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UPDATE: “Groaning of Creation” – Chapter 4: Part III

 

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Does God need to experience pain and suffering like we do necessary for Objective atonement?

 

We complete chapter 4 of Christopher Southgate’s The Groaning of Creation.

Here are our essays.

 

 

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Chapter 4: “An Adventure in the Theology of Creation” – Part II

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Deep intratrinitarian kenosis

 

We will finish the rest of Chapter 4 of Southgate’s The Groaning of Creation.

Please answer one of the questions below:

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UPDATE: Chapter 4.4 – “Developing a Theology of Evolutionary Creation”

 

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Does evolutionary creation lend itself to self-transcendence?

 

During our conversation last Sunday, we had a hard time trying to grasp Southgate’s meaning of the word “transcendence”.  We also had a hard time defining the word “love” as well in a philosophical sense.  Seems simple enough until you get down the deep theological and philosophical aspects of it rather than the simple everyday notions of the word “love”.

Here are our essays.

 

“Groaning of Creation: Chapter 2 – Roads Not Taken” – Part 1

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We will cover the first half of Chapter 2 of “The Groaning of Creation”.

Please answer one of the following questions:

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“The Groaning of Creation” – Preface – Chapter 1-1.5

 

We will begin a new semester this year as we focus on topics in theology and science.  This time, we will cover Christopher Southgate’s The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil.

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“Confessions” – Book VIII: Chapters 7 – 12

A clip from the movie “Restless Heart: The Confessions of Augustine.” Bishop Ambrose is depicted here embracing Augustine and later baptizing him.

 

This week, we will finish the rest of Book VIII – chapters 7 – 12 of Augustine’s Confessions.

In these final chapters, we encounter the monumental moment when Augustine finally devotes himself to the Christian faith as he recounts in great detail in these writings.

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UPDATE: ‘Confessions’ Book III: Chapters 1 – 6

 

Here our our essays on Chapters 1 – 6 of Book III in Augustine’s Confessions.

 

This week, we tried to answer and explore the eternal philosophical question of “What is love?” as Haddaway expresses here.

 

 

Pretty lively discussions from our group this past muggy Thursday at Central Park.

 

Our essays focused on Augustine’s critique of theaters; try to answer what love is; experiences encountering the Bible; and the relationship between theology and philosophy.

 

 

 

‘Confessions’ – Book III: Chapters 1 – 6

 

The Mani Prayer wheel used for prayers in Tibetan Buddhism

The Mani Prayer wheel used for prayers in Tibetan Buddhism.  Augustine was a follower of Manichaeism in his early life.

 

In Book III, Augustine leaves for Carthage from his hometown of Thagaste and enters a place and a lifestyle in which “all around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves.” This is a low point in Augustine’s relationship with God–turned almost entirely toward transient diversions, he seems to feel he could get no lower.

 

It was during this time, when he was around sixteen years old, that he hooked up with a girl and would settle down with her for the next dozen years or so. In that time, having a common-law wife or living together and even having a child together was not considered particularly immoral. The main problem would be that she had come from a lower social class that Augustine which meant that any children they had would take her lower status, not his. This would cause problems for his family who most definitely wanted him to marry a woman with a high social standing. Augustine never reveals her name, most likely to protect her from unwanted attention. As Augustine would later write, she went back to Africa and vowed never to take another man.

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“Confessions: Book II”

We will go over all of Book II of Confessions for our next meeting.

 

In this Book , Augustine describes the onset of adolescence (he was around sixteen at the time – c. 370-371 AD) and enters what he seems to consider the most lurid and sinful period of his life. He describes how he returned home after having spent a year in Madaura, a nearby city where he had gone to study rhetoric. His parents had now expended their meager resources for his schooling, which led the young Augustine to take a year off and give him the opportunity to get into some trouble. He “ran wild,” he writes, “in the jungle of erotic adventures…and became putrid in [God’s] sight.”

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