Comments

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

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some old posts on my old Xanga blog the other day, and I was struck by how much of my previous habit of blogging has been replaced by Twitter/Facebook updates.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

"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

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

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

"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...

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.