Desposyni

Central Oklahoma Church Dogmatics reading group

2012-01-23T20:54:00.000-06:00

We are a small group with diverse backgrounds and ages, representing various church traditions, who share a common interest in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. We meet once a month, usually the third Saturday from 7-9 p.m., to discuss a relatively short section, perhaps 50-100 pages, of the Church Dogmatics. We meet on the east side of Norman. Come 15 minutes early – coffee, hot chocolate and tea are provided at 6:45.

Discussion is informal, prayerful and lively. Our purpose is to help one another better appreciate what we are reading, whether or not we agree with the text. No prior knowledge of Barth is assumed or required. Questions are welcomed at any level – whether from a novice Christian or an unbeliever, whether ministerial or academic.

We are patient. Reading the Church Dogmatics is a long-term endeavor, and we all know that life happens in the meantime. No extraordinary heroism is expected – come when you can, read what you can, come even if you didn’t complete the reading for that month. Perhaps hearing what others found interesting in the text will help you decide whether to go back and catch up, or simply to go on with the aid of the discussion or a summary guide.

We invite you to join us if you live in the central Oklahoma area and would like to read through the Church Dogmatics. You can contact me through this blog. For our calendar of meetings, more information and directions, as well as an ongoing set of reading guides, click the Barth reading group index hosted by my friend, Dr. Kerry Magruder.

Moyers and Company: On Winner-Takes-All Politics

2012-01-20T08:37:00.004-06:00

Moyers & Company 101: On Winner Take All Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Preach like you mean it

2012-01-20T08:34:00.002-06:00

Kevin DeYoung:

The only hope we preachers have for success in the ministry is the power inherent in the word of God. We can have no other confidence. The only things really worth happening in your church will only happen by the power of the word. The word may seem slow or foolish or irrelevant, but it will not disappoint. It cannot return empty.

Critics like to say about evangelicals, “You worship the Bible, a dead letter, words on a page, blah, blah, blah.” Don’t mind those critics. Satan uses their critiques more than God does. The devil wants you to think there’s no power in the word, that it’s not living and active, that it’s not sharper than any two-edged sword, that it’s not the imperishable seed by which men and women are born again. The devil wants you to believe you are fruity and fruitless for wasting your time in study and wasting your breath on Sunday. The devil wants you to voice your cynicism, your skepticism, and your sophisticated reasons for supposedly worshiping Jesus by revering the Scriptures less than he did. Don’t buy it. Look at every preacher worthy of emulation from any century and you will find a man preaching with authority.

So preach with confidence and conviction this Lord’s Day. Preach as if you were utterly and completely dependent on the word of God to do the work of God. “Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you” (Titus 2:15). Preach like you mean it.

The Three Deadliest Words in the World

2012-01-20T07:57:00.002-06:00

It's a girl.

Apple's Education Tools

2012-01-20T07:52:00.000-06:00

Gizmodo has a rundown of Apple's education initiative--announced yesterday. It looks really exciting

The Heavens declare the Glory of God

2012-01-20T07:50:00.002-06:00

Peter Enns on his new book, The Evolution of Adam

2012-01-19T16:18:00.003-06:00

New survey of Protestant ministers show most reject Evolution

2012-01-19T08:46:00.000-06:00

No big surprise here.

In a new survey of American Protestant pastors by Lifeway, 73 percent of ministers disagree with the statement "I believe God used evolution to create people." Of that large number, 64 percent strongly disagreed. As you might expect, the numbers were close to the same for the question, "I believe Adam and Eve were literal people," with 74 percent strongly agreeing and only 1 percent not sure.

That overwhelming number is tempered by the survey's result on the age of the earth. "The survey of 1,000 ... also found that ministers are almost evenly split on whether the earth is thousands of years old."

Why such high numbers for the former, but not the latter?

Over the last century, Christians have found new ways of approaching the conversation of an old earth. Given the direction of research and scientific consensus, theological positions have taken on creative solutions, such as the Day Age Theory, in which the days of Genesis 1 are seen as ages. This allows for an old earth, according to this position, and a special creation of Adam and Eve without evolution.

The idea of human evolution, however, has not taken a hiatus in the discussion. In recent years, the growing evidence for evolution has prompted more conversation, confrontation and surveys.

Read the rest over at HuffPo Science

iPad 3 set to ship in March

2012-01-19T08:42:00.000-06:00

For you fellow members of the Apple ~~Cult~~ Fan Club:

Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s next iPad, expected to go on sale in March, will sport a high-definition screen, run a faster processor and work with next-generation wireless networks, according to three people familiar with the product...

...The company’s manufacturing partners in Asia started ramping up production of the iPad 3 this month and plan to reach full volumes by February, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the details aren’t public. The tablet will use a quad-core chip, an enhancement that lets users jump more quickly between applications, two of the people said.
The Cupertino, California-based company has been working on making the iPad compatible with a wireless standard called long- term evolution, or LTE, said one of the people. Carriers such as Verizon Wireless (VZ) and ATT Inc. (T) are rolling out LTE networks to give users faster access to data...

...Apple is bringing LTE to the iPad before the iPhone because the tablet has a bigger battery and can better support the power requirements of the newer technology, said one of the people...

...The new display is capable of greater resolution than the current iPad, with more pixels on its screen than some high- definition televisions, the person said. The pixels are small enough to make the images look like printed material, according to the person. Videos begin playing almost instantly because of the additional graphics processing, the person said.

Teaching without Wikipedia, egads!

2012-01-19T08:32:00.000-06:00

Yesterday's blackout of Wikipedia in solidarity with a national protect against SOPA and PIPA has some educators thinking:

Five or six years ago at a faculty meeting a colleague, the sort of person who can only be described as an “old school educator,” argued for a college-wide ban on Wikipedia. Another colleague, a highly distinguished scholar and teacher, looked at me in shock and asked the question we were all thinking:

How can I teach without Wikipedia?

I think the difference is not that one was a good teacher and the other bad nor that one was willing to do the work of teaching and the other not. Indeed, I would wager a bet that a look at my Wikipedia-dependent colleague’s teaching record would show an exceptional educator. It is just that she relies on Wikipedia for many of the facts (what year was Weber born? when did Marx write the Manifesto), and spends her time preparing courses that are not just a collection of facts, but rather a set of analytical tools for exploring the world around us.

By this point in time, nearly all of us rely on Wikipedia for the facts, and not just educators. Want to know if you should buy an Austin Mini? Is Continental Airlines still in business? Thinking about going crabbing? What equipment do you need? Got bedbugs? What about Valentine’s Day? These are all important questions that many of us want or need to know NOW and Wikipedia is there to answer those questions. And I’m not going to even mention how much my teenagers use Wikipedia to complete their homework assignments.

Which leads me to wonder, how many of us out here do rely on Wikipedia for the "little things."

Stephen Colbert and Bill Moyers

2012-01-11T13:18:00.000-06:00

Two of my favorite public personalities! Together!

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Stephen Colbert on Pain

2012-01-09T10:06:00.000-06:00

There's some wisdom here. From a big NYT profile of the TV host:

In 1974, when Colbert was 10, his father, a doctor, and his brothers Peter and Paul, the two closest to him in age, died in a plane crash while flying to a prep school in New England. “There’s a common explanation that profound sadness leads to someone’s becoming a comedian, but I’m not sure that’s a proven equation in my case,” he told me. “I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so.” He added, in a tone so humble and sincere that his character would never have used it: “She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain — it’s that the pain is actually a gift. What’s the option? God doesn’t really give you another choice.”

Doug Wilson on Driscoll's "Real Marriage"

2012-01-09T08:52:00.001-06:00

Doug Wilson:

Words written are easier to interact with (and be concerned about) than words unwritten. Pastors like Driscoll frequently get in trouble for things they write and say. This book has been called "dangerous." In the meantime, other pastors rarely get in trouble for things they didn't write and didn't say. But -- and here I am convinced that the Driscolls are exactly right -- a lot of damage has been caused by the church's unwillingness to address certain topics, an unwillingness to bring the whole counsel of God to bear on this subject. Silence is also dangerous. Sex is volatile. Writing about it can blow up on you. But not writing about it can do the same thing. But the damage that is caused by the sin of silent omission is untraceable, it cannot be pinned on anybody. People are just as hurt and just as damaged, and no pastoral fingerprints anywhere. Nobody is going to lose their job over it.

I am a small town pastor, and I think I have pretty much seen it all. In other settings, I can only imagine . . . and I would rather not. One of the things I have seen (in close conjunction with the sexual messes people get into) is that silence doesn't help anybody.

In short, to reapply something D.L. Moody once said, "I like his way of doing it better than other people's way of not doing it."

...Stipulate whatever distance you might think exists between what Scripture says about sex and what the Driscolls say about it. That is a distance that would be a lot shorter if our translations hadn't done a lot of tidying up for us. A Victorian Bowlderization taint continues down to the present. Pastor Mark might not get invited to your conference now, but -- truth be told -- neither would Pastor Ezekiel. Actually, we would invite Ezekiel because our inerrancy statement says we have to, but we would probably arrange for him to speak with a video feed on a ten-second delay.

...All this said, please don't assume that I won't be expressing disagreements with Real Marriage, up to and including significant disagreements. The Driscolls anticipate that, and welcome it. It is only to say that I, for one, appreciate the opportunity that he and Grace have created to talk about these things. The fact that these things would never be talked about in your church does not mean they are not going on. In short, this is a good opportunity-- but only if we receive it as such. The publication of this book is an event that God wants the whole evangelical world to use as an opportunity for sexual stewardship. That won't happen if we try to shout it down.

9 Questions to Diagnose Theological Health

2012-01-09T08:01:00.001-06:00

I enjoyed these questions assembled by Tony Reinke:

Richard Gaffin, WTJ 38.3 (1975), 299:

How many believers today understand themselves with the apostle as those “upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor 10:11)?

How many experience that they are members of God’s eschatological kingdom not only at hand but already present?

How many grasp with some perception of its vast implications that in the interim between the resurrection and return of Christ the existence of the church in the world is determined by the overlapping tension between this age and the age to come?

Richard Gaffin, JETS 41.4 (1998), 585:

How many believers today recognize that the present work of the Spirit within the Church and in their lives is of one piece with God’s great work of restoring the entire creation, begun in sending his Son “in the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4) and to be consummated at his return?

How many Christians grasp that in union with Christ, the life-giving Spirit, the Christian life in its entirety is essentially and necessarily resurrection life?

How many comprehend that in terms of Paul’s fundamental anthropological distinction between “the inner” and “outer man” (2 Cor 4:16), between “heart” and “body,” believers at the core of their being will never be any more resurrected than they already are?

Richard Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight (2006), 75:

How many Christians understand that the Holy Spirit presently at work in them is nothing less than resurrection power, that the Spirit, through whom God “will give life to your mortal bodies,” is “his Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11)?

How many believers grasp that the Holy Spirit indwelling them is an eschatological power, that, in terms of the metaphors Paul uses, he in his activity in the church is an actual “down payment” on our eschatological inheritance (2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5; Eph. 1:14), the “firstfruits” of the full “harvest” of his eschatological working (Rom. 8:23)?

How many appreciate that Christ himself, as “life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45), is present and at work in our lives in his resurrection power?

Laura Ziesel on how to Learn from Imperfect People

2012-01-07T12:23:00.004-06:00

"Take the meat but pick out the bones."

Read the rest here.

10 Day Special on All Crossway Ebooks

2012-01-06T09:05:00.000-06:00

Crossway:

Book lovers know there’s nothing quite like a brand new stack of books. With crisp pages not yet turned for the first time, it’s as if they’re calling to you!
Those of you just now experimenting with a digital reader, have you experienced the same? Here’s your chance to download a virtual stack of Crossway ebooks at a great price.
For the next ten days every ebook will be priced at $5.99 or less on Crossway.org.
Browse for the books that are calling to you and look for the ebook version in the “Other Formats” box. After the checkout process you can download your preferred format straight from your virtual bookshelf.
Blessings on your 2012 reading!

Driscoll's "Real Marriage"...

2012-01-03T20:18:00.001-06:00

...is generating a bit of heat.

Denny Burk reviews Real Marriage

Rachel Held Evans reviews Real Marriage

Carl Trueman on Eph. 5:12 and a tangential reference to Real Marriage

Anyone else out there I missed?

Here's the link to the book.

Sacred Techs: New blog for fans of the bible and technology

2012-01-03T17:48:00.000-06:00

Go check it out...Sacred Techs.

Great name for a blog by the way.

(Really Brief) Book Review: Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America by Stanley Hauerwas

2012-01-02T23:04:00.002-06:00

Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America by Stanley M. Hauerwas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great read from Hauerwas. The first part of the book contains several essays which challenge us to think about the way we read the bible, especially as Americans. Neither fundamentalists nor liberals are spared Hauerwas' withering and critical eye. The back half of the book is a collection of sermons, all of which are convicting and powerful.

Books of the Year

2012-01-01T20:56:00.000-06:00

Scot McKnight over at Jesus Creed lists his books of the year for 2011. James K.A. Smith over at Fors Clavigera does the same. I would definitely recommend all three of the books at Smith's blog.

They've both got some great books listed.

A (Very Brief) History of the Modern Calendar

2012-01-01T20:50:00.000-06:00

Martin Luther: Gen. 1:21 "And God created great sea animals..."

2011-12-31T11:58:00.000-06:00

It is fun to read the reflections of Luther on the creation of the flora and fauna. Luther of course did not possess the scientific knowledge and evolutionary worldview that we now possess, so it might sound like I am poking fun at him by drawing attention to his Genesis commentary and his musings. But that is not my intention at all. It is simply fun to see a theologian from times past try to work out what in the world is going on in nature and how God relates to it, that's all.

Here's Luther:

The question can be raised here why he mentions only the sea monsters by name. Similarly the Scripture rarely makes mention of any but the larger fish. Familiar are the leviathan and the dragons in Job and in other passages of Scripture. But it is certain that this is the name given to whales, dolphins, and other larger fish, some of which have something similar to wings, like the dolphin, which is like a king of the ocean, although he does not surpass others in size. For that matter, neither the eagle, king of birds, nor the lion, king of the quadrupeds, surpasses others in size.

I believe the reason for this is that we should know that such large bodies are the works of God, lest we be frightened by their size and believe that they are apparitions. Then it is easy to conclude that since such large bodies were created by God, the smaller fish (such as herring, trout, carp, and others) were also created by God. Let him who wishes read chapter forty-one of Job. There it is clearly noted how the Holy Spirit, through that poet, praises the amazing monster leviathan, whose strength and courage is such that it takes no notice even of arrows. Descriptions of this kind open our eyes and buoy up our faith that we may more readily believe that God can preserve us too, even though we are far smaller beings.

Here questions are raised also about the mice and the dormice, whence they originate and how. Indeed, we have learned from experience that not even ships which are continually floating on the sea are safe from mice. Likewise, no house can be so thoroughly cleaned that no mice are produced in it. We can also inquire about the manner in which flies come into existence. Likewise, where the birds go in fall.

But so far as mice are concerned, Aristotle states that certain animals are produced by their like, others by their unlike. Thus mice belong to the kind produced by their unlike, because mice originate not from mice alone but also from decay, which is used up and gradually turns into a mouse.

If you should ask by what power such a generation takes place, Aristotle has the answer that the decayed moisture is kept warm by the heat of the sun and that in this way a living being is produced, just as we see dung beetles being brought into existence from horse manure. I doubt that this is a satisfactory explanation. The sun warms; but it would bring nothing into being unless God said by His divine power: “Let a mouse come out of the decay.” Therefore the mouse, too, is a divine creature and, in my judgment, of a watery nature and, as it were, a land bird; otherwise it would have the form of a monster, and its kind would not be preserved. But for its kind it has a very beautiful form—such pretty feet and such delicate hair that it is clear that it was created by the Word of God with a definite plan in view. Therefore here, too, we admire God’s creation and workmanship. The same thing may be said about flies.

About birds I surely have no knowledge. It is not likely that they go to regions lying more toward the south, inasmuch as from experience it has been learned that the swallows lie dead in the waters throughout the winter and return to life at springtime. This is truly a weighty proof of our resurrection. Therefore I think that birds are preserved either in trees or in waters. These works of the Divine Majesty are plainly miraculous. So we see them, and yet we do not understand them. But I think that even if someday a species should perish (but I doubt that this can happen), it would nevertheless be replaced by God.

Thus there belong to the creation of the Fifth day all the creeping, gliding, and flying beings, and such as move by any other method, either in the air or in the water.

Martin Luther, vol. 1, Luther's Works, Vol. 1 : Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 1-5, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann, Luther's Works (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), Ge 1:21.

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T11:09:00.002-06:00

(Really Brief) Book Review: Soul Work: Confession of a Part-Time Monk by Randy Harris

2011-12-30T23:38:00.000-06:00

Soul Work: Confessions of a Part-time Monk by Randy Harris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a great book by Harris--a really fun little introduction (as only Harris can) to the contemplative life. Once again (just like his other book "God Work") Harris writes a book that is witty and largely autobiographical in nature, which makes it a quick and interesting read. If your prayer life is flagging and you need a smart and fun guide towards recovery, this is a fun place to start.

(Really Brief) Book Review: The Churches of Christ: Student Edition by Richard T. Hughes

2011-12-30T14:58:00.000-06:00

The Churches of Christ: Student Edition by Richard T. Hughes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Churches of Christ: Student Edition is a somewhat distilled version of Hughes' excellent Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America. From now on, this book will be my "go-to" treatment for anyone who asks me for a history of the Churches of Christ in the United States. Hughes does a fantastic job of letting important voices from this tradition speak. I was familiar with most of this information, but was surprised by the amount of detail he was able to cover in a short amount of space. In my opinion, this book should be read by all members of the Churches of Christ and those who are interested in the history, hermeneutical approaches, and theological directions of Churches of Christ. Particularly helpful are the fifth through seventh chapters, which help to explain the current tension between the progressive/conservative or sectarian/ecumenical members of the tradition. Those who want the more expanded treatment (with lots of great photos) should consult his longer book, mentioned above.

(Really Brief) Book Review: The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight

2011-12-29T16:45:00.003-06:00

The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited by Scot McKnight

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

McKnight's book was excellent and addresses the important distinction between what the Gospel is and what the "plan of salvation" is. Because the two are often confounded, McKnight's book is an important corrective. If distinguishing between the two makes you wonder why the need to distinguish between them at all, then this might be the book for you...

Historical Naïveté and the "Virgin Birth Hypothesis" of the Churches of Christ

2011-12-29T14:04:00.000-06:00

Jen Walters has a nice post reflecting on what I call the "virgin birth hypothesis" of how Churches of Christ came to be. She does a good job explaining the existential angst one experiences when finding out the historical roots of the denomination known as the Churches of Christ.

She writes:

For those who may be unfamiliar with this myth, it runs something like this: After the death of Jesus, the “true church” was established (as per the opening chapters of the Acts of the Apostles). The apostles continued this tradition until they died and handed it on to their successors. However, at some point in the first few centuries of Christianity, the “pristine” tradition was corrupted as people began arguing about doctrines that were not addressed in Scripture (i.e. the nature of the trinity, etc…). This resulted in all the councils and creeds of the early church, which established a tradition of exalting the “doctrines of humans” (i.e. creeds) alongside the “doctrines of God” (i.e. Scripture). And things only get worse from there. There was a general decline of the tradition all the way up to the Protestant Reformation.

Thus far, there is nothing necessarily remarkable about the Church of Christ (CofC) version of history. Most Protestant traditions adhere to some form of the “general decline” of the original tradition up until the Protestant Reformation. The distinction of Church of Christ history telling is that the Protestant Reformation actually made the problem worse rather than correcting it. This is a post facto conclusion based on the fractured state of the Protestant tradition: there are many denominations that split from one another after the Reformation because they disagreed about human doctrines, creeds, and statements of faith. But even that isn’t the most ridiculous part of CofC re-written history.

The most egregious act of changing history in the CofC narrative is this: all throughout the history of Christianity, in spite of the decline and all the fracturing, the pure tradition of the early church was somehow preserved, and the result of that preservation is the present day Church of Christ. The details of this history are hazy: was there an actual body of Christians all along who called themselves the “Church of Christ” and believed what we do? (Some people would actually answer “yes” to this question). Or was the true teaching simply preserved, even by people who practiced other things?

Inevitably, the inquiring mind will reach a point in conversation with a true CofC party liner where the answer will be something like this: “Well, I don’t know how exactly it happened, I just know that the CofC didn’t come from all those other churches. Our history goes straight back to Jesus.” I know this because, even during my teenage years, I was trying to reconcile the history of western culture (including Christianity) that I was learning in school with what I had heard about my own church’s tradition. I knew it didn’t add up, and I wanted someone to explain to me how we knew about this “secret tradition” of the CofC that bypassed all other churches and went all the way to Jesus. Needless to say, no one could; but that didn’t change their minds about the veracity of the narrative.

For anyone who has actually taken any effort whatsoever to learn about the history of the CofC (or more broadly this history of Christianity in America), this narrative is utterly ridiculous. In fact, the origin of the CofC is not shrouded in mystery or “hidden” from the history books; it is well known. We have plentiful documentary evidence from Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, and others from which we can trace the development of their own thought that led them from previous denominational (Presbyterian, Baptist) affiliation to starting a new movement that came to be known as the CofC.

The really fascinating thing about this piece of CofC myth is that the original founders named above had no such notion. They knew exactly what they were doing: they were doing something new (i.e. not receiving a preserved tradition) in bypassing human creeds and going “back to the Bible”. (By “new” I do not mean they were the first to think that their movement was restoring original Christianity; they certainly were not. I simply mean they thought what they were doing was unique. They were not consciously building on any previous tradition.) Thus, the myth of origin developed later as the CofC attempted to reconcile its own identity as the “true” church over and against other Christian churches. And, apparently, it was troubling to some people that the supposed “true” church had simply emerged out of “the denominations” (the CofC way of referring to all other Protestants who were not the true church) in a concrete historical setting. Hence the need to invent a new history that removed the entire idea of “history” in favor of an idealistic myth to explain the CofC origin.

The most frightening thing about this myth is its prevalence. In other words, the myth replaced the truth; history was re-written. The true history of events was, of course, not entirely forgotten (as it was in 1984); but it is astonishing how widespread the origin myth is among CofC adherents. Now, I admit that I can only speak from anecdotal evidence, and I have not systematically sought out the prevalence of this myth in any way. I know that there will likely be CofC people out there who never heard this concept expressed because despite its consistency (for the most part) in its worship practices, concepts about CofC identity are not uniform among geographic regions. But I do know that throughout my entire life as a member of the CofC, even throughout my attendance at Harding (a CofC university), I had never once heard the names of the Campbells or Barton Stone, and I had never heard the terms “Restoration Movement” or “Stone-Campbell Movement”.

She goes on to recount how she shook of the myth in her time as a grad student at Abilene Christian. Read the rest of her post here.

Narrative in the Hebrew Bible: Taking Humanity Seriously

2011-12-29T12:32:00.000-06:00

John Goldingay:

It is the nature of its faith that constitutes one major reason why the Old Testament is dominated by narrative. But the narrative is far longer than it needed to be in order simply to expound the significance of this sequence of events as a gospel. It is discursive and sprawling in nature. Further, it does not merely give a consistently relaxed, lengthy account of its gospel story. It is uneven in its discursiveness. Something similar is true of the New Testament. The Old Testament’s narrative discursiveness suggests further significances attaching to its narrative form.

...it reflects the fact that God takes humanity with great seriousness. The Old Testament story is not merely God’s story. From the beginning it is the story of God and humanity, a story in which humanity has a key role to play in the achievement of God’s purpose in the world. It becomes in particular the story of God and Israel. It is a story that could not exist without God’s initiatives and responses (positive and negative) but also could not exist without Israel’s responses and initiatives (negative and positive). In its continuation in the New Testament, God’s concern with the whole world again comes into focus, and Israel again contributes in paradoxically complex ways to its frustrating and outworking.

The negative side to the human and divine acts makes the path toward the achievement of that purpose tortuous. The Bible could have been much shorter if God’s purpose in the world had found fulfillment by sovereign fiat, independently of humanity, but this was not God’s approach (because the nature of that purpose made this impossible?). Theological significance thus attaches to humanity’s role in the Old Testament story and not only to God’s role. While this human role is often negative, as when Eve says “yes” to the serpent, it is not always so. It had been designed to be positive, and often becomes so. God works through and with human beings as well as despite them. An account of the Old Testament’s plot thus needs to be augmented with the part the human beings play:

God began.
Humanity turned its back on God’s instructions, and God started over.
God promised, and a family grew.
Israel cried out, and God delivered.
God sealed, and Israel imperiled.
God gave, and Israel took.
Israel equivocated, and God accommodated.
Israel turned away, and God wrestled.
God preserved, and Israel turned back.

John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, Volume 1: Israel's Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 35-36.

Nacherzählung

2011-12-29T12:11:00.000-06:00

“Re-telling [Nacherzählung] remains the most legitimate form of theological discourse in the Old Testament.”

--Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: Harper, 1962, 1965), 1:121.

A People with a Story

2011-12-29T12:06:00.000-06:00

John Goldingay:

It is of the essence of Israel to be a people with a story. In the Old Testament, a “people” may be a group with a common religion and/or covenant and/or territory and/or government and/or kinship and/or literature. Yet most of these visions deconstruct. The people does not adhere to its religion. It exists before it has a land, and then loses it. It breaks its covenant. It is ambivalent about its monarchy. It welcomes other people into its midst and undermines its kinship base. But irreducibly it is a group that has a common story, and the Old Testament story is the one that identifies Israel as Israel. It is a people defined by promise, deliverance, meeting, commitments and migration, and later by political development, political division, religious apostasy, geographical dislocation and the attempt to rebuild. The Old Testament tells us who God is and who we are through the ongoing story of God’s relationship with Israel.

Much twentieth-century Old Testament scholarship was concerned with establishing what was unique about the faith of Israel, with the implication that the Old Testament’s significance lay here. If particular Israelite beliefs were the same as Canaanite beliefs, they seemed less important. One of the ways scholarship articulated Israel’s uniqueness was by describing biblical faith as linear rather than cyclic. In reality, there are cyclic aspects to biblical faith as there are linear aspects to other faiths. A faith needs to combine the two if it is to resonate with human experience. The lives of individuals, societies and communities have a time line, a beginning and a middle and an end, but human experience also has cyclic or recurrent features such as the daily round of night and day and the yearly round of the seasons. Yet whether or not biblical faith is uniquely and thoroughly linear, it is certainly intrinsically and characteristically so. Linearity is an essential and central feature of it. It believes that certain events in the past were determinative for the present of the people who wrote and read the Scriptures and for the present and future of the world itself. Understanding the nature of these events is therefore of key importance for the people of God and the world.

The significance of the Old Testament’s story thus lies not merely in the fact that it is a linear narrative, whether or not this is a unique feature of Old Testament faith. It lies in the actual story it tells. The central feature of the Old Testament is that it tells Israel’s story. Along the way, if aspects of Old Testament faith are the same as aspects of Canaanite faith, that does not make them of questionable or limited significance. Indeed, we might turn this argument on its head and suggest we would expect God not to have left other peoples unaware of the basic truths about God. People such as Amos and Paul certainly make some such assumption. But the specific Old Testament story is of unique and decisive importance for the whole world, not least because it is the story that leads up to Jesus.

The New Testament thus follows the pattern of the Old Testament and again kick-starts its story. The explicit New Testament core story is its “gospel” or good news that “the time is fulfilled: God’s reign has drawn near” (Mk 1:15), or that “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16), though the latter is not actually described as a “gospel.” The explicit Old Testament gospel is that “your God is reigning.… Yhwh has comforted his people, restored Jerusalem, bared his holy arm in the sight of all the nations” (Is 52:7–10; it is from the Greek translation of this passage that the verb euangelizomai “bring good news” comes into Christian usage). Both are part of the biblical gospel, if we may use that term to refer to the macronarrative that may be inferred from the two Testaments as a whole. This gospel begins at the opening of the Old Testament and runs through its story into the New Testament. And “being a Christian or a Jew is not so much a matter of subscribing to one’s community’s core doctrines as of affirming its core story.” The biblical gospel is not a collection of timeless statements such as God is love. It is a narrative about things God has done.

John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, Volume 1: Israel's Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 30-31.

Claus Westermann on the universality of creation stories

2011-12-29T08:51:00.000-06:00

Claus Westermann

The work of the theologians, the students of religion, and the ethnologists from the 17th century right up to the present has demonstrated that stories of the creation of the world and of mankind are spread over the whole earth and throughout the whole of humanity; they reach from the oldest, primitive cultures to the high cultures and beyond. No other statement about God or a god has such a broad geographical and chronological dissemination. Moreover, what they say about the creator and creation retains its own vital import even when all other statements about God fade or disappear. This is most striking in the western Enlightenment, where reflection on creator and creation outlasted all other theological themes.

When the parallels to Gen 1 were first made known, Christian theologians, almost without exception, regarded them as a threat to the revelation of the biblical story of creation. The interpreters of the Bible put themselves into a state of siege and took up an attitude which prejudged the question and which sought to demonstrate the unique character or the religious superiority of the biblical account. This apologetic mentality persists today among certain evangelical, Catholic, and Jewish interpreters.

We must ask if this apologetic attitude really does justice to the biblical texts. The question should rather be: Could not the agreement between the biblical and non-biblical accounts in this area make a positive contribution to our contemporary understanding of the biblical texts? So put, the question leaves us open to ask whether the Christian confession in God the Creator does not serve to link the Christian with so many other people both of today and of all stages in the history of humanity. Only then, as part of the confession of faith, does it fulfil its special function in coordination with the second and third articles of the Creed.

Claus Westermann, A Continental Commentary: Genesis 1-11 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 19-20.

Claus Westermann; Towards a theology of the genealogies in Genesis

2011-12-29T08:35:00.000-06:00

Claus Westermann

The genealogies do not speak of any special action of God; nor are they given any theological coloring or brought into any relationship with God’s action. If this separation were significant then one would have to regard the genealogies as completely secular. Are they secular or religious?

P relates the genealogies very clearly to the work of God in the blessing and its commission: “Be fruitful and multiply,” 1:28. The effect of the blessing is described in the genealogies. What is valid for P is valid also for J though no express blessing is found in his story. The creator made humans with the potentiality to increase their kind; this god-given dynamism is effective in the succession of new births which the genealogies report. It is the blessing that actualizes this potentiality, that makes possible the succession of births, and the names given to the two children in J, 4:1 and 25, point to God’s power at work.

The effectiveness of God’s blessing is the continuation of his creative power. It is to be distinguished clearly from God’s saving action. The blessing is effective in the quiet, steady march of growth, expansion, prosperity and fertility. There are no particular accomplishments to be noted; when a child is born, grows, becomes an adult and in turn begets a child, the power is at work. Later we can deal with the varied and complicated history of the blessing; here it is sufficient to note how the basic structure of the genealogies in Gen 1–11 treats of the effectiveness of God’s blessing. Von Rad writes in his introduction to Gen 5, “Now nothing more is said about … the blessing of man …” The contrary is the case. In 1:28* the first couple is told to “be fruitful and multiply.…” This blessing is effective as they increase and multiply through the genealogies of ch. 5. Nor can one say that “for J the primeval story is the story of disaster and curse” (R. Rendtorff, “Hermeneutische Probleme der Urgeschichte,” Festschr. F. Smend, 1963, 22). J reports in the genealogies the continual effectiveness of the blessing after the man and the woman have been driven out of the garden, and this is expressed very clearly by the words of praise when names are given to the children in 4:1 and 25.

Claus Westermann, A Continental Commentary: Genesis 1-11 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 17-18.

The picture of my funeral...

2011-12-28T21:28:00.002-06:00

Too legit. Couldn't help riffing a bit on North Korea...though I suppose that's a little mean. I repent.

"Out of Ur" blog on Rob Bell's departure from Mars Hill

2011-12-28T07:59:00.000-06:00

Out of Ur:

This week marks the end of Rob Bell's leadership of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Bell is moving on to new callings in California including creating a television show.
A few weeks ago he said his goodbyes to the congregation he founded and which provided him the platform to speak to Christians around the world. Bell wrote a lengthy farewell epistle to Mars Hill containing his parting wisdom and gratitude. I've excerpted a few sections of the letter below for you to respond to.

On a big God:

i have tried to teach you about a big God, who holds all things, including us, in an unconditional, loving embrace. i have tried to teach and model for you an unswerving hope and trust, that change and risk and leaps of faith are normal and at times absolutely necessary for our growth and the continued expansion of our hearts. so when, in this change, this loss, this transition, this departure, you have responded time
and time again with largeness of spirit and bigness of heart, with confidence that the God who got you this far is fully capable of taking you the rest of the way, deeply attuned to your own emotions and responses and at the very same time convinced that everybody will be just fine because what could possibly separate us from the love we’ve tasted and experienced, the love of Christ that holds and sustains us all?

On a nuanced faith:

for many people, the simple dualisms of right and wrong and good and bad are the sole prism, the lens, through which they look for God in the world. so if things go well, then ’God is good’ is how the thinking goes, and if things don’t go well, all kinds of questions arise about God and hope and faith and was it all just a grand illusion in the first place?
the life we’ve found together, however, is far more subtle, nuanced, and complex than those simple dualisms, and i’ve seen you discover this deep well of insight as it shapes you in profound ways.

On the divinity and humanity of Jesus:

you have taught me not to fear the full spectrum of human experience but to embrace it, to celebrate it, to wallow in it and soar with it. many Christians are eager to point out that Jesus said he was the son of God and that’s the wedge issue, the crux of the faith, the divisive point you have to take a stand on. i believe he is. and in the same breath, i remind you that he also referred to himself a shocking number of times as
the ‘son of man.’ you know what ’son of man’ means?
human.
now that’s shocking. take a stand on that.
what he stressed, what he thought was a big deal, what he called himself time and time again, was son of man. it is a big deal for a human to be divine, but if you’re looking to provoke, and if you want to focus in on astounding claims he made about himself, how about the mind-bendingly revolutionary claim of the divine being human?
On responding to critics and the emptiness of doctrine alone:
i write this to you because of how many of you have been challenged about your participation in the life of this church, often with the accusation: but what do they believe over there at mars hill?
as if belief, getting the words right, is the highest form of faith.
Jesus came to give us life. a living, breathing, throbbing, pulsating blow your hair back/tingle your spine/roll the windows down and drive fast/experience of God right here, right now.
word taking on flesh and blood.
and so you’ve found yourself defending and explaining and trying to find the words for your experience which is fundamentally about a reality that is beyond and more than words.
so when you find yourselves tied up in knots, having long discussions about who believes what, a bit like dogs doing that sniff circle when they meet on the sidewalk, do this:
take out a cup and some bread
and put it in the middle of the table,
and say a prayer and examine yourselves
and then make sure everybody’s rent is paid and there’s food in their fridge and clothes on their backs and then invite everybody to say ‘yes’ to the resurrected Christ with whatever ‘yes’ they can muster in the moment and then you take that bread and you dip it in that cup in the ancient/future hope and trust that there is a new creation bursting forth right here right now and then together taste that new life and liberation and forgiveness and as you look those people in the eyes gathered around that table from all walks of life and you see the new humanity, sinners saved by grace, beggars who have found bread showing the others beggars where they found it
and in that moment space
place
remind yourselves that
this is what you
believe.
remember, the movement is word to flesh.
beware of those who will take the flesh and want to turn it back into words

Index to the Talmud

2011-12-28T07:40:00.000-06:00

This is helpful!

The Talmud is a formidable body of work: 63 volumes of rabbinical discourse and disputation that form Judaism’s central scripture after the Torah. It has been around for 1,500 years and is studied every day by tens of thousands of Jews. But trying to navigate through its coiling labyrinth can be enormously difficult because the one thing this monumental work lacks is a widely accepted and accessible index.

But now that breach has been filled, or so claims the publisher of HaMafteach, or the Key, a guide to the Talmud, available in English and Hebrew. It was compiled not by a white-bearded sage, but by a courtly, clean-shaven, tennis-playing immigration lawyer from the Bronx.

The index’s publisher, Feldheim Publishers, predicts it will be snatched up by yeshivas and libraries, but more important, it will be a tool for inveterate Talmud students — and there are plenty of those. Feldheim’s president, Yitzchak Feldheim, said the first printing of 2,000 books — a market test — sold out in a few days here and in Israel. More printings have been ordered.

The index has 6,600 topical entries and 27,000 subtopical entries that point students to the treatises and pages of text they are seeking.

In these passages, sages analyze matters like whether one can remarry a former wife after she has been betrothed to another, or how one should handle a lost object found in a garbage heap. The index guides the student to significant laws about Sabbath and daily observance, as well as maxims, parables, commentaries and Talmudic personalities.

The English version costs $29.99, and the Hebrew, $24.99.

Read through the GNT in one year

2011-12-28T06:53:00.001-06:00

Reading plans are available here and here.

Getting "Thielicke-d"

2011-12-27T19:46:00.001-06:00

Reading chapter 3 of Helmut Thielicke's classic A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, I was reminded about the theological student "...under a considerable display of the apparatus of exegetical science and surrounded by the air of the uninitiated, produces paralyzing and unhappy trivialities..."

Which prompted me to ask my sweet and enduring wife Rachel who was in the other room watching Netflix..."honey, am I a 'Debbie Downer' as a theological student?"

Gratifyingly she said no.

"You're more like a critical Karl..." she followed up.

....

Stanley Hauerwas on "church growth strategies"

2011-12-27T18:46:00.002-06:00

He seemingly ~~hates~~ dislikes them, at least according to his memoir, which makes the book all the more fun to read, especially if you are not fond of "church growth" strategies either.

There's lots of great stuff in Hannah's Child to comment on, so I feel a little guilty isolating Hauerwas' railing against church growth strategies. But perhaps because I am in a denomination that has seen its own fair share of decline in the past 50 years or so, and I know the temptation is always great for ministers to resort to such methods as a way of "growing the church," I have to admit my own disdain for such stuff and admit I got a chuckle out of this part of his memoir.

In the book, Hauerwas recounts the story of the death of a beloved pastor in his home church. The woman was profoundly concerned with the theological and spiritual health of her church and discipleship had evidently flourished. Hauerwas loved her and her leadership. After her death, the district superintendent for the church decided to send a young pastor to get things stirred up, to get numbers up. Here is Hauerwas' account of the ordeal:

A general strategy of church growth became the order of the day. It was assumed that [the church] had potential for growth. Accordingly, we were sent a young person to be our pastor who was as ambitious as she was misdirected. In college she had majored in drama. She applied her theatrical skills in her sermons, which only made them harder to bear. Having more experience in Methodism than I do, Paula [Hauerwas' wife] has lower expectations. But she was even more upset than I was. It was that bad. At the time, Paula was head of the worship committee. The pastor told her that we were too small a church for full services during Holy Week. She said that instead of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Vigil, we would perform a play on Wednesday. Paula told her that she simply could not be part of such a farce.

The outreach and pastor-staff committees were called together to hear her plan for the future. She had been to a church-growth seminar. She told us she knew how to make the church grow.

First, we needed two services. We would have a contemporary service at nine and a more traditional service at eleven. Second, we would have a phone-a-thon, during which we would call 20,000 people at random. That would ensure that the church would attract two hundred new members. Sociologists had confirmed such a result. Finally, we would need to learn that we had been far too close-knit as a church [emphasis added]. New people who came to the church might feel strange. Accordingly, we needed to get used to being a congregation in which people did not know one another well. Most new people would be attracted to the church because of the activities and pastoral services the church could provide, not because of a sense of belonging to a community. I was stunned by her plan for the church. I said little at the meeting, other than blurting out "over my dead body" when she said that she was going to lead a delegation of our members to Willow Creek Church in Chicago to see how a church that had utilized these methods works. The pastor at Willow Creek is said to have once declared that there is no cross in the church because "it gets in the way of the gospel." I could not believe this was happening. It seemed like a joke. Everything I detested about mainline Protestantism in both its liberal and conservative modes had come to roost in the church I loved.

--Stanley Hauerwas. Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir (pp. 258-259). Kindle Edition.

It's a pretty sad tale. Evidently the young pastor graduated from Duke where of course Hauerwas was on faculty (much to his chagrin). I can only imagine the interesting exchange because of that one...(he does hint at a heated exchange a bit in the book).

Christians and the First Testament

2011-12-27T16:33:00.000-06:00

John Goldingay:

There are a number of points where Old Testament faith differs from New Testament faith. It is more interested in creation, the world of the nations and politics; it is more accepting of death and of the ambiguities of human life; it lacks a “positive” picture of life after death or a stress on the Messiah; it understands human sinfulness differently; it stresses reverence for God; it sees us as free to complain at God and to express doubt; it emphasizes enjoyment of everyday family life and food and drink; it values sacramental worship; and it enjoins detailed outward obedience to divine commands. My attitude to such differences is in principle to see them not as points where the New Testament surpasses the Old, but as points where Christians are especially likely to have something to learn. Even where the New may surpass the Old, the church will likely especially need the Old, especially now that the world has gone on for another two millennia since New Testament times, far longer than the period from Abraham to Christ. Over this time the church has not found it possible to live as if God had become incarnate or as if God’s son had been given for it or as if God’s reign had begun, and one can hardly maintain in the third millennium that it might be about to do so. If there is material in Scripture that starts from our stubbornness (so, e.g., Mk 10:5), we still need it. Indeed, only when people have learned to take the Old Testament really seriously can they be entrusted with the story of Jesus, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer more or less argued. The church has reversed that argument and turned Christian faith into a faith that is itself truncated.

--John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, Volume 1: Israel's Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 21.

Daily Bible Reading: God Creates!

2011-12-27T15:05:00.003-06:00

As the old joke goes, theologians don't really read the bible--or so that's what people say. They certainly aren't daily bible readers, right?

Well, I am. Perhaps that's a reflection on the quality of theologian I am.

Nonetheless, I confess that I read through the NRSV every six months. I enjoy it.

Today I started the next six month round of reading. Which means I am back in the marvelous creation mythology of Genesis. Just to spice things up a bit, I decided to read the NRSV and The Message side by side today. I enjoyed the vibrancy of Peterson's translation of Gen. 1:1-2:4 this morning. I thought I might share it with you. Here it is:

In the Mail: New Books

2011-12-27T14:44:00.001-06:00

Recent additions to my theological library include:

Analytical Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology
The Gormenghast Novels
Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices that Transform Us
The Pastor: A Memoir
The complete set of Hermeneia and Continental biblical commentaries (63 vols.) for Logos bible software. This covers the Hebrew bible, Apocrypha, and NT.
John Calvin's commentaries on the bible (46 vols.) for Logos bible software.

I'm very excited about the commentary additions to my library. With these latest commentary additions (and the others I already own) I have a pretty respectable preaching and research library here in my own. What a blessing it is to be able to reach over and grab the tools you need when you need them.

Tim Gombis on Christian Fame as "Platform"

2011-12-27T10:37:00.000-06:00

Good thoughts here from Tim Gombis that will help guide water cooler chatter the next time Tim Tebow is grist for the meal:

I’ve been considering the question of whether or not Christian athletes should use their well-knownness as a “platform” to speak about Christian faith.

I’ve indicated that I think they should not do this. I’ll elaborate on a third consideration here and in a subsequent post turn to some constructive comments about how well-known athletes can embody Christian faithfulness.

It seems to me that this strategy doesn’t consider wisely our current cultural climate.
It doesn’t take seriously our media-saturated culture of cynicism and its familiarity with well-worn manipulative evangelistic strategies.

Cynicism about evangelical Christians in American public life has as long of a history as does evangelism, going back at least to Sinclair Lewis’s novel,Elmer Gantry (1927).
More recently, movies like “Saved” and evangelical characters on TV sitcoms point to a culture tired with evangelicals inappropriately exploiting opportunities to inject canned evangelistic messages. Our wider culture views American evangelicals as judgmental, manipulative, superficial, and offensive.

And it won’t do to identify this kind of public profile with the persecution of early Christians or the offense of the cross.

Early Christians were persecuted because their alternative lifestyle was perceived as a threat to the imperial economic order.

And the offense of the cross had to do with the gospel’s call to embrace weakness and humility, to worship as lord the One who had disappointed corrupted Jewish messianic expectations.

In contrast to this, contemporary evangelicals have this public image—rightly or wrongly—because of their participation in the culture wars of the last forty years and a history of evangelistic strategies shaped by manipulative salesmanship.

Our culture perceives evangelical behavior as offensive, not the gospel.

We can claim that this is unfair or we might wish to put forward better examples of genuine evangelical Christianity. At some point, however, we’ve got to reckon with this reality.
Given this cultural context, it may actually be counter-productive for Christian athletes to use their well-knownness as a “platform” to speak of Christian faith.

Despite their good intentions, our culture is more apt to identify them as an advocate for one side in the culture war than as a gracious exponent of genuine Christian faith.

An Advent Respite

2011-12-23T09:26:00.000-06:00

Boticelli, The Birth of Christ (1500)

Good Merry to you, dear readers. I'm taking a brief hiatus from blogging and technology, to clear my mind and heart and wait in expectation with the Church. Thank you for reading with me this year and the Lord's mercy on you and your household!

Psalm 96

O sing to the Lord a new song;
   sing to the Lord, all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
   tell of his salvation from day to day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
   his marvellous works among all the peoples.
For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
   he is to be revered above all gods.
For all the gods of the peoples are idols,
   but the Lord made the heavens.
Honour and majesty are before him;
   strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
   ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
   bring an offering, and come into his courts.
Worship the Lord in holy splendour;
   tremble before him, all the earth.

Say among the nations, ‘The Lord is king!
   The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved.
   He will judge the peoples with equity.’
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
   let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
   let the field exult, and everything in it.
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
   before the Lord; for he is coming,
   for he is coming to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
   and the peoples with his truth.

Krista Tippett's "On Being" interviews Walter Brueggemann

2011-12-22T11:33:00.000-06:00

American Public Media's On Being is one of my favorite shows on NPR. It's consistently good and Tippett is a wonderful, sensitive, and thoughtful interviewer.

I was thrilled to see that this week's show feature's Walter Brueggemann! Two of my favorite thinkers in conversation? Nice!

Seventeen Seconds

2011-12-21T17:26:00.001-06:00

Seventeen Seconds is the title of The Cure's second studio album, and it marks the moment when their future sound finally started to gel.

I've been listening to it while doing some recreational reading this afternoon.

As an album from my favorite band, it's a moody album (of course, that might be the case for most of their productions) and it's also an extremely important album in my opinion because I think it marks the first time frontman Robert Smith finally stepped into the producer's seat and accomplished his vision for what The Cure should sound like, which I recognize as the sound for most all later Cure albums.

In fact, there's this moment, right after the instrumental intro to the B side, when "A Forest" begins, and I fancy that this is the moment in musical history when the Cure sound was born. It's a remarkable song on a remarkable album, and though the album is not the most well-known among the Cure discography, I think it's really quite important.

Does this album and "A Forest" mark the beginning of the The Cure's greatness? Maybe, in a way. There are certainly other markers that would serve as the turning point. Certainly Robert Smith gathering his confidence and vowing never again to let anyone else take control of album production (after their somewhat-flawed first studio album Three Imaginary Boys). But I'd rather pin it on a musical moment. I think "A Forest" is it:

Fans will note that Smith's hair is a wee bit shorter, there's no lipstick and eyeliner and overall, he has a very clean cut look when compared with later iterations of Robert Smith, which is fun...

I love it when poetry gets controversial

2011-12-21T08:32:00.001-06:00

That blog title is not a punchline. I love poetry, and when it is exciting enough for things to go "Boom"!--then all the better:

American poetry circles have seen nothing like this since the teeth-gnashing of the“Foetry” skirmish in 2004.
The uproar now is over a review of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, a collection compiled and introduced by Rita Dove—a former US Poet Laureate, the 1987 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, a professor of English at the University of Virginia who has published several books of poetry, as well as a novel, essays, plays, and libretti.
The reviewer: Helen Vendler, often cast as a sort of “grande dame” of American poetry criticism. In November in The New York Review of Books, Vendler faulted Dove for a dubious and incoherent selection from the country’s last century of verse, and for poor interpretation of its history. In college-paper terms, she gave a crushing C-minus to a straight-A pupil.

Read the whole story here.

The Hobbit

2011-12-21T08:25:00.000-06:00

The Internet is ablaze with the first major trailer for The Hobbit. Why should it be any different here? The release date is set for December 2012.

Remembering Vaclav Havel

2011-12-20T18:47:00.002-06:00

Watch Madeleine Albright on Vaclav Havel's 'Massive Moral Authority, Great Courage' on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Merry Christmas, from my school to yours!

2011-12-19T11:50:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas from Oklahoma Christian on Vimeo.

Geisler's Christmas Carol

2011-12-17T21:38:00.001-06:00

For those familiar with the Norman Geisler-Michael Licona affair, you'll find the following video pretty clever. For those not familiar with the debate, I'll spare you the sad details. If you want to persist and find out all the sad details (by the way, I'm with Licona) just Google both men's names and read to your heart's discontent. After having done that, come back and enjoy the video!

HT: tektontv

When You Find Me

2011-12-17T10:07:00.000-06:00

Bryce Dallas Howard--Ron Howard's daughter--directed a short, 24-minute art house film for a YouTube space called Project Imagination. It is based on 8 winning photographs which are woven together into a film titled "When You Find Me." The results are gorgeous. You can view it until 12/19 at the link below. Between this and "The Tree of Life" last week, I feel like I'm seeing movies restored to their rightful place as cinematic art forms.

Woot!

2011-12-16T21:54:00.001-06:00

Looks like I'm heading to TED! Space was tight...only 300 can attend. Meaning, I had to actually send in a resume to be considered for a spot. This is great! Thanks TED

"The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner" and Reflecting on the Iraq War

2011-12-16T20:48:00.001-06:00

The "official" end of the Iraq War leaves me feeling deeply ambivalent about things this week. I feel my soul stirring restlessly within me. I suspect, given many people's silence about the withdrawal of American troops from that place, that others feel this way also.

When I feel like this, as if my conscience and moral sensitivities are highjacked for a time in a morass of thoughtlessness and inexactitude, I often find I can provoke myself with verse.

Thus tonight I turn to a bit of verse which sheds light on institutionalized violence (war) and the great moral paradox it creates: that war creates a situation in which certain acts which are repugnant to human nature become appropriate. Most commentators feel that the poem is a condemnation of the dehumanizing powers of "the State", which are most graphically exhibited by the violence of war. I reflect more about this on Desposyni in the coming weeks.

Here is "The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell, who served in the Army Air Forces in WWII and later as the U.S. Poet Laureate:

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

2011-12-15T23:26:00.000-06:00

Vanity Fair is announcing the death of cultural observer/critic, writer, religious antagonist, and provocateur extraordinaire Christopher Hitchens. Here is their announcement:

Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor.

“Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic,” Hitchens wrote nearly a year ago in Vanity Fair, but his own final labors were anything but: in the last 12 months, he produced for this magazine a piece on U.S.-Pakistani relations in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, a portrait of Joan Didion, an essay on the Private Eye retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a prediction about the future of democracy in Egypt, a meditation on the legacy of progressivism in Wisconsin, and a series of frank, graceful, and exquisitely written essays in which he chronicled the physical and spiritual effects of his disease. At the end, Hitchens was more engaged, relentless, hilarious, observant, and intelligent than just about everyone else—just as he had been for the last four decades.

“My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends,” he wrote in the June 2011 issue. He died in their presence, too, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. May his 62 years of living, well, so livingly console the many of us who will miss him dearly.

Thomas Merton, on being "adult Christians"

2011-12-14T00:20:00.001-06:00

Thomas Merton:

It can easily happen that a person loses his Christian faith as a result of forcing himself to try to accept a view of the Church, or of God, or of life in Christ, which is so distorted that is practically false. Yet he may be under the impression that this view of the Church is the right one, since it appears to the view actually held by most of the Christians with whom he associates. In such cases, the effort to cling to a deficient and imperfect concept of Christianity not only does no good, but actually contributes more quickly and effectively to loss of faith. What is necessary in such a situation is not force, not self-castigation and confused efforts to conform to second-rate Christians, so much as a clarification of the real issue and a restoration of true perspectives.

Our ideals must surely be tested in the most radical way. We cannot avoid this testing. Not only must we revise and renew our idea of holiness and of Christian maturity (not fearing to cast aside the illusions of our Christian childhood), but we may also have to confront in our lives inadequate ideas of God and the Church... (from Life and Holiness, p. 46)

Will they say the movement to empower women in evangelicalism powerfully leaped forward on December 13, 2011 because of a blog post?

2011-12-13T20:31:00.003-06:00

Maybe. OK, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but it is a powerful post.

Here's Rachel Held Evans:

While some may try to downplay biblical examples of female disciples, deacons, preachers, leaders and apostles, no one can deny the Bible’s long tradition of prophetic feminine vision.
I believe that right now, we need that prophetic vision more than ever.
Right now, 30,000 children die every day from preventable disease.
Right now 3 million women and girls are enslaved in the sex trade.
Right now a woman dies in childbirth every minute.
Right now, women age 15-44 are more likely to be maimed or to die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.

Meanwhile, the evangelical church has busied itself with endless debates about the “appropriate roles” of women in the church and complaints about the supposed “feminization of the Church,” as if women are no longer needed for the Kingdom, as if we’ve stepped outside our bounds. Meanwhile, churches are spending years debating whether a female missionary should be allowed to speak on a Sunday morning, whether students older than ten should have female Sunday school teachers, whether women should be allowed to read from Scripture in a church service, whether girls should be encouraged to attend seminary, whether women should be permitted to collect the offering or write the church newsletter or make an announcement. Those of us who are perhaps most equipped to speak and act prophetically in response to the violence, poverty, and inequality that plague our sisters around the world are being silenced ourselves.
Folks who see the leadership of women like Huldah and Junia as special exceptions for times of great need are oblivious to the world in which we live. Those who think the urgency of Pentecost has passed are deluding themsleves. They “have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear.”
Women around the world need the voices of all their sisters to cry out in one accord.
I’m with Sarah on this one. We cannot afford to wait for permission to make change; women themselves must be the change.
So, ladies—speak out.
Preach.
Prophecy.
Stand with your sisters.
Change the world.
And if a man ever tries to use the Bible as a weapon against you to keep you from speaking the truth, just throw on a head covering and tell him that you’re prophesying, just like the Bible says you can do.

Killer comments are unfolding on her post of course. The favorite of everyone seems to be this one, by Bryne Helen Lewis:

In case you can't read it, it says "someday when Christ asks me to account for how I used my gifts, 'the boys wouldn't let me' will not be an acceptable answer."

Well, not everyone dislikes Rick Perry's new TV ad!

2011-12-13T11:12:00.001-06:00

I would really love it if this was real and not just Photoshop...

Alexander Campbell's Protest Against Sectarianism

2011-12-13T10:20:00.003-06:00

Writes Alexander Campbell:

"This plan of making our own nest, and fluttering over our own brood; of building our own tent, and of confining all goodness and grace to our noble selves and the "elect few" who are like us, is the quintessence of sublimated pharisaism.... To lock ourselves up in the bandbox of our own little circle; to associate with a few units, tens, or hundreds, as the pure church, as the elect, is real Protestant monkery, it is evangelical nunnery.''

Campbell, quoted in Richard T. Hughes. The Churches of Christ (Denominations in America) (p. 26). Kindle Edition. The quote is from Alexander Campbell, "To an Independent Baptist," Christian Baptist 3 (1 May 1826): 204.

Likely my Catholic friends will not appreciate the glancing blows of Campbell, but the larger blow is dealt by Campbell towards fellow Protestants, leveled even at those who are today his spiritual grandchildren and great-grandchildren and are just as committed to sectarianism. As Hughes notes, Campbell was battling sectarianism in his own time, and "Campbell knew from an early date that these people were distorting his ecumenical intentions, and he registered a resounding protest in 1826."

We should keep the protest alive today.

My 5 Desert Island books

2011-12-13T08:25:00.003-06:00

I like to play this game with myself. It's a cruel game, but it helps me zero in on what reading is just simply vital at any given moment.

The desert island game.

The rules are that you can only take five books.

Here are my five as of December 2011:

The NRSV with Apocrypha (of course)
Karl Barth, CD 1.1
Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience
Michael Horton, The Christian Faith
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

This game is SO hard. For example, I wanted my fifth book selection to be a fictional work. And I love Dickens. A little known factoid about me is that I won a writing prize from the Denton Dickens Fellowship while an undergraduate for an essay I wrote titled "Pip the Detective." Yep, I love Great Expectations that much. But I could have put other things in this category. I considered switching Dickens for Harold Bloom's The Best Poems of the English Language or B.H. Fairchild's The Art of the Lathe which is one of my favorite collections of poetry by a single poet. But like I said, I wanted the work to be fiction. Like my friend Paul reminded me, I haven't even mentioned Lord of the Rings, which much to his chagrin I read annually. Other substitutes in this category might have included The Brothers Karamazov or (if I could cheat a little) The Norton Anthology of English Literature, which I've loved ever since I used it as a textbook in high school.

On number two, I knew I wanted to take a volume of the Church Dogmatics. But it's tough to pick. I picked 1.1, but there were other volumes which I would gladly take. It's tough.

For number three, I wanted a work that would help me pursue the contemplative life. Thomas Merton's The Inner Experience is the best book on the contemplative life that I've read. I considered just taking the Rule of St. Benedict, but I wanted Merton's work because it incorporates his encounters with Eastern thoughts as well, which makes it a great work.

For number four, I wanted a systematic theology. I seriously considered Thomas Oden's Systematic Theology (three volumes in one edition) or Geoffrey Wainwright's Doxology. Both are excellent. We haven't even mentioned Robert Jenson's Systematic Theology. But Horton's ST has some quality that has really captured me right now. It really is magisterial. Of course, it's pretty new, having only come out last year, so whether it will stand the test of time is still open for debate. I've been so impressed with it, I had to take it along though. <sigh> Like I said, this game is tough.

If I could have broken the rules and added a magical sixth category, it would be a science category. I would have included the Norton Critical Edition on Charles Darwin or John McPhee's Annals of the Former World. A strong contender in this category might have been E.O. Wilson and Bert Holldobler's Ants. There are lots of great titles in this category, I mean, if it existed...

The only easy pick was number one. But, of course, we have to (or get to) take that along, don't we?

What would YOUR five "desert island" books be?

Graduate students, embrace the pain...

2011-12-12T17:15:00.000-06:00

Women and the Public Reading of Scripture

2011-12-12T09:41:00.006-06:00

Scot McKnight (in reaction to Tim Challies):

Anyone who says reading Scripture is a teaching ministry is just making stuff up. Reading is reading and teaching is teaching, and preaching is preaching, and prophesying is prophesying, but reading is not teaching, preaching or prophesying. Women were prophets, women were apostles, women were teachers – this is all in the New Testament. That more than qualifies them for the public reading of Scripture.

There is a serious set of scholars who think the first public reading of Romans was by none other than Phoebe, the letter courier. Beside the already-unbiblical notion of prohibiting women from proclamation and teaching and preaching, the biggest error here is the reservation of only male-given gifts for a Sunday morning service. Where do we get Sunday-morning-only gifts? If women can read the Bible at home to themselves (teaching themselves) and to their children (teaching them) and to their Sunday school classes (teaching children), they can read it in the church service.

I'm with Scot on this one.

Not to be missed is Joel Watts' reflection on this disagreement (click on through and give him a page hit):

T im Challies is currently in a firestorm over comments which he made about women in ministry, even to the point of reading Scripture in public. For him, and others in the Reformed Tradition, it is simply not allowed.
Over the years there has been near-endless discussion and disagreement about 1 Timothy 2:11-12. There Paul writes to Timothy and says, “Let a woman learn quietly and with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” …. What we can all agree on is that these words, whatever they mean, are in the Bible and are, therefore, given by God for our instruction. These are not sexist words; they are God’s words.
No, that’s not God’s words. Those are actually, and ironically so, man’s words. What Scripture actually records is this:
Γυνὴ ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ μανθανέτω ἐν πάσῃ ὑποταγῇ· διδάσκειν δὲ γυναικὶ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω οὐδὲ αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρός, ἀλλ᾽ εἶναι ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ. (1Ti 2:11-12 BGT)
Many times, we confuse the English, or other language, translation with what Scripture actually says. Let’s change Challies’ translation and see what might happen?
Over the years there has been near-endless discussion and disagreement about 1 Timothy 2:11-12. There Paul writes to Timothy and says, “They [women] must be allowed to study undisturbed, in full submission to God. I’m not saying that women should teach men, or try to dictate to them; rather, that they should be left undisturbed.” …. What we can all agree on is that these words, whatever they mean, are in the Bible and are, therefore, given by God for our instruction. These are not sexist words; they are God’s words.
That is from N.T. Wright‘s personal translation.
Over the years there has been near-endless discussion and disagreement about 1 Timothy 2:11-12. There Paul writes to Timothy and says, “But to teach I permit not unto a woman, nor to have dominion over the man, but to be in silence.”…. What we can all agree on is that these words, whatever they mean, are in the Bible and are, therefore, given by God for our instruction. These are not sexist words; they are God’s words.
That is from the Latin Vulgate-into-17th-century-English.
The translation one uses makes a difference, no doubt, but the big difference is that when one appends the phrase “God’s words” to the translation – it enlivens the translation and adds weight to that particular translation, weight which is thrown around to drive home one agenda or another. As for me, I do believe that women can read Scripture in worship and be pastors….

Are 'Seeker'-Type Churches Inherently "Non-Theological"?

2011-12-12T09:37:00.000-06:00

OK, OK, it's not really possible to be "non-theological" per se, but the larger point of the question is to ask whether, in the urgency of attracting Christians to their churches, many contemporary 'attractional' churches all but abandon robust theological conviction?

Some think this happens (I would count myself among them). Roger Olson, reviewing Peter Thuesen's Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine, notes that Thuesen thinks this "non-theological" posture of many contemporary mega-churches is real. Olson writes:

One point where I agree entirely with Thuesen is his observations about the contemporary mega-church, seeker-sensitive church phenomenon. He uses Saddleback Church as his test case. He attended services and newcomers’ class there and interviewed one of its pastors—a brother-in-law of Rick Warren. (He was not granted an interview with Warren himself.) Thuesen argues that these churches and those influenced by them tend to downplay controversial doctrines and even refuse to take sides at all with the result that robust theological belief takes a backseat (if not put in the trunk!). I’m sure that’s not true of all mega-churches or seeker-sensitive churches, but it is a trend that many have noted. I have been teaching theology to students at three Christian universities for almost thirty years and I can say with confidence that there is a notable decline in their awareness of doctrines as they leave home and home church and come to college, university or seminary. The one benefit of the current phenomenon of the “young, restless, Reformed” generation is the raising of awareness about and interest in doctrine. That does not seem to have penetrated the numerous seeker-sensitive churches, both large and small.

I suspect that many of the church plants by the "young, restless, reformed" pastors in the past decade could not be accused of being "non-theological" but they are likely the exception. I should note that I can only comment on American evangelicalism, and I am unaware if this is an issue in American mainline churches.

The larger brooding issue for me is that churches even feel the need to avoid robust theological conversations and convictions as a way to attract people to their congregations. In my mind, this will not work out well in the end, I suspect...

Craig Keener, Miracles, and the New Testament

2011-12-12T09:06:00.002-06:00

Craig Keener, who has written a new two-volume work Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, was recently interviewed by Christianity Today.

You can read the article here. Keener ultimately argues that the NT miracles are historically plausible given contemporary evidence of miracles, and modern believers have warrant to believe in them as well.

A bit off point, but still in the same vein, a Barth reading group here in my hometown meets monthly, and this month we read the "Miracle of Christmas" in CD 1.2 (pp. 172-220) about Barth's defense of the virgin birth. We were all deeply impacted by this reading, especially during Advent.

You can Barth's "Miracle of Christmas" here.

Are Churches of Christ "Evangelical"?

2011-12-10T13:19:00.007-06:00

Roger Olson, an evangelical Baptist and Christian scholar at Baylor, has asked the question: are Churches of Christ (or more generally, "restorationists") "evangelical"?

This is a not new question, but it evidently is one that has provoked some readers of Olson's essay in the recently released Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelism to chide Olson a bit for his comment in that essay that Churches of Christ were not evangelical. He writes about a reaction to that essay in a recent blog post:

Today I received an e-mail from a Church of Christ member chiding me for saying (in the book Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicals) that I do not consider Churches of Christ “evangelical.” There I mentioned that, by and large, they seem to have a theology of salvation that borders on legalism or works-righteousness. The e-mailer disagreed and said he grew up in and was educated in a Church of Christ context.

This is one claim I have made about which I would be very glad to be corrected. As anyone knows who has read me, I want a “big tent” view of evangelicalism, but not one that is so flexible as to be meaningless. Many people want now to claim the label “evangelical” as it is enjoying something of a surge of popularity (at least in certain religious circles). I am often asked whether I think a certain person or organization is really evangelical. My tendency is to say yes, IF he/she/it CLAIMS to be evangelical and fits the traditional broad profile of evangelicalism. However, I can’t always be so generous.

Olson's books prove his last contention--he certainly is very generous with the 'big tent' of evangelicalism (and that is a good thing). As anyone who has followed the contemporary wars over what "evangelicalism" is will know that definitions matter. This is problematic because "evangelicalism" crosses a host of denominational and confessional boundaries and coming down on a definition that will matter to most people is difficult. Pierard and Elwell, in their entry on "evangelicalism" in The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology define the word's theological meaning in the following way:

Theological Meaning. Evangelicalism has [...] a theological [...] meaning. Theologically it begins with a stress on the sovereignty of God, the transcendent, personal, infinite Being who created and rules over heaven and earth. He is a holy God who cannot countenance sin, yet he is one of love and compassion for the sinner. He actively identifies with the sufferings of his people, is accessible to them through prayer, and has by his sovereign free will devised a plan whereby his creatures may be redeemed. Although the plan is predetermined, he allows them to cooperate in the attainment of his objectives and brings their wills into conformity with his will.

Evangelicals regard Scripture as the divinely inspired record of God’s revelation, the infallible, authoritative guide for faith and practice. Inspiration is not mechanical dictation; rather, the Holy Spirit has guided the various biblical authors in their selection of words and meanings as they wrote about matters in their respective places and times. Thus, the words and imagery are culturally conditioned, but God has nonetheless conveyed his eternal, unconditional Word through them. The Scriptures are inerrant in all that they affirm and serve as the adequate, normative, and wholly reliable expression of God’s will and purpose. But the heavenly teaching of the Bible is not self-evident, and the guidance and illumination of the Holy Spirit are required to bring out the divine meaning embedded in the text and to apply it to our lives.

Denying the Enlightenment doctrine of a person’s innate goodness, evangelicals believe in the total depravity of humanity. All the goodness that exists in human nature is tainted by sin, and no dimension of life is free from its effects. Humanity was originally created perfect; but through the fall sin entered the race, making people corrupt at the very core of their being, and this spiritual infection has been passed on from generation to generation. Sin is not an inherent weakness or ignorance but positive rebellion against God’s law. It is moral and spiritual blindness and bondage to powers beyond one’s control. The root of sin is unbelief, and its manifestations are pride, lust for power, sensuousness, selfishness, fear, and disdain for spiritual things. The propensity to sin is within a person from birth, its power cannot be broken by human effort, and the ultimate result is complete and permanent separation from the presence of God.

God himself provided the way out of the human dilemma by allowing his only Son, Jesus Christ, to assume the penalty and experience death on our behalf. Christ made atonement for sin on Calvary’s cross by shedding his blood, thereby redeeming us from the power of spiritual death by dying in his place. Christ’s substitutionary or vicarious atonement was a ransom for humankind’s sins, a defeat of the powers of darkness, and a satisfaction for sin because it met the demand of God’s justice. Then when Christ arose from the grave, he triumphed over death and hell, thus demonstrating the supremacy of divine power in a sin-cursed world and laying the foundation for the eventual redemption of all creation from sin’s corrupting influence. To affirm the atonement, Christians are called upon to bear witness by following their Lord in a life of demanding discipleship and bearing the burdens, sufferings, and needs of others.

Evangelicals believe that salvation is an act of unmerited divine grace received through faith in Christ, not through any kind of penance or good works. One’s sins are pardoned, and one is regenerated (reborn), justified before God, and adopted into the family of God. The guilt of sin is removed immediately, while the inward process of renewing and cleansing (sanctification) takes place as one leads the Christian life. By grace believers are saved, kept, and empowered to live a life of service.

Heralding the Word of God is an important feature of evangelicalism. The vehicle of God’s Spirit is the biblical proclamation of the gospel which brings people to faith. The written word is the basis for the preached word, and holy living is part of the process of witness, since life and word are inseparable elements of the evangelical message. Holiness involves not withdrawal from the world and detaching oneself from evil but rather boldly confronting evil and overcoming its effects both personally and socially. In this fashion the church brings the lost to a knowledge of Christ, teaches the way of discipleship, and engages in meeting human needs. Social service thus becomes both the evidence of one’s faith and a preparation for the proclamation of the gospel. The preevangelism of works of mercy may be just as important as preaching itself in bringing people into the kingdom of God.

Finally, evangelicals look for the visible personal return of Jesus Christ to set up his kingdom of righteousness, a new heaven and earth, one that will never end. This is the blessed hope for which all Christians long. It will consummate the judgment upon the world and the salvation of the faithful.

It should be stressed that these are special emphases of evangelicals and that they share many beliefs with other orthodox Christians. Among them are the Trinity; Christ’s incarnation, virgin birth, and bodily resurrection; the reality of miracles and the supernatural realm; the church as the body of Christ; the sacraments as effectual signs or means of grace; immortality of the soul; and the final resurrection. But evangelicalism is more than orthodox assent to dogma or a reactionary return to past ways. It is the affirmation of the central beliefs of historic Christianity (Walter A. Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology: Second Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 406-07).

It is of course always problematic to settle on a single definition of a movement that spans such a large group of people; nonetheless, taking the preceding definition as normative, I think it is a starting point to which we might react and decide if Churches of Christ would be considered evangelical. Perhaps, helpfully, we might interact with a definition of evangelicalism that Olson has offered in other places, a sort of 'minimal facts' approach to defining evangelicalism. For example, this definition from Christianity Today:

It looks to the Bible as the supreme norm of truth for Christian belief and practice—the biblical message enshrined in its narratives and its interpretations of those narratives;

—It holds a supernatural world-view that is centered in a transcendent, personal God who interacts with, and intervenes in, creation;

—It focuses on the forgiving and transforming grace of God through Jesus Christ in the experience called conversion as the center of authentic Christian experience;

—And it believes that the primary task of Christian theology is to serve the church's mission of bringing God's grace to the whole world through proclamation and service.

These four characteristics form the evangelical theological consensus, the core of authentic evangelical theology. Others would add features to this basic list, but no self-identified evangelical theologian—conservative or progressive—would take from it.

I think if you were to approach most any member of a Church of Christ (or "church of Christ" for you sectarians out there) with this 'minimal facts' definition, most would assent to all of the four positions offered by Olson, thereby at least tacitly warranting the moniker evangelical.

But here's the rub. Whether or not a member of the Churches of Christ would self-identify as evangelical is another matter, and it's not often based on a tacit awareness of a doctrinal solidarity with others who would characterize themselves as evangelical. More often than not the willingness to be characterized (in my opinion) as evangelical is based on whether or not they consider themselves ecumenical or sectarian. Here's what I mean by that, and I have Richard Beck to thank for helping give me language for what I likely had already perceived but never clearly articulated. He writes:

...there are two kinds of Churches of Christ. Some people call these "liberal/progressive" or "conservative/traditional" Churches of Christ. This split isn't formal, but it's widely recognized within the movement. However, I don't like these labels as they aren't very descriptive.

Here are the labels I prefer. There are ecumenical Churches of Christ and there are sectarian Churches of Christ. The ecumenical Churches of Christ have a sense of church history and about where they fit within that history. Consequently, ecumenical Churches of Christ see themselves as just one part of the church universal and, thus, extend the right hand of fellowship to other Christian communities. By contrast, sectarian Churches of Christ don't have a sense of church history and, thus, feel that they are a faithful replication of the 1st century church (e.g., many of these churches have "Founded in AD 33" inscribed on their cornerstones). As such, sectarian Churches of Christ feel that they are the true and only apostolic church. All other churches are forms of heresy and disobedience, a willful refusal to worship according to the New Testament pattern. Consequently, it is widely believed in sectarian Churches of Christ that all Christians outside of the Churches of Christ are in a state of rebellion against God. Thus my label "sectarian."

A lot of people, when they hear "Church of Christ", think of the sectarian Churches of Christ.

It's that last point which (I think) Olson is interacting with as he places Churches of Christ wholly outside of evangelicalism. In his mind, he is thinking of sectarian Churches of Christ. And I would say that for the most part, he is entirely correct when he writes the following:

My experience over at least 40 years of paying attention to evangelicalism is that MOST Churches of Christ/Independent Christian Church people and churches DO NOT want to be included among the American evangelical movement. For example, historically they have not supported Billy Graham crusades or joined the National Association of Evangelicals (although one small offshoot of the Stone-Campbell Movement is among the NAE member denominations). Generally speaking these churches have stood apart and even criticized evangelical churches and organizations as inferior to them spiritually, theologically and ecclesiastically. They have often actively evangelized among evangelicals. TODAY there are many exceptions, however, and so the picture is much less clear today than some years ago.

As I think about the sectarian Churches of Christ in our fellowship, I think he is entirely correct--they DO NOT want to be included among the American evangelical movement.

But in my opinion, the ecumenical Churches of Christ are another matter, and this is what is being acknowledged (at least intuitively) in Olson's paragraph when he notes "the picture is much less clear today than some years ago." The reason for this, in my opinion, is that there are now two broad types of Churches of Christ: the sectarian congregations in our fellowship (which will reject evangelicalism) and the ecumenical congregations in our fellowship which would acknowledge that they do fit somewhere within the landscape of American Christian denominationalism, and the most logical place is underneath the "big tent" of evangelicalism.

Conclusion

So, the question is "are Churches of Christ part of evangelicalism?" The answer I have given is: well, it depends.

Some Churches of Christ, in my opinion, certainly do belong under that big tent of evangelicalism, and in my opinion, they are those congregations which have progressively marched towards a more ecumenical vision of what Christianity is today. They accept they are part of Christendom, but not the only part. Or to use a phrase common in the early Restoration Movement, they are those who comfortably confess, "we are Christians only, but not the only Christians." These ecumenical congregations must be categorized somewhere within the landscape of American Christianity, and given the theological convictions of evangelicalism (or better yet, Olson's minimal facts of evangelicalism listed above), I think these ecumenical Churches of Christ are best categorized under the "big tent" of evangelicalism. Thus, these members of Churches of Christ can be defined as evangelicals. Note: I said can be, not must be. They might prefer other monikers, such as simply 'Christian.'

Some (c)hurches of Christ, in my opinion, certainly do not belong under that big tent of evangelicalism. It's not because their theological convictions are so divergent that they wouldn't comfortably fit under the category, but it's because they stake their identity upon the truth that they are the one, true church. As such, I have defined them as sectarian and would not consider them a part of evangelicalism because they would want to stand outside of this tradition, where they are able to critique it and even evangelize those who have already embraced Christ.

It is understandable that it is this last type of Church of Christ that Olson is most familiar with, because the larger part of the twentieth century was spent in this sectarian posture.

That is no longer the case though. Interestingly, while ecumenical Church of Christ members likely can be characterized as evangelical, I'm not certain that many of them (outside of leadership who understand this debate) would really know what an 'evangelical' is. That being said, these members certainly imbibe much material coming from an evangelical posture. To give you one example, consider all the women's classes that on Sunday will use Beth Moore materials in class. I know women who have never had a teacher other than Beth Moore influence their thinking in a bible class setting.

Nothing against Beth Moore (mind you) except perhaps her monopoly on women's ministry (can we get some NT Wright up in there?) but I point out this phenomenon as a way of suggesting that people in our churches are widely exposed to evangelical thinkers, pastors, speakers, scholars, etc. and they act and think largely in these veins or from these postures.

Which leads me to conclude that, yes, most ecumenical members (or something approaching it) of the Churches of Christ, can largely be characterized as evangelical.

Lastly, let me just say that the inclusion or exclusion of the Churches of Christ from the evangelical world is not a vital issue of Christian concern for me. I consider myself to be an ecumenical Christian. Period. Having said that, I am mindful that there are some reasons I can imagine that I would not want to be considered evangelical. Most of these reasons are because the term is loaded and pregnant and usually means something (sometimes) quite negative about the person wielding the moniker. I prefer to be thought of as an ecumenical Christian. In other words, I am a Christian only, but not the only Christian.

That being said, I certainly have not exhausted the subject here. I've not even unpacked the 'evangelical' vs. "Evangelical" issue. But I want to hear from you. What do you think?

The Wexford Carol

2011-12-09T17:29:00.002-06:00

(HT: JT) Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma perform the Wexford Carol, “one of the oldest extant Christmas carols in the European tradition.” Here is the description of the carol from Wikipedia:

The Wexford Carol (Irish: Carúl Loch Garman, Carúl Inis Córthaidh) is a traditional religious Irish Christmas carol originating from County Wexford, and specifically, Enniscorthy (whence its name), and dating to the 12th century.The subject of the song is that of the nativity of Jesus Christ.

"The Wexford Carol" is one of the oldest extant Christmas carols in the European tradition. Traditions abound concerning the song. For many years, it was felt that only men should sing it. It was only at the current revival of all things Irish that this attitude changed. Many popular female artists, such as Loreena McKennitt, recorded the “Wexford Carol” during the 1990s.
The song achieved a new popularity because of the work of William Grattan Ford (1859 - 1928), who was organist and musical director at St. Aidan's Cathedral in Enniscorthy. He transcribed the carol from a local singer, and had it published in the Oxford Book of Carols, putting Enniscorthy into most carol books around the world.

The song is sometimes known by its first verse, "Good people all this Christmas time."

In my opinion, most any song in the world would be vastly improved if it was performed by Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma. It certainly is a beautiful carol, and it is sung beautifully as well. Here it is:

Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved son
With Mary holy we should pray,
To God with love this Christmas Day
In Bethlehem upon that morn,
There was a blessed Messiah born

The night before that happy tide
The noble Virgin and her guide
Were long time seeking up and down
To find a lodging in the town
But mark right well what came to pass
From every door repelled, alas
As was foretold, their refuge all
Was but a humble ox’s stall

Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep
To whom God’s angel did appear
Which put the shepherds in great fear
Arise and go, the angels said
To Bethlehem, be not afraid
For there you’ll find, this happy morn
A princely babe, sweet Jesus, born

With thankful heart and joyful mind
The shepherds went the babe to find
And as God’s angel had foretold
They did our Saviour Christ behold
Within a manger he was laid
And by his side a virgin maid
Attending on the Lord of Life
Who came on earth to end all strife

There were three wise men from afar
Directed by a glorious star
And on they wandered night and day
Until they came where Jesus lay
And when they came unto that place
Where our beloved Messiah lay
They humbly cast them at his feet
With gifts of gold and incense sweet.

2011-12-08T17:10:00.002-06:00

Tis' the season:

N.T. Wright’s Lectures at Moody Bible Institute

2011-12-05T08:07:00.000-06:00

Here are some nice lectures which are basically distillations of his books Simply Jesus and How God Became King. HT: Michael F. Bird

Leroy Garrett: "Our Unity Heritage: 4. Founding Documents"

2011-12-05T07:55:00.000-06:00

UC Davis pepper spray: What really happened?

2011-12-05T07:52:00.000-06:00

I've blogged previously (here and here) about the UC Davis student protest and the "pepper spray" incident that has garnered so much national attention. Previously I wrote about the incident's power as an example of nonviolent resistance. But this weekend, the following video was brought to my attention, and it calls into question (at least in my opinion) the intentions of the student protesters. Perhaps their nonviolent commitments can in fact be called into question. Here's the video:

Here's Rod Dreher's description of it:

It’s from an anti-OWS group purporting to show what really happened at UC Davis leading up to the infamous moment when the campus police officer pepper-sprayed students on the sidewalk. The video above, which is about 11 minutes long, is spliced together from a series of videos shot at the incident, and appears to show in chronological order what happened prior to the pepper-spraying. If this presentation is true and accurate, then it puts that incident in a significantly different light than I and many others thought. According to what is shown on this video, protesters trapped police on campus, and attempted to compel them to release fellow protesters they had arrested earlier — protesters who had been arrested after they refused three stated police orders — lawful orders — to clear the ground or, well, face arrest. If you fast-forward to the 7-minute mark, you will see the police officers’ exit blocked by protesters. You also see the officers going to the line of students and telling each one specifically that if they do not move, they will be subject to police action. Which, in the end, they were.

It is hard to see what realistic choice the police had here, other than to do what they did. You cannot have a mob of students trapping the police, and declaring that they will decide on what terms the police will be allowed to do their jobs, or even to leave an area. In fact, if this video above is a true account of what happened, it’s astonishing that the police were as patient as they were with these protesters. What did they expect? You trap the police on campus and tell them you won’t let them leave unless the free students they’ve arrested, and then the police tell you that if you don’t move and let them — let law-enforcement officers — pass, as they have a right to do, then you may well be subject to violence … well, you’re surprised when you get a mouthful of pepper spray?

Watch the video and tell me what you think. I was quick to believe the story told by the previous videos, so I don’t want to be too hasty to believe this one. But based on what I see here, I’m not sure at all that the police did the wrong thing at UC Davis that day, and I’m inclined to believe they did the only thing they reasonably could have done, given the situation the protesters put them in. Or at least what they did with the pepper spray was not unreasonable, though I suppose it’s possible they could have chosen a different response to clear the way so they could leave. But what? Physically assaulting the protesters and cuffing them? That would have been better? What could the cops have done in this situation aside from capitulate to the student mob refusing to let them leave without releasing the prisoners they’d arrested? Ideas?

Jerram Barrs on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2011-12-03T09:58:00.000-06:00

(HT: JT) Jerram Barrs—Professor of Christian Studies and Contemporary Culture at Covenant Theological Seminary, and Resident Scholar of the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute—talks about his love for the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. (Warning: contains spoilers!)

Struggling to Learn Koine Greek?

2011-12-03T07:29:00.000-06:00

You're not alone:

In my first year of Greek at Biola University, I nearly failed the subject. The professor, Dr. Harry Sturz, had compassion on me and gave me a passing grade. I took a different professor in second-year Greek. He gave us a battery of exams at the beginning of the semester. One exam each week. I failed the first exam. I failed the second exam. I failed the third exam. I failed the fourth exam, but it was a high F! And I got a D on the fifth exam. “Hey,” I thought, “I’m really getting this Greek thing down!”

The professor called me into his office and told me that I should check out of Greek. That was the wake-up call I needed. I went down to my dorm room, got on my knees, and confessed to the Lord that I had dragged his name through the mud. I reasoned that since I am in Christ and he is in me, he was failing Greek, too. And even though I was at a Christian school, I was soiling his reputation. I repented of my sin—the sin of mediocrity because I was surrounded by Christians, the sin of thinking that I did not need to do my best since I was a Christian.

I went back to the professor and asked for one more chance. He granted that to me. I ended up getting an A in the class both semesters. It still took me two more years of Greek at Biola before I even felt moderately comfortable with the language, but I had learned my lesson. Now, to be sure, my experience is not everyone’s. But, for me, learning Greek became a matter of spiritual discipline. And even though I was very sick in my fourth semester of Greek-so that I missed five and a half weeks of school-I still did well in the course.

I don’t consider myself good at languages, but I do consider myself a steward of the life that God has given to me. And I have never recovered from the impact that the Greek New Testament has made on my walk with Christ.

The author? Dan Wallace, who went on to write a standard intermediate textbook, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. The quote above is from Constantine Campbell’s Keep Your Greek: Strategies for Busy People.

Nonviolence in Action: The story of Julio Diaz and his would-be mugger

2011-12-03T07:24:00.000-06:00

Just read this story on NPR. It's a good example of Matthew 5:38-42:

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”

Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.

“You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says.

Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

“The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’”

“No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz says he told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’”

Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?”

“Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said.

Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says.

The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”

The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.”

Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.”

“I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

Scot McKnight's new e-book "Junia is Not Alone"

2011-12-03T07:19:00.000-06:00

Scot McKnight has a new book that is available only in Kindle format. Here's the announcement:

I’ve got a new e-book available, and it’s called Junia is Not Alone.

It’s cheap: only $2.99. It’s so new at Amazon there’s no cover on the Amazon page yet. The cover is now posted at Amazon.

This is my first adventure into the e-book world, and so this is an exciting day. The book is published through Patheos Press, the host of my blog.

What’s Junia is Not Alone about?

It’s about Junia from Romans 16:7. It tells the story of Junia in the history of the Bible, and it shows how her story mirrors the story of women in the Bible, in the history of the church, and in our current world where many women are finding their voice.

Take a look at it and help us spread the word about this book.

Mark Galli: "Why We Need More 'Chaplains' and Fewer Leaders"

2011-12-03T07:08:00.001-06:00

Mark Galli:

In an increasingly secular, capitalist culture, it's understandable that so many clergy are fascinated with the idea that they can be leaders and entrepreneurs. These are the people our culture admires most—those like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or whoever has made a ton of money and a practical difference. I can appreciate this. When I was a pastor, I felt I gained more credibility with my church board—composed of mostly business people—when I could wax eloquent about the church's "decadal growth" and the need to "target a young demographic" and create "revenue models" that would "ensure long-term stability" for the church.

Such is the culture we live in, where successful business people seem to enjoy really important work, and pastors, if they are not careful, will be chaplains, mere servants.

* * *

It's interesting to note how much time and energy our Lord spent on "healing hurting souls." Take this typical summary in Matthew's gospel: "So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them" (4:24, ESV). When Matthew wanted to sum up what Jesus did over and over, time and again with people, this is the sort of thing he said: "He healed them."

It's also interesting to note the way Jesus framed how his disciples should think about their ministries: "And Jesus called them to him and said to them, 'You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles like to be seen as "leaders," "entrepreneurs," "catalysts for growth," and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many' " (Mark 10:42-45).

Okay, I paraphrased a bit. But I'm not convinced the paraphrase is false to the sense of Jesus' words. In any case, it seems clear that Jesus was a chaplain of souls, and that he encouraged his disciples to think of themselves in the same way.

One wonders where we got our other ideas about the pastorate. For centuries, the pastorate was thought to be about "the cure of souls"—souls being understood not as the spiritual part of us, but as the fullness of our humanity. The pastor has traditionally been thought of as one who does ministry in the midst of a people who are sick and dying, and who administers in word and sacrament, in Scripture and in prayer, the healing balm of the Lord.

So who told us that the pastor is primarily a leader/entrepreneur/change agent and anything but a curer of souls? And why do we believe them?

Read the entire article here.

Leroy Garrett: "Our Unity Heritage: 3. Biblical Mandate for Unity (Part 2)"

2011-12-03T06:36:00.001-06:00

Bethlehemian Rhapsody

2011-12-02T08:45:00.001-06:00

Hilarious.

Tim Keller Talks to Google on the Meaning of Marriage

2011-12-02T08:24:00.002-06:00

(HT: JT) On November 14, 2011, Tim Keller visited Google to talk about his book The Meaning of Marriage:

D.A. Carson's Theological Method

2011-12-02T08:12:00.000-06:00

Andy Naselli, assistant to D.A. Carson for some time, has published an article in the Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology titled "D.A. Carson's Theological Method." It's an interesting sort of article (it makes me wish there was something like it for the many other scholars that I admire). Here's the PDF.

Here is the outline, courtesy of Andy Naselli:

1. Carson’s Background: Some Factors That Influence His Theological Method
1.1. Carson’s Family
1.2. Carson’s Education
1.3. Carson’s Professional Experience
1.4. Some Other Background Factors
2. Carson’s Corrigible Presuppositions
2.1. Carson’s Metaphysics: God
2.2. Carson’s Epistemology: Chastened Foundationalism
2.3. Carson’s Bibliology
3. Carson’s Understanding of the Tasks of the Theological Disciplines
3.1. Exegesis
3.2. Biblical Theology (BT)
3.3. Historical Theology (HT)
3.4. Systematic Theology (ST)
4. Carson’s Understanding of the Interrelationships of the Theological Disciplines
4.1. Theological Hermeneutics
4.2. Exegesis and BT
4.3. Exegesis and HT
4.4. Exegesis and ST
4.5. HT and ST
4.6. BT and HT
4.7. BT and ST
4.8. Exegesis, BT, HT, ST, and Practical Theology (PT)
4.9. Spiritual Experience and the Theological Disciplines
5. Conclusion

Leroy Garrett: "2. Biblical Mandate for Unity (Part 1)"

2011-12-02T08:03:00.000-06:00

Leroy Garrett: "Our Unity Heritage: 1. Beginnings"

2011-12-01T21:45:00.000-06:00

Peter Enns: Recurring Mistakes in the Adam/Evolution Discussion

2011-11-26T11:24:00.000-06:00

Peter Enns, author of the excellent Inspiration and Incarnation, has a great blog, and has been thinking about conversational mistakes that occur in the dialogue about origins and evolution. The conversation has taken place over a multipart post, and all the posts are finished now:

Rev. James Martin, S.J. on the new Roman Missal

2011-11-26T11:03:00.000-06:00

From HuffPo:

An Elegy for the Sacramentary

There has been a great deal of ink spilled (and pixels posted) over the new English translation of the Mass, that is, the new edition of the Roman Missal, which will be formally introduced into American parishes this coming Sunday. Even the secular media has gotten wind of the changes, with the result that by now most Massgoing Catholics are aware of the changeover, as well as the discussions surrounding the new translations and the process that led to their approval. (Surveys show that less active Catholics are much less aware.) In short -- depending on who you read -- it's a beautiful translation that preserves the majesty of the original Latin; or it's not much of a change at all; or it's an overly literal translation that sounds clunky.

Which is it? It's probably unfair to judge until a few months have passed, and the priests and people have had the chance to hear and speak and pray with the changes.

Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species

2011-11-25T11:40:00.000-06:00

Oxford University Press:

On the day it was published, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species sold out—eager readers bought every single copy. This alone is not remarkable: the print run was a mere 1,250 copies. But in presenting to the world his theory of evolution by natural selection, Darwin’s tome made history.

Darwin had developed his theory over years of thought about the data and specimens he had collected during the five-year voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, a scientific expedition on which he served as the ship’s naturalist. Reading the work of Thomas Malthus on the stresses placed on populations by a limited food supply had helped spur Darwin’s thinking. Competition for resources, he realized, put stress on populations of plants and animals. The fittest individuals—those best suited to win that competition—would survive and then pass on their adaptive characteristics to the next generation. Here, he concluded, was how species evolved.

The book was not Darwin’s first presentation of these ideas. Darwin had presented his ideas to a meeting of scientists alongside Alfred Russel Wallace, who had somewhat similar ideas, in July of 1858. The November publication of his book was his full working out of his theory, however. By asserting that Earth was ancient, Darwin joined a scientific view gaining currency but still not widely held. By denying that distinct species were created by God, he directly challenged religious orthodoxy.

Read the rest of the story here.

Roger Olson on Black Friday

2011-11-25T11:38:00.000-06:00

Roger Olson:

Black Friday is not Good Friday. Paraphrasing Tony Campolo, “It’s friday but saturday’s coming”–meaning any day, even tomorrow, must be better than Black Friday.

I never cease to be amazed at what the media and advertisers can do to create a sensation. Today, one day after giving thanks, many people pressed into stores just after midnight to over spend and celebrate American consumerism. Once again, as for several years now, we will see reports on the evening news of being being trampled, tear gassed and even shot over attempts to get into the stores before others.

What is America’s real religion? Well, there’s probably no single answer to that. But consumerism has to be right up there near the top of the options. It’s a pagan religion that almost nobody acknowledges, but the ultimate commitment it gains from many people reveals its quasi-religious status (to use Tillich’s terms).

Read the rest of the story.

Latest Zygon

2011-11-25T10:40:00.002-06:00

Zygon®

The latest issue of Zygon® is available on Wiley Online Library

EDITORIAL

WORLDS OF IDEAS IN A SINGLE WORLD (pages 775–776)
Willem B. Drees
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01229.x

ARTICLES

RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND NATURE: SHIFTS IN MEANING ON A CHANGING PLANET (pages 777–792)
Whitney Bauman
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01217.x

SNAKES FROM STAVES? SCIENCE, SCRIPTURES, AND THE SUPERNATURAL IN MAURICE BUCAILLE (pages 793–805)
Stefano Bigliardi
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01218.x

BECOMING BELIEVERS: STUDYING THE CONVERSION PROCESS FROM WITHIN (pages 806–834)
Aaron C.T. Smith and Bob Stewart
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01226.x

TILLICHIAN TELEODYNAMICS: AN EXAMINATION OF THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL UNITY OF EMERGENT LIFE (pages 835–856)
Adam Pryor
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01223.x

ADOLF GRÜNBAUM ON THE STEADY-STATE THEORY AND CREATIO CONTINUA OF MATTER OUT OF NOTHING (pages 857–871)
Mirsaeid Mousavi Karimi
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01221.x

THE ENERGY TRANSITION: RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

INTRODUCTION TO “THE ENERGY TRANSITION: RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES”(pages 872–889)
Larry L. Rasmussen, Normand M. Laurendeau and Dan Solomon
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01230.x

AN ENERGY PRIMER: FROM THERMODYNAMICS TO THEOLOGY (pages 890–914)
Normand M. Laurendeau
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01222.x

OVERCOMING ENERGY GLUTTONY: A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE (pages 915–928)
William B. Irvine
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01232.x

CONSERVATION: ZERO NET ENERGY HOMES FOR LOW-INCOME FAMILIES (pages 929–941)
Anne Perkins
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01233.x

SUSTAINABLE ENERGY FOR RURAL INDIA (pages 942–956)
R. V. Ravikrishna
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01225.x

GREENING FAITH: TURNING BELIEF INTO ACTION FOR THE EARTH (pages 957–971)
Fletcher Harper
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01231.x

CHURCH TEACHING, PUBLIC ADVOCACY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION (pages 972–984)
Drew Christiansen
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01228.x

ENERGY: THE CHALLENGES TO AND FROM RELIGION (pages 985–1002)
Larry L. Rasmussen
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01224.x

REVIEWS

SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed by Martin A. Nowak, with Roger Highfield (pages 1003–1005)
Holmes Rolston III
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01219.x

Journey of the Universe by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker (pages 1005–1007)
James F. Moore
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01220.x

PATRONS

Patrons—Philip Hefner Fund (pages 1008–1010)
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01235.x

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgments (page 1011)
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01227.x

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Announcements (pages 1012–1013)
Article first published online: 24 NOV 2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2011.01234.x

Lynn Margulis: 1938-2011

2011-11-25T10:37:00.000-06:00

Note from The Chronicle:

The American biologist Lynn Margulis has died. She had a stroke last week and never recovered. Born in 1938, she was still active as a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst – her home was literally next door to another famous female Amherst inhabitant, poet Emily Dickinson. I am in a state of shock. I visited Lynn last December and hung around her lab for a couple of days. Someone more vibrant and alive it would have been hard to imagine. Being only two years younger than Lynn, I am going into the Thanksgiving Holiday with all sorts of thoughts about Grim Reapers and asking not for whom the bell tolls.

Lynn Margulis – or Lynn Sagan as she was back then, her first husband was the astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan – is justly celebrated for her determined claim that the eukaryotic cell (the more complex cell with a nucleus and other parts, organelles) is not something that evolved on its own. It is rather the result of a simpler (prokaryotic) cell incorporating other such cells, which latter (rather than being absorbed) continued their existence within the whole, developing their own contributory functions. In particular, she showed that the mitochondria (the power units of the eukaryotic cell) and the chloroplasts (the organelles in the cells of plants that perform photosynthesis) had their origins as free-standing prokaryotes.

Although others had floated similar ideas earlier in the century, basically the position was thought untenable to the point of being ridiculous. Lynn persisted, getting some 15 rejections before her seminal paper was finally accepted in 1967. Some 15 years later the definitive proof of her position was established, when molecular techniques were sufficiently developed to show that the DNA of the organelles is virtually the same as the DNA of free-standing prokaryotes. For this achievement she was honored by being elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Read the rest here.

Soma: An International Journal of Theological Discourses and Counter-Discourses

2011-11-25T10:32:00.000-06:00

A new, peer-reviewed, open-access journal just launched. Here's the announcement:

Soma is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access theology journal published online in the heart of Africa. The title, Soma, is a hybridized word. In Greek it is a noun. It means “body”. In Swahili it is a verb. It means “to read” or “to study”. This journal seeks to develop a body of theological knowledge, practice, and reflection across languages, cultures, disciplines and economic backgrounds. In these interstitial spaces and moments theological discourses and theological counter-discourses will emerge. Consequently, while the journal is interested in modern theology generally, it will give priority to theologizing that is consciously done on the boundaries or margins of well-established theological discourses and theologizing that is done on the boundaries or margins of society.
Soma is a peer-reviewed international theology journal with the highest standards of academic practice.

Soma features the thought and practice of leading theologians from around the world.

Soma gives opportunities for “emerging voices” to be heard.

Soma gives free access to current and emerging theological thought and practice.

Here's the call for papers.

Biblical Views of God

2011-11-25T10:22:00.000-06:00

Amy Jill-Levine in HuffPo:

The claims are familiar: humanity could not control nature, did not understand conception or birth, and feared death, and so we invented a God that brought order to chaos, purpose to life and comfort in death. Next, we developed religion to placate the God we invented to assuage our fears of what we could not understand or control. Then, we wrote the Bible to sanction the religion that placated the God that we invented. Next came clergy, to interpret the Bible. And today, we have academics to challenge the clergy who interpret the Bible that explains the religion that placates the God that we invented.

Such debates over the existence of God are not only tedious, they are also pointless. Those who believe, believe; those who don't, don't. Belief is like love: it cannot be compelled; it does not function on logical parameters. As some religions would put it, faith is a matter of "grace." For these traditions, we do not summon faith; it summons us.

Equally tiresome, perhaps especially to those of us who have invested our lives in seeking to understand what the Bible meant to its original audiences and how it has been received over time, is the frequent claim: "Don't take a biblical studies course; it will destroy your faith." For the most part, if one lecture undermines a religious view, then that view requires deeper interrogation.

The simplistic assertion, "The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it," does a disservice to both the Bible and to the God the text proclaims. Whether a Creator endowed us with the capacity to think, or whether we are lucky enough to be the heirs of millions of years of evolution -- the two points are not mutually exclusive -- it would be a sin not to use the brains we have.

Read the rest of the story

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T10:05:00.000-06:00

I'm thankful for you, dear reader. May this special day be spent in the company of loved ones, both near and far (image courtesy of Alex Wild).

Azteca alfari Cecropia ants sharing a moment...Gamboa, Panama

"Natural Sacraments" by Alexander Schmemann

2011-11-24T08:52:00.000-06:00

"Centuries of secularism have failed to transform eating into something strictly utilitarian. Food is still treated with reverence. A meal is still a rite--the last 'natural sacrament' of family and friendship, of life that is more than 'eating' and 'drinking.' To eat is still something more than to maintain bodily functions. People may not understand what that 'something more' is, but they nonetheless desire to celebrate it. They are still hungry and thirsty for sacramental life."

Source: For the Life of the World

From conception to birth: Like masterworks of art, sometime you just need to stop and stare...

2011-11-22T22:39:00.000-06:00

Ted talk, on babies and development. Gorgeous stuff.

My NRSV doing "bible yoga"

2011-11-22T13:10:00.002-06:00

Inspired the Bible Design Blog, I put my NRSV through its paces:

It says, "thank you, may I have another sir?" Too legit.

2011 Christian Scholars' Conference Plenary Address by John Polkinghorne: "The Quest for Truth in Science and Theology"

2011-11-22T12:14:00.000-06:00

Steve Jobs, customer service rep

2011-11-22T10:12:00.000-06:00

Awesome.

Among chief executives, Steve Jobs was an outlier. CEOs of public companies are generally hands-on, but Jobs was involved in practically every detail, from determining which industries Apple should invade to the material used for the iPhone's screen.
Jobs even got directly involved in customer service, which was a part of Apple's business for which Steve exercised a great deal of attention and patience. He fielded e-mails about broken laptops and intervened on support calls.

Read the whole story here.

"The Seafarer" and the Christian as exile

2011-11-22T09:56:00.001-06:00

"The Seafarer," likely written somewhere between 871 and 899 CE, has been called an elegy or contemplative poem from the medieval literary genre called planctus. Additionally, some think of it as wisdom literature. What I am interested in is what it has to tell us about the Christian life as exile.

Consider the thoughts of critic Rosemary Woolf, who notes the poem's clever us of imagery (my emphasis included):

The poet seems in fact to have given an individual twist to the traditional images of man as an exile...and of life as a sea-voyage. According to this stylized figurative pattern the man who lives life on land is always in a state of security and contentment: he is therefore mindless of the Christian image of man as an exile;...The sea, however, is always a place of isolation and hardship: the man, therefore, who chooses to be literally what in Christian terms he is figuratively, must forsake the land and live upon the sea.

Here is "The Seafarer" (translation by Jonathan Glenn)

Herman Cain, Readers as Leaders, and the 10,000 hour rule

2011-11-22T07:30:00.000-06:00

Aw, shucky ducky, I feel good today. Thus, I'll grumble a bit at Herman Cain, who contends that we need leaders right now, not readers.

What?

David Brooks takes him to task with his usual conversant and insightful analysis. He notes on PBS Newshour last Friday:

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, one other Republican who has gotten a lot of headlines, more headlines, this week is Herman Cain.

David, he had problems answering a question about Libya when he was meeting with a newspaper editorial board, and then just yesterday was quoted as saying, what this country needs is a president who is a leader, not a reader.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: Well, lost the teacher vote with that one.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: I guess I'm a big believer in the 10,000-hour rule, that you know you should do things for 10,000 hours to actually absorb the bits of information involved in the field, whether it's journalism, whether it's playing the piano, or whether it's running for president.

You should have put in the time. And there's a reason why all these outsiders flame out, because running for president, like being a surgeon or like being a teacher, is a really hard thing to do. And it's really hard to do if you haven't come prepared. And he's like a lot of people we knew. And a lot of us had this experience. You didn't do your homework. You showed up at class, you tried to bluff your way through, and it got a little embarrassing at times.

Lectures: Evolution, Ecology and Behavior by Stephen C. Stearns at Yale

2011-11-21T21:53:00.000-06:00

Thinking about my last post on understanding evolution, I thought I'd share a fantastic resource for gaining a better understanding of evolutionary biology. It is a series of lectures on evolution, ecology, and behavior by Dr. Stephen Stearns at Yale. Thanks to Greg Smith's blog for bringing it to my attention.

This series of lectures hosted by Academic Earth presents the principles of evolution, ecology, and behavior for students beginning their study of biology and of the environment. It discusses major ideas and results in a manner accessible to undergraduates regardless of major. The ideas, mechanisms, processes, and recent advanced discussed in this course are relevant to all biologists and educated citizens.

If you are interested in a deeper knowledge of evolutionary biology, this is a fantastic place to start.

Understanding Evolution

2011-11-21T21:41:00.000-06:00

(HT: Biologos) The website Understanding Evolution, hosted by The University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, offers its readers numerous helpful resources regarding the science and history of evolutionary biology. The site’s stated goal is to “help you understand what evolution is, how it works, how it factors into your life, how research in evolutionary biology is performed, and how ideas in this area have changed over time.” Among its resources is a list of popular misconceptions about evolutionary theory.

If you want to know more about evolutionary theory, but don't know where to start, this site can help.

Is your manuscript stalled? Here are some helpful tips...

2011-11-21T15:34:00.000-06:00

Courtesy of Mike Kaspari. Check them out, there's some great, quite practical stuff here.

We need better parents

2011-11-21T14:41:00.000-06:00

Says Tom Friedman in the New York Times. He's talking about parental impact on children's academic performance and I agree with him. Interesting stuff here:

“Fifteen-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents read with them infrequently or not at all. The performance advantage among students whose parents read to them in their early school years is evident regardless of the family’s socioeconomic background. Parents’ engagement with their 15-year-olds is strongly associated with better performance in PISA.”

Schleicher explained to me that “just asking your child how was their school day and showing genuine interest in the learning that they are doing can have the same impact as hours of private tutoring. It is something every parent can do, no matter what their education level or social background.”

For instance, the PISA study revealed that “students whose parents reported that they had read a book with their child ‘every day or almost every day’ or ‘once or twice a week’ during the first year of primary school have markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents reported that they had read a book with their child ‘never or almost never’ or only ‘once or twice a month.’ On average, the score difference is 25 points, the equivalent of well over half a school year.”

Yes, students from more well-to-do households are more likely to have more involved parents. “However,” the PISA team found, “even when comparing students of similar socioeconomic backgrounds, those students whose parents regularly read books to them when they were in the first year of primary school score 14 points higher, on average, than students whose parents did not.”

The kind of parental involvement matters, as well. “For example,” the PISA study noted, “on average, the score point difference in reading that is associated with parental involvement is largest when parents read a book with their child, when they talk about things they have done during the day, and when they tell stories to their children.” The score point difference is smallest when parental involvement takes the form of simply playing with their children.

These PISA findings were echoed in a recent study by the National School Boards Association’s Center for Public Education, and written up by the center’s director, Patte Barth, in the latest issue of The American School Board Journal.

The study, called “Back to School: How parent involvement affects student achievement,” found something “somewhat surprising,” wrote Barth: “Parent involvement can take many forms, but only a few of them relate to higher student performance. Of those that work, parental actions that support children’s learning at home are most likely to have an impact on academic achievement at school.

“Monitoring homework; making sure children get to school; rewarding their efforts and talking up the idea of going to college. These parent actions are linked to better attendance, grades, test scores, and preparation for college,” Barth wrote. “The study found that getting parents involved with their children’s learning at home is a more powerful driver of achievement than parents attending P.T.A. and school board meetings, volunteering in classrooms, participating in fund-raising, and showing up at back-to-school nights.”

To be sure, there is no substitute for a good teacher. There is nothing more valuable than great classroom instruction. But let’s stop putting the whole burden on teachers. We also need better parents. Better parents can make every teacher more effective.