hope wins 1

there are always this judicial contrast between love and death, forgiveness and judgement, (and/or gandhi and hitler’s whereabouts); quoting Leithart in his article:

The verse that everyone recognizes as the Song’s theme (8:6) gives the poem a cosmic scope. Love’s strength is comparable to relentless forces of decay and destruction—death (Hebrew, mot) and Sheol. Love is no ordinary fire, but a flash from the very “flame of Yah.” “Mot” is the name of a Canaanite deity, so the conflict of Love and Death is a war of gods.

the spatial reign

In all paradoxes of faith; God-and-man, already-and-not-yet, predestination-and-free-will, perichoresis is a persistent motif. There is also a subtle paradox in the believer’s body as a temple and temple as the body of Christ (Eastern Theosis+Western Ecclesiology?).

centripetal

in the central locus of the christian faith stands not an idea, not an abstraction, but a person-in-flesh.

if the enfleshment of the incarnate son is truly human, then the faith that arranges itself around his life is too, a faith of humanity.

when, instead of the Son, an abstraction such as “salvation” and “personal relationship” becomes the christianity’s defining lemma, the god in that faith is no longer human, no longer in-carnate.

without the enfleshed christ, i wonder what are the “salvation salesmen” trying to sell anyway? a empty bubble? maybe they are trying to trigger Occupy Pews.

the very humanity of incarnation: that mary was pregnant before marriage- is the solidarity of God to His creation; and the faithfulness of the fellow human to the marginalized people.

semper

we have just passed reformation day last month, and this year is the 400th anniversary of the KJV.

KJV borrows heavily from Tyndale’s translation; who famously said “If God spare my life, before many years I will cause a boy that drives the plough to know more of Scripture than you do.”: a liberation of Scripture from its exclusive clergy use to the masses, or laity. So the reformation brought both liberty and responsibility of interpretation to all belivers, not just clergy.

templar

1. so we went to cambodia to see angkor wat. (and vietnam, to see ha long bay- cool stuff!) probably all our future trips will be unesco heritage-related? we’ll see.