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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 12/3/2003 10:30 AM (GMT -6) |   | Congrats BWH!
I came from an arminian background, but had informally morphed into a calvinist/stoicist/fatalist for the purpose of its role as a psychic balm . I formally became a calvinist after hearing Greg Boyd play the role of Augustine at Bethel's Christianity and Western Culture class in my first year as a college student. I then read LFS between my first and second year and then became an OVTheist when I had a Christian Theology course from Greg in the spring of my 2nd year. I then proceeded to participate/lead apologetics studies after having an apologetics course from Greg in the summer between my 2nd and 3rd year of college.
I came to morph my views into dealing with the problem of order more than the spiritual warfare theodicy, which I studied with Greg during my last semester as an undergraduate, while studying Economics in Grad-school. The problem of order approach emphasizing topical continuity between the Social Sciences and Theology, with the former displacing the latter for much of the population in the past century but subsuming much of its controversies.
I came to espouse a thorough-going fallibilism due to my understanding of the joint role scriptures and tradition/experience plays in us determining how we should let our lights shine in this world. This makes me believe that paying attention to ecclesiastical and secular decision-making arrangements are generally a more productive line of thinking than the spiritual warfare theodicy. The latter is too manicheistic and gets people too easily up in arms. Also if the spiritual/material dichotomy is imperfect and the two are connected, then we do not neglect the spiritual side of things when we deal with them in their materialistic manifestations. Sure we should take the double-barrel approaches, but most theologians in my experience have failed to pay adequate due to the fact-generating process and a theological education doesn't seem to prepare one well, in general, for the ambiguities of the policy-making process. I also would generally prefer more empirical comparative ecclesiastical institutional analysis, like when ecclesiastical governance structures emulate corporate governance structures how might one modify the decision-making so as to prevent the same follies associated with corporate governance from taking place and so on....
Sorry, too much info, I know, but that's where I am at.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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