Sunday 10 May 2009

Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire

by Brian J. Walsh & Sylvia C. Keesmaat

Good fun, if occasionally quite hard work! You'd want to be a little versed in post-modernity to get the best out if it. I like the conclusions they come to but I'm not completely convinced they they can come to them from Colossians, still feels at time that we want to make the bible (or in this case Paul) agree with us rather than accept that maybe he got it wrong :-)

random quotes
... the danger of wanting a god, without being willing to allow this god to speak in a voice that is radically other to our voice, is that the god we end up with is like any other consumer product we take of the shelf (p34).
... a worldview is only as good as the praxis or way of life that it engenders (p113).
There can be no indubitable foundation of knowledge, no uninterpreted experience, no completely transparent reading of the world. (Miroslav Volf) (p122)
We can probably tell as much about the real spirituality and the real worldview of a people by looking at the cars they drive, the food they consume, the gadgets that fill their homes and the garbage they throw out as we can by listening to the songs they sing and the prayers they pray (199)

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