Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.  Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

Christian seminary president doesn’t believe in
Resurrection, Virgin Birth, Heaven, or Miracles

Back in the day, what a Union President had to say would be front page NYT, not level 3 blog.  Still, it is interesting seeing Union get any attention at all considering all of this is decades-old news and Union self-disgraced and has been outside the mission of The Church since 1969 at the latest.

That is the reason I did not attend my class graduation at Riverside that spring of ’69 and have not paraded my degree/academic status.  That is also the reason why, on my application to Metro, I did not mention Union or a graduate degree or its subject, seeing already then — 1984 — that such would prejudice my entreaty for employment.  … innocent as rabbits, prudent as eagles.

By the 1980s, Union was already compost and Christianity was already identified, as this article takes it, as ossified German fundamentalism — which has a specific meaning in the history of theology — or a threat to polite, decorous, society — which it is: see temple, moneychangers, woman taken in adultery — and therefore condemned as racist, paternalistic, colonialist, you name it.

My wife pointed out recently that, in re the woman taken in adultery, St. Jerome says that the words Jesus wrote in the sand were specific serious sins committed by each of the intending stoners, sins for which they thought they had escaped punishment because they were supposedly done in secret.  Jesus wrote specifics known only to Himself and the one present who committed them.  He wrote not moral generalizations, away from which no one would slink.  Only private specifics, eliciting profound embarrassment, would kill the rage and lust of a mob bent on violence.  So wrote Jesus.  So wrote Jerome.

Wanting to not cause offense or invite persiflage, or open dangerous doors, modern exegetes bind themselves to political talking points, fatuous language, as Serene does with this marvelous locution:  … Union actively reforms itself in response to the changing needs of the world and an evolving understanding of what it means to be faithful.  Can’t get more wooly than that.  No wonder Union gets no attention.  There is no leaven there.

Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God

Update 1: Pondering what Serene does believe, there is this for certain: be not a sheep sent among wolves.

Update 2: ‘Absolute theological bankruptcy’: Union Theological Seminary students pray to plants

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA