Thirty things I'm thankful for...
* The unfathomable depth of the Father's love, shown in His Son on the cross, applied in my life by His Spirit.
* The hope of eternal life.
* Unmerited grace.
* Good friends.
* Family
* Sunshine
* Birthday Parties.
* Spring Flowers.
* Coogee Beach
* Theological Education.
* Beach Missions - especially the team at East's Beach Kiama in the 80's.
* My God-daughters.
* Trips to Barcelona.
* Opportunities to talk about Jesus.
* Church family around the world.
* People who taught me to love God's Word.
* Letters and emails from home.
* The West Wing.
* Bear Hugs.
* Telephones.
* Governments who allow Christians to meet freely and openly.
* Opportunities to grow and mature.
* The smell of fresh cut grass.
* Theological greats on whose sholders we stand - this weeks favourites are Augustine, Hilary and Calvin.
* Old friends and new friends.
* The internet.
* Long runs, and running partners.
* Raspberries and white chocolate, Strawberries and dark chocolate, and milk chocolate all on its own.
* Pretty blue things.
* The promise that Jesus will return.
* The hope of eternal life.
* Unmerited grace.
* Good friends.
* Family
* Sunshine
* Birthday Parties.
* Spring Flowers.
* Coogee Beach
* Theological Education.
* Beach Missions - especially the team at East's Beach Kiama in the 80's.
* My God-daughters.
* Trips to Barcelona.
* Opportunities to talk about Jesus.
* Church family around the world.
* People who taught me to love God's Word.
* Letters and emails from home.
* The West Wing.
* Bear Hugs.
* Telephones.
* Governments who allow Christians to meet freely and openly.
* Opportunities to grow and mature.
* The smell of fresh cut grass.
* Theological greats on whose sholders we stand - this weeks favourites are Augustine, Hilary and Calvin.
* Old friends and new friends.
* The internet.
* Long runs, and running partners.
* Raspberries and white chocolate, Strawberries and dark chocolate, and milk chocolate all on its own.
* Pretty blue things.
* The promise that Jesus will return.
posted by Mandy at
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
3 Comments:
Thank you, Mandy. What a nice idea and a good list wot did good to my soul.
Hilary is an interesting choice as a theological great. What do you especially like about her - sorry, I mean, him!?
By
Marc Lloyd, at Monday, May 29, 2006 6:14:00 pm
I was going to get around to explaining Hilary (him - Bishop of Poitiers) at some point. But here are a couple of quotes from my essay that got me excited:
Hilary, writing against both Arians and Sabellians, argues the theophanies in the Old Testament are a prefiguration of the incarnation, ‘with this difference - that in the theophanies God was only seen in man, in the incarnation, God is born in man’. Hilary says:
‘His merciful and mysterious self-revelations are in no wise inconsistent with His true heavenly nature; and His faithful saints never fail to penetrate the guise He has assumed in order that faith may see Him [...] God was seen and believed and worshipped as Man, Who was indeed to be born as Man in the fullness of time. He takes upon Him, to meet the Patriarch’s eye, a semblance which foreshadows the future truth.’
Hilary explicitly denies that the eternal Son had a human form before the incarnation – although he may have been manifest in the theophanies, in taking on human flesh in the incarnation he assumes a body he did not have before that time:
'He had the fullness of the Godhead; he has it still, for He is God’s Son. But He Who was the Son of God had become the Son of man also, for The Word was made flesh. He had not lost His former being, but He had become what He was not before; he had not abdicated his own position, yet He had taken ours.'
Hilary explores this perichoretic relationship and demonstrates that the nature of the eternal Son is determined by the unbegotten Father. He argues that the Father begat the Son in eternity not from any pre-existent matter, nor from nothing, by childbirth or as a piece of himself. Rather:
‘Incomprehensibly, ineffably, before time or worlds, He begat the Only-begotten from His own unbegotten substance, bestowing through love and power His whole Divinity upon that Birth. Thus He is the Only-begotten, perfect, eternal son of the unbegotten, perfect, eternal Father.’
In taking on human form for our salvation, the external Son is embodied, however, like the Father, he remains essentially invisible, bodiless and incomprehensible: ‘the Son is mysteriously omnipresent in the same way as the Father […] If the mutual indwelling of the Father and the son is understood in a bodily way, this is an impossibility. ’ Faced with an embodied Son, Arians must reject the mutual indwelling of the Father and Son, because they argue the Son is less than the Father. Hilary counters a suggestion that omnipresence and perichoresis are inconsistent by acknowledging that what may seem impossible for human understanding is possible for God to be:
‘It seems impossible that one object should be both within and without another, or that (since it is laid down that the Beings of whom we are treating, though They do not dwell apart, retain their separate existence and condition) these Beings can reciprocally contain One Another, so that One should permanently envelop, and also be permanently enveloped by, the Other, whom yet he envelopes […] what man cannot understand, God can be.’
By
Mandy, at Monday, May 29, 2006 6:28:00 pm
well many of the things I would tick, but an especially big tick to:
East's Beach Beach Mission in the 80s! (when Mandy was just 13 or so!)
By
michael jensen, at Monday, May 29, 2006 7:59:00 pm
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