Yarr! – The Weblog of Bob Heffernan

Theology of Hope by Juergen Moltmann

More comments on this after I’ve read more and digested more of what I’ve read (and I only got through a few pages today) but I do have this thought: if the eschatological horizon is a moving horizon does Moltmann expect that history will ever catch up with this horizon? I have yet to see where a total and final fulfillment of promise fits into Moltmann’s system. However, I imagine this will become clear as I go on (I’m only about a chapter into the book, after all).

More some other time. I’m enjoying the book so far. ‘Tis a classic, after all.

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

I didn’t read much yesterday but I did read a chapter or two from Peter Pan. There is nothing quite as enjoyable as a good children’s book. See also The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, The Last Unicorn, &c.

The Early Church by Henry Chadwick

Chadwick moves on to consider some of the most important of the Church fathers: Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria and Origen. What is most striking, of course, is the way in which each of them appropriates Greek philosophy — each in their own way — to combat what they saw as heresies and to describe and defend Christian belief. Also interesting, of course, is the growing insistence on a canon of New Testament writings to form a basis from which to argue against such heresies. Another interesting development, with Irenaeus in particular, is the introduction of something like the idea of `apostolic succession’.

It strikes me as I read the accounts of the various doctrinal disputes of this era that much of what I think to be self-evident upon reading Scripture is clearly not so. At the very least much of what appears self-evident to me was clearly not self-evident to many Christians in the second and third centuries. It is another stark reminder that all of our readings of Scripture (and everything else besides) are prejudiced by our preconceptions and cultural setting.