Open Theism discussed

I've stumbled across another interesting discussion on Open Theism at The Sign of Jonah blog. The original blogger is critiquing Open Theism (although I didn't feel he was particularly successful in this. He seems a little confused about distinction between OT and the problem of evil/suffering, which although connected is not really the same question) and provokes some excellent (although very lengthy) discussion in the comments. I was particularly impressed by the contribution of a commenter called Wesley Brainard who is generally articulate and intelligent in his arguments for Open Theism - although I'm not sure I agree with everything he says about the way God has limited himself (e.g. spacially).

Here's a couple of examples of things which got me thinking:

...This began to take shape around the discussion of God’s freedom. Jim B admitted that God was free to create or not to create. If He was free to choose, then there was a time when God hadn’t yet foreknown. This demonstrates that foreknowledge is not eternal or essential. God is still God without exhaustive foreknowledge.

The open view says that God was free to create the kind of world you propose he created. Does the CV allow that God could have created a world with freedoms like His as the open view suggests?

Keith: I feel like you really ducked the issue with Cyrus. Your basic answer was, "I don’t know how God predicted Cyrus but I’m absolutely sure that it wasn’t through exhaustive foreknowledge". In all candor I think that’s pretty weak.

Wesley: Straw dummy... My argument was that what you offered does not prove exhaustive foreknowledge. I thought Will D.’s post was especially good on this point. If we use your argument for proving exhaustive foreknowledge, my wife would certainly qualify since she knows what I’m going to do or not do before I do or don’t do it. Knowing something does not prove that He knows everything. ...

Openness and Prayer

Blogger TC Robinson has been investigating open theism on his blog and starting various interesting discussions along the way. I recently commented (hopefully gently!) on his post about prayer:

I've always understood prayer to be pretty effective - not just in my personal relationship with God, but also for affecting what happens in the world. I agree there's definitely the sense in the Gospels of Jesus taking time out in prayer to learn his Father's will (as Duane and others have mentioned above) but surely the overwhelming teaching of Jesus is that God responds to prayer and our prayers therefore have real consequences in the world, e.g. Luke 21.36, Matt 7.11 'how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him', Luke 10.2 'ask for workers', Luke 22.32 (in verse 31 it sounds like Satan is also able to pray!)... and I haven't even mentioned some of the most famous verses about prayer!

What I understand from what Boyd and others teach is that because God is relational he has chosen to mediate his authority through free agents such as ourselves and angels etc.* Although the plan was for us to rule 'under authority' (c.f. Luke 7.8), we have real delegated responsibility. To this end God has chosen to limit his influence and authority in the world according to our direction and desire. The really challenging thing about this view is that it makes prayer absolutely critical. God's involvement - to a certain extent - depends on us asking for it! When we pray 'your will be done' we're apparently - in a really odd way - actually giving God 'permission' to act to bring about his will. Sounds crazy, doesn't it?

I actually think this view has a lot to recommend it, as it makes sense of Jesus' instructions about prayer and the importance Paul obviously gives to prayer (e.g. 1 Thess 3.10). God is genuinely responsive to our prayers, relational even in the exercise of his sovereign authority. That sounds like a truly dynamic relationship! It's also interesting to note the way Paul talks about being coworkers with God.

[*At the beginning humankind is given dominion over the earth (Gen 1.26-28) but unfortunately it seems we surrendered our authority to Satan, who is now the 'prince of this world' (John 12.41). But Daniel 7 indicates that part of our final destiny is to finally reclaim this authority in the kingdom of Jesus.]

Comments?

Surface Design Websites and Wall Decals

Check out the Print & Pattern blog - a website showcasing surface design of all kinds. There are some awesome prints on there.

Also, I just stumbled across Wall Decals - self-adhesive vinyl 'stickers' that you use to decorate walls etc (and can be repositioned). I bought some for a birthday present for someone recently without realising what they were (they're selling kiddie versions in B&Q). But there are some fab designs out there...


Urban Outfitters - trendy but sadly US-based

Supernice Blik Graphics - lots of cool designs here, but not cheap!

The Threadless designs are pretty groovy as well.

  

Fun with Sprouts

I've been testing out what Sprouts can do - and so far I'm quite impressed. Sprouts are advanced Flash-based banners or mini websites that can be loaded on websites or shared on social networking sites. Sprout Builder allows you to create custom-designed flash pages containing all kinds of media, feeds, links etc. My example multi-page Sprout below shows some examples of things you can use. This one is quite small but they can be as big as you like!

Fighting Spending

Lifehacker's Top 10 Ways to Trick Yourself into Saving Money has some quite sensible ideas - most of which are, refreshingly, about avoiding unnecessary spending rather than just tips for finding deals and messing around with interest-free periods on credit cards etc.

I particularly liked #9, #8 and #2.

What's your favourite?


"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." Luke 9.23

Wordle-ing

Whoever thought text analysis could be so fun! Wordle creates 'word clouds' from text you provide - and produces some surprisingly striking images in just a few seconds! Try it yourself to see...

Here's one or two I made earlier.. (well actually, just now!)


(from the -slightly edited- Wikipedia entry for Durham)


(from an old essay - can you guess what on?)


(from another old essay!)


(from a well-known song...)

It's a bit addictive really!

Here's one I didn't make:

(the complete text of the ESV Bible)
Isn't it interesting what words come up?

[Thanks to Matt!]

Church Politics and Chess?

I've just recently (re)discovered Dave Walker's cartoons on his Cartoon Church blog. Made me laugh lots despite (or perhaps because of) not being an Anglican!

So many to choose from - here's a few of my favourites:



The last one, in particular, reminds me of the cartoons my brother Brendan used to draw when we were younger - draw some more Bren!

Articles on the rise of Reform Theology

I'll be keeping up with this ongoing discussion on Christianity Today, between Tony Jones (no, not the Durham one!) of 'The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier' and Collin Hansen of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists.

Also, I thought this guest post from Thomas McCall was interesting to read in its sympathetic - yet cautionary - portrayal of the New Calvinists.

How fixed is the script?

I was interested to read Ben Witherington's view on God's 'script' and the significance of human decisions.

"Whilst, God could have done otherwise, he has chosen to allow us to be viable partners with God in ministry and the working out of his will and Kingdom on earth, beings capable of making un-predetermined choices that have incredible consequences. The issue is not the sovereignty of God - the issue is how God has chosen to exercise his power and will. And what the Bible says about this is that he has not pre-determined all things from before the foundations of the world.

Human history is not merely a preordained play, played out perfectly to a pre-ordained script. On the contrary while there is a blue-print, or a general script, God has allowed, indeed invited us to make the drama like a night at the Improv, improvising our roles as we go, and making viable choices of moment and consequence along the way. Are we supposed to follow the general instructions in the script? Well yes, as they provide the boundaries beyond which we ought not to go and show us what character and kind of roles we should play. But of course we may fail to play our parts well, or indeed at all."

I absolutely agree. Saying that God always gets his way makes no sense of Jesus' instructions on prayer, in particular the Lord's prayer:
"Let your kingdom come, your will be done..."

Another interesting link I came across on Ben's blog is a 'blogalogue' between Bart Ehrman and N. T. Wright on the problem of suffering. Ehrman has just published a book called 'God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer'. NT Wright is as eloquent and graceful in his replies as ever. I always find him refreshing on this subject as he takes the existence of evil seriously and isn't content to attribute all suffering in the world to human choices.

"...the Gospels constituted, and still constitute, a challenge to all expectations, particularly in that they link – as readers for hundreds have years have found it difficult to do – the story of Jesus’ kingdom-inauguration with the story of his crucifixion and resurrection. Somehow, they are saying, this is what it looks like when the good, all-powerful and all-loving God is in charge of the world. You may say that if this is what they’re saying then the God of whom they speak is not ‘all-powerful’ in the way we might have imagined, and I suspect that is in a sense correct. Near the heart of Jesus’ proclamation lies a striking redefinition of power itself, which looks as though it’s pointing in the direction of God’s ‘running of the world’ (if that’s the right phrase) in what you might call a deliberately, almost studiedly, self-abnegating way, running the world through an obedient, and ultimately suffering, human being, with that obedience, and especially that suffering, somehow instrumental in the whole process. What ‘we would want God to do’ – to have God measure up to our standards of ‘how a proper, good and powerful God would be running the world’! – seems to be the very thing that Jesus was calling into question.

The mystery of Jesus himself, then, is for me near the heart of – not ‘the answer’, because I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘the answer’, but – the matrix of thought and life within which God’s people are called to continue to grapple with the problem. This is where, in Evil and the Justice of God, I try to draw together traditional discussions of ‘the atonement’ and traditional discussions of ‘the problem of evil’ and suggest that it’s odd that they should ever have been separated, since they seem to go together so closely in the Bible itself. (And can’t be reduced, I suggest, to the ‘God punishes sin’ logic; I have tended to include some elements of that within the Christus Victor motif, which, yes, involves suprahuman cosmic powers and all that. Hard though they are to describe adequately, they are even harder, in my view, to ignore.)"

No Lions...

I really enjoyed this story in the Guardian about the Maasai Warriors running in the London Marathon and their thoughts on England.

We heard about showers before, in a briefing about the country. It said be careful - when the shower is hot it is really hot, and when cold, really cold. This is true.

The Telegraph also has some great quotes from the guide to England they were given.

Design for the Other 90%

The title of this post comes from a recent design exhibition - with a difference. As the exhibition website explains,

Of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion, 5.8 billion people, or 90%, have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted; in fact, nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter. Design for the Other 90% explores a growing movement among designers to design low-cost solutions for this 'other 90%.' Through partnerships both local and global, individuals and organizations are finding unique ways to address the basic challenges of survival and progress faced by the world’s poor and marginalized.

There are some fantastic ideas being showcased here, both ingenious and simple. Other websites celebrating designs for the developing world include the INDEX award, the Project H Design site, and the blog TreeHugger, among others.

I've long been fascinated by the development of the One Laptop Per Child project, its 'first principles' approach and the way in which OLPC have turned every assumption about building laptops on its head. There's an excellent video of the designer Mary Lou Jepsen at the Greener Gadgets show explaining the many innovations that have gone into the XO laptop and why it's not only low-cost and fit-for-purpose, but also amazingly 'green' as well. In fact, as she explains, it could not have been otherwise: the design had to be low energy and 'green' in order to survive in an environment where energy is at a premium. There's a great section about innovative charging methods including (my favourite) the cow-charger! I completely get her excitement - so many elements of this design are worth raving about!



Of the many design solutions being profiled on these websites, some of my other favourites include the LifeStraw, a personal water-filtration and purification device, the weird but ingeneous Stenop Low-Cost Correcting Glasses, and the simple but effective Hippo Roller!



Classic ideas also seeing a new lease of life include the Solar Oven, the WaterCone, a solar-powered water desalinator, and the Portable Light Project, which makes use of the new high-brightness LEDs.

"The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%."
—Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises (link)

Another design site I've enjoyed recently is the Houses of the Future project - check out the cardboard house!

What 'Other 90%' or 'Green' design ideas have caught your eye recently?

Talented Hyperactive Amateur

Chris introduced me to Lasse Gjertsen's video Amateur which is a fantastic piece of video editing and a great track besides. Has to be seen!

"I can neither play the drums nor the piano."

If you like this one, you might enjoy his original video Hyperactive which is pretty funny!

November Passion

I was excited to see that my mum's been writing more nature-inspired poetry, this time a November Passion. A vivid and affecting picture of Christ's death...all the more poignant because we know that spring will come!

Real-time train map

This site shows a live train map for particular stations in the UK.

It's a very clever google maps mashup, with data on train position and speed being pulled from the National Rail network. The trains move in real-time! Very cool.

Maps are cool

I've recently been enjoying some of the delights of Google Maps & Google Earth via the strange discoveries of the community at Google Sightseeing, whose tagline goes 'Why bother seeing the world for real?'

Highlights include:
- the Interdimensional Portal in the town of Dronten in the Netherlands - one of many it seems!
- the longest conveyor belt in the world in Western Sahara
- the Gun lake
and best of all, the Giant Alien Bug!

Brilliant!

I also discovered that although Google maps has not been updated with high-res pictures of Durham, Microsoft's 'Live Local' shows the white house very clearly!

Credit card fun

I'm probably the last person on the Internet to come across the 'The Credit Card Prank' and the ensuing Visa-related silliness, but they literally made me cry with laughter. It's the author's tone more than anything, but the transcripts of the conversations with the Visa company are completely hilarious as well. Definitely my kind of humour!

They reminded me of Johnny's Facade's adventures with Powergen last year (although sadly I can't find it). Maybe this will give him further ideas!

Sunshine + water =

Everyone knows about rainbows, but have you heard of Sun Dogs and ice halos, moonbows and glories? Atmospheric Optics is a fascinating site, dedicated to the beautiful results of sunshine with water droplets or ice crystals.

The site has some amazing photographs, some simple, some almost unbelievable. And although the optics/mathematics here is very involved, the basic physics of refraction and dispersion is relatively simple. it's incredible to think that such basic ingredients could combine to produce such beautiful and complex displays.

Web of Conflict

I found this infographic on relationships in the Middle East hugely useful in understanding some of the roots of the current conflict in Lebanon and the tangled web of influence and hostility in the region. I don't think I had quite grasped how much hatred and distrust exists, not only between Jews and Arabs, but between the different Islamic groups and regional powers.

Found via Information Aesthetics, which has a selection of further infographics on the conflict.

Sweeping up the competition

For some geek humour...check out the launch of Google Minesweeper!

Riddling

If you're feeling brave, check out this riddle - it's hard but definitely satisfying!

The author remarks that most people don't get past level 1. Well, I managed that but I'm stuck on Level 3.5/4!

You'll need to know some (very) basic html.. at least enough to check out the source code.

I'm happy to give hints up to Level 3 - after that point, I'm needing hints myself!