that is it!

I have had it with trying to get anything to work on this cursed Macintrash. A pox! A pox on it and its demon-spawned children. I have better things to attend to, tomorrow is my name day [the Z] and later in the week is my birthday [I share it with the Mother of God]. I have a quart of guacamole to finish off. I picked up a copy of The Da Vinci Code off the ground for free. I have some "ill beats" to study and comment on. I have to wax the cat. I even have Muslim propaganda to study - the good stuff, not the cheap junk. Bah!

thoughts on dialogue and clash

spurred by Mr Sanchez's wrestling with liberalists on the matter of sexuality and Khatami's remarks on the necessity of dialogue with liberalism [notable is his idea about being wary of how one criticizes liberalism, as liberalism is the de facto religion of the west and a Muslim is not to insult the gods of others because, in so doing, they insult their own God [paraphrase of Khatami]].

Recently, The Reader had a front-page article ["His God doesn't hate fags"] featuring an Evangelical who has made it his "ministry" to enter into dialogue with homosexuals in a non-judgmental fashion and has garnered respect from both avid homosexualists and avid Evangelicals [including Moody, by the way]. In it, the reporter asks him whether homosexuality is, according to the Bible, a sin, and he admits, straight out, that it would be theologically sloppy to say it isn't. The next week, a letter to the editor appeared calling him a bigot and all manner of bad things followed by a call to abandon a Bible which teaches such things because they are based on antiquated and superstitious notions of what is natural. After all, and here's the kicker, masturbation was once considered harmful [or perhaps he said wrong?] and is now considered a normal [or perhaps healthy] part of adolescent development. I must have missed the memo: Christians still believe that masturbation is immoral, too. "Normalcy" is not a scientific label, it is a value judgment. He may even have said "healthy" instead of "normal", but the same is said of health. Science can in no way "prove" one ideal of normalcy or healthfulness is any better than another: these are philosophical questions. To appeal to what is normal or healthy begs the question, the underlying ideals are precisely what we are debating. Anyway: it seems the man being called a bigot is quite capable of dialogue and even occasionally garners the respect of those who could be called his "opponents" if he were clashing rather than dialoguing. Is the failure of dialogue in this instance on his end, or on the end which accuses him of bigotry? The end which assumes its own ideal of healthfulness and normalcy, or the one which only offers its offensive answer as a response to a direct question about theology?

One does what one can and then forgets about it.

Protestants and Muslims

Is there any difference between Protestant ecclesiology and Muslim "ecclesiology"? If there is, there are at least enough similarities when compared to Orthodox or Catholic ecclesiology to make one suspicious. This is certainly also the case when you look at, for example, treatments of scripture among some branches of Protestant [ie, being "people of the book"]. Also: anti-sacramentalism and iconoclasm.

Not that I'm trying to draw too many similarities between them, since Protestants usually baptize in the name of the Trinity, often are Trinitarians, and sometimes have an orthodox Christology. Insofar as they do these things, they are Christians, while Islam is at its best a Christian heresy like Marxism or Mormonism.

only a remnant of them will be saved

baptism, circumcision. the love of God. the love of God. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. walk in the newness of life, united with him in a resurrection like his. little to be said.

the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you

every heresy: a denial of the cross. not understanding sacrifice. Christology is the gospel, it is not academic, it's all the cross and resurrection. what else is there?

Posted Elsewhere.

In response to somebody who insisted that conservative Anglicans were more like the Orthodox than Catholics were, I pointed out that most of the ones I knew were quite Evangelical [especially true on the world scene, see Africa]. Perhaps even "39 Articles" Evangelical. Then he backtracked, saying, no, he meant traditional ones, and gave one example where he had a theological discussion with his girlfriend's priest and could only find one minor theological disagreement with him. Whereas he, when he was ever-so-recently a Catholic preparing for seminary, obviously had to have enough theological differences with Catholicism that he had to leave. My response to those "playing up" the differences between Orthodoxy and Catholicism:

I agree with you that Catholicism is not Orthodoxy and has quite a ways to go until it approaches. But a counterpoint has to be made to those who insist traditional Anglicanism is closer than Catholicism. It's the sort of thing only a recent Catholic convert who doesn't know much about Anglicanism could say. I mean, certainly, there are some Anglicans who are closer than some Catholics and some Catholics who are closer than some Anglicans. No denying that. There may even be some decent-sized pockets which are like that. ... But, seriously, the only things most types of conservative or traditional Anglicanism has in common with Orthodoxy to the exclusion of Catholicism is antinomian tendencies in the name of not being legalists like the Catholics, a secret yearning for schism, an occasional love of vagueness rather than definition in the name of "mystery", and not being popish.

Though I bet most of those differences don't have much truck in Nigeria, except maybe the last. But, in America, with western converts...

Of course, I wasn't being completely honest. I believe Orthodoxy isn't Catholicism and there are several things that would have to change, but it doesn't have "a ways to go". I believe I've commented in the past on this matter, so I'll leave it at that.