The Euphemist

जेविश स्टडीज इससे लिंक alert

2009-07-17T08:25:00.003-05:00

Jewish Studies essay link alert:

The links to my Jewish Studies essays won't work for awhile, until I find a new home for them. I'll keep you posted. A number of pictures in posts also won't work, since they were hosted on my old web hosting service.

My titles are still coming up in an Asian script that I don't recognize. Go figure.

नोर्मल म्य्स्तिसिस्म Revisited

2008-05-17T10:50:00.007-05:00

Normal Mysticism Revisited

This is a reposting of an old post on my old blog. The commenter's exact biographical info has been edited to protect the innocent. Why the title is coming up in Asian characters I have no idea.

This topic relates to the topic of the Jewish "smorgasbord" of ideas concerning God, which I expect to write a short essay on for the Jewish Theology course I'm taking. And it's one of the topics that connected the most with my own Christian faith and experience.

The term "normal mysticism" was coined by someone named Kadushin (if I have it right in my notes), and it's the idea (from their viewpoint) that in many if not most religions "paranormal techniques" are used/needed to get in touch with the divine. But in Judaism normal experiences are a stimulus for awareness of God's presence. So, as the rabbi says in "Fiddler on the Roof" (which movie my prof hates, btw, for reasons I won't get into here) "There's a blessing for everything", and goes on to say blessings for sewing machines, etc. One of my class readings gives the text for a prayer to be said upon relieving oneself in the bathroom. No detail of life is beyond the umbrella of sanctity.

My immediate reaction, of course, is that normal mysticism is a part of Christian faith at its best as well, that the glory of God is present in ordinary, everyday things. I just gave my wife a copy of the book "Hidden Art" by Edith Schaeffer, in which she shows how simple creativity in homemaking can be an expression of faith and devotion. Kathleen Norris, the theologian laureate of South Dakota, writes some good stuff on the topic of God in the ordinary, especially in her book "The Quotidian Mysteries".

I've run into certain Christians over the years who have had an above-average understanding of "normal mysticism". Francis Schaeffer & L'Abri are strong in that area. It was in a Schaeffer study group years ago that I first experienced a certain brand of Christian fellowship that can be hard to find - an almost indescribable blend of conversation on deep subjects with the eating of wholesome foods (the founder of the group was an organic farmer), of singing and praying together, laughing and crying together, of open-hearted love, open sharing, and devotion to the Truth. When one has such an experience one misses it when it's gone - sadly a common experience in Christendom. I've caught glimpses here and there of just how good it can be - not only at L'Abri centers but among a rather wide spectrum of Christians, even among some Lutherans!!!. We caught a glimpse of it recently at the vegetarian cooking seminar at the Seventh-Day Adventist church. We've also experienced it at a coffeehouse and bookshop in Indiana operated by an Eastern Orthodox Christian community. I pray that I can help recreate the experience for the people who call me "pastor".

By the way, the course I'm taking doesn't ignore the contributions of Christians to the topic. An Anglican lady named Evelyn Underhill is credited with defining mysticism as "conscious awareness of the presence of the divine." I see that her writings are available through Eighth Day books.

Sometimes God works through everyday things, sometimes He works through extraordinary (to us) things. If you've experienced "normal mysticism", drop a comment and tell us about it.
posted by Michael at 7:51 AM

5 Comments:
Rich said...
Dear Pastor
You wrote this blog almost 3 years ago but it annoys me as though it were written yesterday. "The term "normal mysticism" was coined by someone named Kadushin (if I have it right in my notes), and it's the idea (from their viewpoint)..."
You are a graduate student in Jewish Studies: His name was MAX Kadushin; if you think it's worth your while to use his ideas at least look up his first name, (if I have it right in my notes) indeed!!! and "it's the idea (from their viewpoint)" !?! Jews are not quaint Micronesians and you are not Margaret Mead. What do you mean their viewpoint? Didn't Max's universality strike a chord with you, or did you think you discovered the relevance of Jewish thought on your own... And most people do prefer the Fiddler play to the movie. Other than that I'm sure you are charming at cocktail parties.
Rabbi Richard
Graduate, JTSA

9:48 PM
Michael said...
Dear Rabbi Richard,

Thank you for your comment on this post. Your comments deserve a thoughtful, detailed response.

Three significant points I gather from your comments. Let me know if I understand you correctly, and if I’ve missed anything else you’re trying to tell me:

1. You’re saying that as a Jewish Studies graduate student, I’m responsible as a blogger to display a higher level of understanding than I showed when I commented about Rabbi Max Kadushin without remembering his first name or very much else about him. And to do less is careless and/or inconsiderate.

The point is well taken. I once thought it might be a rewarding experience to document/share my learning experience by blogging about it. Hence, posts like “Normal Mysticism” in which I write about some of my first thoughts when I encounter a new idea for the first time. I thought a blog might be an acceptable place to share half-baked ideas in hopes that they will become fully baked someday. But I’ve found out in more than one way that I was wrong. First of all, my little blog has been largely ignored. I’ve read somewhere that successful blogs generally give the reader uniquely valuable information, or are exceptionally entertaining (it probably doesn’t surprise you that I don’t remember the exact quote, nor the first or last name of the person who said it), and I’m not so vain as to imagine that my attempts at blogging have either helped or entertained many people. Furthermore I’ve discovered that I simply don’t have time to do justice to blogging. I could probably do a more valuable or entertaining blog if I had the time, but I’ve decided that I’m better off quietly doing my studies and actually learning things, not to mention doing my job and other duties. So if you look at my blog (which I continued at the address euphemist.blogspot.com), you’ll see that as of late I really don’t blog anymore, other than every few months when I post about subjects like my dog’s 12th birthday, or other things obviously of no interest to people who don’t know me personally.

But now, 2 ½ years later, I hear from someone who’s been offended. Nothing could be further from my intention. Which brings me to the next thing I hear you saying:

2. That in my post I’m treating Jewish people in a condescending way, like “quaint” specimens to be studied.

Could you please explain to me more how I have done this? In reply to your question, “What do you mean their viewpoint?” I think you may have misunderstood the antecedent of the pronoun “their.” (I admit I didn’t help matters by putting the antecedent after the pronoun.) “Their” refers back not to the Jews or to Judaism, but to “many if not most religions.” All I meant by “from their viewpoint” is that I was contrasting the viewpoint of “many if not most religions” with that of Judaism. I was trying to summarize what I understood from the course lectures in “Jewish Theology”, that Normal Mysticism in Judaism contrasted sharply with unusual and extraordinary measures taken in many religions in order to get in touch with the Divine. Have I misunderstood or misrepresented Max Kadushin’s views? Would he disagree with this contrast between Judaism and “many if not most religions?” Is that what you mean by my missing “Max’s universality?”

What did I say that suggests that I think I’ve “discovered the relevance of Jewish thought on my own?” I wouldn’t claim that any more than I’d claim that Columbus (or Leif Erikson) really discovered America. But I would indeed claim that I’m in the process of discovering the relevance of Jewish thought for myself. I was attempting nothing more in this post than to share my own thoughts, half-baked as they may be, upon learning something new. The central assertion of my post is that the concept of Normal Mysticism in Jewish thought seems akin to me to things I’ve experienced in Christian spirituality. By the way, in my opinion there’s a hint of universality in that claim. I’ve known people who would brand me a heretic for suggesting that there could be kinship between Christian and non-Christian religious experiences.

A word to the wise: in your comment “Jews are not quaint Micronesians” you lay yourself open to the charge that you yourself think that Micronesians are “quaint.” I don’t think that’s what you really mean to say. For the record, I don’t think that Jews, Micronesians, or any other people are quaint, and though I’m not an expert on Margaret Mead, I doubt that she did either. I’d rather think that her serious, expert research on Micronesians reflected a high value that she placed upon all people. So do I, but it seems that I didn’t show that in my blog post, so I apologize for my insensitivity. I only ask that you spell out carefully what is offensive about what I’ve said, especially if there are parts of it that I haven’t understood yet. It seems that the offense lies especially in subtleties of language. Even if it seems like it should be painfully obvious, it would be helpful to me if you’d spell out for me what not to say.

3. I hear you saying that I come across like the kind of intellectual dilettante who thinks that he’s an expert because he’s taken an introductory course and enjoys stringing factoids together in a way that dazzles and entertains people in social gatherings, all the while having no real understanding of the subject. “Other than that I'm sure you are charming at cocktail parties.” Ouch. Sounds like you’re saying that I haven’t (a) proven myself capable of any better, or perhaps you think I’m (b) incapable of or (c) uninterested in doing any better than that.

I can accept charge (a). As I’ve said, I’ve already given up my stream-of-consciousness blogging on my Jewish studies experience, and now I have a couple of new good reasons, because I’ve found it’s too easy to cause unintened offense, and it’s too easily misunderstood as an attempt to look like an “expert”, as if I’m trying to say “Hello, I’m the new Margaret Mead!” By the way, there aren’t many cocktail parties where I live in rural South Dakota. To gain a cocktail party-level knowledge of the culture I’m immersed in, one need go no further than “A Prairie Home Companion” or the movie “Fargo.”

The very reason why I’m taking the MSJS program at Spertus is that I don’t want to be a dilettante, just quoting things from reference books or exploiting my beginner’s knowledge to dazzle the 99% of people in my state who know even less about Judaism than I do. I want to gain actual expert-level knowledge in a given field, as Geology Professor Steven Dutch describes in this article: "Self-Appointed Experts" In my case I hope to specialize in the late Biblical “Second Temple” period. But I’m not there yet.

So, in the meantime, I’ll continue to study the foundations of Jewish Studies, in hopes that after toiling and studying in modest obscurity, someday I might pleasantly surprise you and others by erupting forth as someone who has something intelligent to say about the Second Temple period and other things I’ve studied. And I’ll ask you to take me as a serious student and thinker, able to learn from mistakes and listen to correction. And I’ll refrain from any further acts of blogo-dilettantery, especially ones that might treat Jews, Micronesians, or anyone else as “quaint.” Do we have a deal?

One more thing I hear you saying: you have a deep passion for the Jews, Judaism, and Jewish thought, and you don’t want them to be slighted, disrespected, or mistreated in any way, especially by a Jewish Studies student. I hear you. As a Jewish Studies student your toes are the last ones I want to step on, and I apologize. If there’s anything else you believe I need to know on this subject, I’m listening. What if I do find myself at a cocktail party sometime, and someone asks, “What are you learning in Jewish Studies?” How would you have me answer the question in a respectful manner, considering that I know some things but I’m not an expert?

“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” Proverbs 27:17

Sincerely,
Michael

4:23 PM
Michael said...
PS - The more I read the sentence in which I said the "their viewpoint" comment, the more I see how bad a sentence it was, and I don't blame you for not understanding it. I think your saying that Jewish studies deserves better writing than this post, and I agree. I find myself wondering if I should take all this down after a bit. What do you think?

6:41 PM
Rich said...
I should never post late at night
1. Kadushin was a hero of mine when I did religious studies at Yale so that when I actually got to take one of the last courses he taught at JTS I was in 7th heaven, (I was only in my first year and required special permission);
2. After you explained that I got the antecedent of "their" wrong the rest of my post becomes drivel and your response was calmer and more reasoned than I deserved.
Good luck with the studies!!!
Rich

4:11 PM
Michael said...
Thanks very much. You've lifted my spirits and made my day!

As I said, I'll try my best not to write sloppily about Jewish Studies in any venue, including blog posts. One must tread carefully upon sacred ground.

I looked back at my materials for the "Jewish Theology" course and rediscovered that the course readings included two sections from Kadushin's "The Rabbinic Mind", including "Normal Mysticism" and "This Side of Philosophy." I suspect I'll be seeing much more of him, since "The Rabbinic Mind" is also the name of a course I have yet to take at Spertus.

Thanks again! - Michael

7:40 PM

Theological eccentricities meme

2008-04-16T08:21:00.006-05:00

What better way to break my long silence than to respond to the clamoring crowds (that is, two people) who have expressed interest in the "theological eccentricities" that I alluded to a year ago in this post! So, here goes: in this new meme we air any number of eccentric theological ideas or tendencies we may have, things that either go beyond the norm for our particular faith group or for Christianity in general. No particular number - I won't know how many I put down until I'm done with this post.

1. I seem to be the only kid on the block who thinks that the presence of the "second Cainan" in Luke 3:36 is a piece of evidence that the Septuagint reading of Genesis 11:12-13 is correct and preferable to the reading found in the Masoretic text.

2. With regard to the "Filioque" I lean strongly toward the Eastern Christian position, not because I claim a deep understanding of the issues - I don't, and I've seen detailed arguments on both sides that seemed confusing and/or unconvincing to me. But John 15:26 leaves it out, simply saying "... the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of me."

3. Ever since I met a few Coptic Orthodox Christians who had somehow found their way to my church body's small Bible college years ago, I've had a soft spot in my heart for Monophysites (or, apparently more correctly, Miaphysites. Perhaps I'm a closet Miaphysite myself, but I don't know.

4. Now, just to stir up the pot a little, other non-Lutheran churches which have influenced (or at least nudged) my thinking have included the Seventh-Day Adventists (I'm of the school of thought that agrees with Walter Martin that they are a legitimate Christian denomination and not a cult, as some claim). Though I have many disagreements, I respect the interesting brand of internal consistency their doctrines have, and that they have a comprehensive vision of how the Christian faith should shape all of life. Many Christians don't seem to have that kind of vision. I think their doctrine of the Great Controversy is one of their strongest distinctives, and their distinctive form of premillennialism (in which Christ and the saints reign in Heaven during the Millennium while Satan is imprisoned on a desolate Earth) seems at least as valid an option as any other option floating around, so I don't know why I've never heard of any non-Adventists advocating that position (though, come to think of it, one of my seminary professors had a similar position in which Christ reigns from Heaven during the Millennium). Which leads to my next oddity ...

5. I'm not sure what category I fit into with regards to the Last Days. My views either combine or don't quite fit into the usual categories (Amillennial, Premillennial, Postmillennial). Concerning the "Great Tribulation" I thought for years that at least I was clear on being "Post-Trib", but after noticing how many times the Bible repeats "a time, and times, and the dividing of time", "1290 days", 1260 days", etc., I realized that there's something very important about the mid-point of a seven-year period. I don't know if that makes me "Mid-Trib" or not, because I sometimes wonder if "experts" on Biblical eschatology have connected the dots of Bible prophecy in entirely conjectural ways. But I definitely no longer place the "mid-Trib" position on the bottom of the heap, as I once did.

I'm not a Postmillennialist, though I briefly considered it, under the influence of Christian Reconstructionism. The influence I retain from that movement is that I think Christians should be more optimistic about the influence we can have right now. I may be some type of Premillennialist, but not any of the usual kinds. I'm probably technically a Premillennialist because any other view would hold that the two resurrections in Revelation 20:4-6 are different in kind, that is, one physical, one not physical, and I think that strains the text. But, on the other hand, in common with Amillennialists and Postmillennialists, I think it's possible that the "Millennium" is in progress right now because of my next eccentricity:

6. I'm utterly fascinated by the resurrection of some saints mentioned in Matthew 27:52-53. How can such a big thing be mentioned only one place in the Bible? People have speculated over the years about these people. Did they die again? Did they eventually go their way to Heaven? Are they still among us? Nobody knows, since the Bible says nothing more. Going back to Revelation 20, was this event the "First Resurrection", or at least the first stage of the First Resurrection? If so, one could hold a position which has some characteristics of Amillennialism (the Millennium is now) and some of Premillennialism (the Millennium is between two physical resurrections), and that may be my current position.

If indeed there are resurrected humans out and about, could they be some of the "angels" some claim to have seen? In 1987 my Dad and I were rescued from a dangerous situation when a piano we were moving fell out of a pickup in the middle of a 5-way highway intersection. A burly, curly-bearded guy appeared on the scene and singlehandedly lifted the piano back into the pickup, right over the side of the box, showing no evidence of unusual strain, and went on his way. Was he just a guy who worked out a lot, or was he an angel, or was he an Old Testament saint going about doing good deeds? We don't know.

No doubt I have people concerned about how I'm doing. Don't fear, my theology is more coherent than the jumble above may suggest, I've just learned to ask lots of deep questions and to have a high tolerance for ambiguity in the meantime. I guess six is a good number, but don't feel bound by it if you have fewer or more theological eccentricities to share. I'll tag Steve, Sol, and Lars and Phil, and anyone else who wants a go at it, either on your blog or in a comment to this post.

__________________________

UPDATE:

I'll add these while I'm at it:

7. As a whole I believe that churches should behave more conspicuously as care centers or rescue missions, like the Salvation Army, whom I respect very much. In fact, I'd give serious consideration to joining the Salvation Army, except that they don't practice baptism or the Lord's Supper, something I wouldn't be able to deal with.

8. I don't know if this is an eccentricity or just a semi-original idea: I believe many aspects of the personalities of various church bodies and movements can be illustrated (not defined, measured, or quantified) by plotting them on a graph with x and y axes, one axis showing a polarity between orthodoxy and pietism, the other between scholasticism and mysticism. As an example, my church body deliberately tries to be halfway between in the orthodoxy/pietism spectrum, while leaning a bit towards the direction of mysticism.

9. I'm not a Dispensationalist, but I do believe in dispensations. For example, to me it seems clear to me that Romans 5:14 mentions an "Adam to Moses" dispensation, a definite time period in which God was running things in a certain way that changed later.

Moving

2008-01-09T07:03:00.001-06:00

This is a very brief announcement to confirm that after 6 1/2 years of blessing in South Dakota, we are now moving to Minnesota. Sometime within the next few months I may break my relative silence once again to share some piece of timeless wisdom. In the meantime, I have posted my latest Jewish Studies essays, on Modern Judaism, and they may be viewed by clicking the "My Jewish Studies Essays" link on the sidebar.

Choosing my battles (or, "Only the mediocre are always at their best")

2007-09-23T13:03:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time I came upon a blog entitled "Ah Yes, Medical School." The blogger had drawn a following by writing about his ongoing med school experience in an entertaining way. I got the "bright" idea that I could do a sort of stream-of-consciousness blog about my ongoing experience as a Jewish Studies grad student via distance education. In part that is how I envisioned the blog you're reading now. But I haven't posted any such posts for many moons, partly because I found I really didn't have the time to do it justice, and partly because it didn't seem to be drawing any real interest.

Then, the other day, I discovered that my deepest fear had been realized: a Jewish person had been offended by a post. UPDATE 4-26-08: I removed the post, since he had clearly identified himself. I may eventually repost the same post and comments with identities more concealed. A deep point I'm taking to heart from this is, the topic of Jewish Studies is too important for me, as a Jewish Studies student, to treat in a mediocre manner. If I have something to say about it, it has to be something important, written in an excellent manner. Otherwise it's best for me to keep quiet. So in the interest of damage control I've deleted a number of posts on the subject. Most of them drew no apparent interest anyway, and I'm hoping the rabbi who took the time to write doesn't represent a number of others who were also offended but didn't write. But he easily might.

There are those who thrive on conflict, and who might think I should be defending myself more assertively. But I'm simply a thin-skinned person who meant well, and putting out fires caused by unintended offenses is not a battle that I have the time, energy, or stomach to fight. The battle I choose to fight instead is the one to attain excellence in my chosen field, the type of excellence described by Professor Steven Dutch in this interesting and sharply written article. So I'll stick to doing my work, completing my assignments, gathering the expertise to have something excellent to say, and say it excellently. So that's what I'm doing in the long silences between posts. So, in the meantime, watch this space for relatively harmless diversions such as my dog's next birthday or the next meme someone tempts me with. And if I missed something that offends someone needlessly, please let me know.

UPDATE: My respondent lifted my spirits considerably by receiving my response well.

Happy 12th Birthday, Pluto!

2007-08-16T07:48:00.000-05:00

I'm alive and well, though a bit worn, thank you! What better way to return to the blogosphere than to post some new pictures of our favorite dog, Pluto, who is turning 12 right about now, born mid-August 1995 in rural San Antonio, Texas, and has travelled a long way since then. He remains lively and active and is often mistaken for a dog half his age (I hope that's true of me when I get into my 70s, except for the dog part).

About as natural a pose as he's ever struck on-camera.

Humbly and gratefully receiving an ear rub. That's Your's Truly, with
the Town Church in the background.

My Father: October 6, 1930 - May 11, 2007

2007-05-18T04:24:00.000-05:00

"Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints."

- Psalm 116:15

Six Weird Things

2007-04-21T06:47:00.000-05:00

Once again I've fallen off the wagon, as Dave has tempted me with another meme. Six weird things about me? Only six? OK, I'll give it a quick whirl:

1. My historic nickname is Mickey, and I have a dog named Pluto.

2. I've lived most of my life 100 miles or less from North Dakota, including 15 months in residence there, and I absolutely love it. I think North Dakota is one of the world's most underrated places.

3. I have the exact name, both first and last, as a monk 5 years my junior at a Catholic monastery elsewhere in South Dakota. He and I have this uncanny list of similarities:

Both from towns in West Central Minnesota
Both clergy - I'm a Lutheran pastor, he's a recently ordained priest
I'm Lutheran, he's an ex-Lutheran
Both amateur astronomers
Both musicians
Both interested in patristics and the early Church

I have this strange thought that he might be assigned to the Catholic parish in my community someday, in which case we'd have to educate people on how to tell us apart! :O)

4. I like to read atlases like some people read books.

5. When I do read books, I tend to read them from back to front. I usually manage to control this impulse when I read the occasional novel.

6. The parts in my large homebuilt telescope include PVC sewer pipe, Model T speedometer gears, crank wheels from an old dentist's chair, electrical conduit, and pipe fittings.

I thought of airing one or two of my theological eccentricities (nothing heretical, don't worry), but I decided to play it safe.

Tagging? Well, I haven't tagged anyone for awhile, so I'll tag Lars and Phil and see how often they check here to see if I'm still on hiatus. And the rest of you are welcome to share your weirdnesses with the world as well.

My name is Michael, and I'm a meme-aholic

2007-01-17T09:57:00.000-06:00

I should have known that I was only one meme-tagging away from completely losing my resolve to avoid blog posting.
Dave deliberately tempted me with this "Seven Things" meme. As usually, when I'm asked to name "one thing", mymath gets a bit fuzzy.

1. Name a book that you want to share so much that you keep giving away copies:

Well, the book I've given away the most by far is the Bible, but besides that, a couple of books I've given away & had to replace are The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz, a theological novel which is a sort of Lutheran cult classic, and Lost Moon, retitled Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger, a riveting piece of scientific non-fiction storytelling which is the basis of Dave's favorite movie. Too bad I haven't given away any copies of The Discarded Image by CS Lewis, because I like it even better than either of those two.

2. Name a piece of music that changed the way you listen to music:

Being very musically motivated it's hard to narrow it down. Pride (In the Name of Love)isn't my favorite U2 song, but it unlocked U2 for me. I first heard U2 in my freshman year ofcollege, as my roommate had the October and War albums. I didn't like it. It seemed so harsh and bleak. But when The Unforgettable Fire came out, something clicked when I heard Pride, and suddenly it sounded ultra-cool, & I heard their earlier music with new ears. New Year's Day will always be for me the quintessential U2 song.

Red Rain by Peter Gabriel also has had its impact, as have the Six Suites For Unaccompanied Cello by Bach and Piano Concerto #2 by Rachmaninoff. Also, O Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen. Heart of Stone and other deep, spiritually mature songs of Annie Herring have also had their effect.

I know I've missed something, but I had better quit before this list gets too long to have any real meaning.

3. Name a film you can watch again and again without fatigue:

The Two Towers. I seem to be the only kid on the block who likes TTT the best of the three, though of course I like the others just about as much.

4. Name a performer for whom you suspend all disbelief:

Peter Falk comes to mind, but there are certainly others.

5. Name a work of art you’d like to live with:

Raphael's School of Athens. And I'll never forget a quirky piece of art called Hefty Two-Ply which I saw in Minneapolis when I was a teenager. Yes, it was an ultra-realistic white marble sculpture of a full trash bag. Alas, I don't think my wife would appreciate it in our living room.

6. Name a work of fiction which has penetrated your real life:

The Testament by John Grisham is neither a piece of great literature nor my very favorite, but I appreciate the completely non-ironically positive portrayal of a truly noble Christian character, missionary Rachel Porter.

7. Name a punch line that always makes you laugh:

I laughed out loud at the title of Lars' post Portrait of the Novelist As a Young Dork. Unfortunately I couldn't find it to link to it.

I won't obligate anyone (not that anyone's obligated just because I said so anyway), but all are welcome to give it a whirl.

Please Stand By During Comments Moderation

2007-01-05T08:50:00.000-06:00

I'm briefly breaking the aforementioned cessation of posting, in order to point out that I recently instituted comment moderation in an effort to control spam. This may result in occasional delays of comment posting, as there are times when I can't get back to the computer for a period of a few days in order to screen comments and allow legitimate ones to get posted. If this happens to your comment, please be patient and stand by. I'll get to it! Thanks!

Last Post for awhile; Book notes; Confessions of a Francis Schaeffer wannabe; Seasons' Greetings

2006-12-07T07:03:00.000-06:00

Yesterday my new Big Box came, the one with my new Spertus course materials, for "Modern Judaism." It looks interesting. For the third time out of four courses, the course lectures are delivered by Dr. Byron Sherwin, a learned man who mostly seems very serious, but occasionally reminds me a bit of Rodney Dangerfield. The lectures for "Jewish Theology" and "Medieval Judaism" had been delivered in 1994, but the "Modern Judaism" lectures are more recent, from 2002. It'll be interesting to see how he changes in eight years. The final exam questions are more soberly stated - no more essays in which I pose as a professor at the "Spartacus College of Judaica" or try to create a program of spiritual therapy for the renowned actress "Whoopie Schwartzberg".

So, I'm off. And, as I said a few posts ago, I've decided to curtail blog posting while in progress on a course, blogging only during the two-or-so-month turnaround periods between courses. History will decide whether two months at a time was enough for me to turn the blogosphere upside down.

A few ultra-brief notes on stuff I read during the last two months. Lo and behold, our regional library had a copy of The Gospel of Judas. People who read it should know that the actual Gospel of Judas comprises only pages 19-45 of 169 text pages. The rest of the volume consists of "Commentary", including an essay by Rodolphe Kasser explaining the sordid history of mistreatment of Codex Tchacos, the manuscript which contains Judas (after centuries of preservation, it was nearly destroyed by modern mishandling); a survey of this Gnostic gospel's "alternative vision" by Bart Ehrman, a scholar who is coming to rival the "Jesus Seminar" as the human face of newsy developments concerning early Christianity (which is mostly a step in the right direction); and essays by Gregor Wurst on "Irenaeus of Lyon and the Gospel of Judas" and Marvin Meyer on "Judas and the Gnostic Connection".

All I can say briefly is that, for people who are really wondering what things like the Gospel of Judas and other gnostic writings are really about, there's no substitute for reading the real thing, be it Judas or this volume of Four Gnostic Gospels which I recently acquired, or The Complete Gospels (now they'll have to publish an updated edition which includes Judas). People who aren't well-founded in their faith are being shaken by media-driven doubts about the canonical Gospels. I believe that many people (sadly, not all) who give the "other gospels" a fair read will come to discern that the hoopla is about nothing, and that the reason why these books didn't make it into the canon was that they ranged from elitist to banal to just plain weird. And I invite anyone to explain how the last verse of the Gospel of Thomas can be as liberating to women as Dan Brown wants it to be: "Simon Peter said to them, 'Let Mary leave us, because women are not worthy of life.' Jesus said, 'Behold, I shall guide her so as to make her male, that she too may become a living spirit like you men. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven." (Saying 113)

BTW, as Professor James Davila points out, The Gospel of Judas may not be as pro-Judas as the hoopla would suggest, after all.

I also reread parts of Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code by Bart Ehrman. Overall he's a good influence, compared to some of the other sensationalist influences out there (Jesus Seminar, etc.), but it would be even better if he returned to the Christian faith and a higher opinion of the canonical Scriptures. Very readable - he has a way with words - but occasionally can get a little carried away, as reviewers of his other books note here and here (pdf).

I also reread The Real Jesus : The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels by Luke Timothy Johnson, overall a very good critique of the "Jesus Seminar", but a bit technical and out of reach of some of the people who need to read it the most - people who've been swayed by media hoopla.

In other news, I've been musing for a long time about a post I'd like to post, entitled "Confessions of a Francis Schaeffer Wannabe." I don't have time now to do it the way I want to, but here's the kernel of it:

1. I grew up wanting to be Francis Schaeffer. That is, I wanted to be an apologist for the Christian faith who combined deep, serious thinking with the heart of a flower child.

2. After nearly three decades of being influenced by him, I think I should be much further ahead than I am as an apologist, as a clear thinker, as a Christian activist, as a Christian who radiates love and embodies what he called the "Two Contents, Two Realities": Sound Doctrine; Honest Answers to Honest Questions; True Spirituality; The Beauty of Human Relationships.

I have so much more to say about all that, but don't have time now to put it together. But please drop comments and ask questions. Maybe we can talk it out a piece at a time.

So, that's it for a few months. I won't be posting until at least after Easter, maybe longer. But I will gladly interact with comments (hint, hint). Meanwhile, here's our beloved dog Pluto wishing you a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Blessed Lent, and Joyous Easter on our behalf!

The Euphemist: Emerging World Leader!

2006-12-01T06:00:00.000-06:00

At www.myheritage.com there's a fun, though perhaps only semi-reliable utility with which you can determine who among the world's celebrities resembles you the most. H/T to Lars on this one, and I'm sorry this turned out "better" for me than for you (then again, don't be too sure).

Are you ready? Click for results, including a rare glimpse of "Yours Truly"

IMHO the resemblance to Emperor Akihito & New Zealand PM Helen Clark isn't a bad match! Give either one of them a silvery beard and serious confusion could result. The others, well, they're a bit more remote.

But what I find fascinating is that my celebrity lookalikes include an emperor, a prime minister, and a vice president. Could there be world dominance awaiting me in my future career?

Bowdlerization, 21st Century style

2006-11-26T20:55:00.000-06:00

This evening I was flipping through stations, as I occasionally do when driving alone, and an Oldies station, to my surprise, was playing Money For Nothing by Dire Straits (I didn't remember that station playing anything newer than the 70s before). I have a hard time resisting the urge to assist Sting on his harmony vocals.

Then came the little surprise. The line came in which the appliance-moving protagonist points out "that little [practitioner of an alternative lifestyle] with the earring and the makeup...", but somehow it didn't sound the same. Sure enough, when the same word came up again, it had been electronically garbled so, to my ears, it sounded roughly like "fed-huff" as pronounced by some patron of the cantina in Mos Eisley (you know, the one in which Han shot first, ehem).

That little fed-huff has his own jet airplane
That little fed-huff is a millionaire

Nothing else was changed, of course. Certainly not the parts in which the protagonist is lusting after the "easy easy chicks for free." Just the parts which don't fit with today's ethic.

I suppose there are much better songs to sing along with anyway.

At last, I know what I am ...

2006-11-24T23:41:00.000-06:00

My Belief-O-Matic results:

1. Orthodox Quaker (100%)
2. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (94%)
3. Eastern Orthodox (93%)
4. Roman Catholic (93%)
5. Seventh Day Adventist (87%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (70%)
7. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (66%)
8. Orthodox Judaism (62%)
9. Islam (57%)
10. Hinduism (55%)
11. Liberal Quakers (53%)
12. Sikhism (50%)
13. Bahá'í Faith (50%)
14. Jehovah's Witness (45%)
15. Unitarian Universalism (41%)
16. Jainism (39%)
17. Theravada Buddhism (39%)
18. Mahayana Buddhism (39%)
19. Reform Judaism (39%)
20. Neo-Pagan (30%)
21. New Age (23%)
22. Taoism (23%)
23. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (23%)
24. Secular Humanism (19%)
25. Scientology (18%)
26. Nontheist (18%)
27. New Thought (14%)

Hmmm ... My big question is, what key issue makes me an "Orthodox Quaker" instead of of a "Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant", which is a half-way (but only half) accurate description of my actual affiliation? Aha! It must have been the questions about social justice and the environment. My working theory is that an Orthodox Quaker is the closest thing this quiz offers to a "Crunchy Conservative" or a "Hippie Christian".

Welcome to Blogger, Dave

2006-11-19T07:21:00.000-06:00

David Holford of David's Daily Diversions, one of the only two blogs I actually read every day, appears to have suffered a blogo-injustice and is no longer available at his previous address. Please show your support by reading his blog here.

The "argument from uniqueness" - quotes by Kaufmann

2006-11-02T09:52:00.000-06:00

A recent post at Brandywine Books turned into an extended discussion of arguments against the reliability of the Bible set forth by Thomas Paine in his work, The Age of Reason.

About the time the discussion seemed to be coming to an end, I said I would offer a few "choice quotes" from Jewish Bible scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann, which in my opinion lend support to what I call the "argument from uniqueness" - that the utter uniqueness of the basic nature of biblical faith is a piece of evidence for its truth. I'm not calling it a "proof", just a piece of evidence. Certainly one could propose many theories to explain the rise of a religion uniquely different from all the religions of its neighbors. But I would propose that a unique religion suggests a unique origin, such as a real encounter with the Living God. Lots more could be said, but I'll just give you a few quotes I've selected from Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960:

The store of biblical legends lacks the fundamental myth of
paganism: the theogony. All theogonic motifs are similarly
absent. Israel's God has no pedigree, fathers no generations;
he neither inherits nor bequeaths his authority. He does not
die and is not resurrected. He has no sexual qualities or desires
and shows no need of or dependence upon powers outside himself
(pp. 60-61)

Nor is YHWH ever portrayed as world congueror in the cosmogonic
legends of the Bible. There is no biblical parallel to pagan
myths relating the defeat of older gods (or demonic powers) by
younger; no other gods are present in primordial times ...
There is no hint, however, that YHWH's defeat of Rahab, the
dragon, etc. was the beginning of his rule, nor ar his antagonists
portrayed as primordial or divine beings coeval with him. They
are all mentioned explicitly at one time or another as creatures
of and subject to YHWH (Gen. 1:21; Amos 9:3; Pss. 104:26; 148:7).
The battle is not, then between primordial divine powers contending
over world dominion, but between God and certain of his creatures.
(p. 62)

One of the remarkable aspects of the religion of pre-exilic
Israel is that it failed to transmute either its ancient pantheon
or the gods of the nations into demons. It is sometimes asserted
that the pagan gods became angels, appointed over natural phenomena
or patrons of nations ... if biblical angelogy has pagan antecedents,
it has lost every trace of mythological features. No angel has a
sufficient identity to enable us to see in him his pagan original ...
The non-derivative character of Israelite angelology is indicated
by the fact that the names of the angels have no antecedents in the
old Israelite pantheon or among the gods of the antions. (p. 63)

Israelite religion conceived a radically new idea: It did not proclaim
a new chief god, a god who ruled among or over his fellows. It
conceived, for the first time, of a god independent of a primordial
realm, who was the source of all, the demonic included. (p. 66)

... a fundamental difference between the biblical and pagan
conceptions of the temporal process arises. Theogony makes the
birth of the gods part of the eternal, self-operating process of
becoming that governs the universe. Hence the gods-like the rest of
the universe-are subject to a succession of ages (ending frequently
in annihilation) which are beyond their control. The biblical
God, however, is outside of the flux of becoming and change; he
controls times and sets seasons (p. 73)

In which the blogger shamelessly toots his own horn about a recent good grade; Lunar Standstill

2006-10-30T09:03:00.000-06:00

On Saturday my graded exam for "Medieval Judaism" came back, earlier than expected, and with a higher grade than I thought I could realistically hope for - an A! No minus sign after it, even! An A of the 4.0/4.0 type! I've looked back at the grade sheet a few times to make sure I read it right. My favorite part of Dr. Bell's feedback was that the "Dialogue of Medieval Biblical Commentators" was "logically ordered" - on my initial drafts of the same paper and the one on "Medieval Jewish Philosophy" he had commented "nicely organized and argued." That means a lot to me. I place high value on clear logic (making no claim to have followed it consistently myself), and wish to learn to be a good practitioner of it.

It isn't that Dr. Bell gushed embarrassingly over my genius or any such thing - he gave much constructive criticism about how I could have gone further with the analysis here or relied less on secondary sources there. Indeed, I'd have to admit that the Philosophy and "Overview of Medieval Judaism" essays were a bit weak on quotes from primary sources. But I felt especially pleased with the "Biblical Commentators" essay, which was the topic in the course that interested me the most anyway.

On the one hand, I have a sense that other profs I've had at Spertus might have given me a lesser grade for the reasons cited above. On the other hand, may I dare to think that Dr. Bell, in his professional judgment, was accurate to think that the strongest aspects of my essays far outweighed their faults? At any rate, I, of course, have no intention of challenging my grade as it stands. You may read my "prize-winning" essays by following the link on the left sidebar, if you wish.

This means that I will soon be going on to the course in "Modern Judaism", though I'd better take care of a few other things on the home front first before diving in.

On another note, it did seem to me that the Moon has been riding unusually high in the sky sometimes this year, unusually low above the southern horizon other times. You can read all about it here. Ironic that the term is "Lunar Standstill" for a phenomenon which seems to exaggerate one aspect of the moon's apparent movement, but the explanation of the term in the Wikipedia article makes sense.

Big Decision & Big Steps Back In Time

2006-10-09T07:53:00.000-05:00

I've got so many things going on in my world that I've seriously wondered whether it's wise for me to take the time to do this blogging stuff at all. So, I've done some praying about it, on good advice. In fact, let me mention something interesting, possibly worth a whole blog post - over the years, a number of people with Bible names have given me pieces of good, godly advice, some of which I've heeded, and some of which I haven't, but learned that I should have. One of these many Bible-named people is Michael H, former roommate and frequent visitor to this blog, who advised me in so many words, "pray about everything before you do it." I could go on and on about great advice I've gotten, & not always heeded, from people with names like Paul, Lois, Stephen/Steven, Annie (version of Anna), Philip, and so forth.

So, my prayerful decision is not to totally discontinue blogging, but to go on a strict hiatus every time I'm taking a Jewish Studies course. What that means in practice is that I'll be an active "force" in the blogosphere (to put it a bit grandiosely) during the approximately two-month turnaround period between courses, and then crawl under my rock for a period that could be as short as three months or as long as an entire year. This goes along with my other prayerful decision, which is to try to complete my Jewish Studies courses in a substantially shorter time than I've been doing so far. So, that's my decision, and I believe the LORD led me to it.

Now, I'm picking up an open tag from Dave, on a meme called "Big Steps Back In Time." Dave's another one of my Bible-named friends. I don't recall any major pieces of advice from him, but since we're in regular contact via the blogosphere, his golden nugget may still be coming my way.

25 Years Ago I...
Was a junior in high school
Played cello in the HS orchestra and a dinner music group called the "Rainbow Strings"
Thought I was going to be an optometrist

20 Years Ago I...
Was a senior in college
Played in the college orchestra and the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony
Had taken two years of Latin and was in my second year of Greek
Had just experienced a life-changing experience of disappointment of which I will say nothing more

15 Years Ago I...
Had recently graduated from seminary and was in Western Wisconsin taking my second unit of Clinical Pastoral Education, working as a student chaplain at a nursing home and hospital
Re: the above, I was in a 6-month period of time in which I actually lived in a hospital room! People don't believe me when I tell them that ...

10 Years Ago I...
Had just moved from Texas, the site of the first church I pastored, to Indiana, the site of the second church I pastored
Was working a temporary second job as an evaluator of standardized diagnostic tests (I specialized in 10th Grade Reading). I ended up doing that job three times while in Indiana, and it was one of my favorite jobs of all time.
I had recently met the aforementioned Michael H, and was slightly over two months away from meeting my bride-to-be

5 Years Ago I...
Had lived at our present home for two months. At the time I pastored just one church, the "town church".
Had joined a college/community orchestra in the region, the first time in five years that I had played in an orchestra
Was in the midst of a long search for the "perfect" distance learning grad program

2 Years Ago I...
Had been working with both the "town church" and the "country church" for a few months
Was taking the "Jewish Theology" course from Spertus
Had an alarming case of chest pain, which turned out to be only a mild case of acid reflux which was gone after a brief period of treatment. But, to make a long story short, the med exams and treatment I had in October 2004 proved to be a wake-up call that spurred me on to change my physical self-care so as to buy more tomorrows, as the LORD wills. At the time I weighed about 220-225 pounds.

1 Year Ago I...
Started the "Medieval Judaism" course
Weighed 193 pounds (I would creep up to 199 during the ensuing Holiday Sweet Treat season, but managed to keep it below 200)

Yesterday I...

Preached at two churches
Went to the park with my wife and our dog
Assisted in cooking the evening meal, including some wonderful sweet corn grown by another Christian guy named Dave, an organic farmer who was one of the main influences towards me being a "crunchy conservative"

Today I...

Will take my wife to the podiatrist and do a couple of hospital visits
Might try to straighten up my office a little bit
Might also try to clean out the rain gutters & spouts ahead of the possible first snow on Wednesday
Weighed 179 pounds! Woo hoo! The lightest I've been since 1994, and I'm within 10 pounds of my goal!

Tomorrow I...
Do more office & ministry work
Might be doing the aforementioned rain gutter work that might not get done today
Hopefully won't creep back up to 180 again

Hello, world!

2006-10-05T11:51:00.000-05:00

Praise the LORD that I have just completed and mailed my final essays on Medieval Judaism, just on the brink of the deadline, as usual. So this means I'm crawling out from under my rock, & (I hope) will soon be posting a few matters of substance. To all of you who have kept this site somehow getting five or so hits per day, even when my blogging lies dormant, thank you!

Comment Festival Continues!

2006-07-07T06:39:00.000-05:00

It took a month, but my previously announced "comment festival" is under way! Meanwhile, I haven't yet done my "Medieval Judaism" essays (don't worry, I technically have until October, but it would be really, really good to get them done this summer, preferably this month), so it'll be another month of "light posting". But feel free to drop by and leave a comment, question, rebuttal, a picture of your favorite dog or cat, or whatever you are led to do!

My dangerous idea about Genesis 11 LXX; hiatal comment festival

2006-05-25T07:00:00.000-05:00

That time of year has come upon me again, when I need to curtail extra activities and concentrate on my schoolwork. I'm aiming to finish my essays for the "Medieval Judaism" course by the end of June, so I have the task upon me of proving that I've learned something about Medieval Jewish Philosophy (which I found mostly tedious, though with a few interesting highlights - Christian Scholastic thought owes more to it than most people realize); Mysticism (my take on Kabbalah is "Madonna can have it"); Biblical commentary (I much prefer Ibn Ezra over Rashi); Legal & Ethical literature (overall the most interesting part for me, to my total surprise); and liturgy (haven't gotten to that part yet).

So, I wouldn't rule out an occasional post between now and June 30. But I wouldn't count on it, either.

Before I hang it up, I've decided to skip ahead in the Septuagint to a dangerous idea that's been brewing in my mind for over 20 years, ever since I found out about the "Second Cainan". Here's the deal: Here's the typical reading of Genesis 11:11-12, as exemplified by the NIV translation:

And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters. When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah.

But here's the way verses 11-13a read in the Septuagint (Brenton's side margin translation given for convenience):

And Sem lived, after he had begotten Arphaxad, five hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died. And Arphaxad lived a hundred and thirty-five years, and begot Cainan. And Arphaxad lived after he had begotten Cainan, four hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died. And Cainan lived a hundred and thirty years and begot Sala.

So how did that extra guy get in there? Evidently many have simply viewed it as a mistake, as apparently did Irenaeus and Eusebius, but I have a hard time dismissing it because of Luke 3:35-36, ... the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem ... So Luke included the "extra guy" in the geneology of Christ. As a Christian I've long believed the New Testament to be an authoritative guide to the Old Testament, and it seems to me therefore that Luke's Gospel is an authoritative guide to Genesis 11. My "dangerous idea" is that, according to Luke 3:36, the Septuagint preserves a more accurate rendering of Genesis 11:11-12 than the Masoretic text does. Any thoughts?

While we're at it, during my blogging hiatus this month I'll invite one and all to the First Annual Hiatal Comment Festival. Besides being the first known use of the adjective "hiatal" in some other connection besides a hernia, it is an invitation to post a thoughtful, hilarious, or even moderately outrageous comment on anything that somehow relates to this blog. Your goal is to somehow provoke me to come out from under my rock and respond to your comment. Have at it, and "see" you soon!

Great Aunt Judith 1908-2006

2006-05-25T06:41:00.000-05:00

Her funeral is today - it would have been Kenneth & Judith's 68th wedding anniversary (he died in 1994). A delightful Christian lady who continued to be an active learner well into retirement (which was a long time, since she died at 97). She took up painting in her 70s, and I wish I had a scan of one of her landscapes so I could post it. She also is reputed to have been a formidable Scrabble player. I hadn't realized until a few years ago that she was a "West River" girl (in South Dakota, "East River" and "West River" refer to which side of the Missouri you're on - the two halves of the state are quite distinct) who had come to this area as a teacher. She was spotted by a young farmer named Kenneth (my grandfather's younger brother), and the rest is history. She remarked once that she thought there were too many trees in this part of SD, and that she liked things more wide open, like in the West! Being a Minnesota boy myself, born in the deep woods, I think the trees already look a bit sparse in these parts, and seeing it through her eyes takes a bit of effort. She will be missed, but our loss is Heaven's gain.

Jaroslav Pelikan 1923-2006

2006-05-18T14:37:00.000-05:00

I just discovered that church historian and consummate scholar Jaroslav Pelikan passed away five days ago. May his memory be eternal.

Genesis 4 LXX

2006-05-18T07:12:00.000-05:00

Verse 7 is really, really different. In the NIV it reads: (the LORD speaking to Cain) "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." In Brenton's side-margin translation of the LXX, it reads: "Hast thou not sinned if thou hast brought it [the sacrifice] rightly, but not rightly divided it? be still, to thee shall be his submission, and thou shalt rule over him." Hmm.

Unlike in our familiar versions, Cain seems genuinely repentant in verse 13, Kai eipe Kain pros Kyrion ton Theon, meizOn hE aitia mou tou aphethEnai me, "And Cain said to the Lord God, My crime is too great for me to be forgiven." Compare NIV: "My punishment is more than I can bear."

Lamech also seems remarkably remorseful in comparison to our familiar versions. Verse 23: hoti andra apekteina eis trauma emoi, kai neaniskon eis mOlOpa emoi, "I have slain a man to my sorrow and a youth to my grief." Compare NIV: "I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me."

The standard rendering of the Divine Name YHVH seems to be Kyrios ho Theos, hyperliterally "Lord the God", more customarily rendered "The Lord God."

Has Iran declared war on the United States?

2006-05-18T07:02:00.000-05:00

Consider the evidence: Vasalam Ala Man Ataba'al hoda.

This saddens me.

2006-05-17T09:01:00.000-05:00

And with his landmark 64th birthday coming up, too.

Paul McCartney, Wife Blame Media for Split

Genesis 3 LXX

2006-05-17T06:43:00.000-05:00

Two highlights of this chapter in the Septuagint:

Verse 16 (which is Gen. 3:15 in our English versions), the "protogospel". Instead of "bruise", the word tEreO, "watch for, guard" is used; "he shall watch for your head, and you shall watch for his heel."

Verse 21 (20 English), very interesting to note here that Adam named his wife ZOE, "Life". Adam and Zoe. But in 4:1 she is familiarly called Eua, Eve.

In other news, I forgot to mention in my recent travelogue that I had acquired a new Bible on the trip. While stopping by the CTS Bookstore, I found a copy of the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, Pocket Edition. A blocky little volume, 6" high, 4" wide, 2" thick, it requires a large pocket. But I like it. The Hebrew type is remarkably clear considering how small it is, but a magnifying glass is helpful. Yes, I'm finding new homes for 5 or 6 of my other Bibles.

Genesis 2 LXX - Curing a theological pleurisy

2006-05-12T06:17:00.000-05:00

Verse 8: Kai ephyteusen ho Theos paradeison en Edem, "And God planted a garden (or "paradise") east of Eden." Just noting the use of the word "paradise."

Verses 21 & 22 use the word pleura for the word translated "rib" in virtually every English translation. I had been hoping that the Septuagint would answer a question about this text raised by Dr. Sherwin in the "Medieval Judaism" lecture videos. He asserted that "rib" was a mistranslation dating back to St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate, and that it really meant "side", in the sense that the original human was a hermaphroditic being, who was then divided into male and female. The subject evidently is discussed in Rabbinic and Mystical Jewish literature. I get a mental picture of a creature like one of those Hindu idols, only with an extra head as well as extra limbs. Extra other things too.

Thinking the hermaphroditic thing to be a bit odd, and not yet being well-versed in Hebrew, I was eager to see what the Septuagint says, since it predates the Vulgate by a few centuries, and also predates Christianity. The Greek lexicons I have indicate "side" and "rib" as fair translations of pleura. In modern English the word refers to the membrane inside the rib cage which envelopes the lungs, and is the root of the word "pleurisy", an inflammation of the aforementioned membrane. Pleura also occurs five times in the Greek New Testament. In John 19:34 as well as 20:20, 25, and 27, it refers to the side of Jesus pierced by the spear. In Acts 12:7 an angel strikes Peter on the side in order to wake him up.

On the one hand, it seems like it may not have necessarily been a rib that was removed. Maybe it was a whole side of his thorax, or something else that we can't quite picture. On the other hand, the "hermaphrodite theory" wasn't exactly proven either, and I remain skeptical that the writer of Genesis 2 really had such a thing in mind.

It should be clear by now that my slow march through the Septuagint is going to include lots of amateur-level analysis of minutiae. But I'm in search of nuggets of wisdom, and you never know when or where the next stunning, paradigm-shifting revelation is going to turn up. And every word of Scripture is more than worth a careful read.

Free Alaa

2006-05-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

From freealaa.blogspot.com:

As you may have heard by now, Egyptian Blogger Alaa Abdel Fatah has been arrested alongside 10 others while demonstrating in support of the independence of the Judiciary in Egypt and the release of previous demonstrators who were detained 2 weeks earlier. The Police entrapped them, cordoning off their peaceful protest and then proceeded to handpick the demonstrators that they wanted to detain, beat them, and then arrested them.

Alaa and those arrested with him are now arrested for 15 days "pending investigation", which could be renewed indefinitely if the state so wishes. He and the men were sent to the infamous Torah Prison and the girls to the Qanatir prison for the duration. This makes them hardly safe, because stuff that goes on in Egyptian prisons on the hands of the jailors: beatings, sexual assaults, torture of all kinds.

Currently there are about 48 detained, 6 of them are bloggers, and 3 of them are women. The best known is Alaa, which makes him the posterboy of this campaign - but getting them out is equally as important. Egypt has fewer than 830 bloggers all in all, 60 of whom are political and less than 30 are politically active. Now 6 of those are in jail - 20% of all politically active Egyptian bloggers - and amongst them one of Egypt's most highly profiled one

...

Alaa was arrested while protesting to support Egypt’s Judges fight for independence. 2 weeks earlier he had organized a “National Unity” protest to show solidarity with Egypt’s Christians who suffered a sectarian attack on 3 churches on Good Friday. Before that he was one of the few voices that urged calm and peaceful dialogue while the cartoon crisis was hitting its peak. He is a desperately needed voice of moderation and democracy in Egypt, and one of the few flickers of hope in a country whose future seems mire between the crushing rule of the regime and the fanaticism of the Islamist opposition.

googlebombingforalaa

H/T Paleojudaica.com

Genesis 1 LXX

2006-05-10T06:57:00.000-05:00

Verse 6: Kai eipen ho Theos, genEthEtO stereOma en mesO tou ydatos, "And God said, let there be a firmament in midst of the waters." stereOma definitely means a firmament, something strong and solid (e.g. "stereo", "steroids", etc.). The NIV has "expanse", catering to our modern sensibilities of outer space. I suppose some will say that the "firmament" thing shows that this text is hopelessly imbedded in antiquated cosmology. On the other hand, how do we really know that the cosmos isn't somehow bounded by some strong firmament?

Verse 9: Kai eipen o Theos, synachthEto to ydOr to ypokatO tou ouranou eis synagOgEn mian, kai ophthEtO hE xEra, "And God said, let the water beneath the heaven be gathered together into one gathering place, and let the dry land appear." Interesting to picture the waters being gathered into "synagogues."

Verse 27: arsen kai thElu epoiEsen autous, "male and female He created them." This is quoted verbatim from the LXX in Matthew 19:4 and Mark 10:6.

Does anyone out there know the html symbol codes for E, e, O, and o with macrons over them? I'd like to use them for the letters eta and omega.

Invitation to the Septuagint

2006-05-09T06:38:00.000-05:00

So why does a guy like me decide to read an ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament all the way through over the course of a few years, and broadcast his observations to the world? Here's my Top Ten List of reasons:

1. Hey, man, it's the Bible that I'm reading!

2. It's often (but not always) quoted verbatim in the original Greek New Testament.

3. It was the version of the Old Testament Scriptures in most common use among early Greek-speaking Christians.

4. It's one of our best pieces of evidence as to how Greek-speaking Jews in the 3rd-1st centuries before Christ understood the Tanakh (Hebrew Scriptures).

5. It's the perfect way to keep my Greek sharp while also delving deeper into the Hebrew Scriptures and the Second Temple period.

6. Though it's a translation from the original Hebrew, it's possible that parts of it are translated from an older form of the Hebrew text than the manuscripts we have in Hebrew. Thus it's a key piece of evidence in reconstructing the original text.

7. It appeared at a time when the Jews were for the first time interacting on a major scale with the culture and thought forms of the Classical Greek world.

8. It continues to have an important role in some Christian circles today, such as in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

9. I'm itching to do something related to my Second Temple Era studies, even though I have a few more of the preliminaries to finish yet in my program.

10. It's just plain cool! (and it's a better version than The Message ...)

By the way, I lifted the title of this post from this book of the same title which I've not read yet, but this excellent essay by C.S. Lewis points out how reading the originals is superior to reading books about them anyway. So did I plagiarize this post title? I thought of calling it "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed By the Greek Old Testament and Got a Big Fat Greek Life", but I doubt the chick lit industry would have taken much notice.

2,561.9 miles, a few goats, many blessings, zero pounds!

2006-05-02T00:50:00.000-05:00

In the last couple of weeks we went on a journey to my wife's home state of Indiana (sorry I didn't say "hi", Michael H, maybe on the next trip ...) & saw most of her family & a few friends. Here's the obligatory travelogue, prefaced by Holy Week a few days earlier.

April 13: Maundy Thursday, led the second annual Passover Seder, this year at the Town Church. Our seder followed the Haggadah found at Shalom Scripture Studies, a Hebrew-Christian ministry. At almost the last minute I found a few legs of lamb (the Sephardic tradition includes it, the Ashkenazim exclude it) at HyVee. I had earlier asked a lady whose husband raises sheep if they had any lamb on hand, and she said they didn't, but she made this well-intentioned offer: "We have some pork roast in the freezer. We could cook it and just pretend it's lamb." I said "no, thanks" & decided that on some other occasion I might give a tactful, gentle clarification of just how uniquely inappropriate it would be to have pork roast at a seder. It's worse than those ham & cheese bagels, for crying out loud. But the same lady made this wonderful charoseth (recipe from the same website:)

Charoseth
(makes 4 cups)

1 pound chopped apples
1 pound dried raisins
8 ounces pitted dates
2 cups water (or as needed)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Place the apples, raisins, and dates in a bowl with
enough water to cover. Let stand for 1 hour.

Add the sugar and whirl the mixture in a blender, a
few spoonfuls at a time. Or divide the mixture in
thirds and place in a food processor.

Transfer the chopped fruits to a heavy saucepan and
let simmer over low
heat until the fruits are cooked and the liquid
absorbed. It should take about 20 minutes.

Remove from the heat and place in a jar. When cool,
sprinkle with chopped nuts.

YIELD: 16 Servings

There are many recipe variations. Often some wine is used, & one could use honey or another natural sweetener. The seder was a blessing.

April 14: a very simple Good Friday Tenebrae service at the Country Church.

April 16: Celebrating the Resurrection.

Monday, April 17: A few hectic last-minute preparations finally gave way to the beginning of our vacation. We loaded up "Strider" our Ford Ranger (get it?), headed on out and stayed in a camping cabin in Western Iowa.

Tuesday, April 18: Made the happy discovery of the Museum of Religious Arts, which includes a display of prints by child prodigy artist Akiane, who credits her gift to God. I'm collecting bits of evidence here & there that God exists, & I'm adding her gifts to the list. Made our way to another campground in Eastern Iowa.

Wednesday, April 19: An extremely friendly half-grown kitten hanging out at the campground tried to include herself in our luggage. Crossed Illinois & arrived at yet another campground in West Central Indiana.

Thursday, April 20: While leisurely doing laundry at about 9:00 AM, we discovered it was really 10:00 AM! After years of non-conformity, Central Indiana has adopted Daylight Savings Time, just in time to put us to an unexpected rush, because we needed to check out by noon & head out to my wife's parents' home in Fishers, IN. Had a nice time, & stayed at their house that night.

Friday, April 21: Visited with the in-laws, including lunch at Moe's Southwest Grill, where the crew shouts "Welcome to Moe's" every time someone comes in. Then we headed back to the campground, where we stayed the next few nights.

Saturday, April 22: Picked up my wife's sister in South Indianapolis, then the three of of headed to SW Indiana to visit another sister & her two kids. Thought we were running an hour late, but we ended up being exactly on time, because we didn't realize their county's time was an hour earlier! Toured the house, went on a walk and visited a few neighborhood goats.

Sunday, April 23: Blessed through a fine time of worship at a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod church 1/4 mile from my wife's parents' house, then saw one of my wife's brothers & his wife & their two kids, who came down from Fort Wayne. I took a leave for part of the afternoon & went to a relatively short "Agape Vespers" service at an Orthodox Church where my wife was once a member (the 23rd was Pascha or Easter on their calendar), & where friends Michael & Rebecca are very active. This service features the reading of the Gospel lesson in many languages, & I was there to read it in Hebrew (I'll blog later on my humbling first attempt to be a Hebrew lector).

Monday, April 24: Dined with friend Mina, had supper with Michael & Rebecca & their daughter. Last night at campground in Indiana. My wife's family & friends are very nice people, all of them. MEMO TO ALL YOU SINGLES OUT THERE: If you must marry, be sure to marry someone whose friends are truly good people. But if you remain single, you've committed no sin ... regardless of how certain people in your church might make you feel about it ...

Tuesday, April 25: The only day it rained, was sunny by the time we arrived at a hotel in Eastern Iowa.

Wednesday, April 26: Cruised across Iowa. While taking a break at Stuart, Iowa, we saw an intriguing sign that said there was a "Byzantine Style Church." Investigated, & found to our dismay that the building stands in severe disrepair due to a 1995 "hate crime." Read more about it at www.restoreallsaints.org. Returned to the same campground as on the first night of the trip. Fish were literally jumping out of the water (& flopping back in) all evening.

Thursday, April 27: Journeyed home.

Friday, April 28: Retreived Pluto aka "The Dogster" from the doggie hotel (kennel), where he had become a sort of mascot. He was truly overjoyed to see us, & the feeling was mutual. Life is getting back to normal again. I think we had an above-average vacation. Very pleased to step on the scale & find I had gained zero pounds! If I may crow for a moment, I've worked nearly 40 pounds off in the last year & a half, & I'm within 16-17 pounds of my target weight (I had let myself get pretty big). Trips have always been a challenge to the diet, & I didn't want to lose any hard-won ground. But praise the LORD it worked out pretty well this time.

Next post: "Invitation to the Septuagint."

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

2006-04-12T09:40:00.000-05:00

Holy Week is upon us, followed by the celebration of Christ's resurrection, and then we're going to be busy with some special family activities for a couple of weeks, so I thought I'd drop this note to say, "God bless you, and 'see' you in a couple of weeks." Thanks to those who have commented recently, & I hope to get back to some of those subjects. I'm also going to introduce a new recurring subject, as I'm starting to read the Septuagint, and will be sharing occasional reflections on what I read. Meanwhile, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Confessions of a Bible hoarder (answering a meme)

2006-04-05T10:03:00.000-05:00

Dave tagged me with this Bible meme, and he asked for it, because I think I have about 50, and that's after giving about 10 away recently (and I'm intending to find more good homes for a bunch more of them in the near future).

1. How many bibles are in your home?

At least 60, including at least 2 of my wife's and 49-50 of mine that I've accounted for, plus a few I no doubt haven't accounted for, as well as a few copies of the Town Church's NIV pew Bibles a a few copies of the Contemporary English Version that are in my office here in the parsonage, but really belong to the church.

2. What rooms are they in?

Mostly in my office, but a few in various rooms of the house, and a few in the garage, where last summer I unpacked many boxes of books that hadn't seen the light of day since we escaped from Indiana in 1998.

3. What translations do you have?

Here's a numerical breakdown of how many of each version I've accounted for - wish I could tell a few more stories about a few of them, but I'll give you a few highlights. Ones with an * have at least one copy with some or all of the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonicals.

WHOLE BIBLE IN ENGLISH:
New American Standard Bible 4
NIV 2
English Standard Version 1
Amplified Bible 1
NKJV 2
KJV 3
* Douay-Rheims 1
Revised Berkeley 1 (a sadly neglected, underrated version)
American Standard Version 1
Revised English Bible 1
* New American Bible 1
NRSV 1
* RSV 4
Living Bible 1
"The Message" 1 (the lady who bought it for me later felt a little apologetic when she actually read it & found it a bit lacking, an interesting bit of discernment considering she's a Christian scientist)
* "An American Translation" (Smith-Goodspeed) 1
New World Translation (Jehovah's Witnesses) 1 (in spite of the deliberate heretical mistranslations here & there, I'd have to say that overall it's still a better version than "The Message")

WHOLE BIBLE IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE:
* German Bible, Martin Luther's translation 1
Norwegian 1
* French "La Bible De Jerusalem" 1
* Spanish 1

GREEK NEW TESTAMENT:
UBS 4th edition - 1
Nestle-Aland 26th edition - 1
Hodges-Farstad "Majority Text" - 1
Textus Receptus (underlying KJV & NKJV - 1
Westcott-Hort 1
Greek-English interlinear published by the Watchtower in 1942 - 1
(a real find, it's probably the single best book the JWs ever published - and that's probably why they let it go out of print & into obscurity, because it's a little too easily used against them. Also a find because the Greek text, rather than being eclectic, is based squarely upon the 4th Century "B" manuscript, one of the chief witnesses for the "Alexandrian tradition")

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE & ANCIENT VERSION OLD TESTAMENTS:
Hebrew Bible, published in Great Britain 1
* Septuagint, Brenton's Greek-English edition 1

NEW TESTAMENTS OF VARIOUS DESCRIPTIONS:
Malagasy New Testament 1
Japanese-English NT1
Wuest's Expanded Translation 1
KJV at least 1
4 Translation Parallel NT 1
Orthodox Study Bible NT (NKJV) 1
Latin NT (not the Vulgate, I think it was done by Beza or some other Calvinist) 1
"Today's English Version" NT - at least 2
A few Gideon NTs, mostly NKJV

4. Do you have a preference?

Hard to say - I might do a separate post on that question. I tend to use the NIV, ESV, NKJV, NASB, & Amplified the most, which for most people wouldn't be narrowing it down much.

5. Nominate an interesting verse:

"In that day the LORD will whistle for flies from the distant streams of Egypt and for bees from the land of Assyria." Isaiah 7:18, NIV

Tagging Lars & Phil again - you've graciously cooperated before, I promise you I won't hit you with another for awhile, at least. And an open tag for anyone else who wants to make a go at it.

As mentioned above, I'm trying to find good homes for many of these.

Big Sigh of Relief #72

2006-04-03T20:46:00.000-05:00

No, pot was not an ingredient used in the incense burned in the Tabernacle. I trust Prof. Ed Cook to know what he's talking about.

The seriousness of Christ's blood ... and the ludicrous ineptitude of me ...

2006-03-28T06:33:00.000-06:00

A couple of months ago the editor of our denominational magazine honored me with a request to write an article on the subject of how important it is not to soft-pedal the sufferings and the blood of Jesus Christ. So, about a month ago I finally completed the article (at the last possible minute, as usual) and sent it off, feeling like it wasn't quite as good as I hoped it would be.

Yesterday the new issue came out, with my article in it. I read it, and overall was quite pleased, actually. By God's grace it came out better than I thought it had. But then, for the first time, I began to wonder about one certain sentence. I began the article by pointing out the difference between our nicely polished church altars and decorative crosses, and the original crosses and altars of the Bible, which were used for blood sacrifices and brutal executions. Here are the first two sentences of my second paragraph:

But the first altars and the first crosses did not look, or smell, like our altars and crosses. They were soaked with blood, not polished with Lemon Fresh Joy.

I had been especially pleased with the punch of my "Lemon Fresh Joy" reference, but all of a sudden it occurred to me, "Did I get that right? Is Lemon Fresh Joy a furniture polish?" A little bit of research, and my fears were confirmed. Lemon Fresh Joy is dishwashing detergent! A little more reflection, and I realized that Lemon Pledge, I think, is the product reference I was really looking for.

So now I feel a bit sheepish. I suppose there's no harm done, but I imagine my garbled product reference will cause a few bemused head scratchings. It isn't that I'm a guy totally out of touch with dishwashing detergent, as in our home division of labor I happen to be the one who takes care of the dishes. But, Crunchy Conservatives as we are, we use all-natural Shaklee dish soap, and when my wife polishes furniture she uses a hypoallergenic home blend of oil, vinegar and water that she found in an Amish do-it-yourself book.

So it'll be interesting to see if anybody asks me if we really polish our church altars with dishwashing liquid.

Musical adrenaline rush meme

2006-03-25T07:28:00.000-06:00

Sometime I'll resume making posts with deep, thoughtful academic and theological observations related somehow to my academic pursuits. Meanwhile, it's New Meme Time! I can't claim this one is totally original, because I read something akin to it on Ralph the Sacred River awhile back. But here it is: what are your top ten musical adrenaline rushes? They may or may not be exactly co-extensive with your top ten musical pieces, period. They are the ones that give you the biggest sensation of giddiness & make you feel like turning the car stereo all the way up if they should happen to come on. Genre mixing is encouraged. These aren't necessarily in exact order, except that #1 is indeed #1 for me.

10. Alas, this is the one least likely to be heard on the car radio. Years ago an obscure Indianapolis Christian band called "LivingDead" used to do a remarkably catchy, B-52s-ish song called God Cares. I hope they are still doing it, and I wish everyone could hear it.

9. U2's Where the Streets Have No Name has a very memorable guitar intro.

8. The "Amen" at the end of Handel's Messiah, provided that it is done correctly, that is, FAST! The way Dr. Hanson always directed it the several times I was involved in Messiah performances during college. Somehow a tradition has developed of playing it slowly and stodgily, which defuses the giddy wonder of its brilliant counterpoint. Speaking of stodgy traditions ...

7. Bach's Suite #6 for Unaccompanied Cello. Years ago, college orchestra stand partner Jeff H (see "cello reunion" post below) worked up this piece in a spritely, folk-dance-like fashion, which I believe was very true to Bach's original intent. Towards the end of the Praeludium there is a jaw-dropping arpeggio, of which Jeff did a jaw-droppingly good job. Then, he started preparing for grad school auditions (he ended up studying at the Manhattan School of Music), and Dr. Alton taught him a new way to play the piece, the big, fat, stodgy, organ-chord approach that she knew the auditioners would be looking for. Sadly, once he learned it the new way, he couldn't play it the old, spritely way any longer. I wonder if they recorded him doing it the old, correct way. I'll have to ask ...

6. Antonin Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B, another piece performed brilliantly by Jeff during college, and it also has a jaw-dropping arpeggio in the first movement. (Beginning to detect a jaw-dropping arpeggio theme here)

5. Evanescence, Bring Me To Life. I don't listen much to current rock, but this one caught my ear. Something compellingly apocalyptic about their sound, a young woman's crystal-clear, bell-like voice soaring over deep rolling thunder. And I read somewhere that they're Christians. Cool!

4. O Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen, a Christmas choral anthem, one of those pieces that just bring tears to your eyes with simple, sweet beauty.

3. Our Father by Alexander Gretchaninoff, a majestic Russian choral anthem forming a staple of the repertoire of my college choir & similar Lutheran college choirs for decades.

2. Symphony 6, "Pathetique" by Tschaikovsky. A gradual crescendo towards the end of the first movement builds to an amazing fortississimo that actually made the rehearsal and concert halls feel like they were moving when I played it with the local semi-pro symphony during college. (I also tend to like first movements, for some reason. Maybe because I don't like good things to end. I guess the Handel "Amen" above is a notable exception.)

1. Yes, here it is: Piano Concerto #2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Slava! Glory! A lavishly, thickly romantic piece, yet in my opinion it has a deep-seated spiritual core that gives it its real kick. Especially when you're privileged to be sitting in the middle of an orchestra that's playing it, which I've been privileged to do twice. Again, the first movement is my favorite, though the others are great, too.

Tagging Dave, Lars & Phil, Michael H, Naomi, & anyone else who wants a go at it.

The Great Cello Reunion, Part III

2006-03-17T07:00:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a fun blogging day, as a former cello comrade from college happened to find her way here. This e-reunion with an old friend is a big improvement over the cello-related spam I was getting for awhile, though cello-related spam is better than some spam I've received.

Anyway, I'm calling it The Great Cello Reunion, Part III, and I thought I'd share a picture from Part II, which happened in about February 2002. Another former cello comrade named Vance Zuehlsdorff called on the phone out of the blue one day (how he found my number I still don't know) to tell me that he was guest-conducting the Concordia College Orchestra in a piece of his own composition, so I went to the concert and enjoyed his piece very much - a Korngold-like tone poem about an ascent up Denali (AKA Mt. McKinley), which was visible from his home in Eagle River, Alaska. The last I knew, Vance had moved to California where he was hoping to find a place in the movie music industry, but I haven't heard anything more since. Anyway, Vance is in the middle in this picture. The dark-bearded guy is Jeff H, a brilliant cellist who was principal cellist for his entire Concordia Orchestra career (1982-1986), and whose shoes I never did quite fill when I advanced to principal in 1986-87. The guy on the right is me. Jeff & I had both gained weight since college (I'm happy to report that I'm over 20 pounds lighter now than in the picture, and still working on it), but Vance looked exactly the same as I remembered him from college days!.

I don't know why I was leaning over like that. My wife says that it makes me look like a Russian monk known as "St. Seraphim of Sarov":

Click for picture credit

Great Cello Reunion Part One was when I made contact with Dr. Joan Garvin a few years back, my first cello teacher at Concordia and a great influence on me. It's inspiring to see so many of my old comrades still involved in musical pursuits. Kinda makes me think I should practice a little more myself ...

Get GROSSED out!!!!

2006-03-16T07:37:00.000-06:00

In my ongoing campaign for Emancipation From Stuff, I've created a new and inspiring slogan: Get GROSSED out!!! It stands for:

Get
Rid
Of
Some
Stuff
Every
Day.

On Tuesday I brought some old magazines to the local library. I may have slacked off yesterday, but maybe today I'll send Lars a bundle of Norwegian-language books I culled from my library, since I see from an issue of the Georg Sverdrup Society Journal that he knows how to read/translate Norwegian (and I don't, though I can do a convincing/amusing Norsky accent a la "Fargo", but that's not exactly the same thing ... ). Maybe tomorrow I'll finally get rid of some other thing that I don't really need. If nothing else, there's always the trash.

Send us your inspiring personal story of how you got GROSSED out!

Conversation Between Jesus and a Modern-Day Christian

2006-03-15T07:23:00.000-06:00

Interesting, thought-provoking dialogue - h/t to Michael H.

"Strange.. I would have guessed that my followers were those who… follow me."

Orthodox Desert Island Book Meme

2006-03-08T08:09:00.000-06:00

I'm picking up the tag on a meme which Orthodox fried Dave picked up from another Orthodox friend - so I suppose it'll get a bit Lutheranized in my hands. But here's the original meme idea:

"In the vein of Desert Island Discs, which ten specifically Orthodox and/or General Christian books would you take to your desert island ?
We will allow one copy of the bible as well as the ten books."

Dave graciously adjusts it for Protestants like me: "I'll put an open tag on this one as well, including Protestant readers who can ignore the "specifically Orthodox" part of question ..."

As you'll see, as I'm being shipped off to my desert island I'll be petitioning for another rule change, as three of my ten books are also portions of the Bible - but I think my choices make sense. As Michael H has noted here, I have a tendency to bend the rules of memes. Anyway, the way I'm interpreting the meme is "A collection of books of Christian interest, weighted a bit towards Eastern Orthodoxy." And I'm sticking to books I have on hand right now.

Though the NIV isn't necessarily my favorite version, I think my one (English) Bible would be my Concordia Self-Study Bible, a Lutheranized edition of the NIV Study Bible.

Then:
1. The Greek New Testament, ISBN 3438051133. Because if I'm really stuck on a desert island, I want to study the Bible in the original languages.

2. Biblia Hebraica (Hebrew Old Testament), ISBN 0564000299. Ditto.

3. Lancelot Brenton's Greek-English edition of the Septuagint. Very important ancient Greek version of the Old Testament, often quoted verbatim in the New Testament, also seems to be the "official" Old Testament of the Orthodox Church, and includes the Apocrypha.

4. The Apostolic Fathers, ISBN 0801022258.

5. The Seven Ecumenical Councils, ISBN 1565631307. One volume of the encyclopedic 38-volume set of the church fathers, the only volume I happen to own. Because if I'm going to be trying to figure out Orthodoxy on the desert island, I will be focusing on the basic primary texts behind it (applies to the previous entry, too).

6. A Practical Grammar For Classical Hebrew, ISBN 0198154224. So I can finish learning how to read the Hebrew Old Testament.

7. A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, ISBN 0023270705. In case I need a boost with the Greek NT & the Septuagint.

8. Bl. Theophylact's Commentary on Matthew , ISBN 0963518305. An important Orthodox Bible commentator, this 11th Century bishop of Bulgaria is actually mentioned very favorably in the Lutheran confessions, possibly because he sometimes uses Lutheran-friendly phrases such as "grace alone."

9. My Book of Assigned Readings from the course I took on "The Religion of Biblical Israel" at Spertus.

10. In the last minute before being shipped off, I'll have to make a choice between these two: C.S. Lewis' Discarded Image (which I blogged about here, ISBN 052147732; and Spiritual Counsels, by St. John of Kronstadt, ISBN 0913836923. Another of the more Lutheran-compatible Orthodox figures. I realize I just bent the rules of the meme once again, but "I yam what I yam."

For anyone who's packing their bags for their own desert island stay - feel free to purchase any of these fine books through my Amazon.com search box on the left (* shameless attempt to gain a few membership points for purchase of another book for me to leave behind *).

Feel free, one and all, to pick up on this meme, and adjust it if necessary, though I suppose we shouldn't twist it beyond recognition - I think the original Orthodox meme author had an Orthodox purpose behind it.

Hooray for Governor Rounds (& our legislature, too)

2006-03-07T08:55:00.000-06:00

My adopted home of South Dakota has taken a leading position in the battle for the sanctity of life. The battle has just begun, of course.

Governor signs abortion ban

Purpose-Driven blog entry

2006-03-04T07:54:00.000-06:00

Glad to be resurfacing once again. The last month has been a full one. I presided over the funeral of my aunt, and then, without any intervening "breather", our local community was hit by the tragic loss of a teenager who died by his own hand. I was called upon to assist in the aftermath, ranging from "grief counseling" at school to co-presiding at the funeral.

Besides that, the Town Church held a "40 Days of Purpose" seminar, which was well-attended by people from several area churches. The book & seminar have their strong & weak points - I wouldn't want to make it the centerpiece of our Christian education efforts, but I think it can be a useful tool in the hands of a church that's generally well-balanced and discerning in their theology.

One point I appreciated from the Small Group Edition Study Guide was "The first building block for fellowship is authenticity." My personal theory about why certain things such as The Purpose-Driven Life appeal to many is as simple as this: people are looking for opportunities to "get real" and open up about what's really going on in their lives.

We've now begun another 40 days of purpose, namely the Lenten season, which always blesses me. The Ash Wednesday service was at the Country Church this year, and was well-attended considering that a near-blizzard briefly hit later on that evening (right when I was driving home - visibility was alarmingly low, and I would have streamlined the service if I'd realized it was coming - there's a somewhat remote 17-mile stretch between the Country Church & home, and many accidents have happened there). In our Lutheran pietistic tradition we tend to do Ash Wednesday without ashes - maybe we should call it "Clean Wednesday" in parallel to the Orthodox who start Lent with "Clean Monday," but I suspect trying to get everyone to cooperate in a terminology change would be like herding cats or squirrels.

Rick Warren of The Purpose-Driven Life also states that knowing your purpose streamlines your life, since you spend less time doing things that aren't really part of your purpose. I was thinking for awhile, "is blogging part of my purpose? Is it worth the time?" The conclusion I've come to is "yes, I don't have that much time for it, but it's an opportunity to 'be real'." So, I'm not going to be a daily blogger, but every few days or so I'll post something. How's that? And I'm giving up on trying to be too "focused". The most popular blogs seem to be the ones where people unashamedly write for themselves. If there's an audience out there for them, they'll connect.

Speaking of connecting with an audience, I'm truly gratified to see that my blog has generated some interest. According to my Clustrmap I've had an average of 5.87 clicks per day since January 1. The amazing thing is, for half that time I haven't posted a single post. I'm intrigued by the string of big dots stretching from my home in the Heartland over to some point in New York or New England. I know the big dot in Minnesota must be Lars, the one in Indiana must be Michael H, and the one in England is definitely Dave, but I haven't a clue who the others are. I invite everyone out there to say "hi" - you don't have to blow your cover or anything, but I'd like to hear from you. Maybe you could tell me what interests you on this site, and what you'd like to see more of.

Thought for today: would a wandering stocking cap be a peregrine toque?

Aunt Clarice, 1922-2006

2006-01-30T07:50:00.000-06:00

My aunt passed away in Christ early Saturday morning after a life of 83 somewhat difficult years, though I believe her life would appear heroic to those who are discerning enough to value quiet loyalty over outward achievements. I had the privilege of seeing her a couple hours before she died, and will be presiding at the funeral tomorrow. I only wish her only daughter, who lives in North Carolina, had been able to arrive in time before her mother died.

May her memory be eternal.

This, of course, will slow down my already-slow blogging pace of recent days (how can you get slower than "motionless"??)

My "Dangerous Idea"

2006-01-17T09:40:00.000-06:00

Professor Jim Davila of Paleojudaica.com recently responded to a challenge for bibliobloggers to post "their one 'dangerous idea' for biblical studies." Being a biblioblogger wannabe myself (a biblioblogger is basically someone who blogs on the study of biblical and related texts) I thought I would submit my "dangerous idea":

The differentiation between Judaism and Christianity did not begin at the time of Jesus Christ's earthly life or afterward. The parting of ways between Judaism and proto-Christianity was already under way some time before Christ was born.

While attempting to find out if anybody else has conceived of my wild little idea, I learned that a scholar named Gabriele Boccaccini has written of what he calls "Enochic Judaism", apparently a parent community both of Essene Judaism and Christianity, and which parted ways from what he calls "Zadokite" Judaism, which had a closer connection to the Temple. Whether this relates to my "dangerous idea" I really don't know yet, since I haven't yet read Boccaccini. But I'm intrigued. Meanwhile, in my quest to master elementary Hebrew I've just been getting into the "absolute" and "construct" states and pronominal suffixes, so it'll be awhile before I can run with the big dogs of Biblical studies. Maybe by the time I've gathered the tools, someone will have already offered a compelling proof (or rebuttal) of my Dangerous Idea.

I like someone else's Dangerous Idea that "Q is a mirage". The Q Theory really isn't a bad theory. It's a very ingenious way of accounting for the fact that Matthew and Luke have lots of overlap besides the parts they share with Mark. But the Big Reason why people shouldn't be so dogmatic about Q is as simple as this: Nobody's ever found a manuscript of Q. There's an ancient tradition that Matthew is, in fact, the first Gospel written, and a number of scholars have been favorable to that theory lately. There's nothing like a missing primary source to tempt people to fill in the blanks themselves.

Quadratic meme

2006-01-17T08:41:00.000-06:00

I've been tagged for another meme! Yet another chance to tell the world even more about myself than they ever imagined knowing. It's almost like being in the tabloids ...

4 Movies You Could Watch Over and Over

1. Lord of the Rings (all of it)

2. Fantasia 2000 (especially the "Rhapsody In Blue" & "Steadfast Tin Soldier" segments)

3. How Should We Then Live by Francis Schaeffer (nobody said I couldn't include a 10-episode Christian historical documentary, did they?)

4. Star Wars (all of it ... well, most of it, anyway)

4 Places You Have Lived (I've lived in 13 communities in 6 states, so this is just a sampling)

1. Alexandria, Minnesota

2. Minnewaukan, North Dakota

3. Pleasanton, Texas

4. Whitestown, Indiana

4 TV Shows You Love To Watch

1. Star Trek: The Next Generation

2. Keeping Up Appearances

3. Gilligan's Island

4. Jeopardy

(Noone said they needed to be current TV shows - I hardly watch any TV these days)

4 Places You Have Been On Vacation

1. Orlando & Cape Kennedy, Florida

2. Greatham, Hampshire, England (not exactly a vacation, but an extremely memorable trip)

3. Estes Park, Colorado (also not quite a vacation, but a nice trip)

4. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

4 Websites You Visit Daily

(Not sure there are 4 that I visit every day, but here are the 4 most common:

(other than blogs)

1. Yahoo

2. Wikipedia

3. Juno Webmail

4. The Weather Channel

4 Of Your Favorite Foods

1. "Veggie Lovers'" Pizza

2. Pineapple (but not on pizza)

3. Wheat germ patties, from a 7th-Day Adventist cookbook we have

4. Pancakes & Home fries from the little cafe in our tiny town

4 Places You Would Rather Be Right Now

1. Actually, right here in NE South Dakota is just fine.

2. South Texas

3. The Minnesota North Woods

4. In a college library

4 Bloggers You are Tagging

1. Kevin

2. & 3. Lars & Phil

4. Michael H (not sure if you have a blog these days, but feel free to have at it if you do)

4.1 Anyone out there who actually reads this is welcome to have at it.

Far out, man! I'm a crunchy conservative!

2006-01-04T07:48:00.000-06:00

I've just discovered, via this post in "Mere Comments", that there's a name for what I've been for nearly 30 years: a "crunchy conservative." The Mere Comments post references this Sunday Times (London) article which really describes the phenomenon more thoroughly. And I completely relate. Like writer Rod Dreher, I recoil "from a crass conservatism that had no use for conservation and which never saw a field or a forest that it didn’t want to pave over to create a Wal-Mart parking lagoon." I'm a religious traditionalist who has for years conducted my life "in certain ways that might not have been kosher with the right-wing mainstream but that flowed naturally from our conservative moral and religious beliefs."

Not that I radiate crunchiness the way that some people do, but here's where I'm coming from. When I was growing up I was deeply influenced by an interesting Bible study group my family attended. One of the chief leaders was a man named Dave who was (and still is) a career organic vegetable farmer, a conscientious objector during Vietnam, who served briefly as a missionary in Mexico under Wycliffe Bible Translators, who with his wife was a pioneer of home-schooling during the 1970s. He introduced us to Francis Schaeffer, a Christian thinker who visibly cultivated a Christian countercultural image, and whose home in Switzerland became a ministry called "L'Abri", to which a steady stream of young people on the "hippie trail" came to visit during the 1960s. Very conservative in his Bible-believing convictions, Schaeffer wrote a number of books, including Pollution and the Death of Man.

Francis A. Schaeffer - Patron saint of crunchy conservatives?

Years later while living near Indianapolis my crunchy roommate Michael H (a 7th Day Adventist at the time) introduced me to the amazing natural food grocery in Indy's "Broad Ripple" neighborhood, which I continued to visit occasionally after marrying my wife, also a crunchy conservative. Through her I met a whole group of crunchy people who belonged to a church she had belonged to for awhile, who in the words of one young convert were "a group of hippies who never sold out." Their church had made a long journey from being an idiosyncratic sect to embracing the Eastern Orthodox Church, but in the process had retained some rather countercultural ideals, such as a semi-communal lifestyle and yes, lots of natural food. So what I'm saying is, I keep on meeting Christians every so often who combine traditional Christian beliefs with "crunchy" ideals such as taking care of oneself with good food, taking care of one another through community compassion, and taking care of the world through conservation. How did it come to be that these things would seem contradictory? Isn't "conservatism" really about conserving things? Does it make sense that "conservatives" and "conservationists" have somehow been separated into opposing camps? Last March my wife and I attended a natural cooking seminar at the 7th Day Adventist Church. Though I have my differences with the Adventists, I appreciate the fact that (unlike some of us) they actually have a vision of how Christian faith can reshape every detail of life - and parts of the Adventist vision are a bit on the crunchy side - for example, love them wheat germ patties!

Anyway, I'm glad to know that I'm not alone. Are any of you out there "crunchy conservatives? And could someone please pass the scrambled tofu?

The FreeCell challenge and me

2005-12-22T07:02:00.000-06:00

Do any of you PC users out there spend a little too much time playing FreeCell, like me? When I first discovered it in about 2002, I became a quick devotee. It's not only a game, but has the quality of a problem-solving puzzle. I like puzzles. Furthermore, the standard-issue game that comes with Microsoft Windows has 32,000 different deals, each with its own number, so you can go back to the same deal if you didn't solve it the first (or 50th) time. Or you can do them in numerical order. Or you can just go with the random one that the machine picks for you.

For awhile I played lots & lots of it, and I think I got up into about the 300s doing the deals sequentially. Then I remembered that I had a life, and business to attend to. When I enrolled in the Jewish Studies grad program it naturally took over my FreeCell time, and the mental puzzle of my first choice is now my slow quest to master Hebrew. But I do still play the occasional FreeCell game (not to mention the occasional Minesweeper sortie), as it's a fun way to unwind, and the mental exercise is part of my ongoing campaign to avoid Alzheimer's.

These days if I play FreeCell, I just go with the deal the computer randomly gives me, but I usually try to figure out a deal before going on to another. I've been trying to improve my statistics as well - currently I'm up to a modest 45% win ratio, with my longest winning streak at 15, and losing streak of 22 (yeah, I know that's not genius level, but in baseball it wouldn't be bad). But the stats keeper somehow malfunctioned at a convenient time, because recently the computer dealt me Game #1941, and I'm sure I tried it about 25-30 times before I finally gave up and started looking for alternate routes around the obstacle. I started thinking, "is it just me, or is this the hardest deal?" So, I did a Yahoo! Search on "freecell 1941", which yielded 4090 hits. That was reassuring. The most useful link I found was Michael Keller's "Solitaire Laboratory", which has lots of good info on FreeCell, including lists of difficult deals and solutions written in an easy-to-understand notation. On this page Keller says, "From my own experience and reports from other solvers, I would nominate 1941 as the hardest solvable deal among the first 32,000." That was extremely reassuring. It wasn't just me.

That also made me wonder - how much time are people out there spending, playing FreeCell? "My own experience"? The first 32,000? If you spent 5 minutes solving each FreeCell game, you could spend 333 1/3 full eight-hour workdays doing nothing but playing FreeCell! And some of them take much longer than five minutes ... Like #1941 ... Keller also says, "Although there are many harder deals, I suspect that 617 is the first really difficult deal that many players encounter when playing the deals in sequence" and he goes on to say, "The first really hard deal past the first 32,000 deals is probably 35254. I've had seven people ask for a solution or ask whether it is solvable (it is; the next impossible is past 100,000). Danny A. Jones suggests 57148 and 739671 as two of the hardest in the first million." The first million?!? The first million? One million five-minute FreeCell games amounts to nearly 10,417 eight-hour work shifts! Forget about pajama-clad bloggers ... there's more to life than this ...

Merry Christmas from Pluto & us

2005-12-19T09:42:00.000-06:00

Pluto in early 2002

Our dog Pluto is having a special Christmas this year, because it's his first in years as a partially inside dog. He's a well-travelled dog, born in the country just south of San Antonio, Texas, and as far as I know, he still has a sister Blondie and other relatives in South Texas. But he moved with me to Indiana, and then with us to Minnesota and finally to South Dakota. Now 10 years old, he's showing signs of becoming a geriatric dog, though he still has great bursts of energy when rabbits come within his field of view (kinda gives new meaning to the phrase "Energizer Bunny").

He had been strictly an outside dog for the last few years, as there is a rule that dogs aren't allowed inside the parsonage. Alas, a couple of pastors ago, a dog had caused some damage. But this past summer Pluto was so traumatized by thunder and fireworks that we had no choice but to let him come inside and escape from all those strange things going "boom" at him. So we approached the church council about the matter, and by God's grace Pluto is now a very privileged dog! Due to his known good behavior inside, he has a special dispensation to be inside. And it's specific to Pluto. The general no-dogs-allowed rule is still in place, but Pluto has his own special exception. I believe he's the only dog ever mentioned by name in the church minutes.

So he has happily, legally, claimed the special "Pluto place" we made for him in the living room, complete with a big comfy dog pillow for him to sink into. He is a friendly, sincere, usually very sleepy presence in the living room. And he has acquired a taste for biscuits. Lots of biscuits. And ear massages. And he still likes to take his master on walks. Even in the cold. I let him out, and after a few minutes he barks to say "let me in". But sometimes he barks and then just stands out there, as if to say, "come join me on a walk." He's our personal trainer. He keeps us exercising.

So, Merry Christmas from the Euphemist & his wife, & from our dog and fishes, and from our cat who stays with my folks in Minnesota. And remember, "a righteous man hath regard for the life of his beast." (Proverbs 12:10)

C.S. Lewis & understanding one another's spiritual languages

2005-12-19T08:29:00.000-06:00

I just found an interesting quote from C.S. Lewis, in this article:

However, Lewis possessed a strong reason for avoiding the subject of differences among Christians. He recognized that "we must admit that the discussion of these disputed points has no tendency at all to bring an outsider into the Christian fold. . . . Our divisions should never be discussed except in the presence of those who have already come to believe that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is His only Son." What wisdom!

An interesting point for bloggers such as I to consider. I'm not sure that I agree 100% with Lewis, because there are times that our duty to the truth will require us to say things that not all Christians will agree with. But we ought to do it with as much love and gentleness as possible, displaying the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22,23) which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So I agree over 95% with Lewis. Others are out there watching how Christians treat one another, especially on these web sites readable all over the world. I'm not so sure that I did all that well with the post previous to this one. Perhaps I should delete it. What do you think?

James 1:19,20 says, "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires." Many today are crying out and working for greater Christian unity, and I think that's a good pursuit. I wonder, if we only listened more carefully to one another as Christians, if we learned better to understand one another's differing spiritual languages, if we would discover that we're more unified already than we even realize? The above-linked article, in an Eastern Orthodox publication, explores the idea that Lewis was an "anonymous Orthodox" because of affinities with Eastern Orthodox thought. Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia, a well-known British Orthodox leader and writer, is quoted as saying that there are "four significant points of convergence between Lewis and Orthodoxy", including that he was "acutely conscious of the hiddenness of God, of the inexhaustible mystery of the Divine." My only comment about that quote (& I'll leave it at that) is that the hiddenness & mystery of the God who has revealed Himself to us in Christ is something familiar, and not foreign, to my experience as a Christian who happens to be a Lutheran. Indeed, the deep, rich celebration of the mystery of the incarnation is part of what makes my college's Christmas concert such a rich experience. I have no resistance to the idea that Lewis had "points of convergence" with Orthodoxy, but I wonder how many of them are really simply "points of convergence" with the deep Christian faith of Christians from all parts of Christendom?

It was interesting to discover, as I read the above-linked article, that though it's on an Orthodox site, it was written by a Lutheran pastor! Maybe that's what I should do - write articles for publications of different types of Christian churches, and see how long it takes for people to figure out that I'm not "one of them." Awhile back my Town Church hosted a group of Seventh-Day Adventists for refreshments after they had held a graveside service at the local cemetery. I was invited to lead a prayer, and afterwards received some hearty thank-yous, both verbally and in a "thank you" note. In part I think it helped that I knew something about Adventist spiritual language, and I also knew better than to assert that the deceased was now "with God in heaven" in a disembodied existence (which isn't part of their belief system), but rather spoke of the hope of the Resurrection, and mostly just touched upon the deep truths of "mere Christianity" which I held in common with them.

The article also mentions that there have been "well-received" suggestions that "the writings of Lewis might provide a basis for Christian concord." I think that's putting it a bit too strongly. I don't think that any mere human writings (as I dare say he would characterize his own writings) could be the basis for Christian concord. At the "risk" of sounding Protestant, let me suggest that the best writings upon which to build Christian concord are the Old and New Testament Scriptures! But what C.S. Lewis shows us in his writings is an example of how to listen carefully to others and understand other spiritual languages. I think this is part of why so many different kinds of Christians see themselves in him - Orthodox think he was Orthodox, Lutherans think he was Lutheran (I've seen articles with both allegations), and so forth. Remember, his "day job" was as a literature professor - language was his thing, and as I've mentioned earlier, among his best books are ones in which he helps the writer to understand the conceptual language of earlier times periods such as the Medieval period.

So, as Christians let's celebrate the unity in Christ that we already have, and when we do have differences, let's discuss them very carefully and lovingly, keeping in mind that there's a non-Christian audience watching how we treat one another. Let me be the first to admit that I fail in this rather often. And let's be quick to listen and learn one another's spiritual languages - more often than we think, we may be saying the same things in different languages.

Mass defection, Mere Christianity, and The Post That Ate Touchstone

2005-12-13T10:21:00.000-06:00

A lively discussion recently ensued when S.M. Hutchens of Touchstone Magazine blogged on the subject of On "Using the Greek” (Why Evangelicalism is Falling Apart)
His general point is that Evangelicalism as a movement would gain greater coherence if it would make a "general movement away from self-assertion and self-definition towards shutting up and listening to older authorities, a re-entry into the life and mind of the Church as it was before Evangelicalism came along, and will exist when the movement is only a footnote to its history."

Somehow he touched a nerve among his readers, who have left 75 comments to that post, as well as a total of 84 more at follow-up posts here, here (by Russell D. Moore), and here (by James M. Kushiner).

I won't even try to dissect the multiple strands of argument that ensued, but I'll attempt a few highlights - like the Coming of Christ, this post definitely caused the thoughts of many hearts to be revealed (cf. Luke 2:35). Some debated the merits and demerits of "Evangelical bashing" while others discussed the pros and cons of Sola Scriptura. Still others, especially one or two very young female commentators, lamented that a magazine & blog dedicated to "Mere Christianity" had a definite leaning against certain positions such as the ordination of women. Still another thread of discussion concerned lingustic issues concerning the generic use of the word "man". Somehow the Philokalia came into the discussion, and a few who seemed to have read it started quoting Philokalia passages at one another. One young Orthodox man, very knowledgable in Linguistics, made this pronouncement: "... those not yet deep in the bosom of Orthodoxy are warned away from it left and right because in spite of how plain you think the meaning is, it is too rich to be of use to non-Orthodox and can only lead astray. Quite a pity to see Bishop Kallistos' translation available for all and sundry at bookstores." I have a (little-used) copy of the Third Volume on my office shelf, which I may eventually actually read after I've spent years studying the Christian and Jewish thought of earlier centuries. A thought - Bishop Kallistos Ware is himself an Orthodox spiritual elder, and yet by being an editor of a published edition he is (gasp!) a party to the exposure of the Philokalia to "all and sundry" people like me. How is that justified?

One of the Philokalia experts also blamed the alleged errors of a significant "Emergent/Emerging guru" on his being a former "'technical writer,'" that is, a professional dilettante." I don't know much about the "Emerging Church", and this "guru", whoever he is, may indeed be a poor theologian. But if being steeped in the Philokalia results in judging perfectly honorable professions such as technical writing to be inherently amateurish and unworthy of a theologian, then I think I'll find something else to study. (Update: that may have been a bit harsh - I don't mean to imply in any way that study of the Philokalia caused this attitude, only that Christians should do better.)

Well, there's more, but I'll let you discover on your own, if you're so inclined. My understanding of "Mere Comments" is that all are given a place at the discussion table who share in "mere Christianity" in the sense of adherence to the central teachings of Christianity such as the Trinity, Divine/Human natures of Christ, etc. "Mere Christians" in this sense are found in Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox churches alike, but the discussion certainly showed that "mere Christians" aren't "merely mere" - nor should they be.

In other news, this past Sunday I participated in the defection of 7 former Catholics to Lutheranism, in the process of the welcoming of 10 members into the Country Church. All three families represented were part of one extended family, and each had formerly been a Catholic/Lutheran blended family. I suppose Jack T. Chick would applaud, though not for long, because I somehow suspect that Lutheranism isn't his favorite brand of Protestantism. Furthermore, the fact is, I'm one of the very least pugnacious toward Catholicism of anyone in my church body. If someone asks, I'll certainly tell you forthrightly what my differences are with Catholicism - and they are true, significant differences. But to me the thing I found most positive about our recent admission of new members is simply that these are families becoming more active in their faith as families, finding a place where they are spiritually fed through Scripture, sacrament and fellowship, and making use of their spiritual gifts.

The flow hasn't been entirely in one direction, of course. Just this summer two young ladies married into Catholicism, one from the Town Church and one from the Country Church. The mother of the bride from the Country Church herself had been Catholic before marriage. This kind of thing happens all the time these days, and flows in both directions. My main concern is that people are fed with the spiritual food of Scripture. I've heard this indictment from several former Catholics in our churches, that they were never taught the Bible. Of course there are Catholics who do teach the Bible and some Protestants who don't. But it seems to me that even those (Orthodox and Catholics) who would place Tradition alongside Scripture as authorities would have to say that Scripture is the most primary of primary sources (*alert - bait for discussion - we'll see if anyone bites*).

One thing I like about our Town and Country Church environments is that, since the Town Church is the only one in our tiny town, and the Country Church is the only church open within a 12-mile radius, that there gets to be a certain "Village Church" atmosphere in which we're simply the Christian Church in our localities, rather than the "Lutheran as opposed to __________" in town. We are Lutheran of course, and the preaching and teaching that happens conforms to Lutheran teaching. Furthermore, I would welcome the opening of other Christian churches in our localities. Indeed, would that there would be such a revival that we had to open 4-5 new churches just to hold everybody! But we have a little taste of what it would be like if there were no denominations, but just Christian churches. Know what I'm saying?

Ah, yes, the Christmas Concert!

2005-12-05T08:38:00.000-06:00

This last Saturday we headed up to my beloved alma mater to attend the annual Concordia Christmas Concert. It was good, as always. It's always a treat to experience a sea of sacred Christmas music well done by hundreds of young musicians, and one of the trademarks of the Concordia concert is the mural designed by alum liturgical artist David Hetland. During the program various parts of the mural are illuminated to highlight the theme (this year's mural had everything from the Nativity scene to a woman in a wheelchair to an elephant and giraffe), and at times unexpected new designs are brought out of the mural by a change in the color of the lighting.

I wouldn't say that this year's concert was my favorite, though it wasn't at all bad. The 2000 & 2001 concerts were especially stirring, and the 2002 one was nice in a more subdued way. Then we didn't make to the concert again until this year. Usually there are a few more selections of "music from around the world", as well as 2-3 Afro-American spirituals and at least one Russian piece, and I missed those things this year. Oh well, it can't be perfect all the time.

The Christmas concert always brings to mind the one year that I was in it, 1986. My senior year was the first year that Dr. René Clausen was the conductor - perfect timing, because 49-year conductor Paul J. Christiansen (son of F. Melius Christiansen) had never included the orchestra in the Christmas concert, only a brass choir along with the vocal choirs. But Clausen introduced the orchestra, so for one grand year I actually had the opportunity to be in the concert (not that the orchestras didn't have grand concerts of our own, of course).

This concert, and others like it, highlight a great Lutheran choral tradition which is an example of what I call "Lutheranism at its best". Lutheranism isn't always at it's best, of course (But as someone has said, only the mediocre are always at their best ... ) "Lutheranism at its worst" can be narrowly and even willfully ignorant of other spiritual traditions, but happily Lutheranism isn't always at its worst, either! "Lutheranism at its best" is a very open tradition to the best influences from all of christendom and all the world's great cultures. Though Lutheran chorale singing is certainly a key element in the Lutheran choral tradition, another thing that makes it strong is a genius for taking the best of many traditions and internalizing it. For example, a major influence in the "Christiansen style" is Russian choral music, and our lily-white upper-midwestern Scandinavian kids have been singing Afro-American spirituals for many years now, thanks in part to the Christiansens. That's part of why I missed those two things in particular this year, though there was one spiritual.

Clausen has done a good job of putting his own stamp on the concert and the tradition, without uprooting the foundations laid in the past. A ticklish thing, because Paul J. Christiansen had left big footprints during his 49 years as conductor of the Concordia Concert Choir. But Clausen pulled it off. I remember hearing this anecdote from Clausen's first day at his new job, back in 1986: he walked into the rehearsal hall and told the gathered choir, "My name is René Clausen, and I got this job because my name starts with C and ends in -sen! Now we've got lots of work to do, so let's get started ... "

It occurred to me during the concert that things have come full circle, as I was on campus during 1983-1987, and probably at least 90% of the student musicians in the concert were born during those exact years. Ah, yes, the passage of time!

For those with access to USA public broadcasting, watch for broadcasts of the Concordia concert, and ones like it (St. Olaf College, Luther College, Augsburg College, etc.). I highly recommend any of them.

This week in SD; why I do this pastoring thing; angelfish eulogy; medieval Jewish postmodernism in Iraq

2005-12-02T07:25:00.000-06:00

Eastern South Dakota is still in the process of emerging from a crisis. It began on Sunday with freezing drizzle, followed by high winds and snow in the night. About 11:00 AM Monday the power went out, and at first I thought it might be for 3-4 hours (it's happened before in storms), but instead, we went through the entire night and next day without electricity. Soon on Tuesday it became clear that the crisis was regionwide, with over 50,000 without power for that first night (7% of the entire population of our sparsely-populated state). Just as we were settling in for a second dark, cold night of sleeping with eight blankets and our winter coats on, the lights came on again at about 5:35 PM Tuesday. Praise the LORD, and thanks to the hardworking linesmen! We were among the fortunate first 1/5 to get power back. Some localities still are waiting, even very nearby. It's doubtful that we will have worship at the Country Church this Sunday, as they probably won't be reelectrified until next week. Transportation, communication, even the US Mail have been disrupted this week. Big holes in our infrastructure's safety net have been exposed. South Dakotans as a whole are resilient and able to handle a crisis like this, and there have been few casualties, but we've learned how much we take our power, heat, water, etc. for granted.

The other day a 17-year-old girl was tragically killed in an auto accident due to slippery conditions, and I was called into the school yesterday to be available for any grief counseling needs. I ended up visiting with three close friends of the deceased. I mostly just listened to their stories and prayed with them, not feeling like a very sharp theologian. But it reminded me of why I do this pastoring stuff. It has to do with being useful to God. I got into it in a messy sort of way, feeling like I was going to seminary to satisfy the expectations of other people besides myself. I really would have rather been an academic, soaking in a lifetime spent in the college environment, and/or else a sort of rebel disestablishment Christian hippie like Francis Schaeffer. Instead I did the "establishment thing" and became a pastor. I bristle inside whenever I hear someone speaking of pastoral ministry as an "aspiration" or "career", because my experience is that the pastoral call hunted down and killed my life aspirations, rather than fulfilling them. "Pastor Michael" conceals "The Real Michael" from people's field of vision in a way that sometimes makes me feel lonely and misunderstood even when surrounded by people who love and appreciate me. (Not that I'm not willing to claim the honorific side of being a pastor when it makes me a kind of Bigwig - I'm sadly not immune to that temptation) Furthermore, my attempts to leave it behind and flee to Tarshish proved fruitless. I think I know how Jonah felt.

But, you know what, I've made my peace with it. At a personal low point a few years back, while taking a break from pastoral ministry, I found myself useful to God in a grand way when I was asked to preside at my sister's wedding. One thing led to another, and I found myself back in a pulpit again. Thousands of churches need spiritual leadership, and I can't help them all, but by God's grace I'm helping two churches get taken care of. It's funny how well things go considering my shortcomings, but it's all part of God's big joke on the devil, who thought he was so wise and strong (I Corinthians 1:25-31). A teenager at the Country church made a "Reserved for pastor" parking sign in wood shop class - no pastor there was ever honored in that way before. I received an authentic handmade Dakota star quilt from someone in the Town Church because I had baptized her grandson who later died as an infant. As I was leaving my first church in Texas, an older man told me I was the one who "got him on the straight and narrow." It doesn't get better than that.

Back to the crisis in South Dakota. I'm glad that tragedies were few, though it doesn't seem like "few" for the family and friends of the young lady who died. Pray for them. Pray for us.

We had a minor bit of sadness in our home, as our angelfish and two of my corydoras catfish succombed to the severe dip in water temperature. I still have 13 fish who are doing fine (the goldfish are coldwater fish anyway with an unheated tank, and the danios, though "tropicals", were pretty active even when their tank dipped below 50F). I sure feel bad about the angelfish, though. From now on I'll be prepared with a plan to keep the tropical tank from dipping too low - I'd had him for three years, and all indications were that he would live a few more years. Angelfish are among the most intelligent of all fish, and he knew us personally in a way that's beyond most fish, a true "pet." This isn't a picture of "Angey" as my wife called him (hard g as in "Angus"), but he looked much like this:

Goodbye, Angey and friends, we miss you, and we're so sorry. We didn't mean for you to suffer. "A righteous man hath regard for the life of his beast" Proverbs 12:10

Fascinating lecture in my "Medieval Judaism" video last night. Dr. Sherwin was introducing the class to Saadya Gaon (892-942), the first great medieval Jewish philosopher, who was responding to these four schools of thought current in the medieval Islamic world (he lived in what's now Iraq), and which were influencing the thoughts of Jewish people:

1. Materialists: essentially the same as later "empiricists"
2. Relativists: no knowledge of objective truth
3. Eclecticists: if we have no knowledge of objective truth, we therefore suspend judgment and have "no opinion"
4. Agnosticists: we're not able to ask the question "what is truth" because there is no truth

To me options 2,3, and 4, and especially the Eclecticists, seem rather reminiscent of "Postmodernism". As Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, "there is nothing new under the sun." Dr. Sherwin commented that part of what he was trying to illustrate was that "the Middle Ages are not simply then but now", and the class chuckled when he said, "Like the old saying goes, the future is not what it used to be." it seems to me that "Postmodernism" is essentially what Francis Schaeffer was talking about 40 years ago with the "Line of Despair", but that's for another post.

Putting this all in one big post might not have been the brightest. Feel free to read any of my posts in installments, or, as Lemony Snicket might say, feel free to ignore my blog completely and go walk your dog instead. In fact, it looks like our dog wants a walk right now.

More about Lewis

2005-12-02T06:51:00.000-06:00

A recent post at Brandywine Books reminded me of an anecdote I learned about someone I knew during college, who had met C.S. Lewis. A lady called Mrs. King, a professor of music, for many years was principal viola in the local symphony, in which I played cello. She was originally from Belfast, and a very colorful lady. As a young woman she had met C.S. Lewis personally (I don't know if it happened in England or Northern Ireland) when he knocked on her door. For a period of time the young Lewis was fascinated with the pseudoscience of phrenology, and was going door-to-door asking people if they wanted him to read the bumps on their head. She politely refused, but I get the feeling she may have been candid about her low opinion of phrenology (or it may simply have not been a very good pick-up line ...). Somewhere in his writings Lewis mentions that such-and such a thing is as ridiculous as trying to read people's personalities by the bumps on their heads! Mrs. King liked to think that he was thinking of her when he wrote that!

C.S. Lewis is the kind of person that lots of people want a piece of. I have read a piece by an Orthodox writer who argues that he adopted the Eastern Orthodox view of salvation as theosis or "deification". I have read another piece by a Lutheran writer who argues that Lewis had a Lutheran view of salvation. Both articles had evidences to cite in their favor. Conservatives like him, though some of his theological views wouldn't hold up to conservative critique. Many liberals like him, though he doesn't exactly fit that camp either. Lots of different people see themselves in him. He was a flawed human being, who lived through a lot and whose lifestyle didn't always reflect the Christian ideal. Yet I believe he was a man "after God's own heart." He said something to the effect of this (I'll have to track down the exact quote): People in various churches ultimately are brought the closest together as they draw close to Christ. I think this is why so many different people relate to C.S. Lewis - because he himself sought to draw near to Christ. It's as simple as that.

"Two or three witnesses", apologetics, epistemology, primary sources

2005-12-01T13:55:00.000-06:00

Lately I've been reflecting upon an important, recurring theme in Biblical literature, expressed in Deuteronomy 19:15: (Biblical quotes from ESV)

A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.

And in Matthew 18:16:

But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

And in I Timothy 5:19:

Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

There are many other verses on this order as well. There are the two witnesses in Revelation 11:1-3. There are the "three who testify" in I John 5:6ff. This is an important biblical theme, and it seems to me that it has a bearing upon apologetics and epistemology. It seems to me that if someone is attempting to discover a biblical epistemology, one would need to be informed by these verses. There's a claim that there's truth which can be "established" upon the testimony of several witnesses. More than one witness is needed. Two or three are necessary to establish truth. This truth is "established" and can be relied upon.

When I was working on my essays for my first Spertus course, I submitted drafts to the professor for feedback. She strongly emphasized the importance of primary sources such as "the Bible or ANET." Commentaries are important, she said, but interaction with primary sources (witnesses) is essential.

So, what are some examples of "two or three witnesses?" Here are some ideas. What do you think?

Old Testament and New Testament

Four Gospels

The Bible and one's own experience

"Heavens" and "the law of the LORD" (Psalm 19)

The "Book of God's Word" (Scripture) and the "Book of God's Works" (The Universe) (early modern scientists who were Christians, according to Francis Schaeffer in How Should We Then Live)

The Bible and Tradition (Catholic and Orthodox view)

The Bible and the Church

Presuppositionalist and Evidentialist apologetics

Various Christian denominations (considering the myriad denominational divisions, it's interesting how much unity there actually is on certain key issues such as the Trinity, the divine/human natures of Christ, etc.)

Any thoughts, comments, corrections, rebuttals, suggestions?

Have you ever ...

2005-11-28T07:31:00.000-06:00

Everything's all iced up here in the Upper Midwest, and now the snow will be coming. Perfect time for one of these meme things, though I have some serious stuff up my sleeve this week, too. Dave just did this one, which looks fun.

Have you ever...:

Smoked a cigarette or tried it:: I think I've smoked about 5-6 in my life, but not for nearly a decade now. I was curious, but never understood the attraction. I don't think I ever will again, but occasionally the thought crosses my mind of trying one of those "Swisher Sweets" cigars - but I'll probably never really do that, either.

Crashed a friend's car:: No.

Stolen a car:: No.

Been dumped:: As in, by a lady? I don't think so - unless I blocked it out of my memory.

Shoplifted:: No.

Been fired /laid off:: Happy to say I haven't.

Been in a fist fight:: I never send my fists out on a mission they can't complete. If I did, the results would be ludicrous.

Snuck out of your parent's house:: Not that I can recall.

Been arrested:: Not exactly. Once I was detained about 10-15 minutes when I walked out of a McDonald's wearing the same general outfit as a suspect who had reportedly just been intimidating/verbally abusing a woman at that premises.

Gone on a blind date: : Not really, though I think once or twice I was invited to someone's place at the same time as someone else - it definitely looked like our mutual friends were trying to get us to meet each other. It didn't go anywhere.

Lied to a friend:: Yes, but not for a long time.

Skipped school:: Once in 6th Grade I accidentally skipped school, when we'd been at the nearby public library and I got confused about what time it was. I was hanging around on the steps when I suddenly realized that there was over an hour left, and I was supposed to be back at school. I didn't get in trouble, but it was a close one.

Seen someone die:: No, come close to it a few times, though. A parishioner with heart problems collapsed on the street near our house on a cold evening. I think he was already dead when I came upon him, but I really don't know. Once in heavy traffic on I-10 in Texas a couple years ago I saw someone stretched out on the ground after an accident, with others gathered around. Very chilling. I never found out whether he was alive or dead.

Been to Canada:: Many times to Manitoba, once to Saskatchewan.

Been to Mexico:: Walked about 10 blocks into Neuvo Laredo. Once I had a little scare when I was attempting to reenter the USA. The customs guards didn't think I talked like an American! Just because I talk like someone from the movie "Fargo" ... (which hadn't come out yet at the time - maybe it would have helped ...)

Eaten Sushi: :No, and don't intend to. Why do you need sushi when there's lutefisk?

Met someone in person from the internet:: No.

Taken pain-killers:: Does aspirin count?

Had a tea party:: I've had parties with tea, but I'm not sure that they constituted a "tea party" in the classic sense of the term.

Cheated while playing a game:: Possibly once or twice, but not for ages.

Fallen asleep at work:: My work includes desk work such as writing sermons, so I guess I've even put myself to sleep a few times!

Used a fake ID: :Nope, never had one, never used one.

Felt an earthquake: :In 1975 (July, I think), there was a strong earth tremor in West Central Minnesota, which I remember vividly. I was 10. My sister accused me of jumping up and down in my bed and waking her up, but the joke was on her, since she was the one still in bed! Sorry, sis, I had to say it ...

Touched a snake:: I occasionally caught garter snakes with my bare hands when I was a kid. But I really preferred frogs.

Been robbed: :No.

Petted a reindeer/goat:: I bring quarters to feed the goats every time we go to the zoo.

Won a contest:: I won a desk clock from "Thrivent Financial for Lutherans" for answering a few online trivia questions about Thrivent (they generously told you where to find the answers). 14 years ago as a student pastor in North Dakota I sometimes played duets with an elderly lady who sang and played autoharp, and we won the talent show at a nearby town festival. Back in college I won 3rd & 2nd place, respectively, in nationwide Latin & Greek translation contests sponsored by the Classics honor society.

Been suspended from school:: Never.

Been in a car accident:: A handful of times, never serious.

Had braces:: No.

Eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night:: I doubt it, though I'm sure I've come close a few times.

Witnessed a crime:: Once, back in seminary, I was on a neighborhood walk when I came upon a line of cars, each with the driver just sitting there, in a secluded side street. One by one as I approached each car the driver started the car & drove off. I've always wondered if I unwittingly muddled a drug drop or something. Also during seminary, I heard someone noisily trying to break into an apartment below me. If I had the experience to relive again, I would call 911 immediately, but I was afraid to do anything at the time. More recently, I came upon someone parked along a street who was in the midst of the suspicious activity of putting a different license plate on a car.

Swam in the ocean:: Never swam in it. Waded a couple of times.

Sung karaoke: : Yes, if you count it as "singing" when the selection I did was "Whip It" by Devo. I'd like to do more karaoke, but I don't frequent the venues in which it is usually done.

Paid for a meal with only coins:: Sure, back in my dirt-poor days, when I also sometimes would put 50 cents worth of gas in the car just to make sure I got to my destination.

Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose:: A few times, but usually not in front of anyone. Once when I was at the theater watching "Star Trek V" I had a mild chuckle just at the wrong time while swallowing soda, so I had a loud snorting spew which attracted lots of attention. It would have been embarrassing in any case, but it was especially embarrassing then, since it came across as a reaction way out of proportion to the joke's rather low level of funniness, and anyone who's been to Star Trek V knows it's a pretty lame movie anyway.

Been kissed under mistletoe:: No.

Crashed a party:: No.

Worn pearls:: No.

Jumped off a bridge:: No.

Ate dog/cat food:: Dog food a handful of times (no, not a handful of dog food) - it's edible in a bland sort of way. But cat food only once - it has a very strong taste compared to dog food.

Kissed a mirror:: No.

Glued your hand to something:: Not deliberately.

Done a one-handed cartwheel:: Nope, and haven't even done the two-handed variety for over 30 years.

Talked on the phone for more than 6 hours: :No.

Didn't take a shower for a week:: Question should be rephrased, since some people take tub baths, which is what I grew up with. Never went more than 2-3 days without bathing.

Pick and ate an apple right off the tree:: Lots of times, and very recently. We have two apple trees right next to our house.

Been told by a complete stranger that you're hot: Not in those terms, though, unbelievably, I have had a few rather forward come-ons, upon which I won't elaborate.

Happy Thanksgiving

2005-11-22T16:44:00.000-06:00

This is to pass on a hearty Thanksgiving wish to everyone out there, and to reassure all my faithful readers (there must be at least 5 or 6 of you!) that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth just yet.

C.S. Lewis: Hottest theologian of 2005!!!

2005-11-03T09:04:00.001-06:00

An essay in the current issue of Time about noted Christian author and Oxford/Cambridge Medievalist C.S. Lewis says "In 1947, a TIME cover story hailed Lewis as 'one of the most influential spokesmen for Christianity in the English-speaking world.' Now, 58 years later (and 42 after his death, in 1963), he could arguably be called the hottest theologian of 2005." Considering that Lewis' body has been resting in the grave for 42 years, a number of current theologians who thought themselves to be quite "hot" might be double-checking their own body temperature right now.

But since I have listed Lewis as one of "MY TOP TEN (OR SO) GREATEST INFLUENCES, OUTSIDE OF GOD AND MY FAMILY MEMBERS", I thought I'd say a few words. BTW, it's gratifying to see my new meme coming to life - check out Dave's list. Dave mentions a Deacon Michael Walker who was a witness at his wedding - Dave himself was at our wedding, and Dn. Michael's wife was my wife's matron of honor at our wedding.

Now, Lewis. He is best known, of course, for his Christian-oriented writings, which I appreciate very much. I haven't read all of The Chronicles of Narnia, though I enjoyed The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and am looking forward to the upcoming movie. I also enjoyed Mere Christianity, which I think was an early topic of study in a Bible study group which my family was part of during my teens. That study group left a big stamp on me, as it cultivated a type of Christian faith which embraced deep thinking and spirited discussion of issues, combined with a warm appreciation of the rich, colorful things in life - art, music, hot apple cider with cheese and crackers, the beauty of human relationships. C.S. Lewis was a part of all that.

I should mention that my college roommate Bryan, the Nicko-Mickeyan Ethics guy was a self-described "Lewis junkie."

Now, here's my soapbox. Lewis' "day job" was as a professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, and I personally believe he was at his true best when he was writing in his own field. Alas, few have read some of his most carefully reasoned and witty works. One of my top ten favorite books of all time is The Discarded Image, subtitled "An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature," but what it really is is an introduction to the world view of Medieval times, what he calls the "Medieval Model" of the universe, the conceptual lens through which Medieval people looked at the world around them. He wrote the book to help people not to read into Medieval and Renaissance literature our own modern preconceptions. For example, people are always thinking that since the Medievals had a geocentric view of the universe, that that put earth and humanity at the most important point. In fact, we have that backwards. The Medievals saw the earth as being at the bottom, the "periphery", the "infernal dregs" and "offscourings" of the universe, and so being at the center of the universe put them, in their minds, at the least important place rather than the most important place in the universe. Lewis was lecturing on this stuff at Cambridge in the 1940s, and people still don't know these things.

Akin to The Discarded Image is his extended Introduction to his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama, entitled "New Learning and New Ignorance." Again, he ably demonstrates that our modern conceptual lens can lead us unwittingly to misconstrue the meaning of writings from the past. He points out, for example, that we moderns tend to lump astrology and alchemy together as forms of "superstition", when in fact, to Sixteenth Century thinkers they represented opposite poles of thought. The astrologers, seeing our destiny in the stars, were Determinists; alchemists, seeking the knowledge and power to alter matter, represented a type of Free Will approach (ah, yes, the old free will/determinism debate! I learned in my first Spertus course that this debate was active even in ancient Israel - but that's for another post ...).

Lewis' English Literature in the Sixteenth Century was his contribution to a multi-volume set entitled The Oxford History of English Literature, OHEL for short. Lewis, not a pietist of the type who populate my church denomination, liked to pronounce that acronym as a two-word phrase. It seems that OHEL wasn't his favorite project. But I think it's some of his best writing. A book about literature, IMHO it's a piece of literature in its own right. I chuckle every time I read this quote, from page 24, in which he points out some pitfalls of the early humanists, who lofted the ancient Roman authors as the model of excellence, at the expense of poo-pooing perfectly good Medieval literature:

This desire to be very 'adult', as we now say, had some unfortunate consequences. The qualities which the humanists admired are, of course, to be found in Latin literature, even if less exclusively and continuously than they supposed. But few qualities are less suitable for imitation. Elevation and gravity of language are admirable, or even tolerable, only when they grow from elevation and gravity of thought [Excellent sentence! - The Euphemist]. To imitate them directly is to manufacture a symptom ... The gestures and accents of magnanimity, laborously reproduced by little men, clever, meticulous ... nervously avoiding what is 'low', make an ugly spectacle. That was how the humanists came to create a new literary quality - vulgarity. It is hard to point to any medieval work that is vulgar. When medieval literature is bad, it is bad by honest, downright incompetence: dull, prolix, or incoherent. But the varnish and stucco of some neo-Latin work, the badness which no man could incur by sheer defect of talent by only by 'endless labor to be wrong' is a new thing.

At the risk of making this post appallingly long, I'd like to end it with an extended quote from The Discarded Image, one that reads as if it could have been written in 2005 concerning Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, except it was published in 1964 (and obviously written before Lewis' death in 1963). It contains some excellent points to consider before swallowing Brown's faux-history whole, as so many people have:

I have read a novel which represents all the Pagans of that day [Constantine's time, the 4th Century AD] as carefree sensualists, and all the Christians as savage ascetics. It is a grave error. They were in some ways far more like each other than either was like a modern man. The leaders on both sides were monotheists, and both admitted almost an infinity of supernatural beings between God and man. Both were highly intellectual, but also (by our standards) highly superstitious. The last champions of Paganism were not the sort of men that Swinburne, or a modern 'Humanist', would wish them to have been. They were not lusty extroverts recoiling in horror or contempt from a world 'grown grey' with the breath of the 'pale Galilean'. If they wanted to get back 'the laurel, the palms, and the paean', it was on the most serious and religious grounds. If they longed to see 'the breasts of the nymph in the brake', their longing was not like a satyr's; it was much more like a spiritualist's. A world-renouncing, ascetic, and mystical character then marked the most eminent Pagans no less than their Christian opponents. It was the spirit of the age. Everywhere, on both sides, men were turning away from the civic virtues and the sensual pleasures to seek an inner purgation and a supernatural goal. The modern who dislikes the Christian Fathers would have disliked the Pagan philosophers equally, and for similar reasons. Both alike would have embarrassed him with stories of visions, ecstasies, and apparations. Between the lower and more violent manifestations of both religions he would have found it hard to choose. To a modern eye (and nostril) Julian [the Apostate, the emperor who attempted a pagan revival after Constantine] with his long nails and densely populated beard might have seemed very like an unwashed monk out of the Egyptian desert. (pp. 46-47)

Inspiring thought concerning the Hebrew language ...

2005-11-01T08:38:00.000-06:00

From WERBEH (read it backwards - get it?) at Daily Hebrew, from the pen of Martin Luther:

“The Hebrew language is the best language of all, with the richest vocabulary….If I were younger I would want to learn this language, because no one can really understand the Scriptures without it. For although the New Testament is written in Greek, it is full of Hebraisms and Hebrew expressions. It has therefore been aptly said that the Hebrews drink from the spring, the Greeks from the stream that flows from it, and the Latins from a downstream pool.”

Chesterton and me

2005-10-31T07:12:00.000-06:00

I had no idea that G.K. Chesterton had an "amusing definition of the Euphemist": “I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them.”

So, what's your historical agenda?

2005-10-31T03:41:00.000-06:00

Fascinating discussion by Dr. Sherwin in the video lecture I was viewing last night. He was explaining how the course on "Medieval Judaism" fits into the Spertus curriculum, and he said "Every curriculum makes a statement that's conceptual, political, and ideological." Also, he said that any scheme of periodisation of history has an agenda. Say what?

The way we divide history into periods reveals our ideological agenda. For example, reflecting upon my year of General Church History in seminary, I believe the periodization was "Pre-Reformation", "Reformation", and "Post-Reformation" - which strongly suggests a Reformation-oriented agenda. The Catholics and Orthodox would no doubt have different schemes. To be fair, I believe our professor gave much more time and credence to Centuries II - XV than most Protestants would have.

According to Dr. Sherwin, the thing that holds a period together in the history of Judaism is common questions, rather than common answers. In the Medieval Period, Judaism was tackling the question, "Why do we do what we do as Jews?" Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Mystics (Kabbalists) gave very different answers to this question, but they were answering the same question. Rabbinic Judaism had concentrated, rather, on the question of "What do we do as Jews?"

In each period, whichever group "wins" (i.e., comes up with the most influential answer to the period's leading questions) sets the agenda for the next historical period.

The Spertus core curriculum includes four courses corresponding to four basic periods of the history of Judaism:

1. Religion of Biblical Israel (Biblical Period)
2. Rabbinic Mind (Rabbinic Period)
3. Medieval Judaism (Medieval Period)
4. Modern Judaism (Modern Period)

According to Dr. Sherwin, this four-course, four-period scheme consciously rejects the ideology of Progressive Revelation found in Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism. This is the view that, the closer we get in history to the present time, the better the religion becomes - a development of the religion from a lower to a higher form over the course of time. Reform & Reconstructionist seminaries generally follow the Modern Period with a Post-modern or Contemporary period, beginning with the formation of modern Israel in 1948. Dr. Sherwin & others believe that the Modern Period is still an experiment with an unknown outcome. It's too early to tell if a large enough agenda-changing event has sent Judaism into a new historical period. (Seems to me that the Holocaust would be a big enough event to cause a major shift, but perhaps we need a few more decades, at least, to see what direction is taken)

The Spertus curriculum also contradicts the historical ideology of Orthodox Judaism, which holds that the higher form of the religion is found the further back you go in history, until it reaches its highest form at Mt. Sinai with the bestowing of the Torah. The Spertus scheme is non-committal about what direction the religion is going; it only says that, to understand the history of Judaism, one must understand something of the Biblical, Rabbinic, Medieval, and Modern Periods.

Though Spertus is officially not affiliated with any certain form of Judaism, it seems to me that it generally reflects the viewpoint of Conservative Judaism (a slightly misleading name, as it falls along the midpoint of the Jewish ideological spectrum, rather than the right wing - but, then again, when has the whole "right/left", "conservative/liberal" thing really held up to intense scrutiny, anyway?).

This answered one question I had: why didn't Spertus have a course that corresponded to my special interest, the Post-exilic period (about 530 BC - AD 70)? It had seemed to me that they were leaving a gap between the Biblical and Rabbinic periods, but now I see that, though there was a period in there when no new writings were being added to the Hebrew canon, the general mindset of the Biblical Period still held sway, until the destruction of the Temple.

Naturally this all leads me to ponder what agendas we reveal with the schemes we use to divvy up Christian history and general history. Do our agendas blind us to any ephochal, agenda-changing events that we should really be using as our major historical markers? I welcome your thoughts, one and all.

Blogo-transparency

2005-10-29T11:11:00.000-05:00

"I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!" - Paul, in 2 Corinthians 10:1

I relate to Paul in this verse. It looks like he may have been mild-mannered in person, and much more bold and forceful in his writing. That happens to me, too. My in-person style is so mild and non-confrontational, it would probably astonish some of my parishioners to read some of the sharply worded things I've written. As I reread my comment on the post below this one, I find myself thinking two things:

1. I agree 200% with the substance of my comments, and
2. If I had it to do over again, I would be slightly more diplomatic, though no less adamant.

There's a place for confrontation and confuting of error (Titus 1:9), and also "speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ", Ephesians 4:15. The truth and the love both must be there. They're part of the same thing, or rather the same Person.

What Would Luther Do ...

2005-10-29T09:31:00.000-05:00

... if he were forced to choose between the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions (parts of which he wrote himself) as the one book he could save in an emergency? I think it's very clear from his own writings that he would choose the Bible.

Yesterday, via Lars Walker, I came across this post in which "Othniel" argues that the Book of Concord (the collection of confessional documents which officially define Lutheran doctrine - some, but not all of them were written by Martin Luther) would be the one book to save if you were only permitted to "choose one (count'em "1") book by which to salvage all of human history, knowledge and spirituality."

I dashed off a response/challenge to his argument, which may be viewed as a comment on Othniel's post. I'll also include it at the bottom of this post.

Yesterday I had also posted something about it on this site. Then, after awhile, my conscience told me that in my fury I had let a little of the flesh show through, so I deleted it. Nevertheless, I stand by the content of my comments. I think Othniel meant well, but it seems very clear to me that Luther and the Reformers would have never, never, never intended their writings to take the place of the Bible.

Maybe I'll blog more about this issue in upcoming days. Meanwhile, we're praying for you, Othniel, and thanks, Lars, for the nod.

My comments, as posted at Othniel's "Cross Theology":

I'm a Lutheran pastor, and I can't leave this post unchallenged. To put it bluntly, I think if Luther were a blog reader today he would post you a comment, and it might not be printable in the "Lutheran Witness." Furthermore, I think he would lament, loudly, that the things he and others fought for were on the verge of being lost.

Let's ask the age old question, "WWLD" (what would Luther do?) - He said, "...nothing better could be wished than that all books would be put aside and nothing else stay in all the world, especially among Christians, but simply the pure Scripture or Bible." Seems like that just might be what his answer would be to the question you pose. He also said, "I ... often wish that [my books] would perish, because I fear that they may hinder and keep the readers from reading Scripture itself, which alone is the fount of all wisdom." Keep in mind that parts of the Book of Concord were written by Luther. He also said, "Why make many books and yet forever stay outside the really principle Book? Come now, drink more of the spring itself than of the rivulets which have led you to the spring." I get those quotes from Ewald Plass' "What Luther Says", paragraphs 341, 342, and 350.

It's certainly true that the Small Catechism contains sufficient Scripture to lead us to salvation, but it DOES NOT contain all the Scripture that is "God-breathed" or "profitable" (2 Tim. 3:16); nor does the entire BoC.

You overstate the impact of the lack of the "original source documents" of the Bible. Scripture has, by far, the most extensive array of manuscript evidence of any ancient writing, even compared to much more recent writings such as Shakespeare. Even the BoC has its manuscript discrepancies, as a look at a scholarly edition will attest.

What do you mean by "losing" the Apostles' Creed? Memorize it, man! It's short! Memorize the Catechism, too - you should have already done so in Confirmation.

You say that saving only the BoC will "guarantee" against the rise of a "cult of dispensationalism", but you underestimate the power of the human imagination. Sooner or later someone reading AC article XVII will wonder, "what 'Jewish opinions' are they talking about?" And when it's explained, they'll say, "That doesn't sound so bad!" And people will start wondering, "Where's this Bible that the BoC is always quoting, and why did the 'Cross Theology Guy' withhold it from us? Especially since FoC Epitome Intro. I says "We believe, teach and confess that the only rule and standard according to which at once all dogmas and teachers should be esteemed and judged are nothing else than the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testament..."

BTW, what "antilegomena" are you talking about? The book of Revelation? Take care not to to risk disobeying Revelation 22:18,19.

So my answer is to save the Bible (the spring) rather than the Confessions (the rivulet). It's readily available in compact, inexpensive editions. You can memorize a good portion of the Confessions and should have been doing so already if you're confirmed.

And I am so audacious as to claim that I think Luther would agree with me and have some choice words for your proposal to withhold God-breathed Scripture from future generations.

Who are your greatest influences?

2005-10-27T12:13:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd try my hand at starting a new meme, though this one's so obvious I'm sure it's been done before. It's "MY TOP TEN (OR SO) GREATEST INFLUENCES, OUTSIDE OF GOD AND MY FAMILY MEMBERS." Here's the list, not necessarily in exact order (as you can see, I'm allowing a bit of doubling up in case more then ten belong in the top ten).

1. Francis Schaeffer: Christian theologian, philosopher, apologist, evangelist, writer.
2. David Schonberg: personal friend, self-taught Christian thinker, organic farmer.
3. C.S. Lewis: Christian literary giant, apologist, writer on the history of ideas.
4. Suzanne Winters, and
5. Dr. Joan Garvin, cello instructors.
6. Drs. Olin Storvick & Stanley Iverson, Greek & Latin Professors.
7. Dr. Dale Sweeney, Latin professor who influenced me in a difficult, unique, but significant way.
8. Prs. Philip Haugen and Robert Lee, seminary instructors.
9. Morris Berman, semi-obscure & not entirely reliable writer on history of scientific thought, who nevertheless influenced me in a significant way.
10. Prs. Herbert Malm and John Kilde, pastors.

In future installments I'll write some posts on 1-3 of these people at a time to tell you how they've influenced me. Here are some "honorable mentions" - Dr. Ann Alton, cello instructor; Prs. Phil Rokke & Del Palmer, internship supervisors; Dr. Dan Hornstein, Peggy Atwood, Dean Dainsberg, Dr. J. Robert Hanson, orchestra directors.

I'll also "tag" Dave Holford & my sister to see if they'll divulge their major influences.

Confessions of a 40-year-old beginner

2005-10-24T23:43:00.000-05:00

Some years ago a family I knew in Wisconsin taught me a board game called "Don't Get Mad!" I don't remember the details, but the main point of it was that, after making slow, steady progress through the game board, you could suddenly find yourself back at Square One. This would happen several times per game. Sometimes I feel like my life has been a long game of "Don't Get Mad!"

For the third time since 1988 I'm a beginning Hebrew student. The first time was my second year of seminary, and unfortunately I didn't get securely grounded in Hebrew that year, because I had some major discouragements/hangups that I was dealing with, and it got in the way of my academics. It was a real shame. Hebrew should have been the same kind of "entering a new world" experience that Latin and Greek had been for me in college.

I had actually written off Hebrew as something I wouldn't ever get back to - but then came Spertus, which was the best distance ed program for my needs - an accredited, legitimate program which connected with my special interests in ancient languages, thought, culture, and religion. I need to pass a Hebrew exam in order to complete the degree, so in mid-2004, after I was done with the first course and awaiting the second, I plowed through the first ten chapters of Biblical Hebrew Step By Step by Menahem Mansoor, a simpler Hebrew text than Weingreen, my seminary Hebrew text. Then the second course came and I abruptly dropped the Hebrew. Then I finished the second course and found that I was almost back at Square One with Hebrew! So Now that I'm starting the third course, I've decided that I'd better keep at the Hebrew a little bit each day, so I don't have to begin a fourth time. Though Weingreen is harder, I've gone back to it, as it's more comprehensive, and there's something satisfying about actually being able to compose some simple but biblical-sounding phrases after trudging through a jungle of odd-sounding grammatical rules.

Here's a fun sentence I recently translated from Weingreen:

מי אני ומה־אני

mi eni w'mah eni, "Who am I, and what am I?"

In other news, I sometimes feel like a beginner on the cello after 27 years, though I know it isn't really true. But I don't feel as sharp with it as when I was taking lessons and playing in orchestras every week. This year I set out to teach myself Bach's Suite #4 for Unaccompanied Cello, just so I would be learning new stuff and not just playing the same old things. I think I'll be continuing with Suite #4 in 2006 as well.

I also feel like a beginner as a Christian apologist, a full 28 years after I first encountered the works of Francis Schaeffer and first caught the vision from him (and from an extraordinary Bible study fellowship we were part of when I was growing up) of a Christian faith which connected with all areas of life, the mind as well as the heart.

I also feel like a beginner as a philosophical thinker, 20 years after an undergrad philosophy course which revolutionized my thinking by introducing me to the concept of a Paradigm Shift. Long before that phrase had become a banal buzzword at the hands of Steven Covey and others, a "paradigm shift" meant an all-encompassing change in an individual's or society's basic World View. Already prepared by Schaeffer for this kind of idea, I've spent the last 20 years looking for my next major personal paradigm shift, a new lens bringing into new focus my perennial questions about the Bible, the Church, the world, etc.

I feel like I should be farther along in these pursuits than I am, considering what good beginnings I had. Perhaps I'm farther along than I think. It's my nature to dig ever deeper into the roots, so that could be part of why I don't feel like I've reached the treetops. Perhaps rather than feeling like I'm too old to be beginning, I could tell myself that it's a way of being young again!

They say "well begun is half done." Maybe if I keep at it now I'll be half-way done when I die. And it'll help if I don't get mad!

The Euphemist: Cello-related Spam Magnet

2005-10-22T08:47:00.000-05:00

It's not often that spam actually makes sense. Overnight somebody generously posted multiple versions of a cello supplies link. It looks half-way legitimate, though, of course, I must say "caveat emptor." Just one version of the link would have been enough. I'm most intrigued by the version of the comment that says "mothers day cello bags". In my 27 years as a cellist I had never, to my recollection, strung the words "mothers day cello bags" together in that order.

2005-10-21T22:53:00.000-05:00

Interesting discussion in the opening video lecture in "Medieval Judaism". The subject: The Agenda of Medieval Judaism. According to Dr. Sherwin, Rabbinic (Talmudic era) Judaism was mainly concerned with the question of "what does God want us to do?", whereas Medieval Judaism concerned itself more with "why does God want us to do it?" He said that earlier Jewish thought had actually resisted giving an answer to "why", partly because of a fear that if you give a rationale, you then give later generations an excuse to change a law, for example, if they think the original reason for the law no longer exists. & Dr. Sherwin states that to some extent that very thing actually happened.

Interesting thought. Does an attempt to answer the question "why" result in a sort of situation ethics? If we try to understand the spirit of the law, might it lessen our attention to the letter of the law? Any thoughts or observations?

In other news, I already have a theory about who the North Dakotan is in the video lectures (see this previous post). The backs of the heads of two ladies are prominent in the foreground of the opening lecture video, and the one on the left has a certain plain clean-cutness that I've seen in many of my fellow citizens of the three "ota states" (North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota). The other lady has more of an urbane appearance, probably from Chicago or New York or some such place, but of course I could be wrong - I've known people like her all my life, though they tend to stand out just a little around here. In the "ota states" we have our exceptions who prove the rule. Awhile ago I did a bit of web snooping to find out what I could about the handful (I found five of them) of synagogues in North and South Dakota. I found out that one in ND, in defiance of more than one stereotype, had a young African-American female rabbi. Anyway, I'll probably just have to keep listening until I hear the tell-tale accent of Lutefisk Land ...

Public Service Announcement

2005-10-20T09:17:00.000-05:00

I am happy to annouce that as a public service, The Euphemist will from now on be providing an AUTOMATIC COMPUTER SCREEN CLEANER, accessible through the link in this article or on the sidebar, at absolutely no charge! I just can't help being so kind, generous, and helpful ... aw, shucks, don't mention it ...

You coax the blues right out of the horn, Meme!

2005-10-20T08:41:00.000-05:00

I've just figured out that the word meme is used as a name for these blogging games where you answer some kind of question about yourself that someone else has already answered. The larger definition of meme, according to the Wikipedia article, is "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation." Makes sense. I especially enjoy this paragraph from the Wikipedia article:

"The concept of memes itself comprises a meme. Even the idea that the concept of memes is itself a meme has become a widely spread meme. However, the idea that the idea that the concept of memes is itself a meme is not yet particularly common as a meme. (Not to mention that, at this stage, the idea makes most people's heads hurt.)"

Another meme I might respond to soon is one about Time magazine's list of 100 best English language novels since 1923. Meanwhile, I was "tagged" by David Holford to do this meme, so here goes:

MEME: GETTING TO KNOW ME

Five things I plan to do before I die:

1. Earn an accredited doctor's degree
2. Do more with music, maybe be in a dinner music string ensemble again.
3. Get back down to a healthy weight (I've already lost 20+ lbs!).
4. Write a book.
5. Pay off all my debts.

Five things I can do:

1. Play cello, bass, banjo, harmonica, vox, etc.
2. Read Hebrew (gaining), ancient Greek (moderately rusty), Latin (very rusty).
3. Speak in public.
4. Design simple but, I think, good web pages.
5. I once successfully changed the spark plugs on my car.

Five things I cannot do:

1. Imitate an Irish accent.
2. Keep my office clean for longer than a week at a time.
3. Speak really fast.
4. Lick my elbows (not that anybody else can ...)
5. Make someone do something they don't want to (I don't understand people who seem to enjoy trying ... it's a battle I haven't the heart to fight).

Five things that attract me to the opposite sex:

1. Authenticity.
2. Kindness.
3. Desire to live a good life.
4. Ability to discern the truth.
5. Has a relationship with God.

(All characteristics which my wife possesses.)(This is exactly what Dave's friend, the other Dave, put down, & I concur.)

Five things I say most often:

1. I see!
2. As a matter of fact ...
3. Actually,
4. We must do this very scientifically!
5. Your attention please! (Several times each time I teach confirmation class)

Five Celebrity Crushes:

Can't think of any, and I wouldn't put them down anyway. I don't know how Dave gets away with this kind of thing. In our marriage it would never fly.

Five People to whom I am passing on this meme:

Right now I think the only person I have to pass it on to is my sister at Ripples of Faith, but maybe eventually I'll share the fun with others as well.

Just what you need ...

2005-10-18T21:29:00.000-05:00

I've just been tagged by Dave, so I'll work on it soon. Meanwhile, I've just discovered another fun blog game, while visiting, for the first time, Brandywine Books, done partly by Lars Walker, a sci-fi author who also happens to be a member of the same small, obscure church body as moi.

Here's the deal: you Google "(name) needs" and post the first ten results. For example, "Phil needs" or "Someone needs", etc. I did "Georg needs", inspired by a passing reference Lars had made about Georg Sverdrup, a significant figure in my church body's background. The results were pretty wild:

Plume's Guestbook of Horror
... selling. Spam is junk mail, a hassle for the recipients. That's the main
point Georg needs to get. Georg is excessively thick. Hehe ...

Letter from the provinces
Georg needs the people of God to give him community and tell him the stories that
will draw him into the Kingdom. And the people of God need Georg to help ... (btw, I wholeheartedly agree)

MINUTES FROM ATLAS EAW MEETING
Â Kieran Foster is currently working down on Level 1 to sort this room out, but
Georg needs him to working in the Heavy Lab.Â ...

FunnyStrange.com: ooh, shiny
... stuff but i think you'd dig it anyway. actually, i think you'd both really
dig it, but i can understand if georg needs to avoid childhood traumas :) ...

All About Spike - The Heart's Filthy Lesson by MustangSally and ...
... The circle of power Georg needs to raise the Wirtschaftsministerium is created through
the sacrifice of twenty vampires." "You're just showin' off because you ...

Minutes of July 20-21, 2004 Meeting
Signatures were obtained from EPA, DCDOH and USACE Baltimore, however C.
Georg needs to continue to work with USACE Huntsville on the language of the ...

Giorgio armani cosmetic
... armani exchange. giorgio armani fragrance. armani jewelry. goirgio amani frgrance
products. armani and georg needs arani and geor. armani exchange store. ...

Georgio armani
... The giorgio armani fragrance. The giorgio armani fragrane related to armani and
georg needs arnani and goerg, armani emporium. I need srmani emporiu. ...

Commitment Jean Lorrah Risa lay at the top of the hill above Keon ...
Georg needs a Companion, and this seems a likely way to get him one. I can do
it, if anyone can." "All right. See what you can do, with my blessing. ...

Who's going to Rockcrusher?
... (Currently 0 replies) Posted At 10:32:26 07/22/2003 E'nick will be traveling
that way. Let me know if Georg needs any help. Travis. ...

Eradicating the disabled

2005-10-18T18:03:00.000-05:00

Very insightful post on Eradicating the Disabled at Mere Comments. Things Francis Schaeffer predicted thirty years ago are coming true.

10 Ten Reasons I'm doing this Jewish Studies thing

2005-10-18T12:54:00.000-05:00

Top Ten things I'm trying to accomplish with the Spertus MSJS Degree Program (not necessarily
in order):

1. Learn especially to understand the post-exilic "Second Temple"
period (roughly corresponds to "intertestamental" period + period
of very early Christianity).

2. Use that knowledge to understand early Christianity more clearly
and in a new light.

3. Use that knowledge to respond knowledgably to people's questions
about the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi library, and many other
things that people get funny ideas about.

4. Sharpen my knowledge of the History of Ideas, world views, and "intellectual history."

5. Get out of an intellectual rut by pouring new stuff into my skull that
I wouldn't have otherwise thought of.

6. Sharpen my Hebrew, Greek, & Latin (The Gk & Lt will be involved in my
own research into the "Second Temple" era), & probably learn a bit of Aramaic
eventually as well.

7. Prepare for eventual work on some kind of doctorate degree.

8. Exercise my mind so as to help prevent Alzheimer's.

9. Probe the very roots of my own Christian faith.

10. Learn better to understand and spread the Good News of Yeshua Ha Mashiach.

UPDATE: two more things

I read my list & realized it somehow didn't seem like it mentioned the Jews that much, so I thought I'd add these two things:

11. To further love & appreciate the Jews and "pray for the peace of Jerusalem" (Psalm 122:6).

12. To learn what there is to learn about the Jewish perspective on history, culture, religion, etc., to learn a "second opinion" from a people who have all along been a part of Western civilization and yet a distinct civilization of their own as well.

Video courses: an audio-visual extravaganza

2005-10-17T06:21:00.000-05:00

Twenty years ago as an undergrad I took an African history course, in which the prof showed us a series of filmstrips (yes, filmstrips), the good old-fashioned kind with a phonograph record soundtrack, complete with beeps telling you when to advance to the next frame. Some of you remember exactly what I mean, others are scratching your heads. It was outdated technology even for the mid-1980s, so when he brought out one of the filmstrips he always called it an "audio-visual extravaganza."

The Spertus MSJS program is an audio-visual extravanza of its own, done partly with video lectures, partly with one-week intensive campus sessions (I haven't done any courses on-campus yet, though I did make an actual visit to the Chicago campus nearly two years ago). I'm now starting my third video course, and through the miracle of VHS the Spertus campus comes right to my living room or office out here on the prairie.

Whether deliberately or by chance, the Spertus video course camera crew have a penchant for capturing students in mid-yawn. Most of the screen shots consist of an enthusiastic professor in front of the blackboard, with the backs of the heads of one or two students adorning the foreground. Occasionally they throw in a shot of the students in the classroom, looking a bit glazed-over. Frequently on the video you can hear the soft sound of a student asking a question in class, but for some reason there are never any visual shots of questioners asking questions. Perhaps it was hard for the camera crew to tell which set of lips was actually moving.

The instruction booklet for this course even contains this paragraph: "The recorded class met 4-5 hours each day during a hot summer, and class participants inevitably found it difficult to maintain an attention span for such an extended period, especially with material of the complexity of medieval Judaism. You do not have this problem." Don't be too sure. I've awakened on the floor a few times with the tv screen blue because the video was done.

This is no reflection on the content of the lectures, which are always highly interesting and thought-provoking. But over the years I've lost none of my talent for drowsiness during lectures, and apparently the same is true for the mostly old-than-average students co-starring in the Spertus video lectures.

The profs are highly qualified scholars with great enthusiasm for their subjects, and it comes through. One professor, a consummate Hebrew scholar, often turns a Hebrew phrase with great verve, and her pronunciation of the letter 'ayin is something I'll never achieve. It is the most gutteral of the gutterals, though the heth is also rather gutteral - a fluent speaker can almost raise the concern that something's about to be coughed up.

The introductory notes for my new course also mention that three distance learners were in the class while it was being taped, two from Texas and one from North Dakota, which fascinates me, since I've lived both places. In fact, the lectures were taped during July 24-29, 1994, which happens to have been during the first full week of my two-year residence in Texas. I wonder if I'll be able to pick out the North Dakotan. People from ND usually don't dress much differently from others, but generally have a conspicuous cleanness, like Paul McCartney's grandpa in "Hard Day's Night" ("He's a stone mixer, but he's clean ..."). And of course, North Dakotans (like East River South Dakotans & Minnesotans, I'll admit) talk not unlike the characters in the movie "Fargo" (though I adamantly maintain that the movie lays it on a little thick - on the other hand I admit I've known people all my life who talk exactly like the "Fargo" characters ... I've been told that I do, too ... ), so if he/she pipes up with a question it'll be a dead giveaway.

I haven't actually begun watching my new video lectures yet, as I'm supposed to read some of the assigned readings first. But I eagerly await my new "audio-visual extravaganza." The intro notes also say, "Unlike students in the classroom, you have the advantage of 'instant replay.' You have access to 'class sessions' at any time - particularly at times that you are most alert." Most alert, eh?! I'm not sure I ever am at my most alert ... so I think I'll be doing a lot of replay, which is nothing new ...

Oh ClustrMap, my ClustrMap

2005-10-16T00:08:00.000-05:00

I've added a fun (I hope) thing to this page - my very own ClustrMap on the sidebar, obviously much more interesting than a plain old hit counter. Now I just have to give people reasons to visit. Thanks, Dave, for stopping by and leaving my first red dot on the map other than the one I left by visiting my own site! I'm guessing you're the one who made the red dot in England. Maybe I can collect countries, like people who have a map on the back of their RVs showing what states and provinces they've visited.

Jewish "Protestants?"

2005-10-15T22:37:00.000-05:00

Yesterday The Box came - my study materials for my new Spertus course in Medieval Judaism. At first glance it looks like I may find it more interesting than the Jewish Theology course, with more interaction with primary sources, and interesting topics such as Medieval Jewish Bible Commentaries. Regarding the Bible - I'm not sure there'll be much about the Masoretes, the scholars largely responsible for the form of the Hebrew Bible we know today, but there was a bit about them in the opening pages of my very first assigned reading from Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People. It seems that Jewish efforts to establish one authentic text of the Bible to circulate amongst the Jews paralleled Muslim efforts in "fixing an authentic Koran, a Textus Receptus, that would disqualify all other versions." (p. 227) The Masoretes "took it upon themselves to ... decide for all time what the text of the Bible was in every detail. All Hebrew Bible produced since the period of the Masoretes represent in the main the text established by them. It is called the Masoretic text, and it is the work of a family of Karaites, the Asher family" (p. 227-228)

So who were the Karaites? My brief impression is that they were (and are - apparently a few are around today) Jewish "Protestants" who differ from most Jews in rejecting the Oral Law (Talmud, etc.) and relying on the Tanakh alone as sole Scripture. Sounds to me like an interesting parallel to the Christian divide between sola scriptura (Protestant) and "Scripture as a part of Tradition" (Catholic/Orthodox - I borrowed that phrase from an Orthodox priest). Interesting that my Orthodox friend David Holford had just made a brief blog entry on that very subject, to which I left a half-baked comment a little too late at night.

So, how good a job did the Masoretes do? I've read pros & cons on the subject. It's something I'm hoping to gain the tools to make my own assessment of, in the process of working on this degree. On the other hand, I've read interesting suggestions that the Septuagint & other early versions (not to mention super-early mss. such as the Dead Sea Scrolls) offer some interesting & valid challenges to the Masoretic Text. On the other hand, the Preface to the English Standard Version of the Bible, which I like, mentions a "currently renewed respect among Old Testament scholars for the Masoretic text." Well, another piece of the Big Puzzle which I'm trying to put together as I putter along through perpetual studenthood.

End of an era

2005-10-13T21:06:00.000-05:00

First, praise the LORD for a successful scholarship application for my upcoming course at Spertus, "Medieval Judaism." I already was receiving an automatic 1/3 reduction in tuition for being a full-time clergyperson, and an additional 1/3 will also be paid through the scholarship I just applied for. So, I just had to pay the remaining 1/3 tuition plus course materials, fees, etc.

The "end of an era" is that I'm using up the last $145 of my Americorps Education Award which I earned working at the Helpline in Indianapolis late in the previous millennium. And just in the nick of time, as I had seven years to use up my $2362.50, and those seven years end this Saturday! It sure came in handy - first I took two computer courses, then an online linguistics course, then it paid for my first two courses at Spertus. So thanks, Americorps, for helping me get started. And thanks, Spertus, for finding me financially and/or academically worthy of the scholarship help.

So now I await the arrival of my new course materials. It'll be interesting to see what I learn of Maimonides, Rashi, the Masoretes, etc. I'm interested in what kind of comparison/contrast can be made between Jewish and Christian modes of thought during the Medieval period. And I suspect there'll be a bit of Kabbalah as well. In my previous "Jewish Theology" course, I remember some rabbi being quoted as saying something like this: "People who study the Kabbalah without being thoroughly grounded in the Torah first are likely to go mad." Good advice. If I follow it, I just might, in a way, know Kabbalah even better than Madonna does.

Yom Kippur

2005-10-10T19:05:00.000-05:00

The Day of Atonement
16:1 The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they drew near before the Lord and died, 2 and the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron your brother not to come at any time into the Holy Place inside the veil, before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die. For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat. 3 But in this way Aaron shall come into the Holy Place: with a bull from the herd for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. 4 He shall put on the holy linen coat and shall have the linen undergarment on his body, and he shall tie the linen sash around his waist, and wear the linen turban; these are the holy garments. He shall bathe his body in water and then put them on. 5 And he shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering.

6 “Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. 7 Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting. 8 And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. 9 And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering, 10 but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.

11 “Aaron shall present the bull as a sin offering for himself, and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. He shall kill the bull as a sin offering for himself. 12 And he shall take a censer full of coals of fire from the altar before the Lord, and two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small, and he shall bring it inside the veil 13 and put the incense on the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is over the testimony, so that he does not die. 14 And he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the front of the mercy seat on the east side, and in front of the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times.

15 “Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. 16 Thus he shall make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins. And so he shall do for the tent of meeting, which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses. 17 No one may be in the tent of meeting from the time he enters to make atonement in the Holy Place until he comes out and has made atonement for himself and for his house and for all the assembly of Israel. 18 Then he shall go out to the altar that is before the Lord and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. 19 And he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, and cleanse it and consecrate it from the uncleannesses of the people of Israel.

20 “And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. 21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. 22 The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.

23 “Then Aaron shall come into the tent of meeting and shall take off the linen garments that he put on when he went into the Holy Place and shall leave them there. 24 And he shall bathe his body in water in a holy place and put on his garments and come out and offer his burnt offering and the burnt offering of the people and make atonement for himself and for the people. 25 And the fat of the sin offering he shall burn on the altar. 26 And he who lets the goat go to Azazel shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward he may come into the camp. 27 And the bull for the sin offering and the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the Holy Place, shall be carried outside the camp. Their skin and their flesh and their dung shall be burned up with fire. 28 And he who burns them shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward he may come into the camp.

29 “And it shall be a statute to you forever that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves [1] and shall do no work, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you. 30 For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the Lord from all your sins. 31 It is a Sabbath of solemn rest to you, and you shall afflict yourselves; it is a statute forever. 32 And the priest who is anointed and consecrated as priest in his father's place shall make atonement, wearing the holy linen garments. 33 He shall make atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly. 34 And this shall be a statute forever for you, that atonement may be made for the people of Israel once in the year because of all their sins.” And Moses did as the Lord commanded him.

Leviticus 16, ESV

The return of Milli Vanilli

2005-10-04T07:30:00.000-05:00

I couldn't believe my ears. I was driving home from a church council meeting, listening to a local radio station's "Totally 80s Hour" - I'm a real junkie for the music of my favorite decade - & I must not be the only one, with "Nina Blackwood's Absolutely 80s", "Amazing 80s with MG Kelly", the "Jack" radio format, etc.. Suddenly a song began to play with a strangely familiar synth-pop sound. Yes, it was true - for the first time in 15 years, I was hearing the song "Girl You Know It's True" the signature hit of the disgraced Milli Vanilli! I never was a fan, even before the lip-synch scandal. Yet, the song somehow sounded better than I remembered it. I have to admit their sound was kind of catchy, regardless of who was doing the actual singing.

There's a kind of justice in it. The fact is, Milli Vanilli was a part of the sound of the late 1980s, and we can't make it not so by ignoring it - just as disco and the Osmonds were a big part of the 1970s, "Classic Rock" stations notwithstanding.

The sad part is that Rob Pilatus didn't live to see the day that their signature hit could once again be nonchalantly played as part of 80s nostalgia.

Supreme Court Qualifications

2005-10-04T01:46:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! News' current lead story on U.S. Supreme Court Nominee Harriet Miers bears the headline, "Court nominee has no judicial experience". Sounds rather ominous, eh?

I don't know the current, updated statistic, but as of 1991, "Out of the 105 Justices serving on the Supreme Court in our Nation's history, 41 had no prior State or Federal judicial experience" (see http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r102:S11JY1-62:).

If Miers is confirmed, she will join the company of John Marshall, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Earl Warren, Byron White, Lewis Powell, Abe Fortas, William Rehnquist, and many other justices with no previous state or federal judicial experience.

In my humble opinion, it would be good to have "some of each" - some with prior experience as judges, some without.

L'shanah tovah!

2005-10-03T16:31:00.000-05:00

Thirteen years ago I was working as an activities assistant at a nursing home in suburban Minneapolis with a large Jewish population. On the morning of Rosh HaShanah I was employed by Rabbi Yonassan Gershom, Religious Coordinator there at the time, to call out a series of Hebrew words as he sounded the shofar to herald the Jewish New Year. The words are "tekiah", "shevarim" and "teruah", and they are instructions for the trumpeter. Of course, the rabbi really already knew what to do without me ignorantly "telling him", but the instructions are part of the ritual. Afterwards he told me, good-naturedly, that I had mispronounced "teruah" - I was saying it like "TERR-oo-ah", when it's really more like "t'ROO-ah" - but it was nothing to worry about ...

To all those out there observing the High Holy Days beginning after sundown tonight, L'shanah tovah!

Occam = Barber of Seville = Bugs! Or, Fomenko & Illig expose the Vast Right-Brain Conspiracy

2005-10-01T07:59:00.000-05:00

Click for picture credit

You can learn lots of things when you browse Wikipedia. Last weekend when I was lightly reading topics related to fictional alternative histories, I somehow ended up learning about revisionist ideas about real historical chronology. Did you know that a Russian mathematician named A.T. Fomenko believes that ancient & medieval history as we know it was mistakenly lengthened, that national histories ranging from British history to the Old Testament (!) are accidental reduplications of Byzantine history?! He holds that Jesus was born in what we call the year 1053, and in the environs of Constantinople, not in the Holy Land (even the Temple in Jerusalem is a garbled reduplication of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, according to Fomenko). I get this strange mental picture of 1-year-old toddler Jesus watching a Roman Church official on his way to the Hagia Sophia where he is about to excommunicate the Eastern Church. Fomenko's contentions seem to be based upon his observations of similarities in the timelines of royalty in various nations, plus that he thinks that the errors in Ptolemy's Almagest, a significant ancient astronomical text, are best explained if he wrote of eclipses, etc. that happened less than 1000 years ago, rather than 2000. A Danish ~~religious~~ skeptic (see Morten's kind comment to this post) named Morten Monrad Pedersen has a rather effective parody/critique of Fomenko's methods, pointing out, among other things, that if you apply Fomenko's methods to the chronology of Danish royalty, you can "prove" that Frederick II of Denmark (d. 1588) is the same person as Christian X (d. 1947, in the living memory of many alive today)! Methinks that Fomenko is overdoing the Pattern Recognition thing, like Dr. Nash in the (semi-fictionalized) movie "A Beautiful Mind." Alarmingly, Fomenko's theories apparently have a following in Russia, and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov is among his followers.

It seems to me that there's an anti-semitic implication in this. He holds that the real Jerusalem was never more than an obscure Palestinian village until early modern times - doesn't leave much room for a historic Jewish claim in the area, does it?

A German mathematician (what is it with these mathematicians?) named Heribert Illig has a more modest proposal, that the reason why the (alleged) "Dark Ages" were so dark was that the years 614-911 AD never happened! Guess what? It's really the year 1708!!!

So why does this get my goat so much, even more than "Faking the moon landing" theories and what not? Partly it would be the consequences for my Christian faith, partly because ancient studies are my field, partly because these these theories are extreme reactions to a real problem, that the dating of historical events in the distant past is in truth more problematic than we often realize. But Fomenko's theories, especially, rely on some rather monumental assumptions. He contends that ancient & medieval history as we know it was faked by medieval/early modern monks and scribes - a Vast Right-Brain Conspiracy, like Tolkien inventing the history of Middle-Earth, only magnified 10,000 times, and somehow getting people to believe it.

If anything, these theories spur me on to learn more about how we know when ancient events really happened - something I wondered about even before running into Fomenko and Illig. I suspect we'll find that ancient chronology as we know it is largely accurate, though perhaps with uncertainties amounting to a few years here and there. I think Occam's razor would reveal that it's simpler and more sensible to suppose that chronology as we know it is mostly accurate though moderately imprecise, rather than blaming the margin of error on some Vast Right-Brain Conspiracy. But of course, Occam allegedly lived in the 14th Century, so Occam and his "razor" could be a conflation of the Barber of Seville, who could be the same person as Bugs Bunny!

"Diary of a Reluctant Dissenter, Part I" - First Communion

2005-09-29T17:56:00.000-05:00

Some Lutherans believe that Confirmation (about age 13-14) is the right age to start taking Communion. Others begin at an earlier age, such as in the 5th grade. I believe that 5th grade or even younger is OK, which makes me a semi-lonely dissenter in my church body. The vast majority (but not everyone) in our church body practices the First-Communion-at-Confirmation policy. Some are very confident in their conviction that children are not ready earlier than the early teens, and that it's "liberal" or something to suggest otherwise. In seminary I remember a classmate stating this conviction rather dogmatically. I stuck my neck out, piped up and said, "I began taking Communion in the 5th Grade, and I was ready." My neck didn't get chopped off, but I doubt his mind was changed. I think the subject changed quickly, however.

The locus classicus of this issue would be I Corinthians 11:28, "A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup." (NIV) The word "man" here ("person" in the ESV) is translating the Greek word anthropos, which can mean, among other things, an adult (male or female), someone who has come of age. So the argument is that you need to have come of age sufficiently to be capable of self-examination. How we really know when that is is beyond me. What if, instead of excluding the "introspectively challenged", it simply meant that adults need to examine themselves but children don't need to, before taking Communion? That would put a different spin on things! Apparently that's the position of the Eastern Orthodox Church, as they give Communion even to infants - hard to label it as "liberal", since they've been doing it for centuries.

My first church after ordination had the First-Communion-at-Confirmation policy. I would have loved to change it, but I believe policies like that are something that a whole church needs to decide together, rather than the pastor just setting his own policy (such unilateralism is rarely good pastoring anyway). I defend the prerogative of the local church to set policy, even though I don't always agree with the policy. I think some in my first church would not have been ready to change without a fight. They didn't know it, but my inner conflict about Communion policy was a factor in my departure (and in my unsuccessful attempt to leave pastoral ministry). I had the painful experience of explaining to a conscientious and precocious 2nd grader why she couldn't take Communion yet, and though she accepted the answer without complaint, I would really have rather gone ahead and given her Communion.

It's hard to be a searcher and a pastor at the same time. Being a pastor involves keeping an ordination/installation promise to dish out the teachings of our Faith according to the understanding of our church body. And that's perfectly appropriate, but being a deep questioner (not the same thing as a skeptic) means that sometimes I'm enforcing policies which I personally doubt. It must be nice to be a "true believer" and really believe that our church has it right on these things. I tried to leave parish ministry a few years back, in part so that I could escape the pain of these inner conflicts about enforcing church policy. But my attempt to flee to Tarshish was unsuccessful, and I've learned that there are even deeper pains, so now I'm back in the saddle, dealing with the same Communion issue in a new and interesting way.

I preach at two churches, which I'll call the Town Church and the Country Church. I've been at the Town Church for 4 years, and they have the traditional "First Communion after Confirmation" policy. Just to make things exciting, the Country Church, where I've preached for a little over a year, has held first Communion in the 5th grade for a number of years. Hence, an exercise in diplomacy. In my heart I'd love to see the two churches have the same policy - it would make things a lot easier - and in my heart I believe that 5th grade is plenty old enough. But I'm not ready to try to nudge the Town Church to lower the age - once again I don't think certain people would be ready to change without a fight, and right now such a fight would be a worse problem than the Communion policy. In spite of my personal convictions, I had secretly hoped that perhaps the Country Church might change their policy, at least temporarily. Until a few weeks ago, we didn't have any current 5th graders, and I wondered whether the family of our current 4th grader would be OK with us delaying his First Communion to match up with the "Town Church" kids.

But God has now blessed the Country Church with a couple of new families, including a family with three kids, one of them a 5th grader, who already has taken Communion in the Catholic Church since 2nd grade. So, in accordance with Country Church policy, I've told them that after instruction in the meaning of Communion, he may begin taking it at the Country Church.

I teach the Town & Country Church kids together in one Confirmation class. Most of them go to school together. At the Confirmation Info Meeting I tell the parents and students forthrightly that the two churches each have their own Communion policy, and each church has the prerogative to set its own policy. Town Church kids are asked not to take Communion if they ever happened to be at the Country Church on Communion Sunday (so far it hasn't happened) and Country Church kids are asked not to take Communion at the Town Church before they're confirmed (a couple of them were there on Easter). So far we haven't had any problems with the "Two Policy Policy", but I worry that someone might be offended sometime, thinking that I'm not treating them equally or something. It also means that I avoid having Communion at any joint services of the two churches (which is a kind of a loss). Last Maundy Thursday we had a Passover Seder at the Country Church, partly because I thought it would be an edifying thing to do, partly so we could have a "Communion-y" joint service without actually having Communion. For the foreseeable future I think it would be a good tradition to sustain for our joint Holy Week observances.

So I pray that until the two churches both have the same policy, that Christian good will reigns. I suppose, given my conviction, I should (slowly but surely) explore if the Town Church would be willing to change sometime. But to tell you the truth, I'm chicken.

Fishing for the big one

2005-09-28T07:58:00.000-05:00

While we pursue our daily mundane chores, the pursuit of science proceeds unabated. Apparently a team of Japanese scientists have taken pictures of a 26-foot-long giant squid in action, and it sounds like you wouldn't want it to mistake you for a meal. You may read more at:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050928/ap_on_sc/japan_giant_squid

Prayers

2005-09-22T01:47:00.000-05:00

Prayers for those suffering in the Gulf Coast region, bracing for another hurricane.

Prayers for a young woman having a very difficult time adjusting to the rigors of basic training in the USAF.

Prayers for a family who have just lost a loved one to leukemia.

Prayers for a 5-year-old girl dear to us, severely dehydrated from the flu - it's happened before.

Prayers for a man recovering from an injury.

Prayers for a nearby town of 2,000, rocked by a senseless murder of a 26-year-old wife and mother - the first murder there since 1983; prayers especially for her family, the family of the perpetrator, and the perpetrator himself - Jesus died for him, too.

LORD, have mercy.
CHRIST, have mercy.
LORD, have mercy.

What does "church membership" mean, anyway?

2005-09-22T01:00:00.000-05:00

Perhaps all you theology mavens out there could help me with a puzzle I'm pondering. The basic question has two parts:

1. What, according to the Bible, constitutes "church membership?"
2. When in church history would be the first appearance of any operational definition of "church membership" other than being a baptized Christian who hasn't been excommunicated?

Let me try to explain where I'm coming from. In churches such as mine, "The Free Lutherans", or a similar church body, "The Lutheran Brethren", it's possible to be baptized and participate in the life of the church (taking communion, teaching Sunday School, etc.) and not be on the official membership list of our church, or any other church for that matter. For example, according the the constitution of one of my two churches, a child of a member becomes a member upon being baptized here, but a child of non-members does not. The Lutheran Brethren have a concept of "pure church membership" unique among Lutherans, so that, for example, baptized children are called exactly that, "baptized children of the congregation" and don't become members until a voluntary profession of faith later in life. In Lutheran Brethren jargon a "parishioner" is someone who has come of age and participates in the life of the church without taking the step of being a member; the basic difference made by membership is eligibility to vote and hold office.

Just lately I started to wonder what the early Christians would have made of modern church membership concepts like these. If someone believes, is baptized, serves God, communes, uses his/her spiritual gifts in the life of the church, etc., why wouldn't we call him/her a "member?" Part of the modern policy reflects the fact that most churches (at least in the USA & similar countries) are legal corporations, and I can see why as such they need to define their legal membership lists. But I refuse to believe that churches must be legally incorporated to be churches; otherwise the Church would not exist in countries where Christianity is illegal.

Anyway, Biblical and historical light on this issue is invited. The aforementioned "Free Lutherans" and "Lutheran Brethren" are virtually identical on most points, but differ on a few, most notably concepts/policies on church membership. Even small differences can become magnified in importance when they are among the only differences between otherwise identical groups; after all, if these differences aren't really important, there's cause to question whether our separate existence is justified. As for me, I'm starting to wonder if both our groups have missed the boat. Could our century-long disagreement on church membership really be two versions of the same error? (Don't get me wrong - I've belonged to both groups, love them both, and think that, by and large, they're two versions of the same excellent thing). To me the bottom line can't be better expressed than in I John 4:15, "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God."

So, what did I learn?

2005-09-20T07:46:00.000-05:00

After a bit of a delay I finally received my grade sheet and graded essays back for the course "Jewish Theology" at Spertus. It's a welcome relief to see my "B+" grade in writing. I'd been told in a voice mail message that I had a B+, but a part of me feared that I'd heard it wrong, and it was really a D+.

Overall Dr. Sherwin's feedback was very positive, calling my essays "clear, precise, and well-documented." His main bit of constructive criticism was that it was often "a bit too terse, with concepts noted but neither adequately explained or analyzed." Overall not bad, considering how I procrastinated until about 3 days before the end of the term before I hunkered down and composed my essays. You are invited to read them via the link on my sidebar.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned in this course is the concept of "polarity", that Hebrew/Jewish thought operates in terms of complementary, contrasting polar opposites; humans made of dust/humans created in the image of God, Israel chosen/Israel rebellious, etc. Also, related to this concept, that Hebrew thought works in terms of description rather than definition. The long-standing preoccupation of Western thought is to define concepts, and to suppose that once we've defined something we understand it. Some Jewish thought has been influenced by this Western perspective - Philo, Maimonides, etc. - but the Jewish heritage of thought offers an escape from definitional reductionism and instead is comfortable with paradox.

In my previous course, "The Religion of Biblical Israel", Dr. Dulin had given me some strong advice on how important it is to interact with the primary sources (in this case involving the Bible and "Ancient Near Eastern Texts"), and not just to quote commentaries. This advice has stuck with me, and it proved very helpful while composing my essays.

I also learned just how much of a beginner with things Jewish! In one of my essays I said, "The Mahzor (prayerbook for the High Holy Days) reflects continuous development of worship over the centuries." She wrote in the margin, "So does the Siddur!" That's how I found out about the Siddur, which happens to be THE basic prayerbook for Judaism, as central for the Jews as the "Book of Common Prayer" is for the Anglicans. It probably looked a bit funny for me to have written an essay on Jewish worship without acknowledging the Siddur or even knowing that it exists. I quoted from the Mahzor for the simple reason that I happen to own one. I probably acquired it while I lived in St. Louis Park, MN 13 years ago - I sometimes came home with books from garage sales when I went for walks.

Well, now I'll be registering for the next course, which will be "Medieval Judaism."

Nick-O-Mickeyan Ethics

2005-09-19T06:52:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd start off this blog with a bit of intellectual tomfoolery from my first college semester, the Fall of 1983, when the world was young. I was taking a Philosophy course in "Greek Foundations of Western Thought", and I was preparing to write course essays on Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics." The assignment sheet was tampered with in my absence by my roommate Bryan (who always played Felix to my Oscar, and has since held a very respectable software engineering job in Columbus, OH for many years now - he's also the first one to dub me "The Euphemist"), and you may view the results below. To set things up a bit, my historic nickname is "Mickey", and another student named Nick was our dorm floor neighbor and was taking the same course; hence "Nick-O-Mickeyan Ethics."

Click image for a larger view.