An Exhort from Oxford Nov 2024.

Click bait title: The End of the Exhort!?

Actually about advocating for a dialogical practice in ecclesia's.

An exhort given at Handsworth. If i were to relate this to the last Circles and Lines Exhort I'd say its an attempt to see how Jesus draws the circle into which he invites people so they might explore the edges and parameters of love from the inside out rather as the law does from the outside in.

I gave this talk at Oxford in April and thought it pulled together a few strands from the podcast material so figured I should upload it.

In this Episode we look at how René Descartes influences a highly rational bottom up approach view of the work and how we in the West have adopted this as a way of attending to the bible.

The Death part refers to the ever increasing tide of purposelessness brought on by the dawn of the scientific revolution that started with Galileo and increases with Descartes and Hobbes.

As we get into the 12th and 13 Centuries huge changes take place that effect the western world view not least the protestant reformation. We take a look at what lenses this period in time have become integrated into how we see the world in the West.

This was a tough episode but we got there. We explore the rediscovery of Aristotle and what that means for Christianity in the West. Aquinas' separation of the natural and supernatural and how that creates a ripple effect right up into our community in the present day.

Correction/Clarification: Its important to point out that The great chain of being described is the system developed by Plotinus that pulls from both Aristotle and Plato not just Aristotle. Also Plotinus is 270 AD not BC! (Whoops)

In this episode we continue to look at the lenses we see the world through. This time we see how two big thinkers integrated and synthesised previous ideas to create new coherent ways of seeing the world, God and the Bible.

It was hard to title this one! It looks at ideas that develop in the Middle East, Greece and India out of the Axial Revolution that have embedded in our modern day culture. We look at how they have influenced Christadelphian Culture.

Further listening:

short version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePk1Ol7ZLwI

longer version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF9HeXg65AE&t

We're back with a second series to look at some more frameworks and lenses but this time we're looking at the frameworks we already use but that are "internalised" or unconscious. How can stepping back to see how we view the world help us in our self awarenss? Here is the new video series I mention in the episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hSrgv6w_hw&list=PLO18pafvcP831NZKOndA4_uX4B5xw0Ha5.

And here is the 9 dot problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq3ta6SvlTo

Part of David Kantor's Structural Dynamics which suggests there are 4 main speech acts in any conversation.