Renaissance and Reformation

I will start a new thread of blog but this time I'll be writing on the very interesting topic of Church History with emphasis on the Renaissance and Reformation.

"The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth"; Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere "be born")[1] was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform, this is a very general use of the term."--Wikipedia

Whenever I hear the word "Renaissance", the first thought that comes to my mind is art, and of course the famous artists who flourished at that time. We have Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian. Although, one cannot deny the fact that there was an artistic revolution during the Renaissance. But the true nature of the subject of Renaissance is still an on-going debate today. On the perspective of the Church history, only few can doubt the role of Renaissance as the fore-runner of the great Reformation. Renaissance is the same name given by the historians to a cluster of important developments within Western culture at the close of the Middle Ages.

My main reference material in this thread (I must confess) is the book by N.R. Needham: 2000 Years of Christ's Power. Part Three: Renaissance and Reformation. Actually, I will be lifting most of my topics and discussions from this very valuable book. This was given to me by a highly-esteemed preacher-teacher reformer, Noel A. Espinosa.



Nick Needham is a Londoner by birth and upbringing. He studied theology at New College, Edinburgh University, where he specialized in Church History. He also taught a course at New College on the life and works of the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli, at the same time completing his Ph.D. thesis on the nineteenth-century Scottish theologian Thomas Erskine of Linlathen. He then taught Systematic Theology at the Scottish Baptist College in Glasgow for several years before spending a semester at the Samuel Bill Theological College, where he taught Church History. After a period as assistant pastor in a church in north London, he moved to the Highland Theological College, Dingwall, where he teaches Church History. He recently accepted a call to a pastorate in Inverness. --from the back cover of the 2000 Years of Christ's Power.

an exceptionally simple ToE

From TED.com



About this talk
Physicist and surfer Garrett Lisi presents a controversial new model of the universe that -- just maybe -- answers all the big questions. If nothing else, it's the most beautiful 8-dimensional model of elementary particles and forces you've ever seen.

About Garrett Lisi
Physicist Garrett Lisi has proposed a new "theory of everything" -- a grand unified theory that explains all the elementary particles, as well as gravity. More about Garrett Lisi at TED.com.

On Wikipedia: An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

a wet book

I went in to my room late tonight. I still have a report to prepare and a pile of lecture notes and hand-outs to read through for an exam tomorrow. Beside my bed were my recently bought reference book and a C.S. Lewis Signature Collection. Since I will be having an exam tomorrow, I grabbed the reference book first. Goodness! It is wet and sticky; and the Signature Collection is a bit wet also. I learned that one of our housecats, Batman, earlier went in to the room. Oh well, oh well. Batman was still kind that it left my other books untouched (or should I say unsprinkled with its pee). It just sprinkled the books with a mist of musk! My books are my civilization; and those are very dear to me.

Nice men or new men?

from the Mere Christianity, pp 212-213.

...

Do not misunderstand me. Of course God regards a nasty nature as a bad and deplorable thing. And, of course, He regards a nice nature as a good thing--good like bread, or sunshine, or water. But these are the good things which He give and we receive. He created Dick's sound nerves and good digestion, and there is plenty more where they came from. It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious will cost His crucifixion. And because they are wills they can--in nice people just as much a in nasty ones--refuse His request. And then, because that niceness in Dick was merely part of nature, it will all go to pieces in the end. Nature herself will all pass away. Natural causes come together in Dick to make a pleasant psychological patter, just as they come together in a sunset to make a pleasant pattern of colours. Presently (for that is how nature works) they will fall apart again and the pattern in both cases will disappear. Dick ha had the chance to turn (or rather, to allow God to turn) that momentary pattern into the beauty of an eternal spirit: and he has not taken it.

There is a paradox here. As long as Dick does not turn to God, he thinks his niceness is his own, and just as long as he thinks that, it is not his own. It is when Dick realizes that his niceness is not his own but a gift from God, and when he offers it back to God--it is just then that it begins to be really his own. For now Dick is beginning to take a share in his own creation. The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.

by Clive Staples Lewis.

the pieces are moving

Abraham Lincoln:

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

Oh my God, thou has changeth not.
Thy compassions, they faileth not.
Be with us, O, Great One.

profession and creativity

"the best situation for a creative scientist is to have a menial or unintellectual job that allows some free time for research, rather than a traditional university position requiring teaching, service to the institution, and campus politics."
-Albert Einstein