Posted on: November 6th, 2007 Welcome Back, Self.
It has been six months since my last blog post. (Thanks to Tommy Crawford for helping to resurrect my blog.) A lot has happened in six months:
- I traveled to England and met three of my favorite theological thinkers: Andrew Louth, Catherine Pickstock, and John Milbank. This was a wonderful and quite helpful time for me. I spent about an hour with Andrew Louth, about two hours with Catherine Pickstock, and about four hours with John Milbank. While I have decided not to pursue graduate work at this time, nevertheless the conversations and relationships that began clearly showed me a theological and relational trajectory that I need to follow. I am so psyched that John Milbank has traded several email with me before and after our meeting, some of which are really really long! I will never forget the tour of Southwell Cathedral he gave me, especially our conversation about the Green Man, of which there are many in the 13th century chapter house of the minster.
- My wife got pregnant! (Yeah!) When we went to the oldest pub in Europe, “Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem,” Bouquet sat in a chair inside the pub above which a sign reads, “Warning: Legend has it that any woman who sits in this chair will become pregnant shortly thereafter.” My wife sat in the chair, wiggled around and (partly due to the fervent prayer of dear friends) tested positive for pregnancy the day we arrived back in Austin from the UK.
- I survived summer Greek at UT. This 12-semester hour course in classical Greek (which meets 30 hours / week for class, on top of necessary studying) was one of the highlights of my life. We read Herodotus, Lysius (“sophist” who figures prominently in Plato’s Phaedrus), Homer, tragedian Euripedes, and Plato’s Apology, about the trial of Socrates.
- The PCA General Assembly took a horribly depressing action in its meeting this summer. Swayed by an emotional appeal to fear by RC Sproul (one factor among many) the General Assembly passed an overture which in effect condemns the theological position of the so-called “New Perspective on Paul” (one of whose chief proponents is Bishop NT Wright) as well as the “Auburn Avenue” theology, otherwise known as “the Federal Vision.” (Thankfully, our presbytery, the South Texas Presbytery of the PCA, decided to resist and to defeat an attempt to do something similar at the level of presbytery.)
- I firmed up my decision to leave Christ the King Church in my role as assistant pastor next summer, 2008. We will deeply miss our wonderful friends and brothers. We will also look forward to building the Kingdom, in concert with them, in new and different ways in the future. (More on that to come. Stay tuned.)
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