Death and The Savages

I think the movie The Savages, starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman, exposes our tendency to avoid the reality of death.  Linney and Hoffman play siblings who are forced to take care of their father (who is battling dementia) after his ‘girlfriend’ dies.  Outside of a care facility Hoffman lays into his sister for being so choosy about assisted living centers saying,

“…the landscaping, the neighborhoods of care, they’re not for the residents. They are for the relatives; people like you and me who don’t want to admit what is really going on here. People are dying, Wendy. Right inside that beautiful building, right now, its a f-ing horror show. And all this wellness propaganda and the landscaping is just there to obscure the miserable fact that people die. And death is gaseous and gruesome and its filled with s*** and p*** and rotten stink.”

[This film is a great one for examining the human condition and coping mechanisms and living up to expectations, etc.]

 

What if we find a lost letter of Paul?

This is one of the first questions that came to mind when I first heard a doctrine of canon, and I have revisited it from time to time ever since.

What would we do if we unearthed another letter that (somehow) could be authenticated and verified as being penned by the apostle Paul?

How would we treat/use it?

Would it find its place with the Apocryphal writings?

Would another letter from Paul’s hand be permitted to enhance or adjust our understanding of the letters we already attribute to Paul?

Would its usefulness depend on whether or not the recently discovered epistle coincided with the interpretation of Paul given by the theologians of our tradition?

Some of you, doubtless, have no interest in hypothetical scenarios. Even so, I think this hypothetical is helpful to expose and sharpen our beliefs about the Scriptures.

What do you think?

 

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the Revelation of God

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways [or, in various parts], God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son.” Hebrews 1:1-2 (ESV)

The following is an attempt to help us think about the idea of God’s ‘progressive revelation.’

Consider one of the great masterpieces of Western classical music, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In the first three movements we hear a number of different themes and ideas produced by a variety of instruments.