I loved a recent article on Not the Religious Type. The author (who appears to have left the Vineyard for an Anglican church) states that the Vineyard, like the Anglican church, has two sacraments... but they’re not baptism and eucharist. They’re prayer ministry and worship. He defines sacrament as something like an experience of the divine that transcends words, if I remember correctly. It’s an interesting proposition (full of problems depending on how you use the various words in there). I’ve enjoyed thinking about it.
– Peter Benedict, 2012-01-05, in Facebook discussion (now available on the SVS forum)
Peter, I have thought similarly myself about our Vineyard practices, in that worship and prayer ministry function almost sacramentally for us. This is interesting, given that officially we don’t have any sacraments, but rather describe baptism and Communion… more
St. Cyril giving a theological smackdown to anyone who would hesitate to say that the Second Person of the Trinity suffered:
Why, then, our opponents, who in their extreme folly do not forbear to hold or express the views of Nestorius and Theodore, must answer our question: ‘Do you refuse to allow him who is of the holy Virgin his being God and true Son of God the Father? Do you allot suffering to him alone, fending it off from God the Word to avoid God’s being declared passible?’ This is the point of their pedantic, muddleheaded fictions. In that case, the Word of God the Father on his own and by himself should not be called ‘Christ’; for just as suffering is out of character with him when he is considered in isolation from the flesh, so is anointing an inconsistent feature alien to him. For God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, but the Word of God is… more
We should not overlook the role of technological advances and their effect on notions of canonicity. In specific, the invention and proliferation of the codex (a.k.a. book) that displaced the scroll had a tremendous impact on what canon means and thereby on whether questions about its being open or closed even make sense.
Up to and even during the New Testament period, the various Scriptures were kept each in its own scroll. The typical Jewish classification of the Scriptures, with the Law as the most central, through the Prophets, and out to the Writings as the most peripheral (and then the various texts now termed the Talmud beyond that) makes sense in that context. These texts were a plurality. There wasn’t a clear demarcation line between canonical and non-canonical.
The codex allowed multiple texts to be compiled into a single collection. This raised the question of… more
A few days ago, Steve Hamilton asked:
If we were to explore it, what is the political theology or public theology of the Vineyard movement?
I replied thus:
It is probably no surprise that my initial response is to suggest that the word “the” is problematic in that question! But that just means that exploring it would be all the more interesting. :)
With @Thomas John Creedy, it seems to me that focus on issues of the common good, justice, and poverty relief are likely to be central themes in any Vineyard political theology.
Something I’ve often found myself wondering, though, is how much that takes the form of seeking to help “them/the world/society out there” and how much it takes the form of seeking to help “us/everyone/our society.” Oftentimes Christians speak of ourselves in contradistinction to those we seek to help, whether this be… more
