So things never seem to slow down, but this week I've got a lot to try to finish up including a paper and applying for Advanced Placement classes and starting to research some Ph.D. stuff. After some discussion with our academic dean and a couple professors, I am considering to possibly continue my studies. Anybody have any recommendations of schools, professors, programs, etc.? Anybody know how to even start this process? I figure I will spend some time researching schools, examining programs and seeing what might be a good fit for what I'd like to study and the type of professors I'd get to work with. But really, I have no idea what I'm doing, and I don't even know where to start.
The academic dean who got the ball rolling with me, asking me to at least "consider" working on a doctorate, thought that Philosophy or Philosophy for Theology, or Philosophy of Religion, or Doctorate of Theology (at Duke) were some programs to consider....I'm not that smart, so I have no idea if any of this will work, or if I'll have the energy to go on for further studies. Yet at the same time, if i do want to continue to do this whole "pastoring" thing, I would like to be able to work and financially be more independent from having to be dependent on a church and the bulk of the community's tithes going towards running an organization. I think teaching could be a great job, and I'd love to consider teaching alongside pastoring.
Maybe I'm just crazy though. I'm pretty sure I am.
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Monday, October 16, 2006
Plato and the Sovereignty of God
so over on some message boards that i hang out at every once and a while to try to be in conversation and to have a chance to write out some of my theology with people who i expect will disagree and with whom i would also usually disagree with also had started a discussion about the notion of the age of accountability, and most of the people at the board starting explaining two things that are very reformed and very Calvinist.
1. Children and babies are born into sin, and though we hope God will judge them mercifully, we don't know what will happen to them.
2. It is God's prerogative as to how he'd like to deal with these children and babies who die at young ages, and who are we to question God or his judgments.
both of these notions scare the crap out of me, and tell me a lot of what these folks think about God and his wrath, and they pose a huge unbreakable (and unchallengeable) wall of God's sovereignty in between God's relationship with humanity. talking about this stuff of course led into a discussion of hermeneutics, a time of defining what the gospel "really is", sin, and on and on about things that really probably can't happen on message boards or blogs because it is like trying to smash what takes some theologians 13 volumes to say in a few really loooong posts. which is dumb too because i am still deconstructing a lot of my own theology anyway, so i'm learning what i think often as i write...
but tonight in philosophy for theology, we were discussing Plato's allegory of the cave and a passage stuck out to me that helps illuminate how intertwined the reformed doctrine of the sovereignty of God and Platonic order of realities are:
"And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavouring to meet the conceptions of those who have never seen absolute justice?
Anything but surprising, he replied."
There is this question seen here in Plato's writings that who do the visible beings think they are trying to believe that they understand the Idea of justice from the highest Good? Who are they to question the Good, for their feeble minds are seeing but reflections of the shadows or perhaps the images of justice, but not the idea of justice...
and this reminds me of the reformed doctrine that tries to say through omission, that who are we to question God, if it is of God's desire to send little children and babies to hell, God is able to make such decisions...but in making these claims, we fail to think about what this actually says about the nature of God and how God acts. can we not say that we don't believe that this is how a good God, who pursues and longs to be in relationship with his creation would act?
1. Children and babies are born into sin, and though we hope God will judge them mercifully, we don't know what will happen to them.
2. It is God's prerogative as to how he'd like to deal with these children and babies who die at young ages, and who are we to question God or his judgments.
both of these notions scare the crap out of me, and tell me a lot of what these folks think about God and his wrath, and they pose a huge unbreakable (and unchallengeable) wall of God's sovereignty in between God's relationship with humanity. talking about this stuff of course led into a discussion of hermeneutics, a time of defining what the gospel "really is", sin, and on and on about things that really probably can't happen on message boards or blogs because it is like trying to smash what takes some theologians 13 volumes to say in a few really loooong posts. which is dumb too because i am still deconstructing a lot of my own theology anyway, so i'm learning what i think often as i write...
but tonight in philosophy for theology, we were discussing Plato's allegory of the cave and a passage stuck out to me that helps illuminate how intertwined the reformed doctrine of the sovereignty of God and Platonic order of realities are:
"And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavouring to meet the conceptions of those who have never seen absolute justice?
Anything but surprising, he replied."
There is this question seen here in Plato's writings that who do the visible beings think they are trying to believe that they understand the Idea of justice from the highest Good? Who are they to question the Good, for their feeble minds are seeing but reflections of the shadows or perhaps the images of justice, but not the idea of justice...
and this reminds me of the reformed doctrine that tries to say through omission, that who are we to question God, if it is of God's desire to send little children and babies to hell, God is able to make such decisions...but in making these claims, we fail to think about what this actually says about the nature of God and how God acts. can we not say that we don't believe that this is how a good God, who pursues and longs to be in relationship with his creation would act?
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