Links from the last few days:

***

According to Dr Scaer, the most common way people join the Church is that someone invited them. Guess what? If church sucks, people don’t invite others. They don’t think “Man, my friends have got to be here for this!” They think “Well, I might as well keep going here.” So here’s a fun list that can work for all denominations!

Read the Fearsome Pirate’s church growth tips here. He also gives a Lutheran perspective in outlining some of the things that he dislikes about the PCA worship that he has experienced.

***An interesting post from Leithart here. He observes the way in which we are shaped by popular culture, beginning with a series of tests to see how easily we identify with certain popular slogans, characters and advertisements from our culture and then how easily we identify with Christian counterparts to these. I think that I got a near perfect mark on every part except for the advertising slogans, which probably has something to do with living in the UK. However, I admit that the references to popular culture were generally more familiar than the references to the traditional hymns and references from classic literature. I could probably quote near-verbatim the lyrics from a few dozen rock albums, but I probably know no more than a score of psalms by heart. I have a troublingly vast quantity of pointless pop trivia in my head, so Leithart’s post was a good one for me to read.

Leithart argues that the way that Christians often characterize our struggle with the world is deficient. We tend to think primarily in terms of a struggle of ideas. However, the battle is, more often than not, a struggle of desire. As René Girard has argued desire is mimetic, and the world is consistently tempting us to model our desires after its pattern.

This is where the church comes in. If the battle we face in the wider culture were merely a matter of ideas and thoughts, then we might be able to withstand the onslaught of bad ideas on our own. We might be able to fill our minds with good thoughts and ideas through reading and studying, and when a bad idea came up, we’d pounce. If we are cultural beings, whose habits and practices and desires are shaped by the habits and practices and desires of others around us – and we are – then we can’t really stand up to the cultural temptations in isolation, by ourselves. We cannot resist on our own. We need to be part of a resistant community, a resistant community that recognizes the way the world seeks to shape us into its image, and self-consciously resists the world.

And we can’t resist something with nothing. To the world’s desire-shaping, formative practices, Christians need to oppose a different set of desire-shaping practices. We can’t say: I won’t desire what the world wants me to desire. We have to have positive, godly desires in place of the world’s desires. And these desires and habits need to be nurtured, cultivated, shaped and formed in a particular community. The church has a culture, and must be a culture, if it is going to resist the forces that would conform you to worldly culture.

Leithart also has a post on consumerism that I found interesting.

***Following on from his earlier post on Dawkins and Lacan, Macht observes the importance of un-clarity in argument if we are to truly communicate:

Being “unclear” in one’s writing, then, can perhaps be a way to get the reader to NOT translate what they are reading into familiar terms. A writer want the reader to think in ways they’ve never thought before and that may require unfamiliar terms. This will of course require more work on the part of the reader and may lead to misunderstandings, but that might be the price a writer needs to pay in order to get his point across.

This, I suspect, is one of the reasons why misunderstanding so often attends theological discourse. In theology our terms are generally given to us by Scripture. Our overfamiliarity with these terms can lead to misunderstanding when we read people like Barth and Wright, who use familiar terms in unfamiliar ways. It takes quite a conscious effort on our part to overcome the familiarity that we have with the terms and begin to appreciate the ‘otherness’ of the theology of such men, and not merely interpret them on our own terms.

John Milbank has also observed the importance of ‘making strange’: developing new language to replace overfamiliar terms, in order that the peculiarity and distinctive character of the Christian position might become more apparent. This, I suggest, is one argument in favour of those who are wary of a theological discourse that works almost entirely in terms of biblical terminology. Such a discourse is helpful among those who understand the positions being advanced, but it can provide an impediment to those who have not yet grasped them.

***Joel Garver begins to articulate some of his concerns with the recent PCA report on the FV/NPP.
***Paul Helm on biblical versus systematic theology. I believe that the way that we do systematic theology is overdue for a complete overhaul. I don’t believe that biblical theology is the answer to everything, but I would not be sad to witness the demise of the discipline of systematic theology as it is often currently practiced (something that I have commented on in the past). Much systematic theology is ‘timeless’ in a deeply unhealthy fashion. It tends to treat its subject matter as if it were timeless and it also teaches in a manner that abstracts the learner from the time-bound narrative.

Systematic theology often seems to aim to present us with a panoptic perspective on the biblical narrative. We look at the narrative from a great height, from without rather than from within. This ‘timeless’ perspective is very dangerous, I believe. A reform of systematic theology would reject this way of approaching the discipline and would approach its subject matter in a slightly different manner. We study theology from within time, as participants in God’s drama. Neither the subject matter nor the student of theology should be abstracted from time. Rather than dealing with ‘timeless’ truths, we should deal with truths that are ‘constant’ through time.

Peter Leithart has suggested that ideally systematic theology would play a role analogous to the role that a book entitled An Anthropology of Middle Earth would play relative to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Such a book would help the reader to understand the constant features of the narratives. However, its subject matter would never be detached from the narrative nor could it ever be substituted for the narrative itself. The narrative always retains the primacy.

***Michael Bird writes [HT: Chris Tilling] on the importance of the study of NT Theology and Christian Origins. Here is a taster:

…when students (esp. evangelical students) talk about the message of the New Testament, they usually mean Paul. And when they mean Paul, what they mean is Romans and Galatians. Their understanding (or sometimes lack of undestanding) of these two epistles often becomes the centre of not only Paul, but of the entire New Testament. Hebrews, Matthew, Revelation, and Luke-Acts are all forced into a Pauline framework.

How is this corrected? First, Christian Origins shows us the real diversity of the early church. You only have to compare the Johannine literature, Luke-Acts, and Paul to see that the saving significance of Jesus was expressed in different (I did not say contradictory) concepts, categories, and terms. Approaches to the law were diverse and pluriform as Christians struggled (in every sense of the word) to understand how the law-covenant was to be understood and followed in light of the coming Jesus/faith (cf. Gal. 3.23). A study of Christian Origins opens our eyes to the reality and goodness of diversity, so that Christians can learn to differentiate between convictions and commands, and discern between the major and the minor doctrines of Christian belief. I would also add that, despite this theological breadth to the early church, there was still unity within diversity, a unity apparent in the common kerygma of the early church. While there was diversity and complexity in the early church, it was never a free for all, and the desire to discern between true and false expressions of belief were part of the Christian movement from the very beginning. That leads us to New Testament Theology and rather than priviledging Paul to supra-canonical status (and Romans and Galatians and hyper-canonical), we should listen to each corpra on its own terms and to the issues to which they speak. A study of this kind will indicate where the theological (and dare I say) spiritual centre of gravity lies in the New Testament.

The evangelical and Reformed tendency to force the whole of the NT into a Pauline framework is something that is becoming increasingly apparent to me. Over the last few weeks I have been studying the doctrine of atonement, for instance, in the NT. I have been struck by how muted the theme of penal substitution is in much of the extra-Pauline literature (or even, for that matter, in a number of the ’secondary’ Pauline epistles). If our ‘canon within the canon’ consisted of the Johannine literature or of Matthew and James, rather than Romans and Galatians, evangelical and Reformed theology would probably take a radically different form. Recogizing this fact has made me far more sympathetic to a number of traditions whose theology differs sharply from Reformed theology, largely because they operate in terms of a very different ‘canon within the canon’. Paul is only part of the picture and his voice is not necessarily any more important than others within the NT canon.

I suspect that a number of significant theological advances could be made if we were only to put our favourite sections of Romans and Galatians to one side for a while. For instance, we might begin to see the continuing role that the commandments of the Torah performed in shaping the life of the Church. We might begin to have a clearer sense of just how Jewish the thinking of the early Church was. An overemphasis on Paul’s more antithetical and abstract ways of formulating the relationship between the Law and the Gospel can blind us to how Paul and other NT authors generally continue to take the particularities of the Torah as normative for the life of the NT people of God. The way that the Torah operates has changed, but it is still operational in many respects as the Torah of the Spirit and the Torah of liberty.

We might also find ourselves called to more concrete forms of discipleship and begin to move towards a gospel that is more firmly rooted in praxis. We might also discover that the message of the gospel is not just concerned with the overcoming of sin and death, but also is about bringing humanity to the maturity that God had always intended for it. We might also find ourselves moving towards a more sacramental gospel.

***John Barach ponders the relationship between the Ten Commandments and the ten statements of Genesis 1.
***David Jones at la nouvelle théologie gives a list of links to material relevant to the recent Wilson-Hitchens debate on Christianity and atheism. There is also an interesting article in the Daily Mail, in which Peter Hitchens reviews his brother’s book [HT: Dawn Eden].
***Al Kimel’s blog, Pontifications, has a new home [HT: Michael Liccione]. The RSS feed also seems to be better on this one.
***June 2007 Wrightsaid list answers.
***As someone who believes that the inerrancy debates are largely unhelpful, I found this post by John H quite insightful. The Scriptures are exactly as God wanted us to have them and fulfil the purposes for which they were given. They are trustworthy. In the comments to the post, it is observed that the Church would have been far better off fighting for the ground of Scriptural efficacy, rather than Scriptural inerrancy. The Scriptures perfectly achieve the goals for which they were given. A position centred on Scriptural efficacy also serves to remind us that fundamentalism is itself a threat to a truly Christian doctrine of the Word of God, generally denying or downplaying the saving efficacy of God’s Word in preaching, the sacraments and the liturgy. Thinking in such terms might also help to move us away from the overly formal doctrine of Scripture generally adopted by conservative evangelicalism.
***Matthew gives some helpful clarifications in response to my comments on his recent post.
***The Baptized Body, Peter Leithart’s latest book is released today. Buy your copy now!
***David Peterson, from Oak Hill, gives an introduction to biblical theology in a series of audio lectures. I haven’t listened to these yet, but some of my readers might find them helpful.
***Ben Witherington on Billy Graham.
***R.P. Reeves on evangelicalism:

With Hochshild’s case, I was surprised to learn how bare-bones Wheaton’s doctrinal statement is, but as I’ve tried to think through the history of evangelicalism in a more comprehensive manner, I’m no longer surprised; rather, it’s exactly what I expect from evangelicalism. One of the characteristics of evangelicalism that I am working on developing is that it is first and foremost a renewalist, rather than ecclesiastical, movement. In 16th century Protestantism, the doctrinal heritage of the church (notably the ecumenical creeds) was explicitly reaffirmed, precisely because the Reformation sought to reform the church. By contrast, Evangelicalism seeks to renew the individual (and then, once a sufficient mass of individuals a renewed, this will renew the church, or society, or the state, etc.). Mixed with a primitivist suspicion of creeds and traditions, it’s not surprising that a basic affirmation of biblical inerrancy was believed to be sufficient boundary for evangelical theologians, nor is it surprising that this thin plank is proving to be a shaky foundation.

[HT: Paul Baxter]

***A PCA pastor: “We wouldn’t ordain John Murray”. Sadly, this is only what one should expect when theological factionalism takes holds of a denomination.
***Byron is right: this is a very good parable.
***‘Begging the Question’ [HT: Paul Baxter]
***From the evangelical outpost: How to Draw a Head and Assess your Brain Fitness.
***The cubicle warrior’s guide to office jargon
***The unveiling of the logo for the 2012 Olympic Games.

Seb Coe:

It will define the venues we build and the Games we hold and act as a reminder of our promise to use the Olympic spirit to inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world.

Tony Blair:

When people see the new brand, we want them to be inspired to make a positive change in their life.

Tessa Jowell:

This is an iconic brand that sums up what London 2012 is all about - an inclusive, welcoming and diverse Games that involves the whole country.

It takes our values to the world beyond our shores, acting both as an invitation and an inspiration.

Ken Livingstone:

The new Olympic brand draws on what London has become - the world’s most forward-looking and international city.

And the brand itself:

***Finally, some Youtube videos:

The new Microsoft Surface:

Battle at Kruger:

I’m a Marvel … and I’m a DC:

New Skoda Ad:

This video has been posted by a number of people in the blogosphere. Like most others, I strongly disagree with this guy in a number of areas and believe that his argument against the Emerging Church is riddled with problems. However, rather than mocking, I think that it might be helpful to try to see where he might just have a point.

There was a time when many Christians were very concerned to keep away from pop music and TV because they believed that they introduced dangerous ‘worldly’ ways of thinking and acting. As sophisticated and enlightened contemporary Christians we tend to look at such notions with amusement and see the preoccupation with avoiding such ‘worldliness’ as being largely a concern of a naive fundamentalism. We happily watch 18 (or R)-rated movies and provide clever reviews that show the Christian themes that are subtly interwoven with the sex and the violence. We listen to music that celebrates radically unchristian forms of sexuality or to Christian artists that often seek to ape such music. Perhaps we are justified in this; what really troubles me is that the concerns for godliness and a distinctly and transparently Christian way of living exemplified by many of an older generation really don’t seem to register with us to the same extent. For all of the naivete of their vision, they had a vision for such holiness and godliness, which is more than I can say for many of us. For all of our sophistication I sometimes wonder whether we could learn some basic lessons in being a godly and a holy people from an older generation.

We live in a youth-driven society. Whether in the media or on the web, older people are hardly visible. For instance, the very fact that most of our theological discussions occur online prevents most elderly people from having any active voice in the conversation. When older people appear in the media, they are often ridiculed. Their style, their tastes, their knowledge of the world, their ethics and their values are all out of date. The new and the young are to be celebrated and the old is to be sidelined and dismissed.

Many areas of the Church have bought into this way of thinking. They have glorified the ‘new’ and sit very loosely to the accumulated wisdom of older generations. The Emerging Church is one area where this can be observed. The concern to be hip and on the cutting edge often trumps the concern to be faithful and submissive to the wisdom of our fathers in the faith.

The Church should be one place where a radically different culture prevails. It should be a place where older generations are honoured and treated with respect, even when they are wrong. Biblical societies are generally ruled and led by elders, not by young turks. Many contemporary evangelicals have forgotten this and their churches are driven by the desires of their young people and the most influential leaders are under the age of 40 (ideally, it seems to me, churches should not be led by people under the age of 50).

One of the deepest sins of many of the youth-driven trends in the Church is their determined movement away from catholicity. Rejecting a catholic Church they opt for youth churches or stratify the Church into age groups in other ways. Rather than worshipping in a way that reflects the breadth and depth of the Christian tradition, their worship tends to be dominated by (generally sappy and biblically illiterate) songs written by young, popular and rich Western Christian evangelical artists who are within the contemporary Christian music industry. One of the great things about singing traditional Christian hymns is that we have the opportunity to sing words written by people from all over the world, from countless different backgrounds and generations, and with hugely varied vocations. We get to sing songs by laypeople and bishops, by monks and martyrs, by missionaries to pagan lands and travelling preachers, by Reformers and by Catholics. We sing songs written by people many centuries and countless miles removed from us. We sing songs written by people from cultures that are quite alien to our own, but with whom we share a citizenship in heaven. In the process the parochial nature of our own tastes is challenged and we learn to listen with appreciation and humility to people who differ radically from us. Of course, singing the psalms, we have something even better. We have the opportunity to sing words written by Moses and David.

Sadly, rather than express our respect for our older brothers and sisters in Christ by submitting to the wisdom of the Christian tradition of music and worship, we tend to start worship wars, causing tensions and splits in churches because of our (frankly) ‘worldly’ desire to sing songs that conform to our contemporary Western appetites. Generally the modern worship wars seem to be driven by our ever-changing tastes in music, rather than by real theological or biblical concerns. Where are the voices calling for increased use of the psalms? They are few and far between, largely because the psalms do not generally provide what we believe that the ‘worship experience’ should give us. Where are the deep theologies of worship? Much of the worship wars are about our love for ‘thrashing, bashing and crashing’, rather than about any sort of coherent theology of Church music. Although I am someone who believes that ‘thrashing, bashing and crashing’ music should not be ruled out of the Church, I have no desire to align myself with those for whom the introduction of such music is purely an attempt to accommodate the worship of the Church to their their personal tastes in music, rather than an attempt to discern how God would have us worship Him and what is fitting for the praise of the saints.

Our concern tends to be that we have a good ‘worship experience’, rather than that we worship God joyfully and appropriately. If a particular song or style of music doesn’t conform to our personally tastes, so be it. We are worshipping God, not ourselves. Fittingness for the task of worshipping God should always take priority over everything else.

Finally, I have commented in the past on the infantilization of many quarters of the Church. It is not surprising that this tendency is accelerated in churches where the younger generation sets the agenda. The comments that the man makes in this video about the ‘young and stupid’ are not without a degree of correspondence to reality.

All of this, and the biblical command to honour and respect our elders, makes me quite reluctant to poke fun at this man’s expression of his opinion. For all of his misunderstanding and prejudice, he does have some valid points to make and we would do well to pay heed.

I returned from a few days back in Stoke-on-Trent on Tuesday evening. My time back home was full of activity, but very enjoyable. As there was a wedding on, I had the opportunity to meet a lot more friends than I would have met on another weekend. During the few days back home, I watched Spiderman III for the second time (I far prefer Spiderman II) and Pirates of the Caribbean III (none of the later films in the trilogy have lived up to the original). I helped out at a kid’s club, with preparation for the wedding celebration and had to preach at very short notice (I mainly reworked material that I had written and blogged about recently). I also enjoyed following the cricket when I had a few minutes to spare. The West Indies may not be the strongest opponents, but convincingly winning a Test match does provide welcome relief after the mauling of the latest Ashes series and our failure to make much of an impact at the World Cup.

Over the last few days I have read a number of books. On my way down to Stoke-on-Trent on the train, I finished reading L. Charles Jackson’s Faith of our Fathers: A Study of the Nicene Creed. I had the privilege of meeting Charles a couple of months ago and have enjoyed reading his book. It is a very helpful introduction to the Christian faith, following the statements of the Nicene Creed. Each chapter is relatively short and followed by some review questions. It would be a useful book for a study class and also provides the sort of clear and straightforward (but not simplistic) introduction to Christian doctrine that might be of use to a thinking teenager (Ralph Smith’s Trinity and Reality is another work that I would recommend for this).

On the train journey back I finished reading Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. A friend recommended the book to me when it first came out a few years ago, but I have only just got around to reading it (I bought a secondhand copy of the book from my housemate John a few months ago). Martel is a very gifted storyteller and the book is quite engrossing. Whilst I strongly disagree with the underlying message of the book (about the character of faith and its loose relationship with fact), I greatly enjoyed the book and may well revisit it on some occasion in the future.

I have also been reading a number of other works, including Courtney Anderson’s To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson, which a friend lent to me, in preparation for my visit to Myanmar in September. I am also reading Steve Moyise’s The Old Testament in the New, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Children of Hurin and I have been dipping into the second volume of John Goldingay’s Old Testament Theology. On the commentary front, I have been using Goldingay’s recent work on Psalms 1-41 and Craig S. Keener’s commentary on John’s Gospel.

At the moment I am reading up on the subject of the atonement. I am particularly enjoying Hans Boersma’s work, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition. I am also reading Where Wrath & Mercy Meet: Proclaiming the Atonement Today, edited by Oak Hill’s David Peterson (I am still waiting for my copy of Pierced for Our Transgressions to be delivered), Joel Green and Mark Baker’s Recovering the Scandal of the Cross and revisiting Colin Gunton’s The Actuality of Atonement.

Since returning to St. Andrews I have done very little. I spent much of yesterday playing Half-Life 2 (which I am revisiting after a few years) and reading. Today I expect that I will be a little more productive.

The following are some of the sites, stories, posts and videos that have caught my eye over the last few days.

Matt Colvin has an interesting post on ‘Headcoverings as Visible Eschatology’. Within it he argues that Paul’s teaching on the matter in 1 Corinthians 11 was not culturally determined, but informed by redemptive history.

***James Jordan has posted a series on the Biblical Horizons website: ‘How To Do Reformed Theology Nowadays’. As usual, JBJ has many useful and provocative observations. Here is one extended quotation:

The second problem is that since the academy is separated from the world, it is inevitably a gnostic institution. It is a place of ideas, not of life. For that reason it tends to become a haven for homosexuals (as it was in Greece, as Rosenstock-Huessy again points out in his lectures on Greek Philosophy). But apart from that problem, the separation of the academy from life means that the fundamental issues are seen as intellectual, which they in truth and fact are not. Clearly, conservative theological seminaries are not havens for homosexuals. But when what is protected is ideas and not women, then something is not right. Do academistic theologians protect the Bride of Christ, or do they protect a set of pet notions?

Consider: A man might say that when the Bible says that the waters of the “Red Sea” stood as walls and that the Israelites passed through, this is an exaggeration. What really happened is that a wind dried up an area of the “Swamp of Reeds” and the Israelites passed through. Now, this is a typical gnostic academistic way of approaching the text. The physical aspect of the situation is discounted. What is important is the theological idea of passing between waters. Human beings, for the academic gnostic, are not affected and changed by physical forces sent by God, but are changed by notions and ideas only.

The Bible shows us God changing human beings, bringing Adam forward toward maturity, very often by means of striking physical actions, such as floods, plagues, overwhelming sounds, and also warfare. It’s not just a matter of theology, or of “redemptive history” as a series of notions.

Now, some modern academics have indeed devoted themselves to social and economic history, and have seen that human beings are changed by physical forces that are brought upon them (though without saying that the Triune God brings these things upon them). This outlook, however, has not as yet had much impact on the theological academy.

The fact is that God smacks us around and that’s what changes history. Ideas sometimes smack us around, true enough. But the problem of the academy is that it is (rightly) separated from the world of smackings. From the academistic viewpoint, the actions of God in the Bible, His smacking around of Israel to bring them to maturity, are just not terribly important. What matters are the ideas.

This means the chronology is not important, and the events as described can be questioned. Did God really do those plagues in Egypt, smacking around the human race to bring the race forward in maturity? Maybe not. Maybe the stories in Exodus are “mythic enhancements” of what really happened. It’s the stories that matter, not the events. Maybe the Nile became red with algae, not really turned to blood. The blood idea is to remind us of all the Hebrew babies thrown into the Nile eighty years before.

Think about this. For the academistic, it is the idea that is important. Human beings are changed by ideas. And ideas only. Of course, it should be obvious that turning all the water in Egypt to blood (not just the Nile, Exodus 7:19) is a way of bringing back the murder of the Hebrew infants and of calling up the Avenger of Blood, the Angel of Death, because blood cries for vengeance. They had to dig up new water (Ex. 7:24) because all the old water was dead and bloody. An event like this changes people. The theological ideas are important. But the shock and awe of having all the water of the nation turn to blood is also important. It forces people to change.

***Josh, the Fearsome Pirate, puts his finger on one of the reasons why I would find it hard to become a Lutheran and reminds me of one of the reasons I so appreciate the Reformed tradition: ‘The Bible & Lutheranism’.
***Peter Leithart blogs on a subject that has long interested me: the necessity of the Incarnation. The question of the necessity of the Incarnation might strike some as needlessly speculative. However, our answer to this question does have a lot of practical import, not least in our understanding of the relationship between creation and redemption and the manner in which Christ relates to the cosmos. It raises teleological questions very similar to those raised in supra-infra debates, but does so in a far more biblical manner (supra-infra debates that are not grounded in Christology do strike me as unhelpfully speculative).
***Leithart also blogs on the subject of Pentecost on the First Things blog, one of a number to do so over the last few days. NTW sermons on Ascension and Pentecost have also been posted on the N.T. Wright Page. Joel Garver also blogs on Pentecost here. Over the next few months I will be doing a lot of work on the subject of canonical background for the account of Acts 2 (something that I have blogged about in the past). I will probably blog on the subject in more detail in the future.
***There have been a number of engagements with popular atheism in the blogosphere recently, particularly by Doug Wilson. Wilson’s recent debates with Christopher Hitchens can be found on the Christianity Today website: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. It is interesting to see how Hitchens consistently seems to fail to get Wilson’s point about warrant for moral obligation. Macht also has a helpful post in which he observes Richard Dawkins’ tendency to lightly dismiss positions (not just Christian ones) without ever taking the trouble to try to understand them first.
***Joel Garver summarizes the recent PCA report on the NPP/FV and posts a letter raising some questions and concerns on the subject.
***Ben posts an interesting list of recent and forthcoming must read theological books and Kim Fabricius loses all credibility.
***A recent convert to Roman Catholicism argues that FV theology leads Romeward. A recent convert to Eastern Orthodoxy argues that Peter Leithart was instrumental in his conversion. The first post prompted a very lively and rather heated discussion in the comments (which I participated in).

Frankly, while I do not agree with such moves and do not find the slippery slope argument — much beloved of FV critics — at all convincing, I am not surprised that a number of people make such moves and credit the FV with moving them some way towards their current ecclesiatical home. Unlike many movements within the Reformed world, the FV is heading in a (small ‘c’) catholic and principled ecumenical direction. The journey to Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism is far shorter from a catholic than a sectarian tradition. The FV is not generally given to overblown polemics against every theological tradition that differs from the Reformed and appreciates reading material produced by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and Orthodox. It can open one’s eyes to the fact that there are actually some pretty fine Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians out there and that, despite a number of failings, they are often far better on certain issues than their Reformed counterparts. Differences remain, but they are put into a far more realistic perspective.

***John H on what lies beneath debates about Mary. He also raises the issue of the presence of the Eucharist in John’s gospel for discussion.
***The most blogged passages of Scripture [HT: The Evangelical Outpost].
***Christianity Today has its 2007 book awards.
***Encouraging signs from Dennis Hou’s blog.
***Edward Cook watches LOST with Hebrew subtitles.
***Best selling books of all time [HT: Kim Riddlebarger]
***118 ways to save money in college
Learn a new language with a podcast
Learn the 8 essential tie knots
***New music from The New Pornographers [HT: Macht]
***A third of bloggers risk the sack
***Life as a secret Christian convert
***Global Peace Index Rankings (if you are looking for the US it is down at 96 between Yemen and Iran)
***A wonderful new site where grandmothers share films of some of their favourite recipes.
***Boy kills a ‘monster pig’ [HT: Jon Barlow]
***Some Youtube videos.

George Lucas in Love

Five Hundred Years of Female Portraits in Western Art

Pete Doherty queues for an Oasis album. It is sad to see how messed up he has become since then.

Finally, from my fellow St. Andrews Divinity student, Jon Mackenzie, comes ‘The Barthman’s Deck-laration’

This morning I finished my last exam of the semester. It is a great relief to have finally completed this year at St. Andrews. It has been considerably less productive than the year before (I suspect that there has been a downward trend in my productivity for over three years now, which is rather depressing) and I look forward to really putting my back into the work for my final year. My results haven’t suffered that much, but I would like to have a bit more to show for my time.

In a few days’ time — possibly after I return to St. Andrews next Tuesday — I hope to start posting the subject of the atonement, a subject which will probably dominate this blog over the summer. However, it has been well over a month since I last posted a links post, and I thought that I would mark my return to regular service with a bumper collection of some of the things that have caught my attention over the last month or so.

Matt Colvin’s Fragmenta blog has always been a personal favourite. Matt has been posting some great material recently. Two posts in particular that I have enjoyed: ‘Baptism for Forgiveness in Acts 2:38′ (an analysis of the grammatical arguments put forward by some to avoid a close relationship between Baptism and forgiveness in that passage) and ‘Examine Yourselves: Testing in Corinth and Crete’ (in which Matt challenges the introspective understanding of ‘examine yourselves’ through a careful examination of the Greek). Both posts give a voice to texts that have all too often fallen prey to theological agendas.

***I am not sure that I agree with all of Josh S’s propositions, but Proposition 5 (’If your theology makes you uncomfortable with biblical language, your theology needs to change’) is, in my experience, one of the most important principles that I have ever learned. I seem to remember that my father first taught me this principle over several years’ ago.
***Stephen Carlson links to some helpful posts with advice for honing your academic writing. Such honing is long overdue in my case. Perhaps something to devote some time to over the summer.
***As usual there is a wealth of quality posting on Peter Leithart’s blog. Over the last month Leithart has posted a number of things that may be of interest to NTW fans: ‘Five Points of NT Wright’, ‘Paul and Israel’, ‘Justification and Community’ and a lengthy PDF document: Jesus as Israel: The Typological Structure of Matthew’s Gospel.

Leithart also has a number of other helpful posts that address FV debates, including ‘Perichoretic Imagination’, ‘Theological Imagination’, ‘Grace’, ‘Denying the Gospel’ and a guest post by James Jordan, ‘Justification and Glorification’.

There are also a number of other interesting and thought-provoking posts, including ‘Faith and Grace’ (about different ways of conceiving of the relationship between faith and grace, with particular reference to the practice of infant Baptism), ‘Justification and Purity’ (in which he mentions Chris VanLandingham’s recent work and his argument that justification language has to do more with ’state of being’ than with ’status’ — perhaps a challenging case for the application of Josh’s fifth proposition) and ‘Rites Controversy’ (some thoughts on the relationship between traditional Chinese practices and the Christian faith in the 17th and 18th centuries).

***Mark Goodacre posts on the subject of PhDs in the UK and US (something that is playing on my mind at the moment too). He also links to a Guardian article on recent trouble at Wycliffe Hall.
***Jason Fout posts on the subject of living with questions.
***NTW on Jerry Falwell. There are also a number of new audio lectures linked from the N.T. Wright Page:

Putting the World to Rights
God’s Restorative Program
Godpod 16
Godpod 17
***James White links to a — presumably heavily critical — series on the NPP.
***Mark posts a lengthy grand unifying Lost theory. I must confess to being cheered by recent developments on the show; for a while I was concerned that it may have jumped the shark.
***On Ben Myers blog: ‘Ten Propositions on Being a Minister’ and a plug for Mike Bird’s new book on the NPP (which looks extremely helpful).
***Ben also links to this lecture by Archbishop Rowan Williams, something that I really must read when I have the time.
***Bill Kesatie asked me to respond to this post on the subject of sexual abuse of children within churches. Bill suggests that blogging Christians need to be more vocal about this matter. I suggest that the teaching of Ephesians 5:11-12 is important to keep in mind here:

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.

In our day and age there is virtually no sin so evil that it cannot be spoken of and discussed (almost literally) ad nauseum. There is a sort of unhealthy fascination with perversion that can develop in such a manner, a sort of urge to stoop and sniff the faeces. People who spend a lot of time talking and thinking about sin are in a very dangerous position for this reason. Even though they may condemn the sin in the strongest possible language, there is something about it that arouses their interest.

I am a firm believer in the importance of certain taboos. There are certain things that it is unfitting to talk about. Where sexual abuse of children takes place it is healthy to literally feel sick in the pit of your stomach. Our reaction should be one of deep revulsion. Wherever such sin occurs the Scriptures call us to expose it as a work of darkness. Such an approach of exposing sin has, tragically, not always been followed in Christian contexts. Sin has on occasions been covered up, something which is utterly inexcusable.

The biblical command to expose sin should not, however, be confused with the idea of having a public conversation about such sin. I am shocked by the idea that Christian bloggers should be expected to post condemnations of the sin of child abuse within churches; condemnations are the means by which people who fail to live lives of transparent godliness tend to assert their morality. The fact that we are called upon to condemn such appalling sins suggests that such sins are less than unspeakable and unthinkable to the people of God. Biblically, the Church exposes darkness, not chiefly by condemning it with public statements, but by living as the light of the world.

For this reason, rather than post a condemnation of unspeakable sin, I would prefer to post a challenge for us to be the sort of people for whom such sin truly is unspeakable and unthinkable, for us to be people whose utter rejection of such sin is so completely manifested by the way that we deal with it when it occurs that any further words would merely detract from the fulness of its condemnation.

***Jon Barlow posts on Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens and their current debate. His thoughts on Doug Wilson are very close to my own.
***A couple of weeks ago, Barbara tagged me in the seven things you didn’t know about me meme. Here goes:

1. In my first school play at the age of five I was an angel. Midway through the play the elastic on my trousers broke and the crowd were amused and distracted by my attempts to hide the fact and hold them up. My teacher was not too impressed.

2. I went on strike for a day in primary school, because I was annoyed that the supply teacher was a smoker. The primary school that I attended was a small Church of Ireland school, with four years to each room. My younger brother Jonathan was in the same room as me for a couple of years. As a rather absent-minded kid, he was constantly getting into trouble with the teacher. On one occasion when he was being lectured to (and pyschoanalyzed) by the teacher at the front of the class I felt so strongly that he was being treated unfairly that I wrote a letter of protest and handed it around my classmates. It was intercepted and my mind has long sought to suppress the memories of the resulting experience. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn my lesson on that occasion and, in secondary school I wrote another letter of protest to a teacher, which led to a session in the principal’s office.

3. The first album I ever bought was (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? by Oasis. I still enjoy listening to it today, but at the time, I would have probably been better off had I not bought it as it was, to some extent, a means by which I could rebel against my parents.

4. I have never broken a bone, although I have sprained each of my ankles several times. When I injure myself it is usually playing football or riding my bike. The last time it was a badly sprained ankle. The time before, I slipped on dog doo and cracked my forehead on a brick wall. Unfortunately, the manner of my fall was so amusing that, looking up in my dazed state, all I saw were my friends looking down at me and laughing.

5. I have needle phobia. I feel rather annoyed at myself for having such an irrational fear. Whilst I have faced my fear on a number of occasions in having injections or in donating blood, I haven’t been able to shake the fear itself.

6. I started balding at the age of 16. I noticed about 10 years before some other people did. I guess that you don’t see what you don’t expect to see (and some people are not the most observant).

7. Growing up, I always wanted to be an artist, a soldier, a pilot, a missionary or a maths teacher. Frankly, I probably had a better idea then than I do now.

If you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged.

***Dr Jim West mentions a forthcoming book by Richard Bauckham, which looks very interesting, The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John.
***John H has two great posts with thoughts from Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh: ‘Surging, hopeful, joyful doubt’ and ‘The puzzling mystery of unbelief’. He also has a post, entitled ‘The gospel “under the papacy”‘, which he begins with the remark: ‘One irony of becoming a Lutheran was that it greatly improved my opinion of the Roman Catholic Church.’ Very interesting.
***Kevin Bywater has a great series of posts on the subject of sinlessness in Second Temple Judaism:

Second Temple Judaism and Sinlessness (Prayer of Manasseh)
Second Temple Judaism and Sinlessness (2 - Gathercole’s Wise Words)
Second Temple Judaism and Sinlessness (3 - D. Falk on Prayer of Manasseh)
Second Temple Judaism and Sinlessness (4 - Other Texts)
***Mercersberg Review articles available online.
***Angie Brennan posts the ‘Screwtape E-mails’.
***Some interesting things from lifehacker:

Top ten sites for free books
Learning the finer points of punctuation
Top 10 body hacks
***A very interesting article on the Bible in the global South.
***A new blog: The Reformed News. Looks interesting.
***Finally, some gleanings from Youtube.

I got myself a copy of the Arcade Fire’s most recent album and have been listening to it incessantly over the last month. Here is a performance of the title track:

If you haven’t seen the Potter Pals before, this is a lot of fun (or you may find it incredibly annoying and stupid):

Finally, a powerful speech by Bono:

Believe it or not, I really meant it when I said (about a month and a half ago now) that I had no intention of reducing my input on this blog to that of posting long lists of links. I apologize for the continued lack of substantial posting. Hopefully this will change sometime soon. However, I won’t make any promises, as I have not the best track-record of keeping blogging promises. What do you, my reader, think of my link posts? Should I stop them or make them more occasional? Are they worth reading or would you prefer me to do something different with my blogging time? Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

The following are some of the things that have caught my eye online over the last couple of days:

Matt Colvin, whose Lenten reflection was posted on this blog yesterday, posts further thoughts on his blog on the Last Supper and on Gethsemane. He also has posted some posts that are relevant to the interminable FV debates: ‘Dead Orthodoxy’ and ‘Head on a Platter’.

***The Fearsome Pirate has returned! He kicks off with a post on Lutheranism. Josh, we’ve missed you.
***Leithart posts on the subject of the consumer revolution and gives us quite a Girardian insight from an eighteenth century writer.
***On the subject of René Girard, Edward Oakes posts on Girard over on the First Things blog.
***Macht links to audio from Calvin College’s Faith and Music weekend. It looks interesting: Sylia Keesmaat, Lauren Winner, and a number of other speakers.
***If any of you are feeling like engaging in some extreme penance, Ben Myers links to a meme that might suit you. He also posts Kim Fabricius’s ‘Ten Propositions on Political Theology’, which Josh and Joel discuss over on the BHT.
***Stephen at the Thinkery links to a post with a series of accounts of anti-LGBT encounters. Whilst I believe that lesbian, homosexual, bisexual and transgender behaviour is sinful, I have long maintained that homophobia is real and ought to be shown up in all of its ugliness by Christians. Some of the stories recounted should give us food for thought.
***There are few examples of homophobia as extreme as that of the Westboro Baptist Church. The following is the first part of the BBC2 documentary, in which Louis Theroux meets the Phelps:

The other parts of the show are also available on Youtube — part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7.

***The audiobook of Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine is available for free download from Christian Audio this month [HT: Tim Challies]. Don’t miss out!
***Why PowerPoint presentations don’t work [HT: David Field]. I feel vindicated: I have long viewed PowerPoint presentations with a mistrust bordering on antipathy.
***

According to recent studies, Britain has 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - and 20 per cent of all cameras globally.

It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

Read the whole article here [HT: David Field].

***Tearfund has a new report on churchgoing in the UK. There is some comment on the report on the BBC website. Graham Weeks posts some figures from the survey here.
***NTW’s Maundy Thursday sermon.
***The Placebo Diet [HT: The Evangelical Outpost]. I just need to know how to turn this finding in my favour.
***As usual the Evangelical Outpost has a number of other interesting links, which I thought that I would pass on:

100 aphorisms summarizing Calvin’s Institutes
Some classic insults
34 Reasons Why People Unsubscribe from your Blog (a quick scan confirms my suspicion that I have been guilty of the majority of these at some time or other)
The Internet weighs 2 ounces
***Some British teachers drop teaching the Holocaust and the Crsuades to avoid offending Muslims and other schools are challenged to change their teaching on the Arab-Israeli conflict by some theologically confused Christians [HT: Tim Challies]
***A skeptical ex-scientist describes the funding process for peer-reviewed research.
***Some more useful links from lifehacker:

How to Read a Scientific Research Paper
How to make yourself happier within the next hour
Google launches My Maps
Ditto: A useful Windows clipboard extension
***I am glad that I am not the only person who writes e-mails in this way:

Some of the other Youtube videos that have caught my attention over the last week include: LisaNova does 300!, Sand Castle Explosions Backwards v.1 and Sand Castle Explosions Backwards v.2.
***Jeffrey Overstreet asks whether movies are increasing our capacity to see, and whether the narrative of film distracts us too much from the visual dimension [HT: John Barach].
***And, on the topic of the poetry of cinema, I will conclude this links post with one of my favourite scenes from Spirited Away, which I watched yet again last night. It grows on me every time.

The FV discussion continues on unabated. Matt Colvin has some very good thoughts on the debate here (makes sure that you read the comments). Lane Keister suggests that ego is the main thing standing in the way of FV people repenting of their errors. The huge number of comments that follow his post make interesting reading. Meanwhile, the Presbyteer posts an overheard comment.

***Mark Goodacre and Dr Jim West continue to discuss the value of Wikipedia.
***Richard Mouw writes on Calvinism and sewage [HT: Prosthesis].
***Paul Duggan (who really needs to sort out his permalinks) puts forward the following statements for discussion:

1. Some Christians, because of their great faith or piety, are more effective than other Christians in begging God’s favors, say for healing the sick.

2. Since some Christians are of that sort, it is a good idea to ask them, in particular, to pray for you, say, if you are sick.

3. It is ok to think, in the back of your mind, “that man is righteous: his prayer will be partciularly effective for my sickness”

4. Doing so is not blasphemous, nor does it impinge upon the complete salvation we have in Christ.

***Mererdith Kline’s works online [HT: Ros Clarke].
***R.C. Sproul reviews N.T. Wright’s recent book, Evil and the Justice of God.
***The good bishop is also in the news again, responding to a BBC Radio 4 show with the ‘controversial cleric’ Jeffrey John, who claims that the doctrine of penal substitution “is repulsive as well as nonsensical” and “makes God sound like a psychopath.” The Sunday Telegraph reports:

Mr John argues that too many Christians go through their lives failing to realise that God is about “love and truth”, not “wrath and punishment”. He offers an alternative interpretation, suggesting that Christ was crucified so he could “share in the worst of grief and suffering that life can throw at us”.

Church figures have expressed dismay at his comments, which they condemn as a “deliberate perversion of the Bible”. The Rt Rev Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, accused Mr John of attacking the fundamental message of the Gospel.

“He is denying the way in which we understand Christ’s sacrifice. It is right to stress that he is a God of love but he is ignoring that this means he must also be angry at everything that distorts human life,” he said.

Bishop Wright criticised the BBC for allowing such a prominent slot to be given to such a provocative argument. “I’m fed up with the BBC for choosing to give privilege to these unfortunate views in Holy Week,” he said.

***From Vern Poythress’s ‘The Church as a Family’, which I had occasion to read a few days ago:

[M]any evangelical churches today are seen primarily as lecture halls or preaching stations. People identify the church with its building, in contrast to the Biblical emphasis that those united to Christ are the real church. Moreover, the building is viewed merely as a place for hearing a sermon or enjoying religious entertainment. Such a view impoverishes our communal life as Christians. Certainly monologue sermons are important, since they are one means of bringing God’s Word to bear on the church. But God intends the church to be much more…

But in too many evangelical churches, people have little experience of the Biblical practice of common family life. There may also be no regard for the necessity of church discipline. The church leaders are nothing more than gifted speakers or counselors (paid ministers), or else managers of church property and/or programs (whether these people are called trustees or elders or deacons). Such “leaders” are just people whose useful gifts have brought them into prominence. In such situations, it is understandable that some people may fail to see why appropriately qualified women may not exercise the key functions they associate with leadership. In fact, Christians will not fully understand the logic leading to male overseers until they come to grips with what the church should really be as God’s household.

***Steven Harris posts a Palm Sunday confession.
***Byron Smith on the chocolate Jesus controversy.
***The Pirate comments on the erotic character of much contemporary worship:

Let’s point out the obvious: replace the buxom blonde babes with stout matrons in their late 50’s, and the worship experience just plain doesn’t happen. Hire an older fellow that walks with a cane as your worship pastor instead of that handsome, young, energetic Cedarville graduate, and Sunday morning just won’t “work.” That should indicate something is wrong. This kind of “worship” isn’t anything new. Maybe fog machines, synthesizers, and colored lights are new, but sensuality and eroticism in worship aren’t. It’s just that in the olden-tymie days, you had to go to a pagan temple to get that. They [presumably the Church — Al] did a remarkably bad job of incorporating the pagan culture into their worship. A few things changed with the imperialization of the Church, but the damage had already been done. Christian worship was doomed to centuries of reverence, formality, seriousness, regularity, and deliberation until the 20th century brought Aphrodite back to her rightful place as the orchestrator of our worship.

***Doug Wilson posts 21 questions for a prospective wife. And, if you are reading Dad, I still do not intend to need to use these myself anytime in the foreseeable future…
***John blogs on slinkies.
***Louis Theroux meets the Phelpses.
***How to paint the Mona Lisa with MS Paint:

It has been quite some time since anything was posted on this blog. The pre-Holy Week guest posts have dried up (although hopefully my youngest brother will have sent me something before the weekend). I am presently enjoying my mid-semester break, although not a whole lot has been achieved so far. We have eaten a lot, entertained a number of people, caught up on some DVD watching and played far too much Settlers of Catan and Canasta. I have probably only read no more than one hundred and fifty pages or so of various books within the last couple of days.

Later today we are having more people over for a big meal, prior to a Desperate Housewives evening that my housemate Simon is organizing. I think that I will probably opt out of that (and not just because Desperate Housewives jumped the shark a while back). Tomorrow we have an all-day Lord of the Rings session, where we will be watching the three extended versions back-to-back. I will try and get some study done this evening to help me to justify a full day off. We have a 24-athon planned for next week, which should be even more intense. Hopefully, the LoTR day will help me to get in shape for that.

The following are some of the various things that have caught my attention online over the last few days.

I haven’t read either of them yet, but David Field has posted links to two Oak Hill dissertations, one on Romans 2:1-16 and another on Romans 8:13.

***Kim Fabricius’ Ten Propositions on Being a Theologian
***Also on Faith and Theology, Ben links to reports of Kathryn Tanner’s Warfield lectures and talks about his top 20 theological influences (very interesting reading; I will have to try to put together such a list sometime).
***Peter Leithart’s recent Pro Ecclesia article, ‘Justification as Verdict and Deliverance’, is receiving positive press on a number of places on the blogosphere. Al Kimel (aka: The Pontificator) blogs about it here and ‘Martin Luther’ makes some — rather strange — remarks here.
***John H has some good remarks on faith and certainty:—

In other words, faith isn’t something we are to try to work up in ourselves. It isn’t some inner state of certainty to which we somehow attain. God, in his mercy towards us, does not require us to hold within our heads at one moment the whole truth of Christianity, and to assent to it. Rather, he comes to us with concrete, audible promises: “Your sins are forgiven”; “Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ”; “This is my body, given for you… this cup is the new testament in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins”. Faith is believing the promise we are hearing right now.

Read his whole post here.

***Pope Benedict XVI tries to remind people of the existence of hell.
***Islamic feminist theologians (I suppose that that, like lesbian Eskimo bishops, some have to exist somewhere…).
***Garrett questions the value of long sermons.
***Mark Goodacre writes in defence of Wikipedia. Dr Jim West disagrees strongly.
***‘John Lennon’s Born-Again Phase’ [via Dave Armstrong]
***As usual, there have been some great posts on Leithart’s blog over the last few days. In this post he talks about a type of hospitality that has largely been lost or forgotten in our world.

The church set up various institutional forms of hospitality, including hospitals for the rejected and marginalized sick and weak. But the early church fathers also said that individual believers were supposed to show the same hospitality. Christine Pohl writes of Chrysostom: “Even if the needy person could be fed from common funds, Chrysostom asked, ‘Can that benefit you? If another man prays, does it follow that you are not bound to pray?’ He urged his parishioners to make a guest chamber in their own houses, a place set apart for Christ — a place within which to welcome ‘the maimed, the beggars, and the homeless.’”

It is quite easy to be charitable from a distance. The effort necessary to slow the frenetic pace of our lives down to be able to extend personal care and hospitality to people in need, rather than merely donating money is considerable. I have been very blessed by the example of my parents in this respect. Over the years we have taken many needy people into our home to live with us, for periods of time varying from a few days to a number of months. We have taken in itinerants, homeless people, students, recovering drug addicts and many others. Whilst our hospitality has been abused on more than one occasion, the experience of sharing your life with people in need is such a valuable and eye-opening one that I don’t think that we have any major regrets, even though we might do things slightly differently in the future. Quite apart from anything else, you learn a lot about yourself and your own weaknesses and failings.

Leithart also has some great posts on Jane Austen: ‘Keeping us Reading’, ‘Austen and Prejudice’ and ‘Communal Judgment, Communal Argument’.

***Tim Challies writes on the subject of discernment in the gray areas.
***Paleojudaica, Dr Jim Davila’s blog, turned 4 over the weekend. A belated ‘Happy Birthday!’.
***In my last links post, I linked to a post on speed-reading. Since then Matt has linked to this tool (I’m not sure that I find it particularly helpful, though) and the Evangelical Outpost links to this post on how to read a lot of books in a short time. John Barach speaks up on behalf of slow reading. It surprises some people when I tell them, but I slow-read most books, principally because I am of the conviction that the quality of one’s reading is more important than the quantity. The best books are to be savoured. I also slow read many of the worst books, as I feel duty bound to ensure that I understand someone very well before I strongly disagree with them. I also write lots of comments in the margins of my books and underline many sections, which slows down the reading process considerably.
***John Piper and Ligon Duncan speak on the subject of ‘The Challenge of the New Perspective to Biblical Justification’ on the Albert Mohler Radio Program.
***Some facts about the top 1000 books found in libraries [HT: Tim Challies].
***Josh, the fearsome Lutheran pirate, writes in defence of women’s ordination (don’t worry, he is not seriously advocating the position).
***Mark Whittinghill alerts us to a new posthumous Tolkien book. It should be released in under a month.
***Michael Spencer links to a list of D.A. Carson MP3s.
***Lifehacker tells us how to cure hiccups with sugar and gives a guide to power-napping.
***There is a new Youtube channel dedicated to material about the Archbishop of Canterbury. The first video contains the archbishop’s reflections on the slave pits in Zanzibar.
***Also in the world of Youtube, the Youtube Video Awards have been announced.
***Why models don’t smile and 101 great posting ideas [HT: The Evangelical Outpost].

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The last few days have been very busy, so I haven’t posted any guest posts. They will recommence later this afternoon. A belated happy St. Patrick’s day to all of my readers!

The following are some of the things that have caught my eye recently.

Al Mohler’s ‘Is Your Baby Gay?’ post sparks controversy. It has been discussed by a number of people on the blogosphere (here on the Evangelical Outpost, for example). Mohler has since written a clarifying post. Mark and Macht are both critical of Mohler’s claim that certain forms of eugenics would be justified in the case of an unborn child who would most likely have a ‘homosexual orientation’. Apart from this issue, on which I am agreed with Mark and Macht, I am encouraged to see a rather more nuanced and balanced treatment of the issues of homosexuality from a leading evangelical than we have come to expect. As Lauren Winner has commented, if the Church were to speak about such issues better, we could then speak about them less. That would be a blessing indeed.

***Mark Goodacre continues to blog on the subject of the Jesus family tomb: ‘Discovery Website Adjusts Tomb Claims’ and ‘Talpiot Tomb Statistics Update’. Richard Bauckham guest posts on Chris Tilling’s blog: ‘Ossuaries and Prosopography’.
***Stephen over at Hypotyposeis blogs some thoughts on Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, which Chris Tilling continues to review on his blog (it shouldn’t be much long until the review is longer than the book itself).
***Leithart blogs on the Christian roots of Europe.
***Ros Clarke blogs some quotations from JBJ’s ‘Apologia on Reading the Bible’.
***Edward Cook suggests that the genealogy of Luke 3 was most probably originally in Hebrew [HT: Dr Jim Davila].
***David Field posts notes for a talk that he gave, entitled ‘New Perspectives on Romans’.
***Chris Tilling writes a Bultmann poem.
***Tim Gallant links to a video raising questions about the scientific basis of global warming claims. I have no firsthand knowledge about the issues relevant to the global warming debate, but I do know a thing or two about how gifted the media is at draining complex debates of all nuance and presenting the public with grossly simplified and distorted pictures. I also know about the appeal of the unorthodox line of argument and the pull of the conspiracy theory. We all like to believe that we have privileged insight that others do not possess. A little selective knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. There are a lot of people who feel duty-bound to have a strong opinion on everything, even things that they don’t know have a clue about. The media happily fuels such people with prepackaged prejudices.

On the other hand, I am also well aware of the problems that attend the politicization of specialist debates. Most people bluff to some extent to hide their levels of ignorance on certain subjects; the temptation to bluff is greatest for politicians. On top of this, nuance does not go over well in the world of politics, where people are prone to move into polarized camps. Once an issue like global warming becomes politicized, it becomes increasingly difficult to raise critical questions about the scientific claims that are being made.

I also wonder sometimes whether we are inclined to overstate the impact that human beings have on the environment, wanting to flatter ourselves that we have more of an effect on and control over the world than we really do. The idea of a massive problem that we have created is more welcome than the idea of a huge climate shift that results from powers beyond our control. Man does not like to be reminded of his own impotence and the fact that his destiny is in many respects determined by greater forces than his own. All of these things lead me to retain a measure of skepticism towards the various claims being made in the global warming debates.

Jon uses this video as a springboard from which to discuss conspiracy theories and the need for orthodoxy to engage with heresy, if it is to arrive at a fuller knowledge of the truth. Jon observes something that I have commented on in the past: there are telltale signs of conspiracy theories and much of the thought in our circles as conservative Christians manifests all the classic symptoms. Young earth creationism is a perfect example (as is anti-Roman Catholicism). The truth or falsity of the claims of young earth creationists is beside the point here; the issue is that their approach to the issues is all too often the approach of conspiracy theorists. Conspiracy theories have a noxious effect on society and its public discourse. For this reason, if I were to have children I would prefer to have them educated by an atheistic evolutionist who would train them to think critically and engage with the best that science has to offer, than a conservative evangelical who would teach them conspiracy theories about science and discourage them from truly engaging with those with whom they disagree (I hope that I will never be called to make such a choice).

***Jon also has a helpful post on the subject of Richard Gaffin’s interaction with Rich Lusk (see here for further comment).
***Preparing tomorrow’s soldier [HT: Jon Barlow]
***The world’s oldest living man (116) puts his long life down to the fact that he has never been married.
***Ireland sends Pakistan home in the cricket World Cup. Makes up for the heartbreak of the rugby, I guess. Sadly, the joy of Ireland’s victory has since been overshadowed by the tragic death of Bob Woolmer.
***Herschelle Gibbs scores six sixes in a row, a first for one day cricket. The minnows in the World Cup have really suffered this year; four of the five highest margins of victory in the World Cup (by runs) have been recorded in the last week.
***Tony Blair meets Catherine Tate. Catchphrase comedy generally annoys me greatly, but I grinned at a few points in the last minute of this sketch, despite myself.
***Weird Al parodies Dylan (not anywhere near as funny as ‘White and Nerdy’, but funny nonetheless) and (a fairly good imitator of) Dylan sings Seuss [HT: Mark Traphagen].

Update: NTW lecture, ‘Did Jesus Really Rise From the Dead?’ [HT: Richard]. Be warned, it is a huge file (90MB).

The following are some of the enjoyable and insightful posts, articles and talks that I have read or listened to in the last couple of days:—

Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy [HT: matthew henry john bartlett]

***Ben Witherington - The Jesus Tomb? ‘Titanic’ Talpiot Tomb Theory Sunk from the Start
***The full series of T.F. Torrance audio lectures
***Lauren F. Winner - Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity
***Cynthia Nielsen continues blogging on Jean-Luc Marion
***Mark Horne proclaims the ‘hastening death’ of the theological journal. Frankly, I find the idea that the future of theological writing might lie in the works of dilettante bloggers like me little short of terrifying. Let’s hope that the theological journals reinvent themselves quickly (First Things is a good example of one that seems to be getting it just about right).
***On a related note to the previous item, Mark Goodacre comments on the way that the biblioblogosphere shapes the way that scholarship engages with such news stories as that of the Jesus tomb
***Leithart: Predestination and Logic and Eschatological Meaning
***My brother Mark posts videos of himself making origami models: an elephant and a rose
***Perhaps the most useful resource that I have encountered for weeks [HT: Tim Challies] — search every Calvin and Hobbes cartoon by keywords. Ever wondered how many times the word ‘boogers’ appears in the Calvin and Hobbes corpus? You need wonder no longer!

Having some time on my hands this afternoon, I decided to put together some of the odd videos of St. Andrews that I had on my hard drive to create the Frankenstein’s monster below. Enjoy.

[For personal reference, in case I ever wonder why I am not an 'Arminian'. Admittedly, some of the comments responding to the video on Youtube and elsewhere might cause me to question why I should ever want to consider myself Reformed...]

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Leithart on Rosenstock-Huessy on Descartes, Marxism and Tribalism.

Bill Wilder (who made a helpful series of lectures on N.T. Wright a year or so back) writes a WTJ article on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, arguing for a position that closely approximates to that of James Jordan. Wilder arrived at his position independently of Jordan, but cites Jordan favourably in the footnotes.

In Media Res has an interview with Jeff Meyers (whose new Ecclesiastes commentary, A Table in the Mist, I am presently enjoying) and the first part of an interview with Peter Leithart. The Leithart interview is on the subject of Postmodernism and Postmodernity. Having recently enjoyed his lecture series ‘Solomon Among the Postmoderns’ (available to purchase here), I would recommend Leithart’s treatment of postmodernity as a welcome change from many of the overly positive and negative treatments that one generally encounters.

R. Scott Clark — How We Got Here: The Roots of the Current Controversy Over Justification. Incredibly frustrating to read. The fact that misunderstandings of such magnitude persist many years into the FV debate makes one wonder if progress will ever be made. It is the introductory chapter of Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry, which can be purchased here.

With a respected source and enough repetition, the truth of many theological claims can be taken more or less for granted and seldom be subjected to close scrutiny. One such claim is Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ claim: “if your preaching of the gospel of God’s free grace in Jesus Christ does not provoke the charge from some of antinomianism you’re not preaching the gospel of the free grace of God in Jesus Christ.” Mark Horne addresses the meaning of Romans 6:1 here. I have long felt uncomfortable and have occasionally protested against the way that Romans 6:1ff. is employed as an answer to an argument for ‘antinomianism’.

Whilst Romans 6:1ff. can be used as a response to what some call ‘antinomianism’, we must be careful in using the verse in such a manner, as Paul’s point is not quite the same as our point. Terms such as ‘antinomianism’ are also unhelpful as they fail to distinguish between the moralism that we occasionally encounter in contemporary Christianity and the ‘Torah-ism’ that Paul was dealing with in the epistles. They are not the same thing and the confusion that results from conflating such things will have far-reaching effects on our reading of Paul.

This video makes disturbing viewing as one does not have to look far to find churches that manifest many of the classic signs of a cult. For this very reason I would recommend that people watch it.

There are a number of tendencies of some Christian groups that I find particularly troubling in this area. Here are a few examples.

1. A failure to engage with the broader Church tradition and a tendency to become theologically inbred. In the Church we are blessed with people from a vast range of historical, social and cultural backgrounds and theological convictions. We do well to interact with them. Christian groups, for example, that only sing CCM or that sing only 18th and 19th century evangelical hymns are inviting the increased expression of the negative recessive traits that are present within the ecclesiastical or theological gene pool in question. The fact that ‘evangelicalism’ has produced some terribly mutated offspring is, to a large degree, a result of this practice.

2. The manner in which conversion is spoken of and conceptualized. One can be a Christian without having undergone a ‘conversion experience’. One can be a Christian without having any clear sense of a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ in your life. Many have been raised as Christians and do not remember a time when they did not believe in and trust Jesus. For many people becoming a Christian is a very gentle and gradual process and there is little sense of a sharp break with a past life.

Without wanting to deny the reality of a ‘before’ and ‘after’ (which is clearly biblical), it is important to pay attention to the way that we construe this. The Gospel does not merely present Christ as pronouncing God’s ‘No’ to the sin of our world; the gospel also presents Christ as the one in whom the true telos of creation is realized, as God’s ‘Yes’. For many converts, it will be the ‘Yes’ that hits them with more power. However, in many churches the ‘No’ of the Gospel drowns out any whisper of the ‘Yes’. Converts are led to deny that which they were before, rather than appreciating that the Gospel calls them to recognize that which was good about their ‘past life’ and fulfill it.

The product of this is churches filled with boring clones. They are subtly discouraged from expressing that which is truly interesting and exciting about them as individuals. People are entirely stripped of their old existence and have to begin their lives again from scratch. This process of rebuilding their lives makes them very dependent on the church and their newly constructed life will often tend to revolve around the church. Conversion, however, is a death and resurrection. The old body of our existence dies, but there is a coming back to life in a more glorious form.

3. Too many church meetings and activities that one is expected or encouraged to attend. There is only so much free time and so many free evenings in the week. The superfluity of Christian meetings and activities can often simply crowd out everything else. New converts have less time to spend with their families, less time to take up new hobbies, less time to devote to developing new skills, less time to be around their non-Christian friends. Many new converts lose many of their non-Christian friends primarily because they come to spend all of their free time around other Christians. They also lose friends because this process tends to result in their becoming more boring people.

It is incredibly easy to have a week where practically every evening is taken up with church meetings, Christian groups or activities with other Christians. I really don’t believe that this is particularly healthy. If one is not careful Christian meetings and events can consume one’s life. There is no biblical commandment that teaches that the day of rest should be filled with church meetings. It is not a sin to only attend one. Nor is it a sin to stop attending a midweek meeting and to take up a sport instead. However, it is not unlikely that you will be made to feel guilty should you decide to cease attending such things. Being a Christian is not primarily about attending church meetings.

4. The indoctrination of new converts. There is a difference between teaching and indoctrination. Good teaching should equip the mind to think critically. Indoctrination tends to turn off the mind’s critical faculties. Indoctrination imposes an ideology upon people, an ideology that often restricts them from giving expression to important aspects of their lives. Teaching grants people the tools with which they can begin to work towards true expression of the world, God and themselves. Someone who has been taught, rather than indoctrinated, is empowered to think in a way that goes beyond their teachers.

There are three great brief interviews with James Jordan linked from this blog. Do take the time to watch them.

In other news, I have just set up a Facebook group dedicated to James Jordan and BH, if any of you would like to join it.

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From the wacky [HT: Chrisendom]…

…to the weird, to the more sinister.

Is there any section of the Church that is more messed up than what passes under the name of Evangelicalism? Like it or not, most people who call themselves evangelicals in the US and the UK today are holding a form of religion that only bears a tenuous relationship to the historic Christian faith. Whilst we would like to quibble about the historic meaning of the term and complain that it has been hijacked by fruitcakes, there comes a time when we simply have to accept the fact that the term ‘evangelical’ now carries a radically different meaning to anything that it ever held in the past. The weird, the heretical, the fad-driven, the fruity, the fanatical, the culturally and intellectually bankrupt has become the mainstream.

People, evangelicalism is a greater threat to Western civilization than Islam is. Islam may oppose the Christian faith, but modern evangelicalism trivializes, parodies and cheapens it to the extent that it is no longer deemed worthy of opposition and cannot be taken seriously. With all of its handwaving emotionalism, kitschy culture, intellectual vacuity, collective narcissism and blinkered politics, modern evangelicalism demands all the respect of a shabby circus freak.

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