h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just read this in a friend's blog and thought it might be of interest to you, dagesh.

http://quanglewangle.blogspot.com/2007/07/condensation.html

I hesitated at the word "ridiculous" and stopped reading after he said, "Frankly, it's a bit rubbish".

That's a pity, because I think you would find if you read a bit further that 'rubbish' is not referring to the Bible, just to this condensed version.

Yes, I know what he was referring to.

Let me explain further: I'm sure that the author of the 100 minute Bible knew what he was doing and why he wrote the way he did, and I wish that more reviewers would start off with that assumption rather than setting the entire tone of their analysis with words like "ridiculous" and "rubbish". I'm sure your friend has something interesting to say, but I go through life hearing words like "ridiculous" and "rubbish" a lot and if I can, try to avoid subjecting myself to the same thing in my leisure time - hence not reading any further.

Or perhaps the author of the blog was telling us that he himself is ridiculous and rubbish. In which case reading his opinions would also be interesting, but perhaps somewhat pointless unless you wanted to try to help that person stop thinking about himself that way.

I learned how to write a review from Prof Torrance, then Professor in Systematics and Ethics at Aberdeen, now President of Princeton Theological Seminary. I looked at a book once and criticised it because I could see its flaws according to my own light, but then read a review of that same book by Prof Torrance - his review was basically kind and generous. I compared my reaction and his, and saw that his was much more constructive, and, from what I know of Torrance, very probably more real, too.

Then again, I see I have just fallen into the same trap, of rejecting your friend's blog because of my reaction to the words "ridiculous" and "rubbish".

I'm still feeling a little fragile after my afternoon with Nuria, but perhaps later on I'll read the whole thing.

Well yes, I take your point - but it's only a blog, not a literary review.

By the way, the blogger is a she, not that that's relevant at all.

OK, I read it.

It strikes me that this reviewer is telling us all about himself, and little about the book he's actually supposed to be reviewing.

But, if you want to me to be kind and generous, ok, there's plenty of things one could discuss about the review in your link.

But as I read it again, I see she says some questionable things in her opening sentence. "Hardly anyone bothers to read it" - the Bible, that is. I wonder how many Christians she knows? Do all the Christians she knows hardly bother to read the Bible? Well then she needs to branch out and meet some new kinds of Christians. She might learn some other things too along the way.

I could go on - I'm sorry - that's the mood I'm in at the moment (blame Nuria!)

And she says "the thoughts and questions lie" in theology.

Well, apart from the unfortunate, or revealing choice of word in "lie" (something which I could talk about but I won't), does this mean that there was no content in the life and teaching of Jesus as presented in the Bible, that contains "thoughts and questions"?

Not just in the Gospels - but in the Old Testament everywhere as well?

If we have "thoughts and questions" about the things contained in the person of Jesus - the humanity and the divinity, as she rightly states at the start - I think the best way into them is by finding them in the text of the Bible itself.

The temptation is always to fly off into an intellectual dream which we then live by. This dream consists of speculative thought all of which is based around the axiom that "I understand".

Whereas we must allow God to crucify our understanding in the way Jesus did all his life and also on the Cross, where his last, unanswered question before he died was "why" - "eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani".

One way - although again, not without its parallel counterfeit - is to ensure to base one's entire conscious mode of analysis and thought on the revelation of Christ. Indeed to worship the revelation of Christ with one's faculty of thought, imagination and reasoning.

This is what it is meant when Jesus, echoing the Jewish law, told us to worship the Lord our God with all our soul, mind and strength. Theology is worship of the Lord God with the mind.

Part of the discipleship of the Cross is to learn how, through the mystery of Christ, to stop worshipping self with the mind, and start worshipping God with it. The ways of this path are intricate, interesting and paradoxical. They involve death and resurrection. Theology attempts to explain it, but theological explanation is always leading us away from the crux, if we look to it for help.

That's why theology must take place after the event to which it testifies. Otherwise it's a waste of time.

Or, in the words of contemporary Liberation Theologian Jon Sobrino, "Action precedes understanding". Or, as Anselm put it in his celebrated definition of theology, "credo ut intellegam" (I believe so that I can understand).

Unless you've lived through it, you can't really say anything about it - I'm sure that this applies to all areas of life.

Then again you get the Buddhist axiom, "Those who know, keep silent". There are parallels to this in the book of Proverbs, where it also says that knowledge is concealed by the wise, although it also says the opposite, something like "clever lips spread knowledge" - it does this a lot, saying one thing and then the opposite. I think when this happens, we are meant to read it as a directed koan.

To find oneself at the heart of all this must have been exhausting hard work for Jesus. To enter into life - all that he found at the heart of God - must be something that only happened at the Resurrection.

Yet the resurrection of Jesus was in a way foreshadowed by him throughout his life. He did signs, as John calls them.

I can fully understand the earnest, passionate desire in the voice of the Holy Spirit and the Bride, when they say, "Come, Lord Jesus".

How can you base your /entire/ conscious mode of analysis and thought on the revelation of Christ? Only if your unconscious leaning is in that direction. How do we change our unconscious leaning? Through faith and obedience. There is an old song:

Trust and obey,
Trust and obey,
There is only one way
To be happy in Jesus
Is trust and obey.

I suppose you could say it all depends on how graciously we wait.

That's made me want to go to a selection of restaurants and see how people wait! How interesting. I think this is near to the insight of Hans Urs von Balthasar in his aesthetic theology.

This might indeed to able to be brought into my theological paradigm of personalist phenomenology - they say Von Balthasar was Pope John-Paul's theological favourite, and Woytila was into personalist phenomenology - we have John Macmurray, an Aberdonian-formed Scot, who may be a cross-over from this philosophical foundation into the theology of Ubuntu and the Fathers, which I hope to bring into encounter with each other.

Interestingly, Macmurray's stand was that he loved God, but hated the way he had become institutionalised in organised Christianity. I believe Macmurray saw the whole world as Christ's revelation. I refer you to page 37 of Costello's biography of Macmurray for the basic idea (second paragraph). "His life and God's life are part of one mystery". Yes indeed, it is with this in mind that I have always approached the Fathers.

It could be said that life is for some an inoculation into eternal life, for others a slow administration of lethal poison. I suppose in a way all that matters is how we administer what we alone have to administer. Gosh, that's an interesting one, again. Again, we come to dramatic theory (von Balthasar).

And how we suffer what we have to suffer.

Again the word 'patior' makes its appearance in my hootoo space.

Love is patient, love is kind.

Only Jesus got that right all the time - to some extent or other, we all lurch from consciousness to consciousness diverted by fear. Jesus slept while the boat lurched, but once his disciples woke him up, he stilled the waves with a word.

Even if we can't always live up to the Gospel reality, we can still admire the one who did - Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, son of David, son of Adam, son of God. And we are promised that the more we admire him, the closer we allow him intimacy with us, the more we will become transformed into his image - the Bible talks of 'conformity to the image' - and we will find the Kingdom of God is 'within' us - or amongst us, as others have interpreted the word.

How do we allow Christ close intimacy with us? The closest intimacy you can get is identification. Who was the pastor who took the place of the Jewish concentration camp victim in the selection for death? That man became identified with what it meant to be a Jew in Nazi Germany. He loved his fellow Jew so much - I say his fellow Jew, because all Christians are children of Abraham through Isaac - that he was willing to die in his place.

This is the kind of thing the Bible speaks about. Sometimes, theoretical discourse leads us away from, rather than towards, this central theme.

I suppose the difference between Jesus and a suicide-bomber is that Jesus died in place of other people, rather than taking other people with him.

Although Jesus did take other people with him. In fact, many Christians, von Balthasar included, think that Jesus took the whole world with him in his career of birth (and even, some tentatively suggest, pre-incarnation), childhood, early adult years, and maturity.

Quite what this means, how Jesus might have done it, and how we may realise that we are already sharing in those benefits he won for us in his incarnation, is I suppose the theme of theology and the burden of every evangelist.

Or is this all a load of ridiculous rubbish? I'm sitting with a bottle of port thinking about things. I could carry on with this all night, but I don't know if I'm talking gibberish or truth.