Some good things to read...elsewhere

I haven't time to write something just now, but here are three other things worth having a peep.

First, the estimable Kim Fabricius weighs in on Faith and Theology with Ten Thoughts on the Literal and the Literary. I am beginning to think that 'literal' has become one of those hopelessly muddled terms, co-opted into whatever polemic is at hand, to designate 'those people' with whom one disagrees, or to describe a supposed exegetical principle which 'those people' use, along with requisite connotations of the target being ill-educated, etc. I suspect that it is just about time to call a moratorium on the word and try to find more apt, less ideological expressions. I'm not entirely sure that Kim gets us around the obstacle, or closer to my goal, but there is much in his post worth reading and marking. (More about literalism and how it's not a particularly useful term later...perhaps.)

Next, check out Aaron Ghiloni and his posting on the Blasphemy Challenge on YouTube. I find this sort of thing -- the blasphemy challenge, not Aaron's post -- quite tiresome. You know the drill: set up a rickety straw figure that can easily be knocked down, and when you push it over (or it falls down under its own weight), you can pat yourself on the back that Christianity has been, once and for all (finally!) dispensed with. Some people make quite a career out of this. One of the few things I find more tiresome than this is when we in the church give them reasons -- usually inadvertantly -- for thinking that this sort of wan, pale imitation of Christianity is the real thing. It's as if we are providing vaccinations to people: by giving them a weaker, inferior form of it, they are then immune to the real thing.

And Aaron also calls our attention to Ronster, over at Musings of a Monster, who writes an Advent reflection about why God came to earth, based on a reading of 1John 1: 1-4. Quite good, I think, although possibly limited in the way that I indicate in the comments. Go have a look.