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Erickson on Ecclesiology

Today I took a stab at reading Millard Erickson.  I am hoping that, over time, my mind will become more focused - but it is very easy to get distracted by every little detail.  I'd wanted to read straight through his section on The Nature of the Church pp 949 - 970.  In actuality, I only got started on his section "Defining the Church". Pp 950-956 Lots of rabbit trails to wander here.  For instance, Erickson's assertion that the doctrine of Ecclesiology has not received as definitive treatment as doctrines such as Christology, the atonement, salvation (951).    Is this true?  Or does it simply reflect the state of Protestant Ecclesiology after its reframing of the doctrine during the reformation? The Catholic and Orthodox churches have a very clearly defined ecclesiology.  For them the term "Church" indicates a concrete historical body, with an authority structure, that was passed down to the present through Apostolic succession. This claim to historical co

Father's Day

One of my favorite activities is organizing my thoughts, or at least learning about new ways to try to do that.  I'm very drawn to things like bullet journaling, commonplace notebooks, and the whole second brain thing.  The concept of outsourcing the task of memory reminds me a bit of computing, where the cloud and various sorts of drives are used to relieve your PC from the burden of having to store everything on its hard drive.   This is Father's Day, and it did not go as I had planned.  I had hoped to spend last night out with my friend Austin, and after church today, to go out and spend some time reading.  Then I was going to go home and spend some time with my family.  Last night it was pouring - so I decided to stay home, then our power cut out and I spent the night trying to sleep in a recliner because my C-Pap doesn't work without electricity.  I finally went to bed this morning when the power came back on, but that meant we missed church.  Determined to salvage wha

Hello World! . . .Hello?

Is anybody blogging anymore?   It feels like a stupid time to start blogging.  Like that ship has sailed.  Yet here I am with my steamer trunks like I'm actually going somewhere.  But I'm late to the dock.  People I want to follow all seem to have stopped blogging years ago. Most of the information I've seen about blogging is for entrepreneurs hoping to make a buck off their content.  I hear people complain about being overlooked by the algorithms. It seems like anyone hoping to start a blog these days should accept that nobody is ever going to read their stuff. The thing is, I need this.  My mind is a jumble of thoughts and dream projects, and ideas that I think are clever - and it kills me to think that after springing to my awareness, that they will just sink back again into the obscurity of my subconscious maybe never be seen again.  Or just as bad, keep poking their heads above water as clever yet unfinished ideas to taunt me and remind me of how little I've ever d