Leb' wohl, leb' wohl
July 18, 2007
There, bet Del Boy didn't know I can even quote from memory -- from memory, boyo!! --the relevant German section of the passage in The Valkyrie to which he refers. Eat humble pie, you culturally elitist Welshman and grovel in abject humiliation and wonder before the dazzling cultural intellect of your English superior (and I say that with all due modesty and English self-effacing humility)!!! Now, can you respond by citing some lines from `Heartbreaker,' in the original Sanskrit, by the mighty Led Zeppelin, or are you, as I suspect. somewhat limited in your philistine cultural tastes to music produced by Nietzsche's more dubious friends???
On Christ centred preaching. I wouldn't want to pin the non-Trinitarian thrust of modern worship on this. Perhaps such preaching is rather a symptom of the suspicion with which historical debates, creedal trajectories, and systematic categories are often held in the contemporary church. And Trinitarianism is intellecutally strong meat -- it requires deep thought on the part of the preacher in terms of his own theology, and then excellent communication skills to express it in a sermon in a way that is neither patronising or tending to the heretical. I always think that, if in doubt, close attention to the text solves most problems. On the Trinity, anchoring all of Christ's ministry in its origin in his baptism is the obvious move; failure to do this will always leave the Trinity as problem; but if you do this, then you have immediately laid a Trinitarian foundation for the whole of Christ's incarnate ministry -- whereby truly Christ-centred preaching becomes truly Trinitarian preaching.
On Christ centred preaching. I wouldn't want to pin the non-Trinitarian thrust of modern worship on this. Perhaps such preaching is rather a symptom of the suspicion with which historical debates, creedal trajectories, and systematic categories are often held in the contemporary church. And Trinitarianism is intellecutally strong meat -- it requires deep thought on the part of the preacher in terms of his own theology, and then excellent communication skills to express it in a sermon in a way that is neither patronising or tending to the heretical. I always think that, if in doubt, close attention to the text solves most problems. On the Trinity, anchoring all of Christ's ministry in its origin in his baptism is the obvious move; failure to do this will always leave the Trinity as problem; but if you do this, then you have immediately laid a Trinitarian foundation for the whole of Christ's incarnate ministry -- whereby truly Christ-centred preaching becomes truly Trinitarian preaching.
