The name of Erasmus will never perish John Colet (1516)
Erasmus has published volumes more full of wisdom than any which Europe has seen for ages. Thomas More
The chief aim of Erasmus in his life’s work as a humanist scholar was to restore theology. In his times this meant to replace the theology then being taught and practiced as a professional science by a more adequate study of Holy Scripture and the Fathers of the early Church.
John Olin
Those who have dipped into the life and prolific writings of Erasmus (1466-1536) might be aware of the importance and significance of the Praise of Folly. Others know Erasmus well because of his Adages and Colloquies.
The voluminous correspondence of Erasmus holds the attention of others.
The clash between Luther and Erasmus is part of Reformation lore and
legend.
The
fact that Erasmus was put on the Index makes him an activist and writer
of some interest. The peace theology of Erasmus makes him an anomaly of
sorts in the war stricken 16th century. Many 1st generation Anabaptists cut their peace tradition teeth by sitting at the feet of Erasmus in Basel. Erasmus was front and centre in heralding and doing new translations of the Bible. But, Erasmus was deeply committed as a Christian humanist and renaissance scholar in bringing to the fore the Fathers of the Church.
From the earliest days of Christianity, the Gospels' resemblance to
certain myths has been used as an argument against Christian faith.
When pagan apologists for the official pantheism of the Roman empire
denied that the death-and-resurrection myth of Jesus differed in any
significant way from the myths of Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis, Attis,
etc., they failed to stem the rising Christian tide. In the last two
hundred years, however, as anthropologists have discovered all over the
world foundational myths that similarly resemble Jesus' Passion and
Resurrection, the notion of Christianity as a myth seems at last to
have taken hold—even among Christian believers.
Reconciled to What? Personal and Public Reconciliation in Canadian Aboriginal Context
by Brad Jersak with thanks to the Honourable Iona Campagnola
Recently, I was honoured to attend a gathering hosted by the Lytton First Nation, entitled ‘Bright New Day’ Workshop. The facilitators of the event were John McCandless and Chief Robert Joseph. Approximately sixty registrants attended, half of whom came from a variety of Aboriginal communities and organizations, while the other half represented a wide range of governments and businesses that have a stake in building relationships with the First Nations communities. It seemed symbolic that the modern facilities selected for the event were unfinished but that could enjoy meeting in one large circle within a tent with a grass field as the floor. Significant too was the fact that we were situated on the grounds of what had once been St. George's Residential School, with all the loaded history that its memory carries. To have a conference on reconciliation among such people in such a place was a profound experience that I will not forget. Before I go on, I want to thank the Lytton First Nation for welcoming me to the traditional territories of the N’Laka’Pamux Peoples. You treated me with great hospitality and respect.
Michael Ignatieff, True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2009.
Michael Ignatieff could become the next Prime Minister in Canada. This means it is of some importance to know what Ignatieff thinks and why.
Ignatieff is the child of two important Canadian families: the Grant and Ignatieff clans. Michael has written of the roots of the Ignatieff family in The Russian Album. True Patriot Love is a turn to the better known Grant side of the family, and an exploration of how four generations of Grants have tried to make sense of what it means to be Canadian.
I started spending a lot of evenings in my local county jail a few years ago, doing Bible studies and meeting with inmates one on one as a young chaplain. I immediately loved the Chicano gangsters best. I thought I’d found kindred souls on the margins our society who were readier to follow Jesus than either the youth group leaders or seminary students of my past.
They were delightfully irreligious in the Bible studies. Smart, boldly honest, aware of social injustice. They weren’t attached to the status quo or many family expectations, and not afraid to be arrested nor die for what they wanted. They knew how to hit the streets and get along with few material belongings. These guys could recruit other orphaned young men with uncanny results, and they already had experience in laying down their lives for their homies. Often one would take the hit for another’s crime, doing years in prison without saying a word to the lawyers.
In eighth street eatshops
Leaden words hiss and seal the doors.
“I am not a racist, but-
But. Those natives.”
How long.
how long -
- to choke these hymns of death?
How long to eat the bright paste,
the acrylic lies that melt shut the mouth?
Who will sing truthward songs?
When the young woman, the “Entrepreneur,”
the new waitress comes East to serve
And the dogs bark on her “she’s dirty”
Who would cast over those clean tables?
And who would drive down those lying dogs?
Let prairie winds fling wide the doors,
Scatter the keys. Let us gather round
New tables, look to one another's eyes
- and hear!
O Sing to us, fast flowing river,
Flow West to East and
North to South sing over us -
New songs.
* Interviewer: Mrs. Elizabeth Gurney Fry, you turn 229 years old this May, 65 years of which you lived a bodily existence on earth. In Canada, there is an Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies designed to perpetuate your work. But for most, if anything is known about you, it was that you were a prison reformer and a Quaker!
However, as I have discovered, during your lifetime, you were catapulted to international fame through an amazing involvement in Newgate Gaol, when you were 36 years old and mother of eleven children. We’ll talk about that shortly. You also became better known than any other woman in Britain and arguably Europe, except royalty, at a time women were not public figures in society or church.
The church is called to be now what the world is meant to be then. Peace is possibly the most poignant, difficult and elusive goal of the entire creation. Lest we forget, title of my sermon, the church is nonetheless called to peace.
This is perhaps the essence of the simple words of Jesus at the end of Luke 11:2: “… your kingdom come.”, and the more expanded words in Matt 6:10: “…your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
In the Psalm we heard this morning were these words: “Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire (Ps 46:8-9).” This is God’s will throughout the earth.
Laughter Came From Every Brick
Just these two words He spoke
changed my life,
"Enjoy Me."
What a burden I thought I was to carry--a crucifix, as did He.
Love once said to me,
"I know a song. Would you like to hear it?"
And laughter came from every brick in the street and from every pore in the sky.
After a night of prayer, He changed my life when He sang,
"Enjoy Me."
Collected Works of George Grant: Volume 4: 1970-1988
Edited by Arthur Davis and Henry Roper
University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 2009
George Grant (1918-1988) is viewed by many as ‘Canada’s greatest political philosopher’. George/Sheila Grant were also Anglicans. There is little doubt that Grant was one of the most preeminent public intellectuals in Canada in the latter half of the 20th century. Few Anglicans in Canada have attained such status.
The fact that Grant was at the forefront of political, artistic, religious, literary and educational life in Canada cannot be missed. The publication of the Collected Works of George Grant began in 2000 with Volume 1, and the recent publication of Volume 4 (more than a 1000 pages) brings to a close a decade of serious sleuth work to compile primary material by Grant.
My friend, Kevin Miller, spoke at church last Sunday. He shared about some of the joys and sorrows of being a movie screenwriter. I laughed as I heard about his encounters with some famous characters: shaking Chuck Norris' hand, getting eye-contact with the pope, duking it out with Ben Stein, and getting sued by Yoko Ono. But when he shared from the heart about how a series of deep disappointments can lead to a sense of broken trust with God, I sobered up quickly. He was preaching right to my sadness.
In my disappointment, I know that I lost confidence in God's way of running this buggered up world and at times, took it upon myself to take his place--with disastrous effects. I have seen my capacity to fail others miserably and know the hellish pride of self-loathing. It's easy for me to get stuck there, because that place opposes the very core of God's message. Kev related how our old friend, Tyler, had challenged him to stop and to just spend time "soaking" in worship and just listening to God. Sounds simple, but the resistance to engage that way was itself instructive. He recommended sitting quietly and listening to Kim Walker's "Oh How He Loves Us" ... repeatedly, until a message came through.
It is almost twenty-five years ago that I was writing a doctoral thesis on Martin Buber (1878-1965). There is little doubt that Buber was one of the most influential Jews of the 20th century. More than 2000 people turned up for his funeral. Buber was a leading Biblical scholar, philosopher, political theorist and activist.
Buber was a German Jew who argued strongly for the revival of cultural Zionism but opposed political Zionism. Buber challenged, in 1921, Chaim Weizmann (President of the Zionist Organization) for doing too little to foster good relations with the Arabs. Buber’s classic work, I and Thou, was published in 1922, and in many ways this wise missive anticipated the way the Nazis would treat the Jews (as objects to be exterminated) and the way Jews would treat the Palestinians. Buber fled Germany in 1938, and settled in Palestine where he was given a distinguished teaching position at the Hebrew University.
It is a rare day, indeed, when C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) and Thomas Merton (1915-1968) are breathed in the same breath. There are many who bow low to Lewis, and many others genuflect to Merton. Both men, for different reasons, have an ample following. Is it even possible to think of these men as having anything in common?
We do know that Lewis was quite fond of Merton. John Brown did a thesis at Union Seminary on race relations in the 1960s, and in a letter to Merton, he had this to say. “I am rather ashamed to admit that you are the first Roman Catholic writer that I have read seriously, and then only on the recommendation of C. S. Lewis, who in a letter not long before he died, stated that he had discovered your writing, and found it quite the best spiritual writing he had come across in a long time”. Merton replied to Brown (August 7 1968). “Thanks for your kind letter. I am certainly happy to think that so sound a judge as C.S. Lewis found something to like in my writing” (The Road to Joy: p. 369) . Merton’s interest in Lewis, though, can be traced back to a book review he did of The Personal Heresy in 1939.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You have only to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
-Mary Oliver, from Owls and Other Fantasies, poems and essays, Beacon
Press, 2003.
It has been impossible to ignore the wanton violence in the Gaza in the last few weeks. How does the contemporary Jewish state justify its treatment of the Palestinians? The Jewish Tradition is complex, but the modern secular state of Israel should not be equated, as some do, with Biblical Judaism.
Biblical Judaism, for the most part, is a prophetic religion. Most of the books in the Jewish canon reflect the vision of the oral, major and minor prophets. The heart and core of Biblical-prophetic Judaism is about justice, mercy and peace. It is about caring for the homeless, marginalized, oppressed and foreigner. Jewish prophets dared, again and again, to criticize the Jewish nation for failing to live up to such ideals. Prophets, in short, were not uncritical Jewish nationalists.
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