Aphorism of the Day, June 30, 2017
In a paradigm change, a new paradigm provides solutions to problems or issues which a former paradigm could not provide. What issue was resolved in the switch from the synagogue paradigm to the church paradigm? Why could not the "rabbinical school" of Jesus continue under the umbrella of the synagogue? It perhaps had to do with the mode of adapting to living in the cities of the Roman Empire. Jews and Christians essentially lost their "land of origin" and lived in the semi-voluntary exile diaspora. To experience intimate religious sociality in the church or the synagogue, what was required? The church made accessible intimate religious sociality for Gentile citizenry better than the synagogue did. Gentiles had to give up more of their lifestyle patterns to join the synagogue than to join the church. Ironically, the Christians which so often proclaimed being "separate" from the world compromised the external markers of "Jewish" separation from the Gentile world, namely the ritual purity requirements.
Aphorism of the Day, June 29, 2017
The goal of evangelism is to be welcomed into someone's life after giving them the good news for their spiritual transformation. It is like the goal of hospitality, to put people at ease, to make their presence comfortable and to arise to the level of communion, called fellowship, because hearts have been mutually converted in the sharing of common good news.
Aphorism of the Day, June 28, 2017
Jesus to the Twelve: "Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me." The New Testament is evidence of a new faith paradigm being born. This new faith paradigm created a new hermeneutical circle. If a person was converted and persuaded by a rather radical reinterpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures as found in the Christian mission, then people with shared persuasions experience a mutual welcome. Welcome is a sign of acceptance and if the Gospel was not universally accepted, the apostles were encouraged to register "being welcome" as a sign that the message of Christ was also welcome.
Aphorism of the Day, June 27, 2017
Paul wrote about sin: "Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions." While sin comes from a Greek archery term of missing the mark, in St. Paul, sin also came to be the experience of the loss of self control of one's desires. A projected desire is "fixed" upon some object and repetition of projected desire upon the object enslaved one into behaviors of addiction. The feeling of being out of control was written by Paul as being dominated by sin which seems to attain the status of being a personal force. Sin becomes known as a personal management issue and sin is known when the state of being out of control occurs.
Aphorism of the Day, June 26, 2017
Hospitality and Welcome of God's messengers was important in the Gospel. The words of Jesus relate that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was actually inhospitality to God's messengers, the ones who had arrived to count the number of righteous people there in order to save them. Unfortunately Sodom has become wrongly associated with how inhospitality was expressed in a specific event and not the inhospitality itself which has many forms of expression.
Aphorism of the Day, June 25, 2017
The words of the Gospel often reveal evidence of the painful separation of Christianity from Judaism. This separation once adjusted to, meant that each community came to have different missions within the world even while sharing some significant common themes of God's love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, June 24, 2017
A faith that relies completely upon God's grace is often pitted against a faith that necessarily manifests itself in the performing of good works. Paul wrote, "Should we then sin just to prove that it is God's grace and not our works?" Certainly not. It is true that we are never in a performative state to say that we don't need grace. We are not in a performative state to say that we didn't have grace to live and be. That we have grace to perform works of love and kindness means that we still have to choose the gift and manifest a cumulative improvement in perfection. If there is grace for us to be better today than yesterday, then we must choose to be better. By choosing to be better we end up instantiating grace in our work and thus reveal that faith and works are not inherently opposing dynamics of humility of pride.
Aphorism of the Day, June 23, 2017
The Gospels include evidence of the harsh language of persons in different interpretative communities in doctrinal battle. People were even challenged to choose between their family members and their faith commitment to follow Christ. The irony of Jesus as Prince of Peace is that the separation of the Christian Movement from Judaism was not all that peaceful. How is it that a community based upon words of "loving one's enemies" ended up in creating "enmity" between synagogue and church? Christians and Jews at some point had to admit that their missions were significantly different to the point of being unable to gather as unified worshipers. The oracle words of Christ in the early churches represent the justification for the separation.
Aphorism of the Day, June 22, 2017
Losing one's life and taking up one's cross are familiar phrases in the Gospel and if one took them in a physical sense, one might think that early Christian fervor invited martyrdom. Losing one's life or psueche life is a metaphor for the spiritual education called metanoia or repentance. Repentance is the process of the continual renewal of the mind. It is amazing how much religious education has to do with teaching "fixed understanding" of the meaning of doctrine rather than the continual renewal of the mind. In the renewing of the mind, nothing is fixed into any final understanding because we live in Time when what seems to be fixed or final gives way to new insights to guide new response in a new context.
Aphorism of the Day, June 21, 2017
The language of the Gospel reveals people of faith in transition, conflict, excommunication and persecution. In this crucible loyalty oaths mark one as being "for us" or "against us." Disagreeing religious people call each other children of the devil or mad. The Gospel writings reveal that in the birth of Christianity out of Judaism, there arose irreconcilable differences between the "parent and child" leading to a "divorce." Probably the cause of the "divorce" was the overwhelming success of Gospel of Jesus Christ creating community among the Gentiles. Following the success of the Gospel among the Gentile meant that what had successfully defined Judaism in the past would not work to integrate and consolidate Gentile followers of Christ into "alt-synagogue" churches. In trying to change the identity of Judaism to accommodate Gentiles, the Christian community lost its "Jewish identity" in being separated from the synagogue but in reinterpreting the Hebrew Scriptures through the Christ-event, Christians wanted to present themselves as legitimate offspring of the Hebrew Scripture tradition.
Aphorism of the Day, June 20, 2017
Newtonian, Einsteinian and Quantum are kinds of physics and they share vocabulary words such as energy, mass and matter but these words have different meaning and nuance within their particular paradigm. So people say the same word but mean something quite different in a different paradigm. The Christian paradigm re-defined and particularized the Hebrew Scripture notion of messiah who in the person of the Risen Christ gave the church permission to dispense with ritual customs of Judaism. When Christians moved the interpretive center of Judaism from the Torah to Jesus as the Christ, a new paradigm of faith was born and a necessary excommunication from the synagogue occurred.
Aphorism of the Day, June 19, 2017
Why can we quote Jesus as saying "Peace be with you," and “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" and not be troubled by the apparent contradiction? Jesus, like all of us, can be presented as living contradictions if we pick and choose from diverse contexts of words said within varying circumstances of life. We also need to appreciate that the Gospel voice of Jesus is likened to an absent ventriloquist speaking from heavenly places as a oracle through the early preachers in the church trying to make sense of the progressive separation of Christianity from Judaism. Family disputes sometimes are not very peaceful. The early preachers were "channeling" Jesus who was saying paradigm shifts are not always peaceful events. The members of the synagogue came to oppose the desire of the followers of Christ to universalize the salvation history originating in the Hebrew Scripture tradition with a strategy of dispensing with the ritual customs of Judaism. The Christ-paradigm made accessible to the Gentiles could not co-exist under the same synagogue roof. All religions proclaim a message of peace; in actual historical practice religious people have been involved in conflicts which do not comport with peace.
Aphorism of the Day, June 18, 2017
When does innovation bring about separation? When is there a paradigm shift? How did St. Paul go from being an observant Jews to dispense with the ritual requirements of Judaism for Gentile followers of Christ? For many Jews, dispensing with the ritual requirements of Judaism would remove one from Judaism. So a Christ-paradigm derived from the paradigm of Judaism but in the new paradigm the figurative meanings of Abraham, Moses, the Law, Israel, David and the prophets became so substantially different as to make it impossible for the followers of Christ to be a part of the synagogue with people who lived and practiced different meanings of their inherited tradition.
Aphorism of the Day, June 17, 2017
Was the laughter of Sarah, wife of Abraham, a laughter of "yeah, right, I'm going to have a baby at my age?" Was it hilarity or a giggle after overhearing her husband and angels (three men) talking about her impending pregnancy? Can we also agree about a comedic element of the story in that the miraculous child born is named "Laughter=Isaac" as a reminder to Sarah about her laughing condition of perhaps disbelief? Fast Forward to St. Paul's Abraham and Sarah: By limiting the God's covenant just to the people of Israel, the notion of Abraham being a Father of many nations was not being fulfilled. St. Paul connected the Christian mission to the Gentile to the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant which had become limited when it in practice had become over-identified with the Jewish people and left many people out because too many Gentiles did not find accessible proselyte conversion to full ritual Judaism.
Aphorism of the Day, June 16, 2017
Part of the early dilemma in the formation of a new faith paradigm expression of the Jesus Movement growing to become a separate "faith" community, was the loss of authentic continuity with the Hebraic/Judaic tradition. In evangelical practice, the followers of Jesus early on dispensed with the ritual purity requirements of Judaism as a tactical response to the success of the message about Jesus to the Gentile population. Liminal "Christianity" was betwixt and between the synagogue with full ritual conformity and extra-synagogue house churches where "kosher" was not required. The external "signs" of Judaism were dispensed with in favor of the interior sign of God's Holy Spirit evident in moral behaviors which did not necessarily include all of the ritual behaviors which the synagogue required to be a ritually observant Jew.
Aphorism of the Day, June 15, 2017
The Gospel according to Jesus was good news for people about their physical and spiritual well-being. Jesus inherited this "good news" tradition from the prophet Isaiah. Gospel has come to be the books in the New Testament with narrative of Jesus. Gospel has become associated with the entire "Christ tradition." We should not ever forget the Isaian roots for "good news=basar." Good news was for the poor and it was comfort for the broken-hearted. We can easily adjust the Gospel as a blessing vindication for the fortunate and forget the Isaian message regarding the Gospel.
Aphorism of the Day, June 14, 2017
The New Testament writings are evidence that the transition from Judaism which included followers of Jesus to separated faith communities, was uneven and filled with hurt and polemics that characterize separation. Religious beliefs and practices became incommensurable between followers of Jesus and those who remained in the synagogue even while followers of Jesus rigorously interpreted Christian practice and mystagogy as being a legitimate interpretive successor/development/innovation of the traditions found in the Hebrew Scriptures. The ironic "mission" to the Jews only in the Gospel is probably diagnostic that Gentile Christianity had compromised so many of the ritual practices of Judaism that there was a special mission to Jews to try to make the case that the Jesus Movement was a legitimate interpretive tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures. The historical fact is that the followers of Jesus refused to follow many of the essential ritual requirements for being identified as a Jew in how the Torah specified the behaviors of one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, June 13, 2017
Jesus is presented as one who looked upon the crowds and saw that they seemed as they were sheep without a shepherd. The number of vulnerable people in our world always outnumbers the number of those who make themselves available to provide shepherding care. The success of the Christian movement was in part due to the relevance of the Christian community and social practices to those who needed care and advocacy in their situations. Significant conversion happens in a person's life when a significant need has been met. Human need meeting kindness in response is the essence of the Gospel.
Aphorism of the Day, June 12, 2017
The Gospel of Matthew records an instruction from Jesus to his 12 disciples to go on a preaching mission to Jews only. This perhaps represents a phase in the early church when it was becoming evident to church leaders that more Gentiles were following Jesus than Jews. The Christian preachers had borrowed and altered so much of the traditions from Hebrew Scriptures to articulate the inclusion of the Gentiles, they discovered the alterations were no longer acceptable to those who stayed in the synagogue. When early Christians realized that they had removed Jesus from being accepted within the synagogue traditions, they needed a preaching mission to the Jews to reassert the relevancy of Jesus as continuous with the Hebrew Scripture traditions.
Aphorism of the Day, June 11, 2017
God as Father in the Hebrew Scripture seems to be metaphor of the creator whereas God as Father in Trinitarian Christianity is a "personal" Father. How did it come for God to have personhood? It probably comes because of humanity expresses itself mainly in personal relational terms. Personhood defines humanity so the divine must involve the analogical superlative case of Personhood, from whence came the human definition of personhood.
Aphorism of the Day, June 10, 2017
Innovation can be an ironic notion. Innovation might seem to be something completely new or innovation might be the discovery of something that has always already been. Is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity an innovation in thinking and talking about God? How did the Trinity exists before Jesus was born? Christian expositors of the Trinity end up presenting how the Trinity was involved in creation and yet at the same time have time specific appearance of the Son and the Spirit. How does one reconcile the always already of God's unchangeable nature with how and when people have come to understand a "fuller" presentation of God's nature.
Aphorism of the Day, June 9, 2017
To say that the Trinity is a mystery might sound like a humble confession, but really everything is a mystery in face of infinite context or the relation of anyone given word or thing to every other given thing or word. In space a widening horizon entails greater encompassing area contain more for greater context. In Time, the future includes the ever-changing conditions of synchronicity. It really is not a surprising mystery to say that we don't know what we don't and can't know with a precision of having control of all that we think that we can know. Infinity is what comes to language when we want a discourse of totality to function in a meaningful way to say that we are always already together with everything else. The potential of universal relevance is part of what is assumed when we use language even though universal relevance cannot be empirically verified.
Aphorism of the Day, June 8, 2017
In the human history of how people have spoken about God the names and attributes of God represented significant anthropomorphism since analogically, these names and attributes designate valorized human virtues. What gives humanity the right to elevate such anthropomorphisms about God to the level of "revelation?" Ultimately, theology is "all too human" in that we accept all experience of God as human experience of God. The understanding of Jesus as fully divine is the "divine humanism" of elevating human experience to being a valid way to know God who is "beyond" human experience.
Aphorism of the Day, June 7, 2017
It is easy to underestimate the administrative value and function of how one's community faith is articulated. Truth has no administrative function if there are not enough people involved to comprise a critical mass for organization and institutionalization. A task of the "teaching" church, once the Gospel communities were becoming popular, was to reduce the narrative of Scripture and church traditions to teaching devices resulting in canons and creed. Such devices are necessary abbreviations of narrative and extended Pauline teaching. The purpose of an abbreviation is not to limit the focus upon the abbreviation but rather to refer to the fuller referent of the abbreviation. The doctrine of the Trinity is an inviting abbreviation to discover oneself to share childhood of God with Jesus and to adopt the relational language of Jesus that he used regarding the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, June 6, 2017
The Holy Trinity arose as a teaching and creedal confession in the early centuries of Christianity. When the Christian movement was successful, institutionalizing the message for maximum inculcating purposes was required. Standardization and administration of Christian "truths" was necessary for the organization of the community of faith that had grown. Bishop scholars, most of whom were trained in Greek philosophy, used their academic backgrounds to parse from the New Testament narratives and writings and available traditions a standardized presentation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is as though the 16 names used for God in Hebrew Scriptures get funneled into three Personalities. Obviously divine immanence gets new definition in the life of Jesus and the actual personal effects of the Holy Spirit experienced in the lives of Christians. When Jesus was no longer visible how could the church account for the "lingering continuing traces" of Christ in their lives? Answer: the Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, June 5, 2017
The evolution of God-talk to speak about God as Trinity was an inevitability in the recovery of what was always already assumed in God-talk, namely, that what can be reported or revealed about anything is a human experience. How and why do humanity reach a consensus of sorts to accept human experience as a valid way to understand a non-human Being such as God? The truth of geocentrism is really anthropocentrism and such can be the radical pride of a limited humanism or it can be the humility of accepting the prison of human experience as a valid way to affirm the reality of God. The co-extensivity of human experience qua having language and knowing God is what makes the Trinity undeniably inevitable if one is to speak about God at all. Some like to pretend it valid to lock God into apophasis or "not knowing" to start with God's remoteness. The problem is that apophatic and saying what God is not are still cyphers of language which is having is the essence of being human. The Trinity is the proof that language presupposes both the apophatic and the cataphatic as ways of speaking about God. So the incarnation presume that Word was with God and Word was God and Word creates everything and Word co-inheres with Flesh. How does one elevate human experience as being valid to know a Being that is more than human experience? One assumes a person with a bi-lingual existence of speak God-lect (the dialect of the divine) and human language. In assuming that Jesus could speak the language of God within human experience, one arrives at the unveiling of the obvious, that human experience when it comes to knowing God, is a valid way. This is the elephant in the room in explicating the obviousness of the Trinity.
Aphorism of the Day, June 4, 2017
The Holy Spirit is the built in possibility for the highest of a natural high. Our current opioid epidemic highlights the fact that we are trained in our societies to seek the sublime in ways that lead to addiction rather than to know the natural child like ecstasy and joy that is so close at hand because our interpretive functions have been misled and so we don't know natural ecstasy anymore; we have let surrogate replacement of the sublime take over and leave us addicted and empty. The Day of Pentecost is a day to remember that we have access to the image of God in our lives, the Holy Spirit. But it is more important that we know that the Holy Spirit has access to us and is an abiding advocate in and through us and let us hope that we are getting out of the way and letting the Spirit inspire our lives to be expressions of love, joy, peace, patience, hope, gentleness, self-control and faith.
Aphorism of the Day, June 3, 2017
What has been the common sign of life for people of all time? Breathing. Breath is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit. It is the unseen wind created by the bellows of drawing and releasing of air through the automatic actions that take place in the chest and the abdomen. Having breath means having life. Wind is also a metaphor for the Holy Spirit. All Creation is teeming with the invisible Wind of Life who conducts the possibility for all mutual experience. There is something more universal in the sign value of the Holy Spirit than there is in Father or Jesus Christ. Why? Jesus Christ is limited by the historical context; the notion of Father has gender limitations but Spirit as the unseen and abiding reality of God's omnipresence has greater cross cultural sign value because Breathing is a universal sign of life. Let us give the Spirit, the Spirit's signifying due on the Day of Pentecost.
Aphorism of the Day, June 2, 2017
Pentecost is an event expressing the aspiration for what can truly be "catholic" about the experience of God. Catholic means "on the whole" and in practice it has come to mean "obeying what the pope or your bishop say you should do to tow the party line," which of course reduces "catholic" from meaning on the whole or universal to having the outer appearance of religiosity according to one's own specific setting. The Holy Spirit can be known as the indwelling nature of God to be found in everyone beyond local appearance or variations and therefore it the essence of genuine catholicity as it pertains to an accessible God. With the Holy Spirit, we can believe that God needs no "gate keepers" forbidding God's children to the one and only "official" view and outward signs of "knowing" God. The Holy Spirit, more importantly is God knowing us by indwelling us and we are blessed and encourage when flares of apparent occurrences of "Holy Spirit events" lure us to express more completely the basic image of God which resides upon our lives, especially as we achieve love and justice in actual behaviors.
Aphorism of the Day, June 1, 2017
In a paradigm change, a new paradigm provides solutions to problems or issues which a former paradigm could not provide. What issue was resolved in the switch from the synagogue paradigm to the church paradigm? Why could not the "rabbinical school" of Jesus continue under the umbrella of the synagogue? It perhaps had to do with the mode of adapting to living in the cities of the Roman Empire. Jews and Christians essentially lost their "land of origin" and lived in the semi-voluntary exile diaspora. To experience intimate religious sociality in the church or the synagogue, what was required? The church made accessible intimate religious sociality for Gentile citizenry better than the synagogue did. Gentiles had to give up more of their lifestyle patterns to join the synagogue than to join the church. Ironically, the Christians which so often proclaimed being "separate" from the world compromised the external markers of "Jewish" separation from the Gentile world, namely the ritual purity requirements.
Aphorism of the Day, June 29, 2017
The goal of evangelism is to be welcomed into someone's life after giving them the good news for their spiritual transformation. It is like the goal of hospitality, to put people at ease, to make their presence comfortable and to arise to the level of communion, called fellowship, because hearts have been mutually converted in the sharing of common good news.
Aphorism of the Day, June 28, 2017
Jesus to the Twelve: "Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me." The New Testament is evidence of a new faith paradigm being born. This new faith paradigm created a new hermeneutical circle. If a person was converted and persuaded by a rather radical reinterpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures as found in the Christian mission, then people with shared persuasions experience a mutual welcome. Welcome is a sign of acceptance and if the Gospel was not universally accepted, the apostles were encouraged to register "being welcome" as a sign that the message of Christ was also welcome.
Aphorism of the Day, June 27, 2017
Paul wrote about sin: "Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions." While sin comes from a Greek archery term of missing the mark, in St. Paul, sin also came to be the experience of the loss of self control of one's desires. A projected desire is "fixed" upon some object and repetition of projected desire upon the object enslaved one into behaviors of addiction. The feeling of being out of control was written by Paul as being dominated by sin which seems to attain the status of being a personal force. Sin becomes known as a personal management issue and sin is known when the state of being out of control occurs.
Aphorism of the Day, June 26, 2017
Hospitality and Welcome of God's messengers was important in the Gospel. The words of Jesus relate that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was actually inhospitality to God's messengers, the ones who had arrived to count the number of righteous people there in order to save them. Unfortunately Sodom has become wrongly associated with how inhospitality was expressed in a specific event and not the inhospitality itself which has many forms of expression.
Aphorism of the Day, June 25, 2017
The words of the Gospel often reveal evidence of the painful separation of Christianity from Judaism. This separation once adjusted to, meant that each community came to have different missions within the world even while sharing some significant common themes of God's love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, June 24, 2017
A faith that relies completely upon God's grace is often pitted against a faith that necessarily manifests itself in the performing of good works. Paul wrote, "Should we then sin just to prove that it is God's grace and not our works?" Certainly not. It is true that we are never in a performative state to say that we don't need grace. We are not in a performative state to say that we didn't have grace to live and be. That we have grace to perform works of love and kindness means that we still have to choose the gift and manifest a cumulative improvement in perfection. If there is grace for us to be better today than yesterday, then we must choose to be better. By choosing to be better we end up instantiating grace in our work and thus reveal that faith and works are not inherently opposing dynamics of humility of pride.
Aphorism of the Day, June 23, 2017
The Gospels include evidence of the harsh language of persons in different interpretative communities in doctrinal battle. People were even challenged to choose between their family members and their faith commitment to follow Christ. The irony of Jesus as Prince of Peace is that the separation of the Christian Movement from Judaism was not all that peaceful. How is it that a community based upon words of "loving one's enemies" ended up in creating "enmity" between synagogue and church? Christians and Jews at some point had to admit that their missions were significantly different to the point of being unable to gather as unified worshipers. The oracle words of Christ in the early churches represent the justification for the separation.
Aphorism of the Day, June 22, 2017
Losing one's life and taking up one's cross are familiar phrases in the Gospel and if one took them in a physical sense, one might think that early Christian fervor invited martyrdom. Losing one's life or psueche life is a metaphor for the spiritual education called metanoia or repentance. Repentance is the process of the continual renewal of the mind. It is amazing how much religious education has to do with teaching "fixed understanding" of the meaning of doctrine rather than the continual renewal of the mind. In the renewing of the mind, nothing is fixed into any final understanding because we live in Time when what seems to be fixed or final gives way to new insights to guide new response in a new context.
Aphorism of the Day, June 21, 2017
The language of the Gospel reveals people of faith in transition, conflict, excommunication and persecution. In this crucible loyalty oaths mark one as being "for us" or "against us." Disagreeing religious people call each other children of the devil or mad. The Gospel writings reveal that in the birth of Christianity out of Judaism, there arose irreconcilable differences between the "parent and child" leading to a "divorce." Probably the cause of the "divorce" was the overwhelming success of Gospel of Jesus Christ creating community among the Gentiles. Following the success of the Gospel among the Gentile meant that what had successfully defined Judaism in the past would not work to integrate and consolidate Gentile followers of Christ into "alt-synagogue" churches. In trying to change the identity of Judaism to accommodate Gentiles, the Christian community lost its "Jewish identity" in being separated from the synagogue but in reinterpreting the Hebrew Scriptures through the Christ-event, Christians wanted to present themselves as legitimate offspring of the Hebrew Scripture tradition.
Aphorism of the Day, June 20, 2017
Newtonian, Einsteinian and Quantum are kinds of physics and they share vocabulary words such as energy, mass and matter but these words have different meaning and nuance within their particular paradigm. So people say the same word but mean something quite different in a different paradigm. The Christian paradigm re-defined and particularized the Hebrew Scripture notion of messiah who in the person of the Risen Christ gave the church permission to dispense with ritual customs of Judaism. When Christians moved the interpretive center of Judaism from the Torah to Jesus as the Christ, a new paradigm of faith was born and a necessary excommunication from the synagogue occurred.
Aphorism of the Day, June 19, 2017
Why can we quote Jesus as saying "Peace be with you," and “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" and not be troubled by the apparent contradiction? Jesus, like all of us, can be presented as living contradictions if we pick and choose from diverse contexts of words said within varying circumstances of life. We also need to appreciate that the Gospel voice of Jesus is likened to an absent ventriloquist speaking from heavenly places as a oracle through the early preachers in the church trying to make sense of the progressive separation of Christianity from Judaism. Family disputes sometimes are not very peaceful. The early preachers were "channeling" Jesus who was saying paradigm shifts are not always peaceful events. The members of the synagogue came to oppose the desire of the followers of Christ to universalize the salvation history originating in the Hebrew Scripture tradition with a strategy of dispensing with the ritual customs of Judaism. The Christ-paradigm made accessible to the Gentiles could not co-exist under the same synagogue roof. All religions proclaim a message of peace; in actual historical practice religious people have been involved in conflicts which do not comport with peace.
Aphorism of the Day, June 18, 2017
When does innovation bring about separation? When is there a paradigm shift? How did St. Paul go from being an observant Jews to dispense with the ritual requirements of Judaism for Gentile followers of Christ? For many Jews, dispensing with the ritual requirements of Judaism would remove one from Judaism. So a Christ-paradigm derived from the paradigm of Judaism but in the new paradigm the figurative meanings of Abraham, Moses, the Law, Israel, David and the prophets became so substantially different as to make it impossible for the followers of Christ to be a part of the synagogue with people who lived and practiced different meanings of their inherited tradition.
Aphorism of the Day, June 17, 2017
Was the laughter of Sarah, wife of Abraham, a laughter of "yeah, right, I'm going to have a baby at my age?" Was it hilarity or a giggle after overhearing her husband and angels (three men) talking about her impending pregnancy? Can we also agree about a comedic element of the story in that the miraculous child born is named "Laughter=Isaac" as a reminder to Sarah about her laughing condition of perhaps disbelief? Fast Forward to St. Paul's Abraham and Sarah: By limiting the God's covenant just to the people of Israel, the notion of Abraham being a Father of many nations was not being fulfilled. St. Paul connected the Christian mission to the Gentile to the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant which had become limited when it in practice had become over-identified with the Jewish people and left many people out because too many Gentiles did not find accessible proselyte conversion to full ritual Judaism.
Aphorism of the Day, June 16, 2017
Part of the early dilemma in the formation of a new faith paradigm expression of the Jesus Movement growing to become a separate "faith" community, was the loss of authentic continuity with the Hebraic/Judaic tradition. In evangelical practice, the followers of Jesus early on dispensed with the ritual purity requirements of Judaism as a tactical response to the success of the message about Jesus to the Gentile population. Liminal "Christianity" was betwixt and between the synagogue with full ritual conformity and extra-synagogue house churches where "kosher" was not required. The external "signs" of Judaism were dispensed with in favor of the interior sign of God's Holy Spirit evident in moral behaviors which did not necessarily include all of the ritual behaviors which the synagogue required to be a ritually observant Jew.
Aphorism of the Day, June 15, 2017
The Gospel according to Jesus was good news for people about their physical and spiritual well-being. Jesus inherited this "good news" tradition from the prophet Isaiah. Gospel has come to be the books in the New Testament with narrative of Jesus. Gospel has become associated with the entire "Christ tradition." We should not ever forget the Isaian roots for "good news=basar." Good news was for the poor and it was comfort for the broken-hearted. We can easily adjust the Gospel as a blessing vindication for the fortunate and forget the Isaian message regarding the Gospel.
Aphorism of the Day, June 14, 2017
The New Testament writings are evidence that the transition from Judaism which included followers of Jesus to separated faith communities, was uneven and filled with hurt and polemics that characterize separation. Religious beliefs and practices became incommensurable between followers of Jesus and those who remained in the synagogue even while followers of Jesus rigorously interpreted Christian practice and mystagogy as being a legitimate interpretive successor/development/innovation of the traditions found in the Hebrew Scriptures. The ironic "mission" to the Jews only in the Gospel is probably diagnostic that Gentile Christianity had compromised so many of the ritual practices of Judaism that there was a special mission to Jews to try to make the case that the Jesus Movement was a legitimate interpretive tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures. The historical fact is that the followers of Jesus refused to follow many of the essential ritual requirements for being identified as a Jew in how the Torah specified the behaviors of one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, June 13, 2017
Jesus is presented as one who looked upon the crowds and saw that they seemed as they were sheep without a shepherd. The number of vulnerable people in our world always outnumbers the number of those who make themselves available to provide shepherding care. The success of the Christian movement was in part due to the relevance of the Christian community and social practices to those who needed care and advocacy in their situations. Significant conversion happens in a person's life when a significant need has been met. Human need meeting kindness in response is the essence of the Gospel.
Aphorism of the Day, June 12, 2017
The Gospel of Matthew records an instruction from Jesus to his 12 disciples to go on a preaching mission to Jews only. This perhaps represents a phase in the early church when it was becoming evident to church leaders that more Gentiles were following Jesus than Jews. The Christian preachers had borrowed and altered so much of the traditions from Hebrew Scriptures to articulate the inclusion of the Gentiles, they discovered the alterations were no longer acceptable to those who stayed in the synagogue. When early Christians realized that they had removed Jesus from being accepted within the synagogue traditions, they needed a preaching mission to the Jews to reassert the relevancy of Jesus as continuous with the Hebrew Scripture traditions.
Aphorism of the Day, June 11, 2017
God as Father in the Hebrew Scripture seems to be metaphor of the creator whereas God as Father in Trinitarian Christianity is a "personal" Father. How did it come for God to have personhood? It probably comes because of humanity expresses itself mainly in personal relational terms. Personhood defines humanity so the divine must involve the analogical superlative case of Personhood, from whence came the human definition of personhood.
Aphorism of the Day, June 10, 2017
Innovation can be an ironic notion. Innovation might seem to be something completely new or innovation might be the discovery of something that has always already been. Is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity an innovation in thinking and talking about God? How did the Trinity exists before Jesus was born? Christian expositors of the Trinity end up presenting how the Trinity was involved in creation and yet at the same time have time specific appearance of the Son and the Spirit. How does one reconcile the always already of God's unchangeable nature with how and when people have come to understand a "fuller" presentation of God's nature.
Aphorism of the Day, June 9, 2017
To say that the Trinity is a mystery might sound like a humble confession, but really everything is a mystery in face of infinite context or the relation of anyone given word or thing to every other given thing or word. In space a widening horizon entails greater encompassing area contain more for greater context. In Time, the future includes the ever-changing conditions of synchronicity. It really is not a surprising mystery to say that we don't know what we don't and can't know with a precision of having control of all that we think that we can know. Infinity is what comes to language when we want a discourse of totality to function in a meaningful way to say that we are always already together with everything else. The potential of universal relevance is part of what is assumed when we use language even though universal relevance cannot be empirically verified.
Aphorism of the Day, June 8, 2017
In the human history of how people have spoken about God the names and attributes of God represented significant anthropomorphism since analogically, these names and attributes designate valorized human virtues. What gives humanity the right to elevate such anthropomorphisms about God to the level of "revelation?" Ultimately, theology is "all too human" in that we accept all experience of God as human experience of God. The understanding of Jesus as fully divine is the "divine humanism" of elevating human experience to being a valid way to know God who is "beyond" human experience.
Aphorism of the Day, June 7, 2017
It is easy to underestimate the administrative value and function of how one's community faith is articulated. Truth has no administrative function if there are not enough people involved to comprise a critical mass for organization and institutionalization. A task of the "teaching" church, once the Gospel communities were becoming popular, was to reduce the narrative of Scripture and church traditions to teaching devices resulting in canons and creed. Such devices are necessary abbreviations of narrative and extended Pauline teaching. The purpose of an abbreviation is not to limit the focus upon the abbreviation but rather to refer to the fuller referent of the abbreviation. The doctrine of the Trinity is an inviting abbreviation to discover oneself to share childhood of God with Jesus and to adopt the relational language of Jesus that he used regarding the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, June 6, 2017
The Holy Trinity arose as a teaching and creedal confession in the early centuries of Christianity. When the Christian movement was successful, institutionalizing the message for maximum inculcating purposes was required. Standardization and administration of Christian "truths" was necessary for the organization of the community of faith that had grown. Bishop scholars, most of whom were trained in Greek philosophy, used their academic backgrounds to parse from the New Testament narratives and writings and available traditions a standardized presentation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is as though the 16 names used for God in Hebrew Scriptures get funneled into three Personalities. Obviously divine immanence gets new definition in the life of Jesus and the actual personal effects of the Holy Spirit experienced in the lives of Christians. When Jesus was no longer visible how could the church account for the "lingering continuing traces" of Christ in their lives? Answer: the Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, June 5, 2017
The evolution of God-talk to speak about God as Trinity was an inevitability in the recovery of what was always already assumed in God-talk, namely, that what can be reported or revealed about anything is a human experience. How and why do humanity reach a consensus of sorts to accept human experience as a valid way to understand a non-human Being such as God? The truth of geocentrism is really anthropocentrism and such can be the radical pride of a limited humanism or it can be the humility of accepting the prison of human experience as a valid way to affirm the reality of God. The co-extensivity of human experience qua having language and knowing God is what makes the Trinity undeniably inevitable if one is to speak about God at all. Some like to pretend it valid to lock God into apophasis or "not knowing" to start with God's remoteness. The problem is that apophatic and saying what God is not are still cyphers of language which is having is the essence of being human. The Trinity is the proof that language presupposes both the apophatic and the cataphatic as ways of speaking about God. So the incarnation presume that Word was with God and Word was God and Word creates everything and Word co-inheres with Flesh. How does one elevate human experience as being valid to know a Being that is more than human experience? One assumes a person with a bi-lingual existence of speak God-lect (the dialect of the divine) and human language. In assuming that Jesus could speak the language of God within human experience, one arrives at the unveiling of the obvious, that human experience when it comes to knowing God, is a valid way. This is the elephant in the room in explicating the obviousness of the Trinity.
Aphorism of the Day, June 4, 2017
The Holy Spirit is the built in possibility for the highest of a natural high. Our current opioid epidemic highlights the fact that we are trained in our societies to seek the sublime in ways that lead to addiction rather than to know the natural child like ecstasy and joy that is so close at hand because our interpretive functions have been misled and so we don't know natural ecstasy anymore; we have let surrogate replacement of the sublime take over and leave us addicted and empty. The Day of Pentecost is a day to remember that we have access to the image of God in our lives, the Holy Spirit. But it is more important that we know that the Holy Spirit has access to us and is an abiding advocate in and through us and let us hope that we are getting out of the way and letting the Spirit inspire our lives to be expressions of love, joy, peace, patience, hope, gentleness, self-control and faith.
Aphorism of the Day, June 3, 2017
What has been the common sign of life for people of all time? Breathing. Breath is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit. It is the unseen wind created by the bellows of drawing and releasing of air through the automatic actions that take place in the chest and the abdomen. Having breath means having life. Wind is also a metaphor for the Holy Spirit. All Creation is teeming with the invisible Wind of Life who conducts the possibility for all mutual experience. There is something more universal in the sign value of the Holy Spirit than there is in Father or Jesus Christ. Why? Jesus Christ is limited by the historical context; the notion of Father has gender limitations but Spirit as the unseen and abiding reality of God's omnipresence has greater cross cultural sign value because Breathing is a universal sign of life. Let us give the Spirit, the Spirit's signifying due on the Day of Pentecost.
Aphorism of the Day, June 2, 2017
Pentecost is an event expressing the aspiration for what can truly be "catholic" about the experience of God. Catholic means "on the whole" and in practice it has come to mean "obeying what the pope or your bishop say you should do to tow the party line," which of course reduces "catholic" from meaning on the whole or universal to having the outer appearance of religiosity according to one's own specific setting. The Holy Spirit can be known as the indwelling nature of God to be found in everyone beyond local appearance or variations and therefore it the essence of genuine catholicity as it pertains to an accessible God. With the Holy Spirit, we can believe that God needs no "gate keepers" forbidding God's children to the one and only "official" view and outward signs of "knowing" God. The Holy Spirit, more importantly is God knowing us by indwelling us and we are blessed and encourage when flares of apparent occurrences of "Holy Spirit events" lure us to express more completely the basic image of God which resides upon our lives, especially as we achieve love and justice in actual behaviors.
Aphorism of the Day, June 1, 2017
Consider the Holy Spirit as the end of all ethnocentrism and racism. The unseen Holy Spirit has no color of skin but inhabits people of any skin color. The Holy Spirit is beyond every provincial marking of tribe, clan, culture or religious appearance. Pentecost is a return to creation in that the Holy Spirit was seen again as moving over the face of deep life of everything and everyone and continuously creating in freedom.
