Consciousness

Had a very interesting chat about consciousness with some friends the other day. It has got me thinking harder than I have in a long time. It is good to have the brain re-stimulated after having felt like it had been oozing out my ears since I took a break from full time study. Consciousness and its possible immaterial existence helps answer a whole lot of questions that I had never known were worrying me. Questions about how prayer works, questions about the real existence of the supernatural, and many others questions waiting to be uncovered. However I had to caution myself before i got too excited. I remembered having read so many theologians in 'church history' lectures who you could see so were obviously letting their philosophy inform there reading of the bible rather than the other way around. Not wanting to lose any of the thirst for learning (not something that comes naturally to me) I have decided that before I begin I must firmly ground myself in solid exegesis of the word of God. I have decided to try and discover the bibles understanding of consciousness.

Here are my initial thoughts after a bus trip home, drawing only on my existing knowledge of the bible:

-I am promised a new body, does this necessitate something that 'I' am that is not fully contained in my body?

- God is a person who, until being 'becoming flesh' in Jesus, held some existence separate to creation.

That will do for now gotta catch a bus

Biblical Theology

One of the significant discoveries of my theological education has been my complete lack of clarity on the subject of biblical theology. As a staff team we are reading Goldsworthy's 'Gospel and Kingdom' which has brought the issue back to the forefront of my mind. Having only read the first few chapters my thoughts so far are as follows

• The idea that we need to understand a passage, find what it would have meant to its initial audience, and then 'bridge the Gap' to our present context, seems at this point quite reasonable.
  
• His critique of allegorical interpretation is both amusing and quite apt.
  
• He makes a few statements, however, which the reader is to take as assumed without having been convinced by the author that such is the case. For instance that the Old testament is all about Jesus. This is a statement that I would like to investigate and hopefully become convinced of, however as yet it should have been dealt with in the text. I know the passages to which one might go to show this however at least the ones that come to mind do not say that all of the old testament is about Jesus.
  
• I have been very inspired to read the old testament more
  

I was thinking today that ideally our knowledge and understanding of the old testament would be that of paul or the apostles + whatever revelation is given in Luke 24. To this end it may be worth reading the Old testament according to the hebrew order... but at the same time maybe the LXX order would have been the order used at the time of the NT.

I hope to study this topic in extensive detail.

Coffee Roasting

Having yesterday bought a Coffee Grinder, I am moving up in the world of Coffee appreciation. The next logical step in my mind is to investigate acquiring quality Beans. Rather than finding a good quality supplier of roasted coffee beans in my area I am considering cutting out the middle man and roasting my own beans. After some extensive googling-and-going-to-the-first-site-that-seemed-relevant, I have found that a certain kind of cheap popcorn machine is conventionally used. What is more the roasting takes only a few minutes depending on how you want the beans to taste. This has come much to my great surprise and delight, having previously assumed that the process would take many hours and being both expensive and difficult. I shall have to investigate sourcing some un-roasted (or green) coffee beans

Blog

Since this will be read primarily* by myself, this first post is an exercise in navel gazing but will serve as a rationale of sorts.

This Blog has been written mainly because i was reading the blogs of others and decided that i was just as sophisticated as these others and there was no reason why i couldn't have a blog of my very own. That bit of honesty aside I have a few other more sophisticated reasons for and goals of this blog.

• To act as a journal of sorts, to keep me sane. Having lived inside my head for long enough I have realized** that my mind is a thing not fully in my control. So to aid in my avoidance of Alzheimer's some structuring of thoughts could be helpful. So why do this as a blog? Because as a decidedly selfish individual I have always entertained the idea that most other people ought to be interested in what I think.
• Secondly, (although I have always wondered if it is valid to use the term secondly not having introduced the the prior point with similar designation ie firstly) this blog will serve as a place to explore in writing some of my theological ponderings (pondering is acting as a noun in this sentence).
• This Blog will serve as a place to share some of the more creative ideas as I have them, which if not written down will simply evaporate into the air.
• In an effort to encourage people to read my blog, I will also place some articles of entertainment value.

Unfortunately I cannot guarantee any level of Grammatical adherence in even this sentence, let alone the entire blog, and I sincerely apologize to those who are bothered by such things. I quite often use words that I don't fully understand, and just as often cannot spell these same words, this also I will apologize in advanced for. I also cannot guarantee that this blog will be of any interest to anyone but myself.

But do not be disheartened if all goes to plan this should be a lot of fun for all involved.

"A long and weary traveler, he walked into a beard. a long and weary traveler t'was just as he had feared. For as he wandered further in, his beard went further out. And as he traveled on; his compass, he began to doubt. He had no fear for anything, as you will surely see. this man began to see his life and it was never free.

*Actually lets be perfectly honest it will be read only by me.

**This word processor seems to prefer American spellings, so for the sake of argument this blog will, but for a few exceptions where I will undoubtedly forget to adjust it, use American spellings.***

*** Ever since reading Terry Pratchett books as a youth, i have been fascinated by asterisks and so will probably employ them excessively.