mostly, i've hated greek from the start. the only thing worth while in that language is the new testament... latin have i loved, greek have i hated.
but wait, something's changed - now, when i pick up my greek new testament, things make sense. those phrases and parsings and fun things like that... HAVE MEANING! it's amazing! i still love latin more than greek, and german will always be my favorite spoken language (no matter how rusty i get), but greek's value is quickly increasing!
there's a few drawbacks though... my greek teacher this year doesn't teach us anything we couldn't read in the textbook. he can't explain things well and he's often making mistakes in translating and having to back up to correct himself... for someone i'm paying almost $35/class to teach me... he makes me really doubt him.
then there's why my post is going to be so short - there's this exegesis paper where he wants you to repeat back to him pretty much what he's taught in class, except there's one thing... it's 10-12 pages long, requires a minimum of 12 sources and deals with incredibly obscure topics...
open letter to professors who teach religion, bible, discipleship, whatever else in that pattern of instruction: if you want to teach from a christian perspective - make sure that whatever you assign can be applied, either in orthodoxy or orthopraxy... otherwise, u're irrelevant and wasting our time and money.
well all, with that, i'm going to use a phrase from 1st John that i really liked:
και πας ο εχων την ελπιδα ταυτην επ αυτω αγνιζει εαυτον καθως εκεινος αγνος εστιν.
and all those who have/hold this hope in him purify themselves just as he (the one who we hope in) is pure.
07 November 2009
05 November 2009
The Most Misunderstood and Poorly Taught Christian Theological Idea
I'm talking about the Trinity. This is the one point where I hear people discussing from a fundamentally flawed idea because of ignorance. Here it is, as I have been taught, and its justification in Church history:
The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity states that God is a unified, but essentially differentiated being that has three distinct persons that cannot be separated, that work from the same divine power, are equal in their being and have eternally mutually existed. This doctrine has grown out of experiential and theological understandings of who God is and how he has worked in the world as characterized in the Bible. The Bible never specifically uses the word trinity, but implicitly and indirectly supports this doctrine. This doctrine is vital to a Christian understanding of who God is as a being and how the Father, Son and Holy Spirit can all be God in a monotheistic understanding of God.
Some people, before the time of Irenaeus (a Christian Apologist and Theologian c180 AD), believed in a strict, monotheistic deity that had one personality. Irenaeus wrote against these people using a metaphor that is known as the Two Hands of God Model. He talked about how every time we see, in Scripture, God working in the world - he is working by his divine Word and divine Wisdom. He related these to a person's two hands. Each works on behalf of the person, but in practice is different than the other, but they are all unified. Christians understand the Word to be the pre-incarnate Son and God's wisdom as being the Holy Spirit. He argued that God was always the one working, but that he also worked in parts and that he had differentiation in himself.
The problem with this analogy was that some people (the Sebellians) misinterpreted this to mean that there is one God with one Person and three different roles that he took on. Tertullian corrected this error by creating the Tri-Unity (or Trinity) Theory. Tertullian argued that God was not only differentiated, but essentially differentiated. That God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were essentially different in their purposes and functions, but could coexist at the same time towards the same people. Where the Sebellians understood God to function as only one role to each group of people.
As this theology was, in turn, misinterpreted, a group called the Modalists arose believing that God changed forms or beings as time progressed. The Father became the Son in the incarnation, and the Son became the Holy Spirit after the Ascension. This is fundamentally flawed when we look at the times in Scripture where all three personages of God are present in a situation simultaneously (I.e.: Jesus' Baptism in water). The modalists believed that once God had changed modes, he would no longer exist as the prior mode and would not return to it. Origen argued against this view of God with the Eternal Generation Theory. That God, in his divine nature, cannot exist alone and that at the beginning of eternity, the Father had to coexist with the Son so that the character and nature of God, exemplified in love, could always exist. Thus, the Father, from himself generated something of the same substance and form (not created, which would imply lesser form), which was, by nature, the Son. From this we understand that God has always been and is eternal by nature, thus there is no time that God existed without the Son or the Father.
Sadly, a group known as the Arians misinterpreted generation to be creation and developed a perspectival theology that put the Son not as a pre-existent being, but the first in creation. They believed that from our perspective, the Son looks like God, but from the Father's perspective, the Son is the highest of all creation. Athanasius argued against this theology by establishing the equal, eternal, essentially differentiated theory of God through the Homoousial Theology. Homoousios means that each personage of the Trinity is of the same substance. The Father is everything it means to be God, the Son is everything it means to be God and the Holy Spirit is everything it means to be God. The only stipulation of this idea is that the Son is not the Father or the Spirit, the Father is not the Spirit or the Son, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not ranked or of unequal power or position, all of them are equally God.
From this, people went to an extreme and argued that God was not monotheistic, but tritheistic. They believed three Gods worked according to a unified will. Gregory of Nyssa argued against this saying that God is one, and they are all working according to Common Operations: all three personages of the trinity work according to the same divine power and it is not the issue of will. This was in turn misinterpreted that the Holy Spirit was our name for God's power, but Gregory did not mean this and was supported in Augustine's rebuttal.
Augustine created the Mutual Love Theory, which states that the Father's love for the Son and the Son's love for the Father are simultaneous and mutual. This is so powerful and perfect in all eternity that it is person-generating. God's mutual love within himself generated the Holy Spirit, which is not a power, but a personage and these personages work not from separate power, but from divine power which is common to all of them.
From this, a new issue of Tritheism grew. The argument was if the Holy Spirit is generated form the relationship of the Father and the Son, than there must be three gods that coexist because there is no disunity in a monotheistic God and this God seems to be three separate beings working together in mediation. John of Damascus finalized our understanding of the Trinity when he coined the Perichoresis Theory. Perichoresis is the greek word for dance. He argued that without all the members of a dance, you do not have a dance. In the same way, without all the members of God, you do not have God. He argued that God had distinct differentiation, but they are inseparable, because the Father cannot exist without the Son and the Spirit, and neither can exist without the first or the other. Thus, when all of these theologian's ideas are added together, (because they were continually building upon one another) we have a God that is one being, has three different persons that are inseparable from each other, but are still distinct. These persons have also existed eternally and equally, and they work from the same divine nature and power.
If you need any points of clarification, leave a comment and I will attempt to answer your questions in a timely manner.
The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity states that God is a unified, but essentially differentiated being that has three distinct persons that cannot be separated, that work from the same divine power, are equal in their being and have eternally mutually existed. This doctrine has grown out of experiential and theological understandings of who God is and how he has worked in the world as characterized in the Bible. The Bible never specifically uses the word trinity, but implicitly and indirectly supports this doctrine. This doctrine is vital to a Christian understanding of who God is as a being and how the Father, Son and Holy Spirit can all be God in a monotheistic understanding of God.
Some people, before the time of Irenaeus (a Christian Apologist and Theologian c180 AD), believed in a strict, monotheistic deity that had one personality. Irenaeus wrote against these people using a metaphor that is known as the Two Hands of God Model. He talked about how every time we see, in Scripture, God working in the world - he is working by his divine Word and divine Wisdom. He related these to a person's two hands. Each works on behalf of the person, but in practice is different than the other, but they are all unified. Christians understand the Word to be the pre-incarnate Son and God's wisdom as being the Holy Spirit. He argued that God was always the one working, but that he also worked in parts and that he had differentiation in himself.
The problem with this analogy was that some people (the Sebellians) misinterpreted this to mean that there is one God with one Person and three different roles that he took on. Tertullian corrected this error by creating the Tri-Unity (or Trinity) Theory. Tertullian argued that God was not only differentiated, but essentially differentiated. That God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were essentially different in their purposes and functions, but could coexist at the same time towards the same people. Where the Sebellians understood God to function as only one role to each group of people.
As this theology was, in turn, misinterpreted, a group called the Modalists arose believing that God changed forms or beings as time progressed. The Father became the Son in the incarnation, and the Son became the Holy Spirit after the Ascension. This is fundamentally flawed when we look at the times in Scripture where all three personages of God are present in a situation simultaneously (I.e.: Jesus' Baptism in water). The modalists believed that once God had changed modes, he would no longer exist as the prior mode and would not return to it. Origen argued against this view of God with the Eternal Generation Theory. That God, in his divine nature, cannot exist alone and that at the beginning of eternity, the Father had to coexist with the Son so that the character and nature of God, exemplified in love, could always exist. Thus, the Father, from himself generated something of the same substance and form (not created, which would imply lesser form), which was, by nature, the Son. From this we understand that God has always been and is eternal by nature, thus there is no time that God existed without the Son or the Father.
Sadly, a group known as the Arians misinterpreted generation to be creation and developed a perspectival theology that put the Son not as a pre-existent being, but the first in creation. They believed that from our perspective, the Son looks like God, but from the Father's perspective, the Son is the highest of all creation. Athanasius argued against this theology by establishing the equal, eternal, essentially differentiated theory of God through the Homoousial Theology. Homoousios means that each personage of the Trinity is of the same substance. The Father is everything it means to be God, the Son is everything it means to be God and the Holy Spirit is everything it means to be God. The only stipulation of this idea is that the Son is not the Father or the Spirit, the Father is not the Spirit or the Son, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not ranked or of unequal power or position, all of them are equally God.
From this, people went to an extreme and argued that God was not monotheistic, but tritheistic. They believed three Gods worked according to a unified will. Gregory of Nyssa argued against this saying that God is one, and they are all working according to Common Operations: all three personages of the trinity work according to the same divine power and it is not the issue of will. This was in turn misinterpreted that the Holy Spirit was our name for God's power, but Gregory did not mean this and was supported in Augustine's rebuttal.
Augustine created the Mutual Love Theory, which states that the Father's love for the Son and the Son's love for the Father are simultaneous and mutual. This is so powerful and perfect in all eternity that it is person-generating. God's mutual love within himself generated the Holy Spirit, which is not a power, but a personage and these personages work not from separate power, but from divine power which is common to all of them.
From this, a new issue of Tritheism grew. The argument was if the Holy Spirit is generated form the relationship of the Father and the Son, than there must be three gods that coexist because there is no disunity in a monotheistic God and this God seems to be three separate beings working together in mediation. John of Damascus finalized our understanding of the Trinity when he coined the Perichoresis Theory. Perichoresis is the greek word for dance. He argued that without all the members of a dance, you do not have a dance. In the same way, without all the members of God, you do not have God. He argued that God had distinct differentiation, but they are inseparable, because the Father cannot exist without the Son and the Spirit, and neither can exist without the first or the other. Thus, when all of these theologian's ideas are added together, (because they were continually building upon one another) we have a God that is one being, has three different persons that are inseparable from each other, but are still distinct. These persons have also existed eternally and equally, and they work from the same divine nature and power.
If you need any points of clarification, leave a comment and I will attempt to answer your questions in a timely manner.
03 November 2009
so, i guess it's time to update.
i though of a few things: first off, my blog won't specifically trace my life out so some creepy stalker would know my routine, but i also figured it ought to parallel it in some way. so in order to talk about my life now i'm going to talk about sub arbore.
i went to high school in a little town called Virginia Beach (lol). Va Bch is actually a huge place with lots of people and we get a ton of tourists all summer, it's crazy. but that's all beside the point... one day i was waiting for a teacher. we had been talking and then she was rudely interrupted by a mandatory faculty meeting (which i'm still not sure they needed to have for 90 mins every week...). well, i wandered outside because it was reaching that point in the day where they would throw me out, so i went out towards the teacher's parking lot. it being a nice spring day, i sat... sub arbore... (under a tree) and delighted in the warm sun on my face.
see, i had only been in the church for about 2 months, and at this point, i had been clean for like 2 weeks... which was a feat back then. and i was meeting with a really awesome, down to earth, teacher. as i was sitting there, a jamaican security woman walks out of the back on her way home and greets me with,
"boy! boy! are you ok?!"**
to which i reply: "Yes, ma'am, just waiting on someone."
to which she replies, "chile, you ought to take care of yourself of someone's gowna think u're crazah"**
to which i slightly nodden and she continued walking.
this experience is actually quite humorous to me. she was right though... if i don't chose to act according to what is socially norm, i will be considered outlandish... so, after many years in church leadership, i've given up. i'm not normal, why should i try? i love Jesus, i love his church, and i love theology. i enjoy myself in almost everything i do, and if i find myself in that particular circumstance where i'm not enjoying myself... i make it fun (drawing comics at the bottom of my calculus tests that i will have had failed, theorizing about flux capacitors at the end of my physics homework...)
another thing that makes me crazy: i like watching people react. i don't do anything particularly bad to them, just not normal... for instance: want to get a girl to remember u? propose to her, on a knee, loud, in public, in front of all of her friends... but be wary, if she says yes, u HAVE to marry her.
and to sum up my eccentricness... i've never looked at the world in an "American" way... my parents always encouraged my outgoingness... when i was young, a black german woman lived with us, my family always encouraged us kids (i have 2 brothers) to bring our friends over, and they often took us to friends' houses - black, white, italian, mexican, whatever, it didn't matter... so, now that i'm at a school with a large mutli-cultural population and a large group of foreign students... I LOVE IT!!! there's something about sitting with people who do things differently than you and experimenting with their culture (mmmh, eating curry with your hands while sitting on the floor... i miss my nepalis). i view culture as a group of traditions that i get to sit and enjoy. it's wonderful to try to gain the perspective of someone completely outside of your normal schema... they might not speak your language, share your religion or even think about food in the same way, but these aren't differences... THEY'RE OPPORTUNITIES!
so, yeah, that's a small anecdote and some ideas about myself... my egotism of this post is now ending, i hope you've enjoyed it. :D
** i've tried to reproduce an authentic jamaican dialect here, but i feel like i've horribly failed...
i though of a few things: first off, my blog won't specifically trace my life out so some creepy stalker would know my routine, but i also figured it ought to parallel it in some way. so in order to talk about my life now i'm going to talk about sub arbore.
i went to high school in a little town called Virginia Beach (lol). Va Bch is actually a huge place with lots of people and we get a ton of tourists all summer, it's crazy. but that's all beside the point... one day i was waiting for a teacher. we had been talking and then she was rudely interrupted by a mandatory faculty meeting (which i'm still not sure they needed to have for 90 mins every week...). well, i wandered outside because it was reaching that point in the day where they would throw me out, so i went out towards the teacher's parking lot. it being a nice spring day, i sat... sub arbore... (under a tree) and delighted in the warm sun on my face.
see, i had only been in the church for about 2 months, and at this point, i had been clean for like 2 weeks... which was a feat back then. and i was meeting with a really awesome, down to earth, teacher. as i was sitting there, a jamaican security woman walks out of the back on her way home and greets me with,
"boy! boy! are you ok?!"**
to which i reply: "Yes, ma'am, just waiting on someone."
to which she replies, "chile, you ought to take care of yourself of someone's gowna think u're crazah"**
to which i slightly nodden and she continued walking.
this experience is actually quite humorous to me. she was right though... if i don't chose to act according to what is socially norm, i will be considered outlandish... so, after many years in church leadership, i've given up. i'm not normal, why should i try? i love Jesus, i love his church, and i love theology. i enjoy myself in almost everything i do, and if i find myself in that particular circumstance where i'm not enjoying myself... i make it fun (drawing comics at the bottom of my calculus tests that i will have had failed, theorizing about flux capacitors at the end of my physics homework...)
another thing that makes me crazy: i like watching people react. i don't do anything particularly bad to them, just not normal... for instance: want to get a girl to remember u? propose to her, on a knee, loud, in public, in front of all of her friends... but be wary, if she says yes, u HAVE to marry her.
and to sum up my eccentricness... i've never looked at the world in an "American" way... my parents always encouraged my outgoingness... when i was young, a black german woman lived with us, my family always encouraged us kids (i have 2 brothers) to bring our friends over, and they often took us to friends' houses - black, white, italian, mexican, whatever, it didn't matter... so, now that i'm at a school with a large mutli-cultural population and a large group of foreign students... I LOVE IT!!! there's something about sitting with people who do things differently than you and experimenting with their culture (mmmh, eating curry with your hands while sitting on the floor... i miss my nepalis). i view culture as a group of traditions that i get to sit and enjoy. it's wonderful to try to gain the perspective of someone completely outside of your normal schema... they might not speak your language, share your religion or even think about food in the same way, but these aren't differences... THEY'RE OPPORTUNITIES!
so, yeah, that's a small anecdote and some ideas about myself... my egotism of this post is now ending, i hope you've enjoyed it. :D
** i've tried to reproduce an authentic jamaican dialect here, but i feel like i've horribly failed...
02 November 2009
The First Post
The first post ought to have some explanation of all of this crazy latin:
here goes -
i love a verb tense in latin that doesn't exist in english, i actually revel in it. it's the future pluperfect periphrastic, which is big words for, in the future, something will have been more than completed in the past, thus: ero cogniteram, which means i will have had had thought, which means, if i haven't been clear enough yet, i'm saying that: "in the future, i will have already been finished thinking" (for some time already, too).
now, the next idea is this: sub arbore, a pretty simple phrase found in beginner latin. arbore means tree. it's where we get the word arbor, but the great thing about vulgar latin is this: nouns are not articulated. sub arbore could mean under a tree or under the tree. it doesn't matter in the latin mind. wonderful isn't it?!?! (i'm just excited that i'm starting a blog.)
now, i guess there's one more thing on this site you might wonder about... what do i mean by cognito cum barba? well... if i remember my latin correctly... and i hope i do... then cum takes the ablative... then that simply means, i think/am thinking with a/the beard. at the time of writing, i've been quite some time without shaving. which the explanation of will have to be another post, but the beard has become somewhat of an icon, so i decided to include him, but, for those who know the backstory, be aware that these are my ideas, not the beard's.
three more issues of housekeeping:
1) i could care less about capitol letters and, often, correct grammar. read this as if u were talking to a group of unknown people, and, if you're in some public place, u might want to read it out loud as if u ARE speaking it to them!
2) i will use some language in this blog, some latin, greek, german and what i call 'french' which is where many of our words that are often called 'cuss' words come from... if offended, quit reading after this first post, seriously i don't want you to ::french noun adjusted to be a vernacular verb in the present active infinitive form:: to me about it.
3) i said i would never start a blog, i've offered to guest write for others, but i've finally decided, i'll rant on here for people to talk with me.
well. we're in for a wild ride, talk to you soon.
here goes -
i love a verb tense in latin that doesn't exist in english, i actually revel in it. it's the future pluperfect periphrastic, which is big words for, in the future, something will have been more than completed in the past, thus: ero cogniteram, which means i will have had had thought, which means, if i haven't been clear enough yet, i'm saying that: "in the future, i will have already been finished thinking" (for some time already, too).
now, the next idea is this: sub arbore, a pretty simple phrase found in beginner latin. arbore means tree. it's where we get the word arbor, but the great thing about vulgar latin is this: nouns are not articulated. sub arbore could mean under a tree or under the tree. it doesn't matter in the latin mind. wonderful isn't it?!?! (i'm just excited that i'm starting a blog.)
now, i guess there's one more thing on this site you might wonder about... what do i mean by cognito cum barba? well... if i remember my latin correctly... and i hope i do... then cum takes the ablative... then that simply means, i think/am thinking with a/the beard. at the time of writing, i've been quite some time without shaving. which the explanation of will have to be another post, but the beard has become somewhat of an icon, so i decided to include him, but, for those who know the backstory, be aware that these are my ideas, not the beard's.
three more issues of housekeeping:
1) i could care less about capitol letters and, often, correct grammar. read this as if u were talking to a group of unknown people, and, if you're in some public place, u might want to read it out loud as if u ARE speaking it to them!
2) i will use some language in this blog, some latin, greek, german and what i call 'french' which is where many of our words that are often called 'cuss' words come from... if offended, quit reading after this first post, seriously i don't want you to ::french noun adjusted to be a vernacular verb in the present active infinitive form:: to me about it.
3) i said i would never start a blog, i've offered to guest write for others, but i've finally decided, i'll rant on here for people to talk with me.
well. we're in for a wild ride, talk to you soon.
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