Friday, February 13, 2015

Weekly Links!

Some good reading for your weekend:

"Science Shows Something Surprising About People Who Love to Write":
The benefits of writing go far beyond building up your vocabulary . . .
"Ask the Agent: What's hot and cold in publishing these days?": a nice assessment of the latest numbers.

"Gospel of Confession":
The Father eternal speaks forth the Son – an act that we might re-characterize as the Father eternal confessing the Son, telling forth the truth about himself in the eternal Word. If that is the case, then our confession as telling forth the truth of God finds its basis in the far greater, the complete act of the Father from eternity telling forth the truth about himself in the person of his Son. 
"Strange is Good with the Trinity":
In any given church, you'll have people at different stages of their understanding of trinitarian prayer, which leads to some awkwardness. We've all heard prayers that start out, “Heavenly Father,” and then within a couple of sentences are saying, “Thank you for dying on the cross for us.” Or prayers that start, “Dear Jesus” and move on to “thank you for sending your Son to save us.” What's going on here? Probably not outright heresies (patripassianism in the first case, some sort of Jesus-modalism in the second). Probably the person praying has been mentally focused on one person of the Trinity initially, and has shifted his or her attention to another person a few seconds later, without bothering to adjust all the other parts of the prayer or to vocalize a transition. Anybody in the congregation who is more fluent with trinitarian theology will hear something that sounds alarming. But I doubt that the person praying would fail a simple theology test if you stopped them and administered one (which, by the way, please don't).
"Fifty Shades Against Gender Neutrality":
Having repressed healthy masculinity, what bubbles up through the cracks is a crude distortion of the real thing, and our enjoyment of it is confined to the level of fantasy. We’re eating dog food because we’re hungry for steak.

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