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Warum läßt Gott es zu?

Warum läßt Gott es zu? Warum erfahren wir Leiden, and warum so viel Unrecht und Leiden in dieser Welt? Das können wir wirklich nicht wissen oder beantworten. Keine Religion, keine Theologie, keine Apologetik, keine philosophische Theorie oder Rahmen ergibt irgendwelche Antwort, die wirklich geht. Keine wirklich passt. Also ich versuche hier nicht, diese Problematik eigentlich zu addressieren. Ich kann nur ein paar kleine Gedanken dazu geben.  Imago Dei Wir sind nach dem Gottesbild erschaffen, im ,,imago Dei" gemacht. Wir denken oft daran, daß das heißt, wir haben Seelen, Bewustsein, moralischen Sinn, eine Fähigkeit für ein Verhältnis mit Gott, und so weiter, und das stimmt natürlich. Aber es gibt noch mehr im uralten Sinne, d.h., in der uralten nahosten Kultur, worin die Erschöpfungsgeschichte in 1. Mose zusammengesetzt wurde. Es heißr auch, daß wir als Vertreter Gottes hier gestellt sind. Als vetreter und Angehöriger Gottes, sollen wir seine Erschöpfung

Moby DIck: Jonah historically regarded

Why was the OT book of Jonah written, and how is it to be understood? An honest reading of the book screams 'hyperbole', as there were so many obviously hyperbolic and metaphorical elements. If we take the Bible seriously, we should respect the genre and intention of the various sections of the OT in their cultural context. The book was clearly never intended as historical, and one need only look to a few good scholarly Jewish references on the book if the literary nature of the book is not apparent. In fact, understanding it as a sort of parable or such makes for a more theologically profound and more powerful interpretation than a simplistic, Sunday-schoolish literal interpretation. Apologetic attempts to defend its "historicity" lead to rather awkward explanations, as well as reliance on an account of a 19th century British sailor who was supposedly swallowed by a whale and lived - which turns out to be a made-up story and an urban legend in evangelical circles. I

Ich verstehe das nicht, Gott; ist ist alles zum Quatsch gekommen?

So fühle ich mich heutzutage im Bezug auf meiner Theologie. In Bezug auf meinem vorherigen Blog-Stück, muss ich sagen, es ist schwer, diese abgespaltenen Richtungen zusammen zu bringen. Ich finde, in diesem Tiel meiner Glaubensreise, dass ich ganz underschiedliche Richtungen abstimmen muss: meine neue Emerging-Theologie-Richtung und/oder moderne evangelische Richtung, meinen aalten evangelikalen Glauben, und die charismatische Richtung meines Glaubens. Im Moment scheint es, wie Öl und Wasser zu mischen. Ich schreibe heute über einen gewissen Schwerpunkt: die Theologie des Todes und der Hölle.   Universalismus kann ich nicht akzeptieren - nicht ganz. Aber die Theologie der exklusiven Errettung von Menschen finde ich problematisch - wo die Mehrheit der Mesnchen zur Hölle gehen müssen. Hier in Kürze hat es mit dem Charakter Gottes zu tun, zum Beispiel, wie könnte er Seelen ewiglich und endlos bestrafen für einen beschränken Satz von Sünden? Wie ist das konsequ

The great divide

In the 11th century, organized Christianity split into East and West, mostly for political and cultural reasons that were a bit silly. In the 16th century, Protestantism split off, though Luther's intention was not to split organizationally from the Catholic Church - merely to reform it from within. Since then Protetestantism has split into countless denominations. Two big splits followed by many smaller fractures. From the latter 1800s to the 1920s another major split took place over time, mostly within Protestantism, across various denominations: the liberal / conservative split. One one side, the liberals or modernists, and on the other side, evangelicals and fundamentalists. I question whether this kind of split was wise or was totally necessary, and I think both sides were to blame. To some degree this was in response to modern science - geology in the 1820s showing us that the earth was very old, and later evolutionary biology, showing us that species arose from simpler

All roads lead to...?

Rene Descartes proclaimed "cogito ergo sum" - meaning that in his epistemology, the starting point - to validating truth, the existence of the self, and the existence of the external world and external truth - is oneself, one's own thoughts. One's self-awareness serves as the basis for deducing other truths, and in his philosophy, even for deducing the existence of God. A few problems quickly become apparent to the modern social scientist here. First, his method of deducing God's existence is forced and unnatural; it is probably not the path than anyone else would naturally and intuitively take to apprehending the existence of God. Second, his subjective approach, starting with one's own thoughts as a foundation for other truths, is tenuous, given what we know in modern psychology about cognitive biases, false intuitions, and decision making that is subject to all kinds of subconscious influences. So do we reactively take a totally opposite approach, as an em

Multiverses?

If you said the word 'multiverse' 10 years ago, people would think you're talking about a new form of poetry. Now it's part of our vocabulary, thanks to string theory. Unless something new happens in string theory, apparently the number of theoretically possible universes that might come into existence is huge. I don't know if most of them would last very long - I'll leave that question to the physicists, as I'm no physicist, just a language educator and linguist and lay theologian. So according to the theory, the number of possible universes would be 10 500 (10^500, if the superscripts don't display properly). The name of that number would be 100 quinquasexagintacentillion (ten to the 165th power, times 100) (or 100 tresoctogintillion in the traditional European system). Unless new discoveries or adjustments are made to the theory, then the theory, according to physicists, may imply an eternal inflation. Universes keep popping in and out of existe