Aphorism of the day

Having clarity of thought is the child of having depth of thought

The Gospel and it's Competitors

Jesus clarified the gospel against the Pharisees and the Anti-Roman agitators of his day.  Paul clarified the gospel against the Judaizers in the church.  The Protestant Reformers clarified the gospel against the Catholic Church of the 15^th century.

The gospel must be clarified against the unique competitor idea that arises in each generation to compete with it.  If you teach and preach the gospel only as it was clarified against a competing idea of a past generation, your preaching will be sufficient to save but not be fully effective to disciple.

Aphorism

As a culture moves forward in time it simultaneously moves both forward and backward in moral progress.  It is foolish to pine for a more morally pure past. So too is it foolish to believe that the passage of time has accrued only moral progress. 

A Theology on the Genesis of Knowledge

When God made Man in His Image, He, being beyond space and time, did not give Man His full omniscience, but He did give Man, a being in space and time, a partial endowment of His omniscience – that of omniscient pre-knowledge, such that when Man saw something he had never seen before, a part of him could nonetheless recognize it and have the authority to name it.   Having been so endowed, Man would be driven to consummate his pre-knowledge with full knowledge, and find delight each time a new piece of full knowledge was brought into perceivable space and time.  Earth would be the stage for this process, and it was Man’s endowment of pre-knowledge and the built-in drive to consummate it with full knowledge that would be the driving engine for Man to take dominion over the earth.  By doing so, Man would delight in and better know the Creator as the Author of all that there was to know. 

More Aphorisms

-- We are designed to find joy in the perception of order and in the pursuit of order.

-- Both the artist and the scientist are engaged in a journey of discovery. The only difference between them is the type of laboratory the operate in.

-- Behind every law is a moral idea, and behind every moral idea is a moral universe.

-- A mediocre teacher presents facts. A great teacher imparts joy.

--To be stated and restated and restated in slightly different words each time in perpetuity ... is the rhythm of truth breathing.

-- To be ethical in your fame is to give back something of value to the culture worthy of the attention that you are taking from it. To be unethical in your fame is to take attention from the culture out of proportion to the value you add to it.  Example of ethical fame: Capt. Sully Sullenberger after US Airways flight 1549 miracle on the Hudson.  Example of unethical fame: Kim Kardashian.

-- In romantic relationships, the physical intimacy should be in proportion to the commitment, knowing that marriage is the ultimate commitment, and sex is the ultimate physical act.