Due to tasks such as bringing this website into a more carefree state August has been somewhat of a dry month for reading material here at Theoblogian. To compensate for this, I would like to introduce you all to Bookins.com. This site is for trading books. You offer some of your books for trade, and when someone decides they want it, you slap a shipping label on it, and send it off to the lucky new owner. For each book you put up for trade, you get a certain number of points based on the value of the book. You can trade these points in for that book you have always wanted that someone over in Tennessee put up for trade. Those points plus $3.99 gets the new book.

Welcome to the new and improved Theoblogian.org.

Many of you may have noticed that the site was unavailable some of the weekend. This was due to a change in our name servers. Since you are here reading this, you may be confident that the change was successful!

On the surface Theoblogian.org looks much as it always has. The biggest change is in how you make comments. You must log in before you can make comments, and in order to log in, you must first become a theoblogian.

In my eagerness to eliminate spam in the comments (web-graffiti) on Theoblogian, the site is up minus some features. The archives will be added back in soon, and various others odd and ends will be corrected too.

This means that over the next several weeks, you may find the site temporarily unavailable as new things get moved out. Updates will take about 15 minutes, so if you find the site unavailable, please try back a little later.

Lack of Activity

You may have been noticing a lack of activity here at Theoblogian this month.

My excuse is that I have been reprogramming the website. We have been getting about 8 spam comments a day for the past three weeks. So I decided to upgrade my knowledge of ASP.Net to version 2.0 and eliminate the possibility of the spam at the same time. Consequently I haven’t had a lot of time for writing interesting stuff.

If any of you are burning with curiosity you may go and see the upgraded site, but the visible differences are very minor. The biggest difference is that you will need to log in to make comments. I am interested in any suggestions or comments that you may have. Please leave any comments here, but if they start with “Nice Site,” “Cool site,” or anything Italian, I may think it is just more spam.

How does application differ from interpretation? Or does it differ? I was certain that they did differ. I even came up with a term merging interpretation and application into “interprecation.” This clever term not only represent the blurring of the distinction between the two activities, it also reminds me of “imprecation,” something appropriately directed at one who doesn’t distinguish between application and interpretation. I enjoyed my own cleverness until I read the very helpful “Making Sense of the Old Testament, Three Crucial Questions” by Tremper Longman III. In it he states, “It may be possible to distinguish between meaning and application on a strictly theoretical level, but it is never possible to do so in practice.”

Well clever isn’t very satisfying if I’m just plain wrong so I decided to take a closer look at the differences that I thought I perceived.

Thank you all for your prayers. My partial thyroidectomy (surgery) went well. The Dr. removed half my thyroid, but I didn’t get to bring it home in a jar to show my boys. My folks came over from Idaho for the surgery, and they got to spend lots of quality time with four adorable, well-behaved children. Before dinner tonight the Dr. called and told me that the pathology report had come back already, and my lump was benign. This means that I only need to go in to get my stitches out and then live happily ever after.

Everything else is going well as well. Recovery is progressing at a break-neck pace (that is not the same as a cut-throat rate), and in only four weeks I will be able to pick up my children again. That is going to be the toughest part of convalescence. My three-year-old loves to be “walked to sleep” a ritual in which I walk around our yard with his head resting on my shoulder. This is ritual we both enjoy, and often it results in him falling asleep.

Throughout the gospel of Mark Jesus repeatedly instructed people to keep quiet about Jesus’ miracles. At first glance this may seem a bit contradictory. Jesus went through the countryside, preaching, but whenever he did something amazing, he tried to hush it up. He didn’t want celebrity or even servants. He desired to be loved. He sought friends. This and a bit of reflection on human nature makes Jesus shyness understandable.

On Independence Day, Lewis’s thoughts on the love of country is a breath of fresh air. In these days of strident discourse on America’s role in the world we need a right understanding of our love for our country. We cannot throw out patriotism as some would do. Neither can we equate love for our nation with love for justice. The rest of this post is an excerpt from The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis.

When scripture appears to be open to different interpretations depending upon interpreters’ presuppositions than the task at hand is no longer interpreting scripture, but arguing opinions.

The interpretation of scripture transcends what we bring to the text. Authorial intent does not change. Some discard authorial intent as an impossible standard. It may appear subjective. One may claim to find authorial intent with only a cursory examination of the text. Another believes that his speculations about the circumstances of the author establishes a better authorial intent. Neither trusts the text of the scripture they wish to interpret. Mistakes in interpretation are much easier to perpetuate in isolation. The community of faith is a guard against such misinterpretation.

Back in March, the doctor noticed that the left side of my thyroid was enlarged. Last Wednesday, I had a second biopsy because the first came back “non-diagnostic,” a technical term for “didn't get the bad stuff with all that pokin’ around.”

This biopsy came back diagnostic, and the diagnosis was cancer. If you were told that you were gonna get cancer, but you got to pick which kind...this would be a good choice. It doesn't metastasize (spread and kill all of you), but it is cancer, and it will be cut out.

The exorcism is July 19th. So I have three weeks. And I have committed these three weeks to a reflection on life vs. sin & death and my role in this conflict. Sidelines are non-existent in this conflict so I really have no idea where I have been sitting.

Mark has an amazing percentage of stories that reveal Jesus’ frustration during his ministry: healings ending with commands for silence that were ignored, escaping crowds only seeking healing, continual conflict with the religiosos, and amazement at the pandemic lack of faith. Mark reveals Jesus as a man whose ministry did not go as he wanted it to go.

If you tried to visit yesterday, you would have seen an ugly error message saying (in essence) that you didn’t get to enjoy the brilliance that is Theoblogian.org. It said it in very precise computereeze, but may have appeared incoherent, and you might have thought Theoblogian partied a little too hard on its birthday.

The truth is that Sunday morning, sometime after 7AM one of the servers here where we host Theoblogian died a gruesome death. Official cause of death is “failure on its hard drive controller.”

Thank you for your patience and for checking back to make sure that Theoblogian.org is virtually OK.

David Murrow's book, Why Men Hate Going to Church is an amazing book that actually answers the question of the title. I learned of the book while writing Is God Manly? and picked it up hoping to gain another man's perspective on the intersection of manliness and godliness. I was a bit disappointed, though. Murrow answered the question implied by the title, but not mine. His assumption appears to be that godliness is the automatic result of involvement in church.

The other day Adam contributed to the discussion on Is God Manly and asked, “If the leaders of the church are men, how did feminine values become predominant?” Murrow asks the same question, “How did a faith founded by a Man and his twelve male disciples become so popular with women, but anathema to men?”

Before four notch and seven years our fathers got further, after this continent, a new nation, understood in the liberty, and the affair inaugurated that all men are caused on an equal footing.

This is the opening sentence of the Gettysburg Address translated both to and from German. It is recognizable, yet nothing like the original. The U.S. Department of State website says of the Gettysburg Address

Few documents in the growth of American democracy are as well known or as beloved as the prose poem Abraham Lincoln delivered at the dedication of the military cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

This makes it ideal for demonstrating the difficulties of translating the Bible. Unless you know a second language, the difficulties and pitfalls of translating between languages may be difficult to grasp, but thanks to the Babel Fish we may understand the difficulties through a truly American text.

The error of the Pharisees and scribes was the failure to distinguish between their teachings based on Scripture and the Scriptures themselves. Generations of men had treasured and pored over the Scriptures and contributed their insights into the meaning of the Scriptures. These became the Talmud, the record of Rabbinic discussion and the fundamental source for rabbinic legislation and case law. Jesus condemns them for giving greater authority to these  interpretations and applications of Scripture than Scripture. “For the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God, you hypocrites!” (Matthew 15:6)

With the outright attacks on manliness represented by gender-neutered translations, and the general unconcern over this issue, I have decided to highlight example of manliness in Scripture. My first example comes from the book of Job in which Job goes toe to toe with God like an ancient Greek hero. God, for his part, comes back at him with a blast of undiluted masculinity.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how manly is God? This is an idea that has been growing on me for some time now. I want God to be manly. During our men’s Bible study at church a man at my table put a label on his notebook that reads, “Biblical Leadership for Men.” The “for Men” leapt off the page at me. This Bible study isn’t the ordinary, gender-neutralized Bible study. It is for men. Our pastor is determined to lead the men of our church to be leaders of our families. It was during our weekly men’s Bible study that I realized the scope of this need. We have forty to fifty men at a men’s Bible study in a church of 200.

I suggested the idea to my wife that men want God to be manly, and a pained look flickered across her face. She considered “manly” a belittling adjective for God. But God repeatedly identifies himself as Father. I crave a hero, someone whom I can pattern my life after. Can God be this hero?

In my continuing series on interactions with the church fathers via the Ancient Christian Commentary on the Scripture volume IV I have found an interesting interpretational method. When seeking a life of ease whether in ancient Christendom or modern, citing Scripture may be a supremely effective technique for getting your way. In order to accomplish this you will need to become skilled at interpretational methods overlooked by many so-called leading theologians. To complete the commercial cliché: these are methods the leading theologians don’t want you to know about. They provide great power to the self-important, and since that is what we are all about here at Theoblogian.org, I will describe one of these methods for you.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the season of sorrows and changes of the season, and last week I found out that I have a 3cm lump on my thyroid. This is very treatable, and I may only lose half my thyroid. Whew! So I have nothing to worry about except the biopsy next Thursday and the surgery to remove the thing. Now I am on the prayer sheet at church, but I don’t want to need prayer. Last night I realized that I have been giving God the cold-shoulder. While I heard my name coming from various groups of praying people, my own prayer concerning this lump was reluctant, petulant and blind to God’s character.

Sunday following our Easter dinner an unusual topic of conversation came up: congregational comments during the sermon. I don’t mean the loud “Amen!” or “Preach it!” comments. I mean the passing of notes or leaning over to your neighbor and whispering kind of comments. Strict etiquette may forbid such exchanges, but perhaps they aren’t all bad. Maybe they can even be beneficial.

Through my grief God turned my understanding of him on its side. Before my baptism of grief, I may have said that “sin” or “his glory” was God’s bottom line. Yes. I may have considered God’s glory to be the organizing principle of God’s activity in the world and in history. I viewed God, first and foremost, as transcendent, abstracted from the world—unfamiliar with sorrow. This appears obvious to me now in the question I voiced one night in that first year after Nancy’s death. The answer I received changed my relationship with God.

How has sorrow changed you? Has it affected you r relationship with the Lord? Stiffened your resolve to serve him? Sapped your strength? Or has the effect of sorrow become a tangled mess? Perhaps it is a tangle that you have grown tired of, and now you try to live as you did before the sorrow. I am turning back to this tangle again. I have no expectation of sorting it all out, but I do wish to consider what changes have taken root and grown up in my life. Perhaps some have borne good fruit.

In the story of the raising of Jarius’s daughter from the dead, Jesus intentionally deceived the crowd of professional mourners. This troubles me. Lying is never right...is it? I always feel guilty when I deceive, but my wife pointed out that Jesus deceived of the crowd in Mark 5, and I believe that her conclusion is justified. Jesus didn’t want the knowledge of what he had done to be spread, and he deceived the crowd to conceal the fact that he had just raised a girl from the dead.

Now that my office is (mostly) done, I think I need another project. Johan Huibers of the Netherlands is building his own 1/5 size replica of Noah’s Ark. He intends to stock it with farmyard animals and sail it on the interior waters of the Netherlands.

Thanks to Todd at Bible Places blog

Where is your Strong's concordance? If you are reading this you have a computer, and you probably have at least one Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. So where is it? Do you still use it or have you switched to an electronic concordance?

Sam and I just had a big smack-down over my spot-on fisherman post. Surprisingly, we both made cogent arguments. Early on Sam appeared to be hung up on a point about exegesis, but in the end he came to a rather startling conclusion.

Below is the transcript of the exchange, edited slightly to make us sound even more cogent. What do you think of Sam’s conclusion?

I don’t mean, “Are you a good fisherman or a bad fisherman?” Are you a commercial fisherman or a recreational fisherman? For the first time yesterday it dawned on me that our understanding of evangelism may hinge on that question. Before that realization struck, fishing with a pole was as good as fishing with a net. I have not done much of either. Now I see that they are poles apart. Peter, James, and John were net fishermen—commercial fishermen, and that makes for a very different relationship with the fish.

This morning in Sunday School we covered 2 Peter 3:8 on our journey through 2^nd Peter. Peter wrote in certain terms, “Do not overlook this one fact…”(ESV) in relation to God’s faithfulness to his promise (interesting that “promise” is singular!). It is important not to demand that God act according to my timeline or my interpretation of his timeline. His plan is beyond my scope of understanding, and I must fall back to trusting him.

So how do I keep this one fact before me?

Lo, it has been nearly two months since I wrote anything about the Ancient Christian Commentary. I began this project eager to interact with these ancient Christians about 1^st and 2^nd Samuel. Since I wrote on Augustine, however, I have not spent much time with them nor have I found much to interact with. In order not to let this project die completely, this installment will address this disappointment.

Following Hannah’s Song we have numerous rich pericopes: the decline and fall of Eli and his sons; the call of Samuel; the capture of the Ark and its sojourn in Philistia. In almost none of them, however, did I find good exegesis. These stories appear as illustrations for sermons. Gregory the Great seemed close in his analysis of the afflictions of the Philistines (1 Samuel 5-6), but, in the end, he used it as an illustration of dying to sin.

The government of Pakistan has added itself to the ranks of those natians censoring the internet. Scott over at Magic Statistics commented on this turn of events. Western Resistance started the discussion, but here I will take advantage of this opportunity to reveal the most amusing thing that has happened to me while surfing the net.

I was taking a course on Islam from Dr. Vreeland in which he required us to read through the Koran. I decided to use the database compiling feature in Bibleworks so that I could quickly search for phrases that I half-remembered. I only needed an electronic version of the Koran that I could reformat for the BW compiler and that is how my adventure began.

Hebrews 11:6
If you are going to come to God you must believe that
1. He is
2. He rewards those who seek him

What is the reward for seeking God? I have never really tried to answer this question. Maybe it is my aversion to a "contract based" relationship with God. Maybe it is my Baptistic upbringing. Perhaps I have considered this a which-came-first kind of question. It was a question that shouldn’t really be asked. But once I admitted that I was asking the question, I was able to seek an answer. Context is always a good place to look when I don’t understand a portion of Scripture, so I read the rest of chapter 11. I read Hebrews 11, keeping verse 6 at the front of my mind: “What is this reward?”

I understand why many so-called exegetes prefer proof-text to context. I do. Context muddies the waters. I, for one, am uncomfortable with the answer I found to my question, “What is the reward for seeking God?”

The last time I wrote something here, I decried the disconnect between Scripture and doctrine. Then I went off and worked 70+ hours a week to complete a major project at work. But now I am a free man again, and I wish to address how Scripture is used in the pulpit. “The pulpit” is shorthand for any occasion in which the man of God teaches or preaches. On these occasions, he teaches how to handle the Word of Truth by example.

In many churches today you can find a pastoral infatuation with “application.” They are disenchanted with “doctrine.” The goal is to preach the Scriptures in a way that is relevant to the congregation. The overly-academic sermon is considered boorish, and people must be able to take something home with them

The “doctrine” of such churches is that doctrine is not relevant to folks living Godly lives. Their effort then is to take Scripture and refine it into high quality fertilizer. People are emerging from these churches incapable of benefiting from Scripture. We need to remember the connections between doctrine and daily life. The fact that most people don’t remember the connection does not mean that it has vanished.

In his writing on Hannah’s Song in 1 Samuel 2 Augustine confirmed the value of this series. Contemporary commentaries are filled with catalogues of controversies. Ancient writers came to the Scriptures one on one and shared  their wonder and excitement. Over the years controversies have grown over their insights and now they are all but forgotten.

Oops.

Over the past few days there have been some troubles getting to some of the pages here at Theoblogian. I believe that I have resolved them to the satisfaction of all parties involved.

The eyes of the LORD preserve knowledge, But He overthrows the words of the treacherous man. Proverbs 22:12.

For my birthday I received the Ancient Christian Commentary  on Scripture Volume IV – Joshua through 2^nd Samuel. Through seminary I spent many hours in these books under the tutelage of Dr. Vreeland. He may eschew responsibility for my conclusions, but feel free to blame him any way. Having spent time in the former prophets I am eager to interact with Ambrose, Athanasius, and the others.

Six months ago I turned in and defended my personal doctrinal statement to fulfill my final requirement for graduation. This was a painful process for me and one that convinced me that I needed to spend more time examining the scriptures. I had to include a couple of things that I am not fully convinced of – things to which I can only say that I aspire to believe.
Since then I have begun considering how this institution of formal doctrinal statements relates to what we truly believe. Every church I have ever been involved with has had one. Right out of college I even encouraged my church to adopt one. I thought the litigious atmosphere in our society made it a necessity. They provide grounds on which to maintain the moral purity of a church. They are also a 4 page litmus test for whether or not I have to fellowship with you – whether or not I have to consider you credible.
The exercise of writing my own comprehensive doctrinal statement made me painfully aware of the pitfalls accompanying this institution. I believe that doctrinal statements are a valuable tool to help us communicate our understanding of theology. We should not do away with doctrinal statements, but we need to understand their limits and the pitfalls they present.

Charlie...Just remember you asked for it.

In Introduction to Biblical Grumps: Jacob Dr. Vreeland revealed that he had regaled a hapless congregation with his personalized rendition of that old-time favorite, Love Is a Verb.

Thank you, Mike up in Silverdale,  for providing this eagerly anticipated audio of Dr. Vreeland rapping. For those of you longing for edification, he also provided the complete sermon.

 There is nothing like an authoritative voice speaking from the pulpit. So for the next two weeks we will publish the other two sermons in Dr. Vreeland's series on grumpy old men. This hiatus from his ongoing review of The Privileged Planet is due to the dearth of public acclaim that has befallen the good doctor. Yes. He has chosen to fulfill his responsibilities at the seminary rather than devote himself solely to improving the writing quality here at Theoblogian.org. I am sure that this is not because he considers that task to be a lost cause.

For those of you who wish to continue thinking about Intelligent Design (ID), I point you to a couple of interesting posts.

I grew up in Protestant, usually Baptist, churches. I have heard the Bible preached nearly every Sunday of my life. And there I learned to cherish the Bible and read it. During this time I also observed the ongoing battle over the inerrancy (truthfulness) of the Bible. I find that this habit of reading my Bible created dissonance even between me those who vigorously defend the inerrancy of my Bible. Their methods distort the nature of the Bible. Over the past several years, I have discerned flaws within the methods of those defend the inerrancy of the Bible, and I seek to correct their methods.
I realize now that if I am to succeed I must do more than try to dismantle current methods of defending the truthfulness of the Bible, I must offer an alternative. These methods have been used for generations now. In the future I will attack those methods directly, but expounding on those can only be half of the process. I want to provide a positive statement about the nature of the Bible not based on the elaborate, unstable arguments in vogue.

For nearly a month now I have been mulling over this post on the idea of truth being hidden in Scripture (Yes. That is why posts are so few and far between), and just this morning yesterday morning I came across this Deep(ish) Post on those Magic Eye posters that…um–insightful folks such as myself enjoy. It is an illustration of how people can approach Scripture.

There is an idea that I have heard in Bible college and seminary. For lack of a better term, I will call it "the superficiality of Scripture." The basic purpose of this idea is to reassure Christians that they should continue to read Scripture. Bible school and seminary professors have observed that some folks are intimidated by references to the original languages. "The Greek means this...The Hebrew means that...and aren't you lucky I went to seminary so I could tell you..." And we certainly don't want to become like the 16^th century Catholic Church with an elite clergy and ignorant peasants being told what to believe. We're Protestants. We agree with Luther that everyone should be able to read the Bible and this means in their own language.

No this is not a joke, last Thursday World Net Daily posted a press-release from the Discovery Institute, a proponent of the Intelligent Design theory, based in Seattle.

-Who knew we had sane people in Seattle?

More than 400 scientists have now signed onto the DI’s “Statement of Dissent from Darwin.” which now includes “two prominent Russian biologists from Moscow State University.” Scientists who have now officially submitted their resignation from the category of “respected” scientist.

Dr. Vreeland has been reviewing The Privileged Planet in which the moon's contribution to our scientific discoveries as well as the habitability of terra firma (or not so firma - for those of you reading chapter 3) is lauded. 
And for those of you interested in learning more about our moon...
Today is the anniversary of the the first manned lunar landing, and Google Maps has added some Nasa imagery so that you can surf our nearest celestial neighbor.
http://moon.google.com

A close reading of Scripture is a dangerous activity. A year ago, I was prompted to examine how the heart is discussed in the Bible. This prompting was to go beyond the direct statements about hearts such as Jeremiah 17:9 (The heart is deceitful above all things). What I found was disturbing.  The good news is that we already know that the heart is the “inner man.” The bad news is that those pesky Hebrews used “heart” in a way that doesn’t fit with my anthropology. The good news is that we have translations to smooth out the oddities and obscure otherwise distinctive differences between passages. The bad news is that I decided to dig into the actual Hebrew text. The good news is that I have decided to confess.

My preliminary observations have lead me to believe that the heart was not simply a vague notion of the “inner man.” In the Scriptural understanding of human nature the heart had a particular role. What also fascinates me is that Scripture describes God interacting with his heart in the same way it describes a man interacting with his heart. As we examine these passages, I challenge you to refrain from immediately Westernizing the Scriptures—reducing them to concepts that we already know. This can be disconcerting because they were written thousands of years ago and not according to Western sensibilities. But if we change their meaning by substituting a concept that is easier for us to understand, we forfeit the authority of Scripture.

I am pleased to announce that Sam Yeiter from some where far, far away will be contributing to Theoblogian.org. Sam graduated from NBS two years ago and has been a true friend to me throughout my time at seminary. Sam is a pastor, and we can look forward to his emphasis on pastoral theology.

Dr. Vreeland is a professor at Northwest Baptist Seminary, and that is just the latest of many places of ministry for him. He has been at Northwest for 4 years, and his courses in Old Testament literature have had a profound effect on my approach to Scripture.

At last Thursday's senior banquet when all the professors were asked to share what they were thinking when they graduated from seminary as well as a "pithy bit of wisdom" Dr. Vreeland shared the following.

the·ol·o·gy (thE-'ä-l&-jE) noun
1 : the study of religious faith, practice, and experience; especially : the study of God and of God's relation to the world
(Source:Merriam-Webster)

theo·lo·gian (thE-&-'lO-j&n) noun
1 : a specialist in theology
(Source:Merriam-Webster)

theo·blo·gian (thE-&-'blO-j&n) noun
1 : a theologian who has discovered the art of blogging.