Mar 31, 2010
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I took one day out of my paternity leave for pleasure reading. I selected a new Kindle book I bought after hearing the author interviewed on NPR: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. It was utterly fascinating. I devoured it.
Demick weaves a gripping narrative which puts the reader in contact with daily life north of the DMZ. And the story is more than just exciting and interesting: the relationship between Mi-ran and Jun-Sang (not their real names) has to be one of the most romantic stories I’ve ever read.
Demick focuses on people from the area around the North Korean city of Chong-Jin. She can tell such intimate stories about citizens of a closed country under an oppressive regime because she spoke to them personally. They all defected (or, in one case, were tricked into defecting and only then defected!) to South Korea where Demick, the L.A. Times Korea correspondent, was able to interview them.
Not all of the defectors were born dissidents. Several were classic true believers in the regime who only reluctantly gave up their religious faith in the “Fatherly Leader.” Once inside South Korea, most of them expressed some desire (sometimes) to go back northward.
Reading this work gave me a deep sense of righteous anger at Kim Il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-Il. I had already viewed the latter as a ridiculous man: he wears silly jumpsuits and is always followed by fawning military officials in massive caps. Now I view him as culpable for the deaths of millions. Ideas have consequences, and when your economic policies kill your own citizens you need to take responsibility and change the policies. Instead, the North Korean propaganda machine went into overdrive: “Let’s all eat two meals a day!”
Kim Jong-Il appears to believe his own propaganda. If everyone around you agrees with everything you say and proclaims you an expert on everything from industrial glass production to the best bovine fertility practices, perhaps it’s inevitable that your pedestal’s height starts to put you out of touch with the people on the ground.
As I read I was filled with a desire to do something for these people—and then I started to realize what that might mean. South Koreans certainly have realized it, according to the book. Rehabilitating an entire half-nation and bringing them up to the high-tech standards of the other half would be costly and difficult. Add to this the fact that a lifetime of conditioning has influenced the thinking of everyone. Even defectors have a hard time making it in the South. They have to go through a special government deprogramming.
But nonetheless I have prayed that the true King of this world would depose the leader He, for His own purposes, set up decades ago (Psalm 75:7; Romans 13:1). Kim Jong-Il deserves to answer for his crimes, primarily that of defacing the image of God by putting such little stock in the lives of God’s image-bearers.
Buy this book for an education on the politics and history of North Korea, and read and enjoy this book for the many personal stories that you can follow from their beginnings under oppression to their breakthrough to (political, at least) freedom.
Mar 29, 2010
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The Christian Science Monitor (which, by the way, has little to do with Christian Science and is a respected mainstream news source):
Much of modern Christianity preaches a comforting Home Depot theology: You can do it. We can help. Epitomized by popular titles like Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential, this message of self-fulfillment through Christian commitment attracts followers in huge numbers, turning big churches into megachurches.
I agree. And I thought this comment was quite perceptive coming from a more or less secular news source:
From conservative evangelical churches to liberal new-age groups, the message of much modern teaching is man’s need for betterment. Not New Calvinism; its star is God’s need for glory. And the gravity of His will is great: It can be denied, but not defied.
Calvinists cannot lay exclusive claim to a concern for God’s glory; all regenerated people have that desire planted in their hearts as part of the New Covenant, no matter their formal theological affiliation. But I recently heard an Arminian leader admit that New Calvinism’s rise has been a response to excessive man-centeredness in American Christianity. May all Christians learn to be increasingly God-centered!
Read the whole thing…
Mar 25, 2010
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Half of the readers of this blog, Duncan Johnson, will be giving a series of lectures you should attend if you’re in the Greenville area. Here’s the info:
Saturday, April 3, 9:00 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 1:00 p.m. Computer Classroom, Mack Library
Turning in quality seminary projects is hard work, and technological challenges don’t make it any easier. The Mack Library is offering three workshop labs for undergrad Religion majors, Seminary students, and faculty. These sessions will explain and demonstrate key technologies necessary for seminary research, including Greek and Hebrew fonts, a Turabian template for Microsoft Word and Zotero (the premier tool for research organization and citation). All sessions will occur in the Mack Library Classroom (the former Testing Center, next to the e-mail stations) Saturday, April 3 and are free of charge. Register at the LibGuide for the Seminary Survival Labs. Drop-ins will also be welcome.
The LibGuide will soon include how-to videos demonstrating the techniques explained during the sessions.
Then again, the other half of this blog’s readership is Duncan’s wife, Meg, so I’m not sure why I’m bothering with this. Make sure to go support your husband, Meg.
I might add that if Meg can’t make it, she can read my series of Posts, “What is Unicode?” And, Meg, if your husband doesn’t mention it, though he probably will, OneNote is a viable alternative/addition to Zotero and StyleEase is the Turabian template I recommend.
Mar 24, 2010
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I have always enjoyed languages, especially English, because my father did for me what I hope to do for my son: he insisted that I express myself and he created a welcoming environment for that expression. I took Latin in eighth grade, and my eyes were opened not only to a bit of Latin but, more importantly, to the real nature of my own language.
I later took about six years of Spanish in high school and college, I am officially “proficient” in German (after 40 hours of grammar cramming and the judicious use of an online dictionary!), and, of course, I’ve taken a good bit of Greek and two years of Hebrew.
By my count, I’ve taken 9 semesters of Greek, including three semesters of intro, three of book classes, one of textual criticism, and two of grammar and linguistics.
But a shift has been going on in my thinking over the years, especially because of those last two classes. I learned through them that the value of Greek is not in original word meanings hidden to the lay public. That’s a farce, and a dangerous one. It’s not really in syntactical treasures which will wow your congregation, either. It’s not in besting available English translations. The value of knowing NT Greek is found in, well… It’s in…
Moisés Silva
I have found myself in just the position of Moisés Silva, and it’s partly his fault. He tells the story in one of his chapters in Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation of how he was asked to address a group of prospective seminary students on why to study Greek. Out of the abundance of his linguistically sensitive heart, his mouth spoke, so he began with some warnings and continued with some negatives. As time ran out, he squeezed in a few positives. He found out later that one prospect chose not to attend his school because of his talk. He was never asked to speak on that topic again!
The negatives of knowing Greek are better than the negatives of not knowing it, but they’re still present. That’s probably because linguistics needs to be made a part of the study process, or at least it needs to be a requirement for the undergraduate liberal arts training which should already be undergirding a future pastor’s seminary studies.
But I’ll allow Silva to bring us back to the title of this post: What are the positive reasons for a future pastor to study Greek and Hebrew?
A measure of proficiency in the biblical languages provides the framework that promotes responsibility in the handling of the text. Continued exposure to the original text expands our horizon and furnishes us with a fresh and more authentic perspective than that which we bring from our modern, English-speaking situation.
In my own preaching during the past twenty-five years, explicit references to Greek and Hebrew have become less and less frequent But that hardly means I have paid less attention to the languages or that they have become less significant in my work of interpretation. Quite the contrary. It’s just that coming up with those rich exegetical nuggets is not necessarily where the real, substantial payoff lies.
Silva also points out that Greek grammar may not be the secret key to good theology, but it can certainly rule out the possibility of bad theology in a given case. Jehovah’s Witnesses can impress someone with the fact that “God” in John 1:1 has no definite article, but a rudimentary knowledge of predication and definiteness in Greek will soon show their view to be in error.
Silva also notes that pastors who do not know Greek will not be able to interact with commentary literature or evaluate different English translations. If a member of the church asks him why two translations differ, he’d have to shrug his shoulders.
Silva also points out that if seminaries don’t require Greek and Hebrew, students won’t take them. It’s the equivalent of removing algebra and history from the required list of high school courses. And if students in seminaries don’t take Greek, teachers of their other courses will have to lower the complexity of their lectures. They won’t be able to make subtler linguistic points to their classes. And students won’t be able to speak as intelligently among themselves. And someone who might have been a great scholar of Greek will never get the chance because we won’t be introduced to the topic—do gospel Christians want to cede all Greek and Hebrew scholarship to unbelievers?
Finally, Silva says, there are intangible benefits to studying Greek and Hebrew. In high school, you take algebra whether you will be using sine and cosine in ten years or not. It improves you. It makes you culturally literate. It lays down some brain pathways you will use in ten years. The biblical languages do the same.
Recommendations
I’m sure Silva and I have missed some good reasons for studying Greek, but let me say that all the reasons for it become better reasons if you also take advantage of the advances in linguistics which scholars like Silva have made available. So I’ll end with a few book recommendations on the topic (click to buy):
If you don’t read anything else on this list, read this book. And re-read it a few years later. It’s that good.
This is the second place to start. Silva is less difficult than Barr but goes more in-depth than Carson chooses to in his more introductory text.
This is a classic; Barr was a teacher of Silva’s. Difficult if you haven’t mastered some linguistic concepts already.
Poythress has a simple style that, like John in the NT, belies his intellectual and theological depth. In that he follows his mentor and friend, John Frame.
Haven’t gotten much into this, but I’ve read the opening and I’ve seen it recommended.
I’ve sampled this, and I found it quite helpful.
This isn’t a work of linguistics, per se, but it is very stimulating on hermeneutics in general.
Mar 23, 2010
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I was reading Vern Poythress’ Symphonic Theology for a little help on linguistics and biblical hermeneutics, and he quoted Immanuel Kant:
This debt [of radically evil disposition] can never be discharged by another person, so far as we can judge according to the justice of our human reason. For this is no transmissible liability which can be made over to another like a financial indebtedness (where it is all one to the creditor whether the debtor himself pays the debt or whether some one else pays it for him); rather is it the most personal of all debts, namely a debt of sins, which only the culprit can bear and which no innocent person can assume even though he be magnanimous enough to wish to take it upon himself for the sake of another. Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (Chicago and London: Open Court, 1934), 66.
Immediately I thought of N.T. Wright. Aren’t they saying the same thing?
If we use the language of the law court, it makes no sense whatever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom. What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 98.
Wright isn’t wrong just because he echoes Kant. But it is interesting to note that what Wright is saying isn’t new.
