Pope Benedict Xvi: Christian Radical

[kafka]

a good article summarizing some points in the new book
http://blog.acton.org/archives/20244-benedict-xvi-christian-radical.html

"Such observations hardly seem revolutionary for a Christian. But the context of Benedict’s remarks is a world of biblical studies dominated by what’s known as the historical-critical method. Among other things, this involves placing scripture in its historical conditions and exploring the different literary genres used by biblical authors."

"In itself, such analysis can help illuminate scripture’s meaning. But from the beginning, many of its practitioners have imposed readings upon biblical texts that explicitly sever the Christian scriptures from the Christian faith from which they emerged. It has also facilitated the piling-up of tenuous-hypotheses upon tenuous-hypotheses about Christ which are then masqueraded as “facts” that, in Benedict’s words, “eventually lead to absurdity”: Christ-the-guru, Christ-the-revolutionary, Christ-the name-your-fashionable-cause."


"In recent decades, Benedict claims, Christian preaching has stopped mentioning the Last Things revealed by Christ: i.e., heaven, hell, and the fact that all of us will be judged. Instead, preaching has become “one-sided, in that it is largely directed toward the creation of a better world, while hardly anyone talks any more about the other, truly better world.”


This I like.

[Gregorius]

Werd.

[BG45]

So true!

[tinytherese]

Nothing is more radical than holiness.

[Sternhauser]

.

Edited December 4, 2010 by Sternhauser

[kafka]

the best succinct definition of love I've seen outside of Saint Paul's is

Love is radical personal commitment

from "The Cloud of Unknowing"