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22 Jul 16:14

I don't know what to say anymore...

by noreply@blogger.com (Baron von Hohenfall)
This is not just a post about how truant I've been about updating this blog!


A month or so ago I posted what a crap time I've been having with my faith. http://2nddefenestration.blogspot.com/2013/05/is-jesus-failure.html Well, it's only gotten worse and I don't think I'll ever recover it.

Gay rights, the Problem of Evil, and the things mentioned in the above post have just become too much for me to bear anymore. While I'll always be grateful for the perspective offered in posts like this one, I just don't think I can agree with the "beautiful, warts and all" sentiment. Maybe I could if the majority of the church was a little less of a blight on the planet, but as it stands...

So what's the alternative for me?  I still think atheism is bull honkey if only because of the impossibility of proving a negative. Besides, I'd make a lousy atheist. I'm too sour to be a secular humanist but not sardonically detached enough to call myself a nihilist without starting to feel suicidal (I'm not entirely sure that all those words even make sense, but I think you get the gist). Plus, while I'm certainly not anti-science, I've never had the quasi-religious zeal for it of a Carl Sagan or an Adam Savage.

I suppose the obvious answer for me would be one of the Baskin-Robbins varieties of liberal Christianity. In a lot of ways (theistic evolution, semi-rejection of penal substitution) I was a liberal Christian already. I've certainly had some good conversations with James F. McGrath and I adore the work of Fred "Slacktivist" Clark (even when he's obnoxiously preachy). But, I just can't help but feel like the enterprise is built of a wee bit of wishful thinking.

I know that it's impolite to exclude, labels are for jars, yada yada yada, but when your banner seems to encompass a near atheist like John Shelby Spong or Robert Cargill just as easily as it does Reinhold Niebuhr- then something feels terribly wrong with the logical consistency circuits. On that point, I have to agree with the fundies. To paraphrase a good man, say what you will about the tenets of 16th Century Genevan Calvinism but at least it was an ethos.

The same goes for liberal Islam and Judaism (not to mention Baha'i). If you're using your sacred text to arrive at basic conclusions about the existence and nature of God and morality that would have made absolutely no sense to the actual authors by any sort of common sense reckoning at all, then what's the point of reading the dang thing in the first place?

Islam is pretty much just one guy's self-insert fan fic of the Bible, so if I don't buy Jesus then I'm not buying Mohammed (ditto Mormonism and any other "new and improved, now with Techron" versions of previous religions). Sorry.

Orthodox Judaism I thought long and hard about given my far-exceeding-your-recommended-daily-value of Gentile guilt inherited from my mom. Although I do loves me some latkes, I say "no" to it for a few reasons. One, it runs into the same Problem of Evil that Christianity does (or a worse one if you're one of those "God doesn't really give a rat's ass about anyone who doesn't have a Jewish mother" types considering that the Jews are one of the most battered races in history who unlike Muslims and Christians couldn't even boast of a secular power from the Tenth Century to 1948). Two, maybe it's just the ghost of my Premillenial past talking, but I can't quite wrap my head around the idea of Judaism without the Temple Mount and animal sacrifices. Three, as shaky as the historical evidence for the Gospels is, the archeological evidence for the events of the Hebrew Bible is even worse. In the past, I was able to take Jesus' word for it that these things really happened in some sense, but now I'm kind of stuck on that part, you see...

Zoroastrianism and Sikhism offer no testable proofs, so I have no way to even tackle them. Hinduism just feels like an ancient pagan mythology that somehow got sealed into a time capsule. Wicca/Neopaganism is an ahistorical mess and has similar identity issues to liberal Christianity. Buddhism has a lot of features that attract me (yes, yes, the anime nerd is attracted to an Eastern religion, what a shock) but in my opinion it barely even qualifies as a religion in the first place and it encourages you to pick from it cafeteria-style with or without any sort of formal commitment anyway.

So, I guess I'm a "plain vanilla" theist for now (I'd say deist, but I'm unwilling to rule the possibility of divine miracles in theory). But since I'm unwilling for safety reasons to try the occult or whatever I guess I'm cut off in practice from whatever God(ess)(es) might actually exist.

Maybe I'll give this Jesus guy another chance some day (Yes, I'm well aware how arrogant that sounds, but I don't know what else to do. I'm tired of going against my conscience for the sake of respecting the power of an easily offended God). I doubt it'll be for a while though, if ever. Sigh.
22 Jul 16:14

WIN a copy of T. Michael Law’s When God Spoke Greek

by Brian LePort

61dirz1lajl-_sy300_This weekend is the beginning of the aforementioned book blog tour for T. Michael Law’s When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian BibleI am going to be giving away one copy to a lucky winner. Here is how you participate:

(1) Comment here.

(2) Share this post on Facebook, Twitter, or Google + and tell me that you did this in your comment. For each share you will receive one entry, but your entries are limited to one share per social media platform (i.e., you can receive three entries if you share this on all the aforementioned platforms).

(3) If you have a blog mention our tour on your blog and post the link in your comment.

This allows you as few as one entry or as many as five. Your entries will be numbered and on August 1st I will use Random.org to determine a winner.

Winners are limited to the United States and Canada (or to an address in the United States or Canada where someone will relay it to you elsewhere). Those who are participating in this blog tour as reviewers are not eligible to win.

Good luck!


Filed under: Books (General) Tagged: blog tour, Book contest, Near Emmaus, T. Michael Law, When God Spoke Greek
22 Jul 16:08

Blog Tour, When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible

by Joel L. Watts

This post is part of the blog tour. I am reviewing/reflecting on the first two chapters. I must note that I am quite biased to this book, having read an early draft, the final draft, and having my name mentioned in the acknowledgements. Equally so, I am partial to the LXX and have long been a user of the New English Translation of the Septuagint.

It is not enough to hope all Christians understand the role the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures played in the life of the early Church. We know, sadly, the knowledge of the Greek Old Testament is very limited in the West in both the Church and (while less so) the Academy, but this has slowly given way. In recent years, several authors (Dines, Rajak) have written to demonstrate the validity, usefulness, and importance of the Septuagint. Admittedly, many of these recent works have fallen on deaf ears because they were written to the Academy, complete with stilted rooms of dusty Greek, podiums of big words, and boards of information not easily digestible. This is not to say T. Michael Law has written expressly to the laity and autodidacts among us. Rather, he has written an immensely approachable — and enjoyable — book to be used by a wide range of readers including lay and academic.

Law’s first chapter is appropriately named “Why This Book?” Simply put, he argues, the Septuagint is the reserve bank of Christianity. We are indebted to it not just for New Testament theology, and Christian theology, but so too certain translative images, such as the coat of many colors. He moves on to give four reasons why this book, his book, is need. He believes one area left uncovered is the role of the “Septuagint in the Christian story.” (4) In this book, he promises to keep the Christian story in the proper place in relationship to the Septuagint. His second chapter begins in earnest this present study. In ten short pages, Law gives a concise history of how Greek became the lingua franca of the world. This is a much needed background for those who need to understand the “why” of translating the Hebrew into the Greek.

It is refreshing to see such a book. It lacks a theological agenda, but places the Septuagint at the front of Christian theology. It is because of the Septuagint Christians could developed their theology in such as a way as it did. Further, we in the West tend to forget the East (Orthodox) still use the Septuagint as their biblical text. T. Michael Law writes with the ease of a well polished author and the skill of an academic. His prose is remarkable in that it delivers the needed punch without making the reader go round after round trying to figure out what he is saying.

Having read ahead, I can unequivocally state When God Spoke Greek will become the standard introduction to the Septuagint and should equally serve as an introductory text to New Testament and early Christian doctrine.

As a side note, I am personally glad to see such a book. It values the academic lever but finds its balance with an address to the laity. When I was a King James Onlyist, I was told the LXX was a figment of the imagination of the second or third century. I didn’t believe it, and it was in part due to this line of reasoning within the movement I was able to finally leave. 

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My books are now available on Amazon. Mimetic Criticism and the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary and From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls is in paperback or Kindle
22 Jul 14:36

Open Access Journal: Religious Studies News << Charles Ellwood Jones (AWOL: The Ancient World Online)

by noreply@blogger.com (Charles Jones)
Religious Studies News
Religious Studies News (RSN) is the newspaper of record for the field especially designed to serve the professional needs of persons involved in teaching and scholarship in religion (broadly construed to include religious studies, theology, and sacred texts). Published quarterly online by the American Academy of Religion, RSN is received by some 9,000 scholars and by libraries at colleges and universities internationally. Religious Studies News communicates the important events of the field and related areas and examines critical issues in education, pedagogy (especially through the biannual Spotlight on Teaching), theological education (through the annual Spotlight on Theological Education), research, publishing, and the public understanding of religion. It also publishes news about the services and programs of the AAR and other organizations, including employment services and registration information for the Annual Meeting and related activities. It does not accept books for review.
Online Issues
Print Issues (2001–2009) Available in PDF 
Spotlight on Teaching 
Spotlight on Theological Education
Advertising

22 Jul 14:35

2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium Profiles: Brent Landau

by Tony

This year's York Christian Apocrypha Symposium, “Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier: The Christian Apocrypha in North American Perspectives,” is only a few months away (September 26–28, 2013; mark your calendars). In the weeks leading up to the event, I will be posting here and on the the Symposium web page short profiles of the conference participants. For more information, see the Symposium web page (HERE).

Brent Landau, “The ‘Harvard School’ of the Christian Apocrypha”

The Revelation of the Magi (for Brepols’ Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum) expands upon his earlier popular work on the text for Harper Collins (2010). Landau, whose dissertation provided the first annotated English translation of this third-century apocryphal text, has theorized the Revelation is actually a first-person account of early Christian visionary experiences.

“The Revelation of the Magi is absolutely fascinating,” Landau says, “because it claims something that no other early Christian text does: that the Star of Bethlehem was actually Jesus himself, who is able to change his form at will. It also has a very strange story about the star producing some ‘food’ for the Magi that allows them and the people of their country to see visions of Jesus’ life on earth. I wonder whether some early Christians might have taken their own visionary experiences (possibly involving the ingesting of some hallucinogenic substance) and wrote them down as if they were the Magi themselves.”

Landau received his Doctor of Theology from Harvard University in 2008. The program, often dubbed “the Harvard School,” is known for its ground-breaking discoveries, as well as the influence of Helmut Koester, whose controversial work on the Gospel of Thomas and other texts has shaped the way scholars approach the Christian Apocrypha. “Studying the Christian Apocrypha at Harvard was fantastic,” Landau says, “because its faculty and graduates have included some of the brightest and most prolific scholars of this literature.”

 

22 Jul 00:04

Charles Villiers Stanford: An Appreciation by Henry Walford Davies

by John France
This is one of man tributes paid to Sir Charles Villiers Stanford shortly after his death on 29 March 1924, It need no editorial comment. 

I had but one term of close contact at College with him. The things I remember most vividly in his teaching were: that the ground-plan of each movement had to be perfect; that he ‘sensed’ it in a wonderful way if any measurement was wrong; that he did not repair the disproportion there and then except so far as the ground-plan was concerned. He would go to the piano and hammer out the necessary scheme with a more or less definite bass and a vague super-structure which left a pupil quite free to fancy for himself, but in no doubt as to the exact measurements within which his fantasy was to range.
Parry seemed to have intimate concern for and sympathy with the pupil's thought itself; Stanford's concern was to see the thought through to the hearer, whatever it was; so when the design seemed right he simply nodded and that was done with. The two men made so splendid a combination that we who had lessons from both were uniquely fortunate; and I may be pardoned here for mentioning Brahms's remark to me that ‘he hoped I taught others as well as my teachers has taught me.’
‘Make my compliments to your teachers’ was his message as we parted, with greeting to ‘Sir Grove.’ Whenever I think of him now, my mind will go back as it has dozens of times with gratitude to a trivial kindness of his. In 1889 I had sent in a half-baked exercise for the Cambridge Mus. Bac., which failed. There came a gratuitous letter from the Professor to the unknown candidate, to say that he felt justified in ‘breaking the rule of silence’ and encouraging me ‘to try again.’ It ended with the sentence: ‘Remember that a degree is the reward for excellence attained, not for excellence attainable.’ A scholarship exam at the R.C.M. followed: and this being a search for evidence of excellence attainable, gave him a further chance; and I shall never forget Stanford's kindly eager handshake with me in 1890, when he found himself able to recommend me (mostly on the rejected exercise) for a year's trial scholarship, and followed me through a packed crowd (in the passage in the old College) to say how glad he was. The professor and the composer were-for good and all-one man. His whole being, as I knew him, was as fully in that slight endearing act as in his greater vein of lovable melody. And when unborn singers revel in ‘Cuttin' rushes on the Mountain,’ they will have the same joy of personal contact with Stanford himself as I had in 1890, and as I shall hope to have countless times yet, whenever I hear or think upon a strain of his lovely music. 
Henry Walford Davies   Music & Letters July 1924 (with minor edits)

22 Jul 00:03

IDiot Irony

by noreply@blogger.com (Laurence A. Moran)
Sometimes I really wonder what goes on at the Discovery Institute.

As most of you know by now, Stephen Meyer has written a new anti-evolution book where he criticizes the expert scientific opinion on the Cambrian Explosion. He says that the experts are all wrong and the evidence shows that evolution is impossible. The only reasonable alternative is that god(s) made the primitive animals. Meyer has an undergraduate degree in physics and earth science (1981) and got a Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science ten years later (1991). He is not a scientist and he is not an expert on evolution.

Casey Luskin has a Master's degree in earth sciences but later on he got a law degree and he is primarliy a lawyer. He is not a scientist and he is not an expert on evolution.

David Klinghoffer is a writer. He is not a scientist and he is not an expert on evolution.

Nick Matzke is a graduate student who is finishing up his Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. He is a scientist and he is an expert on evolution. He is also an expert on Intelligent Design Creationism.

Nick Matzke wrote a long review of Darwin's Doubt—a book written by a philosopher [Meyer’s Hopeless Monster, Part II].

Casey Luskin, a lawyer, took it upon himself to critique Matzke's review [How "Sudden" Was the Cambrian Explosion? Nick Matzke Misreads Stephen Meyer and the Paleontological Literature; New Yorker Recycles Misrepresentation]. Luskin says,
Since Matzke published his review, The New Yorker reviewed Meyer's book. Gareth Cook, the science writer who wrote the piece, relied heavily on Matzke's critical evaluation, even though Matzke is a graduate student and not an established Cambrian expert. Cook uncritically recycled Matzke's claim that the Cambrian explosion took "many tens of millions of years," ...
Do you see the irony? Meyer is a philosopher and Luskin is a lawyer but poor old Nick is just a graduate student about to get a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. Matzke is not an established Cambrian expert. Neither are Meyer or Luskin but that doesn't seem to stop them from criticizing Matzke and all other evolutionary biologists and all paleontologists.1

David Klinghoffer just can't wait to contribute his two cents. Klinghoffer isn't a scientist and he certainly isn't an expert on paleontology but that doesn't mean he can't have an opinion [Regarding Matzke, Coyne, and Darwin's Doubt, a Reader Asks].
That is a good question. Casey Luskin has already demonstrated what a non-paleontologist Matzke is.
How could non-scientist Klinghoffer possibly know whether lawyer Casey Luskin had made a good case against evolutionary biologist Nick Matzke? Does Klinhoffer realize that Luskin is a lawyer, not a paleontologist?

Do you wonder why we call them IDiots?


1. My irony meter survived but it was touch-and-go for a minute or two.
22 Jul 00:03

Bill Maher Shows Us that "Smart" People Can Believe Really Stupid Things

by noreply@blogger.com (Laurence A. Moran)
Bill Maher thinks he's a smart person ... maybe even an intellectual. Here's a video of him attacking smart people who believe really stupid things. It drips with sarcasm and mockery. At the end of the video you wonder how in the world people could be so stupid. Maher is upset about the resurgence of the "smart-stupid person." One of his targets is a former Prime Minister of Canada.

Hermant Mehta liked this video [Bill Maher Goes After Dr. Eben Alexander and Other Brilliant Scholars Who Believe in Complete Nonsense].


Speaking of smart-stupid people. Here's a video of Bill Maher talking complete nonsense about vaccines. He is corrected by a really smart person, Bill Frist. This is an example of irony and an example of hypocrisy. The hypocrisy is worse than the irony.

Read more »
21 Jul 23:36

Losing Christ and finding Jesus

by CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor

By Reza Aslan, special to CNN

(CNN) – When I was 15 years old, I found Jesus.

I spent the summer of my sophomore year at an evangelical youth camp in Northern California, a place of timbered fields and boundless blue skies, where, given enough time and stillness and soft-spoken encouragement, one could not help but hear the voice of God.

Amid the man-made lakes and majestic pines my friends and I sang songs, played games and swapped secrets, rollicking in our freedom from the pressures of home and school.

In the evenings, we gathered in a fire-lit assembly hall at the center of the camp. It was there that I heard a remarkable story that would change my life forever.

Two thousand years ago, I was told, in an ancient land called Galilee, the God of heaven and Earth was born in the form of a helpless child. The child grew into a blameless man. The man became the Christ, the savior of humanity.

Through his words and miraculous deeds, he challenged the Jews who thought they were the chosen of God, and in return he was nailed to a cross. Though Jesus could have saved himself from that gruesome death, he freely chose to die.

Indeed, his death was the point of it all, for his sacrifice freed us all from the burden of our sins.

But the story did not end there, because three days later, he rose again, exalted and divine, so that now, all who believe in him and accept him into their hearts will also never die, but have eternal life.

For a kid raised in a motley family of lukewarm Muslims and exuberant atheists, this was truly the greatest story ever told. Never before had I felt so intimately the pull of God.

In Iran, the place of my birth, I was Muslim in much the way I was Persian. My religion and my ethnicity were mutual and linked. Like most people born into a religious tradition, my faith was as familiar to me as my skin, and just as disregardable.

After the Iranian revolution forced my family to flee our home, religion in general, and Islam in particular, became taboo in our household. Islam was shorthand for everything we had lost to the mullahs who now ruled Iran.

My mother still prayed when no one was looking, and you could still find a stray Quran or two hidden in a closet or a drawer somewhere. But, for the most part, our lives were scrubbed of all trace of God.

That was just fine with me. After all, in the America of the 1980s, being Muslim was like being from Mars. My faith was a bruise, the most obvious symbol of my otherness; it needed to be concealed.

Jesus, on the other hand, was America. He was the central figure in America’s national drama. Accepting him into my heart was as close as I could get to feeling truly American.

I do not mean to say that mine was a conversion of convenience. On the contrary, I burned with absolute devotion to my newfound faith.

I was presented with a Jesus who was less “Lord and Savior” than he was a best friend, someone with whom I could have a deep and personal relationship. As a teenager trying to make sense of an indeterminate world I had only just become aware of, this was an invitation I could not refuse.

The moment I returned home from camp, I began eagerly to share the good news of Jesus Christ with my friends and family, my neighbors and classmates, with people I’d just met and with strangers on the street: those who heard it gladly, and those who threw it back in my face.

Yet something unexpected happened in my quest to save the souls of the world.

The more I probed the Bible to arm myself against the doubts of unbelievers, the more distance I discovered between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of history – between Jesus the Christ and Jesus of Nazareth.

In college, where I began my formal study of the history of religions, that initial discomfort soon ballooned into full-blown doubts.

The bedrock of evangelical Christianity, at least as it was taught to me, is the unconditional belief that every word of the Bible is God-breathed and true, literal and inerrant.

The sudden realization that this belief is patently and irrefutably false, that the Bible is replete with the most blatant and obvious errors and contradictions — just as one would expect from a document written by hundreds of different hands across thousands of years — left me confused and spiritually unmoored.

And so, like many people in my situation, I angrily discarded my faith as if it were a costly forgery I had been duped into buying.

I began to rethink the faith and culture of my forefathers, finding in them a deeper, more intimate familiarity than I ever had as a child, the kind that comes from reconnecting with an old friend after many years apart.

Meanwhile, I continued my academic work in religious studies, delving back into the Bible not as an unquestioning believer but as an inquisitive scholar. No longer chained to the assumption that the stories I read were literally true, I became aware of a more meaningful truth in the text.

Ironically, the more I learned about the life of the historical Jesus, the turbulent world in which he lived, and the brutality of the Roman occupation that he defied, the more I was drawn to him.

The Jewish peasant and revolutionary who challenged the rule of the most powerful empire the world had ever known became so much more real to me than the detached, unearthly being I had been introduced to in church.

Today, I can confidently say that two decades of rigorous academic research into the origins of Christianity has made me a more genuinely committed disciple of Jesus of Nazareth than I ever was of Jesus Christ.

I have modeled my life not after the celestial spirit whom many Christians believe sacrificed himself for our sins, but rather after the illiterate, marginal Jew who gave his life fighting an unwinnable battle against the religious and political powers of his day on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed – those his society deemed unworthy of saving.

I wrote my newest book, "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" in order to spread the good news of the Jesus of history with the same fervor that I once applied to spreading the story of the Christ.

Because I am convinced that one can be a devoted follower of Jesus without being a Christian, just as I know that one can be a Christian without being a follower of Jesus.

Reza Aslan is a bestselling author and a scholar of religion. This article was adapted from his newest book, "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth." The views expressed in this column are Aslan's alone.


21 Jul 20:13

On Being an Apple ‘Catholic’

by Paul Fidalgo

It is no new thing to compare Apple, Inc. to a religion. The fanatical devotion it has inspired over the decades has made many outsiders eye it suspiciously, as it hawks a kind of techno-faith in which the textbook charismatic leader, Steve Jobs, emits a Reality Distortion Field that turns the skeptical into zealots, hungry for the latest sleek combinations of glass and aluminum like the damned crave absolution. The term “Cult of Mac,” begun by Leander Kahney in his book and website of that title, both pokes fun at and celebrates this comparison.

Those who live inside the Reality Distortion Field, in my experience, rarely resent this. Just as true religious zealots do not mind being known for their blind faith, but wear it as a badge of honor. This is a bit of an exaggeration, of course, as even the most doughy-eyed Apple user will still vent criticisms and complaints, but very often this is done in the spirit of keeping true to a central credo; as in, if device X does or does not have Y feature, is that really keeping with The Apple Way? Is it What Steve Would Have Done? Et cetera.

I, too, have embraced this. Being an atheist, in particular, it’s actually kind of fun to have a pretend religion to subscribe to. I follow the teachings of The Steve, Apple keynotes are like a twice-yearly mass, and I look for signs from the prophets Tim Cook and Jony Ive, just as much as I shook my head in despair at the heretics Scott Forestall and John Browett as they fell from grace.

At New York Review of Books, Edward Mendelson explores the idea of Apple-as-religion anew:

[A]s everyone knows, the world-religion of the educated and prosperous in the twenty-first century is Apple, with its Vatican in Cupertino and its cathedrals in the light-filled Apple Stores that draw pilgrims gripping iPhones and iPads like rosaries. Apple’s flock is secured against heresy by censors who rule the online App Store; only applications with Apple’s imprimatur are allowed on an iPhone. Programmers risk excommunication — with all their works condemned to being listed in an Index of Prohibited Software — if they violate canon law by bypassing Apple’s banking system or ignoring its infallible doctrine. Rebellious heretics can “jailbreak” an iPhone and induce it to accept software anathematized by Apple, but a heretic’s phone is refused communion when presented for repair at the Apple Store.

It’s true. As much as Apple is a corporation, and would publicly laugh off mentions of their quasi-religious status, they are doubtlessly generating a culture around their products and services. Mendelson calls the Apple Stores cathedrals, but I (who worked in one such store for over a year) think of them more as embassies — outposts in the ugly real world set up to represent Apple diplomatically to the local population and to help spread Apple virtues and values (a prime one of which would, of course, be “buy Apple stuff”).

Mendelson focuses his piece on one particular aspect of Apple’s ecosystem that goes somewhat against dogma, the programming language of AppleScript, which allows non-experts to do what is rarely done in the world of Apple: lift the hood of the operating system (on OS X anyway) and tinker with the guts. This leads Mendelson to this comparison:

AppleScript is protestant with a lower-case “p,” as iOS and much of OS X is catholic with a lower-case “c.”

He goes on to make a case for why the “protestant” side of Apple is the preferable one. (“Apple nailed its Ninety-Five Theses to its own door.”) As for me, I’m less sure.

To be clear, I like that AppleScript exists. I like that one can perform more advanced tasks in the Terminal or with Automator. But I almost never, ever do. (That said, if you own a MacBook Air, and would like it to wake from sleep faster, you must use this Terminal command.)

You see, I think Apple’s done, for the most part, a good enough job without me going into the workings and mucking it up. I had played for a spell within the Android universe, a system that encourages and embraces tinkering and augmenting at all levels and, as I’ve written on my own blog Near-Earth Object, I grew weary of the all the choices. When something didn’t quite suit me, or I suspected I could squeeze more power, more battery life, or what have you, out of the device, I would feel personally responsible to make it happen. This is similar to how I felt back when I was a Windows user pre-2004. In the abstract, it’s great to have options, but I began to be exhausted by them.

Apple, in its iron-fist theocracy, leaves few choices beyond ringtones and wallpaper. As someone who is not a programmer and simply wants his tools to work well and seamlessly with each other and other services, that’s pretty much just fine with me. Apple, you make the decisions, and I will just take part.

And receive salvation.

This is very much a parallel to religion. Let’s take AppleScript out of the discussion, and think more in terms of all of Apple being “catholic” and Android/Windows being “protestant.” In a reformed religion, one is freer to find their own way to God, and they become responsible for finding that path and establishing that ideal oneness with the Almighty. An orthodox/catholic faith, on the other hand, spells it all out in advance. In order to get good with the Big Man, you need to follow the rules, buy into the dogma and the catechism, and then your decision-making is over. It is, counterintuitively, a kind of freedom, because it takes away the burden of forging this path for yourself. It takes away the burden of having to decide what is right and wrong. One is “free” within the parameters.

Obviously, when it comes to religion, I am neither Catholic nor Protestant, but “none of the above.” But with my consumer tech products, I have found, even after dabbling with the reformers, that I prefer the orthodox. Blind faith to dogma in religion is dangerous and has existential implications. Blind faith to a technology company, while maybe not admirable from a skeptics’ point of view, is relatively benign.

And, to me, anyway, it’s spiritually freeing.

And so I say, of The Steve, peace be upon him.

21 Jul 20:10

Eschatologies

by Jeff Carter

I no longer believe in Eschatology – that is: the study of last things and end times.  I no longer believe in eschatology; I believe in eschatologies.

When I was young my parents (who are Salvation Army officers – clergy in our quirky denominational nomenclature) didn't talk much about eschatology, not that I remember anyway [i].  Though my dad did show the Thief in the Night series of films to our congregation.  And those films left a significant mark (heh heh heh) on my young and impressionable soul.

I remember vivid nightmares of earthquakes and volcanoes.  I remember that fear of coming home from school and not finding anyone and being immediately convinced that I had missed the rapture.  I remember freaking out any time the moon seemed especially large or orange.  Eschatology made me afraid. We didn't talk much about eschatology but held a sort of half-digested and barely understood Premillennial  Dispensationalism.

Later, when I was 19 or 20 I started studying eschatology for myself – partly as a way to undo some of that fear that had never left me. And I quickly dropped the Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist system.  The continued “it could happen at any moment” hype left me dry and I wanted to discover an eschatology that was based less on fear and artificial divisions between “Israel” and “the Church”  (It seems to me that Dispensationalism excels at creating a multiplicity of artificial divisions). 

I began reading about Postmillennialism – many of the early members of The Salvation Army held a post-millennial eschatology and were convinced that they would be instrumental in making the world a better place and ushering in the Kingdom of God.  That kind of eschatology influenced some of the songs they wrote.The song, “Shout Aloud Salvation” by Salvationist George Scott Railton, for instance:

March on, march on! we bring the jubilee;

Fight on, fight on! salvation makes us free;

We'll shout our Saviour's praises over every land and sea

As we go marching to Glory.


Early Salvation Army soldiers and officers believed that the expanding work of the Army would, in fact, bring about the great Jubilee, the kingdom of God on earth.

But I didn't stay long there.  I soon discovered Preterism – an eschatological system that holds that most (or all) of the predictions of the end times were fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.  And this system seemed to make a lot of sense.  The pieces of the puzzle began to come together for me.  When Jesus said that “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” (Luke 21:32) he meant what he said… this generation, the very one he was speaking to as he made his predictions.

This belief freed me of that dispensationalist fear, established within me a deeper commitment to seeing the Kingdom of God here on earth, and gave me a great impetus to deeper study of scripture.  But that same impetus toward study has, in recent years, moved me (however reluctantly) away from a Preterist understanding of eschatology.

I say “reluctantly” because I liked that Preterism made sense.  It was a single unified theory that explained everything (or seemed to).  I liked that it was whole and complete.  There was comfort in that. But (and there’s always a “but,” right?) I have had to let it go.

Because I’ve come to realize that there is no eschatology of the bible – there is no one eschatology; there are many.  Daniel’s eschatology is not the same as Zephaniah’s. And the eschatologies of the synoptic gospels (though strikingly similar) are not the same.  And neither is Paul’s eschatology the same as John’s.  They were all writing at various times, to different peoples, with different expectations and with different goals.  And they each had different expectations about what “the end” would (or should) look like. 

I’ve come to accept that there is no way to meld all these eschatologies into one Grand Unified Field Theory.  There is no eschatological Theory of Everything. 

So what do I believe?  I do believe in the resurrection in Jesus Christ – that we who believe live in Christ – and that in some sense we live in and create the Kingdom of Heaven within us and around us in this world here and now.  “Making heaven on earth is our business,” said William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. I believe that.  I love that.  Making heaven on earth is our business.

And whatever I might learn from the many and varied eschatologies of the bible – I filter them all through that thought: how will this help me to better see and create the Kingdom of God in the world around me?  I don’t expect the world to end in a matter of days or weeks or years.  The kingdom of God is an eternal and everlasting Kingdom and it begins anew each day.









[i]The Salvation Army does not officially endorse or embrace any particular form of eschatology.  There is a wide variety of opinion on the topic within our ranks.
21 Jul 20:09

The Day Baptist Press Did a Better Job Covering Archaeology Than Other News Outlets

by Jim

bp

and contrast with this (which is common across the web)

sci

Baptist Press, in the past, has been far more likely to exaggerate archaeological claims than other sources but this time Baptist Press is doing a better job covering archaeology than other news sources.  News outlets are becoming clones of BAR and Baptist Press is becoming more responsible than the rest.   It’s a strange world.  Baptist Press may soon be the go to source for accurate news…  Think about that.


Filed under: Archaeology, media
21 Jul 19:09

Jesus commends the bad hostess

by Doug

One of the most embarrassing moments of my life was caused by cross-cultural discomfort. I was invited with friends (by a cousin of theirs) for a meal. This was in Nagercoil, a town in Tamil Nadu.

We sat in the front room, which functioned as the “public” room of the house. The husband of the family talked to us throughout the meal, being sure we were being entertained. he sat at the table with us, though we were the only ones eating, The wife continued to go backwards and forwards from the kitchen and the “private” area of the house making sure we were well supplied with food throughout the meal.

For me as a Westerner being treated like this in someone else’s home, with them not eating with us, but waiting on us for both conversation and food, felt deeply embarrassing, yet any attempt to express my lack of comfort would have been unpardonably rude. This was not gender based as such: one of the three of us who sat at table being served was a woman. But it was a very traditional cultural understanding of hospitality, which (as other invitations showed) was a relatively extreme example.

Ever since, when reading today’s gospel (Luke 10:38-42), the story of Jesus in Martha and Mary’s home, I’ve read it in the light of that experience. It seems to me that is the kind of hospitality implied in the story. There would have been an incredibly strong cultural expectation that Mary and Martha would both wait on their guests’ needs while not paying any attention to their own.

The story is overlaid with gender expectations, and Mary’s sitting at Jesus’ feet learning his teaching breaks given gender roles. Nonetheless, I’ve come to feel that breaking out from the sacred social script of hospitality is the bigger shock of the two.

A few verses earlier (before the story of the Good Samaritan) Jesus has said:

Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it (Luke 10:23-24)

Now it seems that Mary is acting out that realisation. Sitting at Jesus’ feet takes precedence over not just the cultural role of women, but even over the sacred obligation of hospitality.

21 Jul 12:33

7th Enoch Seminar << Jim Davila (Paleojudaica.com)

by noreply@blogger.com (Jim Davila)
I'M OFF TO ITALY to attend the Seventh Enoch Seminar in Camaldoli and then for a bit of a holiday in Rome. As usual, I have pre-posted something for each day I am away and will blog as time and internet connections permit during the trip.

I am not going to give you my entire seminar handout, which summarizes a lot of work that I may publish in due course. But here is the first part, which gives you an outline of where I wish to take the discussion.
ROLES OF ANGELS AND DEMONS IN 1 ENOCH AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS*
1. Texts for Discussion
We will look closely at the following texts from the Synoptic Gospels with a view toward deciding whether they have been influenced by or (regardless of direct influence) they are illuminated by the traditions in 1 Enoch. Please read them and think about them in advance of the seminar.
  • The Gerasene demoniac (Gadarene demoniacs)
    Mk 5:1-20 (//Matt 8:28-34; Luke 8:26-39)
  • Angels and marriage
    Mk 12:18-27 esp. v. 25 (//Mt 22:23-33, esp. v. 30; Luke 20:27-40, esp. vv. 34-36)
  • The eschatological punishment of angels
    Matt 25:31-46, esp. v. 41(M) (cf. Matt 13:36-43, esp. 41-42 [M])
  • Satan falls like lightning from heaven
    Luke 10:17-20 (L)
  • The process of possession
    Matt 12:43-45//Luke 11:24-26 (Q)
  • The (arch)angel Gabriel
    Luke 1:5-38
Any texts from 1 Enoch are fair game to bring into the discussion, but the following may be of particular interest.
  • The fall of the watchers: BW 6:1-8:4; 15:2-7; 16:2-3; 19:1
  • The spirits of the giants: BW 10:9-10, 15; 15:8-9, 11-12; 16:1
  • Satan: Par 53:3; 54:6
  • The punishment of the watchers: Par 46:1-6; 48:10; 54:3-6; 55:4; 56:1-4
  • The (arch)angel Gabriel: BW 9:1; 10:9-10; 20:7; 32:5-6; Par 40:2, 6, 9; 54:6; 71:8-9, 13; EDV 88:1-3; 87:2-4; 90:21
*Abbreviations: BW: The Book of the Watchers, 1 Enoch 1-36; Par: The Book of Parables, 1 Enoch 37-71; BL: The Book of the Luminaries, 1 Enoch 72-82; EDV: Enoch's Dream Visions, 1 Enoch 83-90; EE: The Epistle of Enoch, 1 Enoch 92:1-5, 93:11-105:2; AW: The Apocalypse of Weeks, 1 Enoch 93:1-10, 91:11-17; BN: The Birth of Noah, 1 Enoch 106-107; FBN: A Final Book by Enoch, 1 Enoch 108. There are no references to angels or evil spirits in A Narrative Bridge, 1 Enoch 91:1-10, 18-19. M stands for special Matthew material and L for special Luke material.
21 Jul 12:33

BNTC 2013: registration closes in 10 days << Jim Davila (Paleojudaica.com)

by noreply@blogger.com (Jim Davila)
REGISTRATION FOR THE 2013 MEETING OF THE BRITISH NEW TESTAMENT CONFERENCE in St. Andrews (29-31 August) at the standard rate is still open and you can book online here. Registration closes in ten days, on 31 July, so why not register now?
21 Jul 12:33

Catalogs of Armenian Manuscripts << Byzantine News

by noreply@blogger.com (Byzantine Philology)

Catalogs of Philosophical, Theological, and Patristic Armenian Manuscripts.



Click here to visit the catalogs

20 Jul 15:54

The President Speaks on the Trayvon Martin Case

by Scot McKnight
Wise words indeed. The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week, the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling. I gave an — a preliminary statement right after the [Read More...]
20 Jul 15:52

A Word from the General Minister concerning Disciples of Christ General Assembly

by Robert Cornwall
With the 2013 General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) now complete, we the delegates return to our congregations and our regions bearing news of our experiences.  We heard good messages, debated issues of importance (or non-importance in the minds of some), and gathered for worship.   As we ponder our experiences, we may have received a pastoral letter from the General Minister and President, the Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins.  You may have already seen it, but I'd like to share it more broadly.  In this letter Sharon interprets the meaning of Resolution GA 1327, "Becoming a People of Grace and Welcome to All."  I offer it up for your reflection and response.  May it help further the conversation as we move forward as God's people.

************************************

July 19, 2013

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ -

Grace and peace to you in the name of the living Christ who lives and moves among us, who calls us to the Table, then sends us forth to serve.

I write to share a word with all Disciples congregations following an important vote at the 2013 Orlando General Assembly.

In these days following assembly,my heart is prayerful; my spirit hopeful; and my love for our church is strong. Surely, God has given Disciples a blessing and a mission for wholeness,
welcoming all to the Lord's Table of reconciliation and love.

That blessing and mission for Disciples begins in a congregation. In congregations we come forward and make or reaffirm our confession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. There we are baptized, our babies are dedicated, we are married and our parents buried. Our faith is nurtured and sometimes challenged in a beloved community of other Disciples we know and love.

We extend the blessing as we join hands with other Disciples congregations to share God's love in our communities and around the world. We offer words and prayers of comfort and challenge, as well as hands-on help, to our neighbor in times of need. In many diverse ways, we learn the story of Jesus and invite others to walk in his love.

The recent vote to "adopt" Resolution GA1327, Becoming a People of Grace and Welcome to All, has significance for the Church, but it is important to recognize the nature of that significance.

The intent of the resolution is to urge Disciples to welcome into our congregations and other ministries all who seek Christ. It serves as a reminder that among Disciples we do not bar the church door or fence the table from those who desire the embrace of God's love.


Here is what this "Sense of the Assembly" resolution is not:

  • It is not a statement of "unwelcome" for Disciples who did not support the resolution. All who confess faith in Jesus Christ are welcome. All means all.
  •  It is not a policy change. The congregation where you worship and serve will not be requested to establish (or change) a policy on gay or lesbian persons in the life of the Church. The region where your congregation is affiliated is not required to change its policies on ordination. Your pastor is not required to bless same-gender marriages.
  • It is not a theological mandate. It does not say that we have the same biblical understanding of sexual orientation or gender identity. Disciples, prayerfully and with biblical study and other research, come to their own understanding on these matters.
  
This resolution does, however, carry symbolic importance in the life of our Church. It reminds us that our baptism into the living Christ continues to be our common ground

It points out that within the broad membership of Disciples, among the many congregations in covenant with each other, there have always been gay and straight, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender persons who participate fully in the life and leadership of the church.It urges us to treat each other with gospel hospitality as we seek to understand each other better.

My deepest hope is that, in the coming weeks and months, with God's help, we will continue in worship and mission together even when we profoundly disagree - as we have so often done before - recognizing that it is God's covenant of love that binds us to God and to one another[1] in Christ. My prayer is that together we will continue to witness to God's gift of reconciliation and wholeness before the brokenness of the world.

United though not uniform, diverse but not divided, let us name our differences, then claim our common calling to be and to share the good news of Jesus Christ who came "that the world might be saved". (John 3:17)

Your sister in Christ,
  

The Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins
General Minister and President
With the General 
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada



[1] The Preamble to the Design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

20 Jul 15:51

Bishop Rowe: welcoming LGBT people fully as children of God

by Jim Naughton

Bishop Sean Rowe of the Diocese of Northwest Pennsylvania has a guest column this morning in the Erie Times-News on marriage equality. He writes:

Many of us remember when issues of human sexuality were off-limits for discussion in our congregations. And sadly, far too many of us are familiar with the discrimination, fear and violence that LGBT people have suffered while people of faith turned a blind eye or, worse yet, acted as perpetrators.

Today it is possible for us to view same-sex relationships differently. Across our communities, we see the goodness and holiness of same-sex couples in committed, lifelong relationships. Same-sex couples and their families are blessings to their communities, their churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, and to their neighbors and friends. Just like opposite-sex couples, their love for one another draws them more clearly into fidelity and service to the world and allows all of us who know them to see the boundless love of God more clearly.

We can also see that our civic life benefits when same-sex couples have the dignity and legal protection that opposite-sex couples have always enjoyed. Same-sex couples, just like their opposite-sex friends and neighbors, work hard, raise children, volunteer for good causes and pay taxes. Erie would be poorer without its LGBT residents, and we need to stand against discrimination that makes their lives less safe or secure.

20 Jul 15:51

Since my time at Auschwitz….

by jillmoffhoward

Well, it has been about 4 weeks since I returned home from Poland, and it’s been an interesting time of trying to get back to normal life.  Corey made the comment last night that I am just now seeming more like myself.  A friend put it well when she said that I might never really “get over” feeling different, but I will experience these feelings differently over time with gradual change.  Some days, I feel like I will never really see the world the same again.

I had the privilege of accompanying a group from my congregation to the CANDLES museum last week where they heard Eva’s story for themselves and learned about the museum.  It felt great to be at the museum and to see Eva again.  After being there with her at Auschwitz, her story took on an even deeper meaning than the previous times I had heard it, and it was great for members of my congregation to hear it from her and be inspired for themselves.

Since my time at Auschwitz, I feel like I look at the world in a different light.  I have a hard time understanding (even more than before!) the violence, the intolerance, the prejudice, and the anger in the world.  I find myself asking even more than before, “Why are people so angry???”  ”Why are people so inconsiderate?”  ”Why are people so violent?”  And, what in the world can we do about it?  There are times when I find myself in the midst of hopelessness for the world, for the church…I see a lot of stories in the news and on social media that speak of nothing but harm and despair from humanity, and the harm that the church is doing to people who claim to be doing this in the name of Jesus.  I struggle to understand.  There are days that I have my doubts about the future, about my own calling, and even about the presence of God.  That’s real talk.

But I continue to find hope in people like Eva who are not afraid to tell their story, who continue to find hope in the midst of despair, and in people of this world who love and do wonderful things every day.  For every act of violence, there are hopefully even more acts of love.  We just don’t hear about them as much.  I continue to have hope in the story of Jesus, the ultimate act of love, forgiveness, sacrifice, and the overcoming of hopelessness, despair, and even death itself.

As for me, I find myself being a little more humble these days, but at the same time, wanting to speak up even more for people who do not have a voice.  I want to teach people about the Holocaust and the events leading up to it, and about Eva and her story of survival and ultimately forgiveness.  I want to pass along her lessons of self-empowerment, never giving up on your dreams, and finding that we are stronger than we think we are in any situation.  I want to pass along my experiences at Auschwitz to anyone who would like to listen, and hope that one day they might find themselves forever changed in some way as we hope and work for a better world where there are no more Auschwitzes.


20 Jul 13:00

Finding the narrative

by John S. Wilkins
New York Times ex-science journalist Virginia Heffernan has said that she is a creationist, because she prefers the narrative of creation to that of science. David Sessions has a good discussion of the issues here. She is basically taking the … Continue reading →
20 Jul 12:35

Discipleship as Theodicy, Part 2: The Superiority of the Irenaean Theodicy

by tsoigitli

In our last post, I argued at minimal length that discipleship to Jesus is part of God’s answer to the problem of evil, and we talked briefly about the two main paths that have been taken theologically on theodicy–the question of how there can be a righteous, all-powerful and all-loving God with the existence of such extensive evil, sin, pain, and suffering in the world–namely, that of Irenaeus on the one hand and Augustine on the other. Today, I will argue for why I believe Irenaeus’ argument to be superior to Augustine’s, for three distinct reasons.

Before I list those reasons, it’s important to note once more that all questions of the problem of evil and theodicy inevitably come back to a question of why evil exists in the world, which inevitably comes back to questions of primeval history–of how God chose to make the world and specifically, the agents through whom He desires to govern the world, human beings. Thus, to speak of Irenaeus’ theodicy or Augustine’s theodicy is also to speak of their conception of the sort of man that God created. As I mentioned last time, Dr. Peter Enns has a helpful article in which he provides a link for John Schneider’s article on this subject, and I encourage everyone to go check it out. In short, Augustine sees Adam as a superman (the image evangelicalism is fond of), while Irenaeus sees Adam as innocent but morally undeveloped, i.e., a work in progress.

Thus, that in mind, here are my three reasons for supporting an Irenaean view of creation and theodicy over against Augustine.

  1. Irenaeus’ view of man and theodicy lines up more with the text of Genesis 1-3 and the Hebrew worldview that is present there. One of the central elements of Augustine’s narrative involves creation as a perfect invention of God, with man as the apex of creation, physically and morally perfect. This view doesn’t hold up under the scrutiny of the text or under the worldview that guided the authorship of scripture. The Hebrew worldview, as Rob Bell notes at some length in Velvet Elvis, does not view the world as perfect–rather, it is exactly as it appears in Genesis 1: fundamentally a good creation by Israel’s God, but a creation that is good because God has brought order to it, and thus a creation God seeks to bring more order to in and through his human image-bearers. This seems to be the intention of commanding Adam to “cultivate” the Garden (Genesis 2:15): the idea that through Adam and his project of pruning and bringing order to the creation, God would actually be bringing creation to a greater state of order, and thus a greater state of “good.” In other words, creation is an ongoing, trajectory process, and God creates human beings in the middle of that ongoing process to be partners in the process. Irenaeus’ view is superior because it makes provision for this idea: human beings, like the world in which they live, are not static supermen whose fall should be nigh impossible, but rather are, like the world around them, created with potential that has to be shaped, immortality and maturity that can 0nly be procured through obedience to and dependence upon God Himself. Furthermore, Irenaeus’ view fits in with the rhetorical point the Adam story would’ve made in later Israel’s regular reading of and commentary on the story: obedience to Torah, God’s law, is to eat from the tree of life and results in blessing and life in the age to come; disobedience to God leads to exile and death.
  2. Irenaeus’ view lends itself to evolutionary theory. One of the major reasons that many evangelical Christians do not accept evolution is because of Augustine’s Adam, because, as it were, evolution has little room for a primordial superman from whom the rest of the human race was descended. Of course, other Christians that would be considered evangelical, or at least who have influenced evangelicalism throughout church history, have found helpful ways of accepting evolution and maintaining Orthodox faith, such as C.S. Lewis (David Williams has a brilliant series on Lewis’s relationship with evolution, which I recommend you read all of, here.) I, for one, accept evolutionary theory, for a number of reasons that we don’t have time for here–very briefly, I find it to be a.) congruent with the nature of our God in his infinite patience and infinitely complex design, and b.) to be the most convincing argument logically for origins, and thus I c.) recognize the need to reassess my understanding of the value or sort of truth contained in texts like Genesis 1-11 that describe creation in terms that don’t permit for evolution. Irenaeus’ Adam, unlike Augustine’s Adam, fits quite well into that mold, as evolutionary theory does indeed leave us with a human being who is morally undeveloped but nevertheless innocent, and depends heavily on that trajectory imagery of creation I mentioned earlier. [Note: I say "evolutionary theory leaves us with" something. What I mean is that God, particularly Israel's God, in and through the power of His Word and Spirit, was interactive and involved in biological processes on earth to bring about the particular creature that we now today recognize as human.]

This is essentially why I think that Irenaeus was right and that his theology for defending the goodness of God in light of evil makes the most sense: i.e., God made a fundamentally good world that included human beings as the creatures with and through whom God desired to bring creation to a new level of goodness, but who needed themselves to develop their potential for bearing God’s image (Genesis 1:26-28). To connect this to a standpoint of evolutionary creationism, which is one of my two main reasons for endorsing Irenaeus: I would theorize that God’s good world included the process of evolution, which depended in part on the evil of natural violence and suffering, and guided evolutionary processes to human beings so that through them, God might bring the creation to a new level of reality. Humans were created (through millions of years of God-guided adaptation and natural selection of hominid species) to bear God’s Image and represent Him as kings and queens on the earth, and thus with the potential to fulfill this God-ordained role for them: however, humankind ultimately failed to obey God and for this reason continued on in the cycle of violence and death in creation, though with the now-added evil of sin. God thus called Abraham and his descendants, Israel, to be the community in whom God redeemed the world by continuing on with the original human project, which Israel also failed to uphold and do.

Enter Jesus and his talmidim.

In this context, discipleship to Jesus functions as God’s answer to the problem of evil in the world because it is to live according to the pattern by which God originally envisioned human beings, and thus the Cross of Jesus justifies God despite the existence of evil because it shows that God has always been in the process of dealing with evil, the cure for which he had already made in the creation of man himself. To repeat: God created man to be the creature through whom he further redeemed the fundamentally good but still potential-filled created world, and discipleship to Jesus–participating in His Cross in every element of life–is the means by which we participate in the ultimate theodicy wrought on the Cross, because it is the means by which we are able to live the way God always intended human beings to live.

God is just, and good, and loving, and everything else we claim about him, then, despite the existence of evil, because evil is something He has always been in the process of dealing with and working against, albeit in a limited way (shall we say a self-limited way) due to his desire to deal with evil through the human creatures whom He originally made to deal with it through. The question, then, is emphatically not, “How can God be good when the world is so evil?” but, rather, “How is it that I am contributing to the existence of evil in the world, and how is it that I can stop and start doing something else entirely?”

And this answers, I think, the problem of evil as it is apparent in the Christian tradition through the problem of sin–i.e., co-crucifixion with Jesus (discipleship to him) in every part of our beings is the means by which we are declared in the right and, coincidentally, by which we participate in that action through which God was faithful (and shown to be in the right all along)–i.e., Jesus’ death on the Cross. It is thus in our discipleship that the focal point of all theodicy–the Crucifixion–continues to be made plain to the world.

I went a little past where I intended to, and there’s still a little more to cover on this topic. Thanks for keeping up (or attempting to). Please discuss!


20 Jul 12:34

Book Trailer: MADDADDAM by Margaret Atwood

by John DeNardo

Here’s the book trailer for Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam, the final book in the trilogy that began with Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood.

But first, the description of MaddAddam:

Bringing together Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, this thrilling conclusion to Margaret Atwood’s speculative fiction trilogy points toward the ultimate endurance of community, and love.

Months after the Waterless Flood pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, Toby and Ren have rescued their friend Amanda from the vicious Painballers. They return to the MaddAddamite cob house, newly fortified against man and giant pigoon alike. Accompanying them are the Crakers, the gentle, quasi-human species engineered by the brilliant but deceased Crake. Their reluctant prophet, Snowman-the-Jimmy, is recovering from a debilitating fever, so it’s left to Toby to preach the Craker theology, with Crake as Creator. She must also deal with cultural misunderstandings, terrible coffee, and her jealousy over her lover, Zeb.

Zeb has been searching for Adam One, founder of the God’s Gardeners, the pacifist green religion from which Zeb broke years ago to lead the MaddAddamites in active resistance against the destructive CorpSeCorps. But now, under threat of a Painballer attack, the MaddAddamites must fight back with the aid of their newfound allies, some of whom have four trotters. At the center of MaddAddam is the story of Zeb’s dark and twisted past, which contains a lost brother, a hidden murder, a bear, and a bizarre act of revenge.

Combining adventure, humor, romance, superb storytelling, and an imagination at once dazzlingly inventive and grounded in a recognizable world, MaddAddam is vintage Margaret Atwood—a moving and dramatic conclusion to her internationally celebrated dystopian trilogy.

20 Jul 12:04

Perpetua’s Father << Kate Cooper (kateantiquity)

Image

Mummy Portrait, Manchester Museum 5380 (Hawara, Egypt, ca. AD 110-120)

One of the most fascinating exchanges during last week’s empathy workshop at the Manchester Museum was about Vibius, the father of the martyr Perpetua of Carthage. Perpetua is perhaps the most endearing and disturbing of all the early Christian saints, a young mother who kept a prison diary while being held before her execution in the Roman arena in AD 203. (The charge against her seems to have been her refusal to sacrifice to the gods of Rome, which was a form of treason.)

Perpetua’s prison diary has always fascinated me, especially a number of scenes in which she describes her father’s attempt to persuade her to give up her religion. Perpetua wants you to feel how hard it is to leave her family, but at the same time to understand that she simply feels that she has no choice. Even worse, she knows that her execution will leave her family in an exposed position – her infant son motherless, and her parents subject to harassment by unsympathetic neighbours and to bullying by government officials.

There is a curious feeling reading Perpetua’s story – since she is a saint of the early Church, one feels instinctively that one ought to be on her side, and yet it feels much more natural to sympathize with her family. We don’t know if they were pagans or simply ‘reasonable’ Christians who did not think martyrdom was the right choice – Perpetua doesn’t tell us.

Below, I have pasted in two attempts made during the workshop to see the story from the point of view of Perpetua’s father – I was fascinated by the different but equally interesting emotional insights of both writers. (For my own attempts to understand Vibius, see ‘A Father, a Daughter, and a Procurator’ and ‘Closely Watched Households‘.)

Megan Howarth (Thomas Whitham Sixth Form, Burnley)

 ’I can’t understand what has happened to my daughter. How has she become so fixated on this religion? I valued her above all my children, gave her everything I could provide. Given her every opportunity in life. She had endless opportunity; she could have been a priestess or wife. She is not thinking about the consequences of the choices she has made, what will happen to her son, herself, our family. I will not be able to trade freely, everyone will know my family as the one that lacks control. I cannot control my own daughter. Who will respect me now? I can’t be an army general as I won’t be seen as a worthy leader. She does not know that this ‘soul’ she believes she has will be tainted and her death will not lead to martyrdom but punishment. She is killing her own child. Doesn’t she love him? She sees him as a sacrifice to a greater goal? She was meant to be one of my heirs. I just want her to live. She thinks I am against her faith. How do I save my child?’

Matt Bartlett (Merchant Taylor’s School, Liverpool)

 ’How dare my daughter disobey me like this, can she not see that I am acting in her interests? Perpetua has brought shame upon my household and our home. Not only that but now, for her disobedience, she will lose her own life and that of her infant daughter! I am inconsolable, I feel like I have failed in my duty as a father. My own failures as a father will lead to the shame of my family. Through all of her life I have done my utmost to train her in the right way and to shelter her from the cruel, real world – perhaps that is where I have failed. My failures are ruining me, I feel as if I have failed my daughter and my family.’

 


20 Jul 12:04

Thomas Brodie and Intellectual Honesty in Biblical Studies...

by The Shape
It's hard to know where to start on this issue but there's a lesson in here somewhere about intellectual honesty in biblical studies. I suppose I should start by giving a brief run down about Thomas Brodie and his latest publication. 

Thomas Brodie is a Dominican priest who is also a biblical scholar par excellence. He has done ground breaking work over the past 40 years into how the New Testament was constructed and how the gospel writers used their sources. Brodie saw the gospels as a form of rewriting which used the literary techniques of the Greco-Roman world in reshaping many texts to create the gospels and other New Testament texts. I think he is largely correct and I have done a lot of work on the Gospel of Mark which backs this up in relation to that author's reshaping of 1 Corinthians and converting a theological letter into a narrative gospel. 

His most recent book which was published last year is called Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus. The controversial part is right on the first page where Brodie writes:

"...the Bible accounts of Jesus are stories rather than history. The accounts are indeed history-like, shaped partly like some of the histories or biographies of the ancient world..."

While arguing for the non-existence of Jesus is nothing new and not unheard of in scholarship (where the term is mythicism) it is controversial when it comes from the pen of a Dominican priest. Sensing trouble over this publication Brodie did not consult the Church first - something which he was required to do. This resulted in a ban from publishing, teaching and preaching and Brodie resigned his position as director of the Dominican Biblical Institute in Limerick. This resignation was not of his choosing I am sure of that. I was a student of Brodie for the past 5 years and he would be in his office before 8am every day and would not leave until at least 9pm - 7 days a week. He was extremely dedicated and passionate and would not walk away from his work lightly.

The whole thing is a very sad end to a very significant career. Brodie, amongst other scholars, has helped further the notion that the Bible is literature and should be treated and approached like any other ancient text. However, I find that this is not the majority position in Biblical studies and this a matter of intellectual honesty. Something which I alluded to in my latest paper is how the religious stance of scholars unconsciously and consciously dictates how one approaches the text. My example was the Eucharist as presented in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 and Mark 14:22-25. From a literary perspective there is no reason to posit that Mark may not be dependent on 1 Corinthians (I'm paraphrasing here a lot). The case satisfies most of the criteria for judging literary dependence as set out by myself, Brodie, MacDonald etc. Yet, most, while recognising the similarities, would reject any connection in favour of influence from liturgical tradition stemming from a 'historical' Eucharist event. In fact, I was told by the external examiner in my doctoral defence that liturgical influence was more likely. I argued against him that invoking an unknown tradition must always be in the weaker position against an earlier and similar extant text. He remained unconvinced. He was a priest. This did not surprise me. I believe that there is a tendency in biblical studies to re-affirm the historicity of the texts because of the religious beliefs of the scholar. Saying that - some of the of finest scholars I know are deeply religious men and women. It is not universal.

I am, in no way, saying that as an Atheist I am more objective. Objectivity is elusive and unobtainable in the search for history and the exploration of literature. There is always interpretation. However, I am not overly concerned with the historicity of the texts. I don't think history was their objective - although many treat it as if it was. Rather, I approach a text like a classicist would approach Virgil or Homer - and they don't believe in Zeus. I am not a mythicist but I think there is very little that we can know about the historical Jesus - but that's for a future blog post.

What it comes down to is intellectual honesty in biblical studies and that can be fairly limited depending on your background. Thomas Brodie gave a great display in intellectual honesty in the publication of his last book and he was crucified (ahem!) for it. He was a priest in the Catholic Church and as a scholar that cost him his intellectual freedom - freedom to say what he wanted was in a narrow window that wouldn't rock the ark. Too much and he was silenced. Someone remarked to me that he was intellectually dishonest in not saying this sooner and that this was underneath all his previous research and we did not have the full picture. My answer to that was that he had little choice until now. He made clear in the first page of this book that if he didn't say it now he never would as he is an ageing man. He threw caution to the wind and paid the price.

With the majority of biblical scholars coming from seminary backgrounds there are likely to be many out there who are restricted in what they say for fear of intellectual ostracism and also many others seeking to reaffirm the texts. What are we left with? We are left with a discipline lagging behind other in a similar area. Those studying intertextuality in the classical world are light years ahead of where we are in biblical studies. But there's change in the wind. Every conference I hear more and more papers from a literary perspective and see more studies on the impact a person's religious beliefs have on their research.

Ultimately intellectual honesty in biblical studies can be limited and depending on what background you are from you had better watch what you say...
20 Jul 12:02

Myth, History and Norman O. Brown

by Azra Raza

Todd Walton in Counterpunch:

NOBin34web4Before I tell you a little more about Norman O. Brown, I would like to recount a scene from Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ, the novel, not the movie.

...“Great things happen when God mixes with man.” — Nikos Kazantzakis

So…in The Last Temptation of Christ there is a memo­rable scene in which Jesus and his disciples are sitting around a campfire after a long day of spreading their gospel, when Matthew, a recent addition to the crew, is suddenly impelled by angels (or so he claims) to write the biography of Jesus. So he gets out quill and papyrus and sets to work transcribing the angelic dictation; and Jesus, curious to see what’s gotten into his latest convert, takes a peek over Matthew’s shoulder and reads the opening lines of what will one day be a very famous gospel. Jesus is outraged. “None of this is true,” he cries, or words to that effect. And then Judas (I’m pretty sure it was Judas and not Andrew) calms Jesus down with a Norman O. Brown-like bit of wisdom, something along the lines of: “You know, Jesus, in the long run it really doesn’t matter if he writes the truth or not. You’re a myth now, so you’d better get used to everybody and his aunt coming up with his or her version of who you are.” Kazantzakis, trust me, wrote the scene much more poetically and marvelously than the way I just recounted it, but…

“All good books have one thing in common. They are truer than if they had really happened.” — Ernest Hemingway

Back to Norman O. Brown. In the late 1960s, Nor­man was among the most famous pop academic writers in the world. Not only had he written Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, which made him famous, he had just published (in 1966) Love’s Body, a mainstream and academic bestseller exploring the impact of erotic love on human history; or was it the struggle between eroticism and civilization? In any case, here is one of my favorite blurbs from the hundreds of reviews that made Love’s Body so famous in its time. I will digress again (thank you, Norman) by saying if any book I ever publish gets a blurb even remotely as stupendous as the following, and said blurb appears in, say, the San Francisco Chronicle or even the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, drinks are on me.

“Norman O. Brown is variously considered the architect of a new view of man, a modern-day shaman, and a Pied Piper leading the youth of America astray. His more ardent admirers, of whom I am one, judge him one of the seminal thinkers who profoundly challenge the dominant assumptions of the age. Although he is a classicist by training who came late to the study of Freud and later to mysticism, he has already created a revolution in psy­chological theory.” — Sam Keen, Psychology Today

The myth and history web site known as Wikipedia says that Norman was a much-loved professor at UC Santa Cruz where he taught and lived to the end of his days (he died in 2002, or so they say).

More here. (Note: Why am I posting a 2011 article today? Because I am in the process of re-reading Brown and am deeply deeply affected. Please read his Life against Death and The Prophetic Tradition for a stunning snapshot of what history and the collective psyche of an epoch looks like when the mind-forged manacles are cast off)

20 Jul 01:11

NRA: The Restaurant at the End of the World

by Fred Clark

Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist; pp. 165-166

In this scene, Jerry Jenkins achieves a vivid, palpable realism. The effect is brief, but it is powerful, visceral.

Rayford and Hattie were welcomed expansively by the maitre d’ of the Global Bistro.

You, the reader, suddenly realize that you are about to be swept along, accompanying Rayford Steele and Hattie Durham for an entire meal. Your fight or flight instinct kicks in, your pulse quickens, your breathing becomes shallow and rapid. It becomes difficult to articulate your thoughts into anything clearer than a primal, howling Noooo! You wish you were anywhere, absolutely anywhere, other than here, in this restaurant, with these two people.

And that is exactly what this experience would be like in real life. Jenkins has made you feel the very same emotions with the very same intensity that you would be feeling them if you were experiencing this scene in real life. Few writers ever achieve this effect quite so successfully.

I can’t help but respond exactly the way I would if I were there in the flesh. I start examining my surroundings, looking around the restaurant for any blessed distraction from the horror of accompanying these two people on this intensely awkward dinner date.

And here, alas, the spell is broken. The initial emotional realism — the head-to-toe dread and longing to escape — quickly dissipates in a flurry of incongruous and contradictory details. This restaurant, we were told, was the finest in all of New Babylon and a personal favorite of the Antichrist himself. Yet I can’t make any sense of the place. Nor can I reconcile what we’re shown of it with the principles of Nicolae Carpathia’s “Global Community” that it is said to embody.

Rayford and Hattie were welcomed expansively by the maitre d’ of the Global Bistro. The man recognized her, of course, but not Rayford. “Your usual table, ma’am?”

“No, thank you, Jeffrey, but neither would we like to be hidden.”

They were led to a table set for four. But even though two busboys hurried out to clear away two sets of dinnerware, and the waiter pulled out a chair for Hattie while pointing Rayford to the one next to her, Rayford was still thinking of appearances. He sat directly across from Hattie, knowing they would nearly have to shout to hear each other in the noisy place.

Earlier, Rayford fretted about dressing for dinner, making sure he wore something formal enough to be acceptable at this upscale restaurant. We were led to imagine a fine dining establishment — the kind of place with cloth napkins, real silver, crystal water glasses and maybe even live music played on a harp or a grand piano. The fussy maitre d’ and solicitous staff reinforce that impression. So did the idea that this is where the global potentate himself has a “usual table.”

I don’t generally imagine global dictators eating out regularly. I picture them, instead, usually dining at one of those long tables in a palatial dining hall with chandeliers, high-backed chairs and a dizzying assortment of goblets, glasses and silverware at every setting. I picture them having personal chefs and probably even a food-taster screening for poison back in the pantry. (All of that is probably inaccurate, but I admit that my sense of the dining habits of global elites comes mostly from old movies and New Yorker cartoons.)

So now I’m trying to square this idea of a fancy-schmancy high-class restaurant with being told the Global Bistro is a “noisy place.”

And I’m even more confused by the next bit of detail we learn about our surroundings: Instead of tasteful artwork, Le Bistro apparently has TV sets all over the place.

Televisions throughout the Bistro carried the continuing news of war around the world. Hattie signaled the maitre d’, who came running. “I doubt the potentate would appreciate this news depressing patrons who came in here for a little relaxation.”

“I’m afraid it’s on every station, ma’am.”

“There’s not even a music station of some kind?”

“I’ll check.”

Within moments, all the television sets in the Global Bistro showed music videos. Several applauded this, but Rayford sensed Hattie barely noticed.

So now I’m trying to recalibrate my mental image of the restaurant. “Televisions throughout” makes me think of a TGI Fridays or a Buffalo Wild Wings, but places like that don’t have maitre d’s. And what kind of restaurant has TV sets tuned in to cable news? (Jenkins seems to be confusing restaurants with his preferred setting — airports.) I used to stop for breakfast after work at a diner in Marcus Hook where patrons watched the morning news on a TV behind the counter, but that doesn’t seem like the kind of vibe Jenkins is aiming for here.

This is the Restaurant Vila Tusa, which TripAdvisor tells us is the 14th-best restaurant in Cluj, Romania, Nicolae Carpathia’s hometown. Note the absence of TV sets.

Restaurants with TV sets usually keep them tuned to only one thing: sports. Unlike either the news or music videos, sports can be watched with the sound turned off.

In one sense, it’s a positive change that we’re told the news of World War III is “on every station.” Rayford Steele is so preoccupied reminiscing about his past with Hattie — “when they were playing around the edges of an affair of the mind” — that he seems to have completely forgotten about the sort-of-nuclear destruction two days ago of London, Cairo, and a dozen major cities in North America. But in a world anything like the real world, that huge story would, indeed, be on every station — pre-empting all other programming for whatever channels still managed to be on the air, even the ones that only ever show Law & Order re-runs.*

Up until now, though, the world of this story has defied any comparison to the real world. In the world of this story, the obliteration of New York and Los Angeles is a one-day story. The destruction of Chicago does nothing to disturb the daily routine of residents of Evanston. So even though it’s wholly unimaginable and unrealistic to think that sporting events would have resumed two days later, in the context of this story and this book so far, there’s no reason to think that a regularly scheduled game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Pittsburgh Pirates wouldn’t be played as though nothing had changed (or a game between the Charlotte Bobcats and the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA, if it’s wintertime — we readers have no idea what time of year anything in this book takes place).

Just thinking about sports, though, leads me to wonder what sort of sports there might be in the “Global Community” of the Antichrist’s one-world government. Nicolae Carpathia has insisted that the entire globe share a single government, a single currency, a single language and a single religion. It makes sense that he should also have imposed a single sport for the entire world.

Soccer seems like the obvious candidate. (And yes, since American English appears to have become the official one-world language, it would be called “soccer.”) But how would that work now that all prior national and ethnic loyalties have been subsumed into a single Global Community? The One World Cup promises to be a sad, one-round affair consisting only of a “final” between GC and Israel. The Global Community squad would be heavily favored, I think, since they’d draw from the very best players of every other former nation on Earth. Plus the Israeli team would need a new place to practice, what with their home stadium having been taken over by Moses and Elijah’s revival meetings. In their favor, though, Israel wouldn’t have lost any players during the disappearances of the Event 18 months ago** — so at least they’d have all their starters still ready to play.

And while we’re musing about this, shouldn’t the harmony-through-uniformity logic of the Global Community mean a single world cuisine as well? I can’t really imagine what that might mean — something as flavorless and uninspiring as Nicolae’s one-world religion, probably. But imagining such a one-world cuisine still seems easier than making sense of the description of the menu that Jenkins gives us here:

Though the Global Bistro had a French-sounding name, Hattie herself had helped conceive it, and the menu carried international cuisine, mostly American. She ordered an unusually large meal. Rayford had just a sandwich.

Sandwiches and unusually large portions, I suppose, is as clear a description of “American” cuisine as one could hope for.

As this post illustrates, I wasn’t joking about the near-physical sensation of revulsion I feel toward sitting down to a long dinner conversation between Rayford and Hattie. Rayford is just too creepy for comfort in these situations.

They were led to a table set for four. But even though two busboys hurried out to clear away two sets of dinnerware, and the waiter pulled out a chair for Hattie while pointing Rayford to the one next to her, Rayford was still thinking of appearances. He sat directly across from Hattie, knowing they would nearly have to shout to hear each other in the noisy place. The waiter hesitated, looking irritated, and finally moving Rayford’s tableware back to in front of him. That was something Hattie and Rayford might have chuckled over in their past, which included a half-dozen clandestine dinners where each seemed to be wondering what the other was thinking about their future. Hattie had been more flirtatious than Rayford, though he had never discouraged her.

Blame the waiter, blame Hattie, nothing is ever Rayford’s fault.

In the past, when they were playing around the edges of an affair of the mind, Rayford had to remind Hattie to order and then encourage her to eat. Her attention had been riveted on him, and he had found that flattering and alluring. Now the opposite seemed the case.

Hattie studied her menu as if she faced a final exam on it in the morning. She was as beautiful as ever, now 29 and pregnant for the first time. She was early enough along that no one would know unless she told them. She had told Rayford and Amanda the last time they were together. At the time she seemed thrilled, proud of her new diamond, and eager to talk about her pending marriage. She had told Amanda that Nicolae was “going to make an honest woman of me yet.”

Hattie was wearing her ostentatious engagement ring; however, the diamond was turned inward toward her palm so only the band was visible. Hattie was clearly not a happy woman, and Rayford wondered if this all stemmed from her getting the cold shoulder from Nicolae at the airport. He wanted to ask her, but this meeting was her idea. She would say what she wanted to say soon enough.

We’ll hear what Hattie has to say next week. Unfortunately though, we’ll only get to hear it filtered through the distorting, condescending lens of Rayford’s point of view.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

* Also, if Hattie is right that the potentate wouldn’t want 24/7 coverage of his World War depressing people, then this coverage would not be “on every station.” The Antichrist owns and controls every station. They broadcast whatever he wants them to broadcast.

** Because, in Tim LaHaye’s theology, Jews are just a special sub-category of “the unsaved.” LaHaye, like most premillennial dispensationalist “Bible prophecy” enthusiasts, believes in hard supersessionism — a theology in which real, true Christians replace the Jews as God’s chosen people and the beneficiaries of all the promises God ever made to the people of Israel.

LaHaye’s complicated theology requires this supersessionism for a variety of complicated reasons that we don’t need to explore here. But I also think the illogic of this view is appealing to LaHaye. Just consider another piece of his life’s work — promoting his wife’s anti-feminist lobbying group, Concerned Women for America. Beverly LaHaye and her army of “concerned women” reject feminism because, in their mind, anyone who says women and men should be equal must hate men. Any effort to improve the lives of women is perceived as an attack on men. Take that same logic and apply it to the New Testament’s insistence that Gentile Christians do not need to become Jewish in order to be counted among the people of God. If that is good news for Gentiles, then by LaHaye-logic it must be bad news for Jews. Tim LaHaye makes the same odd leap here that his wife makes with regard to feminism: If Gentile Christians do not need to become Jewish in order to be counted among the people of God, he thinks, then Jews must have to become Gentile Christians.

For the record, I think supersessionism is a really big mistake, but I tend to find the theological arguments about this confusing, so I’m not sure whether that makes me orthodox or a heretic. “Remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you.” That seems clear enough. I can’t make sense of any theology that sees value in being a wild branch grafted onto what it also says is a dead tree.

20 Jul 01:09

Ancient Art Exclusive: behind the scenes at the Semitic Museum,... << Ancient Art





















Ancient Art Exclusive: behind the scenes at the Semitic Museum, Harvard University.

A look at the downstairs vault of the museum -where the work of restoration, storage and preparation for the displays goes on. Truly fascinating stuff.

20 Jul 01:09

Commentary on Revelation 21:9-27

by jayman777

Notes (NET Translation)

9 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven final plagues came and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb!”

The seven bowl plagues were unleashed in ch. 16. The similar wording between 17:1 and 21:9 prompts the reader to make a connection between the two passages. First, the angel of 21:9 is probably the same angel as in 17:1. Second, we are to contrast the new Jerusalem with Babylon, whose description and judgment is given in ch. 17. On a literal level it does not make sense to call the church both the bride and the wife of the Lamb (cf. 19:6-8). But the term bride alludes to the church’s purity and loveliness while the term wife alludes to the intimacy between the church and the Lamb. Wondering about when the marriage takes place is to miss the metaphors.

10 So he took me away in the Spirit to a huge, majestic mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God.

It is reiterated that John is in the Spirit, i.e., having a visionary experience (1:10; 4:2; 17:3).  The mountain is an ideal vantage point from which to see the new Jerusalem descend. It may also be that the new Jerusalem would be placed on this mountain.

11 The city possesses the glory of God; its brilliance is like a precious jewel, like a stone of crystal-clear jasper.

The glory of God is the presence of God, the Shekinah (cf. Ex. 24:15-16; 40:34-35; 1 Kgs 8:10-12; Isa. 6:1-4; 58:8; 60:1-2, 19; Ezek. 43:5). The comparisons are meant to highlight the radiance, brilliance, and sparkle of the city. The translation “crystal-clear” should probably be replaced with “shining like crystal.”

12 It has a massive, high wall with twelve gates, with twelve angels at the gates, and the names of the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel are written on the gates. 13 There are three gates on the east side, three gates on the north side, three gates on the south side and three gates on the west side.

The wall is part of the description of an ideal city in the ancient world. This wall is made of jasper (21:18) to radiate the glory of God, not to protect the city. The twelve angels are ideal gatekeepers and watchmen. Perhaps these angels, somewhat like the angels of the churches in chs. 2-3, represent the new relationship between God and his people. The twelve gates symbolize abundant entrance (Ezek. 48:30-35). That they have the names of the tribes of Israel written on them symbolizes the continuity of the NT church with OT Israel.

14 The wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

The twelve apostles are the group on which the church is built (cf. Eph. 2:20). Again we see the unity of ancient Israel with the NT church.

This similarity with Ephesians’ appeal to a foundational generation of apostles and prophets has often been used in favour of the late dating of Revelation, and against apostolic authorship. Such a statement, it is claimed, could not have been uttered by one who is among the twelve apostles so inscribed. This would not be simply due to apostolic modesty, but to the sense that such a phrase looks backwards to an earlier foundational age, now in the past. Yet this objection is somewhat blunted if one takes seriously the nature of Revelation as a visionary text: visionaries and dreamers are able to witness themselves, in a somewhat detached manner, as active participants in what they see. Moreover, it is likely that already by the middle of the first century members of the Twelve came to regard themselves as ‘pillars’ in the new eschatological temple (Gal. 2:9); it is but a small step from this self-understanding to a claim to be foundation stones of a new temple-city. (Boxall 303)

While Ian Boxall makes valid points, it should be stressed that this verse focuses on what the twelve apostles represent and not on the individuals who make up the twelve apostles.

15 The angel who spoke to me had a golden measuring rod with which to measure the city and its foundation stones and wall.

The measuring in ch. 11 ensured the spiritual protection of the saints. The measuring in ch. 21 highlights the enormous size and perfect symmetry of the new Jerusalem.

16 Now the city is laid out as a square, its length and width the same. He measured the city with the measuring rod at fourteen hundred miles (its length and width and height are equal).

The city is described as a cube measuring 12,000 stadia per side. This verse recalls the cubic dimensions of the inner sanctuary of the temple (1 Kgs 6:20). Just as the holy of holies was the dwelling place of God so will the new Jerusalem be the dwelling place of God. The number 12,000 may symbolize immensity, perfection, and splendor. Twelve thousand stadia is about the length of the Roman Empire from Joppa in Spain to the Euphrates and could therefore also indicate that the redeemed come from all over the world.

17 He also measured its wall, one hundred forty-four cubits according to human measurement, which is also the angel’s.

It is not clear whether this is the thickness or height of the wall. The number 144 symbolizes the whole people of God (7:4; 14:1, 3).

18 The city’s wall is made of jasper and the city is pure gold, like transparent glass.

In this verse the wall is said to be made of jasper but in the next verse it is said that the first foundation is decorated with jasper. This leads R. H. Mounce to opine that this verse intends to say the wall is decorated with jasper inlay but is not entirely built out of jasper. Earthly gold is not like transparent glass.

19 The foundations of the city’s wall are decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation is jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20 the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.

The twelve stones correspond generally to the twelve gems set into the breastplate of the high priest, which suggests that the privileges reserved for the high priest alone under the old covenant are now freely given to the entire people of God. The order of the stones and the significance of each has been the subject of an extended, yet rather fruitless, debate. (Mounce loc. 7162-7165)

The precise identification of the stones is uncertain in places but the point is that the city is magnificent beyond description.

21 And the twelve gates are twelve pearls – each one of the gates is made from just one pearl! The main street of the city is pure gold, like transparent glass.

Pearls were incredibly valuable in the ancient world (cf. Matt. 13:45-46). The pearl gates symbolize the great value of the twelve tribes (21:12-13) in the eyes of God.

22 Now I saw no temple in the city, because the Lord God – the All-Powerful – and the Lamb are its temple.

The Jerusalem temple was a place of God’s presence. In the new Jerusalem God’s presence permeates everything so there is no need for a material temple.

23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, because the glory of God lights it up, and its lamp is the Lamb.

Verse 23 alludes to Isa. 60:19. As with everything in this book the language is figurative, not literal. There may or may not be a sun and moon in the new creation. The point of this verse is that God’s glory is incomparable with anything else and is sufficient to the make the city (= the saints) resplendent.

24 The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their grandeur into it.

The kings of the earth bring their glory (grandeur in the NET) into the new Jerusalem. They are not bringing literal riches but rather themselves as worshipers (4:9, 11; 5:12-13). Whatever glory they possessed on earth they give back to the one alone who deserves it.

The big question concerning 21:24-27 (and 22:2, 15) is what to make of the people apparently outside the new Jerusalem after the final judgment. The nations and the kings of the earth have been linked with Babylon and the monster (6:15; 11:2, 9, 18; 14:8; 16:14, 16, 19; 17:2, 15, 18; 18:3, 9, 23; 19:15, 19; 20:3, 8). The kings of the earth were killed (19:21) and presumably, along with the sinful among the nations, thrown into the lake of fire (20:15; 21:8). Since the redeemed are, or live in, the new Jerusalem, those outside the city walls bringing in glory and honor must be those damned at the final judgment. On this view, at least some of the damned repent after death and enter the new Jerusalem. Universal salvation is a possibility.

But the above view might be too literal on the chronological level. Another option is to see in these verses the fact that the people of God are composed of people of every nation (Isa. 60:3, 5, 11; Rev. 5:9; 7:9; 14:6-7; 15:4). The verses don’t intend to say some people will repent after death (they don’t address the issue). They are another image, drawing on Isa. 60, to illustrate that people throughout the world have been saved throughout history (i.e., before the final judgment).

25 Its gates will never be closed during the day (and there will be no night there).

In antiquity, city gates provided protection and were closed at night to keep unwanted visitors out (cf. Isa. 60:11). With evil eliminated there is no need for security measures.

26 They will bring the grandeur and the wealth of the nations into it, 27 but nothing ritually unclean will ever enter into it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or practices falsehood, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Verse 26 could be translated with the phrase “glory and honor” in place of “grandeur and the wealth”. As in v. 24, we are to take it that the kings of the nations are bringing worship to God.

Verse 27 indicates that the new Jerusalem is pure and holy. Only those who let Jesus in (3:20) and wash their robes (22:14) are permitted in the new Jerusalem. Uncleanliness has been associated with the empire of the beast (16:13; 17:4; 18:2). What is detestable (or an abomination) has been associated with the prostitute of 17:4-5. Falsehood has been associated with Jews persecuting the church (3:9) and the false prophet (16:13; 19:20; 20:10). The book of life is specifically the Lamb’s book because his death brought eternal life.

Bibliography

Beale, G. K. The Book of Revelation. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998.

Boxall, Ian. Revelation of Saint John, The. Black’s New Testament Commentary. Baker Academic, 2009.

Fee, Gordon D. Revelation. Kindle ed. New Covenant Commentary Series. Cascade Books, 2010.

Mounce, Robert H. The Book of Revelation. Revised. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010.

Osborne, G. R. Revelation. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002.


20 Jul 01:06

The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who

by Paul Cornell
The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who is the name of my forthcoming one-off Doctor Who comic from IDW, drawn by an artist I've had the pleasure of working with on many previous occasions, Jimmy Broxton.  Here's his lovely cover...


It's my anniversary celebration of the series that's formed the central thread of my career, the reason I started writing, the reason I've got to where I am.  I realised a few months ago that I had one last Who tale left to tell, and this is it, my farewell to the 11th Doctor, to be released just when he leaves us, in Christmas week.  It's the story of the Doctor landing in our world, the real world, finding himself to be a well known fictional character and encountering, well, lots of things, but notably Matt Smith.

I hope it reads like an episode. It's a 40 page story, and the issue is even bigger than that, including back-up strips I'm not yet able to mention.  (I'm writing this before San Diego Comic Con, this blog post to be automatically activated after the IDW panel on which this is going to be announced.  So I, erm, hope that worked.  Otherwise you're reading this before the panel, and I'm about to get yelled at from onstage.)

Here are the first two pages, hot off the press from Jimmy... That's an Andy Warhol painting the Doctor's looking at.



Very atmospheric, I hope you'll agree.

The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who will be out in the week of Christmas, and will retail at $7.99 in the US, but will also be available digitally, in British comic shops and by mail order.  I hope you like it.  Cheerio!