Recommendations for you!

Here are two articles that I recieved recently from YABS participants, Todd and Ashley.  The first is an interesting take on the plane crash on the Hudson River that took place last week and our understanding of miracles.  The second article is about young adults living in a community to live out their faith and beliefs.  Check them out and post what you think!

Miracles and the Hudson.

Young People living out their faith.

Chosen?!?!

This week’s discussion will focus on predestination.  It’s that sticky topic that comes up every so often and sometimes gives us more questions than answers.  Well, this week, bring your questions about this challenging topic!  How are we to understand predestination?  What about double predestination?  What does this mean for the life of believers?  How does it affect our faithful living?

See you then!

Sacraments: More than just bread, grape juice and water

This week we will be talking about the Sacraments, baptism and communion.  In fact, this study will center around our experiences of worship and how we participate as a community of faith.  We will focus on two different readings: Matthew 3: 1-17 and Luke 22: 14-23.

Matthew’s gospel gives a vivid description of the baptisms at the edge of the Jordan.  The gospels give similar accounts of baptism and Jesus’ baptism…feel free to check these out too!  They can be found early on in each book.  The Luke passage may seem familiar; it’s the same language that we use in the Lord’s Supper each month.  We will use both of these passages as a lens through which we can talk about the two Sacraments in the life of the Church.

Word…WORD…the Word

Conversation about Scripture can take us on unexpected turns!  We had a lively discussion last night using the Book of Confessions (a collection of confessions from throughout history that are recognized as a part of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. and its tradition).  Unfortunately, due to time, I skipped a lot of the background information.  So, if you are seeking some more historical information about the books in the Bible as we know them, here it is:

   During the turn of the first century C.E., Christians were primarily using the Septuagint, the Old Testament translated in Greek.  “It is from the Septuagine that nearly all the quotations from the scriptures are to be found in the New Testament.  Because the various parts of the New Testament were produced in sites scattered across the Mediterranean world, and because some of its parts had not yet been written by the end of the first century, there was no immediate possibility or necessity to create a Christian counterpart to the official list of Jewish scriptures.” (Kee, 92-93)

   The middle of the second century marked a time when writings based on the apostles’ teachings were utilized as authoritative.  As new faith communities rose, narratives about their leaders created a kind of folkloric teaching of their foundations; these were rarely read as authoritative.  Still, by the end of the third century, a biblical canon (a determined set of books) did not exist!  “The high mobility of the populace, the mounting political and intellectual pressure on Christians, and the strains produced from groups within the church who were espousing ideas incompatible with those held by the majority of Christians made it essential to develop fixed norms on the basis of which decisions could be made about Christian faith and life.” (Kee, 95)

   In the fourth century, various synods created a list equal to the OT and NT lists that we have today.  Around 400 Jerome translated the Hebrew and Greek testaments into Latin therefore creating a definitive set of books of the Bible (even though that wasn’t his intention).  Still, it wasn’t until the Council of Trent (1545-1563) that the list was finally set.  “The council was convoked in 1545 in a theoretically still-united Christendom; the council closed in 1563 with a Christendom rent by divisions that affect world Christianity down to the present.  The Council of Trent definitively ended medieval hopes for conciliarism.” (316)

·         Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits were key players in this council

·         The council reaffirmed the seven sacraments, the authority of Scripture and unwritten apostolic teachings, and spoke against the Protestant belief of grace alone and other ways that they were seeking/attempting to reform the Catholic church.

·         Therefore, the Reformation introduced the “problem” of pluralism within the Christian faith, itself!

 

This may even raise more questions!  Feel free to post them and I will respond right here on the blog.  And tune in for a sneak peek into next week’s topic: The Sacraments!

The Bible, The Word

This week we will be discussion the Bible.  It is a constant in our worship services, we hear it each week, and we open it in our Young Adult Bible Study…but there is so much more beyond that!

• How was the Bible an integral element of the Reformation?
• What authority do we give Scripture in the Church?
• How do we approach reading Scripture?  Where can we even begin?!
• Who is capable and able to interpret the Scriptures?
• What is the place of the Bible in the life of a Christian?

Bring your questions and an open mind as we discuss this next topic!  Hope to see you Wednesday: 6.30 pm bring something to share in our meal together (dinners made completely from dessert or other treats are never turned away!) and bible study form 7-8.30 pm.

A New Year…a new beginning!

These coming seven weeks will bring us “Back to Basis” to answer some fundamental questions of our faith:

• What do we believe happens (or doesn’t) in communion?
• Why do we baptize babies?  What is baptism all about?
• What was that whole Reformation-thing about?  How does it bring us to our own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)?
• What does it mean to be Presbyterian?
• Ummmm….predestination?
• We always talk about hope in the world, but what about evil and its existence?  What do we believe about evil?

Bring your questions and an open mind because we’re hitting the ground running in 2009!  See you Wednesday.