A woman who was hospitalised with damage to multiple organs after she was overcome in an Arizona sweat lodge ceremony has died, sheriff’s officials said. Continue reading
Oct 18 2009
Third sweat lodge ceremony death
Sep 14 2009
The missing Deadly Sin
The Seven Deadly Sins are derived from the Eight Thoughts of John Cassian, the monk who, in the Fourth Century, systematically recorded the teachings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. He described how monks and nuns were always afflicted by Eight Thoughts or Demons. The transformation from Eight Thoughts to Seven Sins begins with Pope Gregory the Great in the Sixth Century. Gregory began this process by removing one vice from the list: acedia, a Greek word which can be translated as spiritual apathy. The disappearance of acedia from ordinary people’s vocabulary deprived Western culture of the ability to name an important feature of the spiritual life, namely, loss of enthusiasm for the spiritual life itself. While the word has disappeared, the reality of spiritual carelessness is strongly present in our culture.
From: Spiritual Apathy: The Forgotten Deadly Sin – here
I wonder what would have happened if acedia had been made a ’sin’ in it’s own right by the Catholic Church, and if spiritual awareness of God would be different now to what it actually is today.
Sep 04 2009
Can your soul be abducted by aliens?
I’m not sure what she believes in …
Japan’s soon-to-be first lady has stolen the limelight from her husband by claiming she was abducted by aliens. Miyuki Hatoyama, sporting new red streaks in her trademark shoulder-length bob, looks set to liven up the traditionally staid role of a premier’s wife with her extroverted and sometimes quirky personality.
Mar 25 2009
Baptist Seminary offers PhD in Joel Osteen's Spirituality
A new doctorate program at a conservative Baptist seminary will explore the life lessons of the Bible at a time when self-help spirituality is being popularized by celebrities like Oprah.
The spirituality doctorate at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary arrives at a time when the cultural interest in spirituality — and disinterest in organized religion — is growing, said Michael Haykin, a church history professor in the seminary’s Ph.D. program.
“The way the word (spirituality) is used broadly in our culture, it’s very eclectic and it can mean whatever a person wants it to mean,” Haykin said. “So we’re trying to ground it in a certain context.”
Continue reading “Baptist Seminary offers PhD in Joel Osteen's Spirituality”
Jan 13 2009
Irenaeus on the Spiritual Need of Speaking in Tongues
The below comes from Irenaeus’ work, Against Heresies, 5.6.1. The Doctrine of Cessationism generally states that certain gifts enjoyed by the Church during the Apostolic days ceased shortly after their deaths. Irenaeus, a pupil of Polycarp, was born between 115 and 125, dying about 202. This book is placed around the year 180 and was written to defeat the first great doctrinal threat to the Church, Gnosticism. It is highly doubtful that Irenaeus wrote this in defense of glossolalia, but it serves that peculiar purpose well in that the ancient Apologist establishes that the Spiritual man is the perfect man, and in order to be perfected, one must ‘partake of the Spirit’. Irenaeus says, ‘The man is rendered spiritual and perfect because of the outpouring of the Spirit’.
We must be reminded that in Acts, as the Spirit fell upon the Jews, the Gentiles, and the disciples of John the Baptist, it was accompanied with speaking in tongues, or prophesying.
1. Now God shall be glorified in His handiwork, fitting it so as to be conformable to, and modeled after, His own Son. For by the hands of the Father, that is, by the Son and the Holy Spirit, man, and not [merely] a part of man, was made in the likeness of God[1]. Now the soul and the spirit are certainly a part of the man, but certainly not the man[2]; for the perfect man consists in the commingling and the union of the soul receiving the spirit of the Father, and the admixture of that fleshly nature which was molded after the image of God. For this reason does the apostle declare, “We speak wisdom among them that are perfect,” terming those persons “perfect” who have received the Spirit of God, and who through the Spirit of God do speak in all languages[3], as he used Himself also to speak. In like manner we do also hear[4] many brethren in the Church, who possess prophetic gifts[5], and who through the Spirit speak all kinds of languages, and bring to light for the general benefit the hidden things of men, and declare the mysteries of God, whom also the apostle terms “spiritual,” they being spiritual because they partake of the Spirit, and not because their flesh has been stripped off and taken away, and because they have become purely spiritual. For if anyone take away the substance of flesh, that is, of the handiwork [of God], and understand that which is purely spiritual, such then would not be a spiritual man but would be the spirit of a man, or the Spirit of God. But when the spirit here blended with the soul is united to [God’s] handiwork, the man is rendered spiritual and perfect because of the outpouring of the Spirit, and this is he who was made in the image and likeness of God[6]. But if the Spirit be wanting to the soul, he who is such is indeed of an animal nature, and being left carnal, shall be an imperfect being, possessing indeed the image [of God] in his formation (in plasmate), but not receiving the similitude through the Spirit; and thus is this being imperfect. Thus also, if any one take away the image and set aside the handiwork, he cannot then understand this as being a man, but as either some part of a man, as I have already said, or as something else than a man. For that flesh which has been molded is not a perfect man in itself, but the body of a man, and part of a man. Neither is the soul itself, considered apart by itself, the man; but it is the soul of a man, and part of a man. Neither is the spirit a man, for it is called the spirit, and not a man[7]; but the commingling and union of all these constitutes the perfect man. And for this cause does the apostle, explaining himself, make it clear that the saved man is a complete man as well as a spiritual man[8]; saying thus in the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, “Now the God of peace sanctify you perfect (perfectos); and may your spirit, and soul, and body be preserved whole without complaint to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Now what was his object in praying that these three — that is, soul, body, and spirit — might be preserved to the coming of the Lord, unless he was aware of the [future] reintegration and union of the three, and [that they should be heirs of] one and the same salvation? For this cause also he declares that those are “the perfect” who present unto the Lord the three [component parts] without offence. Those, then, are the perfect who have had the Spirit of God remaining in them, and have preserved their souls and bodies blameless, holding fast the faith of God, that is, that faith which is [directed] towards God, and maintaining righteous dealings with respect to their neighbours.
We can see here in the words of Irenaeus that although he might place emphasis on speaking in tongues, he does not make it central to the Christian life or worship. It is something placed on the individual, and commended, but not established as a must at every gathering of the Church – as some today would make it.
I look forward to any discussion that might arise out of this posting.
[1] Note the application of the Son and Spirit as hands of God; See, The Two Hands of God.
[2] The soul and the spirit of man – his psyche and his life force – are not distinct or separate entities within the man. The same is with the Logos and the Sophia of God.
[3] Irenaeus begins a moment of what is commonly known as ‘speaking in tongues.’
[4] Old Latin has ‘have heard’, but this is not a result of cessationism.
[5] These had to be different than the Montanists of Tertullian’s liking, but still within the frame of the Apostles. Irenaeus died sometime around 202, which removes the idea of cessationism of certain gifts at the death of the Apostles
[6] Irenaeus seems to take the general ‘Oneness’ position that speaking in tongues is a sign of spiritual maturity, of spiritual perfection, in that it is by speaking in tongues that a man has been recreated in the image of God. He goes to say that if the man lacks the Spirit (of God) than the body is still in the image, and the man is of an animal nature. The man, albeit a Christian, is still imperfect without the Spirit, and the man with is Spiritual is the man who partake of the Spirit as manifested by speaking in tongues.
[7] Perhaps Irenaeus would agree with, ‘Neither is the Logos itself, apart by itself, considered God; but it is the Logos of man, and a part of man. Neither is the Pneuma itself, considered apart by itself, God; but it is the Pneuma of God and a part of God.’ So then, we still maintain an economic form of God.
[8] Would then Irenaeus agree with the general statement that speaking in tongues is the sign of salvation?
Jan 06 2009
Five spiritual trends to watch for in 2009
The dark nights of early January are when many Canadians turn to spirituality for their light. But it was hard to get a clear vision of what was going on in the dramatic world of religion in 2008.
There were Muslim fundamentalist terrorist bombings in India, a divisive Christian-fuelled election in the U.S., Buddhist protests in Asia and ever-growing numbers of Canadians saying, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.”
Amid the apparent chaos of 2008’s spiritual and religious events, I see five major trends emerging for 2009 and beyond:
Continue reading “Five spiritual trends to watch for in 2009″
Nov 18 2008
Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors, and where are the young people?
One of the great tragedies of ‘modern Christianity’ is the churchless attitude of the young.
Ian is a Christian who says he is highly spiritual but not at all religious.
Unfortunately for churches, there are a lot of Ians out there.
A new benchmark survey finds that 55 percent of young people ages 12 to 25 say they are more spiritual now than two years ago. But nearly one-third of the young people said they don’t trust organized religion.
“If that’s the way they really feel, it means that we have some serious questions that we need to ask ourselves,” said Terry Dittmer, the director of youth ministry for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
The survey, believed to be the first of its kind in the world, was conducted by the Minneapolis-based Search Institute and released last week at the four-day Healthy Communities-Healthy Youth Conference. Peter Benson and Gene Roehlkepartain, co-directors of the institute’s Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, said that it will take several months, if not years, of serious number-crunching to figure out all of the study’s implications.
Sep 19 2008
Weekly News – 9/19
Mr. Davis at Ad Gloriam Dei has a return post (I say return because he has not posted in some time) about what you can and cannot sing in Church.
Our Arminian Friends seek to answer what happens at the death of an infant, while posting on Romans 3.10-18,
Csalafia, a new friend of the blog, as a great post on slander and this election cycle while having another post on infalliblity of the Bible or perhaps Inerrancy…
The Stoned-Campbell blog had a post up about the spirituality. I am not telling you anything else about. You will just have to read it for yourself.
“The Church claims to show the human world as such what is possible for it in relation to God–not through the adding of ecclesiastical activities to others, and not through the sacralizing of existing communal forms, but by witnessing to the possibility of a common life sustained by God’s creative breaking of existing frontiers and showing that creative authority in the pattern of relation already described, the building up of Christ-like persons. The Church’s good news is that human community is possible; the Church’s challenge is its insistence that this possibility is realized only in that giving away of power in order to nurture authority in others that is learned in the giving away of God in Jesus, and its further insistence that the relations constituting Christ’s Body neither compete with nor vindicate others, but simply stand on their own right as the context which relativizes all others.”
– Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 233.
Roger Pearse has a post on the the heretic in Titus. Speaking of translations, Byron has a good point – who endorses your bible translation? Iyov has a post on the return of the NRSV to the sales charts.
John Hobbins as the new Christian Carnival up linking to a bunch of great posts.
If you have a chance please read Thabiti’s A Proposal for Christian Bloggers Interested in Politics
Michael Bird has a though provoking post on Philemon and his ’slave‘?
W B Moore asks if hell exists. What is your answer?
The Jesus Blogger has a post on a pesky Apostolic that does harm to everyone, oneness and trinitarian alike.
Koinonia has an interview with Kenneth Berding, associate professor of New Testament at Talbot School of Theology of Biola University, and director of the “Sing and Learn New Testament Greek” project, which contains audio recordings that help in the memorization of Biblical Greek through well known songs. You can check out some samples of the CD here.
Bloggers are being detained under a sedition act (Here and here). Guess where?
I am going to post on this guy later, but James Whites gives us a good start.
Nick has a good quote from Athenagoras.
If there were from the beginning two or more gods, they were either in one and the same place, or each of them separately in his own. In one and the same place they could not be. For, if they are gods, they are not alike; but because they are uncreated they are unlike: for created things are like their patterns; but the uncreated are unlike, being neither produced from any one, nor formed after the pattern of any one. Hand and eye and foot are parts of one body, making up together one man: isGod in this sense one? And indeed Socrates was compounded and divided into parts, just because he was created and perishable; but God is uncreated, and, impassible, and indivisible— does not, therefore, consist of parts. But if, on the contrary, each of them exists separately, since He that made the world is above the things created, and about the things He has made and set in order, where can the other or the rest be?
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