New Street Theologian Project

OVBS 2008 senior curriculum...MAMA MIA!

Atheism and Violence- First Things

"One would think that, given their insistence that faith and violence are inextricably linked, these authors would be a bit more circumspect about their own rhetoric. As it happens, one does not have to read too far into these books to see an underlying advocacy of violence animating their venom, an advocacy made most explicit in Sam Harris’s The End of Faith, which openly avows: “Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. . . . There is, in fact, no talking to some people. … We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.” To which I can only respond with one of Blaise Pascal’s more mordant observations, “Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.” Pascal called civil war the worst of all evils and openly admitted that no evil is greater than that committed under the guise of religion. If he were living today, I am sure his response to Harris would be: yes, Mr. Harris, you’re right, and the reason atheism brings so much violence in its wake is because it is its own kind of religion—and that’s your problem: your atheism is too religious."
-Edward T. Oakes (full article)

Adjectives

What does it mean to be Orthodox? What does it mean to be Catholic?

Well, let's figure out what it means to be lowercase orthodox and catholic first. They are adjectives, of course.

To be orthodox means to be the way whatever it is was meant to be. To be catholic means to be universal in a dynamic sense; having the potential to be spread everywhere. The Church claims to be the true Faith as it was meant to be, with the mandate to change the hearts of all God's people. Therefore, the true, Holy, Apostolic Church is necessarily both Orthodox and Catholic.

-Steve K.

Darwin, Jesus and Human Nature- D'souza

I love this guy!

"Consequently we hear social liberals argue that since human nature is wonderful, we should give everyone freedom because they will surely use it wonderfully. Our secular televangelist Oprah argues that all you have to do to be virtuous is to "be yourself" and let your inner light shine. Corporations like Nike tell their customers, "Just do it." (Imagine telling Hitler, Stalin or even Charles Manson, "Just be yourself." "Just do it.") Darwin knew how absurd such propositions are. Yes, humans are capable of virtue but this is not our natural orientation. On the contrary, human beings are typically focused on surviving and protecting their own interests and those of their kin and tribe.
...
Jesus also knew the limits of human nature and showed a way to transcend them, although ultimately this transcendence must await the next life. Christ's teaching "love your neighbor as yourself" is based on the very practical realization that we all love ourselves. Liberals like to celebrate love as a form of sociality and even an embodiment of a kind of higher morality. But love, in its various forms (familial love, sexual love and love of friends) tends to be rooted in the needs and demands of the self. As Christ understood, charity or agape is the only selfless kind of love. "

full article

Ummm..hurray?

GLOOMIEST DAY OF THE YEAR

New books!

Just finished "Politically Incorrect Guide to Science" and a few more pages left in "The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World"

I recommend the first to everyone. As an alleged semi-member of the scientific community (man that thesis was long...boring), I know first-hand about some of the sweeping assumptions made by the non-scientific about what science can and can't do. I don't recommend the second book unless you're interested in Cold War history and Ronald Reagan. I, incidentally, am.

I bought two new books:
The Messiah Formerly Known as Jesus

so far, very humorous and terribly theologically inaccurate (on purpose)

and

The Heart of Orthodox Mystery
by William Bush

so far seems to be inspiring, perhaps another recommendation to my high school kiddies. I'll tell you when I'm done.

-Steve K

Looking at the past...

We are all in a dire situation. Whether we like it or not, we’re born into the time and place that we are. We have no choice; it is not up for negotiation. Not only are we born into that time and place, we’re born to a particular set of people. I’m not free to choose my parents; they are who they are. And since, as a child, I have no method of self-determination, I am a product of their particular modes of thinking. On top of that, my parents, who have been in pretty much in the same predicament as I am, are, along with me, completely reliant on the culture around them to provide us with all the necessary information about this world that I can’t simply reach out and touch, taste, smell, hear, or see on my own. The only knowledge we have beyond our senses, is the knowledge that we’ve inherited from our collective past.

So, where does that leave us? Well, one upshot is that I don’t have to relearn math in order to do it. In fact, while we ascribe brilliance to Pythagoras, Euclid, Leibniz, and the other great mathematicians of the past, nowadays their life’s work can be reasonably mastered by an astute high school student. I also don’t have to appreciate my own novels and poems. I’ve come into possession of all that Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck and Walt Whitman have written even without their ever knowing me. In fact, I could write my own stories or compose my own poems while consciously or unconsciously building upon my literary influences from the past. Even the very words I use are a product of a language that was forged over the centuries of peoples interacting with one another.

Without having lifted a finger, I am the heir of all civilization and the benefits therein, just like my parents, and their parents before that. I am born not just into a family, but into a community, a culture. Our participation in this wider civilization is our peculiarly human characteristic. Aside from received knowledge, from where else can I know anything? I can’t test out and derive all there is to know on my own, not in a million lifetimes. Indeed, everything I know actually took a few million lifetimes to put together. For this reason, I don’t just keep a working knowledge of the past, but I revere the past, the source from which my knowledge is drawn.

-Steve K.

(this was originally the beginning of a larger article I had been working on...that article moved in a different direction and is forthcoming soon)

Silencing Traditional Values- First Things (DeMint & Woodward)

On August 31, 2007, the president of Clemson University opened a letter from the South Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union that read, “Coach [Tommy] Bowden . . . has abused his authority as . . . head football coach by imposing his strong personal religious beliefs upon student-athletes under his charge.” In published reports, cited in the letter, the coach encouraged his players to attend one church service as a team during the two-a-day practices each preseason.

Even though “Church Day” was voluntary, and those who declined to attend suffered no penalty on or off the field, the ACLU urged the university president to end the practice of Coach Bowden taking his team to church. This practice of legal intimidation, directed at both individuals and organizations who affirm traditional values, we label as SLAPP, for “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.” The ACLU ploy is not new; it invokes the requirement of “pluralism” to secure submission to the doctrine of a secular, naked public square. Anything religious, especially if it is associated with the religion with which nine of ten Americans identify, must be denied public salience. The free exercise of religion becomes synonymous with “theocracy,” and its practice declared to be a threat to democracy and the public order.
...
Such are the new politics of whispering in the twenty-first century version of the culture wars. The values that were instrumental in forming the American culture have been ignored, forgotten, or—worse—forbidden in public debate. Through court rulings, bureaucratic pronouncements, and well-intentioned but unhelpful laws, secular values have allied with government authority to dismantle the ideals of a decent nation. In the words of Robert Bork, “Large chunks of the moral life of the United States, [along with] major features of its culture have disappeared altogether, and more are in the process of extinction.”

full article

Bishop Consecrated for the Syrian Orthodox Community in Europe

If you haven't seen this before...here it is. I could do without the heavy background music.

-Steve K.

For those times you forget your Mobile Qurbana Kit...

Here are the plans for a Soda-Can Alcohol Burner

My idea:

Roughly the same thing but with a couple strings (or if you're lucky pieces of chain...or perhaps four long strings of paper clips), and a couple chunks of incense (if not available, some sweet smelling dried up flowers??), and BAM...Hobo-Censor

For those times you just need it...

Proper Understanding of Scripture?

In response to the comment on the last post:

Let me take the Evangelical claim head on. Is Scripture to be juxtaposed against Tradition? Or is it something foremost within the Tradition and understood within it? Unless Jesus ascended to Heaven and beamed the KJV Bible down to Earth, I don't believe the Bible or any other document for that matter can be interpreted outside of it's particular framework. I can read A Tale of Two Cities, but I can also read it while understanding the French Revolution and Dicken's motivation in writing the book. I can not take the mosaic image of a King and make a fox.

Here's another thought I'd like to expand on some other day:
Without a living Tradition guiding the Church, is not the alternative inevitably legalism? Outside of a historical understanding of the Faith which holds Scriptural teaching in light of thousands of years of experience, wouldn't we otherwise be lobbing Bible verses at each other aimlessly?

Sacramentality podcast

Catching up on my Ancient Faith Radio...

Listen to this

In the broader, cosmic sense, is not Sacramentality what distinguishes Christianity? Any religion can teach fundamentals of good living and righteousness, but only Christianity calls us toward an active Communion with God; Communion which is active and real. Moreover, Sacrament has been ordained by Christ as written in the New Testament (Care to debate me about it?).

Take Baptism. If baptism is a mere commemoration of an act without a real mysterious death and resurrection, how can one be bound to Christ? Without being bound to Christ, how can there be Salvation? As Christ has assumed our humanity and healed it, through Baptism, in the proper understanding, we become bound to Christ's renewed humanity. This seems to make the most sense to me, though I'd like to read other opinions on the subject.

-Steve K.

What's So Great About US???

Another reflection on Christopher Hitchens...

He says repeatedly "Any self respecting person would think..." to the effect that anyone with enough dignity and belief in their own self would not need to believe in a God who places constraints and restrictions on us? Why should he? Are we not basically good? Is humanity basically beautiful the way we are?

If Hitchen's assertion seems so self evident to him, then why is it so obvious that man is not so good after all? Who can look around and see man in all his violence, debauchery, cruelty, viciousness, and greed and say that man is innately good? Even outside the Christian perspective (Hitchens says so himself), men more or less understand right and wrong, and still overwhelmingly choose wrong.

The big word here is "fallen." Even the atheist who doesn't believe man was created for good must observe the evidence of fallenness. Perhaps he will blame it all on the religious, but then he dogmatically pursues a utopian dream of a perfected world inaugurated by the atheist elite (Dawkins call them "brights").

In any case, the fallen man is in desperate need for renewal and redirection. Though he wishes to do good, he inevitably falls away. He is either fallen or nothing at all, but certainly not inherently good.
-Steve K

Happy New Year!!!

My resolutions:
1) Blog my own articles at least once or twice a week
2) Generate more traffic

Finally watched the Dsouza/Hitchens debate...

Very interesting...many of Hitchens' arguments against Christianity were based on a penal substitutionary model of Salvation (i.e. Christ suffered indignity on the Cross in order to satisfy God's honor). Dsouza got him though in saying that Christianity is not about the suffering of Christ as much as the Resurrection. Meanwhile somewhere someone is coming up with good Orthodox rebuttals to atheist presumptions.

Speaking of which...
Is there something within the scientific method that predicts the future? Is there something scientific about self righteous assertion? Simply saying "any self-respecting individual would see...." does not prove anything when said within the collected inheritance of overwhelming religious civilization. Moreover, nothing within science says that science will solve everything. Science can connect the dots but only a leap of secular faith can allow the assertion that all the dots in the universe will be connected someday. More thoughts forthcoming...

-Steve K