Divine Self-Investment -A review

I got hold of this book because of two things. One is when I've seen stuff by Tripp Fuller, I've found it interesting. The other is that it's about Christology. If there was a third, it's that it seems to be trying to look at the Christological issues through an open and relational lens, and I think that these can often offer helpful insights.

I've found that I have needed to read it slowly. I also found that the danger in that was to keep losing sight of it.

It's encouraged me to engage more fully with process theology by helping me to understand how thinking about divinity in dynamic terms could be more useful in this age than the static ontological terms theology has inherited. It's encouraged me to think more about my own understandings and appropriation of the ontological terms and categories. In doing so, becoming more aware of the provisional, incomplete nature of attempts to 'name' God and the things of God. That's no bad thing.

Quotables

...the task of the disciple is to understand the content of the confession and then begin the journey to inhabit that same mind that was in Christ Jesus ...the disciple's predicament is not the act of identifying Jesus as the Christ, but in coming to grips with affirming the mission of God and the character of the Christ.

This one I liked because it affirms the intellectual dimension of discipleship but holds it within the bigger frame of personal, "existential" response. And a page or two further on there is a helpful affirmation and limitation to the reach of intellectual enquiry:

One cannot put a Christology in the form of a report no more than a sonnet into a syllogism... one is not only identifying just how God was present in the person of Jesus, but is also talking about God with one's very self up for grabs.

This is not to decry intellectual endeavour -theology- but rather to limit the implicit claim of modernistic rationalism and to recognise personal commitment belongs to sense-making in community.

Divine Self-Investment

Links for this Review

Divine Self-Investment on Amazon
Tripp Fuller’s Website

Please tag your posts for this book as #DivineSelfInvestment

 I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Lighting, tech culture and worship

I've written before about liturgy and candles from the perspective of considering candles as technological artefacts and observing their base function of providing light to read by in largely dark buildings for men who have begun to suffer from presbyopia and are using manuscripts. The next move is to consider the further meaning-making that takes place once the necessary uses of candles are in use for things like gospel processions or prayers over bread and wine.

The next thing, then, is to consider the kinds of potential observations like those in this article offer, LEDs Have Evolved to Be More Than Just Lighting: 

LEDs are so efficient that there probably is an overall saving, but that lighting is no longer just for illumination—"lighting has become so cheap that it has turned into a bauble, into decoration." It was pointed out to me that lighting has always served a decorative function as well as a utilitarian one—that's why we got crystal chandeliers and mood lighting. Now we see that mood lighting has evolved with the technology.

Of course there wouldn't be an instant replacement. The inertia of expectation, habit and indeed post-hoc rationalisation around using wax candles would need somewhat conscious experimentation and good aesthetic practices being imitated.

So we might begin to imagine LED lights being used liturgically. Sometimes in place of candles, maybe sometimes with new usages made possible by the affordances of LEDS -good light with little heat is probably chief among those affordances allowing for manipulation without harm or danger of starting fires. The can be run from batteries in many cases, so there is a portability about them.

It is worth reading through the article cited and quoted above for a quick opening reflection on the way that these affordances can begin to be developed. Ask yourself what kinds of ceremony or ritual become possible using some of the ideas there.

And, of course (as the article mentions), there are also effects from programmable variations in colours, rhythm etc. It's also worth recalling that switches can also be controlled remotely -our cathedral has some LED candles which have a remote control unit (you have to be within about a two metre radius to operate it).

So what kinds of ideas could we generate?

How about a patten and chalice with some lighting built in or put on? Especially if they were actually glass. They could be lit with the taking of bread and wine in the preparation for the Eucharistic prayer or at the completion as they are taken from table to distribution. This would obviously be more effective in a darker milieu.

I have a portable reading light which is built into a flexible tube to go around the neck. It's easy to imagine using this or something like it for gospel readings in a more catholic style or to help keep things relatively dark in things like the kindling of Easter fire rituals.

Speaking of which  -how about using mobile phones and/or manual LEDs for passing on the light during such liturgies?

I know that some would object on the basis of the romance and tradition of candles. I get that. In a way I agree in a positive assessment of the aesthetic. However, we can develop and experiment with different aesthetics and over time begin to develop the traditions or evolve new ones.