BIBLIA THEOLOGICA

The Least Tolerant People on Campus are Liberals. They're Never Liberal with Tolerance toward Conservatives.

2012-01-16T19:51:00.000-06:00

Conservatives on Campus? A Case for Courts

by Katherine Kersten

What was Tom Emmer thinking when he applied for a faculty position at Hamline University? Surely he knows that our campus intelligentsia generally view conservatives like him as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.

At many campuses, Emmer might have made it to the second round of interviews if he had been a disabled "person of color" or confused about his sexuality. But even then he probably couldn't have overcome the cardinal rule of campus "diversity"—diversity of political views will not be tolerated.

Given his rejection by Hamline (after he thought he had a job), Emmer might be pleased to know that some aspiring conservative faculty members who are victims of political discrimination are gaining new traction through the courts.

Take Teresa Wagner, whose case was recently considered by the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Iowa, Minnesota and other Midwestern states.

Some might question Wagner's sanity, since she applied—and was turned down for—a position at a law school whose 50-member faculty includes only one registered Republican.

Was this hotbed of liberalism Berkeley, or an Ivy League university where (one suspects) conservatives risk being burned at the stake?

Read more.

The Dumbing-Down of the Dissertation

2012-01-16T05:57:00.000-06:00

Dissing the Dissertation

by Scot Jaschik

The average humanities doctoral student takes nine years to earn a Ph.D. That fact was cited frequently here (and not with pride) at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. Richard E. Miller, an English professor at Rutgers University's main campus in New Brunswick, said that the nine-year period means that those finishing dissertations today started them before Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Kindles, iPads or streaming video had been invented.

So much has changed, he said, but dissertation norms haven't, to the detriment of English and other language programs. "Are we writing books for the 19th century or preparing people to work in the 21st?" he asked.

Leaders of the MLA -- in several sessions and discussions here -- indicated that they are afraid that too many dissertations are indeed governed by out-of-date conventions, leading to the production of "proto-books" that may do little to promote scholarship and may not even be advancing the careers of graduate students. During the process, the graduate students accumulate debt and frustrations. Russell A. Berman, a professor of comparative literature and German studies at Stanford University, used his presidential address at the MLA to call for departments to find ways to cut "time to degree" for doctorates in half.

Read more: Inside Higher Ed

Recovering Rightful Respect and Displacing Wrongful Respect

2012-01-11T15:30:00.001-06:00

This is a paragraph from a brief document and presentation that I found necessary to make to one of the classes I taught about a decade ago. If it was needful then, it probably has greater need now.

Students routinely make the mistake of thinking that their opinions should be respected and not challenged. Respect should not be shown to opinions. Respect should be shown to people while we challenge their opinions and ideas. Strangely, while many students insist upon the mistaken notion that their opinions should be respected by professors, not challenged and critiqued, many students do not show proper respect toward their professors. I respect students, and I speak respectfully to them. If I am required to respect students' opinions and not challenge their opinions and ideas, then I cannot teach anything as truthful and right. When what I teach runs cross-grain to students' opinions, this is when learning should begin to take place for a student rather than to take offense. But, how can any of us learn anything, if we cherish our opinions as unassailable and take offense whenever our opinions are challenged?

Faith Comes by Hearing

2012-01-10T14:57:00.004-06:00

Here is my most recent contribution at Credo Magazine and Credo Blog--"Faith Comes by Hearing: The Inclusivists' Abuse of Romans 10:9-17."

Open to read.

Modern Statists Exploit Threats of Violence to Compel Citizens Subjects to Do Good

2011-12-20T15:15:00.000-06:00

Here are some excellent thoughts concerning Romans 13:1-7 by James Wanliss, who posted a wonderful blog entry entitled "Utopian Impulses" which expresses well the responsibility of those who govern. Here are a few paragraphs to tease you to read the whole of it.

But moving from using the sword to remove evildoers, left wingers invariably pitch their tents on the questionable ground. They wish to use the sword to compel good, rather than prevent evil. And these days, more than ever, the desire to compel goodness comes through cowardly evasiveness based on the deadly euphemisms of political correctness. . . .

So-called progressives have all the self-righteous certainty that it is good to use the threat of government violence to redistribute the fruits of my hard-earned labor to help others. The great-hearted politically correct will have the State love my neighbor on my behalf. . . . .

The argument is that if we do not use violence, or the threat of violence, then who will help those who need help? Unless Peter is robbed, Paul will die. This is a false dilemma. Instead of using his energy to rob Peter, the prospective thief could choose instead to help Paul. Instead he is consumed with hate and envy that Peter is not doing enough, in his opinion, to help Paul. If he will not do it himself, he demands that strong men rob Peter, in the name of Caesar, God on earth. . . .

The Intolerance of Tolerant Leftists

2011-12-19T09:07:00.001-06:00

Liberal Bias? University Allegedly Cans Former GOP Politician Over Conservative Views

Tom Emmer, the 2010 GOP candidate for Minnesota governor, a radio host and a former state politician, is claiming that Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minn., hired him — then reneged — based on his political views.

Emmer, whose views are widely known in the state, claims that the university offered him a position to teach business law as an “executive in residence.” In fact, he says he had already hashed the details out and attended a faculty meeting before he was later told that he wouldn’t be able to teach at the school.

Hamline, thus far, has been relatively mum about the situation. The university recently released a brief statement addressing the incident, though it sheds little light on the reasoning behind the school’s decision not to allow Emmer into the classroom. University spokeswoman JacQui Getty told the Pioneer Press that, at this point, the college would have no further comment on the matter.

Read the whole story.

Obama Administration Flouts Court Decisions

2011-12-19T07:43:00.001-06:00

NAS Criticizes New "Diversity" Guidelines

PRINCETON, NJ (December 6, 2011)—The National Association of Scholars strongly criticized the Obama administration's new guidelines for enhancing racial diversity in college admissions. The new criteria, outlined in a fourteen-page document released on Friday under joint sponsorship of the federal education and justice departments, extol the value of a racially diverse student body and propose ways in which college and university administrators might factor race into their admissions decisions despite existing legal strictures.

NAS president Peter Wood observed, "The new guidelines represent a sharp departure from previous federal policy and on several points are unlikely to withstand judicial scrutiny. They seem to sanction common university practices which circumvent the law."

Wood, whose 2003 book, Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, is a standard work on the subject, says that the Obama administration has "adopted a highly aggressive approach aimed at making racial classification a much more salient part of college life, and of K-12 education too." The new guidelines for college were released along with a separate set of guidelines for enhancing racial diversity in elementary and secondary schools.

Wood continued, "The Departments of Education and Justice justify the new 'guidance' as an explanation of how colleges and universities can expand the use of race without running afoul of federal law. But they are very loose in their reading of Supreme Court rulings over the last decade. For example, they give college officials broad new powers to rely on their own 'judgment' for when and how to take race into account. This is contrary to the spirit of existing law."

"The Obama administration has, unfortunately, put itself on the side of higher education's 'diversicrats' who have already been engaging in racial discrimination under the pretext of pursuing diversity."

Wood alluded to the pending appeal of Fisher v. University of Texas, a racial preference case that the Supreme Court may take up this spring (see NAS’s friend-of-the-court brief). "We hope the Court agrees to take the case and makes clear that this new guidance is unlawful."

Grooming Counts, by Charles Colson

2011-11-30T15:27:00.001-06:00

Grooming Counts—Charles Colson (1931 – ) Charles Colson is the author of many books (including Born Again, Loving God, and How Now Shall We Live?) and founder of the international ministry Prison Fellowship. In 1993, he was awarded the famed Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. In the following piece, Colson points out how seemingly small matters of dress and conduct can fuel a more general, and serious, demoralization of culture.

The coarsening of our culture is evident in our discourse. For example, news journals defer to our sensitivities, not by omitting vulgarities, as they once did, but by using three dashes after the first letter of offensive words. Really clever. Over the water cooler at work or in school corridors, no one seems embarrassed anymore by conversations sprinkled with four-letter words.

Nowhere is this coarsening more evident than in our dress. I'm used to being an anachronism—the only person on an airplane wearing a coat and tie. Yes, I know business is going casual. But T-shirts stretched over protruding bellies, shorts exposing hairy legs, and toes sprouting out of sandals are not casual—they're slovenly. And you see it more and more on airplanes, in restaurants, and even in church.

How we present ourselves to others says something about how we view ourselves. When I was a Marine, we checked our spit-shined shoes and starched khakis in a full-length mirror before leaving the barracks; it was drilled into us that if we were to be sharp we had to look sharp. That's the right kind of pride, the antidote to sloth.

How have we arrived at this state? In his A Study of History, the great historian Arnold Toynbee contends that one clear sign of a civilization's decline is when élites—people Toynbee labels the “dominant minority”—begin mimicking the vulgarity and promiscuity exhibited by society's bottom-dwellers. This is precisely what some political leaders and most media moguls have done. The result: The entire culture is vulgarized.

Christians need to be conscious of the subtle ways in which our culture is sinking into sloth. We must resist the slide by creating strong countercultural influences. We can start by elevating our own standards in speech and dress. One good place to start is in our worship services. I realize that casual is “in” for contemporary services—but “casual” should be decorous.1

Footnotes: 1 Charles Colson, “Slouching into Sloth,” Christianity Today, April 23, 2001, 120.

Fall 2011 Issue of JSPL

2011-11-13T10:47:00.001-06:00

Table of Contents: JSPL 1.2 Fall 2011

ARTICLES

Citizenship and Empire: Paul's Letter to the Philippians and Eric Liddell's Work in China 137

Lynn H. Cohick

Judgment, Behavior, and Justification according to Paul's Gospel in Romans 2 153

A. B. Caneday

Why Spain? Paul and His Mission Plans 193

Allan Chapple

To Fall Short or Lack the Glory of God? The Translation and Implications of Romans 3:23 213

Steven E. Enderlein

Review Article: The Blackwell Companion to Paul and the Current State of Pauline Studies 225

Nijay K. Gupta

Review Article: How Should We Reconstruct the Historical Paul? Thomas E. Phillips's Paul, His Letters, and Acts 229

Sean A. Adams

Very Troubling! Students Know Best How to be Taught?

2011-11-08T09:34:00.000-06:00

Socratic Backfire?

by Kaustuv Basu

Some students didn't take well to Steven Maranville’s teaching style at Utah Valley University. They complained that in the professor’s “capstone” business course, he asked them questions in class even when they didn't raise their hands. They also didn't like it when he made them work in teams.

Those complaints against him led the university denying him tenure – a decision amounting to firing, according to a lawsuit Maranville filed against the university this month. Maranville, his lawyer and the university aren't talking about the case, although the suit details the dispute.

Maranville and his attorney did not return phone calls, but the allegations in the lawsuit raises questions that have been raised and debated about the value of student evaluations and opinions, how negative evaluations play into the career trajectory of affected professors and whether students today will accept teaching approaches such as the Socratic method.

Abstract of ETS Paper to Be Presented November 16

2011-10-30T17:44:00.001-05:00

The Advent of God’s Son as Judgment in John’s Gospel:
Justification and Condemnation Already

Scripture’s announcement that salvation is found in “no other name” than in Christ Jesus necessarily entails an exclusive claim that apart from belief in him, no one will be saved. According to John’s Gospel, Jesus presents this exclusive claim in a familiar passage.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their works were evil.

With his advent, God’s Son brought forward two correlated acts of God—resurrection and judgment—that belong to the last day that consummates the present age and ushers in the age to come. The mission of God’s incarnate Son sweeps forward both the wrath of God’s coming judgment revealed in his sacrificial death and the gift of God’s resurrection life disclosed in his glorious resurrection from the dead. Because Jesus is the incarnate Son of God, the Father authorized him to have “life in himself” to bestow this life of the coming age to whomever he desires and to set in motion his execution of the coming judgment (John 5:21-29).

Thus, even though John’s Gospel never uses the verb δικαιόω or the noun δικαίωσις, the Gospel contributes much to the biblically coherent teaching concerning justification and condemnation as the divine verdicts of judgment on the last day brought forward in incarnate coming of God’s Son. Throughout his Gospel John portrays Jesus as God’s Son who has already brought forward and set in motion things that properly belong to the coming age including judgment, salvation, eternal life, resurrection, justification, and condemnation. Everyone who hears the gospel and believes the Father already has eternal life and will not be condemned, which is the inverse way of saying “will be justified.” So, for example, Jesus assures, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into condemnation, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). When Jesus says “does not come into condemnation,” this is a figure of speech (litotes) that uses understatement that emphatically expresses the affirmative by negating its opposite. Thus, to say “does not come into condemnation” is an emphatic way of affirming “is most assuredly justified” by way of negating its opposite. If litotes does not sufficiently emphasize the correlation between eternal life and justification, Jesus underscores his announcement by asserting that everyone who believes the Father already experiences a phase of the resurrection life of the age to come because they have already crossed over from death to life.

Resurrection unto life which stands opposite resurrection unto condemnation (5:29), both verdicts of the Day of Judgment, are already manifesting themselves in responses to the Word of God’s Son, the gospel. God’s Son did not come to condemn the world but that through him the world might be saved (3:17). Nevertheless, the arrival of God’s Son brings the Day of Judgment forward in that the gospel announces the verdict of judgment: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned [is most assuredly justified], but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (3:18). Justification and condemnation take place in two phases; belief and unbelief in Jesus Christ already signal the verdicts not yet issued on the last day.

Ponder This!

2011-10-30T17:41:00.001-05:00

Think about the literary significance of John's account concerning Nicodemus. He reports, "This man came to Jesus by night" (John 3:2). It may not be evident upon one's first reading of this that "by night" is not just a time indicator concerning when Nicodemus came to Jesus. Given the prominence of the "light"/"darkness" motif in John's Gospel, surely the mention of "night" also describes Nicodemus's spiritual condition--at that time he was in spiritual darkness.

Yet, there surely is more that John is suggesting by telling readers that Nicodemus came to Jesus "by night." The darkness of night is often the cover evil people use to conceal their evil deeds. Yet, here, Nicodemus, a man who is yet in spiritual darkness uses the darkness of night to conceal not an evil act but a good act, his coming to Jesus.

Trace the other accounts of Nicodemus in John's Gospel to discover that he finally emerges into the light. He begins to move from darkness to light, daring to raise his voice in dissent within the Sanhedrin (John 7:50) and later, in the end, he even does a good act in daylight not at night by assisting Joseph of Arimathea to receive and to bury the corpse of the Christ (John 7:50; 19:39).

Breaking Patterns

2011-09-26T15:50:00.001-05:00

At this school, usual excuses don't apply: The student population is black and poor--and highly proficient.

A north Minneapolis school at Olson Memorial Hwy. and Humboldt Avenue has demographics that seem a sure predictor of our state's most intractable education problem. The student population there is 99 percent black and 91 percent poor, and about 70 percent of the children come from single-parent families.

Such "racial isolation" is widely considered a formula for defeat—a hallmark of the cavernous "achievement gap" that separates poor, minority students from their more affluent white peers. In recent decades, Minnesota has spent billions of dollars attempting to narrow the gap but has little to show for it.

That's why the achievements of the school I just described should be shouted from the rooftops. In this year's state math tests in grades three through eight, this school outperformed every metro-area school district, including Edina and Wayzata. Its students outperformed all state students in reading proficiency (77 percent to 75 percent), and state white students in math proficiency (82 percent to 65 percent).

This extraordinary school is Harvest Preparatory School, a K-6 charter with five programs, including Best Academy, a K-8 boys program.

Black males are among our state's lowest-performing groups of students, but at Best Academy, 100 percent of eighth-grade boys scored proficient in reading. "Best Academy has the highest proportion of African-American boys of any institution in Minnesota," says founder and director Eric Mahmoud. "The only institution that competes with us is the prison system."

How have Mahmoud and his team worked this magic? Mahmoud is an electrical engineer by training. "At the factory I used to run, if we had a failure rate of 0.5 percent, we'd shut down the line until we figured out the problem," he says. "In our education system, we're failing with 40, 50, 60 percent of our African-American children, but we keep the system that turns out the same product, year after year."

Read more.

A New Credo Blog Enty

2011-09-19T13:13:00.000-05:00

Perhaps you have never wondered why Paul tells the Galatians, "But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel other than the gospel we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed" (Gal. 1:8). Nevertheless, maybe you have wondered what may have prompted Paul to make the statement. I would suggest that it was not simply his brilliance nor fanciful desperation that conjured up the specter of an angelic visitor that would subvert his gospel by proclaiming "a gospel other than the one we proclaimed to you." Instead, I would propose that Paul is alluding to an Old Testament precedence, an account in which an old prophet from Bethel deceived the man of God who came from Judah to prophesy against Jeroboam that a son born to the house of David, Josiah by name, would sacrifice the priests of the high places upon the altar Jeroboam had erected (1 Kings 13:1-10). The portion to which I am persuaded that Paul alludes follows:

Read more.

Attention, iPad Users.

2011-09-13T11:43:00.001-05:00

Tim Dalton, at Theology Degrees On-Line, has posted a helpful entry titled "25 Incredible iPad Apps Every Theology Student Should Have." Take a look! I commend it.

Update (9/14/11): I should have included an item that I have found useful with my iPad2. Until someone comes out with an app that enables one to type in Greek characters, you may find typegreek.com useful. For instructions on its use look here. The tool generates Unicode Greek font.

Update (9/16/11): I discovered, today, that iPad 2 is capable of typing in polytonic Greek. So, now I use it instead of typegreek.com. Woo hoo!

Fallen! Fallen! The Faculty Has Fallen.

2011-09-07T20:42:00.002-05:00

The Faculty Has Fallen

Actually, it’s been pushed down by hordes of money- and power-hungry administrators.

By Robert Weissberg

Like many academics of a “certain age,” I have long noticed the growth of the campus bureaucracy. For example, at the University of Illinois—where I spent 28 years—it seemed that half of all new construction was to house administrators. The administrative expansion was relentless even though enrollments remained almost unchanged and faculty salaries remained flat.

Fortunately for myself and other puzzled but similarly observant academics (of “a certain age”), Professor Benjamin Ginsberg’s The Fall of the Faculty brilliantly (and with great wit) explains this rabbits-in-Australia phenomenon. Even better yet is his account of why this population explosion undermines the university’s core mission of teaching and research. To repeat a point impossible to exaggerate: the intellectual costs of bureaucratic expansion far exceed the extra salaries and expensive, wasted office space.

Read more.

Do Writers Actually Work?

2011-09-06T07:11:00.002-05:00

On Labor Day, Gina Barreca asks, "Is Writing Work?"

Christian Smith Meets Robert Gundry. Smithereens!

2011-08-30T17:01:00.001-05:00

I had intended to write a review of Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. However, now that senior evangelical statesman, Robert Gundry has done so and very well, anything I might have said is rendered superfluous. Read Gundry's superb review, Smithereens!, in Books & Culture.

Peter Leithart also has offered a review of Smith's book at First Things.

Kevin DeYoung offers a surrejoinder to Smith's rejoinder to his initial critique of the book.

A Welcome Review that Accurately Understands My Essay

2011-08-28T13:46:00.001-05:00

Here is a welcome review that accurately understands my essay, “The Language of God and Adam’s Genesis & Historicity in Paul’s Gospel.” It is heartening when readers display the fact that they actually understand and accurately represent what they read.

Update on the Tyranny of Political Correctness at the University of Delaware

2011-08-19T10:37:00.001-05:00

Betrayal of Liberty on Campus

by Jan Blits

Let me briefly explain. This will serve as a warning to those of you who don’t yet have such programs on your campus. You’ll see why the threat to all schools is real.

Until very recently, those who ran college dorms were interested in student housing, dining, safety, study breaks, health, home—sickness and other such matters. However, many of those running dorms, today, have a new, grandiose mission, which they’ve appropriated for themselves. These Residence Life administrators regard themselves as educators—in fact, as their institution’s real educators. While faculty, in their view, do nothing more than fill students with facts, the Residence Life administrators shape the whole human being, they say. Faculty may shape careers, but Residence Life shapes souls. In their view, the college or university has no higher mission than soul-craft, and Residence Life is best prepared to fulfill it.

If you look at the publications of their professional organization (the American College Personnel Association), you’ll see that they proclaim “a shift in thinking.” They say that the traditional distinction between “academic affairs” and “student affairs”is misguided. Residence Life officials must unite the two. They must “create living-learning environments that fully engage students at meeting desired learning outcomes.” The key phrase is “learning outcomes.” It means the administrators’ desired political results. ResLife administrators are to create so-called “education” programs that change students’ opinions, beliefs and actions so they agree with the administrators’ own political views. The aim is to “turn” students, as I quoted, earlier. Success in a traditional Residence Life program used to be measured by the number of students attending an event and how much they liked it. Success in a new “educational” program is measured by how much the (captive) students’ opinions, beliefs and (most of all) actions have changed to meet the desired political outcomes.

Now, some people defended the program by arguing that administrators have the same academic freedom as faculty. ResLife administrators should therefore be as free as faculty to educate students. This argument may sound plausible, especially to those who support academic freedom (as I do), but it overlooks something crucial. No faculty member (at least at my institution) may do what Residence Life attempted. Academic freedom does not mean that anything goes, that I may do whatever I like with my students. Academic freedom permits me to teach, but not to indoctrinate.

Read the whole speech.

2011-08-09T10:59:00.001-05:00

A Tottering Technocracy

by Victor Davis Hanson

Higher education is no longer affordable for many families, and does not guarantee well-rounded, well-educated graduates. A university debt bubble, in Fannie and Freddie fashion — together with the rise of no-frills private online certificate-granting institutions — is undermining traditional higher education. The symptoms are unmistakable: tuition spiraling far ahead of inflation; elite faculty excused from teaching to publish esoteric articles in little-read journals; legions of poorly compensated part-time instructors and graduate-student assistants subsidizing the privileged class; political orthodoxy as an unspoken requisite for membership in the club. An administrator is deemed successful largely for promoting “diversity” — rarely on the basis of whether costs stabilized, graduation rates increased, the need for remediation declined, or post-graduation jobs were assured on his watch. This warped system, which grew out of the bountiful 1960s, is now a vestigial organ, an odd-looking thing without an easily definable purpose. When will the bubble burst? If the four-year university cannot ensure its graduates that they will necessarily have a better-paying job and know more than the products of an upfront credentialing factory, why incur the $200,000 cost and put up with the political indoctrination?

This is only one of many brilliant paragraphs in the essay. Read the whole essay here.

A Candid Report on the State of Evangelical Colleges

2011-07-20T10:51:00.001-05:00

Everyone who is interested in higher Christian education, whether a parent or an employee of an evangelical college, ought to read Allen C. Guelzo’s “Course Corrections: Whither the Evangelical Colleges?” in Touchstone.

Guelzo focuses upon institutions that make up the Council of Christian Colleges and universities. His article addresses the same issues that his earlier study found.

Five years ago, I surveyed the overall state of Evangelical Christian higher education in the United States, and came away impressed by three ominous developments:

· That the financial health of Evangelical colleges was eroding even in the midst of record good times for higher-education funding;

· That the need to survive in this environment was driving Evangelical colleges to recruit ever-downwards on the scale of qualified students, simply in pursuit of warm, tuition-paying bodies, and ever-upwards in pursuit of managerial presidents; and

· That the faculties of Evangelical colleges were sitting surprisingly loose beside the tenets that were inscribed in their employers’ faith-statements.

When I called attention to these things, the response I got included a few amen’s and a few injured rationalizations for the incidents I’d cited. But mostly they elicited a frozen silence, the kind you hear when the divorced father shows up at his kiddies’ birthday party.

_________________

His candid assessment indicates that evangelical colleges are in trouble for many reasons. He addresses such issues as admission requirements, alumni giving (or lack thereof), SAT/ACT comparisons with non-evangelical private colleges, funding problems, escalating costs, “Rolodex Presidents,” guild-minded faculty, etc. The principal problem of major concern that Guelzo finds across the spectrum of evangelical colleges and universities is widespread failure among leaders and faculty to uphold the true mission of the evangelical college. Guelzo concludes, “It comes as no shock to discover that secular universities can find no cultural consensus, since they abandoned that a long time ago; and it is not news, since Ex Corde Ecclesia, that Catholic colleges and universities are far from being of one mind on their identity. But it will mean the end of yet another important cultural alternative if Evangelical colleges, one by one, go down—or worse, pull themselves down, because their leaders and their faculties could not make up their minds what core business they were in, and sat in silence.”

Read the article.

Jesus' Rebuke for Susan Feinberg Who Imitates His Disciples

2011-07-14T11:44:00.005-05:00

I realize that this story is a week old, but I could not let it pass without a comment. Last week Talking Points Memo published the story, "Rep. Ryan Tastes The Grapes of Wrath." By now you have likely heard about the episode. Paul Ryan was at the Capitol Hill Bistro Bis with two conservative economists. One of his fellow diners ordered a bottle of wine. Nearby sat Susan Feinberg, an associate business professor at Rutgers, celebrating her birthday with her husband. From where she sat Feinberg noticed that the bottle on the Ryan table was Echezeaux Grand Cru, which she promptly determined from the wine list cost $350.00. When a second bottle of the expensive wine arrived at the Ryan table Feinberg quickly computed that the $700 for wine served to the three men is more than a couple working for minimum wage earns per week. Keep in mind that Susan Feinberg and her husband reportedly shared a bottle of wine at $80.00.

So, outraged at the amount of money the three men were putting out for wine, Freinberg took a few pictures with her cell phone to document the extravagance. Then, after she and her husband completed their meal, Susan Feinberg tottered over to Paul Ryan's table to ask him "how he could live with himself" sipping expensive wine while advocating for cuts to programs for seniors and the poor (which, of course, he is not actually doing, if Feinberg would inform herself).

The episode reminds me of some first century friends of Susan Feinberg who complained about the waste when the unnamed woman anointed Jesus with an expensive alabaster jar of perfume. Yes, Jesus' own disciples became indignant, just like Susan Feinberg and said, "Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor" (Mark 14:4-5). Jesus, so very unlike the Jesus modern Liberals (read Leftists) preach, does not affirm his disciples' policy of being liberal with other people's wealth, goods, or money. Instead, he rebukes his own disciples, saying, "Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them." Of course, Paul Ryan isn't Jesus. Nevertheless, the very nature of Jesus' rebuke--"For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them"--applies to all of us, and in the case being address, it specifically applies to Susan Feinberg.

In addition to everything else that Jesus is teaching about himself in Mark 14:1-11, in his rebuke of the disciples he is plainly teaching at least four corollaries.

First, what other people do with their goods, their money, and their wealth is absolutely none of our business. What belongs to them does not belong to others. They are accountable for however they use what belongs to them. In other words, Jesus is giving clear instruction concerning personal rights with regard to their own possessions. Others, keep your hands off and keep your judgments to yourself.
Second, Jesus points out how easy it is for people to be generous (liberal) with other people's wealth, goods, or money. In other words, Jesus condemns the policy that governs modern Leftists whose liberalism amounts to little more than being extremely liberal with other people's wealth, goods, and money.
Third, Jesus makes it explicitly clear that poverty, like it or not, ordinarily and regularly exists in human societies--"You always have the poor with you."
Fourth, hence, Jesus condemns those who, when they see what they regard to be the squandering of wealth that belongs to another, exploit the poor as Jesus' disciples did to publish how compassionate, loving, and caring for the poor they are. In other words, how do those who pretentiously exploit the poor in this manner to preen themselves in an outward show of their virtue and generosity (only with other people's wealth) but actually do nothing at all to assist the poor to rise out of their poverty, differ from those who possess wealth but disdain the poor as Ebenezer Scrooge does in Charles Dickens' story? They both regard charity to belong to the impersonal collective "others," not the individual, themselves. Jesus condemns them both.

For other commentaries on Susan Feinberg's imitation of the liberalism of Jesus' disciples, see

Congressman Paul Ryan Sips Wine, Liberals are Outraged.

Winegate: Liberal "Winers" Cry Foul Over Paul Ryan's Vintage.

Updated 07/18/2011: Two additional corrolaries added.

Ingenius!

2011-07-07T08:27:00.002-05:00

Save $50.00 by preordering one for your iPad 2. Click here. No, I receive absolutely no commission for posting this. I am just impressed with the product, which is the only reason I am posting this. I like brilliantly conceived products.

Essay on Historicity of Adam in Paul's Gospel Is Now Published

2011-06-21T20:44:00.000-05:00

My absence from the virtual world has been due to the importance of projects in the real world. This entry does not necessarily signal greater frequenting of the blogosphere. I do, however, want to let you know that my essay, "The Language of God and Adam’s Genesis & Historicity in Paul’s Gospel" has been published and is the featured essay in the latest issue of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. You may want to download it and read it later, since it is fairly lengthy.
I do hope and pray that this essay will be effective and useful for the strengthening of the faith of Christians everywhere. For anyone who may not have yet noticed, when I write essays for publication, I do so with pastoral concerns in mind. I do so for the establishment of Christian faith.

"How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" (Rom. 10:15)

2011-06-21T15:09:00.003-05:00

Dear Friends & Readers,

If the Lord wills, I shall be ministering the gospel in Bangalore, India, in early to mid-August. P. J. Mathai, President of Maranatha Baptist Bible College & Seminary, has invited me to speak at the pastors’ conference to be held August 15-18 at the college and seminary. As I have done in the past (in 2002, 2004, & 2007), I will be ministering with Rev. John Hoeldtke of FLAME MINISTRIES of Everett, Washington. John has made numerous ministry trips to India as well as to several other countries. In 2002 and 2007 we ministered together at Maranatha Baptist Bible College & Seminary from where we traveled to Kathmandu, Nepal, where we ministered to village pastors for a week at another pastors’ conference.

I will be speaking six times during the three day conference. My messages will be shaped thematically on the chapters contained in The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance & Assurance, a book I co-authored with Tom Schreiner. During my sabbatical I have been writing a shortened version of the book with eight corresponding chapters. The working title of the book is Let Us Run With Perseverance: A Training Manual for Endurance unto Eternal Life. So, my six messages will derive from my writing during my sabbatical throughout the past academic year.

Costs for this mission trip are considerable. My travel expenses, including airline tickets, will be at least $2500, which does not include various expenses while in India. In late July others will be traveling with John Hoeldtke to India ahead of me. They will be ministering in other cities and villages prior to arriving in Bangalore where I will join them. The policy of FLAME MINISTRIES is to cover costs of all meetings and conferences in India so as not to be a burden on the indigenous churches and Christian leaders. In fact, FLAME MINISTRIES covers all the costs entailed in hosting conferences, thus alleviating the burden that our Indian hosts would otherwise bear. Total costs for FLAME MINISTRIES to carry out this mission to India in July and August will exceed $17,000.

If you believe the Lord would have you help with the costs of this mission trip, either for my part or for the larger mission or both, please send your contribution to:

FLAME MINISTRIES
PO Box 3333
Everett, WA 98213

Funds are needed by July 18. If you would like to assist with my personal expenses, please make your check payable to FLAME MINISTRIES and indicate on an accompanying slip of paper that it is for “A. B. Caneday Mission Trip.” FLAME MINISTRIES is an approved non-profit corporation. So, a receipt for your tax-deductible gift will be sent to you. For members of Bethlehem Baptist Church, you may make contributions to help allay my expenses by making a contribution through BBC. If you desire to make a contribution through BBC, please send me a note at abcaneday@gmail.com. I will send you a form that will direct you how to submit your gift.

All of us who will travel to India to minister will greatly appreciate both your contributions that will assist us on our way and your prayers for our health, our safety, and our spiritual effectiveness throughout this mission endeavor.

Thank you for considering this invitation to participate in my ministry in India with your monetary gifts and your prayers.

Blessings in Christ!

Ardel B. Caneday

Essay on Historicity of Adam in Paul's Gospel Is Now Published

2011-06-21T09:27:00.002-05:00

My absence from the virtual world has been due to the importance of projects in the real world. This entry does not necessarily signal greater frequenting of the blogosphere. I do, however, want to let you know that my essay, "The Language of God and Adam’s Genesis & Historicity in Paul’s Gospel" has been published and is the featured essay in the latest issue of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. You may want to download it and read it later, since it is fairly lengthy.

I do hope and pray that this essay will be effective and useful for the strengthening of the faith of Christians everywhere. For anyone who may not have yet noticed, when I write essays for publication, I do so with pastoral concerns in mind. I do so for the establishment of Christian faith.

A Significant New Book Published Today

2011-05-15T12:06:00.001-05:00

Today, at 5:00 PM, Seattle time, Andrew Himes will speak at the launch of his significant new book, The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family.

I am reading the book with plans to write a review. Purchase the book at Amazon.com: The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family. If you prefer purchase The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family [Kindle edition].

I do recommend it.

Here are some brief reviews of the book.

Congratulations, Scott Hafemann.

2011-05-14T15:57:00.001-05:00

I just learned of this. Scott Hafemann will begin a new position as Reader in New Testament Studies at the University of Saint Andrews. Congratulations, Scott!

Students. Win Logos Software + $1,000.00 for Seminary or Bible College

2011-05-06T12:28:00.000-05:00

Attention seminary-bound students!

Win Logos Software + $1K for Seminary or Bible College: Last Chance to Apply!

Teaching "White Privilege" Is Destructive and Divisive

2011-05-06T11:04:00.000-05:00

Ask a Scholar: Is “White Privilege” a Good Way to Teach about Race?

By Carol Iannone

Dear Ask a Scholar,

Students at our daughter's school were invited to the White Privilege Conference. I would argue that this is a very divisive approach to teaching diversity in American Culture; it teaches victimization. Isn't there a better method to teach race and gender dynamics than this loaded gun?

Answered by Dr. Carol Iannone, independent scholar and editor-at-large of the NAS's journal Academic Questions. Dr. Iannone received her Ph.D. in English literature from SUNY, Stony Brook, and has written widely on cultural and intellectual issues. She has served on the faculty of the Gallitan School of New York University and was the 2009 recipient of the National Association of Scholars’ Barry R. Gross Memorial Award.

The White Privilege Conference has been held annually for twelve years, and is sponsored by a consortium of institutions of philanthropy and higher education in the Minneapolis area. This year's conference was held at the Sheraton Bloomington in Minneapolis from April 13-16.

Read more.

What is the future of higher education? Andrew Ferguson

2011-04-30T10:20:00.000-05:00

"Multiculturalism is the racism of the anti-racists." --Pascal Bruckner

2011-04-28T20:02:00.000-05:00

"Tears of the White Man: The Tyranny of Guilt"

Pascal Bruckner, May 3, 2011

7:00 PM

University of Minnesota
1210 Heller Hall
West Bank

The subject line of the e-mail, a quotation from an upcoming speaker, probably got your attention. It's quite taboo to say anything ill of the concept of multiculturalism. Nonetheless, it's a subject worth discussing in an intellectually honest and rigorous manner.

To do so, the Minnesota Association of Scholars is bringing in Pascal Bruckner from France on Tuesday, May 3. Intellectual Takeout is proud to co-sponsor the event.

Pascal Bruckner is Maître de Confèrences at the Institut des Études Politiques in Paris.His extended essays include Tears of the White Man: Compassion as Contempt (English version 1987) and The Tyranny of Guilt (2010). His many books also include novels - Lunes de Fiel was made into a movie by Roman Polanski, and The Divine Child was translated into English in 1994.

Since the 1970s he and other ‘New Philosophers’ have challenged the Marxist assumptions so long taken for granted by French intellectuals. Most recently, he has opposed the outcry against US efforts to extradite Roman Polanski, and defended France’s ban on the burqa.

European intellectuals often blame colonialism for the travails that beset poor countries in parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Is this a frank acknowledgement of the burdens of history? Or a back-handed way of maintaining Europe’s centrality in world affairs? Pascal Bruckner’s answers to these questions have provoked a great deal of discussion.

The event is free. Here are the important details:

Who: Pascal Bruckner

When: Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Time: 7:00 p.m.

Cost: Free

Where: University of Minnesota, 1210 Heller Hall, West Bank

More Details: Click Here

The New Easy Path at University

2011-04-25T06:42:00.001-05:00

The Race to the Bottom

by Schumpeter

IN MY day people who wanted an easy time at university studied geography or land management. Now, in the United States at least, the soft-option of choice is business studies. Business students of various sorts are the most numerous group on American campuses, accounting for 20%, or more than 325,000, of all bachelor degrees. They are also, according to a long article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, by far the idlest and most ignorant.

Read more.

Beautiful!

2011-04-17T15:05:00.002-05:00

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Use full screen feature.

Real Science Versus Post-Normal Science

2011-04-13T14:51:00.002-05:00

A little over a year ago I wrote an article titled “Wanted for Premeditated Murder: How Post-Normal Science Stabbed Real Science in the Back on the Way to the Illusion of ‘Scientific Consensus’ on Global Warming.” The article explained the difference between real science and “post-normal science” and referred to another article on the subject by British scientist Kevin McGrane. Understanding that difference is, I believe, one of the most important things for Christians—indeed for everybody—to grasp in today’s world, for a great deal of dangerous nonsense now masquerades as science and undeservedly gets the respect real science has earned, and the consequences for mankind are deadly.

Now another scientist friend, John Swayze, a research chemist, having read about the hyper-politicized, misanthropic views of the editors of one scientific journal, has written two paragraphs that state that difference between science and “post-normal science” about as clearly, simply, and concisely as anything I’ve seen:

Traditionally, science worked something like this: "I was curious, asked a question, and had an idea. So, I tested that idea through experiment and observation, obtaining some results. Those results caused me to ask more questions, posit more ideas (including some which contradicted one another), and test them all through further experiment and observation. After examining all the data, I have reached this conclusion which I am sharing with you. Feel free to examine my data and conclusions, have alternate ideas, test yours and mine, and reach your own conclusions, even if they contradict mine. Eventually, a range of ideas and conclusions may coalesce into a coherent whole, which we will regard as true until a countervailing argument is found to be more compelling. I acknowledge that this process may take generations, also knowing that an upstart with new ideas may upset the applecart at any time. That is a good thing."

Unfortunately, the system has been transformed in many ways to be this: "I had an idea. I liked it a lot because it could transform politics and economics, in ways I would like, if people believed it. So, I set out to find only those data which supported it. When I found data which didn't support my idea, I sought other sources which would allow me to reach the conclusion I wanted. By combining some sources of data and information, and ignoring others, I was able to support the conclusion I had already reached. By joining forces with like-minded others and obtaining public support from news media and politicians, I was able to claim ‘overwhelming scientific consensus,’ drowning out voices raised in disagreement. As I had become a prophet uttering profound oracular claims, it was both reasonable and necessary to stifle dissenting views. The truth is what I say it is. Anyone who disagrees is, therefore, a liar and a scoundrel. It is reasonable to use both the courts and the court of public opinion to silence heretics."

Read more.

What is Wrong with University Administrators? Why So Bullheaded? Why So Thin-Skinned? Why Take Such Drastic and Final Action Based on Complaints from Two Students?

2011-04-12T15:27:00.004-05:00

Widener Law Prof Sues Dean for Defamation

By Ashley Thorne

Today Lawrence Connell, the professor who was suspended from teaching at the Widener University law school after two students complained about the examples he used in his first-year criminal law course, filed suit for defamation against the law school dean, Linda Ammons.

On February 24, 2011, Dean Ammons submitted a Statement of Reasons for Dismissal for Cause for Professor Connell. The allegations accused him of exhibiting racism and sexism in his teaching, among other charges. On March 7, a committee set up to investigate these charges determined that the University should withdraw the Dismissal for Cause action. On March 16, Connell’s lawyer Thomas Neuberger issued a press release stating that Dean Ammons had chosen to disregard the recommendation and had ordered the two students to re-file their complaints against Connell. (The university issued its own release declaring its commitment to due process and a fair trial.)

According to Neuberger, the case will now go to a university hearing in which the panel is composed almost entirely of administrators, not faculty members, and where the lawyer will not be allowed to cross-examine witnesses. It is in light of this impending hearing and Professor Connell’s view that he will inevitably be fired that he is bringing this lawsuit today. He believes Dean Ammons is seeking to remove him because he is a conservative, a belief he explains in his interview with NAS.

Read more. For another story on the issue read here.

Interview with T. David Gordon, Media Ecologist

2011-04-12T13:28:00.002-05:00

I have greatly appreciated various writings by T. David Gordon, Professor of Religion at Grove City College. Two of his recent books are Why Johnny Can’t Preach and Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns.

If you appreciate Neil Postman’s work as a “media ecologist,” you will find the following interview with T. David Gordon, hosted by Al Mohler, a continuation of Postman’s work.

Media Ecology and the Modern Mind: A Conversation with T. David Gordon.

Mohler: Well, when you start thinking about the child who now say is born in the year 2011 and comes to life as a part of the digital revolution such that he or she genuinely is a digital native in the way we now describe frankly teenagers and those in their early twenties but you can imagine that this child could pass through in the age of the laptop, and now the tablet, and the smart phone, and all the rest without ever learning to read or to write in terms of the classic expectations of reading and writing.

Gordon: In the last three years Dr. Mohler, several of my colleagues and I have noticed that if we give an essay portion of an examination some of our students cannot handle it because they literally don’t have the handwriting skills to write an answer. They simply cannot do it.

Mohler: Yeah they don’t have the experience.

Gordon: That’s right they simply, it used to be that we occasionally encounter someone with which we called poor penmanship but some of the students now have virtually no penmanship.

For anyone who wants to access the interview but would prefer to hear it rather than read it, click on this link, Media Ecology and the Modern Mind: A Conversation with T. David Gordon.

A Great Contrast to the Previous Blog Entry

2011-04-05T14:54:00.002-05:00

This would be actionable if done in any American college or university.

Outrageous!

2011-04-04T21:54:00.000-05:00

This is truly outrageous.

When the Customer Student Is King

2011-04-04T06:02:00.000-05:00

Some time ago, I had a student answer his phone in class and carry on a conversation as he walked out of the room. When he returned, I approached him and quietly reminded him that he lost points for answering the phone in class. He asked me where the dean's office was located—the academic version of "I want to see the manager."

I told him where to find the dean and if he left, he wouldn't be permitted back because the class had been disrupted too many times that day. He did leave, and later that day, an administrative assistant from the dean's office contacted me and said the student had filed a complaint against me. She wanted to know if he could re-enter my class.

Read Educating our 'Customers' by Brian P. Hill.

I Had A Session with Freud

2011-03-23T21:25:00.013-05:00

Last week my wife and I were in New York City with good friends. We had a session with Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. If you either get to New York City in the near future or "Freud's Last Session" comes to a city within driving distance from where you live, do yourself a favor and go see this wonderful play. I assure you, you will not regret it at all.

It is a wonderful play that features an imagined meeting of the renowned psychiatrist Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna, at 83, who welcomes the young, rising Oxford professor, C.S Lewis, at 41, to his home in London. Lewis anticipates that he will be chided for his satirizing Sigmund Freud, under the name Sigismund, in his recently published book, The Pilgrim's Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason, and Romanticism. However, Lewis soon recognizes that Freud has a far greater objective.

The conversation occurs on September 3, 1939, the very day England finally enters the war with Germany. Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis engage their own conflict concerning God's existence, love's joy, sex's purpose, and life's meaning just a few weeks before Freud eventually ends his own life. Certainly this play features the clash between two antithetical worldviews. But it is more than a debate. It highlights character development of Freud and of Lewis, showing how their respective worldviews shape them as men. Given the setting with the tension of anticipated war, Lewis' survival on the battlefields of the Great War, Freud's painful suffering the effects of cancer, and the clash of opposing worldviews, the play bears a profundity wrapped with humanity, with Freud's well dramatized suffering and Lewis' equally well performed empathetic touch, all while two men who have left their deep imprints on the history of ideas articulately engage the greatest of all questions humans ask. In the end, the play features the God of Christianity over against the god of Freud's own design, which is no god at all and certainly no god of comfort, of hope, and of life everlasting.

Freud's Last Session

See Marvin Olansky's brief review in World.

See "Freud's Last Session" at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, 10 West 64th Street, a block from Lincoln Center and next door to 2 West 64th Street, where Redeemer Presbyterian Church meets on the Upper West Side.

See here for another longer review.

The play is based upon The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Armand M. Nicholi.

The Green Tyrants

2011-03-22T06:48:00.001-05:00

The Greens' Agenda, in Their Own Words
by Kevin Andrews

The Green movement projects the whole planet with a spiritual dimension. The British chemist James Lovelock described the Earth as a complex living organism, of which humans are merely parts. He named this planetary organism after the Greek goddess who personified the earth—Gaia—and described “Her” as “alive”.

Singer and Brown are correct to describe this as revolutionary. It involves the creation of a new pagan belief system, concerned not with the relationship between humans and a creator, but based on a deification of the environment.

For the Greens, a pristine global environment represents earthly perfection. . . .

What is at stake in the Greens’ “revolution” is the heart and soul of Western civilisation, built on the Judeo-Christian/Enlightenment synthesis that upholds the individual—with obligations and responsibilities to others, but ultimately judged on his or her own conscience and actions—as the possessor of an inherent dignity and inalienable rights. What is also at stake is the economic system that has resulted in the creation of wealth and prosperity for the most people in human history.

Read more.

Martin Bashir Interviews Rob Bell. Paul Edwards Interviews Martin Bashir about the Interview of Rob Bell.

2011-03-21T13:21:00.002-05:00

I posted the following interview on my Facebook page last week, but since I was out of town I did not take time to post it here. Frankly, I was amazed at the forthrightness of Martin Bashir. I encourage you to take a few moments to hear Bashir's questions and Bell's responses. Then, I encourage you to take the time to listen to Paul Edwards' interview of Martin Bashir here.

Martin Bashir’s Superb Interview of Rob Bell

Perhaps you have wondered, as I, whether Martin Bashir is an evangelical Christian. It was not only Bashir's knowledge of the issues that struck me but also his evident passion to get to the truth of the matter. Yesterday, while in New York City we attended Redeemer Presbyterian Church (at 2 West 64th Street, NYC) we noticed an announcement of an upcoming event next Monday concerning a conversation between Tim Keller and Martin Bashir (see here). This prompted a thought. I wondered whether Martin Bashir attends Redeemer Presbyterian Church. So, after returning home, today I did a little research that confirmed my hunch. Bashir does, in fact, attend Redeemer and he is an evangelical believer. However, listen to the full interview below to hear Bashir’s explanation of why he interviewed Bell as he did. He is interested in the truth.

MSNBC’s Martin Bashir on The Paul Edwards Program
Mar 17, 2011 by Paul Edwards

Here’s the audio of my interview with MSNBC’s Martin Bashir on his interview with Emergent Universalist Rob Bell of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids. Martin discloses whether or not he is a committed Christian and if the blog rumors are true that he attends Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

Listen to the interview here.

You may listen to or download the interview here.

A Rising Young Scholar

2011-03-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

NWC Alum receives faculty appointment at prestigious seminary

Mar. 10—Northwestern alum Joshua Jipp ’01 recently received a faculty appointment at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), one of the nation’s most respected and prestigious evangelical seminaries. His position within the New Testament department will begin in January 2012.

“I'm excited to be at an institution which places both a high value on the study, proclamation, and embodiment of the Word of God and also is seeking ways to contextualize the Word of God locally and globally in a changing and complex world,” said Jipp.

He will be teaching three courses each semester including Greek Exegesis of Colossians, Exposition of Acts (English Bible), and History of the Interpretation of the New Testament.

“Mostly, I'm just thankful to do what I love,” added Jipp. “To do what I believe God has called and gifted me to do, and join God in his mission in the world in teaching and training ministers of the Word and leaders within the church.”

Jipp is currently working on his dissertation at Emory University and will graduate next spring (2012). He plans to defend his dissertation this fall. His dissertation is on the role of hospitality to strangers within the ancient Mediterranean world with special attention to its role and function within Luke-Acts. He notes that within Luke-Acts hospitality is a sign, almost a symbol on par with faith, that one accepts the person and message of the journeying Lord (esp. Luke 9-19) and the word of the journeying apostles.

Jipp received his M.Div from TEDS where he met his wife Amber (who also did an M.Div concurrently). She is currently team leader with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Emory. They currently reside in Atlanta and are expecting their first child in early June.

Will The Digital Book Put An End to The Bibliophiles Best Friend, the Book?

2011-03-14T13:24:00.003-05:00

Can libraries survive in a digital world?

The question reminds me of this funny video.

Academics with Far Too Much Time on Their Hands

2011-03-14T13:02:00.002-05:00

As Technology Evolves, New Forms of Online Racism Emerge

New forms of online racism are emerging as video games add audio-chat features, and as popular online games draw a more global audience.

That was the message of a panel of academics and journalists at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive conference, an annual event that brings together video-game designers, social-media leaders, and cultural critics looking for the latest technology trends.

A famous New Yorker cartoon has long summed up the anonymizing power of cyberspace: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” But in some popular video games and in social virtual worlds like Second Life, chat features have been added in the past few years, essentially proving the cartoon outdated. The addition of human voices has led people to make assumptions about the players based on their speech, often on the basis of race. That’s according to research cited at the conference by Lisa Nakamura, a professor of Asian-American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Read more.

This Is A Public Service Announcement. Please, Turn The Volume Down!

2011-03-09T06:10:00.002-06:00

This entry is not particularly on topic. Nevertheless, as a public service, I post this.

I had seen the following video recently. After attending church last Sunday, I thought it appropriate to post it as a PSA, for evangelicals are in danger of losing their hearing. What happened Last Lord's Day? An elderly man with two hearing aids sat directly in front of my wife. When the "worship band" began to play its introductory piece the poor man jumped with a start because the volume was so loud. His startled motion was quite noticeable, so noticeable that the couple who sat on either side of him (presumably a daughter and her husband), reached out to console him.

The volume has decidedly increased at our church the last two Sundays. Someone, almost surely within the "worship band," somehow assessed, counter-intuitively, that the band instruments were not loud enough for the congregation to hear. So, now they are amplifying the piano, as if no one could hear the piano before. Thus, when the band began to play on Sunday, it was fully understandable that the gentleman in front of us jumped with a start. The volume actually hurts one's ears.

Someone dubbed in a real-life complaint about the volume of "worship music" into this Dora cartoon, which I've watched many times with my three granddaughters. Listen to the short clip and you will discover how pertinent it is to what we have experienced at our church recently.

Oh, one other thing. If John Stackhouse can publish an article on this topic (“Memo to Worship Bands: Five sound reasons to lower the volume”) in Christianity Today (2009), I think that I can post this entry on my professional blog.

So, this is a PSA on behalf of all Evangelicals who desire to retain some level of hearing capacity. To all you "worship band" members and to sound board engineers, please, TURN THE VOLUME DOWN. Thank you!

The Australian Jim Wallace, Not the American Jim Wallis

2011-03-08T11:50:00.006-06:00

Greens are attacking religious freedom

by Jim Wallace

THE move by the Greens to give territories as small as Norfolk Island the power to set legislative precedents on social issues such as euthanasia and gay marriage is an attempt by gay-green activists to render us all the same.

During more than 40 years of pursuing its objectives, the homosexual lobby has trumpeted its differences. "Queer" and "proud" were calls to include homosexual lifestyle in the diversity that is modern Australia.

But now the tactic has changed. Not only do they want to be the same as everyone else, they're not prepared to suffer diversity in anyone else, particularly if it is religiously inspired.

The latest target has been religious freedom. Admittedly they don't discriminate - anyone's religious freedom will do.

Churches are portrayed as wantonly discriminatory for refusing to employ someone who doesn't subscribe to their values. So might any corporation, particularly after the money spent on defining corporate values.

Read more.

_______________________________

I wish that Jim Wallis would have the understanding of Jim Wallace.

I’m glad Jim Wallace understands the strategy of “multiculturalism and diversity” that, when necessary, morphs to take on its new form of the Green Movement and Sustainability Movement. Actually, multiculturalists and diversiphiles always planned to render everyone the same; their social engineering has always been designed to make everyone in their own image. It’s their way of playing God. Multiculturalists have always had in view the imposition of a single culture, their own. Their whole agenda is cloaked in a ruse, “multi-culturalism” when it should be “uni-culturalism.” Diversocrats have always had as their agenda the expulsion of bona fide diversity and the socially engineered imposition of sameness, everything after their own likeness, which is their way of playing God. Again, their entire plan is disguised with deliberate equivocation, for “diversity” is their code word to make their agenda palatable to the ingenuous among us who fail to recognize the purposeful equivocation. Lamentably, the ingenuous among us includes most people. And the diversocrats’ design in exploiting “diversity” has been to render any argument with the rest of us, who have caught on to their agenda, a dispute passed off as a squabble over semantics or worse, a devilish opportunity to charge opponents of their agenda as opponents of real diversity—racism, bigotry, sexism, etc. Of course, the same is true with those who have chosen to identify their agendas “Green” and “Sustainability,” as though we who oppose their agenda crave filthy drinking water, desire toxic waste to foul the earth, want noxious fumes to fill the air we breath, eagerly wish for the earth to heat up to kill off millions of people, and long for the oceans to rise to drown out millions more. Being a conservationist, as I have been my whole life, is not acceptable to Greenies and Sustainabilocrats, for my conservationism is born out of my Christian faith which is antithetical to the innate paganism that energizes the Green Movement and Sustainability Movement.

Ultra-Politicization of Government Higher Education to Destroy a Political Challenger

2011-03-08T06:08:00.001-06:00

Democrats attack Republican candidate's children

By Art Robinson
© 2011

In an effort to do my part in rescuing our country from the out-of-control Obama administration, last year I ran for Congress in Oregon's 4th District against 12-term incumbent, far-left Democrat Peter DeFazio, co-founder of the House Progressive Caucus.

Although I won the nominations of the Republican, Independent and Constitution Parties and the endorsement of the Libertarian Party, a massive media smear campaign by DeFazio, paid for with money raised by MoveOn.org and from special interests favored by DeFazio in Washington, resulted in a 54.5 percent to 43.6 percent victory for DeFazio in a race that was expected to be much closer.

Although I had never run for public office before, I immediately announced my candidacy for Congress again in 2012.

However, when you take a stand for what's right, sometimes there is retribution.

On Nov. 4, 2010, as soon as the election results were in and they were sure their candidate had won, faculty administrators at Oregon State University gave new meaning to the term "political payback."

They initiated an attack on my three children – Joshua, Bethany and Matthew – for the purpose of throwing them all out of the OSU graduate school, despite their outstanding academic and research accomplishments. OSU is a liberal socialist Democrat stronghold in Oregon that received a reported $27 million in earmark funding from my opponent, Peter DeFazio, and his Democrat colleagues during the last legislative session.

Thus, Democrat activist David Hamby and militant feminist and chairman of the nuclear engineering department Kathryn Higley are expelling four-year Ph.D. student Joshua Robinson from OSU at the end of the current academic quarter and turning over the prompt neutron activation analysis facility Joshua built for his thesis work and all of his work in progress to Higley's husband, Steven Reese. Reese, an instructor in the department, has stated that he will use these things for his own professional gain. Joshua's apparatus, which he built and added to the OSU nuclear reactor with the guidance and ideas of his mentor, Michael Hartman, earned Joshua the award for best Masters of Nuclear Engineering thesis at OSU and has been widely complimented by scientists at prominent U.S. nuclear facilities.

Meanwhile, faculty member Todd Palmer notified four-year Ph.D. student Bethany Robinson (OSU grade point average 3.89) that he was terminating her thesis work and taking all of her work in progress for himself. Some of Bethany's graduate work has already been used, without credit to Bethany, in the thesis of another favored student now recently hired on the department faculty.

Read more.

The Robinson family needs advocacy from NAS and F.I.R.E.

New Catholic Bible Translation for Catholics

2011-03-02T13:14:00.001-06:00

The Blaze provides the following report, which I have preserve fully here. The headlines project a somewhat negative cast to the story: “Catholic Bible Gets an Update: U.S. Bishops Remove ‘Booty’ & ‘Virgin’.” However, if one understands the nuances of the biblical languages, given what is reported below, one should have no quarrel with the translators, including on Isaiah 7:14, not 4:17, as reported in the story.

Also, the story confuses by reporting, “The new version, however, swaps ‘the virgin’ for ‘the young woman.’” Instead, to clarify the point, the sentence should read, “The new version, replaces ‘the virgin’ with ‘the young woman.’”

_______________________________

The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops has given its official translation of the Bible a little update. And while many of the changes will go unnoticed, there is one that could spark a lot of controversy.

“We needed a new translation because English is a living language,” retired auxiliary bishop of Milwaukee Richard Sklba, part of the review and editing team, told USA Today.

According to the paper, fifty scholars, translators, linguistics experts, theologians, and five bishops spent 17 years on the project. It’s the first update of the New American bible since 1970, and the group referenced everything from the Dead Sea Scrolls to recent archaeological findings.

USA Today lists some of the more trivial changes:

The word “holocaust,” now associated with World War II genocide, has been replaced by “burnt offering.”

The 1970s version of the 23rd Psalm — “even when I walk through a dark valley” — becomes a “walk though the valley of the shadow of death.”

Proverbs 31:10, the ode to “The Ideal Wife,“ is now a ”Poem on the Woman of Worth.”

“Booty” has been replaced by “spoils” of war.

But the one raising eyebrows deals with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and a prophecy regarding her in Isaiah 4:17 [sic; 7:14]. According to that verse, “the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” And that’s the way the old version of the New American Bible phrased it.

The new version, however, swaps “the virgin” for ” the young woman.”

According to USA today, “It elaborates that the original Hebrew word, almah, may, or may not, signify a virgin.” Yet Sklba insists the Catholic church will not change any of its teaching related to the change.

According to the Messianic Jewish group Jews for Jesus, almah does sometimes refer to a “young woman. But the group explains even though the Hebrew word is used, the insinuation is that the woman referenced is “chaste”:

In the few verses where almah appears, the word clearly denotes a young woman who is not married but is of marriageable age. Although almah does not implicitly denote virginity, it is never used in the Scriptures to describe a “young, presently married woman.” It is important to remember that in the Bible, a young Jewish woman of marriageable age was presumed to be chaste. [Emphasis theirs]

“One cannot assert that the prophet was speaking of a virgin technically on the basis of the word almah,” the group’s site says. “Nor can a serious student lightly dismiss the word as having no possible reference to a miraculous conception.”

USA Today says Catholics can read from any of two dozen English translations, however the New American Bible is the official translation used by the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops.

A Quick Lesson on Multiculturalism

2011-02-27T13:45:00.001-06:00

Multiculturalism Explained in 2:54, by Andrew Klavan.

A Grand Dilemma for Higher Education

2011-02-26T16:39:00.001-06:00

A Perfect Storm in Undergraduate Education, Part I

By Thomas H. Benton

Unsurprisingly, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011), by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, reveals that at least 45 percent of undergraduates demonstrated "no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills in the first two years of college, and 36 percent showed no progress in four years." And that's just the beginning of the bad news.

Meanwhile, in his State of the Union address, President Obama included a call for more Americans to go to college in order to make us more competitive in a global context. This is "our generation's Sputnik moment," he said.

Many professors will recall that the arms race with the Soviet Union motivated a surge in support for higher education that lasted until the end of the 1960s. It was a rising tide that lifted all boats, including the arts and humanities. Fifty years later, perhaps the most visible remnant of the original "Sputnik moment" is the belief that everyone should go to college.

But that raises the question: What good does it do to increase the number of students in college if the ones who are already there are not learning much? Would it not make more sense to improve the quality of education before we increase the quantity of students?

Read more.

Can Christian Colleges Require a Statement of Faith without Denying Academic Freedom?

2011-02-24T15:32:00.001-06:00

What Happened? Academic Freedom at a Christian College, Chico State’s Diversity Action Plan, Counseling Student Opposed by ACLU

Since I teach at a Christian college, of particular interest to me are the following paragraphs from this NAS article.

Shortly over a year ago, the Canadian equivalent of the AAUP, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) issued a report stating that Christian colleges and universities that have a statement of faith as a condition of employment deny academic freedom to their faculty members. The report was specifically directed at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, a private institution that openly declares its Christian mission. NAS noted at the time that, unlike the CAUT, the AAUP has made provisions for schools with religious aims in its declarations on academic freedom.

Since then CAUT has issued reports on Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg and Crandall University in New Brunswick. Now it has set its sights on Redeemer University College in Ontario. The National Post reports that Redeemer has refused to cooperate with CAUT’s investigation but “has invited the CAUT to an open and honest philosophical discussion about differing paradigms of academic freedom and the relation of faith to learning.” According to the National Post, there have been no complaints at Redeemer or the other colleges over the institutions’ statements of faith.

Redeemer’s president, Hubert Krygsman, told the Post, “It’s a definition of academic freedom that says it cannot be faith-based. So by definition any faith-based approach strikes them as contrary to their definition. All of the other findings are really fodder for their own beliefs. It’s certainly an attempt by whatever public suasion they might have to give Christian schools a black mark.”

In response to the discrimination against Canadian Christian colleges, faculty members of these institutions are signing a statement in protest. As of yesterday, the statement had 225 signatures.

Read the whole article. Who knows? Perhaps the AAUP will make similar moves in the US. Can Christian Colleges require a Statement of Faith without denying academic freedom? This is a question that I fear far too few Christian college professors and administrators have adequately pondered. A major crucial question, of course, must be, what does academic freedom entail?

The “Soft Bigotry” of Low Expectations

2011-02-16T12:30:00.004-06:00

Every day I stand in amazement as I watch the inhabitants of this world turn the truth upside down and invert the doing of good. Consider in part how this has come to pass.

Even though I was only a young lad when these events took place, I marveled at the hatred some people had for Rosa Parks, for Martin Luther King, Jr., and for others because of different skin coloration. Rosa Parks was neither the first nor the last person to refuse the orders of a bus driver to give up her seat to a white person. Yet, her refusal on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, became a symbolic act of the Civil Rights Movement that gained great advancement under the guidance of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose famed "I Have A Dream" speech (August 28, 1963) rightly called for dignified treatment of all peoples with his great line, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Today, however, it is remarkable how people have completely inverted virtue and truth. What Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed and what Rosa Parks desired, enough to take great personal risk, has become a nightmare of national, yea, international proportions. The hateful bigotry and racism which Parks and King vigorously opposed has become domesticated by political activists and leaders of all ethnic origins but especially whites.

Because, as Shelby Steele so astutely observes, when white political leaders came to acknowledge the egregious wrongs of America's past, marred by racial bigotry, they came to lack moral authority to address the many issues that had become attached to race. So, instead of doing what was right and necessary, they domesticated bigotry and racism by cloaking it to look virtuous, generous, benevolent, and kind. How did they do this? They did it by subjecting a whole generation of Americans to the demeaning of humanity by"The Great Society" program of welfare statism and handouts inflicted by President Lyndon Johnson's and Congress's institution, by the Supreme Court's imposition of several key decisions, and by the establishment of many unjust and humanly demeaning laws.

All of these programs institutionalized prejudice but dressed it up to look like Christian virtue. Preferentialism, paternalism, and patronization, cloaked with new garb, such as "affirmative action," "multiculturalism," and "diversity," became enforced institutionalized policies of both federal and state governments, seducing a whole generation to accept the more tolerable form of suppressing the so-called "minority groups" as the way of virtue, but now, with the force of institutional power, suppressing the very groups that the suppressive programs were allegedly designed to help, to lift up, and to treat as equals before the law. This institutionalized suppression is what President George W. Bush correctly identified as "the soft bigotry of low expectations," whether or not he understood the brilliance of his apt depiction.

Thus, now, the virtue and truth are completely inverted so that to expect that all peoples should be treated equally under the law is condemned as racism and bigotry. To expect that individuals, regardless of ethnicity or sex, who compete for the same employment opening should be required to demonstrate competency in order to be awarded the vacant position, whatever it may be, is denounced as racism and bigotry. Those who lower expectations for others on account of ethnicity, sex, or cultural factors congratulate themselves for their seeming virtue as they silence anyone who attempts to point out that to lower expectations is actually to demean other humans and to do real injury to the dignity of fellow human beings, whose dignity we are obligated to uphold.

I cannot speak for others. I speak for myself, and as for me, I object to treating fellow human beings with soft bigotry, not merely because it gives an unfair advantage to others whose personal qualifications do not measure up, though it does this, and for this reason alone, bigotry, whatever form it takes, is wrong. My greater concern is how such bigotry demeans the spirit and dignity of the individual who is made in the likeness and image of God. The "soft bigotry of low expectations" violates American law, which requires that everyone be regarded as equal before the law, but worse, it violates God's law, which requires that we regard one another as dignified humans because we are all made in the image and likeness of our Creator, which is also the very basis of American laws.

Are you outraged when you see a fellow human being whose dignity is subverted and whose humanity is demeaned by self-proclaimed "moral do-gooders" whose speech codes banish any voiced objection while they selectively lower expectations for people based upon skin color, ethnicity, ethnic sounding surnames, sex, or any other non-essential quality that makes one a human being? The sense of virtue that self-appointed "moral do-gooders" derive from this inversion of doing good is repugnant. Far worse, however, is the additional demeaning and subjection to indignity of another human being who is made in the image and likeness of our Creator. True moral virtue requires that we hold forth expectations equally for all and never demean another human by lowering standards and expectations to accommodate low achievement, whatever the cause may be for low achievement. I uphold standards and expectations because I desire to treat other human beings as I hope they will treat me, with respect and with dignity as one of our Creator’s creatures who bears his image and likeness.

The State of Higher Education: Academically Adrift

2011-02-16T10:24:00.000-06:00

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, was released by the University of Chicago Press. The Chronical of Higher Education, the book issues "a damning indictment of the American higher-education system."

As one might expect, the book is receiving sharp criticism, with various faculty assailing its findings as flawed, rejecting its analysis as falling short in its assessments of certain teaching and learning methods, questioning the scope of the study, etc. Nevertheless, the book is sure to stir the cauldron for at least a short time. Whether educators take the message to heart to remedy the mess we're in will, of course, remain to be seen. Throwing more money at the situation will hardly solve the problems.

Here are some of the findings the book reports:

"Gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills (i.e., general collegiate skills) are either exceedingly small or empirically non-existent for a large proportion of students."
Thirty-six percent of students experienced no significant improvement in learning (as measured by the CLA) over four years of schooling.
Fewer than one half of seniors had written more than 20 pages worth of assignments for a course in the prior semester.
Students are academically engaged, typically, about 27 hours per week (combined class time and study time).
Comparing these findings with scholarship from earlier decades suggest there has been a sharp decline in both academic work effort and learning.
While "collaborative learning," where students are encouraged/required to work in groups, is highly popular now, the Arum and Roksa study finds that studying alone is more effective than studying in groups.
Thirty-five percent of the students sampled spent five hours or less a week studying alone; the average for all students was under 9 hours.

As an educator, my anecdotal observations agree with these claims.

So, what can we do about students adrift? Jason Fertig offers help here, in an article posted at NAS, concerning "students who see school as a social and credentialing experience more than one of intellectual growth." Who handed them such a notion? Surely, they did not come up with it on their own. Fertig rightly notes that Arum and Roksa point to the necessary correction.

A renewed commitment to improving undergraduate education is unlikely to occur without changes to the organizational cultures of colleges and universities that reestablish the institutional primacy of these functions – instilling in the next generation of young adults a lifelong love of learning, an ability to think critically and communicate effectively, and a willingness to embrace and assume adult responsibilities.

Europe, Where Telling the Truth Can Land One In the Courts and Even in Prison

2011-02-16T09:02:00.000-06:00

A free speech activist in Vienna, Austria has been charged with inciting religious hatred and faces a possible three-year prison sentence simply for criticizing Islam and Shariah law. She is guilty of nothing more than speaking up as has Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, and David Cameron, Chancellor of Germany, President of France, and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, respectively, who have all commented publicly concerning the failures of multiculturalism.

First Merkel, Then Cameron, and Now Sarkozy

2011-02-11T08:25:00.002-06:00

Last week the UK's Prime Minister Cameron joined Germany's Angel Merkel when he pointed out the tragic failure of the policy called "multiculturalism." Now, French President Nicholas Sarkozy joined the parade of sanity when he made the following proclamation Thursday:

Of course we must all respect differences, but we do not want… a society where communities coexist side by side. If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France. The French national community cannot accept a change in its lifestyle, equality between men and women… freedom for little girls to go to school.

More here.

May multiculturalism and diversity die a thousand deaths. Lord, have mercy on us. Banish these scourges from us and restore sanity to all our leaders by constraining them to treat all human beings with the dignity owed to them as creatures made in your image and likeness.

Thank the Lord I Do Not Live in Arkansas

2011-02-10T12:58:00.002-06:00

When Bested by Reasoning, Roar!

2011-02-07T14:16:00.001-06:00

The recent uproar against Chick-fil-A on campuses illustrates well what has come of reasoned response, of thoughtful engagement, and of logical and dispassionate argument on America's college and university campuses. Peter Wood aptly portrays the typical response in Is Chick-fil-A Anti-Gay?

____________________

Protests like the one aimed at Chick-fil-A are partly or even mostly attempts to exhibit the power of the protesters. That aim has nothing to do with winning the argument—is gay marriage a good social policy or a mistaken one?—and everything to do with controlling the narrative. Only those who agree with the protesters are granted a legitimate voice hereafter. Roar loud enough and you may intimidate the target, but that’s of less importance than pumping up excitement among followers and creating a secondary wave of self-censorship among others who correctly surmise that it is dangerous to disagree.

The ideal of the campus as a place where people debate their differences by means of rational arguments and well-vetted evidence has been on a downward trajectory for decades. Kicking Chick-fil-A off campus is a reductio ad absurdum of the now-common tactic of roaring at your supposed opponents. . . .

Higher education, however, is ill-served by this spirit of censorship. If we want students to learn the principles and arts of governing our republic, for starters they will need to learn the importance of living alongside those who hold views that clash with their own.

Read Wood's whole brief essay.

The Humanly Demeaning Policy of Engineered Diversity

2011-02-04T13:16:00.013-06:00

A few years ago Christian Research Journal published one of my essays titled, “In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit of Diversity: Multiculturalism Goes to College.” The form of the essay on-line does not include a crucial sidebar which I post below the following introduction.

I write this entry and post the sidebar below because I was reminded of its significance during a recent conversation with a fellow educator concerning misconceptions regarding “diversity.”

“Diversity” is a noun that once had a basic meaning: “the fact or quality of being diverse; different.” The word, of course, properly refers to the factual existence of real differences that occurs naturally throughout all creation, including among humans. However, throughout the past thirty years the word has been deliberately exploited by politicians, political activists, activist educators, journalists, religious and church leaders, and many others as they have imposed their own meaning onto the term, “diversity,” to advance a political agenda by social engineering and manipulation which entails artificially imposing a forced diversity of peoples upon the societies wherever they hold power and influence.

Who could possibly oppose “diversity”? Right? Diversiphiles, as Peter Wood identifies them, trade upon the slipperiness that they have imposed onto the term “diversity.” If diversiphiles exploit to their advantage equivocating uses of "diversity," they do the same with opposition to their agenda. They do not offer thoughtful responses to dispassionate, well-reasoned, well-documented, and well-argued critiques of their diversity agenda, which is to manipulate artificially engineered “diversity.” Instead, they accuse critics who offer intelligent critical exposés of their agenda with a variety of false charges, even welcoming invidious accusations that critics of their agenda oppose the integration of diverse peoples and instead demand and preach some form of homogeneity even advocating racism and white supremacy.

The ingeniousness of the new coinage of the term “diversity” as shorthand for the diversiphiles’ agenda is that (1) it self-validates their new found virtue with a sense of moral superiority; (2) it provides a source of authority to suppress and to silence objections; and (3) it catches the ingenuous among us unawares by luring them to accept uncritically, to advance religiously, and to defend loyally the social engineering project. This social experient on human beings does not prize authentic diversity that already factually exists among humans but instead exploits people by treating them not as individual human beings but as members of a so-called “protected class” that requires preferential treatment in the form of “affirmative action” in order for people of those “protected classes” to find their way in life on a “level playing field.” It is just as Peter Wood so aptly observes.

Pursued as a social policy, diversity is a form of systematic injustice and it makes us accomplices to injustice. To treat people as objects, as though they are the residuum of their race, class, gender and other superficialities, and not as individuals who define themselves through their ideas and creative acts--that is injustice (Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, 47).

This political agenda that is being advanced powerfully allures with its speech code of virtuous-sounding political correctness. The agenda’s speech code surreptitiously infiltrates the lexicon of any religious belief system, and in the process it imperceptibly transmogrifies religious expressions and belief systems, including Christianity, to adjust to its values, virtues, and message. It seduces many to suppose that its suppression of ill-mannered speech with “political correctness” is of a piece with Christian virtue and compatible with the Christian gospel.

The issue at stake has never been and is not now whether we should welcome diverse peoples among us and embrace them as our equals, our peers, our friends, and our colleagues. Rather, the issue is on what principles we should do so. We should never welcome diverse peoples among us on the principles that diversocrats exploit, namely preferentialism and paternalism. For, anyone who advocates any form of paternalism or a policy of preferentialism for a so-called “protected class” is worthy of rebuke, for such a posture is contrary to a credible Christian profession. Why? It is because preferentialism is sin (James 2:9). Preferentialism demeans the human who is made in the image of God. The gospel of Jesus Christ obligates us to love and to kindness toward all regardless of differences, whether racial, social, or sexual.

At last, here is the promised sidebar.

Made in the Image and Likeness of God

Observant individuals may ask, “What are the dynamics that render members of a minority group in need of paternalistic assistance from the majority group?”

Shelby Steele astutely addresses this question in White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (New York: Harper Collins, 2006). Steele incisively explains that advocates of multiculturalism (e.g., America’s whites, members of the majority group) endeavor by “affirmative action” to regain a sense of human dignity against a stigma of “white guilt” for slavery, for Jim Crow laws, for discrimination, and for racism. Steele demonstrates the seductive nature of “affirmative action.” It does not truly provide authentic assistance to minority individuals. Affirmative action puts recipients in a double bind. To receive the patronizing preferential favor one has to bow to paternalism and accept one’s inferiority and dependence upon members of the majority group. Affirmative action’s design is to provide a sense of redeemed humanity, of renewed virtue, and of restored dignity to members of the majority group who seek to purge themselves of “white guilt.” Its seductive power resides in the fact that while preferentially offering handouts based upon ethnicity or skin color it provides a sense of virtue. It is not virtue at all; it is paternalism and patronization. He writes:

So post sixties American liberalism preserves the old racist hierarchy of whites over blacks as virtue itself; and it grants all whites who identify with it a new superiority. In effect, it says you are morally superior to other whites and intellectually superior to blacks. The white liberal’s reward is this feeling that because he is heir to knowledge of the West, yet morally enlightened beyond the West’s former bigotry, he is really a ‘new man,’ a better man that the world has seen before” (White Guilt, 148).

Steele observes,

Because dissociation is a claim of superiority, it generates a kind of collective narcissism—an irrational yet utterly certain belief in the moral superiority of post sixties, dissociational liberalism. In this liberalism one does not argue by logic or principle; one argues by dissociation. Only in dissociation are authority, legitimacy, and power available. This grounding in dissociation, with its assertion of moral superiority, is what gives today’s liberalism its narcissistic quality (151).

As Christians, it seems proper that we should go beyond this explanation, good as it is. Preferentialism is prejudice dressed up as Christian virtue. To redeem themselves from the stigma of America’s past, Christian advocates of “affirmative action” seek deliverance from “white guilt” through dissociation from racism. They embrace the seductive notion that to treat individuals of “minority groups” with preferentialism based upon ethnicity or skin color is both permissible and virtuous, if not godly and Christian, so long as preferentialism is positive (favors “affirmative action”) and not negative (advocates “prejudice” or “discrimination”). People who embrace this view fail to recognize that preferentially favoring individuals based upon ethnicity or skin color, though seemingly positive and godly, is simply another form of prejudice (James 2:1-13). Preferentially favoring individuals based on ethnicity or skin color is as sinful as prejudicially discriminating against individuals based on ethnicity or skin color because partiality, whether taking the form of paternalism or prejudice, looks to superficial human qualities as the basis for favorable or unfavorable action toward others (cf. 2 Cor. 5:13-21). Preferentialism, no less than discrimination, entails paternalistic dehumanization of individuals by treating them as members of an approved group rather than as individuals made in the image and likeness of God.

—A. B. Caneday

Defining Deviancy Down and the Wrath of God

2011-02-02T10:49:00.002-06:00

In the alliterative words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “defining deviancy down,” is what authorizes the mother of one of the high school lesbians to say, ““They had a lot of courage.” and “Look how far we’ve come.” Defining deviancy down has the effect of inverting courage and virtue. As deviant behavior contends to become the new normal way of behaving, deviants are praised as being courageous and their conduct is commended as virtuous.

Defining deviancy down gives the illusion that our society is progressing, upward of course, even as it is sliding ever so quickly downward into the abyss.

Defining deviancy down intoxicates our society so that parading deviant behavior in full public view, after suing for the right to do so, is called “courage” instead of “shameful” and “wicked.”

Now, if you desire, read the story. "Two Lesbian High School Students Sue to Accompany Each Other to Dance." It is about a couple of teenage high school girls just a short drive from our home.

CHAMPLIN, Minn. (AP) — Two lesbian high school students who fought for the right to walk together as part of a royalty court made their entrances Monday to the cheers of hundreds of classmates.

Sarah Lindstrom and Desiree Shelton wore matching black suits with pink ties and held hands as they entered the Snow Days Pep Fest at Champlin Park High School in Minneapolis’ northwest suburbs.

The reaction came as a relief to the couple and school administrators. The district has been stung by criticism of its policies toward homosexuality and the alleged bullying of a gay student who killed himself.

“It felt amazing,” said Shelton, adding that she was too nervous to notice dozens rise to give her a standing ovation as she walked in with Lindstrom. “I think we were too focused on getting to the stage.”

If there were any boos, they were drowned about by supporters. “I feel so much better,” Lindstrom said while surrounded by friends after the rally.

Sarah’s mother, Shannon Lindstrom, camera in hand, joined the other mothers of children in the royalty court after the rally.

“They had a lot of courage,” she said Shelton and her daughter. “Look how far we’ve come.”

Finish reading here.

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We Christians need to understand that female to female and male to male sexual relations, now made respectable by our perverse society and culture, is not the greatest, the most terrible, and the most wicked sin for which our nation will be punished by our God and Creator who designed sex as the human delight to be enjoyed in the bonds of holy matrimony between a male (husband) and female (wife). Indeed, God's judgment will fall upon all who engage in sexual perversions, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Perversion of the sex act by same sex individuals, whether male to male or female to female, vile as it is, is not, according to the apostle Paul, the bottom of the barrel variety of sinful behavior which God will surely, at long last, punish, including humans who accommodate such wickedness. Instead, if we read Romans 1:21-27 correctly, we will realize that sexual perversion, but particularly male to male and female to female sexual perversion, IS God's punishment for the primal human sin against God, namely, idolatry. What am I saying? What do I mean? Consider the passage.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Romans 1:21-27 is not instructing us about God's wrath that will come because of male to male and female to female sexual perversion. Instead, the passage instructs us that male to male and female to female sexual perversion IS THE DISPLAY of God's wrath for another more primal sin, the sin of idolatry. In other words, God's judgment and wrath already has fallen upon our society in the form of his turning human beings over to their vile, lustful passions as they turn to one another to delight themselves in their perversion of the sex act with same sex partners. God's turning humans over to same sex perversion is highly significant. Why? It is because humans are made in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, humans are obliged to worship God who is Other than themselves. Yet, to what do humans turn to worship? Instead of worshiping their Creator, they have turned to worship the creature instead of the Creator. Therefore, God abandons them to their fondness for the creature so that when they engage in the most intimate of human actions they engage in that act with same sex partners. Thus, male to male and female to female sexual attraction and sexual engagement is God's wrath in ironic form. It is God's wrath on display for all to see. It is the rawness of God's wrath among a people who have become idolaters, people who repudiate the one true God, their Creator.

Fallen human fondness for and affection for the creature rather than the Creator has become the very form in which God now displays his wrath for human idolatry. Yet, what do fallen humans do with the display of God's wrath manifest in rampant sexual perversion? Humans glory in their sexual perversion. They regard it courageous when formerly secret sexual perversion, hidden in the closet, dares to emerge with public announcement, fanfare, and press releases. They regard it virtuous when sexual behavior, once regarded as shameful perversion, benefits from society's defining deviancy down. Suddenly, what formerly looked so vile and wretched takes on an air of virtuosity, especially if the relationship can be honored as "monogamous," engaged in with "fidelity," and socially labelled "marriage." Is this not precisely why those who engage in homosexual and lesbian relationships and their advocates sue for society's stamp of legal approval called "marriage"?

In my essay here, I make the following observations with the aid of comments by my scholarly acquaintance, Simon Gathercole, of Cambridge University.

Humanity’s exchange of “the glory of God for the image of the likeness of corruptible man and birds and animals and reptiles” received God’s ironic measure-for-measure punishment, one substitution for another, the exchange of natural relations for those that are contrary to nature (Rom 1:26, μετήλλαξαν τὴν φυσικὴν χρῆσιν εἰς τὴν παρὰ φύσιν). “God handed them over to dishonorable passions–their women exchanged the natural use of their bodies for that which is against nature, and likewise the men” (Rom 1:26-27).

Simon Gathercole adeptly identifies the concept of God’s ironic “measure-for-measure punishment” when he contends, “The action of the sinful human beings itself has an ironic element—a reversal whereby their desire is for the exact opposite of what it should be:

their exchange consists of getting ‘a likeness of an image’ . . . in place of ‘glory,’ . . . the contrast being between what is insubstantial–indeed, being ‘an image of a likeness’, it is doubly removed from the reality of the object of an already misguided worship–and what is ‘weighty’;
in place of the immortal one, they choose mortal objects of worship . . .
in place of God, they serve people, birds, animals and snakes. . . (162).”

The primal sin of humanity, namely, idolatry, “turning in on itself toward self-worship, then, leads to sexual relationships which mirror this same turn in se” (164). Gathercole accurately identifies this measure-for-measure punishment this way: “Humanity should be oriented toward God but turns in on itself (Rom. 1.25). Woman should be oriented toward

man, but turns in on itself (Rom. 1.26). Man should be oriented toward woman, but turns in on itself (Rom. 1.27)” (164).

Concerning Paul’s use of παρέδωκεν (he gave them over, 1:24, 26, 28), Gathercole convincingly shows that “God’s ‘handing over’ here is his personal action whereby, without withdrawing his presence, he gives the condemned what they want—with the reward ironically corresponding in some way to the sin of idolatry–but with the result that it ends up compounding the divine judgment” (164).

See Simon Gathercole, “Sin in God’s Economy: Agencies in Romans 1 and 7,” in Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment (ed. J. M. G. Barclay and S. J. Gathercole; Library of New Testament Studies; London: T. & T. Clark, Continuum, 2006), 158-72.

Chiasmus in Literature

2011-02-01T12:39:00.000-06:00

Membership in the National Association of Scholars and subscription to the NAS web services never disappoints but sometimes surprises. When I opened today's e-mail packet from NAS I was surprised to see the following, which, of course, resonates deeply with me as one whose scholarly concentration is on biblical literature and theology. Take note of the "Ask a Scholar" feature,

Ask a Scholar: Pericope and Chiasm

By Todd D. Moore

Dear Ask a Scholar,

Can a pericope have more than one possibility of a chiasm?

- Jose Munoz, Seventh Day Adventist Theological Seminary

Answered by Todd D. Moore, staff scientist in commercialization at Merck & Co., Inc. He received a bachelor of science in biology from Delaware Valley College, an additional bachelor of science in Bible and pastorology from Pillsbury College, and a master’s in Biblical studies from Biblical Theological Seminary. He has lectured extensively on Biblical subjects at churches in the Bucks County, PA area. His website features a growing collection of chiastic structures.

Yes, but first a few definitions are in order so that everyone understands what we are discussing.

In literary or rhetorical analysis, a “pericope” is a set of sentences or verses that forms one coherent and self-contained unit. Such a unit is normally evident as a paragraph, episode, or story that contributes to the overall composition. The word itself is transliterated from the Greek, perikoph, referring to the general form of a passage or section. (Its plural, by the way, is “pericopae.”) A good illustration is the “Pericope Adulterae” - the pericope of the adulteress in John 7:53-8:11. This famous episode from the life of Jesus is debated among textual critics as to whether it was actually present as part of the original writing of the author (since this pericope is not found in some of the oldest manuscript evidence).

“Chiasm” (short for “Chiasmus”) is a figure of speech, a form of parallelism, derived from the likeness to the crossing in the Greek letter chi, X. In this figure, the order of the literary units is reversed from one half of the compositional structure to the other. The units (which may be words, sentences, paragraphs, or themes) are composed such that they correspond to one another, but in inverted order. The smallest, most basic, chiastic structure looks like ABBA in form. An example of this is Matthew 7:6 where we should understand that it is dogs that attack and pigs that trample:

A. Do not give dogs what is holy,

B. and do not throw your pearls before pigs,

B’ lest they trample them underfoot

A’ and turn to attack you.

Read the whole article.

On the Charge of Antinomianism as a Badge of Honor

2011-01-31T13:39:00.001-06:00

With my entry, Have You Been Charged with Antinomianism?, on another of my blogs I offered no comment or commentary. I will not post a response or commentary, but I will post some instructive material that is necessary to understand what stands behind the recent discussion on several blogs.

Particularly instructive concerning how many Reformed folks read the Scriptures through their interpretive lens of "the law and the gospel," is the Open Letter to Michael Horton by Frank Turk. The following brief excerpt from a White Horse Inn broadcast of January 2, 2011 is instructive.

Mike Horton (MH): The Gospel can't be lived. It's the Law that's lived. We obey the commands that we find in Scripture, we do not—the Gospel is not anything for us to do. The Gospel is an announcement for us to take to the world, and on the basis of that Gospel we do live differently in the world, but that isn't itself the content of the Gospel: it is the effect of the Gospel.

Kim Riddlebarger (KR): I think you made a brilliant point. I know there will be a number of people who will hear us, who are familiar with us, and they'll say to themselves, "well, there they go, they've been on the air two minutes talking about the Great Commission, and they're back to Law and Gospel again!" But your point is absolutely spot-on: we believe the Gospel, we obey the Law—and if you are not clear about that, then you're going to go off on a mission and as you risk, as Jesus warned, making people more fit for Hell than they were before. If you're telling people that the Gospel is doing certain things, acting certain way, behaving in a certain way, then you're just accelerating their demise and decline.

Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, R. Scott Clark and many others believe that we should regard all the commands of Scripture, including those in the New Testament, other than those that command faith, to be of the law not of the gospel. This is what some identify as "the Lutheran view." Of course, it is not strictly "Lutheran," since many who are not Lutheran but Reformed embrace the view.

In order to understand what is going on, one needs to recognize that there are two series of "threes" that stand behind the view.

First, we need to understand that "the Lutheran view" of the law entails the notion that the law of Moses consists of three distinct parts, what theologians call the "tripartite division of the law."

The ceremonial law consisting of all that elements that concern worship, sacrifice, the prieshood, etc.
The civil law consisting of all the elements that concern Israel distinctly as the covenant nation, such as regulations concerning crime and punishment, clothing, foods--clean and unclean, and the like.
The moral law consisting of all the elements that concern moral and ethical behavior before humans and before God, such as those identified in the Ten Commandments.

Those who hold "the Lutheran view" or the "tripartite division of the law" regard the first two parts of the law as rendered null and void. Hence, Christians are not bound by by either the ceremonial or the civil law. We rightly no longer have concern about mixing fabrics in the clothing we wear, and we offer no animals in sacrificial ceremony.

However, adherents believe that the third part, the moral law, is binding in perpetuity. And when the New Testament commands, exhorts, or warns without specifically calling for faith, those commands, exhortations, or warnings all of these belong to the law in the sense of "the moral law." They do not belong to the gospel.

What do they mean by the moral law? They believe in the classic "Three Uses of the Law." By this they mean "Three Uses of the Moral Law." When the Reformed and Lutheran scholastics talked about God’s moral law (lex moralis), they taught that there are three basic uses of the law (usus legis). They are:

The civil use (usus politicus sive civilis). That is, the law serves the commonwealth or body politic as a force to restrain sin. This falls under the general revelation (revelatio generalis) discussion in most of the scholastics as well as natural law (cf. Rom 1-2).
The pedagogical use (usus elenchticus sive paedagogicus). That is, the law also shows people their sin and points them to mercy and grace outside of themselves. In Muller’s summary, this is “the use of the law for the confrontation and refutation of sin and for the purpose of pointing the way to Christ” (p. 320). This can be found in the Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Days 2-4.
The normative use (usus didacticus sive normativus). That is, this use of the law is for those who trust in Christ and have been saved through faith apart from works. It “acts as a norm of conduct, freely accepted by those in whom the grace of God works the good” (p. 321). This can be found in the Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Days 32-52.They believe that all New Testament commands, exhortations, and warnings that do not specifically call for faith belong to the "Third Use of the Moral Law."

Understanding "the Lutheran view's" articulation of these two series of "threes" concerning the law of Moses is vital to understanding why some may regard being charged with antinomianism as a badge of honor. Because, in their belief system, the New Testament's commands, exhortations, and warnings that do not specifically call for faith belong to the law not the gospel, the gospel imposes no moral demands upon anyone. That is the law's work and function, not the gospel's work. The gospel is strictly the announcement of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. The gospel does not issue any requirement upon us except one, faith.

Some who hold that even New Testament commands, warnings, and admonitions belong to the law not the gospel are willing to wear the charge of antinomianism as a badge of honor, because they insist that the gospel lays no moral requirements upon anyone. Only the law places moral restraints and requirements upon us. Yet, some of these same folks are not necessarily shy to reverse the accusation of antinomianism against those who do not hold their view of the law, but when they do, their charge has nothing to do with the moral or ethical demands of the gospel, since the gospel makes not moral or ethical demands. The gospel requires only one thing--faith--faith for justification. Rather, their accusation of antinomianism concerns the moral law and sanctification. Anyone who does not hold to the "tripartite division of the law" and the "three uses of the law" may be suspect. People who believe that the gospel lays commands, admonitions, and warnings upon all who hear the gospel may be charged with being "legalists" with regard to justification, but they also may be charged with being "antinomians" with regard to sanctification.

This is why one who has engaged in the recent discussion returns the charge of antinomianism against evangelicals who do not share his view of the law.

Antinomianism? I’ll show you antinomianism: defiance of God’s holy will as revealed in the fourth commandment. Reformed Christians confess that God has given ten commandments. What about the fourth commandment? Most of the evangelicals I’ve known, who are wound up about the “Lordship Controversy,” are antinomian (lawless) when it comes to the fourth commandment.

Yet, simultaneously, this individual might accuse the same non-sabbatarian evangelical with legalism with regard to justification.

Yes, I realize that it is all quite confusing, but such is the nature of the discussion. I could say much more and may yet do so in another entry. However, for now, does Titus 2:11-14 have anything to say with regard to the notion that because the gospel is of grace that the gospel lays no moral or ethical demands upon us but that all commands, admonitions, and warnings derive from the law?

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

Am I misunderstanding this passage to point out that Paul does not say that it is the law that "teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age" but that it is the grace of God in the gospel that teaches us these things?

Superfical Scholarship

2011-01-30T22:45:00.000-06:00

Our superficial scholarsBy Heather Wilson

For most of the past 20 years I have served on selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship. In general, the experience is an annual reminder of the tremendous promise of America's next generation. We interview the best graduates of U.S. universities for one of the most prestigious honors that can be bestowed on young scholars.

I have, however, become increasingly concerned in recent years - not about the talent of the applicants but about the education American universities are providing. Even from America's great liberal arts colleges, transcripts reflect an undergraduate specialization that would have been unthinkably narrow just a generation ago.

As a result, high-achieving students seem less able to grapple with issues that require them to think across disciplines or reflect on difficult questions about what matters and why.

Read the whole article.

HT: MH

Sarah Palin Needs Some Serious Help, At Least A Speech Coach

2011-01-27T11:32:00.001-06:00

Since Sarah Palin arrived on the national political scene, when John McCain selected her as his VP running mate, my wife and I have often observed to one another two things concerning her speech. First, Palin's speech pattern, cadence, and especially her shrillness are quite off-putting. If she has any intentions of running for political office, higher than governor of Alaska, she will need to secure the services of a speech coach that will have the ability to help her correct these flaws. Second, closely tied to her speech pattern and cadence is Palin's penchant to choose words that make her sound like a immature teenage girl. Some have called it "folksy." In my estimation, it is more offensive than folksy. You've heard the words, two of which are, Dang it! Heckuva lot! The tone she strikes with her word choices is rather malapert or saucy, unbecoming any politician, especially a woman, and especially a woman who communicates her "conservative" message.

On Wednesday evening Greta Van Susteren interviewed Sarah Palin.

VAN SUSTEREN: I’m very well, but there are a lot of Americans aren’t. They need jobs. What are we going to do about jobs? Do you have an idea that‘s any way different from what the president said last night because we’re looking for all options?

PALIN: Well, speaking of last night, that was a tough speech to have to sit through and kind of try to stomach because the president is so off base in his ideas on how it is that he believes the government is going to create jobs. Obviously, government growth won’t create any jobs. It’s the private sector that can create the jobs.

And his theme last night in the Speaker of the House was the “WTF,” you know, “Winning the Future.” And I thought, “OK, that acronym, spot on.“ There were a lot of ”WTF” moments throughout that speech, namely, when he made the statement, Greta, that he believed that we can’t allow ourselves to, I guess, eventually become buried under a mountain of debt. That right there tells you he is so disconnected from reality! The problem is, we are buried under a mountain of debt, and jobs cannot be created by the private sector. We cannot grow and thrive and prosper as a nation when we are buried under this $14 trillion debt [Emphasis added].

She wasn't finished. Later in the interview Palin returned to her saucy and potty-mouthed teenager talk.

VAN SUSTEREN: Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is still with us. And Governor, last night there was a lot of discussion about the Sputnik moment that the president talked about. Do you agree with him? Do you — and is this our moment?

PALIN: That was another one of those WTF moments, when he so often repeated this Sputnik moment that he would aspire Americans to celebrate. And he needs to remember that what happened back then with the former communist USSR and their victory in that race to space, yes, they won, but they also incurred so much debt at the time that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union.

The fact that Palin used the acronym and not the actual three words hardly renders her more presidential.

For videos see here.

The Danger of Texting While Walking or Driving

2011-01-19T07:30:00.002-06:00

A video worth a thousand words.

For more of the story, click here.

Surviving Thriving While Attending College

2011-01-18T07:54:00.000-06:00

I commend Thriving at College: Make Great Friends, Keep Your Faith, and Get Ready for the Real World! authored by my friend and former colleague, Alex Chediak.

A Spiritually Humbling and Moving Conference

2011-01-13T09:45:00.003-06:00

In my previous blog entry I indicated that last week I was privileged to attend the Think Tank conference of truthXchange at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, CA. To encourage him, I offered to Dr. Peter Jones my assessment of the conference. With full sincerity, I observed that, to date, it is the best conference I have attended. Why? It is because, despite reasonable expectation of some unevenness among the presenters, all mined deeply their assigned focus, and the progression and development of the conference theme effectively flowed. (For presenters and topics, see here.)

All who know me well realize that I am neither particularly moved by the affective nor easily impressed. Therefore, I trust that the point that I am about to make should be received with all that much more weight. At this conference I was exposed to and I made acquaintance of several young scholars who have considerable spiritual depth, holy gravitas, Christian acumen, and breadth of biblical knowledge. Among the various impacts witnessing the vastness of the knowledge and understanding that these folks have acquired has had upon me, I will mention three.

First, I have renewed confidence that the Lord God is raising up young individuals throughout his church to lead his people to resist the devil and the neo-pagan assault upon truth, against Christ, and upon the church. Not only are the presenters that I heard well-equipped to engage the battle against the forces of darkness, but they are capably equipping Christians to do the same. And each of the presenters manifested considerable humility.

Second, I am humbled by the wealth of knowledge, by the breadth of understanding, by the depth of spiritual maturity, by the vastness of the mastery of information, and by the weightiness of Christian demeanor that I witnessed from each of the presenters. I am grateful that so many from the younger generation are and have acquired a far more well-rounded and more deeply plumbed education than I received, given my quite unguided choices. The conference reminded me of encouragement that I have frequently offered students whom I have been privileged to instruct and to counsel, including young scholars whom I hear present their research.

Once again, what I have witnessed among so many young scholars revives hope and a deep sense that my own labors in Christian education, puny as they are, are not in vain. The pleasure I have taken in encouraging young scholars whom I fully expect to exceed my few and little accomplishments is refreshed and invigorated. An important and essential quality of true scholarship, in my estimation and for which we all should strive, is to find delight in serving as the source of ideas that stimulate and stir the imaginations and passions of younger scholars who will almost surely advance well beyond ourselves. Scholarship entails leadership that finds joy in passing ideas, insights, and curiosity on to others in such a manner that they take these up as their own and advance them. And we are to do this all without whining that the ideas may have originated with ourselves in some small way once we discover that those whom we have encouraged have done just as we encouraged them to do. True Christian scholarship is not particularly concerned to receive credit and applause for ideas, even if they are brilliant ideas, for we do not serve ourselves but the Lord.

So, if I have the opportunity of playing some small role in stirring research and writing juices in young scholars, I take delight in it. If an essay I publish prompts ideas which a young scholar takes up and advances even farther, as one student recently did, I am delighted.

Third, not only biblical scholars presented at the truthXchange Think Tank conference. Presenters came from a cross-section of disciplines. A look at the program reflects this. By way of example I will comment upon the penultimate presenter, Mr. Steve Baarendse, (Professor of Literature, Columbia International University, Columbia, SC). His presentation vividly displayed that one's scholarly study of the Bible in Hebrew and Greek, as is so dominant in my guild, is no substitute for one's humble, believing, and daily reading of the Bible in English. Mr. Baarendse's knowledge of and use of the Bible in his presentation puts to shame the same as done by numerous scholars who read the Bible in the original languages. May Mr. Baarendse's tribe increase.

"Civil Religion" in America Has become More Pagan

2011-01-13T09:30:00.000-06:00

For more, see here.

Environmentalism: Pagan Religion

2011-01-12T19:09:00.005-06:00

Last week I had the privilege, at the urging of two colleagues, to attend the Think Tank conference of truthXchange founded and led by Dr. Peter Jones and his wife, Rebecca. Wow! What a conference! It was superb. All of the presenters instructed us well. I was able to get to know several new friends. The conference theme was “One-ism: A Poison Pill for the Church.” Dr. Jones’ specialization is to expose how paganism is not only overrunning Western culture but also invading the church. Find the conference program here with a few changes. Bob DeWaay did not attend or present, and James Wanliss presented instead of Calvin Beisner. For a corrected program see here.

Dr. James Wanliss, author of Resisting the Green Dragon, made an excellent presentation concerning environmentalism’s roots in paganism and how paganism is invading the church in the form of environmentalism. The session was open to the public.

Dr. Wanliss is associated with the Cornwall Alliance. The latest Cornwall Alliance Newsletter (Jan. 12) links to the following article in The New Antlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society.

Environmentalism as Religion

Joel Garreau

Traditional religion is having a tough time in parts of the world. Majorities in most European countries have told Gallup pollsters in the last few years that religion does not “occupy an important place” in their lives. Across Europe, Judeo-Christian church attendance is down, as is adherence to religious prohibitions such as those against out-of-wedlock births. And while Americans remain, on average, much more devout than Europeans, there are demographic and regional pockets in this country that resemble Europe in their religious beliefs and practices.

The rejection of traditional religion in these quarters has created a vacuum unlikely to go unfilled; human nature seems to demand a search for order and meaning, and nowadays there is no shortage of options on the menu of belief. Some searchers syncretize Judeo-Christian theology with Eastern or New Age spiritualism. Others seek through science the ultimate answers of our origins, or dream of high-tech transcendence by merging with machines — either approach depending not on rationalism alone but on a faith in the goodness of what rationalism can offer.

For some individuals and societies, the role of religion seems increasingly to be filled by environmentalism. It has become “the religion of choice for urban atheists,” according to Michael Crichton, the late science fiction writer (and climate change skeptic). In a widely quoted 2003 speech, Crichton outlined the ways that environmentalism “remaps” Judeo-Christian beliefs:

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

In parts of northern Europe, this new faith is now the mainstream. “Denmark and Sweden float along like small, content, durable dinghies of secular life, where most people are nonreligious and don’t worship Jesus or Vishnu, don’t revere sacred texts, don’t pray, and don’t give much credence to the essential dogmas of the world’s great faiths,” observes Phil Zuckerman in his 2008 book Society without God. Instead, he writes, these places have become “clean and green.” This new faith has very concrete policy implications; the countries where it has the most purchase tend also to have instituted policies that climate activists endorse. To better understand the future of climate policy, we must understand where “ecotheology” has come from and where it is likely to lead.

Read more.

Ezra Klein, the Historically Illiterate Journalist

2010-12-30T12:13:00.003-06:00

Washington Post writer Ezra Klein was featured on MSNBC Thursday and used his time to rail against Republicans who want to read the Constitution before the start of the new Congress. That railing included an interesting side bar regarding the document, and comments seemingly suggesting it’s obsolete:

Ezra Klein on the US Constitution

In essence, it seems Klein is saying the Constitution is too old to understand. He echoed that sentiment (and clarified it a little) on his blog on Thursday when talking about a GOP proposal that each new bill reference its authority from the founding document.

“I’m very curious to know what the GOP — or the tea partyers they’re presumably pandering to — think will happen when every piece of legislation requires “a statement from its sponsor outlining where in the Constitution Congress is empowered to enact such legislation,” Klein writes. “What’s the evidence that this will make legislation more, rather than less, constitutional, for whatever your definition of the Constitution is?”

He uses Obamacare, which referenced interstate commerce (Article I, Section 8), as an example of a recent bill that referenced the document but that failed to gain universal appeal, and reiterates the point from his MSNBC appearance:

My friends on the right don’t like to hear this, but the Constitution is not a clear document. Written 100 years ago, when America had 13 states and very different problems, it rarely speaks directly to the questions we ask it. The Second Amendment, for instance, says nothing about keeping a gun in the home if you’ve not signed up with a “well-regulated militia,” but interpreting the Second Amendment broadly has been important to those who want to bear arms. And so they’ve done it.

His conclusion? When it comes to the Constitution, liberals and conservatives “pick and choose their moments of textual fidelity.”

When a nationally prominent journalist, such as Ezra Klein, is so sloppy with historical facts and with historical documents, friends, we are in grave danger.

Greetings

2010-12-24T18:59:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Let's Call It What It Is: "Christophobia" (Being interpreted, "Ashamed of Christ")

2010-12-23T06:00:00.000-06:00

NPR's Nina Totenberg apologizes for using "Christmas" on the air.

Speaking on the local D.C. program “Inside Washington,“ NPR reporter Nina Totenberg openly apologized for using the phrase ”Christmas party” while telling a story.

While discussion the omnibus spending bill that was rejected, she recalled a conversation with government defense officials regarding their budgets, a conversation that took place at a recent Christmas party. However, before she used the party’s adjective, she asked for forgiveness for invoking the “holiday” term. Transcript and video via NewsBusters:

Well, these agencies, including the Defense Department, don‘t know how much money they’ve got and for what. And I was at – forgive the expression – a Christmas party at the Department of Justice and people actually were really worried about this.

If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38).

"A Tree of Knowledge." But, It Looks Just Like a Christmas Tree!

2010-12-18T07:47:00.001-06:00

What's the old saying? "Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery"? Given my entry yesterday concerning Exmas and Crissmas, here is a fitting story.

Atheists Celebrate Anti-Christmas by Decorating a "Tree of Knowledge

OLYMPIA — With little fanfare or complaints, Seattle Atheists have erected a decorated tree and a sign on the Capitol campus in honor of not-Christmas.

A tree? As in, a Christmas Tree?

Not exactly. The group calls it “A Tree of Knowledge” — although it’s unclear if they’re unaware of the Biblical implications of such a title, or co-opting it.

But their tree looks suspiciously like a Christmas Tree, considering it’s about a 6-foot conifer with decorations hanging from the boughs. No toys or angels or smiley snowmen for the atheists, however. Their decorations consist of pictures of famous scientists like Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, covers for books like “Cosmos” and a small copy of the Periodic Table of Elements. (I know what you’re thinking: These atheists sure know how to trim a tree!)

And, of course there’s a sign. If you can’t read it on the photo above, it’s reproduced inside the blog.

In case anyone’s wondering, there is no Nativity Scene on the Capitol Campus at this point. The Catholic League was faxed the standard form for campus displays that every group must submit, but the group hasn’t yet responded, Steve Valandra of state General Administration said. So far, the creche remains in the GA vault, awaiting the form or a request to send it back to the league.

Not sure if this qualifies as a salvo in the war on Christmas or not.

Happy Crissmas!

2010-12-17T12:32:00.002-06:00

A lost portion of Heroditus:

“Exmas”

. . . and beyond this there lies in the ocean, turned towards the west and the north, the island of Niatirb which Hecataeus indeed declares to be the same size and shape as Sicily, but it is larger, and though in calling it triangular a man would not miss the mark. It is densely inhabited by men who wear clothes not very different from other barbarians who occupy the north- western parts of Europe though they do not agree with them in language. These islanders, surpassing all the men of whom we know in patience and endurance, use the following customs.

In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound they have a great festival which they call Exmas , and for fifty days they prepare for it in the fashion I shall describe. First of all, every citizen is obliged to send to each of his friends and relations a square piece of hard paper stamped with a picture, which in their speech is called an Exmas-card . But the pictures represent birds sitting on branches, or trees with a dark green prickly leaf, or else men in such garments as the Niatirbians believe that their ancestors wore two hundred years ago riding in coaches such as their ancestors used, or houses with snow on their roofs. And the Niatirbians are unwilling to say what these pictures have to do with the festival, guarding (as I suppose) some sacred mystery. And because all men must send these cards the market-place is filled with the crowd of those buying them, so that there is great labour and weariness.

But having bought as many as they suppose to be sufficient, they return to their houses and find there the like cards which others have sent to them. And when they find cards from any to whom they also have sent cards, they throw them away and give thanks to the gods that this labour at least is over for another year. But when they find cards from any to whom they have not sent, then they beat their breasts and wail and utter curses against the sender; and, having sufficiently lamented their misfortune, they put on their boots again and go out into the fog and rain and buy a card for him also. And let this account suffice about Exmas-cards.

They also send gifts to one another, suffering the same things about the gifts as about the cards, or even worse. For every citizen has to guess the value of the gift which every friend will send to him so that he may send one of equal value, whether he can afford it or not. And they buy as gifts for one another such things as no man ever bought for himself. For the sellers, understanding the custom, put forth all kinds of trumpery, and whatever, being useless and ridiculous, sell as an Exmas gift. And though the Niatirbians profess themselves to lack sufficient necessary things, such as metal, leather, wood and paper, yet an incredible quantity of these things is wasted every year, being made into the gifts.

But during these fifty days the oldest, poorest and the most miserable of citizens put on false beards and red robes and walk in the market-place; being disguised (in my opinion) as Cronos. And the sellers of gifts no less than the purchasers become pale and weary, because of the crowds and the fog, so that any man who came into a Niatirbian city at this season would think that some great calamity had fallen on Niatirb. This fifty days of preparation is called in their barbarian speech the Exmas Rush.

But when the day of the festival comes, then most of the citizens, being exhausted with the Rush, lie in bed till noon. But in the evening they eat five times as much supper as on other days and, crowning themselves with crowns of paper, they become intoxicated. And on the day after Exmas they are very grave, being internally disordered by the supper and the drinking and reckoning how much they have spent on gifts and on the wine. For wine is so dear among the Niatirbians that a man must swallow the worth of a talent before he is well intoxicated.

Such, then, are their customs about the Exmas. But the few among the Niatirbians have also a festival, separate and to themselves, called Crissmas, which is on the same day as Exmas. And those who keep Crissmas, doing the opposite to the majority of the Niatirbians, rise early on that day with shining faces and go before sunrise to certain temples where they partake of a sacred feast. And in most of the temples they set out images of a fair woman with a new-born Child on her knees and certain animals and shepherds adoring the Child. (The reason of these images is given in a certain sacred story which I know but do not repeat.)

But I myself conversed with a priest in one of these temples and asked him why they kept Crissmas on the same day as Exmas; for it appeared to me inconvenient. But the priest replied, “It is not lawful, O Stranger, for us to change the date of Crissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not to keep it at all. For Exmas and the Rush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left.”

And when I asked him why they endured the Rush, he replied, “It is, O Stranger, a racket, using (as I suppose) the words of some oracle and speaking unintelligibly to me (for a racket is an instrument which the barbarians use in a game called tennis ).

But what Hecataeus says, that Exmas and Crissmas are the same, is not credible. For the first, the pictures which are stamped on the Exmas-cards have nothing to do with the sacred story which the priests tell about Crissmas. And secondly, the most part of the Niatirbians, not believing the religion of the few, nevertheless send the gifts and cards and participate in the Rush and drink, wearing paper caps. But it is not likely that men, even being barbarians, should suffer so many and great things in honour of a god they do not believe in. And now, enough about Niatirb.

C.S. Lewis,God in the Dock,
“Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus”
(1st published in Time and Tide, 1954)

HT: JB

Somebody Doesn't Have Enough to Do :)

2010-12-17T10:33:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

A Fascinating Disclosure

2010-12-17T08:53:00.001-06:00

The Holocaust: Uncovering the Secrets of the First Phase of the Final Solution

Mark Gould, a private American citizen posing as a neo-Nazi sympathizer, spent the last four years undercover in Germany, investigating an unprosecuted Holocaust figure – allegedly the senior Nazi officer who signed the “start order” that commenced the genocide of Europe’s Jewish population. The following is footage from hundreds of hours of interviews with the now 97-year-old SS Colonel, who confirms that, on July 28, 1941, he personally signed the order allowing the first mass execution of Jews in the Pripjet Swamps near the Polish and Belarussian/Ukrainian borders. This effectively served as the flashpoint of the Holocaust.

Press Release: AMERICAN CITIZEN FILES HISTORIC LAWSUIT AGAINST ALLEGED HIGH-RANKING NAZI OFFICER AFTER FOUR-YEAR INVESTIGATION

New York (December 7, 2010) – After years of deep research and undercover work in Germany, a private American citizen posing as a neo-Nazi sympathizer has implicated Bernhard Frank, alleged to be the high-ranking Nazi officer who signed the “start order” that commenced the genocide of Europe’s Jewish population. Having met Frank and gained his trust over four years, Holocaust scholar Mark Gould confronted the SS Colonel last Thursday during a videotaped meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, listing his alleged crimes against humanity and presenting a copy of a lawsuit newly filed in U.S. Federal Court in the District of Columbia.

“It’s been over six decades since Bernhard Frank took a pivotal role in the Nazis’ extermination program, but given the cover-up of his identity and the lack of criminal remedies, this led to the decision to file a civil suit and to publish his crimes – at the very least, allowing the civilized world to recognize and condemn his deeds,” said Gould, whose Jewish relatives were among those murdered as a result of the orders signed by Frank.

The civil action charges Frank with genocide, torture, kidnapping and crimes against humanity.

The suit was brought by Gould along with Burton Bernstein, the brother of composer Leonard Bernstein, both of whose relatives were murdered during the Holocaust.

“We believe that this case is unprecedented and historic in that it represents the first time that heirs of those murdered by Nazi atrocities have brought civil suit against one of the perpetrators of the Holocaust,” stated Gould’s lead attorney, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. “There have been criminal prosecutions, but no one has ever located a Nazi war criminal and brought a civil suit. For those long frustrated by the criminal justice system, this provides a bold new approach for survivors to take action, hunt war criminals themselves and prosecute them in civil court.”

Co-counsel Robert Tolchin agrees that, “in the history of Holocaust cases, institutions have been sued, but never a victim suing an individual perpetrator.”

Gould, with the consensus of international academics, asserts that now-97-year-old Frank was a senior official of the Nazi elite Schutzstaffe (SS) who rose to the rank of Obersturmbannfuhrer (Lieutenant Colonel), reporting directly to Himmler and later to Hitler. In videotaped interviews, Frank himself confirms that, on July 28, 1941, he personally signed the “start order” allowing the firstmassexecutionofJewsinthePripjet Swamps near the Polish, Belarussian/Ukrainian border. This effectively served as the flashpoint of the Holocaust.

“Bernhard Frank actually wrote his PhD on the folklore behind the Nazi ideal of blood and soil,” says Dr. Stephen Smith, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation and founding director of the UK Holocaust Centre. Smith explains that Frank served as a librarian at Wewelsberg and was central to the ideology that trained the SS. “He was at Dachau himself, so he knew precisely what he was preparing them for. As one of only twelve Nazi officers in Himmler’s inner circle, he was right in the eye of the storm,” says Smith. “The remarkable thing is that Mark Gould has dug up the most significant Nazi alive, one that represents the very essence of the regime and the mechanism of the genocide. The Holocaust would not have happened without people like him.”

Gould, a professional information data broker of Jewish immersion, has long been interested in history, amassing a substantial collection of Holocaust photos and other memorabilia. In 1996, through a dealer at a gun show in Orange County, California, Gould purchased the gold-plated Walther PPK surrendered by Hermann Goering upon his arrest in May 1945. Gould’s investigation of the story behind the gun spurred his interest in uncovering untold stories of Nazi atrocities and American Jewish heroism during World War II. He filmed WWII veterans, both Allied and Axis, as well as Holocaust survivors, but wanted to know more.

Gould decided to go underground in Germany. Blond, blue-eyed and six feet, he had enough of the classic Aryan look and was willing to cut his hair into a neo-Nazi style in order to blend in. In 2002, under the guise of a “wealthy American neo-Nazi who wanted to own pieces of the Third Reich in order to preserve them and spread the message,” he began meeting with various leaders in the movement: buying documents and memorabilia, and attending neo-Nazi rallies.

This paved Gould’s way to higher-level SS gatherings and, in 2006, to Dr. Bernhard Frank, Himmler’s most trusted subordinate, who nevertheless was not prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials and has lived openly in Frankfurt for many years. Gould has shot hundreds of hours of high-definition footage capturing Frank’s stories, bolstered by research at the restrictive Ludwigsburg Archives for Nazi War Crimes.

The findings from Gould’s four-year undercover investigation of Frank will be painstakingly detailed in The Last Nazi (working title), a book to be published by Random House in Fall 2011, and he is also utilizing his expertise to help develop an authoritative database to further aid researchers and combat Holocaust deniers.

John E. Dolibois, a military intelligence interrogation officer during the Nuremberg Trials, has been a longtime supporter of Mark Gould. “In the past several years I have followed [the] development [of your undercover work] with a great deal of interest, convinced that it is a most worthy endeavor,” wrote Dolibois, who also served as former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. “I have been impressed by your intelligent pursuit of the subject, your honest attention to detail, and your understanding of the historical background.”

Is This A Premature Announcement?

2010-12-16T07:58:00.001-06:00

Multiculturalism is Over

December 13, 2010 By Ashley Thorne

NAS member Roger Scruton has a fascinating article in the most recent issue of the American Spectator, “Multiculturalism, R.I.P.” He declares that the reign of the ideology that has dominated political language and education for decades is...over.

Indeed, he writes, the clouds of multiculturalism have lifted and we’ve emerged into the sunlight at last. But how did we get here? Scruton asserts that national leaders are finally beginning to recognize that culture and race are entirely different.

During these decades of multiculturalism, all cultural practices were deemed good and attachable to Western culture. This attitude of unending optimism (“wishful thinking” as Scruton calls it) about foreign cultures led to an equation of culture with race. In turn, rejecting or questioning a foreign practice was called “racism.”

The embrace of all aspects of all cultures ultimately led to some embarrassing hypocrisies. Not all cultures espouse the idea of justice and dignity in the treatment of human beings—a principle the West holds sacred:

It is culture, not nature, that tells a family that their daughter who has fallen in love outside the permitted circle must be killed, that girls must undergo genital mutilation if they are to be respectable, that the infidel must be destroyed when Allah commands it. You can read about those things and think that they belong to the pre-history of our world. But when suddenly they are happening in your midst, you are apt to wake up to the truth about the culture that advocates them. You are apt to say, that is not our culture, and it has no business here. That is what Europeans are now saying -- not just a few crazies, but everyone. And the multiculturalists are reluctantly compelled to agree with them.

Scruton writes that the political class is finally willing to insist that immigrants adapt to the culture instead of inviting them to perpetuate their former customs over and against those of the land to which they have come.

Now if multiculturalism is dead, what of the accompanying ideology “diversity,” which has enjoyed a concurrent reign? Diversity isn’t going down without a fight – at least not in higher education. For instance, on November 2, Arizona voters approved Proposition 107 which will prohibit racial preferences in admissions in the state’s public universities. University of Arizona president Robert Shelton immediately issued statements denouncing Prop. 107 and affirming UA’s undying commitment to “a diverse community.” So while the outside world has opted for an end to racial discrimination, the academic world, as usual, remains a step behind.

Diversity, though still a stronghold in colleges and universities, does seem to have largely spent itself. But its successor, “sustainability,” is an ideology far more expansive, more demanding, and more accusing—and it’s making its bid to become the “foundation of all learning and practice in higher education.” Read more about this evolution in Peter Wood’s recent article “From Diversity to Sustainability: How Campus Ideology is Born.”

So as multiculturalism in the political realm kicks the bucket, new dogma stands ready to take its place. How long until embarrassing hypocrisies suddenly become clear to the sustainatopians?

________________

Perhaps I am in error for viewing political correctness, multiculturalism, diversity, and sustainability as far more organically bound together than Roger Scruton and others may. I regard these four, and perhaps other variations depending upon contextualization, to be something more like a hydra-like multi-headed beast. It seems to me that the four are so organically connected that the beast manifests itself with in different forms, but all of the forms are inseparably and organically the same beast. As my research and writing show, I have always regarded “multiculturalism and diversity” to be twin heads of the same beast. The one cannot exist without the other.

Hence, I wonder if Roger Scruton’s announcement of multiculturalism’s demise is not quite premature.

For What It's Worth

2010-12-15T08:41:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, with gratitude I received the following notice.

Hello Professor Caneday

I'm writing this because I thought you and your readers might want to check out our article "Top 50 Blogs by Theology Professors", wherein Biblia Theologica is listed at #15 (http://www.masteroftheology.org/top-50-blogs-by-theology-professors.html#15 ). Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any comments!

Warm Regards,

Rachel M. Stevenson
Co-founder, Theology Masters

Original Thinking, Indebtedness to Teachers, and Current NT Discussions

2010-12-15T08:36:00.002-06:00

Recently I posted an entry I titled “Harmony between Rom. 2:6-11 and Rom. 4:1-9.” At the time I posted it I had not read the following since I had digested it, marked it up, and highlighted portions in my copy of the book many years ago when I worked my way through the entire book, Paul, An Outline of His Theology by Herman Ridderbos. As I have discovered repeatedly and have commented upon on my blogs several times, once again it was revealed to me that I owe so very much to all who have taught me, whether in the classroom or by some other means, especially by way of their books. My thinking is not original in the sense that I am the first to think individual thoughts. After all, as someone once said, "Originality does not consist of thinking new things but of thinking for ourselves." Thus, my earlier blog entry, noted above, indicates that those who have taught me, have taught me well, for they have compelled me to think for myself. Lo and behold! In thinking for myself, I find myself thinking thoughts after those who have gone before.

How pertinent are the following words, then, for current issues and discussions in New Testament studies!

“When it is said therefore in Romans 4 that to the one who does not ‘work’ but who believes in him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness, this is not in any way to be brought to bear against the ‘working’ character of faith itself and likewise not against the judgment of the believer according to his works. For just as absolutely as faith is involved in justification by the grace of God and by nothing else, even so work emanates from this same faith; as faith it cannot remain empty and work-less, but becomes known as faith precisely in works. Indeed, in the pronouncements on the justification of the ungodly and the imputation of faith for righteousness and those concerning the just judgment of God according to every man’s work, we have to do with the two poles of the same matter. For the first expresses as pregnantly as possible that the ground or cause of divine justification does not lie in human work as merit, but only in the grace of God. And in the second all the emphasis is placed on the work of faith, in the sense of its indispensable fruit. Yet this does not mean that justification by faith may be said to be the initial judicial act of God, which takes place in the present, and which is then to be followed in the final judgment by a justification on the ground of works. For it is true of the latter as well that it is a justification of the ungodly, an imputation of faith for righteousness, so long as what is at issue is the ground for justification. . . . To be sure, works are indispensable as the demonstration of the true nature of faith and as the evidence of having died and been raised together with Christ. In that sense one could also speak of the reckoning of works for righteousness, although the apostle does not so express himself. For works, too, only find their acceptableness before God in the fact that they are from Christ, wrought in the believer on account of his death and resurrection. . .” (Ridderbos, Paul, 179-180).

Peter Wood on When to Charge “Racism”

2010-12-07T17:17:00.001-06:00

When to Use the Word "Racist"

PRINCETON, NJ (December 7, 2010) - Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, has published a statement, "Racism at Wesleyan?" on the use of the term "racist" in higher education.

The statement was prompted by a recent controversy at Wesleyan University. A student group on campus, the Cardinal Conservatives, held a satiric "affirmative action bake sale" to protest the university's use of racial preferences in admissions. A faculty member denounced the event as "racist." Civil rights activist Ward Connerly is scheduled to speak at Wesleyan about the controversy at 4:00 PM on December 8.

Wood defined racism as "the belief that humans are profoundly and importantly divided into hereditary groups; that these groups are inherently unequal in talents and ability; and that their hereditary characteristics are crucial to understanding their group attitudes, mores, and ideas." He wrote that racism is not always associated with white privilege.

Wood argued against censoring the term "racist" but pointed out that the word can be abused as a label "to intimidate and to polarize," as was the case at Wesleyan University. He advocated eliminating racial preferences in college admissions:

We would as a society be better off if we jettisoned race from our consideration of how public goods such as college admissions are distributed. Getting rid of race, like getting rid of racism, is far from easy, but that doesn't mean we can't take the preliminary steps. One of those is de-institutionalizing racial categories.

Cardinal Conservative member Aileen Yeung talks to a Wesleyan student at the affirmative action bake sale. Photo: Campus Reform.

Wood's article appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education on December 7, 2010.

The National Association of Scholars advocates for higher education reform. To learn more about NAS, visit www.nas.org.

Harmony between Rom. 2:6-11 and Rom. 4:1-9

2010-12-07T10:52:00.001-06:00

Since I presented my essay, “Justification, Judgment & Behavior: Judgment Day’s Coming Verdict Now Announced in the Gospel,” during the recent ETS meetings in Atlanta, I have been working almost daily at recasting it with a view to publishing it. (It will bear a different title when published.) In preparation for writing today, I awoke early, around 4:45 am. Prior to rising a half-hour later, I resumed my thoughts from yesterday and composed the following paragraphs which constitute a footnote, a rather significant footnote, so important that I may find that I need to promote it out of the notes field and into the text field.

I welcome your comments, insights, and criticisms of my reasoning.

________________________

In Rom. 4, to argue his case that Abraham was justified not from works (ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη) but that his faith was reckoned to him for righteousness (ἐλογίσθη . . . ἡ πίστις εἰς δικαιοσύνην), Paul plays the imageries of bookkeeping (ὁ μισθός οὐ λογίζεται κατὰ χάριν κτλ.) and the courtroom (πιστεύοντι ἐπὶ τὸν δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἀσεβῆ λογίσεται κτλ.) off one another. Yet, is it not excessive to reason that Paul’s claim here, “to the one who works, the reward is not reckoned κατὰ χάριν ἀλλὰ κατὰ ὀφείλημα,” renders theoretical his positive assertion, “God will recompense each one κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ” in 2:6? That “God will recompense each one in accordance with one’s works” does not mean that God’s reward will be “in accordance with debt” instead of “in accordance with grace.”

In Romans 2 and 4 Paul comes at the issues from very different angles. As Paul reasons in Rom. 4, there is a kind of “worker” (τῷ ἐργαζομένῳ) who regards God to be the debtor versus another who, by implication, is in debt to God and thus is the “non-worker” (τῷ μὴ ἐργαζομένῳ) who believes (πιστεύοντι) upon God as “the one who justifies the ungodly.” Accordingly, in Rom. 4 his argument concerns the sinner’s posture before God. The sinner “who works,” by implication to be set right with God, regards him as an employer who makes good on a debt (κατὰ ὀφείλημα) rather than one who is gracious (οὐ . . . κατὰ χάριν). To the sinner, like Abraham, “who does not work but believes upon the One who justifies the ungodly, this faith is reckoned for righteousness” (4:4-5).

Prior to his use of the participle in 4:4 (τῷ ἐργαζομένῳ), Paul uses it in Rom. 2:10 to depict a kind of “worker” whom God impartially will reward with eternal life, which is to say he will bequeath the reward κατὰ τὰ ἔργων αὐτοῦ but not κατὰ ὀφείλημα. In 2:6-11 his argument concerns God’s “righteous judgment,” which is to say, the impartiality and inviolability of the correlation between God’s recompense and human behavior truthfully assessed (κατὰ ἀλήθειαν). In 2:6-11, Paul’s insistence that God will recompense each human κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ hardly is to argue that humans obligate God by putting him in their debt, either actually or theoretically. On the contrary, the apostle’s argument is that precisely because God will recompense everyone “in accordance with one’s works” (κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ) is essential to establish his thesis that “in the gospel God’s righteousness is revealed” (1:17). Since God’s judgment is integral to his gospel (2:16), Paul punctuates his argument in Rom. 2:1-11 with the following distinct assertions to make it clear that his concern is to advance his thesis concerning God’s righteousness (δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ): (1) τὸ κρίμα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν κατὰ ἀλήθειαν (2:2), (2) δικαιοκρισίας τοῦ θεοῦ (2:5, (3) ἀποδώσει ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ (2:6), and (4) οὐ ἐστιν προσωποληψία παρὰ θεῷ (2:11).

Is America Satanophobic? Great Satire. Klavan on the Culture.

2010-12-04T10:45:00.003-06:00

Packed in among the sardonics Klavan makes the point that Time Magazine might be serving its readers far better by asking, "Is America Christophobic?"

A Challenge: Just Try Not to be Overcome with Joy and Worship!

2010-12-03T06:22:00.003-06:00

A few weeks ago I posted A Glorious Random Act of Culture, a must see and hear. Today I offer you a link to Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus. This comes from Ontario, Canada.

On Nov.13 2010 unsuspecting shoppers got a big surprise while enjoying their lunch. Over 100 participants in this awesome Christmas Flash Mob. This is a must see!

This flash mob was organized by http://www.AlphabetPhotography.com to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!

Special thanks to Robert Cooper and Chorus Niagara, The Welland Seaway Mall, and Fagan Media Group.

HT:LDC

NAS Opposes Demands for "Reeducation." Bravo!

2010-12-02T08:49:00.003-06:00

NAS Supports Freedom of Speech and Conscience in Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley

PRINCETON, NJ (December 2, 2010) - The National Association of Scholars (NAS) filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley.

The NAS calls on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, refusing to enjoin Augusta State University from expelling counseling student Jennifer Keeton, for expressing her religious views on homosexuality.

"A public institution can require professionally competent behavior, but not fidelity to particular moral doctrines or an abdication of the right to free speech," said Steve Balch, chairman of the NAS. "The District Court lost sight of these distinctions. Its decision should be overturned."

After learning that Keeton believes homosexuality is a choice, not a "state of being," the university ordered her to participate in "remediation activities," which included "diversity sensitivity" training and a gay pride parade. When she refused, she was expelled from Augusta State's counseling program.

The amicus brief states in part:

As NAS has learned during its more than twenty years, many public university administrators have a substantial appetite for restricting student speech. So far, that administrator desire has been rightly checked by a solid line of court decisions. But if courts build a doctrine under which university-disfavored speech could be subjected to burdensome "remediation plans," many university administrators will come to embrace it, and use it as a basis for a new generation of speech codes.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has also signed the brief.

The National Association of Scholars works to protect freedom of speech in higher education. To learn more about NAS, visit http://www.nas.org/.

Who Is Writing Your Students’ Paper?

2010-11-30T12:20:00.001-06:00

The Shadow Scholar

The man who writes your students' papers tells his story

Jonathan Barkat for The Chronicle Review

By Ed Dante

Editor's note: Ed Dante is a pseudonym for a writer who lives on the East Coast. Through a literary agent, he approached The Chronicle wanting to tell the story of how he makes a living writing papers for a custom-essay company and to describe the extent of student cheating he has observed. In the course of editing his article, The Chronicle reviewed correspondence Dante had with clients and some of the papers he had been paid to write. In the article published here, some details of the assignment he describes have been altered to protect the identity of the student.

The request came in by e-mail around 2 in the afternoon. It was from a previous customer, and she had urgent business. I quote her message here verbatim (if I had to put up with it, so should you): "You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?"

I've gotten pretty good at interpreting this kind of correspondence. The client had attached a document from her professor with details about the paper. She needed the first section in a week. Seventy-five pages.

I told her no problem.

It truly was no problem. In the past year, I've written roughly 5,000 pages of scholarly literature, most on very tight deadlines. But you won't find my name on a single paper.

Read the whole article.

See Ashley Thorne’s “Lessons from a Professional Paper-Writer.”

For What It Is Worth

2010-11-30T09:53:00.003-06:00

I believe that I ought to return to the comments N. T. Wright made during his lecture at the Evangelical Theological Society’s recent conference in Atlanta that have attracted so much attention among bloggers. I do so to point out something that I had forgotten when reading John Piper’s The Future of Justification. I do this so as to be entirely fair to both N. T. Wright and John Piper.

Piper observes,

Wright repeatedly refers to works—the entirety of out lives—as the “basis” of justification in the last day. However, Wright also uses the language of judgment and justification “according to works” in a way that inclines one to think that the terms “according to” and “on the basis of” may be interchangeable for him. For example, he refers to Romans 2:13 and says, “Here is the first statement about justification in Romans, and lo and behold it affirms justification according to works.” “Paul, in company with mainstream second Temple Judaism, affirms that God’s final judgment will be in accordance with the entirety of a life led – in accordance, in other words, with works.”

But in these contexts where he is discussing justification on the basis of works or according to works, he does not discuss the finer distinction between “based on” and “according to.” I suspect his view of how works really function in relation to final justification would become a good bit clearer if Wright discussed this difference.

Find Piper’s comments on pages 117-118. These quotations suffice to show that Piper is aware that Wright uses the expressions—on the basis of and in accordance with—interchangeably, even though he finds fault with Wright for failing to explain his appeal to 1 Corinthians 3:10-17 and to address “the fact that Paul threatens baptized professing Christians not just with barely being saved, but with not being save at all at the last judgment (Gal. 5:21; 6:7-9; 1 Cor. 6:9). The whole question of how Paul can speak this way and how our works actually function at the last day. . .” (p. 118).

N. T. Wright Quotes, “in accordance with works”

2010-11-25T06:53:00.003-06:00

Since the annual meetings of the ETS in Atlanta have ended many words have been written concerning N. T. Wright’s comments made during the final day of the conference. I have contributed my own comments commending Tom Wright for making more clear what I believe he always meant even though his phraseology has tended to confuse readers.

It is fitting, therefore, for me to point out that Tom Wright’s expression of surprise over the confusion of what he meant has evident warrant. Consider his lecture at Rutherford House title “New Perspectives on Paul.” He makes the following statements.

The third point is remarkably controversial, seeing how well founded it is at several points in Paul. Indeed, listening to yesterday’s papers, it seems that there has been a massive conspiracy of silence on something which was quite clear for Paul (as indeed for Jesus). Paul, in company with mainstream second-Temple Judaism, affirms that God’s final judgment will be in accordance with the entirety of a life led – in accordance, in other words, with works. He says this clearly and unambiguously in Romans 14.10–12 and 2 Corinthians 5.10. He affirms it in that terrifying passage about church-builders in 1 Corinthians 3. But the main passage in question is of course Romans 2.1–16.

The ‘works’ in accordance with which the Christian will be vindicated on the last day are not the unaided works of the self-help moralist. Nor are they the performance of the ethnically distinctive Jewish boundary-markers (sabbath, food-laws and circumcision). They are the things which show, rather, that one is in Christ; the things which are produced in one’s life as a result of the Spirit’s indwelling and operation.

And we now discover that this declaration, this vindication, occurs twice. It occurs in the future, as we have seen, on the basis of the entire life a person has led in the power of the Spirit – that is, it occurs on the basis of ‘works’ in Paul’s redefined sense. And, near the heart of Paul’s theology, it occurs in the present as an anticipation of that future verdict, when someone, responding in believing obedience to the ‘call’ of the gospel, believes that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. This is the point about justification by faith – to revert to the familiar terminology: it is the anticipation in the present of the verdict which will be reaffirmed in the future.

I am fascinated by the way in which some of those most conscious of their reformation heritage shy away from Paul’s clear statements about future judgment according to works. It is not often enough remarked upon, for instance, that in the Thessalonian letters, and in Philippians, he looks ahead to the coming day of judgment and sees God’s favourable verdict not on the basis of the merits and death of Christ, not because like Lord Hailsham he simply casts himself on the mercy of the judge, but on the basis of his apostolic work. ‘What is our hope and joy and crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus Christ at his royal appearing? Is it not you? For you are our glory and our joy.’ (1 Thess. 3.19f.; cp. Phil. 2.16f.) I suspect that if you or I were to say such a thing, we could expect a swift rebuke of ‘nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling’. The fact that Paul does not feel obliged at every point to say this shows, I think, that he is not as concerned as we are about the danger of speaking of the things he himself has done – though sometimes, to be sure, he adds a rider, which proves my point, that it is not his own energy but that which God gives and inspires within him (1 Cor. 15.10; Col. 1.29). But he is still clear that the things he does in the present, by moral and physical effort, will count to his credit on the last day, precisely because they are the effective signs that the Spirit of the living Christ has been at work in him. We are embarrassed about saying this kind of thing; Paul clearly is not. What on earth can have happened to a sola scriptura theology that it should find itself forced to screen out such emphatic, indeed celebratory, statements?

Given the clear fact that Tom Wright uses the expressions “in accordance with” and “on the basis of” interchangeably, as demonstrated above, does it not behoove us all to grant him the benefit of the doubt that he really does mean what he explained during his ETS presentation? My hope is that Tom Wright will employ the clearer expression and avoid the expression that introduces confusion. But I also hope that American evangelicals will be more generous readers and hearers as they continue to engage Tom Wright’s always thought-provoking presentations and essays.

*I have purposely not highlighted the crucial phrasing so as to constrain all to read the entirety of the citations to get the point.

Tom Schreiner’s Response to N. T. Wright’s Presentation at ETS, Atlanta

2010-11-24T14:59:00.003-06:00

Tom Schreiner’s responses to both Frank Thielman and N. T. Wright which he presented at the ETS conference in Atlanta last week are now available on the Internet, thanks to Patrick Schreiner.

Schreiner responds to Frank Thielman.

Schreiner responds to N. T. Wright.

Of special note in Tom Schreiner’s response to Wright is his happy acknowledgment of Tom Wright’s terminology clarification or adjustment from “on the basis of the whole life” to “in accordance with our works.” Tom Schreiner states,

I am delighted that Tom now speaks of the final judgment as one that will be in accordance with our works instead of on the basis of our works. I think this adjustment and clarification is exactly right and does not contradict the idea that our righteousness is in Christ. I resonate with Tom when he says that we too quickly drown out what is said about the role of good works in the final judgment because of our tradition. And I am in full agreement with his formulation: we are judged according to our works, but not on the basis of our works.

Since I commented on the terminology clarification or adjustment that Tom Wright offered during his plenary presentation, “Justification Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” on the final day of the ETS conference in Atlanta, I believe that it is proper for me to underscore the point I made in my earlier entry on this matter. I have always granted Tom Wright the benefit of the doubt when he has repeatedly made the following statements in numerous essays and books.

“Present justification declares, on the basis of faith, what future justification will affirm publicly (according to [Rom.] 2:14-16 and 8:9-11) on the basis of the entire life.”[1]
The whole point about “justification by faith” is that it is something which happens in the present time (Romans 3.26) as a proper anticipation of the eventual judgment which will be announced, on the basis of the whole life led, in the future (Romans 2.1-16). Until justification is set firmly within this eschatological, as well as covenantal and apocalyptic, framework, we shall never be able to understand what Paul is talking about.[2]
And we now discover that this declaration, this vindication, occurs twice. It occurs in the future, as we have seen, on the basis of the entire life a person has led in the power of the Spirit—that is, it occurs on the basis of “works” in Paul’s redefined sense. And near the heart of Paul’s theology, it occurs in the present as an anticipation of that future verdict, when someone, responding in believing obedience to the “call” of the gospel, believes that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.[3]
Along with lawcourt and covenant goes eschatology. Paul has set up a further question which will take him until Romans 8 to address fully. The new note he strikes in Romans 3:21-31 (justified in the present on the basis of nothing but faith!) sounds initially all wrong in terms of the tune he was playing in Romans 2:1-16 (justified in the future on the basis of the entire life!). He has set himself the challenge of filling in the intervening harmony and showing how, in fact, it is exactly what was required.[4]

I have always accepted Tom Wright’s phrasing, “on the basis of,” as his attempt to mean what I think is the much more accurate way to translate κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ (Romans 2:6), namely, “according to their deeds” or “in accordance with their works.” In fact, it seems to me that Tom Wright’s third statement cited above requires that we readers grant him the benefit of the doubt that I have consistently granted him. For he explains what he means when he clarifies “that is, it occurs on the basis of ‘works’ in Paul’s redefined sense” (emphasis added). Nevertheless, precisely because other readers have consistently found it difficult to grant him the benefit of the doubt and because readers (I included) have pointed out the unnecessary confusion created by using the phrase “on the basis of ‘works’,” it seems quite reasonable that we might have expected Tom Wright to have taken more ownership of the confusion and frustration caused by his choice of words when he seemingly resolved the matter by his clarification last week at the ETS conference. Yet, his effort to clarify fell short of taking ownership and set the blame upon readers instead. Keep in mind that John Piper did not hide his concern over Tom Wright’s phrasing in some obscure footnote in The Future of Justification. Piper devotes a whole chapter, chapter 7, spanning pages 103 through 116 to the issue. Yet, Tom Wright’s published response, Justification, does not offer the clarification of terminology that he offered at the ETS conference when he responded to Tom Schreiner’s presentation in which he points out the same confusing terminology. As I state in my own paper which I presented at the ETS conference, in Justification, his response to Piper,

Wright remains unbowed as he claims that future justification is on the basis of the whole life while simultaneously insisting that even though he differs from Piper on the idea of imputation, he agrees that justification by faith is “on the basis of Jesus’ death and triumphant resurrection.”[5] Earlier in his response Wright acknowledges the tension his statements pose, but he believes these statements, that incite others to charge him with “synergism,” accurately reflect Paul’s “paradoxes.”[6] Wright rejects the charge of “synergism” and explains: “I am not saying for one moment that ‘God does part of it and we do part of it’ (one classic form of ‘synergism,’ but not Paul’s). Paul’s regular paradoxes . . . remain the best way of putting it: ‘I struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me’ (Colossians 1:29); ‘I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me’ (1 Corinthians 15:10).” [7]

Clearly, Wright’s statements disallow generous readers to suppose that when he uses the expression “on the basis of” that he intends what many take the words to mean, that they require some kind of synergism. I have always happily and eagerly granted him the benefit of the doubt that he is no synergist, that he is no semi-Pelagian nor a Pelagian. I know what it is like to be so charged, for Tom Schreiner and I have been accused of such by individuals who fail to read The Race Set Before Us correctly. Both Tom and I have patiently responded by explaining how and why we are not synergists. I have posted extensive responses on my blog (TRSBU), and Tom has published a small book in which he responds to such criticisms (Run To Win The Prize). If being understood properly by others is what we surely all want for ourselves, should we not avoid terminology and phrasing that introduces confusion, especially when we are addressing such crucial issues as the gospel?
______________________

[1] N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 129. Cf. Wright’s definition in the glossary of terms in his popular commentary series as, “God’s declaration, from his position as judge of all the world, that someone is in the right, despite universal sin. This declaration will be made on the last day on the basis of an entire life (Romans 2:1-6), but is brought forward into the present on the basis of Jesus’ achievement, because sin has been dealt with through his cross (Romans 3:21-4:25); the means of this present justification is simply faith. This means, particularly, that Jews and Gentiles alike are full members of the family promised by God to Abraham (Galatians 3; Romans 4)” (Paul for Everyone—Romans: Part One [London: SPCK; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004], 169-170; emphasis original).

[2] N. T. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 57-58.

[3] N. T. Wright, “New Perspective on Paul,” in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006): 260.

[4] N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2009), 214.

[5] The full statement is, “Justification by faith on the basis of Jesus’ faithful death and triumphant resurrection, revealing the ‘righteousness’ of the Creator God, his faithfulness to the covenant-through-Israel-for-the-world—this justification means that God now declares circumcised and uncircumcised alike ‘in the right,’ ‘members of the covenant family,’ the former ‘on the basis of faith’ and the latter ‘through’ faith—a small but perhaps important distinction” (Wright, Justification, 216; emphasis added). Consideration of the latter portion of this statement follows shortly.

[6] N. T. Wright states, “As long as theologians, hearing this kind of proposal, shout ‘synergism’ and rush back to the spurious either-or which grows out of a doctrine that has attempted to construct the entire soteriological jigsaw puzzle on the basis of a medieval view of ‘justice’ and with some of the crucial bits (the Spirit, eschatology, not to mention Abraham and the covenant) still in the box, or on the floor, or in the fire, we shall never get anywhere” (Justification, 192).

[7] Wright, Justification, 192 (emphasis added).

Kindergarten Kommunism Kops

2010-11-22T08:08:00.001-06:00

Because America's governing officials have been actually fallen for the foolish notion that scanning airplane passengers by looking for potential terrorists by way of profiling is inherently racist, they have refused to implement the effective security program made famous by El Al and have insisted upon using the really dumb Kindergarten Kommunism style approach to airline security. Instead of spending public tax dollars efficiently with minimal intrusion into individual's privacy, TSA officials, otherwise known to me as Kindergarten Kommunism Kops, under the supervision of Big Sis Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security (newspeak terminology), subject American citizens to Kindergarten Kommunism, the kindergarten teacher's philosophy of punishing everyone for the misbehavior of one.

Out of stupidity and for fear of being charged with and sued for profiling for real terrorists, instead they terrorize everyone equally by subjecting us all alike to invasive federal government searches as we stand in line waiting for TSA officers, recipients of one of Amerika's largest Public Works Programs (or Pogrom, if you prefer), to wield their tyrannical power over us. These Kindergarten Kommunism Kops, of course, are hardly to blame, for they, like the low level members of the SS, are just doing their jobs as ordered by those above them. Their job is to distribute misery equally to everyone by subjugating everyone alike to suspicion of criminality, to invasive searches and pat-downs, to the loss of liberty, and to being herded like ~~cattle~~ Jews through their extravagantly expensive show of force that is little more than a placebo designed to appease the consciences of our governing officials and to reassure the gullible among us that they are actually effectively protecting us from terrorists.

I traveled last week to Atlanta, Georgia. Fortunately, in Atlanta I did not encounter the Strip-Search Beast operated by the Kindergarten Kommunism Kops. I saw the Beast, but the report I heard was that they decided not to implement the Beast because of the public outcry. If I were traveling this Wednesday, I would eagerly participate in the protest against the KKK Beast and compel a KKK officer to pat me down in search of those notoriously evasive weapons that I allegedly carry on my person and which again, allegedly I have so surreptitiously concealed.