About to touch down at Seattle Int’l.
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Harden or Soften
There’s an excellent essay in the current Books & Culture by Robert Gundry. The body of the essay is a critique of Bart Ehrman’s book “Misquoting Jesus,” which purports to debunk the Gospels. (Gundry ably debunks Ehrman in a page or two.) What resonated with me particularly is a “postscript” in which Gundry recognizes that, underneath all the bluster and skeptical dogma (yes, skepticism has its own dogma), Ehrman’s work does highlight that the Bible isn’t always a simple book.
Ehrman and Gundry both grew up, by their own accounts, in rigidly fundamentalist circumstances. Ehrman left the faith when he found his fundamentalism didn’t work; Gundry’s faith deepened. Here’s Gundry’s explanation:
Last week a pastor who is affiliated with Samaritan’s Purse spoke at my home church. This speaker’s message reflected both the best and worst of evangelical convictions. (The speaker was not Franklin Graham. You probably woudln’t know the speaker by name.)
The first part of the message reflected the ethos of Samaritan’s Purse, which I admire. The text was Ephesians 6: “be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” and “put on the full armor of God.” The speaker referred to perseverence in doing the sort of good work done by Samaritan’s Purse. He made some references as asides that suggested a broad, cooperative approach among Christians engaged in such work, and fleshed out his sermon with a solid historical background on his chosen text. That was some of the best of an Evangelical approach: solid, balanced, seeking opportunities to serve the poor and oppressed alongside Christians from other traditions, while holding firmly to a historic, Biblically grounded orthodoxy.
But, just as I began to feel comfortable, he went off the rails. He slid into fundamentalist thundering. At one point, holding the Bible aloft, he shouted “THIS BOOK CAN BE DEFENDED!” Later, he spat (literally) “THE EMERGING CHURCH WILL EMERGE RIGHT INTO NOTHING!” Then he suggested that political efforts to promote peace in the middle east are pointless and alluded to a dispensational premillenial view of Israel and its enemies. He also dismissed political and social efforts to stem the tide of AIDS because it is a “heart” problem. It went on and on like this for the last fifteen minutes or so. It was like listening to two different preachers: sort of a “good cop, bad cop” from the pulpit.
This latter part of the sermon was some of the worst of an old-school Evangelical approach, which can be characterized as “simplify and divide.” What does it mean, and what purpose does it serve, for example, to shout “THIS BOOK CAN BE DEFENDED!”? Yes, there are good responses to many criticism of and attacks on the Bible. But then, there also are many good and difficult questions that honest people ask for which there are not easy answers. We need to be prepared to give the reason for our hope (I Peter 3:15) and to reason with questioners (cf. Acts 17:2), but we shouldn’t expect that the Bible is a simple book or that all (or even most) theological questions are easy.
I was genuinely shocked that someone who works for a relief organization, and who presumably has seen incredible human suffering first-hand, could be so dogmatic. Theodicy, after all, is one of the toughest and deepest questions of them all. Likewise, I was discouraged by the offhanded slam of the “emerging church” coming from someone who works cross-denominationally in a parachurch organization. Perhaps some people who call themselves “emergent” will emerge into nothing, but it’s not so easy to define a distinct “emerging church,” much less to write the whole movement off with a single wad of spit.
Even more so, I was dismayed to hear the old line, long abandoned by most thoughtful dispensational scholars, that we should give up on any political efforts to promote peace in the middle east or to mitigate the effects of diseases and other problems that can result from sinful behavior. This was from someone who works for an international relief organization which, according to the organization’s website, has “sponsored dozens of grassroots HIV/AIDS programs around the world; developed programs to help local churches and ministries teach prevention, offer care, reduce stigma, and show Christ-like compassion to victims of the deadly disease; and supported ministries engaged in orphan care”!
We need more of the “good” Evangelicalism represented by Samaritan’s Purse — deep, strong, but broad — and less of the “bad” represented by the second half of this sermon — narrow, shallow, and defensive.
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Song in Progress
New song in progress: Pretty Cafes. This is only a snippet, but I think it’s coming along pretty cool. Turn it up to hear best.
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New Paper and Conferences
If Ambien and Lunesta aren’t doing the trick for you, a draft of my current working paper, The Penguin’s Paradox: The Political Economy of International Intellectual Property and the Paradox of Open Intellectual Property Models, is available on SSRN.
At the end of this month, I will present at the conference “Closing in on Open Science: Trends in Intellectual Property and Scientific Research,” at Maine Law School. My topic is “Virtue Ethics and Biotechnology Patent Policy.”
In November, I will present at the conference “The World and Christian Imagination,” at Baylor University. My topic, again, will be “Virtue Ethics and Biotechnology Policy.” This conference is sponsored by the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and Arts, and will feature interdisciplinary dialogue among Christian scholars from a variety of disciplines. Cool.
In this book, David Snoke, a professor of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh, presents a case for a “day-age” view of Genesis 1. Snoke’s twin goals are to establish that the “day-age” view is a valid alternative for Christians who hold to Biblical inerrancy and to argue for a concordist understanding of the Genesis texts and modern science. He succeeds admirably at the first goal, but is less persuasive concerning the second.
The book is organized into nine chapters and includes an appendix with a “literal” translation of Genesis 1-12. The first two chapters identify Snoke’s underlying assumptions and recite the scientific evidence for an old earth. Snoke does an excellent job of explaining why and when extra-Biblical evidence can be used to interpret the Bible, and provides a calm, concise summary of the physical evidence against the young earth view. These chapters are particularly useful and admirable because they avoid the argumentative tone that so often creeps into this sort of discussion.
After laying this groundwork, Snoke responds to two key objections against the old earth view: the problem of death before the fall and the relationship between the creation week and the Sabbath. His insights concerning animal death before the fall are particularly helpful. In particular, he suggests that the wild, untamed aspects of creation, including things such as carnivorous animals, may have served before the Fall as a reminder to Adam and Eve of God’s power, and as a sort of warning about life outside the protected confines of Eden. Just as Aslan in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books is not a “tame Lion,” he notes, these aspects of creation that don’t seem “nice” to us remind us that God is also a “dangerous” God.
After presenting his Biblical case for an old earth, Snoke turns to the case for a concordist view of science and scripture. He defines “science” as “nothing but a way to organize and analyze the things of the world around us,” and concludes that since the Bible also makes observations about the physical world, there should be areas of overlap where “things in the Bible are open to scientific investigation.”
Many readers will take issue with this definition of “science,” as well as with the expectation that the Biblical text is presented in an objective, narrative form that can be correlated with modern scientific propositions. Many readers also will question why Snoke discounts Darwinian evolution based on an a priori reading of the creation story concerning Adam and Eve, while remaining willing to consider alternative interpretations of related texts that superficially seem to suggest a recent creation. Nevertheless, on the question of the age of the earth, this is a fair and well-balanced book that deserves a wide reading, particularly in the evangelical community.
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Dispensational Truth
This is a scan of a two-page plate from the book “Dispensational Truth,” published in 1918. I have the first edition, which was in my wife’s grandfather’s library. Interestingly, it is still available in a reprinted edition.
A reviewer of the reprint edition on Amazon correctly noted that this book is most interesting and useful as an original source document that helps us understand dispensational theology at the turn of the nineteenth century. Modern dispensational theology would mostly eschew the very detailed divisions identified in these old charts (see, for example, Blaising and Bock’s Progressive Dispensationalism), even though it retains some basic concepts such as a distinction between national Israel and the Church.
It’s particularly interesting to me that this chart refers to the “gap” theory of an original, ancient earth that was destroyed before the present earth was created. This is how many conservative Christian theologians tried to accomodate facts from geology and fossils at the turn of the century — not by denying the facts from general revelation, but by reimagining what the scriptural text was saying. I don’t think the “gap” theory is correct, but the approach of using knowledge from general revelation to shed light on special revelation is correct.
This chart is also something that helps me understand my psyche, as this old-style dispensationalism, reflected as well in the Scofield Reference Bible first published in 1909, underlay the “exclusive” Plymouth Brethren church I grew up in until I was a teenager. While I don’t hold to this theology anymore, I do appreciate the depth and fervor with which the Bible was studied in that tradition.
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State of the Blog
Jeff recently wrote on the state of his blog, the Dawn Treader, and it inspired me to think about the state of this site. Jeff noted that he writes to gain perspective (via organizing and refining his thoughts, like the discipline of journaling) and to practice his writing. He also writes to persuade, but more as a possible incidental side benefit than a primary purpose.
I keep this site for these same reasons, and for a few others. I have to break the alliteration now, but here are some other reasons I like to blog:
- Learning from others. I’ve learned tons from other bloggers and commenters. Blogging has introduced me to perspectives and resources I wouldn’t have found on my own. Discussing — even arguing — in blogs and other on-line forums also has helped me clarify my thinking on many things.
- Modeling. My aspiration for this site, which I probably don’t ever fully realize, is at least in some small way to model some things to others in the Christian community — in particular, that we can love God “with all our minds,” engage ideas, examine different perspectives, perhaps disagree, or even maybe develop in our own thinking about some things, without being defensive or resorting to angry rhetoric.
- Resourcing. I often come across books, music, and other resources that are helpful to me and that I think might be helpful to others. I want to highlight those things so that others can perhaps benefit from them as well.
This site isn’t yet near where I want it to be on any of these counts. When I changed my banner a while back, I included the subtitles “Theology, Culture, Society, Justice.” My intent was, and still is, to build sections of the site that will focus on these topics, with content from my posts as well as external content. It hasn’t happened, because life is too busy. I’d also like to do some things to build traffic. Like Jeff, I’m happy to be in the “long tail” of the blogsphere, but I’m afraid sometimes that I’m more like some of the dead skin that gets sloughed off the tail when the animal molts. Maybe with the new season I’ll get some of this done!?
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Through the Looking Glass
Back from vacation — Through the Looking Glass today.
The best academic’s home page I’ve ever seen: Peter Simpson, philosopher at CUNY. Note: make sure your computer speakers are on.
Good inteview with Del Ratzsch, philosopher of science at Calvin College. Ratzsch makes some good points, I think, about epistemology, design in nature, and scientific method. (HT: Telic Thoughts.)
Meaty site: The Galilean Library. Looks like lots of interesting stuff is posted here (including the aforementioned Ratzsch interview) and there is some good discusion and community in the forums.
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This Week and Last
Last week was busy in a good way. Over the weekend and through Tuesday, I was at Northern Frontier camp with my older son. We had a blast shooting air rifles, launching model rockets, jumping off the thirteen-foot high dive, singing goofy campfire songs, and reading the Bible together. This is what it’s all about.
On Thursday, I took the GRE, as I’m hoping to apply to some Ph.D. programs this year. As expected, I crushed the verbal section — over 700, probably a 90th percentile score — but my math, shall we say, needs some work. The programs I’m looking at most seriously are the Communication and Culture program at NYU, which has a strong focus on Internet-related legal and regulatory issues, and the political science program at CUNY. Both of those are things I could do while in my current academic post. I was thinking as well of the public policy programs at Princeton, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get the math score where it needs to be for that. I’ll have to talk with some people and see if I need a better math score for the NYU and CUNY programs I’m considering.
I also worked hard late in the week to finalize a draft of my latest paper, “The Penguin’s Paradox: the Political Economy of International Intellectual Property and the Paradox of Open Intellectual Property Models.” It’s now out to the law reviews, so we’ll see if I get any publication nibbles.
I played golf Friday at Wild Turkey and had a pretty good round for me, especially on the front nine — I broke 100, though barely and with a hole or two where I took a mullligan.
Now, we’re at the Jersey shore for a week, reading, swimming with the kids, and relaxing. Thank God for summer!