CURRENT CONCERNS FOR CHRISTIAN INTELLECTUAL WITNESS

We must address the challenge of the cultured despisers of Christianity if Christian witness is to gain credibility:
– Secure a thorough understanding of the modern world.
– Identify crucial issues that must be addressed if we are to follow J. H. Bavinck mission strategy to annex culture, to take every thought captive in Christ.
– Re-conceptualize the framework for Christian reflection and set priorities for theological education. All too often activism replaces serious theological reflection when we act under the tyranny of the urgent. But in the absence of a distinct intellectual framework and with our inability to ferret out and critique the presuppositions of dominant thought patterns of the world, we end up merely responding to the agenda set by non-Christian elites and eventually conform to the spirit of the age.
– Ensure that theology is both grounded in Biblical tradition and critically correlated with contextual realities. This demands a fresh look at theological education and how we train Christian thinkers and pastors.

CURRENT CONCERNS FOR CHRISTIAN INTELLECTUAL WITNESS
Themes – Modernity and Resurgence Religion and clash of civilizations; Theology of culture and social engagement; Religion and Culture; Ecclesiology and cultural plurality; Creation and New Age Spirituality; Science and Religion

I. INTELLECTUAL WITNESS TO WIDER SOCIETY
Adolf Harnack observed that the early church gained ascendancy because they not only out-loved their competitors; they also out-thought their critics. The early Christians reveled in the intellectual truth and lucidity of Christian revelation. They were able to rejoice in the order and diversity of nature and social life which they saw as a witness to the greatness of the Creator. They extolled the boundless goodness of God who endow humans with reason, freedom and the promise of immortality. Christianity was commended as enhancement and not an encumbrance to reason and understanding. In short, Christianity was commended as the true philosophy. Continue reading “CURRENT CONCERNS FOR CHRISTIAN INTELLECTUAL WITNESS”

Disaster: Lost Posts

Disaster Strikes!

Never love blogging more than necessary. It is more unreliable than a fickle lover

DISASTER STRIKES!

Lost data due to file corruption while updating MySQL for the server, and of all things backuped the wrong files. Anyway, after some tweaking we got back most of the posts. Hopefully, I will be able to repost some the lost data sometime in the future.

Never love blogging more than necessary. It is more unreliable than a fickle lover.

Muslim Reception/Rejection of Modernity (Part 1)

My thesis is that there is a deeply felt, but nevertheless unexpressed anxiety among Muslims, especially among the religious elite, that Modernity (in the technical sense that I will describe below) will ultimately undermine Islam as a viable framework for a coherent community in the modern world. Hence, we witness the temptation among Muslims to find solace and security in dogmatic and defensive Islam and the resurgence of intolerant Islam in Malaysia.

MUSLIM RECEPTION /REJECTION OF MODERNITY

Introduction
It is a fact of life that people hold conflicting political and religious views and follow different ways of life. It is imperative that the government frames social policies that encourage people of various cultures to identify commonality (not homogeneity) to build a harmonious society. Such an endeavor in turn requires building a social ethos that allows for tolerance of diversity, dialogue and openness to change in order to equip a citizenry with the intellectual capacity to confront the overwhelming pace of change of the modern world.

But what non-Muslims witness coming from the Muslim community is rejection of the vital pre-requisites for the development of a flourishing modern society. We hear prominent Muslims condemning liberalism although liberalism at its best encourages citizens use reason to weigh moral choices rather than follow traditional authority blindly. Secular politics is rejected as essentially antipathetic to religion when it is specifically designed to provide a neutral platform for different religions to work out compromises that are essential for a plural society. Other Muslim leaders reject the call for interfaith dialog. Religious tolerance is vigorously condemned through mass demonstrations that find their way even into the National Mosque. Finally, there are the regular calls for banning of various cultural activities on grounds that such activities (music festivals or films) are against Islam. Continue reading “Muslim Reception/Rejection of Modernity (Part 1)”

Dialog (Building Bridges Seminar) Between Christian Muslim Scholars Cancelled

Many friends have been asking what happened to the Dialog: The 6th Building Bridges from May 7-11, 2007 convened by the Archbishop of Cantebury, Dr. Rowan Williams. The Dialog is supposed to bring together 30+ Christian and Muslim scholars from all over the world to discuss on the topic “Humanity in Context: Christian Muslim Perspectives on Being Human.�? Thank you for your encouragement and prayers when I was preparing one of the plenary papers. I owe you an update.

Many friends have been asking what happened to the Dialog: The 6th Building Bridges from May 7-11, 2007 convened by the Archbishop of Cantebury, Dr. Rowan Williams. The Dialog is supposed to bring together 30+ Christian and Muslim scholars from all over the world to discuss on the topic “Humanity in Context: Christian Muslim Perspectives on Being Human.” Thank you for your encouragement and prayers when I was preparing one of the plenary papers. I owe you an update.

The sad thing is that the Dialog has been cancelled (or, to use the language of diplomacy -postponed indefinitely) at the last minute. You might be interested to read the full details of the unfortunate development of events from the

The Times May 10, 2007 at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1769414.ece Continue reading “Dialog (Building Bridges Seminar) Between Christian Muslim Scholars Cancelled”

Image of God and Human Personhood

The image of God becomes most evident in the unique human capacity to respond to God’s offer of covenant relationship. To echo Robert Jenson, human distinctiveness is simply that we are related to God as his conversational counterpart. Because God speaks to us, we know he is personal. As we answer him, we too are personal.

Image of God and Human Personhood

The Majesty of Man
Humans stand out among living creatures with special characteristics that include the use of complex language and symbolic thought, the production of culture and technological innovations and fostering community based on moral values. It is most significant that only humans display religious longings and sing hymns. In this regard, Christian theology is right in seeing the uniqueness of man lies in his relationship with God: Only man is an ordered being, an addressed being, a responsible being. Only man is called to prayer.

The Psalmist (Psalm 8) exclaims a sense of wonderment, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” Humans may be made lower than heavenly beings, but he is entrusted with dominion over the creatures. Humans are under God but over creation. Continue reading “Image of God and Human Personhood”