tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67328697900947714192024-03-23T17:54:04.033+00:00Not Quite Art, Not Quite Livingblog closed. moved to gempf.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-45283864089481471202013-09-29T16:29:00.002+01:002013-09-29T16:30:57.303+01:00I Blog elsewhere now; please note new address: gempf.comYou'll find me at my new home: <a href="http://gempf.com/">gempf.com</a><br />
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Thanks for your interest.<br />
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-------Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-80845507502478675592011-06-13T12:40:00.000+01:002011-06-21T12:41:58.099+01:00starting up again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidMC2TomWI4mQPig1NkfK_ymgv7x52T3w9rssjsWar_G-Dr-w1OIKC4ei4nXCWsMbA8WhKt041U_-Gl09Z3qMNwn_44z2GKB7pE_6qfyB2Ta6wOd6hhZPNaTfTkEb8bC9Bwrc-VyP25kQ/s1600/blogagain.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidMC2TomWI4mQPig1NkfK_ymgv7x52T3w9rssjsWar_G-Dr-w1OIKC4ei4nXCWsMbA8WhKt041U_-Gl09Z3qMNwn_44z2GKB7pE_6qfyB2Ta6wOd6hhZPNaTfTkEb8bC9Bwrc-VyP25kQ/s1600/blogagain.gif" /></a></div><br />
I'm on sabbatical again, so for the coming few months at least, I'll be doing a blog.<br />
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I did one for a while back in 2007 and those posts are underneath this one... beware though, almost all of the links now lead nowhere and I discuss a lot of things that are rather 'old hat.' That's life in the fast lane of academic theology!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-77694155008047433552007-09-10T19:39:00.002+00:002011-06-21T12:22:51.363+01:00Genius<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC1fnP0A1sgCnILz_CPx2W98Iqw15vN3TVX28bozge1PVG7bt4HZ7nmkZkiKsB3ZLpjNfDwvEAfMD8EqlU5jLe5um66gaVH-kulOp4y-nDh_I_rZA6WPlr6Fwk0ZWuRWepFHXFgRCPnsk/s1600-h/522531957_af68651a9c_m.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5108662918762967042" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC1fnP0A1sgCnILz_CPx2W98Iqw15vN3TVX28bozge1PVG7bt4HZ7nmkZkiKsB3ZLpjNfDwvEAfMD8EqlU5jLe5um66gaVH-kulOp4y-nDh_I_rZA6WPlr6Fwk0ZWuRWepFHXFgRCPnsk/s320/522531957_af68651a9c_m.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaR7cDbYD-V_HXX0Tklw0kOI3UwWtzk2QeRhTgpk6Ex0z1rdbeaQpM80G7k04m-3tOAGfixcGxb3mNE8mx00G4jSxoE5so_H4kPbWfIsxhpIq67lOix1jGqV3Fn68rKsiCjg96SmCQYhg/s1600-h/522531893_739d4b6556_m.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5108662923057934354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaR7cDbYD-V_HXX0Tklw0kOI3UwWtzk2QeRhTgpk6Ex0z1rdbeaQpM80G7k04m-3tOAGfixcGxb3mNE8mx00G4jSxoE5so_H4kPbWfIsxhpIq67lOix1jGqV3Fn68rKsiCjg96SmCQYhg/s320/522531893_739d4b6556_m.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a><br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lockwasher/page1/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/lockwasher/page1/</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-77589868693660129902007-08-31T09:00:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:25:09.233+01:00Just wrote about this to a friend and on pressing 'send,' it occurred to me that it was the sort of short snippet that belonged here as well -- the kind of thing I need to get into the habit of posting rather than saying/sending out and forgetting.<br />
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Luther was anxious to replace the Latin of the worship service with common ordinary-folks German. Why did he not also replace the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper with common ordinary-folks beer and pretzels? Answer, predictably: the Bible.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-22546762695488483382007-08-17T13:46:00.001+00:002011-06-20T11:43:19.095+01:00Virtual reality has been an interest of mine for a long time. In the early 90s, I was very active in educational experiment VRs run by MIT and the University of Pheonix, microMUSE and mariMUSE. It got as far as my actually teaching a 'distance learning' module on the Gospels to two students in different locations in Arizona, as part of their undergrad programmes in America. It was 5 am for me and 10 pm for me when we'd meet in my virtual classroom in cyberspace and I'd use virtual slideshow projectors and discussion for our weekly hour and a half sessions. But text-based wasn't sexy enough for funding, and I watched a mariMUSE close down, a project called Virtual University flounder and fail under fraud charges and microMUSE change hands and focus.<br />
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I'm sure the day is coming when virtual environments will have a low enough learning curve and high enough bandwidth that they'll be of use. But that day is not yet.<br />
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Worlds with more visual elements have been established and obtained cult followings. I've kept my eye on two worlds that were established deliberately to be open-ended social networks. One is the pastel and cartoonlike Habbo Hotel which has been used as an occasional meeting space by some in the emerging movement. The other is the more serious and ambitious Second Life, used, for example, by Calvary Chapel in California experimentally. (Photo: my Second Life persona hovering in front of Calvary Chapel's offices) Second Life has hit the headlines not too long ago -- their full-fledged economy has produced a real-life millionaire: she's earned her money buying and selling virtual land in Second Life... enough that she can exchange her Second Life currency for more than a million in real world currency. (Yes mechanisms exist for 'cashing in' your game money.)<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxzNxond8CxBWOkTKV4uBHPXlHiRjbrzTzHifqfaZ9IySiplQOqBQoofOznqGQmnYOTCyjSRScnDfKiYwhv3dYiupHOVhLjxH2hIFlDvvMN1UJ1JBuSMeCOtcx24-OsvoesSWZLNhyqQo/s1600-h/Capture+-+09.10.43.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5099665735371960306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxzNxond8CxBWOkTKV4uBHPXlHiRjbrzTzHifqfaZ9IySiplQOqBQoofOznqGQmnYOTCyjSRScnDfKiYwhv3dYiupHOVhLjxH2hIFlDvvMN1UJ1JBuSMeCOtcx24-OsvoesSWZLNhyqQo/s320/Capture+-+09.10.43.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a>I went in to Second Life trying to scope out whether it was worth thinking about using it for a Second Campus of London School of Theology or at least as a Virtual Office, in which I could meet with my postgrad students who live overseas. Having devoted a significant chunk of my evenings and weekends for a few weeks, I'm very much leaning away from using it for students.<br />
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Here's why:<br />
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1. No one under 18 is permitted to join. Why this is the subject of the next topic. But the simple fact that some of our undergraduates, even if a small minority, would not be able to join legally probably deals it a death blow for use by our students.<br />
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2. The reason no one under 18 is permitted is because Linden Lab, who run it, try as hard as they can not to regulate it. They want an economy with stuff being bought and sold but other than the basic structure of the world, they've stepped back and told the citizens/participants that it's up to them to provide the content. Not unpredictably in today's western culture, a great deal of the content revolves around sex. There's a lot of other stuff that I think is unhealthy as well. OK, all this is true of the real world too, but if you had a choice of having electronic conversations with or without background ads for sexual services, Christians should probably choose to have them without. The domain is a good mission field, in some ways, but a lousy classroom.<br />
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3. Because visual-based educational virtual realities have almost all the disadvantages of the text-based ones I used in the past without any major, killer-app educational advantages. For online tutorials with far-away students, iChat still beats Second Life easily.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-27287567557671855712007-08-15T20:52:00.000+00:002008-12-09T07:49:25.388+00:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQnFVcWyq9k43bdGasrlDKuGZf1gSWnVyj_iqIg4AN3x7cD9UUf4xBLgd2AdIBT2Ufl17fVdmpYEYjDwow-Cd1aEKGKveUpas8vemxwWuKkBpB2Sf4FkJjp1U1jetXPeXpuq1ucKIMeTM/s1600-h/titanic-lamp.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQnFVcWyq9k43bdGasrlDKuGZf1gSWnVyj_iqIg4AN3x7cD9UUf4xBLgd2AdIBT2Ufl17fVdmpYEYjDwow-Cd1aEKGKveUpas8vemxwWuKkBpB2Sf4FkJjp1U1jetXPeXpuq1ucKIMeTM/s200/titanic-lamp.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5099039133583592658" border="0" /></a><br />Hey, if you liked the lamp with the cord I mentioned a while back. You'll like this one, too. I'd love to have both of them in the room! (But not for that price.)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flukecollective.com/product.php?productid=13">The Titanic Lamp</a>:<br />Charles Trevelyan, England<br />The Titanic Lamp elegantly upsets one's expectations. A diagonal slice through the length of the lamp creates the appearance of floating semi-submerged in water. Combined with a high-gloss white lacquer finish and matching shade, the lamp is dressed in the stark attitude of a museum piece, frozen in time.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-84127475050579499892007-08-14T13:05:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:25:27.766+01:00Jeremiah is a ferocious book.<br />
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23:23 Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? 24 Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord. 25 I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, “I have dreamed, I have dreamed!” 26 How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back—those who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? 27 They plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal. 28 Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-89297090574649789812007-08-10T09:51:00.002+00:002011-06-21T12:25:41.662+01:00My problem with Fred Peatross's new <span style="font-style: italic;">Missio Dei</span> (<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Missio-Dei-Christianity-Fred-Peatross/dp/1583851852/ref=sr_1_13/202-2578076-3223036?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186412375&sr=8-13">Amazon UK</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Missio-Dei-Christianity-Fred-Peatross/dp/1583851852/ref=sr_1_1/104-5141521-7956721?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186412931&sr=8-1">Amazon US</a>) isn't what it says about reaching out; my problem comes in the assumption behind the book (and behind Michael Frost and Alan Hirsh's works with which Peatross is in cahoots) that the purpose of an institutional church, whether trad or based in a pub, is to serve the congregation and help them connect to Jesus. If I agreed with this premise, I would agree with much else.<br />
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I think the institutional church is what happens when Christians try to submit themselves to God in corporate worship. It is more of an act of emptying of self and culture than an act of self-expression and enculturation. Certainly the church, the people, are involved in the other thing -- all the time. And the institutional church can be involved in supporting and facilitating that, but ultimately it is each Christian's job to be a witness, not the job of the Christian community to erect a Lobbying Entity (though I'm sympathetic with those who try to do both).<br />
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Thus, it's incorrect to think that the Traditional Church's approach to doing church is an attractional model: that if we do things the way we've always done things, people will want to come in. From 1 Corinthians, we learn that the church's liturgy is more of a duty model: the Corinthians were chastised for trying to move the Lord's Supper away from its Jewish-specific roots and instead to practice it in the context of a Sophist's teaching/meal, which their culture understood and accepted. Paul tells them that such attempts at making worship culturally appropriate and self-expressive "do more harm than good" (1 Cor. 11:17).<br />
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Instead they are to practice the tradition, as they had it passed on to them by Paul, who in turn had it passed on to him by others (1 Cor. 11:23). There is no sense that Paul wants them to do this because it will be more attractive to them. That's not his motive at all. If it were, you could tell him it isn't working and he needs to change his strategy. This is what many want to say to the trad church: "If your motive was attracting people, it's not working." The correct reply isn't "Oh, yes it is working and we're going to keep on." The correct answer is "That's not really the motive behind our worship service."<br />
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Missiology is an important -- a crucial -- part of ecclesiology. But ecclesiology isn't exhausted by missiology. Evangelism is about attracting or connecting and the church must be involved in that. Christian education & Bible study can be about helping believers connect. Worship is not about that. Worship is about Him, and only tangentially about us humans. Bread and wine. Cookies and milk won't do.<br />
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And I think Fred Peatross instinctively feels this: I mentioned some non-Christians for whom he prayed. He also read the Bible in front of them and, in time, asked if it would be okay to have a morning devotional. Did he use the Bible rather than a self-help book because of an 'attractional' model of this ancient document? Nope. He read the Bible because it's a thing God gave us to use. So, my friends, are the sacraments.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-66871135879048035522007-08-09T16:31:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:25:59.589+01:00I got into a long conversation today with a non-Christian, a particular kind I'm sure you've run across as well -- believes that all human motivation reduces down to selfishness / self-centredness. I'm sure it all comes from reading too much Dawkins.<br />
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Anyway, when the notion that love is other-centred rather than self-centred didn't really make a dent in the armour, I went for science: science only advances by people not being self-centred and sticking to their methodological / theoretical guns, but by giving those up and getting out of the way and making the thing they're studying -- the Other -- become more important, more determinative, than themselves.<br />
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Then I realized that I wasn't so much arguing for 'selflessness' as I thought I was at the beginning. Love isn't selfless. Science isn't selfless. Music composition, jazz improvisation is not selfless -- else it's just mechanics and we despise it. But neither is it self-centred -- we expect submission to the tempo and key and so on or at least the use of it as a springboard from which to make a musical point. When it is self/ego-centric we also despise it.<br />
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Stereotypically, I think God wants us to be ourselves in submission to him. So here's what I'm wondering today. What defines the point when self-denial goes too far to turn Christianity into mechanics and technique? And on the other end, what defines the point where personal response (which I think is good) becomes nothing but self-expression (which I think is bad)? Or am I off-track with all of this and it's all just a matter of taste or something?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-54802197701293744462007-08-06T15:07:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:26:15.184+01:00Old blogging crony Fred Peatross has let me read his latest book <span style="font-style: italic;">Missio Dei</span> (<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Missio-Dei-Christianity-Fred-Peatross/dp/1583851852/ref=sr_1_13/202-2578076-3223036?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186412375&sr=8-13">Amazon UK</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Missio-Dei-Christianity-Fred-Peatross/dp/1583851852/ref=sr_1_1/104-5141521-7956721?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186412931&sr=8-1">Amazon US</a>). If you see it on a bookshelf, don't be fooled by the footnotes, this is friendly and thoughtful wandering. Here's my favourite sentence... it comes in the context of Fred and his wife spending time travelling with non-believers -- putting into practice his dictum of spending more time with such folks than with Christians: "Each night I prayed behind my non-Christian friends' backs and then told them to their face over a morning bagel."<br />
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More about this book later in the week.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-55385118471764630382007-08-01T07:44:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:26:30.873+01:00The texts set for this coming Sunday, Col. 3:1-11 and Luke 12:13-21, are both concerned with the renunciation of non-Kingdom priorities and patterns of life. But it's easy to see from them how it is that asceticism and even gnosticism became so prevalent so early. Without balance from other Scriptural texts, it looks as though we are supposed to make a simple distinction: anything non-spiritual is worldly and evil.<br />
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Heaven knows, the hyperbole is necessary to shock some people and cultures into restoring balance, and we do well to feel the force of such passages. But the New Testament church did not set out to hate the world per se, only to love the Lord so very much that all else paled into insignificance -- to hate the world in a relative sense. And speaking of a 'relative' sense, this, of course, is also how to understand the passages where Jesus tells you to hate your family.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-44990804228020604132007-07-30T07:45:00.000+00:002007-07-30T07:55:27.810+00:00Do you top-post or bottom-post?From <a href="http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/jargon/html/index.html">The Jargon File</a>:<br /><br /> <span style="font-weight: bold;">top-post</span>: v. To put the newly-added portion of an email or Usenet response before the quoted part, as opposed to the more logical sequence of quoted portion first with original following. The problem with this practice is neatly summed up by the following FAQ entry:<span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><blockquote> A: No.<br /> Q: Should I include quotations after my reply?</blockquote></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">bottom-post</span>: v. In a news or mail reply, to put the response to a news or email message after the quoted content from the parent message. This is correct form, and until around 2000 was so universal on the Internet that neither the term ‘bottom-post’ nor its antonym top-post existed. Hackers consider that the best practice is actually to excerpt only the relevent portions of the parent message, then intersperse the poster's response in such a way that each section of response appears directly after the excerpt it applies to. This reduces message bulk, keeps thread content in a logical order, and facilitates reading.<br /><a href="http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/jargon/"></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-6016088242839490622007-07-26T10:39:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:24:06.907+01:00I was going to stay up last night (whoops... night-before-last now) to attend a Bible Study in the Second Life virtual world. (I didn't make it because their system went down for a while.) A Bible Study I could go along with. I still unsure about a worship service. And yet I have real trouble articulating why. Many of the initial objections are illusory. This may be a virtual community, but it's not an imaginary one -- the people are real, with gifts and with problems. The fact that it's a virtual computer-based thing may colour our view unnecessarily. It's difficult to see how it is different to a club in any RL hobby -- a chess club meeting or quilting group. Imagine you were in one of those activities rather than a virtual environment, and imagine the meeting was made up of thousands of people in a big warehouse. Wouldn't it be nice to sometimes have the Christians in the group get together and pray and hang out?<br />
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But can the virtuality really be left out of the equation? To celebrate the Incarnation in a land made of patterns which only imitate bodily form? That doesn't really add up. -- More thinking needed.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-10438330502437342002007-07-24T09:15:00.002+00:002011-06-21T12:23:51.416+01:00I spent a significant part of the weekend exploring the virtual reality environment "<a href="http://www.secondlife.com/">Second Life</a>." I'd visited before, back when the first Macintosh client software came out, but I found it excruciatingly slow and buggy and didn't stay.<br />
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Some of you will know that years ago I did a lot of work on three text-based virtual educational environments, designing Museums on the University of Pheonix's MariMuse and MIT's MicroMuse, and designing the main classroom objects and programming for an ill-fated Virtual University project. I also taught a class on the Gospels via the virtual environment in MariMuse. It was with an eye to the educational possibilities that I went exploring.<br />
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It's a fascinating place to visit. I don't find the system particularly friendly -- with all virtual environments I've been in there is a very steep initial learning curve. But once you're well and truly in, there is a wealth of stuff — the good and the despicable — to see.<br />
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I may be writing more about it -- and virtual environments in general -- later. Second Life is a working economy and some people are actually making their Real Life living by buying and selling virtual real estate and goods. You can exchange real life currency for in-world currency, but also vice versa, so if you make enough LindenDollars, you can cash them in for real money. There are lots of philosophical and theological implications and issues.<br />
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If you want to visit the world, it's absolutely free to do so (though if you choose that option, you'll also start out penniless in the world). Wait to start until you've got a chunk of time, though. It's more like learning how to use a software package than like browsing a website. There are a good bunch of Christians on-line already but most "people" are very friendly and willing to be helpful if you don't demand a lot of their time. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, much of what goes on there now concens either sex or making money or both. When you get out into the wide virtual world, you need to steel yourself for that. Oh, and there are a lot of Goths, too -- more Goths than Cyberpunk, though the styles cross. There's also a sizeable SteamPunk movement. And vampires, lots of vampires.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-89361907220199374442007-07-23T14:47:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:31:07.857+01:00The lectionary Gospel reading last week was the Mary & Martha story from Luke 10:38-42. I'm pretty sure that I've written about it elsewhere, but it doesn't show up in a quick search of my offline blog storage. It's such a lovely story. And it's so typical of the New Testament that the most radical teaching about the equality of the role of women is not about rights but about access and humility: Mary sitting at Jesus' feet. That, of course, is the appropriate place for a student in those days. Except that as a woman she wasn't really an appropriate person to be there (there were some exceptions, but as a rule it was the role of women to feed the men who were engaged in the study).<br />
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Verse 42 struck me this time through. Jesus says that Martha is troubled by many things, but only a <span style="font-weight: bold;">few</span> things are necessary and really only <span style="font-weight: bold;">one</span>. That so reminds me of the saying of Jesus in Mark 10:21, one of my favourite passages. Jesus says the rich young ruler lacks one thing, then lists a <span style="font-weight: bold;">few</span> things (that boil down to <span style="font-weight: bold;">one</span>, really).Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-73894441080238508502007-07-19T06:52:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:30:51.597+01:00Apparently, Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote:<br />
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'Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.'<br />
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Sounds like good quality greeting-card sentiment.<br />
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But is it barbed?<br />
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The American Declaration of Independence says that 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' are God-given rights. Is part of the problem with the West that we take that phrase literally and out of the context of our relationship with God (and even with each other). We seem to want those rights to be fundamental to our relationships -- the rules that they obey -- rather than the other way round.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-17861397099122508312007-07-17T14:26:00.003+00:002011-06-21T12:30:37.808+01:00There are quite a few New Testament questions that still baffle me. One of them came up in House Group the other night: the ending of Mark. Your Bible probably gives you 20 verses of chapter 16. But in most versions, verses 9-20 are printed in a different style or with a disclaimer before verse 9. My old King James Bible is one version that doesn't. That's because when the old King was doing his stuff, most of the ancient texts that were available included 9-20. We've found a lot more texts since then and learned a lot more about how to read even the ones that we had. These days, most everyone agrees that 9-20 is not by the author of Mark's gospel on the basis of vocabulary and style, that it doesn't really fit into the narrative flow and that the content has probably been pieced together from other parts of the New Testament.<br />
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The best texts that we have end at verse 8. But that is in many ways an undesirable place to end a book. It's an unsatisfying ending from a narrative perspective; it's an odd way to end grammatically; and theologically it seems even less satisfactory than narratively. Probably that's why 9-20 was added on by someone.<br />
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There's a much shorter alternative as well. Some manuscripts, instead of 9-20, have this two sentences:<br />
<br />
And they promptly reported all these instructions to Peter and his companions. And after that, Jesus HImself sent out through them from east to west the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.<br />
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This doesn't seem any more likely than the longer ending.<br />
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Did Mark mean to end at verse 8 -- is it his developed sense of irony, or some kind of device to make clear that the story is unfinished until you respond to it? Many people I respect think it's meant to end there.<br />
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But there could have been a longer ending that got lost. The Christian documents were under siege early in the going. Mark's gospel would have been written not as a codex-style book but on a scroll. It would have been a fixed length before Mark started writing. Did he run out of room and put the ending on an add-on sheet which got lost? Or did the end of his scroll literally break off, as they apparently often did?<br />
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That's the question that vexes me. I'm sure that we have to reject both 9-20 and the shorter one. But I don't know whether Mark meant it to end at verse 8 or whether there's a lost ending.<br />
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Does it matter? In terms of doctrine and application, certainly not. But for someone with a high view of Scripture, the implications make the ground shake. Yet I cannot decide -- I've gone back and forth at various points in my career; always with pretty good reasons. But right now, I can't even decide which one I want to be true!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-40709213571172327422007-07-16T07:44:00.002+00:002011-06-21T12:30:26.032+01:00I started blogging because some of my former students blogged first. I read their stuff and enjoyed being able to keep up with them and what they were thinking about even though they'd left college. The natural thing to do seemed not only to comment on theirs but to start my own.<br />
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It wasn't long, though, till the community expanded and I wound up feeling part of a blogging community that included quite a few people I'd never met before. These people have become prayer partners, assistant editors & critics and writing partners. That's been fun.<br />
<br />
When I took part in a panel discussion about blogging a couple of Greenbelts ago, it was clear that the guy chairing the discussion thought that the blog was there to publicize my books. That kind of surprised me. My guess is that the blog has caused me to give away more copies than I've sold through it. I did also then try to run a site about my books -- my <a href="http://conradgempf.christian.net/">blog annex</a> -- but it's been even harder for find the time and energy to put into updating that than my main blog.<br />
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Ideally, the blog would fit into my writing life in a different way -- helping me to write every day, giving me a reason to write stuff that I might not put into words otherwise. I'm still wrestling with the idea of the self-publishing alternative that the web offers.<br />
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The next question is why do I write? And that too boils down to sharing with people, but also the compulsion to share what I know (and what I suspect) about the gospel. It's also, I suspect, something of a hobby -- something I do because I want to and because I can. Thus it's something I want to get better at for its own sake as well as because of what it allows me to do.<br />
<br />
So, two reasons for blogging: contact/sharing with folks; and writing practice/outlet.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-74517151670149277352007-07-12T12:44:00.002+00:002011-06-21T12:30:15.639+01:00<span style="color: black;"><span style="color: #660000;">WARNING: Nothing but spoilers coming.</span> </span>Watch the trailer first. It's filmed on a handheld camera, so let it load first, so you don't confuse the jitteryness of download with the intended jitteryness of the genre. Trailer is available in high quality on <a href="http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/11808/">Apple's site</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/11808/" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086293014893157234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH6_L1hyxP8eoI3w8FbG1xP9wckoz6kI2OZ670_TlPNbqg4R44Zrl-ONI4l9uDVRGJgY9E3tlJs1clMTJERClrNIk-Nt9i8G8_5sT4lpdOzsZ-bD3XGZNmKdYRegXPxImt-4OZI2xRFKo/s200/Capture+-+13.53.54.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">[whoops. it's gone now. sorry.]</div><a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
The trailer and secretive publicity is the phenomenon that I'm more interested in than the film. It reminds me of iPhone and Pixar in the way that it allows the raw quality of the product to hype itself. The trailer seems to me extremely tight writing and directing -- story-telling. Tight and risky: you've got, what, two minutes? And you're going to spend what percentage of time purely establishing the going-away party? This is a trailer designed by the artists not the marketing suits. It is, of course, the utterly believable normality of the farewell party that makes what is to come so horrifying.<br />
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The Liberty head is pure genius. At the point in the trailer where we're dying to figure out what this strange thing making the noise is, we're confronted not by the alien and bizarre, but by something familiar chillingly in the wrong place. But we're kept from recognizing it as it tumbles through the air -- beautiful attention-grabbing end over end spin against a lit building... kept from recognizing it until it comes to a halt and then, exquisitely, they've managed to time the thing perfectly so that you see it, but by the time your brain processes what it is, they've already faded to black so you can't verify it. It's a long standing suspense-film technique, but done to perfection here: the jumps your mind has to make -- that's the thing. You're eyes are taking in the credits and stuff, but your brain is going: What kind of thing could do that to the Statue of Liberty? How big would it have to be... where would it be standing... etc. etc. Lovely.<br />
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Here's another long-standing suspense-film technique; one you'll have missed watching the trailer on the computer. When the lights go out unexpectedly at the farewell party -- did you think for a second that something had gone wrong with the download? Big deal. Imagine if you were in a room like a movie theatre where the only light in the room is coming from the screen. When the party blacks out, your sensory world goes black. You're in the same situation as the guys in the party: you can no longer see the person next to you either. And when the first set of projectiles hit and the screen goes bright white? That's blinding in a movie theatre where your eyes are dark-adjusted. The story-tellers aren't just manipulating what's on the screen, they're manipulating your whole environment.<br />
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Here's a little touch a non-writer might not notice that sets it up: the roof sequence. We've not only got an explosion in the distance, we also have the concept of stuff flying through the air in a trajectory that's going to smash buildings and come down near the characters -- just like the punch-line statue of Liberty head. Know why that's there? Foreshadowing and preparation. When you see the head coming at you, you already think you know what to expect: trajectory, smashing things, coming down near us, watch out. Been there, done that. So then your brain is ready for the next question: what is the projectile? The ending wouldn't be nearly as effective without the middle setting you up. Brilliant story-telling.<br />
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And your overall impression? The marketing guys would have had a voice-over telling you: "This is the scariest film you'll ever see" instead each viewer comes to their own conclusion, "These guys sucked me into their story when I gave them 2 minutes; I'd love to see what they do with two hours."<br />
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Speaking of Pixar, you've seen the <a href="http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/ratatouille/preview.html">Ratatouille 9-minute piece</a>, right?<br />
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You might also appreciate the gee-whizzery of some of the intelligence Apple built into the <a href="http://www.apple.com/iphone/usingiphone/keyboard.html">iPhone keyboard</a>.<br />
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When you've got the quality, let it speak for itself.<br />
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Meanwhile, have a nice day, watch out for flying statue heads and <a href="http://www.slusho.jp/">don't drink more than 6 Slushos</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-2841994518943971842007-07-11T09:35:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:30:03.164+01:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd4nKTaTR1YbIuUC_RMWcvPE71ko5PldKMyjpTEq8bvgf2Wyr3f4LJooiEvpsK_OL9EzPVP8opTBXW9fNhCN_7pJnGnjYGJ9tNSVOkf5-PDDM1LF8QYwyHb35Ox0tE5dfkTWl6O4fJ7fQ/s1600-h/theojansen.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5085874329651621650" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd4nKTaTR1YbIuUC_RMWcvPE71ko5PldKMyjpTEq8bvgf2Wyr3f4LJooiEvpsK_OL9EzPVP8opTBXW9fNhCN_7pJnGnjYGJ9tNSVOkf5-PDDM1LF8QYwyHb35Ox0tE5dfkTWl6O4fJ7fQ/s200/theojansen.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">My name is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMqftVhOuTw">Theo Jansen</a>. I'm a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tILRd5rwRM">kinetic sculptor</a>.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-72852158278124848732007-07-10T14:48:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:29:51.017+01:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIWtorQjugJfNGaIYe1DycB2aZ20ADy9obbbQ9QbrMCpCwQhQMc9jib31e08d-L2enqRJ6IQst7-O_KCTyUoAj-XPYGg1piWafr6arTt5BYJKxynsA-n1CUOLFX0ouat6QmdacDopDJAk/s1600-h/2ff4af7355f4a9eb_m.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5085584311984959234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIWtorQjugJfNGaIYe1DycB2aZ20ADy9obbbQ9QbrMCpCwQhQMc9jib31e08d-L2enqRJ6IQst7-O_KCTyUoAj-XPYGg1piWafr6arTt5BYJKxynsA-n1CUOLFX0ouat6QmdacDopDJAk/s320/2ff4af7355f4a9eb_m.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 196px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 136px;" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dumpr.net/museumr.php">Museumr.</a><br />
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Upload your photo and voila.<br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-70782200288612066032007-07-09T10:37:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:29:37.829+01:00Someone wrote to me:<br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: #000099;">Another theological question: If the greatest commandments</span><br />
<span style="color: #000099;">are to love God with all your heart, and love your neighbour as</span><br />
<span style="color: #000099;">yourself, and bearing in mind that Jesus gives an example of this (Luke)</span><br />
<span style="color: #000099;">in the good Samaritan, immediately after making this statement - does</span><br />
<span style="color: #000099;">this mean that non-jews and non-Christians who love God with all their</span><br />
<span style="color: #000099;">hearts and their neighbour as themselves are obeying all the</span><br />
<span style="color: #000099;">commandments and will therefore also get eternal life?</span></span><br />
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You don't earn it by following the greatest or the least commandments. He's not waiting at the gate with a commandments checklist. It's not about that.<br />
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You get there by loving him and being loved by him. And that implies not rejecting him. John 3:16-18. Yes, of course, non-Jews who and non-Christians who are willing to love God and not refuse the gift he offers are welcomed in. That's the revolution that Christ brought to Judaism: relationship isn't limited to blood/family/tribal ties. They're welcomed in not because they have followed commandments but because they have loved and said yes to God and his way, Jesus. But in doing so, they are no longer non-Christians.<br />
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The question is a little like asking "how many keys does there need to be on a computer keyboard for it to be connected to the internet?" "It says to 'mouse-click here'; does that mean a trackpad won't do it, only a mouse?" No. The internet isn't really about that. It's about being able to send and receive signals and, once you can receive them, not turning signals away.<br />
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Jesus is being typically playfully paradoxical with the guy. Jesus says If you love me you'll keep my commandments. And what are his commandments? Essentially, that you love him.<br />
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Some of the guys that ask Jesus similar questions have a problem: they are trying to justify themselves. They are examining the wording to find out whether they can fit into the definition without changing. "Ah, but who IS my neighbour?" Jesus told the Good Samaritan parable not in order that the guy might jack up his commandment-compliance an extra notch, but so that he would change his attitude. Such people are in trouble not because there are commandments that they are violating, but because their attitude is not one of loving God, but of asking "how little can I get away with and still have it be called 'love'?" That, of course, is not a question love asks. Love asks, "What can I do to show you I love you?" not "How little can I do and still have you think I love you?"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-21701228063843436162007-07-06T07:30:00.002+00:002011-06-21T12:29:27.671+01:00A friend of mine asked about the Dead Sea Scrolls the other day. She'd studied theology years ago, when the text of the Scrolls had been published but not many folks knew what to do with them yet. She asked me for an update: how have these ancient documents informed our understanding of the New Testament and Christian origins?<br />
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I wasn't prepared, of course. I had to say that I thought Vermes's volume was still the standard entry point. As for how our knowledge of the Scrolls has influenced NT studies, I thought of some of the discussions of Christology, particularly divine mediators, but other than Hurtado's stuff, not much of this has any trickle down value to the folks facing the pews.<br />
<br />
But then something occurred to me that hadn't before. It's still a half-baked notion, but.... here goes. Part of the reason for the imbalances and errors in Tom Wright's reconstruction of Jesus and Judaism might lie precisely in his great awareness/knowledge of the Dead Sea Scrolls.<br />
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His Second Temple Jews all seem to share the preoccupations of the oddball Qumrani sect. It was Qumran who felt themselves still in exile (because they <span style="font-style: italic;">were</span> in a self-imposed exile); it was the Essenes who felt that the Temple was under the judgement of God (and separated themselves from it <span style="font-style: italic;">unlike</span> the Jews or the first Christians); it was Qumran who saw everything in terms of paranoid religious politics (this, I'll grant, is a less telling point); even their particular vindication-vengence eschatology comes into it.<br />
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A lot of the stuff that you find in Wright makes sense if you accord the Qumran folks and their philosophy an influence beyond what a careful reading of the ancient sources suggests. There's a reason that the Gospels contain references to Sadducees and Pharisees and Herodians but not to Qumranis/Essenes. They were a marginal sect; they marginalized themselves. And this was because they did not share -- rejected -- the common consensus of understanding Judaism that allowed groups as different as the Pharisees and Sadducees to work together in the Sanhedrin. In Wright's reconstruction of the first century scene, Qumrani thinking would be more or less mainstream.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-31224545497715218012007-07-05T11:04:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:29:15.564+01:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGjROh187t6JJHnnz0pmPOIX9-d4NxKM2cTVg_RYdf8ZSe7Bm6SMSfl0CV48kR9I5xpMNhHCnUP2zZbQwWJLWVjMfLPD1ILtizxhhQ4SuV0bANgkw2L79D5WPBXtHFar1WNWSus1uYh4E/s1600-h/Capture+-+12.02.37.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5083667949117091522" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGjROh187t6JJHnnz0pmPOIX9-d4NxKM2cTVg_RYdf8ZSe7Bm6SMSfl0CV48kR9I5xpMNhHCnUP2zZbQwWJLWVjMfLPD1ILtizxhhQ4SuV0bANgkw2L79D5WPBXtHFar1WNWSus1uYh4E/s320/Capture+-+12.02.37.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></a><br />
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<br />
Behold; the FlapFlap lamp from <a href="http://www.buerofuerform.de/">Büro für Form</a>. When I was a kid, touristy shops at the seaside would sell empty dog collars with stiff leashes/leads... you'd walk with them as if you had an invisible dog. This is almost as fun.<br />
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It'd be even more fun if they sold it paired with an identical lamp with an ordinary cord. Then you could change one for the other while your house guests were in the other room.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6732869790094771419.post-43067422359355969732007-07-04T07:15:00.001+00:002011-06-21T12:29:06.546+01:00I noted a wickedly clever quotation from Richard Bauckham's wonderful <span style="font-style: italic;">Eyewitnesses</span> book. He's talking about the many versions of Jesus on offer at present - "...the Jesus of Dominic Crossan, the Jesus of Marcus Borg, the Jesus of NT (Tom) Wright... and many others." Of these, he writes: "...in all cases the result is a Jesus reconstructed by the historian... in effect, to provide an alternative to the Gospels' constructions of Jesus." (p. 3)<br />
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This is clever. All of us will want to use this quotation about our enemies' interpretation of Jesus. But it's naughty of him not to make crystal-clear that we must also say this about our <span style="font-style: italic;">favourite</span> book about Jesus. Even worse, it's true of any of us, not just professional historians. No earthling has access to the "Gospels' constructions of Jesus" untainted by our own interpretations and presuppositions. It isn't, thus, a choice between Wright's Jesus and the Jesus of the Gospels, but a choice between Wright's Jesus and your own Jesus. What you're hoping is that your favourite historians portray a Jesus who is closer to the Gospels' own rendition than your own is.<br />
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Bauckham is again naughty on the next page, where he writes: "Historical work, by its very nature, is always putting two and two together and making five -- or twelve or seventeen."<br />
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Wrongety-wrong-wrong. Not 'always.' Rather, historical work at its best is putting two and two together and not only making four, but deducing the existence and nature of one and three.<br />
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In fact, in thinking about how I would use the metaphor, it is the applied theologians, not the historians, who are interested in what two and two "make," arriving at five, twelve or seventeen. And the hermeneuts? They don't care about the numbers all that much; they want to explore what we mean by "and" and "make."<br />
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(ps A better, funnier, challenge would be that conservative Evangelical NT guys like me tend to put two and two together and get twenty-two.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com