writing

Today I haven’t done much reading for two reasons. (1) I have to preach tomorrow, so I spent a good amount of time working on a sermon. (2) I have been reworking my prospectus draft. I suppose I should now discuss my prospectus. My large focus is Baptist ecclesiology. My feeling is that many, if not most Baptist theologians are not willing to claim that as Baptists we do indeed have an ecclesiology. Because that topic is to big, I am going to narrow it down specifically to ordination. So I am going to look into the Baptist theology of ordination. Now it is late, and I am tired, so part two will have more on the prospectus.

picture context

Today I made some notes from the first six chapters of the Wittgenstein bio. A couple of things stood out for me. One is the level of intensity that Wittgenstein holds in his work. It seems as if he is truly trying to embody his philosophy. It might be interesting to compare this to the idea of theoisis (spelling). The other is the picture theory of language. So far, I understand picture theory as something representing something else that cannot be parsed down to the single atom - word - symbol. Thus we have ways of speaking about God, but we do not have a set combination of words that will completely describe God in a total holistic way. We can only paint a picture. A danger is that when two people look at a picture, they can see two different things, and one cannot control the other. Thus we have the picture of the bible, but two people can see very different things in the same Bible. Hmm….
Finally I enjoyed the difference between saying and showing. I can say I am a Christian or I can show that I am a Christian. I wonder if the showing is painting the picture. If one could never fully say what it means to be a Christian, than it may be more appropriate to show and let the picture speak for itself.
I have read these ideas before, but to read them in a bio is very informative. Context, context, context.

I just got to the part where Wittgenstein is going to the front lines. What drives a person to look for such danger?