2009 September | βλογάπη

Have Another Tilt at It

Nathan Wilson summarizes a position he obviously doesn’t take:

People are raped in this world, and rape is evil. Because evil exists, there must be no God.

But then he shows where that position ends up:

Because there is no God—no authoritative standard over creation—the badness of rape downgrades to a mere matter of societal taste. Ethnic cuisine, ethnic ethics. In God’s absence rape is no longer fundamentally evil. In our country, you’ll get confined to a cell (if caught and convicted), but that just means we enforce our taste, not that our taste has any real authority over anyone else.

—N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl

Posted by Mark L Ward Jr on Sep 30, 2009 in Mission, Theology | 0 comments

A Truly Great Line from a Truly Great Book

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I’m still thoroughly enjoying—and receiving historical instruction from—Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859–2009.

I just got through the major fight liberal-moderate president Duke McCall had in the 1950s with a group of liberal-moderate faculty. McCall won, and because he was not viewed as liberal, rank and file Southern Baptists viewed his victory as a purge of unsound theology from the school. But they weren’t quite right. Wills’ little line at the end of this paragraph is brilliant:

Herschel Hobbs’s assessment prevailed widely: “This was Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s finest hour as she stood in the breach and said to modernism and its kind that it shall go no further in Southern Baptist institutions and life.” McCall’s purge had saved the school and the denomination from liberalism. The orthodox soon discovered, however, that it was not a case of once saved, always saved.

Posted by Mark L Ward Jr on Sep 29, 2009 in Books, ChurchLife | 1 comment

Jesus and Adam Smith

From American Vision:

What would Jesus have done if confronted with the new technology [of horseless carriages]? Would He have endorsed the mass production of the automobile when it was first introduced to the American public knowing that it was a polluter? Actually, Jesus would have said little. He would have allowed common sense and market forces to determine how the new technology would be used.

This troubles me. Jesus was not a Republican, much less a free-market fiscal conservative. Neither, of course, was Jesus a Democrat. Though He cared for the poor, it was more important that “the poor have good news preached to them” (Mt 11:4).

This doesn’t mean the Bible has nothing to say about economics. Far from it. But it does mean that we ought to be careful claiming Jesus for our causes. “You thought you that I was one like yourself” (Ps 50:20), God told Israel. Israel was wrong.

During my five years as a research assistant in the BJU Library I read thousands of articles, and I ran into a bunch of causes people had enlisted God for. I began keeping a “God told me to do it” file. Enjoy: Screen shot 2009-09-29 at 9.55.52 AM.png

Posted by Mark L Ward Jr on Sep 29, 2009 in Piety, Theology | 3 comments

Thrilla in Greenvilla, Round 3

I challenged my good friend Brian Collins to a public discussion: electronic books vs. paper books. I started off by listing all the stuff I’d bought from Logos and other electronic sources. (I got one moderately nasty comment that I did not post, someone marveling at how much I’d spent. Remember that 1) I was single during most of those purchases, 2) I was in the foundational stages of building my ministerial library, and 3) a third of the money I spent came from one gift at the end of my M.A.)

Brian Collins responded to my first post by listing (from Zotero, I imagine) all the books and articles he’s gotten for free.

Of course, I could do the same. I have countless electronic articles that I’ve saved in topic folders and about 150 electronic books (see images below) that I’ve gotten for free online, too. And they’re not all public domain. Some are quite valuable. Piper, for example, makes most of his works available for free online (don’t miss this little helpful book).

Screen shot 2009-09-23 at 10.08.50 AM.png

Brian’s point is well made, and I agree with it completely: a not-insignificant amount of books you could buy on Logos are available for free from Google Books—so do some research and thinking before you plunk down the cash.

The value of Logos over Google Books is having completely clean, copyable, and searchable tagged texts. Bible references and even topics are coded into those tags, and it’s nice to have all your best resources in one place. But how much is that worth to you for public domain books?

And that brings us to the real issue, books that aren’t public domain and that will cost you real money whether you buy them from Logos or Amazon.

I’ll list the pros for electronic books. I’m aware of the cons, and I’m eager for both of you readers to be aware of them, too, but I’ll let Brian tackle those.

Pros for Electronic Books

Cost: buying commentaries and reference works in sets can be a lot more cost-effective than buying them in print. Case in point: the IVP Essential Reference Collection. I got it for $80. That would buy me about three of the nicer books in the collection.
Convenience: I bought the paper version of BDAG at my Greek teacher’s recommendation, but I found I never pulled the thing down to look up words. BibleWorks’ auto-info window was just too tempting, so I sold the book and bought the electronic version. I now use BDAG much more frequently. Same goes for just about any reference work in my library.
Portability: For missionaries, which Brian is likely to be, it’s a no-brainer. Evangelists who read books (like Keven Brownfield, who told me ten years ago that he adores Logos)—same thing.
Searchability: I don’t remember where to find things anymore (of course, you could also call that a con). I just remember wording, and I can search for it.
Quality: The big Logos packages contain some fluff—and even some liberal claptrap. But overall, students who buy the Gold package, for example, are guaranteed some excellent commentaries, theologies, and reference works. If undergraduate ministerial students are left to their own devices buying analog books, they won’t choose as wisely as Logos has already done for them.