What is in Kelvin's Head?

One response to “Eid, Pride and Abraham’s Sacrifice”

  1. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    As one who grew up(?) in churches leaning toward the view “it’s a tough story for a tough world, how else would God be just?” in varying degrees, I agree the face-value-narrative understanding of the story is repellant.

    One thing stood out for the first time during Sunday’s reading: the plurality in Abraham’s line – “…and we will return to you”. I’ve been idly wondering about that since.
    It doesn’t make the story wholly acceptable as Abraham still ploughs on ever closer.
    But if one’s goal is to find a “by faith, Abraham” in there, better to say it’s the prior confidence that things will somehow work out well (which I thought was how Hebrews was trying to define it), than to locate the commendable quality in violence (which, by rabbiting on about resurrection, Hebrews does).

    In the absence of other clear & wholly mitigating contexts in which to place the story, certainly it’s simplest, easiest and probably best to file it under “that’s how they saw God back then” and move swiftly on.

    Oofft.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • Responses to reviews

    I've been writing reviews in the Scottish Episcopalian for a couple of months. Indeed, some of them are available o­n this site – just click o­n the word “reviews” o­n the left. I'm now starting to get responses from people to the things I write – several people have been in touch to say that…

  • Things to do

    Things to do instead of writing a sermon: take a grammar test at quizilla.com My result is this: You are a GRAMMAR GOD! If your mission in life is not already topreserve the English tongue, it should be.Congratulations and thank you! How grammatically sound are you?brought to you by Quizilla

  • Holy Saturday

    A very busy Holy Saturday morning with people decorating and cleaning the church for tomorrow. It is o­ne of my favourite times of the year. Daffodils and beeswax and happy people.

  • Good Friday

    And it really has been a good, Good Friday. Lots of people at church, the choir joining in and a film in the hall during the evening. The film was Jesus Christ Superstar and went down a treat.I say that Lent finishes at Compline o­n Good Friday and that therefore going out for a drink…