Dragon Island

Party at the End of the World

2011-05-20T13:14:00.000-04:00

So, this has been knocking around in my head for a little while now, and I figured I'd better go ahead and write it before it became another one of those posts I didn't get around to writing until the occasion for it had past (there are literally DOZENS of these; I'm such a horrible blogger it isn't even funny).

So, as you may or may not have heard, there is a small group of Christians, led by one Harold Camping, who believe that tomorrow, Saturday, the 21st of May 2011, is the end of the world. More precisely, the Rapture (wherein God takes all the faithful to heaven prior to the Tribulation) is tomorrow; I gather the final end won't be until sometime in October.

Pretty much everybody on the internet - at least, all the bloggers I read - has drawn attention to several significant weak points in Mr. Camping's theology. That's not really what I'm interested in. Leaving aside the question of whether a Rapture of the sort expected by Dispensationalist theology is actually Biblical (I'm convinced it isn't), leaving aside the fact that the New Testament explicitly and repeatedly warns against attempts to know the timing of the Second Coming, leaving aside that every single prediction of said Second Coming has been wrong, and leaving aside the fact that Mr. Camping himself made such a prediction in 1994 that was, of course, wrong; leaving all that aside, there is one aspect of Biblical teaching that Mr. Camping has ignored, but that really ought to keep him up nights. The Bible - Old and New Testaments - has strong words of caution for those who would teach, and harsh words for those who teach falsely. God, from what the Bible tells us, is highly concerned that those who lead His people lead them rightly, and gets particularly angry with those who lead them wrongly.

In Deuteronomy 18 the people are warned to look out for prophets whose prophecy does not come true. If such a person appears in their midst - someone who claims to speak for God but whose prophecies do not come true - that person is to be put to death, because he has tried to lead God's people astray. Jesus in Matthew 23 speaks harshly to those whom he calls "blind guides" - teachers who claim to lead God's people yet teach wrongly. James 3 opens with an admonition that "Not many of you ought to become teachers," because "we will receive greater judgment."

Now, I'm not suggesting that we stone Mr. Camping (tempting as it may be) for claiming to speak for God when he really doesn't and for claiming to know what the Bible explicitly says is unknowable. The point is that in addition to being, frankly, a fool, he also plainly cannot take his position as a teacher of God's people seriously, else he would be far more cautious about spreading this nonsense.

Frankly, I find the whole thing rather depressing. I feel bad for the people who follow him. Some of these people have left everything to follow him and spread his silliness, and they're headed for a potentially catastrophic disappointment. How many of them will have their faith irreparably damaged? How many of their children will grow up to scorn Christianity? Should they (the adults, at least) know better? Yeah, they should. But there are always people who will follow any ridiculous path set for them. The fact that Mr. Camping has found them and fooled them so thoroughly is his fault, far more than theirs. What will be really interesting to me is what he says on Sunday morning. Will he repent and recant, as he should, or will he come up with some ridiculous explanation as to why he wasn't really wrong? My money's on the latter.

Quick Review: OtterBox Defender for iPad

2011-05-04T21:02:00.001-04:00

Over the weekend I discovered that AT&T was selling certain iPad cases (first generation iPad only) for $5. So I bought three (and with a coupon code from DealsPlus, got them for $3.75 each). The first to arrive was the OtterBox Defender.

I've had OtterBox cases on two different iPhones now, but but they've both been the mid-level Commuter line. I love the Commuters, but The Defender series is much thicker and more robust, and has always seemed a bit much for a phone, I thought.

The first thing I noticed when I unboxed the iPad case was the weight. The thing is heavy. Since the first gen iPad is a bit weighty, too, this makes a pretty significant difference. Conversely, it's also extremely sturdy. The install was easy, though it took several steps. Now that it's on, though, I feel a lot better about how safe my iPad is than I did when all I had on it was the Apple-manufactured folio case.

Pros: I'm pretty sure my iPad is bullet proof now.

Cons: I'm also pretty sure you could tie it to somebody's leg and throw them in the river, and they'd drown. Also, it only props up at one angle, which is great for watching a video, but not for typing.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Quote of the Day

2011-04-07T12:46:00.001-04:00

"Inability to understand a phenomenon or a concept is not necessarily a criterion of its truthfulness."
-Richard Carlson & Tremper Longman, Science, Creation, and the Bible: Reconciling Rival Theories of Creation.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Sign of Authority

2011-03-17T10:25:00.001-04:00

So, I'm currently reading an interesting little book by Craig Keener (who'll be coming to Asbury to teach this summer; very exciting), Paul, Women & Wives, in which he discusses various passages relating to gender roles within the church. In chapter 1 he works through 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, which discusses women wearing head coverings in the church. Several times in the discussion he makes reference to verse 10 demonstrating that a woman has authority over what she wears on her head. This is a fairly striking claim if you read, well, pretty much any translation of this passage ever, because they all say something along the lines of "therefore a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head" (NASB). So, being a good little Bible student, I flipped open my Greek New Testament. It turns out that there is nothing in the Greek text corresponding to "sign" or "symbol." The translations all get "symbol/sign of authority" from the word εξουσια [exousia]

The weird thing about that is that, unless I am very much mistaken, εξουσια never means "symbol of authority." Rather it just means "authority." So far as I am aware, if it means "symbol of authority" here, this is the only place in all of Greek literature where it has that meaning. So, as Keener points out, the most natural reading of the Greek in this verse is "a woman ought to have authority over her own head."

Now, I'm not the type to just assume that I'm right and those responsible for every English translation (and one French!) I was able to lay hands on are all wrong. But. The way I read the Greek text, the "symbol of authority" translation is awfully difficult to defend.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Let's Keep X in Xmas!

2010-12-07T13:34:00.000-05:00

(Warning: there will be Greek in this post.)

Every year at Christmas it is common to see or hear, among all the hustle and bustle and various trappings of the season, assertions that we ought to "Keep Christ in Christmas." Now, insofar as this means we ought to recognize that Christmas is a primarily Christian holiday meant to celebrate the birth of Jesus, that's all well and good. I certainly affirm the right of non-religious people to keep Christmas in their own way if they choose, but I do find the excessive secularization (and commercialization, Charlie Brown) of the holiday a bit bothersome.

All too often, though, the phrase "Keep Christ in Christmas" is said in reference to the abbreviation "Xmas." Now, there are all sorts of reasons to use this abbreviation: "Christmas" isn't a particularly long word, but when one is, say, sending a text message or writing a shopping list or the like, it can be useful to shorten it. But shortening it to "Xmas," so the thinking goes, removes "Christ" from the holiday, and is cause for varying levels of frustration and anger among believers who understand "the reason for the season." In fact, all too often such anger and frustration is expressed in a manner that is, shall we say, less than consistent either with the Christmas spirit or with Christian charity. But what are we to do? Should we just accept this (apparent) attack on our faith during one of the two most important holidays of the Christian year? How should we handle this?

Well, maybe we don't need to do anything about it. In fact, upon further examination, all the hoopla over the use of "Xmas" instead of "Christmas" is what the apostle Paul called "zeal without knowledge" (Romans 10:2). In fact, a little digging shows that the use of this abbreviation is not a exctly modern practice. In fact, it is at least 250 years old, and is actually of Christian origin. You see, "Christ" in Greek is Χρίστος (Christos). See that letter at the beginning that looks like an X? That's a chi, which is usually transliterated ch. In fact, a great many English words wherein a "ch" makes a "k" sound are of Greek origin, "school" for example (from σχολη, schole). That means that the X in "Xmas" is actually meant to be a chi, the first letter of the Greek word for Christ. And so, consequently, using "Xmas" does not "take Christ out of Christmas." It just substitutes the first letter for the whole name.

People who live in or near cities with long names actually use much the same practice all the time. I grew up near Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Very rarely does anyone in that area actually say (much less write) "Elizabethtown." It's nearly always "E-town." Functionally, using "Xmas" for "Christmas" is the same thing, except the replacement letter is Greek instead of English.

Now, some will no doubt point out that most people who use "Xmas" don't know anything about how Christ's name was written in Greek, and so they're still "taking Christ out of Christmas." And that's completely true, after a fashion. But to that I say two things: first, the majority of people who use this abbreviation have no malicious, anti-Christian intent in doing so. They're not trying to dodge the Christian origins of the holiday, or any such thing. They're just people who, for whatever reason, find it convenient to knock a few letters off of a 9-letter word. The point is, it's a person's motivations that matter. It's wrong - preposterous, really - to assume that someone is somehow denigrating Christ and Christmas just because they abbreviate the word. Before you judge them, have a look at their Christmas decorations. Or their holiday traditions. Or just have a conversation with them. How a person does Christmas is much more important than how a person writes it. Completely apart from all that fanciness with the Greek, we as Christians really ought to know better than to lambast people for how they write a word if we know nothing else about them or how they celebrate the holiday.

Secondly, though, there are people who use "Xmas" because they are specifically trying to de-Christianize the holiday. There are even people who write "Xian" and "Xianity" for the same reason. How, you may ask, should we deal with that? Quite apart from whether it's our place to deal with it at all, my response is to be amused, for two reasons. First, I'm amused because it's an attempt at cleverness that really winds up just being rather childish and petty. Second, it's amusing because it's ironic. Precisely because of the origins of the abbreviation, using it to take Christ out of Christmas is a non-starter. They're trying to use a Christian abbreviation to de-Christianize an inescapably Christian holiday. Either way, it's basically the rhetorical equivalent of this guy:

So, the moral of the story is this: just because a person uses "Xmas" for "Christmas" doesn't necessarily mean they're taking Christ out of Christmas, because the abbreviation itself is of Christian origin. And even if it wasn't, there are a whole lot of ways to "keep Christ in Christmas" that have nothing to do with how we write the word. Also, using Xmas because you do want to take Christ out of Christmas is like fouling a baseball off your face.

Happy Holidays!

"So what does the Greek say here?"

2010-11-29T11:35:00.000-05:00

I'm guessing most seminary students/graduates get this question a lot in a church setting. I for one get it with some regularity in our Sunday school class. When we get to a tricky passage or verse in the text, people's heads swing my direction, and someone will ask, "So Shaylin, what does the Greek say here?" Now, don't misunderstand: I'm certainly not complaining. I'm perfectly happy to share any insight I can, and sometimes a look at the underlying text can be helpful. Unfortunately, however, there are a lot of times when my answer is fairly anticlimactic, because most modern translations of the Bible are made by people who know Greek a heckuva lot better than I do, and are therefore quite good, even where they differ from one another. That doesn't mean I don't reserve the right to disagree - I've even been known to cross out translations I don't like in my English Bible and write something better in the margin. But most of the time when I get asked that question, the passage in question turns out to be fairly straightforward, and the translation a good one.

The problem is, there's a tendency to view the Greek text as a sort of interpretive panacea: whatever problems or questions we have can be solved by looking at the Greek (or, of course, Hebrew; in fact, any time you read "Greek" in this post, assume I've also said "or Hebrew"). This idea usually doesn't last past the end of one's first (or maybe second) semester of Greek study, but among those who lack the special kind of mental instability that makes some of us want to spend our time reading dead languages, the idea persists.

The reality, though, is that learning Greek does not, of course, answer all our questions. All it really does is show us which questions are the important ones. The places where the Greek text is trickiest often don't get asked about, precisely because the translators have done their jobs well: they've rendered a difficult verse or passage in such a way as to make its meaning clear.

Where it gets really interesting, though, is passages where the text seems straightforward, and may even have been translated in a certain way for a very long time, but a deeper look shows it to be trickier than originally thought. I stumbled upon an example of that this morning in a post over at Joel Hoffman's excellent blog, God Didn't Say That. The post in question (direct link here) deals with the translation of Matthew 5:32. I won't rehash the whole post, but here are the highlights: The forthcoming 2011 edition of the NIV - a project I'm watching with great interest - translates this verse differently than previous translations, including the 1984 edition of the NIV, and the TNIV.

Most translations of the verse read something like this: "but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery" (NASB). The NIV2011, however, has "makes her the victim of adultery" rather than "makes her commit adultery." The difficulty, as Dr. Hoffman points out, is that of the two instances of the verb moicheuo (μοιχευω) in the verse, the first is in the passive voice, the second in the active, which means that what the woman does is in some sense different than what the man does in this verse. He concludes that neither the simple active translation of the NASB, NRSV, NIV, etc., nor the "victim" translation of the NIV2011 is acceptable, and I tend to agree.

Apart from the translation issue at hand - which I find intensely fascinating - Dr. Hoffman's post drives home the point I tried to make earlier. Sometimes looking at the underlying text of a difficult passage does provide us the answers we seek. But sometimes, as here, digging deeper into the text of a verse the meaning of which is widely agreed upon ends up raising questions we hadn't even thought to ask.

I suppose some, perhaps especially those just embarking on their seminary careers, might find that discouraging. Personally, I find it exciting. If we could get all the answers just by learning Greek (or, of course, Hebrew), then understanding the Bible wouldn't be as much of a challenge. It wouldn't be as fun. And it wouldn't present nearly the same opportunity for growth.

Quote of the Day

2010-11-23T23:16:00.001-05:00

"I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us."
-C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory."

In which I indulge in a bit of whining

2010-11-20T23:10:00.000-05:00

If you pay any attention at all to my Twitter feed (conveniently viewable on the right hand side of your screen), you likely know that I've been taking Krav Maga since early summer, and you may know that in last Thursday's class I bruised the bejeebers out of my left shin (long story short, I blocked a roundhouse kick with my shin bone instead of my calf muscle). Thanks to that little bout of stupidity, I now know the difference between a regular bruise and a bone bruise. The chief differences being that a bone bruise is a)on the bone, and 2)a helluva lot more painful. As in, it hurts to walk. Still. Over a week later. And as if that wasn't bad enough, when I was at the doctor's office on Tuesday I asked him to look at it, which apparently meant "push really freaking hard on the very painful bruise," and I think he must've messed something up, because now my entire left leg from knee to foot is stiff and sore, and my ankle is rather grotesquely swollen. Also, some blood from the bruise appears to have run down my leg (under the skin, mind), and pooled around my ankle, which, apart from looking gross, is just freaking weird, man.

So yeah, that's really all I've got for tonight. For your sake I hope you didn't read this far hoping for I would close with some sort of deep thought or insight about life or anything. 'Cause I really just felt like a bit of whining 'cause my leg hurts. That's it. If you were hoping for something more profound than "never block a roundhouse kick with your shin bone" and are disappointed, I'll be happy to refund the price of your admission.

Quote of the Day

2010-11-18T14:07:00.000-05:00

"To apply what Paul said to his churches to our own circumstances today requires more than simply reading words on a translated page of the Bible; it requires understanding the principles those words were meant to evoke for the first readers. This is the only proper way to respect the author's inspired message, as opposed to constructing an entirely new meaning based on a naïve modern reading of an ancient text."
-Craig S. Keener, Paul, Women, and Wives.

On iPads and Productivity

2010-11-18T12:54:00.001-05:00

So, as both of my readers likely know already, I recently acquired an iPad. I'd been planning to hold out for the the second generation, likely due out in April, but I just couldn't wait anymore. It actually turned out to be a win for everybody, though, because I raised the funds for the iPad by selling a bunch of junk that was just sitting around my house, unused and collecting dust. I cleared out a bunch of old books and CDs and all three of my old video games systems (a Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and N64). I also sold my NOOK e-reader, intending to read on the iPad (this I did with some trepidation, as I was worried about eye strain from reading on a backlit screen instead of the very lovely e-ink display of my NOOK, but so far, so good). So I effectively traded a bunch of crap that was taking up space for something I would use often and would take up considerably less space. Win all around.

The interesting thing is that I really thought I was just buying myself a toy. I figured I'd surf the web, maybe watch some videos, play some games, and read books on it. And in fact I do all those things, even more than I expected to. What I didn't expect - apart from the Spanish Inquisition - is how much of a productivity tool it would become. I do read for pleasure on it, in fact I'm working steadily through Brandon Sanderson's excellent The Way of Kings right now (well, not right now; you know what I mean). Additionally, though, I find myself doing a good bit more school-related reading than I expected. When researching for a paper a couple weeks ago, I collected several journal articles in PDF form. With the help of Dropbox (which I highly recommend, by the way) and an app called PDF Expert, I was able to get these PDFs onto my iPad and annotate them. Of course, you can read PDFs in Dropbox or iBooks, but PDF Expert makes it easier to mark them up, which is usually a necessity for me when I'm reading something for school - I have to have either some way to make separate notes or to mark up what I'm reading. Once I started writing said paper I was able, thanks to Scrivener 2's external folder sync feature and Notebooks for iPad, to work on it even when I not actually at my computer (not extensively, though, as Notebooks only edits plain text files - which means no italics or footnotes - and until iOS 4.2, there's no Greek keyboard on the iPad). Now, if I could only get the good people at Accordance to get it in gear and release their iOS app, I'll be set.

So, long story short, it turns out the iPad is actually more useful than I expected. Though if I were really interested in just being productive with it I would not have downloaded Plants vs. Zombies. Or Angry Birds. Or Fruit Ninja. Or Cut the Rope. Or Solitaire. Yeah.

P.S. If anybody's curious about my take on the various e-reader iPad apps, here it is: iBooks has the best user interface by far. The Kindle app is a distant second, only just marginally ahead of the NOOK app. Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble, though, have a vastly larger selection of books than the iBookstore (and I'm finding Amazon's selection to be better than B&N's in some respects, most notably books related to my field of study). Most of my reading is done in the NOOK app, since I built up a not-insignificant library over the course of nearly a year owning a NOOK reader.

P.P.S. Pretty much everything Apple tells you about how spectacularly awesome the iPad is is true. What they don't tell you, however, is how much harder it is to keep an iPad's screen clean than an iPhone's. Especially if a certain grubby-fingered four-year-old likes to play with it.

Test, part trois

2010-11-09T21:23:00.001-05:00

Trying the email route one more time, to see if the tags work now, as it still seems potentially more convenient, especially if i think i might have to stop working on a post and come back. So...

Bold?

--
Sent from my iPad.

Test, part deux.

2010-11-09T21:19:00.000-05:00

Oh, well, then. Don't I feel stupid. Looks like i can, after all, post from the Web instead of email, as long as I have it in "Edit HTML" mode. Isn't that nifty. So let's try some stuff again...

Bold
Italic
~~Strikethrough~~

Link to my Twitter feed

There, now. That should work.

Test

2010-11-09T21:11:00.000-05:00

This is mainly a test to see how well emailed posts come through. For whatever reason, Blogger won't let me write or edit posts from the web on my iPad. But if I can use HTML tags in emailed posts, I might start blogging this way. Assuming I can find the time to do so, which, let's be honest, is hardly guaranteed.

So anyway, commence the testing:

Italics.
Bold
Underline

Hrm. I'd include a link, but i can't remember the exact HTML tag off the top of my head. Well just see if this works before we try anything fancy...

--
Sent from my iPad.

Excuse me, tap tap is this thing on?

2010-11-08T13:29:00.003-05:00

He blogs! I don't know if April 28-November 8 (which is... *counts on fingers*... 6 months) is a record for silence on this blog, but it's got to be close. What's worth, I've probably lost both of my regular readers in that time. Anyway, what brings me back to the blogosphere is the a post by Denny Burk on the NIV 2011's translation of 1 Timothy 2:12.

For those unfamiliar with the issues, a few years ago the Today's New International Version (TNIV) translation of the Bible was released. On the whole it is an excellent translation and should have replaced the older NIV, as it was intended to do. It was severely hampered, however, by a)a lack of adequate marketing by Zondervan, and b)a significant amount of controversy over some of its translation choices. It was marketed as "gender accurate," which basically means that it replaced "man" (ἄνθρωπος) with "human," "humanity," or "human kind," and "brothers" (ἀδελφοί) with "brothers and sisters" when a mixed-gender group was in view. It also regularly employs "they" as a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun, which is a common feature of modern American English. These and other choices made the TNIV a major point of contention in the complementarian-egalitarian debate (again, for those unfamiliar, this is basically the debate over whether women ought to be allowed leadership roles in the church; complementarians say nay, egalitarians say yea; that's an oversimplification, but it works to be going on with).

One of the most significant controversies dealt with the TNIV's translation of 1 Timothy 2:12. This verse is extremely significant in the comp-egal debate, as (depending on how it's translated) it provides a significant bit of evidence for the complementarian side. In the NIV it reads "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent." Complementarians take this verse as a universal declaration that women are never to be allowed positions or authority over men within the church. Egalitarians (of which I am one, it should be noted) counter that what Paul has in view here is women - who are, perhaps, accustomed to having a place of importance in the local cults in Ephesus - who are taking assuming positions of authority without having the proper training to fulfill the role, and that as such the prohibition on women teaching is limited to the situation in Ephesus at the time the letter was written.

The TNIV seems to support the egalitarian view: in it this verse reads, "I do not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man; she must be quiet." The switch from the NIV's "have authority" to "assume authority" is taken as evidence of an egalitarian bias in the TNIV.

So, now we get to the above blog post. As it turns out, the new NIV 2011 (another revision of the (T)NIV) follows the TNIV in its handling of this verse. In the post, Professor Burk argues that this is a distinctly egalitarian reading, and that it consequently casts doubt on the NIV 2011 as a whole. In the course of his argument (as you'll see if you read the post) he quotes Wayne Grudem's statement that the TNIV's "assume authority" is a "highly suspect and novel translation."

In point of fact, the Greek word underlying the translation - αὐθεντέω - is quite problematic. It may mean simply "to have authority," but most likely it has other, less pleasant connotations. More significantly, however, the TNIV and NIV2011's handling of this verse is far from "novel." The King James Version, published in 1611, has "usurp authority" here. Many very early English translations handle the verb similarly. Which means that what Dr. Grudem derides as "novel" is in fact supported by some of the very earliest English translations (and several Latin, French, and German ones as well, including the Vulgate) ever produced.

The fact that Grudem, Burk, et al ignore this fact is frustrating. Even more frustrating, however, is this: I personally have posted two comments on Dr. Burk's blog, pointing out the error in Grudem's statement. Neither of these comments - both quite reasonable and respectful in tone, if I may say so myself - have made it past moderation. Now, anyone with a blog is within his or her rights to enable comment moderation, and to refrain from allowing whatever comments he or she wishes. What's disappointing to me is that Dr. Burk, a New Testament professor at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville and dean of Boyce College (which is part of Southern), has chosen to eliminate not only my comments, but every comment that offers objection to this post (except by Douglas Moo, a notable scholar and one of the translators of the NIV 2011; Moo also falls on the complementarian side of the debate). Again, that is his prerogative - bloggers are not required to allow the free exchange of ideas in their comment sections. Yet I would have expected better, especially in a professor and dean who would, I'm sure, have sharp words for a student who similarly disregarded contrary evidence.

UPDATE: After a third (somewhat strongly worded) comment addressed directly to Dr. Burk, he sent me an email assuring me that his intent was not to suppress objection, but to keep the flow of the conversation focused tightly on his and Dr. Moo's interaction. Interestingly, though, apart from comments by Drs. Burk and Moo, the only comments that have made it through are those supporting Dr. Burk's position.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

2010-04-28T10:47:00.004-04:00

No, not that ark. The other one. Noah's. Apparently a group of Turkish and Chinese Christians claims to have found it.

See this article for more details.

I'm intrigued by this. Not because I think it might actually be Noah's ark (I suppose it's not impossible, but I'll need some convincing), but because of the sheer number of times Noah's ark has supposedly been found. It's rather like all those Crusaders who returned to Europe with various relics - bones of saints, and the like. I mean, if all the supposed pieces of the True Cross that were brought back from the Crusades were put together, you'd probably have enough wood for Jesus' cross, the crosses of the bandits crucified with him, and a couple of spares. Sometimes it seems that we modern Christians, who so often revile our Medieval brethren for their backwardness, are not so far removed from them as we might like to believe.

On Productivity

2010-03-09T10:42:00.005-05:00

So, I'm really making a liar out of myself by even writing this right now, because I really should be attacking the mountain of reading I've got to do this week (my workload this semester is pretty much all reading; only a couple papers to write, and a little Greek translation, but mostly reading). But I've spent yesterday and this morning getting about half sick, so reading about ancient Babylon, Egypt, and the Hittites isn't really grabbing my attention today, and this has been knocking around in my head for a couple days, so I'll write for a bit, then get back to reading, I guess.

This is the third year of my Ph.D. program and I am taking right now, God willing, the last three courses I will ever be required to take. Ever. I know, right? It's crazy. Now, there's still miles to go before I sleep - exams, dissertation, defense, and so on, all of which I expect to take two more years, but still, it's pretty awesome. But I digress. Anyway, the first two years of my Ph.D. work were a real struggle, both in terms of self-confidence (in a there's-no-way-I'm-actually-smart-enough-to-be-doing-this sort of way), and in terms of actually doing the work. Jenny works full-time (more than full-time, really), which left the primary care of our son (and now our foster daughter) to me. So for the first two years of my Ph.D. work, I was both a full-time student and a stay-at-home-dad. This meant taking G* to a sitter while I was in class, and working around his sleep schedule when I was at home. I worked all through naptime, and for several hours after bedtime. This, as you might imagine, became wearing. It got a little better when he started half-day preschool last year. This year, though, things got much more complicated when we were given a newborn foster daughter. Suddenly (literally, in the span of about four hours) we went from having one child to having two.

I realized very quickly that this wouldn't work: I couldn't manage being the stay-at-home-dad to two kids and being a full-time student. I was, in fact, at the point of starting the necessary proceedings to take a year off from school, when we hit upon the notion of putting G in school all day and M in care for the day. This allows me to effectively treat my schoolwork as a a 9-5 job (usually more like 9-3 or 9-4, depending on circumstances), with the result that I am much more productive, and much happier with the situation overall. I even have my evenings and weekends relatively free - meaning I don't usually have to bring work home, and can spend my evenings doing other things. This usually means cooking and keeping the house in general running order, but it also means that I have some time for more entertaining activities that usually had to just go on hiatus during the semester - video games, reading fiction, and so on.

To be honest, I'm not really sure what the point of all this is, except to say that an academic career is best treated like an actual career (i.e., a job), at least at the level where I currently am. Trying too hard to juggle what amounts to two full-time - and more than full-time - jobs (stay-at-home-parenting** and Ph.D. work, in my case) ultimately doesn't work well. So my advice: if you're a Ph.D. student (or thinking about becoming one), try to get yourself into a situation where you can focus on school with the attention it deserves: namely, as though it were an actual paying job, because it's at least that much work. Also, if you're the friend or loved one of a full-time student, don't hate. We work our butts off. The fact that we're still "in school" and may not earn any actual income for what we do doesn't change that - and can even make it more frustrating.

*Being as this blog (and my Twitter feed) are completely open to the whole wide internet, I refer to my kids by their initial, rather than their actual names. It may seem silly and paranoid, but I'm okay with that. So if you see G and M, that means my son and foster daughter, respectively. (Also, it saves me a few characters when I talk about them on Twitter.)

**Most people have probably heard me say this before, but it bears repeating. I've never been one to disrespect the stay-at-home parent. I remember all too well what royal pains in the butt my brother and I could be at times to take the all-too-common attitude that it amounts to just sitting around the house doing nothing all day. But after a couple of years of doing it myself, somebody who tried to tell me "I wish I could just stay home all day and do nothing," would probably not be able to finish the sentence until after they'd spit out a couple of teeth.

Comments

2010-02-23T23:05:00.002-05:00

I had to add word verification to comments. Because apparently spammers are too stupid to realize that month-old posts on a blog read by about ten people are not a good place to try and drum up buyers for their snake oil. (Have I mentioned I hate spammers? 'Cause I do. Mostly because I find their sales pitches insulting.) So anyway, no big deal, so long as you're a human and not a spam-bot. You'll just have to do the word verification thing before you can comment. That is, before you comment on the posts that I rarely make. Anyway, that's all for now. Have a lovely evening.

On Blogging

2010-02-01T10:17:00.003-05:00

I was looking through some old posts on my old Xanga blog the other day, and I was struck by how much of my previous habit of blogging has been replaced by Twitter/Facebook updates. I was also reminded, though, that I quite like blogging, and really feel I should do it more often. So that's what I'm going to try to do. I've got the seeds for several posts bouncing around in my head, on a wide variety of topics, ranging from academic/theological stuff to a review of the shiny new Nook e-reader I got for Christmas (because my wife rocks).

So anyway, I guess this is the occasionally obligatory "I don't post very much but I'm going to try and start posting more often" post. Of course, my final semester of coursework starts next week, so how much time I'll actually have for blogging is anybody's guess. But I'm going to try.

Quote of the Day

2010-02-01T10:00:00.002-05:00

"A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when perfected, is the best of animals but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all."

-Aristotle, Politics Book I

This jumped out at me when I read it this morning because it fits nicely into my views of human nature and my cynicism toward politics and politicians, which stems from my views of human nature, and which I was thinking about earlier this morning.

From the Mouths of Children

2009-11-30T00:12:00.002-05:00

Sometimes explaining theology to a child yields interesting results.
For example while we were on the way home this evening, my three-year-
old asked "Where's God." Which led me to... Wait. Before I start, let
me preface this by saying that he is obsessed lately with racing. We
are always racing everywhere: to the car, to his room at bedtime, and
so on. So anyway, I tried to explain to him that God is everywhere all
at once. Ultimately, this led to the fact that God was in the truck
with us, and at home with Mommy. He said: "Is God already at home?" I
said yes, and he said "He beat us! God was racing!"

I don't know if the whole idea of God being everywhere all at once
sunk in (you never know: he may repeat it all back to me in a week, or
he may forget it all). I can say with some confidence, though, that he
did not understand why I was laughing so hard.

Quote of the Day

2009-11-28T21:59:00.003-05:00

From Ken Schenk's Quadrilateral Thoughts blog:

"We have to accept the fact that the original context of the Bible was sexist in its orientation. We can't be as Christians in our context, not and be faithful to the core message of Christ. But when we are studying the original meaning of the Bible, we simply have to deal with the fact that we are reading male-oriented texts, as all the texts of the day were. This is one area, interestingly, where Western society as a whole--even the fallen world at large--has thankfully moved closer to the kingdom than the New Testament itself, since its books were truth incarnated within the thought patterns of its day.

God took where they were, met them there, and pointed them in the direction of the kingdom. Pity those like the Grudems and Pipers of the evangelical world who mistake the wineskins for the wine. "

Probably one of the lessons about Biblical interpretation that I most value from my education thus far is this idea of trajectories in Scripture. That is, the idea that when set within the cultural context from which it came, the Bible can set us on the path toward certain theological conclusions that are not explicitly stated in the text itself. It's an idea that was well understood (and then taken much too far) by the pre-Reformation church, but which certain forms of modern Protestantism have largely lost. This sort of reasoning gave us, among many other things, the doctrine of the Trinity: though no such doctrine is ever specifically articulated in the New Testament, there are many passages that point in that direction and, when followed to their logical conclusion, result in the Trinity. The abolitionist movement of the 18th and 19th centuries is another example: it's not often remembered nowadays that the abolitionists' position rested largely on their conviction that slavery was fundamentally counter to the message of Christ. Though the New Testament never explicitly says "slavery is evil," it points strongly in that direction - especially in places like Galatians 3:28 and Paul's letter to Philemon. If in Christ "there is neither slave nor free," and a Christian master is urged to receive back his runaway Christian slave as "no longer a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother." It's only a short hop from there to the conclusion that slavery is inherently anti-Christian.

Some of these ideas, however, meet with resistance. Indeed, from would-be debunkers of Christianity, many of them do: it is makes their argument easier. If they can argue that the Bible promotes slavery and the oppression of women and that the Trinity (especially the divinity of Jesus) is a later Christian invention (*cough* The DaVinci Code *cough*), then it's easier to argue that Bible is irrelevant.

There is also controversy over some of these issues within the church, particularly the issue of the roles of women. That is what Dr. Schenck is discussing: there are many (myself among them) who see in the New Testament a trajectory leading toward the equality of men and women within the leadership structures of the church (and the marriage). Others, like John Piper and Wayne Grudem, disagree, and argue that gender-based hierarchy remains in force in the church.

I do have to disagree with Dr. Schenck on one point, though: I think the ESV, though overall an excellent translation, does suffer as a result of the politics of its origin. It's translation of certain passages most favored by egalitarians is plainly constructed so as to minimize the impact of such passages for egalitarian arguments. An example being Romans 16:7, the ESV's translation of which is deeply problematic, and is designed to undercut a specific egalitarian argument (namely, that a woman in the New Testament-era church bore the title "apostle").

Ultimately, though, I think Schenck is right. The Bible does put us on a particular path on this issue, and I expect that ultimately, this view will win the day, and in a century or so will be largely taken for granted among Christians, in much the same way that the abolitionist arguments of our predecessors have done.

(Which is not, of course, to say that there is no racial prejudice within the church, certainly there is. But there's also nobody arguing for the re-institution of slavery, either.)

Quote of the Day

2009-11-12T13:04:00.002-05:00

"But let no one suppose that joy descends from heaven to earth pure and free from any mixture of grief. No, it is a mixture of both, though the better element is the stronger, just as light too in heaven is pure from any mixture of darkness but in regions below the moon is clearly mixed with dusky air." -Philo of Alexandria, On Abraham 205.

Please Let This Be a Joke...

2009-10-06T10:53:00.002-04:00

So I've read about the Conservative Bible Project from a couple different sources. My first reaction was to hope it was a joke. My second reaction was to pray fervently that someone, somewhere would jump out and yell "Gotcha!" But alas, it was not so. It appears to be entirely serious.

If you don't have the time or inclination to read the website, I'll sum up: basically, the creators of Conservapedia (which, until now, I've never been entirely sure was not itself some sort of very subtle satire) have decided that all modern Bible translations are too liberal, and that the best way to remedy the situation is basically to paraphrase the King James Bible in such a way as to better reflect their own socio-political views.

The interesting thing is that at first blush the description I just gave might seem harsh, but after having read the description, I'm not sure that they would disagree. They actually seem fairly open about their political agenda.

But here's the thing: first of all, the Bible is between 2 and 3 millenia old, and as such naturally defies simple classification according to 21st century American (or, more broadly, Western) socio-political categories. In other words, the Bible is not - and should not be seen as - entirely "conservative" or "liberal" by our standards, because the Bible was not written according to our standards.

Second, it is perfectly true that certain socio-political or theological biases will creep into a translation of the text. It's only natural: translation is an inexact art, requiring the translator to make choices based on his or her best evaluation of the underlying text. Such choices cannot be completely divorced from the person making them. As such, a person's translation of a passage - particularly a difficult or controversial passage - will reflect that person's own views to a degree. Though steps can (and should) be taken to moderate this effect, it is not realistic to expect to eliminate it entirely. This is why translations done by committee (as nearly all modern translations are) are superior to those done by individuals or small groups - various biases ideally tend to cancel out, allowing a better view of the text itself. The problem, though, is that these folks are not, as nearly as I can tell, just attempting to eliminate a supposed "liberal bias" in modern translations (which, as far as I can tell, is not there anyway, broadly speaking). They are trying to replace a perceived liberal bias with a conservative one. Attempting to eliminate bias is one thing, intentionally inserting it is just mucking with the text, and is completely unconscionable.

Also, there is no apparent concern with faithfulness to the text, but rather with ensuring that the text support a socio-politically conservative viewpoint. For another, the words "Greek," and "Hebrew" are not to be found until near the bottom of the page (where recourse to the original languages is treated basically as plan B). What we have instead is the statement that much of the problem, as they see it, can be corrected "simply by retranslating the KJV into modern English."

So basically, this is a modified form of King James Only-ism, overlaid with a hyper-conservative socio-political perspective. What these folks, well-intentioned though they may be, are doing is not correcting anything. They're modifying the Bible to make it more palatable to them as conservatives, and I don't know any words strong enough to express how wrong and absurd that is.

Things that make you go... facepalm

2009-08-03T21:14:00.002-04:00

I went back and forth for several minutes as to whether or not this was even worth my time, but finally decided that I couldn't let it go. Sometimes you just have to point out the stupidity of something stupid, just so you don't explode. Well, I do, anyway.

This video has apparently been circulating the internet. I ran across it just this evening:

If you're not inclined to sit through the five minute video, I'll give you the basics. Starting with Luke 10:18 - "I saw Satan falling like lightning from the sky" (my translation) - he argues that although the text as we have it is written in Greek, Jesus originally spoke these words in Aramaic (true enough). Thus, he argues, Jesus would have used the word baraq for "lightning" and bamah for "sky" (the Greek ouranos here is often translated "heaven," or "heavens"). This collocation of baraq and bamah in the words of Jesus naturally means that Barack Obama is the Antichrist.

This is why I have a love-hate relationship with the Strong's Concordance. It's a great tool when used for what it's meant for, but when it gets misused... hoo boy. So, a couple brief points of refutation, then I'm done:

1)Obama's first name comes from the verbal root BRK ("to bless") and is a variation on the Hebrew name Baruch ("blessed"). The noun baraq ("lightning") is completely unrelated, however much they may sound alike. Similarly, the English words "bare" and "bear" are completely unrelated, despite sounding alike.

2)The Hebrew word bamah never, so far as I'm aware, refers to the sky, but rather to hilltop or mountaintop shrines - high places on earth. The Greek word ouranos means "sky," as distinct from land and sea. No Hebrew speaker who knew an ounce of Greek would have translated bamah with ouranos, or vice versa. If Jesus' words are being translated from Aramaic to Greek, the Aramaic word underlying ouranos would certainly be shamayin, which means "sky, heavens."

3)The Isaiah 14 passage is not about Satan. It's about Nebuchadnezzar. Read the context. The word lucifer there is a Latin rendering of the Hebrew for "star of morning" (i.e., Venus). By a trick of medieval exegesis, the common noun lucifer came to be taken as a proper name, Lucifer, and applied to Satan. But that never ought to have happened, because the passage isn't about Satan. Isaiah's prophecy is predicting the fall of Nebucachadnezzar.

4)Let's grant, for one brief, brain-melting instant, that this whole argument is right, and that Jesus is really referring to Barack Obama. What is he saying? "I saw Satan fall like Barack Obama"? Seriously? In what way did Barack Obama fall, and in what sense is Satan's fall like it?

5)The context of the Luke 10 passage is not eschatology or the Antichrist. Sidebar: "Antichrist" is an ill-defined concept in the NT anyway. Most of what we associate with the concept of a single eschatological Antichrist figure comes from medieval and, later, dispensationalist theology. The word "antichrist" only shows up once or twice in the NT, in the letters of John. It's nowhere in the gospels, and nowhere in Revelation. End Sidebar. Even if we accept that Jesus is saying "like Barack Obama," that doesn't mean that Obama is the antichrist (whatever that means anyway). It would just mean that there is some point of comparison between Obama's "fall" and Satan's.

But hey, as long as we're accepting this gentleman's conclusions for the sake of argument, let's look at Matthew 24:27 - "For just as lightning comes from the east and shines into the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be." So if lightning = baraq = Barack, then what Jesus is really saying is that "Just as Barack comes from the east and shines in the west," and that's compared to the coming of the Son of Man. Which means that, far from being the Antichrist, Barack Obama is actually the Messiah, returned to Earth to lead the true people of God! Somewhere, right now, John McCain is saying, "Aw, damn."

Nonsense. Baraq is completely unrelated to "Barack," and bamah was certainly nowhere in Jesus' discourse here. Even if it was, the idea that Jesus would drop the name of a person who won't be born for 2000 years into the middle of a conversation about something completely different is silly. What Jesus is doing here is comparing the sudden and spectacular fall of Satan with the sudden and spectacular descent of lightning from a stormy sky. His disciples have just come to him talking about their power over demons, and he responds with this.

Okay, so I've spent way more time on this than I wanted to, or than it deserved, but now I've written it, so I'll go ahead and post it. Suffice it to say, this is what happens when somebody learns just enough about the original languages to be dangerous.

No Joy in Beantown

2009-07-30T15:28:00.002-04:00

I'm reading all sorts of news stories all over the internet now about how David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez are both on this infamous list of 104 baseball players to tested positive for PEDs in 2003. Now of course, Manny has already tested positive this year, and served his suspension, so this isn't really huge news. Ortiz is a much bigger story, and a much bigger disappointment, but unfortunately, I can't say I'm really all that surprised (though, to be fair to Papi, there are only a handful players in the game who would really, genuinely surprise me at this point - Jason Varitek and Derek Jeter spring immediately to mind, but there are others).

As to the whole PED issue is a quagmire with no quick or easy answers, so far as I can see. Focusing on which players have used in the past and how to handle things like stats, records, championships, and the like is just going to prolong a problem that is best handled only by a solid drug policy moving forward, and the steady application of time.

But what really hacks me off is this list. The players who agreed to be tested in 2003 were guaranteed two things: that there would be no penalties for positive tests, and that the results would be destroyed immediately after the league was finished with the study it was conducting, so that they would never become public. Obviously that didn't happen. What did happen is that the Feds seized the list, which shortly thereafter became a court-sealed document. But the list is still becoming public. Not all at once, mind. No, the names are leaking out in ones and twos every few months, so that just as the media frenzy over one is dying down, out pops another. A-Rod's results not a big story anymore? Alright, let's release Sammy Sosa's name. Sosa turns out not to be a huge story? The media frenzy died down too quickly? Darn, well, let's toss out a couple names from the Red Sox, that'll make news! Because that's what this is. This is some lousy [expletive deleted] who has been entrusted with confidential information getting his jollies by stirring things up. Nobody benefits from that. The list ought to have been destroyed, because that's what the players were promised. But if the results were going to be released, then they should've been released all at once. The only people who benefit from this trickle of information are the jackass doing the trickling, and the media, who now have something new to blather about for awhile.

This whole mess is just rotten from one end to the other. The fact that there are and have been players using drugs is awful and wrong, but the way this list from 2003 is being handled is infuriating and, in my opinion, just as wrong.

On Language Learning

2009-07-03T23:55:00.006-04:00

One of the myriad Biblical studies blogs I read posted a link to a post on yet another blog, here, where Dr. Mark McGinniss comments on the link between admiring the Biblical languages and willingness to endure the difficulties of learning them. I absolutely agree: if you admire the Biblical languages, you will be willing to put forth the effort of learning to read them.

I think there's more that may be said, though. I've been party to (or observer of) a number of conversations at Asbury, both in person and on the school's internet discussion forum, on the necessity of language study, particularly for those entering into congregational ministry. There are a whole range of (very excellent) arguments given as to why the clergy ought to have good working knowledge of the Biblical languages (and, to be honest, I'm fighting the temptation to jump off-topic in that direction).

There are also a number of arguments on the other side. Asbury only requires 2-3 semesters (combined) of Greek and Hebrew for an M.Div. There are many who think that is plenty, and many who think it's too much (I happen to think it quite inadequate, but I digress). The most common arguments usually center on two points: 1)Learning these languages is difficult and time consuming. 2)Does a pastor really need to do the legwork of reading the Greek/Hebrew him-(or her)-self when there are so many resources - commentaries and dictionaries and whatnot - that have already covered the same ground?

My view, for what it's worth, is that these two objections are linked. The perceived difficulty of learning the Biblical languages is inversely proportional to the perceived need to learn them. Or, to put it another way, the more sure you are that you need to be able to read Greek and Hebrew to understand Scripture, the easier (though still not "easy") you will find it to learn to read Greek and Hebrew. Conversely, the less persuaded you are that you need to learn the languages, the more difficult and onerous the task will seem.

This really goes for learning any language, not just Biblical Greek and Hebrew. That, I suspect, is part of the reason immersion is the best method of language learning: entering an environment where you cannot communicate with the people around you creates - or should create - an intense perceived need to learn their language. Another example: I taught myself to read French this past January. It's a lovely language, and I'd had the books I used to learn it for several months, but did not start learning it until very early January. Why? Because my Ph.D. program required that I pass a competency exam in French, which was scheduled for February 1. The need to learn a language facilitates the task of learning that language. (For those curious, I did pass the exam, and developed quite a fondness for French along the way.)

All that being so, then, a seminary student who does not think that learning the Biblical languages is particularly necessary to his or her career in the pastorate will find it harder to learn the languages than someone who (like myself) regards it as crucial. So, to Dr. McGinniss's excellent observation - "If you admire the use of Hebrew (or Greek), you will weather the frustration" - I would add the following: if you feel that the use and knowledge of Hebrew and Greek is important or valuable, you will find the frustrations easier to weather.

In which I learn a spiritual lesson while mowing

2009-06-27T22:54:00.002-04:00

"Covet" is a weird word in modern English. It's one of those that preachers and Sunday school teachers are always called upon to explain. "What does the Bible mean when it says, 'Thou shalt not covet?'"

The usual and, I think, correct answer is that it does not merely mean wanting something someone else has. Looking at my friend's new car and thinking, "Man, I wish I had one of those," isn't coveting. Rather, it's wishing that you had the new car instead of your friend. Or feeling ill toward your friend because he or she has the new car.

I'll give you an example. Today, it was hot and humid. Today, my grass was really long. And so, today, I mowed my grass in the heat and humidity. We have a large yard and I have a push mower (self-propelled, but still). It was sweaty, nasty, miserable work. Well, about halfway through cutting the back yard I happen to glance toward the street and spy, through a gap in our fence, a pickup truck towing a boat. It was a nice boat. Sleek, shiny, big, and by the look of it, fast. And in the space of a couple of heartbeats several things ran through my head. First, I thought of how nice it would be to be out on a lake somewhere swimming, tubing, maybe doing a little fishing (not that I fish, but we'll roll with it), or just tooling around in that shiny boat. Second, I thought of how unpleasant it was to be pushing a mower back and forth across my ridiculously long (and still slightly damp from recent rain) grass in the heat of a mid-summer sun at high noon. Then, putting the two thoughts together I glared and the tail-end of that boat as it went out of sight and grumbled, "Jackass."

And that ladies and gents, is what "covet" means. I didn't just wish I had a boat. I didn't just see the boat drive past my house and think how much I'd love to be out on a lake instead of cutting my grass. I saw that boat and, for a fleeting moment, actually felt ill toward the people in the truck because they were getting to go out in their fancy little boat while I was stuck cutting my stupid grass in the baking sun.

So there it is. That's my spiritual insight for the month. It may not be especially profound, but it sure whapped me upside the head under a hot June sun.

BibleWorks 8 Giveaway

2009-06-27T22:50:00.002-04:00

The Cal.vini.st blog is giving away two copies of BibleWorks 8 in honor of its first anniversary. The contest runs through July 12th. Full details available here.

A couple thoughts about Terminator Salvation

2009-05-27T23:10:00.002-04:00

Of the many sights there are to see in our grand capital, tonight I chose the Regal Cinemas on E street. More specifically, I went to see Terminator Salvation, which I've been really wanting to see, but Jenny is less interested in (and because this is my 5th trip to DC - which I love - and I've done most of the touristy stuff at least once before).

Anyway, I went into this movie with a little trepidation. I'd seen the previews, which excited me greatly, but then I read reviews like those at GeekTyrant (here and here) and Rotten Tomatoes, and as I generally respect those opinions (especially GeekTyrant), I was a little wary.

But I went and saw it, and I have to say, I loved it. My chief worry - in spite of the complaints of the reviewers above - was that it would be too divorced from the previous films (full disclosure: when I say "previous films" I mean Terminator and Terminator 2, which are great movies; I've never seen Terminator 3). But the continuity worked well for me. There were several subtle references to elements of the previous movies that tied the whole thing together nicely, I thought. This is especially impressive in light of the subtle genre shift between the first two movies and this one: Terminator and, to a lesser extent, Terminator 2 are at horror movies at heart (though with strong action-movie overtones). This one is a straightforward action movie. That this movie has such a similar feel (to me, anyway) to the first two in spite of that is pretty impressive.

Also, though the folks at GeekTyrant criticized both the script and the acting, I thought both were fine. Christian Bale is one of the best actors around, in my opinion, and he did a fine job as John Connor. Moon Bloodgood (of the late and much-lamented Journeyman) played her part well, as did the woman who played Connor's wife, Kate. The actor who played Marcus did well, apart from his occasional shifts in accent. On one point, though, I quite agree with the first GeekTyrant review: Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese was phenomenal. I was a little worried that I'd have trouble forgetting Ensign Chekov (whom he plays in Star Trek), but quite the opposite. He played the part extremely well, and made it easy to think of him as a young Michael Biehn (who plays Reese in the original Terminator).

So to sum up (because it's late and I'm sleepy and still need to pack), this was an excellent movie. If you liked the first two movies at all, you ought to like this one.

Test #2

2009-05-15T11:24:00.002-04:00

Okay, so Twitterfeed is supposed to check my blog feed every half hour. I posted an hour ago, and nothing... Peculiar. Trying again.

Twitter Test

2009-05-15T10:29:00.002-04:00

I think I've linked this to my Twitter feed, so it'll show up there if I make a new post... let's see.

Does God Have a Sense of Humor?

2009-05-15T10:05:00.004-04:00

One of the perennial questions Christians ask when we're bored is, "Does God have a sense of humor?" The answer is usually yes, but the reason varies. "Of course. Have you ever looked at a giraffe?" or "He must, since he made my goofy kid brother. Hur hur hur." or "He must because we do."

Now, I don't think that God has a sense of humor because of giraffes (though giraffes are pretty funny), and I don't think anybody really believes God has a sense of humor because of their goofy friends or relatives. I think the fact that humans have a sense of humor is a good answer, but today I though of a better one: What makes me so certain that God has a sense of humor is the fact that nothing in this world delights me more than being made to laugh by my child.

Breaking the Silence... with a quiz

2008-09-19T21:59:00.002-04:00

He lives!

And by "he" I mean me, not Jesus. Though he lives, too.

Anyway, I always say I'd like to blog here more, and I really would, I just can never seem to squeeze it in among all my myriad commitments. Not that I really have many readers anyway - if Sitemeter is telling me the truth, I rarely get even ten hits in a week here. Which is probably just as well - if I posted more, God knows what kind of crazy stuff would come out.

Anyway, I just took a short quiz on my view of the use of the Old Testament by New Testament authors. Here are the results.

NT Use of the OT -- Test Your View!

Single Meaning, Multiple Contexts and Referents view

You seem to be most closely aligned with the Single Meaning, Multiple Contexts and Referents view, a view defended by Darrell L. Bock in the book “Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament” (edited by Kenneth Berding and Jonathan Lunde, Nov. 2008). This view affirms the singular nature of the meanings intended by the OT and NT authors when OT texts are cited in the NT. In spite of this essential unity in meaning, however, the words of the OT authors frequently take on new dimensions of significance and are found to apply appropriately to new referents and new situations as God’s purposes unfold in the larger canonical context. Often, these referents were not in the minds of the OT authors when they penned their texts. For more info, see the book, or attend a special session devoted to the topic at the ETS Annual Meeting in Providence, RI (Nov. 2008); Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Darrell L. Bock, and Peter Enns will all present their views.

Fun quizzes, surveys & blog quizzes by

Courtesy of the Koinonia blog.

Faith, Works, and Baggage

2008-06-10T00:52:00.002-04:00

Please pardon any incoherence in what follows - it's late, and I'm getting sleepy, but I wanted to get this down while it's fresh, and figured that cyberspace was as good a way to do it as any. I welcome any and all comments.

I was just reading Romans 1, and read for the gazillionth time a certain little verse that gets quoted so often, verse 17: "For the righteousness of God is revealed in it [the gospel, cf. v.16] from faith into faith, just as it is written, 'The righteous one shall live by faith.'"

Now, if I recall correctly, this verse was the center point of Luther's epiphany (note: I haven't actually read Luther on this point, and I probably should), and has often been cited in discussions of faith and works in the writings of Paul. The common interpretation is, or seems to me to be, that the one who seeks to be righteous attains life by means of faith, rather than by means of works.

It strikes me now, reading it for the gazillionth time, that that's not what's going on. What Paul (and Habakkuk, from whom the verse is quoted - Habakkuk 2:4) seems to be saying is that the righteous person lives in a manner consistent with faith. That is, the righteous person lives faithfully. The righteous person will conduct his or her life in a certain way because of his or her faith in God.

Luther's interpretation, though, well suits the context in which he was reading. The faith-works contrast that much of Protestantism has seen in the writings of Paul and in the gospels is reflective of their experience of medieval Roman Catholicism. How reflective it actually is of Paul's thought, or of Jesus', is up for debate. In this case, though, I think that understanding "the righteous shall live by faith" to mean that we achieve life through faith and not works is not what Paul (or, again, Habakkuk) had in mind.

Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

2008-05-14T19:47:00.002-04:00

I just read an interesting news story on MSNBC about a group of forensic dentists who are attempting to make a computerized database of bite mark characteristics. Apparently, bite mark evidence is fairly controversial among attorneys and forensic specialists, because of how skin may or may not distort a bite pattern. The end result being that sometimes you get experts testifying in court who have reached different conclusions from the same evidence. What intrigued me, though, about the article - and what prompted the post - was this quote by one of the people in the bite-evidence-is-bad camp:

"If the discipline lends itself to opposing experts, it's not science," said Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project, which works to free wrongfully convicted inmates.

The question I have is, what the heck science journals is this guy reading, anyway? I'll grant I'm not a scientist, but I know enough about the sciences in general to know that there are debates in the scientific community, just as there are debates in every academic field.

What's significant about this, to my mind, is the way it's reflective of the popular conception of "Science" (capitalized on purpose) as the final arbiter of truth, and the assumption that Science is something that can be done with pure objectivity, therefore leaving no room for debate. This latter position, of course, is often used to characterize one's opponents as having some sort of underhanded agenda: they disagree with the Science, and since the Science can't be wrong, they must be trying to pull something.

There's more there that I could tease out, and is certainly worthy of discussion, but that will have to wait for another time.

Quote of the Day

2008-05-06T18:00:00.003-04:00

"Surely it is the case that the sacred books, whether we look at the words alone or the concepts they convey, are frequently and in many places veiled by a deep obscurity - and this is easily demonstrated, for one thing it is self-evident and for another a host of useless exegetical works proclaims it."
-Johann Philip Gabler

The Aussie Bible

2008-04-29T08:14:00.003-04:00

The Aussie Bible

This looks like a lot of fun. I can't mimic an Australian accent nearly well enough to get the full force of it (I can do a decent Scottish or Irish, but not so much Aussie), but what I've read is pretty awesome.

Quote of the Day

2008-04-27T21:01:00.002-04:00

"[I]t is enough to know that in everything the call of the Lord is the foundation and beginning of right action. He who does not act in reference to it will never, in the discharge of duty, keep the right path. He will sometimes be able, perhaps, to give the semblance of something laudable, but whatever it may be in the sight of man, it will be rejected before the throne of God; and besides, there will be no harmony in the different parts of his life."
-John Calvin, Institutes of Religion III.10.6

Progress

2008-04-23T16:13:00.002-04:00

So I've been really trying to get my language proficiency up to speed (i.e., with Greek and Hebrew), so as to manage basic reading comprehension. Well, tonight I've got a Bible study with some other guys from church, and the passage we're looking at is Genesis 6. The funny thing is, I started out reading the chapter in English, and actually found myself feeling as though I were cheating by not reading it in Hebrew. I'd call that progress, I think. (It helps that most of the book of Genesis is fairly straightforward narrative text, and thus fairly easy Hebrew.)

Unfortunately, my vocab isn't quite up to snuff - I need to take an afternoon and set up some sort of programmatic system for refreshing it. I.e., figure out which words I know, and which I need flash cards for, basically. The short-term goal would be to learn every word (in each language) that appears ten times or more.

The other part of my plan is to start working systematically through each testament, so as to improve my reading knowledge, and to reduce my dependence on the translation notes I usually make for myself as I work. Here's hoping.

New name...

2008-04-20T21:16:00.003-04:00

Well, I know people rarely visit this blog, but as I'm going to try and post more often on it, hopefully that'll change... or hopefully not: if what I say turns out to be dumb, then it might be better if fewer people see it!

At any rate, I've changed the name. The old name, "Aslan's How" was originally the URL that I wanted, but was already taken (in every possible variation). So I went with the current URL, but kept the original name. I've never been happy with that, though, but could never think of anything to switch to. I finally came up with "Dragon Island," which is where Eustace gets himself turned into a dragon, and then Aslan changes him back in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I've often said that for all that I'd like to say I identify more with with Peter, or Caspian, or even Edmund, if I'm honest with myself, I'm really much more like Eustace, so it seemed appropriate.

The quote under the title (for those who don't know) is from one of the slave traders who capture Caspian, et al. on the Lone Islands. Reepicheep the Mouse (my absolute favorite character) is insulting the slavers viciously and challenging them to combat, but they just chuckle and treat him like a trained circus animal, which makes him even madder.

Anyway, having said that I'm going to post more often, I now have to sign off and do some actual school work, since I've got a book to finish, a review to write on said book, and a presentation to prepare, all before Tuesday. No rest for the weary, eh?

A Random Thought

2008-02-12T15:23:00.000-05:00

It occurs to me to wonder whether, in all the debates over whether or not Moses wrote the Torah, much has been done with the fact that the references to Moses are all in the third person. That is to say, how likely is it that an author making a historical record of events in which he himself was not only a direct participant, but indeed a key player, would refer to himself in the third person, rather than the first? If, as Judeo-Christian tradition has long held, Moses was the divinely inspired author of the Torah, would we not expect a first-person narrative from Exodus to Deuteronomy? For myself, I tend to think that we would.

A quick note

2007-12-04T11:43:00.000-05:00

I'm in the middle of an assigned translation for my Greek class, and I just ran across something interesting.

Most translations of 1 Peter 1:7 read along the lines of "That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ," (KJV). Most translations read similarly, and it's a perfectly valid translation. There is, however, a nuance present in the Greek that is very difficult to carry into the English translation. The adjective "more precious" (polutimoteros, in Greek) is modifying dokimion, "trial," and not pistis, "faith." In other words, in this case, it is not the faith that is "more precious than gold that perishes even though tested with fire," rather it is the testing of that faith.

There is, I think, much that could be said on this point theologically, though unfortunately I haven't the time to say it at present. Suffice it to say that I'm reminded of James 2 and Genesis 22, where righteousness must be proven by action, and our faith is shown by how we respond to certain situations.

Marriage Advice

2007-11-02T15:15:00.000-04:00

Well, the guy is a marriage expert...

Saudi Marriage Expert Advises Men in Right Way to Beat Their Wives.

"Woman, it has gone too far. I can't bear it anymore." I'll have to remember that.

Seriously, though, it is sort of interesting from a sociological standpoint. We post women's-lib Western types hang up on the "here's how a man ought to beat his wife" part, and fail (at least, the author of the article seems to fail) to recognize what's actually going: he seems to me to be attempting to moderate the effects of his culture's acceptance of a man beating his wife. Notice that the "right way" is not to just slap her around for the slightest reason - when she burns your dinner or if she doesn't happen to feel like putting out that evening - but rather to use the beating as a last resort, and to exercise restraint, rather than just hitting her out of anger.

Not that I'm defending him, not at all: I heartily disapprove of wife-beating under any circumstances, for reasons both moral and pragmatic (I've been breathing on my own for a good many years now, and have gotten rather fond of it, to be honest). It just struck me (pardon the pun) that this was an interesting example of how things can seem different to people of different cultures: whereas we tend to react with unadulterated scorn, a deeper look might show that things may be different, if only slightly, than our initial reaction.

This is interesting to me, particularly, in that some of these same factors are in play when we talk about the role of women in the New Testament: passages that make the apostle Paul, for example, seem one way to the 21st century western observer may actually turn out quite different when we look at them within their proper socio-cultural context.

Of Eunuchs and Archaeology

2007-07-11T11:28:00.000-04:00

Tiny Tablet Provides Proof for Old Testament.

Now, that's an awfully ambitious headline, but it's not really that far from the truth. Incidental details are one of the ways we can be sure of the general historicity of a text which is otherwise uncorroborated (for example, the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts: the author is very careful and scrupulous with minor details of geography, dates, and history that can be confirmed in other sources, which lends support to the picture of him as a careful historian concerned with accurately reporting facts, which in turn allows us some confidence in trusting the accuracy of those details which can't be confirmed from other sources). As a former OT prof of mine put it, "if the Bible 'incidentally' captures correctly the names of third-tier officials in the Neo-Babylonian bureaucracy, can we really be content with [certain scholars] telling us it's just ideological fiction?"

So... I'm it... I guess...

2006-12-07T09:13:00.000-05:00

So apparently I've been tagged. Man, I don't even remember the last time I did one of these internet surveys. Crazy. Anyway, several of my answers are going to be identical to Jenny's, 'cause, well, we live in the same house. I'll mark the ones that are the same.

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Coffee. Maybe with a little dollop of Scotch.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? Yes. When I was really young, and my parents were still married, about half (usually the smaller half) of Santa's presents were wrapped, and the other half were just sitting under the tree. The end result of which was that on Christmas morning, my brother and I would get up and go see what we'd gotten before getting our parents up. Anyway, after my parents divorced, Santa's presents at Dad's house were never wrapped, while at Mom's house they all were. In our house, we have dogs, cats, and a crawling baby, so if we put any presents under the tree before Christmas Eve/Morning, they wouldn't be intact when it came time to unwrap them. So for us, all the presents are wrapped, and none of them go out until sometime in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. Jenny and I actually have gotten in the habit of racing to see who can get their presents for the other out first. I usually win. Twenty-five years old and I still have trouble sleeping on Christmas Eve.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Again, my parents' differing styles came into play here. Dad always put colored lights on the outside of the house and on the tree, whereas Mom put white lights on the tree and no lights on the outside of the house, just some candles in the windows and a wreath on the door.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? [Same as Jenny] We have a fake cluster (real is poisonous to pets and babies) with a bell that we hang between our living room and kitchen.

5. When do you put your decorations up? Usually the weekend after Thanksgiving. When I was really young, we'd get a live tree, and so it'd usually be later, but when I was 9, Mom and Dad each got artificial trees, and so we started putting the decorations up earlier. Well, Mom did... nowadays Dad may decorate for Christmas or not. He usually manages to have his tree up by Christmas Eve. The last couple of years, Jenny and I have put it up for him a couple weeks before Christmas. In our house, we usually put them up the weekend after Thanksgiving. Except for any lights going on the roof. For those we jump on the opportunity to do it when it's fairly warm out and the roof is dry. Learned that lesson the hard way our first year in the first house - it's really hard to get from your roof to the ladder so you can get down and go inside and warm up when your butt is numb from sitting on a wet roof, hanging lights in 40-degree weather.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Hmmm.... yes.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child: Jeez. Lots. Christmas has always been great for me. I'm told that my reaction to seeing that I'd gotten a Nintendo - the original NES, so I was probably about 6 - was pretty funny from a parental perspective. Actually, and this is going to sound weird, later in high school, I enjoyed driving myself home from Midnight Mass. At 1 a.m. on Christmas morning, you can drive through a town like Leitchfield (which, though it isn't big, isn't that small, either) and see maybe one other car. It's very peaceful. But in general, Christmas has some of my best childhood memories, so it's hard to pick one.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? Wha... What do you mean? What "truth" about Santa?

Okay, so in '91, the year my parents divorced, I spent Christmas Eve at my Dad's house. I woke up at about 4:00 Christmas morning and went to see what Santa had brought and... nothing. I ran into Dad's room, freaking out 'cause Santa hadn't come. Dad told me to get back in bed while he checked the situation out. A few minutes later he came back in and told me Santa had come while he was in the other room. A couple months later I went "Wait just a minute..."

So I was a gullible kid. Sue me.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? We could usually manage to finagle an early Christmas present. Whether on Christmas Eve or the week before, or something like that. No real traditions like the pajamas in Jenny's family or anything like that, just some years we got to open a present early, some years we didn't.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? [Mostly the same as Jenny, except for the part about the cats... she's the cat lady here, not me] Pre-lit with colored lights, angel on top, gold bead garland, and all our family ornaments (lots of Hallmark stuff, etc.). No tinsel - animals spread it and eat it. We usually get a new ornament every year (mine are almost all cats - do you sense a theme with me?) and for special occasions (New Home, Parents-to-Be, etc.) but there's lots of room left for more. :-)

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Love it. It should start snowing on Thanksgiving, at the latest, and from that point on, snow enough and stay cold enough to maintain about a 4-inch layer until absolutely no earlier than New Year's Day. I'm in general a winter sort of guy.

12. Can you ice skate? When I was in 7th grade, my mom and brother and I went ice skating basically every weekend for most of the winter. I got pretty good by the end of that winter, but I haven't been since, so I'd probably fall and break my ass if I tried it now.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? I've gotten a lot of great gifts. It's hard to pick out my favorite. My pajama set from Jenny the year before last was pretty nice. But no, I can't really pick a "favorite."

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? [Same as Jenny] I like spending time with family. I also enjoy giving gifts. The big thing, though, is comemorating Christ's birth (even though it was probably really in the spring).

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Yes.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Hmm... can't really pick one from among the others. There are lots of things I like to make sure I do at least once in a holiday season - watch It's a Wonderful Life and The Muppet Christmas Carol, for example. I also really enjoy putting up Christmas decorations. But it's hard to single out an individual holiday tradition and elevate it to the position of "favorite."

17. What tops your tree? [Same as Jenny - but did I really need to say that? It's the same tree.] An angel figurine.

18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? Giving, by a fair margin, actually. I'm not sure exactly when this happened, but at some point in the last few years I realized that I was looking forward to having people (especially Jenny) open the gifts I'd gotten them more than I was looking forward to opening my own gifts. Of course, I'm still a big fan of opening my own gifts. A really big fan.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? "O Holy Night." Done properly that song can nearly move me to tears. In general my favorite Christmas songs are the more worshipful ones, the Christmas hymns - "O Come All Ye Faithful," "The First Noel," and the like. But "O Holy Night" is the best by far.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum? Candy canes are hard to eat. The peppermints that I can just unwrap and pop into my mouth are great - when they're around they're like cigarettes for me: I eat them all the time, especially after meals (and I don't have to worry about going outside to eat them, and it's okay if my clothes smell like peppermint - pretty sweet deal, really).

Oh, that's the end of the survey. I kept hitting the down arrow to get to the next question, and turns out there are no more questions. Just as well, I suppose. Gabe's awake now.

Oh, and I guess I should tag somebody... hmm... I'll tag Jon.

And they shall take up serpents

2006-11-08T08:34:00.000-05:00

A few days ago in London (Kentucky, not England) a woman was apparently bitten by a snake during a church service. She was dead four hours later (the story can be read here, among other places).

Most of us are at least aware of the practice of snake-handling in churches. It's more common in small rural churches than in, say, megachurches, but most of us are familiar with it, even so. There are a whole host of problems with it, theologically. For one thing, it seems to me that playing with venomous snakes in the expectation that God will keep you from being bitten stands in plain violation of the commandment to not test God (Deuteronomy 6:16, quoted by Jesus in Matthew 4:7 and Luke 4:12). From a theological standpoint, it seems that this ought to be sufficient to discourage the practice.

Also worth noting are the concepts of hyperbole and metaphor. It seems entirely probable to me that when when Jesus tells his followers they'll be able to handle serpents without being harmed, he may not have meant that they would perpetually impervious to snake venom (side note: the same passage mentions drinking poison without harm - do these snake-handling churches, say, put out hemlock punch during services?). There are lots of ways to interpret that statement that avoid the obviously problematic conclusion that Christians are immune to snakebite (though that would have made Snakes on a Plane a more interesting movie: "It's okay. I'm a Christian!").

Finally - and of no small significance - is something that is generally well-known among Biblical scholars, but somewhat less known among laypersons, namely, the questionable provenance of the concluding paragraphs of Mark's gospel. In order to avoid an overly detailed and technical explanation of the discipline of textual criticism, and of the specific details of this situation, I will simply say that the earliest and best manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark end at 16:8. The remainder of the chapter - vv.9-20, which include the bit about handling snakes and drinking poison - were added later, possibly being excerpted from a late 2nd century document which is now lost to us. Moreover, the oldest of those manuscripts which do contain the text mark it in some way as being an addition, whether with asterisks or scribal notes to the effect that the passage is spurious. What is likely the case is that at some point someone decided that the ending of Mark was too abrupt and needed some reference to Jesus' post-resurrection appearances, and so felt it necessary to tack on a fuller ending (such practices at that time were not entirely out of the ordinary, nor thought to be terribly dishonest - the concept of intellectual property did not exist then). This ending, whatever it's origin, managed to get adopted into the majority of manuscripts, and all indications that it was a spurious addition were eventually lost, with the end result that the Textus Receptus - the manuscript that underlies the King James Bible - runs seamlessly from 16:8 into 16:9. Also, in addition to the manuscript evidence, the internal evidence of vv.9-20 argues against the passage's inclusion with the text of Mark. There are significant differences of style and vocabulary in these 12 verses, including a number of words not found anywhere else in the document.

Now, this discussion does raise some interesting theological questions. How do we deal with the fact that the church for several centuries has regarded these verses as inspired Scripture? I'm not so much a Protestant that I'm willing to simply ignore tradition entirely. But if Mark, the inspired author, did not actually pen these words, can we be certain that they are, in fact, inspired Scripture? It's a sticky question with no clear or easy answer (the study of the Bible is full of such questions). Either way it has serious implications for the concepts of Biblical inspiration and inerrancy - both of which I affirm, for the record (as a professor once put it, "I just don't see a future in Biblical errancy").

Sticky theological and textual questions aside, though, I think we can safely conclude that anyone - however strong his or her faith - who picks up a venomous snake should not be surprised when they get bitten and die.

Also, as Jenny pointed out, this must be a difficult time for the poor woman's family. If they honestly believe that a true Christian ought to be able to handle snakes without harm, what must they think about this woman's eternal fate? Unfortunately, the people who practice such things in church are often also the type of people to reject the kinds of arguments I've made above in favor of a "Well, the Bible says..." Unfortunately, this traps them in something of a lose-lose scenario. If their theology is accurate, then this woman may well not have been saved. If it is, as I have argued, improper, then her life was thrown away doing something that Christians really ought not be doing. In either case, a senseless tragedy.

A Note on Eschatology

2006-10-03T22:23:00.000-04:00

This was originally posted on my Xanga blog on August 2nd, having been prompted by a Newsweek interview with Tim LaHaye (co-author of the Left Behind series) that I read during the recent Israel-Lebanon conflict.

BWAAA!

Y'know, I used to be an enormous fan of the Left Behind books. But then two things happened. First, the series got way over-long and got a little too, shall we say, market-driven (it really ticked me off when the message boards on their website started requiring a paid subscription). Second, I went to seminary. Now, again, maybe I've just become the jaded academic - the seminary grad your pastor warned you about. But frankly, when I look at the linguistic and theological and exegetical training I had at Asbury, and set that next to the entire dispensational framework ("premillenial dispensationalism" is the formal term for the theological school of which the Left Behind books are a popular exemplar), my first reaction is, "You can't do that!!"

For example, take the rapture. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the doctrine of the rapture holds that at some point (opinions differ as to what point precisely) during the seven years immediately preceding Jesus' return, all Christians will be removed from the earth and taken directly to heaven. Now, first of all, it should be noted that the first clear example of someone teaching this particular idea was sometime in (if memory serves) the mid-19th century. A.D. That's important. Also, 1 Thessalonians 4:17 is often cited in support of this doctrine. This is a problem.

Taken in isolation, the verse seems very much to support the doctrine of the rapture: "Then we who remain alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; thus we will be with the Lord always." There are two main problems, though. The first is context. The immediate context of verse 17 is verses 13-18. Paul is not, in this passage, primarily discussing the return of Christ. He mentions it here in the context of a discussion about those Christians who have already died at the time of the writing of the letter. His audience is concerned about those Christians who die before Jesus' return (exactly what concerns they may have expressed is uncertain - we must remember when reading Paul's letters that we usually have only half of a conversation). Paul, then, is here exhorting his readers not to worry: God raised Jesus, He will raise those who die in Christ before Jesus comes back (v.14). In fact, he says, when Jesus does return, those who have died and those who yet live will meet Him at the same time. Neither will precede the other (v.15). In fact, when the Lord returns, we will all - sleepers and those who still live - meet Him at the same time (v.17). Thus what we have here is less a prediction of the rapture than an explanation (and an offer of comfort) regarding those Christians who have died before seeing Jesus return.

The second problem with citing this verse in support of the rapture is rather more obscure. It involves a bit of Greek vocabulary in its historical context. At the crucial point of the verse we have the following "we will be caught up... to meet the Lord." Now, I've translated this phrase in pretty much the same way as everyone else, "to meet." The problem is, it's not a terribly clear translation, as it lends the impression that the underlying Greek is a verb, rather than a noun. In fact, a more wooden translation would be "to (or for) a meeting of the Lord." Of course, that makes less sense in English, hence the polishing done in my translation (and everyone else's, too). The thing is, the noun for "meeting" here (apantesis, if you want to know) is something of a technical term. It refers, in fact, to the Roman practice of the triumphal parade, where a general (or the emperor) fresh from winning a battle, would march into a city (whether Rome or somewhere else) with a parade consisting of his troops and of the spoils of war - exotic animals, captured slaves, enemy kings/leaders, etc. As the triumphator approached the city with his army and his spoils, the people of the city would go out to meet him and escort him into the walls. The word for this meeting is the same as is used here in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 - apantesis (ah-PAHN-tay-sis). The same word appears twice more in the New Testament: in Matthew 25:6 and Acts 28:15, and both usages are consistent with this meaning. So whatever one does with 1 Thessalonians 4:17 and rapture theology, this has to be taken into account.

I'll close off with a couple of quotes from the article above, and be done...

Newsweek: "[M]y understanding is that current biblical scholarship reads some of the apocalyptic scenes in the Bible as metaphorically addressing events that were taking place as the Bible was being written."
Tim LaHaye: "These are usually liberal theologians that don’t believe the Bible literally."

Newsweek: "So the Revelation should not be interpreted, for example, as a polemic against Rome?"
Tim LaHaye: "That’s what they say. We believe that the Bible should be understood literally whenever possible."

BWAAAA!!!!!
There's a seriously problematic false dichotomy in play here. LaHaye is basically asserting that not believing the Bible literally=being a liberal theologian. Well, I cry foul. I, frankly, don't believe "the Bible should be understood literally whenever possible." I believe the Bible should be understood literally whenever the text intends to be understood literally. It may not seem like a big difference, but it is, in fact, a huge difference. Often the text of Scripture narrates supernatural events with the full expectation that the reader accept those events as actually, literally having happened - the miracles of Jesus, up to and including the resurrection, are an example. But sometimes the text narrates events with the understanding that the audience not take them literally. The parables of Jesus are an example. No one believed that there really had been a man with two sons, one of whom took his inheritance early and ran off to squander it (Luke 15). God is perfectly capable and (if the preaching of Jesus is any indication) perfectly willing to express certain spiritual and theological truths using symbol, type, and metaphor. If we insist on taking the symbology and the metaphor as literal, we miss what the text is trying to say. With all due respect to Dr. LaHaye, he seems never to have asked whether or not Revelation is meant to be taken as a literal description the end of time. I happen to believe that it isn't. What it is meant to do is a different post for a different day. Suffice it to say that I think those who draw up timelines of the tribulation and ask where America fits into end-times prophecy are missing the point rather badly and forcing the text to answer questions it was never meant to answer.

(Oh, and I may have said this before, but I find myself often thanking God that there are no references to donkeys or elephants in Revelation - "See! The Antichrist is a Democrat!!!!")

Addendum 1
It's worth noting that when Dr. LaHaye says we should take the Bible literally whenever possible, he makes certain glaring exceptions. An example is the letters to the seven churches in the first three chapters of Revelation. A "literally whenever possible" approach ought, I think, to take these letters at face value - as letters to the seven churches in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) to whom the book was written. Cover letters, if you will. That's how the text of Revelation presents them. Dr. LaHaye, however, (and most dispensational theologians with him) interprets them metaphorically as referring to the seven ages of the history of the church, beginning with the time immediately following Pentecost (Acts 1-2), and running up through modern times. Ignoring the fact that church history does not match up all that well with this schema, there is absolutely nothing in the text of Revelation which demands - or even suggests - that these letters be taken as other than what they are: letters to seven churches in Asia Minor, the contents of which are available for application and appropriation by other readers as well (hence the "let he who has ears hear" refrain throughout the letters).

Addendum 2 (For Clarification)
It occurs to me that some of what I wrote in the above could bear some clarifying. It's important to note both what I said, and what I did not say.

I did not say that there is no long-term predictive prophecy in the Bible, nor did I say that the Bible tells us nothing about the return of Jesus or of the events immediately preceding it. I do say that the Bible doesn't tell us all that much about these events - and certainly far less than dispensational theology in general and Tim LaHaye in particular would have us believe. I believe this is intentional, as God has other things He would rather we be doing than watching the skies. I also did not say that there will be no rapture. 1 Thessalonians 4:17 does say that those who are alive when Jesus returns will be caught up to meet Him. I do not, however, believe that that reference alone can bear the theological weight that is often placed upon it.

What I most vehemently challenge is Dr. LaHaye's assertion, in essence, that those who take the Bible seriously take it literally, and therefore agree with him, while those who take positions other than his are liberal theologians who fail to take the Bible seriously.

I am, by most definitions, a conservative theologian. However, my primary allegiance is to the text of Scripture, and to the God who speaks through that text. If that requires me to take theological position that could be labeled either "liberal" or "conservative," then so be it. I care not one bit for such labels. The fact of the matter is that it is entirely possible to interpret the book of Revelation (and the creation accounts of Genesis) in a manner that is theologically orthodox, academically and exegetically responsible, and yet not "literal." And it is possible, in so doing, to avoid certain distinct exegetically fallacious and theologically dubious errors that may often attend the "literal" interpretation of such a text.

Reason and Rationalism

2006-09-25T10:21:00.000-04:00

This is the second of two posts promised some time ago in my Xanga blog. Whereas the previous post was a rare foray into politics (sort of), this one will deal more with philosophy and was prompted, interestingly enough, by a television show.

Some weeks ago, Jenny and I were watching a summer rerun of the TV show Numb3rs. I'm quite a fan of the show - it's one of my favorites, actually. And I'm generally a fan of the character Charlie, the young prodigy mathematician (played by David Krumholtz, who does an excellent job of making me forget he also played Bernard the Head Elf in The Santa Clause). For those unfamiliar with the show, Charlie's brother Don (played by Rob Morrow, who does a similarly excellent job of making me forget Joel Fleischman from Northern Exposure) is an FBI agent, and Charlie regularly consults on Don's cases. Anyway, in the episode in question Don winds up working with a psychic consultant on a murder case. Much is made of Charlie's skepticism regarding the veracity of psychic/paranormal phenomena, to the effect that he rejects the notion utterly on the grounds that no scientific evidence for the existence of such phenomena is available. He hypothesizes numerous potential explanations for how the psychic could be obtaining the - generally accurate - information which he claims to have because of his psychic abilities.

This brings me to the subject of this post: Charlie's attitude is not at all uncommon today, especially in scientific and academic circles, where the concepts of reason and rationality are held in such high regard. The dominant paradigm tells that belief in the paranormal or the supernatural is to be spurned as irrational and unscientific. We here stories about a psychic having visions that prove to be accurate, he (or she) must have something up his sleeve - the information must have been obtained some other way. Similar views are held regarding, say, the miracle stories of the Bible. Maybe Lazarus was just in a coma. Maybe when Jesus' disciples said they'd seen Him resurrected from the dead, they had just had a vision or a hallucination. Or maybe they just made it up. Maybe Mary was raped by a Roman soldier. Maybe she and Joseph were just too hot for each other to hold off until after they got married (see Bruce Chilton's Rabbi Jesus), and that's how Jesus was conceived. We'll believe anything before we'll believe that psychics may really be psychic, or before we'll believe that the Bible's miracles may actually have happened. We're rational people, after all. We're scientifically advanced and knowledgeable. We don't buy into that supernatural mumbo-jumbo.

The problem is that such an attitude is not at all rational or logical. In fact, such an attitude is profoundly irrational. It flies in the face of sound logical reasoning. It's rationalism, not rationality. To dismiss as impossible an entire category of phenomena solely because your presuppositions demand you do so is not only illogical, it is, in fact, patently absurd.

It surprises me - and frightens me, frankly - that so many people who think this way fail to see the inherent illogic of their position. Saying that science cannot prove or discover the existence of certain phenomena and concluding thereby that such a thing must not exist is a classic non sequitur. The conclusion that psychics are all frauds does not follow from the fact that scientists can't prove that psychics are what they claim. Yet in the hallowed halls of academia, we see just that sort reasoning lauded as rationality. I cry foul. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You simply can't say "Science can't prove God's existence, therefore God must not exist." Such reasoning is blatantly fallacious - and yet it's appallingly common, all the same. To say, "I'm a scientist, therefore I don't believe in X," where X is anything from telepathy to the Virgin Birth, is not rational, and it is not commendable. It is an example of what happens when a person's presuppositions get in the way of reason. It's rationalism, not rationality.

Now, to clarify: I'm only referring to psychic and/or paranormal phenomena here because that was the subject of the television show that prompted me to post. I'm not trying to equate the claims of psychics with those of Scripture. In the event, I happen personally to believe that a good many people who claim to have psychic abilities are indeed hacks, charlatans, snake-oil salespersons. That doesn't mean that I dismiss all such claims as impossible solely because I've already decided that such things don't happen. My basic point is this: some would argue that a devotion to science and logic necessarily demands a corresponding rejection of the paranormal and/or the supernatural. My argument is that this is a logical fallacy - a non sequitur (Latin for "it does not follow"). In fact, I would argue that a genuine devotion to reason and logic as such would demand openness to the possibility of such things. A genuinely rational person ought to be able to say, "My lack of experience/belief/proof regarding such things does not mean that they do not exist/cannot happen." A genuinely rational scientist ought to be willing to admit that his (or her) inability to prove the existence of God does not require him (or her) to become an atheist.

Unfortunately, though, a great many people who claim to be rational, logically-minded people are in fact rationalists, instead. They display a single-minded devotion to their own sets of doctrines and presuppositions that is not substantially different from the devotion of a religious person to the doctrines and presuppositions demanded by his or her faith.

Gun Control Means Steady Aim

2006-09-22T08:26:00.000-04:00

The Waco Kid: *holds out right hand* "You see this hand?"
Bart: "Steady as a rock."
The Waco Kid: *holds up a violently trembling left hand* "Yeah, but I shoot with this one."
(From Blazing Saddles. As Mel Brooks movies go, it's no Spaceballs, but it's pretty darn funny even so.)

This will be the first (and shorter, most likely) of two posts I've mentioned a couple times on my Xanga blog. Both have been rattling around in my head for a few weeks. With a great deal of luck and a very cooperative son, I hope to get them both out today. If not, so be it.

It occurred to me some time ago that in the general orientation of the political spectrum, the issue of gun control finds, it seems, the bulk of its supporters on the leftish side. Frankly, this perplexes me. Given all the talk one hears from that end of the spectrum regarding the preservation of civil liberties, it seems somewhat self-contradictory that the same group should support legal and political measures that limit "the right of the people to keep and bear arms," as explicitly stated in the Constitution (whereas the words "privacy," "choice," and "abortion" are not even implied in the document). I find this fascinating. Now, I'm not opposed to all forms of gun-control - there are some people who shouldn't be allowed to own firearms, and nobody really needs a bazooka (except maybe me...). But it seems incongruous to me that from a political camp whence come frequent references to Constitutional rights and Big Brother, we should also hear calls for extreme restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms - up to and including calls for a completely disarmed populace.

Now, as to the second amendment, you may point out that although it does say "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," it qualifies that right, limiting it to the context of "a well regulated militia," as "essential to the security of the state," (I'm quoting from memory here, so I may not be getting it verbatim, but that's the general sense). Some read this qualification and say that we have the National Guard. That's our militia. The amendment only guarantees the right of the militia/National Guard to be armed, not the general populace as a whole. My response is that we must look at the historical context in which this amendment was written. First, we must understand what the Framers would have understood by the term "militia." The militia would have been drawn from among the general populace - ideally every able-bodied adult male - and the militiamen would have kept their arms in their homes. Second, we must look at what had just happened: the American Revolution. This was a situation in which the (armed) populace had risen up and thrown off an oppressive government. The aim of the second amendment (no pun intended) is, it seems, to ensure that such a thing could happen again if it becomes necessary. A disarmed populace has no means of defending itself against an oppressive government. Finally, I note that, qualification aside, the amendment still says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Again, the intent is to ensure the ability of the populace to defend itself against an oppressive government. Saying "the National Guard counts, hand over your guns," simply doesn't work with a proper, historically conditioned understanding of the second amendment.

Thus ends my first blogging foray into politics. I generally prefer to avoid politics in favor of theology and Biblical scholarship, in which arenas I'm considerably more comfortable, but this occurred to me some time ago, and I thought I would put it out there for perusal.

Context, Context, Context.

2006-09-08T08:30:00.000-04:00

So I've just been reading from 1 Corinthians 14 and I came across the following passage: "Women must keep silent in the churches; for it is not permitted to them to speak, but they must submit, even as the law says."

Now, this is one of those passages that traditionalists tend to cite in support of ecclesiastical patriarchy, and one over which feminists cry foul. Based on such passages, Paul was a bastion of godly patriarchy to his supporters, or a dangerous misogynist to his detractors. Well I cry foul. Paul was neither. Paul's main crime is being easy to misunderstand. I, for one, am with Peter, who points out that the letters of Paul contain "some hard to understand things, which the unlearned and unstable distort, as [they do] the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction," (2 Peter 3:16).

I once heard a preacher point out that although the Bible has come to us in nice neat chunks, with chapter divisions and verse divisions and - in some modern versions - subject headings, that's not how it was written. The Bible wasn't meant to be read one verse at a time. It was meant to be read one book at a time. This is nowhere more true than in the letters of Paul, and yet at the same time no author is more prooftexted than Paul. And so we get traditionalists praising Paul and feminists booing Paul and nobody ever realizing that Paul just might be saying something different than they think.

(Note, when I say "traditionalist" in this post I'm referring specifically to gender roles. That is, when I say "traditionalist" I mean those theolgians who argue that man as head-of-household and man as head-of-church has the status of Timeless Divine Decree. On some matters the term "traditionalist" would apply to me. On this issue, it does not.)

So back on topic: 1 Corinthians 14:34 is one of the portions of Paul's letters that gets prooftexted (prooftexting is the practice of isolating a single verse or group of verses to support a certain position). "Aha!" they say, "Paul says that women ought to be in submission to men in church, not allowed to teach or even speak." Again, I cry foul. Let's look at what Paul is actually saying.

First, we must remember one very important thing: only one or two of Paul's letters are capable of standing entirely alone. Most - including this one - constitute half a conversation. Paul is here responding to questions asked and issues raised by the Christians in Corinth in a letter they sent to him, and which is lost to us. Therefore it is highly likely that this statement is situationally specific, that it, that Paul is responding to some particular concern of the Corinthian church.

Second, we must examine the context. A text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext. So it is here. In context, Paul is talking about orderliness of worship. In the preceding verses we see references to how many people ought to be praying aloud at once, to people not speaking in tongues if there is no one to interpret, and so on. And so it is only after a lengthy discussion of orderliness of worship that we find this injunction for women to be silent, followed in verse 35 by a suggestion that women who have questions should ask their husbands later. Thus we begin to see a scenario where the Corinthian worship services were two steps shy of utter chaos and confusion: people all praying and prophesying and speaking in tongues at once, with women - who were generally denied education in the ancient world - chiming in with questions whenever they came to mind. Thus Paul says to all: take turns speaking, and if you have questions, hold them until after the service, please.

"Ah," you may say, "but what of that bit toward the end of the verse about how women must submit?" A good question, I say. Here again we must look at what Paul isn't saying, as much as what Paul is saying. I note that there is no object for the verb "submit" (hupotasso, in Greek, if you want to know), that is, Paul does not say here "Women are to submit to men." Rather he simply says, "they must submit," (or, more literally, "submit themselves/be submitted" the verb is middle/passive in form, but "submit" is less wordy and conveys basically the same meaning, so I've translated it that way). That being the case - since there's no object of the verb - we must return to our context to try and figure out to what women must submit. Given our previous discussion, that is (or should be) fairly obvious: the submission involved is to proper order and decorum within the worship service. Paul's concern here is with preserving order in worship, keeping the Corinthians' meetings from descending into utter chaos (I've been to some modern Protestant churches that could stand to re-read this chapter, by the way). His comments about the silence and submission of women must be read in that context.

"Fine," you say, "but I've got you now, you stinking liberal feminist! What about verse 35, where Paul says it's shameful for a woman to speak in church? Squirm out of that if you can! Bwahaha!!" I say, alright. Let's look at verse 35. Specifically, let's look at the second half of verse 35. We've already noted that Paul suggests women who have questions ought to ask their husbands at home, but he goes on to say "for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church." Uh-oh. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Paul really did mean the church to be patriarchal. Maybe the above analysis really is just a bunch of wiggling eisegesis - a pitiful attempt to force the text to say what I want it to say, in plain contravention of the obvious sense of the text. Maybe.

But I don't think so.

At first blush, this verse appears to be rather a problem for my position: it's obviously a general statement; it can't really be construed as context-specific. There are no real textual variants to speak of - certainly no manuscripts in which the clause does not appear (though there are a handful of manuscripts where it apparently gets moved to a different part of the passage). I can't pull any fancy original language sleight-of-hand with the word "shameful." Although the NASB translators soften the blow a bit by rendering it "improper," the word (aischros) means something like, "shameful, base, immoral." So what are we to do? Shall we scrap the entirety of the brilliant analysis above in favor of signs - "Ladies, keep your traps shut until you leave. Thanks, Mgmt" - posted on the doors of our churches? Maybe.

But wait, there's more.

There are two issues worth considering, here. First, is the issue of contradiction. If Paul believes, as this vexing little clause appears to say, that it is immoral or dishonorable for a woman to speak in church, why is it that just three chapters earlier (11:3) we find Paul saying that a woman who prays or prophesies in church ought to have her head covered? What's Paul playing at? In one passage he says a woman can only speak in church with her head covered, but in another, he says that a woman can't speak in church at all. Common sense and basic logic leave us with a few alternatives. One, the clause in question is an insertion by later editors or copyists of the text. This is unlikely, as there are no manuscripts which omit it. Two, Paul was a crazy man who didn't care whether he contradicted himself or not. Also unlikely, given the eloquence and rationality Paul displays elsewhere. Three, the verse in chapter 11 doesn't mean what it appears to mean, and women weren't really allowed to pray or prophesy in church. Unlikely, given references elsewhere to female prophets, and given the fact that the reference in 11:3 is made more or less in passing. Four, the clause in question - 14:35b - doesn't mean what it appears at first glance to mean. My money is on option four, and I'll tell you why:

Greek has two words for "speak." This is not surprising, as we have several in English, as well. Now, by the time the Bible was written, these two verbs - lego and laleo - were essentially synonymous, but not entirely. Earlier in the history of the Greek language, there was a sharper distinction between the two: lego (pronounced like the little toy blocks, or like the Spanglish word for "leg") meant basically "to speak," and could be used of giving a speech, carrying on a conversation, etc. The other verb, laleo (lah-LEH-oh) could also be used of carrying on a conversation or talking in general, but it could also be used of babbling, chattering, or prattling. It's even onomatopoietic: lalalalala - laleo. Plutarch uses it in reference to the vocalizations of monkeys.

That being said, does anyone care to take a guess as to which verb Paul uses in 1 Corintians 14:35? "Laleo," you say? Why, you're absolutely right! So when Paul says "it is shameful for a woman to speak in church," he does not - it would seem - mean that a woman must under no circumstances utter any speech during a worship service. That would contradict things Paul says in numerous other passages. Instead, we are drawn back to our context: Paul is trying to ensure the orderliness of worship in Corinth. He is not declaring a patriarchal structure for the church for all time. He's trying to keep the Corinthian church from descending into chaos in worship: "take turns speaking, and if you have questions, save them for later; it's disgraceful to prattle on during the worship service." How many of us as children were similarly scolded for talking in church? I was. That, nearly as I can tell, is all that's going on in this passage. Paul singles out women not because he's a misogynist, but because women were the ones chattering during the service and asking questions and being disruptive.

Paul's problem is not that he's a sexist. Paul's problem is that his arguments are sufficiently complex as to resist a nice, neat verse-a-day or chapter-a-day reading pattern, and so he makes statements as part of a larger argument that the unlearned and unstable can easily distort, if they neglect to pay attention to context.

Quit Yer Wine-ing

2006-08-17T08:59:00.000-04:00

As most people who know me are aware, I'm rather a fan of certain kinds of alcoholic drinks: beer and red wine, mainly (hard liquor tastes like flavored rubbing alcohol - but it sure clears my sinuses). But it occurs to me that there are a good many Christians who would be thoroughly scandalized at the thought of a Seminary graduate who drinks alcohol. I know a Southern Baptist pastor who refused to participate in the toast at his brother's wedding reception because it was done with champagne (and because it was a Catholic wedding).

Honestly, I don't have a problem with Christians who abstain from drinking alcohol. Why should I? I don't even have a problem with Christian groups - e.g., the Baptists - who forbid the consumption of alcohol by their members. The Baptists have every right to decide what one must affirm and how one must behave in order to be a Baptist. That's their tradition and they're welcome to it.

Where I have a problem is when certain groups declare all consumption of alcohol by any Christian to be sinful. That's a very large-scale assertion, and making it requires, I think, very strong Biblical support. Upon examination of the New Testament, however, one finds no such support. Nowhere in the whole of Scripture is it stated - implicitly or explicitly - that drinking alcohol is inherently wrong. Now, there are several exhortations in the New Testament to avoid drunkenness, but drunkenness and drinking are not the same. That's an important point.

Also worth noting is the fact that Jesus' first public miracle was the making of wine - and good wine, at that. The kind that the host of a wedding party puts out first until the guests have had enough to drink that they are no longer paying attention to the quality of the wine (see John 2). If the drinking of alcohol were inherently sinful, one must wonder why Jesus supplied an entire wedding party with the means to sin.

Some will say in response that when we read in the New Testament about "wine," as in the story in John's gospel, what is really being spoken of is more like grape juice than "wine" as we think of it. I am most curious as to where this sort of argument originated, because quite frankly, it is absolutely false. The wine the ancients drank was wine. Real, honest-to-goodness, alcoholic wine. If it weren't, how could Paul exhort his readers not to be drunk on it (Ephesians 5:18)? The plain fact is that people in first-century Judea drank alcoholic wine as a regular staple of their diet. Just as did people througout the Greco-Roman world, and the whole ancient world in general. In fact, grape juice, as something distinct from wine, is largely an invention of the modern world - something that came along with the advent of chemical preservatives and artificial refrigeration. The juice from grapes actually ferments at an incredible rate. If you take a bunch of grapes, squeeze the juice into a jug, and leave that jug sitting around for a few days, then at the end of those few days (less than a week, as I recall), you will have wine. The only way to prevent the process is by adding chemical preservatives and keeping the juice chilled, which they couldn't do in the ancient world.

Another spurious argument: the ancients only drank wine because they didn't have access to good drinking water. Yes, drinkable water was harder to come by then than now, but not enormously so. The ancients were quite skilled at finding drinkable water. They cooked with it, watered their animals with it, and drank it. They even cut their wine with it, to increase the volume. Besides, anyone who knows anything about alcohol knows that you can't replace water with wine in your diet. Alcohol is a diuretic: it increases urine production, and therefore accelerates dehydration, rather than preventing it.

A final point for consideration: the notion that Christians are required to abstain from alcohol is less than 200 years old, and is primarily localized in the United States. That means, in essence, that if drinking alcohol is inherently sinful for all Christians, then no one realized it for about the first 1800 years of Christian history. Now, there were people during that time who chose to abstain - in part or in whole - from drink, but no one (so far as I know) argued that drinking was inherently sinful. That's new.

All that being said, I want to reiterate that I have nothing against Christians who choose to abstain from alcohol. There are lots of good reasons to do so. Indeed, I'll be the first to say that there are some people who ought to do so: if you can't drink responsibly, you shouldn't drink at all. What I cannot accept is the assertion that drinking alcohol is somehow inherently wrong. There simply is no Biblical support for such a position, and most of the non-Biblical arguments used by Christians in defense of such a position are plainly spurious.

A Different Perspective

2006-08-15T08:08:00.000-04:00

In the midst of debate over the death penalty, it's interesting to me to look at the perspectives of other cultures. A common argument by those opposed to the death penalty is that execution is less humane than lengthy - or perpetual - incarceration. The ancient Greeks took just the opposite view: they found incarceration inhumane in the extreme. They had prisons, but one was not, for example, ever given a life sentence there. For them, either exile or death was far preferable to the long-term imprisonment of a human being.

Now, I'm not saying one position is necessarily better than another. I'm just offering a different perspective. We often tend to take it as a given that long-term imprisonment is inherently better than execution. It is a usually unquestioned assumption. Other cultures at other times, however, would have found it highly objectionable.

Paul's Radical Ethics

2006-08-13T10:27:00.000-04:00

There are lots of accusations and misinterpretations of the writings of Paul the Apostle. Part of the problem is that when we read Paul's letters we only have half of a conversation. Sometimes we can reconstruct parts of the other half, sometimes we can't. Often we're so unfamiliar with the socio-historical context in which Paul was writing that we think certain passages make one point, when in fact they are saying something completely different. There are lots of examples of this, and I could hold forth at some length about them. One main point on which Paul is often quite misunderstood is his position on the place of women - both within the church and within the home. Paul is often accused of (or applauded for) enshrining the patriarchal social system of his day in Scripture. This is only possible if we remain unfamiliar with Paul's context. Again, examples abound, but I have one in mind.

In 1 Corinthians 7:3-4. Verse 3 and the first half of verse 4 would've presented no problems to Paul's readers. Verse 3: "The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise the wife also to her husband." No problem so far - Jewish ethicists recognized that husbands and wives had responsibilities to meet one another's physical needs (indeed, Jewish tradition even exhorted men to sleep with their wives at least two to three times a week). So then, v.4: "The wife is not the master of her own body, but rather her husband [is]." Again, no problem so far - husbands have authority over their wives. Paul's audience - men as well as women - would've been nodding in agreement so far. But then we come to the latter half: "but likewise, the husband is also not master of his own body, but his wife [is]." What?!? Wives have authority over their husbands?! (Note that the verb for "to be master" in v.4 is exousiazo; the noun meaning "authority" is exousia). This is a radical notion - the idea that women have authority over the bodies of their husbands equal to that of their husbands over them. This would've been scandalous. It should be noted that the grammar of the verse prohibits any varying of degrees of authority here - the word homoios, "likewise," serves to equate - the husband has authority over his wife, "and also likewise" (homoios de kai) the wife has authority over her husband.

At any rate, I could keep going at some length - about how Ephesians 5:21 and following is often misinterpreted, and so on. But the demands of home life are exerting themselves. Perhaps later in the day I'll come back.

Twoo Wuv

2006-08-12T00:37:00.000-04:00

Today - well, yesterday, since it's after midnight - marks eight years since Jenny and I began dating. A remarkable thing, to be not yet 25 and to have spent eight years with someone. That's slightly less than a third of my life that this one woman has shared with me. It's a remarkable thing indeed. Better men live their entire lives in want of blessings I have before the end of my 25th year, and I am grateful beyond words.

But it sparks some reflection on the nature of love. We are led to believe, whether through romance novels or romantic movies that the initial feelings associated with being in love are permanent, and that the maintenance of a healthy marriage is essentially effortless. I've found in my travels that there are some things in life that you simply can't tell someone. Before we were married, I was told several times by married friends that "marriage is a lot of work." Frankly, I didn't believe them. I didn't see how that was possible. "We love each other. How can living together be work?"

Eventually I came to realize something very important: before I got married, there was no one I had lived with who I had not at least occasionally felt like strangling. Nor was there anyone who hadn't at least occasionally felt like strangling me. You see, we tend to think in our modern society that a good marriage is one in which the emotions associated with love remain strong without our aid, and in which neither partner ever feels like slapping the other.

But love is not just an emotion. In the initial stages it most certainly is, and even later, the emotions remain: just this evening Jenny and I were sitting on the couch and I was struck by how beautiful her eyes are, and I told her so. But love is more than emotion. Love is a choice. It's waking up every morning, looking at the person lying next to you, and saying to yourself "This day I give you myself. It may not be much, and I may regret it by day's end, but I'm yours, and I intend to act like it." It's an act of sheer will. Sometimes emotion makes it easier. Sometimes emotion makes it harder. I would be very surprised if Jenny has never contemplated smothering me with my own pillow as I slept. The people we let in wind up being the very ones with the greatest ability either to piss us off or to make our hearts soar.

So that's my reflection on marriage for the day, I guess. Marriage is wonderful. I love being married more than anything, save being a father. And I can honestly say I love my wife more today than yesterday, and more yesterday than the day before. But I can also say - or at least, begin to say - that I understand better now what it is to love than I did when Jenny and I first started dating, those many years ago. It's both an emotion and a choice. And the choice has to be made afresh with every new day. Bring on the morning.

I have succumbed...

2006-08-09T11:25:00.000-04:00

Well, I've finally gotten a blogspot blog. I mainly did it so I can comment on the blogspot sites of people I know who have them. If I use this one, it will probably be as a forum for my various theological, biblical, and philosophical musings, with maybe a bit of socio-political stuff, too. I intend to keep my Xanga site, too. I may ultimately wind up switching to this one primarily. We'll just have to see.

Dragon Island

Party at the End of the World

Quick Review: OtterBox Defender for iPad

Quote of the Day

A Sign of Authority

Let's Keep X in Xmas!

"So what does the Greek say here?"

Quote of the Day

In which I indulge in a bit of whining

Quote of the Day

On iPads and Productivity

Test, part trois

Test, part deux.

Test

Excuse me, *tap tap* is this thing on?

Raiders of the Lost Ark

On Productivity

Comments

On Blogging

Quote of the Day

From the Mouths of Children

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

Please Let This Be a Joke...

Things that make you go... *facepalm*

No Joy in Beantown

On Language Learning

In which I learn a spiritual lesson while mowing

BibleWorks 8 Giveaway

A couple thoughts about Terminator Salvation

Test #2

Twitter Test

Does God Have a Sense of Humor?

Breaking the Silence... with a quiz

Faith, Works, and Baggage

Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

Quote of the Day

The Aussie Bible

Quote of the Day

Progress

New name...

A Random Thought

A quick note

Marriage Advice

Of Eunuchs and Archaeology

So... I'm it... I guess...

And they shall take up serpents

A Note on Eschatology

Reason and Rationalism

Gun Control Means Steady Aim

Context, Context, Context.

Quit Yer Wine-ing

A Different Perspective

Paul's Radical Ethics

Twoo Wuv

I have succumbed...

Excuse me, tap tap is this thing on?

Things that make you go... facepalm