Questions, questions

This week I picked up a book that Jerry (my new brother-in-law) and I decided to read together - Socrates Cafe by Christopher Phillips. So far I am only a little way into the book and it has mostly been about questions and the need to keep asking them to ourselves and others. His whole idea is that people should do philosophy rather than just read it, and who better to show us the way than Socrates?

While thinking about this book and looking at some sites that I frequent, I found myself back at The Ekklesia Project. Here is a little of what they are about:

The central questions of ecclesiology, in our time as in all others, remain stark and straightforward: to whom or what do we belong? To what body do we pledge our allegiance? What commitments do we recognize as those to which all others must bend or bow?
For too long, such questions of ultimate loyalty and allegiance were kept at bay by most Christian churches. The Church as the Body of Christ–the material, living community that crosses all borders and human divisions–has been too easily and often compromised and fragmented by unwise accommodations with states, ethnic and racial imperatives, and the naturalized imperatives of class, gender, and ideology. By minimizing or denying the distinctiveness of the life of discipleship...too many churches have turned the clear and unambiguous call of Jesus and the Holy Spirit into a confused and contradictory mix of caution and self-interest.
The intent of The Ekklesia Project is to remind the church of its true calling as the real-world community whose primary loyalty is to the Body of Christ, the priorities and practices of Jesus, and the inbreaking Kingdom of God. In doing so, The Ekklesia Project will work with, within, across, and beneath existing churches and structures.
We envision The Ekklesia Project as a means to provide coherence, leadership, and vision to some of the still developing, occasionally inchoate, stirrings of discontent and reappraisal within the Christian community...By calling attention to the Body of Christ as our “first family” in the world, we aim to put discipleship and a picture of the church as an alternative community of practices, worship, and integration at the center of contemporary debates on Christianity and society. This is the vision we share and the reality we seek.

What is interesting about this project is that Phil Kenneson, a professor from Suzy's alma mater -Milligan College, is one of the brains behind it. I heard him (but mostly his students - Kennesonites as Suzy calls them) talk about it when we were in Tennessee. I thought the idea and concept were still in the incubation stage, but it seems like things are really taking off. The recent conference they had in Chicago (to get back to the point) dealt with issues of Church and State. The way they introduced the topic included some questions that tried to get at the issue such as
How should citizens of God's commonwealth (Ephesians 2) understand and relate to the post-9/11 imperial designs and ambitions of American? When does respect for Caesar verge on having another god, committing idolatry, or taking the true God's name in vain? How does the church keep the commandments in the face of the New American Empire?
If you're interested, they will be posting transcripts of the presentations from the conference on their website - it should be interesting!

St Maximus the Confessor

I am sitting here at Suzy's school thinking about her education and Becky writing her thesis. It made me want to revisit some of the things that inspired me while writing my thesis, mainly Maximus the Confessor. One of the main things he is known for is exploring the theme of deification , a term that does not sit well with many evangelicals - mainly because they misunderstand or do not know what it means. Here is an excerpt from the Philokalia where Maximus addresses the topic:

On Deification:
"Everyone who does not apply himself to the spiritual contemplation of Holy Scripture has, Judaic-wise, also rejected both the natural and the written law; and he is ignorant of the law of grace which confers deification on those who are obedient to it. He who understands the written law in a literal manner does not nourish his soul with the virtues. He who does not grasp the inner principles of created beings fails to feast his intellect on the manifold wisdom of God. And he who is ignorant of the great mystery of the new grace does not rejoice in the hope of future deification. Thus failure to contemplate the written law spiritually results in a dearth (lack, an indequate supply) of the divine wisdom to be apprehended in the natural law; and this in its turn is followed by a complete ignorance of the deification given by grace according to the new mystery."

And then one more of my favorite quotes that sums it up a little more succinctly:

"God made us so that we might become 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Pet. 1:4) and sharers in His eternity, and so that we might come to be like Him (cf. 1 John 3:2) through deification by grace. It is through deification that all things are reconstituted and achieve their permanence."

Just a stroll down memory lane...

After Writing

Well, in an attempt to keep my mind going since I am no longer in school, I finally picked up a book my sister-in-law gave me a couple of years ago for Christmas. I almost feel bad for just now getting to it since I recall wanting is to bad at the time, but now that I have actually read some of it I don't think I could have devoted enough time to it while doing anything else (that almost includes breathing). The first ten pages took me about two hours to get through - this should give you some idea as to how difficult it is to read. It's not that I don't know the words (I just seem to have forgotten them), it's not that she is a terrible writer (though she is a bit verbose), it's just extremely heavy. It is definitely a meat and potatoes kind of book, here's the description:

After Writing provides a significant contribution to the growing genre of works which offer a challenge to the modern and post modern accounts of Christianity. The author shows how Platonic philosophy did not assume a primacy of metaphysical presence, as had been previously thought, but a primacy of liturgical theory and practice.
Catherine Pickstock also provides a significant rethinking of Christian understandings of language, temporal and bodily life, and notions of the presence of God. Through a detailed reading of Phaedrus, the medieval Roman Rite, and a discussion of the theology of the Eucharist, the book indicates directions for the restoration of the liturgical order.

So, that's the general idea of the piece. Her work falls into a group of writings put out by Blackwell Publishers and is associated with John Milbank and the Radical Orthodoxy movement. I'll post more about the book later tonight.

Third time's the charm?

There are a few things in this world that I really hate to do, and one of them is having to redo something I have already done. For the past couple of months I have been working with an architect on different remodeling and construction jobs. He's a good guy and likes to do things the right way, the first time. The problem lays elsewhere - some of the other people he has hired out to do the plumbing, for example, don't always do things the right way. This translates into more work for me, distracting me from the other projects I would rather be doing at work. Here's the scenario: We demolished his girlfriend's bathroom and I got to rebuild it from scratch, walls and all. Once the plumbing was done, I put cement board in the shower area to get it ready for "Tommy the tile guy" (who did a poor job, too). For some reason, the plumbing is now defunct, so the wall was torn out. This morning, the plumber redid the shower and I redid the wall, only to find out that the shower mechanism is now busted. Once again the wall must be taken down,the shower mechanism replaced, and the wall rebuilt for the third time. It's a good thing I don't have to go back to work until Tuesday!