Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Welcome Chris Eyre

    Chris will be posting a series of entries here dealing with the Consider Christianity series. One of the purposes of my publishing company, Energion Publications is to publish materials that start conversations. As a small publisher, I think it’s useful for me to help start the conversations. Chris has been reading the books, and he disagrees with a number of things in them, so I have invited him to present some of these issues in a series of posts. I haven’t put a limit on it. I’m expecting this conversation to be frank and vigorous. I’ll let Chris introduce himself in more detail as he goes along.

    Let me remind everyone of my comments policy. I remove spam and anything that appears likely to get me in legal trouble or will get my rated ‘X’. If you stay away from those limitations, you are free to express yourself with some vigor.

    I have also set aside some copies of Elgin’s books, both volumes and both study guides, for bloggers who want to get involved in the discussion. I haven’t decided yet on what basis to hand them out, but if you want to comment to this post or e-mail me early with a good reason that you should be one of the folks to get free copies, I’ll certainly give it consideration. The rules that I know of will be that you have a blog on which you comment on religious issues, from any perspective, and that you promise that you will comment on the books on your blog. I know also that I will absolutely not limit the free books to those who are likely to review them favorably. I would like to see bloggers from several perspectives look at these issues. There’s a lot of material in the two volumes, over 400 pages all told, and a number of interesting questions in the study guides.

    I’ll come up with detailed rules and then publicize this further at a later date.

    Have fun!

  • Implementing a Doctrine

    I’ve been discussing essentials of Christianity, as I see them, and emphasizing the doctrine of the incarnation. In the process I’ve mentioned implementing and expressing doctrines. What do I mean by those two terms?

    First, I do not regard the expression and the implementation of the doctrine to be part of the essentials. I believe that our implementation and expression of any idea will be limited at best and may be quite flawed. We do not always know best how to express our love, for example. Recently my wife and I were teaching for a weekend at a church, and one of the members recalled an experience. She told us that a woman had visited her church, and that numerous people had gone up to her, greeted her, and done their best to make her feel welcome. At some point, the woman told one of the folks that she really wanted the opportunity to experience the worship service without being bothered so much. Now let’s assume that the visitor was being honest. In this case a number of church members expressed their love sincerely and to the best of their ability, but the message received by the visitor was something different. We aren’t omniscient; things like this will occur.

    Let me look briefly at the incarnation, its expression and implementation.

    (more…)

  • Bible Study and Sharing

    In the method of Bible study that I teach, the last element is sharing. Now sharing is last on the list because you have to dig into your Bible study in order to have something to share, but not because it is the least important.

    Recently I have been impressed again with how important sharing is to our Bible study. I occasionally get blank stares when I start to talk about this. Surely sharing is a result of Bible study and not a part of it. But the fact is that when you share effectively, you will also enhance your own Bible study. What happened to me recently was that my wife, who maintains a devotional list, needed some rest from preparing a devotional every weekday morning. We discussed taking a bit of a vacation from that list, but then I suggested that I try seeing what I might write out of my morning devotions. And thus I’ve been contributing to her list for the last couple of weeks.

    Now I teach that one should share and I know from experience that sharing expands learning, but I have really enjoyed the benefit I get from thinking about a passage while asking the question: What can I get from this passage might be helpful to others in their Christian walk?

    In addition, stopping to write down my thoughts makes me read more slowly, and that helps me learn more from the passage than I would otherwise. I recommend both fast and slow reading; fast reading to get an overview, and slow reading with time taken to ask yourself questions about the text.

    The biggest threat to learning about the Bible, or any other subject, is the assumption that you already know. One of the best ways to counter that threat is by engaging in dialogue with others. They will surely teach you that you don’t already know.

  • Consumer Reports Viruses for Testing

    Bob Sullivan has a post on The Red Tape Chronicles about Consumer Reports creating viruses for the purpose of more accurately testing virus software. In particular, these viruses allowed CR to check how capable the programs were of catching new viruses and new variants.

    The antivirus community is up in arms, because they have made it a practice not to do this. I think in this case that their approach and their fear is not well founded. Indeed, a virus created in the lab could leak. But many viruses do get out on a regular basis because people put them out there. The advantage to creating new variants is that you can test and improve your software with them without them being released onto the online community.

    Compare the risks: 1) A virus is released from Consumer Reports labs or 2) A new virus variant, similar to one that Consumer Reports produced, is created and released intentionally. I think the extra preparation and testing is worthwhile. The computer industry needs to become more responsive to the public. The time is past, or at least fast passing, when software developers are the priesthood of an obscure cult, and the rest of humanity just has to take what they dish up.

    Keep up the creative testing! Oh, also be sure to keep those CDs with the new viruses locked up. It might only be a few hours advantage to the virus creators to have them, but let’s not give them any help.

  • Gender Accuracy Fun

    Adrian Warnock has responded to his perceptions of the approach taken by the folks over at Better Bibles. Since this is a topic that interests me, I thought I’d call attention to it. I don’t have anything to add at the moment, as I think Peter Kirk, both in comments on Adrian’s blog, and in a posting on Better Bibles, has brought up all the points I might have noticed.

    It appears that Adrian is accusing the Better Bibles folks of holding a position that I know they don’t hold. I also think Peter Kirk is asking an excellent question when he wonders what political correctness has to do with it.

    My eyes are glued to my comment trackers. 🙂

    PS: I would possibly be more properly accused of political correctness than any of the folks at Better Bibles. See my essay Gender Neutrality and Bible Translation.

  • Bible Puzzlers Anyone?

    There’s a new wind over on Lingamish, and this one brings us The Bible Puzzler. I’m waiting with interest to see what this is going to be, and watching my schedule with interest to see how much time I’ll have to get involved. But this can’t help but be a good thing. If at all possible, watch Lingamish for the first puzzle and get involved.

    How do you read? What do you think it means? Can you back that up?

  • Change to Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator

    This is only a minor change. I wanted some software that would aggregate the way I wanted to, and make it reasonable to include a couple of online forums as well. The result was that I wrote my own software, built on MagpieRSS and really very simple otherwise. At the moment it orders the blogs randomly and goes from most recent back for each blog. I am thinking of adding a simple reverse date order mixing the entries, but that favors blogs that update regularly, and that includes favoring myself, so I’m holding off to see what people like.

    Check this out. Any suggestions are welcome. Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator.

  • A Poll Too Far

    OK, just yesterday I wrote about the mob mentality and how technology is just technology–it’s how we use it that matters. Then today I find This article on MSNBC.com about changing the definition of a planet. The article itself is interesting, though hardly earthshattering (planetshattering?). But right next to the headline we have a live vote.

    What do you think? Yep! What do the masses, lacking any basis for making a judgment, think?

    I’m not going to start decrying the technology involved, but sensible journalists ought to start thinking about the value of polls such as this. It’s clearly a marketing idea to make people feel like their participants, but it generates no real information, and it makes people think their opinions on subjects about which they are uninformed, are more important than they really are. Actions such as this do have consequences, and responsible journalists ought to make that clear.

    Let the astronomers decide how many planets there are and what will be a workable definition. They will in any case, and the rest of us shouldn’t have a vote–including me.

    Live vote on what should be called a planet.

  • Technology is Just Technology

    Over and over I’ve heard the refrain, “The invention of the _________ is causing the deterioration of society because it _______.” The technology may be rapid transport, from the steam driven train to the airplane, or communications from radio to television to the internet, or any other form of technology.

    The internet is a favorite target these days. Child pornography, predators, bad ideas, unreliable information, crackpot theories, even though policing are blamed somehow on the internet. Now Jason Lanier, in an essay on Edge.org, calls the polling and other “mob” aspects of the internet “Digital Maoism” and refers to the result as the “hive mind.” Some of us who think Wikipedia is somewhat less than reliable are nonetheless hardly likely to equate it with the mobs of the cultural revolution in China. I discovered his essay via MSNBC.com, in an article by Steven Levy titled Poking a Stick Into the ‘Hive Mind’.

    Now my problem is not precisely with the problems that Lanier points out, nor even with some of the counterpoints quoted by Mr. Levy. In his final paragraph he makes an excellent point:

    [Author Kevin] Kelly’s point is well taken

  • Capitalization and Translation

    One of the categories on which I rate trnslations for my Bible Version Selection Tool is on capitalization of divine names. This has resulted many times in people asking me if I’m not being a bit nitpicky in making an issue of something like that.

    Wayne Leman has posted about Psalm 2 and his arguments illustrate my point well. Comparing Acts 13:32-33 with Psalm 2:7 in the NET, Wayne comments:

    Notice that the NET translators, theological conservatives who believe that Jesus is God’s Son, the promised Messiah, uppercase “Son” in Acts 13:33, but not in Hebrew Bible passage which this verse quotes, Psalm 2:7. I personally believe that the NET translators have translated accurately in each passage and indicate appropriately authorial intent with this differing typographical notation.

    Wayne also shows a list of translations that, he says, “Christianize” the Hebrew Bible in this verse. Included among them are the NIV, NASB, ESV, HCSB, and GW. All of this is accomplished by means of the capitalization–something that is a choice of the translators and can be merely stylistic, or can, as in this case, be very meaningful. The choice whether or not to capitalize any pronouns referring to the deity is, in itself, stylistic. But if one chooses to follow that practice, then a verse like Psalm 2:7 cannot be neutral because whether you capitalize certain words or not, it will be taken as an indication of your interpretation.

    Now the indication that I give in my selection tool doesn’t test this level of detail, but it can give you an idea. And I think that the better choice in modern English is to lose the capitalization of the pronouns throughout.

    Wayne concludes:

    Better Bibles should use the least amount of “interpretive translation” necessary for conveying the original meanings of the biblical authors accurately to translation audiences.

    I couldn’t agree more.