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Finished reading: The Edge of Words by Rowan Williams 📚

A stunning, mind-bending achievement. There is immense apologetic value here, though it is not straightforwardly a work of apologetics. Indeed, the best comparison to Williams' argument (at least, the one that comes immediately to mind) is from David Bentley Hart’s The Experience of God. Neither author argues directly for the existence of God, yet both books provide rather powerful (if oblique) arguments for God’s existence. Hart’s argument focuses on three “moments” in our experience of reality (being, consciousness, bliss) as pointers to the fundamental reality of God. Williams, meanwhile, focuses on language, particularly the peculiarities of language. I’m no prophet, but I can say with confidence that I’ll be reading Rowan Williams for the rest of my life.

Lesslie Newbigin:

Jesus appears to have taken no steps to embody his teaching about the kingdom in a written form, which would be insulated against distortion by the fallible memories of his disciples. The Christian church possesses nothing comparable to the Qur’an. The teaching of Jesus has come to us in varied versions filtered through the varied remembering and interpretings of different groups of believers. What, on the other hand, did occupy the center of Jesus' concern was the calling and binding to himself of a living community of men and women who would be the witnesses of what he was and did. The new reality that he introduced into history was to be continued through history in the form of a community, not in the form of a book.

It’s easy for Protestants (like me) to balk at what Newbigin says here about Scripture, leading us to then tune out the rest. But I do think he’s making a really important point about Jesus calling “a living community of men and women” to be his witnesses—a community that exists in history and extends across history. Newbigin’s point is that Jesus cared supremely about equipping his disciples (and, by extension, the church) for the task of bearing the presence of God’s kingdom through history. To be sure, Scripture plays an absolutely essential role in that whole process. But there is an unavoidably visible, tangible reality to the church (as the community of Jesus in time) that we can see and point to and trace its development (and declensions) and submit to and so on. This is what, in another context, I referred to (drawing on Richard John Neuhaus) as being an “ecclesial Christian.”

Marva Dawn:

The greatest danger of a marketing approach to sharing the gospel with the world around the Church is that it treats people as consumers—perhaps religious consumers, but consumers nonetheless. In The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch describes consumers as “perpetually unsatisfied, restless, anxious, and bored.” They have been educated by advertising and a milieu that champions consumption as a way of life into “an unappeasable appetite not only for goods but for new experiences and personal fulfillment.” Consumption is expected to provide “the answer to the age-old discontents of loneliness, sickness, weariness, lack of sexual satisfaction,” the malaise of boring and meaningless jobs, and “feelings of futility and fatigue.” At the same time, “it creates new forms of discontent peculiar to the modern age.” Since consumption can never keep its promises to fill the aching void in people’s lives, to create congregational members who treat religion as another consumer item is to train them not to appreciate the way in which God really does fill our emptinesses.

Finished reading: Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton 📚

I read this with a few guys from church. Some really good, memorable chapters on prayer. Staton is an engaging writer. Not sure if this is owing more to the book or me, but I found my attention waning somewhat in the latter chapters. Overall, would still recommend.