Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Energion.com

  • Tagged – but I can Break the Rules

    Just to be honest, I probably would have in any case.

    Tony from Thoughts from the Heart on the Left tagged me with the meme created by L. L. Barkat, so here goes, as I break rules.

    I’m going to copy the rules from Tony’s post rather than the original, just to be a bit perverse. They are:

    • Write about 5 specific ways blogging has affected you, either positively or negatively.
    • Link back to the person who tagged you
    • Link back to this parent post
    • Tag a few friends or five, or none at all
    • Post these rules— or just have fun breaking them

    I would have not posted them, but there was that pesky permission not to do so, and then also how would you know in what ways I break them? Indeed, the permission to break the rules is the main reason I responded, as I generally dislike memes and getting tagged, and all that goes with it.

    So as for five specific ways blogging has affected me positively or negatively, allow me to provide any number but five.

    I think I was created to blog. I was merely waiting for the idea of blogging to come along so that I could fulfill my destiny by writing long blog posts that very few people read. I have opinions about everything, and a relatively high opinion of my own opinions (funny how that works), so I like to talk about them, and quite frankly there aren’t that many people who want to sit around an listen as much as I want to talk.

    Enter blogging. It doesn’t matter any more! I can imagine the legions of readers of my blog checking and rechecking their readers to see if I have let more wisdom flow so that they might take it in.

    If someone tells me that I have few readers, and cites my SiteMeter report as evidence, I can simply point out that SiteMeter doesn’t get all those folks who have subscribed via Bloglines, Google Reader, or some other service. In addition, who knows how many people, overwhelmed with appreciation for my prose, e-mail pages to their friends or share them via some of the aforementioned readers or aggregators.

    Consider that I used to regard it as a good day when a Sunday School class of a dozen people wanted to listen to me talk. Now I can just go to the computer, pour out my thoughts, and make them available to an audience of millions. Admittedly, most of those millions will fail entirely to read my stuff or even know that it exists. But they won’t tell me they didn’t read it, and if nobody tells me, it’s an inconvenient fact that I can conveniently ignore.

    If one has discovered a technology that provides a tool that allows one to become completely fulfilled in one’s calling in life, what possible need can there be for other reasons? Thus, reasons 2-5 have been superseded by the awesome and sublime power of reason #1.

    As for tagging, think of it this way. If you read this, and felt that you just can’t resist saying something about what blogging means to you, then consider yourself tagged. If not, well, not so much.

    PS: If you didn’t read this, please don’t tell me. It will disillusion me, and I really like my illusions. I’m planning on keeping them.

  • Incomprehensible Preaching?

    I found this humorous story from the Lark via Shuck and Jive.  It’s humorous, I think, because it strikes close to home even though it’s exaggerated.

    I make two serious points out of this.  On those occasions when I’ve had the opportunity to teach Greek or Hebrew to those planning to be pastors I emphasize:

    1. Use what you know from the pulpit; don’t try to get beyond your own knowledge of Biblical languages.  That avoids the type of problems I mentioned yesterday.
    2. In general, use your Biblical languages to deepen your own study and then express what you learned, not the language details you used to get there.

    Preaching is not my main activity.  I general teach, often in hour long settings or longer.  But when I do preach, I make very little express reference to Biblical languages.  If I learned about the text by studying it in the original, I should understand the text better, and I should then take time to express what I learned so it can be comprehended by the congregation.

    In 15-25 minutes you really can’t tell folks that much about the languages.  Speak plainly and simply (he says to himself as well!).

  • Evolution, Historical Methods, and Assumptions

    Andrew Lamb has commented on a post I wrote back in July. I have responded to most of the comment there, but he references an article of his own, Immeasurable Age, and it employs an approach that, while I do not think it has merit, is so common in both public discourse and apologetics, that I want to respond.

    In the comment he states:

    Contrary to your assertion Henry, age is dependent upon assumptions, i.e. age is not something that can be measured. See the article Immeasurable age.

    It’s interesting to note here that Mr. Lamb introduced the term “measured” and then uses a mildly eccentric definition of the term. Apparently if any form of inference is involved, one is not measuring. But we use various types of inference in a number of measurements. For example, inference is involved in measuring radio frequencies. One observes the effect and from there infers the frequency.

    Now you should rightly point out that my example of inference is substantially different than the types of inference involved in determining the age of the earth. (Note again that I did not use the term “measure.”) That is why I called his use only mildly eccentric. There is no device, such as a time ruler that I can put up against the time line of earth’s history and read off the actual age. That is the nature of historical study, whether human history or historical science. (At the end of this post I will provide links to a couple of online sources on the age of the earth. I’m not planning on discussing the actual science, but rather the general approach.)

    I would prefer better definition of terms like “assumptions” (which Mr. Lamb uses) or “presuppositions” (which is seen frequently elsewhere). In this case Mr. Lamb is using “assumption” in a manner that borrows some of the baggage of “presupposition” without actually going there. (A presupposition is something one must suppose or assume to be true to make sense of a worldview, i.e. it is unquestionable within that worldview. An assumption can be something that one takes temporarily to be true, but which one intends later to test–or not, as the case may be.)

    Thus I would immediately disagree with the definition Mr. Lamb provides in his article:

    All three methods involve making assumptions. Assumptions are things we believe, but which cannot be proven.

    That definition is closer to the definition of a presupposition. Now note that I’m not much of a fan of the term “presupposition” either, but I’m much happier with it when it is either carefully defined by an author, or used in a standard defined sense. I have found so many senses of the term, however, that I think each author would do well to state how he understands the term whenever it is used.

    A more serious problem, however, is the way that this idea is used in the article. We are told that because the age of the earth cannot be measured, but is rather based on assumptions, pretty much anything goes. Lamb gives a number of ideas of measuring age based on clearly false and ridiculous assumptions, such as checking your current rate of growth and extrapolating, thus implying without saying so that scientific assumptions (if such they are) are also perversely stupid. One could summarize this as “It’s all based on assumptions (probably bad ones), so why not ours?”

    To quote:

    When it comes to the age of the world, we can use historical methods (method 1 above), which involve assuming or trusting particular records to be accurate. This is the way we at CMI calculate the age of the earth. We trust the Bible to be a supremely reliable record of world history, and from the information in the Bible we can calculate that the world is about 6,000 years old.

    So we are to believe that the assumption that the records in the Bible are accurate, and the assumption that rates of radioactive decay have remained essentially unchanged, are to be placed on the same level. Then if one is a Christian, of course one should accept whatever the Bible says over equally speculative scientific options.

    I hope you note the way I worded that. I believe a number of my more conservative friends would be uncomfortable with the idea that the accuracy of Biblical records was simply one assumption among many, so hey, why not accept it.

    But the assumptions involved are not even close to the same level. An age based on radioactive decay may be based on an assumption of a constant rate (though more on that later), but the assumption that the earth is 6,000 years old is based not on a single assumption, but rather on a large number of them.

    1. We assume the Bible’s accuracy
    2. We assume that the Bible intends to present us with history in specific passages
    3. We assume that we read those passages correctly
    4. We assume that genealogies are, or are even intended to be, complete
    5. We even make an assumption of constant rate in reading Genesis 1, that each day is 24 hours long even when it occurs before the appearance of the sun
    6. . . . and many more

    But do we have to make such assumptions, or are these things testable? Other ancient records go well beyond the 6,000 year history based on the Bible. The great pyramid and the Sumerians, amongst others, would have live through the great flood. In later years, records from these other nations can be synchronized with part of the Biblical record. If we can synchronize the record at one point, why would we take the Bible in isolation earlier, unless it proved to be accurate in providing this specific type of historical data?

    I discuss the issue of historicity in the Genesis accounts on my Participatory Bible Study Blog in articles Historicity of Genesis 1-11, Literary Types in Genesis 1-11, and Perspective on Vocabulary and Genre in Genesis 1-11. To summarize, there are good indications that these chapters are not intended as narrative history, and if they are not narrative history, then the assumption (!) that one can glean that type of information from them would be incorrect.

    But my intent here is not to prove the 6,000 year old earth wrong. While I avoid the term “prove,” I think that the evidence against a young earth is so strong that it is perverse to reject it. But what I am concerned with here is what one does with the concept of “truth.” This isn’t capital T “Truth” with which one can pound the table, but valid data on which one can base sound decisions for one’s life.

    I depend on such information from science and technology all the time as I live my life. I’m using a computer that is based on such information. Of course, I am again not speaking of historical information.

    So let’s turn to the resurrection. I’ve discussed recently how far from proof this is, and looked at a couple of attempts to place it on firmer ground. Some of my conservative friends may be concerned that I’ve given away the store by stating that a miracle can’t be the most probable explanation of an event by nature from an historical point of view.

    But one can provide some evidence that sets up the circumstances and the results of the resurrection. This too is based on many assumptions. First, one assumes that there were witnesses, that nobody just made this all up. Second, one assumes that this material was passed on with any sense of accuracy. Both of these assumptions involve a set of other assumptions about the nature of the ancient world and how its people worked.

    But if I use the word “assumption” in the manner in which Mr. Lamb uses it, I would say, “Well, those are your assumptions, and that’s how you choose to believe.” There’s no basis for testing and discussion. Any believe is equally plausible because they are all based on assumptions. But are all assumptions equal?

    What I would suggest rather, is that each of those assumptions can be discussed and tested and we can discover what is more or less probable. Then we can build a complete picture based on the best set of parameters we can work out. Note that I begin to deviate seriously here from the definition of “assumption” that I stated earlier. That’s because I believe it is the wrong concept to use.

    “It’s all based on your assumptions” parallels “that’s just your interpretation” in terms of tearing down the possibility of intelligent discourse and discovering truth. “That’s just your interpretation” suggests that a text actually has no meaning of its own, and anyone can read into it whatever they desire with equal validity. “It’s all based on your assumptions” does the same thing to scientific data.

    As used here, some “assumptions” are more equal than others, with apologies to George Orwell. Only in this case I’ve inverted the idea, and it is true and right that some assumptions be more equal.

    In fighting what he perceives as falsehood, Mr. Lamb has taken an unwitting (I hope) shot at any sort of truth or validity.

    To simply consider one thing regarding the age of the earth, one of the most common young earth creationist objections to constant rate in a natural process is the idea that the global flood would have massively changed deposition rates, as indeed it would. But the first point here is that there is no assumption that deposition rates everywhere and at all times are the same, but rather than the physical laws that govern them remain the same.

    Scientists are well aware that a flood deposits different things at different rates depending on the specific conditions. That’s why they can look at the state of the geologic column and be quite certain that there was no global flood. It would have left certain depositions. Old earth creationists are willing to go with the evidence here and understand the flood to be more local, though certainly great enough to stand out.

    Amongst the things that one can use to check deposition are the fossils of creatures that lived at that time. For example, if a layer was deposited instantly in a massive flood, all of the creatures involved would have to have been alive at one time.

    Just as we can divide up the various assumptions that we would have to make about the Bible in order to get the young earth position, we can divide up the assumptions here as well. Then we can test these one against another. One need not make all these assumptions at once, and many of them can be tested and determined to be probable or improbable.

    Let me provide references to a couple of articles:

    Abundant Evidence, Skepticism, Apparent Age (from the American Scientific Affiliation). Provides a more detailed discussion of the relativism involved in this type of argument.

    FAQ: Age of the Earth (Talk.Origins Archive). Goes into more of the nuts and bolts.

    CB102: Mutations Adding Information (Talk.Origins Archive). A good starting point on this issue, raised in Mr. Lamb’s comment to the earlier post.

  • A Simple and Legitimate Use for a Concordance Indexed to the Biblical Languages

    I should just call the title a post and go on! But I won’t.

    The title and post came to me as I read Stupid Bible Tricks #1, and empathized. I recall one occasion when a speaker who was aware that i read Greek, and knew I had my Greek testament in front of my while listening, announced that “Henry would know” that he was right when he said that a particular Greek verse consisted of just four words, and then said them. The verse in question consisted of more than four words, and to the extent I could follow his pronunciation, none of the ones he indicated were in it.

    That reminded me of some of the interesting things that can result from too little knowledge. The key, of course, is knowing what you know and conversely what you don’t. Then you can talk about what you know, or indicate that you don’t but you’ve heard, or something similar.

    The second thing that lead to this post was my wife asking me whether there were different words in Hebrew for “sin” and “iniquity.” A bit of clarification showed that she understands the two very similarly in English and was wondering about what might lie behind them. For the answer to the simpler question, however, I pointed to her Kohlenberger The NIV Exhaustive Concordance which she uses with her NIV, and noted that she could discover the answer to such things in there. (I did this after I answered the question.)

    Now I have written before about the dangers of word studies. There is simply no substitute for actually knowing a language if you are going to comment on it. But for certain simple answers, such a concordance can be useful. Bible software, such as Logos, can be even more useful, but that is another post or several.

    To get the answer to my wife’s question, on can simply go to the entry for “iniquity,” check the verse in question, get the word number, and look it up in back. Why go to this trouble? On the list in the back one will find out all the English words that the NIV has used to translate that particular Hebrew word, in this case quite a number. Perusing that list will give you some idea of the semantic range of the word, though not nearly what you would get from a good lexicon.

    Again, this is no substitute for actually knowing the language, but it is

  • Whither the Budget Deficit

    Up, folks, always up.

    Those who know me as a moderate (which I prefer) or as a liberal (which I am often called) may be surprised to know that I started my political activism by working in the campaign of Ronald Reagan in 1976 when he ran against Gerald Ford. It was the first presidential election in which I would vote, and I registered as Republican. I worked as a precinct worker, which is to say mostly that I stood at the polling place on election day and tried to get people to change their vote to Reagan. It was Maryland, and I found it an uphill battle.

    The key thing that attracted me to Reagan was his $90 billion plan to balance the budget, as I remember it. I get a bit nostalgic when I think of those days, when only a $90 billion shift would have balanced the budget. It was a pretty controversial idea. Reagan lost, of course, though he did very well considering he was running against an incumbent president.

    By 1980 Reagan was running again and he had discovered supply side economics. No longer was the plan so much to balance the budget by carefully planning your taxation and spending. Now we were going to solve all our problems by reducing taxes and watching the revenue grow as the economy expanded.

    I don’t think supply side is totally without merit–quite. In general a less taxed economy is going to collect capital faster and grow faster. But it wasn’t the easy solution many thought it would be. It became the Republican excuse to spend without paying for it, and the deficit grew, and grew.

    I’ve heard a good deal of talk about redistribution in this campaign, and the truth is that no matter which slate of candidates we elect, we’re going to be redistributing income. It’s worked all through the system. I find it pretty disingenuous to argue that one should vote for a particular candidate because the other favors redistribution. It’s really a question of whose money gets redistributed and who benefits (if anyone) from it.

    In the case of deficit spending we’re doing some redistribution in a sense. We’re redistributing our problems into the future, and we’re doing so quite rapidly. The problem is that nobody wants to buckle down and actually pay the costs for the programs that they advocate, Democrat or Republican. Either telling people they can’t have certain things because there is no money, or telling them they’ll have to pay more taxes is generally a losing strategy in an election. At best, you can get by with what Barack Obama is doing by telling only a minority that they will pay higher taxes.

    There’s an interesting analysis of the tax proposals from the Tax Policy Center, and the results don’t look all that good.

    I don’t blame the current economic problems directly on deficit spending. Rather, I would suggest that we will face much worse problems in the future unless we start to be in a fiscally responsible manner. The proposals we have from the major candidates are not responsible, in my opinion.

    Crossposted to RedBlueChristian.com.

  • Mixed Health Care Feelings

    That’s mixed feelings about health care and feelings about a mixed system of health care, in case you were wondering.

    I’ve expressed my ambivalence about health care previously. While I hope for an ideal situation in which a certain level of health care is available to everyone regardless of ability to pay, I also want to protect the good things about American health care, including the level of choice and the leading edge developments.

    Such a combination won’t occur completely in real life. Any compromise that increases government funding is going to cut into choice and in some cases quality of care. Maintaining our leading edge advantage (read “expensive” leading edge) cuts into the ability to give basic care to everyone, simply because it costs. If everyone is expected to pay, expect everyone to get in on the decision as to whether certain treatments are worth it or not.

    Today on MSNBC.com I read A tale of 2 sickbeds: Health care in U.K. vs. U.S., which expresses my ambivalence very well. The author was hospitalized for similar problems in the U.S. and the U.K. though about 10 years apart. There were aspects of each experience that were better than the other.

    What is the possibility that real serious creativity could produce a system that gets the best of both? I suspect not. Everything I know about economics (which isn’t all that extensive) suggests it won’t work.

    It’s too bad, because I think that this nation will not forever accept the idea that the Emergency Room is primary care for a substantial number of patients. That provides lousy care and forces other people to pay. It takes money out of some people’s pockets for others just as effectively, though not as fairly, as taxes would, but it doesn’t deliver health care all that effectively.

  • Book Notes: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

    Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006. 538 pp. ISBN: 0-8028-3162-1.

    I would remind my readers again that I am writing some notes on my experience of reading this book and not a formal review.

    I requested this book via interlibrary loan because it was recommended by a reader who commented on one of my posts blogging through What Have They Done with Jesus?. I objected to the idea that one could improve on the picture of Jesus by first building a picture of the eyewitnesses and then discussing what those eyewitnesses could tell us about Jesus. Since there is much less documentation on each of the eyewitnesses than there is on Jesus, any picture we create of them will be much less certain than even what we can say about Jesus himself, so just how does this procedure help us in getting a true picture of Jesus?

    Reading Bauckham on this topic has enlightened me somewhat on the intentions, if Witherington is indeed working on the same basis as Bauckham, but I remain essentially unimpressed with the final result. Bauckham is much plainer in expressing his procedure, and his book is more academic in style. (This isn’t particularly a criticism of Witherington who was intentionally writing a popular book.)

    If I can summarize in the briefest possible time, Bauckham is arguing that the gospel story was passed on by a form of controlled informal tradition, and that those who controlled this were the eyewitnesses sprinkled through the church.

    He finds evidence for this in a number of lines of argument including the use of names in the gospels, the shape of the stories, the level of divergence that is tolerated, and what is not tolerated, and even some cases of anonymity in the passion narrative of Mark. Why, for example, is it “one of the men with Jesus” who draws a sword in Mark 14:47, but the man is identified with Simon Peter in John 18:10? Bauckham argues that at the time Mark was written, this person’s identity needed to be protected because the authorities would be after him, while by the time John was written he (Simon Peter) was already dead.

    That is only one in many arguments for the survival of the eyewitnesses and their role in preservation of the story. I’m not going to make a real attempt to summarize all of these, as it would be impossible to do justice to the arguments. The book is only a bit over 500 pages; read it for yourself!

    While I have never been convinced by the argument that there were no eyewitnesses remaining by the time the gospel text was written, I am also unconvinced of the value of eyewitness testimony in and of itself. You may rightly ask what this leaves me.

    In the third quest the emphasis has been on evaluating sayings and incidents according to a set of criteria. This results generally in a very minimalistic Jesus, because some of the criteria, even necessary and good ones, tend to weed out a great deal that is quite possibly true, but which simply cannot be demonstrated well enough. This result seems surprising given the large amount of written material about Jesus, more than we have on many figures of history that we nonetheless feel free to characterize in more detail.

    It is no wonder that Christians seek something that will work a bit better. Perhaps they need look no further than how modern writing about ancient history is actually done. In essence, historians take the pieces that they have, sift them as they make sense, and attempt to fill in the blanks. I may simply be missing something in my reading, as I have only read a tiny fraction of what’s available on the historical Jesus, but I think Jesus is the only historical figure concerning whom we are barely willing to speculate. He becomes a very uninteresting figure.

    Part of this results from scholars who seem to want a Jesus who could occupy the office down the hall in the ivory tower. I think the argument over wisdom teacher vs. eschatological prophet is just such an issue. Many people of that time combined aspects of both. Why is this not possible for Jesus to do? He doesn’t have to fit our notions of consistency and a coherent philosophy.

    If we take this kind of approach, then I think we can also give serious consideration to the idea that the earliest generations of Christians might have had some idea of what they were talking about. They just may have had some idea of the character of Jesus. We would prefer a Jesus who perhaps never made the seemingly grandiose claim to be the Messiah. Let the early Christians do that for him. But somehow he made such an impression on them that a fairly substantial movement was able to get the idea that he thought he was the Messiah.

    Even if we view the tradition as an imperfect mirror, with the real Jesus dimly reflected therein, it seems a bit hasty to discard the mirror and start from scratch. In this sense I’m in tune with Bauckham, though that is saying much less than he is.

    On the other hand, it seems to me that many orthodox Christian writers are trying to combat the historical Jesus scholars by finding a way to say that Jesus is just as portrayed in the canonical gospels and that this is history, every bit as sound as any other form of history. Thus we have Bauckham arguing at great length that eyewitness testimony was important to ancient people, and finally in his conclusion that perhaps we should take it more seriously as well. “Trusting the eyewitnesses” is to replace “applying criteria” and result in a more complete and substantially accurate picture of Jesus.

    Here is where I part company. In trying to establish the eyewitnesses, Bauckham has made a number of arguments that are quite possibly true, but are nonetheless often no better established than the reasoning behind various criteria for historicity. This doesn’t mean he’s wrong; it simply means that when all is said and done we don’t know. My suggestion is that we go ahead and get comfortable with that.

    In my view, there is one problem with bringing orthodox theology in line with good historical methodology. In general, historical methodology is based on probability; not generally calculated probability, but a sort of common sense decision as to what is more likely. If two kings claim a great victory, we know they can’t both be right, so we look for more evidence, or we draw some common sense conclusions.

    In the case of Jesus, however, orthodox theology claims that he is unique, God in the flesh living amongst us. What does common sense say about a claim to virgin birth? Not likely. So if the options are either illegitimate birth by natural means or virgin birth, historical probability suggests the former. What does common sense say about people who die? They don’t come back. So if the claim is that somebody rose from the dead, historical probability suggests it’s not true.

    In practically every case of virgin birth claims (all that I know of) and all but a very small number of resurrection claims, neither believers nor unbelievers would decide differently. Yet I, an otherwise rational person (I think!), believe that Jesus rose from the dead. This is not an historical event that can be made probable. Even assuming miracles are possible, which I do, I am not going to assume that they are the most probable explanation. This can be tested by presenting the miraculous claims of another religion, and seeing how likely one is to accept them.

    In addition, I know my own experience. I did not come to believe in Jesus by historical methods. I came to believe in Jesus through contemporary testimony. I find the Jesus of orthodox faith fits that. I believe there is historical evidence for such a Jesus, but that this evidence falls far short of proof, and even short of probability. It must be so, because the Jesus of my faith is inherently improbable, unique in fact.

    Now you may be thinking that I’m not all that far from Bauckham, even if I got there afterward. And indeed the picture of Jesus in my head goes well with what Bauckham (and Witherington, for that matter) have written. That is indeed the case. But I sense in both writers the intention to make this more historically firm, to suggest that this is an historian’s conclusion. The jacket blurbs and advertising text tend to suggest this as well, though heaven knows many writers are badly served by their book covers! Thus far, I just don’t think they have done so successfully.

    I nonetheless strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in historical Jesus research. As I have repeatedly noted, each book on this topic is extremely good at critiquing the views of others, even if you find that their own pictures of Jesus are no more probable. In addition, Bauckham documents well and examines arguments in detail, so that you can profit no matter where you stand on the final result.

    Addendum:

    Here’s an overview of the chapters so you can get a better idea of the course of the argument. I have left the notes in an abbreviated form as I wrote them immediately after reading.

    1: From the Historical Jesus to the Jesus of Testimony
    General overview of the idea – going to the Jesus of testimony, specifically eyewitness testimony
    2: Papias on the Eyewitnesses
    Rehabilitating Papias

    3: Names in the Gospel Tradition
    Studying use of names. Why are certain characters named and others not.
    4: Palestinian Jewish Names
    Palestinian Jewish names – an exceedingly useful chapter even if you wind up disagreeing with the thesis of the book.
    5: The Twelve
    Looking at the lists of the apostles; reconciling most, error in Levi=Matthew equation.
    6: Eyewitnesses “from the Beginning”
    What constituted an eyewitness?
    7: The Petrine Perspective in the Gospel of Mark
    Looking at indicators that Mark is based on someone’s testimony, and that this testimony is that of Peter the apostle.
    8: Anonymous Persons in Mark’s Passion Narrative
    Arguing they are not named so as to protect the guilty.
    9: Papias on Mark and Matthew
    Deals with the differences in how the two gospels are put together and how their sources are to be understood.
    10: Models of Oral Tradition
    We get to one of the big questions-what does oral tradition preserve and how?
    11: Transmitting the Jesus Tradition
    Bauckham now argues that we have a “controlled informal” transmission, with the “controllers” being the eyewitnesses surviving in the community.
    12: Anonymous Tradition or Eyewitness Testimony
    Looking at the reasons why we should see the gospels as eyewitness testimony rather than a tradition of the community without named sources.
    13: Eyewitness Memory
    One of my own key questions, and one that I don’t think Baukham manages to deal with adequately, but nonetheless he does look at it more carefully than most.
    14: The Gospel of John as Eyewitness Testimony
    I think this will easily be the most controversial chapter, though I think Bauckham makes the best case possible.
    15: The Witness of the Beloved Disciple
    Identifying who this person was, and then assigning him as author of the gospel of John.
    16: Papias on John
    A very difficult search for reflections of the views of Papias on the gospel of John. His (possible) references could be to John the Elder, whom Bauckham identifies as the author rather than John son of Zebedee.
    17: Polycrates and Irenaeus on John
    Looking for more patristic evidence and judging whether it can apply to John the elder, and just how did the identification of the author with John son of Zebedee occur?
    18: The Jesus of Testimony
    Summary of the case.

  • Idiocy and Firing Michael Reiss

    I realize that journalists write confused stories and that headline writers produce stupid headlines to go with them, but I would think that academic or scientific organizations, irrespective of subject, should be able to be more sensible.

    It may not be so. “Firing” is, of course, my own overblown headline, provided you regard essentially forcing someone to resign as substantially different from firing them. In this case, I think the difference is entirely in framing.

    Reiss advocated responding in a reasonable and rational manner to the objections of children in school who are creationists. He didn’t advocate teaching creationism as equally scientific as the theory of evolution. His view is actually mainstream in his views.

    As an advocate of the theory of evolution I hope that the folks on our side will be clear here on what we do advocate (sound science in the science classroom) and what we don’t (suppression of all discussion).

    I’d commend to you Nick Matzke’s post on the Panda’s Thumb, which covers the scientific and educational point of view. Supplement this with and Doug’s post at MetaCatholic which deals with the religious aspects more fully.

  • Will We Let the Text of Scripture Change Us?

    On The Rev’s Rumbles (HT: Shuck and Jive) there is a discussion of Biblical authority. The writer quotes the following assertion favorably (from Kenneth Cauthen):

    NO CHRISTIAN ALLOWS THE BIBLE TO TEACH AS THE AUTHORITATIVE WORD OF GOD WHAT IS KNOWN OR BELIEVED (FOR WHATEVER REASONS) TO BE EITHER UNTRUE OR IMMORAL.

    EVERY CHRISTIAN FINDS WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHES AS THE AUTHORITATIVE WORD OF GOD TO BE IDENTICAL OR CONGRUENT WITH WHAT IS KNOWN OR BELIEVED (FOR WHATEVER REASONS) TO BE TRUE AND RIGHT.

    There is a great deal of truth in that statement. I can certainly observe these mechanisms in place as I discuss interpreting Bible passages. Try asking a group of Christians why they regard Leviticus 19:18 as a universal and binding command, but feel that they can ignore Leviticus 19:19, for example. There are certainly good reasons in Christian hermeneutics to do so, but those hermeneutical reasons are not the ones you are likely to hear.

    At the same time, such a statement can certainly be taken too far, whether or not it was intended by the author. (My own exposure to this particular author is limited to the quotes in this blog post, so please don’t take me as commenting on him; rather I’m commenting on the blog post that contains them and on some general approaches.) It’s easy to assume that nobody can change their impression of what is right and wrong based on their reading of a work they regard as authoritative. Such a change can be good or bad.

    It’s because of such issues that I think we should all spend time thinking about why we believe what we do, how we come to ethical decisions, and if we believe we base our decisions on the Bible, how we interpret what we read.

    I have frequently heard someone say that they do something because the Bible plainly says so, but when I point out another passage that speaks just as plainly taken at the same level of context as the first, they find a quick explanation for why it does not apply. The interesting point is to ask whether the same explanation will work for any similar scripture.

    Since one of the reasons one might reject Leviticus 19:19 while accepting Leviticus 19:18 is simply that Jesus reaffirmed Leviticus 19:18 (Love your neighbor as yourself), let me try again from Leviticus, this time with passages not so clearly affirmed (or not). Leviticus 18:22 is commonly read as forbidding homosexuality, and is used regularly by Christians as such. It is one passage regarding which I have heard the expression “the Bible plainly says.”

    When that was once quoted to me, I referenced Leviticus 19:33-34:

    Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. Treat them like native-born Israelites, and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God. (NLTse)

    The immediate answer? “That’s different. Things are different now.”

    Now my point is not to debate just how these two texts would apply today. Rather, I would like to point out that if you quote one as “what the Bible plainly teaches” and then find reasons to avoid the other, you are not truly advocating “what the Bible plainly teaches” (an impossible task in any case), but are applying some other means of producing your result. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong on the result, but the process is not what you claim.

    I would argue that if “confirmed by Jesus” is the key, then Leviticus 19:33-34 has much better evidence of having been reaffirmed by Jesus than does Leviticus 18:22, though I actually think the “reaffirmed by Jesus” is not the best approach in any case.

    For me there’s a three step process, broadly described. The first is to ask just how I’m approaching the scripture. The second is to try to look at scriptures consistently. the third is to ask just how that might enlighten my decision making. I think God intentionally didn’t give us a working “plain meaning” model because he preferred us to go through the hard work of evaluating and making decisions.

    There is much in scripture that I believe should change me, or to be more accurate that God the Holy Spirit should use in changing me. I have to intentionally get away from using ad hoc interpretation to support my own view in order to let that happen.

  • Checking on ex-Hurricane Ike

    First I want to say that my thoughts and prayers are with the folks who experienced Hurricane Ike. Having lived through a couple of interesting storms, such as Ivan and Dennis, I empathize with their position. I’m not very good at writing condolence blog posts, largely because I think they are empty gestures for the most part, but sometimes we can’t help making a gesture, even if it’s pretty empty.

    In the “not making it empty” category, let me provide the United Methodist Committee on Relief hurricane response page. I complain about many things in the Methodist church, but when it comes time for relief, they’re the ones I trust. There are donation buttons on the page.

    What got me writing, however, was this story from MSNBC.com, really a totally unremarkable, even routine story, but one that bothers me.

    Why is it that we expect politicians and national leaders to make a personal appearance in a disaster area? What good does it do? Please note that this is not a criticism of President Bush. This expectation that our leaders will show up and sympathize in person and “assess the damage fore themselves” seems to be well-nigh universal. Any mistakes in this area are politically costly.

    But the people who really do assess the damage are professionals who are quite efficient, I believe, and one gets a much better picture of the damage for management purposes from their work. The people who actually help are the folks who show up to restore power, rebuild, clear roads, and so forth.

    I recall our elation when the power company trucks showed up on our street–actually at a friend’s place to which we had gone ahead of the storm. They were from Quebec, a long ways from home, and we were glad to see them. I can’t imagine that I would have welcomed a tour by the president in a similar way.

    I’m sure it’s an emotional relief, a sense that someone with power cares about us in our hour of need, but I confess I have never comprehended it. I’d be much happier with a president and various management level folks hanging out at headquarters and managing, while the folks who do the work travel to the area and do their jobs.

    I’d be interested in other people’s thoughts. Do managers really handle such a situation better after they fly by some of the damage? Is any understanding they may gain tangible and measurable?