Theology and Religious Studies and other items under BS

BS is the library catalogue id for Biblical Studies - it has nothing to do with the bulls and goats of Psalm 50.

Is the God-given “good” meant for everybody, or is it only for a few? And how is your answer logically coherent to the faith you claim?

So asks Brooke Lester on the comment thread here.

What a great question! For me this question identifies the most basic faith - is where we find ourselves a part of good? The question emerges every time the word good or better occurs in a religious document. Better is worse than good by the way - it is the enemy of the good, as the French say. I have recently decided to avoid the word better in translation. The good is sufficient as is the evil to the day.

So why do I study? It's all about the good for me and for others. For everybody? That needs some nuance. There is no 'everybody'. There is one other body at a time. For the few? Where is the sufficiency that the few might find it? Never far away as T.S. Eliot noted in his Journey of the Magi. Available in the place where we are no longer at ease.

Is this answer coherent with the faith I claim?  Ha! why should the answer cohere? Why should it not be good to be 'no longer at ease'? Is this question implying that God must cohere to my ideas? Also what is my faith that I claim? That the good that is shown to me is sufficient. But what if it is not shown? Then complain. I can't put it in a single word apart from that good that I know through the death of Jesus and the Anointing and Anointed of the chiastic TNKNT, the one Spirit that informs my good through the circumcision that is in Christ Jesus.  I can only invite to the good - through the madness of tasting and seeing to which the slightly mad David invites us poor folk in Psalm 34.

Is that in-coherent or co-inherent?  The New Jerusalem turned upside down reveals the marvel of her garments of precious stones. (from a vague memory of Charles Williams, Shadows of Ecstasy. Faber Edition, p26)

The actual quote - vague memory right on but context right off. "She was a magnificent creature, tall and rather large and dark, and she carried them off magnificently. In fact, she was a creation in terms of jewellery, the New Jerusalem turned upside down so that the foundations showed"