Ben Myers
@_BenMyers_
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Professor of Theology and Literature, Alphacrucis University College
Brisbane, Queensland
Joined July 2009
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Pinned Tweet
I've put all the Trinity tweets together here ⚡️ “Doctrine of the trinity: explained in tweets”
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My 94-year-old grandmother has kept a list of every book she ever read since she was 14 years old. Amazing archive of one person’s mind over nearly a century
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Thread. Last year my grandmother went viral on Twitter when I shared the reading list that she had kept for 80 years. Her funeral was on Monday. When she died, she left me a bundle of old diaries
My 94-year-old grandmother has kept a list of every book she ever read since she was 14 years old. Amazing archive of one person’s mind over nearly a century
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The total number of books listed is 1658 (nearly one per fortnight over 80 years). Not bad for a person who never had the opportunity to finish school. In a different world she would have studied philosophy at university
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Here’s a poem by Goethe that was read out at her funeral on Monday:
Over all the hilltops
Is peace.
In all the treetops
You feel hardly a breath of air.
The little birds are silent in the wood.
Just wait—soon
You will rest too.
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While the world was at war around her, my 16-year-old refugee grandmother was collecting love poems and copying them in her diary (this cover page says “love poems: collected by Nada Novakovic from Sombor: A human life without love is like a flower without petals”)
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The oldest one is dated May 1945. It’s a collection of poems and quotes that she copied from her reading during this period
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Some of these books have quite a story behind them too. Here is an excerpt from my grandmother’s memoir, about an incident in 1945 when she was given lodging in a German farmhouse (she was a refugee from Yugoslavia at the time)
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Thanks for all the interest in my grandmother’s reading! Here are a few more pages from this early period when she was a refugee in Germany, followed by her migration to Australia
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She copied out poems and went back later to mark off the ones that she had memorised. In an example pictured here of a poem by Friedrich Halm, my grandmother came some back years later and used the poem to practise her English
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She was particularly devoted to Goethe, and was memorising passages from Goethe for 80 years. In my last conversation with her, a week before she died, she quoted—at 95 years of age!—a Goethe poem that she had just been memorising
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Since she was reading German books at the time, material with a Nazi tone made its way into her collection. She must have come back later and struck out these passages. On this page she has crossed out lines about German greatness and love-of-fatherland
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And she was forever writing down bits of Goethe to memorise. Even the package that contained these diaries, which was found in her room after she died, has one last Goethe poem scribbled on it
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APA 7th edition - this is a wonderful change and I hope it will spread widely to Chicago and other referencing styles. Including place of publication seems an absurd hangover from pre-internet times
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Although she kept similar diaries for many years, she kept returning to this early one and would sometimes record the date (50 years later!) on which she had finally gotten around to memorising one of the poems
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I’ve seen a number of requests for my grandmother’s favourite book. Here’s one example: she has had a stormy love affair with Goethe since first reading him in 1947 (
#61
on the list). Recently she told me about a reconciliation with Goethe after a dispute and prolonged breakup
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If I ever wrote a systematic theology I would make the last page end with: “Or something like that.”
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@GaryManders
Exactly 1658 (technically 1659 since I know she read my book on the Apostles Creed - but she hated it and obviously couldn't bring herself to add it to the list! 😄)
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That time when Kierkegaard advertised his own lecture series by saying: if you attend these lectures, your life will be worse afterwards than it was before
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@singularity001
1658 (one book per fortnight for 80 years!). She didn't have a top 10, but Goethe was clearly her
#1
author
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By popular demand, here are a few more pages that show my grandmother’s typical interests and her enormous range. This is from the years 1964-68
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I overheard a child telling someone how to pray:
“It’s easy. You just say whatever you’re worried about, and then you say Amen.”
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I told the librarian that I sometimes check out books that I already own (really good books that I love), just to create borrowing records to protect those books from culling. I said I feel guilty for cheating the system. He replied that many librarians do exactly the same thing
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Some people freaked out about the
#RoyalWedding
sermon only because they have no idea what ordinary preaching looks like. That’s what was so beautiful about what
@PB_Curry
did: he treated it like any other sermon, and the audience like any other congregation
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Mary did nothing (except bear God in her body)
Mary willed nothing (except whatever God wills)
Mary gave nothing (except her consent, her body, and finally her son)
Mary is nothing (except the mother of God, the first disciple, and a model for all believers)
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@dwcongdon
Thanks David. I've thought about writing a book about her one day. She's also written a memoir that gives the broad details of her early years - and i'm just so struck by the contrast between her inner life (captured in these diaries) and what was going on all around her
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“O Holy Night” is adapted from the French original “Minuit, chretiens”. The English version amplifies the theme of humility but suppresses the (very French) themes of power, boldness, and solidarity: “Peuple debout! Chante ta délivrance!—People arise, sing your liberation!”
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To all the Billy Graham haters: have you ever tried living for 99 years in a row? It’s quite hard to do without once or twice saying something stupid that you later regret
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@shroomiverse
I assume the parts in biro must have been added some time later. You can see that she kept coming back to the diary over time and adding, amending, etc. She doesn’t seem ever to have ever learned Sütterlin. She learned German in Yugoslavia but only had minimal formal schooling
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“Lot was living in Sodom. He escapes the conflagration for this reason alone: because he opened his house to strangers. Angels entered the hospitable house; fire entered the houses closed to strangers.” —Origen on the sin of Sodom (a refusal of hospitality)
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The Union Seminary parody account is gold.
Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.
What do you confess to the plants in your life?
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Confession: occasionally when creating bibliographies for course syllabus materials I have been too lazy or busy to look up the place of publication and have just written "New York" which has a 50% chance of being correct in any given reference
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@k_salberta
Yeah I gave it a quick read too, and it's just as bad as you'd imagine. Unbelievable times.
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Apparently some pastors out there are teaching people that the correct way to pray is always “to the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit.” Two quick responses:
1. Please read St Basil, “On the Holy Spirit”
2. Arianism is one of the worst sins so please stop doing it
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"The kindest people are often people who have experienced great sorrow in their lives. Hence the infinite kindness of God." -Kim Fabricius
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To me, the most amazing moment in Calvin's Institutes is when he says that the content of general revelation is (though we fail to perceive it) exactly the same as the content of special revelation
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Places that will soon be forgotten forever, and which may not even have been real places to begin with:
Grand Rapids
New Haven
Cambridge, MA
Harmondsworth [almost certainly not a real place]
Farnham
Aldershot
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By the time you're 35 you should be wondering if the PhD and academic career were all a big mistake and if there's still time to pursue your true calling as a professional cyclist or an unemployed yachtsman or a used book salesman in Barcelona
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Has anyone done a study of plagiarism by preachers? I recently came across a preacher who had reproduced absolutely verbatim (from YouTube) a series of 9 sermons that I gave on the creed years ago. About 5 hours of content - it must have taken him ages!
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How beautiful are the feet of the mailman who brings this to my door! Origen’s 29 homilies on the Psalms, recently discovered in Munich
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I once knew a pastor who used to wash his car every Sunday before driving to church because “we should bring our best to God”. Years later I heard how he’d been in a long-term extramarital affair with another pastor. That taught me a lot about over-scrupulous acts of piety
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As a writing exercise, I sometimes get students to place their sentences on separate lines and study the length and structure of their sentences. Then I do the same thing with a random page from CS Lewis
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10 things you like that Augustine doesn’t:
1 Being true to yourself
2 Those special feelings when you listen to music
3 Greek
4 Love stories
5 Getting ordained
6 Pacifism
7 Changing your life through better habits
8 Nostalgia for childhood
9 Transforming society
10 Mystery
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From the submission guidelines to a leading journal: "The prose of your manuscript, is expected to be of high quality."
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One of the greatest works of patristic theology: now available with one of the greatest book covers.
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To me, the most astounding thing about the greatest teachers of humankind is how little they read. Everything Aristotle ever read in his lifetime fills a couple of volumes on my shelf. Jesus read the scrolls of the Hebrew bible. The Buddha is said to have been unable to read.
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Liberalism: the most ambiguous word in English. It refers to
a. Politics based on individual rights
b. Free market economics
c. Politically left-wing (US)
d. Politically right-wing (Australia)
e. Tolerant of diverse lifestyles
f. Sceptical of Christian doctrine
g. Generosity
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Personal news: Next month I’ll be taking up a new role as Director of the Graduate Research School at Alphacrucis College - overseeing their research degrees (PhD, MPhil, DMin) and working closely with research students and supervisors. Looking forward to it!
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How to combat trinitarian heresy,
#4
: Have you come up with a really helpful analogy? Well done! Now please don't tell anyone about it, ever
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Thanks for all the love for my grandmother Nada. 🥹I’ll post a few more excerpts for those who are interested. The lines by Goethe scribbled on this packet say:
Years, moons, days, hours
Sow seeds, heal wounds.
If not carelessly allowed to slip away,
They sow, and need not heal.
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*After church, shaking the minister’s hand on the way out the door*
My brain:
Don't say it
Don't say it
Don't say it
Don't say it
Don't say it
Don't say it
Don't say it
Don't say it
Don’t say it
Don’t say it
Me: “Interesting sermon. Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
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Pope abolishes hell.
Abolishes.
Abolishes hell.
The pope. Abolishes. Hell.
-Excerpt from groundbreaking new book by Rob Bell
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“Always assume that there is one silent student in your class who is by far superior to you in head and in heart.” -Leo Strauss’s advice on how to teach
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Best lyric from the new Kanye album:
John 8:33
We the descendants of Abraham
Ye shall be made free
Where “Ye” functions both as a biblical quotation and as Kanye’s name.
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As a teacher of theology I always come to class armed with a canon
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Nouveau atheists: I admire Jesus but not the Bible
Nietzsche: I admire the Bible but not Jesus
Modern apologist: Christianity is true because the Bible is so great
Ancient apologist: Christianity is true in spite of the limitations of the Bible
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Luther: the Boardgame. Spotted this in a Hamburg department store. Players move through the cities of the Protestant reformation using bread, cheese, and beer
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Is God compassionate? NO, says classical theism. Is God holy, loving, just, wise, good, etc? NO WAY GUYS, says classical theism. God just sits around all day knowing the future which is quite infuriating and someone ought to do something about it
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’Why do pastors fail? Why aren’t there more miracles? Why are there contradictions in the Bible?’ Oh Marty Sampson... if those were my hardest questions about the Christian faith, I would have become a monk by now or a wonderworking saint or Mother Teresa
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The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of the Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. -GK Chesterton, 1924
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Incorrect quotation, incorrect use of dashes, incorrect interpretation of John’s Gospel, but apart from that it’s spot on
4. "No one comes to God except through me," is simply Jesus' prophetic announcement that—to know and enter into relationship with God—emulate Jesus: Embrace folk on the margins, stand against imperial abuses, love one's neighbor. These aren't exclusively Christian values.
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Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
—Wendell Berry
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Greeks: value the body but elevate the soul
Gnostics: degrade the body to elevate the soul
Christians: elevate the body through the soul
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“All religions are equal! Each has its own vision of the good and its own valid path to salvation!”
In other news, archeologists uncover the remains of a mass child sacrifice. The 227 children were sacrificed facing the sea, probably to change the weather
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The protestant reformation saved Christianity
What is the theological opinion you have that results in this?
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@ruohomaa
@bankerbrady
Mostly English books after moving to Australia, but she has always continued to read a small number of German books (as well as occasional books in Serbian)
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Elisabeth of Schönau, a 12th-c Cistercian mystic, had a vision where she asked the Virgin Mary about the state of Origen’s soul. The Virgin replied that Origen’s heresies weren’t due to evil but to an over-zealous immersion in the profundities of scripture. So his soul was OK
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This is why the Christian life isn’t about using Christ as a way to get to God. It’s about dwelling “in Christ” and therefore in God. We pray not as if we were reaching out across a distance to God but as those who are located on the inside of the divine life (Rom 8; Jn 17).
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Against the claim that Satan invented Greek philosophy, Clement points out that when Jesus was tempted he defeated the devil by a verbal ambiguity; this shows that Satan has no talent for philosophy, and could never have invented it
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Twice in the past 24 hours I’ve been in conversations where someone recounted a sermon that they’d heard, recalling it point by point and quoting it verbatim. One was a sermon preached 6 years ago; the other was 40 years ago. Keep up the good work, preachers.
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As my family prepares for lockdown, we agreed on some new family rules. Rule
#1
was that Sundays will be a Virus Sabbath where we don’t talk about the coronavirus.
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I visited a church once & we were told it was “rock Sunday”. The whole liturgy was about rocks. They had a pile of stones & you had to take one and hold it in your hand, “really feel the mystery of its being.” I began to convulse with repressed giggles and had to flee the service
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Orthodox theology: mysticism + philology
Catholic theology: mysticism + Kant
Anglican theology: Pelagianism + eucharist
Pentecostal theology: pragmatism + superpowers
Liberation theology: Marxism + a smile
Lutheran theology: Luther+
Reformed theology: the only theology
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@thmstern
Yes, that book had a circulation of hundreds of thousands so it’s understandable that she would have come across a copy. It’s not a thread that she followed with any of her other reading, as far as I can see
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I was sent a 2008 journal article by someone who “found it helpful and thought you might find it interesting.” I looked at the title. I looked at the name. It was written by me 😂
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One last passage - very fitting for my grandmother Nada:
Wide world and broad life,
Long years of honest striving…
Faithfully preserving the old things
And kindly welcoming the new:
Cheerful spirit and pure intentions.
Well then! One surely comes a long way.
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Idea for a book:
A book on leadership where all the principles for success are based on Milton’s Satan
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What is the soul's highest capability?
Plato: love
Jesus: love
Paul: love
Origen: love
Augustine: love
Aquinas: love
Marx: class conflict
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Saw this on the side of a truck. I think it’s a wonderful idea for companies to confess their sins like this. They should all do it. Bank sign: “we steal.” Used car yard: “we bear false witness.” Studios making animated films for children: “we dishonour father and mother”
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@fairy_mr
I’m sorry for your loss. 🙏🏼 My grandmother has also written a memoir of her life (dictated to one of her sons), and it’s a precious thing to have
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On her mother’s birthday in 1951 she wrote out this poem. She had come to Australia and left her mother behind in Germany. Here are some lines from this page:
Far from home, a refugee here
Lost in the world around,
Finding neither my dear homeland
Nor my little child anymore
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Brief reply to the wish fulfillment theory of religion: name one character in the Bible whose life becomes easier, or who feels that life has become easier, on account of their faith in God
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Here's all the body & soul tweets. Now go and be virtuous, people. ⚡️
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Augustine's Confessions strings together the words of the Bible and they sound like the words of an eloquent and impassioned orator. The Pilgrim's Progress strings together the words of the Bible and they sound like the common speech of the working class. I find this very amazing
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I just noticed that a passage in TS Eliot’s Four Quartets is based on a specific passage in Barth’s commentary on Romans. I thought I was the first person ever to notice this. Then I checked the books: everybody knows it, and always has
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How to combat trinitarian heresy,
#5
: The doctrine is not a mystery. It is simple & precise. The reality it points to is incomprehensible
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Imagine being the first biblical scholar to use the terms "already" and "not yet". What a boss.
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Teaching online is so easy, I just take my old lecture notes and turn them into videos, animations, and interactive online activities
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Leaving the theology to one side, it’s incredibly unseemly to lay down any correct method or formula for prayer. The mark of Christian prayer is meant to be boldness, not ceremonial correctness. We’re meant to pray in the same way Jesus did: with audacious frankness (parrhesia)
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This Richard Dawkins parody account is so good
I really want to not indoctrinate. Perhaps I can help parents arm them against indoctrination by schools, g’parents & religious books. & against taunting by religious schoolmates. Help them think on evidence, e.g. for evolution. “What do you think?” is my continual refrain.
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Pentecostal: God of the gaps spirituality
Liberal Protestant: beautiful soul spirituality
Catholic: secular spirituality
Orthodox: holy man spirituality
Anglican: humble pie spirituality
Reformed: beer
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I read a lot myself and am always an advocate of primary sources! I just don’t like it when the vague huge mass of Everything Ever Written is invoked to discourage anyone from being deliberately selective, or from reading one thing well in a spirit of gratitude and contentment
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At breakfast I quoted the opening lines of Moby Dick and, without looking up, one of the kids pointed out that I skipped a word. Parenting goals.
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I’ve been in many different book clubs over the years but my favourite one is Christianity, one of the world’s oldest book clubs
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This works for absolutely anything. All you have to do is (a) pose a moral question; (b) replace the human element with the technological element; and then (c) presto, the moral problem has vanished! (But what else has vanished? Hint: see CS Lewis, “the abolition of man.”)
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