This Camino talk captures a great conversation on our walk that began with a great question. Great questions are often the pathway to growth – and this is because they usually lift the lid on a topic that we really don’t understand, but skip over with cliches to cover our ignorance up. Anne is not the kind of person who happily just skips over things… I can remember many years ago when she asked Mark Strom after a sermon of his – “When God so loved the world…what does that mean? Does he love ALL the world, or just the Christians in it?”
This time Anne asked me what the idea of ‘participation’ that is so central to Ephesians 1 means. And let’s face it, Ephesians does not handle participation as if it is some interesting sideshow to salvation – it claims that it is the high point of all God’s purposes. You could not have asked a more important question.
So this talk is my struggle to answer it – and I think it came together more succinctly than normal because I was walking and talking at the same time. Time to draw breath and ponder not just blurb stuff out.
A special request
Can I raise another issue entirely with you my friends. We have all been blessed by David Bentley Hart’s talks and ideas. You may or may not know, but David struggles with poor heath, and the latest episode is a crippling neuralgia in his neck that requires some expensive surgery. His insurance has let him down and he has to pay for lots of the surgery which he can’t afford. He is most embarrassed by this – but his dear brother ignored him and set up a Gofundme page for anyone who might like to help out. Here it is if you would like to do that.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-david-bentley-harts-spinal-surgery-costs
Maximus and participation; What does 'We become gods' mean?