1 Corinthians

Started reading 1 Corinthians this morning. Here are some observations:
Interesting attitude to start a talk with (2:4) "my message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power"

3:16 "don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred and you are that temple"
This seems to speak about murder.

3:21 reminder me of McClaren's Generous Orthodoxy: "all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world it life or death or the present or the future - all are yours, and
you are of Christ, and Christ us if God"

Reading 4:17 in light of the previous verses it becomes: "I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who I'd la faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life [as scum of the earth] in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church."

Revolutionary Subordination

Is the title of this chapter in The Politics of Jesus.
Yoder highlights that the key point about the 'haustafeln' (house tables - ethical guides of early church in Col, Eph and 1 Pet) is not that they borrow from Hellenistic stoicism (which they don't) but that
"the subordinate person in the social order is addressed as a moral agent". The radical thing about the early church ethic is that it speaks directly to the slaves and women and gives "personal moral responsibility to those who had no legal or moral status."

Freedom for

"yet the freedom of this God is far greater than the idea of freedom as complete independence from others. The free, self-determined God is free for others."

Migliore

Infallibility

An interest link between two forms of infallibility and the Enlightenment:

"To the Roman Catholic dogma of the infallibility of the pope (1870), directed against the rising tide of modernity, there corresponds the Protestant doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible."

Migliore, 'Faith seeking understanding'

principalities and powers

In The Politics of Jesus, Yoder quotes from Berkhof who seems to understand Paul's 'principalities and powers' as forces at work in the world. Berkhof emphasises that Paul is really saying that in the church a new 'power' or 'force' has come into the world which stands opposed to the ways of the world. This is a more rational understanding of Principalities and Powers and it makes a lot of sense in the way that Christianity gives a new motivation and attitude to our living. Christ sets us free from a world driven by self-interest and greed. The structures of oppression and injustice do not hold the Christian who lives for the promotion of love and justice.

To what extent are Principalities and Powers spiritual? For as long as I don't fully understand the spiritual dimension of life (i.e. forever) I suppose that the best approach is to continue to pray against strongholds and to live the fight against material injustice.

Give and forgive

A God who wants to give and forgive, a world that wants get and forget.

Quote from Pete Greig.