The similar phrase 'Worldly Christianity' is one used by Bonhoeffer. It's J Gresham Machen that I want to line up most closely with. See his Christianity and culture here. Having done commentaries on Proverbs (Heavenly Wisdom) and Song of Songs (Heavenly Love), a matching title for Ecclesiastes would be Heavenly Worldliness. For my stance on worldliness, see 3 posts here.

The joy of reading



One of the joys of the cruise for me was sitting in the Captain's Club or the Library reading or writing up my journal (especially when no-one else was there). I took Paul Johnson on Napoleon, Tom Barnes on Glorification, the Boris Starling novel Messiah and my Bible. Every cabin had a Gideon bible (the one concession to anything like that). On the last day I left my little pile of books in the Library while we went into town. When I returned the Bible was gone. I don't know if someone who really needed one had it or if someone rather malicious threw it overboard. I'd not written anything in it. It's the second book down in the little pile in front of me, under my journal. Next to me you can see my trusty i-pod. Many of the books that appear to be behind me on the shelf are just a facade.

7 comments:

Dai Corleone said...

Great to find your blog, Gary. I love reading too!

Gary Brady said...

You must be unique - a theolog who prefers tea to coffee.

Dai Corleone said...

Coffee is for Barthians. Calvinists drink tea.

Gary Brady said...

I'm having real problems with this assertion (especially as I'm more coffee drinker than tea man). Clearly Lutherans and Puritans are beer drinkers and Evangelicals are tea people ('the cup that cheers but doth not inebriate' as Cowper put it) but how can Calvinsts be classed as the tea party (to coin a phrase)? By the way I trust that like myself you are a-lactarian nto pre- or post-lactarian. I know tea drinkers can be very fussy about such things.

Dai Corleone said...

I'm a post-lactarian tea drinking Calvinist. Is there any other kind? I sometimes drink coffee too, but only in a dialectical way.

Alan said...

You are both wrong as a glace at this website will prove.

http://www.calvinus.ch/

Video evidence of the strongest kind.

As for pre and post-lactarianism, prelactarianism has been scientifically proven to give greater joy due to reduced denaturing of the milk proteins. Here in France most of us are alactarians, however.

Gary Brady said...

Thanks for settling this for us Alan. So Calvin was a bit of a Lutheran then?