Marginal Christianity

I have been doing a little digging in Tertullian’s work The Five Books Against Marcion the last couple of days. The five books cover an astonishing amount of ground (creation, hermeneutics, prophecy, goodness, Christology, etc.), which makes sense once you consider what a convoluted mess Marcion’s theology actually was. They didn’t call him the “arch-heretic” for nothing. One important area is his treatment of divine anger. Mark Sheridan has touched on the issue of the Fathers’ handling of Biblical anthropomorphism in  Language for God in Patristic Tradition and shown how the different strategies involved were concerned with making sure we were reading the Bible in a way that is “fitting” to God’s dignity and majesty. Obviously, the Marcionites thought attributing anger or wrath to God was unfitting, which partially motivated their rejection of large portions of the Old Testament and New. Read more at: https://derekzrishmawy.com/2017/07/17/do-not-prejudge-divine-things-from-hum

(A new series of posts) Ch.1: Is God Mad at Me? What Are We Made For? We are made to be loved and love. Love is what God is and God made us to be like him. [1] Love is the energy that moves us. The soil in which we bloom. What makes us who we are meant to be. The necessary and sufficient condition for full humanity. It is God’s glory and ours too. More to the point – this is the point! The only one that matters. Without a deep awareness and assurance of our Creator’s love is both disposition and action our lives becomes desperate and distorted searches for it. Surrogates abound: family, children, job, stuff, status, wealth, achievement, sports, health, and other deities we create to fill the god-shaped hole inside us. The 17 century French mathematician and philosopher Pascal says it well: “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he