Confessions of Book Stealing

I’ve always been a big reader.  When I was a kid, my favorite genre of books to read was fantasy.  But at about age 9, one particular type of book was especially irresistible to me: the choose-your-own-adventure. These were the stories where after reading about the hero’s latest predicament, you had a choice between two different page numbers to turn to, based on how you wanted the story to unfold.  Turn to page 36 if you want to escape down into the troll’s cave, or to page 83 if you want to feign death.  The protagonist’s fate was in your hands.

As a result of this compulsion for life-threatening decision-making, these books were the entire gamut of my 5th-grade reading diet.  All the books came from my elementary school’s public library, but loaning the books wasn’t enough, of course.  I had to own them.  They had to be mine.

So, I stole them.  Once a week or so, our class would venture to the library, to check out books.  I would scour the shelves for the familiar-looking covers, then scurry to a table to begin the adventure.  When it was time to leave the library, I would simply hold the book along with my other schoolbooks, as if I had checked it out like all the other students.  “Hide in plain sight,” as they say!

This confession was prompted by an excellent post by Ben Myers, cataloging the history of book stealing, from basically the dawn of time.  There are some excellent quotes peppered throughout, and it is an enjoyable read!  Be sure and drop by for a look [LINK].

(The image here, for anyone that doesn’t know, is a parady image of the classic covers of the books.  The title is poking fun at the fact that your decisions in the books frequently resulted in unexpected death!)

“Don’t Be Evil”: Google Censors Incriminating Planned Parenthood Videos

Remember when Google used to be that friendly, lovable startup?

The cuddly logo is reminiscent of childhood crayons, punctuated with an excited exclamation point (now removed).

I still remember the first time I used Google, nearly 10 years ago.  Whenever Google would launch a new product/service, I would be an immediate early adopter and fervent zealot to convert the masses.  They were the perfect remedy to the evil Microsoft monolithic empire that had dominated everything for years.

And the very best part?  Google’s official motto: “Don’t be evil.”

However, this lovable nature of Google has caused it to grow aggressively.  Very aggressively.  And the more influence, control, and power that Google garners, the more the lines of “evil” have become blurred.

For example, in order for Google to compete in China, it has bowed to the communist government to censor search results, and not allow terms such as “democracy” to display proper organic results.  The Chinese people will see only what the Chinese government wants them to see.  And Google, with all of of its clout, rather than fighting for Chinese freedom, has instead pledged its allegiance to the almighty dollar.

The other day, I read this headline:  “YouTube Removes New Undercover Student Video of Planned Parenthood without Explanation”

YouTube, of course, is owned by Google.  Read these excerpts from the article:

Without offering any specific explanation, the video-sharing site YouTube [owned by Google] has removed a new video by the student group “Live Action” that shows dishonest counseling practices at Planned Parenthood. The video first plays undercover footage of a Planned Parenthood counselor from Tucson, AZ telling a patient that images of aborted fetuses “are not real” and then shows photographs of a completed abortion and documentation of their authenticity.

Lila Rose, 20-year-old president of Live Action, calls on YouTube to re-instate the video in accordance with its own guidelines: “Since the video we posted does not violate any terms of use, we expect YouTube to re-instate it immediately.” [...] YouTube has removed videos posted by Live Action without explanation before, including videos showing Planned Parenthood employees caught on tape sympathizing with donors with racist agendas to encourage the abortion of black babies. [...]

The most recent video [...] documents abusive practices in Planned Parenthood clinics across the nation. Footage released to date has caught on hidden camera six Planned Parenthood clinics in three states ignoring their mandatory reporting responsibilities for statutory rape and protecting adult-child sexual relationships. Recently the Tennessee State Legislature used undercover footage from Live Action to help divert nearly $1 million in taxpayer subsidies from Planned Parenthood clinics, and in California, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to end a nearly $300,000 contract with the abortion provider.

And Google is censoring these videos?  “Don’t be evil”?

I used to like Google.  But the China stuff, the corporate (financial) opposition to the California Proposition 8, the huge privacy concerns, and now this, have all gradually shifted my perspective on this once-lovable company.

Now, Google is coming under scrutiny for crossing the line into becoming an anti-competitive monopoly—exactly like Microsoft of yesteryear.  And Google’s response, as of just days ago?  NYT: “Google Makes a Case That It Isn’t So Big.”

Not so big?  Give me a break.

So much for not being evil.  It’s probably time for Google to amend it’s motto.

In the meantime, maybe I’ll switch to Microsoft’s Bing.  (How’s that for ironic.)

Obama’s Stimulus Predictions vs. Reality, Illustrated with Pennies

As June is now coming to a close, I found a very interesting video reflecting on Obama’s predictions for June, made 5 months ago.

In February, we were all in a fuss over whether to pass the great economic stimulus bill.  At that time, Obama said that it would save over 3 million jobs by the time June rolled around.

Now that June has come and gone, how has Obama’s plan panned out?

Here’s the minute-and-a-half long video:

Ouch!

I like Obama, he’s certainly a likeable fellow.  But I think that is exactly the problem.  Everybody “likes” him so much that we are glossy-eyed on the tough issues.  The mainstream media loves Obama so much they simply gloss over this stuff, and don’t even report it.

Matter of fact, what’s the purpose of even having a “freedom of the press,” not controlled by government, if the press is simply pandering to the government, anyway?  We may as well just have a state-run press, like China or North Korea.  In fact, we should just have the president write the headlines himself =).

I looked up the video-creator’s website, and he has more commentary on it there as well [LINK].

Obama’s Court pick Sotomayor Overturned by Supreme Court

Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for the next seat in the Supreme Court—a Puerto Rican racial activist for affirmative action (read: reverse racism).

When he made the announcement, I pointed out that Sotomayor is involved in a controversial case involving race, which was being re-evaluated by the Supreme Court itself.  Here was the summary:

As part of a panel, [Sotomayor] voted to uphold New Haven’s decision to throw out a set of fire department promotion tests, because no minority candidates made the top of the list. White firefighters who scored high but were denied promotion are appealing that ruling.

Well, the headlines just hit the press:

New York Times: “Justices Rule for White Firefighters in Bias Case”

The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

Ouch!

How ironic that right when Sotomayor is maneuvering to get on the Supreme Court, the very court itself ruled against her decision-making on these racial issues.

Although, I don’t know what is more disturbing: the fact that Sotomayor is actually being considered for the high court, or the fact that her decision was only overturned in a 5-4 ruling!!  From the Associated Press:

“Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions,” Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters “understandably attract this court’s sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them.”

Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg’s dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday.

Maybe Sotomayor is exactly the type of material that half of the court is filled with, after all.

(Is it noteworthy that the headline didn’t instead read, “Sotomayor Overturned by Supreme Court”?)

Tim Keller, and…Jean-Luc Picard?! Star Trek!

Okay.  So, I’ve thought about this in the past, but I just saw a photo and it brought it to my attention once again.

Doesn’t Tim Keller look EXACTLY like Patrick Stewart—i.e., Jean-Luc Picard?!?!

As you can see from this screenshot I took—(from episode 23 in season 4 of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” when the Klingons took over the U.S.S. Enterprise to set a trap for the Borg)—Tim Keller looks a spitting image of the good captain himself.

I predict that with the new release of J.J. Abrams’s latest Star Trek film, the attendance at Keller’s church will surely have a sharp influx of Trekkies.  (Although, it’s unlikely to draw in the Trekkers, which is a slightly different demographic.)

The “New Perspective on Paul” in a Nutshell

What, exactly, is the “New Perspective on Paul” (NPP)?

I received a notification via Twitter¹ that “Christianity Today” is hosting an article by Trevin Wax, titled “The Justification Debate: A Primer.”

Essentially, as Wax explains,

Some friends have encouraged me to explain “in a nutshell”² and in easy-to-understand laymen’s terms what the big debate between John Piper and N.T. Wright is all about. [...] “The Justification Debate: A Primer” (Christianity Today, June 2009) is my humble attempt at summarizing the two views as succintly and simply as possible.

Please note that both John Piper and N.T. Wright looked over my work and made some slight revisions regarding their respective summaries.

Here is my mandatory visual:

Look at ‘em.  “Grrrr…”

The article is split into a handful of topical sections, with each view briefly summarized in about 1-3 sentences.  The topics include:

—The Problem (Creation+Fall)
—The Law
—God’s Righteousness
—First-Century Judaism
—The Gospel
—How This Happens
—Future Justification

It looks like a lot, but with less than a paragraph for each of the two views per section, it makes for very snappy reading.

So, there we have it!  A nice simple summary, even with Wright and Piper putting the stamp of approval on it themselves.  Go check it out! [LINK]

(I see now that Justin Taylor at BetweenTwoWorlds has mentioned this. Keep an eye on the comment thread of his post, he always draws an interesting crowd to the conversation…)

______

¹Have you started using Twitter yet?  Srsly, itz totally awsm. #ftw

²If you’re like me and enjoy things in nutshells, you will also like my recent post on Church History, and also pistachios.

Art: “The Agony,” by Theyre Lee-Elliott

Crucified tree form – the agony

Theyre Lee-Elliott (1903-1988)

Tempera and gouache, 1959

Methodist Collection of Modern Art, No.21

Church History in a Nutshell (Videos)

I found this website that I think is just awesome.

I’ve been trying to brush up on my church history, but I’ve specifically been looking for two criteria.  First, I wanted to find some videos, rather than reading material.  Second, I wanted to find something that focused on the “forest,” rather than the “trees.”  Just a broad overview of the big-picture, so then I can go in and fill in the details myself later, with more detailed sources.

Well, one day when I wasn’t even looking for it, it fell into my lap!  The site is called “HeLives.com,” and has a handful of similar-style resources.

There are 8 videos, each spanning only about 5 minutes each.  They include:

—Why study Church History?
—Introduction
—Early Church (Patristic)
—Medieval
—Early Modern
—Late Modern 1
—Late Modern 2
—Postmodern

But the best part about the videos is the format.  On the site when you play the video, there are three window screens playing simultaneously.  The first is simply a video of the teacher speaking (Dr. John Hannah). The second is a scrolling transcript of his words, so you can follow along reading if you want.  But the most interesting window pane is the third, which is a visual “slide-show”-type accompaniment to his teaching.  It’s a really great format, and hopefully we can see more things like this in the future!

The videos are so short that you can watch them one at a time, in little 5-minute blocks throughout the day.

And the cherry on top: it’s free!

Check it out! [LINK]

Patristic Writer Origen: “Literal Genesis is Foolish”

I was perusing the inter-webs, and I stumbled across an interesting piece.

The Patristic writer Origen (c.185-254 CE) offers this commentary on Genesis 1-3:

What intelligent person can imagine that there was a first “day,” then a second and a third “day”—evening and morning—without the sun, the moon, and the stars? [Sun, moon, and stars are created on the fourth "day."] And that the first “day”—if it makes sense to call it such—existed even without a sky? [The sky is created on the second "day."]

Who is foolish enough to believe that, like a human gardener, God planted a garden in Eden in the East and placed in it a tree of life, visible and physical, so that by biting into its fruit one would obtain life? And that by eating from another tree, one would come to know good and evil? And when it is said that God walked in the garden in the evening and that Adam hid himself behind a tree, I cannot imagine that anyone will doubt that these details point symbolically to spiritual meanings, by using an historical narrative which did not literally happen. (p.71)

Cited from Origen’s “De Principiis“ 4.1.6, translated by Marcus Borg, “Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally“ (2001).

It seems that there is a sensibility here that is radically different than the contemporary readings and debates over Genesis(!).

Somewhat ironically, perhaps the ancients would have accepted evolution more than we moderns…

Comic Relief in the Old Testament: “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t”

Here is one of my favorite passages of the Bible, where there is a couple moments of comic relief in an otherwise horrific situation.

We pick up the story in 2 Kings 6:

Afterward, Ben-hadad king of Syria mustered his entire army and went up and besieged Samaria. And there was a great famine in Samaria, as they besieged it, until a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver.  Now as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king!”  And he said, “If Yahweh will not help you, how shall I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the winepress?”  And the king asked her, “What is your trouble?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’  So we boiled my son and ate him. And on the next day I said to her, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him.’ But she has hidden her son.”  When the king heard the words of the woman, he tore his clothes—now he was passing by on the wall—and the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth beneath on his body—and he said, “May God do so to me and more also, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today.”

Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. Now the king had dispatched a man from his presence, but before the messenger arrived Elisha said to the elders, “Do you see how this murderer has sent to take off my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold the door fast against him. Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?” And while he was still speaking with them, the messenger came down to him and said, “This trouble is from Yahweh! Why should I wait for Yahweh any longer?”

But Elisha said, “Hear the word of Yahweh: thus says Yahweh, Tomorrow about this time a seah of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria.” Then the captain on whose hand the king leaned said to the man of God, “If Yahweh himself should make windows in heaven, could this thing be?” But he said, “You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it.”

Now the story shifts scenes to outside of the city being besieged.  This part struck me as a very funny bit of dialogue:

Now, there were four men who were lepers at the entrance to the gate. And they said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die? If we say, ‘Let’s enter the city,’ the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. So now come, let us go over to the camp of the Syrians. If they spare our lives, we shall live. If they kill us, we shall but die.”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t! =D

The story concludes with another fun scene of comic relief:

So they arose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians. But when they came to the edge of the camp of the Syrians, behold, there was no one there.  For the Lord had made the army of the Syrians hear the sound of chariots and of horses, the sound of a great army, so that they said to one another, “Behold, the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to come against us.”  So they fled away in the twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses, and their donkeys, leaving the camp as it was, and fled for their lives.  And when these lepers came to the edge of the camp, they went into a tent and ate and drank, and they carried off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them. Then they came back and entered another tent and carried off things from it and went and hid them.

Does anyone else find this mental-picture hysterical, where the exiled lepers with destitute lives get to have a romp-roaring party?  Ha!

Of course, they decide to tell the king, and everyone finally gets to eat some food again.

God has a great sense of humor ;-D

The Eucharist in Cubism: Jacques Iselin

The Elements of the Holy Communion

Jacques Iselin (1933— )

Oil, 1963

Methodist Collection of Modern Christian Art, No.19

Top 5 Biggest Influences on How I Read the Bible

I have been tagged by Art Boulet, to answer a question that is traveling around the biblio-blogosphere.  The prompt is to list your top 5 books or scholars that have had the greatest influence on how you read the Bible.

I have had an interesting theological journey.  I began as an Arminian Dispensationalist, and progressed into Reformed Covenantalism.  Now I am finding myself questioning how well I even fit into the ‘Reformed’ camp anymore; or at least, how well the Reformed camp would like me calling myself ‘Reformed’! In light of these (fairly drastic) changes, at the very least it has helped me temper my theological knowledge with a dose of humility, because I know that there is always much more for me to learn!

So, rather than make my list in order of significance, I will instead make my list chronological, as how each book affected my reading of scripture.

1. How To Read the Bible for All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart.

This is a basic text for entry-level Bible college students.  It is an excellent introduction to a more exegetical way to engage with the texts of the Bible, rather than your typical “devotional” reading of scripture.  This book was my first introduction to the fundamentals of proper Bible reading, and laid an invaluable foundation for me to build onto in the future.

2. Plato.

It’s strange that the writings of Plato would have a large effect on how I read the Bible, but it did in a nontraditional way.  Reading Plato had the biggest effect on how I read Paul.  When I read Plato, I get a glimpse into a culture and world of the past.  Similarly, this helped break a subconcious barrier in my mind that read Paul’s letters as “timeless,” rather than deeply encultured by Paul’s own time and day.  God’s truth in Paul’s letters is indeed timeless, but the text itself is embedded in time, space, and history.  Of course I’ve always been conscious of this, but it was a subconscious barrier that it helped.

3. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible, by John Walton.

This book, along with my Norton Anthology of World Literature, was my first proper introduction to the contextual world of the Old Testament.  This book really blew me out of the water.  It seemed like there were mind-blowing nuggets of information scattered absolutely everywhere in the book.  While Walton doesn’t necessarily go as far as he can in some of his conclusions, the data he presents is an excellent introduction and analysis of how the Hebrew Bible fits into the ancient Near Eastern world that it comes to us from.

4. Pete Enns (“Inspiration & Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament”).

The work of Pete Enns has turned my thinking about the Bible completely downside up.  Although chronologically this book comes in fourth, in terms of significance it comes in first place.  In the same way that William of Ockham overturned the then-reigning Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics (”There are no Platonic ‘forms’!”), I think Enns’s seminal work is going to influence biblical scholarship and theology permanently from now ’till Kingdom-come.

I’ve always been a strong proponent of the compatibility of science and faith, and Enns’s work was similarly my first introduction to synthesizing critical biblical scholarship with an evangelical authoritative view of the Bible as God’s word.  I genuinely believe that the work of Enns and others in this field will demand a complete reevaluation of our theology, in the same way that Dunn, Sanders, and Wright are doing in the New Testament with the New Perspective on Paul. Very, very exciting!

5. The Bible.

This entry is a little cheeky on my part, but I have a point to make.  What I want to highlight is the chronological order of where the Bible falls on my list: dead last.  I propose that in order to best understand the Bible, we should read the Bible itself last.

I think that in the same way that we would read an ancient text like Plato, we should read the Bible.  You don’t just pick up Plato and read it, and expect to necessarily understand every detail of what he’s talking about.  Sure, you will probably get the main gist of it, but the details are going to go way over your head. You should read an “Introduction to Plato,” or a study guide or something.

So it is with the Bible.  I think that the central message of redemption in the Bible can be read and understood by all.  However, when it comes to details and other peripheral issues, a lot is lost on the everyday Christian: why is Paul always going on about circumcision, etc.  A proper reading of the Bible should be preceded by first studying the Bible the way we would any ancient text: Who wrote it, where, and when?  What is the subject matter, and why was it composed?  This is why study Bibles are so important.  If you want to understand the Bible in a more detailed, thorough, and rigorous way, you have to first read about the Bible. And then only afterward, when you have a handle on the issues, read the Bible itself.

(Of course, this advice only applies to the non-specialist.  For an actual biblical scholar, the only way to ascertain such details as authorship, date of composition, etc., is to study the text itself.)

Okay, I had begun to write an additional point here (and one that is significantly more relevant), but I am getting ahead of myself for what I’m writing in my next blog post.  So I’ll write more on this subject very shortly, on my next article to be hosted at the collaborative blog, Dust and Light.

I’ll tag: Scot McKnight, Daniel Story, Tony Jones, Scott Lencke, Michael Bird, Simon Ravenscroft, and Mark Goodacre.

Taiwainese College: “Ghost on Campus”

Some of my dear friends, a married couple, have the good fortune of pursuing their degrees in Taiwan.  They run a blog, “Tiawaneers,” to catalogue their various experiences as Americans in the Orient.  (I can say “orient” because I’m “oriental.” But you can’t, because you’re not oriental, and that would not be politically correct. My nigga.)

So I saw this recent post on their blog, and I couldn’t help but share:

Ghost of the Bell Tower

A girl is said to have died here, falling from the high tower where she was ringing the school bell. Earlier this semester a few guys were hanging out here at night, and claimed to have seen her ghost. Upon hearing this and calling a school meeting, the board restricted access to the tower after dark, warning that her ghost might still be around.

Can you imagine that same scenario playing out in the States?

How hilarious is that!

Stanley Cup Playoff Heineken Commercials (Videos)

I’m from Michigan, and our all-star team—the Detroit Red Wings—is presently in the Stanley Cup playoffs.  My wife is a die-hard fan, and I’ve been enjoying the games with her.  But during the commercial breaks, I’ve also been entertained with some fun Heineken beer commercials, and here are a couple I thought I’d share :-).

(Make sure you crank up your volume for BOTH of them—all the fun is in the audio!!)

And my favorite:

“Hermeneutics in Everyday Life”

I found this the other day and thought it was hysterical, so I thought I would share!

Hermeneutics in Everyday Life

by Tim Perry

Suppose you’re traveling to work and you see a stop sign. What do you do? That depends on how you exegete the stop sign.

1. A postmodernist deconstructs the sign (knocks it over with his car), ending forever the tyranny of the north-south traffic over the east-west traffic.

2. Similarly, a Marxist sees a stop sign as an instrument of class conflict. He concludes that the bourgeoisie use the north-south road and obstruct the progress of the workers on the east-west road.

3. A serious and educated Catholic believes that he cannot understand the stop sign apart from its interpretive community and their tradition. Observing that the interpretive community doesn’t take it too seriously, he doesn’t feel obligated to take it too seriously either.

4. An average Catholic (or Orthodox or Coptic or Anglican or Methodist or Presbyterian or whatever) doesn’t bother to read the sign but he’ll stop if the car in front of him does.

5. A fundamentalist, taking the text very literally, stops at the stop sign and waits for it to tell him to go.

6. A preacher might look up “STOP” in his lexicons of English and discover that it can mean: 1) something which prevents motion, such as a plug for a drain, or a block of wood that prevents a door from closing; 2) a location where a train or bus lets off passengers. The main point of his sermon the following Sunday on this text is: when you see a stop sign, it is a place where traffic is naturally clogged, so it is a good place to let off passengers from your car.

7. An orthodox Jew does one of two things:
1) Take another route to work that doesn’t have a stop sign so that he doesn’t run the risk of disobeying the Law.
2) Stop at the stop sign, say “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who hast given us thy commandment to stop,” wait 3 seconds according to his watch, and then proceed.
Incidentally, the Talmud has the following comments on this passage: R[abbi] Meir says: He who does not stop shall not live long. R. Hillel says: Cursed is he who does not count to three before proceeding. R. Simon ben Yudah says: Why three? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. R. ben Isaac says: Because of the three patriarchs. R. Yehuda says: Why bless the Lord at a stop sign? Because it says: “Be still, and know that I am God.” R. Hezekiel says: When Jephthah returned from defeating the Ammonites, the Holy One, blessed be He, knew that a donkey would run out of the house and overtake his daughter; but Jephthah did not stop at the stop sign, and the donkey did not have time to come out. For this reason he saw his daughter first and lost her. Thus he was judged for his transgression at the stop sign. R. Gamaliel says: R. Hillel, when he was a baby, never spoke a word, though his parents tried to teach him by speaking and showing him the words on a scroll. One day his father was driving through town and did not stop at the sign. Young Hillel called out: “Stop, father!” In this way, he began reading and speaking at the same time. Thus it is written: “Out of the mouth of babes.” R. ben Jacob says: Where did the stop sign come from? Out of the sky, for it is written: “Forever, O Lord, your word is fixed in the heavens.” R. ben Nathan says: When were stop signs created? On the fourth day, for it is written: “let them serve as signs.” R. Yeshuah says: … [continues for three more pages]

8. A Pharisee does the same thing as an orthodox Jew, except that he waits 10 seconds instead of 3. He also replaces his brake lights with 1000 watt searchlights and connects his horn so that it is activated whenever he touches the brake pedal.

9. A scholar from Jesus seminar concludes that the passage “STOP” undoubtedly was never uttered by Jesus himself, but belongs entirely to stage III of the gospel tradition, when the church was first confronted by traffic in its parking lot.

10. A NT scholar notices that there is no stop sign on Mark street but there is one on Matthew and Luke streets, and concludes that the ones on Luke and Matthew streets are both copied from a sign on a completely hypothetical street called “Q”. There is an excellent 300 page discussion of speculations on the origin of these stop signs and the differences between the stop signs on Matthew and Luke street in the scholar’s commentary on the passage. There is an unfortunately omission in the commentary, however; the author apparently forgot to explain what the text means.

11. An OT scholar points out that there are a number of stylistic differences between the first and second half of the passage “STOP”. For example, “ST” contains no enclosed areas and 5 line endings, whereas “OP” contains two enclosed areas and only one line termination. He concludes that the author for the second part is different from the author for the first part and probably lived hundreds of years later. Later scholars determine that the second half is itself actually written by two separate authors because of similar stylistic differences between the “O” and the “P”.

12. Another prominent OT scholar notes in his commentary that the stop sign would fit better into the context three streets back. (Unfortunately, he neglected to explain why in his commentary.) Clearly it was moved to its present location by a later redactor. He thus exegetes the intersection as though the stop sign were not there.

13. Because of the difficulties in interpretation, another OT scholar emends the text, changing “T” to “H”. “SHOP” is much easier to understand in context than “STOP” because of the multiplicity of stores in the area. The textual corruption probably occurred because “SHOP” is so similar to “STOP” on the sign several streets back that it is a natural mistake for a scribe to make. Thus the sign should be interpreted to announce the existence of a shopping area.

14. A “prophetic” preacher notices that the square root of the sum of the numeric representations of the letters S-T-O-P (sigma-tau-omicron-pi in the Greek alphabet), multiplied by 40 (the number of testing), and divided by four (the number of the world–north, south, east, and west), equals 666. Therefore, he concludes that stop signs are the dreaded “mark of the beast,” a harbinger of divine judgment upon the world, and must be avoided at all costs.

Significance of Sotomayor’s “Court is Where Policy is Made”: Checks and Balances

I posted yesterday a brief intro to Obama’s recent nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor.

Sotomayor spoke at Duke University Law School in 2005, saying “the court of appeals is where policy is made.”  Here is the 30-second video clip:

‘The court of appeals is where policy is made.  And I know—I know this is on tape and I should never say that, ’cause we don’t “make law,” I know.  Okay, I know.’

(Notice how she dismissively laughs at her own words.)

Why is this so important?  Why does Sotomayor know that she should never say such a thing?

Upon its founding, the United States government was deliberately split into three separate “branches,” or wings of government: the Legislative branch, the Executive, and the Judicial.  The reason for this is to create a “separation of powers,” where no single institution of the government has too much control over all elements of governing.  It’s a protection measure, for the governed—you and me.

—The Legislative branch is to provide laws,
—The Executive branch is to enforce the laws,
—The Judicial branch is to apply the laws.

This provided a system of “checks and balances,” so that no branch became too powerful and could be “judge, jury, and executioner” all in one.

How does this apply to Sonia Sotomayor?

A judge’s role, as part of the judicial branch of government, is to apply the law as legislated—not to create new law.  Policy is made by the Congress in the legislative branch, not the court of appeals in the judicial.  And any shift to do otherwise would be an overstepping of the boundaries clearly outlined in the separation of powers in the Constitution.

And here is Sotomayor, emphatically proclaiming that “the court of appeals is where policy is made.”  Sotomayor immediately acknowledges the radicalness of her comment, and half-heartedly tries to pay lip-service to the idea that she isn’t supposed to think such a thing.

Activist judges are a plague to the democratic system.  When a policy is made, it’s because that’s the way people want the policy to be.  When there are rogue judges that apply and interpret laws in their own ways, they single-handedly act as a trump-card against the entire populace.  It is completely contrary to the entire system.

And that, my friends, is Sonia Sotomayor—and very proudly so.

(And in case you didn’t see my previously posted introduction to Sotomayor, she’s also a racist, to boot.)

Obama’s Supreme Court Pick: Sonia Sotomayor, Racist Activist

Obama has just announced his choice for the upcoming Supreme Court vacancy, federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor.  The politically-correct brigade insisted that Obama must choose a female Hispanic for the position, and Obama did not fail to deliver.

Sotomayor is filling the vacancy to be left by David Souter, both liberal-leaning justices, and so will not shift the delicate balance of power on the court.  Sotomayor will be the first Hispanic judge on the court, and will now be the second woman on the 9-member court, assuming congressional confirmation.

The New York Times has a brief introductory piece on the judge, and there are some glaring gashes in her pedigree:

Judge Sotomayor has said her ethnicity and gender are important factors in serving on the bench, a point that could generate debate. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said in a 2002 lecture.

She also once said at a conference that a “court of appeals is where policy is made,” a statement that has drawn criticism from conservatives who saw it as a sign of judicial activism. Judge Sotomayor seemed to understand at the time that she was making a controversial statement, adding that “I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don’t make law.”

Sotomayor has a fascinating “American-dream” story of being raised in the Bronx without a father, and making it to Princeton and Yale Law.  But I don’t care how great your story is—comments like this are absolutely diametrically opposed to the entire point of the judicial system.  The article continues:

On the appeals court, Judge Sotomayor has not been involved in many hotly disputed decisions, but one that she participated in is before the Supreme Court right now. As part of a panel, she voted to uphold New Haven’s decision to throw out a set of fire department promotion tests because no minority candidates made the top of the list. White firefighters who scored high but were denied promotion are appealing that ruling.

Does this strike anyone else as absolutely absurd?  Firefighters are in a career where they literally are responsible for saving human lives at the brink of death.  And rather than choosing the best candidates for the job, let’s be politically correct and make sure you’re having your life saved by a minority firefighter.

What the #&($@#$%?!

It seems that Sotomayor is similarly being chosen for the Supreme Court position.  Rather than perhaps choosing the best candidate for the job, Obama saw fit to choose a female, Hispanic candidate—even with a record such as this.  Does this really seem like the caliber of person for the court?  What kind of judgement does this reflect on the president?

(And for anyone that couldn’t tell from my photo—I’m a minority. Who cares!)

Post Featured in “Biblical Studies” Blog Carnival

For anyone that hasn’t already seen it, a recent blog post of mine has been featured in this month’s “Biblical Studies” blog carnival.  (A “blog carnival” is a monthly-updated list of significant posts and discussions on various blogs on a specific subject.)

The post is my recent one, “The Gospel According to Ancient Near Eastern Cosmology,” posted at the collaborative blog that I contribute to, “Dust and Light.”

I have summarized it here before, but essentially it has three parts: (1) a description of the ancient Near Eastern understanding of the world, (2) a demonstration of how this understanding can be seen within the Old Testament, and (3) the modern significance this has on how we understand the Old Testament as inspired holy scripture.

The carnival rightly categorizes my post under the subject of “Biblical (In)errancy.“  The fundamental question is that if the Bible contains elements of a scientifically false understanding of the world, what bearing does this have on our doctrine of scripture?  Is scripture “inerrant” in the traditional understanding of the term, or is a modified understanding of “inerrant” (or perhaps “infalible”) more appropriate?  How should this effect our understanding of scripture?

This is basically a small introduction to the current discussions going on in Old Testament biblical studies.

Google “Biblical Inerrancy”: Hello Mugshot, Goodbye Employment

So, there I was today, minding my own business. But then I received a tweet (that is, a ‘message’ on the microblog service “Twitter”), that read the following:

If you put the terms ‘inerrancy bible’ into Google Image Search, your mug shot shows up on the second line!!

The message came from Art Boulet—another student of theology and biblical studies, who runs a very excellent biblioblog.

Sure enough, I punched it up, and what did I see but my very own face staring back at me (bottom right):

The irony is that when you click the link to see what it is related to, it actually points to my blog post where I am in fact challenging the traditional notion of biblical inerrancy (see “Biblical Inerrancy: From the Bible, or the Enlightenment?”).

I must admit—my first reaction was a bit uneasy!! To see my very face so immediately associated with a challenge to inerrancy was a little jarring!  My instant comment to Art was:

Holy crap, I’m the poster child for Biblical Errancy! I’m suddenly overcome by a sense of foreboding about my future career…

The problem is that the issue of biblical in/errancy is a really controversial one, and is landing a lot of people in hot water.  Many biblical scholars that are challenging the evangelical establishment are getting institutionally ostracized—put into the “outer courtyard,” where the defiled and ceremonially unclean and leprous are put.  And while my critique of inerrancy comes from a more philosophical background apart from biblical scholarship, I still am aiming to gear my postgraduate work and career toward theology and biblical studies.  And in this respect, my future job prospects seem to be just as much in jeopardy!

Hopefully in coming years, a more constructive tone will arise from within evangelicalism in the debate over inerrancy.  If not, I better not quit my dayjob…

(And in case you missed the link above, here was my reaction one more time.)

“Theology & Culture” Now on the Amazon Kindle!

At long last, after years of waiting, it’s finally here: “Theology & Culture” is now available on your Amazon Kindle ebook reader!

Unfortunately, Amazon wouldn’t let me set the pricing (and make it free), so it’s $1.99 per month to subscribe.  But I guess they gotta pay for their 3G network fees somehow!

Because I frequent the Amazon website so often, it’s pretty wild to see a snapshot of my homepage right there in the Amazon store.

I only personally know one person that owns a Kindle, and that’s my cool MacBook-Pro-toting mother-in-law.  But if you’re one of those trendy folks living on the bleeding-edge of the technological revolution, and own one of the cool devices, you can now subscribe and read T&C wherever your digital heart desires!

Link: “Theology & Culture” on Amazon.com

My 1-year-old Daughter: Aspiring Theologian

So, it’s been a really, REALLY long time since I’ve written here.  Actually, it hasn’t been terribly long—but because I post here pretty frequently, this has definitely been a significant stretch.

But I have a good excuse—it’s finals week!  I am wrapping up my final essays and exams, and so far it’s going well.  But in the meantime, I found this photo that I thought I would share.  It is of my at-the-time 1-year-old daughter, picking out a Bible commentary.  In case you don’t recognize them, she is perusing the Word Biblical Commentaries, and the New International Commentaries on the Old and New Testaments.

Unfortunately, this isn’t my personal library—it was at my former Bible college =(.

Enjoy!

Some New Books: Kenton Sparks and Craig Allert

My wonderful wife was kind enough to buy me a couple books for Easter that’ve been on my wish list!

The first is “God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship” by Kent Sparks.  It’s a whopper at 400 pages, but it is apparently similar to the seminal work by Pete Enns, “Inspiration & Incarnation.” The contents include:

1. Epistemology and Hermeneutics
2. Historical Criticism and Assyriology
3. The Problem of Biblical Criticism
4. “Traditional” Responses to Biblical Criticism
5. Constructive Responses to Biblical Criticism
6. The Genres of Human Discourse
7. The Genres of Divine Discourse
8. The Context of the Whole and Biblical Interpretation
9. Negotiating the Context of the Whole
10. Biblical Criticism and Christian Theology
Conclusions: Biblical Criticism and Christian Institutions

I am really excited to dive in.  In my philosophy studies, the subjects I am most fascinated with are epistemology (”how do we know what we know?”) and hermeneutics (interpretation of texts).  I am most excited to get to chapters 8-10 and the conclusion, so I guess it’s best that they’re at the END of the book, otherwise I might not finish the 400-pager, hehe.

The other book I am excited about is Craig Allert’s “A High View of Scripture?: The Authority of the Bible and the Formation of the New Testament Canon.” Allert’s book is a contribution to the Baker Academic series, “Evangelical Ressourcement: Ancient Sources for the Church’s Future.”  The table of contents reads as follows:

1. Evangelicals, Traditionalism, and the Bible
2. Introducing New Testament Canon Formation
3. Canon and Ecclesiology
4. A Closed Second-Century Canon?
5. Two Important Fourth-Century Lists
6. Inspiration and Inerrancy
Appendix: The Fathers, Scripture, and Inspiration

I am interested to hear Allert’s case on the implications of canon formation on our doctrine of scripture.  I am particularly interested in exploring how epistemology and the doctrine of revelation overlap, and the implications this has on how we understand the Bible as a text and God’s revelation.

So I think along with my curricular studies and reading, I will have my hands full with all of this extra-curricular reading!

Dual-Natured or New Creation? Romans 7 and A NEW Parable of “Two Wolves”

There is a little tale that is told, that goes something like this:

Two Wolves

One day a grandfather was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, “A battle is going on inside us. It is a terrible fight and it is between two ‘wolves.’

“One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

“The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

The children thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The grandfather simply replied,”The one you feed.”

Now, this may sound all nice and “Christiany” at first, but it is actually a completely false understanding of the Christian life and sin.  I have received this in numerous email forwards from Christians, and this is even developed into a theology of “dual-natures” within Christians.  As a youth, I’d heard it described as “two body builders,” etc.

Michael Bird, a NT scholar and professor, writes this in his ‘Introducing Paul‘ (p. 136):

I have found it common for preachers to say that Christians have two natures, spiritual and carnal, and then to liken these two natures to fighting dogs. Our duty, so it goes, is to ensure that we feed one dog and starve the other. But this is not quite true, since Christians have one true nature: the new creation. The process of sanctification (growth in holiness, godliness, and love) is about becoming who and what we truly are, cracked vessels that have been transformed into precious vases. When sin affects Christians, it is not because a civil war is raging within our bodies and we have somehow temporarily yielded to our carnal as opposed to spiritual nature (this is based on a bad reading of Rom. 7). Instead, it is more like we have failed to be and act as we truly are: new creations. A better analogy to use in order to exhort Christians to stop indulging in sin is perhaps more along the lines of urging us to stop trying to lay LPs on a CD player: play CDs on a CD player. Stop trying to load old software onto new hardware. Be what we are, be what we are becoming, and be what we will be on the final day of Christ Jesus! (HT: Justin Taylor)

This is a very important point to understand for the Christian life.  We cannot have a mentality of “the devil made me do it” when we sin. But similarly, we also cannot have a “my flesh made me do it” mentality, either.

So rather than writing up a theological treatise to forward around to Christians (who will in turn dump it into their “Trash”), I decided I would write a comparable parable of “Two Wolves,” following this more holistic biblical understanding.  I intentionally made them as similar as possible, to highlight the sharp differences.  This is a first draft, but hopefully it should communicate the idea!

You Are What You Eat

One day, a grandfather was teaching his grandson a lesson about life.  He said, “My son, there is a wolf inside each of us.  It is a ravenous wolf, wild and evil.  It is pride, jealousy, sensuality, wickedness, enmity, deceit, greed, idolatry, lust, and hate.

“When we are given new life, a new wolf comes inside us and slays the old.  It is a virtuous wolf; it is love, peace, patience, kindness, hope, joy, humility, self-control, gentleness, and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a moment, and then asked, “How does the new wolf prevent from becoming anything like the old?”

The grandfather simply replied, “It depends on what you feed it.”

Just like any of Jesus’s parables, it really is meant to communicate one main point; if the analogy is pressed beyond the one point, the metaphor starts to crack around the edges. But in this case, the main point is that we are one new creation, and the health of our Christian life is contingent upon what we feed ourselves spiritually.  We do not have a “carnal wolf” fighting against us, we have “carnal food” that we ingest instead of “healthy food.”

You are what you eat!

Review: “So You’re Thinking About Going to Seminary” by Derek Cooper

I was browsing Christian book publishers one day and came across the newly published title, “So You’re Thinking About Going to Seminary” by Derek Cooper.  Of course, since I am trying to figure out which theology graduate programs I should apply for, this instantly went to the top of my reading list!

This is an unprecedented book, that takes a look at the ins-and-outs of seminary, and helps provide a road-map for navigating the terrain.  As the cover attests, it helps choose the right seminary, discern if seminary is right for you, explore degree options, what to expect, how to finance the escapade, and more.  The author explains his somewhat tumultuous experience of shuffling between a whopping SIX different seminaries, before finishing his academic career.

The book is divided into four parts: (1) Orientation to Seminary, (2) Things to Consider Before Seminary, (3) Things to Consider During Seminary, and (4) Post-Seminary Things to Consider While in Seminary.

The book is packed with information that would take a very long time to accumulate through one’s own experience alone.  One interesting thing I learned in the orientation is what exactly “seminary” is.  Cooper explains that a “Divinity School,” a “School of Theology,” an a “Seminary,” are all theological schools that fall under the big-umbrella term “seminary,” but that have important differentiations.  The primary point is that a “divinity school” or “school of theology” is usually a theological department/college of a bigger mainstream university, whereas the term “seminary” is often used in independent educational institutions without affiliations to another school.

Part 2 offers chapters on theological affiliations of schools, the “outside” factors to consider (locale, etc.), the “inside” factors (school size, etc.), how to finance, and a walkthrough in applying to schools.  This was a good section of the book for making you think about what you want out of your education: small community, or big school with lots of resources? Suburban quiet setting, or urban fast-paced?  I’m afraid the theological affiliation section didn’t give me exactly what I wanted, but the author is trying to present an unbiased and “neutral” view for all the schools, and didn’t delve into theological positions much.

Part 3’s highlights included chapters on departments and courses within seminary, discussing biblical studies and theology, church history and practical theology, and different degree programs—both basic and advanced.  This section was helpful for learning the more inner-workings of departments and how curriculums are set up, which is helpful for me as I am still trying to find out what I want to specialize my studies in (Old Testament, Historical Theology, or Philosophical Theology).

Particularly interesting was the discussion on different degree programs.  If you have ever looked at a list of biblical scholars, their names are followed with every sort of random degree letters: BA, MA, MDiv, MTS, STM, PhD, ThD, MTh, ThM, DPhil, DMin, STD (bummer), and on and on.  Needless to say, this looks like one big mess.  Cooper spends an entire TWO CHAPTERS sorting each of these out, which is extremely interesting and helpful.

Finally, Part 4 introduces career prospects for (A) ministerial seminarians, and (B) academic ones.  Although I fall into the latter category, I found the first section very illuminating, as it describes the process of ordination for the main denominations, and what it all entails.  The second section helped introduce the steps of going on into PhD studies, understanding the costs, and more.

One of the very best highlights of this book is the style of writing Derek Cooper employs.  It is a very non-technical work, and I managed to read the first 100 pages in one sitting, without even realizing it!  I am a terribly slow reader, so this is a tremendous testimony to the author.  The book is filled with helpful charts and tables, and nice highlight-bubbles on pages to emphasize key points.

The only complaint I can make about the book is that I would have like the same in-depth-treatment for doctrinal and theological positions of schools as there was for the different degree programs.  One of the biggest challenges for me in studying schools and programs is getting a feel for the theological inclinations of this department or that.  Dallas Theological Seminary is the pioneer in dispensationalism, Westminster Seminary California hammers out good little amillennialists, Yale in the 70’s and 80’s was big on narrative theology, etc.  A catalogue of these types of things would have been the icing on the cake for this type of book.

All in all, however, I found “So You’re Thinking About Going to Seminary” a very worthwhile read.  I appreciated the insight that only an experienced insider’s perspective could offer, all bundled in one easy package.  I would recommend it to anyone at any stage in their theological education (even going into PhD studies), because each section is sort of a stand-alone reference.

Two thumbs up!

Quiz: “What Denomination Are You?” Crazy!

This was fun.  I took a little quiz, to see which denominational affiliation would most match my theological inclinations.  It’s particularly interesting, because I’ve never formally been in a denomination (although I was raised in a Methodist church while very young).  Here are the results:

I thought this was pretty fascinating.  I know that I am strongly indebted to the Reformed tradition, but the Eastern Orthodox one really came out of nowhere!  I would certainly have expected some Anglicanness to pop out, though.  Although, I’m a little surprised that Anabaptist and Pentecostal are so low on the list.  But then again, I guess I am pretty eclectic!

To corroborate this, I found another quiz at Beliefnet.  This one, however, is a multi-faith quiz, so it has random religions mixed in with different Christian traditions:

Isn’t that weird?  Now before I get written off as a heretic, remember what I said—it’s multi-faith!  It shows what religions are compatible with my answers, but certainly a more extensive quiz would rule out Adventists and Hindus, lol.  (In the first quiz above, Adventists are only 44%!)

Now, these are a little misleading, because the devil is in the details.  But what’s most interesting is that on the WHOLE, I map out more Orthodox and Catholic than I do either Evangelical Protestant or Mainline/Liberal Protestant.

I would call myself Presby-orthod-angli-catho-testant.

Take the quiz, and come back and tell me your results!  What did you get?

Preaching as Poetry: S.M. Lockridge’s “My King”

When I was at Bible college, a friend named Daniel (whom I lovingly called “Belteshazzar“) showed me this video.  It is an audio clip of a preacher running through a piece by S.M. Lockridge, “My King.”

I love preaching that follows “preaching” as its own distinct genre.  Preaching, properly speaking, is different from public speaking, motivational speaking, and teaching.  And good preachers can elevate preaching to poetry, which is exactly what this is:

Justin Taylor posted a transcript of the original.

“Theology & Culture” now on Twitter! Follow “ArsTheologica”

I have finally succumbed to the unstoppable machinations of Twitter.  If you are viewing this post on the “Theology & Culture” website (rather than a feed reader), you can see my Twitter feed imported on the right-side of the page.  You can also “follow me” directly on Twitter, under the account “ArsTheologica”.

I usually read a lot of theology blogs and news during the day, but I have generally only made one blog post per day here at my own site (in the past).  I intend this Twitter feed to act as a sort of “micro-blog” for all of the little things I read and engage with during the day, but I don’t take the time to do a full write-up here at “Theology & Culture.”

I also predict that my Twitter feed will overlap a bit more with my personal life, in addition to “Theology & Culture” related topics and themes.  I think this is just the nature of it being updated more often, particularly with SMS messages via my Treo.  (Example: “I saw a book at the store today with the strangest title: ‘The Joy of Indoor Plants.’ Isn’t that an oxymoron?”)

I think it should be a good complement to the regular feed!

The Gospel According to Ancient Near Eastern Cosmology

I have a new post up over at the collaborative blog that I contribute to, “Dust and Light.”  It is titled, “The Gospel According to Ancient Near Eastern Cosmology,” a title which I was quite pleased with.

Essentially, it comes in three parts: (1) the cosmological wordview of the ancient Near East, (2) how the Old Testament reflects this wordview, and (3) the contemporary significance.  This post is particularly relevant to the debate over the modern doctrine of biblical inerrancy, and how we should understand the Bible as holy scripture, taking it on its own terms.

Drop by “Dust and Light” and feel free to contribute to the conversation!

Video: 40 Epic Movie Speeches in 2 Minutes

You know those epic speeches delivered in movies, right at a climactic turning point?  Think Braveheart, Gladiator, etc.  You know the kind.

Well here is a great video delivering 40 inspirational speeches in just 2 minutes:

Awesome.

Here is the transcript:

Shame on you. This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you’re going to let it be the worst. And I guarantee a week won’t go by in your life you won’t regret walking out, letting them get the best of you.

Well, I’m not going home. We’ve come too far! And I’m going to stay right here and fight for this lost cause. A day may come when the courage of men fails… but it is not THIS day. The line must be drawn HERE. This far, no further!

I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. You’re going to work harder than you ever worked before. But that’s fine, we’ll just get tougher with it! If a person grits his teeth and shows real determination, failure is not an option. That’s how winning is done! Believe me when I say we can break this army here, and win just one for the Gipper.

But I say to you what every warrior has known since the beginning of time: you’ve got to get mad. I mean plum mad dog mean. If you would be free men, then you must fight to fulfill that promise! Let us cut out their living guts one inch at a time, and they will know what we can do! Let no man forget how menacing we are. We are lions! You’re like a big bear, man!

This is YOUR time! Seize the day, never surrender, victory or death… that’s the Chicago Way! Who’s with me? Clap! Clap! Don’t let Tink die! Clap! Alright! Let’s fly! And gentlemen in England now abed shall know my name is the Lord when I tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our Independence Day!

(HT: The Daily Scroll)

“Dust and Light” is now a Dot-Com

This is just a very brief announcement to let everyone know that the other collaborative blog that I am a contributor to, “Dust and Light,” now officially has its very own dot-com address!  You can find it over at http://DustAndLight.com

For any RSS feed subscribers, be sure and updated your readers.  Most readers should make the change automatically, but not all do.

Some Cool Titles

Sorry I haven’t posted anything for a short stretch; I am in the middle of an essay and exam, both due in a couple days.

One of my biggest irks about blogs is when they are “all-about-me,” diary-type endeavors; so I have fought hard to keep away from it.  Unfortunately, since I’m so busy, I can’t take time to write about anything other than what I’m doing immediately, which is my essays.  So here is a somewhat (hopefully rare) self-indulgent post.

One thing I love about writing is crafting clever titles.

The paper I am working on right now is an analysis of the film “The Matrix,” and arguing whether human nature is depicted as Platonic (dualistic and separate mind+body), or Thomistic (essential unity between mind+body).  I am fighting perhaps an uphill battle, arguing for a Thomist perspective.

My title is:

Ghost in the Machine?:
Exploring Human Nature in ‘The Matrix’

It’s a play on words, invoking the imagery of the Matrix (whereby human minds plug into the machine-software of the Matrix), but also of philosopher Gilbert Ryle’s critique of René Decartes’s Platonic “mind-body” dualistic depiction of humans.  Ryle pejoratively described Decartes’s understanding of the relationship of the mind and body as “a ghost in a machine,” and that the body is simply a biological ‘vehicle’ of sorts for the mind.

My other recent paper was titled:

The Insurrection of Resurrection:
A Comparative Analysis of Platonic and Hebrew Human Metaphysics

In this paper, I outlined Plato’s understanding of human persons (mind+body), and then a Hebrew understanding, and how Christianity appropriated ideas from each.  Ultimately, I conclude that Christianity has adopted a far more Platonic understanding than perhaps the New Testament warrants, and that Christainity needs a sharp dose of understanding of a bodily resurrection to better grapple with human mind+mody relations.

My friend and blogeague Daniel just wrote a new post at our collaborative blog, “Dust and Light.” He wrote such an awesome title that it practically melted my face off:

The Ammunition of Reduction and the Humility of Christ

Nevermind the fact that I had to read the post to figure out even what he was talking about!  It reminds me of the very cool title of a work by John Owen,

The Death of Death in the Death of Christ

That. Is. Awesome.

Okay, back to work…

Emergent, Emerging, and now.. Remerging?!

Trying to define the “emerging church” movement is like trying to nail jello to a wall.  To complicate matters, we have differentiated between terms such as “emerging“ and “Emergent“ (the capital ‘E’ is important, of course).

Now, I present for your entertainment, a blog post at Emergent Village ushering in the new label: “REMERGING.”  Yes, that’s right.  Remerging.  This is not a joke.

While I admire the sentiments of the post—and I very sincerely do—there is a lot of talk, and very little substance.  And in this respect, “remerging” will be exactly like most everything else that has come before it.

PS: I now proclaim the universal term to be “rE/merging/ent.”

(HT: Church Leader Links)

Post Featured at ‘Christian Carnival’

For those that missed Rey’s comment in the previous blog thread, he is hosting the latest installment of the Christian Blog Carnival.  (A “blog carnival” is a scheduled installment of a collection of links and articles to other blogs on the subject.)

My recent highlight on ‘Academic Earth’ is featured there, along with some other interesting links.

Drop by the site to check out the highlights.

Free Ivy League Lecture Videos for Everyone!

I have been checking out a new site that has launched, “Academic Earth.”  I will just say it outright—this is a dream come true.

Academic Earth is a site where anyone-anytime-anywhere can come and watch full-length video recordings of lectures from leading universities: Princeton, Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Yale, and Stanford.  The lectures span the full spectrum of a liberal arts curriculum, ranging from economics to astronomy, medicine to theology.

Not surprisingly, I looked at the offerings in the “Religion” department.  At first I was dismayed to see that there was only one offering: Yale’s intro class on the Old Testament.  But then I realized that it was in fact a full-length COURSE, including a whopping 24 lectures running at 45 minutes each!

I have listened to only the first one, but it is very, very good.  The material is decidedly not evangelical, but it is a university and not a seminary, after all.  As a matter of fact, I think it is a sad fact that a Christian will get a better education from a secular university on the Christian Bible than perhaps a seminary can offer on the same subject—and I firmly believe that.

But perhaps what I’m most thrilled about is the liberal arts curriculum.  I took my liberal arts classes straight after high school, and despite whizzing through every class with a 4.0 GPA, I didn’t learn a single thing.  So this will give me the opportunity to refresh all those subjects that went in one ear and out the other!

From the site:

Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.

As more and more high quality educational content becomes available online for free, we ask ourselves, what are the real barriers to achieving a world class education?  At Academic Earth, we are working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.

We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.  Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment that in which that content is remarkably easy to use and in which user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.

We invite those who share our passion to explore our website, participate in our online community, and help us continue to find new ways to make learning easier for everyone.

Now I can stop hunting through YouTube for all those “how-to” videos…

(HT: Church Leader Links)

‘Everyday Evangelism’ Anecdote from Lee Strobel

Here is a jaw-dropping story from the book I am reviewing for Zondervan, “The Unexpected Adventure: Taking Everyday Risks to Talk With People About Jesus,” by Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg.

†

One average and routine day I was packing up my briefcase and getting ready to leave the newspaper [office] when I felt a gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit.  I sensed God wanted me to go into the businiss office and invite my friend, who was an atheist, to come to Easter services at my church.  Since the impression seemed so strong, I figured something dramatic was going to happen.  And it did—but not in the way I had anticipated.

I waked into the business office and looked around.  The place appeared empty except for my friend, who was sitting at his desk.  Perfect! I reminded him that Easter was coming and asked if he would want to come to church with Leslie and me.  He turned me down cold.  I asked if he was interested at all in spiritual matters, and he emphatically said no.  I asked if he had any questions about God, and again he said no.  I talked to him about why the resurrection was so important, but he clearly wasn’t interested.

With all of my evangelistic overtures being instantly shut down, I was beginning to get a little embarrassed.  Why was he so disinterested in talking about spiritual matters if God was indeed prodding me to talk with him?  Finally, I stammered, “Well, uh, if you’ve ever got any questions, um, I guess you know where my desk is,” and I walked out.

What was that all about? I couldn’t understand why he was so adamantly resistant. In the end, I concluded that maybe I was going to be one link in a very long chain of people and experiences that would eventually lead him to Christ. Still, as far as I know he remains a skeptic to this day.

Fast-forward several years. By this time I was a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago. After I spoke one Sunday morning, a middle-aged man came up, shook my hand, and said, “I just want to thank you for the spiritual influence you’ve had in my life.”

“That’s very nice,” I said, “but who are you?”

“Let me tell you my story,” he replied.  “A few years ago I lost my job. I didn’t have any money, and I was afraid I was going to lose my house. I called a friend of mine who runs a newspaper and said, ‘Do you have any work for me?’ He asked, ‘Can you tile floors?’ Well, I had tiled my bathroom once, so I said, ‘Sure.’ He told me, ‘We need some tiling done at the newspaper. If you can do that, we can pay you.’

“So one day, not long before Easter, I was on my hands and knees behind a desk in the business office of the newspaper, fixing some tiles, when you walked into the room. I don’t think you even saw me. You started talking about God and Jesus and Easter and the church to some guy, and he wasn’t interested at all. But I was crouching there listening, and my heart was beating fast, and I started thinking, ‘I need God! I need to go to church!’

“As soon as you left, I called my wife and said, ‘We’re going to church this Easter.’ She said, ‘You’re kidding!’ I said, ‘No, we are.’ We ended up coming to this church that Easter, and my wife my teenage son, and I all came to faith in Christ. I just wanted to thank you.”

Review: I&I, “Getting Our Bearings”

This is a segment in my review of the book “Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament,” by Peter Enns.  You may also return to the table of contents, to navigate other parts of the book.

†

In the world of biblical scholarship (”who wrote the book? when?” etc.), you have the critical scholars on the one hand, and the evangelical scholars on the other.  The critical scholars frequently are atheists, and evangelical scholars are the theists.  Critical scholars challenge traditional views of the Bible (”did Moses really write the Pentateuch?”), while evangelical scholars tend to be more conservative, with such doctrines as Biblical Inerrancy.

Enns’s goal in I&I is to bridge this gap, and offer a way for Christians to hold an evangelical view of scripture (as the divinely-inspired word of God), and simultaneously appropriate the critical scholarship in helping us better understand what kind of text the Bible is, and how to interpret it.

“What I Hope to Accomplish”

Enns begins his book with the section, “What I Hope to Accomplish.”  He writes,

The purpose of this book is to bring an evangelical doctrine of Scripture into conversation with the implications generated by some important themes in modern biblical scholarship—particularly Old Testament scholarship—over the past 150 years.

Enns highlights the difference between God’s special revelation (scripture) and God’s general revelation (how he reveals himself in creation).  We must constantly evaluate how we interpret God’s special revelation in light of new discoveries in God’s general revelation.  The classic example that Enns invokes (and that I have invoked here in the past) is that of Galileo, discovering a heliocentric universe rather than geocentric.  The Bible doesn’t teach that the earth is the center of the universe, but it is written from a terrestrial vantage-point.  Therefore, we have to take the worldviews of the biblical authors into account during interpretation.

Enns highlights a crucial point— “the problems many of us feel regarding the Bible [reconciling modern data with the authority of scripture] have less to do with the Bible itself and more to do with our own preconceptions.”

Enns wants to engage in three issues that he feels evangelicals have dealt with inadequately in the past, with three big implications.

(1) The Old Testament and other literature from the ancient world.  Why is the Bible so much like contemporary literature of the time?
(2) Theological diversity in the Old Testament.  Why do different parts of the Old Testament say different things about the same things?
(3) New Testament authors’ use of the Old Testament.  Why do the authors take passages completely out of context?

The implications:
(1) The uniqueness of the Bible.  It’s a common expectation that for the Bible to be God’s word, it should be unique, not bearing striking similarities to the literature of other ancient peoples.
(2) The integrity and trustworthiness of the Bible.  It is a common expectation that the Bible be unified in its outlook, free of diverse views.  Shouldn’t God have just one opinion on things?
(3) How one should interpret the Bible.  The NT authors seem to interpret the OT quite fancifully. What about us?

“A Way Toward Addressing the Problem: The Incarnational Analogy”

The solution: Just as Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man (not half of each), so we too can understand the Bible as both fully God and fully man.  Jesus was fully enculturated in his social context, and so is the Bible.  Enns writes:

“[The Bible] belonged in the ancient worlds that produced it. It was not an abstract, otherworldly book, dropped out of heaven. It was connected to and therefore spoke to those ancient cultures. The encultured qualities of the Bible, therefore, are not extra elements that we can discard to get to the real point, the ‘timeless truths.’ Rather, precisely because Christianity is a historical religion, God’s word reflects the various historical moments in which Scripture was written. God acted and spoke in history. As we learn more and more about that history, we must gladly address the implications of that history for how we view the Bible; that is, what we should expect from it.”

He asks, “How does Scripture’s full humanity and full divinity affect what we should expect from Scripture?”  Enns proposes that it is the very human dimension of scripture that in fact makes it scripture—a proposition that, while arguable, I find quite fascinating.

He lists some fundamental human elements of scripture:

—Language: Koine Greek.  This isn’t divine, it is rudimentary.  It demonstrates God becoming “one of us”!
—The Old Testament matches its contemporary Ancient Near Eastern setting of temples, priests, and sacrifices.
—Israel was no different from surrounding nations who had prophets that mediated divine will to the people.
—Israel’s legal system has similarities with contemporary cultures, including Mosaic law.

Enns underscores a crucial point:

What is so helpful about the ‘incarnational analogy’ is that it reorients us to see that the Bible’s ’situatedness’ is not a lamentable or embarrassing situation, but a positive one.

That the Bible, at every turn, shows how ‘connected’ it is to its own world is a necessary consequence of God incarnating himself.

Defensive evangelicals that want the “uniqueness” of the Bible do not want it to be just like any other ancient book.  Liberals say that because it is “like any other book,” it is not the word of God.

To those who fear the human stamp as somehow dirtying the Bible, marring its perfect divine quality, I say, “If you wouldn’t say that about Jesus (and you shouldn’t), don’t think that way about the Bible. Both Christ and his word are human through and through.”  In fact, it is precisely by having the Son become human that God demonstrates his great love. Is it so much of a stretch, then, to say that the human nature of Scripture is likewise a gift rather than a problem?

It is somewhat ironic, it seems, that both liberals and conservatives make the same error. They both assume that something worthy of the title “word of God” would look different from what we actually have.  The one accents the human marks and makes them absolute. The other wishes the human marks were not as pronounced as they were. They share a similar opinion that nothing worthy of being called God’s word would look so common, so human, so recognizable.  But, when God speaks, he speaks in ways we would understand.

This concludes the introduction to the book.  I am quite favorably inclined toward Enns’s position, and he makes a good case so far.  I’ll return with the next segment exploring “The Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Literature.”

You may also return to the table of contents of this review.

Zondervan Review: Everyday Evangelism w/ Lee Strobel

Zondervan has recruited me to do another pre-release review of a new book!

This time around, the book is “The Unexpected Adventure: Taking Everyday Risks to Talk with People About Jesus” by Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg.

I have to say, I am genuinely excited to take a look.  Despite my more academic theological inclinations, deep down within me is a fiery street preacher.  So perhaps this will help me bridge the gap between my tempered sensibilities and my zealous fervor for the gospel ;-).

Here is a synopsis from Zondervan’s website:

When we seize opportunities to talk with others about Jesus, days that start out dull and tedious can quickly blossom into exciting escapades. Written for today’s multigenerational, multicultural world, The Unexpected Adventure helps readers take easy steps into a natural evangelistic lifestyle that will energize their own faith while making an eternal difference in the lives of people they encounter.

Using a devotional-style format, bestselling authors Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg tell dramatic and sometimes funny stories from their own lives and then draw out practical applications backed by Scripture. Readers will be inspired with fresh compassion for their spiritually confused friends and equipped with practical strategies for influencing others for Christ. Entire churches will be rejuvenated as congregations discover that evangelism can be the adventure of a lifetime — starting today.

The book arrived yesterday and is a whopping 300+ pages!  It is due out in May, so I’ll have some thoughts on it soon.

Review: “Inspiration and Incarnation” by Peter Enns

While I am dragging my feet in my philosophy studies that I am paying extortionate amounts for (Aristotle is a terrible bore to read), my personal theological studies are in full force!

I had the opportunity to finally pick up a copy of Pete Enns’s tremendously controversial book, “Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament” from Baker Academic (2005).  I decided that I would take the opportunity to introduce his ideas by blogging through the book chapter-by-chapter.

“Inspiration and Incarnation” (I&I) is Enns’s attempt to reconcile critical biblical scholarship with an evangelical, “high” view of the inspiration and authority of scripture—two things which traditionally are diametrically opposed to one another.

Here is the table of contents:

1. Getting Our Bearings
What I Hope to Accomplish in This Book • A Way Toward Addressing the Problem: The Incarnational Analogy

2. The Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Literature
The Impact of Akkadian Literature • Some Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts • What Exactly Is the Problem? • How Have These Issues Been Handled in the Past? • How Can We Think Differently through These Issues? • How Does This Affect Us?

3. The Old Testament and Theological Diversity
The Problem of Theological Diversity in the Old Testament • Diversity in Wisdom Literature • Diversity in Chronicles • Diversity in Law • God and Diversity • What Does Diversity Tell Us about Scripture?

4. The Old Testament and Its Interpretation in the New Testament
Do New Testament Authors Misuse the Old Testament? • Biblical Interpretation in the Second Temple Period • Apostolic Hermeneutics as a Second Temple Phenomenon: Interpretive Methods • Apostolic Hermeneutics as a Second Temple Phenomenon: Interpretive Traditions • What Makes Apostolic Hermeneutics Unique? • Should We Handle the Old Testament the Way the Apostles Did? • What We Can Learn from Apostolic Hermeneutics?

5. The Big Picture
What Is the Bible, and What Are We Supposed to Do with It? • Continuing the Conversation: Learning to Listen

Here are a couple extended quotes from the Preface:

The aim of this book is not novelty, but synthesis. My focus is twofold: (1) to bring together a variety of data that biblical scholars work with every day for readers who do not have firsthand familiarity with these data and (2) to look at these data with a clear view toward discussing their implications for an evangelical doctrine of Scripture. [...]

I believe with all my heart that honesty with oneself is a central component to spiritual growth.  God honors our honest questions. He is not surprised by them, nor is he ashamed to be our God when we pose them. He is our God, not because of the questions we ask (or refrain from asking), but because he has united us to the risen Christ. And being a part of God’s family is ultimately a gift to us, not something to be obtained by us. God has freed us in Christ and made us his children. And, as all children do, we ask a lot of questions.

For those that aren’t familiar with the history behind the book, Pete was until very recently a professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary.  His ideas had mixed feelings among faculty, and caused a bit of a stir (quite the understatement).  Ultimately, he decided to resign, and felt that the institution was going down a different trajectory than he felt the school had traditionally maintained.

I’ve read a lot of Enns’s miscellaneous journal articles and otherwise, but I am excited to finally dig into his main entrée!  I’m sure this review will be extended over time (I am a student with a 2-year-old and 3-month-old, after all), but I will keep it coming as I progress through it!

(As a closing note, I cannot end without commenting on the cover art. Someone had the bright idea of superimposing an ampersand (the “&” symbol) overtop of the actual word “and” in the title. Why would you do such a thing, cover-design-artist? Shame on you and your household. You’re definitely getting an extra year in purgatory for that one.)

Martin Luther King Jr. on the Collapse of Evangelicalism

Here is Martin Luther King Jr.’s prediction on the recently discussed collapse of evangelicalism.

He wrote this to his fellow clergymen in 1963, taken from his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” He was speaking in the context of the civil rights movement, trying to wake the slumber of the Christian church that simply accepted the status quo.

But how much do his words apply to our own, contemporary context?  It can certainly apply in many ways, but one that comes to mind is the church’s rigid defense of the tenets of Modernity, and strong resistance to that ‘devil’ called “postmodernism.”  And it certainly has a ring with the recent flare of conversation regarding the “collapse of evangelicalism.”

An excerpt:

There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the morés of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”‘ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

Philosophy Seminar at Michigan State University

For anyone in the Mid-Michigan area (or within traveling distance that’d be interested), Michigan State University is hosting a philosophy seminar, titled “Power, Conflict, and Commitment: Rethinking the Political.” Apparently, it is part of a series of conferences that are being held on social and political philosophy.

It will be held March 28/29.  From the website:

TOPIC

During recent decades philosophers from diverse perspectives have extensively discussed the problem of the public sphere and the language, conflicts, and outcomes it can organize.  Liberal understandings of politics and public life have been challenged by feminists, critical race theorists, and radical democrats.  In view of structural change and the crisis of dominant political institutions, it has become clear that our understanding of politics needs careful reformulation.  We need to develop new conceptions of what it means to be political, how the individual and the self are politically situated in the world, and how political action and resistance (or transformations) are possible. This second workshop for social and political thought at Michigan State University will bring these perspectives together and discuss new perspectives for understanding the political sphere within our current social situation.

SPEAKERS and COMMENTATORS

Amy Allen (Dartmouth College); Feminism, Foucault, Continental Philosophy; author of The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory

Todd Hedrick (Michigan State University); Critical Theory, Habermas, Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Philosophy

Simon Critchley (New School); Poststructuralism, Continental Philosophy, author of Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance, Things Merely Are: Philosophy in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, On Humour

Kristie Dotson (Michigan State University); Feminism, Critical Race Theory, Epistemology, Social and Political Philosophy, editor of  Race, Hybridity and Miscegenation

Robert Gooding-Williams (University of Chicago), Critical Race Theory, Nietzsche, Social and Political Philosophy, author of  Zarathustra’s Dionysian Modernism, Look, a Negro!: Philosophical Essays on Race, Culture and Politics

Roberto Nigro (Michigan State University); Foucault, Marx, Social and Political Philosophy; editor/translator of  Foucault, Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology

I’m hoping that I should be able to make it out.  Let me know if you are going, and we can collaborate!

“Heroes” Creator offers Modern-day “King David” Story – Tonight!

NBC is airing a new show tonight from the creators of “Heroes,” that retells the story of King David from 1 Samuel in a modern-day, contemporary setting.

It is called “KINGS.”  Here is the trailer:

Interestingly, the creators have said that there will be hidden parts around the show for those who are familiar with the Biblical account of the story.  That should add a whole ‘nother layer of interest!

Today is the 2-hour season premiere, starting at 8pm eastern standard time.

You can read more about the show at the official website.

It looks like it could be really good.  I’m definitely shifting my studies to 1 Samuel now!

Biblical Inerrancy: From the Bible, or Enlightenment?

I have a new post up over at “dust and light” discussing a hot topic at the moment, the modern doctrine of “Biblical Inerrancy.”

http://DustAndLight.wordpress.com/

I had to scribble it in a hurry, as I am running out the door.  But feel free to offer any thoughts!

As Seen On TV! More Jesus Junk

This is pretty much one of the most amazing thing’s I’ve ever seen. (sarcasm)

Here are some great, notable quotes—

“Each prayer cross is hand-crafted with brilliant, genuine crystals… creating not only a magnificent piece of jewelry, but a one-of-a-kind spiritual accessory.  When held up to the light, the entire Lord’s Prayer becomes instantly and almost miraculously visible!”

“The perfect way to keep the Lord’s Prayer close to your heart.”

You even get a certificate of authenticity!

Just have your credit card ready—don’t delay, call right now!

I’ve posted more thoughts on “Jesus Junk” previously, as well.

Speaking of Jesus-junk, apparently GodTube is going for a new marketing strategy, and has redubbed itself as “Tangle.”

Thank God(tube).

Emergent Tony Jones Wishes He Still Had Friends

There is an article up, reflecting on the past 10 years of the Emerging Church conversation.  It interviews some of the top, lead figures of the movement—Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Jordon Cooper, Scot McKnight, Dan Kimball, and Andrew Jones.

I thought this was an interesting quote from Tony Jones:

It concerns me when leaders who were formerly friends of mine back away from me and from emergent because they find my theology too risky.  I think that’s sin, plain and simple.  Friendship should trump doctrinal difference, and I’m quite sure that Jesus would agree with me on that. [...]

Just like no political scientist could classify me as a political “conservative” or “liberal” because of my unique mix of views, I think we in the church should be particularly wary of classifying others.  Haven’t we learned our lesson after the era of hundreds of denominational labels that so many of us now reject?

Dude—you can’t go around saying homosexuality is okay, and denying inherited sin, and expect to not raise some red flags with Christians, of all people.

Look how “grunge” Tony has gone in his photo, too.  He used to look all smiley and happy and nerdy, when he still had his emergent friends.  It reminds me of a teenage girl who “goes goth” when things aren’t working out as expected.  He’s got this new Ben Affleck “angst” look goin’ on.  I kind of like it.  Matter of fact, my photo looks kind of nerdy as well, now that I think of it.  I need a new photo.

I have to say though, I do agree with Jones, to a degree.  We should not allow doctrinal differences impede on fellowship.  But on the other hand, we are commanded to defend the sheep from false teachers and wolves, which perhaps Tony Jones has in fact now become.

Time for me to find a photographer…

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Are Evangelicals Anti-Urban? James K.A. Smith

For those in the (Western) Michigan area, there is a lecture today from Profs. James K.A. Smith and Mark Mulder at Calvin College.  Here is the writeup:

Calvin’s Center for Social Research invites you to join its 2006-2008 faculty Fellows, Drs. Mark Mulder of Sociology and James K.A. Smith of Philosophy, who will discuss the findings from their study “Subdivided by Faith.”

Please join this presentation of their ongoing research that considers whether evangelicals tend to exhibit an anti-urban bias that fosters a negative view of urban life, and thus contributes to the growth of suburban and exurban social arrangements.

Meeter Center Lecture Hall
Thursday, February 26, 2009 l 3:30 p.m.
Refreshments Provided

I unfortunately won’t be able to make it (I have arrangements with my in-laws!), but I thought I would give anyone a heads up!

Intro to Enlightenment Philosophy

I have a new post up over at ‘dust and light‘ titled “Prolegomena: A Primer on the Enlightenment”.  It’s basically an introduction to Enlightenment philosophy, and its influences on society and culture.

Feel free to drop by and pay us a visit =D.  Among other things, I offer some commentary on this cool painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, “An Experiment on a Bird with the Air Pump” (1768):

Hope to see you there!

http://DustAndLight.wordpress.com

Simon and Daniel both also have very excellent posts up there recently, which I can highly recommend, exploring philosophical foundations of “freedom,” and “vocation” in Genesis, respectively.

Introducing “dust and light”

Some good friends and I have started a joint-blog venture, called “dust and light“.

The authors are friends that I attended Bible College with.  Simon introduces it well:

The blog is intended to provide a platform for a theological interaction with philosophy, culture, politics, art etc., and is supposed to produce conversation and discussion. We are all engaged in formal theological/philosophical study of some sort or another—but don’t let that put you off! We hope to make the posts as accessible and practical as possible without watering them down too much. We are not quite sure how things will pan out, but intend for at least one of us to make a new post each week.

Why the title “dust and light”?  Read more about it at the site!

Hope to see you there!

Darwin’s 200th Birthday: Some Quotes

Today is the 200th birthday of one of history’s most revolutionary figures: Charles Darwin.  Here is a quote from him on the implications of his theories:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated.  We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination.  We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick.  Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind.  No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.  Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

—Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871

Ouch.

But here are some good quotes from Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and a more sensible one from Darwin.

Albert Einstein— “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God.  But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.”

Stephen Hawking— “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”

Charles Darwin— “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.”

Perhaps the Darwinists should heed Darwin’s own advice.

The Next Chapter of “Theology and Culture”

‘Theology and Culture’ has evolved through different phases.  ‘Phase 1′ was the blog’s earliest days—one year ago—where I only posted extended theological reflections at a rate of once per month.  Then I stopped posting for a couple-few months, which was significant enough to call ‘Phase 2.’  When I picked up again, the blog evolved into what it presently is at, ‘Phase 3′— keeping an eye on contemporary culture, and various theological musings on current events.  I have kept it updated on a nearly-daily basis in this phase.

I have a feeling this will be ‘Phase 4.’  I haven’t posted in a handful of days due to my semester’s studies picking up steam again.  I’m not sure what kind of rhythm or pace ‘Phase 4′ will look like, but I know that it will be a semi-significant shift from my daily-updated pace of before.

Perhaps the content will stay the same, or perhaps it will change focus a bit.  I’m along for the ride as well, so we’ll see =D.

Tim Keller Answers ‘10 Questions for Expositors’

The Unashamed Workman has posted an interview with Tim Keller, on “10 Questions for Expositors.”

He asks:

1. Where do you place the importance of preaching in the grand scheme of church life?
2. In a paragraph, how did you discover your gifts in preaching?
3. How long (on average) does it take you to prepare a sermon?
4. Is it important to you that a sermon contain one major theme or idea? If so, how do you crystallise it?
5. What is the most important aspect of a preacher’s style and what should he avoid?
6. What notes, if any, do you use?
7. What are the greatest perils that preacher must avoid?
8. How do you fight to balance preparation for preaching with other important responsibilities (eg. pastoral care, leadership responsibilities)?
9. What books on preaching, or exemplars of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?
10. What steps do you take to nurture or encourage developing or future preachers?

Here are my highlights:

5. What is the most important aspect of a preacher’s style and what should he avoid?
He should combine warmth and authority/force. That is hard to do, since tempermentally we incline one way or the other. (And many, many of us show neither warmth nor force in preaching.)

7. What are the greatest perils that preacher must avoid?
This seems to me too big a question to tackle here. Virtually everything a preacher ought to do has an corresponding peril-to-avoid. For examples, preaching should be Biblical, clear (for the mind), practical (for the will), vivid (for the heart,) warm, forceful, and Christo-centric. You should avoid the opposites of all these things.

8. How do you fight to balance preparation for preaching with other important responsibilities (eg. pastoral care, leadership responsibilities)
See my remarks on #3 above. It is a very great mistake to pit pastoral care and leadership against preaching preparation. It is only through doing people-work that you become the preacher you need to be–someone who knows sin, how the heart works, what people’s struggles are, and so on. Pastoral care and leadership is to some degree sermon prep. More accurately, it is preparing the preacher, not just the sermon. Prayer also prepares the preacher, not just the sermon.

***

Tim Keller is the author of the critically acclaimed “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.”

You can also see an abbreviated lecture on the book at Google’s campus.