Liturgy as a Form of Knowing: Part 1 - Sensual Experience

I was watching a little video clip (it isn't really that little, it's an hour long) between Alister McGrath and Richard Dawkins where McGrath essentially attempts to argue that the Christian faith is "reasonable." I quit pretty early on, as I grow bored from what I perceive to be futile attempts to reconcile Christianity with an empiricist, rationalist version of Modern philosophy. That is, I do not believe that Christianity will ever be rational in terms of modernism. It will never be supportable by empirical evidence. It will never be "certain" in any meaningful sense of the term when playing by the rules of so-called "objectivity." One will always have to fall to the default position of having faith in the unprovable and unsupportable idea that God became human, died, and rose again from the dead after 3 days. It is simply indefensible, and there is no evidence we can submit which would somehow make it a reasonable or rational thing to believe.

However, I want to contend in this and the next post that concrete evidence is not the only form of evidence that humans function from. Instead, sensory evidence - that is, what we experience - is every bit as powerful (and valid) a form of knowledge. I will use love to make this point.

Evolution: Is Death the Consequence of Sin

Often times Romans 5 and Genesis 3 are cited as proof-texts which are supposed to show that death didn't exist before The Fall.

Here I offer some quick thoughts on interpreting Paul in Romans 5 which refutes this proof, locating Romans 5 more accurately within the wider Pauline theology, and specifically within the argument of Romans as a whole.

http://www.naznet.com/community/showthread.php/8506-Is-Death-the-Consequence-of-Sin?p=142707&viewfull=1#post142707

Others deal with Genesis 3. Enjoy!

Some Thoughts on Marriage and Sexuality

First of all, I want to give a big congratulations to my very dear friend, Corey Fuller, and his lovely wife, Lauren (whom I also consider a friend!) on their life
together, and their beautiful celebration of and commitment to that yesterday.

Oddly enough, I had a conversation with another good friend about marriage on the drive up to Rancho Cucamonga, and these conversations intersected as I thought about their marriage, other marriages, and the culture of marriage and sexuality in much of the Christian culture around which I grew up. However, to get there, I'm going to need to set the stage.... (just so everyone knows, I will not use gender neutral language throughout this post, because I am a male, and will speak as I identify, and as I have experienced these conversations).

Born Again and Exegetical Selectivity

I was sitting at Pizza Port, drinking a pint of Flying Dog Kujo, and a woman asked me about my tattoo on my left arm. I ended up entertaining a conversation I knew full-well that I shouldn't have entertained. The woman and her husband were good Evangelical Christians. Now, there's nothing wrong with evangelical Christians, nor with being such. However, I knew that eventually they'd ask questions about what I believe, and that never goes as well as some might imagine. 


So, eventually the conversation made its way around to what we all know it was leading to.... and she asked me "Are you born again?" However, this question came at an interesting point in the conversation, where her and her husband had attempted to use wedding ceremony practices to talk about the significance of communion, as a way of saying that it has no significance other than memorialist purposes. After all, it is by believing in Jesus that we're saved, so, am I born again?