Friday 15 June 2007
next house group - 27th june
our next house group will be on 27th june - we will be watching a c4 documentary about the situation in Israel/Palestine, this is being done by ron liddle, the same person who did the documentary we watched about athisism
Thursday 7 June 2007
Three ways to make sense of one God | Ekklesia
This is an interesting (and quite long) article about the Trinity.
Three ways to make sense of one God | Ekklesia: "For example, I once heard a well-known theologian wrily observe that grasping Trinitarian language is not too difficult... once you realize that ‘one’ and ‘three’ aren’t numbers in a sequence (but rather ways of speaking of a singularity embracing beyond the merely numerical); that ‘persons’ in the Trinity are not human persons (the Greek means something like dramaturgical ‘masks’ or ‘appearances’, and was deliberately chosen to avoid what we now denote by ‘personalness’); and that ‘substance’ applied to God doesn’t mean ‘stuff’ (but true essence beyond our knowledge of ‘thingness’)!"
...
All of which brings us to that remarkable and famous icon about the Trinity painted around 1410 by Andrei Rublev. If we are swimming intellectually, this image will, I hope, begin to make what is being said more approachable. First, let’s be clear, this isn’t (as the untrained modern eye might assume), a representation of ‘God in three figures’ - a sort of celestial tea-party. Absolutely not. An icon is something to look through, not at. You need to go beyond the immediate appearance to ‘see’ what is ‘hidden within and beyond it’, so to speak. In this case, the three gold-winged figures are the visitors encountered by Abraham as he camps by the oak of Mamre. As he talks with them he finds himself mysteriously in conversation with God through being drawn into their curious communion, symbolized by the chalice. This only works if the picture, like the doctrine, is figurative – the opposite of what our modern minds fear, thank God, which is naive ‘literalness’.
Three ways to make sense of one God | Ekklesia: "For example, I once heard a well-known theologian wrily observe that grasping Trinitarian language is not too difficult... once you realize that ‘one’ and ‘three’ aren’t numbers in a sequence (but rather ways of speaking of a singularity embracing beyond the merely numerical); that ‘persons’ in the Trinity are not human persons (the Greek means something like dramaturgical ‘masks’ or ‘appearances’, and was deliberately chosen to avoid what we now denote by ‘personalness’); and that ‘substance’ applied to God doesn’t mean ‘stuff’ (but true essence beyond our knowledge of ‘thingness’)!"
...
All of which brings us to that remarkable and famous icon about the Trinity painted around 1410 by Andrei Rublev. If we are swimming intellectually, this image will, I hope, begin to make what is being said more approachable. First, let’s be clear, this isn’t (as the untrained modern eye might assume), a representation of ‘God in three figures’ - a sort of celestial tea-party. Absolutely not. An icon is something to look through, not at. You need to go beyond the immediate appearance to ‘see’ what is ‘hidden within and beyond it’, so to speak. In this case, the three gold-winged figures are the visitors encountered by Abraham as he camps by the oak of Mamre. As he talks with them he finds himself mysteriously in conversation with God through being drawn into their curious communion, symbolized by the chalice. This only works if the picture, like the doctrine, is figurative – the opposite of what our modern minds fear, thank God, which is naive ‘literalness’.
Sunday 3 June 2007
next house group 13 june - the trap
just a general reminder, next house group will be 13th june, not 6th as far too many people away on the 6th.
we will be watching the documentry "the trap"
we will be watching the documentry "the trap"
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