Иконописмека мебел Tom Wright talks about the orthodox church and its view on Hell.

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Kester Brewin says the following in his letter to the church in North America : if you want to find the Kingdom of Heaven, you’re going to have to abandon your pursuit of paradise. In other words, the purified utopian ideal is dangerous; God is found in the dirt of the incarnation.

It certainly could be a letter to us in the North too..

“By acknowledging that all our readings are located in a cultural context and have certain prejudices, we understand that engaging the Bible can never mean that we simply extract meaning from it, but also that we read meaning into it. In being faithful to the text we must move away from the naive attempt to read it from some neutral, heavenly height and we must attempt to read it as one who has been born of God and thus born of love: for that is the prejudice of God.

Here the ideal of scripture reading as a type of scientific objectivity is replaced by an approach that creatively interprets with love.”

–Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God

Should we always ask “what do they believe?”

Brian Mclaren has some brilliant things to say taken from the conversation above.

“When I read a book, or listen to music, I’m not always asking “What do they believe?” I’m asking, “What do they have to say to me?” I’m not requiring them to agree with me (and me to agree with them) for me to be stimulated by what they have to say. To me, there is a peculiar problem in a lot of religious readers where their approach is, “I don’t care what the person might have to say to me.

I want to know if he’s right.” And, so they go into the reading and discussion experience with an assumption that they are already right, that they already see things the way they should be. And they’re going through with a checklist. The experience of that for a writer (and for pastoring and preaching), is when you’re in the presence of those people is that it feels like an inquisition. They’re doing a kind of constant heresy hunt. My personal feeling is that there is a place for that. But maybe we could say, “those who live by the sword die by the sword,” i.e., “those who live by boundary maintenance die by boundary maintenance,…those who live by heresy hunting die by heresy hunting.” It is interesting that people read a book that way. To me, that’s a significant problem.

Regarding “provocative ambiguity,” there is some dimension of that. Soren Kierkegaard said, “It is very hard to use indirect communication when you’re talking to someone who is held in the grip of an illusion.” Because if you tell a person who is so absolutely certain, they have absolute certainty that they’re right, when they’re not right, if you tell them they’re wrong, they just assume you’re wrong. Sometimes when talking to people in an illusion, you have to use indirection. Flannery O’Connor said, “With people who can’t see very well, you have to use very large and strange characters.” I also think that in other places, I’m not trying to pass someone’s test, I’m actually trying to challenge them

to think. And sometimes the ambiguity does help with that.”

The full transcript of this interview can be found here.

Frank Schaeffer is the son of the late theologian and author, Dr.

Francis Schaeffer. He has left his childhood faith(Evangelical Christianity), and work with his father for a different path and faith (he has converted to the faith of the Orthodox Church). He shares some of his thoughts via different media in some of the links below. I have read most of the stuff his father wrote and was at one point drawn to much of his thought. I find it interesting to hear how his son today distances himself from much of what his father believed and taught.

He is a strong critic of the new atheists like Richard Dawlins, Sam Harris,Christopher Hitchens etc and the evangelical right in the States. The critique is actually towards the strong fundamentalism he sees in both of these ways of faith, and the dangerous consequences fundamentalism creates.

Frank Schaeffers blog and his homepage.

A radio interview with Frank Schaeffer

Peter Rollins brings his Insurrection Tour to a close in Brooklyn, New York.

As always he asks some good questions and brings ideas and thoughts to the table that might be worth contemplating for a minute or two.

Listen to him here.

or watch him below;

Peter Rollins at Baylor University from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.