In chapter two of The Formation of Christian Understanding Charles Wood takes on the task of defining exactly what the goal of Christian interpretation of the Bible should be. At the core of Wood’s understanding is a hermeneutical approach centered around a God who actively seeks deep relationship with his creation and a community of believers doing theology together. Though I see need to nuance some of Wood’s main points, his goal of focusing Christian interpretation of Scripture around coming to better know God and applying this knowledge as a theological collective are affirmed by Anglican doctrinal standards and more than applicable to the daily lives of Christians within the Anglican Communion. Wood does theology from within the Methodist tradition. Though I am Anglican, I too, pull from the Wesleyan tradition as I do theology. As the progenitor of the Methodist movements, Wesleyan theology — at its core bounds — fits neatly within the broad theological tent that is Anglicanism. Affirming the 39 Articles of Religion of the Church of England, the Book of Common Prayer of 1662, and the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888 among other doctrinal standards, I can also pull from the theological thoughts of Wesleyan theologians. As I look at chapter two of Wood’s Formation I will pull from my Anglican standards of doctrine and Wesleyan-Anglican theology to show where my community agrees with Wood’s direction and where we offer critique or different insights.
Read more..."I am the Lord your God, […] you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them […]" Exodus 20:2-5a ESV
The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States' federal government has already caused many millions of words to be written in blogs, Tweets, postings, newspapers, texts, and all the various other means of communication of our modern world. I'm hesitant to add my words to the fray, but I've observed things over the last several days that I feel must be spoken to.
Read more...My post-Mormon experience has been much easier than most. My transition out of the Mormon faith and into orthodox Christianity, unlike many, saw no family conflict and no lost relationships. By God’s immeasurable grace, I left the Mormon church with no external negative consequences to speak of.
My status as a post-Mormon has been a personal struggle of healing and theological recentering. Though less frequent in the last while, I am still hit with moments where I realize my otherness in a Christian context. There are still to this day times where the guilt and worthlessness of my Mormon youth come to the forefront. God, however, is always merciful and continually heals my wounds. In so many ways he has used my past as a benefit to my Christian ministry. My Mormon background has allowed me to see the church and the faith as an outsider. It has helped me better explain and proclaim the gospel because I can see things someone with only a Christian past to draw from cannot.
Read more...This semester marks the beginning of my third year at Vanderbilt Divinity School. It also marks a return to a required MDiv course after two semesters of Ph.D. level seminars. As I am once again confronted with future social organizers, ministers, and other religious leaders who seem to default to contrarian heterodoxy I have found myself taking a step back to reflect on where I’m at theologically. Has Vanderbilt Divinity changed me and — as this is most likely true — has it changed me for the better?
Read more...The move to TLS-secured websites is great for privacy and a good step forward for the Internet. That being said, as someone who collects and uses retro computing technology, this poses a problem; TLS-secured website will not work in older browsers. Further, heavy use of Javascript, larger image sizes, etc. make loading even none TLS-secured websites problematic. —When you’ve got megahertz and megabytes to work with rather than giga or tera, large payloads take forever!—
Read more...— An updated post for for Parallels 13 & 14 can be found here. —
When I was in middle school there were four games that consumed the vast majority of my time: Simcity 2000, The Sims, Sim Theme Park, and Spiderman Cartoon Maker. I loved these games and would play them with my brothers nearly every day.
Adulthood means limited free time and, in my experience, a desire to in some way escape back to childhood via nostalgia. For me this manifest in my upkeep of old computers and software so I can play the games of childhood. Beyond that, I want to play the games of my childhood on hardware that I could hardly conceive of playing on back then. We’re talking maximum settings all around.
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