31.8.16
– Verb ~ verbal
Word as action!
– Chronic fatigue syndrome
I hate the exhaustion that results from busyness & depression.
Even physical sickness (to some extent) is not that bad!
– Preparing ~ praying!
– Seminal energy
Waste not!
– I think, those who (can) criticize the Bible, honor its GOD more/better than those who (only) revere it!
– Pleasure as a genuine value
– Spirituality ~ good life ~ well-being ~ true beauty
– “Hevel” (Heb.)
– The main function of the Messiah is to transform Israel (arrogance-idolatry & greed-violence) into an obedient and faithful community. This is how he saves the entire world!
– Destructive distillation ~ radical/transformative purification (not just cleansing)!
– History/word & God/spirit
– Justice + mercy = peace!
– The Messiah both replaces the disqualified Israel and renews/redeems it!
– Remnant ~ seed
– Suffering Servant –> family of all nations –> renewed creation!
– Grace –> judgment and hope!
– Priests, scribes & kings (various forms of institutional authority) as false prophets (God-competitors & -substitutes)
– Distinguish:
Great
&
Big
– Child sacrifice ~ parents forcing children into the MNCs (archetypal Babel/Babylon), as highly paid slaves (contemporary equivalent)!
– In order to punish you, GOD will destroy his own temple!
– Prophecy/wisdom/prayer ~ poetry!
– Warning –> siege –> lament
– Protest – the wisdom of grief, shame and anger!
– Structure as message – literature, biology, architecture, etc.
– The shouts of people to GOD become the word of GOD to others!
– Preserving and sustaining dignity in suffering – resisting dehumanization in the midst of evil…
– Language as the great comforter – articulation/expression for healing & hope
– Ignore ~ abandon ~ reject
– Professional mourners
WOW!
– Gospel > soul-salvation
Kingdom > Heaven
Discipleship > daily devotions
Mission > evangelism
– “We have to be candles,
burning between
hope and despair,
faith and doubt,
life and death,
all the opposites.
That is the disquieting place
where people must always find us.
And if our life means anything,
if what we are goes beyond the monastery walls and
does some good,
it is that somehow,
by being here,
at peace,
we help the world cope
with what it cannot understand.”
William Brodrick
– “Dissenting Diagnosis: Voices of Conscience from the Medical Profession”
Doctors publish book on corruption in Indian healthcare!
Corruption: medicine’s dirty open secret
Doctors pen a book to expose medical malpractices in India
Doctor No
1.9.16
– eo ipso
qua
– Conceptual binaries
The metaphoric & the metonymic
The semantic & the syntactic
The semiotic & the symbolic
The real & the imaginary
Signifyingness & systems of signification
Being & name
The mirror stage
Presubject
Semanalysis
Integration & transformation
Transferential love
Dia-logue
Illeity & ipseity
Subjects-in-process & subjects-in-relation
Inscription
The transcendental body
The leisurely community
Metalepsis
inveigh
casuistry
turpitude
– Black sun
– The Cross (crucified Christ) as the rupture of logocentrism!
– insolent
– Intertextuality –> Intratextuality ———……>>> supratextuality!
– Communion
Vs.
Communication
– Distinguish:
Solipsism
&
Narcissism
2.9.16
– Double-helix theology
3.9.16
– Udupi
– Theology & Big Data
Spirituality & the market
The church & politics
– Piracy & privacy
– Doing > saying
Believing > confessing
Heart > thinking
Doing the right thing compensates for saying the wrong thing, but saying the right thing does NOT compensate for doing the wrong thing!
Don’t be deceived (as to who you really are), by your own words & feelings……
Faith is not a work. But there can be no faith where there are no works, just as there can be no fire where there is no smoke.
Compare Mat. 7: 21-23 with Mat. 21: 28-32 – salvific heresy & damned orthodoxy!
Evildoers ~ lawbreakers
So, is ethics more important than theology?
What then is true spirituality?
– Visionary exegesis
Narrative & personhood
Reception, appropriation & performance
Revelation & mediation
Catalepsis ~ mystical intuition
Textual sublime
The irrational & ecstatic
The technological colonization of religion
The ineffability of the infinite/transcendent/numinous/holy
Distinguish – knowledge, cognition & experience
Self-validating claims
Encounters with the transcendent –> possibilities for transformation
The mysticism of reading
Lived quality – dread, anxiety & alienation
Romantic hermeneutics
‘mysterium tremendum et fascinens’
Higher feelings, endless energies, eternal mind
Universe ~ world ~ life ~ God ~ Man
Original insight
Wondrous givenness
The strange blessedness of absolute dependence
Eudaemonists
Reading body
Materialist theories
– Aporia ~ abyss ~ crisis
– Is Paul Ricoeur a Christian?
– Distinguish:
Shortcuts (–> dead end!)
&
Bypasses (dead end –> )
– “Inspiration is merely the religious name for freedom.”
– Marriage:
OT – conservative orthodoxy – centrality of family.
Eschaton – new creation – no family.
NT – in between the above 2 – transformed community (transcending family)!
Past, future & the in-between present.
The past is definitely passing away… And the Future is pressing in upon us!
It is better to be prepared for the Coming, rather than be stuck facing backward.
4.9.16
– “Crown him”, “before the gods”
Psalm 23:5 + 138:1b, 4a
Polemical worship!
– “Help us to honor you”
– Cultural morality
Vs.
Eternal holiness
– Do you believe there is ONE who vindicates the few against the many?
– Gratitude
Vs.
Capitalism
– All superheroes are weirdos, & therefore outcasts!
– Yes, you want to believe He can move (your) mountains.
But what if He wants to blot out the entire horizon?! Will you let Him??
Yes, you want to believe that He will catch you before you trip off the edge.
But what if He wants to push you off, to make you fly?! What then??
– Re(verse)-assurance 😉
– Corpus ~ amount
– Because of the Resurrection, you know that your labour (in the Lord’s work) will never be in vain, therefore you can continue working enthusiastically, in spite of all the setbacks.
When you remember that your destiny is victory, then you can overcome the defeated mindset.
– “Now when this…… then the saying that is written will happen”!
– Spiritual realty
Building projects
&
Vineyard labour
Reclaiming the colonized areas!
– 2 approaches to time:
1. Moving from the past to the future, through the present.
2. Moving from the future to the present, through the past!
– “Remember me”
Or else forget, and live n die in vain!
– Female seminary
– Annie Dillard
Emily Dickinson
“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church
I keep it, staying at Home.”
– Your Word is a light that blinds me, and an explosive that makes the path
– “Training for Utopia”
Atopia
Ootopia
– There is a kind of masculinity that emasculates the other, & a kind of majesty that dignifies the other!
Distinguish:
Emasculated
&
Effeminate
5.9.16
– My magic formula:
Work soft, party hard! 😀
And never stop thinking, about everything, in every way……
– The New Wave (of?)
– If you can’t beat them, don’t join them.
Let them beat you!
– If you have no enemies, then you don’t have any friends either.
– The logic of obfuscation
– “The meaning of the utterance, I repeat, is its experience”
– All description is (also) interpretation.
And all interpretation also involves imagination.
And all imagination is influenced by social/personal context.
6.9.16
– Scopophilia and specularization
– All dichotomies are false…!?
And monism/advaita (non-dualism) is no better either.
Maybe pluralism is the only realistic description of our existence…
– Postmodernity is not equal to relativism.
– From doctor/teacher/counselor to patient/attender/friend 😉
Hmmm… going down??
– Add cafes, public transport, open libraries, etc. for solo outings.
– “You (God) cause me to know, & help me walk in, the way that leads to full & lasting life.”
Joy as the perfection of peace!
– Dieting (to lose weight) – break the strict routine only for one meal (NOT one day!) a week.
– Brain:
Flexibility & problem-solving
Multi-tasking & focus
Logic & emotion
Impulse control & speed
– POTUS
‘On the stump’
– The political element in natural disasters
– Tropical cyclone
Storm surge
– lander (space)
– Democracy
Vs.
Patriotism
– Dissent – just a right or also a duty?
– politoons
Venal politicians & unscrupulous bureaucrats
Lip service & stage-managed photo-op events
– “You’re only as vulnerable as you allow yourself to be.”
The freedoms that we enjoy are constantly at threat.
“Power is a potent aphrodisiac.”
– Modinomics
Swaraj –> Surajya
Reform –> perform –> transform
– “The informed reader”
– “My reply to your question on method:
1. Each discipline has its own field, goals, tools, style, etc. of enquiry. But the divisions between the various disciplines are coming down, & inter- or multi-disciplinary work is becoming more common & important.
2. Especially a discourse like Theology (including Biblical Studies) is done in dialogue with other fields like Philosophy, Social Sciences, other Humanities, even the Natural & Life Sciences. Theology can have its own core resources & tradition, but doing it in a mutually reciprocal manner with these allied areas is crucial.
3. Finally, when it comes to my own theological method, it is a perichoretic model with Scripture, tradition, culture, personal experience, intellect, community, Spirit, etc. None of these things can be fixed as the central authority! They are all interacting in an interdependent manner, so the results are always dynamic & tentative… Process is all!”
– Is the lack of parental intimacy in my infancy in some way related to my deep hesitation & suspicion of my own (potential) parenthood?
– Marriage is not unique as the one-flesh union, since even sex with a prostitute has the same status. But spiritual oneness (E.g. With Christ) is greater.
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