Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Working the Blogroll

    One reason I enjoy the blogosphere is that it involves an exchange of ideas, often between people who differ a great deal on what they believe. I was pruning out my blogroll yesterday (I only removed defunct blogs), and it occurred to me that the blogroll really is not very meaningless. It contributes to someone’s scorecard on Technorati, perhaps, but often I have very little interaction with the blogs on my blogroll.

    So I’m going to try something for awhile. A couple of times each week I’m going to select a blog from my blogroll, look for an interesting post, read it, and respond here. The rules I’ve set for myself are these:

    1. First time through is pretty much random
    2. If there is no recent post with which to interact on the blog, I’ll go on to another and check it later.
    3. I won’t return to a blog until I’ve checked the rest of the roll. (Obviously this does not include ordinary blogging and linking.)
    4. After the first time through I’ll keep the order I worked the blogs through the first time.
    5. I won’t post just a link. I’ll respond in some way to the content of the post.
    6. This only includes posts in my blogroll, not the various larger blogrolls of which I’m a member. The Methodist blogroll is anchored at Methoblog.com, the Moderate Christian Blogroll is aggregated at ModerateChristian.com, and I’ll also be doing some linking from the Moderate Christian Blogroll Blog (there’s tongue twister).

    I have created a category Blogroll for these posts, so you can either avoid them or make sure you don’t miss any, as the case may be.

  • Another Interesting Lectionary Omission

    Since I’ve been attending a lectionary discussion group during Wednesday lunch, and therefore spending more time on the lectionary texts, I’ve been interested in the way the texts are selected. For this coming Sunday, Epiphany, one of the texts is Isaiah 60:1-6. “Now what could possibly be interesting about that?” you might ask.

    I’m glad you asked! In this case what’s interesting is the cut-off point. In general, this is a prophecy of restoration, given to Israel during the time of the exile, or perhaps afterward. (It would fall in trito-Isaiah, assuming one accepts that division.) More specifically it is a prophecy of Israel becoming a religious center, and other nations supporting them.

    I found it interesting that the Learning Bible (CEV), in its note on Isaiah 60:7 specifically says that the temple referenced there is the rebuilt temple, dedicated about 515 B.C. This suggests that in the view of those interpreters this passage was fulfilled with the restoration of Jerusalem and the temple following the Babylonian exile. Yet a brief reading of the chapter suggests there are a number of things which were not fulfilled at that time, such as the sun no longer being their light (verse 19) but YHWH serving that function (cf. Revelation 21:23-24), all its people being righteous (v. 21), to name just a couple. I note also that the Jewish Study Bible refers this to a future age when God will rule the nation directly.

    So again why do I find the cutoff at verse 6 interesting? Well, in that verse we have a reference to the continuation of the sacrificial services of the temple, something that most Christian interpreters do not include in any future age. Quoting from the JPS Tanakh:

    All the flocks of Kedar shall be assembled for you,
    The rams of Nebaioth shall serve your needs;
    They shall be welcome offerings on My altar,
    And I will add glory to My glorious House.

    Now Christian interpreters are not unaware of these texts, but many people in the pews are, and thus when they start studying eschatological prophecies they can become very confused.

    Let me make a couple of quick observations. First, Christian eschatology, insofar as it works from the prophecies of Hebrew scripture has divided prophecies between a first and second coming of Jesus. No such division is known here in the text. Salvation from sin and salvation from physical oppression are closely intertwined.

    Second, while both Ezekiel and Isaiah speak of a future time when the temple will be restored and sacrifices will be offered, Christian interpreters find that very hard to fit into any prophetic scheme. There are those who believe there will be a period of sacrifice in a restored temple during the time of the tribulation. I won’t go into the details of how this is supported from the text here. Suffice it to say that it can get complicated quite quickly. But in general, Christian theology has a problem with restored sacrifices seen in a positive sense, since the sacrificial system is commonly seen as unnecessary following the death of Jesus.

    One has to wonder whether the compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary didn’t want to avoid having these questions raised by a reading of verse 7 on Epiphany.

  • Christian Carnival Posted

    The latest Christian carnival is Ancient Hebrew Poetry.

  • Random Designer Wrap-Up

    I found the last several chapters of Random Designer quite attractive, I think partially because I’m from a Wesleyan background. We cross the “somehow” barrier and find that human beings, by whatever means that was accomplished, want to connect with their creator. In chapter 20, this is presented as “A Choice and a Chance.” The following quote (also used as an inset quote in the book) gives the flavor:

    An intimate, meaningful, and fulfilling relationship cannot be required. It can only be offered! Without the possibility of rejection, there is no opportunity for meaningful connection.

    Here I think Dr. Colling gets into one of the key potentials involved in looking at humanity from an evolutionary perspective, yet doing so as a theist, though I don’t know if he would go as far as I do. God takes risks by being the Random Designer instead of the complete dictator. There is the risk inherent in creation itself. Just what type of creature will arise that will think and connect? There is also the risk inherent in relationship. Will the person who seeks a relationship with God become a better person, or will he use the “specialness” of that relationship as an excuse to lord it over others? My own answers thus tend toward an “openness of God” theology. (Please be certain to distinguish my commentary here from Dr. Colling’s. Dr. Colling does not embrace the openness of God theology in the text.)

    Chapter 21, God’s Will: A Confusing Concept Becomes Crystal Clear promises clarity on a difficult topic, and here I have to express a bit of amusement. In general, once we come to an understanding of an issue, we think it’s crystal clear. I get caught here too. When teaching classes on the book of Revelation, I will inevitably be asked about some commentary in which the author says he has worked out the meaning of Revelation and it’s really very simple. I can point out that I have a row of commentaries on Revelation and several of them make a similar claim, yet do not agree on the meaning! So there are at least half a dozen crystal clear meanings to the book of Revelation.

    Understanding God’s will is rather similar, I believe. While I actually like Dr. Colling’s explanation, and I think he points in the right direction at least, it would probably take only a few minutes in a room with a Calvinist to get it all pretty confused again. Of course both Calvinist and Arminian would leave with a clear understanding–just different clear understandings.

    The chapter content is good. I think the subtitle is perhaps a bit optimistic, but then those who have no optimism don’t write books!

    Chapter 22, the rewards of perseverance builds on the spiritual view of humanity, while chapter 23 introduces the concept of “higher order random design.” I am not going to try to summarize this one. The key example is to be found in the human immune system. I think I followed it, but I am uncertain I can express it again myself. It does indeed express again the way in which randomness can produce order and design.

    Chapter 24 takes a step out into the unknown by suggesting that the genome may be as loaded as is possible and that we may well not move to greater complexity than human beings. It’s an interesting point, but one which I am woefully unqualified to analyze.

    Finally, chapter 25 deals with the call to relationship with the creator again. The form of expression and the theology here is very comfortable for me as it coincides closely with my own.

    Wrap-Up!

    This is the first time I have tried to blog through a book rather than read it completely and then write a few short notes or attempt a review. I see advantages and disadvantages. In once case, I re-read a section and commented on it further due to readers’ remarks. I think that second read had some value. So much for the process.

    What do I think of the book overall? I regard the first section as one of the best explanations of the basics of evolutionary theory for a layman that I have read. It does not involve the detail that a book like What Evolution Is includes, nor does it have the spice of Evolution, Triumph of an Idea, but it has substantial advantages too.

    First, I think it makes clear both the complexity of life and the power of the “random design” concept. Variation + Natural selection works. Dr. Colling is not afraid to look at abiogenesis and give us an idea of where the science is there as well. I think it is quite appropriate to separate abiogenesis from the biological theory of evolution for many purposes. At the same time, for many people the origin of life is the major question.

    Second, Dr. Colling is clearly an excellent teacher, and can explain complex processes simply. He apologizes to his colleagues in the scientific community for the extent to which he will simplify, and having read other materials, I know he is simplifying considerably, yet I do believe he gives an overall excellent picture. When looking at the forest one might misidentify a tree or two while still getting the shape of the forest.

    Third, Dr. Colling is talking about evolution in theistic terms, even when he is not talking about divine intervention. The recognition of God as the creator, and more precisely of God as the Random Designer underlies the entire book. The science is not divorced from theology, though science and theology are each given their spheres, their separate identity and their separate subject matter.

    Finally, these earlier points mean that this is a book for Christians and other theists who want to understand how one can still perceive God in an evolving world, as well as for those who want to understand how a theist can possibly manage that. One of my responses to the claim that nobody can be a theistic evolutionist is simply: And yet here I am. Well, now “here’s Dr. Richard Colling.” The second half of the book is a more explicit expression of the Christian faith that was always present even in the first half.

    One thing that struck me throughout was the basic honesty of this whole book. We have intelligent design proponents trying to pretend to do science without identifying their intelligent designer. Dr. Colling is unafraid to state from the start who he means by the Random Designer. That freedom comes with a lack of ulterior motives. This isn’t a sneaky way to get a specific type of “random design theory” into high school classrooms. It’s simply an expression of how one scientist who is also a man of faith sees God in random design.

    I would strongly recommend this book for any Christian who is considering the creation-evolution controversy, and also for anyone who wants to understand where many people of faith stand in terms of the relationship between science and theology. It is clear, informative, and challenging. I can’t ask for much more in a book!

  • New Year Blog Dressup

    I spent a good bit of time yesterday dressing up my blogs for the new year. This unseemly waste of time on the merely visual probably came to pass because I’m fighting a cold.

    I like to keep my three blogs, this original Threads blog, and the two I derived from it (Participatory Bible Study Blog, and the Jevlir Caravansary) similar in appearance. I’ve used the same theme on all three with a different header image and different sidebar arrangements.

    For those who may be new to Threads, I created the Participatory Bible Study Blog in order to separate material strictly on Biblical exegesis from the more general “religion and society” theme of this blog, and the Jevlir Caravansary to separate out my occasional flights into fiction or poetry writing. While Threads is my personal blog, I do stay closer to my professional work in religious education here. My life is divided these days between writing and teaching on the one hand, and continuing computer business on the other. As I’ve developed the teaching ministry, I’ve spent less and less time on the computers. In turn, the computer business is divided into managing networks for small businesses, which provides a steady income, and the occasional spurt of activity producing custom software. It will probably surprise nobody who is involved in any ministry work that while I spend probably 80%+ of my time on the writing/teaching, and 20% on the computer related business, a majority of my income still comes via technology. I call it modern tentmaking.

    As for the new year, my plan (business plan, not resolution) involves putting more time into writing, especially for print, and spreading the other work around.

    A blessed New Year to all!

  • Happy New Year!

    I’m starting the new year with a new theme for this blog. I’ll be using a similar theme for both my Threads and Jevlir Caravansary blogs. The basic design is from here. All I have modified is the header image.

  • My Theological Worldview

    . . . at least according to this quiz. (HT: Gentle Wisdom)

    What’s your theological worldview?
    created with QuizFarm.com
    You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

    You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God’s grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

    Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
    		93%

    Emergent/Postmodern
    		75%

    Roman Catholic
    		61%

    Charismatic/Pentecostal
    		54%

    Neo orthodox
    		54%

    Classical Liberal
    		54%

    Modern Liberal
    		43%

    Reformed Evangelical
    		18%

    Fundamentalist
    		0%

    I suppose that settles it. Not!

  • Preachers: Respecting without Idolizing

    Eddie Arthur at Kouya Chronicle comments on recent debates about John Piper and justification. Amongst other things, he says this:

    It might surprise some of you that I recommend Doug’s articles because in his review of Piper’s criticism of Wright, Doug comes down fairly and squarely on the side of Wright, not Piper. For most Evangelicals John Piper has a status approaching infallible. However, on this question, everything I’ve read leads me to side with Tom Wright (though I will fully admit to not yet having read Piper’s book).

    (HT: Gentle Wisdom, in a related post, also well worth reading.)

    Eddie is to be congratulated on his attitude of respect for John Piper, while at the same time being willing to recognize where Piper is not quite so strong. After reading Eddie’s blog for some time, I would have expected no less. But many Christians find it difficult to both hold a preacher or teacher in high regard and disagree with them. If we shift the cultural and religious context, and refer to leaders instead, I suspect it is a strongly human characteristic. We like to either like or dislike someone, and to do so without qualification.

    There will be those who think I don’t respect Piper at all. After all, I have criticized him recently. But I have also appreciated what he has to say on many topics, including prosperity theology, though I differ there in the details. Mark Driscoll is another preacher I have criticized, but also one from whom I have much to learn. My theological perspective is very, very different from these two men, yet I find myself continually blessed by interacting with what they write, even–or especially–when I dislike it.

    The other day my wife and I were watching 60 minutes on Joel O’Steen. Now if you want to find a preacher who gets on my nerves there he is. There’s all the glitzy, prosperity oriented, shallow, showmanship that I dislike most. When the segment was over my wife and I discussed it. We frequently do this, because we both teach, and often do so together. We found that there were things we could learn from the work in ministry, as well as many things that we both deplore. I look, for example, at the time he spends on his sermons. Wouldn’t it be great if more preachers spent that kind of time and effort on their proclamation of the word each Sunday!

    My wife frequently gives a portion of her testimony when we’re teaching. She was greatly blessed and had a life-changing experience with the Holy Spirit at the Brownsville Revival here in Pensacola. Now many readers will again be surprised that I have any connection with Brownsville, given the more rationalistic tone of my own faith. But those who have read my own testimony will perhaps remember this. She tells of how she was powerfully changed and for many weeks continued attending the revival and drinking in everything that evangelist Steve Hill had to say. Then came the night when he read a text and made a point and she said, “That’s not right! That’s not what that text said!” With a bit of thought she realized that two things were compatible. Steve Hill could be wrong. Steve Hill could be God’s instrument in a powerful change in her life. The two things were not incompatible. She tells that as an important point of maturity in her Christian faith.

    I blogged yesterday about being willing to live with uncertainty. Just as we like certainty about the facts we use in living our daily lives, we also like certainty in our leaders. A preacher is either good or bad, not quite good but fallible. But that is the wrong perspective. We are all human, all fallible, all less than perfect. I can often learn from people whose behavior I do not like, or whose teaching grates on me in many ways. At the same time, I must always be aware that even people I truly appreciate may be in error.

    I need to respect preachers, teachers, and leaders, without making the mistake of idolizing them.

  • The Quest for Absolute Certainty

    When I was a teenager, I was very involved in electronics, something that has stuck with me. My first real efforts at understanding science came in working with electricity. One day I was discussing the theory of electricity, and specifically how it “moves” through a circuit with my father, also an electronics hobbyist. We had gone through electrons moving from one atom to the next, and the reasons why some things are better conductors than others, and why some things are so bad as conductors that they are insulators. This all applied to some circuit or another I wanted to build.

    Then my father dropped a bombshell. “You know this is all a theory,” he said.

    “What do you mean by theory?” I asked. To me at that point a theory was something not so well established. There were facts and then there were theories. Facts were good, theories were not so good.

    “Well,” he continued, “we don’t actually observe subatomic particles in motion. We don’t know that an atom looks like those drawings you have.”

    “So we don’t really know any of this? What good is it then?” Of course I well knew that I could build circuits based on it, but teenagers aren’t required to be logical with a parent.

    “The theory does what it’s supposed to. It explains what we observe. It works. That’s all it has to do.”

    “Oh.”

    But somewhere deep inside I was upset. I liked my little pictures of atoms. I wanted to believe that they were just that way, and that if I could get a good enough microscope, I could actually observe those little electrons doing their thing. Now electricity is based on very good theory, and it does work. My dad was himself a young earth creationist, though we never discussed that much. I suspect now that he was more along the Kurt Wise type–there may be substantial evidence for evolution, but the Bible says otherwise, so we must believe–only he never felt the need to work on a real theory.

    (more…)

  • On Being Moderately Sheeplish

    Joe Carter has had a salubrious encounter with the human mind, such as it is, and has discovered that conservatives are sheeple too. “I have to confess that I’d always associated sheeplishness with the Left,” he starts out, but then notes how, in his new role with the Huckabee campaign, he has found sheeplishness amongst conservatives as well. He thinks he should have known this all along.

    Well, give yourself a break, Joe. It’s easy to assume that people who agree with one’s well thought out opinions are obviously brilliant and agree only because, having thoroughly examined all the evidence, they are impressed with the brilliance of those opinions. Then one encounters the so-called “popular mind” in action, and one finds out that this isn’t precisely so. And I’m not trying to be particularly sarcastic here about Joe. It really is easy to do, and quite natural. (Oh, and I had considered writing something about Huckabee’s foreign policy, as I thought it was getting badly treated, but since I’m not a Republican I never got up the energy to do the necessary research.)

    The addiction to secondary and tertiary sources is becoming (if it hasn’t already become) endemic in our culture. For many of us the facts come from purveyors of opinion without regard to references, sources, context, and logic. It’s not a particular failing of the left or the right, no matter how much each side would like to think it is. Much of public discourse occurs without fact checking. We believe what is said by folks we regard as authorities and we choose authorities based on how sympathetic they are to our own viewpoint. Often we avoid reading those who may disagree, and thus reinforce our feeling of rightness. How could those other folks disagree, given the overwhelming array of authorities (the six people whose blogs I read and who agree with me) who support our position.

    Now since I call myself a moderate, I need to add here that moderates are by no means immune to the problem. There’s a particular form of the problem that afflicts moderates in which we look for the extreme positions on an issue, not so that we can study the evidence for them and determine our position without excluding any option, but for the purpose of avoiding the extremes. Moderate sheeple make sure that they can in no way be regarded as extreme. That doesn’t mean that they are resistant to following leaders. Rather, they look for leaders who stay well away from the edges on any issue, and follow them.

    It’s very difficult to avoid this problem. I know I have caught myself following someone’s lead on a point without checking a few times, and it’s embarrassing. The answer, of course, is to check your facts, then check your logic, then check them both again. The only way to avoid simply following one’s impressions and feelings is to explicitly look at the foundations of one’s positions. But this is hard work, and modern journalism and popular writing is not helping us carry out the task.

    The tendency now is to cite a number of viewpoints. Balance in journalism means that one gives the various views on the topic. In politics, you get a Republican and a Democrat to tell you what they think, and you have balance. You get a Christian and an atheist to express their views on religion, and you have balance. Evaluation of the issues involved don’t matter.

    I’m sure we’ve all seen documentaries such as those that come out just about every Easter on the historical Jesus. Several scholars are interviewed, and as the material is narrated, we get short clips of what those individuals may say. But we never get their actual evaluation of the evidence in enough detail to judge for ourselves what they are saying. I rarely watch one of those shows all the way through, because I become agitated. In general I will have read at least something by every scholar they cite, and as they take abbreviated quotes from those authors and charge forward I become more and more agitated until I must choose between changing the channel and damaging the TV when I throw something at the narrator’s head.

    We have people getting the impression that they know something about the search for the historical Jesus when most couldn’t identify a pericope, or define what is meant by form, source, or redaction criticism, or identify one or two criteria which any group of scholars might use to determine historicity.

    Of course, they believe the documentary is balanced, because they have shown a variety of viewpoints. We’ve gotten to the place where people don’t think it’s nice to evaluate ideas. But some ideas are really stupid. Some ideas are really dangerous. Are we to expect journalists to simply present all sides without giving any kind of evaluation? That seems to be the way that we’re going, and I hear these complaints from people all across the spectrum of political and religious beliefs.

    I would suggest that we don’t want neutral media. We want diverse media. These days we have no reason to believe we won’t get diverse viewpoints because there are many sources available. Of course, those sheeple who are looking for a leader to follow will get their information from the easiest source, but in the modern world it’s very difficult to actually exclude an idea from discourse. Just consider the intelligent design movement. Never has a “suppressed” idea been so loudly and constantly proclaimed.

    Many today seem to think that “all men are created equal” somehow means that “everything is equal.” We want equal results, equal time, and so forth. But not everybody deserves the same amount of attention. Not every idea deserves the same amount of exposure and proclamation. A few more facts, a few more references, and a little more evaluation would go a long way.