Today (Friday) for the first time the number of visitors to my blog has reached 30 (33 so far) and the number of hits is more than 100 (104). I've also discovered that 219 people have viewed my profile since January and the total number of page views in that time is nearly 1700.

Here's to the future!

If you google 'rosclarke' you get this blog as the first link. If you google 'ros clarke' you get to Liam Beadle's blog at number 42 (which would then offer you a link here) but it doesn't appear directly in the first 100 links. 'ihaveaquestion' gets you here at number 95 but 'i have a question' doesn't.

What to do? I'm sure there are many millions of people out there wanting to read this stuff but not finding it. I hope this post has helped! Any other ideas?

In Doctrine of God earlier today, we were discussing the idea of perichoresis (the mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity) as a dance. This idea is much beloved of proponents of social and/or egalitarian trinities since it allows them to explore the idea of different persons as the leaders of the dance at different times.

However, as Sally Reeve pointed out, in ballroom dancing it is essential that the same person always leads. And in modern disco dancing there are no leaders at all.

Hurrah for Dawn who suggested the conga as a dance in which the leader changes from time to time. Next time someone plays the perichoretic trump card, ask them if they really want to employ the image of the eternal divine trinity enjoying an everlasting conga around the half-empty glasses and dead party poppers of eternity.

And while we're on perichoresis - no Marc, you can't say that the eternal Father died on the cross by virtue of his indwelling the eternal Son. Since the eternal Son died according to his human nature, it is clear that only the person who took on that human nature died. If we claim that the human nature is in some sense the Father's then it seems pretty clear that you've entirely collapsed the distinction between persons.

I don't know if this is true across the board, but those blogs I check out on a fairly regular basis have all experienced a sudden upturn in production in the last few days. Is this to do with the weather? Or the fact that exams/essays are due in soon so work avoidance has become a priority?

With the kind of intellectual rigour only gained by years of being beaten up in the playground for having a girl's name, it seems that Hilary addressed the postmodern question only a matter of 1700 or so years ago. Here are some of his choicest one liners...

On heresies which appear to have biblical support: 'the crime comes from the construction not the word.'

On the danger of proof-texting: 'stringing together of isolated phrases' which fragments the unity of God's witness.

On the consequences of this kind of reading: 'we set up our desires as doctrines' rather than letting 'our doctrine dictate our desires.'

In this kind of way, people declare 'war on the Word of God'

So how do we get our biblical interpretation right?
'We must make our choice between rejecting his witness, as the heathen do, or else believing him His as He is, and this in the only possible way, by thinking of Him in the aspect in which He presents Himself to us.'

These are all from De Trinitate via Mike Ovey's Doctrine of God handouts.