As I have been quite busy at work recently, and also have been away for the weekend, I am catching up on my blog reading. I found this little squabble at Parableman’s blog about whether Classical Theism or Open Theism are more likely to have been influenced by Greek thought.

The issue concerns the charge that Open Theists have made regarding Classical Theism that the latter view is more likely to have been derived from Greek philosophy than from biblical revelation. Open Theists are do not have a problem with accepting a view of God who does not know everything in the future because He has allowed His creatures free-will. Thus Open Theism is also sometimes known as Free-Will Theism. The idea is that because His creatures have complete freedom to make choices, it is impossible for God to have the foreknowledge of what choices His creatures are going to make. This view has interesting repercussions and is important to the free-will defense in the perennial problem of evil debate.

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After returning from my memorable weekend away with my wife, we took our kids and one of our kids’ friend who was visiting with us out to have a nice family dinner at the Elephant Bar, a reasonably priced eating joint with a fusionesque cuisine, probably a quaint Californian phenomenon.

We were celebrating at several levels - a family reunion of sorts - since mom and dad have just returned home from a weekend away, the fact that my wife and I are in a sort of relationship bliss and mostly because Daughter #1 will be flying away to school to New York in a couple of weeks. As I mentioned before, my daughter is transferring to the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at NYU after completing two years at the local community college.

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It’s gonna be Christian Carnival time at …in the Outer…! This is another reason for excitment for me! This is going to be the first time I am going to host the Christian Carnival and I can’t wait!

Christian Carnival is a weekly celebration of the highlights of posts submitted from different blogs around the blogosphere. If you have a blog and you have written within the past week (roughly from Wednesday August 3rd onwards) that has a Christian theme then you may submit your post to be included in the Carnival. There are some general guidelines for submission to the Carnival, and I don’t set the rules. The guidelines are found here, and if you wish to submit, you need to use this email address.

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I am so excited and at the same time I am scared, yet hopeful! I have just got back from a Couples’ Weekend relationship workshop with my wife. We had an exhilarating time, sharing, learning, discovering, enjoying and celebrating our coupledom with other couples. It is a workshop that I highly recommend to everyone, although some elements of the sessions might trouble those of my friends who object to the use of spiritual motifs that are apart from traditional Judeo-Christian contexts. It was nonetheless a powerful weekend, and we were able to share a beautiful time together, learning tools of communication, commitment and most of all, learning how to be commited to loving one another every single moment of the day.

One of the exercises we went through that was especially powerful for us was a visualization experience, in which the facilitator brought us through an experience of walking through the sudden news that our partner is going to die within the next two weeks. Through that short (about 30 minutes) of visualization, we were brought face to face with so many quesitons about what we value most in our relationship and how we ought to live our lives.

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