Christianity as a performance

'One of the things that liberal democratic society has encouraged Christians to believe about what they believe is that what it means to be a Christian is primarily belief! ... This is a deep misunderstanding about how Christianity works. Of course we believe that God is God and we are not and that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit ... but this is not a set of propositions ... rather [it is] embedded in a community of practices that makes those beliefs themselves work and give us a community by which we are shaped. Religious belief is not just some kind of primitive metaphysics ... in fact it is a performance just like you'd perform Lear. What people think is, is that it's like the text of Lear, rather than the actual production of Lear. It has to be performed for you to understand what Lear is - a drama. You can read it, but unfortunately Christians so often want to make Christianity a text rather than a performance.' Stanley Hauerwas, Homiletics Online 2005, cited in Swinton and Mowatt, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research

Dunn and Wright in conversation

There's a really interesting conversation here between James D G Dunn and N T Wright about the New Perspective on Paul.

grace

'grace is not opposed to effort but to earning'
Dallas Willard

The Gift of Tongues

'[tongues] is a gift that can be used to edify the spirit even as the mind is bypassed.' Mark J. Cartledge, The Gift of Speaking in Tongues.
I wonder if this 'bypassing of the mind' has had an effect on Charismatic attitudes to formal theology: if God can be known without intellectual engagement then why bother with academic study!