Neat Insight into Blogging/Twittering & Real Life

So many good blogs and so little time. I need to get to work but here's a neat snippet from Ambivablog

VI. I still don't think the Internet is a bad drug. On the contrary. The blogosphere and the Twitterverse are places of amazing ferment: a hive mind to which each brings a dab of nectar; a teeming sourdough starter for the next culture. Their genius -- and their jonesiness -- is being at once a place to chatter and brag and play for laughs, as comes so naturally to us tribal primates, and a place of contagion and mutation, an agora where ideas cross-fertilize as fast as viruses swap genes.

It's just that, like anything, it isn't everything. And when it starts to become everything, it's time to turn off, tune out, and drop in. Real life is the mother lode. The more you go there, the more you'll have to bring back.

Ezekiel in a Nutshell

Ezekiel left Jerusalem in 597 BC, taken captive by Babylon.

In about 593 BC he receives his vision of the "chariot" and call to his vocation.

Half way through the book, the major event is the destruction of Jerusalem in about 586 BC.

He puts down his last vision about 571 BC

Major Message: Bad news for folks in Jerusalem

A contrast with Jeremiah: J is emotional and expresses his emotions. He feels. E is not like that. He does not use the words lovingkindness, graciousness, forgiveness, compassion.

Where Jeremiah is disorganized chronologically and a hodgepodge of different genres and sections, Ezekiel's book is the most organized of the prophets.

Jeremiah and the other prophets before him were recorded by others.

Ezekiel actually wrote all or most of the book himself. It is mostly prose. You can sit down and read it and make sense. That is very difficult to do with much of the other prophetic writing. There, one is required to do background study and consultation with commentaries and scholars in order to make any sense of it. The poetic language and oracles take a lot of effort. Of course, it is good to do all of that with Ezekiel too.

He uses "I" a lot. But still he is more detached emotionally. As an example, God does not allow him to express the normal emotions when his wife dies. No mourning or showing sorrow. It is meant to convey how the same will of necessity happen in Jerusalem.

The book of Ezekiel is the best dated of all the prophets. He is careful to give dates quite often.

In the book, there are four major visions, 12 symbolic acts, and 5 parables according to one source I read somewhere.

One theme "Then you shall know I am the Lord" occurs some 65 times.

One important teaching that emerges from E is the responsibility of the individual. Ezekiel 18:20 - the soul that sins shall die. The father is held accountable for the sins of the son and vice versa.

Outline

Chapters 1 - 24 The impending doom to befall Jerusalem.

Chapters 25-32 Oracles against other nations

Chapters 33-39 Oracles of consolation for Israel

Chapters 40-48 The Vision of the New Temple

Ezekiel is distinctive for his visionary experiences. And he gives vivid details.

The vision of the chariot eventually served to ignite Merkabah Mysticism among some Jewish thinkers. The rabbi's reserved the study of this part of Ezekiel only to the mature and properly apprenticed.

Something I think needs to be explored: the apostle Paul's relationship to Jewish mysticism.

The most macabre writing of all the Bible: The Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones.

An obvious effect on the New Testament: clear references in Revelation eg. where Gog and Magog are discussed (see Ezek. 38)

The last section gives a vision of a New Temple and one can almost make a blueprint from it. Then, in rhapsody, he describes a river flowing from the Temple to the east to the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea will begin to host life, fish will thrive. And fruit trees in the desert will grow and produce fruit monthly. Oh what a day that will be. I think this must connect with the gospel of John 4 and John 7 where we have reference to "streams of living water". Rather than physical it is spiritual. Ezekiel must have meant that as well.

Science and the Coming of Christ

OK, I'm gonna leave the postmodern theme of the last couple of posts. Remembering, after all, a lot of it has rightly been called "fashionable nonsense".

I've been fascinated by the book Christology and Science by LeRon Shults and came across this interesting quote that explains what Teilhard de Chardin was up to:

As in our case study on the incarnation and evolutionary biology, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin stands out as one of the early courageous voices to engage these cosmological shifts; many other proposals at the intersection of these sciences have engaged his work to some extent. As a theologian Teilhard wanted to think through the implications of the Pauline idea that Christ will incorporate all things in himself and bring them into relation to the Father so that God will be "all in all" (ICor 15; cf. Eph 1:10 Col. 1:20), and to express this in a way that illuminates our scientific understanding of an evolving universe." page 140.

Some of the relevant Bible passages are below.

Ephesians 1:10

And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. (NIV)


Colossians 1:19-20

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (NIV)


We discussed de Chardin in a class back at Harding many years ago and I remember wondering at the time where he possibly got his idea. I can perceive where this is coming from a little better now.

Modern versus Postmodern Science

I'm seeing this kind of thing more often now. This is lifted from The Postmodern Adventure (see previous post). This author makes a distinction between "modern" science and the type of science that is now developing. According to this type of thinking (and I think they are on to something) the mechanistic science exemplified by Isaac Newton which co-developed with the industrial revolution is giving way to something else, a science characterized as follows:

Many scientists and cosmologists began forsaking modern models of the universe for new paradigms that reject atomistic logic for relational understanding and replace static laws with history and evolution. The new cosmological theories also abandon necessity for contingency, go beyond the logic of simplicity and determinism for new theories of complexity and self-organization, and renounce realism in favor of a hermeneutic approach to scientific understanding. p137

...what is remarkable is the general fact that science, which has done so much to alienate human beings from nature, is now in a position to help reconnect us with the cosmos as it advances ecological and life-sensitive values and challenges modern theories of mechanism, determinism, reductionism, and dualism. p. 139



Could it be that finally, science is now making room for the Spirit?

Gravity's Rainbow and a Postmodern St. Paul

In the year 1976, for reasons I do not remember, I bought and read "Gravity's Rainbow". I'd just completed my course work and qualifying exam for my degree and just getting started on my research. The book was interminably long, disjointed, with a cast of characters I couldn't keep up with and plots within plots, and short vignettes thrown in just for fun, and allusions to a great many things. Thomas Pynchon, the author, covered a lot of ground. But not only was he verbally gifted, he had some education in engineering physics, which it so happens was the degree I was pursuing. Science and technology references and inside jokes were a part of the narrative and it was fun to follow that aspect of the book.

I knew that my comphrehension of the book was greatly lacking. Occasionally through the years, (that was 1/3 of a century ago!), I'd think about getting back to it and re-reading.

When I ordered The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology and Cultural Studies at the end of the Third Millenium I was hoping to learn more about how the postmodern turn to things affects science and technology, after all, that is how I make my living and I'm trying to keep up. I discovered upon receiving the book that the authors devote quite a bit of space to a chapter called Thomas Pynchon and the Advent of Postmodernity. And Gravity's Rainbow is presented as something which "vividly illuminates a phase between the modern and the postmodern. ... In addition, Pynchon's texts exhibit the postmodern turn in the arts, science, and theory, as he cultivates a mode of postmodern writing, epistemology, and vision." p.23


The authors describe how Pynchon presents a character ,Mr. Pointsman, who represents the old "modern" way of thinking, those who condense the world down to a Pavlovian model of stimulus response and a character, Roger Mexico, who is counter to that (postmodern was not a term of use then.) Below is lifted from The Postmodern Adventure (blue) which also contains quotes from Gravity's Rainbow (GR)(in red). The pronoun "His" refers to Pointsman.

"His faith ultimately lay in a pure physiological basis for the life of the psyche. No effect without cause, and a clear train of linkages. Mexico answers that "there's a feeling about that cause-and-effect may have been taken as far as it will go. That for science to carry on at all, it must look for a less narrow, a less ... sterile set of assumptions. The next great breakthrough may come when we have the courage to junk cause-and-effect entirely, and strike off at some other angle" That "other angle" leads to a postmodern science that suspends the modern paradigm for less determinist models."... Thus, GR signals that randomness is a fundamental part of existence, and that underlying connections may not be perceivable or even accessible to the diligent investigator." p 41

Cause and Effect. That is what technology is based on isn't it? My technical training, in my Harding University physics classes and my U. of VA engineering classes directed us to model the world using deterministic equations. Can there be any effect if there is no cause? Can there be free will? What IS free will? This has always vexed me. Still don't have the answer to that. But, Mexico is right, randomness is not an accident, randomness is a fundamental part of reality. It is necessary to the evolution of the universe since the Big Bang and necessary to the evolution of life on this planet. It is necessary for our continuing lives. Randomness, interconnectedness, non-deterministic thinking. These are qualities of more importance to our everyday, postmodern story we are now living. And I'm glad. Breaking out of the cause/effect prison gives meaning/validation to the spiritual side of life.

And now, I know what your are thinking. This is clearly what the apostle Paul was writing about in what we know as the 2nd epistle to the Corinthians where we read:

He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter (binary 0/1, yes/no, unyielding sets of rules, instrumental rationalism, determinate physical law) kills, but the Spirit gives life. II Cor 3:6 NIV

GraceConversations

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"A conversation regarding the disagreements that separate the conservative and progressive branches of the churches of Christ"

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"Please help us publicize this conversation as widely as possible within the Churches of Christ — among all elements of the Churches.

If you participate in a Christian forum or maintain a blog, please post a notice iniviting readers to read and comment. For this sort of dialogue to truly work well, it needs the broadest circulation possible.

Thanks."

update april 02 2009

Trekked to Raleigh this past weekend for round 3 of NCAA. Saw my niece play her last game for Baylor. Parents followed us home. Dad wasn't feeling well and the next day was diagnosed with pneumonia. Have been very busy at work. Will be a few more days before posting.