Clarity, Full Disclosure & A Way Forward: Standing in the Wake of General Convention and the Approval of Same-Sex Blessings

A Sermon Preached at Good Shepherd, Tomball

An Evolutionary Look at Creation, the Fall, and Our Restoration in Christ

Creation is an act of kenosis, i.e. a "self-emptying," whereby the Creator pours out the divine-self to "make room" for something other than the divine-self. Yet creation is not so much "event" as it is a series of dynamic, ongoing, purposeful and transformative processes. In the initial act of creation, God calls the cosmos into being from non-being (creatio ex nihilo). But God also continues to call and draw the cosmos towards the gradual attainment of greater and greater complexity (creatio continua), eventually manifesting itself in the emergence of life, sentience, consciousness, rationality, moral awareness, spirituality, love, beauty, joy, and ultimately, the beatific vision. Considered in terms of mere physicalism, these processes may be rightly subsumed under the scientific term "evolution."

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Part Two: Theosis Realized

The Quest Continues with "The Witness of the Empty Tomb"

Barth had never held or insinuated that the resurrection of Christ had been anything but a physical resurrection or that the Church's faith in the resurrection was rooted in anything less than historical event. Barth's earlier statements that seemed to dismiss the "empty tomb" were not about denying the existence of a grave or a sepulcher located somewhere in or around Jerusalem, but rather about the legendary character of the resurrection accounts found in the gospels.

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The Quest for the Mythistorical Jesus

...Jesus is not the kind of person that history typically remembers. Indeed, the shortcomings of "questing" for the historical Jesus is simply that what can be known about Jesus historically, apart from the rare incidental comment by otherwise disinterested observers (like Josephus and Suetonius), is relegated exclusively to the writings of his followers, particularly the gospels. The problem is, however, that the gospels are not "histories," at least not in the sense that we understand that term today; nor are they what we would call "biographies." Rather they are "faith-narratives," i.e., stories about the "Christ of faith."

Read entire article here.

Mythopoeia Ancient & Modern

"Standing right at the pivot point of the Axial Age are the sacred texts of the biblical tradition, written over the course of some eight centuries, more or less, but certainly preserving stories that are much older; stories of the ancient mythopoeic mind, remembered and re-crafted into Israel's sacred story."

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Marcion Rehabilitated (Part Four)

Resolving the Dilemma of the Schizophrenic God

My New Blog

Come and visit my new blog: "post.catholic project."  I'm writing under the nom de plume, "Father Thomas."