Insight
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Books on February 26, 2010
An insightful comment on economics applying to all disciplines from Paul Collier, Oxford prof and author of The Bottom Billion:
Part of the reason single-factor theories about development failure are so common is that modern academics tend to specialize: they are trained to produce intense but narrow beams of light.
A New Cartoon Inspired by A Real-Life Misspelling by One of Stanley Fish’s Commenters
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Humor on February 23, 2010
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Culture, Theology on February 23, 2010
I love Stanley Fish for his willingness and ability to see the bankruptcy of his employers. He regularly stands on the foundation which supports him and whacks at it with his prodigious intellectual sledgehammer. I admit I haven’t read enough to see if he ever tries finding another rock to build on, but I suspect he doesn’t and that’s his point.
His latest New York Times blog post is a must-read. It takes up presuppositionalist themes again by reviewing Steven Smith’s The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, a work wielding the same hammer Fish does. Secular reasons, Smith argues, are actually religious ones smuggled in. There is no safe secular arena where neutral arguments reign.
It is not, Smith tells us, that secular reason can’t do the job (of identifying ultimate meanings and values) we need religion to do; it’s worse; secular reason can’t do its own self-assigned job—of describing the world in ways that allow us to move forward in our projects—without importing, but not acknowledging, the very perspectives it pushes away in disdain.
And this from Smith’s book:
The secular vocabulary within which public discourse is constrained today is insufficient to convey our full set of normative convictions and commitments. We manage to debate normative matters anyway—but only by smuggling in notions that are formally inadmissible, and hence that cannot be openly acknowledged or adverted to.
And yet it seems most Christians don’t understand this. They have agreed with the intellectually bankrupt bullies that religious evidence has been ruled inadmissible. So Christians go on TV and talk about the horizontal, sociological effects of homosexuality or teen pregnancy. They never mention the vertical. Granted, in the world God made, horizontal effects are part of God’s general revelation. But no one can repent of their sins and trust creation. Christians are the only people who have a good answer for why the negative sociological effects of sin are in fact negative. We’ve got answers for Fish’s powerful questions!
It always amazes me to read the comments from readers after Fish’s essays. The very first comment:
As an atheist, I read this whole piece waiting for the part where Mr. Fish would explain how, without invoking a secular/religious distinction, a society can prevent the majority religion from imposing its creed on everyone else. However metaphysically unfulfilling it may be, “smuggling” sounds a lot better than “theocracy.”
The only appropriate response to that comment is sorrow. “I will not be ruled by God!”, she is saying. “I’d rather be ruled by a puppet with my own hand inside.”
The next commenter appeals back to his presuppositions: evolutionary naturalism explains all.
The next commenter simply asserts that “there is no ‘metaphysics’ only physics.” Only observable facts are true.
When the truth, or even a portion of it, comes into the house to burn it up, people run and get their valuables.
From the New Bible Truths F, the 12th Grade BJU Press Bible Textbook Due Out in 2011
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Theology on February 22, 2010
It is helpful, even essential, to keep the storyline of Scripture in mind at all times as you read the Bible. If the Bible is about what God is doing to glorify Himself by redeeming His fallen creation, then you’d expect Scripture to point out over and over how God glorifies Himself by saving people from the power of sin. It should be no surprise that God’s standards are higher than we can possibly meet, because Scripture is not the story of man working harder and harder to achieve equality with God. Impossible standards like “Love your enemies” or even “Love your neighbor as yourself” are just reminders of how far we’ve fallen and how much divine power it’s going to take to buy us completely back from slavery to sin.
Linguistics, Homosexuality, and Friendship
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Culture, Linguistics, Theology on February 19, 2010
Back in 2005, I wrote the following for the monthly newsletter I’m charged with producing:
Touchstone recently dedicated its cover story to the disintegration of male friendships in American society. In the article, perceptive cultural observer Anthony Esolen noted that the unceasing thrust for the normalization of homosexuality in America has pushed boys into heterosexual promiscuity (lest they be accused of homosexuality) and out of healthy male friendships. Men, too, simply could never express—and rarely have reason to anymore—what David did regarding his friend Jonathan: "Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." Even in the 19th century, Esolen shows, thoroughly heterosexual men knit their souls together. Today that sentence is difficult to write. "What do the paraders achieve, with their public promotion of homosexuality?" asks Esolen. "They come out of the closet, and hustle a lot of good and natural feelings back in." (Touchstone, 9/05)
I just re-read that essay, available here, and I must say that my rather pedestrian summary does no justice to the beauty of Esolen’s style and the power of his argument.
I’m thankful I grew up in a culture which still let me have close male friends, and I’m trying to hang on to that culture and maintain it for my now-gestational son.
Incidentally, Esolen also has some thoughtful objections to the idea often touted on this blog that usage determines meaning—at least the idea, not touted on this blog, that this statement is sufficient to describe the world as it is. Vern Poythress, in a book I’ve been reading on language, has made a similar point: usage may determine meaning, but God is still ultimate. He’s the one who guarantees that words have meaning and that we can understand one another at all. That’s a point from special revelation, and it’s one parallel to the Bible’s assertion of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Esolen, as a Catholic might be expected to do, makes his point from general revelation: the world is set up in such a way that some syntaxes and some syllables won’t work, and some meanings will never exist in language because they don’t exist in real life. That’s another pointer to God’s ultimacy, because He’s the one Who made the world as it is.
I encourage you to read the whole thing.
Andy Crouch on Postures and Gestures
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Books, ChurchLife, Culture on February 19, 2010
Over the last few months since work (and baby!) deadlines led me to drop Andy Crouch’s Culture Making, waiting to pick it up again some day soon, I’ve thought many times about his model for describing typical Christian cultural engagement. He sees four typical “postures” toward culture among Christians:
- Fundamentalist Condemnation: this group just dismisses popular or secular culture as sinful, he says.
- Evangelical Critique: this group, a la Francis Schaeffer, evaluates culture, probing its worldview.
- Evangelical Copying: after Schaeffer, evangelicals began simply copying pop culture. CCM was one prominent result.
- Evangelical Consumption: today, however, most evangelicals are avid consumers of secular and pop culture.
Under that last point, he has some very sad things to say, especially coming from his position at the center of the evangelical world:
The dominant posture among self-described evangelicals today toward culture is neither condemnation nor critique, nor even CCM’s imitation, but simply consumption. . . . If anything, when I am among evangelical Christians I find that they seem to be more avidly consuming the latest offerings of commercial culture. . . than many of my non-Christian neighbors. They are content to be just like their fellow Americans, or perhaps, driven by a lingering sense of shame at their uncool forebears, just slightly more like their fellow Americans than anyone else. (p. 89)
Crouch makes the helpful point that condemnation, critique, copying, and consumption are all appropriate gestures toward culture, but none is appropriate as a default, ongoing posture. Some cultural products can only be condemned: sex-trafficking, pornography. Others are appropriately critiqued: a popular novel or piece of art or music. Some should be copied: we can’t start from scratch when we design church buildings; we’ve got to use some existing forms. Other cultural products should be consumed: hamburgers, for example. Especially if they have bacon. But when you start to make one gesture your default posture—as evangelicalism has typically done—you start justifying sin.
Crouch offers an alternative posture, creating/cultivating, but you’ll have to read the book to see what he means. And so will I!
Excellent Insights on Biblical Literacy
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in ChurchLife, Exegesis on February 18, 2010
His set of buzzwords is a bit different from mine, but his insights are profoundly needed: David R. Nienhuis’ article in Modern Reformation on how to promote biblical literacy is a great read.
He points to our entertainment culture as one reason even evangelical kids don’t know the Bible well, coming up with a corker of a quote in the process. One of his students told him, “Reading a lot is not a part of my learning style”!
He also points to the proof-texting traditions we’ve built up in American evangelicalism, in which students fail to gain the skill of reading God’s words in their full depth and breadth, but only stock up on individual apologetic points. Here he also landed an insightful quote. One of his students “noted that all these years she had relied on someone else to tell her what snippets of the Bible were significant enough for her to know. But whenever she was alone with the text, she felt swamped.”
Nienhuis suggests three steps for changing the sad state of Bible knowledge in our own churches:
- schooling in the substance of the entire biblical story in all its literary diversity (not just an assortment of those verses deemed doctrinally relevant);
- training in the particular “orienteering” skills required to plot that narrative through the actual texts and canonical units of the Bible; and
- instruction in the complex theological task of interpreting Scripture in light of the tradition of the church and the experience of the saints.
I’d rather not put the third point that way, but I can affirm it if I get to define the terms. Reading in light of church history is at least suggested by Scripture (Heb. 13:7), and it’s certainly wise. You’re going to read in light of some history of interpretation; it might as well be a thorough and accurate one.
May I also suggest, as step zero, getting rid of all verse numbers and printing Bibles in paragraph format? That would go a long way.
BDAG Could Be a Much Bigger Book
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Books, Exegesis, NTScholarship on February 15, 2010
This is what its entry on ἀγάπη looks like in BDAG, the standard Greek lexicon.
This is what it looks like uncompacted, with all of its separate points turned into descended bullets:
It’s like unfolding some incredible origami!
I find I can’t use the information nearly as well when it is not laid out visually this way. I don’t plan to do this for very many more BDAG entries, however…
Notes for Ph.D. Students at Bob Jones Seminary
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Dissertation, NTScholarship on February 12, 2010
On 8/31/04 at 7:30 pm, the dean of BJ Seminary met with all the doctoral candidates and gave some instruction, encouragement, and advice. Obviously, this won’t be of interest to everyone, but I’ve tried to let all this counsel guide me and it may help anyone who’s in school. Re-reading it now, I see some areas where I wish I had listened better, but overall it was a great help. “Keep sound wisdom” like this, and “it will be life to your soul, and adornment to your neck. Then you will walk in your way securely and your foot will not stumble” (Prov. 3:21-23).
LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE
- Lead other students academically—don’t let them beat you when you take the same classes. More importantly, lead them in your spiritual walk.
A CULTURE OF DILIGENCE, HIGH ACHIEVEMENT, AND EFFICIENCY DURING COURSE WORK
- You will be a teacher of these disciplines. You have to go far beyond “good.”
- Maintain an A average.
- Pass language proficiency exams early in your program. The end of your second year of coursework is the absolute outside point for finishing your language requirements. The earlier the better.
- Give yourself a heavy course load each semester. The longer you extend your academic career the more you set yourself up for roadblocks and failure. Some providentially must elongate their academic career, but as a general rule this is the approach you want to take.
- Set priorities that assure timely completion. Don’t set extensive ministry commitments or take year-long hiatuses or multi-month summer mission trips.
MAKE INCREMENTAL PREPARATION FOR THE COMPREHENSIVE EXAMS
- Do your course work with a view toward the comprehensives.
- Gather the rest of the material needed for study in the final semester of your course work.
- Plan to invest 100–120 hours of study time before your comprehensives (the equivalent of a thoroughly prepared doctoral-level course).
- Set the dates for your exams for 45–60 days after the completion of your course work.
DISSERTATION RESEARCH AND WRITING
- Stay in town.
- This is your last academic project, not your magnum opus (think of ten thirty-page papers). This is still an academic exercise, and you need the input of your committee. You must recognize that you will have to take correction.
- Think intensely about possible topics early in your program; read widely within the framework of a few topics that interest you; talk to your professors.
- Have a specific topic by your final year.
- Plan to complete your writing and research in two years. Consistent productivity is your goal.
- Turabian will become your good friend.
- Register each semester for dissertation research, file your reports each quarter with the dean’s office, and reach the stated goals in the Guide to Doctoral Studies.
- If you have a due date for your dissertation at the end of January (Jan 15 is one of the two possible due dates), and you have just three chapters done, that’s not enough. Remember that over the Christmas break the faculty will be gone. You may not be allowed to proceed if that’s all you’ve done. Try setting a fall due date. Hankins would like to see a greater percentage of guys doing that.
- You have four semesters to register for the dissertation research class. The first time you register you must have your proposal and prospectus written. The second registration you’ll have 100 pages written. The third will bring you another 100 pages in. In the fourth semester you must wrap it all up. If you do not succeed at reaching those goals within those four semesters—and remember that you’re only required to earn three credits of dissertation research—you don’t receive credit the first time. If you haven’t caught up during the second period, you don’t get credit. If you do it the third time, you’re out of the program “We’re not going to persist in the endless delays in the writing of the dissertation.” Hankins cannot subject his faculty to that kind of deluge. Guys start feeling like they don’t want to get kicked out of the program—they don’t want that shame for the rest of their life. So they hustle up and turn in a big chunk of their dissertation at the end. The material is sub-par and takes an immense amount of time from faculty members to correct.
- Note that the Guide to Doctoral Studies is actually more specific and complete than Turabian. Note also that with the Turabian template the faculty has created, you’ve got to know how to use styles.
Advice for Doctoral Students from (Former) Doctoral Students
Barney
- Learn to say no. If something is going to delay your progress, especially in your dissertation, say no. Your dissertation is your job.
- You need large chunks of time to write. You can’t nickel and dime a dissertation.
- When the pressure is on, you can write as fast as you need to. He wrote half of his dissertation during Christmas.
- Consider early morning writing, especially if you have a family. Nobody is there to bother you or call you or stop you, and your wife doesn’t miss you because she’s still sleeping.
- Get in this mindset: The pressure is on now. Don’t wait for a friendly phone call from Dr. Hankins.
Miller
- Learn to say no.
- Pick a topic that you enjoy. If you don’t like your topic, it doesn’t matter whether you’re staying up late or getting up early. Be careful that your topic doesn’t generate too much interest, making you chase down rabbit trails that don’t fit your prospectus. (Miller did Liberation Theology and that stoked his interest in politics.)
- How do you decide what to leave out? Wrong question. Ask, “What has to be in?” Get every chapter down to one page and flesh out from there.
- Be ready for criticism. Don’t assume necessarily that all the criticism is wrong… Some of it might be right. At the same time, if you think you’ve been misunderstood grant your committee member that maybe you’re misunderstanding his comment. Just go meet face to face and talk about it. Eat lunch together.
- Figure out your bibliography forms early on so you don’t have to re-do a lot of work.
Hand
- Management: As long as you are not obsessed, time spent organizing is rarely wasted.
- Even if you spent six months doing no writing but intensely researching, if you write 2,000 words a week after that you can be done in another year.
- Hand wrote 2,000 words a week and then upped it to 4,000.
- Don’t overrun your committee’s advice. If you act too quickly, you can get so much done and just be dumping material on them. Then if they discover a major flaw, it may be systemic through a number of chapters and you may have a lot of revising to do.
On 1/18/05 at 7:04 pm we all met again and picked up where we left off.
Saldivar
Coursework
- Don’t neglect to connect coursework and make an overall understanding of a topic.
- Don’t put minimal effort into projects. As much as lies in you, try to exhaust each topic.
- Look for potential vacuums in some subject area to allow a potential dissertation topic.
- Force yourself to think up questions for class discussion. The more you bring into class the more you will get.
Comprehensives
- Don’t fail to gather material as you go through the program. Take the study guide for your major and put together the final product you’ll study for the comps.
- During vacation times or weekends you should take out your study sheet and see what you can add.
- For language proficiency, get it done ASAP.
- Look at what others have gathered for the comps.
- Ask other NTI guys if anything surprised them in the comps.
- Don’t neglect to consult with professors about the comps.
- Schedule your comps to give yourself a deadline and a goal.
- Schedule your orals later in the day if possible to leave the morning for final cramming.
Dissertation
- Don’t lose momentum after comps. Take it right into the initial research for your dissertation.
- Don’t spin your wheels on a questionable topic.
- Don’t spend too much time researching without forming an outline for writing.
- Avoid taking on a ministry or a job that will deter your progress.
Hoskinson
- Recognize that you are where you are doing what you’re doing by divine initiative. That ought not be a source of pride, and woe to us if it is. 1 Tim 1—Paul was where he was because the grace of God was lavished upon him.
- Move as quickly as you can through your course work. Take as much summer school as possible.
- Focus your papers along the way on your dissertation topic if possible.
- Matt took one month off 40 hours a week and went down to the Greenville Library (where he didn’t know anyone) and chose one subject per day to study through.
- Learn to file effectively now.
- Choose a topic you think you’ll enjoy. Hoskinson chose assurance of salvation.
- Write full time if you can for as long as you can.
- Pray for or thank God for a supportive spouse. Having his wife to encourage him to go to the library has been a huge help.
- Don’t take on a job that you can’t leave at the office.
- Do your theology in second person. Don’t write about God but for God. Communicate to God during the entire process.
Manning
- Keep a journal if possible.
- Keep a to-do list so you don’t have to derail your train in order to do whatever you think of.
- Keep a record of journal articles for your bib.
- You may need more than the recommended 120 hours for comp study.
- For the written tests use a computer if possible.
- For oral exams, keep focused. Your questioners are out for your blood.
- For your dissertation, don’t feel discouraged if you don’t have it all figured out.
- Keep the development of YOUR THESIS in front of you. Don’t get sidetracked by something that may or may not even end up in a footnote. You don’t want to spend time studying a passage and then realize that you don’t remember why you’re studying it.
- Have confidence and humility going into your defense.
- Remember that your dissertation is not your magnum opus, your definitive life’s work.
- The dissertation process was definitely worth the pain for Troy.
Dr. Bell
- At every stage in the process—courses, comps, dissertation—you should feel as if you are in the heart of the program.
- For comprehensives, Dr. Bell’s rule of thumb is to think of your comps as a 3-hour course.
- As for choosing a dissertation topic:
- A dissertation topic should be directed toward the major area of the student’s study. Think in relationship to the majority of courses you’ve had and what you’ve been into. E.g., no archaeology.
- It should pertain to something the faculty are experts on. Having said that, you ought to be more of an expert on your topic than those on your committee.
- It should involve legitimate research. Preferably, the candidate should assemble an original collection of objective data. E.g., don’t go for something like “People in our churches ought to learn to give more willingly.” This is not a topic for research.
- There are some projects that involve time-consuming work but really very little research. E.g., investigating how the LXX translates every waw in the OT. Some topics might even work for a book, but not for a dissertation.
- The topic should possess a degree of originality. It may seem that in the area of biblical studies, original studies are impossible. But three things make this possible:
- The availability of new material to which past generations of biblical scholars did not have access.
- The existence of new problems, especially for theology matters. E.g., open theism, NPP.
- There are new emphases or interests in biblical studies. E.g., we’ve had interest in the past in literary study of the Bible.
- The dissertation should meet some need, contributing to the writer’s future ministry.
Dr. Hankins
- 1 Foresight – comps and dissertation ought to be the compass in navigating your coursework. Your agenda should be set with the comps as the structure, not the coursework. Find the shortest, fastest, and straightest road to completion. You avoid greater temptations and distractions that way.
- 2 Timing – Plan out your deadlines for the comps (one mo. max after the coursework is done, or even during the last semester of your coursework). You need to set deadlines for chapter completion for your dissertation. Set page limits for each chapter and for the total.
- 3 Right expectations – For faculty availability, have a high expectation during dissertation writing time. Don’t feel as if meeting or e-mailing your committee members is an imposition on them. However, during Christmas break, don’t expect faculty to take their vacation time to look through your dissertation chapters. And unless a faculty member is on the summer school faculty, he’s under no obligation to evaluate your work. So be highly productive during the fall and the spring.
- It is not the faculty’s obligation to edit for style or grammar, or to teach you to write. That should be learned prior to your dissertation writing.
- Do timely, systematic work. We are constitutionally opposed to “core dumping.” Do not be twiddling your thumbs and then suddenly get urgent right before your deadline.
Buzz Off!
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Piety, Tech on February 11, 2010
No, no, no, NO!
Google Buzz lasted about four hours on my Gmail account. I admit, I don’t mind seeing my friends’ comments on Google Reader items (even though I’m trying to cut down on those, too…), but I simply do not need any more messages clamoring for my attention on the Internet. Maybe you can handle it, but I can’t. No Google Buzz for me, and (almost) no Twitter. They don’t help me do what I want to do. They’re distractions.
Enough is enough. I want to be wise more than I want to be up-to-date. I’m in the process of making some changes that will replace much of my short-form Internet reading time with book time. I spent the morning in bed on a sick day reading a book. A paper one. I fought off most compulsions to check my Internet feeds. It was great. I actually learned a few things I might remember.
Bah humbug!
An Arresting Metaphor
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Culture, Mission on February 9, 2010
J. Gresham Machen, in “Christianity and Culture,” Princeton Theological Review, Vol. 11, 1913.
The elimination of the supernatural in Christianity—so tremendously common today—really makes Christianity merely natural. Christianity becomes a human product, a mere part of human culture. But as such it is something entirely different from the old Christianity that was based upon a direct revelation from God. Deprived thus of its note of authority, the gospel is no gospel any longer; it is a cheque for untold millions—but without the signature at the bottom.
The other day I heard again—this time from evangelical Greek scholar Dan Wallace—the only explanation I’ve ever heard for why so many liberal theologians would bother to study and write about Scripture when they have already eliminated the supernatural: they’re practically all former evangelicals who want to liberate others from the deceit they feel they grew up under. That’s sadly the case with Bart Ehrman, for example.
Machen, thankfully, didn’t give in when he was attracted to liberalism. A divine signature was at the bottom of every page in his Bible.
Interesting! What People at My Alma Mater Are Reading!
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Books on February 8, 2010
Ripping Off Moisés Silva
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Dissertation, Exegesis, Humor, NTScholarship on February 6, 2010
I’m stealing brazenly from Moisés Silva (see my previous post quoting him at length), but perhaps this post may still amuse and inform you. Silva provides the set-up, I the made-up text and exegesis. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Silva: "It is approximately the year 2790. The most powerful nation on earth occupies a large territory in Central Africa, and its citizens speak Swahili. The United States and other English-speaking countries have long ceased to exist, and much of the literature prior to 2012 (the year of the Great Conflagration) is not extant. Some archaeologists digging in the western regions of North America discover a short but well-preserved text that can confidently be dated to the last quarter of the twentieth century. It reads thus:"
mlwj: Because of my interest in all forms of dance—I worship Martha Graham and Mikhail ….shnikov—I decided to take a course in aesthetics. I hoped that my new class wouldn’t burden me too heavily with responsibilities, because my daily peace was already being disturbed by incessant cries from my colicky baby. I loved the textbook and the lectures, and I deployed all my best writing tricks to produce papers that would impress my professor.
Silva again: "The archaeologists know just enough English to realize that this fragment is a major literary find that deserves closer inspection, so they rush the piece to one of the finest philologists in their home country. This scholar dedicates his next sabbatical to a thorough study of the text and decides to publish an exegetical commentary on it, as follows:"
Mlwj:
• This small piece, probably part of a ritual (note the word "worship" in a place of prominence in the very first line), is a fascinating example of 20th century American religious prose. The writer is afraid of having a heavy burden, probably of sin (notice the threat to her "peace"), by entering a new social "class," namely the "aesthetic" class. This was a group of writers, musicians, artists, dancers (as here), and general aesthetes who valued visual and aural beauty religiously. Scholars now generally regard them as a separate religion within American culture. Babies apparently played some unknown role in that class.
• The text is slightly damaged after the word "Mikhail," but the remaining letters likely were part of the word "Kalashnikov," a type of military fire-arm very popular in that day (notice the clever use of the military term "deployed" later in the piece).
• "Cries" denotes anguish, but not emotional anguish, for King Lear in Shakespeare’s play of that name is said to have "cried out loudly to find out if anyone was at home."
• "Love," too was a beloved 20th century concept. Literally dozens of so-called "love songs" were written during that period, and love was broadly considered the highest virtue. A large cache of ballpoint pens bearing the phrase "Love is a Choice" were recently found in what was once the city of Colorado Springs—with the name "Gary Smalley," a religious preacher, beneath. For the writer to say that he or she "loved" her textbook and lectures shows again the religious devotion she chose to have toward the Aesthetic Class.
• "Produce" is a term used in all sorts of places, but pre-eminently the grocery store, where it denoted a specific set of food items which were "produced" (led or brought forth, from the Latin pro- [forward] + ducere [to lead]) directly from the ground rather than processed. This is probably what the writer has in mind here: she did not use a "paper mill" to write her assignments but did them herself.
• An interesting consonance and assonance develops toward the end of the piece: "impress my professor." This writer had a masterful command of her language.
Romans 12:3–21
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Exegesis, Piety on February 5, 2010
My good pastor has been urging his congregation with more heart even than usual to read their Bibles this year. As part of his exhortation to do that, he gave some practical examples from his own Bible reading of what he does to study. I think that was an excellent idea because I, for one, struggled for a long time to know just what to do during my Bible-reading times. I wish I could say those struggles are all over.
What I can say is that I have discovered a few little methods which really do help me. Methods aren’t saviors; they can even be slavers, pushing me in unhelpful directions. But you’re going to have some method for study, so you might as well pick a good one.
For what it is worth (in fact, take that phrase as a preface to every one of my blog posts), here is what I often do. I ask BibleWorks (Ctrl+Shift+B) or Logos (Ctrl+Alt+B) to copy a passage into Microsoft Word for me. You could use esv.org, too. That’s a nice site.
Then I strip out all of the numbers (esv.org can actually do that for you; it’s under “Options”). Find ^# and replace it with nothing; then replace double spaces with single ones—that should do it.
I’m left with a block of text that looks like this:
Then I start reading through the passage, hitting Enter after every major phrase or thought I see. I go fast, trying to keep the flow going in my mind. I hit Enter, and then I often hit Tab in order to subordinate one line to another. Later I might go through and try to think about those subordinate relationships (is this a grounds, a contrast?), but I don’t worry about that too much right off. I want to know the overall flow.
Below is what I did today while studying Romans 12. It certainly calls for refinement, and that refinement will cause me to ask yet more questions I wouldn’t otherwise. It helps me follow the thought flow. It helps me study.
This works mainly for epistolary literature and perhaps Jesus’ longer discourses in the Gospels.
For What It’s Worth.
“Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love,” Romans 12:10.
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Exegesis, NTScholarship on February 5, 2010
Leon Morris makes an interesting note on φιλόστοργοι (philostorgoi—a combination of φίλος [philos] and στοργή [storge]) in Romans 12:10:
KJV has “Be kindly affectioned”, where “kindly” is used in its original sense, “referring to kin.”
—The Epistle to the Romans, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 445.
If he’s right, I can add one more to the list of verses I never understood in the KJV because of the changes English has undergone in the last 400 years. I suspect that few people outside English philologists understood it either.
To be perfectly fair, I’m not sure that the OED supports Morris’s reading, but his argument still seems likely to be true since στοργή (storge) refers to a love for one’s kin, something that the KJV would otherwise not be reflecting.
A Good Warning for Bloggers and Dissertation Writers
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Books, Dissertation, Piety, Theology on February 1, 2010
John Frame in “Machen’s Warrior Children,” regarding theological polemics in his community (and, let’s face it, ours):
Overall, the quality of thought displayed in these polemics has not been a credit to the Reformed tradition. Writers have gone to great lengths to read their opponents’ words and motivations in the worst possible sense (often worse than possible) and to present their own ideas as virtually perfect, rightly motivated and leaving no room for doubt. Such presentations are scarcely credible to anybody who looks at the debates with minimal objectivity.
Writing a dissertation presents many temptations to misrepresent one’s opponents. But, as Alan Jacobs has pointed out in his A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love, loving my neighbor as myself means working to understand him in the best light.
Jacobs opens his work with a description of a scene from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Don John has made it appear that Hero, who is to be married the next day to Claudio, is a fornicator. Jacobs comments:
Only Hero and Don John (the innocent victim and the villain) actually know that the charge of fornication is false.
Or do they alone know? That depends on what counts as knowledge. The first to speak on Hero’s behalf—after her own father, Leonato, has accepted the charges against her (“Would the two princes lie, and Claudio lie?” [l. 153]—is the Friar who was to officiate at the ceremony:
Hear me a little:
For I have only been silent so long,
And given way unto this course of fortune,
By noting of the lady. I have mark’d
A thousand blushing apparitions
To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames
In angel whiteness beat away those blushes,
And in her eye there hath appeared a fire
To burn the errors that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth. Call me a fool;
Trust not my reading nor my observations,
Which with experimental seal doth warrant
The tenure of my book ; trust not my age,
My reverence, calling, nor divinity,
If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here
Under some biting error. (ll. 155–169)It should register with us that the Friar lays no claim to some intuited gnosis or supernatural revelation divorced from the realm of the senses. Like Claudio and Don Pedro, he derives his judgment from what he sees, and he sees what they do: Claudio, as noted, has spoken of Hero’s blushes, but has interpreted them differently. And what the Friar calls attention to here is precisely the importance of interpreting the sensory phenomena correctly, and, moreover, the need for the interpreter to possess certain virtues in order to ‘read’ Hero’s blushes as they should be read—which is to say, in accordance with the truth of the situation and of her character.” 3–4
Jacobs points out that Beatrice is also certain of her friend’s innocence, but not for the same reasons as the friar. It is her “intimate personal knowledge of Hero” which makes her sure that Hero is blameless. 5
Benedick, for his part, trusts Claudio’s character and Beatrice’s. He eventually sides with Beatrice and the Friar. He “comes to share their conviction by acknowledging their claims to interpretive and moral discernment.” 8
“This scene from Much Ado About Nothing provides,” Jacobs says, “a remarkably comprehensive outline of a hermeneutics of love.” 8
So love believes the best, and love provides knowledge that empiricism misses. A high standard!
Frame Summarizes Van Til
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Mission, Theology on January 30, 2010
I really do not have a very good understanding of the Van Til/Clark debates or the Frame/Ligonier debates, but I hope to grow in that understanding. These are all serious men worth taking seriously.
For what it’s worth, here’s how Frame summarizes Van Til’s apologetic:
Van Til’s apologetics is essentially simple, however complicated its elaborations. It makes two basic assertions: (1) that human beings are obligated to presuppose God in all of their thinking, and (2) that unbelievers resist this obligation in every aspect of thought and life. (Westminster Theological Journal Volume 47, 1985: 282)
One thing I can say is that it has been incredibly useful to me in my work on What in the World! to recognize that everyone has presuppositions. That’s why, for example, people today are so quick to find evolutionary explanations for human behavior. Any questions they face—say, the reason for the existence of religion—are fed through the grid of their evolutionary presuppositions. It’s no surprise that out comes evolutionary explanations (e.g., “Religion evolved as a social mechanism for curtailing behavior detrimental to the group”).
I have presuppositions, too, but at least I admit it.
Star Trek and Richard Dawkins
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Culture, Theology on January 29, 2010
It was a beautiful fall day for a seven-year-old kid to be playing outside, but when I came back into the house my dad was watching people in weird pajamas striding around on a spaceship. That was 1990, I believe, and my first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. My dad and I immediately loved it, and we regularly watched the show together for the next several years. I was a particular fan of Commander Data. (Interestingly, I was fascinated with his quest for emotions, and now I’m writing a dissertation on emotions in the New Testament.) I even learned lifelong leadership lessons from Captain Picard.
Why did two conservatives like what is supposed to be a thinly disguised leftist polemic? It wasn’t just the explosions and Klingon fights. It was the transposition of today’s issues into interesting circumstances in our distant tomorrow. Issues of race, sex, class, culture, and religion were taken out of their 20th century light and placed in a 24th century light (OLEDs, I would guess).
The explosions and Klingon fights were also nice.
I recently succumbed to my curiosity to see a few episodes after a decade’s hiatus, and my wife and I picked up two Star Trek DVDs from the library. The early 1990s production values faded quickly out of view as we both got into the stories and characters.
My wife and I watched an episode called “The Chase,” in which Cardassians, Klingons, Romulans, and humans all converge on a remote planet to put together the last piece of an intergalactic archaeological puzzle. Some think they’ll find an incredible weapon. Others are sure it’s a massive power source. No one wants anyone else to get whatever it is. As they all squabble, Dr. Crusher secretly finds what they’re all looking for, and a holographic image suddenly appears before the assembled races. It’s a 4-billion-year-old recorded message from an alien humanoid who explains to her surprised guests that her race had “seeded” life on all of their planets—in fact, on many planets throughout the Alpha Quadrant. Her race, she explained, had evolved to a high level and decided to preserve their memory by this means. There’s more linking Klingons and Cardassians than either would care to admit.
The Global Village Atheist
And that’s where Richard Dawkins came in. The climactic scene of “The Chase” brought Dawkins’ conversation with Ben Stein in Expelled to mind. It wasn’t quite fair of Stein, perhaps, but Dawkins was led to believe he was talking to a sympathetic ear. All the same, he said what he said:
BEN STEIN: How did [life] get created?
RICHARD DAWKINS: By a very slow process.
STEIN: Well, how did it start?
DAWKINS: Nobody knows how it got started. We know the kind of event that it must have been. We know the sort of event that must have happened for the origin of life.
STEIN: And what was that?
DAWKINS: It was the origin of the first self-replicating molecule.
STEIN: Right, and how did that happen?
DAWKINS: I told you, we don’t know.
. . .
STEIN: What do you think is the possibility that Intelligent Design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in Darwinian evolution?
DAWKINS: Well, it could come about in the following way. It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved, probably by some kind of Darwinian means, probably to a very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Um, now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer.
. . .
And that Designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe. But that higher intelligence would itself have had to have come about by some explicable, or ultimately explicable process. It couldn’t have just jumped into existence spontaneously. That’s the point.
The Point of This Post
There are two remarkable similarities between the Star Trek episode and the infamous global village atheist. Both are 1) willing to posit the existence of an intelligent designer behind evolution as long as it’s not God. And both 2) make sure to mention that this designer has to itself have evolved by naturalistic processes.
Everyone’s a fundamentalist. Everyone has presuppositions. Everyone believes some things he can’t prove except by appeal to his basic beliefs.
Love Your Neighborhood as Yourself
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in ChurchLife, Mission on January 28, 2010
At the turn of each new year, our whole church gathers together for Sunday School for several weeks. It’s a chance to touch special topics that the pastoral staff and elders want everyone to hear about. One of those is the set of outreach ministries we have to the neighborhoods surrounding our church. I was asked to provide a bird’s-eye view of our evangelism ministries by telling the story of my own personal history with them. Others’ names and details have been changed or removed.
I came Mount Calvary Baptist Church during my freshman year—in Romans 16 in 1997, and I joined not too long afterwards. I had never heard expository preaching in my life, but it immediately arrested me and I had to hear more. I started doing Awanas here my sophomore year, but I didn’t take part in any of our evangelism ministries until January of 2001 when the Church Internship Program required me to go out street witnessing in downtown Greenville.
It was God’s way of moving me along in many areas. I began to really enjoy reaching out and just talking with people. I made it a goal to have real conversations if at all possible, though I also handed out tracts to those who wouldn’t speak with me. I kept a list of everyone I spoke to in order to pray for them and try to remember the lessons I learned from our conversations. I always came away invigorated spiritually. I especially remember one man whose words were a real encouragement from the Lord: He said, "If someone is going to speak to me about stuff like this, I like the way you are doing it." The love God gave us as a church for these lost people had shined through to this man. Very few people were hostile.
After getting a taste of reaching out along with my fellow church members, I wanted to continue, and in 2001 one of my friends invited me to a new church Bible Club, held right over there in Century Oaks apartment complex. This is where I first really got to know people from our church’s mission field.
Among many other kids I got to know, there was our little drama queen, Milly, and Stephana, and Lauren. In fact, a picture I have of those girls (and one more whose name I can’t remember who wasn’t a regular attender) became the basis of our current Bible Club logo. Milly and Stephana would not like it, but they had to be boys in the picture for things to be fair (two boys and two girls). That logo is now on our club T-shirts, and, interestingly, my job of printing the T-shirts is how I met some of my and my wif’e’s best friends in the world—a couple who are now members at our church (the husband was a screen printer at the time).
Focus on the one little girl in the front of the group. Her name is Lauren, she was 4, and her dad’s name is Allen. One Saturday morning no other leaders could make it and it was raining, so I took some cookies made by a church teen around to some of our regulars. I had one left, and I stopped by Lauren’s house at 208 Martel St. No one came to the door, but I looked across the street to 209 and I saw a Mexican boy playing a GameBoy on the porch.
That’s how I met Angel and his family, who pulled up in the driveway in a few minutes. I invited them out to Bible club, and they came, but it was clear they were too old for a kids Bible club!
Providentially, that’s just when our church’s Teen Club was starting up on Friday nights in 2002, so I took them there. That began what is now an eight-year relationship with this family. Some of them even attend our Released Time ministry now.
And this is the focus of my testimony. The Lord used my relationship with these boys to open my eyes to a number of things. For the first time in my life, I had an ongoing ministry to lost people that I could really talk to. And we talked a lot, especially Mateo and me. He asked great questions. We had a lot of fun and a lot of good chats. I really loved these boys, and to tell you the truth, that love came pretty unexpectedly. I hadn’t felt it at all like that before in ministry.
But the sobering truth is that none of these boys seem to have come to Christ. They all heard the gospel dozens if not hundreds of times. I explained and urged over and over. And they listened. Pedro even came to church here and was impressed by the ushers because they looked like soldiers… The boys came to special events with me, visited my dorm room, and hiked Paris Mountain with me. One of my good friends became close to Angel and he had similar experiences. I learned that I must faithfully sow the message and water it, despite seeing no fruit, and that real ministry usually takes time. I learned that kids will improve their behavior radically out of love for a male authority figure but not out of love for God—and that I had to make that fact clear to them so they wouldn’t think they were fine with God because they pleased me.
Fast forward a few years. The boys have been too old for teen club for a while, but because of all the time we as a church invested in them, we still have an open door with their whole family. They know us. I stop in every once in a while to their house on and they welcome me with very open arms. Some of them have gotten in some trouble, but because they know I love them, they let me rebuke them lovingly but openly and tell them what the Bible says about their sin. I wish to God that the purpose of our relationship will be their eventual salvation and not just my Christian growth. But I wouldn’t trade that growth in love and ministry experience for anything.
I loved teen club. (At least the Green Team, if not perhaps some people on the Orange Team. =) I really looked forward to it every week. God gave me, again unexpectedly, a real love for teens who are very different from me. And He built up a very solid team of others to love our neighborhood as ourselves together. I never had a week where I didn’t have at least one good conversation with a teen, and I usually had more. Love always bridged our huge cultural gap. We didn’t have to have driving music and video game consoles. Love does it for a lot less money.
Teen Club was an intro to many years of Cola Wars and my annual duty to pretend I like a particular soda—just another way to spend time with people, to love my neighborhood with my meager time investments.
Love is even a bridge to the biggest and scariest boys. They need love, and they usually eat it up. Usually.
Teen club was also an intro for me to Neighborhood Bible Class, a ministry also founded in 2002 to reach out on Sunday mornings. I’ve been in the teen class there for about five years, I think. I see a lot of the same kids from teen club. It’s another way our church is loving our neighborhood.
Getting married then opened up a new frontier of having people over. (My dorm room was generally inappropriate for hospitality.)
Teen club was one of the greatest experiences of my whole life. I hated to leave it after six years, but wives and dissertations need attention too, and I was allowed to move to Sunday ministries where I get to do a lot of the same things. Door-to-door visitation is a way of making initial contacts to form relationships, and I’ve been helping lead that and doing some evangelism training there since 2008.
God has given us a specific mission field, and it requires patient continuance in sowing the seed. The time our church has invested over at least nine years in some of the kids from that Bible club, one of whom I still see every week, seems to me to be the most likely way that God will bring people in our mission field to faith in Christ.
I have heard many people say there’s not much to do in a big church because so many people are already doing it. It’s true that you may never stand on the platform if that’s what you mean by being involved. But when it comes to evangelism there is no limit to how much time you could spend in our ministries. We’re looking for those willing to take personal ownership of their ministry, and we are looking for giftedness—which mostly means the gift God gives you to love your neighborhood as yourself.
Found!
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Books, ChurchLife on January 22, 2010
A friend sent my request for help to a friend, and the lost egalitarian/complementarian illustration has been found! (Thank you!) Only my memory didn’t serve me with 100% accuracy. Here’s the original:
David Gushee did not convert to complementarianism, but perhaps that makes his comments all the more powerful and interesting.
Carl Trueman States the Fundamentalist Position
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in ChurchLife on January 22, 2010
Carl Trueman is having a friendly but serious and important debate with Paul Helm. Both are conservative evangelical men, but as American conservative Christians tend to fall on either side of the Billy Graham issue, so British Christians like Trueman and Helm fall on either side of the Packer-Stott/Lloyd-Jones issue. (These UK luminaries split in 1966 over separatism.) Trueman, while expressing great appreciation for Packer (as I would), nonetheless firmly opposes his decision to stay in the Anglican church (as I would!):
It seems to me to be illogical to claim that the Church (as a whole; I am not speaking of individual ministers and congregations here) does not deny the authority of the Bible and the terms of the gospel when it has long since ceased to uphold its basic doctrinal standards through its ecclesiastical courts. After all, a nation that has a law against theft on the books but allows anyone to take anybody else’s property at will, with impunity and without fear of prosecution, permits theft and, indeed, arguably has, in practice, no real concept of theft, no matter what the statute book says. Thus, a church that has for many years ordained those who deny many basic elements of the gospel, and even promoted such to senior positions within its ranks, and which does not regulate public teaching by its official doctrinal standards, has in its practice clearly denied the authority of the Bible and the terms of the gospel as articulated in those standards, and perhaps has no concept of them in any real, meaningful sense. Talk of denial of the gospel on its own is thus too vague: there is a crucial distinction which needs to be made between a church which promotes and maintains the preaching of the gospel as non-negotiable and normative, and a church which merely tolerates the same, while allowing teaching which denies the gospel to go unchecked. It would seem that when Packer speaks of the Anglican Church not denying the gospel, he simply means that the Anglican Church tolerates the gospel. That is not the position envisaged by the Thirty-Nine Articles and is arguably not Reformation Anglicanism.
Incidentally…
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Exegesis, NTScholarship, Piety on January 21, 2010
While I was doing some research for a high school Bible lesson on gender roles, I ran across this article at the Council for Biblical Equality. The article includes this:
Theologian Wayne Grudem wants us to believe that the Greek word kephale (translated into English as “head”) always means a “person in authority over.” His premise is that words have one fixed meaning, the context does not matter. Virtually all linguists are of another opinion. Any given word has a range of meanings and the context is the most important indicator of that meaning.
This really bothered me, and not because of the apparent comma splice. I’m certain Grudem does not take it as a premise that “words have one fixed meaning.” No theologian and exegete of his stature could. This straw man argument was a reminder to me to try to be fair toward my theological opponents. That means, ideally, understanding their position as well as they do. Ouch. That’s part of the calling of a scholar.
You can see for yourself whether the author was fair to Grudem by reading Grudem’s article on kephale.
Please Help!
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Books, Piety, Solipsism on January 21, 2010
Several years ago, in something like 2005 (?), I read an article (?) by an evangelical theologian (?) who had been an egalitarian. His story was something like this:
I was an evangelical Christian egalitarian. My wife and I split our marriage in half: everything was fifty-fifty. Cooking, chores, work. But after 15 years of marriage and three kids, my wife came to me. “Honey, you’ve got to step up and take responsibility for our family. It’s just not working. You’ve got to take charge.” This came as quite a shock, but I loved the Lord and I knew she was right. The structure of the family works when everyone is fulfilling his or her particular role, and I needed to be the head. Whatever is true of other egalitarians, my egalitarianism had been an excuse not to do the work I knew God had called me to do.
At least, I think that’s what his story was… I cannot find this article. I’ve tried and tried, looking through all my indexed and organized files.
Can anyone help me? I’m presuming this was in a complementarian publication, and I want this illustration for a high school Bible lesson on gender roles.
I think the author’s last name started with “S.”
Humpty Dumpty on Ἀγάπη
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Dissertation, Exegesis, NTScholarship on January 21, 2010
Humpty Dumpty took the book and looked at it carefully. “That seems to be done right—” he began.
“You’re holding it upside down!” Alice interrupted.
“To be sure I was!” Humpty Dumpty said gaily as she turned it round for him. “I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven’t time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—”
“Certainly,” said Alice.
“And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs: they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”
“Would you tell me please,” said Alice, “what that means?”
“Now you talk like a reasonable child,” said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. “I meant by ‘impenetrability’ that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.”
“That’s a great deal to make one word mean,” Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
“When I make a word do a lot of work like that,” said Humpty Dumpty, “I always pay it extra.”
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
The New York Times Censors Me for the Second Time [CORRECTION APPENDED!]
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Books, Culture on January 19, 2010
I love reading Stanley Fish’s long blog posts on the New York Times web site. A recent post of his reviewed a book which, apparently, repeats Stephen Jay Gould’s argument that religion and science are “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA)—that is, two separate things doing separate jobs which need not come in conflict so there.
Several times in the past, Fish has skewered sloppy thinking about science and faith, but this time his postmodern sensibilities (he’s a premier postmodern literary critic, author of Is There a Text in This Class and many other influential books) determined his read of the book. He cheered on the author for not taking sides, but of course she did. Everyone does in a world where there are only two real rulers.
Along the way he tried to summarize one leading argument from each side of the religion and science divide. He quotes the science side as challenging the religion side with this question:
“Well, if your philosophy tells you that facts are relative to belief systems, how come you don’t walk through walls or jump out of your apartment window?”
The faith side, he says, has this question for the science side:
“Well, if your philosophy tells you that religion and ethics are reducible to materialist evolutionary forces, why do you bother to be ethical at all?”
I think the first question is inaccurate and the second is unanswerable from within a secular materialists’s worldview. So I left a comment—only it hasn’t been posted [see update below], even though others were posted after mine. This is the second time this has happened to me at the Times, and the first was in a nearly identical situation. I do believe I have been censored.
Other comments tend to be like the following, from “Ehkzu”:
Magnum mysterium shmisterium.
Religion is entirely explainable via anthropology and sociobiology. So are ethics. Religion and ethics derive from us being pack animals that take a decade and a half to raise our young….
The message you get after commenting reads, “Thank you for your submission. Submissions are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.” Judge for yourselves whether my comments were on-topic and not abusive:
Mark L. Ward, Jr.
Greenville, SC
January 19th, 2010
8:44 amQ: ”Well, if your philosophy tells you that facts are relative to belief systems, how come you don’t walk through walls or jump out of your apartment window?”
A: Because you didn’t represent the Christian position accurately—truth isn’t relative to belief, but to God. He constitutes the ultimate standard, the lodestone of inquiry. He even constitutes walls as physical barriers, “for by Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:17).
Q: “Well, if your philosophy tells you that religion and ethics are reducible to materialist evolutionary forces, why do you bother to be ethical at all?”
A: … I do not believe Smith has answered this question.
The only reason naturalistic materialists view the question as ridiculous on its face is that they have an innate moral sense planted in them by God (Romans 1:18–21). Otherwise they can’t get oughts from ises.
Smith did takes sides! She just pretended to be the umpire instead of one of the players on the field.
Update: Let me eat crow. Or at least a little. They did post my comment after three hours—and that might simply reflect the amount of time it took them to go through the comments in the queue. But they didn’t post my other comment from several months ago. Of that I’m sure, because I checked for several days afterwards.
You’re 1,300 in a Billion
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Culture on January 16, 2010
A clever line delivered by Bill Gates to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, pointing out that the Chinese have a large talent base: “In China, when you’re one-in-a-million, there are 1,300 other people just like you.”
The Courage to Be Catholic
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in ChurchLife, Theology on January 15, 2010
At the behest of a flashing sign on Wade Hampton, I’ve been listening to EWTN (Eternal World Television Network) radio. EWTN was founded in 1981 by a nun in full habit, Mother Angelica, and now broadcasts over both TV and radio. As you listen to their many radio programs, you get the feeling that American Catholicism—at least that brand represented by EWTN’s listernship—lives very self-consciously in the shadow of evangelicalism. Much more so than the other way around. There are many glowing stories about converts who crossed the Tiber, and callers to Catholic Answers Live ceaselessly bring up Protestantism and its problems.
The other day I heard a featured guest on that show who was trying to help a young Pentecostal. The young would-be convert to Rome was fielding objections from his Protestant uncle, who knew the Bible well, he said. I believe the uncle had charged that Catholicism follows man-made traditions while Protestants adhere to Scripture. The guest argued that, actually, Protestants are followers of the traditions of men (he named Luther and Calvin particularly) while Catholics follow traditions handed down from Christ and the apostles.
I was amazed. My several weeks of EWTN commutes had treated me to all sorts of ideas that have no basis in Scripture and, in fact, contradict it. Prayer and devotion to Mary were certainly at the top, but veneration of other saints, purgatory, transubstantiation, clerical celibacy, Mary’s perpetual virginity, and the authority of the papacy were all touted on EWTN. I was encouraged to purchase books on the Međugorje visions. I was told that if I made room in my heart for Mary, the Holy Spirit would “dive bomb” my soul because Mary is His spouse and He follows her everywhere.
I would think that Catholic Answers Live could at least grant that Protestants are basing their doctrine on divine revelation—even if we’re somehow missing out on traditions added later. But if you believe in apostolic succession, apparently later traditions supersede earlier ones.
If you want to know what Catholicism teaches, read the official Catholic catechism. If you want to know what active American Catholics believe, listen to EWTN.
No doubt there are many self-professed evangelicals who preach a watered-down gospel and are in danger of losing even that (if they haven’t already). I’m embarrassed by evangelical radio’s urge to be like the world. And no doubt there are many faithful Catholics who are truly regenerated. But, in the main, the two groups speak different languages because our edifices are built on different rocks. I continue to be saddened and angered by those evangelicals who think the Reformation is over and we can all beat our swords (Eph. 6:17) into shepherds crooks. I’m glad EWTN still thinks I’m wrong to be a Protestant!
The Love Chapter
Posted by Mark L Ward Jr in Dissertation, Exegesis, Piety on January 13, 2010
You could be the world’s foremost orator, but if you aren’t motivated by love, you’re like a car alarm going off in a parking lot.
You could give out God’s Word powerfully, know truth no one else does, and move mountains with your faith—but if you aren’t driven by love, you’re a spiritual zero.
You could sell the entire contents of your home to give to the homeless, and you could be tortured and martyred at the hand of terrorists, but if you don’t do it for love, you get nothing out of it.
Love will never be obsolete.
Love doesn’t mete out the full punishment someone else deserves.
Love is happy to see the next person succeed.
Love doesn’t carry an “I love others” sign around.
Love is substance more than appearance.
Love observes the social graces.
Love gives others the right of way.
Love absorbs a ton of grief.
Love doesn’t keep a list of past infractions.
Love doesn’t enjoy winning by cheating; it enjoys seeing truth in the winner’s circle.
Love can take it.
Love believes the best.
Love doesn’t pronounce someone else a hopeless case.
Love lasts.
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