Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Note on Crossposted Reviews

    I’m cross-posting several reviews and notes from my Jevlir Caravansary site where I will no longer be reviewing just to get things started.  I will also occasionally cross-post from my other blogs where I occasionally review non-fiction.  Normally, posts here will not be crossposted from elsewhere.

  • TV Series: Ballykissangel

    This is another British (at least BBC, set in Ireland) show that I discovered recently and really enjoyed.  It follows the adventures of a young priest from Manchester assigned to a parish in Ireland in the town of Ballykissangel.

    His supervisor is somewhat conservative and doesn’t always appreciate his approach to ministry, but the villagers often do, with the frequent exception of one of the largest contributors to the church.  Those who have been involved in ministry will recognize the types of problems he encounters as well as the joys.  The culture may change, but the human equation remains the same.

    I’ve put my humor and mystery previews from British sources on this page.  These are also available for viewing on Netflix by subscribers.

  • TV Series: Campion

    I love British mystery series, in just about any period.  Over the weekend I discovered a new one, to me, though it’s been around for some time and I missed it.  This is Campion, set in the 1930s, with another of those kind of standard eccentric aristocratic detectives, complete with slightly mysterious butler.

    I would say this one is a somewhat less humorous (and the detective less eccentric) than the Lord Peter Wimsey stuff.  It’s less about the science of detection than the more modern series like Lynley or Alleyn, though it tends to be a bit more serious like those latter two.

    I found myself thoroughly enjoying this series from the start, and I think others will as well.  I’ve created a page on which to place the Amazon.com preview widget which collects Campion and a number of other British mystery and comedy shows I have enjoyed.

  • Welcome!

    This is the new Energion.com Book Notes Blog, which will be replacing my book reviews and notes posted on The Jevlir Caravansary.  That blog was originally intended as a place to post my own fiction and poetry writing as well as links to other fiction and poetry available on the web.  At first I added book and movie reviews in order to keep the blog busier.  Then I did so as a convenient place to park them for presentation here.

    Over time they became a distraction there as people came to view that blog as mostly a review blog.  So in self-defense, I’m moving the reviews here and keeping my own writing there.

    Watch here for new recommended books, short notes and full length reviews, as well as links to reviews elsewhere on the web.

  • Adrian and Dave Warnock on the Atonement

    So far as I know, no, they’re not related.

    Adrian is concerned with the suggestion that anything in the Bible might be culturally conditioned. Wake up and smell the coffee, Adrian! Practically all of Hebrew scriptures is about leading people from here to there. The narrative is built around the exodus, about physically moving from here to there, and then that becomes a metaphor for spirituality. On what basis would one imagine that what God taught them would be anything other than culturally conditioned?

    But there is explicit scripture for this as well:

    I also gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments by which they could not live. — Ezekiel 20:25, my translation

    The whole context of that verse is worth studying, as is the entire book of Ezekiel. In fact, looking at Ezekiel and Jeremiah as they deal with the Babylonian exile is a theological exercise well worth the time. The exile did not occur with its theological context all ready to go. These prophets, and 2nd Isaiah after them, had to build that context in the people’s mind. The success of this enterprise is demonstrated by the survival of Judaism.

    I think Paul reflects this somewhat with his concept of the law as a schoolmaster (Galatians 3:24). God’s revelation is not always intended to be eternal in the form in which it was given. Even Jesus, God in the flesh, had a temporal context in which he spoke and acted.

    Dave Warnock, however, responds to this in somewhat more detail and with some excellent scriptures. I commend his post, Sub-Biblical arguments against Steve Chalke to you for study and thought.

    Now that you did that (you did go and read Dave’s post, right?) let me just comment that one doesn’t honor scripture by pretending it is something it is not, and was never intended to be. One honors scripture, I believe, by taking it as it is, as much as one is able.

  • Idolatry of Theology and Liturgy

    • In a recent comment on my video Why I Hate the KJV, I received a comment that began thus: “You were saved by the KJV. . . .”
    • A young man visited my home and discussed with me for more than an hour. At the end, he said he was concerned for my salvation because of various details in the way I understand salvation by grace through faith.
    • A student asked me just what set of beliefs he needed to convey to someone and convince them to believe before he could be sure they had been saved.
    • A church member quits attending worship because he can’t stand the drums, the organ, the people raising their hands, the people not raising their hands, the way the pastor prays, ad nauseum.

    All of these points do have something in common, I believe. There’s the theory of salvation by grace through faith (God does it), the theory of salvation by works (get working and earn it), and the wonderfully western theory of salvation by intellectual assent to correct theology. I would suggest, however, that this intellectual assent version falls afoul of Paul’s note “not of works lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:9, emphasis mine). I think that could justifiably be paraphrased “not of intellectual assent (or prowess) lest any man should boast.”

    But no, there’s a substantial group of Christians who hold implicitly, if not explicitly, that without getting certain parts of their theology right, people cannot be saved. No thieves hanging on crosses need apply! One wonders just how many facts about atonement the thief on the cross grasped in the moment that he said “Lord, remember me”? Did he even know what “Lord” meant in that context?

    Now I’m told that I put too much weight on the story of the thief on the cross, but I think it’s a tremendously important counter-example. That thief hangs there athwart the path of all those who want to make salvation difficult by requiring amounts of time, training, works, or even understanding. There’s nothing there but a cry for help and grace extended.

    People frequently paint pictures of God from the theological prose of the Bible that contradict the God who appears in the stories. Personally I think this is reversed. As the thief on the cross hangs athwart the path of those who require intellectual understanding, so do Deborah (Judges 4 & 5) and Junia (Romans 16:7) stand in the way of those who want to claim that God can’t use women as leaders. At a minimum, those two examples should make one look carefully at each individual woman one meets in ministry and ask, “Is she one for whom God has made an exception?” Of course I think there are better theological reasons for rejecting gender exclusion in ministry, but that’s another post.

    But what does all of this have to do with the last example I gave, a liturgical one, and with the title of the post which refers to idolatry? Quoth Paul again, “Much, in every way!” I use the basic definition for idolatry I got from reading Tillich: “Treating as ultimate anything that is not ultimate.”

    • The commenter on my YouTube video has made the KJV the ultimate thing, replacing God and Jesus as the agent of salvation, and replacing it with a book, a translation made by human hands.
    • The young man who questioned my salvation based on his theological propositions has made those theological propositions into his god. They are the idol of God before which he worships. I would note here, however, that in my view grace is sufficient for gossips and murderers, and yes, even idolaters!
    • The student who asked about what must be believed was a very sincere person who was nonetheless distressed by the idea that he might not present the right pieces of the puzzle and thus not reach someone. He was being tempted by idolatry.
    • The church member who quits over liturgy, well . . . see below.

    I suspect that liturgy is the part of theology which tempts us most to idolatry. Many people ignore the atonement debates and simply believe that Jesus died for them. The idolatry is more frequently one of church leaders than church members. But everyone knows whether you raise your hands or don’t. Everyone knows what kind of music they like. Everyone knows whether they like a fixed order or a more spontaneous service.

    Preferences aren’t the problem. In fact, it’s not a problem to seek to understand and believe correct theology. That is, until what you say about God and how you worship becomes more important than God. Worship is about experiencing and worshiping God in community with one’s fellow believers, the body of Christ. When you let your personal preferences keep you from corporate worship, at least some elements of that are lost. In fact, I would suggest that if you are in no sense giving up something to others in worship, you may not be fully experiencing corporate worship.

    And when you let those individual preferences keep you from worship, then that becomes idolatry as well. Something that is not ultimate–the form of the worship service–has become ultimate for you instead of God.

    Should pastors, church leaders, and liturgists not strive for a good worship service? Absolutely they should do their best in this area. I am not advocating sloppiness either in theology or in liturgy. I am advocating the correct priority. When a pastor presents the Eucharist carelessly and thoughtlessly, for example, it may make it harder for people to experience the presence of Christ in their midst. I very much enjoy the Eucharist. There have been times, however, when I have had to work to experience the presence of Christ because it was so clear that the pastor was not experiencing it, and didn’t care.

    On another occasion I recall a minister who I thought might ascend from before the altar at any moment because he was so thoroughly engaged in the liturgy he presented. The simple fact that his worship was so completely directed at God, and so engaged his entire being, made it easy for the worshipers to join him.

    It is not good liturgy and good theology that I’m challenging here. Good liturgy and good theology help bring one to God. But no liturgy or theological proposition that stands between God and the person can be truly good.

    A tree is a good thing, but when one bows down and worships it, it becomes an idol. It is the same in our theology. A good doctrine, a good worship service, or a good deed, placed above the one in whose service they should stand, has become an idol.

    Friends, keep yourselves from idols. Amen! — 1 John 5:21

  • Psalm 100 – How to Meet YHWH

    A Psalm of Thanksgiving
    1Shout to YHWH,
    all the earth.
    2Serve YHWH with rejoicing,
    Come before him with triumphant shouts.
    3Understand that YHWH is Goda,
    He made us and we are hisb.
    We are his people,
    The sheep in his pasture.
    4Enter his gates with thanks,
    And his courts with praise.
    Thank him, and bless his name.
    5For YHWH is good,
    HIs grace is eternal.
    His truth lasts from one generation to the next. — Psalm 100

    aProbably better:  It is YHWH who is God, but that seems a bit clumsy in English
    bFollowing the Masora

    The reason I have chosen the title “How to Meet YHWH” is that we are given several things to remember about God in meeting him:

    • We are his, we belong to him
    • He made us
    • He is good
    • His grace lasts forever
    • He is always truthful

     There are two elements to the preparation to enter:

    • Thankfulness
    • Praise

    That’s a bunch of God and essentially one thing for us!

    Thus while one can call this a hymn of praise, it also makes a good judgment day Psalm.  You can use it effectively in conjunction with a sermon on the gospel, Matthew 25:31-46.

     

  • Nova: Buried Secrets

    I had an unfortunate brain failure (probably need to reboot!) and missed the first part, then I was interrupted twice more, but what I did see of the Nova show The Bible’s Buried Secrets looked pretty good.

    Since for similar reasons (messed up time and all) I didn’t record, but it looks like the site will have the full program available online tomorrow. Once I watch the rest, I may comment some more. In the meantime, it looks like it might not be a bad idea to watch this.

  • Reading Psalm 100 Out Loud

    One of my Bible study methods, though most important for devotional reading, is to read a passage aloud.  Since the lectionary Psalm for this week is Psalm 100, which is very short, I thought I’d read it aloud in a number of versions and then write my subjective impressions.

    I chose to read it from the REB, NJB, CEV, NRSV, The JPS Tanakh, and the NLT.  There was very little method to all this; those versions were just nearest my computer at the time.  I could have read from more by either walking farther or by using my Logos library, but I didn’t.

    Prior to reading these aloud in English I had read the Psalm a few times in Hebrew and had done a draft literal translation myself.

    The purpose of the exercise, beyond “whatever” was to get a feel for how each version would function in public reading.  I’m frequently asked what the “best” translation is, and one obvious question is always “best for what?”

    First, whether more functional or more formally equivalent, the translations were more similar than I would have expected when read side by side.  The NJB was fairly choppy.  I like its use of “Yahweh” in the Psalm, though I don’t use that as a rule in reading publicly.  The REB was similarly a bit choppy and appeared to use vocabulary that didn’t fit well.  (Note that I normally prefer the REB, though today was an exception.

    I disliked the use of “love” to translate Hebrew “hesed”, as was done by the CEV and the REB.  I understand the reason in the CEV, but the REB uses “acclaim” in verse 1, “acknowledge” in verse 3, I think they might have employed a few more letters on “hesed.”

    The very positive thing about the CEV is that it is very easy to understand when heard, with no difficult vocabulary.  At the same time, it loses all sense of Hebrew rhythm and parallelism.  This is one of those necessary trade-offs in translation.  You’re going to lose something, and if your goal is to translate for a fairly basic set of English vocabulary.

    The JPS Tanakh is an excellent translation, though it didn’t seem to read as well as the NLT read aloud.  The NRSV sounded remarkably good to me, which again is not usual.  I usually like the NRSV for the formal equivalence, but dislike its sound.  Unfortunately, it is the Bible used for most scripture readings at my church.

    Overall I would give the edge to the NLT as a compromise between easy to understand, decently flowing English text, maintaining some sense of the parallelism, and not translating any of the Hebrew words in too jarring a manner.

    All this is, as I have said, very subjective.  One impression is very strong–all of the translations seemed less smooth and readable when read aloud than when read silently.  I know the CEV is designed to be read orally, but I think there it is very hard for me to come from reading the Hebrew text with the parallelism and some sense of similar length poetic lines, and then go to a translation that deliberately eliminates both elements.

    I suspect that a major reason why the NRSV sounds good to me in this case is that this is one of those Psalms I memorized in the KJV as a child, and the NRSV is the closest to the KJV amongst those I read.

    One thing I believe I should think about is the quality of reading involved.  There are some readers who can make a scripture reading really resonate.  I wonder how much my own inclinations about reading impacted the way I felt about what I read aloud?

  • Christ the King Sunday – Preliminary Thoughts

    My pastor preached from the gospel lesson, Matthew 25:31-46 this past Sunday, and reminded me of something important.  Though this is called a parable, it is really much more of an apocalyptic vision, presenting the scene of judgment day.

    Besides the differences in the way one would understand a vision and a parable, this provides a good context for connecting the various texts.  Consider the visions around the throne for example in Revelation 4 & 5, or even other theophanies such as Ezekiel 1 or the second coming scene in Daniel 7.

    What does it mean to stand before God?  How will we feel when we do so?  Frequently we speak of “being in the presence of God” in our worship services, but the presence of God is never so casual a thing in scripture.

    In our texts we have the question of the shepherds that God is going to replace because they haven’t been feeding his people in Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24.  God’s judgment in that case involves removal from a position but if we tie it in to the view of the sheep and the goats, who are asked whether they cared for one another, then the failure of the shepherds takes on a new–and final–meaning.

    Psalm 100 is the most positive of these texts in that it is a Psalm of praise.  In the one sense it’s entirely positive, but it references the “sheep of God’s pasture” (v. 3) which might give a slightly different view if connected with the shepherds of Ezekiel 34 and the goats of Matthew 25!

    Finally, Ephesians 1 brings us in for another angle, but connects to Matthew 25 by centering the entire judgment, and the path to judgment, in Jesus Christ, his work, and his authority and lordship.

    I think it will be very hard to teach or preach from this passage without centering in some way on the final judgment.