Marking Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year

Ses s i on 1: F rom Ever l as t i ng to Ever l as t i ng 13

1. Reductionism – substituting a comprehensive religious vision of Christian faith for an alternative, smaller, usually culturally-oriented substitute notion, activity, relationship, or element

2. Rationalism – spending the majority of time using modern scientific proofs and arguments to underwrite faith in Jesus, reducing Christian faith to holding of particular, contextualized doctrinal positions over against other contrary views

3. Moralism – reducing the Christian vision to personal and communal decency and ethics, e.g., living well in a nuclear family context, holding certain views on selected socially controversial moral issues

D. Elements of a comprehensive biblical story-ordered framework

1. The recovery of “Christian myth”

2. The Picture and the Drama: From Before to Beyond Time

3. Living in the Upside-Down Kingdom of God: the Principle of Reversal

4. Philosophical big picture: the Presence of the Future

E. Components of a guiding worldview: (Arthur Holmes)

1. It has a holistic goal (i.e., where we came from, and are going).