripture suggests that it is a Muslim and not a Christian view that insists that divine and human must be in inverse proportion in a sacred writing. I would replace the orthodox end of the spectrum with the view that the Bible is 100% human and 100% divine.

Ida Glaser

(~ Towards a mutual understanding of Christian and Muslim concepts of revelation. Themelios, 1982 (2) 16-22)

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The question is not so much what we think of other faiths and their adherents as how we read the Bible in the inter-faith contexts

Ida J Glaser

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Lots of good articles by evangelical authors about contextualisation and cross cultural communication of the gospel

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Multiplex: God's Global Urban Mission - Contextualization - Tim Keller - Cape Town 2010

Urban areas are fundamentally different than suburban and rural areas, but most churches are indigenous to non-urban areas. The gospel will reach urban areas...

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Quote from Simone de Beauvoir about philosophy and philosophers and why she concluded that literature was more for her than philosophy.

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time, place & person

In contrast with today, when so much of christianity is being with the right people in the right places at the right times, Jesus was always in the wrong places, with the wrong people, at the wrong times, according to the religious establishment. [Micheal Frost & Alan Hirsch in: The shaping of things to come - innovation and mission for the 21st century church. 2003]

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ART

Being creative is hard work, but we believe art is that region between heaven and earth that connects the two. Mark Driscoll (quoted in Frost & Hirsch, the shaping of things to come, 2003)

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Overcoming Sin

“I have, by God’s grace, learned as a member of the Christian community what is the nature of God’s mercy, which does not leave me to overcome my sin by my own effort, so I have something to say to the fellow-sufferer who does not know where to look for hope. And what I have to say depends utterly on my willingness not to let go of that awareness of myself that reminds me where I start each day—not as a finished saint but as a needy person still struggling to grow.”

— Rowan Williams, Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another

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personal, private, individual

“The American church, in taking its cues from Western, white culture, has placed at the center of its theology and ecclesiology the primacy of the individual. The cultural captivity of the church has meant that the church is more likely to reflect the individualism of Western philosophy than the value of community found in Scripture. The individualistic philosophy that has shaped Western society and consequently shaped the American church reduces Christian faith to a personal, private and individual faith.”

— Soong-Chan Rah, The Next Evangeiicalism