Faith in Space

Last updated on: August 9, 2013 at 7:26 am By Matthew Tan

In an interview with Eric Jacobsen on Mars Hill Audio Journal, Ken Myers hinted at the impossibility of forming real community without any reference to geography. In other words, communion between persons becomes impossible when it takes place away from concrete practices in real space and time. In a similar fashion Lumen Fidei, the latest encyclical from Pope Francis (with some significant contributions from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), has suggested that it is impossible to speak of a genuine Christian... Read more

Why Plato Helps Christians in the Real World

Last updated on: August 3, 2013 at 8:07 am By Matthew Tan

Christians today often proudly declare their love for Aristotle. Catholics and a number of Protestants might this as a means of declaring their love for the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Even if that were not the case, Christians would choose Aristotle over his teacher Plato. Judging from marking the many undergraduate essays marked, the most common reason cited for this Aristotelian bias was for its “realism”. Aristotelian realism is such that affirms and engages the world. On the other hand,... Read more

Christians and Crises

Last updated on: July 25, 2013 at 6:43 am By Matthew Tan

Crises are politically useful gimmicks. Whether it is economic meltdowns, asylum seekers, cabinet reshuffles, sex scandals or wars, political entrepreneurs will often either make use of them or create them to try and force a surrender by the general populace of their right to communal discussion, reflection and critique. What can be concerning is the degree to which many Christians seem willing to play along with the games of the political classes. Whatever the event, many Christians would treat such... Read more

Monasteries: “In” But Not “From”

Last updated on: July 18, 2013 at 7:12 am By Matthew Tan

James KA Smith has on his blog Fors Clavigera provided with a succinct yet incisive reflection on the monastic life via a painting by the 17th century painter Gaspar de Crayer, entitled Saint Benedict Receiving Totila, King of the Ostrogoths. It is a short but very valuable reflection on the role of monasteries in our contemporary culture and politics, and a reminder that monastic life is not a retreat from the world, but a retreat for the world. The monastery... Read more

Vile and Holy Bodies: Sacraments & Surgery

Last updated on: July 12, 2013 at 8:30 am By Matthew Tan

In a 2007 interview with The Other Journal, Eugene McCarraher from Villanova University spoke about the importance of viewing secular culture, not as an independent sphere to which theology has nothing to say. Following lines of analyses laid out by John Milbank and William Cavanaugh (and in some cases further radicalising them), McCarraher argued that what takes place in the secular sphere is actually distorted to the extent that it does not square up with the grammar of Christian accounts.... Read more

Scribblings in Transition

Last updated on: June 21, 2013 at 8:43 am By Matthew Tan

A series of transcontinental transitions will temporarily affect the frequency of posts in the coming weeks. Next week, blogger-at-large Matthew Tan will be presenting at the 2013 Conference of the Centre of Theology & Philosophy at Oxford University. The paper is entitled “Runaway Soul: The Postmodern City and Theologies of Escape” and builds upon a post on the Divine Wedgie entitled “A Theology of Running Away“. The paper correlates Graham Ward’s work on the postmodern city in his Cities of... Read more

Why Christians Should Shut Up

Last updated on: June 14, 2013 at 8:15 am By Matthew Tan

In his A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart, Josef Pieper wrote on the virtue of silence in this way Since reason is nothing else than the power to understand reality, then all reasonable, sensible, sound, clear and heart-stirring talk stems from listening silence. Thus all discourse requires a foundation in the motherly depth of silence. Otherwise speech is sourceless: it turns into chatter, noise and deception…Talk…sets its roots downward into the nourishing soil of silence. Pieper... Read more

Sacramental Commodities

Last updated on: June 6, 2013 at 10:57 pm By Matthew Tan

At an introductory Theology class at Campion College, mention was made of a marketing campaign by Coca-Cola Amatil last year, which involved the distribution of bottles or cans of Coca-Cola emblazoned with the customer’s name. No name was too obscure or to be excluded from the embrace of Coke. In this campaign one could see an attempt to closely identify this mass produced soft drink with the individuality of the customer. Whilst one of the most blatant instances of personalising... Read more

Redeeming Regret

Last updated on: May 31, 2013 at 12:06 am By Matthew Tan

Regret is a part of the life we live. While a number of regrets concern things so banal and are easily forgotten, others that concern life choices can touch on the core of who we are as persons – jobs, relocations and relationships, just to name a few. In making these choices, we often build a world around the objects of these choices with our thoughts, our words and our actions. It is a possible world and life and a... Read more

When Coffee Gets Martyred

Last updated on: May 25, 2013 at 5:45 am By Matthew Tan

The first line of Psalm 19 says that the heavens declare the glory of the Lord. In a similar fashion, the saints declare the true (and heavenly) end of humankind, and in so doing witness to the Christ who brings humankind to that end. As a direct result of that witness, a select few suffer at the hands of those who do not want to hear about that end, or even want to act in a way that obliterates the... Read more

Who was the oldest man recorded in the Bible?