Monday, May 29, 2006

Passing on Impassibility & Graham Cole

Does anyone know exactly what Dr Graham Cole said at the Oak Hill School of Theology on grieving the spirit? Was it just "remeber God is passionate and has emotions and real relationships in which he is "affected" by us - even if they are not like human emotions, relationships or affecations - which I understand to be consistent with Orthodoxy? Or was Dr Cole trying to say something else? When do the tapes come out? Where none of the Doctrine Boys keeping an eye out?

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I enjoyed Rev'd Graham in chapel the other day. Being from Trinty Evangelical Divinty School, I was expecting an American Baptist not a Sydney Anglican who had transformed Ridley College, it seemed. Good on him for getting back to the class room.

I loved the line:

Or to put it in technical Aristotelian terminology: "You'd be nuts, mate!"


Might plagarise that one.

And was it something like:

And if you invited them to a dinner party or a barbie, which in Australia is the same thing...


I believe a "barbie" is a "barbeque", by the way.

I wondered whether what Rev'd Cole was saying about the relationship between evangelism and social action was really consistent if pressed?

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Dr Cole seems to have an egalatarian view of men and women in the church - women can preach to men etc. - but a hierarchical view of men and wonen in marriage, I understand? Some people thought his 7 points in favour of his view didn't work, but I've heard them described more as "considerations / ways into thinking about this / how would the landscape look with these features in place / are these part of a more plausible picture" than arguments - cumulative or otherwise. Does that help? I understand there was some heat, however much light?

3 comments:

Ros said...

You may have noticed I've given up on correcting spelling/grammar for you (not having a spare 3 hours a day). However, I cannot let barbeque pass. The word is barbecue. No q. Ever.

Anonymous said...

Come on, Ros. The fact that Marc managed the 'ue' on the end (not the easiest or most natural spelling) deserves some praise.

Marc, Trinity EDS is inter-denominational, so they're not all Bappos. I agree with your comment on social action. It was interesting he quoted Stott as his origin for this. It was Stott's change of mind between Berlin in 1966 (mission is always evangelism, and often includes social action as a secondary but inevitable consequence) and Lausanne in 1974 (evangelism and social action are the two wings of the bird/two blades of the scissors in mission) which set international evangelical mission on its long road to the social gospel. You'll get more of this in 'Mission in the Modern World' next year.

Anonymous said...

They are all premills though (at least, that's what their DB says)