think hard, think well

I’m still quite sore from a Saturday morning game of touch football played with some friends and coworkers. I’m not the most limber person in the world, and when I’m out of shape and do a lot of running my hamstrings become tighter than the discourse of the Joseph Novella.

Nevertheless, I enjoy football. I think I have the body for it–6’3", about 225 lbs., not as much muscle as there could be, though. As a homeschool student, I never got the change to play high-school sports like Tim Tebow did. Sometimes I feel about sports the way Lady Catherine de Bourgh felt about music:

"There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient."

I was thinking about the various aspects of athletic competitions and games that make them fun. Some sports are contests in a single area of strength (track and field). Others are individual games (tennis, golf, racing). Within the genre of team sports, some are relatively simple and elegant with few "arbitrary" rules, such as soccer and hockey. These games are relatively simple: get the ball/puck in the net, and don’t hurt each other (too badly).

Football and baseball have so many rules. I like these sports most because they require learning context and history to understand. Why does an incomplete pass or a run out of bounds stop the clock, but a tackle in bounds does not? Because in the early days of football they may have only had one or two game balls, and countless minutes of game time was wasted trying to find errant passes that went into the crowd. Who thought up the infield fly rule? Why does the second baseman not have to touch second base when turning a double play? Rules have stories, and stories are fun.

My sister, Rebekah–formerly of ThinkHardThinkWell, now at The Primary Word–will present a summary of her Honors Thesis at Philadelphia Biblical University on Wednesday, November 4.  The lecture is entitled, “YHWH’s Cult Statues: ‘Image of God’ in an Ancient Near Eastern Context.”  It will be held at 8 PM in classroom BL225.  If you are available that evening, please do consider coming and also feel free to invite others to this event.  This will be a fun and interesting lecture–see the abstract below.

If you can’t make it, you should still read her earlier posts here entitled, “YHWH’s Cult Statues” (part1, part 2).

See you there!

_____

Abstract: “YHWH’s Cult Statues: ‘Image of God’ in an Ancient Near Eastern Context.”

Most Christians in our culture know the Bible teaches that humans were created in the “image of God,” however, there is much debate on what precisely this means. Some scholars on ancient Mesopotamian religions suppose that the reason the ancient Israelites were commanded by their God not to make “graven images” is because humanity was created in the “image of God.” Therefore, YHWH God, unlike the gods of the polytheistic Mesopotamian peoples, was not to be represented in statuary form (the graven image), for humanity was created as YHWH’s unique form of divine representation. This lecture will discuss the function of Mesopotamian cult statues as divine representation in order to better understand the term “image of god” in an ancient Near Eastern context and also how humans may function as images of YHWH God.

I have gotten rid of my Facebook account yet again.  I’m hoping it stays gone this time.  I ditched it a while back because I was spending too much time on it.  The main reason I reactivated my account was so that I could post links to my posts here at WordPress–so you all have to continue coming on your own instead of whenever FB reminds you.  You can subscribe via e-mail or RSS in your favorite reader (Google, for example) in order to stay up to date.  Hope to see you back often!

Benj

As a Reformed person, I’m sympathetic to the reforming or sectarian movements in the Anglican Communion. I was encouraged by the formation of the Anglican Church in North America.

So, this article came as a surprise: "Pope Sets Plan for Disaffected Anglicans to Join Catholics." Will this tempt any conservative Anglicans? I’m guessing that the responses from the British church and the American church will be different. Brits don’t have a significant Catholic population, and the small Catholic minority is a lot like the High-Church Anglicans. America has a long history of Catholic immigration and integration.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts–is this gonna fly?

“You think that’s clear enough?”

“Of course, everyone has the right to hang a pair of bear arms … on their wall; what could be vague about that?”

“I guess it’s OK.  But before we send it to the printer, let’s take out that thing about abortion.”

Now that everyone (Art, Andrew, others) has said their piece on John Walton’s book, it’s my turn to gather their crumbs and weigh in.

The main thesis of Walton’s book is his frequent refrain: Genesis 1 concerns functional ontology, not material origins. His first eleven propositions are an attempt demonstrate this thesis using exegesis, ANE context and theological reflection. Propositions 12-18 draw out the implications of the primary thesis for the church, theology and science.

Walton is critical of concordism, a term which characterizes several different views of Genesis 1. Concordism “seeks to give a modern scientific explanation for the details in the text” (16-17). The various concordist positions, including Young-Earth and Old-Earth Creationism, Gap Theory, Day-Age Theory, etc., presuppose that Genesis 1 concerns material origins. In order to be faithful to Scripture, then, Genesis 1 must be reconciled with the observations of science, which explores the material world.

Walton argues convincingly that Genesis 1 presents functional ontology, meaning that the existing physical components of the universe are formed, organized, and instilled with purpose. For example, water, though it exists in the primeval sea of Genesis 1:2, is separated into the sea and the firmament on Day 2 and pushed back to reveal dry-ground on Day 3, in order to provide sky for the birds and sea for the teeming things on Day 5 and land for the animals on Day 6. Genesis 1 does not describe the creation of water ex nihilo but rather God taming it and giving it purpose.

Though he demonstrates the relationship of the Genesis account to other ANE worldviews, Walton does not place much stock in the polemical view of Genesis 1. He argues that the Genesis 1 creation account is only tacitly, rather than explicitly, a polemic against the other creation myths. He observes that Genesis 1 does not contain the cosmogonic battle characteristic of other ANE myths since there is only a single deity (103-104).

Walton presents his thesis not as an abstract theory about an ancient text but as a way for the church to answer what has previously been a difficult question. Not content to remain in the domain of OT studies, Walton rebukes both the church and the scientific community. He believes that the church has done itself a double disservice. Theologically, it has sacrificed the biblical worldview that attributes eternal significance to the physical world as God’s temple. Socially, concordism has sacrificed either the church’s high view of Scripture or its credibility in society. Walton criticizes those in the scientific community who equally “adulterate that which is empirical with that which is nonempirical” (156), that is, mixing “theories of evolutionary mechanisms” with “metaphysical teleology or dysteleology” (157).

Walton’s book combines careful exegesis and responsible historical conclusions with thoughtful prescriptions for the church and the scientific community. Though not a scientist, he recognizes that scientific has strayed beyond its bounds. As a Christian, he offers the church a way to be faithful to Scripture and still engage in relevant dialogue with society.

One of the my difficulties with the book is the brevity of Walton’s treatment of Genesis 2 and Romans 5 (138-41).  He presents Genesis 1 as a theological account of Creation, but the biggest stumbling block for Christians like me who are inclined toward his view is Paul’s theology of sin, creation and resurrection in Romans 5 and 8 and 1 Corinthians 15.  This is a huge issue, but Walton barely addresses it.  Walton’s project would be significantly strengthened by a more developed explanation of the function of Adam in Paul’s hamartiology.  As impressed as I am that Walton “wandered afield” from his own academic discipline into science, practical theology and social policy, I wish he would further flesh out his theory’s implications for NT theology.

InterVarsity Press
$10.88 (Amazon.com)

My sister has finally gone and done it–she has gotten her own blog, "The Primary Word." She will be missed. Go and read her blog more often than mine, because it’ll definitely be better.

Blog on, man. Blog on.

I wish I had known about this association and others like it when I was in college. I was student senate parliamentarian for a year; as someone who enjoys rules, protocol and the ins-and-outs of procedures, and who is interested in politics, these seminars and publications would have neat to experience.

In light of Rep. Wilson’s outburst last week during the president’s address, I’ve been watching some videos and reading reports about incidents in parliamentary bodies in other countries. Compared with some of the goings-on in these other bodies, Wilson’s behavior seems quite tame. Now, all the coverage and commentary on his outburst and subsequent apology have distracted from the substance of President Obama’s address. I swear, we have the national attention span of a fruit fly.

This is not to defend Wilson, however. Cultural expectations are the key here; if he were a British or Australian MP, his comment might have been within the bounds of protocol–even if not quite factually accurate. However, the rules of decorum generally understood in the US Congress made his comments disrespectful, and he was right to apologize.

Ever heard of this incident on the Senate floor?