Safe Haven

I found myself reading Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman (please permit me to 'Protestantize' them by leaving off their honorifics) where they lamented and denounced the loss in some quarters of a so-called "dogmatic principle." I'm not going to find it and quote it here, but we can see with a little effort that in matters of religion, we have two basic choices in how we approach the issue: either the process/effort earnestly pursued becomes paramount--in which case specific truth claims are superfluous or even harmful--or truth and error in religion is possible, error has consequences, and is, to say the least, undesirable. When this journey of mine began--I have to say--it was provoked by a sudden realization that I saw the abyss of relativism right before me, that much of what we Protestants had rejected had unwittingly left us prey to an abiding uncertainty that persisted even as we did our best to be faithful Christians who heeded what was revealed to us. ...

5 Completely Pointless, Random Mind-Dumps From My Brain To Your Face 5. I don't know if Rob Bell preaches anything close to the gospel, but I listened to the first ten minutes of one sermon, and at least he is funny. 4. I didn't know that Anglican prelates hung out at hipster churches. 3. If he is turning 40, how come he looks 25? 2. Cards game, 21st. Good (looking) company. Done and done. 1. Wendy's Spicy Chicken. Good things, good things.

Note to the "fake profile, 21-years old, now attending Covenant Seminary, porntastic spam-bots" of Facebook: I may be lonely, but I am not in fact that stupid. Every Covenant Seminary student knows that even if there were a girl that "hot" (if you will pardon the word choice) she'd be engaged in 3.4 seconds. Besides, your weird "two last names" or "two first names" or the ever-popular, "I have an exotic foreign name you will find irresistible" gives you away. I hope you don't mind if I politely ignore your friend request; even if you do exist, we haven't met. If we had, and the word "friends" could be reasonably affixed as an appellation to our association, well, you should be so lucky. [Intriguing Side-Rant: I had to look up the word "irresistible." Doesn't it seem plausible that one could spell the end of that word 'able'? I must confess, I was tempted. But I looked at it; it just wasn't...

If I had known that Gwyneth Paltrow could sing like this , I would have gone to see that movie. Of course, we have to thank Smokey for writing it. She is joined on this track by Huey Lewis, the lead for 1980s rock band Huey Lewis and the News, one of the true nice guys in music, by all accounts. In case you forgot, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds is the epitome of cool, and he proves it by joining Gwyneth on another track from that soundtrack. The words needed to change the the sex of the protaganist are kind of janky, as I like to say, but I've got no complaints.

I'm up to page 84 in Jurgens on the Fathers. That's what he should have done: named it "Jurgens on the Fathers." How delightfully pompous! [You should be done with that whole first volume, you bum.--ed.] I'm in the midst of two pieces for OFB, and decided to do a third. I have nothing earth-shattering to report, though I will say it was quite intriguing how things went down with those cats [Internal Debate on Slang Usage: I'm quite semi-famous for referring to groups of people (especially men) as "cats" when discussing some matter of life, e.g. "Those cats was/were reading the Shepherd of Hermas, yo [in the liturgical free-for-all before the canon was settled]." My question is, would it be more appropriate to spell it "kats" to avoid confusion with actual cats? Justin Klein seems to favor "kats." I suppose I could say that "kats" is the papist spelling in this context, while "cats" is the more arrow-s...

We observed the Lord's Supper today; because of where I am in my faith journey, what used to fill me with joy and expectation now fills me with trepidation and doubt. It is not Our Lord I doubt; may it never be! Rather, I am amazed that we had never considered the validity of our eucharistic celebration. I don't have the information and the means as yet to decide the merits of the Catholic claims, but the fact that I know the contours of those claims, I know how the story will end if they are true, it fills me with boatloads of hesitation when I do the things that we do. The sermon was from Romans 1:16-17: "for I am not ashamed of the gospel..." It was all around a beautiful message. The focal point was this generation and its cynicism, and their great need of Christ. I yearn for them to know him, as I do for people my age who are leaving the Church (any of them) in droves. But it morphed into a "gospel as imputation" sort of thing. First reaction: "Rom...