And it comes with a variety of features: articles, sermons, pics, etc.
Enjoy!
P.S. I just read this chestnut in one of his sermons:
"The doctrine of the Trinity takes us into the mystery of who God is, but it does not explain or dispel the mystery" (Sermon on the Trinity)
*Chris cuts and pastes this into a future sermon*
Being the quick cookie I am, I only just realised that Blogger are closing down ftp webhosting blog support on the 1st of May. That means, this blog will no longer function!
Yikes!
While I have been away from blogging for a while, I was planning to get back into things this spring, so I'm not quite sure what to do. I would prefer to keep my blog here, and have all my old posts online (with comments) – perhaps I could use another programme like Wordpress, but that doesn't support personal domain publishing, nor will comments export over.
Any suggestions?
I promised myself for a long time, that upon completion of my PhD I would treat myself to a really good espresso machine. After weeks of research, I decided to take the plunge (not the sort of thing I easily do). Behold, my new Bugatti Diva:
In my excitement I made myself three delicious espressos for myself before work, today. So I was just a bit jittery giving the early morning lecture on NT Greek! I have tried a couple with foamed milk, but I am yet to get the hang of this new steam foam system – the jet is much stronger than my old pump espresso. I'm poorer now for sure, but heck, I'm loving my espresso shots like never before.
So claims the BBC webpage!
"It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which confirm their Semitic origin"
Read more here.
By natural inclination, I'm always suspicious about such stories.
"Once a year the reputation of Germans as an orderly, obedient, sober, rational and humourless people gets severely damaged. The time of year in question is known as the 'fifth season' and people everywhere go barking mad, so it seems"
So starts a BBC article on the seasonal German carnival! It's a bit rough really. I wonder why the German's have got this reputation? It isn't true.
Or more precisely, I didn't meet him at all ... but I was in the same room as His Royal Highness for close on 2 hours! And almost spoke to him. Fame! I was on a list of people to introduce to the Prince, but there were plenty of others to talk to first. I believe I was to be introduced as the one 'who has recently obtained a PhD'. I was not sure what I would say if he asked 'what did I write about?'.
*Prince approaches Chris*
*Tilling bows vigorously and tries to remember whether he should say 'Your Highness' or 'Your Majesty', but then remembers the Blackadder episode where the Prince keeps saying 'Your Highness, Your Highness', so sticks with 'Your Highness' and hopes for the best*
'Tis about Pauline Christology ... Your Highness'
*Royal blank look*
*Tilling gets nervous Prince is starting to wish he had not asked*
'...a new way of tackling the divine-Christology debate, sir*
*Prince's eyes start looking for someone else*
'... building on and critically responding to Jimmy Dunn, Larry Hurtado, William Horbury, Gordon Fee and such like. Your Highness'.
*Prince finds some polite and regal way of saying a 'Riiiiiiight - Next!'*
Yea, probably best this conversation didn't happen. Besides, there were plenty of better looking, funnier, more intelligent, popular and wittier people to impress the future King of England.
Why did I almost meet him? He was there to get a taste of the St Mellitus phenomenon, and he seemed to have enjoyed himself. I think we all had fun! And it was good to catch up with Paula Gooder.
Here is our own official St Mellitus report, with loads of pictures.
Finally, this is one of the Prince meeting some of our students!
I had my Viva a few days ago. Steve Walton and Larry Hurtado, my examiners, scrutinized my thesis thoroughly, yet happily it was accepted with only minor corrections. Now I will become Dr Chris Tilling, I trust all you plebs out there will finally start treating me with a bit of awe and respect!
I have really enjoyed writing my thesis, and I think it makes a decent contribution to the whole Pauline divine-Christology debate. I can now think about getting my work published. Indeed, I think the whole area of Pauline Christology, especially as it impinges on the divine-Christology debate, needs fresh impulse.
Actually, my Viva has got me considering what sort of qualities the future of NT research needs to cultivate. Courage is now right near the top of my list - it takes guts to challenge the views of established authority figures. I think the best of NT scholarship will also develop and encourage a broader vision, one that grasps significance beyond lexical studies and syntactical analysis and dares to look also into related epistemological factors, ontology, interweaving theological themes etc. In many ways, Doug Campbell's The Deliverance of God, represents the sort of work that will move NT research forward.
Without, of course, forgetting all of the necessary ingredients (such as diligence, care, language proficiency etc.), what qualities do you think the next 50 years of NT scholarship needs to develop, to advance debates?
My thanks to the kind folk at IVP for a review copy of Tim Stafford's Shaking the System: What I Learned from the Great American Reform Movements (and may I voice a special "hurray" to IVP at the moment - they must be doing something right to get this kind of criticism). I feel privileged to have Stephanie write a book review for Chrisendom as she is one of these extremely talented people - artist, writer, intellectual - yea, one of them. But try not to hold it against her too much, cos she is also a very dear friend of this Tilling household! So without further ado, let me hand over to her.
Shaking the System Review
Ordinary Activism
When writer Flannery O'Connor was asked whether she thought the Iowa Writers' Workshop discouraged young writers, she answered "Not enough of them." Tim Stafford's stance toward young would-be activists in his Shaking the System has something of the spirit of her remark, though his is a gentle voice. This book will not produce a new wave of gleaming-eyed idealists: It says too much about the realities of actual activist work, about the grind of the long haul, about failure, about glory that never happens.
I've been a gleaming-eyed idealist, and when I found that brightness and hope and Big Ideas had, roughly, zero impact on injustice, that in fact the work of changing the world is slow, often painful, slow, disheartening, and slow, my Big Ideas fizzled, and I began to dislike activism. If I couldn't make everything better now, if I couldn't, in fact, save the world, then why bother?
Stafford's answer is, because there is truth. This is where he begins: If you want to be an activist, make sure you are on the side of truth. Remember that truth often. His next chapter is on resistance: what to do when no one gives a shit about truth (he doesn't put it that way). Expect this, he says.
From there he moves to pressure tactics, which involve the ethical, responsible use of power. The term "institutional sin," he says, is confusing: "People, not institutions or systems, are sinners." And yet, there is "web that binds people to injustice. It is not enough to simply present the truth and change people's hearts, one by one. Activists must change laws, institutions, habits and customs, for these bind people's dark hearts together into a formidable fortress. Activists must shake the system." In the U. S. abolitionist movement, he goes on to argue, it was finally "only the carnage of the Civil War" that accomplished change. Triumphalism is entirely absent from this book, as is a sense of activists as Knights in Shining Armor battling the forces of darkness. Instead there is a longsuffering familiarity with sorrow and with failure, with good coming about through devastating violence.
There is also personal honesty; Stafford first won my trust when he listed his own roles as an activist, early in the book. The list includes spending four years in Africa with his wife, helping to start a magazine for young people; it also includes writing letters to Congress, and helping to preserve a green space near his home. Stafford is not Wilberforce, and this makes me trust him, because I am not Wilberforce either. But Stafford has avoided the trap into which I've often fallen, of refusing to take any action if I can't be Wilberforce. Stafford's book is Christian in arriving at truth by paradox. On one hand, he points out that activism is harder, slower, more daunting work than I'd been willing to admit; on the other, he points the way toward starting small, with the activist equivalent of loaves and fishes—of giving what I have.
Over recent years I have developed a friendship with someone called Mark. Since then we have discovered that we are both passionate about theology and biblical studies and have enjoyed many a lively discussion. Actually, I have learnt much from him. I thus asked him recently if he would like to 'guest post' on my blog now and then – and he gladly agreed.
By his own admission, Mark is not too computer literate, so I will post his texts as 'guest posts' – but I will always make it clear that Mark is the author. I will do this as Mark and I certainly do not always see 'eye-to-eye', yet I always enjoy interacting with his often provocative (and even hilarious), but shrewd, insights.
So knowing Mark, this post is also a disclaimer (actually, he was the one who urged me to add this bit): when posts are distinguished as Mark's 'guest posts', I am not necessarily in agreement with either the style or content of his blogging. This has to be said knowing the political nature of blogging, the importance of attribution, as well as the sometimes delicate disposition of certain readers who may strongly disagree with Mark (and may wrongly attribute his assertions with my own online persona!)
Anyway, he don't yet know if his excursion into the world of blogging will be a lasting feature, but I do hope you enjoy Mark's contributions, however many there may be.
I've been reading Augustine recently and have rediscovered the enormous significance and spiritual power of desire and joy in God. Of course, he famously wrote in his Confessions: 'You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you' (I.1), but he was constantly on about it. James Smith deliberately makes a similar point in his new book, Desiring the Kingdom, in relation to Victoria's Secret!
'I suggest that, on one level, Victoria's Secret is right just where the church has been wrong. More specifically, I think we should first recognize and admit that the marketing industry – which promises an erotically charged transcendence through media that connects to our heart and imagination – is operating with a better, more creational, more incarnational, more holistic anthropology than much of the (evangelical) church ... Christians will tend to say, "Ah, but that's not love – that's eros, not agape!" But romantic theology refuses the distinction because it recognizes that we are erotic creatures – that agape is rightly ordered eros' (77, 79)
I'm not yet sure how this insight might look in practice, but I love the point he is making!
"Vladimir Kramnik, former world chess champion and current No. 4, is playing in the first round of the London Chess Classic, the most competitive chess tournament to be played in the U.K. capital in 25 years. Tall, handsome and expressionless, he looks exactly as a man who has mastered a game of nearly infinite variation should: like a high-end assassin. Today, however, he is getting methodically and mercilessly crushed. His opponent is a teenager who seems to be having difficulty staying awake. Magnus Carlsen ..."
And I saw it with my own eyes. Though to be honest, Magnus seemed pretty awake to me!
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1950683,00.html
Gratefully received from my parents-in-law, but what should I spend it on?! A nice question, if ever there was one!
Some presently in my basket:
Any thoughts, protests, additional recommendations?
... and a belated Happy Christmas!
Among my gifts (which, ok, I selected myself – but Anja at least wrapped!):
Of course, I think it a real pity that my friend Jim West has decided to stop blogging. But I hope that he will return to it after a break.
Christ Sein, Küng
Existiert Gott?, Küng
Der Anfang aller Dinge, Küng
Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat
The Character of Theology: An Introduction to Its Nature, Task, and Purpose, John R. Franke
Shadow Sides. God in the Old Testament, Eric Peels
The Jesus Creed, Scot McKnight
Gebete des Lebens, Karl Rahner
Jesus and the Victory of God, N.T. Wright
Universal Salvation? The Current Debite, ed. by Robin Parry and C. H. Partridge
