Evangelical Hermeneutics vs. Pauline Hermeneutics

Would Paul Have Made a Good Evangelical?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/05/would-paul-have-made-a-good-evangelical/

 

by Peter Enns

May 24, 2012

Comments

 

No.

 

Even when you account for 2000 years of cultural differences between Paul and Evangelicalism, the answer is no.

 

Why? Because Paul didn’t treat the Bible the way mainstream Evangelicalism says you need to.

 

The way Paul handled his Bible–what we call the Old Testament–would keep him off the short list for openings to teach Bible in many Evangelical seminaraies and Christian colleges. Heck, John Piper, John MacArthur, and R. C. Sproul probably wouldn’t let Paul lead a home Bible study, at least not without supervision.

 

Here is the main reason why:

 

• For Evangelicals, the Old Testament leads to the Gospel story. For Paul, the Old Testament is transformed by the Gospel.
 
• For Evangelicals, the Old Testament, read pretty much at face value [(literally)], anticipates Jesus. For Paul, the Old Testament is reshaped in order to conform to Jesus.
 
• For Evangelicals, the Bible is God’s final authority. For Paul, Jesus is the final authority to which the Bible must bend.

 

You see, Paul had a monumental theological and hermeneutical task before him. The Old Testament is centered on Israel’s need for obedience to the law of Moses in order to stay in God’s favor–what the Old Testament often calls “life.” God’s favor is most clearly demonstrated by Israel’s remaining in the Promised Land–if they obey, they stay; if they disobey, the are cast out (which is what the exile to Babylon was all about). And, as an added benefit, when Israel is faithful to God, the other nations will take notice and also bend the knee to Yahweh, Israel’s God.

 

1. Obedience to law;
2. Holding onto the land (and along with it worship in the temple);
3. Conversion of the Gentiles. All central elements of being an Israelite.

 

The Gospel of Christ that Paul preached said:

 

1. Law was a parenthesis, a temporary measure;
2. Holding on to land is now a non-issue;
3. Gentiles can claim Israel’s God as their own as Gentiles.

 

Clearly something has to give. For Paul, it was the Old Testament.

 

Paul cites the Old Testament 106 times; 59 times in Romans. For example, look at the string of quotations in Romans 9:25-29. Paul is arguing for Gentile inclusion in the plan of God–Gentiles do not need to be circumcised, thus following Jewish law. They are included as Gentiles simply by faith in Jesus the messiah.

 

Paul could have simply said, “Jesus is here and we are turning a new page. From now on we welcome Gentiles with open arms without them becoming Jewish first.”

 

That would have been a pretty radical message all by itself, but Paul gets even more radical. He argues that in the Old Testament itself teaches that Gentiles are to be included among Israel solely on the basis of faith–not obeying the law. Paul claims that Gentile inclusion without circumcision was God’s plan all along.

 

If you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you would be right to wonder how Paul is going to pull that off, since the Old Testament is so adamant about maintaining the distinction between Jew and Gentile.

 

In this string of quotations in Romans 9, Paul cites two passages from Hosea and two from Isaiah to support his claim that Gentile inclusion is part of God’s plan. The problem, though, is that all four of these passages have nothing to do with Gentile inclusion. They are all aimed at God’s mercy at restoring Israel.

 

This is not a minor point. Paul is not getting a little creative with some passages, tweaking them a bit, teasing some fresh angle out of them. He is saying that these passages support his Gentile agenda, even though a plain reading shows unequivocally that they are about Israel.

 

Flip over to Romans 10:5-8. Paul places two passages from the law of Moses side by side–and he pits them against each other.

 

The first is Leviticus 18:5, where Yahweh tells Moses that the Israelites are to “Keep my decrees, for the man who obeys them will live by them.” Note that keeping the law is assumed to be attainable and a benefit to those who do so.

 

But in very next verse Paul brings in another passage from the Law, Deuteronomy 30:13-14. In Deuteronomy, these verses have a very clear meaning. The commands that God is giving to the Israelites are doable. They are not out of anyone’s reach. They are not up in the heavens or somewhere acoross the ocean. They are right here–”in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.”

 

The Israelites were expected to keep these laws, and keeping them brings life, which is sort of what Leviticus 18:5 says. The two passages are in complete harmony.

 

But Paul contrasts these two verses to pit law against faith.

 

For Paul, Leviticus 18:5 is correct insofar as it goes, but Paul clearly does not present obedience to the law as a benefit to anyone–which contradicts the point of the passage.

 

Paul’s handling of Deuteronomy 30:13-14 should, by all standards, drive mainstream Evangelicals crazy. In Deuteronomy, God tells the Israelites to keep these doable-written-on-your-heart commands. Paul says it is not about commands at all but about having faith in Christ, apart from the law of Moses.

 

Either Paul can’t read or something else is up.

 

Something else is up.

 

Paul handles his Bible the way he does for two reasons:

 

(1) Judaism has a long history of manipulating scripture in the interest of supporting theological arguments. Paul, in case you need reminding, was a Jew trained in this way of using scripture.

 

(2) Paul’s grand goal in Romans is to make the case that Jews and Gentiles are on equal footing before God; Paul’s angle is to show how the law itself made that same point all along–which requires Paul to take get very creative with the Old Testament.

 

If anyone else were doing this–me, you, the Pope, Jehovah’s Witnesses, an emergent pastor, a liberal theologian, a first year seminary student–Evangelicals would call it “distorting the inerrant Word of God.” Paul, however, either (1) gets a free pass because Paul is an apostle (and apparently it’s OK for apostles to do this), or (2) Paul’s reading of the Old Testament is defended as being consistent with the Old Testament meaning (which leads to overly subtle and back-breaking arguments).

 

Here is the great irony. Without question, as a first century Jew, Paul believed his scripture was God’s Word. He had what Evangelicals like to call a “high view” of scripture.

 

That is correct. It’s just that Paul’s high view and an Evangelical high view are clearly not the same. I’m just glad Evangelicals weren’t around at the time to try to stifle Paul, to keep him from landing his gig as apostle to the Gentiles. We would have missed out on a lot.


 

Trying to Imagine the Age of the Bible in Our Contemporary Present

Long, Long Ago, in a Land Far, Far Away…. (What I’m Saying is the Bible is Really, Really Old)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/08/long-long-ago-in-a-land-far-far-away-what-im-saying-is-the-bible-is-really-really-old/

 

by Peter Enns

August 28, 2012

Comments

 

This is the eve of a significant event in Jewish history. 2532 years ago tomorrow, August 29, 520 BC, according to Haggai 1:1, God gave the command to rebuild Israel’s temple, destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC.

 

That’s a long time ago, is all I’m saying.

 

Think about it. Just 1/5 of this length of time takes us way back to about 1500, the days when Europeans were just staring to explore (and exploit) the known world by ship and people still thought the earth was the center of the cosmos.

 

If we were transported back to those days, only 500 years ago, many of us would probably be dead within a week, unable to negotiate the dos and don’ts of daily life.

 

Take just half of 2532 years and we are back in the mid-8th century. Vikings began invading Europe, the stuff of legends. Paper was introduced to the Arabs by the Chinese.

 

We live in a world where huge numbers are thrown around daily: trillions upon trillions of dollars of national debt, billions upon billions of galaxies each containing billions upon billions of stars, trillions of cells in the human body. We can’t wrap are heads around numbers that large, but they are part of our daily consciousness.

 

With numbers that large floating in our heads, we tend to forget how large numbers like 500 years, or 1000 years, or 2532 years are when seen from the point of view of our daily human experience.

 

So, Haggai began urging his countrymen to rebuild the temple over 25 centuries ago. 100 years, 25 times.

 

Imagine living to be a hundred–and doing that over and over again 25 times. Frankly, I have a hard time truly “experiencing” in my minds’s eye what just one 100-year span looks like. I am currently watching Ken Burns’s excellent series The Civil War, with photographs of soldiers, wives, children, slaves, buildings, and farmland 150 years old. I am taken by the profundity of how much time has elapsed, how foreign this world is to mine.

 

And the Israelites began rebuilding their temple 2532 years ago.

 

This bit of the human drama will forever remain outside of my capacity to comprehend. The distance of it all. I cannot get inside of it. I remain a foreigner to this ancient landscape, and outsider looking in.

 

I guess my point is this. It seems many of us, myself included, can get a bit careless, even cavalier, about the Bible, thinking that we “get it” because we happen to read it regularly in our native tongue. Perhaps we should regain a sense of respect for the distance this book has travelled to land on our coffee tables and work desks.

 

Perhaps we should remember that in the Bible we are coming face to face with a very foreign (and small) slice of the human drama–with customs, habits, a whole consciousness, that we do not share–and so we should be respectful enough not to claim for ourselves too great a familiarity.

 

We can study it and even teach it, as I do. But we kid ourselves if we think we control it.

 

Perhaps we can try to keep that in mind when we disagree over what it means. We are all on foreign soil.

 

 

 

 

How God Became King: Putting Creed and Canon Back Together Again

How God Became King

http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/webexclusives/2012/august/how-god-became-king.html#.UCUjVHBEeTE.facebook

by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
August 2012

Putting creed and canon back together.

For the past decade I've endeavored to be something of street preacher in my neighborhood. Granted, when I came here it wasn't my neighborhood. I was marked as an outsider, not only because everyone around here seems to know everyone else, but also because I'm white. And in this Southern town, white folks don't belong in Walltown.

 

Everyone knows this, but no one communicated it more clearly than the young guys who used to stand on the corner, just four doors down from our house. I used to wave when I'd pass by them. They wouldn't wave back. For months, they never said a word. They only glared.

 

The month we moved here, one of these guys on the corner was shot in the street by another guy who drove by, stuck a gun out the window, and pulled the trigger. A friend happened to be driving behind the car that slowed down to shoot. He stopped his car, jumped out, and asked the guy who'd been hit in the elbow if he needed a ride to the hospital. "Naw," this young man said, gritting his teeth and pressing his hand against the wound. "I'll be alright." The next evening, the same car drove by again, taking better aim this time. We learned at his funeral that the young man shot dead on our corner was named Robert.

 

When our household of outsiders invited a guy from Walltown who was returning home from prison to come and live with us, we started to hear secondhand what the guys on the corner were saying. When we first came, they'd thought we were a police house, sent to monitor drug traffic. Then some said we were a plant from the local university—part of a secret plan to take over the neighborhood. Finally, they settled on calling us a church house because every Sunday and Wednesday they watched us go in and out of the Saint Johns Missionary Baptist Church, our Bibles in our hands.

 

About this time, the guys on the corner start talking. I learn their names and they learn mine. A couple of them start stopping by the house for dinner. Whenever I get a chance, I stop by their corner to catch up. One day, a fellow named Andre—who likes to rap when he talks—says to me, "You're a preacher, uh huh. / You want to talk theology, don't you?" I ask him what's on his mind. "Well, I'm a Muslim," he raps, hands flying up and down, "I'm a Muslim because / Christianity's about what you believe in your heart, / but Islam is about how you live."

 

I'm a Christian who grew up singing "King Jesus is all / he's my all and all." I get up every morning and go to bed every night praying, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." But I cannot argue with Andre. The Christianity he has seen is a feel-good spirituality, a get-me-through-another-week kind of faith. "Crack religion," some folks around here call it. But Andre prefers the real thing. Still, these theological conversations on the street corner are what make me into a street preacher—not the "turn before you burn" type, but something more akin to Paul on Mars Hill, always probing to see where God fits in. Always asking questions. One day I say to a guy who's run the streets since he was thirteen, to a young man who thought he was king when other people started selling his drugs for him, "Jesus said, 'If you live by the gun you'll die by the gun.' " There's no good use for a gun in this neighborhood, I tell him. And he says to me, "You oughta tell that to the police." Jesus is well and good for the church house, but out here on the street, he says, religion can get you killed.

 

He asks the same question Andre asks, the same question these guys have been asking me for a decade: What does your Jesus have to offer a guy like me? "As I have both studied and written about Jesus and the gospels," writes N.T. Wright in his newest offering, How God Became King, "I have had the increasing impression, over many years now, that most of the Western Christian tradition has simply forgotten what the gospels are really about." This celebrated scholar and former bishop of the Church of England seems to agree with the guys who hang out on the corner in Walltown. "What we need is not just a bit of fine-tuning, an adjustment here and there. We need a fundamental rethink about what the gospels are trying to say."

 

For the scholarly Wright, the first question to ask is, How did we ever forget the main point? How did the Jesus who ignited a popular movement by promising abundant life to marginalized people like the guys on the corner in Walltown become an irrelevant idea that scholars write about or an otherworldly deity that pious people worship? The answer is not simple, but Wright makes it comprehensible. It is a tragic accident of history, the sad result of thinking that the gifts the Holy Spirit offered at one moment in history can simply be packaged and delivered to our contexts today.

 

Wright's gift for clarity rests in his ability to make crucial distinctions, and the one most central to this book's argument is the historical difference between the creeds and the canon. The creeds, Wright observes, are doctrinal statements that Christians developed to answer the particular challenges of the 4th- and 5th-century church. In their context, they make perfect sense. But because they are a response to particular heresies, they necessarily do not say everything that must be said about who God is, why Jesus came, and what the Spirit is doing in the world today. This, Wright says, is why we have a canon—four gospels that have their own story to tell. And most of what they have to say is about the gap that comes between Jesus being "born of the virgin Mary" and "suffering under Pontius Pilate." That is, the gospels, by and large, cover ground that the creeds skip over with a comma.

 

In the great storehouse of Christian tradition, we have both creed and canon. But in the midst of the particular challenges that the Western church faced at the dawn of the modern era, creed trumped canon and doctrinal claims seemed more important than the story that the gospels tell. Wright masterfully demonstrates how this tendency is common to those groups that have most vehemently disagreed with one another in the church and the academy—conservatives and liberals, fundamentalists and progressives. We all seem to have agreed that creed and canon are separable, some clinging to doctrine whatever the cost, others saying that Jesus is an interesting historical figure, even if he wasn't God.

 

At the core of this book is an invitation to re-read the gospels—to hear them as the story of how God became King by paying attention to the ways they make claims about four themes that were central to the hopes and longings of 1st-century Israel. Those themes are:

1. the story of Israel,
2. the story of Israel's God,
3. the hope of God's renewed people, and
4. the conflict between God's rule and the kingdoms of this world.

For all of its value as a clear and concise argument about the meaning of Christian faith itself, this book is at its best highlighting Wright as a Bible teacher. The gospels come alive in these central chapters, singing the song that all of creation longs for, flowing like living waters in a dry and weary land. I wanted to stand on the corner and read several passages aloud.

 

But for all of his gifts as one of our best contemporary Bible teachers, Wright is not content to end this exploration with applause from guys like me who love the Bible anyway: "Part of the tragedy of the modern church, I have been arguing, is that the 'orthodox' have preferred creed to kingdom, and the 'unorthodox' have tried to get a kingdom without a creed. It's time," Wright says, "to put back together what should have never been separated." This work of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again is the work of communities that read the gospels and recite the creeds, living God's mission as the body of Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Wright concludes by saying that the answer to this riddle isn't in the power of "all the king's horses and all the king's men." It's in little communities who try to live by the power of the Spirit in a place like Walltown.

 

This, I fear, is where Wright is most likely to be misunderstood: after so many years of Christendom, the news that the gospels are really about "how God became King" may come to some—especially those who worry that the Western church is in decline—as an invitation to rebuild our institutions, renegotiate our relationship with the power structures, and reclaim a sort of theocracy. I live in the Christ-haunted South. We're always susceptible to the promises of a Jerry Fallwell. But this is not the hope that the guys on our corner ache for, nor is it the good news Wright is proclaiming. "The implicit ecclesiology of all four gospels is a picture of the complex vocation of Jesus himself," Wright says. It is "to be kingdom-bringers … first because of Jesus' own suffering and second by means of their own." The Revelation is right: we will, one day, rule the nations. But we'll only get there the way Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father—by suffering with those who've been pushed to the margins until we learn to see together, through creed and canon alike, that another world is possible. Indeed, it's beginning to appear right now in our conversations on the corner and around the dinner table.

 

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an associate minister at St. Johns Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina. The Rutba House, where Jonathan lives with his family and friends, is a new monastic community that prays, eats, and lives together, welcoming neighbors and the homeless. He is the author most recently of The Awakening of Hope: Why We Preach a Common Faith, just published by Zondervan.

 

 

 

An Evening with Peter Rollins (Emergence Christianity in the Present Tense)

 

 

 

Thinking of Christianity in the Present-Tense: The Politics of Discipleship

(Emergence Christianity)

 

 

 

An Evening with Peter Rollins

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwkj_UbZYI&feature=plcp

 

Peter Rollins at Cornerstone University, Monday, April 16, 2012.

Presented by the Cornerstone University Society for Philosophy.

Chaired by Dr. Michael Van Dyke.

 

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg1Fz_epKqbS30h6XZZx5NQ

 

 

 

 

The Legacy of the Christian Blogosphere

a deeper story

 

 

 

A History of Outrage

http://deeperstory.com/a-history-of-outrage/

 

by Mason Slater

August 3, 2012
 

Chick-Fil-A, Love Wins, the maelstrom over a particular post about 50 Shades of Gray – sometimes I find myself worrying that this will be the legacy of the Christian blogosphere, that these controversies (and hundreds like them) will be all that people remember in twenty or fifty years.

Sure, we wring our hands at the unpleasantness of it all, but that’s usually while we are busy rolling out the outrage machine and the language of persecuted minority or righteous-defender-of-all-that-is-good-and-true.

We say we wish it wasn’t like that, that we don’t want to be this way, that they started it.

But, sometimes, I really don’t think that’s the case.

I think much of the blogosphere can’t do without it. We have become the outrage-industrial complex, building a digital empire by speaking in the vitriolic language of us vs. them.

I think that if there wasn’t a conflict we would have to start one.

I worry that if people twenty years from now remember the Christian blogosphere as driven by controversy, outrage, and infighting, tragically they might be more right than wrong.

How many blogs would soon fall silent if there wasn’t an “enemy” to oppose? We get a high off it, but like any junkie we are quite talented at denying we have a problem, no matter how much damage we are doing, no matter how out of control it has become.

And it’s a shame, because so many of you have beautiful stories to tell, and incredibly brilliant ideas to share. So many bloggers are writing and doing things that are redemptive, imaginative, an outworking of the Gospel story.

But those bloggers, the sort who don’t want to play the game, they often tend to drop out over time, exhausted and disheartened by it all. Or, these wise and quiet voices get passed over in our mad dash from one controversy to the next. And so, one way or another, we never hear them.

I suppose that is part of what I appreciate about this community. True, it is not afraid to address difficult or controversial issues – but it finds its identity not in outrage but in grace, love, and the little bits of life that we share through our stories.

I think if all the controversies went away, by some miracle of God’s mysterious grace, the people here would have just as much to say. These writers would not fall silent.

Because it isn’t simply writing about a controversy that’s the issue, it’s when we start to confuse these controversies with the Gospel, and confuse our stance on them with our identity as children of God. These controversies are not our story, or at least, they shouldn’t be, because our real stories are far better.

And it’s those stories, those stories about love and grace and resurrection, that I hope people remember long after the controversies have been forgotten.


About Mason: Mason is a husband to Melinda, seminary student, blogger, and freelance writer in Grand Rapids, MI. He is passionate about theology, community and justice. What little time is left amidst his busy schedule is devoted to reading, coffee snobbery and a new adventure in home brewing.

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Book Review: "Incarnational Humanism" by Jens Zimmermann

Incarnational Humanism

http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=3903

A Philosophy of Culture for the Church in the World

Strategic Initiatives in Evangelical Theology

By Jens Zimmermann

INTRODUCTION

Having left its Christian roots behind, the West faces a moral, spiritual and intellectual crisis. It has little left to maintain its legacy of reason, freedom, human dignity and democracy. Far from capitulating, Jens Zimmermann believes the church has an opportunity to speak a surprising word into this postmodern situation grounded in the Incarnation itself that is proclaimed in Christian preaching and eucharistic celebration.

To do so requires that we retrieve an ancient Christian humanism for our time. Only this will acknowledge and answer the general demand for a common humanity beyond religious, denominational and secular divides. Incarnational Humanism thus points the way forward by pointing backward. Rather than resorting to theological novelty, Zimmermann draws on the rich resources found in Scripture and in its theological interpreters ranging from Irenaeus and Augustine to de Lubac and Bonhoeffer.

Zimmermann masterfully draws his comprehensive study together by proposing a distinctly evangelical philosophy of culture. That philosophy grasps the link between the new humanity inaugurated by Christ and all of humanity. In this way he holds up a picture of the public ministry of the church as a witness to the world's reconciliation to God.

Proposes a distinctly evangelical Christian philosophy of culture

Builds on centuries of Christian reflection on the nature of humanity and human culture

Engages Irenaeus, Augustine, Henri de Lubac and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Responds to current postmodern concerns and the challenge of pluralism

Provides a vision of common humanity from an orthodox Christian perspective

Contributes to contemporary discussions on the purpose of education and educational institutions

CONTENTS

Preface

1. Without Roots: The Current Malaise of Western Culture
The West's Cultural Heritage: Christianity or Enlightenment?
The Exhaustion of Secularism
The Return of Religion

2. The Beginnings of Incarnational Humanism
Greco-Roman Antecedents
Patristic Humanism
Christology and the Incarnation
The Imago Dei
The Heart of Patristic Humanism: Deification
The Correlation of Reason and Faith
The Fruits of Reason: Education as Transformative Participation in the Divine Word
The Foundation of a Common Humanity
Eucharistic Humanism and Human Solidarity
Conclusion

3. The Further Development of Christian Humanism
Medieval Humanism
Conclusion
Renaissance Humanism
Introduction
The Retrieval of Patristic Theology
The Incarnation and the Imago Dei
Humanistic Education
The Importance of the Incarnation
Christian Humanism after the Renaissance
Conclusion

4. The Rise of Anti-Humanism
The Beginning of the End: The Unity of Mind and Being in Kant and Hegel
Nietzsche's Anti-Platonism and the Birth of Anti-Humanism
Nietzsche's Anti-Humanism Heirs: Michel Foucault and Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger: From Anti-Humanism to Hyper-Humanism
Conclusion

5. Still No Incarnation: From Anti-Humanism to the Postmodern God
Levinas's Humanism of the Other
The Disincarnate God of Continental Philosophy
Gianni Vattimo: Incarnation Without Transcendence
Weak Thought or Weak Theology? Vattimo's Heideggerian Christianity
Problems With Vattimo's Incarnational Ontology
Conclusion

6. Incarnational Humanism as Cultural Philosophy
God's Presence in the World: Sacred and Secular
God's Presence in the Church
The Heart of the Church: The Eucharist
The Sacrament of the Word
Eucharistic Humanism: The Link Between Church and World

Conclusion

Bibliography

Name Index

Subject Index

Scripture Index

The Human Fossil Record, Parts 1-10b

The BioLogos Forum: The Human Fossil Record

http://biologos.org/blog/series/human-fossil-record

 

In this series, James Kidder provides an intriguing study on transitional fossils and the evolutionary history of modern humans. He begins by discussing the fossil record, explaining how new forms are classified. He then explains the physically distinguishing trait of humankind—bipedalism. From the discovery of Ardipithecus, the earliest known hominin, to the australopithecines, the most prolific hominin, Kidder focuses on the discovery, the anatomy, and the interpretation of these ancestral remains. 

 

Hominid Brain Development

 

The Human Fossil Record, Part 1. The Nature of Transitional Fossils

By James Kidder | November 25, 2011

It has become an article of faith for those espousing both the young earth creation model and many who hold to the intelligent design model that transitional fossils do not exist and therefore evolution has not taken place. Support for this position usually entails attacking the weak areas of the fossil record or defining transitional fossils in such a way that none could ever be found.
Comments (0)

 

 

The Human Fossil Record, Pt 2: Bipedality

By James Kidder | January 5, 2011

One of the most fruitful and exciting areas of research in palaeoanthropology is the search for the last common ancestor to the higher apes and humans. This question is inextricably tied to concepts of what separates humanity from the animals around us. This is a question that has spiritual as well as physical ramifications.
Comments (232)

 

 

The Human Fossil Record, Part 3: The Discovery of Australopithecus

By James Kidder | February 10, 2011

In the early 1920s, a young anatomist named Raymond Dart took a job at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Keenly interested in comparative primate anatomy, Dart had been advised to go to the Wit by the famed anatomist Sir Grafton Eliot Smith and, upon arrival, began work on the ancestry of South African primates.
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The Human Fossil Record, Part 4: Australopithecus Conquers the Landscape

By James Kidder | April 4, 2011

In my previous post, I described the discovery of the first Australopithecus in South Africa by Raymond Dart. Beginning with the work of Dart and venerable palaeontologist, Robert Broom, an extensive range of discoveries has been made that continues to the present day.
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The Human Fossil Record, Part 5: The Dispersal of the Australopithecines

By James Kidder | June 16, 2011

Up until approximately three million years ago, australopithecines were restricted in variation to Australopithecus afarensis, the successor to Australopithecus anamensis. This hominin has been found in the north at Hadar, Ethiopia, and as far south as Tanzania. Subsequent to this time period, however, the australopithecines as a genus underwent a dramatic expansion and, eventually, would be found in all of eastern and possibly central Africa.
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The Human Fossil Record, Part 6: The Dispersal of the Australopithecines, Continued

By James Kidder | June 20, 2011

It is tempting to look at these remains and think privately, “these are nothing but apes. What is the fuss?” Such has been the viewpoint of the Institute for Creation Research’s Duane Gish (Gish and Research 1985) and John Morris. This is incorrect. There was never any doubt in any of the researcher’s minds that from A. afarensis, the australopithecines walked upright, albeit with a gait not quite like that of modern humans.
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The Human Fossil Record, Part 7: The Rise of Early Homo

By James Kidder | August 26, 2011

Thus far, we have journeyed from the forests of the late Miocene/Early Pliocene at 4 and half million years ago to the open savannah at a little over one million years ago. We have seen perhaps our first forebears, Ardipithecus ramidus in Northeast Africa, walk upright, albeit awkwardly at first—the first primate to do so.
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The Human Fossil Record, Part 8: Evolution in Early Homo

By James Kidder | November 17, 2011

In the previous post, I detailed the arrival of early Homo on the landscape and the differences of these forms from contemporary australopithecine species. The australopithecines, while possessing bipedal locomotion and, perhaps, rudimentary tool use, were characterized by having small brains, largely ape-like faces, reduced stature and primitive characteristics reminiscent of their ape ancestry.
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The Human Fossil Record, Part 9: Out of Africa (The First Time)

By James Kidder | April 12, 2012

One of the persistent questions involving paleoanthropological research is the timing of that first migration out of Africa. Work by several researchers beginning in the 1890s had uncovered remains of hominins in both East and Southeast Asia, but because of problems understanding exactly how remains decayed or were preserved in those environments, very few concrete dates could be determined.
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The Human Fossil Record, Part 10: Homo erectus in Asia 1

By James Kidder | July 28, 2012

Up to this point, all human fossils had been found on the surface, eroding out of the side of a bank, or as a result of farming. It had not occurred to anyone to go looking for human ancestors. Dubois was attempting was something that had never been done before: discovery of hominin material through the tools of archaeological excavation.
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The Human Fossil Record, Part 10: Homo erectus in Asia, Cont’d

By James Kidder | July 29, 2012

While both Lantian and Hexian were significant finds, the Zhoukoudian site in China boasted the single largest collection of Homo erectus fossils ever found at one site, as well as presenting one of the greatest mysteries in paleoanthropology.
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The Sorrows and Joys of Teaching Evolution at an Evangelical Christian University

 

http://biologos.org/blog/the-sorrows-and-joys-of-teaching-evolution

August 24, 2012

"The BioLogos Forum" frequently features essays from The BioLogos Foundation's leaders and Senior Fellows. Please note the views expressed here are those of the author, not necessarily of The BioLogos Foundation. You can read more about what we believe here.

 

Today's entry was written by Dennis Venema. Dennis Venema is an associate professor and department chair for the biology department of Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia. His research is focused on the genetics of pattern formation and signaling.

 

As I settle into the lecture, only I really know what is coming a mere few PowerPoint slides hence. The class is an upper-level course in genetics, and the topic is changes in chromosome structure. Starting with fruit flies as an example, I sketch out comparisons between closely related species for which complete genome sequences are available. Students learn about the evidence for chromosome fusions and fissions, the reordering of genes along chromosomes in different lineages over time (an issue of synteny which we have discussed before), and how these lines of evidence support the hypothesis that the various fruit fly species we observe in the modern day derive from common ancestral species in the past. Perhaps my using of the genuine estimates for speciation dates raises a few eyebrows, since “millions of years” is something of a byword for some antievolutionary groups, and fruit flies have been separating into new species for tens of millions of years. Still, it’s pretty clear that this isn’t really rocking anyone’s world: they’re all just fruit flies, after all, and I like to talk about them, since they’re the organism I do my research on.

 

After the “information dump” using the fruit fly examples, it’s time for a class discussion/application before the students drift off too much. Ok, here’s a slide that shows the chromosome structure of a group of organisms that other lines of evidence suggest are part of a group of related species. What do you observe? Do you think these species are related? If so, what explains the differences you observe?

What the students don’t know is that the slide shows human chromosomes, and those of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. Oblivious to this knowledge, they easily arrive at the correct answer: yes, the evidence is strong that these are quite recently diverged species, and that a chromosome fusion or fission event explains the differences in chromosome structure between them. When I tell them that every other species in this grouping has the higher chromosome number/structure, they correctly deduce that the species with the lower chromosome number should show evidence of a fusion event in the form of “telomere” sequences at the fusion point and an inactive “centromere” at the location suggested by comparison to the other, related genome.

 

Easy.

 

As I look around the room, I see the students are satisfied. I cover some difficult material in this course, and the students are obviously pleased that this topic is so easy to handle. The lines of evidence are easy to follow, and it’s easy to predict and test one’s hypotheses. Then, only after they’ve seen the evidence at least once without the baggage that will inevitably come, I ask them if they know what two species they’ve just compared.

 

As a biology professor at a primarily undergraduate, evangelical, liberal arts and sciences university, I have the profound privilege of teaching the principles of evolutionary biology to a variety of students, both biology majors and non-majors. As one might expect, teaching this subject matter at times engenders controversy, crises of faith, anger and fear in students (and others). These types of sorrows are relatively well known and have been discussed here on BioLogos by several authors. Yet there are also great joys associated with teaching evolutionary biology in a Christian setting, and in this post I reflect primarily on these as a counter-balance to the more frequent stories of conflict and struggle.

 

The sorrows …

 

Lest anyone think that this post is an attempt to present an overly-optimistic or whitewashed view of teaching evolution in an evangelical setting, let me acknowledge and affirm that the pain that many (yes, most) evangelical students go through as they learn about evolution is substantial and real. I have had too many long conversations with students caught between their faith communities and the science to deny this reality. I have seen students struggle with their faith, close their minds to the scientific evidence, and even resolutely declare that no amount of evidence would ever be enough to convince them that evolution is real. I have seen anger, hurt and fear. I have seen students willing to discard the nearly the entirety of modern science in order to maintain a particular anti-evolutionary view.

 

For me personally, the most difficult circumstances to watch are students who feel torn between the evidence and their faith. In some cases these are extremely bright students, who easily see the strength of the evidence, but feel the need to remain unengaged and uncommitted because they fear a backlash from their churches, or (especially) their parents. While an evangelical university can be a wonderful, safe environment for students to explore these issues, that environment doesn’t follow them home. These struggles are painful to watch, and I’ve spent more than a few hours in prayer for students facing them.

 

… and the joys

 

Yet for all these issues, I thoroughly enjoy teaching evolution at an evangelical university. Of course I do not enjoy the anguish it can produce for some of my students – far from it! Fortunately, conflict and emotional turmoil are not the whole story, and many evangelical students report that learning about evolution was a valuable, enriching experience, regardless of their views after the fact.

 

One of the things I enjoy most is that teaching evolution is never dull in an evangelical setting. My students might snooze through a class on cellular respiration, or be tempted to surf Facebook when they should be applying their reasoning skills to problems in genetics, but whenever evolution is the topic I have everyone’s full attention. Whatever else, evolution matters. That intensity of student engagement is invigorating, and the students feel it too. Regardless of where students ultimately decide to “land” on the issue, many report that they enjoyed the process – the exchange of ideas, the discussions and debates, and the new understandings gained.

 

In addition to the electrifying interest the topic holds for evangelical students, learning about evolution is also by nature a multidisciplinary enterprise and opportunity for personal growth. Students are not merely gaining a larger perspective in biology, but fitting that new understanding into their knowledge of Scripture, church history, and their own faith journey. Often in class students will contribute what they have learned in other courses to the discussion: courses dealing with the setting and context of Genesis, courses on church history, and courses on hermeneutics and exegesis frequently are drawn upon. It is for this reason that I feel learning about evolution in a Christian liberal arts university is one of the very best places to do so, providing the institution treats the topics fairly. In this setting, resources are available for all of the questions that evolution engenders for Christians, not merely the scientific ones. Moreover, faculty are generally able to assist students with resources that address these extra-scientific issues, and provide a safe and non-judgmental environment for students to learn. The ability to learn what can be faith-shaking material in a setting surrounded by professors committed to the academic and spiritual growth of their students can make all the difference. To be sure, this environment can be one of personal turmoil for students, but with that turmoil comes a rare opportunity for intellectual and spiritual growth in a way that other areas of biology simply cannot provide.

 

Many of my students, regardless of whether they ultimately accept or reject the evidence for evolution, report that they have grown spiritually through their learning process. Contrary to popular opinion, in my experience most who do come to accept the evidence for evolution also report this growth. They feel closer to God, not further from Him. They feel that they have a deeper appreciation for, and understanding of, His creation. They feel that their faith is now more their own, rather than merely that of their parents. Most importantly, they feel free: that they need no longer be afraid of evolution, but celebrate it as the mechanism by which God has populated His world with “endless forms, most beautiful.”

 

Seeing students experience that freedom is something that one cannot test on an exam, nor encapsulate as a teaching outcome – but it is a deep joy of my teaching career.

 

 

 

 

St. John's Video Timeline Project - Interviews with Scholars on the Bible, Church, and Historical Eras

 

 

 

St. John's Video Timeline Project

 http://www.stjt.org.uk/

 

 

 

 

 YouTube Timeline - http://www.youtube.com/stjohnsnottingham

Direct Timeline Website -  http://www.stjt.org.uk/

 

 

THE ORIGINS OF THIS MULTIMEDIA PROJECT

 

Over a number of years The Revd. Dr Tim Hull has approached distinguished scholars to talk to camera on their area of expertise.

 

We are very thankful that so many have graciously and generously agreed to this request. Originally these interviews were used purely to enhance teaching and learning for our college students or those doing distance learning with St John’s, but more recently we have been developing a project that put these interviews (and many more to come) into interactive timelines.

 

We are also very thankful to a number of organisations and educational trusts that are currently supporting the development of these timelines.

 

The scholars who have been interviewed over the years, many of which appear on these timelines, are: Tom Wright, Anthony Thiselton, Keith Ward, Karen Kilby, Richard Bauckham, Larry Hurtado, Loren Stuckenbruck, Stephen Travis, Richard Burridge, James Dunn, Ian Paul, Graham Stanton, Denis Alexander, Elizabeth Fisher, Rodney Holder, William Lane Craig, Ben Fulford, David Wilkinson, Bruce Winter, David Clough, David Fergusson, Richard Swinburne, John Hedley Brooke, Rachel Muers, Gavin D’Costa, Nick Spencer, Tom Greggs, Steven Shakespeare, David Cheetham, Andrew Shanks, Mike Higton, David Firth, Paul T Nimmo, Walter Moberly, Peter Harrison, Hugh Williamson , David Fergusson, Paula Gooder ,David Shepherd,Thomas Renz, Stephen Williams, Christopher Rowland, Clive Marsh, Christopher Insole, John Cottingham, Simon Oliver, Stephen Plant , Richard Briggs, George Pattison, David Ford, Thomas Renz, Russell Re Manning and Stephen Mulhall.

 

This project continues to grow, in fact we are in the process of arranging interviews with Darren Sarisky, Steve Holmes, John Binsom, Jonathan Tubb, Stephen Mulhall, Paula Gooder and more.

 

 

 

 

    http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/

 

 

 

 

An Ikonoclast - For Those Desiring Eden

 

http://peterrollins.net/?p=3888

by Peter Rollins

August 30, 2012

 

I remember a good friend calling me many years ago, having just read How (Not) to Speak of God. As the conversation went on he said, “Pete, those gatherings you write about in the second part of the book were so inspiring. I loved them! They were so much better than when I was at them!”

 

This can help us understand Immanuel Kant’s distinction between the harsh realities of the French Revolution (with its terror and violence) and the inspiration birthed by the French Revolution (inspiring far-reaching political and social upheaval). In short, his insight that a problematic material reality can provide the ground for the birth of an ideal that instigates wide-ranging transformation.

 

With the creation of ikon (along with The Last Supper, The Evangelism Project, The Omega Course and Atheism for Lent) a group of people in Belfast embarked on a grand and ridiculous project of rethinking the event of Christianity. In the course of setting up and running it, a new and inspiring vision of faith appeared to grow. Yet the on the ground reality was often difficult (lack of resources, equipment that failed, bad ideas, conflicts, misunderstandings etc. etc.) The dirt out of which the idea grew was, well… dirty.

 

Knowing all of this another friend recently asked me if I would be willing to put myself through it all again. Whether I would want to get my hands dirty with a new project that would no doubt be full of difficulties and conflicts. The answer was a simple one: absolutely!

 

I’m no gardener, but I guess that one of the best bits is the work of digging into the manure and planting seeds that might grow into something beautiful. The only thing holding me back has been the time it takes to find people to work with and the effort needed to really understand the landscape that will be worked on. But the time of preparing is over.

 

A small, but growing, band of people have come together. A group who are, in fear and trembling, embarking on a new one-year project with me starting on the 9^th September in Brooklyn. I have no illusions that this will be a difficult journey as we strive to present a radically different vision of faith, one that overturns what is taken for granted by so much of the actually existing church. It will no doubt involve conflicts, boredom, confusion and annoyance at different times among different people. Some things will hopefully work beautifully and others will no doubt fall flat on their face. We will risk and we will fail… not once, but time and again.

 

So do I think that something wonderful will arise out of the dirt? I honestly don’t know, but we’ve got to try.

 

In truth, if you pack a few things and come along with us on this dissident journey there will be times when you’ll regret it and be disappointed. Because of that, if you want to be involved I would dissuade you from coming, there are other more brightly lit paths to walk. But if you need to come, if you feel that you must throw yourself in to this cauldron and see what happens, then do what you need to in order to be there.

 

Also sign up to the Pyrotheology facebook page to be kept up to date with future events.

 

 

Dystopia | Deity Nightclub | Brooklyn | 7pm | 9th September

 

 

 

 

"How Deep the Father's Love"

How Deep the Father's Love for Us (w/ on-screen lyrics)

 

 

 

LYRICS 

 

How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
And make a wretch His treasure.

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the Chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory.

Behold the Man upon the cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers.

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished.

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection.

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom.

The Story Behind the Song “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us”

http://doxaworship.org/?p=339

 

 

 

To begin our time of response this week in Doxa, we will be singing the modern hymn, “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us”, a song which speaks of the great loss of God the Father (the sacrifice of His Son) so that we could be redeemed. Check out what the author, Stuart Townend, reveals as he tells us the story behind this great song:

 

Writing this song was an unusual experience for me. I’d already written quite a few songs for worship, but all in a more contemporary worship style, drawing from my own musical background. But I distinctly remember getting this feeling one day that I was going to write a hymn! Now, like most people, I am familiar with hymns – they form part of my church background, and I love the truth contained in many of them. But I don’t go home at the end of a busy day and put on a hymns album! So I don’t think of hymns as where I’m at musically at all!

 

Nevertheless, I’d been meditating on the cross, and in particular what it cost the Father to give up his beloved Son to a torturous death on a cross. And what was my part in it? Not only was it my sin that put him there, but if I’d lived at that time, it would probably have been me in that crowd, shouting with everyone else ‘crucify him’. It just makes his sacrifice all the more personal, all the more amazing, and all the more humbling.

 

As I was thinking through this, I just began to sing the melody, and it flowed in the sort of way that makes you think you’ve pinched it from somewhere! So the melody was pretty instant, but the words took quite a bit of time, reworking things, trying to make every line as strong as I could.

 

After it was finished, I remember playing it to Dave Fellingham a few minutes before a time of worship. I was worried it was perhaps too twee, too predictable. Dave, in his typical demonstrative and over-enthusiastic way, shrugged his shoulders and said, “yeah, it’s good”, and that was that. It was only when I began to use it in worship, and all sorts of people of different ages and backgrounds responded to it so positively, that I thought that it might be a useful resource to the church at large.

 

Now I’m finding it gets used all over the world, by all sorts of churches; it seems to be as accessible to a traditional church as it is to a house church, and I’m excited by that. But it has perhaps branded me as an old man before my time. It was fed back to me that at a conference a couple who loved the song were surprised to hear I was still alive…

 

Stuart

 

 

 

Stuart Townend
October 2008
Background information
Born	1963
Origin	West Yorkshire, England
Genres	Contemporary Christian music, hymns, contemporary worship music
Occupations	Songwriter, worship leader, music publishing executive
Instruments	Vocals, piano, guitar, banjo
Labels	Kingsway Music
Website	www.stuarttownend.co.uk

 

 

Stuart Townend is an English Christian worship leader and writer of hymns and contemporary worship music. His songs include "In Christ Alone", (2002, co-written with Keith Getty, Townend's first collaboration with any other songwriter),^[1][2] "How Deep The Father's Love For Us", "Beautiful Saviour" and "The King of Love".^[3] As of 2008, Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) lists "In Christ Alone" in its Top 25 CCLI Songs list.

 

 

From Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Townend

(Not to be confused with Stuart Townsend.)

 

 

 

 

 

Stuart Townend - How Deep The Father's Love For Us (Story Behind the Song)