Compliant Subversity

2011 in retrospect, 2012 in prospect

2012-01-05T09:29:00.000+11:00

2011 was an interesting year, positive overall, with many highlights and achievements.
I began the year with a fairly keen interest in weight lifting, and this developed in 2012. I had ambitious lifting goals and radically failed to meet all of them. That is a little frustrating, indeed looking at numbers from the end of 2010, I am not too much further advanced.

Perhaps most surprisingly, in early July I entered a powerlifting competition, which was something I'd never imagined doing. It was a great experience, and I lifted well. I became more uninterested in lifting after this, and failed to make strong strength gains in the second half of the year.

I also took up barefoot running early last year, which lasted while the weather stayed warm, so for a few good months, and I worked up to 7km barefoot runs.

About halfway through the year a sudden interest in pursuing parkour was realised, and I started watching online tutorial videos and training with some local guys. My focus shifted from lifting heavy weights to doing cool gymnastic-type stuff. I bought some rings, and eventually signed up to an acrobatics class. I've learnt to front somersault, front handspring, and backflip (though all are not-quite-mastered).

I started two spin-off blogs this year. The first is a sermon one (http://jeltzz.wordpress.com/), the second is a fairly boring fitness one (http://jeltzzfitness.wordpress.com/), though I'm hoping the later might have some videos of gymnastic antics from Mongolia in the future.

One of my other main goals last year was to work on my Gaelic. I did do some solid self-study in the first half of the year, and I took some Skype tutor sessions, but these weren't as helpful as I'd hoped. I made a critical decision mid-way through the year to enrol in an online class through Atlantic Gaelic Academy in Canada. This has meant regular 3hr classes online from about Sept onwards, which have been great for my Gaelic. It's coming along well.

It took until June before they finally marked my MTh thesis, and August before the released a transcript, so my academic work was in hiatus for much of the year. I then spend Sept-Dec wrangling through PhD application issues, which are yet to be finally resolved. As we look into 2012 it seems likely that I'll be starting on something shortly.

In August/September my wife and I travelled to Europe, another event that I'd never put into the 'possible' category. We attended my brother's wedding in Munich, spent some time touring Scotland, and a week in Rome.

At the start of the year I took up a new position in a new church, which was definitely God's guidance (Well, it would have been anyways, but it is readily apparent to us). We have had a great year being here, and I've enjoyed the ministry and the friendships formed. It has also been an excellent place for us in raising support and preparing to go to Mongolia.

In 2012 we, deo volente, will be moving to Mongolia, in Feb/Mar. There we will begin by learning Mongolian as our main focus, in preparation for future ministry there. I'm hoping to continue both weight training and gymnastics based training, continue with Gaelic, and commence work on my PhD, looking at patristic exegesis of trinitarian texts in two 4th century authors.

Exegetical notes on Galatians 3:15-29

2011-11-25T14:07:00.001+11:00

Text

15 Ἀδελφοί, κατὰ ἄνθρωπον λέγω· ὅμως ἀνθρώπου κεκυρωμένην διαθήκην οὐδεὶς ἀθετεῖ ἢ ἐπιδιατάσσεται. 16 τῷ δὲ Ἀβραὰμ ἐρρέθησαν αἱ ἐπαγγελίαι καὶ τῷ σπέρματι αὐτοῦ. οὐ λέγει· καὶ τοῖς σπέρμασιν, ὡς ἐπὶ πολλῶν ἀλλʼ ὡς ἐφʼ ἑνός· καὶ τῷ σπέρματί σου, ὅς ἐστιν Χριστός. 17 τοῦτο δὲ λέγω· διαθήκην προκεκυρωμένην ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ μετὰ τετρακόσια καὶ τριάκοντα ἔτη γεγονὼς νόμος οὐκ ἀκυροῖ εἰς τὸ καταργῆσαι τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν. 18 εἰ γὰρ ἐκ νόμου ἡ κληρονομία, οὐκέτι ἐξ ἐπαγγελίας· τῷ δὲ Ἀβραὰμ διʼ ἐπαγγελίας κεχάρισται ὁ θεός.

19 Τί οὖν ὁ νόμος; τῶν παραβάσεων χάριν προσετέθη, ἄχρις οὗ ἔλθῃ τὸ σπέρμα ᾧ ἐπήγγελται, διαταγεὶς διʼ ἀγγέλων ἐν χειρὶ μεσίτου. 20 ὁ δὲ μεσίτης ἑνὸς οὐκ ἔστιν, ὁδὲ θεὸς εἷς ἐστιν. 21 ὁ οὖν νόμος κατὰ τῶν ἐπαγγελιῶν [τοῦ θεοῦ]; μὴ γένοιτο. εἰ γὰρ ἐδόθη νόμος ὁ δυνάμενος ζῳοποιῆσαι, ὄντως ἐκ νόμου ἂν ἦν ἡ δικαιοσύνη· 22 ἀλλὰ συνέκλεισεν ἡ γραφὴ τὰ πάντα ὑπὸ ἁμαρτίαν, ἵνα ἡ ἐπαγγελία ἐκ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ δοθῇ τοῖς πιστεύουσιν.

23 Πρὸ τοῦ δὲ ἐλθεῖν τὴν πίστιν ὑπὸ νόμον ἐφρουρούμεθα συγκλειόμενοι εἰς τὴν μέλλουσαν πίστιν ἀποκαλυφθῆναι, 24 ὥστε ὁ νόμος παιδαγωγὸς ἡμῶν γέγονεν εἰς Χριστόν, ἵνα ἐκ πίστεως δικαιωθῶμεν· 25 ἐλθούσης δὲ τῆς πίστεως οὐκέτι ὑπὸ παιδαγωγόν ἐσμεν. 26 Πάντες γὰρ υἱοὶ θεοῦ ἐστε διὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ· 27 ὅσοι γὰρ εἰς Χριστὸν ἐβαπτίσθητε,Χριστὸν ἐνεδύσασθε. 28 οὐκ ἔνι Ἰουδαῖος οὐδὲ Ἕλλην, οὐκ ἔνι δοῦλος οὐδὲ ἐλεύθερος, οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ· πάντες γὰρ ὑμεῖς εἷς ἐστε ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. 29 εἰ δὲ ὑμεῖς Χριστοῦ, ἄρα τοῦ Ἀβραὰμ σπέρμα ἐστέ, κατʼ ἐπαγγελίαν κληρονόμοι.

Translation

15 Brothers, I speak in respect of humanaffairs: likewise[1]no-one sets aside or adds a codicil to a ratified human contract. 16 Now thepromises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed; it does not say ‘and toseeds’, as in the case of many, but as in the case of one, ‘and to your seed[2]’,which is Christ. 17 this is what I mean: the covenant[3]previously-ratified by God, the law[4]having come after 430 years does not nullify – unto the destroying the promise.18 For if the inheritance is of law, it is no longer of promise: but God showedgrace to Abraham through [the] promise.

19 Why then the law? it was added because oftransgression, until the seed to which it was promised might come, mediatedthrough angels by the hand of a mediator. 20 Now a mediator is not of one, butGod is one. 21 Is then the Law against the promises [of God]? Not so! For if alaw were given, one that was able to make alive, righteousness would truly beby law; 22 but the Scripture shut all things up under sin, so that the promiseby faith in Jesus Christ be given to those that believe.

23 Before the coming of faith we were held incustody under law, shut up until the coming faith be revealed, 24 so that thelaw became our pedagogue until Christ, so that we might be justified byfaith; 25 but with the coming of faith we are no longer under a pedagogue. 26For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus; 27 for as many [ofyou] were baptised into Christ, you were clothed in Christ. 28 There is neitherJew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor freeman, there is neither male andfemale; for you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 and if you are of Christ, then youare Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise.

Comments

Silva’shistorical redemptive take is explicit in the way he connects 3:6-14 to 3:15,and the introduction of the term διαθήκη.[5]Almost directly contrary to this, Martyn links 3:15 with Paul’s apocalyptic andanti-redemptive historical argument. For Martyn, the reference in v15 to ἡ διαθήκη is a secularises reference, a move to disassociate the word from the Judaisers'use of it in Mosaic terms, and part of Paul’s argument to align διαθήκη with the promise to Abraham. Key to Martyn’s argument is that theanalogy of an alteration to the will is illustrated in v19 by the giving of theLaw through angels. For Martyn’s Paul, the Law is an angelic addition seeking to alterthe prior promise of God.

Howeverthe suggestion that Paul employs διαθήκη in a purely secular sense in v15is severely open to question. Given the context of Paul’s own argument andbackground, it’s difficult to see how Paul could try and secularise anddetheologise the term at exactly this point alone.

Thecitation in 3:16 forms the hermeneutical crux of the passage, and casts it indistinctively redemptive-historical terms. At least, that seems obvious, butMartyn argues that this particular verse is the death-knell to a redemptivehistorical reading. Martyn grounds this is Paul’s punctiliar and singularunderstanding of τὸ σπέρμα, over against the Teachers’ linear and corporatereading.[6]And yet, once you connect the distinct singularity of the seed in v16, with thecorporate and incorporated reading of the same in 3:26-29, it is hard tomaintain that Paul’s reading is only individual. Indeed, 3:15-29 continues Paul’s argument about who οἱ υἱοὶτοῦ Ἀβρααμ are, οἱ ἐκ πίστεως contra οἱ κατὰ σάρκα. The language of promise in3:16 implies fulfilment, which rests upon a temporal distance, and thus ahistorical trajectory. That Paul sees that summarily instanced in the singularChrist is by no means a defeater for a salvation history reading.

Withregards to the citation that Paul employs, he is primarily referring to Genesis13:15 and 17:8, but in regards to the singularity of the seed reference, thefinal and summative set of promises that Abraham receives comes in Genesis22:17, “he shall possess the gates of his [sg] enemies”.

3:17 then does not simply pit theinferiority of the Covenant against the Promise, but relativises the Covenantby its temporal sequencing after the Promise. That is, the Covenant can only be understood withattention to its posteriority to the Promise, which conditions how exactly theCovenant may be understood. Paul’s argument depends upon the sequencing ofsalvation history.

Martyn,to be fair, is not without real insights into the text at this point. Forexample, he highlights the way in which the motif of transferring or entering into thepeople of God is probably more the theological language of the Judaisers, notPaul, and that in Galatians Paul speaks repeatedly of who the blessing comes tothe Gentiles, that it is the God-directed invasion of the cosmos, not the‘human movement into blessedness’ that is the focus.[7]And yet, even if entry language is being taken from the Judaisers, Paulredefines and re-employs their terms, so that while it is God who is the agentof blessedness, there is an incorporation motif operating for Paul,incorporation into the Christ, not under the Law.

Silva highlights the distinctchronological references ἄχρις (3.19), πρό (23), ἐφ’ ὅσον χρόνον (4.1), ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου (4:4), and relates this to (at least) 3 epochs of history: Promise,Law (Sinai -> Christ), Faith.[8]This, if ever there was, is a redemptive-historical scheme, and Paul’s precisepoint is not to abstract Law and pit it against Promise & Faith, in a kindof conceptual conflict, but to re-align the redemptive historical place of Lawover against the Teachers’ placement of the same.

The effect of v18 is tomarginalise the Law’s role in salvation history. If the Law had the functionthe Judaisers are attributing to it, as the basis of the inheritance, then thiswould effectually undermine the promises as promises; the fact that Abraham wasshown grace by God throughpromise and not Law, establishes thecounter-factuality of the Judaisers’ interpretation. This naturally raises thequestion of why the Law, which is framed as a redemptive-historical question.

3:19,then, is an answer to that redemptive-historical question, not merely anabstract question about why the Law at all. Paul’s answer is three-fold, givinga purpose (τῶν παραβάσεων χάριν), a temporal telos (ἄχρις οὗ ἔλθῃ τὸ σπέρμα ᾧ ἐπήγγελται), and acomparative point with the Promise (διαταγεὶς διʼ ἀγγέλων ἐν χειρὶ μεσίτου.) In reverse order, the point of comparison cannot be readas Martyn does, as if the Law were the work of angels contra God, and sooffering some kind of false promise to Israel. This would destroy all integrityin Paul’s use of the Law both in Galatians and his other letters. Rather, thecomparison has the object of subjugating the Law to the Promise, by pointingout its dual mediation (angels, Moses), against the unilateral and directnature of the Promise spoken by God to Abraham.

The second element alsosubordinates the Law, by giving it a temporal frame that finds its fulfilment,not purely in its own terms, but in terms of the prior-existing Promise and theSeed. Thus the pattern of Promise-Fulfilment encloses, includes, and concludesthe Law. This of course raises the very first question and answer-clause, whythe Law at all? Fung understands this, and I agree, as making sin ‘illegal’.[9] It matches the slavery and confinementlanguage of 3:22ff.

The enigmatic verse, “Now a mediator is not of one, but Godis one” requires some kind of redemptive-historical interpretation, given thestrongly redemptive-historical focus of the verses before and after. The Lawinvolves a somebody giving something to a somebody else; there is an ‘external’movement in the covenant dimension. In relation to God, the movement of thecovenant is humanward, but this functions alongside another ‘covenant’ which isentirely within God’s being, i.e. between the Father and the Son, the divineSon incorporating and uniting humanity within his two natures in the one person. The mediatorial yet onenessof this covenantal relationship implies a superiority to it, compared tovirtually all Pentateuchal passages dealing with the presence of God, whichinvolve mediation through angels. There is something abundantly ‘one-sided’about the promise which does not have its counterpart in the (Sinai) covenant.

Further reflection on the salvation-historical place of theLaw continues in 3:21, with the rhetorical question about whether the law is κατὰ τῶν ἐπαγγελιῶν? If Paul’s point were purelyantagonistic, the answer would have to be affirmative. Martyn takes the veryquestion as proof of the strong and ‘genuine antimony’ between law and Promisein Paul.[10] Butsurely Paul’s emphatic denial of the opposition is not merely about the‘effective opposition’, but whether the opposition is purposeful. Indeed, hisanswer in 21b denies to the Law an enlivening and justifying role.Paul’s point is precisely that the Law was not able to do it, because if it wasit would have, but it doesn’t, therefore it can’t, (implied) thereforeit wasn’t designed to do so. Paul’s aim here is to tackle head on the Judaisers’version of salvation-history, in which the place of the Law is to givelife and justify, with his gospel-driven alternative placement of the Law,which is not to give life and justify, but rather preparatory (howeverwe understand the hemmed-in and παιδαγωγός language) until the coming ofthe promised Seed.

It is interesting that v22 introduces ‘the Scripture’ as theagent, rather than ‘the Law’, which shuts all things up under sin. Given Paul’scontext, a reference to the Old Testament, and thus primarily the Law, isundeniable. Paul continues to locate the salvation-historical purpose of theWord of God, but this time broadens it, so that all things are under sin. Indoing so Paul gives us a further insight into the place of sin within thesovereign and redemptive purposes of God. The reference to promise in the secondhalf of the verse should be taken to refer to the, by now, broad encompassingpromise given to Abraham, which, by faith in Jesus, finds its reception amongbelievers. The so-called ‘redundancy’ of the double use of faith does notrequire the first use to be taken as ‘faithfulness of Christ.’

The same thought is continued and reiterated in v24, as theLaw gives way in salvation history until the time of Christ. In antiquity, thepedagogus is a slave who makes sure the boy gets an education, he is not atutor at all; rather, he is a kind of educational bouncer, taking the boy toschool and sitting at the back and making sure he goes home and does hishomework. The Lutheran existential school-master interpretation does not workhere, particularly since Galatians works with a fairly clear Jew/Gentiledistinction that does not allow the application that the Law teaches Gentilesin order to lead them to Christ. A boy who had reached adulthood would not hangaround his pedagogue, it would have suspect connotations. Thus, to go backunder the pedagogue would be childish, stupid, and a little creepy. Yet withv25, ‘adulthood’ has come, and in terms of a different metaphor, ‘slavery’ isdone with. Those who exhibit faith in Jesus are no longer children, no longerslaves, and so are no longer to live as such.

This is the thought that leads into vv26-29, and returns Paulto the question of who the sons of Abraham are (3:7) which is herere-configured as the sons of God. Adoption into Abraham’s family isadoption into God’s family and in both cases is instrumentally through faith,and objectively in Christ. The connection in v27 is to express this in terms ofbaptism and ‘clothing’. The close connection within the New Testament betweenfaith and baptism should not be diminished, insofar as baptism is the ordinary,consequent, public, incorporating sign of (repentance and) faith. For Paul, itis simply normal to equate those who have faith in Jesus with those baptised inChrist, and this extends to the clothing metaphor. Those who are sons of Godare clothed with this new identity. The outcome of such clothing is a radicalalteration of the status of the believer, as expressed in v28. So constitutiveof the new identity is its in-Christ nature, that the former distinctions arerendered abolished both (a) as making any difference in regards to entrance andincorporation into Christ. That is, with regards to being in Christ, there isno difference of instrumentality in becoming in Christ, and no difference inregards to status within the believing community, on the basis of (formerly)being a Jew or a Gentile. This is the primary distinction that has beenoperative within the discourse of the epistle, but Paul extends it further tothe social distinction between slaves and free citizens, no doubt in partbecause slavery has been a part of this discourse both metaphorically andliterarily-historically. Furthermore, Paul applies this abolition of distinctionto gender identity as well.

Some have pushed v28 as the basis for an abolition ofdifference as a factor of identity at all, particularly in the gender and ministrydebates. There are several problems with this approach. Firstly, it pays scantattention to the context of Paul’s argumentation within Galatians, which doesnot deal with either ministry roles or ethical instruction in regards to roledifferentiation at all. Secondly, it creates a canonical inconsistency withinPaul’s literary corpus that is difficult to reconcile without violatingcanonical integrity. Simply put, Paul elsewhere uses exactly such differences,both slave and free, and male and female, as the basis for applying the sameethical principles in differentiated application. For example, Paul is preparedto use “God is our Master” as the principle that informs the pattern for bothearthly masters (fair and just treatment, Col 4:1), as well as earthly slaves(Eph 6:5).

Paul’s argument, then, is about status, identity, and entryinto Christ, not about ontological existence. One is ‘in Christ’ as a Jew or asa Greek, as a male or as a female, as a free citizen or as a slave, but one’sprimary identity in Christ is determined by that very being in Christ. At thesame time one does not cease to possess these idiomata, and to live out thatunity and equality in Christ in terms of the diversity of human existence.

This oneness in Christ leads Paul in his flow of thought backto the assertion that to be in Christ (v27-28), is to be a son of God (v26), isto be Abraham’s descendant. The fact that Paul has shifted back here to a‘plural’ understanding of ‘seed’ should not mislead us to concludeinconsistency on his behalf. Paul is fully aware of the plural interpretationand that the very word seed can function as singular for collective, but thewhole thrust of his argument in this respect has been to assert the individualnature of the seed as the basis for understanding the corporate fulfilmentof the promise in terms of incorporation into the one heir. It is only inChrist that, Jews and Gentiles alike, believers are heirs to the promise. There’snowhere else to be except in Christ; to impose Law is to step outside theblessing[11], andbring people under curse, and it’s a perverse thing to do.

[1]used to introduce comparisons;

[2]singular

[3]object

[4]subject

[5]Silva, 804.

[6]Martyn, 347-8.

[7]Martyn, 348-9.

[8]Silva, 805.

[9] Fung interpretsthe χάριν phrase as giving a purpose rather thancausal basis, suggesting that the sense is ‘to make wrongdoing a legaloffence’.

[10]Martyn, 358.

[11] What is the blessing? Justification (3:6-9) and theSpirit (3:14).

PhD ponderings

2011-11-02T14:58:00.000+11:00

It appears that my application for a PhD will not be successful, predominantly because I was going to be doing it from Mongolia. This is understandable, but I am a little frustrated. Frustrated that it has take 11 months from the submission of my MTh to get to this point, and frustrated because I am not sure what to do next.

Option 1: Apply for an alternate Australian institution

I could apply for another Australian university. The problems here are similar. (i) I would need to find a department that is competent and willing to supervise something in Late Antique Christianity, (ii) and a supervisor willing to supervise in that area, and (iib) willing to supervise a student not in-country. The pro would be financial, I should be able to do an Australian-based doctorate at virtually zero personal cost.

Option 2: Apply for a distance PhD program from a UK institution

I think this would alleviate some of the problems of the Australian difficulty – there seem to be a small number of universities more willing to do distance-education PhD students, and I could possibly to probably get a supervisor in my field. The main drawbacks are (i) I would need to pay International student fees, so something like A$8000/yr part-time, which is a lot, and (ii) the probably need for annual or so trips to the UK.

Option 3: Delay starting a PhD and later take time out to tackle it full-time, residential.

The drawbacks to this option include (a) there is still a funding issue, especially if outside Australia, though scholarships are more likely, (b) financial viability of studying full time in my late 30s is not great, (c) taking 3 years off the mission field will really dent the progress of our ministry work, and it would cause problems in terms of our mission support.

Option 4: Attempt to pursue a PhD sneakily (aka by publication)

This is a sneaky option in my view, possibly but improbable. It would require working independently, with a strong sense of purpose, to get a dozen or so inter-related papers published in peer-reviewed sources. Problems include (a) I don’t really approve of these peer-reviewed journals and their locking up of knowledge so that the world can’t have it, (b) this is not a popular approach for awarding PhDs, so I would still need to do some hard yards at the end of the process to convince a university of the merits of my application.

Option 5: Forgo a PhD

Part of me thinks this is a great option – stuff the academic establishment and its pointless pieces of paper. The thing that drags me back to reality on the issue is that the aim of our work in Mongolia is bound up with providing greater academic gravity and opportunity for Mongolian believers. So that piece of paper does count for something, even if the something is not ‘meaningful academic contribution’.

Option 6: ???

Of course, perhaps there are solid alternatives I have not considered, perhaps even some that you have thought of. There are always options out of the box.

Exegetical notes on Galatians 3:1-14

2011-10-12T11:11:00.003+11:00

Text

3:1 ῏Ω ἀνόητοι Γαλάται, τίς ὑμᾶς ἐβάσκανεν, οἷς κατʼ ὀφθαλμοὺς Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς προεγράφη ἐσταυρωμένος; 2 τοῦτο μόνον θέλω μαθεῖν ἀφʼ ὑμῶν• ἐξ ἔργων νόμου τὸ πνεῦμα ἐλάβετε ἢ ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως; 3 οὕτως ἀνόητοί ἐστε, ἐναρξάμενοι πνεύματι νῦν σαρκὶ ἐπιτελεῖσθε; 4 τοσαῦτα ἐπάθετε εἰκῇ; εἴ γε καὶ εἰκῇ. 5 ὁ οὖν ἐπιχορηγῶν ὑμῖν τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ ἐνεργῶν δυνάμεις ἐν ὑμῖν, ἐξ ἔργων νόμου ἢ ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως;
6 Καθὼς Ἀβραὰμ ἐπίστευσεν τῷ θεῷ, καὶ ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην• 7 γινώσκετε ἄρα ὅτι οἱ ἐκ πίστεως, οὗτοι υἱοί εἰσιν Ἀβραάμ. 8 προϊδοῦσα δὲ ἡ γραφὴ ὅτι ἐκ πίστεως δικαιοῖ τὰ ἔθνη ὁ θεὸς, προευηγγελίσατο τῷ Ἀβραὰμ ὅτι ἐνευλογηθήσονται ἐν σοὶ πάντα τὰ ἔθνη• 9 ὥστε οἱ ἐκ πίστεως εὐλογοῦνται σὺν τῷ πιστῷ Ἀβραάμ.
10 Ὅσοι γὰρ ἐξ ἔργων νόμου εἰσίν, ὑπὸ κατάραν εἰσίν• γέγραπται γὰρ ὅτι ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὃς οὐκ ἐμμένει πᾶσιν τοῖς γεγραμμένοις ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τοῦ νόμου τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτά. 11 ὅτι δὲ ἐν νόμῳ οὐδεὶς δικαιοῦται παρὰ τῷ θεῷ δῆλον, ὅτι ὁ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται• 12 ὁ δὲ νόμος οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ πίστεως, ἀλλʼ ὁ ποιήσας αὐτὰ ζήσεται ἐν αὐτοῖς. 13 Χριστὸς ἡμᾶς ἐξηγόρασεν ἐκ τῆς κατάρας τοῦ νόμου γενόμενος ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν κατάρα, ὅτι γέγραπται• ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὁ κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου, 14 ἵνα εἰς τὰ ἔθνη ἡ εὐλογία τοῦ Ἀβραὰμ γένηται ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, ἵνα τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν τοῦ πνεύματος λάβωμεν διὰ τῆς πίστεως.

Translation:

3:1 O foolish Galatians, who ensorcelled you, to whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly displayed as crucified? 2 This alone I desire to learn from you: did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are you thus foolish, having begun by the spirit you now finish by the flesh? 4 have you suffered such great things in vain? If in fact in vain. 5 Then the one who furnishes to you the spirit and [who] works miracles among you, [is it] by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?
6 Just as Abraham believed God and it was credited to him unto righteousness,^a 7 know then that those who are of faith, these are the sons of Abraham. 8 For the Scripture foreseeing that God justifies the nations by faith, fore-evangelised to Abraham that all the nations will be blessed in you^b 9 so that those of faith are blessed together with the believing Abraham*. 10 For as many are of works of the law, they are under curse; for it is written ‘Accursed is everyone who does not cleave to all the things written in the book of the law to do them’^c. 11 that no one is justified by law before God is plain, because the one righteous-by-faith will live^d; 12 but the law is not by faith, but the one doing these things will live by them^e. 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law [by] becoming curse for you, because it is written: accursed is everyone hung upon a tree^f, 14 so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations in Christ Jesus, so that we might receive the promise of the spirit through faith.

a Gen 15:6, b Gen 12:3 c Dt 27:26 d Hab 2:4 e Lev 18:4 f Dt 21:23

Commentary:

The foolishness of the Galatians that leads of v1 is not necessarily a slight on the Galatians’ intelligence, but is referred by the question ‘who ensorcelled you?’ to an external agent – they have been tricked, bewitched, hoodwinked. The gravity of such deception is brought home by the fact that Jesus Christ was publicly displayed before their eyes as crucified. As Galatians it is unlikely that any at all were present to visually witness the crucifixion, but the declaration of the gospel has displayed before them this truth, and now they are being tricked as to its consequences.

Paul’s questions in v2-3 rest on the principle that the way we begin the Christian life is the manner in which we continue it. It does not start on one basis and continue on another, but has a cohesive shape to it. And so Paul frames the question in those terms – how did these believers commence the Christian life (marked by the reception of the Spirit)? Paul knows that the answer to this is ‘by the hearing of faith’. The options for rendering both ‘hearing’ and ‘faith’ are various, Fung listing at least 8 combinations of active and passive senses in his commentary. For my part I read them as a passive sense of ‘hearing’ (what is heard’), and an objective genitive, so that the import of the phrase is the content of the hearing – the message of the Faith. The Galatian believers received the spirit when they heard (and believed) the gospel proclamation. They did not receive the spirit by performing works of the law (a point the Jewish-background believers in Galatia would well know). Why then (v3), would they think that they ought to continue (‘finish’) and complete the Christian life ‘by flesh’. The contrast between law and faith in v2 and flesh and spirit in v3 is meant to be parallel, but not identical. It is the work of the spirit to produce faith, and the one who has faith lives by the spirit, not under law. The one under law lives life apart from the spirit, and so entirely in the flesh. Attempting to live under the law, in the flesh, can only be a life lived in vain, since that was their previous way of life that leads to death.

I have already expressed my view that ‘works of the Law’ will not work in the NPP way, and so repeat here that its sense is that ‘it expresses Torah-obedience within a Mosaic covenant context’. Paul is not opposed to works, but to works of the law, rather than works of the Spirit. Works in the first sphere are under a curse, because they are (a) not unto justification, (b) no one does them anyway, while the works of the Spirit are the grace and faith lived out in the believer.
Introduced in v4 is a further question, that relates to that aspect of Christian life linked with suffering, and so with perseverance. If they are attempting to go back under law, and live by the flesh, then their suffering will indeed have been in vain.

The particle ‘then’ in v5 ought not be read as following directly on as a logical consequence of v4, but as a continuance of the series of questions, referring to the work of God amongst them, and whether (again) such work is instrumentally related to Torah-performance or to faith in the gospel.

The καθώς that introduces the citation links it immediately with 3:1-5, and the implied comparison is between the Galatians’ reception of the Spirit and Abraham’s being reckoned righteous. The premises then include the work of the Spirit in Abraham, and the exclusive dichotomy between faith and works. I agree with Martyn that the verse is distinctly Paul’s, given its use in Romans (though for slightly different purposes). Paul thus in this verse establishes the connection between faith – hearing – Spirit-reception. The textual form of the citation is almost identical to the LXX except for the dislocation of Abraham’s name. To the extent that we can read the Judaizers’ argument out of the text, it seems that they are preaching a need to become ‘sons of Abraham’ in order to receive the blessings. Part of the effect of citing Genesis 15 is that it is both post-promises, and pre-circumcision.

The second thesis that Silva identifies lies in vv7, 9, that the sons of Abraham are those of faith, and these in turn are blessed along with Abraham. Verse 7 is emphatic in its identification of the sons of Abraham, and probably represent Paul’s counter-claim to the opponents’ appeal to the Galatians to become ‘sons of Abraham’ (i.e., sons of the Covenant). There is a sense of status associated with the use of ‘sons’ over against ‘children’.

The second scriptural citation, in v8, has a number of distinctive features. Firstly, Paul personifies scripture in a rare way. Secondly, he characteristically pre-empts the reading of the verse, with his phrase ‘God justifies the Gentiles by faith’. The use of προευηγγελίσατο is also remarkable, underlying the continuity of the Gospel with the OT scriptures, so that whatever discontinuity Paul asserts later, it cannot be read as fundamental disjunction between the scriptures and the new revelation in Christ. The citation itself conflates Gen 12:3/18:18:

Gen 12:3 καὶ εὐλογήσω τοὺς εὐλογοῦντάς σε, καὶ τοὺς καταρωμένους σε καταράσομαι, καὶ ἐνευλογηθήσονται ἐν σοὶ πᾶσαι αἱ φυλαὶ τῆς γῆς.

Gen 18:18 Αβρααμ δὲ γινόμενος ἔσται εἰς ἔθνος μέγα καὶ πολύ, καὶ ἐνευλογηθήσονται ἐν αὐτῷ πάντα τὰ ἔθνη τῆς γῆς.

cf. also Sir 44:21 διὰ τοῦτο ἐν ὅρκῳ ἔστησεν αὐτῷ ἐνευλογηθῆναι ἔθνη ἐν σπέρματι αὐτοῦ, πληθῦναι αὐτὸν ὡς χοῦν τῆς γῆς καὶ ὡς ἄστρα ἀνυψῶσαι τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ καὶ κατακληρονομῆσαι αὐτοὺς ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ἕως θαλάσσης καὶ ἀπὸ ποταμοῦ ἕως ἄκρου τῆς γῆς.

The replacement of αἱ φυλαί with τὰ ἔθνη is not exceptionally significant, except that it reinforces the Gentile-focus of Paul’s argument. The parallel with Sirach 44:21 is also not particularly illuminating, except for the way in which Sirach speaks of ἐν σπέρματι αὐτοῦ which links with Paul’s further argument.

That v8 functions as a ground for the thesis of v7, 9 depends upon Paul’s assertion concerning v8 that the Gentiles blessing comes about in Abraham, in conjunction with the identification of the sons of Abraham with those of faith, not the descendants according to the flesh. Indeed, if the blessing of the Gentiles was for those according to the flesh, then the blessing of Abraham would never come to Gentiles per se, since covenantal incorporation would always be necessary. The first participial phrase may suggest (qua Kern), that Abraham is being viewed here as a Gentile.

Verse 9 summarises 6-8, with its result clause, that (a) those of faith (v7) are (b) blessed (v8) (c) along with believing Abraham (v6). There exists a unity with Abrhahm that is prior to Moses, and that unity is by faith. There is a translation conundrum over the phrase σὺν τῷ πιστῷ Ἀβραάμ, whether it is best rendered ‘with believing Abraham’, ‘with faithful Abraham’, ‘with Abraham by faith’. The insertion of τῷ πιστῷ between the preposition and the name seems to rule out the last of the three options, despite Kern’s backing. That the unity exists by faith can be established on other grounds. The second option seems over-nuanced – Abraham’s faithfulness in this context is exactly in believing the promise(s) given to him.

Silva splits 10 into 10a and b, identifying 10a as the 3rd thesis, and 10b as the grounds. Again, Paul pre-empts the interpretation of his citation, with the principle that ‘for as many as are of the works of the law, are under a curse.’ Comparing verse and source:

10 Ὅσοι γὰρ ἐξ ἔργων νόμου εἰσίν, ὑπὸ κατάραν εἰσίν• γέγραπται γὰρ ὅτι ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὃς οὐκ ἐμμένει πᾶσιν τοῖς γεγραμμένοις ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τοῦ νόμου τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτά.
Dt 27:26 Ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ἄνθρωπος, ὃς οὐκ ἐμμενεῖ ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς λόγοις τοῦ νόμου τούτου τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτούς, καὶ ἐροῦσιν πᾶς ὁ λαός Γένοιτο.

A number of distinctive elements are apparent. Silva highlights that Paul retains the two instances of πᾶς which the LXX adds to the MT, and that his variation in the first instance suggests it is not unintentional. Secondly, and more interestingly, is the change from ‘of the Law’ to ‘in the book of the Law’. The effect of this change is to expand the reference from a specific part of the law, which Dt 27:26 has in view, to the Law as a whole. Silva suggests that the phrase may be taken from Dt 30:10, and on this basis I think it’s fair to say that Paul is not unfaithful in his reading of the text at this point.

One must still wrestle with the difficulty that Martyn et alii raise, that Paul seems to read the verse against its plain meaning. Surely, one would think, the curse of the Law is for those who don’t keep the Law, which is what it seems to be saying. Silva identifies the argument’s assumed premise as ‘all are disobedient’, which he recognises as a disputed premise. The contrast between οἱ ἐκ πίστεως and οἱ ἐξ ἔργων is surely not to be by-passed. For Paul’s citation here speaks of πᾶς, but his application concerns ὅσοι ἐξ ἔργων. Non-proselyte Gentiles would certainly be a hard category to fit into οἱ ἐξ ἔργων, and so his argument demands a reading in terms of Jewish observers of the Law apart from faith. It is thus, not those who observe or do not observe the Law (both failing), nor even those who suppose themselves to be observing the Law, but all those under the Law who fall equally under its curse. In this vein, I find myself concluding that v10 has a primary redemptive-historical reference to Jews under the old covenant.

Sanders would raise a different issue: that failing in the Law was not such a big deal, one would offer the appropriate sacrifices. The curse in view is probably to be linked to the larger redemptive-historical picture, and so to the Deuteronomic curses for covenant failure which for Israel lead to exile and judgment, to the extent that v10 represents individual curse, it is because the story of Israel’s failure is paradigmatic for individual covenant failure, exile, and judgment.
Silva identifies 11a as the fourth thesis, which complements thesis 3. The grounds for this thesis is the citation from Hab 2:4. Martyn argues that this verse, as with Gen 15:6, is part of Paul’s scriptural ammo, and given that these two verses are the only 2 OT texts that bring together faith and righteousness, it seems likely. Silva sees part of the function of 11 as to identify Paul’s opponents as οἱ ἐξ ἔργων and not οἱ ἐκ πίστεως, in conjunction with v10’s condemnation of those ἐξ ἔργων under the Law.

The citation itself is problematic, the MT reading ‘but the righteous one by his faith will live’, which LXX takes as ‘my faith’ with μου which Paul excludes from his citation. Some have argued that Paul deliberately ambiguates the faith on view, but if so he is only doing so by bringing it closer to the MT. More likely, the context of Paul’s argument itself adequately resolves the question of the faith in view, the believer’s. Whether the ἐκ πίστεως be attached to ‘the righteous one’ (so Fung), or ‘will live’, is almost incidental, since even the latter reading must relate eschatological enlivenment to faith, correlated elsewhere with justification. Whether one could in fact keep the law thus becomes irrelevant, because it is the righteous one, who is so by faith, that will live.]

Silva spends some time (802) defending Paul’s use of Habakkuk contextually, against the reading that Habakkuk 2:4 has only in view the faithfulness of the Law-keeper, ‘for Habakkuk, there was no such dichotomy between faith and faithfulness as we often assume’.

Concerning v12, Silva reads this as the stated premise for thesis 4 (v11a), along with the grounds for that premise. This reading incorporates the fourth citation under the third, seeing Lev 18:5 as a proof of Paul’s justification-by-faith reading. This is a long way from Martyn, who basically sees Lev 18:5 as a proof against Paul’s justification by faith, which Paul raises only to discount as false!
The adjustments made to the text from Lev 18:5 are slight, and not dramatically interesting. They are almost all occasioned by the new context of the verse and the removal from the original context, grammatically rather than theologically. More difficult is the theology of Paul’s argument. Again he seems to be reading the verse over and against the Law itself from which he quotes. Fung, rightly, recognises that ‘while the goal envisaged is the same, faith and law appear as two diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive principles.’ And yet, this must raise some questions. Is the goal of the law faith by works? And if so, hasn’t Paul done either violence to the context of Lev 18:5, which seems to have more to say than a Torah-based works-righteousness, or else violence to the scriptural canon, in rendering Lev 18:5 false, as Martyn argues.

Personally, I can only find the resolution in the hidden premise that it is not the failure of the Law, but the failure of Law-observers, that renders this verse intelligible in context. For Paul, there is indeed a theoretical life through Law-observance, but this is in reality unobtainable, not because of the Law’s deficiency, but the Flesh’s. The Law is quite right to say that the one who does these things will live by them, but we are quite wrong to suppose that any of us can do so. This, I would argue, is further reinforced by comparison with Paul’s triangulation of Law/Sin/Grace in Romans 7. I would posit an implicit reference then to the righteousness of Christ, which is both by his faith, and his faithfulness, expressed in perfect and active obedience to the Torah. For, in Paul’s curse language, otherwise the Christ himself would be under the Curse of the Law, since he was under the Law and did not keep it.

In v13 Paul’s use of Dt 21:23 raises a number of issues. Firstly, he alters κεκατηραμένος to ἐπικατάρατος, aligning his citation with 3:11. This raises the question to what extent it is valid to identify the curse of Dt 27:26 with 21:23. Secondly, Paul omits ὑπὸ θεοῦ from his citation, almost certainly intentional, but with what intention? Silva suggests he may simple be trying to avoid an unnecessary distraction to his main argument. Fung suggests he is avoiding the implication that Christ was cursed by God because of its theological import. This, I suspect, comes closer to the truth, but needs more nuancing, because in becoming ‘a curse’ for us he was, in some sense cursed by God, so that Paul’s omission carries more refinement than simple avoidance of the plain text. Indeed, as Silva posits, perhaps Paul simply doesn’t wish to draw out the cursed yet not cursed distinctions.

This is Silva’s fourth thesis and grounds, and its relation to the preceding is slightly discontinuous. That is, having to some extent resolved the faith/law dichotomy by divorcing the blessing from the Law and attaching it to faith, and aligning the curse with the Law and the inevitable failure to keep it, Paul re-orients the reader to the only means of escaping the curse of the Law, the Cross.
The double-barrelled purpose clause of v14 completes the argumentative flow of Gal 3:6-14.

Following Kern, we read these two clauses consecutively, so that the initial result if the blessing of Abraham to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, which in turn leads to the reception by (Jewish believers) of the promise of the Spirit through faith. That these two elements are not exclusive should be already apparent by the way Paul has linked Abrahamic blessing with reception of the Spirit in 3:1-5, 6-9.
The argument of those who want to read Galatians apocalyptically, at this point insists upon the salvation-historical logic of the Judaizers, who trace Abrahamic lineage through the Mosaic Law and so regard incorporation into the covenant people a necessary pre-condition of receiving the Abrahamic blessing. Over against this, Paul relativises and polemicises against the Law, instead treating the punctiliar and cosmically invasive event of the Christ’s crucifixion. To this point, though, Paul has not spoken concerning the Law’s role, and so it is too soon to disregard any salvation-historical element to his OT usage. His treatment of the sons of Abraham, faith, Law, and curse, are all predicated on a different reading of redemptive history, not the absence of one, as is seen in the second half of the chapter.

It is worth noting the flow of thought here: Jesus became a curse for those under the law, which leads the gentiles to inherit the blessing of Abraham by Christ, which leads to the Jews entering the eschatological inheritance; the blessing/promise is the Spirit: the Spirit is how we enter and continue in the Christian life. cf. 3:8 both justification and the Spirit appear to be hand-in-hand the content of the promise/blessing. v14 is the exposition of Christ’s redeeming work in v13.

Electronic version of my Master's Thesis now online

2011-10-03T14:09:00.003+11:00

Having submitted the hardbound copies of my MTh thesis, I have also uploaded an electronic version to the web. It is released under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - No Derivation licence, as outlined in the appendix or online here

The thesis is downloadable here:
Pro-Nicene Hermeneutical Techniques in the preaching of John Chrysostom: A case study of the homilies on John, 2011.

Languages and learning, 2 quick links

2011-09-15T11:52:00.002+10:00

I'm really pleased to see that Daniel Streett has started bloggin. He and I are on the same page when it comes to language pedagogy and ancient languages.

I'm also pleased to see Polis is being developed for Biblical Hebrew and Latin, as you can read here.

Home from travels

2011-09-15T11:50:00.003+10:00

For the last 3 weeks my wife and I have been travelling overseas. My brother was married in Munich about 3 weeks ago, and then we spent some time travelling in Scotland, and Rome. One of my highlights was simply joining in fellowship with Christian believers in Stornoway and Rome. Anyway, we are back now, and ready to resume more 'ordinary' life.

My college has finally given me some paperwork asserting that my MTh was passed, this hopefully will finally complete my PhD application and I can begin work on that.

Things I am not doing very well this year

2011-08-09T09:53:00.003+10:00

..and that I'd like to be better at.

1. Blogging
2. Studying Gaelic
3. Reading in other languages
3a Reading Patristics
4. Writing exegetical notes and commentary

Post-script:

Have taken action on 3/3a by getting together a copy of Athanasius' De Incarnatione and Cyprian's De Unitate, compiled a digital copy and printed a physical copy, and will start reading away at them. Hopefully the first of many patristic reading endeavours in the original languages.

Reflections on my first lifting Competition

2011-07-09T19:50:00.002+10:00

I've just come back from a Christian camp for high-schoolers, but just before that I entered my first powerlifting competition.

It was an interesting experience. One of the things about powerlifting is that it is a sport in which virtually all the important aspects occur before the actual competition. It's the months of training that really determine what happens on the day. Secondly, the amount of actual time spent competing on the day is incredibly small. You perform 9 lifts in total, one at a time, and all up the time you actually spend in lifting a weight is probably less than two minutes. Powerlifting is really a sport about disciplined lifting, resting, and eating, not about the competition day.

Thirdly, while it is a competition, the real competition is with yourself. You have a fair idea of what you can lift, and choose your own lifts on the day, and when you step up to the platform, everyone is actually cheering for you to succeed - it's you + the crowd + competitors versus the iron. This makes it a very positive sport. Everyone wants to see you succeed (even the judges!).

I'm pretty happy with how the day went. I missed a few lifts, but I expected that and it was because I was going for new PBs. I also came last out of the men, but that didn't bother me at all. I have no real natural talent for lifting. In the end, a fun day, and I'm proud of my efforts.

Good news on the thesis

2011-06-11T20:09:00.003+10:00

Today I heard the news that the two markers have passed my MTh thesis "Pro-Nicene Hermeneutical Techniques in the preaching of John Chrysostom: A case study of the homilies on John", and the College has agreed, and so I've fulfilled all the requirements for my Masters of Theology!

Once I finalise the library copies, I'll also release a copy of the same to the web under a creative commons licence.

Very grateful to have this finished off and move on with studies, ministry, and life.

Jesus as priest in the gospels?

2011-05-30T08:27:00.003+10:00

Someone asked me last night whether Jesus referred to himself in priestly terms. I'm pretty sure the answer to this is no, but I'm wondering if the gospels protray that aspect of Christ's work in any particular passage. Nothing has come to my mind yet. Thoughts?

This is not scholarship for the people

2011-05-17T14:12:00.001+10:00

Another overpriced academic tome. Why do we even continue with this charade of a publishing industry?

Sneaky sneaks and gender in Bible translation

2011-05-16T18:24:00.003+10:00

I don't really like to get into arguments about gender in Bible translation. I just want some honesty in debates. And the honesty I want is for people who are arguing for gender inclusivity to recognise that the Greek (that's where my interest lies here) uses masculine language in a way that is inclusive of feminine objects. This is not unique to Greek, it doesn't (in my opinion) reveal some deep-seated masculinist program of the Greek language, it's just a feature of grammatical gender linked to real gender.

So, for example, αδελφοι does not 'mean' "brothers and sisters". It would be more accurate to say it 'means' "brothers" (when referring to a group of exclusively male siblings), and "brothers and sisters" (when referring to a group of mixed-gender siblings).

It's no problem to recognise this, just as it shouldn't be a problem to recognise that historically in English "Man" and "Mankind" have been gender-inclusive terms. The fact that contemporary English-speakers now regard them as gender-exclusive terms shouldn't blind us to the fact that this is a shift in our own language.

Insisting that αδελφοι means "brothers and sisters", and ανθρωπος always means "human being" with no gender marking, is misrepresenting the Greek language, even when these are accurate translations of the contextual meaning of the words.

Truly last mention of the sermon podcast

2011-05-04T16:25:00.002+10:00

I've set it up to automatically post a sermon through virtually all of May, thus getting through past sermons, and new content should then appear afterwards. So, the links are at right for the blog and the podcast subscription through itunes, otherwise you can just click through here, and this is the last time I'll mention it or post sermons to this blog, leaving us all free to think more about biblical texts, patristic exegesis, and important matters like learning Gaelic and lifting heavy objects.

Is the wood of Genesis 22 a typological foreshadowing of the cross?

2011-04-27T11:48:00.000+10:00

Chrysostom thinks so. He says as much on his sermon on John 19:16ff, Homily 85 on John. I’ve said as much, preaching in the past on John 19. But will it hold weight?
The key to typology, Clowney says, as opposed to allegory, is that typological readings pick up what is already symbolic in the OT. If the text doesn’t make an element symbolic in the first place, it does not warrant the production of a typological connection to the OT. That casts significant doubt for me on whether you could call the wood of the sacrifice typological.

And yet, have a look at Genesis 22:3-9 with me. The ξύλον is mentioned 5 times. Gen 22:3, 6, 7, and twice in Gen 22:9. The key verse would be Gen 22:6, “And Abraham took the ξύλον of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and ht eknife. So they went both of them together.” Then in v8, the fire and the ξύλον are present, and only the Lamb is lacking. In v8, Abraham responds that God will provide the Lamb for himself, and in v9, he binds Isaac on the ξύλον on top of the altar.

I highlight the use of the word ξύλον, because I believe it is significant – in one sense it is simply the Greek word that can be equally used of trees as of lumber, and so we find it used for both senses through the LXX. But it is the word that is used for (a) the tree of life in the garden, (b) the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden, (c) the tree of curse in Dt 21:22, (d) the cross in the preaching of the apostles, and (e) the tree of life in Revelation. I’m convinced that there’s a theme running through those trees, quite apart from hanging anything upon the word ξύλον itself, but that makes Genesis 22 all the more interesting.
Try reading through the passage and everytime you strike ‘wood’, substitute ‘tree’. Beginning to sound like typology yet?

Now, here’s why I think the case is arguable. Not because the wood in the Genesis 22 narrative is symbolic, but because the narrative is typological. Abraham early in the morning takes his one and only son, the child of the promise and fulfilment of the covenant. He leaves his camp and goes to a solitary place to sacrifice (v2, the land of Moriah, identified in 2 Chr 3:1 with Jerusalem). In v7 they exchange the following, “My father!”, “Here am I, my son.” Isaac enquires about the lamb for the sacrifice, and Abraham responds that God will provide it for himself. Isaac asks about the offering, but makes no resistance to being bound to the wood.

Chrysostom, for his part, indicates that Abraham is prevented from completing the sacrifice, precisely because it is the type, not the reality. It would avail nothing, the death of Christ will avail all. There is virtually no doubt, if you grant typology, that Isaac is a type of Christ. So then the question becomes a slightly less complex one – to what point can you press the details once you established typology?

In this regard, I suppose it becomes a question about authorial intentions and maximalism vs. minimalism. I’m quite content to be towards the maximalist end of the spectrum – to trust the divine authorship of Scripture enough to believe that the details are part of the program. That still doesn’t leave me in the realm of allegory, though I suppose others would disagree, particularly minimalists who believe the only typology is that which the NT writers get away with.

So, the answer is yes, the bearing of the wood is typological. But it’s not typological without the prior typology of Isaac, and the typology of the sacrifice of the only Son, the child of the promise. Those are events laden with symbolism already, and invite us to read the narrative with typological import, which we then bring to our reading of Christ’s crucifixion, layering and deepening our appreciation of the fulfilment that Christ’s death is.

Gaelic and Lifting

2011-04-26T16:48:00.002+10:00

Well, it's a very long weekend thanks to the collusion of Easter and Anzac day, and that's meant extra time for Gaelic study. I've covered quite a bit of ground this weekend.

So, how are those goals going?

Gaelic: I'm making steady progress. I've been working hard on my fairly grammar-focused book, which is paying some dividends at the moment. My Gaelic tutoring lessons have been fairly infrequent due to timing issues, but they are good too. I can see myself by the end of the year having a decent grasp of Gaelic grammar, and an expanding vocabulary. Listening/Speaking lag behind though.

Lifting: I've hit 117.5 for a Squat, 75 for Bench, and 140 for a deadlift so far. I estimate that I could manage the 120 Squat and 80 Bench. Things are mostly on track, just a little behind on Sq and BP, but at this rate it's still conceivable that I'll reach 135 SQ, 155 DL, 90 BP, towards the end of June, which is difficult to comprehend.

Studies: Still no final result from the Masters, though it is being marked at last. Once that comes back, my PhD application can finally be processed, and it will be time to return to books once more. I should be doing a bit more Greek and Latin to keep things up, but I haven't had the motivation to make the time.

the almost last word about the podcast

2011-04-20T12:09:00.001+10:00

So, because wordpress moves old posts off the main page and archives them, if you miss episodes they will eventually no longer appear in iTunes. Thus, my posting many back episodes almost certainly means that you'll miss some. Just head to the webpage to find any sermons you're missing and looking for.

For this reason I think I'm going to skip the 2009 sermons, and move into posting the occasional sermons from 2010 and then on to this year's sermons.

Why my brain hurts: annotating Jn 19:16-42

2011-04-19T14:23:00.002+10:00

This week I'm working on the third in a series of Easter sermons, on Jn 19:16-42. I've probably done more hard exegesis work on these sermons than others I've done, (a) because they're longer passages, but (b) they're theologically quite dense. John is depicting the central event of Christian faith, and thus the single most theologically and historically significant even in the universe. So there is a depth of both eyewitness hsitorical detail and well as theological symboism and explicit Old Testament connection, that engages my mind and forces deep thinking.

Of course, the problem remains how to turn this into a sermon. And a relatively short sermon (compared to others), for Good Friday. my theory is to try and pick one of the OT threads, and focus on that. And yet there are so many! I'm working on either Isaiah 53 or Passover. My second difficulty is working out what aspect of human sinfulness to address. How do I bring the good news of atonement to bear on the problem of human rebellion, and in what respect?

latest sermon and a quick word on the podcast

2011-04-18T10:44:00.001+10:00

John 18:28-19:16 Christ the True King (Apr 18 2011)

I'm updating the podcast chronologically from the start, which is taking awhile. Once it's up-to-date, I'll stop posting sermons here and leave them all to the other blog/podcast feed.

John 18:12-27 The Faithful Witness

2011-04-16T16:01:00.000+10:00

In Jn 18:12 Jesus is arrested, by the cohort, the centurion, and the officials of the Jews. Calvin against gets things dead right when he comments, “Let us remember that the body of the Son of God was bound in order that our souls might be set free from the bonds of sin and Satan.” They lead Jesus first to Annas. Annas, father-in-law of Caiaphas, had held the high-priesthood between 6-15AD, when he was deposed by the Romans. As many considered it illegal to remove a high priest from office, he was considered by some to still be the high-priest. Nonetheless, the deposition had not halted Annas in his patriarchal power: five of his sons held the position, and at this time Caiaphas his son-in-law did (he held it from 18-36AD when he lost it at the same as Pilate was removed from power. Annas then is really the godfather to the Temple-mafia. And so it is to Annas that Jesus goes first. Yet, the mention of Caiaphas leads John to reflect upon Caiaphas’s earlier comment, in Jn 11:49-52, about the expediency of Jesus dying for the people. In Jn 11 John narrates this as unwitting prophecy, and its reintroduction here serves to highlight the theological dimension of Jesus’ death. It is substitutionary, one man for the people, the righteous for the unrighteous (1 Pet 3:18).

Jn 18:15 depicts Jesus being accompanied, or better ‘followed’, by Simon Peter and ‘another disciple’; the text remains silent about his identity, though he is both commented on and depicted as being intimately familiar with the household of the high priest. This does not rule out John the apostle, but certainty is impossible. The high priest here is Annas, not Caiaphas (cf 18:24). Peter’s unfamiliarity to the high priestly household is, naturally, a reason for his inability to gain entry, thus necessitating that the other disciple return to the door to secure his entry. The presence of a girl on the door suggests that this property does not lie in the temple precinct, thus further corroborating that we are not dealing with Caiaphas’ household.

The fateful question of v17 then comes from an unexpected quarter. Peter, so bold recently with the sword in the garden to lay down his life for Jesus, now finds himself unable to confess him. The question invites a negative answer, or else has a slight tone of scorn. Pressed by the simple question of a slave girl, Peter stumbles, and declare “I am not”. The three denials of Peter will echo in contrast to the three-fold affirmation of Jesus, “I am.”

The focus of the narrative shifts for a moment to details, again reinforcing the impression of eye-witness testimony. John records that the slaves and officials stood around, having made a charcoal-fire, due to the cold. The mention of Peter standing with them subtly alludes back to v5 where Judas stands with Jesus’ enemies – so now Peter.

However the author’s main focus lies further inside the household compound, where the high-priest (Annas) interrogates Jesus on two topics: his disciples and his teaching. Concerning the former, Jesus has been situated as a possible revolutionary figure, and his populism may have lead to suspiciions that he has numerous, possibly armed and trained, followers. Jesus replies nothing on this account. As to the second topic, Jesus’ teaching has been likewise popularly received, yet it does not derive nor have a great deal in common with the mainline teachings of the Sadducees or Pharisees.

Jesus answers with shrewdness. He says nothing about his disciples, once more defending his flock. Instead he concentrates on the identity relation between his outward, public teaching and his private instruction of disciples. In Jesus’ defence there is no dichotomy – his public teaching is his private teaching, and thus if they desired to know the content of his teaching, there were any number of witnesses who could attest this. The truthfulness of Jesus echoes Isa 45:19 and Isa 48:16, the truthful declarations of God. It also represents a dig at the proceedings. While it is doubtful that this initial trial could be considered a legal trial, and so their deviations technically illegal (whether they were technical illegalities or not), Jesus highlights the exceeding irregularity of the proceedings. No witnesses are called, the defendant is interrogated, and Annas is not the reigning high priest.

Jesus’ seeming insolence is taken as an afront by one of the officials present (v22) and occasions a blow and a rebuke. While the insinuation is that Jesus has violated Exodus 22:28, the violation actually belongs to his assailant, who has illegally struck the prisoner. An allusion to Isa 50:6 LXX is also present. Jesus’ response in Jn 18:23 again raises questions, challenging the abuse he receives. Indeed, he has not violated Ex 22:28, or in fact any law, and so merely inquires what charge they have, and requests that they testify to it. The intractability of the innocent Jesus at last moves Annas to send Jesus on (v24) to Caiaphas, who no doubt has been convening the members of the Sanhedrin for the night trial.

Meanwhile the narrative returns to Simon Peter, standing and warming himself (v25). He is asked a second time whether he is a disciple of Jesus, and denies again, “I am not.” The third questioning is quite dramatic and pointed, a relative of Malchus, who has lost the ear(lobe), asks Peter, “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” (v26). Here is a confronting question, and Peter now cowers before his questioners, in stark contrast to Jesus before his. The restrained account of John conludes this vignette with the crowing of the rooster.

Application and preaching

2011-04-16T15:14:00.002+10:00

I never really learnt to preach at college. Preaching was a subject, preaching was taught, but I don't think it was learnt. And I suspect that my experience was not unique.

One of the accusations I regularly hear is that we don't have enough application. I think this is generally true of Sydney preaching, but I don't think the answer is application. To come at this another way - what most people want in terms of application is not what they need. When most people say 'application', they want some practical outworkings of Christian living to implement in their lives.

The problems with that are several. Firstly, the Bible doesn't deliver a great deal of it. So if I preach that kind of application, I'll be exceeding the Bible's scope, and will leave it behind as the authority and content of my preaching. Secondly, if I present that as exhortation and suggestion, people are inclined to hear it as moral instruction and so take it on-board whether it is fitting for their situation or not. Thirdly, and relatedly, if I preach it as instruction and command, I will be preaching Law and not Grace.

Perhaps the best thing I've encountered on preaching has been listening to Clowney and Keller teach "Preaching Christ to a post-modern World." It's available on-line somewhere, and I've started re-listening to it. It helps you make sense of Keller's excellent preaching (ie, where it derives from), and you see how much he owes to Clowney (who is a real treasure to listen to and learn from).

Their tri-perspectival approach to preaching also is deeply fulfilling. I think I do only one of them well - expounding Christ from the Scriptures. The other two I am working on: applying Christ, and adoring Christ.

Applying Christ is basically, (a) getting to the roots of people's sins, and diagnosing those root-sins with the truth of the gospel. So, for example, this week the focus of the text is Jesus as our King, and so my application is to do some probing on the ways in which we reject God as King, and how that works itself out in our life and culture, and how Jesus as our King is in fact the solution to our problem. It's realising that the cure for our problems is always God and His Gospel.

Adoring Christ is something else I struggle with - hitting people emotionally with the vivid portrayal of the truth so that it engages our whole being and leads us to worship. This is really where illustration of truths comes in, and on the whole I'm not a handy creator of illustrations. Nonetheless, I'm working on it.

Will see how this goes this Sunday...

podcasts of sermons

2011-04-13T21:56:00.003+10:00

I have set up a separate blog just to podcast sermons and other talks. It's not all properly tagged and so forth, but I'm working on that. Anyway, I've posted up some fairly old sermons from 2006 and 2007 (I'm working forward chronologically). The blog is http://jeltzz.wordpress.com/, and you can put the rss feed directly into itunes from here

Or you can subscribe through itunes directly from this link:
http://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/sermons-etc-from-seumas-macdonald/id432221424

Sermon: John 18:1-27

2011-04-11T19:11:00.001+10:00

Here's the first of 3 sermons on John 18-19.
John 18:1-27

John 18:1-11 The Good Shepherd

2011-04-06T16:38:00.004+10:00

In the lead up to Easter I'm preaching through John 18-19. I'll be posting up my thoughts on the passages as I prepare, and the sermon audio as well. Here is the first installment.

In Jn 13-17 Jesus has been instructing his disciples for life after his departure, preparing them for a post-cross existence. The narrative takes two turns: firstly in Jn 13:30 Judas departs the last supper, heading out into the night to arrange Jesus’ betrayal; secondly in Jn 14:31 Jesus says “Rise, let us go from here” signalling (presumably) the disciples’ departure from the upper room. Thus the initial verse of 18:1 signifies a second geographic movement. Jesus has finished speaking ‘these things’, not only the prayer of Jn 17, but the entire upper room discourse, and he ‘went out’. This is a reference then to leaving the city of Jerusalem itself. Unlike earlier in Passover week when Jesus has withdrawn to his base in Bethany, the night of Passover does not permit such an extended journey, and requires them to remain within an ‘extended city-limit’. Thus, Jesus takes his disciples across the Kedron ravine, to a garden (i.e. Gethsemane).

The other gospels fill in the details of their purpose there – Jesus’ prayer and the disciples’ failed vigil. John records only the fact that Judas knew the place (Jn 18:2). That Judas knew the place is because it has been a place frequented already by Jesus, and so in fact we know that Jesus knows that Judas knows the place. This scene is dominated by Jesus as the protagonist, and by this stage Judas is far less the free agent he might think he is. His role is played out in Jn 18:3, as he leads the mixed group to Jesus. Three parties are represented here. Firstly, the Romans, in a ‘cohort’, probably a far smaller detachment of a cohort. Their concern is that Jesus, as with other popular, charismatic, and messianic, figures could be the cause of civil unrest. The officials are associated with both the ‘high priests’ and the ‘Pharisees’, two fairly antagonistic groups within Judaism, united at this point in hostility to Jesus. They bring ‘lamps and torches and weapons’, expecting either a manhunt through the wilderness for a fugitive, or else a violent struggle with armed insurrectionists.

Jn 18:4 extends the foreknowledge of Jesus hinted at in Jn 18:2 to all things. Jesus knows ‘what’s coming for him,’ and yet precisely in that knowledge Jesus is the one taking control of events. The entire scene is narrated in a way consistent with the authority of Jesus over the events. So it is that Jesus ‘came out’. The garden was almost certainly a walled enclosure, and as such Jesus comes out of the entrance, thus interposing himself between the pursuers and his own disciples. He immediately takes the initiative, and asks the question, ‘Whom do you seek?’. The interlocutors reply, ‘Jesus the Nazarene,’ to which Jesus replies starkly, ‘I am’. On the one hand this is simply no more than the correct response, ‘I am he’, the complement to their question. Yet, within John’s gospel, the last time this phrase received prominent usage was in Jn 8:24, 28, 58, where in connection to Isaiah 40-55 it has definitive tones of divine self-revelation. So too here it is difficult to deny a second level of meaning to Jesus’ utterance. Indeed, to add a further layer of complexity, Jesus is the one they have been truly seeking all their lives, if only they had eyes to see.

It’s at this point that John includes the remark that Judas stood with them. As elsewhere, Judas’ name is irrevocably blackened with the epithet ‘the one betraying him’. Though John omits the kiss of betrayal, no less should the human pain of Judas’ betrayal be seen. Here is one whose feet Jesus washed, a zealot for the messianic kingdom, now standing among Jesus’ enemies.

Though Jesus only appears to declare it twice, John’s construction includes an indirect statement in Jn 18:6, to thus provide three ‘I am’ statements. The resumption of the narrative after the Judas’ comment leads to the cryptic withdrawal and stumbling of the pursuants. No intra-narrative explanation is offered. Is it merely the boldness of Jesus in presenting himself to them, or are we to find a greater, theophanic, significance to the situation? Certainty is difficult. It is not, however, the pursuers who regain their composure, but rather Jesus who follows with a repeat of his question, to which they reply the same again. This provides the opportunity for Jesus to rejoined in 18:8 ‘I said to you that I am.’ Perhaps Jesus is subtly mocking them here – he has already identified himself as the one they seek, why then do they not act? There will be no capture of Jesus except Jesus permits it. Jesus then uses the emphatic declaration of whom they seek as the launch point for a trade, “If then you seek me, let these depart.”

It is hear that the full import of John 10 is realised. Jn 18:9 gives the key, as it speaks in scriptural terms of the fulfilment of Jesus’ words. The antecedent promise is primarily to be derived from Jn 17:12, but also Jn 6:39 and significantly 10:28. The physical dynamic of the garden arrest is now apparent. In Jn 10:6 when Jesus refers to himself as the ‘door’ of the sheepfold, and in those days a sheepfold would typically be a walled enclosure, and shepherds were known to sleep in the entrance way, thus functionally being the ‘door’, protecting the sheep within. Literally Jesus comes out of this walled enclosure (the garden), to face the thieves and robbers who have been false shepherds of God’s people before him, while behind him are his sheep. He thus physically interposes himself, before offering himself up for the free release of his disciples, in turn this surrender will mean the true liberation of his disciples, as “the evangelist is not just speaking about their bodily life, but rather means that Christ, by sparing them for a time, made provision for their eternal salvation.”¹ He truly is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

The action then is interrupted by the unexpected violence of Peter. For the possession of a sword, it is worth comparison with the account in Lk 22:35-8. Peter draws his sword and makes an attempt on the slave of the high-priest. Only John records that his name is Malchus, another eye-witness detail by someone who knows significant details and facts. The futile strike achieves nothing more than slicing of his ‘ear’, perhaps better ‘earlobe’. In Lk 22:51 Jesus heals the ear, again protecting his disciple for what charge can be brought against him if the ear is there for all to see?

The two elements of Jesus’ speech in Jn 18:11 bring out the theological significance of this interruption. To take them in reverse order, Jesus’ statement about drinking the cup is loaded with Old Testament significance (Ps 75:8, Is 51:17, 22; Jer 25:15-17, 28-9; 49:12). It is the cup of God’s wrath poured out upon the wicked as judgment for sin. Functionally Jesus question here is the affirmation of the plan and so his resolution to do the Father’s will, mirrored in the other gospels by Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer. Peter’s outburst shows the practical outworking of the alternative, which is pitched so winsomely by Satan in Matthew 4. What happens if Jesus doesn’t drink the cup? If the Messiah initiates his messianic kingdom now, if Jesus takes the proferred kingdoms of the world, it will mean the Day of the Lord, judgment upon the wicked, the cleansing of sin from the face of the earth. It would mean no mercy, no forgiveness, no grace. It would be the crown without the cross, and an empty kingdom. Jesus’ refusal of that path is the determination to go to the cross, to offer his life up as the propitiation of God’s wrath upon sin, and so the Good Shepherd will indeed lay down his life – this indeed is the Father’s charge to him (Jn 10:18).

¹ Calvin The Crossway classic commentaries Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1994.

A recent sermon

2011-04-02T17:51:00.002+11:00

A recent sermon on 1 Thess 5:1-11. Apologies for the audio quality, and there are a few minutes missing at the start. The technical difficulties of getting recording happening right in a new church context.

Thoughts on Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns

2011-04-02T17:44:00.001+11:00

Recently I’ve been reading this book, by T.David Gordon. I find it to be thoughtful, provocative, and engaging. In his introduction Gordon helpfully points out that while his intention is to be descriptive, i.e. an explanation of why contemporary American churchgoers do not sing hymns, and find it difficult to do so, his argument to why that is so inevitably involves the superiority of traditional hymnody, and so cannot but come across as prescriptive.

Some of the features of Gordon’s argument are keen insights. He writes of how we have not chose to listen and sing pop music (p15), but rather the ubiquity of pop music means it’s the only music we think of as music. He critiques the values of our contemporary society as amusement, triviality, and contemporaneity as an aesthetic value (p45). He also argues that Christian theology gives us a ground for an aesthetic absolutism, not an aesthetic relativism (p54).

And yet, there are a number of features of Gordon’s argument that I do not find convincing. For example, he argues that comparisons to the translation of the scriptures into the vernacular are not a valid analogy for the music question. And yet, he often speaks of how music that we don’t think of as music (i.e. classical music for most of us), may as well sound oriental (as oriental music sounds foreign to most western ears, trained or not). But I presume Gordon would not think oriental traditions of church should adopt western hymnody? That is, I think Gordon is overplaying the synthesis of traditional Euro-centric hymnic traditions with Christian aesthetic absolutism.

Furthermore, Gordon argues that the need for broad cultural appeal is misguided, and uses Jesus’ discourse about the narrow way leading to eternal life as some kind of scriptural ground for this (Mt 7:13-14). Yet, I would think that Jesus’ words on this matter point to the narrowness of Christ’s exclusivity, and the righteousness that comes only through faith in him. It is not an elitism or narrowness about cultural norms of church life.

In utilising Ken Myer’s tripartite division of music traditions (classical/high, folk, and pop/mass), Gordon finds pop lacking in virtually every category. He does not consider accessible to be a virtue. And yet, if new Christians need to be schooled in a musical tradition that will probably always feel alien, how is that the heart’s response of worship in song? More to the point, since Myer’s schema basically has the same values for classical music and folk music, except that folk music is more accessible, is it not folk music that has the best ‘pitch’ to be the tradition of music the church should pursue.

Indeed, one of the sadnesses of western culture is the decline in true folk music traditions. Folk for many has become a ‘genre’ of pop, a section of the rapidly-disappearing CD stores. Personally I find my truest experience of folk music in learning and listening to the songs of my ancestor’s homeland, Gaelic songs from Scotland. Since few of us have a background in singing songs of everyday life and singing communally, communal singing in church is becoming virtually our only communal singing context (barring karaoke).

All the questions that Gordon finds in traditional hymnbooks, about the theological significance and orthodoxy of lyrics, their poetic value, the fitness of their music, are valuable. I also concur that we should resist aesthetic relativism, and seek to develop a truly robust Christian aesthetic philosophy. Yet there is a proper cultural relativism, that is descriptive, biblical, and has aesthetic implications.

Ultimately I am not convinced that singing hymns alone will save us from contemporary society and the reign of the banal. Rather, we risk raising barriers to people’s entry into worshipping communities, barriers that are not gospel ones, and may in fact prevent people from living lives of faith, or at the least force people to feel like their Christian life is lived out in a stranger’s language.
I’d love some thoughts on this topic, so feel free to comment.

On becoming British

2011-03-17T22:33:00.002+11:00

It's a strange thing, becoming British. In the last week I received a British Passport, which is a de facto et de iure recognition of British citizenship. My father is British, you see. And yet, in one sense I did not become British - there was no naturalisation or citizenship ceremony. It was a claim to a pre-existing status. Yet, if I had never made the claim, I would never have been considered a citizen. That's why it's such a strange thing. The very act of claiming a legitimate citizenship implies that I was always a citizen, but if I had never claimed citizenship, I would never have been considered a citizen at any time, yet it is not the claim itself that creates my citizenship.

I find this an odd thing.

iTunes paralysis

2011-03-17T12:30:00.001+11:00

def: the state of being where I need to either switch audio off in order to focus on a verbal-processing task, or else switch music off in order to listen to some other audio input, but I feel compelled to let the current song finish. Further compounded by the start of any new song.

I don't know if you experience this, but I do quite a bit. I'm loathe to cut songs off mid-stream, especially if they're enjoyable! And yet I need that audio function, whether of my brain or of my computer, to get on with some task or other.

Barefoot Running

2011-03-10T16:28:00.003+11:00

One day this blog will turn back into a blog about patristics, theology, and language pedagogy. I have a PhD application being processed, and I'm still waiting for someone to agree to mark my MTh thesis. In the meantime...

Apart from weightlifting, I've taken up barefoot running. When I tell people this, they usually think I'm crazy. A quick search around the internet will tell you that barefoot runners form a small, dedicated clique of runners, and there is a rather decisive and vehement split over the issue. Barefoot advocates argue that the biomechanics of running barefoot are far superior to running shod, and advocates of shoes tend to think barefoot runners are a bit loony.

For my own part, I think barefoot running *is* better, and it also makes sense to me as a Christian. Barefoot advocates tend to argue that our bodies have evolved to run barefoot. I would just say that it makes sense that God designed our bodies to work without shoes just fine.

I did a few runs around Christmas barefoot, but foolishly (ignorantly) went for 5-6kms, which is about how far I was used to running with shoes. This resulted in blisters that lasted several days and left me hobbling around. More internet research and I realised my problem - too much too soon.

So then it was learning to restrain myself. I started again with a more restricted regime. The first run was literally around the block. Then two blocks. Then three. This week I've just completed two 7km runs. I'm planning to add some sprint training, and think about working up to a 13km run from church to home or something.

Weightlifting is going well by the way. I'm almost dead on track for my April lifting goals. We'll see how we go for the June goals though. Consuming enough is one of my main challenges, not so much the lifting part of things.

Whither this blog?

2011-03-06T07:29:00.002+11:00

It's been more than a while since I've posted anything. I think the nature of the blogosphere has changed. The rise of fb and twitter¹ have changed the shape of people's online communications, and blogs don't fill the same niche of the ecosystem they used to.

Things have changed for me too. Working full-time doesn't leave me feeling like blogging is a priority of any sort, and more subtly changes what fills my days. I'm not reading as much theology or thinking about languages quite so much. Both of which are fine, but contribute large amounts of my actual blogging material.

But I'd still like to be blogging. I think that's the issue that conflicts here. I need to work out how to do that in a constructive way. Setting aside some time each week to write something meaningful and thoughtful.

I'd also be quite happy to keep posting sermon audio, but the systems to make that happen efficiently aren't quite happening in my current setting (things are getting recorded, but they take considerable time to go anywhere after that).

In personal news, lots of good things. The job at the new church is going well. I've put a PhD application in and am waiting to hear on it. And we've been approved by Pioneers for overseas mission work.

I think that's all for now.

¹ I'm constantly amused by the demographic that cries "I don't 'get' twitter".

Sermon: Anointed Conqueror

2011-01-26T13:48:00.006+11:00

Last sermon upload from 2010,
The Anointed Conqueror - Isaiah 63:1-6, Revelation 19:11-16

Pretty sure I mixed up some patriarchs in the middle there.

I did a few others towards the end of the year, but no recordings.
Should be quite a few new ones this year.

A European holiday?

2011-01-22T19:19:00.002+11:00

I'm currently trying to work out whether my wife and I can (a) afford, (b) render worthwhile a trip to Europe. My brother is getting married in late August in Munich, which provides the occasion. Our sentiment is that if we are traipsing across the world we might as well take advantage of that fact. Yet, constraints of time back on this continent probably limit us to two weeks or so.

For my part, I'm quite keen to visit Scotland, primarily Skye and the Outer Hebrides. But stops in Glen Coe, Inverness (Culloden), Aberdeen, and Edinburgh are virtually compulsory.
If time permitted, some short stops in Rome, Athens, and Istanbul would also be ideal, for some classical history.

Thoughts and suggestions from readers are most welcome.

Kicking off the new year

2011-01-20T21:53:00.002+11:00

Not much activity on here, and for a reason. Spent some time away over Christmas and New Year, and a week down the coast with friends. Currently tutoring Latin at the Latin Summer School 2011. Starting the new job in a week. That's what's going on this side of the lake. No doubt some more serious blogging to follow when life stops being so summertime and becomes equally serious.

Weightlifting 2010 vs 2011

2010-12-21T11:22:00.003+11:00

Well, I try not to turn this blog into too much personal stuff, but it's that time of year, so I thought apart from exegesis of Galatians, you might like to hear about my lifting progress.

I've been training consistently all year, but in the last 3 months have become much more serious, and joined an online forum for support, motivation, and tips.

Today I've just achieved the last of my goals for Dec 2010:

Squat: 105kg (Goal was 95)
Deadlift: 125kg (Goal was 115)
Bench Press: 70kg (=Goal)
Military Press: 45kg (=Goal)

I have some pretty ambitious goals for 2011 though. After another year of consistent training, I'd like to see these figures:

Squat: 165kg
Deadlift: 185kg
Bench Press: 110kg
Military Press: 65kg

The problem with Logos sales

2010-12-20T11:28:00.002+11:00

First, I want to say that I really appreciate Logos and its software platform and the vast amount of resources they make available. It's from that standpoint that I write.

But I do find their sales pitches a little bothersome at times. Telling me over and over how great a deal it is to by 2010 titles at 97% off, is a little disingenuous. Firstly, nobody is ever going to read all those 2010 titles. Secondly, the quality of those titles varies greatly, so that not all 2010 titles are worth owning. Thirdly, Even if you decided to take advantage of the sub-deals, there's not really the means for sorting and processing that many titles to work out what is worth owning. Now, there certainly are benefits of owning masses of electronic volumes, all searchable, but in terms of usefulness + searchability + manageability, vast numbers of titles I'm unfamiliar with don't actually help me that much. Which is why simply focusing on the cost vs. print volumes is rarely persuasive.

Also, employment. Or what 2011 will look like.

2010-12-20T09:44:00.002+11:00

I believe it's been formally announced, so I can also inform the internet.

I've taken a position as an assistant minister for 2011. It's a 12mth position, leaving my wife and I free to head off to Mongolia the following year. I'm also putting together my doctoral proposal, hoping to start studies in February. I think I have a topic, in the area of creeds, councils, and the late 4th/5th century.My wife will be doing some theological study as we prepare for Mongolia.

It's good to have things sorted and a bit more settled. I'm really looking forward to the ministry position, I think it will be an excellent year. I'm also looking forward to getting started in the doctoral studies. Actually, an exciting year all round. There's also heavy weights to be lifted, and languages to be excelled in!

Copyright, Mars Hill, and Music

2010-12-09T06:58:00.002+11:00

Tim Smith, the worship pastor at Mars Hill, is writing some genuinely insightful posts over at the Resurgence. Starting with, Thank God Jesus didn't copyright the gospel, which is a telling title if ever there was one (take note German Bible Society!), and explores in a very preliminary way the control copyright puts on using music. The second post is
The same could be said for those caught up in the prestige-game that some call academic publishing.

Thesis: Submitted

2010-12-08T10:51:00.003+11:00

I'm sure my readers will be pleased to hear that I have just handed in my three copies of the MTh thesis for examination and marking. At this stage no examiners have been chosen, so it will be some time I imagine before I receive results. Nonetheless, it is good to be done. Perhaps I'll even write some more thoughtful blog posts...

From an Iraq veteran

2010-11-24T06:57:00.001+11:00

Due to my breakdown, my platoon sergeant, my chaplain, and my first sergeant go to bat for me and go talk to the sergeant major to get me to move to chaplain assistant. So I get moved from my mortar platoon to chaplain assistant, which was probably the best move they could ever make. I was able to get the chaplain’s assistant work done pretty much before day ended, and bought a computer, and started writing out my conscientious objection application. My claim was, I’m a Christian. Jesus said love my enemy. How can I not do what he says and still call him Lord?

A full interview can be read at the war project.

Work completed

2010-11-16T18:19:00.002+11:00

It's always fulfilling to complete some work. I've recently finished up doing a big of translation which you can read about here on the Great Stemma. A small contribution to a far greater project.

My thesis is done, and should be submitted in the next few days.

At a bit of a loss - working on a few small things, trying to get that PhD thesis proposal together, and interviewing for a few jobs.

Augustine on why not to be boring

2010-11-16T09:59:00.001+11:00

Rhetoric, after all, being the art of persuading people to accept something, whether it is true or false, would anyone dare to maintain that truth should stand there without any weapons in the hands of its defenders against falsehood; that those speakers, that is to say, who are trying to convince their hearers of what is untrue, should know how to get them on their side, to gain their attention and have them eating out of their hands by their opening remarks, while these who are defending the truth should not? That those should utter their lies briefly, clearly, plausibly, and these should state their truths in a manner too boring to listen to, too obscure to understand, and finally too repellent to believe? That those should attack the truth with specious arguments, and assert falsehoods, while these should be incapable of either defending the truth or refuting falsehood? that those, to move and force the minds of their hearers into error, should be able by their style to terrify them, move them to tears, make them laugh, give them rousing encouragement, while these on behalf of truth stumble along slow, cold and half asleep?

De Doctrina Christiana IV.2.3. Translation by Edmund Hill.

Exegetical notes on Galatians 2:11-21

2010-11-12T14:38:00.001+11:00

Text:

11 Ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν Κηφᾶς εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν, κατὰ πρόσωπον αὐτῷ ἀντέστην, ὅτι κατεγνωσμένος ἦν. 12 πρὸ τοῦ γὰρ ἐλθεῖν τινας ἀπὸ Ἰακώβου μετὰ τῶν ἐθνῶν συνήσθιεν• ὅτε δὲ ἦλθον, ὑπέστελλεν καὶ ἀφώριζεν ἑαυτὸν φοβούμενος τοὺς ἐκ περιτομῆς. 13 καὶ συνυπεκρίθησαν αὐτῷ [καὶ] οἱ λοιποὶ Ἰουδαῖοι, ὥστε καὶ Βαρναβᾶς συναπήχθη αὐτῶν τῇ ὑποκρίσει. 14 ἀλλʼ ὅτε εἶδον ὅτι οὐκ ὀρθοποδοῦσιν πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, εἶπον τῷ Κηφᾷ ἔμπροσθεν πάντων• εἰ σὺ Ἰουδαῖος ὑπάρχων ἐθνικῶς καὶ οὐχὶ Ἰουδαϊκῶς ζῇς, πῶς τὰ ἔθνη ἀναγκάζεις ἰουδαΐζειν; 15 Ἡμεῖς φύσει Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ οὐκ ἐξ ἐθνῶν ἁμαρτωλοί• 16 εἰδότες [δὲ] ὅτι οὐ δικαιοῦται ἄνθρωπος ἐξ ἔργων νόμου ἐὰν μὴ διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, καὶ ἡμεῖς εἰς Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐπιστεύσαμεν, ἵνα δικαιωθῶμεν ἐκ πίστεως Χριστοῦ καὶ οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων νόμου, ὅτι ἐξ ἔργων νόμου οὐ δικαιωθήσεται πᾶσα σάρξ. 17 εἰ δὲ ζητοῦντες δικαιωθῆναι ἐν Χριστῷ εὑρέθημεν καὶ αὐτοὶ ἁμαρτωλοί, ἆρα Χριστὸς ἁμαρτίας διάκονος; μὴ γένοιτο. 18 εἰ γὰρ ἃ κατέλυσα ταῦτα πάλιν οἰκοδομῶ, παραβάτην ἐμαυτὸν συνιστάνω. 19 ἐγὼ γὰρ διὰ νόμου νόμῳ ἀπέθανον, ἵνα θεῷ ζήσω. Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι• 20 ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγώ, ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χριστός• ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί, ἐν πίστει ζῶ τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντός με καὶ παραδόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ. 21 Οὐκ ἀθετῶ τὴν χάριν τοῦ θεοῦ• εἰ γὰρ διὰ νόμου δικαιοσύνη, ἄρα Χριστὸς δωρεὰν ἀπέθανεν.

Variants:

12 τινας ; τινα – the manuscript support for the former is strong and diverse, and the former reading is more logical in the context.

12 ἦλθον ; ἦλθεν – the manuscript support is slightly more even on this variation, but the former reading is preferable, matching the τινας of the preceding.

Translation:

11 But when Kephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was condemned. 12 for before the coming certain men from Jacob he ate together with the Gentiles; but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing those of the Circumcision. 13 and the remaining Jews joined him in hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was lead astray by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that they were not dealing straight in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Kephas before all, “If you, being a Jew, do not live in a Jewish manner, why do you compel the nations to Judaise? 15 We by nature are Jews and not sinners of the Nations; 16 but knowing that a human being is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by the works of the law all flesh will not be justified. 17 But if we are found to be seeking to be justified in Christ and are ourselves sinners, then is Christ a servant of sin? Not so! 18 For I, through the law, died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been co-crucified with Christ; 20 and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me; what I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God that loved me and gave himself on my behalf. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God: for if through the law came righteousness, then Christ died vainly.

Comments:

In verse 11 we have both the continuations of Paul’s temporally marked biographical defence, but also the introduction of a new sequence. Peter comes to Antioch, and there is a division between Peter and Paul, which Paul goes on to relate. Paul gives the reason for his strong opposition – Peter ‘was condemned’. This may be understood as ‘Peter stood condemned’ by his actions. Paul then explains the basis for Peter’s condemnation in verse 12. His former practice was to share table-fellowship, to eat, with the Gentile believes (with ‘the nations’), an action that Paul understands as being in line with the Gospel message. And, indeed, Peter does too, based upon Acts at least. Yet a new party comes to Antioch, ‘certain men from Jacob (James)’. While Peter and James certainly represent a Christianity more deeply embedded in Jewish cultural practices, it is a mistake to overread this diversity. Debate continues about how we should understand the relationship between these men and James himself. Are they authorised? Do they represent James and James’ position? Acts 15 suggests not. On this basis, I am inclined to see the party as a group associated with James’ more Jewish Christian practice, but more conservative than James himself, and not an authorised delegation by any means. They have some association with James and represent themselves as coming from him.

Paul makes Peter’s very separation a gospel-issue. That is the basis of Paul’s condemnation of Peter. Not that eating with Jews, or eating according to Jewish food laws, is wrong. But that to do so in a context that separates oneself from Gentile believers carries a communication: that they do not have genuine fellowship together.

So much so, that verse 13 introduces the language of hypocrisy. Peter’s actions are out of line with his own beliefs. No doubt that if questioned, Peter’s response would be some kind of accommodation-line. The point here is that in seeking not to offend the Jewish faction, Peter is in fact undermining the gospel message by cutting off the Gentile believers.

So Paul confronts Peter in v14, as he observes that there practice does not align with ‘the truth of the Gospel’. His question highlights Peter’s hypocrisy: since Peter is a Jew, and is free from the Law and so regularly eats and lives like a Gentile, how can he in fact force Gentiles to live in a Jewish manner? This is the outcome of Peter’s withdrawal – it sends the message that Gentile believers will need to ‘Judaise’ in order to have full insider-status in the new Christian movement. Even though Peter himself makes no move to ‘compel’ the Gentiles, his actions are tantamount to the same.

It is unclear when the speech of Paul shifts from historical recollection of conversation with Peter to epistolary discourse with the Galatians, but it is certainly not before v15. The ‘we’ of v15 follows (or establishes, if you prefer), the distinct referents of we vs. you in the letter. We, referring at least to Paul and Peter, but by implication other Jewish-background believers, is used to distinguish Peter and Paul from ‘Gentile sinners’. Paul asserts this as a statement of who they are ‘by nature’. They were born as Jews and so were not unclean Gentiles. And yet, even being such Jews, Paul adds the participial phrase of v16, ‘knowing that a human being is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ’. Paul here states the key theological principle that drives both his rebuke of Peter, and his argument within Galatians. He draws upon Psalm 143:2, with a shift from πᾶς ζῶν to πᾶσα σάρξ, but more importantly adds ἐξ ἔργων νόμου. The future tense δικαιωθήσεται may refer to a decisively eschatological justification, rather than a generic one. This will have important theological implications.

Immediately then we enter into two significant debates. The first is concerning the phrase ἐξ ἔργων νόμου works of the Law. For my part I am unpersuaded by the arguments of the NPP to understand this as something like ‘Jewish boundary markers of ethno-religious identity’. It certainly fails to function that way in Galatians. Neither should it be pushed to a generic ‘legalism.’ Rather, it expresses Torah-obedience within a Mosaic covenant context, which appears to be what the Judaising-teachers in Galatia are pushing for.

The second is debate over the meaning of ‘righteousness’ and ‘justify’ language. Again, I find the NPP unpersuasive. That, a la Wright, justification should be redefined in largely covenant-inclusion terms seems to make a nonsense of justification language at all. I stand with a traditional stream that sees ‘to justify’ to have legal connotations, and to include the idea of declaring and so performatively making right. More on this to come.

v16 then expresses Paul’s conviction, from the scriptures, that a human being is not (and cannot) be right before God through obedience to the Law, but can be so justified, can be so right, through faith in Jesus Christ. (In some instances, I suppose one might take ‘faith of Jesus Christ’ to refer to Jesus’ faithfulness, but I find this position also unconvincing). The fact that Peter and Paul both know this, is why they, as Jews, trusted in Christ – there was no salvation for them through the (works of the) Law. Paul is tripley emphatic here: he first declares what ‘we’ (Jewish believers) know [justification through faith not works of law], then declares that they believed in Christ so that [justification through faith not works of law], because [justification through faith not works of law]. Peter and Paul are in agreement that one has to stop ‘doing’ the Law.

In v17 Paul raises the question: if as believers in Christ and no longer Law-observers, we are ‘sinners’, in that same old covenant sense that Paul raises back in v15, does this in fact make the Messiah a servant or minister of sin? Paul’s emphatic μὴ γένοιτο not only rules this out, but is an expression of its absurdity. v18 gives the reason. ‘sinner’ in the ‘Gentile sinner’ sense is an empty term – it’s been robbed of its meaning by the coming of the new covenantal reality. Rather, to go back to the Law, to the old covenantal reality, would in fact make Paul a transgressor. In reestablishing the Law as a principle for life and obedience before God, the inevitable outcome is sin by the standard of the Law, and so condemnation by the Law. Implicit in Paul’s argument is that Peter’s choice to withdraw from Gentile company and meals, is based on an observance of the Law not only not necessary any more, but in fact a return to it undoes and undermines the Gospel freedom that faith in Christ brings.

The final three verses shift to a very personal note as Paul relates his own salvific existential reality. The Law was the means of Paul’s death insofar as he was condemned by the Law, because the Law is a mechanism of death. The Law produces neither righteousness or life with respect to God. It isn’t designed to do so. And yet, Paul’s death to Law through Law iis the means for life – only through dying to the Law can the Jewish Paul live unto God. Paul immediately links such Law-death to the crucifixion. Paul’s co-crucifixion with Christ is his objective union and participation in Christ precisely and predominately in the Cross event which is the ground of justification. There is no justification without union with Christ. This union and identification is so complete that Paul in verse 20 can state that it is no longer the “I” that lives. There is a kind of ego-death for the Christian, which I believe Paul generalises in 5:17. Who then lives in Paul? None other than the Messiah. And yet Paul does not deny that there is a ‘Paul’ who carries out an existence, ‘life in the flesh’, but that life is entirely by faith, nor is it any generic faith, but a very specific faith in the Son of God (royal-messianic language) who loved Paul even to the point of substitionary death. Paul is caught up in the overwhelming experience of his own reception of grace: the King loved me and died for me: the new life is the life united to the rised Christ. All this to say that Paul’s gospel does not nullify God’s grace, even the gracious gift of the Law. Paul would in fact be nullifying the grace of God if he demanded Torah-observance. And yet, if Torah-observance could in fact bring righteousness, if the Law was a mechanism for righteousness and life, then Christ and his death was pointless, unneccesary. And so Paul prepares to move into the third chapter, wherein he will go head to head with the Judaising teachers about their vain gospel which renders Christ’s death useless.

Some recent blog posts on the debate over 2:16 faith in Christ/Christ's faithfulness. I am in substantial agreement.

Tasks for Nov & Dec

2010-11-09T15:13:00.003+11:00

Well, my master's thesis is virtually complete. This morning I sent through a final draft to my supervisor, and pending a nod of approval from him, I'll print it up and submit it, probably next week now. I had hoped to submit this very week, but I feel it would be slightly foolish to submit a thesis without my supervisor looking at the final draft first.

The job front is still pending, but things are looking brighter. More on that when things are clearer.

That leaves about 6 weeks before the end of the year. And a few projects to tidy up:

* Gregory reader. I've let it slide the last couple of months, but I'm planning to pick it up again and put in the effort. I could at least have the reader done with vocab, if not grammatical commentary, by the end of the year, and release a Beta version with just the vocab helps.

* Find a PhD topic. I need to reignite that conversation, and do some more research in the field, in order to formulate something both interesting, researchable, and acceptable to the university.

* I'd like to finish up the Galatians series. These are exegetical notes that came out of an MA subject I audited, and it would be good to get through the book.

* Still tidying up a few pieces of Latin translation for a project. And then need to prepare for the Latin Summer School in January as well.

Publish. verb. to make something public.

2010-11-07T17:47:00.000+11:00

The irony of publishing today is that publishing does anything but make something public.

With the invention of the printing press, ‘publishing’ became a live possibility. That is, a means for the mass reproduction of written material was available, and in conjunction with the Reformation and related social and religious changes, put to great effect. Writers could, with the proper backing, produce a text and see it promulgated to all and sundry. It was possible for private discourse to become public propaganda (in the most beneficent sense of the word).

As publishing developed it became more and more a means to share – to share ideas and information. How else would you get your ideas into the hands of others interested to read them and hear them, short of going in person to speak?
Eventually you get the advent of periodicals and journals. Regular publications designed to highlight and desseminate worthy writings on a particular topic. Now ‘to publish’ means to have a piece deemed worthy by the editors, or peer-review, of being given a hearing. A form of censorship and vetting enters the process. And not necessarily a bad one. The control of publishing is also a filter for garbage, provided the filter can be trusted.

But we now live in a world where academic publishing does anything but make knowledge public. That is, the cost of subscriptions continues to increase, and journals become harder to access, and copyright is locked up and articles remain hidden behind fireways and pay-walls, and all this made sense in an older world, but this is the world of the internet. This is the age when someone can publish something online, public for anyone who can get hold of a computer with a connection (admittedly a small percent of the population, yet a staggeringly large small-percent).

So now the cost of academics choosing to publish in elitist journals, with commercially-driven pricing agendas, is not to spread their ideas, but to refuse to spread their ideas. ‘Publish or perish’ actually means ‘play the prestige game’ of elitest academic publishing. What good is another academic tome selling for $200? It will only be bought by libraries and borrowed by a handful of people. What good is an article that is published 3 years later than it was relevant, in a journal only those with access to wealthy libraries can read? When this kind of work could be freely and publicly published for all? Sure, we can quibble about the value of peer-review (though even in the hard sciences peer-review is not always all it makes itself out to be – there are personal and political agendas there too) and filtering the garbage, But if a work is good enough to stand on its own, then readers should be critical enough to come to their own determinations and conclusions. It is the task of the student and reader to assess their sources thoroughly.

Knowledge wants to be free. Ideas live by copying. No-one loses from free information, except the gatekeepers of dead media.

Two thoughts on 'the social network'

2010-11-07T16:56:00.004+11:00

The wife and I watched 'the social network' on Saturday. It's a passable movie. It's worth keeping in mind that it's not only fictional, but the work of a team that doesn't want to let truth get in the way of story. That said there are two lines in the movie worth reflecting on.

1. "A guy who makes a new chair doesn't owe money to everyone who ever built a chair."

This is the essence of the case against intellectual property. What is it to own an idea? You can't control it, you can't exclude people from using it, there's no physical means of doing so. It's not a 'thing'. And IP by nature must be copied to be shared. But copies don't dilute in value. If I take your idea of a chair, I haven't taken anything from you. You aren't short the idea of the chair. Want to be the only guy in town making chairs? Sure, but let's not call it property.

Much as movie-Zuckerburg is unlikeable, he's at least right on this, even if the scriptwriters missed the biggest point of their film.

2. There's a line in the film, I haven't found it online, but it's the moment when Zuckerburg talks about "taking the whole college experience and putting it online", and I think it's linked to the relationship-status epiphany.

Here's the biggest secret about facebook - the biggest game on facebook is not farmville, it's facebook. facebook is the game. or, college is the game. or, high school is the game. or, social networking *is* the game. Do you see that? That high-school in micro, and then college for a bunch of people, is actually about a social game in which the nebulous contest is for popularity, but not necessarily in a crass 'I have the most friends' kind of way, but in a thousand subtle interactions, attempts to gain status, steal status, improve status, and network ourselves into being liked. The initial shifts to make facebook first available to school students, and then to the world, essentially began to replicate the social games we play in those institutional environments, and make them shape our whole life. it's not that we wouldn't play if we weren't on facebook - we were already playing. facebook just took that, put it online, quanitified a few aspects, added some nifty coding and algorithms to play by, and we're a generation hooked on playing. life is a game, and facebook is its virtual mirror.

The inside is the outside is the inside.

2010-11-07T16:56:00.001+11:00

I imagine, and not entirely without reason, that there was a time when nothing was ‘private’, except maybe the goings on inside your head. Life was lived mostly in the open, communities were small, kinship-related, and so people knew everybody in their vicinity, and so everyone knew, to some extent, what everyone was like, and what everyone was up to.

But then our civilisations grew up. Villages turned into towns turned into cities. People stopped living in family compounds, and began to live in family units, and very recently, alone. What went on inside a property wasn’t known to those on the outside. And not only did we create the ‘private’, but we enshrined it as a right – the right not to have others know.

And yet now, in the most isolated time in history, technology is turning it all on its head again. The nature of the internet, and the spawning of social networking, is restructuring our society. People are giving up their privacy for connection. Once you share on the internet, you have shared with everybody. It’s there, always, for everyone to see, despite what ‘privacy’ settings you have. And as other technology invades our society – device tracking, proliferation of cctv, integration of databases, consumer profiling – the internet becomes the gateway to a kind of public life many of aren’t even aware we’re having.

Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen. What it does mean is that we will need to make a psychological shift: the private is public again. In fact, we are better off assuming that all our life is public. Despite society’s late 20th century rejection of public or social morality, I suspect the internet will mean the end of private morality in one sense, and the rebirth of a public morality, though of a very different kind in this post-Christendom context. The censure and judgment of online life will become, in its own way, the social ostracism and exclusion of many far earlier close-knit public communities.

Exegetical notes on Galatians 2:1-10

2010-11-02T11:04:00.003+11:00

The Text:

1 Ἔπειτα διὰ δεκατεσσάρων ἐτῶν πάλιν ἀνέβην εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα μετὰ Βαρναβᾶ συμπαραλαβὼν καὶ Τίτον• 2 ἀνέβην δὲ κατὰ ἀποκάλυψιν• καὶ ἀνεθέμην αὐτοῖς τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ὃ κηρύσσω ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, κατʼ ἰδίαν δὲ τοῖς δοκοῦσιν, μή πως εἰς κενὸν τρέχω ἢ ἔδραμον. 3 ἀλλʼ οὐδὲ Τίτος ὁ σὺν ἐμοί, Ἕλλην ὤν, ἠναγκάσθη περιτμηθῆναι• 4 διὰ δὲ τοὺς παρεισάκτους ψευδαδέλφους, οἵτινες παρεισῆλθον κατασκοπῆσαι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἡμῶν ἣν ἔχομεν ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, ἵνα ἡμᾶς καταδουλώσουσιν, 5 οἷς οὐδὲ πρὸς ὥραν εἴξαμεν τῇ ὑποταγῇ, ἵνα ἡ ἀλήθεια τοῦ εὐαγγελίου διαμείνῃ πρὸς ὑμᾶς. 6 Ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν δοκούντων εἶναί τι, - ὁποῖοί ποτε ἦσαν οὐδέν μοι διαφέρει• πρόσωπον [ὁ] θεὸς ἀνθρώπου οὐ λαμβάνει - ἐμοὶ γὰρ οἱ δοκοῦντες οὐδὲν προσανέθεντο, 7 ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον ἰδόντες ὅτι πεπίστευμαι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς ἀκροβυστίας καθὼς Πέτρος τῆς περιτομῆς, 8 ὁ γὰρ ἐνεργήσας Πέτρῳ εἰς ἀποστολὴν τῆς περιτομῆς ἐνήργησεν καὶ ἐμοὶ εἰς τὰ ἔθνη, 9 καὶ γνόντες τὴν χάριν τὴν δοθεῖσάν μοι, Ἰάκωβος καὶ Κηφᾶς καὶ Ἰωάννης, οἱ δοκοῦντες στῦλοι εἶναι, δεξιὰς ἔδωκαν ἐμοὶ καὶ Βαρναβᾷ κοινωνίας, ἵνα ἡμεῖς εἰς τὰ ἔθνη, αὐτοὶ δὲ εἰς τὴν περιτομήν• 10 μόνον τῶν πτωχῶν ἵνα μνημονεύωμεν, ὃ καὶ ἐσπούδασα αὐτὸ τοῦτο ποιῆσαι.

πάλιν ἀνέβην in v1 has both early and diverse attestation. The reverse order is supported by mainly Western texts. In any case the significance would be virtually zero.

In v5 several texts omit οἷς, which grammatically smoothes the text; omission of οὐδέ on the other hand, might harmonise Paul’s yielding with Act 16:3 (so Metzger conjectures), but would run directly contrary to Paul’s Galatian argument.

v9 the reading of the names is altered in some texts, with the more familiar Πέτρος substituted for Κηφᾶς, and brought to the front for prominence.

Translation:

1 Then after 14 years I again went up to Jerusalem, taking with me Barnabas and Titus; 2 I went up in accordance with a revelation; and I presented to them the gospel which I preach among the nations, privately to those that seemed good, lest somehow I am running or have run in vain. 3 but not even Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised; 4 now on account of the snuck-in pseudo-brothers, who snuck in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might enslave us, 5 to whom not even for an hour did we yield to subjugation, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. 6 But from those that seemed to be something – whatever they were formerly matters nothing to me (God does not judge men at face-value) – for those who seemed to be regarded added nothing to me, 7 but rather seeing that I have been entrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcision just as Peter of the uncircumcision, 8 for the One operating through Peter for the apostolate of the uncircumcised worked also through me to the nations; 9 and knowing the grace that was given to me, Jacob and Kephas and John, those seeming to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we unto the nations, and they unto the circumcision; 10 only that we should remember the poor , which this very thing I was eager to do.

Comments:

The temporal sequencing of Paul’s autobiographical material continues with the initial Ἔπειτα. The 14 year gap between Paul’s first initial visit, and this second visit again confirms Paul’s autonomous gospel ministry. Commentators divide over whether this visit accords with Acts 15, Acts 11, or another occasion altogether. Given that the council in Acts 15 provides a clear statement of Gentile law-observance, it seems odd that Paul would not cite nor bring that letter to bear on the Galatian scenario if this visit coincided with the Acts 15 narrative. For this reason I am inclined to see this visit as either corresponding to the Acts 11 visit, or another unspecified visit to Jerusalem.

Paul cites three different reasons for his visit to Jerusalem on this occasion. Firstly, it is in accordance with a revelation. Paul does not identify whether this revelation in particular was given to him directly. In any case, it grounds Paul’s movements in God’s activity and purpose. Secondly, he presents to ‘them’ his gospel, in conjunction with the third reason, to ensure his gospel work wasn’t in vain.
Understandably, it can seem that Paul’s presentation of his gospel to the Jerusalem leaders is to gain their approval, but broader considerations render this unlikely. Paul has been arguing for the God-revealed autonomous nature of his gospel. He doesn’t personally need the Jerusalem leaders’ approval or blessing. No, rather Paul’s presentation of his gospel is to confirm the unity of his gospel with the Jerusalem leaders, the Jewish-apostolate, and so to reject claims that Paul’s gospel work was half-done, which left open a path for his Judaising opponents to sneak in and ‘complete’ Paul’s gospel work.

At this point attention to pronouns becomes more necessary. I think a good case can be maintained that the language of ‘we’ throughout most of Galatians refers to Jewish-background believers in Christ, while ‘you’ has in view Gentile-background believers, i.e. the Galatians. So Paul notes that Titus, though a Greek, was not compelled to be circumcised. The Jerusalem church did not require entrance and observance of Torah from a Gentile-believer.

The grammar of 4-6 is somewhat discontinuous. All of verse 4 prepares for verse 5, so that Paul’s refusal to yield is the main concept. The false-brothers of verse 4 are the Jerusalem counterparts to the opponents in Galatia – Judaising believers who seek Torah-observance. The ‘our liberty’ in v4 refers to the very liberty that even Jewish-background believers in Christ have, a freedom from the Law which Paul will elaborate latter in the epistle. Yet Paul’s defence of his liberty has the Gentiles in view – v5. Gentile freedom from Law-observance depends upon Jewish freedom from the same.

In verse 6 Paul notes that the Jerusalem leaders added nothing additional to his gospel. This matches his purpose in coming to Jerusalem – to attest to the agreement in gospel proclamation between his gospel and their gospel, so that the unity of the gospel might be established, not so that Paul’s gospel might be approved. Thus Paul defends both the autonomy of his gospel and its congruity with the other apostles’ message.

Paul’s repeated disavowal of respect for status in these verses also deserves some comment. The δοκεῖν language should not be treated as suggesting insincerity, as if Paul were saying ‘those who seemed to be something (but aren’t)’. This is an English connotation to the language of ‘seeming’ that does not apply in the Greek. Paul’s point is probably rather that, being unacquainted with the Jerusalem church, these were those who did indeed appear to him to be important and proven leaders. Yet he also makes the point that ‘whatever they were formerly matters nothing to me’. The presence of the word ποτε suggests that Paul’s disconcern for their status has more to do with their former way of life, indeed all our former ways of life, than present reality. His aside that πρόσωπον [ὁ] θεὸς ἀνθρώπου οὐ λαμβάνει draws from Dt 10:17, with some minor alterations. The concept is prominent elsewhere in James, in referring to God’s impartiality.

Verses 7-8 then concentrate on the difference between Paul and the Jerusalem leaders. The expressions τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς ἀκροβυστίας and τῆς περιτομῆς should be understood as the receivers of that gospel proclamation, so that Paul’s apostolate extends to the Gentiles, whereas Peter’s focuses on the Jews. This division of mission fields is confirmed in v9, with the right hand of fellowship, given to Paul and Barnabas, for their Gentile-mission work. The final comment of v10 may sound like an addition to Paul’s teachings, but Paul emphasises that it is already his own concern. There is some debate about who ‘the poor’ are, whether the marginalised in Jewish society, or the economic sufferers in the Jerusalem church, or the poor in general as an expression of Christian faith. In light of the ethical dimensions of later Galatians, I would suggest that it is the economically poor within the Christian community, and in light of the historical factors particularly those suffering in connection with the Jerusalem church.

Still at the drawing board

2010-11-02T10:16:00.003+11:00

With the PhD application. My 1 Peter proposal was considered a bit too broad-ranging and theological.

I'm not really sure what else to go with at the moment. I'd really like a fairly defined body of texts, sermons preferably, by a single author, which have theological significance, that can be studied in a history-oriented department.

Exegetical notes on Galatians 1:10-24

2010-10-28T11:54:00.001+11:00

The Text:

10 Ἄρτι γὰρ ἀνθρώπους πείθω ἢ τὸν θεόν; ἢ ζητῶ ἀνθρώποις ἀρέσκειν; εἰ ἔτι ἀνθρώποις ἤρεσκον, Χριστοῦ δοῦλος οὐκ ἂν ἤμην. 11 Γνωρίζω γὰρ ὑμῖν, ἀδελφοί, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τὸ εὐαγγελισθὲν ὑπʼ ἐμοῦ ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν κατὰ ἄνθρωπον• 12 οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐγὼ παρὰ ἀνθρώπου παρέλαβον αὐτὸ οὔτε ἐδιδάχθην, ἀλλὰ διʼ ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 13 Ἠκούσατε γὰρ τὴν ἐμὴν ἀναστροφήν ποτε ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ, ὅτι καθʼ ὑπερβολὴν ἐδίωκον τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἐπόρθουν αὐτήν, 14 καὶ προέκοπτον ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ ὑπὲρ πολλοὺς συνηλικιώτας ἐν τῷ γένει μου, περισσοτέρως ζηλωτὴς ὑπάρχων τῶν πατρικῶν μου παραδόσεων. 15 Ὅτε δὲ εὐδόκησεν [ὁ θεὸς] ὁ ἀφορίσας με ἐκ κοιλίας μητρός μου καὶ καλέσας διὰ τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ 16 ἀποκαλύψαι τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐμοί, ἵνα εὐαγγελίζωμαι αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, εὐθέως οὐ προσανεθέμην σαρκὶ καὶ αἵματι 17 οὐδὲ ἀνῆλθον εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα πρὸς τοὺς πρὸ ἐμοῦ ἀποστόλους, ἀλλὰ ἀπῆλθον εἰς Ἀραβίαν καὶ πάλιν ὑπέστρεψα εἰς Δαμασκόν. 18 Ἔπειτα μετὰ ἔτη τρία ἀνῆλθον εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα ἱστορῆσαι Κηφᾶν καὶ ἐπέμεινα πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡμέρας δεκαπέντε, 19 ἕτερον δὲ τῶν ἀποστόλων οὐκ εἶδον εἰ μὴ Ἰάκωβον τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ κυρίου. 20 ἃ δὲ γράφω ὑμῖν, ἰδοὺ ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ ὅτι οὐ ψεύδομαι. 21 Ἔπειτα ἦλθον εἰς τὰ κλίματα τῆς Συρίας καὶ τῆς Κιλικίας• 22 ἤμην δὲ ἀγνοούμενος τῷ προσώπῳ ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῆς Ἰουδαίας ταῖς ἐν Χριστῷ. 23 μόνον δὲ ἀκούοντες ἦσαν ὅτι ὁ διώκων ἡμᾶς ποτε νῦν εὐαγγελίζεται τὴν πίστιν ἥν ποτε ἐπόρθει, 24 καὶ ἐδόξαζον ἐν ἐμοὶ τὸν θεόν.

v11 γάρ vs. δέ. Almost balanced textual support. One suspects the meaning is not overly affected by the variation.

v15 ὁ Θεός has numerous textual witnesses, but importance texts omit it. It probably should be omitted, since its insertion is explicable by a desire to bring out the implied subject of εὐδόκησεν. Its omission, conversely, would be difficult to explain.

v18 Κηφᾶν is supported by strong textual witnesses, while Πέτρον is almost certainly a later substitution of the more familiar Greek name for the apostle. Such a variation occurs several later times in the epistle, which I will simply note without comment.

Translation:

10 For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? For if I still were pleasing men, I would not be a slave of Christ. 11 For I make known to you, brothers, the gospel proclaimed by me, that it is not merely human in nature; 12 For neither did I receive it from men nor was taught it, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For you heard my way of live formerly in Judaism, that I persecuted the church of God in an extreme manner and attempted to destroy it, 14 and was advancing in Judaism beyond many of the cohort of my generation, being an extreme zealot for my ancestral traditions. 15 But when [God], having set me apart from my mothers womb and calling me through his grace, 16 revealed his son in me, so that I might preach him among the nations [Gentiles], I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those apostles that precede me, but I departed into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. 18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to pay an inquiring visit to Kephas and I stayed with him fifteen days, 19 but another of the apostles I did not see except Jacob the brother of the Lord. 20 which things I write to you, see! before God, I am not lying. 21 Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia; 22 I was unknown by face to the churches of Judaea that are in Christ. 23 They only were hearing that the one formerly persecuting them not preached the Faith which formerly he sought to destroy, 24 and they glorified God because of me.

Comments:

Although some read πείθω and ἀρέσκειν as having virtually the same force, I think it better to give each an independent force. So Paul raises the question about (a) persuading, and (b) pleasing, and implies a dichotomy between the two. Is the object of his persuasive efforts God or men? The second clause of 10, ‘or do I seek to please men?’ along with the answer in 10c, resolves the rhetorical questions. Paul isn’t making a rhetorical defence before God, since he has no need to persuade God nor purpose in doing so, but rather seeks to please God. On the other hand, his persuasive attempts are directed towards human beings, which is why he doesn’t seek to please human beings. In 10c Paul suggests that service (slavery) to Christ, necessarily rules out pleasing men. This verse sets up the tone of the rest of the passage, which will launch into Paul’s defence of his gospel and apostleship.

v11 then functions as a topic sentence, about the nature and origin of Paul’s gospel. It is not κατὰ ἄνθρωπον, ‘according to men’, which should probably be understood as ‘being human in nature and characteristics’. The reason for its non-human character is, v12, its non human origins – neither received (the passing on of tradition) from a human being, nor taught it, but by a direct, supernatural revelation whose agent and source if Jesus Christ.

Paul’s backing (γὰρ) for the radical nature of this revelation is point to his former way of life ‘in Judaism’. However we want to read the parting of the ways, Paul is prepared to see his former life as part of a distinct religious identity of ‘Judaism’. There is real irony that to ‘advance in Judaism’ was to ‘persecute τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ, a phrase which has the Jewish identity of ‘Israel’, but which Paul now situates as ‘God’s assembly’. To advance in Judaism was to persecute the Israel of God (cf. 6:16). Though I would be reluctant to assert any literary or direct connection, the zeal for τῶν πατρικῶν μου παραδόσεων matches well with Jesus’ own engagement with the Pharisaical schools, as in Mark 7:1-23.

The construction of v15 is odd, partly because the flow of thought introduced by ‘but when God was pleased...’ is interrupted by an extended description of God in terms of Paul’s setting-apart from the womb and calling. The phrase is drawn from Isaiah 49:1, with further correspondence to Jeremiah 1:5, and situates Paul’s calling in terms of the Old Testament prophets. What other category for calling would Paul have drawn upon? For this reason, I cannot sanction interpretations that want to deny a conversion experience to Paul in place of a ‘calling’ experience. Paul’s radical then/now Judaism/Christ constructions rules out a purely intra-Judaism development.

The nature of Paul’s calling is specified in v16, to preach the gospel to the nations. Nations here should be understood in its typical sense, ‘Gentiles’, hence my inclusion in brackets. Thus, Paul’s calling and conversion to some extent coincide. Whether v16 ἐν ἐμοί is to be taken as ‘in me’, as the location of the revelation, or else instrumentally ‘by me’, to Paul’s ongoing revelation of the Christ through his preaching, is open to debate. Though Paul’s ongoing preaching is logically dependent upon the revelation of the Christ to him.

Paul now emphasises the autonomy of his initial period. He did not ‘consult with flesh and blood’ – reinforcing his earlier comment in v12, about the non-human origin and teaching of his gospel. v17 likewise disassociates his gospel activity from the Jerusalem-apostles Rather, Paul went to Arabia (i.e. the Nabataean kingdom), and specifically Damascus.

The three year gap before Paul visits Jerusalem gives his gospel and apostleship a ‘distance’ from the Jerusalem apostles which serves as Paul’s defence of its independence. He does not deny dealing with the Jerusalem apostles, but is keen to delineate his autobiography in terms that demonstrate that independence. So, v18, he mentions his visit to Kephas (Peter), which lasted 15 days, and involved no other major Jerusalem identities beyond Jacob (James), the brother of Jesus. v20 is a meta-comment upon the narrative itself – Paul draws attention to his self-disclosure and attests to his truthfulness. v21-24 summarise events beyond that initial visit – his return into Syria and Cilicia, the fact that he was not acquainted in person with Judean churches, and they praised God.

We might also note that Paul’s visit to Jerusalem here is informal. There is not delegation, no officiality, just Paul coming to Jerusalem and meeting two Christian leaders. He is again emphasising that he didn’t ‘get’ his gospel on this occasion. Indeed, cross-checking with Acts reveals his prior gospel ministry. Secondly, ‘the Faith’ in v23 is a remarkably Christian expression, since Christianity as a religion is built upon ‘Faith’. To speak of other religious traditions as ‘faiths’ is to import a key Christian distinctive into them, that is not necessarily present. So Paul can speak of preaching the Faith in a unique sense of the word. This section, 1:11-24, repeatedly hammers the defence of the source of Paul’s gospel and Paul’s apostleship.

Some Latin translation help

2010-10-27T17:00:00.003+11:00

I'm working on a project for someone, and having a few problems with the following passages. Would appreciate if anybody could chime in with some suggestions. There may well be spelling errors/variations, etc., to be figured out. I'll list the latin text, followed by my rambling notes/paraphrase.

1. et occisit Cain tritabum suum et per hoc plantarium sanguinis e digamie dilubii protinus pena subvertit

1. and he slew Cain his own tritabum and through this of his family’s cutting he overturned the penaly of the flood...

2. propter quod zelo ductus interfecit eum. Primus ante diluvium Cain civitatem Enoch ex nomine filii sui in India condidit. Quam urbem ex sola sua postitate inplevit quidis vult quod impiorum pergenies civitatem in ipsa mundi origine construxit. in quod novemus in pios in hac vita ete fundatos, scenos us hospites ete et preginos unem et Abel tamquam preginius intram populis inranius non condidit civitatem superna en enim secorum civitas

2. On account of which, led by jealousy, he killed him. Cain founded the first city, Enoch from the name of his son, in India, before the Flood. Which city he filled by his own [power?] with whomever he wished, since in the very beginning of the world he built this city through the talents of the wicked....

3. a quorum iteritu omnis mundus letabitirunt et invicem re munera mittent

3. from whom the whole world will kill [iteritu] and in turn send rewards

A possible PhD topic

2010-10-26T18:12:00.002+11:00

I may have come up with something. I'm proposing to do a study of the interpretation and reception of 1 Peter in patristic literature. Just looking at the ACCS, there are 7 possible commentaries, though how extensive and how much they show dependencies I'm yet to investigate. They include: Didymus the Blind, Theophylact, Bede, Hilary of Arles, Oecumenius, Cassiodorus, and someone else whose name currently escaped me. That, plus a thorough working over of Biblia Patristica could generate some interesting material. Most of these smaller commentaries have no English translation, which would be an advantage.

Exegetical notes on Galatians 1:6-9

2010-10-25T13:45:00.002+11:00

The Text:

6 Θαυμάζω ὅτι οὕτως ταχέως μετατίθεσθε ἀπὸ τοῦ καλέσαντος ὑμᾶς ἐν χάριτι [Χριστοῦ] εἰς ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον, 7 ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο, εἰ μή τινές εἰσιν οἱ ταράσσοντες ὑμᾶς καὶ θέλοντες μεταστρέψαι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ. 8 ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐὰν ἡμεῖς ἢ ἄγγελος ἐξ οὐρανοῦ εὐαγγελίζηται [ὑμῖν] παρʼ ὃ εὐηγγελισάμεθα ὑμῖν, ἀνάθεμα ἔστω. 9 ὡς προειρήκαμεν καὶ ἄρτι πάλιν λέγω• εἴ τις ὑμᾶς εὐαγγελίζεται παρʼ ὃ παρελάβετε, ἀνάθεμα ἔστω.

There is considerable doubt about the textual readings of Χριστοῦ in v6 and ὑμῖν in v8. Χριστοῦ is omitted by significant Western texts, but not all. Its presence serves only to definitely identify the grace in view. The presence of ὑμῖν in v8 restricts the anathama to a particularly Galatian scenario, rather than a more widespread principle, though such a principle would not be inappropriate. Nevertheless, I retain the reading.

Translation:

6 I am amazed that are deserting so quickly from the one that called you by the grace [of Christ], to another gospel 7 which is not another [gospel], except there are some troubling you and wishing to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven preach the gospel [to you] different from what we preached to you, let him be anathema. 9 As we said before and now I say again: if someone preaches to you different than what you received, let him be anathema.

Comments:

Unlike most of his letters, and letters in general, Galatians omits any thanksgiving and moves directly into astonishment. The cause of his astonishment is not the celerity of their abandoment, so much as the desertion itself, couple with its speed. Theodoret and Chrysostom both highlight that the desertion is spoken of as not ‘from the gospel’ but from God himself, to heighten the immensity of their abandoment. The mention of ‘calling’ here again previews significant latter themes in the letter. The play in vv6-7 about the gospel hinges on the fact that, in Paul’s view, another gospel is, by definition, not a gospel at all. Thus he is forced into speaking of it in one instance as ‘a different gospel’, but then denying its very gospel-like nature, since the message they are turning to is not gospel.

v7 also introduces us more directly to the Galatian Opponents. They are described here as ‘those troubling’ the Galatians, and ‘wishing to pervert the gospel of Christ.’ Paul has no hesitation about casting them in the most negative light possible, since at stake is the very gospel message of Paul, and thus the eternity of the Galatian believers. This leads into the twice-over warning and anathema. ‘We’ in v8 should probably be understood as Paul and his entourage, though the primary originator of such preaching is Paul himself. It is worth noting the complement between ‘different from what we preached’ and ‘different from what you received’. The language of ἀνάθεμα picks up the OT cultic language of given over to destruction, and so indicates falling under the wrath of God in judgment.

It is unclear from the text itself whether ‘as we said before’ should be taken to refer to Pauline teaching in Galatia, which he is seeking to remind them of, or as a communicative device referring simply back to v8, and so simply drawing attention to the gravity of Paul’s warning message.

Paul's opening gambit highlights the main concern, especially of chapters 1-2, that of defending his gospel against the Opponents, who he perceives to be peddling an alternate, and thus deficient and deceptive, 'gospel'. Paul's defence will come in two parts, as he shows both the independent origin and the lack of difference from the Jerusalem apostles, of his gospel.

Exegetical notes on Galatians 1:1-5

2010-10-24T19:38:00.003+11:00

The text:

Παῦλος ἀπόστολος οὐκ ἀπʼ ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ διʼ ἀνθρώπου ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν, 2 καὶ οἱ σὺν ἐμοὶ πάντες ἀδελφοὶ ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῆς Γαλατίας, 3 χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ 4 τοῦ δόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν, ὅπως ἐξέληται ἡμᾶς ἐκ τοῦ αἰῶνος τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος πονηροῦ κατὰ τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ πατρὸς ἡμῶν, 5 ᾧ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων, ἀμήν.

A number of variations in the text of v3 appear. The strongest of these is πατρὸς καὶ κυρίου ἡμῶν which is preferable on external evidence, with a strong and broad cross-section of attestation. Paul's usage elsewhere (Rom 1:7, 1 Cor 1:3, 2 Cor 1:2, etc.) supports the reading as stands, and a desire to align ἡμῶν with κυρίου would make sense of a scribal change. The effect of the primary alternate reading is theologically negligible, in my opinion.

Translation:

Paul, an apostle not from men nor through human agency but through Jesus Christ and God [the] Father that raised him from the dead, 2 and all the brothers with me – to the churches of Galatia,
3 Grace to you and Peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 he that gives himself for our sins, so that he might rescue us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory eternally, Amen.

Comments:

The standard epistolary introduction receives a number of distinctive features in 1:1-5. Firstly, the author Paul immediately identifies himself as an apostle, and this previews one of the dominant concerns of the epistle in chapters 1-2, a defence of Paul’s gospel intertwined with his apostleship. The qualifications he gives direct our attention first negatively, to the source (not from men), and the agency (nor by men) of his apostleship, then positively to the agency of Jesus Christ, and the source. A strict distinction between source and agency is probably overblown here, so that Paul’s double statement has a certain highlighting of its non-human origins. The qualification of God the Father as ‘the one that raised him from the dead’ is the only reference to resurrection in Galatians, and yet its prominent position in identifying the very God who is the source of Paul’s apostleship reinforces its prominence in his gospel, despite its absence from the bulk of the epistle.

The reference to the brothers with him reminds us that Paul’s epistolary and pastoral work was not done in isolation, but in community.

The addressees, the churches of Galatia, are a source of scholarly contention. For myself, I favour a Southern Galatian hypothesis. The reference to multiple churches suggests multiple gatherings of Christians, and reinforces the notion from elsewhere the ἐκκλεσία properly refers in early christian literature to a local community.

The twin greeting of grace and peace combines the distinctive Jewish salutation, shalom, with the uniquely Christian emphasis on grace, forming a typical Pauline address. Some suggest the grammar of this verse is open to being read as ‘God – our Father and the Lord Jesus’, as a statement of Jesus’ divinity. While this is possible, I am unconvinced the Greek reads so straightforwardly. It can well be agreed, though, that Jesus’ divinity is attested on other NT grounds, and conceded that Jewish 1st century authors would not invite such ambiguity frivolously. That the Christ is identified further in v4 matches the further description of the Father in v1, giving us a rounded presentation of both death and resurrection, with the clear gospel statement of ‘the one giving himself for our sins.’ This is the core of Paul’s gospel message, which is part and parcel of the content of the Galatian epistle.

The purpose clause introduced gives an eschatological note to Paul’s gospel and epistle, ‘this present evil age’ picking up apocalyptic language. However, a full-blown apocalypticism of genre or outlook is impossible to sustain from the rest of the epistle. Thus, it is better characterised as part of Paul’s eschatology. The present age is passing, done with, and the new age has come, into which we are rescued by Christ’s salvific death. The importance of time is also previewed here.

The death and rescue are both 'according to the will of our God and Father', and so reveal and accomplish the divine purpose, which cannot be thwarted. This final statement leads Paul naturally into praise, as he offers up a doxological conclusion to his introductory statements.

On the reading of texts, a personal note

2010-10-23T15:30:00.003+11:00

This past week I've had the pleasure of spending three days in the second block of an intensive MA subject on Galatians. A pleasure for two reasons. 1) As an MTh student, I have been able to audit subjects like these for free, reaping much of the benefit without either financial cost or submissable assessments. 2) There is just something very refreshing about the study of the text. I like nothing better than to sit down with a portion of text, particularly the sacred scriptures that is, but other texts occasion a similiar delight, and read it with close attention to detail. The bulk of my MTh is simply a reading of Chrysostom with attention to certain details. My preaching style is built upon simply reading the text in front of us. The text is indeed the thing.

If I can hold my own attention for long enough, I will post up a series of exegetical notations on Galatians.

doctoral application

2010-10-23T15:24:00.002+11:00

I'm meant to put in a PhD application this week. That involves me doing enough preliminary research to formulate at least a provisional topic. I'm thinking of taking a portion of Gregory of Nazianzus' sermons, preferebly untranslated, and seeing what I can do with them. Suggestions welcome.

The Job Search

2010-10-21T22:17:00.002+11:00

It isn't going very well. I'm half-qualified to be a Latin teacher, by which I mean that I have excellent Latin, but I don't have a teaching background or degree. So, I've applied for at least half a dozen Latin teaching positions, the magnitude of which surprised me, but have yet to get an interview for any of them.

My most eminent qualifications are for ministry positions, but here I am confronted with the fact that despite this being the course of employment most suitable, a plan to move overseas in the next 6-12 months renders me highly undesirable as a prospective employee. Nobody really wants a full time minister for such a short time. This coupled with a lack of networks bodes poorly.

Of course, I am a pessimist in this area. That should at least be acknowledged.

My only other experience and qualifications are in fitness (another area where I am but half-qualified), and working in a fish & chip shop (it was a good year, but I can hardly make a living out of it). Now contemplating a range of employment possibilities which bear little to no relation to my background, experience, and qualifications.

Perhaps you can empathise with my pessimism.

Augustine on culture and sin

2010-10-21T21:29:00.002+11:00

The human race, however, is inclined to judge sins, not according to the gravity of the evil desire involved, but rather with reference to the importance attached to their own customs. So people frequently reckon that only those acts are to be blamed which in their own part of the world and their own time have been customarily treated as vicious and condemned, and only those acts to be approved of and praised which are acceptable to those among whom they live.

De Doctrine Christiana, III.10.15

Was reading this passage this evening and struck by how true it is. Apologies for the lack of interesting blog posts, hope to get some in next week.

The interplay of the corporate and individual and the doctrine of two kingdoms (Part 2)

2010-10-07T08:39:00.000+11:00

I’m going to take for granted a step that some of you are not inclined to grant, in order to advance this second part. That step is a number of convictions:

a) Individual Christians are called to enemy-love, not self-defence or personal vindication. (I think a good case for this can be made from the classic texts of Matthew 5:38-48 and from Romans 12:14-21, among other places and a broader Christological ethic)

b) The church as a corporate body is also called to enemy-love, not self-defence or personal vindication.

c) The ruling authorities in the world have judicial power for the execution of judgment (Romans 13)

Now, let me come to the point of my philosophical confusion. If Christians are called to a life of enemy-love, both individually and corporately, which eschews violence, how can this be overturned when Christians are considered corporately under a different aegis? That is, if you think about a collection of Christians as a church, one would deny that they had any authority for violence and judicial-force, but if you reconstituted the same collection of Christians as a civil authority, then they should pursue such violence? Of course, the objection could simply be made that in different places and roles I have different values and functions and authorities to carry out. Let me suggest though, that this contrast between ethics of Christian life and secular authority is more than simply what my governmental office might permit me to do, it goes close to the core of Christian ethics.

This is where it is helpful to consider the articulation of the Reformer’s doctrine of the two kingdoms of God. I agree, that God does indeed rule the world by means of two reigns, two kingdoms, the one of secular government, the other the spiritual kingdom nascent in the church. Such two kingdoms are united and overlaid in the nation of Israel, which is why you see the twin exercise of coercive and spiritual authority in the same body. The two kingdoms are distinctly separated in the NT, as I believe can be seen both by (a) Jesus’ relation to secular authorities (Mt 22:21 for instance), (b) the spiritualisation of church discipline and judicial function (excommunication as the sign of spiritual exclusion and thus death, not matched to any temporal death).

The key question is what sort of role may Christians legitimately pursue in the realm of secular authority, that will not compromise their allegiance to Jesus? The NT addresses a situation of political disempowerment, where rulers were far from paradigms of justice, and Christian involvement was negligible to non-existent. Nonetheless, I think it’s a far characterisation of the NT that the real work of God and focus of Christian effort is to be the spread of the Kingdom by lives of witness and work in the world. i.e., the primary focus of Christian lives is seen in the spiritual means of the Heavenly Kingdom, not the coercive means of the ruling powers. Indeed, the realpolitik of fallen and unredeemed rulers and tyrants reminds us that God rules providentially through whatever ruling authorities there happen to be, irrespective of their devotion to him. That, too, is the treatment of the OT, where the judgment of Israel by foreign nations is likewise portrayed as God’s providential ruling of the kings, without exoneration of their sins.

If we’re looking for a terminus ad quem for Christian involvement in secular government, I propose minimally that it must be the avoidance of any kind of dual-minded mentality. Contra Luther, it’s not okay for the Christian to be not-retaliatory in his personal life, but put on the cap and baton and mete out judicial violence in the community. Such a bifurcation of moral realities is unsustainable psychologically and morally for the individual, and disingenuous about the integrated reality of human moral communities. We may live in a world where God reigns by two modes, but Christians should be wary of thinking that the latter can be redemptive.

The interplay of the corporate and individual and the doctrine of two kingdoms (Part 1)

2010-10-05T17:03:00.001+11:00

The two most common arguments I hear against the kind of pacifism I articulate follow along these lines:

(1) Surely it is wrong to stand by and let someone vulnerable suffer harm, when you have the power to step in and stop it

(2) The restraint of evil is a necessary part of Godly order in a fallen world, and so Christians must employ violence to do so, but it is not the Church’s role.

In this post I want to explore some of the logic that undergirds or plays into these positions. Firstly, I want to consider how the former argument is often based on a kind of utilitarianism that ends up in logical convolutions of increasing counter-intuitive absurdity.

(1) is based on the premise that ends can shape, and fundamentally alter, the moral dimension of means. What is the end or consequence that is in view in (1)? Let’s suppose that it is some violent crime, murder or rape or the like. These things are truly horrendous, and are to be stopped. Let’s further suppose that the prospective victim is someone dear to me, a family member. Suddenly our hypothetical is taking the shape of, “What sort of moral monster would you have to be to stand by and watch a family member get murdered?”

I have already critiqued in other places the kind of deterministic logic that says only violence can solve this situation, and your only options in this situation are (a) violence, (b) acquiescence. Instead, this time I wish to point out how this hypothetical makes two other problematic moves. Firstly, it atomises the corporate.

Is it right for the church to willingly accept martyrdom? I would think the scriptures and the history of the church teach us yes. And yet, the kind of example above breaks down that solidarity, and says that if its in the power of individuals to prevent, by means of violence, other individuals from dying, then they should do so. The church as a collective, then, would never be a church that accepts martyrdom, but one in which individuals never practice self-defence, but instead always practice other-defence. There is a mis-translation of individual and corporate sensibility here that I want to engage further below.

Secondly, it absolutises this life. If the greatest evil we could suffer would be the deprivation of mortal life, then death would be the great evil to be avoided. But this is untrue in several dimensions. The greatest good is to know God and his gospel. Indeed, Jesus goes so far as to say that to know God and his Son is eternal life (Jn 17:2). So when I make the lives of those nearest to me the highest value in a life-threatening situation, I over-value temporal existence, and under-value eternal existence. Because the eternal life of those dear to me in Christ is secure. The eternal destiny of those that threaten them, almost certainly not. Should I choose to save that which cannot be prevented (i.e., the mortal death of Christian loved ones is certain), at the price of the enemy’s life, thereby ending all hope for their redemption? By this utilitarian logic, Christians should prefer to kill each other to prevent the deaths of non-Christians, in the hopes of their repentance to eternal life. This logic won’t do at all. Indeed, it makes Jesus a moral monster, since he indeed has the power to prevent the deaths of his brothers and sisters, those who he loved to die for, and he prefers their death to their life. Why does Jesus stand idly by?

Training Diary

2010-10-04T22:55:00.002+11:00

I meant to write 3 intelligent blogposts this weekend. Review some books, drop some exegesis skills, that kind of thing. Instead I spent the long weekend digitising music, visiting friends, catching a film at the cinema, and so on. So instead, I'm going to talk about exercise.

I tend to be a little addictive in personality, and this extends to exercise. Coming out of high school, I did martial arts, and trained 2-4 times a week. After university, I did a 6 month stint in a tech college learning Fitness Instruction, at which time I also joined the Tech gym, and went to about 14 training sessions a week. That was a fairly high level of training! I was swimming, running, doing weights, and martial arts.

Turns out I really like lifting weights. It's a solitary kind of pursuit, which suits my personality well. This last year I have been back in the gym. I'd taken a couple of years off any organised or formal exercise, and suffered for it. So now I am in the gym usually 5 days a week. I'm not naturally a big person, I really struggle to gain weight. Currently I'm the heaviest I've ever been, and the strongest.

One of the problems with enjoying weight lifting, is that I just like to pile on more activities to my program, so I think I've ended up overtraining lately. I had a shoulder injury many years ago (torn rotator cuff from a skateboarding incident), and so my left shoulder is usually the first to feel things. The second problem I have is the bad habit of just wanting to keep training.

But this week I'm going to be good - no lifting at all. Just a bit of cardio work. I used to run a lot, but not so much anymore, but I'm working on that too. I also really enjoy indoor rowing. What I love about these, and lifting weights, is that it is all so measurable. Metrics means you can record, and thus improve, your efforts.

Anyway, this week, just some running and rowing, and then I'm going to cull my bloated weights program back to some core exercises.

An hour in the gym is also a good length of time to listen to a lecture or sermon on the ipod.

Hope you've enjoyed this off topic post/ramble.

Random updates on various aspects of Life

2010-10-01T11:35:00.002+10:00

1) The Thesis

My supervisor sent me back my draft today and we met. He is overall very pleased with it. A few structural elements to include. So my main aim for October is to tidy up the thesis, track down a few more articles that aren't on hand here, and try and submit by Oct 30. That would be excellent.

2) Other studious enterprises

I've been auditing an MA subject on Galatians that is quite fun. We have a second intensive block in October, and I'm getting together a presentation on OT usage/salvation-history/typology. I did a youth camp last weekend with three talks from Galatians 2, 3, and 5, which went quite well and helped a lot.

I'm also helping a guy with some Latin translations from a late antique/early medieval text, which is quite enjoyable.

3) Other things

I've upped my gym training since I've had more time on my hands, which has been really good. On the other hand, haven't really been plugging away at the languages as much as I should be. Once I break routine, it's quite hard to get back into it.

Medical examination for overseas went well. Took longer than expected due to some conflicting but ultimately meaningless results, but now it's done and our mission application can proceed.

I've been reading some good books. Keller's 'Ministries of Mercy', Kostenberger's book on Heresy and Orthodoxy, and just picked up 'Halos and Avatars', a theological compilation on video games.

No success on the job front though.

facebook, privacy, and social exchange

2010-09-17T11:00:00.000+10:00

The more I live in my personal post-FB world, the more phenomenal the phenomenon
becomes. And the more reflections I have.

Facebook's fundamental premise is not, "If you didn't want people to know, you
shouldn't have shared it," but, "if you didn't want people to know, you
shouldn't have done it." That is, for FB, privacy is not really an option that
it believes you want, even if you say you do want privacy. In this world, FB is
a silent eavesdropper to all your relationships, ever present, and assuming that
even if you don't want other people to know, you want FB to know. FB's mantra is
eerily like the moral agenda of More's Utopia, "If you've got nothing to hide,
why do you need privacy?" But privacy is not about hiding things, but about
sharing them. There's nothing wrong with a nude body, but privacy is not needing
to share it with everybody! FB is the 5yo child standing at your bedroom door at
inopportune moments, and blurting inopportune comments out at dinner parties
with your to-be-impressed friends. When all of life becomes public performance,
what will we have left to share?

Facebook is also the mediator of our social exchanges. So that in my post-FB
existence, I sometimes experience 'social networking discrimination', the kind
of exclusion that comes from the assumption that 'everybody is on facebook', so
to share with facebook is to have shared with your friends. "Didn't you read it
on facebook? I posted it this morning" is the FB-user's assumption, and so the
need to have unmediated social exchange has been obviated. No need to 'catch-up'
at all. Worse still is the presumption, "If I just put something up on facebook,
everybody will read it." We have outsourced our communication.

None of which is meant to be an ideological critique of what facebook is.
Facebook's success is in doing social networking with a high degree of
functionality. But in the age of online social networking, we more than ever
need reflection on what it is doing to our society.

Thesis: approaching completion

2010-09-12T17:48:00.003+10:00

You'll be pleased to hear (I hope!) that my MTh thesis is nearing completion. I am a few thousand words shy of the target, and have a conclusion to write, but it's mostly done. A few other things need tidying up - incorporating a little more secondary literature, refining and nuancing the premises of my argument, the strength of evidence, and the weight of conclusions.

I'll present a paper on Partitive Exegesis in Chrysostom at a student seminar in a few weeks, and probably post that online shortly after. As for the whole thesis, I expect I'll make it freely available once it's been marked, so sometime in the new year.

Will shortly be looking in more earnest for a job for next year; will also spend Nov-Dec trying to finish the Gregory Nazianzus reader/commentary.

Towards a theology of violence, V (Exodus)

2010-09-12T16:17:00.001+10:00

Exodus is, on my understanding and reading of the Canon, the central OT book. Its dual focus is the Exodus event, which is the great deliverance of a people unto God, through the atoning sacrifice of the Passover, and the Covenant-giving, which constitutes that saved people into a holy assembly unto the nations.

The opening of the book reconfigures the historical scene – the passing of time, the new generation, and the forgetfulness of Pharaoh, who now proceeds upon a campaign of oppression that culminates in Ex 1:22, a persistent genocidal attempt to exterminate the Hebrew people.

The first incident of depicted violence comes in Ex 2:11-15, with Moses slaying of an Egyptian for oppressing a Hebrew. The incident doesn’t receive a great deal of commentary, but it’s by no means favourable to Moses, who does not emerge as a triumphant saviour, but a cowardly murderer who flees into exile.

The incident of the Burning Bush and God’s speech in Ex 3:7-10 reveals God as the one who hears the cries of his afflicted and oppressed people, and will intervene to deliver them.

The interplay between Pharaoh, Moses, and God in the next few chapters involves two major factors. Firstly, there is the back-and-forth over the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. At times, he hardens his own heart, at others, God does it. I read here a doctrine of dual agency: both God and Pharaoh are responsible for the hardening of his heart, God in his sovereign electing and providential purposes, Pharaoh in his human sinful responsibility and rebellion. Secondly, the plagues represent both battle and judgment. They are judgments upon Egypt for their sin, rebellion, and part of their curse for cursing God’s people (cf. Gen 12:1-3). They are also defeats of Egypt’s ‘gods’, whose individual realms of jurisdiction are shown to be in the hand of the Almighty. They are the sallies of the Lord as he wages a kind of war against Pharaoh.

All this culminates in the Passover and 10th plague. For in the 10th plague, no distinction is made as regards to guilt and judgment between Egypt and Israel, for both are guilty before the Lord. Rather, God in his grace gives to Israel the means of atonement, the sacrifice of a substitute by whose blood they will be passed over in judgment. This is, in fact, the basis not only for the gospel, but for any Christian ethical approach to violence and judgment. We too are under judgment, and only by grace, the grace of atonement, do we escape it. The death of the firstborn is the crippling blow to Egypt and its ‘gods’. Moreover, it plays of the themes of Israel, the ‘Son of God’, and Pharaoh, the son of a god. YHWH redeems his firstborn son, the sons of Israel, the descendants of Isaac according to promise, while judging and destroying Egypt’s firstborn(s).

That a war motif runs through these chapters is also evident by the repeated instructions to ask the Egyptians for their wealth, and Israel’s carrying this off as plunder. These are spoils of war, which Israel possesses, even though they do none of the fighting throughout the Exodus event. God is the mighty warrior, Israel the passive bystander. Ex 15:3 poetically displays that truth. Not the might of Israel, but the arm of the Lord brings them salvation.

The battle at Rephidim (Ex 17:8-16) is an odd occurrence. Israel’s first physical battle is ultimately carried by the visible sign of Moses’ raised hands. Though I accept it’s a long shot, I see here a faint typology of the Cross, as the victory is accomplished more by the outstretched arms of God’s Servant, than the actual fighting on the ground.

The second major theme of Exodus is built around the Covenant formed at Sinai. Its initiation in chapter 19 sets up Israel as ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Ex 19:6). This dual identity as priests (mediators of God’s presence) and kings (rulers of God’s land), reflects the creation reality of Genesis 1-2, the interior relation of Israel’s kings and priests to Israel’s exterior relation to the nations, points forward to Jesus our High Priest and King of Kings, and by extension to the church’s role in the world in 1 Peter 2:5, Revelation 1:6. This theme I have explored and preached on elsewhere.

This background helps us see the Covenant in a slightly broader salvation-historical context. The details of Chapter 20 should not escape us either, that the giving of the Decalogue is predicated on the prior deliverance wrought by God alone, Ex 20:1-2.
Some will ask no doubt whether Ex 20:13 is a basis for a pacifist ethic, I find it is not. The word choice refers to illegitimate killing, and there is plenty of legitimised killing in the Covenant and OT. However, as you read on through the Torah, the killing is, arguably, judicial. This reflects the overlay of religious and political realities in the nation/ekklesia of Israel.

The conquest of Canaan is spoken of in Ex 23:20-33, and we will speak more of the conquest under Joshua. Note here the emphasis on refraining from Idolatry, and instead on the peace that Israel and the land will experience together.

Most of the later chapters are taken up with Ark building instructions and activities, which I will leave aside. Instead, let’s focus on the incident of the golden calf, which calls forth both a violent purging in Ex 32:25-29, and a plague from God in 32:35. The violence of the purging is shocking to us, but sensical in the ANE context, and reflective of the utter detestation of sin and idolatry that is becoming characteristic of Israel’s life with God. Again, despite its ad hoc nature, it is typically judicial in character, if not formal in conduct.

I suggest then, that the book of Exodus reveals God as the mighty Judge and Warrior. As judge, he visits people to bring punishment for sins, whether within or without God’s people. As Warrior, he is the one who fights for his people, and the strength of his might is such to render them bystanders to his mighty saving deeds.

False equations: masculinity and violence

2010-09-11T17:05:00.004+10:00

Can we move past them?

I'm sick of hearing people say, "I can't imagine Jesus as a wimpy guy. He must have been a tough dude. Therefore pacifism is wrong, and you're not manly enough." [slight caricature, but only slight]

If you equate being masculine with being tough, and physically capable of beating up other men, then your doctrine of humanity is deeply flawed. Most men will never live up to your physical idealisation of masculinity. Some will never be capable of even attempting to do so.

More drastically though, if you build in to your idea of masculinity the idea of violence, then you're tacitly building violence into your idea of the New Creation. The Scriptures image to us that the New Creation will be the restoration, redemption, and perfection of this current one, and so it's theologically naive to suppose that masculine identity innately involves violence, and your heaven is beginning to look more like Valhalla.

So cut that cheap rhetorical trick out of your repertoire. Were Jesus and the apostles physically fit and tough? Probably. Did Jesus or the apostles ever practise or teach self-defence or violence? No. Did Jesus or the apostles at any time teach restraint from violence? Yes. Why then would you keep arguing that violence is somehow integral to being a man?

Introversion and church as community

2010-09-08T08:33:00.000+10:00

I’ve been reading McHugh’s very helpful book, Introverts in the Church, and one of his several helpful insights is the way in which evangelical values on relationship and community are expressed in a extraverted way that is problematic for introverts. I could well resonate with him as he spoke about how we often measure people’s spiritual health or commitment to church by assessing what they’re involved in: groups, committees, meetings, etc.. That’s a mistake when it comes to introverts.

It caused me to think a bit more about the ‘Total Church’ “model”, and a question I should have asked Timmis or Chester when I had the chance. Their vision of gospel community sounds incredibly relationally-intense. When Timmis talks about spending most of his day with others, and jokes that often the only time he is alone is when he goes to sleep, sharing a bed only with his wife, his vision of gospel community begins to sound like an introvert’s nightmare.

How do we build a real and close-knit community, while respecting that introverts really do need time alone to recharge? On the one hand, we don’t want to just give introverts a pass-out card, as if their personality gives them the option to opt-out. At the same time, it would be a mistake, and a sinful one, simply to tell introverts to ‘toughen up’ and get on with sharing 17/7. Especially for introverts whose work-life is already people-centred. For those introverts, much of their relational energy will be drained by work itself, which means the rest of their time they’re probably looking to recharge. I imagine there would be nothing worse for an introvert than to spend 8 hours being emotionally drained working with people, and then come home to a house full of exuberant Christians who dropped by for a meal and prayer!

We need to do better on this.

The way we play is a mirror of our values

2010-09-08T08:24:00.000+10:00

I don’t think Christians have done very well in the realm of ‘play’. We have very poor theologies of art, entertainment, leisure, and representation. A reformation inheritance has tended to downplay the importance of ‘play’ in life, and so relegated it entirely to the realm of childhood, which has meant it’s not a topic for serious discourse, and it’s something we want children to give up and grow out of.

However play is very important. Ask some developmentalist-types and they’ll tell you that. But what I want to ponder today is how play is important to social development and social normalisation. My hunch is this: the way we play, or what we play, is often an idealisation of cultural values. Now, I’m not trying to draw a very straight line, as if every act of play is of deep significance, that cruelty to animals or violent video games are automatic producers of serial killers. Read a few research papers and those links are tenuous at best. No, rather the imaginative worlds people regularly inhabit, have a formative effect on their values.

This is why I’m opposed as a Christian to violent games on the whole. Actually, I think a distinction needs to be made between representations of violence and simulations of violence. It is simulations of violence that I’m opposed to. Not because I think simulating violence produces violent people, but because simulating violence helps build up a mindset in which violence is normalised and legitimised.

If the Christian vision of the world is one of the ingathering of the nations into the church, the body of Christ which consists of a new humanity not riven by ethnic and national divisions, why would I want to uphold and honour the professional soldiery of nation-states, whose basic allegiance is to defend the sovereignty of nations by means of killing others, when the whole gospel is subversive of nations by declaring them and us both equal and in solidarity in Christ? If the pattern of Christ is submission even unto death, why would we model our play on self-assertion to the point of death?

The core of the Christian gospel is that Christ came to die to accomplish our redemption and reconciliation, so that the pattern of his life has become the pattern of Christian life. Conflict, within the NT, such as it is, is never about force of arms. Not from Christians. So why would we inculcate the values of a foreign belief system about violence, in our leisure and play, especially for our children?

Why we failed at 'Total Church'

2010-08-29T08:14:00.003+10:00

On Friday I sat in on a session at college with aspiring church planters and Steve Timmis. It made me realise something that I think I'd not quite grasped previously. That is how "radically radical" the reshaping around community really is.

I first read Total Church back in 2008, and it really resonated with me (as it did for many others). I suspect the call to a reshaping around gospel and community filled something of a void for many Sydney-siders, who generally feel ecclesiologically lite and have a slight suspicion (a fundamental conviction in my case) that maybe the Anabaptists were right on this one all along.

Listening to Timmis talk on Friday, and field questions from the students, I was struck by how different his life is shaped. Their community group really does 'do life' together - eating, going out, leisure, errands, jobs, and so on. Whereas in our culture (and I imagine UK culture too), we are conditioned around doing things in family units at best. What is it truly like to spend most meals with people not from your family? To have a fairly open drop-around culture with fellow christians? To never have the sense of 'this is my time to do solely as I please', but always to be asking what it is to love those around me, which will then include time for myself and my wife?

The reason why Sydney (Anglicans) love and fail at a total-church model is that we're not truly convicted enought to embrace the communitarianism that it's suggesting. We're looking for sunday service + home groups on steroids. But it's more than that. It's a counter-cultural pattern of communitarian life that will upside-down our individual and individualistic agendas.

The two best things we did in my context were for our evening service to share dinner every fortnight (not my idea), and for my home group to eat together every week. These two factors by themselves greatly increased our sense of 'community', but they didn't challenge our underlying cultural assumptions and commitments. We never quite got to 'doing life together' in a full-time capacity, and so we never quite got to 'doing mission as community'.

Timmis and Chester's suggestion for those in a position where they aren't leaders or have some kind of reshaping power, is simply to start living it out, set an example. But I suspect this is not quite enough. We need to grasp and thus to be challenged and provoked to see and to believe this reshaping around community. Living in each other's pockets in a post-community 21st century atomistic and alienating society is a radical break, and it's not one that comes from a few shared meals, but from a shared gospel understanding.

Why solid reformed doctrines are the basis of a biblical pacifism

2010-08-19T22:10:00.002+10:00

Thanks to the insights of a good friend doing some work on Yoder as part of his doctoral thesis, I'm inclined to think that Yoder has a similar problem to Hauerwas, a gaping hole in his theology of atonement, that undoes the central theological underpinning of pacifism. In this post I want to explore how the kind of pacifism I advocate is theologically grounded in classical reformed doctrines. I wish I had a snappy name for it, but really I just think it is a deeply biblical pacifism.

I suppose that a logical place to begin with is with total depravity. To recognise that all human beings are born in sin, are affected by sin, are shot through and through with the corrupting and tainting power and influence of sin, so that in every aspect of their image-bearing being they are sinful, is the frank and stark assessment of humanity that comes from this reading of the scriptures. The corollary to this is that it is through the original sin, the Fall, that death enters the world as judgment, so that all have sinned and so all fall under the judgment of God, the sentence of death. Death is inevitable, and deserved. Those two twin facts underpin this biblical pacifism.

That all have sinned, that sin is judged, that God opposes evil through his judgment, set the frame against which a doctrine of substitutionary atonement makes sense. That the Christ died in our place, to pay the penalty for our sins and so ransom and redeem us by the price of his blood, is the good news, the gospel, which means both that neither do we have a judgment to pay (death), nor a judgment to enact.

Closely linked to the doctrine of atonement though must be an eschatology of Christ's return, his second coming not to die a second time, but as judge of the earth. So that, those who have rejected the atoning work of the cross will face the defeat (as evildoers) and their judgment (as transgressors and rebels), as eternal death, even as Christ's return brings vindication for his forgiven people and resurrection to eternal life. The sure hope of eternal resurrection life is a necessary hope for those who would embrace biblical pacifism.

Lastly in this whistlestop tour, biblical pacifism is grounded in a high view of the Sovereignty of God. That he is the almighty transcendent Creator who made all things, rules all things, works in and through all things to achieve his good and glorious purposes, is the basis of a faith that can trust in his outcome, more than our methods.

If you don't believe in total depravity, then some are more deserving of death than others, because sin is not innate and all-encompassing, and so some have more right than others. biblical pacifism rejects the pride that privileges the life of self and kin over the stranger, because it is no respecter of persons.

If you don't believe in God's judgment, then this life is the only context in which good can triumph, justice can be done, and vengeance taken. Which means that if men don't do it in this world, it won't get done. biblical pacifism rather trusts that God will bring justice, and if not in this life, how much worse in the final judgment.

If you don't trust in the atonement, then there's no surety of forgiveness, which means you have no basis to extend forgiveness to others.

If you don't believe in the second coming, then God's ultimate judgment will never come, and so evil must be defeated in this life, in this world.

If you don't believe in the resurrection, then life is worth killing for.

And if you don't trust in the Sovereignty of God, you must seek to control and determine things for yourself.

It's not any kind of optimism about our world that drives this biblical pacifism, but a profound optimism about God and his redemptive and ultimate purposes.

And you see, this is why biblical pacifism can play the card of "It's more important to be faithful than to secure the right outcome." It's because (a) the 'right' outcome is ultimately secured not by our actions so much as God's goodness, sovereignty, justice, and atoning death in Christ. It's because (b) means create ends, ends do not justify means, and so faithfulness in act will result in faithful outcomes, even if these seem bad or wrong. It's because (c) ultimately we trust that faithfulness will be more effective in securing right outcomes, but we don't lose anything when they don't. It's because (d) we have already died to self, lost all, and been forgiven with a resurrection hope, so we have nothing to lose in martyrdom, but everything to lose in unfaithfulness.

How misunderstood: America and Australia

2010-08-19T19:49:00.003+10:00

We've had a week now of our MA course on American Protestantism. We haven't actually covered that much temporally, a lot of work understanding the founding fathers, puritans, the 1st and 2nd Great Awakenings, early American Methodism, and a final lecture on Abraham Lincoln and American Civil Religion.

I think it was this last lecture that really brought home the major and remarkable differences between Australia and America. The idea that many Americans sincerely believe in America's exceptionalism, and a mission of sharing the blessing of democracy of the world, alongside a historical period where virtually the whole (European) population was evangelical, are things very, very strange to us. The whole cult of American civil religion, of public discourse about the relationship between 'God' (however vague) and the nation, and the trappings of ritual, of pledges of allegiance and flag-reverence, are entirely foreign to Australians. We regard them with incredulity, cynicism, and fail to understand that Americans take these things seriously.

As to a sense of national identity and shared national destiny, we have little. Australia has few historical defining moments, except perhaps for the mythologising of Gallipoli, and little in the way of shared national cultural values. That underlies some of our ongoing and endless debates about what Australia stands for. Our political discourse cannot sustain anything like the self-assured bombast of Bush or the optimistic high-flying rhetoric of an Obama. Politicians here all lack the integrity to pull it off, and we are too cynical to believe them anyway. That's why our current election is dominated by 'the economy', the only transcendent we can generate (except for the growing and competitive worship of 'the environment'). Most Australians avoid the big questions of life, have little sense of eternity, and when those questions arise our culture encourages suppression of reflection in favour of binge-drinking.

If I sound down on our nation, by no means think that I've come to some new found admiration of America! A new found appreciation for your history, perhaps, but my own cynicism of politics runs deep, and your civil religion dances dangerously with nationalism, fascism, and an idolatry of the state.

Our nations are further apart than many superficial similarities would suggest.

Life beyond Facebook

2010-08-19T19:28:00.002+10:00

I'm not sure how long it's been. Perhaps a month? Perhaps less, perhaps more. No, at least I month I think, since I deleted my facebook account.

At the time it was a combination of two factors. Firstly I was pretty fed-up with fb's changing terms of service and privacy policy. It was about the time of that last, latest kerfuffle over that issue. I'm not interested in fb linking and co-ordinating more and more data and making it more and more available to more people.

Secondly, it was about time. At my desk the need is for focus, sustained attention to my work. And fb, regardless of whether at work or home or anywhere, is a terrible, addictive substance. The desire to be connected, and to know what is going on, and to refresh endlessly to obtain either the latest trivia from people I half-know, or validation on the social propriety and wit of my own latest status update.

I am not much inclined to moderation. on/off is how my brain likes to work. so i just deleted the whole thing.

One of the things I feel is a sense of liberation. i'm *free* from fb. life carries on and i'm none the worse for it. it certainly has helped focus my work day. and oddly, ditching fb is it's own kind of cutting edge of valueless cool.

The other side of it though, is that I'm still quite aware that fb is a rapidly but well-entrenched part of many people's social life. There are conversations and connections that happen in a web of connectivity that i'm no longer part of. Things occur that I don't know about, or am not invited to, simply because of technological hermiting. Occasionally someone gets personally frustrated with me for not being on fb, like it's some kind of violation of a new social contract.

Which it's not. Social networking is just another tool. A tool like no other tool before it, but a tool nonetheless. And one you can live without.

Thesis writing and MA auditing

2010-08-17T21:00:00.003+10:00

Well, it looks like all the dramas of moving are over, except for initiating some kind of complaint process with our bad cleaners.

I'm trying at the moment to write my thesis in some kind of earnest. If you recall my basic premise: to test for the presence of 9 specific criteria that will help cast Chrysostom in a pro-Nicene camp for his hermeneutical method, then what I am currently doing is working criteria by criteria, browsing through my extensive notes on the Homilies, and writing a section on each criterion. I find a number of key passages, quote them in translation (my own), cite the greek in a footnote, and then talk about what Chrysostom is doing and how the criterion is in operation. This should form the bulk of my 30,000 words. Once I finish this, I need to do some work in section 2, which is introducing the criteria and my rationale for them, along with some non-Chrysostom illustration (perhaps) of them. And then I need to step back to section 1, which is introductory material, to cover Eunomius and a few other things.

So, considerable work to be done. I still have some other secondary literature I need to read, as well.

At the same time I am auditing some MA subjects, which graciously my college permits research students to do at no extra cost. This week and next I'm sitting in and enjoying (so far), "American Protestantism" with Robert Lindar. American history in general, and religious history at all, is really a hole in my understanding of world history, and this is certainly filling in some gaps, as well as a very non-related area to most of my studies. I'm also down to do Galatians with Philip Kern, which should be excellent. The only downside of this is that it's chewing up 18hours of my week, so I'm not as focused and productive elsewhere as I could be.

So these two commitments have put some other things on hold. Once these 3 weeks are up I hope to find a bit more time to allocate for the McGuffey, Orberg, and Gregory side-projects. Ideally, I'll finish up the thesis ahead of the end of the year, and if I don't immediately fall into a job, I'll be able to get the Gregory reader completed quickly.

The dramas of moving

2010-08-10T20:54:00.002+10:00

Well, we moved. And I thought it was all over, but alas no.

I spent the bulk of the first week packing up our house, which was time consuming but necessary. Removalists cam on the Friday and were quite efficient, and we were all moved over in a few hours. Just a matter of unpacking all those boxes! Which we made a start on the following weekend.

Back at the old place, I did a few trips to clear out the last of our stuff, and we arranged for some cleaners to come in, and finally I sold up a few items on ebay. The keys were handed in on the Thursday, and I thought we had seen the last of things. Over the weekend then we managed to acquire 3 wardrobes (with thanks to my good friend and handyman (aka Math teacher) Dave).

Alas, on Monday our former real estate got in touch to say the house was not up to scratch. The cleaners had left several things undone or not done well. Plus, there was some gardening they wanted done too. So today I was back over at the house in the rain, gardening away. And probably some more gardening in the rain tomorrow.

All this amounts to about 3 weeks in total disruption to my studies, which I'm none too pleased with. I was hoping to settle back into routine this week and get most of my thesis written up. Instead I am disrupted for most of the rest of the week again. The following 3 weeks I have some scheduled classes to attend on American Protestantism and Galatians, so less time than usual there.

Anyway, tonight is a good night, since our internet has finally been moved over to our new place, and that's why you're getting a little blog post to update you on life. Once things get a bit more settled, then we'll see about some more Greek/SLA/Thesis/Patristics related posts.

On Impassibility, a sermon

2010-08-05T16:44:00.002+10:00

I have uploaded a text roughly corresponding to a sermon I preached in college chapel today, On Impassibility. I had hoped to record it, but my plans were not carried to fruition by my agent. The text was written post-sermon, so it is neither a transcript nor an accurate record, but it is most of what I said plus just a little extra. I did edit out some seminary in-jokes that peppered the introduction.

Moving & Books

2010-07-27T21:42:00.003+10:00

I'm in the process of moving this week, hence little productivity and little blogging. I did make it in to college today to hear two excellent papers, once on biblical authority and genre, and the other on the use of repetition in Hebrews.

I've packed up almost all our books for the move, and even though we got rid of a few before the move, we still have a lot. I need to be more ruthless in getting rid of them. There are books that I own that I'll almost certainly never read, nor refer to, ever again. Those should go. As we look to overseas, there's also books that will need to go on some long semi-permanent loans to good friends. So if you'd like some more of my books, they could be available. And if you'd like to become a custodian for them during my project many years overseas, let me know.

Hope to be back to some more regular things next week.

Thesis: reading the homilies

2010-07-22T14:39:00.003+10:00

I haven't posted any new writing from my thesis, largely because I haven't done any for awhile. Instead I've been focused on reading through the homilies. I've finally finished, all 88 (in English), and taken over 30,000 words of notes on them. The next stage is to take my 9 criteria, work through my notes, and show the presence or absence of each of those criteria. So, after moving house, I hope to get stuck into that, and that should produce the bulk of my thesis over the next month or so. I still have a few sections of introduction to work on, and I need to do some methodology work as well. All in all, I'm fairly happy with progress so far, and I'm looking forward to producing some good material in the next 2-3 months.

Disappearing podcasts

2010-07-21T20:55:00.002+10:00

The audio I've recorded over at jeltzz.com is mainly hosted on mypodcast.com, which now tells me that they are deleting old/unused podcasts. I'm not really sure how many downloads I've had at all, though I know that from time to time people have enjoyed the recordings. (Having just gone and logged in, there do seem to be a few hundred downloads of most files, over the last 3 years that is).

It's possible I could dig up the source files, and post them directly. It might simply be better if I kept working on trying to do new recordings and put those up.

Rethinking 'let me'

2010-07-21T08:08:00.002+10:00

I've done just 11 lessons, the very simplest, from the McGuffey readers into Greek and Latin, and already met a host of problems. The least of these is what to do with names. I turned a few of the early ones into Graecised or Latinate versions, but others (Jip!) I have more simply transliterated.

Perhaps the one that I've thought over the most, is the construction "Let me...do X"; now in English this is fairly straightforward, because we use lots of auxiliary verbs. At first I began to render this with an imperative of 'permit/allow', sinere or ἐάω, plus an infinitive. This seemed to best fit the sense of the first appearance, and preserved me from introducing the subjunctive. But as I've gone on, I'm beginning to wonder whether I shouldn't simply use a 2nd person subjunctive. Once you get to sentences such as "Let me do X, won't you?", it has a sort of subjunctive force, rather than a permissive-imperative.

As always, I would appreciate your thoughts.

More progress on Gregory project

2010-07-18T22:36:00.002+10:00

Well, audio recording was a wash-out for the weekend, but I have made some good progress on the Gregory reader. I've continued to do morphology tagging and am working my way down the frequency list. It's at a point where I can now get a clearer picture of things listed by frequency of the lemmas.

I've also gone through all of the first Oration, and checked it against Migne's edition, which is what I'll need to print from. I've corrected a few things, made some textual variation notes, and picked up a few points in my electronic text where lines had been repeated (my own error, I've got rid of most of those elsewhere). That means my frequencies will need a little adjusting again. I've also included Migne's footnotes when he's explaining something (in latin, of course). I still would like to add Migne's scripture references as well.

Once I make a little more frequency/morphology progress, I'll get started on Oration 1 (27) properly, producing a workable text. Good progress it seems to me! The later orations are longer than the first though, so similar proofing will take longer on them.

Frustrations

2010-07-18T16:13:00.003+10:00

I sat down to do some quiet sunday afternoon recordings in Greek and Latin, as I'd been planning. There's someone noisily mowing their lawn nearby, but that hasn't been my main problem. Rather, my computer decided yesterday to stop recognising usb devices, including both mouse (not too big a problem), and microphone (more of a problem).

So I thought I'd just try the built-in microphone. But then audacity likes to randomly stop working every now and again, and that hasn't helped either.

Might have to wait a bit longer for more Greek audio.

Edit: Apparently simply turning your computer off, disconnecting it from mains power, and then rebooting will do the trick. that is, (O Microsoft), not a real solution!

Edit 2: Well, I did manage a bit of recording, but having Audacity crash randomly, on top of the spent working out my usb-port problem, has left me pretty frustrated for the day.

Commenting

2010-07-18T12:58:00.003+10:00

I have turned comment moderation on. I don't really like to do this, as it is so frustrating for users, but I regularly get spam comments on new posts, so I am hoping that if I do this for awhile it might deter such commenters, and then I might be able to remove it again.

Oerberg in Greek, chapter 1

2010-07-16T20:15:00.005+10:00

If you've missed it, I have completed a translation of the reading text from Oerberg, into Greek. I have yet to do the exercises or grammar, but I will do something along those lines (with some significant but necessary adaptions). No word from the rights holders, but my understanding is that a single chapter will hold under fair use. So, until there's further news on copyright, I will refrain from making public any more materials (plenty of other projects for me to be working on!). Feedback on this text is certainly welcome. (Particularly if you have some grammatical insight on whether using τὸ to substantivise all the 'words' in the final paragraphs is correct, or whether I should use the normally appropriate article). I've already made some major revisions to the accenting of οὐκ ἔστι as well as some word choices towards the end.

Chapter 1

In terms of grammar:
This page was particularly helpful
Also helpful has been Rico's book, and R. Buth's very much.

Moving

2010-07-16T18:41:00.002+10:00

Well, the good news is that we've been approved to rent an apartment!

This is a real answer to prayer, and should cut some off our daily commutes by half. It also means we get a short time in the sun: being trendy Inner-Westers somewhere between Ashfield and Summer Hill.

If you'd like to help me move, you know who you are!

Rethinking approach on Gregory reader

2010-07-15T21:13:00.002+10:00

I did a little more work on the Gregory project this afternoon, after my brain got fried from too much study.

One of the major problems is that since this is a patristic text, I can't just use Perseus to do massive vocab crunching. So I have circa 6500 words to identify. If I managed 100 a day, that would still be 2 months of work. Perhaps if I have some time by finishing my thesis a little early, I'll be able to dedicate some real gutsy time for this.

So at the moment it's me spread across an excel spreadsheet, LSJ in Logos, and the Perseus project, filling in a lexical form, some morphological data, and a base translation.

I think I've been doing it badly though - I've just started working alphabetically. Which is kind of helpful when you have however many forms of ἄγω turn up. (ps, keymanweb virtual online keyboard is a winner). But now I'm thinking of re-sorting my list by frequency of occurrence, and getting that list down and dusted, because then by the time I got to those vast number of low or single occuring forms, I could change my approach: I could start to work through the text itself and look up those words in context. This would allow me to work on the commentary at the same time.

I've already looked up a few words in the text in order to get a better handle on their meaning, form, and usage. Especially when Perseus doesn't know what to do with them and I can't find anything in LSJ. Re-orienting to this approach would magnify that factor.

So I think that's the plan from this point on: frequency it down to the small numbers.

In other news, maybe we've found a new place to live. Praying it all comes together and we can move in the next couple of weeks.

Chrysostom on Humility

2010-07-15T13:44:00.003+10:00

Ὁ καθήμενος ἐπὶ τῶν Χερουβὶμ, τοὺς πόδας ἔνιψε τοῦ προδότου· σὺ δὲ, ἄνθρωπε, γῆ καὶ σποδὸς ὢν, καὶ τέφρα, καὶ κόνις, ἐπαίρεις σεαυτὸν καὶ μέγα φρονεῖς;

In Iohannem, LXXI.2 (On Jn 13:12-19)

He who sits upon the Cherubim, washes the traitor's feet;
but you, man, earth and ashes, cinders and dust,
magnify yourself and think high-minded?

Hobbies

2010-07-14T21:42:00.002+10:00

It used to be that I could say that things like Latin and Greek were my hobbies. But then they became my studies. And now I'm a full-time student again and Greek is mainly what I do. It's a little bit sad to say that my favourite hobby outside the study of ancient writings is... the study of ancient writings and languages!

I have other interests though. I like to play some bass guitar. I used to do a lot of martial arts, but I gave that up for theological reasons.

So now I go to the gym 5 days a week. It's my main non-study hobby. I once studied fitness at a technical college, something people often find hard to believe. In fact, I topped our class for "Group exercise to music" - i.e. running an aerobics-type class. I like to lift heavy objects.

This year has been good for gym going, since I'm in at college 5 days, I just go across to the uni gym. I've been really pleased to reach some goals I've never got to before, including being able to do my own body weight and above on a chest press and lat pulldown. Other things have been harder - getting back into some running for instance. My knees are not what they used to be and my cardiovascular fitness has declined. Nonetheless, Tue and Thu are cardio days and I do a 5km row or run on the machines.

Anyway, I just thought some of you might like an insight into my life apart from new schemes for the advancement of classical languages.

As an extra bonus, yesterday I learnt the word 'kebbock' through my Gaelic study. It's always exciting when studying Gaelic to be given an English gloss that I've never encountered! a kebbock is a round of cheese. There you go, no extra cost.

Progress with Gregory and other projects

2010-07-12T21:52:00.004+10:00

Well, I've finished compressing the vocabulary list into discrete forms and their frequencies. There are about 6575 forms in the 5 Orations. This is not exact, as there are a few forms I have kept discrete where I might have collapsed them, simply to aid my own processing of them.

The next step will be to do some morphological tagging, so I can (a) process words by frequency of word rather than form, (b) know what to put for vocabulary references. This I expect will take a bit longer than the initial processing will take.

One of the obstacles for me in this, and in other Greek-language projects, is simply that most of my tools for working with Greek are on the laptop that spends most of its time at college, which means weeknights are not good times for Greek work; most of my Greek-related non-digital tools also live at college. But conversely I don't want to spend college time sidetracked into masses of Greek-work. Anyway, I will find some workarounds and keep at it.

I sent off an email to ask about the copyright issues on a Greek-translation of Oerberg, but no response at yet. I'll finish up the first chapter and leave it at that for now. Already one sees the issues of translation versus a ground-up approach, in that Oerberg's first chapter covers some key words in the 1st and 2nd declension across the genders: insula, oppidum, fluvius, whereas the Greek translation is immediately introducing νῆσος, πόλις, and ποταμός, of which only the latter would normally have even a chance of getting into an opening chapter!

I'm thinking sunday afternoons will make a good time for podcast recordings. I'll try and work through a single text at a time and produce some fair audio for them. Hopefully I can get started this week with Puer Romanus or A Greek Boy at Home.

See my last post for an attempt to locate more Direct-Method texts from the turn of the previous century. Not all make workable material, but some are really helpful.

I'm becoming quite convinced that we need something in the vein of Piper Salve meets Traupman's Conversational Latin, but for Greek. The former is an excellent little volume that came out of Latin conventicula in Europe, while the latter has a veritable cornucopia of communicative Latin. Something by topic-area, with key phrases and words, and some continuous dialogue as well.

PS: having made some progress on the Gregory project, it strikes me that I'm not far short of morphologically tagging the whole text. Surely this could be of wider use than the Reader? If I knew what format to put this information in for broader use, I'd be happy to make it more available towards the end. (It's quite slow going though!)

Direct Method Books we could do with

2010-07-11T20:36:00.007+10:00

I've made a list of books for Latin and Greek, generally related to the Direct-Method, Rouse, etc., that it would be good to source. Some of them already exist on google books, or other places, but some of them are proving hard to track down. Feel free to comment if you have located any, and I'll incorporate the link into this page.

WHD Rouse Demonstrations in Greek Iambic Verse (1899)
- , Demonstrations in Latin Elegiac Verse (1899)
- , A Greek reader (1907)
E.H. Scott and Frank Jones, A first Latin course (1913)
WHS Jones, First Latin book (1919)
- , Via Nova; or, The application of the direct method to Latin and Greek (1915)
RB Appleton and WHS Jones Initium (1916)
- , Puer Romanus (1913)
- , Pons Tironum (1924)
- , Perse Latin Plays(1913)
Edward Adolf Sonnenschein Ora Maritima (1914)
- , Pro Patria (1907)
WL Paine and CL Mainwaring, Primus Annus (1912)
TA Wye; WL Paine Primus Annus: Vocabula explicata
WL Paine, Decem fabulae pueris puellisque agendae (1927)
Frank Stephen Granger, Via Romana (1915)

A wealth of texts, out of copyright one would presume, ripe for audio-recordings as well.

Personal News....

2010-07-11T16:52:00.003+10:00

We've just come back from 8 days away. My idea of a holiday is mainly to go and do other things: courses, conferences, etc..

Anyway, we spent a week down in Melbourne for orientation with Pioneers, a mission organisation. It was quite an intense week, with only an hour of scheduled free-time each day, and about 7 hours of sessions throughout the day and into the evening. We are, as long-term readers and friends would know, exploring the possibilities of long-term ministry in Mongolia. It was a very helpful week as we get to know Pioneers and how they work and what they're all about and how we might fit in with that.

We flew back to Sydney on Friday night, and then got up Saturday morning and drove up to Mt. Victoria to serve a neighbouring church for their weekend retreat. I gave 4 talks on Judges. I should have organised to record them. It was a good time up there, sharing with some lovely folk, and hearing their stories too. You might get some posts on Judges out of me in the next week or so.

Tomorrow is back to college, back to the thesis, and back to everything else. So I'm trying to enjoy my Sunday evening as best I can.

Really slow

2010-07-03T21:26:00.002+10:00

I do most of my greek work on a Windows 7 operating system, running Keyman. It makes typing polytonic Greek a real breeze, and I can switch keyboard layouts with some custom hotkeys.

But I also run a linux system off the same computer, which is also where emails tend to end up. And the Greek polytonic layout is different. Which messes me up. You get used to one system and then the other totally throws you.

This explains why sometimes things get delayed. Like just now when I went to type an email in Greek and gave up in frustration. it's bad enough trying to think in Greek, let alone remember a foreign keyboard layout.

Okay, this is truly my last post before going away for the week. mission conference then speaking at a church retreat. would appreciate your prayers.

End of week ramblings without proper title.

2010-07-02T17:55:00.005+10:00

Well, this is the end of a rather odd week in my study calendar. I've not been doing much thesis work, because I'm going to be away next week, and I've mainly been occupied with preparing some sermons on Judges for the weekend following. (This explains why you won't get any posts for a week or so).

Anyway, I am reflecting today on how little use I've made of ἡ Σχολή (Greek) and Schola (Latin). These are both fine social-networking and education-resourcing sites, with chat facilities as well.

I suppose one part of it is a certain shyness. I'm not outgoing by nature and sitting down in chat-rooms to talk in Attic doesn't come naturally. Secondly, I suspect we all suffer from some language-shock: confronted by a mass of Greek it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Thirdly, Greek and Latin work better in my brain when I've spent some time 'acclimatising'. And fourthly, time-zones are not in my favour.

Anyway, I want to work against this. If indeed our plans to go to Mongolia next year, εἰ ὁ Θεὸς θέλει, then I will be an even more isolated setting for communicative language practice of Greek and Latin!

So, I think my answer is to set aside a time each week, and just lock it in to being online and on such sites. Maybe Aussies like myself could make a common time, one weeknight for a few hours say. Working on real-time text-based, and voice-based, conversation will definitely help us move forwards.

I had another thought about something but it's gone.

An Oerberg in Greek?

2010-07-01T17:19:00.003+10:00

A lot of us would like to see a Greek version of Oerberg's Lingua Latina. Today I started doing a bit of work on something that would help us get there. I started translating Familia Romana into Greek.

Of course, simply translating LL is not a perfect solution. My text is not truly adapted to a Direct Method teaching of Greek per Greek. I've kept the story located in its Roman Empire setting, with names intact. I have not tried to balance out the vocabulary to systematically introduce endings and declensions. Greek has an aorist and perfect to match the Latin perfect. The optative needs its own treatment. Participles do a lot more in Greek. It's also hard to know how to introduce the variety and complexity of Greek particles (I don't even have a good instinct for using them myself). And so on.

At this stage though, my main aim is simply to provide a translation of LL as is, into the Greek language. At a later stage we might think about adapting the text itself or writing a new one.

One of the other problems is that a translation runs into copyright issues, even though LL's content is not actually the point, since it's trying to teach Latin; nonetheless I think I'll try and get in touch with the rights holders'. Hopefully they've no objection to a straight translation of LL into Greek.

I make no promises about progress! I had thought about starting this long ago, but never got around to it. I can at least tell you that I've made a start, and some of it will appear over at cotidie, and maybe some files will get posted somewhere too.

If you'd like to more formally collaborate on this, let me know. Maybe we could set up a wiki or something.

Lessons in being polite: spelling people's names

2010-07-01T16:05:00.004+10:00

It's really quite simple. People have a name, they're generally quite attached to it, and they're often very attached to the way they spell it. So be polite, spell their name correctly.

Now, if you don't know how they spell their name, it's okay to get it wrong. Once. And they should not be offended, they have no good claim to be offended. They should simply say, "Sorry, that's not how I spell my name, I spell it ...."

And then you should take notice of this and from then on be a proficient and diligent speller of their name.

Particularly bad is when their name is right in front of you. Like when they've sent you an email and their name is in the address field, and they've signed it, and you're replying back to them, and you just ignore what they wrote and use whatever spelling seems good to you. Now you're just be rude, probably through mental indolence.

I'm not particularly offended when you spell my name wrong, just a little baffled that you didn't take more care, especially when it was right in front of you all along.

Seumas. It's Scottish, not Irish. That's why you don't spell it Seamus.
Macdonald, not McDonald. Again, I'm not Irish, and we don't run a family restaurant.

Thank you. Here ends today's public service announcement.

p.s. Substituting random Scottish names, a la Angus, Fergus, etc., only secures you a place in my hall of infamy
p.p.s. While I appreciate the genetic memory that drudges up Hamish as the Gaelic vocative form of Seumas, it is also generally not to be used for my name, unless you are in fact addressing me in Gaelic.

Radde-Gallwitz on Divine Simplicity

2010-06-30T21:00:00.002+10:00

Another fine book I've just finished is Andrew Radde-Gallwitz's Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity

I first became interested in the doctrine of simplicity a couple of months ago, in connexion with a number of other things. I've really been enjoying the books in the Oxford Early Christian Studies series - they are all top-notch. So I picked up this one to explore a bit deeper as to how simplicity functions for some of the Fathers.

First, let me say that RG writes with great clarity in a fairly tricky field. The arguments that occupy his book involve complex Greek debates over theology, language, and ontology. RG's main line of argument is to reject Christopher Stead's over-simplification (!) and dichotomisation between (a) the identity thesis, and (b) radical apophaticism.

The first couple of chapters look at figures such as Ptolemy, Marcion, Clement of Alexandria, Dionysius of Alexandria, etc.. I'm going to pass over them to focus on the later chapters which deal in depth with Aetius, Eunomius, Basil, and Gregory of Nyssa.

In picking up the argument with Aetius, the debate of the late 4th century with the Heterousians becomes very clear through RG's treatment. For Aetius, and Eunomius after him, 'ingenerate' names God's essence, and so we get a version of the identity thesis. The identity thesis is simply that God is his attributes, self-same and identical. For Eunomius, building on Aetius, this means that all God's attributes must be synonymous, since language and ontology must map 1-to-1. So, since ingenerate names God's essence, all other attributes of God are synonymous to ingeneracy. For Eunomius the alternatives are dire: an inability to say anything about God. To know God is to know his essence.

Basil's response is to chart a course between total apophaticism and Eunomius' identity thesis. Basil makes a number of moves. Firstly, he believes that language about God is fixed by common usage firstly, so that (contra Eunomius), 'father' is not a case of homonyms, two separate words in the case of God and humanity, but rather 'father' is applied with the same meaning to God and to humans, yet it also must be 'purified' of creaturely connotations. Further, Basil underlines a number of distinctions that preserve knowledge about God without requiring that we know the 'whatness', the essence of God.

Basil's distinctions destroy the ability of 'ingeneracy' to name God's essence, by showing that it is a relative term, which never names essences. Furthermore, he develops an account of propria, those things which properly belong and identify a thing, without being definitional, partitional, or complementary. That is, God's goodness does not define, nor constitute, nor go to making up, nor function as a predicate complement, to God's essence, but is a coextensive property not destructive of simplicity.

Moving into Gregory's defence of Basil, RG does a great job of teasing out the distinctives and the contributions. Gregory takes up Basil's account of conceptualisations, also key, which is a way of speaking about our understanding of God without either denoting the essence of God, or engaging in sheer fiction. That is, conceptualisations are second-order reflections on primary truths about God, primarily revealed through scripture, that allow us to make distinctions that exist conceptually, even where such distinctions do not exist ontologically in the simplicity of God.

Part of Gregory's work is to develop an account of Basil's propria as 'the goods', the unmixed and unlimited virtues that are God's idiomata, which are mutually entailing and so also co-extensive. This involves a more detailed treatment of true and false goods for humanity as well.

I fear I have not given a good account of RG's work. He is clearer than I am, by far. What is particularly enjoyable is that clarity, and to see how Gregory of Nyssa in particular develops Basil and provides a strong case for simplicity which involves a philosophical complexity that avoids total apophaticism, as well as the identity thesis of Eunomius, which is a hyper-rationalist account of Christianity that destroys orthodoxy. The Cappadocians' work is not always appreciated in its depth and nuance, and this fine volume goes someway to correcting this. It also helped me understand Eunomius a lot better, which is important for my thesis in other ways.

Weinandy on Impassibility, III

2010-06-30T14:39:00.004+10:00

It has been some time between drinks on this series. We are looking at Weinandy's Does God Suffer?
Posts one and two.

In chapter 8 of his book, Weinandy turns to an examination of the Incarnation in relation to impassibility. Those who adopt a passibilist position effectually make the suffering of God ahistorical, and thus render the cross meaningless.

Weinandy's theological starting point is to spend considerable time exploring the significance of the communicatio idiomatum (the communication of properties). For Weinandy, The C.I. embeds this statement: "Jesus is one ontological entity, and the one ontological entity that Jesus is is the one person of the divine Son of God existing as a complete and authentic man." (p174), and every christological heresy departs from both this proposition and from the C.I.

In particular, Weinandy contests that it is misapplication of the analogy of soul-body union in the human person that leads to many of these difficulties; furthermore, it's a misunderstanding of Cyril of Alexandria that is similarly problematic. The effect of Weinandy's reading becomes apparent on p201. Who is that suffers? The Divine Son. In what manner does he suffer? As man. The unity of the natures undergirds that it is the person of the Son who suffers, the distinction of the natures undergirds that the Impassible God suffers in his assumed (taken-to-himself) human-nature.

If the Son suffered in his divine nature (p204), the incarnation was pointless; If the impassible Son suffers in his divine nature, then the Godhead is diminished; yet it is fully in the human existential 'I' that the one person of the Son lives, and so suffers.

This leads into chapter 9, which is Weinandy's attempt to work out the redemptive nature of Christ's sufferings. Again he is covering a large amount of biblical material. Most of it quite well in my opinion. Firstly he explores how Christ suffers the necessary, intrinsic, inevitable consequences of sin: death and separation from God. Furthermore, Jesus' death is not a mere experiencing of our condemnation, but an atoning suffering, which effects reconciliation to God for us. I am not convinced entirely at this point, at which Weinandy argues that sin itself demands the sacrifice, and denies a doctrine of propiation for one of expiation. Simultaneous with his death as death for sin, is the putting to death of sinful humanity, which Jesus assumed in his incarnation, which death (and resurrection) makes possible our re-creation as human persons to an unfallen (fallen yet restored) nature in the New Creation.

For Weinandy, the Resurrection firstly establishes the Father's love for the Son. Impassibility will mean that the Father suffers no deprivation, no evil, in the death of Jesus. Indeed the scriptures speak more plainly of the Father's joy in the Son's obedient death, than grief. Further, the resurrection is the vindication of the Son, and the manifestation of the new creation, the new and complete humanity that is in Christ, which then makes possible the new provision of the age of the Spirit.

Chapter 10 rounds out Weinandy's book nicely, as he explores the significance of our sufferings as well. I do not agree with all that he writes in this chapter, as he draws on Roman Catholic ecclesiology and sacramentology. Nonetheless, I believe his basic thrust is correct: "The mystery of Jesus...is the Father’s response to the mystery of human suffering." (p243), and so human suffering only becomes explicable in light of the Son's human suffering and death. Furthermore incorporation and unity in Christ makes in some sense his suffering ours, and our suffering his. All of which is triumphed over in the cross, so that the Cross is the "Glory of Man". Those who hold to a passible God, in Weinandy's view, have so contained God that their understanding of human suffering can only ever be that of the passive victim. Rather, the suffering of the Impassible God in the cross has "salvific significance" (p281), and so our suffering is transformed by that suffering.

In conclusion, let me say that it was a real pleasure to read Weinandy's book. Almost every chapter delivered a sense of clarity and epiphany to me, as I realised how true this doctrine rings, and how sweetly it sings of God's great sovereignty, goodness, love, and redemption. In a few weeks I'm scheduled to preach at the college chapel, and impassibility will be the theme of my sermon. I will perhaps post some notes to accompany that also.

Post #352

2010-06-29T22:03:00.002+10:00

If it's not obvious by now, I mainly blog because when I have ideas in my head, it's best for them to find expression. That could be a sermon or it could be a written exposition, it's rarely conversation (that's not my temperament!). So blogging helps me process my thoughts into communication.

I like to keep some kind of tab on who wanders past here. Mainly for curiosity's sake. I'm always intrigued by weird search terms that land people here, or unusual countries.

With the rise and rise of RSS-readers, it's hard to know who's reading these days. People are not likely to comment in passing, as I myself know - there's 156 feeds on my reader and I rarely take the time to follow a link to the site proper and leave my opinion. Only things that get me going, one way or the other, get that level of interaction.

Which leaves the blogging experience with a kind of shouting in space feel. I'm aware that there are more readers than I can place a finger on, and there must be regular readers, and some of them I even know, in one way or another. But it's the most amorphous kind of audience to write for.

All of which essentially to say, I hope you enjoy, or benefit from, the words that pass along here. And if you'd just like to say hi, this is the post for that. Carry on, then.

Brief summary of current side-projects

2010-06-29T18:21:00.002+10:00

It's certainly one of my sometimes unhelpful proclivities to take on side projects. At present I can think of 3 that I am seriously working on:

1. The Gregory Nazianzus reader. Trying to create a reader's version of the 5 Theological Orations. Currently I'm working through the list of all words, and condensing them by noting down their frequency. This is rather time consuming. Anyway, it's a good project and I look forward to the next few stages. I also don't mind data-crunching mechanical work that much.

2. McGuffey Readers. I only started this the other day. The idea is to translate the Eclectic Readers of McGuffey into both Greek and Latin. Already it's proven to be beneficial to myself. Learning words for cat, hen, etc., and thinking through some translation issues. I expect as the complexity of texts increases that it will be both more personally beneficial, and of greater use to others.

3. The Greek Colloquial handbook project (that I mentioned in the last post). This too I've just started, but I think it will be a really useful resource. I'm hoping it can serve as a bit of a basis for working on Greek conversation with people.

All of which takes time that I don't have a lot of. I try and refrain from doing any of this during my 8-4:30 study day, so that I can that time focused on study and thesis-work.

Here are some additional projects I'm contemplating:

4. I'd really like to take up podcasting again. I think I'd pick up Rouse's Greek Boy and start recording readings from it again, probably with a Buthian Reconstructed-Koine Pronunciation.
5. Beyond that, it would be good to record podcasts to go with Kendrick as well.
6. Thirdly in the podcast realm, writing 5 minute scripts and recording one of those per week would be another beneficial work. This might have to follow on from project 3 above.

7. Lingua Latina, Greek style, would be something of a holy grail. I'm aware (though haven't seen), the Italian Athenaze. Rouse's Greek boy comes close. But if we had a genuine Greek text built on the same principle as Oerberg's LL, its usefulness would be astounding. As it is, anyone interested in Attic as a living language has to try and gather together a half-dozen (excellent, let me be clear) resources and make the most of them. 'Lingua Graeca' would be a complete course, something one could teach from, all in Greek. Some adjustments might need to be made (it's relatively easy for a Latin-alphabet-using-language-speaker to pick up LL and get started, the Greek alphabet and pronunciation are a little more of a stumbling block. Audio would be an essential complement)

Okay, enough dreaming for now.

Latin to Greek?

2010-06-29T18:17:00.002+10:00

Is anyone aware of a Latin-to-Greek Lexicon? I've done a little bit of searching, but no success so far.

I've started working on a very helpful document. It's basically a Latin conversational guide, arranged topically, with exercises and so forth. A teaching document really. Anyway, I'm trying to port it across to Greek, because there are so few Greek resources of this kind. This is not the only kind of Latin->Greek work I have been trying my hand at. That's why a Latin-to-Greek lexicon would be really helpful. Sure, I can go Latin->English->Greek, but it's more cumbersome and often there is a closer overlap between Greek words and Latin words, that would work better in the texts.

If I ran your languages department

2010-06-28T19:12:00.002+10:00

In most universities in Australia, a student normally takes 4 courses per semester, and a language course takes up one of those slots. So a language stream through university is 1/4 of the load, perhaps with some double courses here and there. If you were in a classics major, you'd round that out with extra literature courses, some ancient history, and so on.

Seminaries are a slightly different kettle of fish. Those modelled on universities have to slot languages into the same kind of structure, and so are far less likely to hold a stream of language right through, unless from the 2nd year on they simply integrate it into biblical-exegesis classes.

Back to universities for the time being. Fairly standard for an Arts subject is 3 hours contact time, to be matched nominally (but rarely) by 9 hours of private study. This is the basis for how I'd revise a languages program.

Raise your contact hours to 10.

If comprehensible input is going to be the main driving force of your language acquisition, you need to do everything possible to maximise that input, and raising the contact hours is the first step. It's what's going to let you actually communicate and engage with the language, rather than memorising paradigms at home and doing translation exercises.

So, argue that your languages course should be more like a Science course with labs and pracs and so on, and far less like an Arts course where you can lecture some content and assign some reading.

How are those 10 hours a week going to be filled?

Firstly, the main teacher should pick a text, or write their own, that is going to be adaptable to a communicative model. In Latin, there's no substitute for Oerberg's Lingua Latina. I'd make it the basis of my classes and syllabus. Teach through TPR and TPRS and work through the text, always in Latin.

Secondly, assign reading-labs. Gather a significant amount of graded Latin reading and require students to work through them in their own time, but not as homework. Maybe use nodictionaries.com or something. The idea is that students should spend two hours or so a week simply reading Latin extensively, without seeking to translate.

Thirdly, employ your second year and third year students to run conversational classes. These should build off the readings and the text/main classes, and look and feel like a modern languages class. Students can be discussing everyday life, a topic, the reading for the week, etc.. In terms of getting 2nd/3rd year students to run them, I'd just block that in as a requirement and part of the hours for the 2nd/3rd year subjects. It will certainly help them develop more communicative fluency, it reduces the main teacher's overwhelming contact hour burden, and they should be far enough ahead of the new students to be teaching them something. 3rd years could run a similar thing for 2nd years. 3rd year students should be able to run their own conversation times.

The final 2 non-contact hours should involve working on assignments, some home composition assignments, and maybe even listening to audio. It isn't so necessary to schedule this time.

With such a course I think you'd move fairly quickly. You should be into reading unadapted but simple original materials in the second semester. By the third semester I'd also set Donatus or Dionysius Thrax as reading, alongside a modern grammar, and be teaching some critical grammatical analysis (since most programs will not want to abandon this). The gains of an acquisition-orientation should pay off in the second half of a 3-year program, with the ability to set much longer texts/portions of texts for study, as well as requiring in language analysis and discussion.

In a seminary I'd readjust the system slightly. I'd assign more Koine reading than in a secular university, and integrate it into the NT courses. In 2nd and 3rd year the Greek reading should be integrated with doctrine as well, and in the right setting that would include Latin (come on you slackers!). Hebrew could undergo the same treatment. Of course, the seminary program is generally overloaded anyway. The student who turns up with some knowledge of Greek and/or Hebrew is off to a flying start.

Probably I've said all this before. Never hurts me to repeat myself (especially on the internet)

Assorted News

2010-06-28T08:22:00.002+10:00

I've now recently had two separate individuals contact me to talk about some conversational Attic Greek in Sydney. So, if you're in Sydney, AUS and also interested, now is a good time to come out of the woodwork, and maybe we could form a small group together.

Last week I had the idea to start turning McGuffey's Readers into Greek and Latin. I realise not all will appreciate either the content or tone (I, too), but such a continuous graded public-domain reader makes excellent source material. I've made a start on the first reader, lessons 1-5. I think my plan will be to post them up sequentially over at cotidie, and to make some links available here when I complete major milestones. Feedback will be certainly welcome.

A few more ideas are simmering away in my brain, we'll see what comes out later this week.

Lastly, congratulations to my friends Russ & Aimee, married in Bendigo over the weekend. A lot of driving to be there but it was well worth it.