Neuroscience of Memory and Salvation (Soteriology)
Memory-forming molecules traveling around the brain to form new memories.
Came upon this site about the latest research on how memory forms in the brain.
This relates to some articles I wrote about pertaining to cognitive neuroscience and theology. (The summaries on Peterson and Rev. Choong in particular.)
The key point to understand is that when memory forms, or when new memories form in your brain or when you learn something new (like I hope you’re doing now), there’s a physical change that’s occurring in your brain – i.e. your brain changes.
Through the Wormhole: Did We Invent God?
Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman is one of my favorite series to watch on tv that’s on the Science Channel.
From time to time, they’ll show episodes concerning God and science.
This episode explores the latest research done in psychology and neuroscience about where the origins of human belief in the supernatural may have come from.
This episode poses interesting questions, such as:
- Does God only exist in our minds?
- Is a belief in God “hardwired” within us?
- What is required to believe in a God or supernatural entity? Can animals believe or sense the divine? (i.e. at the bare minimum you need a theory of mind as far as we can tell.)
- Is belief in God just a remnant from our evolutionary past to explain what’s going on in our world?
- Is it just childish superstition that we haven’t outgrown?
- Did God create us? Or did we create God?
Submissions for Chapter 13: Part II – Byzantine Iconoclasm and Patriarch Photios
Here are our written submissions from last night.
Also, I caught an error in one of our links for Chapter 12, from Dec. 18, 2013. Here is the corrected link.
Good conversation from last night as we centered around the often uneasy relationship between religion (the institutionalized version) and politics. (And first time in a long while where we had the whole crew present in a meeting.)
Amanda pointed out that she felt that MacCulloch’s book was more about a “history of the church” rather than the “history of Christianity”. I think I understand her position. It’s a bit depressing to read about how corrupt and power-hungry people have been when reading about church history, even though they hide under the veneer that they are followers of Christ. I believe she wanted to read about accounts of believers in the early part of the church who were not only doing good deeds, but really living out their convictions for the love of Christ and for others.
I think one of the main underlying questions was: What does true Christianity really look like? Does it have to be defined by church denominations or traditions? (No, of course not, but…)
I posed the question, “Didn’t Christ die for the church?”
“Noah’s Ark: The Facts Behind the Flood”
Dr. Irving Finkel, assistant keeper at the department of the Middle East at the British Museum, recently deciphered the “Ark Tablet” – an ancient Babylonian tablet that describes a flood and a building of an ark by a single person; however this one is unique in that this tablet provides specific instructions on how the ark was to look like and be built.
Some interesting facts:
- In this account, the ark was round, called a coracle– a shape that is still used today in the Middle East, with a diameter of around 230 ft; very different from our traditional picture of what the ark looked like from our Sunday school pictures
- It’s one of the first known depictions of the Akkadian (Semitic Babylonian) word “sana” which translates to “two each, two by two” when the Ark Tablet describes how the animals were rounded into the coracle. (Sound familiar?)
- It’s worthy to bear in mind that, as Finkel states, the Babylonian flood story in cuneiform is 1,000 years older than the book of Genesis in Hebrew.
He’s come out with a new book on his discoveries called The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood.
I personally had a chance to attend a lecture of Dr. Finkel in the summer last year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when they were exhibiting the Cyrus Cylinder; the Met used his English translation of the Cylinder. He’s quite an entertaining speaker, unlike most other academic lecturers in his field who tend to be quite dry and boring in my opinion.
It should be interesting to see how this may impact biblical and Old Testament studies in the future.
Click here for his complete article.
James D. G. Dunn Interview by Eerdmans Publishing on his new book “The Oral Gospel Tradition”
James D. G. Dunn is Lightfoot Professor Emeritus of Divinity at the University of Durham in England and a New Testament scholar. He is widely regarded as one of the foremost scholars in the world today on the thought and writings of St. Paul.
In this interview he talks about his latest book The Oral Gospel Tradition. When we read about the life of Jesus, we forget that the gospels were written down many decades after Jesus’ life and during that gap between his life and the written gospels there was a rich oral tradition about Jesus that the gospel writers were dependent upon.
Diarmaid MacCulloch on his book “Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years”
“God is not the answer; He’s the question.”
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Prof. of History of the Church at Oxford University, talking about his book, Christianity: The First 3000 Years, that we are currently going over.
Chapter 13: Faith in a New Rome – Part 2 – Icons and New Missions to the West; New Social media links
Emperors Constantine and Justinian Presenting Constantinople to the Virgin Mary Holding the Christ Child, Hagia Sophia
For next Tuesday, we will be finishing up the rest of Chapter 13 by covering the final two sections: Smashing Images: The Iconoclastic Controversy (726 – 843) and Photios and the New Missions to the West (850 – 900).
Before getting to the questions, please check out our new social media pages on facebook and twitter. Please join if you have accounts on both sites.
New Submissions for Chapter 13: “Hagia Sophia” & “Byzantine Spirituality”
Hi all,
New updates and submissions about the reign of Justinian I (aka Justinian the Great), the Byzantine Empire, Hagia Sophia, and the Orthodox theology of theosis. You can find them here.
Tonight, there were interesting talks about what constitutes theosis and how it perhaps relates to the more Reformed understanding of sanctification.
Also, to clarify some points on terminologies that often confused us tonight:
- Dyophysitism – the Chalcedonian position that full deity and full humanity exist in the person of Jesus Christ as two natures without confusion or change.
- Monophysitism – states that in the person of Jesus Christ, his human nature was absorbed into the divine nature like a cube of sugar dissolves in a cup of water. Therefore, Christ was left with only one nature, the Divine (Greek mono- one, physis – nature). (i.e. Christ had only a Divine nature.)
- Miaphysitism – holds that in the one person of Jesus Christ, his Divinity and Humanity are united in one “nature” (physis), the two being united without separation, without confusion, and without alteration. This is the position of the Orthodox and Coptic Churches.
It was also interesting to see tonight how hard it is for most Christians to articulate very basic terminologies we use all the time like:
- What is a spirit? How is it different from the soul? What is a soul anyway? After death, how exactly does the soul or the spirit separate from the body?
- How is a soul saved by God? Saved from what ? It’s saved from Hell? What is hell exactly and where exactly is it located within the known universe? If it’s outside the universe, how do know that? (Same questions apply to the notion/concept of heaven.)
- What is the nature of a “resurrected” or “spiritual” body? What type of matter will it consist of?
Chapter 13: Faith in a New Rome (451 – 900) – Part 1
Hello folks and Happy New Year!
We’ve definitely come a long way since we first embarked on this book last year and hopefully garnered much since then – let’s keep the momentum going throughout this year.
For our next meeting on Thursday, Jan. 9, we’ll cover the first two sections of Chapter 13 that deals with the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church: “A Church to Shape Orthodoxy: Hagia Sophia” and “Byzantine Spirituality: Maximus and the Mystical Tradition”.
We’ll spend the next couple of months dealing with the Orthodox Church that will hopefully lift the veil of obscurity that most evangelical and Western Christians have of it.
A New New Testament
The process of canonization of the biblical text or the Bible that we have now, is long and complex.
Most people think that the 66 books that comprise the Bible have been set in stone and that they are a settled (and eternal) issue, but it really depends in most part what Christian tradition or denomination you’re affiliated with.
I can only imagine how (radically) different Christianity would have been like if such books were included and other current ones, like the Book of Revelation, had been omitted.
Very interesting article about a new book coming out soon.
http://articles.philly.com/2013-03-04/news/37412901_1_christianity-new-testament-bible-scholars
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