This Week: May 16-21

Weekly Prayer kicks off this week on Wednesday, May 18th, at 8:00 AM (Lord, in your mercy) in the Charter Room at the Memorial Union.

Game Night:

This Thursday, May 19th, at 7:00 p.m., come to Josh Krieger & Kerilyn Harkaway-Krieger's house (3442 N. Stoneycrest Road) for a game night. Bring your snack of choice, and maybe your favorite game, too! Call Kerilyn (734/276-8000) if you get lost!

Book Club:

Cindy Geiger and Kerilyn Harkaway-Krieger are starting a book club! All GFM-ers who are around for the summer are invited to join us in reading Gilead, by Marilyn Robinson, together. Gilead received much critical acclaim a few years ago when it came out, and here’s the briefest overview of the book’s premise: “The narrator, John Ames, is 76, a preacher who has lived almost all of his life in Gilead, Iowa. He is writing a letter to his almost seven-year-old son, the blessing of his second marriage. It is a summing-up, an apologia, a consideration of his life. Robinson takes the story away from being simply the reminiscences of one man and moves it into the realm of a meditation on fathers and children, particularly sons, on faith, and on the imperfectability of man.” Cindy has one extra copy of the book, and both the Monroe County Public Library and the library at ECC have copies. Here’s a link to the book on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Gilead-Novel-Marilynne-Robinson/dp/B004MKLRVK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305312771&sr=1-1. We’ll meet some time mid-June to discuss; time and place TBA.

Next week:

Bible Study:

Our topical Bible study with rotating leadership will begin on Thursday, May 26th, at 7 p.m. Want to lead it? Email Sadie, preferably before next Monday, so we can tell people where they're going and who they're going to be learning from. If you'd like to wait a few weeks, June 9th & June 23rd are also wide-open. Don't want to lead it? How about hosting? Nothing like having a group of grad students & faculty descend on your house with snacks and Bibles! Don't want to lead or host? We don't blame you. Hey, it's summer. Kick back, relax, and just show up where we tell you to next Thursday. :)

Thinking about Faith

From Tim O'Connor: It is striking that the atonement -- Christ's life, death, and resurrection effected "for us men and our salvation" -- may be the central doctrine of Christianity, yet no particular 'theory' or detailed account of exactly what the atonement is or consisted in, what problem it is a solution to, and how it is manifested in the life of an individual has ever been given detailed creedal formulation embraced by all orthodox Christians. Compare this to the way the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation were -- at times fiercely -- debated and ultimately pronounced upon at church councils in the 4th and 5th centuries.

Tentative schedule:

• May 24: 'Penal Substitution' Theory(classic Reformed view). Readings here and here.
  

• June 7: Thomas Aquinas's Satisfaction & Meriting Grace Theory (Catholic view). Two readings: This one and this one.
  

• June 14: Interchange (Mystical Union) Theory (In the neighborhood of an important element of Eastern Orthodoxy). Read this and this.
  

• July 5: Beauty Revisited: Beauty and Worship/Liturgy (readings to follow)

• July 12: Atonement Revisited: How Wide is the Application of God's Mercy? (readings to follow)