| RSS/Atom feed | | Date Created: Jan 12, 2007, 06:23 AM |
I should also probably have mentioned: you'll need to add a new RSS/Atom feed if you want to subscribe to my blog. This is the new feed link: http://notquiteart.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default (it's an Atom feed, if that matters to you).
The old one was http://homepage.mac.com/conrad.gempf/blogwavestudio/rss.xml if you want to search for and delete it. |
| Time to change blog location | | Date Created: Jan 11, 2007, 09:58 PM |
| the end of the sabbatical | | Date Created: Dec 19, 2006, 08:52 AM |
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Well, this is pretty much it. Today's the last day in the sabbatical routine -- in any sort of routine -- until January and getting stuck into the new term. I was going to write the next book during the sabbatical. But rather than just writing what I felt like writing, I wanted to work with my editor and publisher to see if I could merge my unusual and idiosyncratic interests with what they think Christian bookbuyers across the English-speaking world are looking for. Giving that a serious shot consumed the bulk of the sabbatical, and no one is sure whether I've 'got it' yet or not.
I think I'd make the same decisions again. It seems to me hard to fault a decision to submit yourself to people who you believe know better than you do. That doesn't make a cold December morning -- the end of the sabbatical -- any less discouraging and depressing.
I've written a lot of words this sabbatical, on experimental subjects and in experimental forms, including some fiction. Virtually none of it is publishable. But I've learned a lot. I did a lot of speaking. I saw two of my tutees get their PhDs. I did a reasonable job teaching the visiting students from Houghton College. I've written some articles for publication. I had some good spells on the blog. I finally got my website annex up and running. Biggest personal accomplishment was probably being organized and consistent enough to initiate and carry through the podcast of Jesus Asked. It's a big deal for me to manage to keep ahead of schedule with the recording and on schedule with the publication of weekly episodes. It's run from early August all the way to this week's final episode that I did the finishing XML programming for before breakfast today. It's been a slog but a thrill to be able to give it away!
Anyway; it's time for Christmas break. I doubt I'll be posting on the blog till second week in January or so. But I hope all you who read this have a great Christmas. Bye for now. |
| Judgment and Tom Wright's Jesus | | Date Created: Dec 18, 2006, 10:33 AM |
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I'm writing a set of short devotions for Scripture Union on a chunk of Luke's gospel. And the passage I was working on early this morning is one that Wright has to dance around for his reimagined ministry of Jesus. It's the sending out of the 70 (or 72, in some manuscripts). You remember: if the boys stop at a village that welcomes them, that's cool, but if they stop at a village that isn't hospitable, they're to do the dusty Hokey-Cokey at it. Then in verses 12-15, Jesus goes into a tirade about judgment falling upon villages that reject the disciples. "Woe to you, Korazin etc!"
For NT Wright's Jesus, who knows nothing about a Final Judgment at the end of space/time, these judgments are coming right away and will "take the form of Roman invasion and destruction." (Wright, Luke for Everyone, London: SPCK, 122.) In other words, for those villages, the cost of rejecting the disciples was the Jewish Wars. It'd be ingenious if only it fit the text a little better.
(1) The whole thrust of the passage is that some villages will accept and other villages will be punished for not accepting. But the Romans would not have and did not hit the named towns harder than any other.
(2) The judgment that Jesus envisions happens on "that day" (v 12) and at "the judgment" (v 14). Read the text, even in Wright's own translation: it's clear he envisions not only Galilean towns like Bethsaida and Korazin and Capernaum being judged on "that day," but also an ancient city, Sodom (v 12) and foreign cities like Tyre and Sidon (v 13). Jesus clearly has a universal day of judgment in mind, not a limited first-century Roman police action against Judaea and/or Galilee.
(3) It will be clear from the follow-on vv 18-24 that Jesus regarded the disciples' mission as joyously successful. Yet the people of Galilee still got biffed by the Romans. Never mind, guys, you still did really really well. |
- Thinking > Judgment and Tom Wright's Jesus
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| some slowcore for free | | Date Created: Dec 08, 2006, 10:16 AM |
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Slowcore band "Milhaven" have released their "bars closing down" lp and "im wagner" ep as creative commons licenced freeware. I downloaded them via reloda (download the songs and artwork files; the "complete disk zip" files unzipped as empty folders for me).
It's great music to have on while writing (except for the heavily voiced-over "pint of blood"). |
| Dawkins's blind spot | | Date Created: Dec 07, 2006, 09:24 AM |
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As I've already noted, Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion is not receiving much favourable press from anyone. His long-held position is that theology isn't a proper subject worth dialoging with, only ridiculing; no one who is bright and informed can be a believer and shouldn't even be an agnostic.
But even when Dawkins admits there are things he does not know (and he's happy to make such admissions) he assumes that the things he does not know must fall into categories and rules that he does know. He can't seem to conceive of the possibility that we don't know the rules, only that we don't -yet- know the data.
Like Einstein, but for different reasons, if he were 50 years younger, Dawkins's position would have led him to have similarly ridiculed Quantum Physics. "Not enough evidence, Mr Bohr." He needs to read his Kuhn and get to grips with the possibility that someone caught up in a paradigm, as he is, might not recognize evidence as evidence even if it were to rise from the dead and say "Howdy doody!" (Lk 16:27-31, paraphrase mine).
One of the phrases I can still hear JB Torrance repeating in class is "It is the nature of the object that determines the mode of knowing." What mincemeat he'd have made of Dawkins, who assumes that it is our comfortable methods of knowing that confidently determine what is and what is not an object. |
| McKnight on emerging | | Date Created: Dec 06, 2006, 09:41 AM |
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If you're not regularly browsing Scot McKnight's blog, you'd better have a good reason for it. You've probably read something he's written or edited. You may know him as one of the editors of Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels or you may know him as the author of The Jesus Creed. He's also written about 23,487 other books and articles.
Scot is prolific and both thoughtful and insightful. He's also incredibly personable and has no hesitation about entering into personal conversations with readers who have questions. Amazing. (Remember, though, if you write to him: one 't' in Scot.)
I'm singling him out for mention today though because of a post that I'm finding extremely helpful in looking forward to doing a set of evening classes here at London School of Theology with Anna Robbins, Brian Draper and Jason Clark on "Emerging Church". Scot gives his take on what "emerging" is emerging out of and into.
---added later--- unfortunately, due to some scheduling conflicts, it looks like Anna and I won't be contributing. *sigh* |
| free handwriting fonts | | Date Created: Dec 04, 2006, 02:14 PM |
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Amanda thinks everybody's handwriting is beautiful. Amanda doesn't know most of the people I know. But she's got some really great specimens and they're all for free. And if your handwriting is beautiful or at least legible and quirky, she may be interested in collecting you. Have fun!
Amanda's fonts -- follow the links at the bottom of the page. |
| happy thanksgiving weekend! | | Date Created: Nov 24, 2006, 10:23 AM |
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People here in London always ask me, "Did you have a good Thanksgiving? Do you celebrate it over here?" And if by that they mean did we all take the day off of work and school and cook a huge meal, the answer is no. For me, the celebration of the holiday has always had a lot to do with extended family -- I still remember the pattern of our early married life of spending Thanksgiving with one extended family and Christmas with the other. Not being able to do that, for me, would make cooking up turkey and sweet potatoes and so on kind of a hollow celebration.
If they mean did I pause to take time to be thankful to the Lord for my family and friends and blessings, well then the answer is yes.
And last night, Shanese reminded me, we did celebrate like the Pilgrims of old. For we had a feast of foods that were given to us by Indians. They were the wrong sort of Indians, but, hey... a local Indian restaurant was having a half-price sale on take-away meals to celebrate their 10th anniversary.
Blessings to you all this Thanksgiving weekend! |
| Lectionary - Christ the King | | Date Created: Nov 23, 2006, 11:43 AM |
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The Epistle reading for this coming Sunday is Revelation 1:4b-8. The Gospel reading for this coming Sunday is John 18:33-37.
This is a fascinating combination of texts in light of the debate about whether "kingdom of God" really means "kingdom" or whether it means something more like "kingship" or "reign". The Gospel reading from John, especially verse 36, is often taken to mean "my kingly authority is not derived from this world." So, for instance, such authorities as Don "Machinegun" Carson, in his commentary: "Jesus' reign does not have its source or origin in this world." He aligns this with immediate co-text about Jesus' followers not fighting, saying "The kingships of this world protect themselves by force and violence; Jesus' kingship... will not be defended by the world's means." (both quotations from p. 594)
There is nothing wrong with this translation per se. But it is not the only possibility and the alternative fits the larger co-text and the flow of the discussion in the narrative as well or better. I would paraphrase it thus (exaggerating to make the distinction clear): "The sphere in which my kingship is to be applied is not a subsection of this world" (a well-established translation of ek: Jn 7:50 Nicodemus was a subset of the Sanhedrin; Jn 10:26 you don't believe because you are not a subset of the set of my sheep).
This being the case, you can see how the conversation flows. Pilate asks whether he is king of the Jews, Jesus deflects the question about being king, is this your idea or someone else's? Pilate says he's not a Jew (to make such decisions about who's king over the Jewish nation), and the Jewish leaders are not saying good things about Jesus. Jesus then still refuses to answer whether he is a king, but instead comments about whether he is king over the Jews (who are his followers? how do they act?), making it clear that a nation is not what he is king over. From this answer about kingdom, Pilate then comes back with kingship: if you have a kingdom, that implies that you are a king, doesn't it, Jesus? And once again, Jesus deflects the question about kingship.
This is typical of Jesus, for whatever reason. He does talk about kingdom; he does not talk about his own kingly authority or kingship.
The epistle passage, Rev. 1:4-8, admits no ambiguity. "Kingdom" here cannot mean "kingship" or "reign," it must mean "kingdom," for the text says "He has made us to be a kingdom." We are the sphere in which his kingship applies. |
| the parable of bullhorn man | | Date Created: Nov 21, 2006, 11:32 AM |
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Once upon a time there was a would-be writer.... no I mean... there was a guy who stood out out on the street corner in the center of town. He's got a bullhorn and he's reading from the King James. He's got a reasonably acceptable reading voice (which coaching it could maybe turn into a good reading voice) and he honestly loves God's word so very much. One day his publisher ... no I mean ... another Christian on the street comes up to him and says "Look, they're not listening. It's not relevant to them. You've got to talk to people not just at them. Jesus met people where they were at."
So the poor guy decides to try changing his act. Less King James. Instead, as people walk by he looks folks in the eyes and says, "Let's talk about you. Are you going to heaven or hell? Repent! Give up your wicked ways!"
Finally, he stops and thinks, "This still isn't working; I need to change even more radically." So he turns off the bullhorn, right? And he walks up to someone, anyone, and he says, "Forget my agenda and pre-conceived ideas. How can I help you? What are you here for today?" And she says, "I could use some help with clothes shopping, I guess." And he says "What are you looking for and why?" And she tells him and he listens, hard. She needs something smart and professional for a job interview. And she says, "Why do you want to help?" and he says "Because I'm a Christian and that's what we're supposed to do." She replies, "Hmpf. I don't need some Bible changing my life around but I do need a new suit. If you want to help, cool."
So they go together into this big up-market department store and he patiently waits while she tries things on, commenting and suggesting accessories, never talking explicitly about God or even using the word 'thou', only talking clothes. And eventually she buys this suit she feels really happy about and goes off to her interview.
She doesn't get the job. After listening to her, the interviewers think what she really needed was to change her attitude more than she needed to change her clothes and, anyway, the pieces of her outfit all clashed. Bullhorn man had an okayish reading voice and a love for the God, but his taste in clothes was just as bad as hers.
But the news wasn't all bad because the job was a crummy one anyway with a company that made money by selling things to poor people who didn't really need them and exploited its employees and treated them badly, so she never knew it but she would have been unhappier if she had gotten the job.
Not that it mattered because that night the world came to an end.
The End.
Now back to my book proposal and sample chapter. |
| 20-minute test for 'worship' | | Date Created: Nov 16, 2006, 10:29 AM |
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[A guest blog from my friend & colleague Steve Walton. I heard him talking about this and asked if he'd like to blog it. -Conrad]
I've formulated a test for a service or church meeting to test whether it's likely to be Christian: are any of the three members of the Trinity named in the first twenty minutes?
Why this test? Well, it arose from my experience of a number of services over the last couple of years. The move to hand over the first chunk of the meeting or service to the musicians means that their choice of songs becomes critical.
And there are now lots of songs around addressed only to 'you' or which speak only of 'God'. In many of them it's quite unclear who this 'you' or 'God' is, other than being pretty great or reasonably loving. In other words, there is no evidence that these songs are addressing the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who sends his Holy Spirit to indwell his people. Many of them could be sung by Jews, Muslims or (even more scarily) by Buddhists or Hindus without objection. And that means the event, whatever else it is, is not explicitly Christian up to that point.
I have no objection to some songs addressed to 'you' or to 'God', providing it's clear who this one being addressed is. Some clear reference to the way we are brought to God only through the death and resurrection of Jesus and by the Spirit's action in our lives would make it clear - but that's what's missing in so many of these songs.
Of course, if you use a good Christian liturgy, such songs can be placed in an explicitly trinitarian liturgical context. But then, I'm an Anglican priest, and I would say that, wouldn't I?
- Steve Walton |
| forwarding e-mails | | Date Created: Nov 14, 2006, 07:01 AM |
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This weekend, someone I love very much forwarded an e-mail message she'd received. It was about the modesty of true heroes. It told of great valor during war-time as displayed in particular by two men who were famous to American baby-boomers as children's TV presenters.
The stories were touching, even inspirational.
They were also untrue.
A little research and I found out. The guy who was supposed to have distinguished himself at the WW2 Battle for Iwo Jima had, in fact, not made it into active combat service by that time. And the other, supposedly a special ops Navy 'Seal', had never even served in the military at all.
Touching, but fiction. It occurred to me that this is how non-believers like Richard Dawkins regard the gospel. Touching, inspirational, but lies. It occurred to me that I've sometimes been complicit in this -- I've got enough postmodern attitude that I can sometimes make it sound as though what's really most important is the power of story. Although I believe with all my heart & mind that the Story is true, I can play down the importance of that. But, it's crucial, of course. A powerful and touching story about a god isn't good enough.
I've also resolved not to forward such e-mails myself without checking the facts. If the world can accuse me of sending out touching but verifiable false, stories about Captain Kangaroo -- if I'm that kind of person -- why should they believe my stories about Jesus, who is much harder to verify historically?
Christians need to have the reputation of being people who check things out before repeating them, not the reputation of being gullible conduits. |
| Lectionary : Proper 27 (epistle) | | Date Created: Nov 09, 2006, 11:31 AM |
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The Gospel reading for this coming Sunday is Mark 12:38-44. And the Epistle is Hebrews 9:24-28.
The commentaries tell us that the author of Hebrews has constructed this huge analogy between Jesus who is at once both the High Priest and the sacrifice. That's good commentary-speak, but I think it's misleading. I think it's probably truer to say that the author of Hebrews is making clear the huge analogy that God has created. From our human perspective, it may look as though Christianity was trying to find ways to tie itself in with the traditional, struggling to find ways to rationalize what happened in their time with the Scriptures that they'd been handed down. One frequently reads passages in the secondary literature about the strands of thought within Judaism that were available -- almost as raw material -- for the Christians to create their theology out of.
This scholarly cause-and-effect model misses something basic about God. He's outside of time. I don't believe that the Exodus or the High Priesthood or the Isaianic prophecies were constraints upon Jesus. They are not certainties and Jesus' life and ministry dependent upon them. Chronologically, they may have been prior, but in the eternal mind of God, I believe it is Jesus' mission on Planet Earth that is fundamental. It is in Jesus that the fulness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell. Insofar as the prophets were writing about the implications of the mind of God on the realities of their day, they were writing about Jesus and what he was to accomplish. They describe him in his authentic freedom; he is not constrained by their sequentially prior ideas, rather they are constrained in what they write by the eternal truth of him.
Thus, the author of Hebrews is not cleverly bringing together two things that are dislike each other when he writes about Jesus and the Old Testament routines for relationship with God. He is not making an imaginative creative leap. He is artfully describing a true and rich connection that he has discovered. But he's discovered it because it was there all along. The God who sacrificed himself in Jesus Christ is the God who set up the Hebrew nation.
When you read Wright or Perriman or listen to Bell, you could think that God's business in Scripture was all about the Now -- using apocalyptic or cosmic language with the purpose of investing the current moment, any moment, with eternal significance: Now is important in its own right, and the language of eternity is a way of talking about the importance of now. I don't think you get there from reading Scripture. Instead, the picture seems to be that we should use the now in the service of what is eternal. Part of the reason that the now is significant is that what we do now will determine what we are in the forever. It isn't that God wants to teach us about our neighborhood and uses the language of eternity to do so. Instead, God uses the stuff of our local space-time to teach us about things outside of space-time that we wouldn't otherwise be able to grasp. |
| Lectionary : Proper 27 (gospel) | | Date Created: Nov 07, 2006, 12:53 PM |
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The Gospel reading for this coming Sunday is Mark 12:38-44. And the Epistle is Hebrews 9:24-28.
And both are extremely good remedies for some trendy but wrong teaching going around these days. In the Gospel, Jesus shows not only his attitude toward giving, but also his attitude toward the Temple in his day. In order to cohere, Wright's system requires a Jesus who does not cleanse the outer Temple courtyards of businesspeople as in the text of the Gospel, but who judges the business of the inner Temple, its priesthood and reason for existing. But this passage makes clear that the argument in his lifetime was not with the Temple but with the hypocrisy of the synagogue. An impoverished woman has somehow been made to feel as though she should give the very little she had to the Temple -- that the Temple was there for her to give to rather than to give to her.
Now you or I if we'd been there would probably -- and Tom Wright's Jesus, if he existed would certainly -- have condemned the Sadducees and Temple in much the same way that the real Jesus often condemned the Pharisees. You have taken the poor and made them twice as worse off! You have preyed on the... blah blah blah. Jesus does not do this. A modern Jesus in line with our ways of thinking might well have prevented the woman from donating her money. A modern Jesus might well have felt sorry for the poor deluded woman. Instead Jesus praises her. Usually his praise is reserved for someone who places extraordinary trust in himself or extraordinary trust in God. Here he praises someone who places extraordinary trust in the Temple. Until his death, it remains the way that God himself ordained that his people approach him.
Look at verse 40 in the Gospel reading. Here he does actually condemn those who "devour widow's houses." Is he talking about the Temple or the Sadducees? No. He's talking about the Pharisees and the synagogues! He is in Jerusalem, about to be killed by Sadducees led by the High Priest and other Temple officials (though the Pharisees were in there too) and yet, even in the next story, Mark 13, which does concern the coming destruction of the Temple, there is not the slightest hint in the actual text that this is God's anger with the Temple itself. Those things that the Lord is said to be actively doing, during all the times spoken about, are positive: giving you the words to speak, creating the world, cutting short the suffering, coming in the clouds and sending his angels to gather the elect back together from the very ends of the earth.
I'll write a little about the epistle reading tomorrow. In it it's clear that, yes, Christians are to regard the Temple as having been fulfilled and pointing away from itself now. But that in the light of Jesus' death and ascension. And even then, not because it was evil but because it was a pointer. |
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