Friday, March 17, 2006

Ut infinitio quod ultra



I'm sure the question crosses your mind two, three times a day. I want to venture into deep space, but which crew should I travel with?

There's the all-human-but-flexible-morality crew of Serenity (Firefly). Or the part android, part testosterone group aboard the Millennium Falcon (Star Wars). Now, at long last, there is a survey that answers this question, at warp speed no less.

http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=111863

Phil

Friday, March 03, 2006

Theology of Kissing

Culled from various sources on the web, we bring you this smoochariffic complication of what various theologians had to say about kissing:

Augustine:
You awaken me to delight in your mouth, and my lips are restless until they’re kissing you.

Luther: If the Word of God tells me to kiss, then I will kiss—and let the pope, the world and the devil be damned!

Adolf von Harnack
: Jesus’ own simple teaching about kissing was immediately eclipsed by the early Christians’ Hellenistic approach to kissing.

Karl Barth: “I kiss you.” There are three related problems to consider here. I kiss you. I kiss you. I kiss you.

Hans Urs von Balthasar: Kissing is not only true and good, but it is beautiful.

Hans Küng: The Church’s approach to kissing is in urgent need of the most radical and most far-reaching reform.

Wolfhart Pannenberg: One’s first kiss is a proleptic anticipation of all that is still to come.

N. T. Wright: Every kiss is a dramatic enactment of our return from exile.

Billy Graham: Will you walk down the aisle and kiss me tonight? Will you do it tonight? You many never have another chance—you might be dead tomorrow!

Gerd Lüdemann: After many years of careful research, I have decided to kiss my faith goodbye.

Meister Eckhart: I kiss God and God kisses me. We kiss with the same lips.

Calvin: Even though you don't deserve me, I chose to kiss you.
OR
Calvin:My kiss I give to you, promptly and sincerely.

Moltmann: A kiss is a present promise of the future hope. Yeah baby!

Marcus Borg: I'd like to kiss you again, for the first time.

Thomas Aquinas: "There are five ways to prove the existence of a kiss...."
OR
Thomas Aquinas: Kissing is an occasion of lust unless it is the custom of the country.

Walter Brueggemann - There is the kiss and the counterkiss and if one wins, we both lose.

Stanley Hauerwas: In the community established upon the principle of nonviolence, the question 'whom should I kiss' never arises - since to refuse to kiss is itself an act of violence. We kiss not because Jesus recommended it, but because in Jesus we discover that God is a kisser. So you'd all better damn well pucker up.

Some Patristic additions:

Ignatius of Antioch: I can’t wait to kiss those lions!

Justin Martyr: Greek kisses and Jewish kisses were preparations for The Kiss.

Irenaeus: Those ridiculous Gnostics have invented 30 crazy ways to kiss and not one of them is the True Kiss.

Tertullian: There will be no kissing! But I can provide you with a whole new Latin vocabulary on the subject.

Athanasius: A kiss is both human and divine.

Anselm: Why a kiss is satisfying.

Aquinas: Substantially, a kiss is no accident.

Huss: Allow us to kiss with both lips!