[Oe List ...] Internal screwed-up-ness, Niebuhr and so on

[frank bremner]

Thanks everyone, for your comments on brokenness, and the Niebuhr commentary.  They have been useful in coffee-break conversations within my BTh subject Grace and Humanity (Christian anthropology).  Lots of stuff about creation, eschatology, sin and grace (of course!), and so on.  

 

(I was also interested in the notes about Hilary Clinton's youth pastor in Carl Bernstein's book about her - his theological influences looked very familiar, although they were part of the US theological landscape.)

 

I'm doing the tutorial on Karl Rahner - as his brother once said, it's be great if he'd written in German!  But I like his notion that "creation is already blessed" - echoes of Matthew Fox's Original Blessing.  I may even refer to Jimmy Carter's interview in Playboy, in which he spoke about forgiveness in an ontological fashion.

 

I'm doing my major essay on "What, if anything, is distinct about Christian freedom".  Any suggestions on leads and references to pursue?  I'm certainly taking the tack that "man (sic) is freedom" from NRM/OW/RS-I etc.  

 

And definitely taking a Christian (and Christ-event) approach rather than a Jesus-ian one - although Jesus before Pilate, and Conchis (in John Fowles' The Magus) before the Nazi firing squad are good illustrations of extreme freedom, of freedom as "relationship to the situation".  And Kazantzakis' phrase about "man loses his (sic) freedom as soon as he uses it" (from Report to Greco?).  

 

And certainly the responsibility/obedience/ freedom relationship from Bonhoeffer - my current take is an ontological rather than a moral one - that obedience (from obediens = I listen) means living in a world of connectedness, and that freedom means living in a world of solitariness in my decision-making ("When I'm on my journey there is no-one else but me").

 

Any ideas?  Good references?  Good quotes?  (Remember "corporate writing"?)

 

Cheers

 

Frank Bremner
 
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