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The Week

Scot McKnight

First, this accusation fails to represent the best thinking about how the Father and Son are related in the Bible and Christian theology. Inevitably, it turns the Father against the Son, bifurcates God, turns the Father into a torturer and someone who can’t be nice until he exacts some blood, and ends up destroying what the perichoresis of Trinitarian thinking is about. Both Western and Eastern thinking have no place for this perception of the Trinity’s relations at the cross. In Christian theology the cross is an act of Father, Son and Spirit.

Second, this accusation fails to see that the Son gave his life, that the Father gave the Son’s life, and the point here is that the cross in the Bible and theology is the freely-chosen, gracious choice and act of the Father, Son and Spirit. In other words, there is something entirely redemptive about the act that reveals the divine child abuse theory for what it is: a mockery of the way Christian theology describes what God is doing. The cross is an act of love by the Father (and Son, and Spirit) for humans and sketching it as act of revenge on the Son fails the larger context of grace.

Third, this accusation fails to comprehend that entering into death, willingly and out of love, is the act of God entering into the fullness of the human condition, including death. Once again, this is out of love: the Son entered into the suffering and death of humans because Father, Son and Spirit love each one of us and want to go down into the depths with us in order to lift us from death into life. The God who does not suffer with us doesn’t know us and becomes the remote God of deism.

HT Dreher link to Emily Gould

If there’s more than one of you and you have an agreement you’ve got an “institution”. 

Link

It has not been sufficiently noted that freedom of religion requires freedom from religion. If the foundational idea is that people should be free to follow their reasoning about the nature of the world where it takes them, then that reasoning should actually be free from coercion and constraint. One such constraint consists in understanding freedom of religion as a kind of menu of different religious options from which people can choose. That menu has an atheist option, but I reject it. I don’t think I should have to choose from a menu of religions in the first place.  –

NYT

And Dreher follows up. Gets into the research on how much western research focuses on westerners and how much our culture impacts the findings. We Aren’t The World

Interview by Sarah Pulliam Bailey

Author Anne Rice made waves across the Internet when she posted a short message on her Facebook page:

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.Rice returned to the Roman Catholic Church in 1998, a decision she began openly speaking about in 2005. She spoke with Christianity Today about her recent decision, the enormous response, and how she plans to follow Jesus outside the church. Continue reading →