Today the world of New Testament scholarship mourns the passing of a true giant in that field, Dr. Bruce Metzger. He died yesterday at the age of 93. He was a translator of Scripture and a prolific author of significant scholarly texts. He made important contributions to our understandings of the canon of Scripture, its content, and its background. But he will go down in history for his vast labors in the unglamorous but essential field of the textual criticism of the New Testament.
One of the things I find a tad irritating about Beard and Cerf’s The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook (New York, NY, USA: Villard Books, updated edition 1993), is that it is actually four separate dictionaries bound in one volume, and it has no index. I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking that that’s actually two things to be irritated about. Well, when it comes to irritability, I’m a multitasker.
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
___We wear the mask.We smile, but, O great Christ our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
___ We wear the mask.
[Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask,” in Selected African American Writing from 1760 to 1910, Arthur P. Davis, Jr., J. Sauders Redding, and Joyce Ann Joyce, editors, (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), 281-282.]
Nevertheless, sacred doctrine makes use of these authorities [i.e., philosophers who are able to know the truth by natural reason] as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of the canonical Scriptures as an incontrovertible proof, and the authority of the doctors of the Church as one that may properly be used, yet merely as probable. For our faith rests upon the revelation made to the apostles and prophets who wrote the canonical books, and not on the revelations (if any such there are) made to other doctors. Hence Augustine says (Epis. ad Hieron.)1: “Only those books of Scripture which are called canonical have I learned to hold in such honor as to believe their authors have not erred in any way in writing them. But other authors I so read as not to deem everything in their works to be true, merely on account of their having so thought and written, whatever may have been their holiness and learning.”
[Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), Summa Theologica, First Part, Treatise on God, Question 1, “The Nature and Extent of Sacred Doctrine,” Article 8, “Whether Sacred Doctrine is a Matter of Argument?”, Reply to Objection 2, in Robert Maynard Hutchins, ed., Great Books of the Western World, Volume 19, (Chicago, IL, USA: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1988), 8.]
ˆ 1There is a discrepancy in my sources for the precise reference of Epis. ad Hieron. (abbreviated Latin for “Epistle to Jerome”). The texts provided by both the Encylopædia Britannica and the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (to which the above bibliographic reference is linked) are based on the translation of the Summa by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Britannica’s revision (by Daniel J. Sullivan), however, has properly corrected the reference from Augustine’s 19th (xix) letter (which was not written to Jerome but to Gaius) to his 82nd (lxxxii). Cf. “Letters of St. Augustin,” translated by J.G. Cunningham, in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Volume 1, (Peabody, MA, USA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., reprinted 2004), 350. ˆ
He apparently likes it almost as much as I do. This image, created by the amazing jon-e, speaks to me on a very deep level.
To view a step-by-step overview of the process by which he created this masterpiece titled “Mug Shot,” click here. To view it in its original size, click on the image in this post. To view the rest of his online photos, click here.
It’s difficult to imagine what life would be like without the present active indicative of λύω (luō), “I loose,” or “I destroy.” Continue reading
There is something about the printed page that computer text files have not been able to replace for me. Even though I can take my laptop most places, including to bed, so far I haven’t found anything like the convenience of being able to gently close a book and lay it on a nightstand just as I begin to sink into an unconscious stupor. There’s nothing to turn off, and if I accidentally drop it the consequences are usually slight. Continue reading
So we’re coming up to the fifteenth anniversary of the publication of a Henry Beard’s and Christopher Cerf‘s The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook (New York, NY, USA: Villard Books, updated edition 1993), and I thought it would be a good idea to hunt down my copy of it and take a look at some of its knee-slapping and yet eerily sobering entries.
I started with the phone book. Looking up Mensa was not going to be easy, what with having to follow the strict alphabetizing rules that are so common nowadays. I prefer a softer, more fuzzy alphabetizing scheme, one that allows the mind to float free and “happen” upon the word. There is pride in that. The dictionary is a perfect example of overalphabetization, with its harsh rules and every little word neatly in place. It almost makes me want to go on a diet of grapes and waste away to nothing.
—Steve Martin, from “How I Joined Mensa,” in Pure Drivel, (New York, NY, USA: Hyperion, 1999), 62.
I was still fairly new to evangelicalism in 1980 when Ronald Reagan first ran for President. I had been a believer for a little more than four years, and up until that year I had not noticed any overall political bias toward either the Democratic or Republican parties among my fellow believers.
But in my local church, a conservative Open Plymouth Brethren assembly, the campaigns of 1980 seemed to create a new a political rift between those who preferred Jimmy Carter because he was a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher, and those who were fed up with the state of the economy and the low level of national morale and wanted him out. The latter group seemed vaguely aware that Reagan also professed some form of Christian belief, but for the most part did not think that either man’s profession of faith should be a determining factor in whether he was elected.
I posted the following comment to a post titled “Trichotomy–A Beachhead for Gnostic Influences” at The Riddleblog today at about 9:30 a.m. (U.S. Eastern Time):
James Montgomery Boice advocated the trichotomist position in Foundations of the Christian Faith,” revised in one volume, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 151-153, and 201-204. On 204 he showed the implications of trichotomy for his doctrine of man when he wrote: “When Adam sinned, the spirit died instantly, with the result that all men and women since are born with what we may call dead spirits. The soul began to die. In that area the contagion may be said to be spreading, with the result that we are increasingly captivated by sin. The remaining part of human nature, the body, dies last.” As I see it, that was about the extent of trichotomism’s impact on his theology. I don’t find it sending him off into the kinds of unbiblical views you cited in other trichotomists. Continue reading
I posted the following comment (with a typo corrected) to a post titled “Cross-Cultural Hermeneutics Course Aims: Why Are They Missing Elsewhere?” at John Morehead’s blog today at 12:59 p.m. (U.S. Eastern Time):
John,You wrote: “These goals represent those common in missiology. To what extent do we see them desired, emphasized and utilized among American evangelicals working in the area of new religions and alternative spiritualities in the West? I don’t see much of it. Why is this the case?” Continue reading
I posted the following text (with one typo now corrected) to a Christmas Eve post titled “Subversive Can Openers” at John Morehead’s blog today at 6:43 p.m. (U.S. Eastern Time): Continue reading
As I started reading J.P. Kenyon’s Stuart England (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1978), and I came across a remark that seems applicable to the state into which scholarship on the Apostle Paul has fallen since the various New Perspectives became influential. Continue reading
I feel bad. It’s the kind of feeling I get when I try to join a conversation already in process by interjecting a remark that turns out to be entirely inappropriate because I missed something that was said earlier. It’s embarrassing. Even worse is the feeling I get when I start asking questions to get myself caught up on the subject of the conversation and others become impatient because they’re eager to take the discussion to the next level, not waste time bringing me up to speed. Sometimes I try to to camouflage my faux pas behind a wisecrack, but more often I just shut up and listen, hoping for a few understandable crumbs to fall from the table of their esoteric dialogue. In either case it’s painfully (to me, at least) obvious that something has been going on—something essential to the conversation—that I missed, and that my attempt to fit in demonstrated that I had not first acquired the necessary background. Continue reading
Our Life Is But a Span 