Over the last three weeks, ToothandNail records has released 3 tremendously cool albums, all of which reveal just how far ToothandNail has come. 

Before the albums, however, let me reminisce :).  I've been a fan of ToothandNail for a LONG time.  10 years or so ago, ToothandNail was releasing copious amounts of albums.  The one problem: they didn't have the resources for good production or good recording.  The result was really cool albums that sounded like crap.  

Fortunately, those days are long gone.  With the success of many of its roster of bands, ToothandNail has obviously been able to upgrade its recording and production talent.  Most of albums coming out of ToothandNail are slick and finished, lacking any remnants of the good old days.

With that said, the albums I've been listening to are as follows:

Emery :  While Broken Hearts Prevail

This is really more of an EP, but it's got some seriously cool songs on it. Emery's sound continues to evolve as the band becomes less and less afraid to loosen the tether to their trademark screamo.  It worked well for Dead Poetic (IMO), so I think it's a positive for Emery as well.

Ruth :  Anorak

My first exposure to Ruth came a week ago when I was browsing ToothandNail's site looking for information about Emery.  Reminiscent of bands like This Day and Age and Waking Ashland, Ruth is powerpop all the way through.  Nonetheless, they bring some pretty intoxicating melodies (especially on "Nothing to Hide")--great drowning-out-the-dullness-of-work music.

Starflyer 59 :  Dial M

I've listened to Starflyer 59 since they began in 1993, and I've always believed that SF's Martin is infinitely more interesting and talented than another Martin of Joy Electric fame...Anyway, Dial M is easily SF's best album to date.  Smart lyrics and ridiculously interesting arrangements imbue every song with life and quell the doubts about the relevance of Starflyer to the post-90's music scene.

Seriously, do not waste any more time.  Go find these three albums right now.  Throw away everything else you have and listen to nothing else for 3 weeks.  You will not regret it.

Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.  -  Matthew 25:34

This vision of the kingdom of God reveals an interesting perspective into the identification of the face of God.  The scenario is that of the eschatological Christ presented as victor and King.  Yet the ones who belong to the kingdom of the Victor are not warriors and statesmen, nor kings and rulers--rather, it is the sick, the impoverished and the oppressed.  Yet these are not simply citizens of God's eschatological kingdom by proxy, but are more audaciously the ones with whom God in Christ self-identifies.  It is in their faces and lives that God dwells most vividly.

It is often said that God is no respector of persons; and in ways this is probably true.  However, the eschatological Christ reveals that the poor and downtrodden have a special place within the life and kingdom of God.

If the poor and oppressed have such a central place in the eschatological kingdom of God, what then should the Christian response to poverty be?  Historically, the answer has been varied.  At times, the Church has made tremendous outreach toward inclusivity and restoration of the poor and marginalized while, at other times, an unfortunate tendency toward over-spiritualization has resulted in increased oppression and neglect in the name of spreading the gospel.

With either approach, however, the danger is that whether the goal is social good or evangelism, the poor will yet remain "them".   Filling bellies and souls is great, but if the impoverished are ever on the outside, the goal of the eschatological kingdom of God is lost.  

This is why the early Church was so appealing to the poor and distressed.  It was not simply because the people did good things for each other, but because by entering into relationship with the Church, people were welcomed into a community of shared life, acceptance and grace.  In this community they found help and life that vanquished the despair and distress of the world around them.

And this is precisely the picture that we find in this vision of God's kingdom.  The face of Christ within the poor and marginalized professes that these not only find a special place within the heart of God, but that it is through community with "the least of these" that the kingdom of God is realized.  The face of Christ in these calls and compels us all to engage their needs and to welcome them into their lives that we might be incorporated into theirs.  As we do, we find that the kingdom of God is realized in us as we embrace the face of God for which we all seek.

So a coworker and I are always talking about code.  Not terribly interesting (especially for people who aren't in the biz...), but sometimes we make ourselves laugh.  Yes, I know.  I am a huge nerd for finding conversations about code to be funny...

But anyway, the other day we were talking about XHTML validation (you're welcome to start sleeping about right now, if you wish) and how validation fails if there are markup tags that are not "closed" (e.g., a "div" tag that hold an image, text, etc. needs to have a "closing" tag to tell the browser what it's dealing with). 

Somehow, the comment was made that life feels like failed XHTML validation--replete with open "tags" of disappointment that never close...

Boy, I made myself bored just writing this.  Appartently my line of work is dorky and lame.  Oh well.   

Wow.  I haven't posted here since the middle of May.  

Well, I've been busy...and whatnot.

For the last several months, I've been extremely busy with my company, Singularity Concepts.  I've launched several websites and currently have some "bigguns" in progress.

But for some reason, I've gotten the theology bug recently.  So here goes.

The other day, I came across a post talking about problems with Arminian theology.  As was once my practice, I jumped into the fray, gunning down the arguments of my Calvinist detractors (not to difficult, but good sport nonetheless).  At one point, one of the Arminians actually defended the Reformed view of the atonement, and pointed me to a post somewhere which he believed was a "great" defense of PSA theory from a non-Reformed perspective.

Needless to say, the argument highlighted was terrifically weak and philosophically thin, but one point did pique my interest.  One of the fundamental arguments made by the author for his view of atonement is that sin damages God's glory, and that this glory must be restored.

Obviously, this is nothing new.  Beginning primarily with Anselm, theologians have thought this way about atonement.  Simply, they suggest that in the fall and continuing sinfulness, humanity degrades the glory of God.  As God must be glorified, the argument continues, something must be done to restore God's honor.  The answer, for whatever reason, follows that punishment of the perpetrators of sin will effect this restoration.  So then, the peculiar mystery of atonement is that Christ is able, as the Incarnate God, to not only encapsulate the whole of history's dishonor of God, but is moreover able to vicariously bear the penalty of this, thereby fully satisfying the honor of God and its due requirement for restitution.

Several problems crop up, of course, for this theory.  The most disturbing, however, is its view of God's honor and glory.

Consider this.  If God is eternally glorious, it stands to reason that the eternality of this glorification concomitantly requires that the amount or level of God's gloriousness is not diminished.  After all, if God's glory waned at any moment, God's would seek to be eternally glorified, and would thereby cease to be God.  Simple enough.

However, we must go deeper: what is the source of God's glorification?  Is it attributed to God by others, or is it self-referential?  The former conclusion poses signficant problems, for it requires that that which attributes glory to God exist eternally with God, whereby the glory which accrues to God might be equally eternal with God (for if God is not eternally glorious, God is not eternally divine).  If we say that glory is attributed to God by that which is not God, one must posit that that which is not God has existed eternally whereby it might be identified as the source of attribution of God's glory.  This, of course, blurs any meaningful distinction between God and that which God has created, creating a thoroughgoing pantheism.  So it must be concluded that God's glory is self-referential.

If this is case, however, we must return to the original notation about the eternality of God's glory, e.g., that there is no point at which God's glory is diminished.  If the logic of this is understood, then it must be further concluded that there is nothing, either internal or external to God, that can in any way add to or diminish from God's glory.  For such a scenario to be possible, one would have to suggest that God's self-referential glory has not be as infinite and eternal as the divine existence toward which it is directed and from which it procedes.

So for discussions of atonement, the notion that God's glory and honor is somehow detracted through human sin must be rejected, for if this is true, we must admit that human sinfulness is capable of diminishing the eternality and fulness of the divine life, even though that which detracts is ultimately dependant upon the former for its primal ontology.  

What, then, does this mean?  It requires that when we approach an understanding of atonement, it must be recognized that the cross is not "for God."  The cross is not a mechanism for filling a deficiency in the divine person, as if something needs to be restored unto God, lest God be understood as incomplete.  This is ludicrous, for a God which lacks that which is essential to deity (e.g., eternal glory) is no longer God. 

So over the last year, I've become quite good at playing nursery rhymes on my guitar--it's one of the easist ways to be able to actually play guitar while concomitantly appeasing the attentions of my two-year old daughter.  On my favorites (because it's easy) is the old-standby, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. 

Well, this last Saturday night, I did not sleep a wink.  Therefore, all Sunday was somewhat of a daze.  However, somewhere in the midst of it, I was playing this song and was struck by the question posed throughout:  "How I wonder what you are."  Indeed, I thought, how we do wonder what stars are. 

Of course, science tells us that they are giant balls of coalesced stellar gases.  Pa-shaw.  Here's my philosophical analysis.

Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are

Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky

Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are

Are you really just a ball of gas, as the hegenomy of science says?

Why should I believe that, when no one's ever seen it, and no one's ever touched it

I know I've never tasted it; I've never had a side of star with turkey on rye

Maybe it's an animal; maybe just a great machine

It's harder to tell what's real, and separate the make-believe

Maybe it's a giant sheet the ancients spread across the sky

And the moderns came in with their sticks, and only poked holes in it...

That kind of makes sense to me, because I have some holes of my own

And you say, you say, you say I'm a star; or at least I'm made of it

So when I pierced full through, with Western epistemology

Maybe I can be one of your stars; reducible to bare phenomenology

And you say, you say, you say I'm a star; you say, you say, you say I'm a star...