A few more good links

Here's a nice book review by James Pate.

Tom Thatcher’s Why John Wrote a Gospel addresses the question of why the Gospel of John was written down. He raises some of the same sorts of questions that I have: Why write, when most people arguably could not read, and when there was an oral culture? But he also asks questions that rest on other considerations. Why did the author of the Gospel of John see a need to write a Gospel, when he said that the Holy Spirit would bring things about Jesus to people’s remembrance (John 14:26)? If the Holy Spirit could cause believers to remember what Jesus said and did, would it not be unnecessary to write those things down to preserve them and to keep them from being forgotten?

And here's Jim Davila on Daf Yomi and Jewish Mysticism.

The “act of Creation,” we read in Chagiga 11b, can be taught only to one student at a time, and the Chariot—the name for the prophet Ezekiel’s baroque vision of the Godhead—cannot be taught at all. It must be studied alone, and then only if the student is “wise and understands on his own.

Eventually I will get around to some notes on Jewish Theology by Louis Jacobs. It is curious to me that I have found significant misprints. (I actually check references.) And I have also found both strong and weak reasoning, both strong references and weak ones - like C. S. Lewis on pain in animals - exceedingly weak. I hope to address the whole nine yards of the science of God at some point: Unity, relationship to humanity, reward and punishment, Anointing and the world to come, time and science, election and the scandal of particularity, predestination, providence, and miracles, and who knows what else. This is my death-wish I suppose. For I like anyone else, cannot see God's face and live (Exodus 33:20). Whatever... I have died already in the Anointed. I will start and end there. I took this list of topics, this subdivision of a theological treatise from Jacobs' summary on page 8. I changed a number of his words since I think his words lead him along some paths that are not fruitful. But my theology is and I hope will continue to be 'in God', and 'in Christ' (which I will redefine as 'in the Anointing'. Christ is bigger than Jesus. God is Spirit - not three old men throwing olives at each other among the clouds and shouting Tov! Tov! Tov Me-od' to each other.

And here's Rabbi Rachel's Sermon for Rosh Hashanah. What can we learn from the other? What then can we learn from the One who is wholly Other? Locally, our Christian preachers, Christopher and Alastair muse of the ultimate question and what preaching is about.  Just so you know, even though neither is of my parish, I do read some local Christian stuff too.

But I haven't been reading much recently - I am using a pair of reading glasses that cost $1 and 0.10 cents - bought at Dollarama the day after my second laser eye operation to remove cataracts. The results are good. In a month or so I will get a proper prescription. $1.10 - who says good deals are no longer available?

Enough - I am behind on my reading - must go visit and later watch the Ryder cup.