Down Sydney way an innocuous looking institute has got itself up and running, calling itself the Centre for Public Reactionary Christianity. All very timely, bringing Christianity into public political debate, stepping forward with Rev Kevin Rudd’s blessing. But then, when you look at the ‘team member‘ page you start to see what is really going on: shiny faced, slightly pudgy evangelicals out to convert the world. Look again at the home page (25 April 2011) and you will find a ‘documentary‘ putting forward evidence that Jesus rose from the tomb. WTF: what has that got to do with political issues like climate change, economic woes, and the ranting and raving of politicians? Nothing, unless you are a fundo obsessing over the ‘physical’ resurrection.
25 April, 2011
Centre for Public [Reactionary] Christianity?
Posted by stalinsmoustache under Uncategorized[19] Comments
25 April, 2011 at 12:45 pm
And of course they’re at the ridiculous Garden Tomb, discussing the “historical aspects” (yeah, yeah, “all that history’s pretty solid”). Even given the utter lack of historical evidence of any of it and “dead people stay dead”, the Prods can’t bring themselves to go to the Holy Sepulchre/Church of the Resurrection which could have even a smidgen of connection to any historical crucifixion, unlike some 19th century British Major-General’s observation from the veranda of his hostel.
25 April, 2011 at 12:51 pm
It is important that Christ rose from the dead,and by faith a Christian would know this,but it sounds like the Christians as they are called don’t believe it themselves,and have to come up with what they see as evidence in an attempt to convince themselves. Christianity is so much more, and yet it is simple.it is Christ living in you to love all even as Christ loved, and Christ loved the ones of his time that were unloved drawing humans unto him. Had humans followed the true teachings of Christ and the words inspired in the KJB war would not be,and we would not know the name police or have the legal system that we have today.
25 April, 2011 at 2:13 pm
The reason why fundy Christians, you know, who are all about faith as absolute certainty, obsess over historical “evidence” for the resurrection is because they need something to grasp to as they hide their personal doubts.
25 April, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Yes, you got it. Those humans also obsess about the signs trying to figure out the exact time of Christs return, and it plainly states in the bible,KJV, bible cc, that no one knows the day or the hour of Christs return. That is a common piece of knowledge that bible reads should know, but apparently do not know that verse marching on anyway trying to see if they can decipher what Jesus said could not be done. Those humans do not having the spirit of Jesus guiding them into all truth.
25 April, 2011 at 5:09 pm
That’s always puzzled me: in the midst of apparent certainty, they obsess over something so banal. Or rather, they project their own doubts onto a supposedly sceptical world.
25 April, 2011 at 11:58 pm
On the plus side, they’ve got their brand sorted – “CPX”. Edgy. Relevant. Vital. Now.
26 April, 2011 at 10:50 am
Like 90s fashion.
26 April, 2011 at 8:54 am
Sure, the concern for evidence shows that the faith is weak. But it’s a concern for physical evidence – so what else could be weak? Old Augustine knew that the restoration of Eden would restore potence to the member which he could not control. Is this not the same reason why William Lame Craig is so keen to defend the physicality of ‘raising’ that he produces such spurious etymologies as this: the Greek word for “raised” (egēgertai) must mean “to raise upright”, that is “to erect”? Something else is going on (or not going on) with these men.
26 April, 2011 at 10:51 am
The reserection was always snigger stuff for the teenage boys at the massive yourth program I once directed … But does Augustine mean potence or control?
26 April, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Potence and control – in Augustine’s Eden restored, the penis may be controlled by the will just the same as the hand.
26 April, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Jesus says if you cannot contain it is best that you marry. It seems the young are the ones who cannot contain, and yet are constrained by man made laws to be able to marry.
26 April, 2011 at 8:39 pm
These are my exact sentiments on the upcoming wedding of Prince William.
26 April, 2011 at 8:39 pm
Deane: potence never seemed to be a problem for our dear Gus; it just depended whether potency was involuntary or voluntary.
27 April, 2011 at 4:32 am
I’m sure he made a wee self-deprecatory joke in Book 14 of City of God about impotence. But, it would’ve been a sign of the corruption of the flesh and out-of-control passion.
27 April, 2011 at 4:56 am
Now you have me reading Augustine before dawn, in a 19thC English translation. Discussing how his reproductive member does not obey his will, he proceeds to give some examples: “The motion will sometimes be importunate against the will, and soemtimes immovable when it is desired, and being fervent in the mind, yet will be frozen in the body. [Augustine talks too passionately here, about his desire to reproduce without passion and only with sheer will - it's personal, man!] Thus wondrously does this just man [i.e. Gus] fail, both in honest desire of generation, and in lascivious concupiscence; sometimes resisting the retraint of the whole mind, and sometimes opposing itself by being wholly in the mind and in no way in the body at the same time.” (De civitate dei 14.16)
That’s funny stuff. Sure, he was officially concerned about the restoration of the will, but from that passage it seems to me that Augustine had some much less abstract ancieties as well.
27 April, 2011 at 1:09 pm
actually, it’s an exegesis of Romans 7, beloved by – of blessed memory – Jacques Lacan.
28 April, 2011 at 8:04 am
Well, its form is an allusive reception of Romans 7 to explicate the consequences of the Fall, and so filtering Augustine’s preoccupation with his impotence. This is what Augustine suppresses when he pretends to talk about the restoration of the will (which stands in for the restoration of potency, especially phallic potency). Here, what is read at the surface level as a mere example of the effects of the Fall is Augustine’s double sexual trauma, being neither able to control his erections (associated especially with his first common law wife) nor his impotence (associated especially with the wife under the Law). What appears as a mere example of is the fons et origo of his whole doctrine of the Fall, that human failure to realise the fantastic ideal of full control over one’s body. As Lacan – of blessed memory – taught us, desire must be sought between the lines; Augustine’s wish for redemption is only an alibi here: why has Augustine’s desire for potency taken the form of an exegesis of a passage in which the “I” is impossibly out of reach, an uncontrollable part of “me”, the part of me which is beyond my control? Augustine’s preoccupation with the Fall and its reversal is a preoccupation with his impotency, a flaccid cock projected onto a cosmic canvas of sin and redemption.
29 April, 2011 at 12:49 am
Deane, it seems to me that Gus’s great contribution to Christianity is what may be called penile theology, or theology from the end of a penis. What a man!
29 April, 2011 at 8:00 am
I totally reckon. This is why he transformed Adam’s sin into something “originary”, within his own flesh, transmitted by the uncontrollable member itself – and so mapping against the women-man binary, too, as what is women for Gus if not that body which is uncontrollable by a man?