The inter-semester break has gotten off to a good start, even though I am still having sleeping problems. I have plenty of ways to keep myself occupied and have even succeeded in getting some work done. The last few days have involved a lot of cooking. We have entertained guests for the last four evenings and have cooked an amazing amount of food.
Yesterday was particularly enjoyable. My friend Hannah and I decided to try to cook a proper Chinese meal. We began the day at 10 o’clock in the morning and travelled to Dundee to look for ingredients in the Chinese supermarket. Having returned to St. Andrews, the early afternoon was taken up with looking for extra ingredients and things for the meal in various stores in town. In the mid-afternoon we started cooking and cooked solidly until just past 7pm. We made dim-sum dumplings, spring rolls, long soup, chow mein, egg-fried rice, boiled rice, Chinese sausages with pak choi (I am not sure if there is any left, but if there is, I might try to make some kimchi) and a number of other dishes. The meal was very tasty, but it was the cooking that was the real experience. I had never attempted cooking a Chinese meal before, but it is definitely something that I want to try again.
Following the meal we watched Good Bye Lenin!, a superb film. I first watched it with Jonathan and Monika over a year ago, but was pleased to have the opportunity to see it again.
I got off to a slow start today, but was able to get some reading done, an hour or more of Hebrew revision, a little Chinese and Greek, some knitting and some tidying of the house. I also managed to organize my room, which is no mean achievement. The following are some miscellaneous links that some of you might find interesting:
I met Richard Mouw in the Netherlands a couple of summers back and had a couple of great conversations with him. Now he is blogging.
Do you want to know ways to use your time and resources more effectively? Lifehacker is a good place to start. Thanks to John H for alerting me to this site.
What St. Muller Really Says
Sharing Jon’s frustration with the way that Muller is frequently used as a ‘conversation stopper’ (yes, I have read a number of his books) I am very pleased to see this post. I would also recommend that you read Joel’s older post addressing the reading of Reformed history put forward by Muller and others. Both Joel and Jon make what I believe to be a very important point about how the ease with which historians like Muller separate form and content can lead them to downplay significant developments within the tradition. I find Muller’s arguments more or less convincing in most respects. However, this has always been a niggling concern in the back of my mind, which has led me to be less than completely satisfied with the conclusions reached by Muller. It would be great to see others build on the work of historians like Muller, whilst recognizing a closer bond between form and content.
The Puritanboard is like those websites which have collections of videos of spectacular crashes, pratfalls, stupid stunts going wrong, accidents with fireworks and the like. However, the clever people on the Puritanboard struck on the innovative idea of trying to do the same thing with theology. Boy, does it work! Go to the Puritanboard and you will see theological paradigms drive full-force into walls of logic. You will see the dashing around of headless chickens. You will theologies so freakish that the Barnums of the world would be green with envy.
Whilst I will admit that John Robbins’ Trinity Foundation website is more consistent in this respect, one has to respect those people on the Puritanboard who, day after day, produce ribtickling material that has us creasing up with laughter. At the moment, there is the theological equivalent of a multiple car pile-up in progress. Just when I thought that it couldn’t get any better, C. Matthew McMahon went ahead and posted this. Brilliant, simply brilliant!
Joel has tagged me for the important contemporary theological works meme. Most of the works that I would have chosen have already been mentioned. The following are not the works that I deem to be the three most important of the last 25 years, by any means. However, I believe that they are not unworthy of mention on a list of such books.
Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (1981 — this just squeaks in)
The author of this book is a Jewish, rather than a Christian, thinker. Furthermore, Alter writes more as a literary than as a theological person. However, I believe that Alter’s groundbreaking work is worthy of inclusion. In reading the Bible as a work of literature and challenging theologians to develop literary sensibilities, Alter’s work has been of great significance for many students of Scripture. A truly Christian reading of Scripture must go far beyond reading the Bible as literature and must also radically question this basic claim (surely the Scriptures are a very different sort of thing from those works which we usually think of when we say ‘literature’), but Alter’s work still has many important lessons to teach us.
Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1—4:11 (1983)
Hays’ Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul has already been listed by Joel. I would add this book to the list, not primarily for Hays’ argument for a subjective genitive reading of pistis Iesou Christou, but for the use that the book makes of the category of narrative for understanding the work of Paul. This work is truly of seminal significance. Doctoral dissertations that have received the attention that this work has are extremely uncommon. Hays’ work gave impetus to a move towards narrative on the part of Pauline scholarship and its effects remain with us to this day.
Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (1999)
The ascension of Christ has is in many ways been a neglected doctrine in the modern history of the Church. Farrow’s book reclaims this doctrine as one of great significance for the Church’s theological reflection. For this, and the high quality of its content, I believe that this book deserves its inclusion on a list of the most important works of contemporary theology.
Jon Barlow’s response to Richard Phillips here and to Scott Clark here are very well written. I must say, I am impressed with how temperate Jon’s response to Clark is, given the tone of Clark’s posts in this Puritanboard thread. Even if we leave their tone to one side, the sheer number of misrepresentations and distortions that are present in Clark’s comments is quite astounding.
“Out from us they went out,” — that is, they set out on teaching missions.
“But they were not out from us,” — that is, they had no valid commission from us.
“For if they were out from us they would have remained with us,” — that is, if they had valid commissions from us, they would have remained with us in our true teaching.
“But [this happened] in order that they might be manifest that none of them are out from us.” — that is, their false teaching shows that they were not sent by us.
This seems to me to make far more sense of 1 John 2:19 in its context than those readings that take the verse as working in terms of a visible/invisible Church distinction. This verse is currently being discussed on Lane Keister’s blog.
I have two important exams this week, one tomorrow and one on Saturday. Unfortunately, my revision for both exams has been minimal. I haven’t been feeling too great over the last couple of weeks and over the last few days I have found it hard to focus on my studies. There are so many odd jobs that come to one’s attention when one has to prepare for an exam.
I can’t wait until these exams are over and I can enjoy three weeks off. I hope to spend much of those weeks working on my languages: Hebrew, Greek, French and Chinese. I might even start working on some German. I also look forward to doing some more focused reading and prayer, to learning some Chinese cooking and preparing a few special meals, starting to learn how to ride the unicycle, having a few bicycle rides, finishing the jumper that I am presently knitting (I have found lots of time to knit during my revision period; I record my revision notes into the computer and play them back to myself while I knit), making a video or two, getting back into a couple of games of Civilization IV that I started last term with some friends and playing the Seafarers of Catan expansion pack for the first time.
I also hope that the posting on this blog will improve both in quantity and quality during the break. Finishing my N.T. Wright talks is near the top of my to-do list at the moment.
However, all of this must be put to the back of my mind until Saturday afternoon…
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.
Leithart has been posting some great stuff lately (where does he find the time?), obviously inspired by his reading of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. One of his recent posts ably makes a point that I have often tried to make, with less success.
I and many of my friends have been criticized for our supposed lack theological rigor. It’s meant as an insult. I take it as a compliment.
Rigor has its place. But it’s not the be and end all of theology. A Turretin is necessary for consolidating a Reformation. He could never have started a Reformation.
…
Fresh insights are always un-rigorous. They always come in a flash of intuition, not through brick-by-brick systematization. They always come as a blinding light from heaven, an open door to paradise, a strange warming of the heart. Rigor is always a late-comer. Lack of rigor might be a sign of laziness and falsehood. But it might just as well be a sign of vitality and truth.
Read the complete post here. In my experience, all of my greatest insights have been arrived at in a very un-rigourous fashion. My present theological understanding is the product, not of some sort of rigourous theological calculus, but is closer to that which results from finally ‘seeing’ a Magic Eye picture. Explaining my theological understanding to others can be difficult. In most cases all that you can do is encourage people to keep on looking and try to direct them in the best ways in which to look, in the hope that one day they will ‘see’ it too. This, I appreciate, makes my writing often appear un-rigourous, a pastiche of theological impressionism that could never survive outside of the overly-forgiving atmosphere of the blogosphere. However, I am convinced that if my writing and thinking were characterized chiefly by rigour I would find it hard to convey precisely that which I most want to convey.
Alastair's Adversaria 