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Film Faith & Justice 2007
Things I Re-Learned and Experienced This Easter
1. The audible and silent power of God in the hearts, minds, and bodies of his people during corporate worship done well. I wept in repentance and praise as I sang this Sunday of the glory and grace of Christ.
2. The power of hospitality during our post-Easter family lunch. We were the recipients of lavish hospitality in food, fellowship, and aunts and uncles lovingly caring for our children.
3. The joy of making up alternate lyrics while singing repetitive praise songs. Anytime I do this, I find myself increasingly focused on the Person(s) whom we praise.
4. Singing “Jesus is Lord” is robust trinitarian praise. In an earlier post I briefly explained that the phrase, Jesus is Lord, is more than a Christian catchphrase, but a distinctly New Testament way of referring to Jesus as part of the identity of God, one with the Lord (YHWH). To sing Jesus is Lord can only be done by faith through the Spirit of God. Therefore, anytime I am singing Jesus is Lord or “Hallelujah,” I am worshipping the Father and Son by and in the worship of the Spirit.
The Post-Postmodernism: A New Humanism
As many academics will agree, Postmodernism is an implausible philosophy constructed on logical fallacies. Linguistic forms of postmodernism claim that texts have no determinate meaning. This, of course, assumes that the reader is able to ascertain a determinate meaning in that sentence by interpreting and understanding correctly the author’s intent–a logical fallacy (for more see Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There Meaning in This Text?). If there are no fixed truths, science is a bankrupt endeavor, which is precisely why the renowned biologist and Harvard professor E. O. Wilson has joined Salman Rushdie and others to promote “The New Humanism.” As French and English philosophers have avered, the post-Postmodernism is a return to humanism but with a twist.
Check out the details in Harvard’s New Humanism conference. Better yet, go to the conference and send me your notes. For more on the development of post-Postmodern philosophy, see Jamer Parker III’s chapter, “A Requiem for Postmodernism: Whither Now?” in which he discusses the development of Transmodernism in Reclaiming the Center, ed. Justin Taylor et. al.