Blog Posts - Wayfarers

After Life

19/7/2013

I don't expect there to be an after-life. I try to take an Epicurean position on death. I am not motivated by either the fear of eternal punishment or the prospect of an endless heavenly banquet, as some atheists seem invariably to associate with the religious impulse.

Indeed, like them, I do not regard these as desirable reasons for professing faith.

However, in dismissing belief in an after-life as entirely the result of such self-interested calculation, the atheists miss two important facets of such a belief.

Firstly, the desire to be reunited with loved ones. If God is love, love is eternal, therefore death cannot end it.

Secondly, the desire to see justice done. To see those who have led a miserable life given the opportunity for joy, those who have led an unobtrusively selfless life to be recognised, and those who have hurt, manipulated and damaged others to reap what they have sown.

Indeed, I feel it is a weakness in my faith that I cannot see a way to admit even these understandings of an after-life into my theology.

About time!

19/7/2013

The website christianity.org.uk offers a refreshingly honest take on the claim that Jesus is God. It admits that Jesus never claimed to be God but offers the suggestion that by 'intriguing' his Jewish followers he caused them to conclude he must be. It implies, though it has a careful line in anti-semitism to tread - that many Jews, similarly intrigued, didn't reach this conclusion.

About time! After centuries of pointless oppression, specious argument and downright lies from representatives of the mainstream Church we get the admission that the status of Jesus is not obvious. It's a conclusion that the Church arrived at some time after Jesus's death.

It accepts that there are other ways to understand Jesus and the divine sonship hypothesis is the 'one that [some] Christians came to accept as the belief that made best sense of what had happened during the thirty remarkable years of Jesus’ life'.

It also, remarkably, accepts the wide variety and contradictory understandings of the meaning of the Crucifixion. In the spirit of Free Christianity, it confesses that different people understand Jesus very differently.

We haven't yet quite got there. The website still claims that the New Testament clearly backs up the claim of divine status, whereas only the later epistles offer much support and then only if you have already accepted a trinitarian solution to Jesus. Nor, more importantly, does it address the obvious issue that there are abundant evidences in the Gospels that Jesus was not God and, like the non-believing Jews to which christianity.org.uk refers, would have regarded such a claim as repugnant.

Still, it's a step forward. Free Christianity advances.

Are we Brethren?

18/7/2013

If I lived in the US there's a good chance that I'd attend a Church of the Brethren (www.brethren.org). This Church, one of a bewildering variety that came out of the Anabaptist, Mennonite tradition, shares an aversion to creeds with Free Christianity. Its emphasis on simplicity and peace, open and welcoming liturgies, and real manifestations of the priesthood of all believers also seem very much at one with the vision that is being promoted here.

Going Forward

18/7/2013

'Those who believe that they infallibly listen to a divine command, have nothing else to do but obey it. Those who are the mere creatures of instinct press on without misgiving. And those who suppose they follow their manifest destiny, go forward come what may! But as for us, while we know that we must go our way, we have to learn which way is right and safe. If we pursue the course we trod in former years, whither will it lead us? Where has it led us? What reason have we to believe that it is the way of wisdom and the path of duty?'

From Go Forward, by Russell Lant Carpenter

The origins of Christianity

23/1/2013

'The identical thing that we now call the Christian religion existed among the ancients and has not been lacking from the beginnings of the human race until the coming of Christ in the flesh, from which moment on the true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian'. (Augustine of Hippo, Retract I. XIII,3).

A new consecration

23/1/2013

Christ has ordained a new consecration. Outside those organizations which men have formed in his honour, his spirit has been working. When his own have received him not, he has made of strangers the children of his promise. Across the ocean - it may be so here - those who profess his religion have often left it to others to testify its prevailing power, to preach delivery to captives, to withstand prevailing iniquity, to vindicate the claims of brotherhood. Other teachers than those who are called his ministers are proclaiming his glad tidings.
R.L. Carpenter 1860

On Russell Lant Carpenter

5/12/2012

Revd Russell Lant Carpenter (1816-1892) was the Unitarian minister at Bridport 1865-1887. He was the son of the minister Revd Lant Carpenter and brother of the social activist and reformer Mary Carpenter. He was a passionate anti-slavery activist who wrote fascinating accounts of his travels in the United States in 1852, meeting abolitionists, slave owners, freed slaves and those still in slavery. His warning of the nature of the impending Civil War is truly prophetic and his narrative is a useful corrective to those who would minimize the importance of slavery as the chief reason for the war between the States.

He wrote an important theological exposition on the Atonement, in which he displayed a combination of learning, commonsense and devotion to Jesus Christ that is still powerful today. When he wrote his views would have been seen as evidently Unitarian Christian, though perhaps even then more Christocentric than was thought fashionable. Nowadys his views would, rightly, be seen as much more Free Christian. In the next few weeks I shall be sharing some of his thoughts.

Another Free Christian website

22/2/2012

There aren't many websites promoting a Free Christian perspective. Therefore it is a real joy to be able to link to Matt Grant's 'Life in 361 degrees' here. It is a different type of resource to this site, but has the real advantage of being more frequently updated.

The Good and Happy Life

27/4/2011

Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) is a particular hero of mine. The quintessential Renaissance Man, his humane and reasonable philosophy appeals greatly.

The good and happy life, vivere bene e lodati or ad bene beateque vivendum, is the key to Alberti's philosophy.

‘Be agreeable to yourself, welcome to others, and useful to many’. Profugiorum ab aerumna.

‘Go forth from your nest, try yourself at arms, take to the sea, seek elsewhere in any occupation whatsoever to live honourably. Who does not seek his own good cares not for it; who cares not for it, deserves it not.’ De iciarchia.

‘Man was born to be useful to himself and others; and our primary and proper use is to turn the powers of the soul toward virtue, to recognise the causes and order of things, and thereby to venerate God’. De iciarchia.

‘With the forethought that we are mortal, and that every adversity can befall us, let us do what the wise have so highly praised: let us work so that past and present will contribute to the times that have not yet come’. Profugiorum ab aerumna.

‘Nature, that is God, formed man in part heavenly and divine, in part more beautiful and nobler than any mortal thing…Be certain, then, that man was not born to waste away in idleness but to work at great and magnificent tasks by which he can, first of all, please and honour God, and also bring about within himself the habit of virtue and thereby the fruit of happiness’. Della famiglia.

‘Shall I not deem it my duty, by exercising myself in important and noble undertakings, to cultivate my “self” and become more worthy by my industry and virtue?... These two things which Seneca said were more valuable than all the things given by God, reason and society, shall I extinguish them by my sloth and inertia, and let them mean nothing to me?’. Profugiorum ab aerumna.

Alberti's work emphasizes that the potential for strength, endurance, courage, inventiveness, and creativity exists in every human being God created.

Accounts of his life may be found at
http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/14977/Leon-Battista-Alberti.html
and
http://serdar-hizli-art.com/great_artists/leon_battista_alberti_biography_art.htm

It's been a while

22/4/2011

It has been many months since I last added to this website. I am delighted to say that signs of life are agan visible, with an addition to the 'Thoughts and essays' by Dr Roger Booth, a fellow former editor of the Christian Compass.

What's here

A quick look at the 'blogosphere' shows that the nature of the medium means it is all too easy for a 'blog' to convey the impression that its compiler is, at best, self-indulgent and verbose, and at worst, a narcissistic bore. Religious blogs are by no means immune from this.

However, while I shall try to avoid sharing my each and every passing thought with you, there is a use for a space for shorter, more ephemeral pieces of writing, and on this website, that's here. These pieces are likely to be frequently revised, sometimes rewritten and occasionally removed.

ewayfarers@gmail.com

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