theologians. they don't know nothing.

What is this, opposite week? I work with a guy who will throw out options like opposite day and finding new terms for cool. This is beside the point because the point is that it seems looking back over my week of class that I enjoyed the class I don't enjoy and was frustrated with my favorite class, Reformation Theology. It's my professor's last semester teaching and he has taken on a feisty demeanor. He's out with his fighting gloves trying to show how his trinitarian/affective theology is valid and held by others in the scholarly realm. And he keeps being met by grumblecakes from other scholars and students which seems to only make him feistier still. This is part of a trend I'm noticing in the broad sweep of my studies. This past week I completed a paper on the warning of Hebrews 6:4-8 and every interpreter seeemed to not only hold a different view but also seemed quite willing to bash the others. Oh, scholasticism. I started to miss the Church, the practical application of all this talk. I also wondered if anyone outside this circle of specific scholars even care about these things. Maybe they've become so specialized with the purpose of closing out others or to simply stand on their own creative ground. I wish there was more room to encourage and uplift one another than to defend our own well-founded view.

bagels

there have been a couple different weeks when i experienced nothing but the craving to eat a bagel. toasted, of course and with cream cheese, of course. at work we have two different types of bagels (hawaiian and chonga), but no toaster and the two we carry seem to lack the hutspah that my craving required. so last week i got out of class and needed to send a baby shower gift off to my sister(according to the law and not the flesh) and brother. i decided i'd take myself off on a nice little date. so i drove myself down to hawthorne looked around one of my favorite shops until i saw every item, bought some things, went to american apparel and wasn't intimidated and then took myself to noah's bagels and sat looking out at the street as i noshed (one a soda bread bagel with honey almond cream cheese). it was a pleasant afternoon. since then i think i've eaten a good dozen (baker's even) of bagels and had one today (sesame) as i talked with a newly acquired irish friend about art projects and christian schools. it was nice.

and that's all. i just wanted to let you know i've been eating bagels.

A little theology, perhaps.

Here's something I'm trying to sort through right now:
During the time to of the Protestant Reformation in the 1520's the Church and Martin Luther and his gang stumbled upon a moral dilemma. Luther proposed that we are saved solely by grace. Justification is by faith alone. And if I remember last years theology class he also said that faith is an open hand. This ran counter to the Roman Church's extensive system of indulgences and works based faith. When the works factor was pulled out of the equation people's identities as Christians collapsed. This (as Stephen Ozment proposes) was due to the Medieval construction of the individual. You are what you do, or I guess you were what you did at that time (not too different from now). How could you be in relation with Christ without doing anything? Surely you could light a candle or give some money or even just say please and thank you. If Luther was going to say people were justified by faith alone and works didn't matter (and this created problems for Zwingli and Calvin, not just the Roman church) then how did he expect people to develop a sense of identity?

This pairs with my interview with the head pastor of our Church about his sabbatical. He said he came to the point when no one needed him and he had to figure out how to find identity in Christ. I'm fascinated with this, at the same time I've got a late paper to write, I just got off work, I'm leading a ministry come Sunday. I'm needed right now which makes it hard to see how I would react if I wasn't needed. No one's giving me the "justification by faith alone" speech so it's hard to develop my faith around that. But was Luther even right? He seemed to go to the extreme to combat the abuses of the Church and those who came after him were quick to get works back in the picture (Melanchton). Were they wrong to do so? Are we quick to say that yes, you are justified by faith alone and not works, but a true faith will result in works, because we truly believe those works guarantee or save us? Calvin said our assurance of personal salvation was good works, so he kept that tension that keeps us working and moving to hold on to certainty. Luther sort of left us hanging.

I'm not likely to go off to the mountains alone for months anytime soon, so what should I do to figure this stuff out? It feels hypothetical rather than practical.