It's a good question: can you have an unsuccessful death? Clearly death ends the unsuccess too, but by that I mean people full of worry about their life and about beliefs that exist that create anxiety among the just living. I'm afraid I think Jesus offered us nothing, because on offer is the idea that we can continue when we cannot. That itself leads to anxiety, and on this the Buddhists have it right I would say. The difference between me and the Buddhists is that the Buddhists would say if you continue to cling on you continue to exist. But even supposing my me-ness had a pre-existence, seeing as I cannot recall any of it and my me-ness seems part of this existence and only, I rather think it irrelevant whether clinging leads to more or not clinging leads to the end.

I go again with the wave analogy. We are a process, and once the energy in and out ceases, so do we, just like the wave. And this is a matter of scientific insight.

Pluralist?

Is it possible to have an unsuccessful death?

It is possible to have an unsuccessful life, and it is possible to have an unpleasant, or disturbed dying process, but not an unsuccessful death..It is possible to die for a while and then recover and come back to life, but i don't think i would consider that an unsuccessful death.

God through Jesus did give a human framework for living the suggestion is (which i agree with) that if we do not follow Jesus instruction for life, we are like the living dead, because Jesus only instructs us to do things which are for the greater good and builds one another up, Jesus only instructs us to do things which enhance life. There are other faiths which offer that too. But the point about eternal life is that what we are told in the gospel is that, in sternal life you can have all the best bits of life forever.

An unsuccessful death would be a place of life without love, for you can have the whole world but if you do not have love you have nothing! Now there are many types of Love sacrificial love is the love that Jesus refers to in general for a successful life, leading to a peaceful death, but a peaceful death is not necessarily a death without pain but a death with pain which can be endured.

Once upon a time , happily ever after, and the end actually alludes to that "ever after" a way of explaining happiness can last after "it is done, it is finished"..We live in the hope that we can have "heaven on earth" with the ever after being part of our daily life. I do not belief in the resurrection in the here and now, but i believe it happened once for a purpose, and that purpose was to give people hope "of the things to come" it was to take away the fear of an unsuccessful death. Death simply means we do not get an invite to the afterlife party. Life is an aspiration of fulfillment among st the dying who are full of life.

Angela

It's just that the basis of the argument is so now lost. For example, an excellent programme repeated on TV that likens the human existence to a wave. A wave is an energy held process, just as human bodies are energy in and energy out and when not are dead. It was contrasted with St. Paul's Cathedral that just stands, remains and decays slowly.

So we are transience, and as I've said before, the purpose of religion becomes the ability to cope with transience - to have a successful death. Death is the closure that gives the life its shape. And then each of us is also a part on the way of the bigger evolutionary picture, chaotic but systemic, changing and becoming.

I suggest that this is the way to make religion in the future, based on the evidence of science, that becomes reflective. The Buddhists have done much, once the reform from Hinduism led to the idea of the self becoming selfless and not joining with a Brahman. Once the grand deity was disposed, the idea of the path became clearer. The science we have is different from this, but arises from it is also an awe and wonder about the size and majesty of the container we are in, and the simplicities that give rise to complexities, and the flash of life each biological unit enjoys.

The founders of Radical Orthodoxy (RO) are Anglicans in England. They would argue, esteemed villagers, that the wicked Enlightenment project is interfering with our ability to read the creation texts that I have been posting [on the New Creation thread] for the past few months. And how does it do this? By fostering an "ontology of violence" that splits nature from grace, man from nature, and faith from reason.

Personally, I welcome ideas that enable human beings to see nature with grace, man with nature, faith with reason, etc. Pluralist however objects to RO ideas.

The RO argue that the received Enlightenment categories that have been used in social research modelled on the physical sciences contribute to the sorts of splits I mention above. Against this, Pluralist seems to be objecting (see New Creation thread) that the usually introspective and hermeneutical research of theologians is not as credible as the usually observational research of sociologists who model their work on that of physical scientists.

Couldn't both be true enough? Couldn't the RO be roughly correct about their views on the "ontology of violence" that splits nature from grace, man from nature, and faith from reason whilst a sociological study of, say, the theological attitudes of ordained women based on survey data are just about what the survey result says they are? It does not seem obvious that both could not be reliable knowledge of its kind, as Aristotle would say. And if introspective and hermeneutical research is not valid, then how is the work of judges, philosophers, literary critics, mathematicians, etc. valid? Or put another way, how would doing systematic observational research like that of a sociologist help any of them in their core tasks?

If reading RO ideas actually helps readers to see nature with grace, man with nature, faith with reason, etc. then I suspect that we will hear more of them. If not...?

Very good Bowman, The craziest on the spot baptism i saw was in Malta, we were taken to a local swimming pool with a shute and yes they used the shute for the baptism. I thought oh its a Maltese thing, but it wasn't of course because then i went to the Shipwreck church and met the English Vicar, yes we need some crazy people, people who will take risk alongside the calculated risk people. But when JESUS calls it always seems crazy but right. It is good to see people have the courage of their convictions. It is also reassuring to know that people can respond on the spot.

PS I dont think you need to wear red trousers or pink suits to be crazy.

Angela

Angela-- A baptism in a fountain at TEC's General Convention.

All that Stanley Hauerwas shows is how deeply illiberal he is - to put an institution of so called truth above the experiences of individuals and teir consciences. But it is the case that I refer to the Bible less and less - and arguably do this under a 'truth' institution where this is also the trend.

A reformation which did away with the Bible would now be just as valid as Luther’s doing away with the Pope.... [N]o one any longer reads the Bible humanly. As a result it does immeasurable harm.... The Bible Societies, those vapid caricatures...which like all companies only work with money and are just as mundanely interested in spreading the Bible as other companies in their enterprises: the Bible Societies have done immeasurable harm. Christendom has long been in need of a hero who, in fear and trembling before God, had the courage to forbid people to read the Bible. --Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard.

Most North American Christians assume that they have a right, if not an obligation, to read the Bible. I challenge that assumption. No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. North American Christians are trained to believe that they are capable of reading the Bible without spiritual and moral transformation. They read the Bible not as Christians, not as a people set apart, but as democratic citizens who think their “common sense” is sufficient to “understanding” the Scripture. They feel no need to stand under a truthful community to be told how to read. Instead they assume that they have all the “religious experience” necessary to know what the Bible is about. --Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture.

On this thread, I mostly post notes on either bible-reading or unpolarised civility, but tonight I cannot resist two quotations that wryly oppose both causes.

Is this the way the Christian traditions see each other?  ;-)

David R-- Are you leaving the village for the summer?

The denomination which I support has a position of individual conscience, and therefore a social gospel that people of difference, who do not have to agree, can come together and even worship together. We claim it is possible and do it. Others like to follow packages of belief. I recall a liberal Anglican book reviewer in a quarterly whose doubts in Christianity transferred her across to learning the language of Buddhism in considerable depth, and so went from one belief collection to a belief that followed patterns and understandings of practice. If doubts are indeed just doubts at a fairly minor level - virgin births, bodily resurrections - but keep the big picture of a faith - incarnation, resurrection as a whole - then the faith pattern is going to stay within the religion. But I mix with people who have made transitions, usually from a package deal to something more individual. It might be said to be towards the religious humanistic (in general) but it is rather loose in its particulars. Nowadays orthodoxy is only 'orthodox' among the orthodox, as most folk are not Christian followers, don't attend churches, have not learnt the faith, and have a collection of their own ideas. My funny bunch just go on to say that with those different ideas you can still find space, place and words to reflect.

David R-- Yes, all of Henri Nouwen's short books draw the reader into a relationship with his voice in a way that is in itself worthy of study. Nouwen thought carefully about how to reach persons who could not share all of his presuppositions about God or faith. He reminds me a little of a mathematician who tries, not to construct new mathematical objects, but to reach the ones we already somewhat know with proofs from unusual axioms. His students sometimes found that he was more deeply curious about how their thinking was situated in their lives and worlds than they themselves were. He never forgot his training in phenomenology. He was a listener.

Dialogue, witness, catechesis, counsel-- they all begin with hospitality, theological hospitality, as you say. When they do not, the eternal Voice from the whirlwind once again rebukes the latest friends of Job. But from this hospitality, they branch out into quite different conversations, like guests departing by different roads.

Speaking of catechesis, a priest once proposed-- hospitality, experience, reflection, catechesis. The point of the two middle phases is not didactic exemplification, but rather allowing the heart to open itself until it is large enough to take in something of the reality that catechesis invokes. I think that this stimulus to the heart is necessary in all four of these sorts of discourses, but perhaps there is large difference between what opens the heart to witness and what opens it to counsel? I think of the witness that led to the conversion of St Pachomius.

After the persecution, the great Constantine became emperor of the Romans. He was the first of the Christian emperors of Constantinople. But another chief wanted to take the empire away from him, and he declared war on him. He ordered a search in all the villages to be made for big and sturdy boys to become soldiers and fight against the enemy of God. Pachomius was twenty years old. They took him away although he was not very sturdy, because they needed so many. The boat sailed down the Nile, and at Thebes, the capital, they were thrown into prison.

That evening the people of the city came to visit them, bringing something to eat and drink, for they saw that they were very wretched. Pachomius asked his companions: "Who are they? Why are they so good to us when they do not know us?" They told him: "They are Christians; they treat us with love because of the God of Heaven."

Pachomius did not sleep. He prayed all night: "My Lord Jesus, the Christ, God of all the saints, may your goodness come quickly upon me. If you deliver me I will serve mankind all the days of my life." The following day they were put on boats and came to the city of Antinoe. While they were there, the emperor defeated his enemies. He sent all the soldiers home. Pachomius went south to the Upper Thebaid. He entered the church in a village called Seneset. He became a catechumen and was baptized. On the night of his baptism he had a vision. The dew of heaven came down onto his head, then it became a honeycomb in his right hand; and while he was considering it the honey flowed onto the ground and spread over the whole earth. A voice said to him: "Pachomius, this will happen to you before long."