James F. McGrath

I must thank Joshua Paul Smith for this one:


I've never really understood cat humor, which has pretty much alienated me from my siblings over the years, but this is really something.

-anthony

Yesterday Alin Suciu posted a notice of a Bohairic Coptic leaf with some lines from the martyrdom of Macrobius that was recently found in a Syriac manuscript from Saint Mark’s Monastery in Jerusalem. He also mentioned the entry for that martyr in an Arabic synaxarion (published in PO 16.2, 190-193). The same entry also exists in the Gǝʿǝz synaxarion (published in PO 46.3, 304-309). The saint is commemorated on 2 Baramhāt (ⲡⲁⲣⲉⲙϩⲟⲧⲡ; see Crum 269a for the forms) in the Copto-Arabic synaxarion and 2 Mäggabit in the Gǝʿǝz synaxarion. (According to the Mensium tabulae in BHO, this date corresponds to Feb. 26 — “15 février” in the FT of PO 16 is an error; it is correctly given as “26 février” in the running title — but according to Colin’s table in PO 48.3, the Ethiopian date is Mar. 11.)

Alin notes that the new Coptic leaf has “part of the episode when Macrobius is boiled by the governor Armenius in grease, oil and pitch.” Saints’ lives sometimes exist in two lengths: a shorter notice in the synaxarion and a longer — sometimes considerably longer — one, which may be a vita (or sīra), collection of miracles, martyrdom account, an encomium, or a combination of these types, and which may circulate on its own, that is, not in a calendrical series like the synaxarion. Naturally, many more saints are listed in the synaxarion than have their own separate stories, and when more than one kind of hagiographic text exists for a particular saint, the episodes of the stories may vary more or less, whether in the same language or across languages. The Copto-Arabic and the Gǝʿǝz texts referred to above for Macrobius are essentially the same, but distinct from that of the longer encomium published by Hyvernat. Here is the beginning, with an ET of the Arabic and different readings in the Gǝʿǝz in brackets, of the synaxarion entries:

• في مثل هذا اليوم استشهد القديس الطوباني انبا مكراوي الاسقف كان هذا الاب من اهل اشمون خريسات من اكابرها فجعل اسقفا على مدينة نقيوس
• በዛቲ ፡ ዕለት ፡ ኮነ ፡ ቅዱስ ፡ ወብፁዕ ፡ አባ ፡ መክራዊ ፡ ኤጲስ ፡ ቆጶስ ፡ ሰማዕት። ዝንቱ ፡ ቅዱስ ፡ ኮነ ፡ እምሰብአ ፡ ሀገረ ፡ እስሙንዙራይስ ፡ እምልሂቃነ ፡ ዚአሃ ፡ እምደቡበ ፡ ግብጽ።ወተሰይመ ፡ ኤጲስ ፡ ቆጶሰ ፡ ላዕለ ፡ ሀገረ ፡ ነቂዮስ።
• On the same [G. "this"] day the blessed saint Anba Macrobius the bishop was martyred [G. "became a martyr"]. This father [G. "saint"] came from the chiefs of Ešmūn-Ḫarīsāt [G. ʾƎsmunzurayǝs] and he was made bishop over the city of Nikiu.

The synaxarion entries do not have the detail of the longer martyrdom text that partially survives in the Coptic leaf, and there is nothing about boiling the martyr. All they have to say about Armenius, governor of Alexandria (والي الاسكندرية, መኰንነ ፡ ሀገረ ፡ እስክንድርያ፡), and his tortures at this point is the following. The texts are formally different enough that they merit separate translations.

• فلما بلغ ارمانيوس ما يصنعه القديس من الايات امر ان يعذب بانواع العذاب بالعصر وبقطع الاعضاء وان يلقى للاسد الضارية وان يغرق في البحر وان يوضع في اتون النار وكان صابرا على هذا جميعه غالبا بقوة المسيح
• When news of the miracles the saint was doing reached Armenius, he commanded that he be tortured with various kinds of torture — by pressing and by cutting off limbs — that he be thrown to the savage lions, that he be drowned in the sea, and that he be placed in a furnace of fire. He was enduring all of this, conquering in the power of Christ.
• ወሶበ ፡ ሰምዐ ፡ ሄርሜንዮስ ፡ መኰንን ፡ በእንተ ፡ ተአምራት ፡ ዘገብረ ፡ ቅዱስ ፡ አባ ፡ መክራዊ ፡ ወአዘዘ ፡ ከመ ፡ ይኰንንዎ ፡ በዘዘዚአሁ ፡ ኵነኔ ፡ ወኰነንዎ ፡ በመንኰራኵራት ፡ ወመተሩ ፡ መልያልያቲሁ ፡ ወወገርዎ ፡ ለአናብስት ፡ መሠጥ ፡ ወአስጠምዎ ፡ ውስተ ፡ ባሕር ፡ ወወደይዎ ፡ ውስተ ፡ እቶነ ፡ እሳት። ወኮነ ፡ ቅዱስ ፡ ውስተ ፡ ኵሉ ፡ ኵነኔ ፡ መዋዒ ፡ ወጽኑዕ ፡ በኀይሉ ፡ ለእግዚእነ ፡ ክርስቶስ ፡ ወያነሥኦ ፡ ጥዑየ ፡ ዘእንበለ ፡ ሙስና።
• When Armenius the governor heard about the miracles that the holy Anba Macrobius had done, he commanded that he be tortured with various kinds of torture, and they tortured him with wheels, cut off his limbs, threw him to savage lions, drowned him in the sea, and put him in a furnace of fire, and the saint was prevailing in all of this torture, strong in the power of our Lord Christ, and he will raise him whole without decay.

In addition to the obvious text-critical interest that studying multiple versions of this or that hagiographic text might conjure, in the case of probably or definitely dependent texts, questions of translation technique might be asked (and, hopefully, answered). Those interested more in the narrative content of the stories and in their use in cult and devotion, too, have plenty of material for study in eastern Christian hagiography. And while there is already far more available across these languages than any one person could completely study, new pieces continue to appear, especially in previously unploughed fields of manuscript collections, as this Coptic leaf shows, a textual witness to a particular continuum that spans Coptic, Arabic, and Gǝʿǝz.

Thanks to Alin for his notice and discussion of the Coptic fragment!

If you were anything like me, you spent many a weekday morning singing along to Jennifer Knapp’s “Faithful to Me,”  “Hold Me Now,” and “A Little More” as you got ready for another day of high school. The Grammy-nominated folk rock musician’s earthy, raw music has always given shape to my hopes and frustrations. 

Jennifer’s first three albums—Kansas, Lay It Down, and The Way I Am—sold over a million copies. After taking a 7-year hiatus, Knapp announced in September 2009 that she was returning to music. On May 11, 2010 she released her newest album Letting Go with the single "Dive In". 

Jennifer spent her Christian music career challenging religious cultural  stereotypes both on and off stage. Candid and compassionate in heart, rock-n-roll in her confrontational style, Jennifer’s impact on Christian audiences took a new turn in  2010 when she made public her long-standing same-sex partnership. The revelation  sparked much public debate amid cries for immediate rejection from Christian music leaders, retailers and fans alike. Jennifer currently advocates on behalf of LGBT Christians through Inside Out Faith. Having experienced, first hand, the devastating effects of rejection and judgment, Jennifer knows full well the challenges of being “out” in certain faith communities. However, it is in the sharing of her journey through story, music and conversation that she has discovered the healing that comes from breaking the silence.

It’s such an honor to have Jennifer on the blog to respond to YOUR questions. 

You know the drill. If you have a question for Jennifer, leave it in the comment section. Be sure to utilize the "like" feature so we can get a sense of what questions are of most interest to you. After 24-hours, I'll pose seven of the most popular questions to Jennifer and post her responses next week. Ask away!

The Jewish historian Josephus presents a summary of the Torah’s legislation in Antiquities 4.196-302. In this section, he surveys in a reorganized fashion what he regards as the constitution of the Jewish people, namely the laws of the Torah. In this context, he presents numerous reasons for commandments. We will be able to talk about only a small number of these. We should note at the outset that these reasons for the commandments may be distinguished easily from the rest of the material, that constitutes either a simple rewriting of the biblical requirements or the presentation of legal interpretations of them.

In 201, Josephus explains why there can only be one altar and temple, namely “for God is one and the stock of the Hebrews one.” Clearly, the intention here is to say that the unity of the people and its God is symbolized by having only one, central temple, that we know to be located in Jerusalem. In 203, we learn the reason for the thrice yearly pilgrimage festivals that the Torah requires:

… In order that they may give thanks to God for the benefits that they have received and that they may appeal for benefits for the future; and coming together and taking a common meal, may they be dear to each other.

This passage, reflecting classical Jewish belief, understands the observance of festival rituals to be oriented both to the past, in terms of gratitude, and to the future, in terms of prayer. In addition, he sees the purpose of these gatherings as to create a kind of social unity among the Jewish people, itself strengthened by joining together in the eating of festival sacrifices. Essentially, Josephus here recognizes the fact that Jewish ritual is aimed both at the relationship of each individual with God as well as with the inculcation and strengthening of relationships within families and the larger Jewish people.

Josephus states this beautifully in section 204:

For it is well that they not be ignorant of one another, being compatriots and sharing in the same practices…. For if they remain unmixed with one another they will be brought completely [to be] strangers to each other.

In 208 Josephus discusses the prohibition of garments woven of wool and linen (Lev. 19:19, Deut. 22:11). He gives the reason for this commandment as the fact that such garments are part of the priestly vestments. This fact is also noted by the rabbis, however, they do not see this as the reason for the prohibition, only noting that it is set aside for priestly vestments. For Josephus, at least in this passage, the prohibition is based on the assumption that only priests wore such a combination of materials. However, below, in 228-229, he takes up the similar laws pertaining to mixing of species in agriculture and draft animals. Regarding the mixing of seeds, he explains that “nature does not rejoice in association of  dissimilar things.” He then refers to the issue of animals yoked together and expands on this:

For from this there is fear that the dishonor of that which is of the same kind may pass over even to human practices, having taken its beginning from the previous treatment of small and trivial things.

It is best to understand this difficult passage in light of what follows (230), where that which may appear to be a violation of the law is forbidden, as well as undertaking actions that may by chance lead to violations of law. Accordingly, we see the paragraph that we have just quoted (229) as indicating that if one is willing to mix the various kinds of agricultural or animal species, it may lead to violation of various laws, especially those regarding prohibited sexual relations. Indeed, two passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls make the very same parallel between the mixing species (kil’ayim) and forbidden sexual relations.

In section 213, Josephus provides a reason for the requirement of wearing phylacteries:

… And as many things as we are able to show forth the power of God and His goodwill toward them let them display on the head and the arm, so that the favor of God with regard to them may be readily visible from all sides.

This interpretation assumes that the purpose of the phylacteries is to display the benefit of God’s blessings so that all can see. While rabbinic interpretation did discuss the notion of the visibility of the head tefillin, it understood it as a means of inspiring fear among the nations. Here, however both head and arm tefillin are assumed to be a sign of God’s blessing to Israel. One wonders if this approach does not fit into Josephus’s attempt to demonstrate to the nations the special status of the Jewish people, itself based on God’s blessing of them, even in the face of the defeat they suffered in the Great Revolt of 66-73 CE, including the destruction of the Temple in 70.

An example of a simple, almost obvious interpretation of a commandment is his remarks in section 233 regarding muzzling the mouth of animals at the threshing floor (Deut. 25:4). Here he remarks:

… For it is not right to bar from the fruit those who joined in the work and who have exerted themselves with regard to its production.

We assume that reasons such as this simply indicate the common Jewish interpretation of such commandments, in no way reflecting the creativity of Josephus.

Regarding the commandment of Levirate marriage, taken up by Josephus in section 254, after paraphrasing Deut. 25:5-6, Josephus adds:

This will be of advantage to the community if houses do not disappear and the possessions remain with the kinsmen; and it will bring to the women, as they live with those nearest to their former husbands, an alleviation of their suffering.

The Bible only speaks of the need to perpetuate the name of the dead first husband. On the other hand, it seems apparent from the Bible that, as held by the rabbis, the property of the dead husband devolves to the brother who performs Levirate marriage and then to the children born of the Levirate marriage. Josephus here introduces two other rationales for this commandment. First, it provides for orderly transmission of property and maintenance of “houses” that is, in biblical times, clans within the tribe. Second, it provides succor to the unfortunate widow who is provided both with material support and with a husband who would many ways resemble her first husband. We should note here that Philo does not mention Levirate marriage at all, and that the rabbis were indeed concerned with the welfare of the widow in legislating the specific applications of these laws.

The fact that this brief survey comes only from the beginning of Josephus’s review of the laws of the Torah should indicate how extensive his discussion of the rationales for commandments was, as such explanations punctuate his survey over and over. While some of the rationales do indeed fit with the polemical purposes of Josephus, it appears that others are simply drawn from the common Judaism of the time or represent rationales fitting with Josephus’s notion of Moses as a kind of philosopher king whose legislation was totally wise and just. One thing is certain: the sustained discussion of ta`amei ha-mitzvot as a rational enterprise, in the works of Philo and Josephus, contrasts greatly with the etiological approach for the most part taken by the book of Jubilees. Clearly, it is the Hellenistic environment that called upon Jews to make logical, rational, philosophical arguments for commandments often held up to ridicule in the Greco-Roman world. Further, we should not underestimate the need for Jews themselves to explain internally the significance of the commandments in an environment in which Jews constituted a minority in the wider oekumene.

Today was a great day for travel in and around Jerusalem. We started the day by visiting the Temple Mount. This is a place filled with Bible history relating to Abraham, David, Solomon, Jesus, and Peter (as well as all of the apostle). It is a place destroyed by the Babylonians (586 B.C.) and the Romans (A.D. 70).

The site has been under Islamic control since the 7th century.

We visited the Pools of Bethesda (John 5) and the Pool of Siloam (John 9).

Yesterday, by the time we visited Masada, Qumran, and Jericho, it was too late to visit the baptismal site on the Jordan River, a site known as Qasr el-Yahud. This site on the Israel side is across from the Jordanian site identified as Bethany beyond the Jordan (John 1:28).

We stopped in Jericho for lunch at the Temptations Restaurant. The restaurant is located on the south end of Tell es-Sultan, identified with Biblical Jericho (Joshua 3-6).

The restaurant has lots of parking space for tour buses and good food. That’s a good combination in the tourist industry. As I was leaving I noticed a sign with the wording “View of Jericho”, and thought I should check it out. It took a climb of 11 flights of stairs to reach the roof. It was worth it for the view which was exceptionally good in all directions.

The view to the north is of Tel es-Sultan. See below. You may notice some wires (cables) across the photo. These are for the cable car that goes up to the traditional Mount of Temptation (Matthew 4).

Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) from the south. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins.

Afterwards we visited the Jordan River. On the way back to Jerusalem we stopped by the St. George Monastery in the wilderness of Judea. The monastery building appear to hang on the side of a cliff overlooking the Wadi Qilt. Quite a sight.

We stopped at the Inn of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) which now houses many mosaic floors from Jewish synagogues, Samaritan Synagogues, and Byzantine Churches, as well as a few other interesting artifacts.

It was a great day.

In Striking It Rich with ‘Instant Gold’ (17 April 2013) Timothy L. Clarey points us to a Nature Geoscience paper called “Flash vaporization during earthquakes evidenced by gold deposits.” The gist is as follows:

The two scientists found that faulting events are key to gold deposit formation, where rocks split apart and quickly slip past one another, causing earthquakes. Faults through solid rock are never straight. Instead, they follow zigzag patterns that look like chain lightening and create small voids—openings in the rocks called “jogs.” Fast-forming jogs create instantaneous drops in pressure during movement, causing superheated deep waters to almost instantly “flash vaporize,” leaving behind thin coatings of gold and quartz.

Repeated earthquakes could build up the gold to levels that would be economical to mine. Clarey – who has apparently recently joined the ICR as a research associate – is naturally going to be very fond of such a mechanism. He says:

Creation scientists have proposed a scenario wherein the fault slip-recovery method of gold deposition occurred rapidly and often in the recent past. This produced commercial-sized deposits in decades or hundreds of years. Rapid plate motion and tremendous tectonic activity during and after the Flood of Noah would have caused almost innumerable slip-recovery events to have deposited masses of gold along small fault jogs and larger superfaults. This recent Nature Geoscience study helps show how commercial gold—and even the elusive mother lode—can be deposited so fast that it easily fits within a biblical timeframe.

The claim in the first two sentenses – that creationists have a model that would allow this to happen very rapidly – is cited to the Creation Science Fellowship’s 1994 “catastrophic plate tectonics” paper, which so far as I can tell doesn’t actually mention gold at all. I’m therefore interpreting Clarey’s comments as being just a roundabout way of saying “it could have happened during the Flood.”

The Nature Geosciences paper does give an estimation of the time required to create an economical deposit:

Assuming a seismic frequency history similar to that of, for example, the Alpine Fault system in the Southern Alps, New Zealand, the formation of one such deposit [containing 100 tonnes of gold] would take much less than 100,000 years.

Some evidence that this could be (and was) increased to accommodate the same sized – and even larger – deposits within a thousandths of that time would be nice, but Clarey does not oblige.

Filed under: Daily (pseudo)Science Updates, Great 2013 catch-up Tagged: Creationism, Geology, Global Flood, Gold, ICR, Science, Skeptic, Skepticism, Timothy L. Clarey

2013.04.06 | Ellen van Wolde. Reframing Biblical Studies: When Language and Text Meet Culture, Cognition, and Context. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009. $49.50 pp. xiv + 402. ISBN: 978-1-57506-182-5.

Review by Kurtis Peters, University of Edinburgh.

Many thanks to Eisenbrauns for kindly providing us with a review copy.

facebook.com/RBECS.org

Ellen van Wolde’s recent volume, Reframing Biblical Studies, is an ambitious attempt to change the course of the whole of biblical scholarship. Biblical scholarship, she maintains, has become too narrow, too specialized, and does not have much ability to incorporate insights from other disciplines. Those who do attempt a crossover or integration often find themselves fumbling in the dark. Van Wolde, however, suggests a way forward, a light in a dark place – the study of cognition. It is by appeal to the human mind that we can form meaningful bridges between normally separated disciplines.

This is the ambitious sentiment with which van Wolde opens her book in chapter 1. Chapter 2 and 3 then take the reader into the world of cognition and cognitive grammar. Van Wolde spends chapter 2 focusing primarily on the role of the mind in processing the world and how that affects the way people relate to their surroundings. This relating to one’s surroundings can be illustrated most effectively by means of Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Grammar, which she sketches briefly here. In chapter 3, she begins to introduce the particulars of Cognitive Linguistics with relation to words and their meanings (rather than clauses, sentences, etc.).

Chapters 4 through 7 demonstrate how Cognitive Linguistics, particularly the theory of Cognitive Grammar generated by Ronald Langacker, can be applied to various types of words. Chapter 4 is dedicated to nominal forms, primarily nouns themselves. The subject of Chapter 5 is prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, particles, adjectives, participles and infinitives construct, all of which she classifies as ‘atemporal relations,’ i.e. relations not profiling a span of time. Verbs, on the other hand, are the subject of Chapter 6, and are classified as ‘temporal relations.’ Chapter 7 concludes this section with a brief summary of the material covered to that point, and a schematic outline for reference for the following chapters.

Chapters 8 and 9, then, constitute two significant case studies. The first, in chapter 8, looks at one word,טמא, in several texts considered to be representative of its use in the Hebrew Bible. Chapter 9, instead of examining one word throughout its various uses, looks at one passage, Genesis 34:1-31 – the ‘rape’ of Tamar – and the various words contained within it. Chapter 10 concludes the book as a whole and once again calls for biblical scholarship to appropriate this general approach, this integration of disciplines all centred upon the human mind.

As mentioned above, the book opens strongly. The appeal to incorporate insights from a variety of disciplines is well made and it would be difficult to find a biblical scholar who did not agree. It is the method for doing so that is up for debate. Is Cognitive Grammar the answer? Van Wolde is indeed convincing, at least to a point. It may have been overly ambitious to ‘reframe’ all of biblical studies, particularly seeing as the majority of the book is really the application of Cognitive Linguistics to Biblical Hebrew language. It is true that this method illuminates word meanings and word uses, and is a valuable resource for doing even that. It allows those studying Hebrew a methodology for incorporating extra-linguistic information, something that has been taboo ever since James Barr and the 1960’s. I am not so sure, though, that van Wolde has presented a methodology that can be applied to other sorts of biblical research. Perhaps it could be, but her argument for such application needs more thorough articulation.

Despite perhaps being misguided in the scope of her project, van Wolde still clearly delivers a success insofar as it applies to Hebrew semantics. She quickly dispels the notion that word meaning can be equated with dictionary-type definitions. On page 55 for example she dismisses the typical definition of war, which refers to an act that includes fighting between countries, with weapons, where many people die. Instead, she says,

War is warfare, weapons, troops, logistics; war is soldiers fighting each other and fighting tiredness and sleep. War is soldiers struggling on the battlefield with blood in their mouths and dust in their nostrils. War is friends dying before your eyes and fear of the next attack…. War is aggression and the diminishment of civil rights. War is rape and the children born from it. War is hatred and terror. War is reluctance and indifference….

With this visceral description, she potently demonstrates that to know the meaning of the word ‘war,’ one must have this broader knowledge and experience. What she then goes on to do is set out a methodology for employing this kind of encyclopaedic knowledge in the meaning of words.

One of the more effective ways of doing this is the relationship of what van Wolde (following John R. Taylor and Ronald Langacker) calls profiles, bases and domains. Profiles demonstrate the actual information that a word designates, whereas a base is the inherent and necessary information for comprehending that profile. For example, on page 56, she suggests that for the word ‘island’ the profile is a landmass and the base is the knowledge that it is surrounded by water. These profiles and bases, however, must be understood on the backdrop of a cognitive domain, a selection of a language user’s encyclopaedic knowledge. In this example, geology might serve as the appropriate cognitive domain.

In chapters 5 and 6, van Wolde goes on to discuss atemporal and temporal relations. At this point, the reader may have a more difficult time following the plot. Much of this has to do with the fact that Cognitive Grammar categorizes words differently than traditional grammar. However, van Wolde could have guided the reader through this maze more clearly than she did.

By chapters 8 and 9, the plot became even more difficult to follow, at least by comparison to where she started in her wide-ranging introduction. In both of these later chapters, it seems as though van Wolde was ‘showing her work.’ Every detail was analysed. Granted, she was trying to present a method that others could apply and therefore she wanted to show how to do it. However, by the end of nearly 90 pages of details in chapter 9, the plot was almost entirely lost. She certainly made a strong case for a multi-layered reading of the Dinah narrative, but need not have taken so long to do so, or even to demonstrate her method.

Despite the possibly misplaced ambition and the unnecessary detail, van Wolde clearly has made a significant contribution to the study of Hebrew semantics, especially for those of us still trying to discern how real-world knowledge relates to the words that describe it.

Kurtis Peters
University of Edinburgh

Nice article here on the BBC about claims that William Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him, and attempts by mainstream scholars to debunk such views.
Sound familiar?

Chapter five of Daniel Harrell’s book, Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith, begins with a joke (p. 69): A scientist tells God that he’s figured out how to create life from the dust of the ground, just like God did in the beginning. Consequently, the scientist says, he’s shown that God is no longer [...]

DANIEL BOYARIN'S BOOK THE JEWISH GOSPELS receives a quite sympathetic review by Simon Rocker at The Jewish Chronicle: Why a 'divine' messiah was not beyond belief: A new book by a leading Jewish scholar turns some of our preconceptions about Jesus and the origins of Christianity on their head. Excerpt:

But a daring new book by one of the world’s leading Jewish scholars challenges this simple contrast. The Jewish Gospels is a short work aimed at general readers by Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmud at the University of California in Berkeley. In ancient times, the borders between what Judaism and Christianity were far more porous than we conceive today, he argues: it was not until the fourth century that the doctrinal differences were clarified, not least because of the desire of the Roman-backed church to put clear water between the spreading new faith and those it considered Jews.

His most explosive contention is that the concept of a divine messiah was not an alien import but part of the cauldron of ideas that bubbled in the volatile world of classical Judaism. “The basic underlying thoughts from which both the Trinity and the incarnation grew are there in the very world into which Jesus was born,” he writes.

Background here and links, where you will see that Peter Schäfer's review of the book goes rather further than believing "that Boyarin overstates his case."

Metal band Means End has made a spectacular cover of my Nox Aurumque. PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR FACE MELTED!

For reference, here’s the original. Bravo to the boys in Means End. SO thrilled with their cover.

The post Epic Djent Cover of Nox Aurumque appeared first on Eric Whitacre.

One response to the stories of pain and abuse being aired at Homeschoolers Anonymous is that the problem isn’t homeschooling, it’s fundamentalism. Or, the problem isn’t homeschooling, it’s abusive parents. Homeschooling has nothing to do with it, they insist. Leave homeschooling out of it, they say. But I won’t do that, and there’s a reason for that.

The sort of unregulated homeschooling that we have today, without any form of checks and balances, allows parents with abusive tenancies to abuse their children without any restraint on their authority. Similarly, homeschooling as it currently exists allows fundamentalist parents to indoctrinate their children without fear of outside influence, controlling their children’s every action and interaction. The idea that homeschooling is this totally unrelated thing and not a key factor that is complicit in creating abusive and oppressive situations is laughably ridiculous.

Allowing a fundamentalist or abusive parent to homeschool is like giving an alcoholic a key to the liquor store. 

Would someone honestly tell children who are abused by their father, an alcoholic who has been given a key to the local liquor store, that the key plays no role at all in their abuse, or in their father’s alcoholism? I’m thinking not. Sure, the underlying problem is their father’s alcoholism, but his possession of a key to the liquor store must be taken into account when looking for ways to curb his abuse and deal with his alcoholism. In fact, it probably isn’t possible to solve his abuse or alcoholism without taking the key away—or at the very least restricting his access to it. It’s also possible that it was this key that caused his alcohol problem in the first place by giving him unfettered access to all the alcohol he could drink.

If he has proven himself unable to handle the responsibility it puts in his hands, perhaps the alcoholic father should lose his key to the liquor store. Perhaps we shouldn’t give alcoholics keys to the liquor store in the first place, because of the risk of abuse. Perhaps those in possession of liquor store keys should have some oversight or accountability to ensure that they do not become alcoholics and abuse the access these keys grant them. Perhaps we should have provisions in place to confiscate the liquor store keys of those who become abusive alcoholics, or are at risk of doing so.

By now I think you get my point. Just like you can’t address this hypothetical alcoholic father’s problems without addressing the fact that his habit is aided and abetted by his possession of a key to the local liquor store, even so you can’t solve the problems described on Homeschoolers Anonymous without grappling with the reality that homeschooling enables this abuse to take place and, indeed, creates the very situations within which it occurs. Homeschooling as it currently exists places an enormous amount of power in the hands of homeschooling parents, allowing them complete control over their children’s social and academic lives without any sort of outside check or balance. When these parents are healthy, kind, and loving, this usually works out. But when they’re not, the implications for their children are profound and even disastrous.

So no, sorry, I’m not going to leave homeschooling out of this.

“The Urgency of Breaking Free” by David Hayward

You must break free! I say “break” because any freedom worth having means breaking away from slavery and bondage. It means leaving something behind, breaking away from it. Like this caterpillar and butterfly realize, true transformation is traumatic. But it is urgently necessary.

I have friends who run a butterfly house. I’ve watched them receive the chrysalides from exotic lands and prepare them so the butterflies can emerge from the cocoon safely and populate the house with their beauty. It is a very very delicate process… from the collecting to the shipping to the pinning to the hatching to the drying to their first flight. Watching the butterflies work to break free is profoundly moving to me. The whole process is at once tender and traumatic.

You must break free! To remain where you are will be the death of you. You intuitively know this. But we hesitate because we predict the trauma. We foresee the crisis.

I am equally moved by the people who go through this process. I love helping them. It is a tender time when they are especially vulnerable to predators. So much could go wrong. But it is also a traumatic time when they need encouragement and sometimes assistance. The courage these people must muster is breathtaking. But those who are serious find it. From beginning to end, this is the bible’s predominant theme.

I was talking to a good friend yesterday about her profound transformation. The courage, the risk, the change! But her life is more beautiful than before. Fuller. Larger. And she knows it.

You can do it. No, you must! You must break free!

As a co-editor, I am very glad to have received this: You can pre-order for the next few days our book here.

Many strange things are said and done in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.  Many of them are alien to the Christian gospel, even though they are done in the gospel’s name.  Many of them are toxic, destructive both of persons and societies. They march under the banner of Christian fundamentalism.

This interesting and important book  is the chronicle of spiritual journeys that persons have taken from the prisons of fundamentalism [characterized by biblical literalism, anti- science, fear rather than love as the basis of our relationship with God] to the world of catholic (small c), ecumenical churches.  For these persons, it has been a journey from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land.

The persons whose stories this book tells, are now living in what they believe to be mature communities of faith, where they are growing spiritually and finding the vocations to which they believe God is calling them.  Several of them have been called to the formal ministries of their churches and have been ordained.  Others have found joy and peace living out their discipleship as lay persons. This important book is their story.

William Boyd Grove
Bishop  (retired)
The United Methodist Church

Blog:  Just Visiting

I’m failing my MOOC.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not learning anything.

I enrolled in Coursera’s “English Composition I” with the best of intentions. I’ve been writing about MOOCs, often critically, and thought I should experience massive, open, online learning for myself. I chose English Composition I because it’s a course I teach and I was curious to experience it from the student side of the equation.

So, six weeks ago, 60,000 classmates and I began watching the initial videos featuring our teacher, Prof. Denise Comer of Duke University.

Professor Comer is no “sage on the screen,” but instead acts as a friendly and open guide, spending her time (in the initial videos at least) not lecturing, but talking directly into the camera from her office, Skype-style. Periodically, animated PowerPoint-ish slides serve as visual aids, not too different from what a student might experience in a lecture/discussion course in a traditional setting.

In the first unit, we were asked to consider ourselves as writers, and given a task to help us brainstorm the writing milestones in our lives.

I do something similar in my own class, but found Professor Comer’s brainstorming prompt superior. I’ll be stealing it.

I was looking forward to our first assignment, a critical review of an article, in this case Daniel Coyle’s “The Sweet Spot,” a chapter from his book, The Talent Code, which explores the ways we develop skills and debunks some myths about the role and recognition of talent. The assignment is actually a tad more sophisticated than how I begin with my students in that it asked me to both summarize and respond to Coyle’s argument. I begin the semester with an initial assignment where students are asked to do only a summary, with the response being added in as part of the second assignment.

I felt like I had lots to say in response to Coyle, particularly in the context of learning writing and spent some time considering different points I wanted to raise, not too different from how I approach writing for this space.

And then I got sick. Not sure what it was. Possibly the plague. I reduced my activities to the bare essentials, breathing, basically, and even as my brain boiled in my skull, I managed to meet my classes. The ten days of being well beneath full capacity put me behind in all kinds of life and work responsibilities, and my MOOC participation suffered. I missed the draft deadline for assignment 1 as well as the peer review. Once or twice a week Prof. Comer sent me (and 60,000 others) a friendly reminder of where we’d been and where we were going next. Each time an e-mail arrived, I felt brief pangs of guilt before deciding that completing that work was too far down the personal priority list to even register.

I now find myself hopelessly behind. We’ve just passed the midway point and I have the functional equivalent of a zero. I’ve caught up with my school and life work just in time to receive the final researched essays from my students, essays which will take me a solid week to grade and return, a process which sometimes makes me wish for something more pleasant, like being sick with the plague.

Even though I’ve all but abandoned my MOOC after barely getting started, the experience has provided some fresh personal insights into teaching and learning.

For one, it reminded me how difficult it can be for my students when some misfortune, like an even briefly debilitating illness, hits them during the semester. The schedule waits for no one, not even in the MOOC world. Without sufficient incentive to catch up in my MOOC, one hiccup was enough to put me off track.

For another, in terms of external content, MOOCs match or even surpass traditional classrooms. In addition to the “lectures,” and other related videos, Prof. Comer arranged a live, 45 minute-long “Google Hangout” with Daniel Coyle that allowed for questions from some of the participants. I imagine it’s relatively easy to get authors to sign on for group video chat when you tell them there’s a potential audience of 60,000 people for it.

At the same time, for me, it reinforces that the content by itself is a very limited part of what matters in terms of teaching and learning. This feeling is perhaps biased by my discipline (writing/literature) and relatively small courses (20 students max), but as good as Prof. Comer’s content is, and as engaging and nice as she appears to be on screen, she and I don’t have a relationship, and when it comes to learning, relationships matter.

Like just this afternoon, I was holding some final office hours prior to the turning in of the researched essays. One of my under-the-radar students dropped by. I was surprised. This student has been cruising pretty comfortably in the B/B+ range this semester, clearly doing the essays without breaking much of a sweat, but also, by not breaking a sweat, not excelling. This is actually a student who could likely pass a proficiency test in the course without taking it.

I answered a couple of questions about the assignment and then encouraged the student to really polish the final version because it was on track to be the best work of the semester, and that I could tell, for the first time, that this student was engaged by the challenge of an assignment. I also told the student that I knew about the coasting. I guessed (an easy one) that the student had come from an affluent school district, and that the course material, the modes of discourse we practiced, seemed relatively familiar.

The student indicated I was on target. There was a sheepish grin. I said that it didn’t bother me that the student was coasting, but that it seemed important to say that I had indeed noticed, and I was glad to see it less in evidence in this final assignment.

We had a nice chat about some other things, possible majors/fields of study, how the field of interest in the researched essay might mesh with those things someday.

We talked about the fact that a number of the student’s colleagues had in fact quite possibly not written analytical essays (or any other kind of essay) before attending college, and were therefore struggling with a course that seemed so easy to the student.

The student was surprised by this. This student had never considered this before. That felt like an important victory, hopefully for both of us. The student left, “excited” to finish the project. I said I was excited to read it in its final form.

I like to think that it is this conversation, more than the content of our course, that will linger with the student. My hope is that the student will remember the time a teacher was willing to call the student out for coasting, the time we could tell each other we were excited to see how things were going to turn out.

--

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Fundamentalist Christianity guarantees a crisis of faith for those indoctrinated into its all-or-nothing package deal. This is stupid and cruel.

Fundamentalism: Take out one piece and the whole thing topples to the ground.

It’s stupid because that all-or-nothing package deal includes dozens of things that are not so. Lies. Falsehoods. Easily falsifiable falsehoods projected into the Bible and then mined back out of it as holy writ.

That’s bad enough on its own. It’s immoral to teach such lies at all, let alone to teach them as “God’s Word.”

But the problem isn’t just that those indoctrinated into fundamentalism are taught things like that the Earth is only 10,000 years old, or that homosexuality is a sinful choice, or that Noah hung out with dinosaurs before the flood, or that God hates you because you’re not perfectly holy. The larger problem is that according to fundamentalism, those falsehoods are inextricably linked to everything else. Everything. So if it turns out that the Earth is actually 4.5 billion years old, then, according to fundamentalism, life has no meaning, happiness is impossible, love is illusion, Jesus is dead, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins, and we are of all people most to be pitied. And that is cruel.

But enough from me, I’ve written about this enough times that you probably don’t need to hear another variation of my rant on the subject. So let me instead direct you to a post from Defeating the Dragons. DtD is a new-ish blog — started just this year — but it’s earning some well-deserved attention with its candor, honesty, deeply personal storytelling, and terrific writing under the name “forgedimagination.”

Here is the most recent post, “What Christian fundamentalism means to us,” which takes on the all-or-nothing, package-deal aspect of fundie faith by looking back at it from the other side of its collapse:

For those of us who grew up and left our fundamentalist nests, it was caused by our engagement with reality – for most of us, for the very first time. We befriended people in the LGBTQ community, and realized that everything we’d been taught about homosexuality (the BTQ part was completely dismissed) was either deeply misguided or just plain wrong. We encountered science for the first time, and for many of us who were taught that Genesis 1-11 was the bedrock of the entire Bible, finding out that AiG and ICR misrepresented evolutionary theory was the first nail in our theological coffins. For many of us, it was simply meeting people. We made friends with Christians who weren’t fundamentalists – we made friends with people who weren’t Christians, and it shook us profoundly. We met atheists and agnostics for the very first time, and suddenly, all our “right answers” couldn’t make sense. For many of us, the psychological dissonance was so bad we abandoned Christianity completely.

Sometimes, we abandoned Christianity for a time, but then we came back – and our Christianity looked utterly different. Some of us are Unitarian now. Some of us are Progressive. Some are Universalist. Some of us are Catholic, or just liturgical. Some of us hold the basic truth that God loves us, and we are trying to see the world through that love and nothing else.

Which gives us another core problem to face in fundamentalism: the absolute certainty, the absolute necessity of possessing “all the right answers” is coupled with another concept known as foundationalism. It’s the notion that there are “bedrock” ideas (like inerrancy and young earth creationism) and that, if those fall,everything else falls with it. And this has held true in many of our lives – our faith, when we took it out into the real world, was nothing more than a house of cards. And it wasn’t because we didn’t believe enough, or weren’t taught correctly enough, or hadn’t been instructed enough, or that we were secretly never believers and just couldn’t wait to “get out.”  It was because of what were taught, it was because of what we believed – that Christ was not really enough.

Go read the whole thing.

A couple of week’s ago, I shared Part 1 of our friend Richard Beck’s thoughts on the book, Sexuality and the Christian Body by Eugene Rogers. Richard has graciously allowed me to share Part 2 (which originally ran on his blog) today, and I am so grateful. Really. Richard has been incredibly generous to share these posts in their entirety with us. (You may want to thank him next time you're on his blog.) 

As an aside, I hope this post will also inspire you to check out Rowan Williams’ important essay The Body’s Grace. I’ve been told on multiple occasions that we can’t have a series on Sexuality & The Church without discussing that essay, which is exactly what Richard does here, in the context of Rogers’ book. 

For those who feel a bit overwhelmed by reading two deep theology posts, Richard has distilled much of the theological content in a compare and contrast format in a post on his blog entitled “Same Sex Marriage in the Image of God?” There he presents both sides of the debate clearly, simply, and charitably.

Sexuality and the Christian Body, Part 2: “Grace & Election”

by Richard Beck 

A second major theme in Eugene Rogers' book Sexuality and the Christian Body is his interaction with and elaboration upon Rowan Williams' essay The Body's Grace. If you've not read The Body's Grace many consider it to be the most significant theological treatment of human sexuality in the 20th Century. You can decide that for yourself. Regardless, agree or not, The Body's Grace is considered required reading for theology students taking up the subject of human sexuality. So, before getting back to Rogers it might be helpful to sketch out some of the main moves inThe Body's Grace.

Williams opens the essay with the question: "Why does sex matter?" One part of the answer is negative: Sex matters because it is where our personhood is most exposed and vulnerable. This makes sex both tragic and comic:

 Nothing will stop sex being tragic and comic. It is above all the area of our lives where we can be rejected in our body entirety, where we can venture into the "exposed spontaneity" that Nagel talks about and find ourselves looking foolish or even repellent, so that the perception of ourselves we are offered is negating and damaging (homosexuals, I think, know rather a lot about this). And it is also where the awful incongruity of our situation can break through as comedy, even farce...

[Sex] is potentially farcical--no less for being on the edge of pain.

The reason sex can be so painful and tragic is that we expose ourselves to the perceptions of another. And this exposure carries great risk, psychically and spiritually. Consequently, we may choose to remove our sexuality from the communal sphere where there is so much risk, vulnerability, and exposure. Sex, then, becomes solitary and non-relational. Williams suggests that this retreat into isolation, removing sex from the perceptions of others, may be the best theological definition of sexual perversion:

 "Sexual "perversion" is sexual activity without risk, without the dangerous acknowledgement that my joy depends on someone else's, as theirs does on mine. Distorted sexuality is the effort to bring my happiness back under my control and to refuse to let my body be recreated by anther person's perception. And this is, in effect, to withdraw my body from the enterprise of human beings making sense in collaboration, in community, withholding my body from language, culture, and politics."

In light of this, healthy sexuality is allowing my personhood to be shaped by the perceptions of others. Sex is to enter into a communal space where there is giving and receiving, a mutuality, a sharing of selves and perceptions. This is why sex matters. It is a location where we discover our humanity through our being with others. Williams writes:

 "I can only fully discover the body's grace by taking time, the time needed for a mutual recognition that my partner and I are not simply passive instruments to each other. Such things are learned in the fabric of a whole relation of converse and cooperation; yet of course the more time taken the longer a kind of risk endures. There is more to expose, and a sustaining of the will to let oneself be formed by the perceptions of another. Properly understood, sexual faithfulness is not an avoidance of risk, but the creation of a context in which grace can abound because there is a commitment not to run away from the perceptions of another."

I'd like to grab a part of Rogers' argument at this point. What Williams is suggesting is that human sexuality is akin to a spiritual discipline. More, Rogers suggests that human sexuality is a form of monasticism, of living in close community, exposing our bodies and personhood to the perceptions of others and allowing those perceptions to affect and shape us. In both monasticism and marriage there is a "mutual kenosis," a shared self-emptying. Here is Rogers on this point:

 "Marriage, like monasticism, allows eros and the body to mean more...[M]arriage shares with celibacy the end of sanctifying the whole person through the body, of permitting the body something more to be about, something further to mean, something better to desire, until finally it gets taken up into the life in which God loves God. In this process of desiring ever more, one incidentally or intentionally gives up--lets go of, gets rid of--the petty things that one used to want, and in that way the life of ever-greater desire is one of asceticism, and asceticism in which self-control serves self-abandonment. In this way too the end of marriage and monasticism is one."

This might seem to be an odd claim, that sexuality and celibacy are two sides of the same coin. That eros can be a form of asceticism. But if you've ever been married and have tried to "work out" life in the sexual sphere I'm sure you can understand. Rogers' description of mutual kenosis is very apt. More from Rogers describing the relationship between eros and agape:

 Both these forms of community--monasticism and marriage--require time to complete the transformation of human beings by the perceptions of an other. Both the married and the monastic need somebody who loves them to call them on their faults from whom they cannot easily escape. The transformation is not only, or even primarily, the experience of falling in love (eros), but that is the intensity and the clue to the importance of something else: the experience of living with someone, the neighbor, who won't leave one alone (agape).

This view of human sexuality fits very comfortably with scripture. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians: "The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife."

Our bodies are not our own. They are "community property." I share my body with my wife. And it doesn't end there. My body belongs to the community of faith. I don't wholly control my own time, money, efforts, or talent. The community has a claim on me. Ultimately, because these loves--for my wife and for the world--are simply reflections of my love for God. As Paul writes: "You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body."

Monks are "not their own." And neither are the married. As Rogers notes, monks learn this lesson directly: By giving up eros for the love of God (agape). The married discover this more indirectly: Eros demands that I make my body available to the other (agape). But the lesson is the same: You are not your own.

Now all this talk about discipline, kenosis, monasticism and asceticism might sound kind of dreary. But this is where the language of grace comes in. As both Rogers and Williams note, marriage doesn't make any sense, theologically, without the pre-existent language of grace. Love, sex, marriage, friendship. These only mean what they mean because of God's grace. So what is grace? Williams offers this vision:

 Grace, for the Christian believer, is a transformation that depends in large part on knowing yourself to be seen in a certain way: as significant, as wanted.

The whole story of creation, incarnation, and our incorporation into the fellowship of Christ's body tells us that God desires us, as if we were God, as if we were that unconditional response to God's giving that God's self makes in the life of the Trinity. We are created so that we may be caught up in this, so that we may grow into the wholehearted love of God by learning that God loves us as God loves God.

The life of the Christian community has as its rationale--if not invariably its practical reality--the task of teaching us to so order our relations that human beings may see themselves as desired, as the occasion of joy.

I mentioned in Part 1 that I found Rogers' book a wonderful read in relation to my own marriage. A part of that was Rogers reminding me of Williams' account of grace, of finding myself in my marriage to be "an occasion of joy." True, it's not always like that, but if you've ever experienced grace you know the feeling. Just think of the last time--whether with friends or family--where you, in your personhood, were greeted and experienced as an occasion of joy. That feeling is grace. And the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is aimed at teaching us this: That is how God feels about you. You are God's occasion of joy.

As physical creatures, we tend to experience this grace in the presence of others. And that is what I was talking about above. These human experiences--love, laughter, sex, friendship--only make sense in light of God's grace. God's grace animates these experiences, we know ourselves to be loved by God through these experiences.

And this is where the body's grace comes in. Can my physical body be experienced as "an occasion of joy" by another? And for myself? Again, recall how risky sex can be. Can grace be experienced here, in the physical sphere, where I am maximally exposed--physically, emotionally, spiritually?

Yes it can, but again, this grace must participate in the life of the Trinity. There must be mutuality and communion. And when this mutual kenosis is present, Williams writes, we find in sexuality an experience of grace, the body's grace:

" For my body to be the cause of joy, the end of homecoming, for me, it must be there for someone else, must be perceived, accepted, nurtured. And that means being given over to the creation of joy in that other, because only as directed to the enjoyment, the happiness, of the other does it become unreservedly lovable. To desire my joy is to desire the joy of the one I desire: my search for enjoyment through the bodily presence of another is a longing to be enjoyed in my body.

In this, sex might be the quintessential form of spirituality: Eros (desire) can only be experienced by agape (self-sacrifice). True love is only experienced when my joy is achieved by surrendering to your joy. In this, the sexual union models the life of the Trinity. The love of the Son is given to the Father and the Father gives it back to the Son through the Spirit. Each empties into the other, an eternal flow of self-emptying love--back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The tides of kenosis and love. Gifts given and received--back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Father, Son and Spirit finding each other to be occasions of joy.

This, then, is a sketch of Williams' essay The Body's Grace. And what it provides us with is a vision of how sexual love reflects the Imago Dei. Sex of this nature is holy, a participation in the Triune life of God. In his book, Rogers takes this Trinitarian vision of human sexuality and then folds it into a theological account of marriage.

We might say that a part of what Rogers is doing is asking a question similar to the one Williams asked. Where Williams asks, "Why does sex matter?" Rogers is asking "Why does marriage matter?"

Rogers' answer also follows the path of grace. Marriage is an experience of grace, of being found to be an occasion of joy. And as with sex, this marital grace can only make sense if a pre-existing language of grace precedes it. God's marriage to his people is what makes sense of human marriage.

So how does the bible describe the grace found in "God's marriage"?

Rogers argues that it is fundamentally described as a matter of election. God's grace is experienced in God's own choosing of a people. God chooses Israel to be his bride. And in this choice Israel is found to be an occasion of joy. Israel experiences God's grace.

In short, what makes marriage a reflection of God's nature is that it models God's election:  I choose you.

And again, this is where my own biography wells up. Jana and I have a little exchange we share when we are experiencing grace in our marriage. I say, "Thanks for saying 'yes.'" And she responds, "Thanks for asking." We experience grace because it is an occasion of joy to be chosen. To be selected. And this grace is not just for the married. We experience the grace of God's election whenever we are chosen to be an occasion for joy, by friends and family. As Williams describes, this is grace because we feel desiredand wanted.

Marriage, then, reflects the nature of God in that it participates in (incarnates) God's election and marriage to Israel. This is the grace of marriage: I choose you.

If this is so we can see why procreation isn't what makes marriage a marriage, theologically speaking. No doubt reproduction is a part of human sex. But marriage? Marriage is about God's election of Israel. As Rogers notes, it would be sort of odd to model Christian marriage after Adam and Eve. Do we really want marriage modeled after those two? Ummmm. No.

So Adam and Eve aren't the model for marriage. No, God and Israel are the model for Christian marriage.

And that marriage is one of election and covenant faithfulness. And, interestingly, the best biblical example of this faithfulness, read aloud in countless marriage services, is Ruth's pledge to Naomi:

 Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.

The fact that we use this pledge for marital covenants (!) highlights that this is what marriage is about. God's election and covenant faithfulness--incarnated in Ruth's pledge to Naomi--is what makes a marriage a marriage.

More, as noted in my last post, if we recover our identity as Gentiles (as Rogers insists) we soon realize that we are not a part of this marriage. God married Israel, not us. Yahweh is not our God. Yahweh is Israel's God. So, as Paul helps us see, we have to be adopted into this family. And "in Christ" we are adopted. We are "grafted in."

This identity as "adopted children" puts further strain on attempts to place reproduction at the center of Christian marriage. We are not God's "children of the flesh." We are not circumcised. We've been adopted through baptism. And what this again highlights is God's election. His choosing us. What makes us family isn't DNA but the free choice of God. Also known as grace. And this is how family is understood in the church: We are not biological relatives, but we are all "family" through God's choosing us in Christ.

And according to Rogers this understanding goes a long way in explaining why "non-standard" families can be full reflections of the Imago Dei: Sterile couples, step-families, adopted children, gay marriages, etc. These are all marriages and families that reflect the life of God. They are not incomplete or failures. They fully reflect the Imago Dei. Why? Because they model God's marriage to Israel, God's election: 

I choose you.

And that is an occasion of joy.

***

Be sure to check out “Same Sex Marriage In the Image of God?”  over at Richard's place and the rest of our Sexuality & The Church series here. 

Richard’s blog, Experimental Theology, consistently falls into my personal Top 5 list and I can’t recommend it enough. Richard is a psychologist, and so his reflections on theology, the Bible, church, community, and spirituality always include some new angle I never considered before. (For example, recently he’s been discussing “the impossibility of Calvinistic Christian psychotherapy!”) I  had the privilege of meeting Richard and his awesome wife Janna when I visited Abilene Christian University a few years ago. Richard is Professor and Department Chair of Psychology there. He and Jana have two sons, Brenden and Aidan. Richard's area of interest--be it research, writing, or blogging--is on the interface of Christian theology and psychology, with a particular focus on how existential issues affect Christian belief and practice. Richard's published research covers topics as diverse as the psychology of profanity to why Christian bookstore art is so bad. His books include Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality and The Authenticity of Faith: The Varieties and Illusions of Religious Experience. 

Go subscribe to Richard’s blog now. You will thank me later. 

 

Philip Jenkins, author of (among other things) Hidden Gospels:How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (Oxford 2001), has contributed a post to the patheos blog entitled "The First English Bible." The title is somewhat misleading; Jenkins discusses the apocryphal texts circulating in Anglo-Saxon England and Ireland in medieval times, but it is a stretch to consider these texts part of the "English Bible." Certainly canonical and non-canonical texts were both valued and used but not in a single collection and not without a sense that some texts are more valued, more authoritative than others.

Here’s another one of my older devotional cartoons. So I’m going to speak here from a devotional Christian perspective.

There are all kinds of intricate theologies created to explain why we feel distant from God. As a pastor, I’ve observed that this is one of the most prevalent problems Christians face. If they are willing.

Some say God withdraws to discipline us. Or to test us. Or to punish us. Or it’s just a mystery. I want to make a series of suggestions:

1. I claim our ideas of God are just that… ideas. The word, the idea, is not the thing. It is a sign, a symbol, pointing to that which it points to. What if this idea we have of God, this mental construct, is the highest that our minds can possibly conceive at this particular point in our life? It suffices for our level of maturity. Our minds have formed a container within which to conceive of God.
2. There comes a point in our life when we realize that this highest concept our minds have conceived of God is deficient. It becomes obvious to us that our highest mental construct of God is bankrupt and even idolatrous. This may come through study or a gradual dawning of realization. But in my experience and observation, it comes through a crisis of some sort, usually physical or intellectual, when it becomes clear that our God is too small and even embarrassing.
3. We then experience alienation from God because our mind has lost its concept of God. We may conclude that God has removed himself. Actually, our mind has concluded that its image of God is false and suddenly God disappears from our experience. God has removed himself because God is above and beyond what our minds can imagine. But really our mind realizes that it has always been remote from God because it could never imagine him rightly. It’s a mutual separation: we distance ourselves from our idolatrous mental image of God and our God distances himself from it as well. This creates a vacuum that creates a crisis. Enter a time of severe confusion, darkness, and even terror!
4. This is when we have a choice: we either shrink back into a familiar and comfortable previous perception of God, or we push forward into our next level of conception. Our mind at this point formulates new and larger concepts for the suddenly larger God. Like moving a goldfish from a smaller bowl that it has outgrown into a bigger one, we allow our minds to provide a larger space for our God to fit in.
5. Repeat steps 1 to 4 above.

Now, there is a way to avoid this game altogether. But that’s for another post.

This is the the second of two posts about Ishmael in film. The first, it turns out, was rather error strewn, and anyone with any decency would have gone and made the corrections and added the labels and so on before writing the second. He or she would probably also write a better more meaningful post for part two and reply to comments more consistently. But unfortunately, you got me.

There are 6 films that I'm able to lay my hands on that depict Ishmael, but to be honest none of them really do much of great interest with him. This is, I suppose, mainly because he is a minor character. The Bible, and the films that do adapt his story, or rather his part in Abraham's story, are not really interested in him, they are interested in Abraham and Sarah and how they act and react. There's a certain amount of etiology in the Bible's account: Ishmael goes on to be the father of the Ishmaelites (popularly considered to be the descendants of the Arab people), and some of the Edomites (Gen 36) who both become enemies of the Israelites at times (although trusted servants at others - 1 Chron 27:30 for example). Gen 25:18 makes special mention of the Ishmaelites living in "hostility" to all the other tribes.

Essentially though Ishmael is a passive character, acted upon by Abraham, Sarah, and to a lesser extent Hagar, but never really an active initiator. The last mention of Ishmael the man is from Genesis 25. He is with Isaac when Abraham is buried (which raises the question as to how contact was made / maintained between the half-brothers) and dies himself at the age of 137.

This doesn't leave scriptwriters a great deal to work with, and although with some characters such a blank sheet might be seen as an invitation to be creative, the need to focus on Abraham means that none of the films really take it.

The Bible (1966)
Sarai takes the initiative here, calling Hagar over and whispering into her ear. She waits for Abram, explains to him her plan. The enmity between Sarai and Ishmael (Gen 16:4) is made explicit early on with Hagar disdainfully comparing Sarai to "dried-up fruits", but it doesn't go to the extent we find in the rest of Genesis as Hagar does not flee from Sarah. The scene then changes to Abram's rescue of Lot (Gen 14), before returning to Ishmael's birth and childhood. But it's Sarah who urges Abraham to send them away, after Ishmael seizes a doll at a celebration of Isaac weaning, and then smashes it and buries it. Sarah again urges Abraham to take action; he is reluctant, but ultimately yields. The narrator adds that God also endorsed the plan in a sentence that sounds too ludicrously anachronistic to be from the KJV but actually is ("Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad"). The next scene is of bright desert sands reflecting the sun and the suddenness of the switch from the previous night-time scene, to the brightness of this scene, is at once beautiful and momentarily painfully glaring. Hagar and Ishmael collapse in the desert and Hagar cries out to God before an angel appears and makes water spring from the ground.

Abraham (1994)
Again everything is Sarai's idea, though here she asks Hagar as her free choice and then proposes it to Abram. Once the baby is born however Hagar makes comments to Sarai about her affair with Pharaoh and then questions her choice of bed for the baby. Hagar then runs away and has a conversation with an angel in line with Gen 16 and including some prophetic words about Ishmael. Hagar and Sarai make up and Hagar gives birth whilst sat on Sarai's knee. But the film is very clear that the child is Sarah's such that even as she is recovering from childbirth, Hagar has to lie there watching Abram and Sarai bring up Ishmael. There's an interesting scene with Abram and Ishmael preparing a sacrifice, which heavily prefigures God "testing" Abraham.

Isaac is born and looks up dotingly to Ishmael, cheering him on as he wrestles with older men and bests them.But as the boys grow older, the tension re-emerges between their mothers.  Sarah fears that Ishmael will do what Hagar tells him, and that Hagar wants to usurp Isaac and make Ishmael the leader. So Sarah persuades Abraham to send the pair away. They go off into the desert (Ishmael with a quiver slung over his shoulder), and struggle for their lives before the visitation from an angel. The spring appears though it's not explicitly a miracle. This, I think, is the only film to show both the times Genesis records Hagar meeting an angel.

Testament: The Bible in Animation - Abraham (1996)
Testament makes the primary focus of the Abraham's whole story, his search for an heir. Right from the start, during Abraham's time in Haran, his failure to find an heir is seen as a big problem, highlighted by both the narration and Sarah's isolation from the children who play around her. Once the move to Canaan is completed it's Sarah's idea for Abraham to have a child through Hagar, the sex is skipped over and the next scene is of a heavily pregnant Hagar still doing tasks for Sarah. Sarah asks "Have you done your work", to which Hagar snaps back "I've certainly done yours". Hagar runs into the desert but is spoken to by angelic/God figure, who tells her to return and not fear Sarah: "Do not be afraid she will be kind".

Again the film seems to skip over another of the more human moments of the story by missing Ishmael's birth. Of all the films this is really the only one to give Ishmael a proper role. He's seen talking to his father and asking "It will be a brother won't it?". It also both shows and mentions Ishmael with a bow and arrow as per Gen 21:20. Ultimately, though it is Sarah who sends Hagar away telling her husband "I will decide". Abraham is reluctant but hears God concur. "Free them" commands this film's God, trying its best to put some kind of positive spin on an episode that doesn't really reflect well on The Almighty.

The Bible: In the Beginning (2000)
Abraham is the main character in the first part of this two part miniseries - indeed even the creation story is narrated by him (to his people). Sarai offers Abram a concubine. He initially refuses, but eventually he visits her tent in the middle of the night. Next scene a heavily pregnant Hagar argues with Sarah and escapes to the desert. Drinking from a pool of water she sees a shadow in the pool and a Godly voice prophesies about Ishmael. Ishmael is born. Abram is happy, Sarai less so. Soon enough she's pregnant and it's Hagar that's in a grump. Isaac's born, Abe's happy again, but soon Sarah becomes all protective and scolds Ishmael. (Hagar and Sarah argue again, Sarah really doesn't come out of her dealings with Hagar with much credit) and soon Hagar's heading back to the desert. Abram weakly tells her God will look after her but the provision of water in the desert is missed out. If that sounds like one of dullest pieces of writing ever to appear on this blog then its because the Ishmael episodes are dealt with in such a dully mundane fashion that it drains any interest from the task of recounting it.

What's a little more interesting though is that Ishmael reappears (at the head of group of horsemen) just before Abraham dies. He and Isaac verbally jostle over pecking order and then Abraham blesses them both equally, making a vaguely 21st century sounding statement about respecting different paths, which sounds a bit forced, but at least it's something of interest in an otherwise turgid portrayal. This is the only film to show the death of Abraham.

The Real Old Testament (2003)
Ishmael doesn't actually appear in this endlessly hilarious version of Genesis, but the chapters 16 and 21 of Genesis are covered and feature Hagar fairly memorably. It's Sarai that suggests Abram taking Hagar as a concubine, and has to explain to him what it actually means. Abram is rather more keen on the plan here than in the other films, and, as he spends his night with Hagar in a sillhouetted tent, is heard triumphantly shouting "I'm young again".

Hagar flees Sarai and meets God in the desert, and as the film doesn't really deal with the story from Genesis 21 that's more or less it. It does however pick up on a couple of parts of chapter 16 that the other film's miss. First is God's prediction that Ishmael will be a "wild ass of a man". In one of Hagar's talking to the camera sequences she clearly sees that as possible. "I have this uncle and he's a wild ass of a man". Also covered is Hagar naming God El-roi in Gen 16:13. God, however, is not impressed: "I'm not going to let that one stick".

The Bible (2013)
Of all the films discussed here, this is the one that simultaneously sexes things, whilst going to the other extreme to portray Abraham as whiter than white. When Sarah suggests that Abraham has his child through her, Abraham is initially vehement "no, no, no, no, no, no, no", but he does anyway. But as he departs from Hagar's tent he leaves the door open for long enough for Sarah and, more crucially, the camera to get a good look in. Hagar sits up, still naked, her beautiful back exposed to the elements. It's a very sexualised image, but in contrast, Abraham, fully clothed walks away as if he has been emotionally unaffected by the whole affair.

We also see Ishmael practising his archery (as per Gen 21:20), and Abraham celebrating his son's prowess. The story then cuts to the rather gratuitously violent story of Sodom before returning to the birth of Isaac. Ishmael and Hagar are dispatched fairly quickly - though there is a heavy implication that it is God's decision and that Abraham is assured by God that they will survive, and prophesies to Ishmael that he will have many children. The camera fades on the two as they walk into the desert and there's no death of Abraham scene for him to feature in.

• Dossin, Georges Correspondance de Samsi-Addu et de ses fils Archives Royales de Mari 1 Paris Imprimerie Nationale 1950   
• Jean, Charles-F. Lettres Diverses Archives Royales de Mari 2 Paris Imprimerie Nationale 1950 
• Kupper, J. R. Correspondance de Kibri-Dagan, Gouverneur de Terqa Archives Royales de Mari 3 Paris Imprimerie Nationale 1950 
• Dossin, Georges Correspondance de Samsi-Addu et de ses fils (Suite) Archives Royales de Mari 4 Paris Imprimerie Nationale 1951 
• Dossin, Georges Correspondance de Iasmah-Addu Archives Royales de Mari 5 Paris Imprimerie Nationale 1952  

And see the list of Open Access Publications at the Oriental Institute Research Archives

The Iranian texts discovered at the beginning of the 20^th-century during the German excavations of the Turfan oasis constitute a major source for modern scholarship on Manichaeism; like the Nag Hammadi Library, they provide an important corrective to the exclusively polemical accounts that had survived the manuscript transmission.  The numerous textual fragments have been patiently published over the past century by a number of scholars, and this critical project is still ongoing.

The Turfanforschung group at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften has published to the web the Digitales Turfan-Archiv, which includes a variety of literature from the Turfan oasis, including “Texte in Manichäischer Schrift,” in the Parthian and Middle Persian languages, as well as some in Old Turkic.  This section contains high-resolution images of basically the entire run of texts in Manichaean script, more than 9,200 fragments, catalogued according to the more recent “M” categorization cited in contemporary scholarship (from Mary Boyce’s A Catalogue of the Iranian Manuscripts in Manichaean Script in the German Turfan Collection [Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1960]); the glass plates show the former “T” categorization:

http://www.bbaw.de/forschung/turfanforschung/dta/

The Middle Persian and Parthian eTexts for many of these documents is available from TITUS at the University of Frankfurt:

http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/indexe.htm?/texte/texte2.htm

That ghastly collection of homophobes and right-wing zombies, Focus on the Patriarchy, is starting a new initiative to take on the happily growing army of student atheists. They’re launching a series of ‘edgy’ videos called True U which feature grim Christians staring glumly at the camera while statistics scroll by (“Increasing numbers of college students are losing their faith!” “60% of all biology & psychology professors are atheist or agnostic!” Cheer up kids, it’s good news all the way!). Then to inspire them, they cut to a Christian fake college professor ranting away.

The ‘professor’ is…Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute! And the great thing is that he’s openly using the arguements of Intelligent Design creationism to counter atheism with assertions that science supports the existence of a god.

“The new atheism is the old atheism repackaged to make best sellers,” says Dr. Stephen Meyer, a presenter in the video, “but is completely out of touch with the most current developments in science.” Meyer, who holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University in the History and Philosophy of Science, is a Senior Fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design. The Discovery Institute is behind the “Teach the Controversy campaign” that aims to teach creationist anti-evolution beliefs in United States public high school science courses alongside accepted scientific theories, claiming that a scientific controversy exists over these subjects.

It’s been settled for a long time, but this is one more nail in the coffin: Intelligent Design is simply a front for religious pitchmen. And not just any religion, but far right Christianity.

Also, his arguments are awful.

“When we find information in DNA molecules encoded in digital form, the best explanation is that that information also had an intelligent source.”

That’s what he babbled about endlessly in his dreary text, Signature in the Cell: nothing but rank assertions that genetic information is digital (really, it’s not), that it’s just like computer programs (nope), that computer programmers write computer code (OK, I’ll accept that), and therefore, there had to have been a Great Intelligent Space Programmer at the beginning of everything (can you say logic error, boys and girls? I knew you could). So now you know the next step, the part he wasn’t brave enough to say in his book…and that Super Programmer is Jesus.

At least I suspect that classroom is as fake as the one Ben Stein was yelling at in Expelled, since Meyer is no longer affiliated with any real university and spends all of his time flogging lies to his creakily fanatical colleagues and church audiences any more.

In Evolutionists Scramble ‘Fossil-Egg Evidence’ (19 April 2013) Brian Thomas challenges the conclusions of a recent Nature paper, “Preservation of ovarian follicles reveals early evolution of avian reproductive behaviour” (not open access, but a Nature News article is).

Bird fossils do not generally ruffle paleontologist’s feathers, but some amazing specimens from China’s Jehol province—preserving eggs inside fossil bird bodies—might do just that. Researchers suggested that the bird egg features lend themselves to an evolutionary progression from crocodile-like reptile to chicken-like bird eggs. But if God made birds and reptiles according to separate kinds as clearly stated in Genesis, then they were and are unrelated. Which history does this recent evidence best match?

You can tell what he thinks the answer is right away, of course. Thomas explains the situation as he sees it:

A team of mostly Chinese authors described the three extinct birds in the journal Nature.One of the birds had a long tail, and the team identified the other two as short-tailed birds called Enantiornithines. All three well-preserved fossils showed flattened remains of eggs situated just in front of the pelvis, like modern birds and reptiles.

The bird with the “long tail” (we’ll get back to that later) was of the genus Jeholornis, and is labelled “STM2-51.” The Enantiornithes are STM29-8 and STM10-45. Brian adds:

Their Nature report placed these three birds onto an evolutionary tree diagram. The crocodile on the diagram represented the birds’ supposed modern reptile relations and the chicken represented the birds’ supposed modern bird relative.

The “tree diagram” (a cladogram) can be seen here. You’ll note that, to Thomas, not only is the crocodile only a “supposed” relative, the chicken is too. Strange as it may sound this is consistent with the conclusions you would have to draw from the creationist pseudoscience of baraminology: “bird” is too large a group to be a single kind, so it has to be broken up into numerous unrelated subgroups. Where the dividing lines between these groups lie I couldn’t tell you.

Next, we have a misunderstanding about the meaning of the word “primitive”:

The crocodile shown on the left of the diagram held dozens of small eggs. The Nature study authors placed their long-tailed [Jeholornis] bird next to it and described it as “primitive.” But if the long-tailed bird was more “primitive” than the short-tailed birds shown, then why were all three fossils found together in the same Chinese rocks? The primitive bird fossil should occur in rocks far below their supposed descendants.

The paper does not directly tell us the age of the specimens, but the supplementary information (pdf) says that the Jeholornis is from the Yixian Formation – which is 125-121 million years old, according to Wikipedia – while the Enantiornithes are from the Jiufotang Formation (120.3 +/- 0.7 million years old). The fossils were therefore not “found together in the same Chinese rocks,” the “primitive” Jeholornis was found in older rocks, and Thomas is wrong.

But that’s not the point. The word “primitive” has a subtly different meaning in this context: “resembling evolutionary ancestors of living things and in particular resembling them in the nature of their anatomy and behaviour,” according to that link (emphasis original). Being more “primitive” doesn’t actually require being older at all.

The other issue here is that the paper never calls Jeholornis “more” primitive than the other fossil birds studied, though it does say:

Differences in follicular morphology between Jeholornis and the enantiornithines are interpreted as forming an evolutionary gradient from the reproductive condition in paravian dinosaurs towards neornithine birds.

Thomas continues:

The “primitive” bird had fewer eggs than the crocodile, but more than the Enantiornithines. The evolutionary diagram silhouetted a chicken on the far right as holding the fewest eggs. The viewer is supposed to get the impression that as reptiles evolved into birds, they produced fewer eggs.

But why select egg number as the key trait to define evolutionary relationships? Possibly because the study authors would have a difficult time depicting transitions in beaks or feathers, since reptiles don’t even have feathers, and the dinosaurs that had beak-like mouth shapes were not the ones that allegedly evolved into birds. Clearly, the scientists hand-selected eggs to illustrate evolution, ignoring most of the anatomical data.

Yeah, no. You’ll note first that Thomas is still denying that any dinosaurs had feathers, refusing to take the easy out. Where he gets the idea that “the dinosaurs that had beak-like mouth shapes were not the ones that allegedly evolved into birds” (emphasis original), or even that they’re only using “egg number” to “define evolutionary relationships” here, I don’t know. (This is the first time that they’ve had eggs to work with, but they already knew the relationship: the eggs are being used to work out egg-related aspects.)

Thomas thinks that the Nature paper cherry-picks the egg trait over “five more relevant bird traits noted in the very same report” that “clearly show the specimens to have been complete and created birds, thus outside of evolutionary flights of fancy.” These are (quoted, with commentary in brackets):

1. The “Jehol birds” preserve fossilized seeds in their crops. Unlike crocodiles and lizards, a bird’s crop and gizzard help digest food. [The birds mentioned by the paper to have said seeds in their crops are not the ones being studied, but who's counting? Also, some dinosaurs may also have had a crop.]
2. The internal eggs, called follicles, “are consistent with two-dimensional preservation of a spherical structure.” Bird eggs are nearly spherical, while reptile eggs are oblong. [Thomas may be confusing the follicles in the ovary (which are spherical) with the egg that is eventually laid (which need not be).]
3. The fossil bird’s follicles were on the left side, consistent with the way in which, as the Nature authors described, “birds are unique [in that] only the left ovary and oviduct are functional in the adult.” Crocodiles and dinosaurs used both left and right oviducts. [This, at least, is an actual distinction between these fossils and known non-avian dinosaurs, though we don't have a huge amount of data there.]
4. Egg sizes in the fossil birds were large in proportion to the body, as in modern birds, but not in reptiles. [The paper says that this has also been observed in non-avian theropod dinosaurs.]
5. One of the three bird fossils shows preserved feathers, clearly a bird and not a crocodile or reptile trait. [Again with the feather denialism.]

Thomas’ list is looking a little shaky. What’s more, his is itself cherry picked, excluding a number of features that can be used to tie these fossils closer to their dinosaurian anscestors. These include:

1. You remember that “long tail” on the Jeholornis, right? There’s another adjective here that Thomas repeatedly fails to include: the tail is bony. Theoropods had bony tails, as did some primitive birds such as Archaeopteryx. Modern birds do not, but Jeholornis’ tail was longer than that of Archaeopteryx.
2. Similarly, Jeholornis had a small number of teeth – modern birds have none.
3. The fist toe of a Jeholornis was only partially reversed.
4. The paper says that, in the Jeholornis fossil, the “size of the follicles is very consistent, suggesting a more crocodilian style of reproduction, in which a large number of follicles reach maturity near simultaneously so that follicular hierarchy is minimal.”
5. As for the Enantiornithe STM10-45, the paper notes that the evidence suggests that “reproductive maturity was achieved before skeletal maturity, as in paravian dinosaurs and crocodilians.”

While these fossils are definitely birds, there is not the deep rift between birds and non-birds that Thomas claims. There is room for evolutionary progression, and it has been observed.

Filed under: Daily (pseudo)Science Updates, Great 2013 catch-up Tagged: Bird evolution, Birds, Brian Thomas, Creationism, Eggs, Evolution, ICR, Science, Skeptic, Skepticism

Or you could try this, too.

(via Toothpaste For Dinner)

It’s Earth Day today, and I had no idea this was an atheist holiday. Ken Ham sets me straight, though, explaining that Earth Day is actually an anti-christian plot. You see, God made humans stewards of the earth, which basically means that we’re supposed to turn it into farms and gardens. There are also bad things that were brought about by the Curse of the Fall, and icky things that don’t help people be fruitful and multiply are supposed to be removed. Meanwhile, Earth Day is just a bunch of pagans elevating the universe over the imaginary being he claims created the universe, so it’s bad. Furthermore, it’s…evolutionary. But we must be cautious of putting the creation over the Creator. Romans 1 warns against worshiping the creation rather than the Creator—and many Earth Day celebrations are founded on evolutionary ideas, where man’s opinions are lifted above God’s Word. And we must remember that “nature” is not perfect. In fact, we read that God cursed the ground in Genesis 3:17. That will dramatically affect how we understand farming and gardening. Also, in Genesis 3:18, thorns and thistles came into existence as part of the Curse. Thus, man can help improve things by working against the Curse. So, see, the tallgrass prairie that once dominated where I live, and was home to bison and prairie dogs and prairie chickens and passenger pigeons and numerous small lizards etc. etc. etc. better serves God’s purpose when we plow it down and replace all that diversity with endless fields of corn and soybeans. That’s Earth Day to an evangelical Christian: chop down that copse of trees, rip out that inhuman habitat, replace it all with a fecal lake for the nearby pig farm. That lake glorifies God! There’s also the inevitable denial of scientific facts. Global warming is a myth, his “Christian perspective” says so. As a biblical creationist, let me illustrate how I would deal with a...
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I love apologetics. It often hurts my head and goes “beyond my pay grade” as far as brain power (especially when I get into all the science stuff—I just don’t know who to trust, and sometimes it’s no one), but I find myself excited about apologetics in general. That said, apologetics is a very personal issue for me. Normally, it is not the case of a “seeker” or a “skeptic” asking me a question, prompting me to run to the apologetics section of my library at Credo House to research the answer. Rather, it is me asking the questions. It is me defending the faith to myself.

As a result, I find that I am much more critical than others who are involved in apologetics.  I greatly appreciate what Christian apologists do; nevertheless, there are times when I discover some aspect of their apologetic perspective that bothers me. I can’t always put my finger on the specific thing that troubles me.  More to the point, when I do identify the problem, I am too much of a “fan-boy” to confront someone “on my own team” and criticize their game plan. The issue boils down to a matter of honesty.  I don’t find very many apologists who are transparent in their approach.  I don’t find very many apologists who will readily admit that their viewpoint may have weaknesses.  Many are averse to playing the game fairly.  I find too many apologists are simply there to defend their prejudices, ignoring honest and, sometimes, well-founded questions. In essence, they are long on “apology,” but short on scholarship.

Notwithstanding my reservations about apologetics and apologists, I am fully aware that this is not always the case.  Last weekend, I spend a lot of time with Dr. Gary Habermas. If you don’t know who he is, shame on you! Gary Habermas is one of the greatest apologists I have ever met. We spent two nights (just him and me) in his hotel room talking theology. Initially, we had some fun with the “Calvinist/Arminian” thing for a while.  (He said he was neither.  .  .Rather, he was comfortable just being a Baptist.)  Then, we dove into the subject of apologetics.  Having read several of Habermas’ works, I already had deep respect for him.   But the one-on-one encounter for two consecutive nights was truly a gift in getting to better understand the underpinnings of his perspective on apologetics.  For example, we played a game where I was the atheist/agnostic and he was the one trying to win me to the faith. For two hours we role played; I did surprisingly well, if I do say so myself.  I surprised even myself by what a “good” agnostic I made. But Habermas proved that he was a much better Christian apologist. With tenderness and incredible wisdom (not just knowledge), he navigated me to the point where I felt I no longer had a legitimate excuse for “being” an agnostic.   What a valuable experience this was!  I sincerely wish we could have recorded it. The experience most certainly increased my faith, since I was entirely free to unload on him all the doubts that stir in my brain sometimes, when no one was looking. However, what I appreciated most was Dr. Habermas’ honesty. I could tell that he had been there, so to speak. He was a Christian-turned-skeptic for ten years before his faith was restored. The depth of his responses to my skeptical objections revealed that he was truly a scholar/apologist. How encouraging!

I have been reading through Craig Keener’s Miracles book recently. Although I don’t think Keener would ever call himself an apologist, this book is an apologetics jewel. Why? Well, for one thing, Keener has already established himself as a critical scholar. Being such, he is truly worried about getting things right, and dealing with problems honestly. When he wrote this book, I was curious about what might come from it, since Keener is a charismatic. Was he writing to confirm his prejudice relative to his charismatic leanings? Thus far, I have not found this to be the case. As I expected, he is very critical of the data he uncovers concerning the miracles he documents in the book. On many occasions, his conclusions are very tentative. However, the scholarship he provides, along with his accompanying critique, have won me over. I am becoming convinced that I am far too “Western” in my thinking, and that the worldview I subconsciously hold is not shared by the majority of the world.  Moreover, I am convinced that the positions it asserts are not sustainable when one truly looks at the evidence.

First comes “Truth,” followed closely by “Defense of the Truth.”  It is no exaggeration to say that the transition from “Truth” to “Defense of the Truth” is a difficult one to make.  Too often, many of the “internet atheists” who wear the label of  “former Christian apologists” choose to follow a different course of action:  they defend what they already believe.  The result is found wanting not only from a human, rational point of view; this approach inevitably produces an unstable foundation of illogical presuppositions.  From a Christian perspective this approach cannot be pleasing to the Lord.  We are in pursuit of truth first. Our defense of the faith comes out of this pursuit, and is dictated by it. Our personal struggle with the intel, our ability to admit weaknesses, and our freedom to discover can be dangerous, yet so very essential to our apologetic endeavors.

One of my favorite people in all of Church history is Theodore of Mopsuestia. Though his story is riddled with controversy, I have always admired him for certain particular stands he took that went against the grain of his contemporary culture. First, in contradiction to the teachings of the allegorical school (which ruled the day in his time), he did not believe that the Song of Solomon was a love song between Christ and the Church.  Theodore believed  it was a love poem written by Solomon to celebrate his marriage to his Egyptian wife. We say, “So what?”  However, for the vast majority of Theodore’s contemporaries, his interpretation was nothing short of scandalous.  Similarly and significantly, he drew a distinction between Old Testament texts that contained what he believed to be genuine Messianic prophecies and those that, in their historical setting, were not truly predictive prophecies, but merely analogous experiences shared by Christ and certain Old Testament situations (one might call these typologies). This is significant for me because I have always had a problem seeing certain Old Testament prophecies used in apologetic situations as proofs that Christ is the Messiah or that the Bible is inspired. For example, Psalm 22:16, “They have pierced my hands and my feet,” is often used apologetically to prove that Christ was a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Certainly, I believe this verse contains a broad reference to Christ, but for the skeptic, this assertion provides no apologetic value whatsoever. Contextually, it was David talking about himself. As a Christian in “faith seeking understanding” mode, I can accept that this also refers to Christ. Conversely, it does not give any sign that it was a predictive prophecy from a rational perspective. Any honest skeptic or seeker will look at this passage and think, “Boy, these Christians will accept anything, so long as it confirms what they already believe.”

In a postmodern world, the Apologist/Scholar model must be laid to rest. If for no other reason, it should be done for the stability of your own faith. You are one who stands before the living God. You are not responsible to become an apologist for what you already believe, but to become an informed researcher who truly believes.  On this basis you can defend whatever beliefs are legitimately produced with integrity and peace of mind. Then, and only then, will you be able to discuss your faith like Habermas. May the likes of him, Daniel Wallace, Craig Keener, Darrel Bock, Richard Bauckham, N. T. Wright, Ed Komoszewski, and Theodore of Mopsuestia increase. May we seek truth first and build our defense from scholarly study and personal engagement with the issues.Similar Posts:

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