Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Do Not Despair. Holding On To God's Promises




What Are We Holding On To?

[Written by Joe Stowell for Our Daily Bread.]
"Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life."  —1 Timothy 6:12
Tolkien’s classic The Lord of the Rings trilogy came to life in recent years on film. In the second epic story, the hero, Frodo, reached a point of despair and wearily confided to his friend, “I can’t do this, Sam.” As a good friend, Sam gave a rousing speech: “It’s like in the great stories . . . . Full of darkness and danger they were. . . . Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.” Which prompted Frodo to ask: “What are we holding on to, Sam?”
It’s a significant question, one that we all need to ask ourselves. Living in a fallen, broken world, it’s no wonder that sometimes we feel overwhelmed by the powers of darkness. When we are at the point of despair, ready to throw in the towel, we do well to follow Paul’s advice to Timothy: “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life” (1 Tim. 6:12).
In life’s battles, let’s hold on to the fact that good will triumph over evil in the end, that one day we will see our Master and Leader face-to-face, and we will reign with Him forever. You can be part of this great story, knowing that if you have trusted Jesus for salvation you are guaranteed a victorious ending!
Though weak and helpless in life’s fray,
God’s mighty power shall be my stay;
Without, within, He gives to me
The strength to gain the victory. —D. De Haan
The trials of earth are small compared with the triumphs of heaven.

Friday, July 11, 2014

Common Questions and Misunderstandings about Classical Arminianism, Part 4




Arminianism FAQ 4 (Everything You Always Wanted to Know…)

by Roger Olson
July 11, 2014

FAQ: How does Arminianism explain Romans 9?

Answer (A): This is without doubt one of the most asked questions by hard core Calvinists, but even many Arminians want to know as they have always only heard the Calvinist interpretation of Roman 9.

First, it’s important to pay attention to the fact that Romans 9 was never interpreted as teaching unconditional double predestination to salvation and damnation before Augustine in the early fifth century. For four centuries Christians read the New Testament including Romans 9 and never came up with that interpretation.

Second, it’s important to read Romans 9 in context–Romans 9 through 11 is a “thought chunk.” The chapter divisions were not in the original autographs. Nobody would have read Romans 9 and stopped there. Romans 10 and 11 complete the argument and show that Paul was not talking about individuals and their salvation (or not) but about groups and service in his plan.

Arminian interpretations of Romans 9-11 are not hard to find. Look into that section of the Society of Evangelical Arminians’ web site (www.arminianevangelicals.org). There you will find essays and lists of commentaries.

But, for me, what is more important is what Wesley said about the Calvinist interpretation of Romans 9: “Whatever it means it can’t mean that!” He was not merely brushing it aside. He meant (and I agree) that IF the Calvinist interpretation of Romans 9 is true, then God is a moral monster, an arbitrary damner, not in any way like Jesus Christ who wept over Jerusalem and said “I would…but you would not.”

FAQ: Why are there no Arminian spokespersons, great preachers, leaders, like John Piper, John McArthur, R. C. Sproul, Matt Chandler, et al.?

A: This isn’t really a question about Arminianism as a belief system; it is a question about a passing cultural fad.

About thirty years ago this question would have been asked about Bill Gothard and non-Garthardites. “Why do the non-Gothardites” not have any influential spokesmen like Gothard? Gothard had his Basic Youth Conflicts Seminar movement erupted among evangelicals like a Mount St. Helen’s and then all but died away.

Whenever an unusual, strange (even if very old) message is proclaimed loudly and often by one or two or three extremely persuasive proclaimers, it gains a following. That doesn’t say anything about the alternatives–that they do not rise to meet the new messsage/movement with equal fervor and passion.

Usually, the new message/movement is extreme and proclaimed by extremists. They gain a following–mostly composed of people attracted to extremes. After a while the extremism dies down and the movement matures and the rough edges and corners are shaved off. All the time the majority around the “new message/movement” are going on with ministry avoiding the extreme. But the media loves extremes, so the extremists get all the attention–by being extreme!

I consider it a good thing that few Arminians have become loud absolutists to match the leaders of the Young, Restless, Reformed Movement most of whom are (in my opinion) fundamentalists.

FAQ: What makes a person an Arminian? The label is so little used–outside Wesleyan circles.

A: This is true; many theologians (and others) who I believe are Arminian in that their soteriology fits the profile of classical Arminianism shy away from the label or deny it altogether. I suspect that is because of the ways it has been misrepresented by its (mostly) Calvinist critics.

A few years ago I met Thomas Oden and we talked. He rejected the label “Arminian” even though he is Methodist and his book The Transforming Power of Grace presents one of the best expositions of Arminian theology I’ve ever read

My late friend Stan Grenz admitted to me that he was Arminian but asked me not to tell anyone. (At the time he was a colleague of J. I. Packer who strongly opposes Arminianism.)

Over the years I have had Free Methodists, Pentecostals and others tell me they are not Arminian but turn right around and affirm all the historical elements of classical Arminianism. To me this is like a Presbyterian who affirms the Westminster Confession of Faith saying he’s not a Calvinist. (I actually heard that recently.)

So, IN MY MIND any person is an Arminian who:

1) Is classically Protestant,

2) affirms total depravity (in the sense of helplessness to save himself or contribute meritoriously to his salvation such that a sinner is totally dependent on prevenient grace for even the first movement of the will toward God),

3) affirms conditional election and predestination based on foreknowledge,

4) affirms universal atonement,

5) affirms that grace is always resistible, and

6) affirms that God is in no way, and by no means, the author of sin and evil, but affirms that these are only permitted by God’s consequential will.



continue to -


Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change, Part 8 - Christopher M. Hays


Christopher M. Hays

“aha” moments: biblical scholars tell their stories (7): Christopher M. Hays
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/07/aha-moments-biblical-scholars-tell-their-stories-7-christopher-m-hays/

by Peter Enns
July 11, 2014

Today’s “aha” moments is by Christopher M. Hays (DPhil, New Testament Studies, University of Oxford). After completing his degree, Hays was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow for 3 years, and is now teaching at Fundación Universitaria Seminario Bíblico de Colombia.

Hays thinks a lot about how early Christians believed that money ought to be used, a subject he calls “Christian wealth ethics.” He is the author of Luke’s Wealth Ethics: A Study in Their Coherence and Character (Mohr Siebeck, 2010), and his current research moves beyond the New Testament to investigate the teachings and practices of early Christians in the era before the rise of Constantine. He is also the co-editor (with Christopher B. Ansberry) of Evangelical Faith and the Challenge of Historical Criticism  (SPCK/Baker Academic, 2013).

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Graduate students are willing and eager to do miserably boring jobs for woeful wages. Professors, who also do a lot of boring work for only slightly less woeful wages, are willing and eager to give their grad students the worst of that drudge-work. (It’s called “mentoring.”)

That’s how, in 2003, I found myself naively happy to be cataloguing “textual variants” for 2 Peter, helping my boss and mentor, Gene Green, on his then-forthcoming commentary for Baker. (Not all ancient copies of biblical manuscripts are identical, so scholars have to decide which “variants” are likely to be older, and therefore more likely original.)

Now most textual variants are tremendously insignificant, which is why, when I found a slightly-less-insignificant one in 2 Peter 2:15, I felt a rush of nerd adrenaline.

2 Peter 2:15 mentions false teachers who have gone astray like Balaam, the prophet from Numbers 22:5 who was hired by King Balak to curse the Israelites. Some manuscripts of 2 Peter 2:15 called him “Balaam son of Beor” (which is what Numbers 22:5 calls him); other manuscripts of 2 Peter 2:15 call him “Balaam of Bosor,” which, as we’ll see in a moment, makes no sense at all.

“Beor” is a person’s name; it was the name of Balaam’s dad (his patronymic). Bosor is the name of a city (a.k.a. Bosorra). The problem is: the older, better manuscripts called him “Balaam of Bosor,” but Balaam wasn’t from anywhere near Bosor, which is in the land of Gilead. According to Numbers 22:5, Balaam was from “Pethor, which is on the Euphrates, in the land of Amaw.”

Later copyists, therefore, changed “Bosor” to “Beor” so that the text makes more sense.


So I asked myself, why did the author of 2 Peter call him “Balaam of Bosor”? I poked around, and then an answer suggested itself.

If you are a normal person, reading text criticism is about as much fun as un-sedated dental surgery, but I’m asking you nicely to hang with the next couple of paragraphs to see how I came to understand that the author of 2 Peter was himself confused about a historical detail.

The basic problem is that there was another guy in the Old Testament whose name sounded a lot like Balaam’s. Instead of being “Balaam son of Beor,” his name was “Bela son of Beor.”

The name Beor actually occurs in a genealogy (a king-list) that is copied three times in the Old Testament (Gen 36.33; 1 Cor 1.44; Job 42:17c [LXX only]). That genealogy mentions a king whose name was “Bela son of Beor,” who in turn was succeeded by aguy from the city of Bosorra (Bosor). And in one version of the genealogy (the LXX of Job 42), the king “Bela son of Beor” is actually called “Balak son of Beor”.

Now the King Balak son of Beor in this genealogy is a different King Balak (of Moab) than the one that hired Balaam son of Beor in Numbers. But you can see how people might get confused: same patronymic, similar sounding first names. You’re probably confused already! And so were some ancient Jews.

In fact, when you read the genealogy in ancient Aramaic translations of the Old Testament (the “targums”), which were already popular at the time of Jesus, you can see that they sometimes actually changed the name of King Bela/Balak son of Beor toBalaam son of Beor.

Since there was already a history of confusion over the Balaams and Balaks and Beors in the Numbers story and the genealogy, it seemed really understandable that the author of 2 Peter would be caught up in the flow and reproduce the same mistake.

What more natural way is there to explain the fact that he used “Bosor” instead of “Beor” than to say that he mixed up the patronymic of one person in the genealogy with the similar sounding hometown of the next person in the genealogy?

Yeah, yeah; I know it’s dull stuff. But I was fascinated, and so Prof. Green (who really was and is a brilliant mentor to me) fanned the flame, and helped me produce my first scholarly publication (an insignificant note in Filologia Neotestamentaria; if you are an insomniac, you can look it up here).

It was at that point that my friends started to rain on my parade.

One of my buddies asked, “So, don’t you believe in inerrancy anymore?” I was taken aback. I was pretty sure I still believed in inerrancy. But he explained, no, no I didn’t; after all, I had just said that Peter (no scare-quotes at this point in my life) made a mistake.

(BTW, this totally messes up the silly idea that Scripture is “inerrant in the original autographs”; we of course will never have the original autographs, but in 2 Peter 2:15, for example, the most-original reading we have is the more problematic one; the later manuscripts in 2 Peter 2:15 are the ones that are without error!)

Then came my “Aha” moment: I realized that I thought Peter had made an historical mistake, and I realized that it didn’t make me trust themessage of Scripture less. The agenda of 2 Peter (to say that false prophets in his day were doing bad things, like Balaam did) is not remotely altered by the author’s snafu about Balaam’s surname.

In this case (though not in every case) the veracity of the theological message is in no way dependent upon the historical detail of the Old Testament illustration used to underscore the point. So I saw no reason to doubt 2 Peter’s criticism of the false teachers because of this tiny lacuna in his historical knowledge.

But for a lot of my friends, that wouldn’t be the case. In popular evangelical discourse (such as the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy), the historical and scientific inerrancy of Scripture is adduced as the reason one can trust Scripture’s message about God’s redemption in Christ.

So, if there are historical or scientific errors in the Bible, then the theological veracity of the Bible’s message is also jeopardized.

The conservatives have a point here; we can’t just pretend that historicity is entirely irrelevant to the Bible. The live debate among conservative and liberal Christian scholars has to do with how much historicity the Bible itself claims to possess and how much Christians are obliged to affirm.

We all agree (at least in principle) that inductive research should help us determine which of the portions of the Bible aim to be historical. We all agree (at least in principle) that a biblical text that doesn’t aim to be historical can still be true. For example, none of us will argue that the Parable of the Lost Son (Luke 15:11-32) is “false” even though we all agree—since it is a parable—it never happened in history.

But how much history is there? How much history needs to be there?

I’m inclined to say that lots of texts that evangelicals consider historical probably shouldn’t be read that way (e.g. Gen. 1-11). Nonetheless, lots of biblical texts are still very concerned with substantial historicity the key events. Moreover, the historicity of the events in the Bible does matter for lots of our Christian doctrines. So I don’t think we can make a binary distinction, claiming that the Bible is a purely theological but non-historical book.

We’ve got to be more refined than that, examining the texts of the Bible and the doctrines of the Church on a case-by-case basis to figure out where the points of friction are. (I recently edited a book exploring just this subject, Evangelical Faith and the Challenge of Historical Criticism. Pete was kind enough to post an interview about it here, if you’re curious.)

From a pragmatic point of view, there’s a downside to this nuanced construal of Scripture’s historicity. A definition of Scriptural truth that safeguards all its historical and scientific contents does build a nice fence around our other doctrines. (Muslims have a similar construal of the Qur’an, and it certainly can be useful.)

But the point of my “aha” moment is that the phenomena of Scripture itself don’t seem to support that depiction of Scripture. Scripture cannot bear the weight of the historical demands that many evangelicals place on it.

That sort of realization sometimes causes people to conclude (or fear) that all our other doctrines must be rubbish. But that’s sloppy logic; just because you can’t guarantee the historicity of every genealogical detail doesn’t mean that Jesus’ body is moldering in a tomb somewhere. There’s a ton of middle ground between those extremes, and evangelical biblical scholars (as well as non-evangelical Christian biblical scholars) can and should be (and are!) involved in mapping out that middle ground.

Are there doctrines “at stake” depending on the conclusions that people draw? Sure. But I don’t think our faith is actually well served by distorting the Bible, especially insofar as I think that the Bible is revelatory and true just as it is. As a good friend of mine, David Lincicum, puts it, the job of the Christian biblical scholar is to seek the perfection Scripture has, rather than the perfection we would demand of it.



Thursday, July 10, 2014

Common Questions and Misunderstandings about Classical Arminianism, Part 3




Arminianism FAQ 3 (Everything You Always Wanted to Know…)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/07/arminianism-faq-3-everything-you-always-wanted-to-know/

by Roger Olson
July 9, 2014

FAQ: Doesn’t Arminianism lead to open theism?

Answer (A): Open theists and Calvinists both think so, but classical Arminianism don’t think so.

 According to classical Arminianism, God knows the future exhaustively–as already settled in his own mind although not already determined.

How God can know future free decisions and actions (ones not already determined by anything) is a mystery classical Arminians are willing to live with because they believe it (divine simple foreknowledge without comprehensive divine determinism) is taught in Scripture and because it is the only alternative to other views of God’s foreknowledge they (classical Arminians) cannot embrace.

There is no logical contradiction in this mystery. Every theology includes mysteries at some points. So do the natural sciences.

FAQ: Can an Arminian resolve the mystery of divine foreknowledge with Molinism?

Molinism - "Molinism, named after 16th Century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, is a religious doctrine which attempts to reconcile the providence of God with human free will. William Lane Craig andAlvin Plantinga are some of its best known advocates today, though other important Molinists include Alfred Freddoso and Thomas Flint. In basic terms, Molinists hold that in addition to knowing everything that does or will happen, God also knows what His creatures would freely choose if placed in any circumstance." - Wikipedia

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A: Some classical Arminians think so. Others do not. Two unsettled questions bedevil this intra-Arminian debate:

First, is a philosophical one: Is “counterfactual of libertarian freedom a viable concept?”

Second, is a theological one: “Can God make use of middle knowledge (assuming he has such knowledge) in arranging human affairs without determining them?”

Classical Arminians are divided about these questions and their answers.

FAQ: Doesn’t Arminianism imply that the “decisive element in salvation” is the sinner’s free decision to accept Christ, thereby giving saved persons permission to boast of partially meriting their salvation?

A: No. Under no circumstances would a person freely receiving a free gift be thought to have merited it simply because he/she accepted it. A gift received is still a gift. Everyone knows this.

The only exception is Calvinists who accuse Arminianism of importing merit into the free acceptance of salvation. But those same Calvinists would never allow someone to whom they gave a gift to claim they merited it.

FAQ: Doesn’t Arminianism lead to liberalism in theology?

A: No more than Calvinism does.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, the “father of liberal theology,” was a Calvinist who became liberal without ever embracing Arminianism.

Many, perhaps most, 19th century liberals (in theology) were raised Calvinist and, seeing the damage it does to God’s character, jumped into liberal theology without ever even considering Arminianism.

Evangelical Arminianism is conservative theologically. Some evangelical Arminians are fundamentalists. Most have never been tempted by liberal theology.

There is no logical or historical connection between classical Arminianism and liberal theology.

FAQ: Is the first principle of Arminianism free will?

A: It is not.

The first principle is God revealed in Jesus Christ or, put another way, Jesus Christ as the full and perfect revelation of the character of God.

Arminians only believe in libertarian free will (power of contrary choice) because:

1) It is implied throughout Scripture,
2) It alone preserves God from being monstrous (Calvinism's divine election to hell, etc), and,
3) It is an experienced reality necessary for responsibility.

One might add that it (libertarian free will) was assumed by all the church fathers before Augustine.




Business & Ethics: Google New Anti-Porn Policy Hits the Bottom Line




The corporate giant's stance against explicit content could have Internet-wide ramifications.


Why Google’s New Anti-Porn Policy Is Such a Big Deal
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/why-google%E2%80%99s-new-anti-porn-policy-such-big-deal

July 9, 2014

Last week, Google sent out a letter to many of their advertisers, informing them of their new policy to no longer accept AdWords advertisements containing explicit language or that link to porn sites.

This is a huge deal, and not just because of its implications for users who will no longer see search ads for porn sites. This is a move that could significantly affect Google’s bottom line.

Essentially, Google is getting out of the porn business.

So What Does This Mean?

To clarify, Google isn’t further limiting its search engine’s ability to find and link to adult websites. Instead, with this policy, Google will no longer be profiting from them as their customers. The new rules are directly aimed at excluding porn-peddling from its AdWords campaigns.

As a technology company, Google does a lot of things: They make cool maps; have created the world’s most popular mobile operating system; help you organize emails. They also maintain the Internet’s biggest search engine. But ultimately, Google does one thing very well: They help you find things.

Their entire brand is predicated on people coming to them to help them find things—driving directions, email contacts, funny videos—more easily. It’s also their business model.

How Do Google's Ads Work?

BY ALLOWING ADS TO PORN SITES, GOOGLE WAS ESSENTIALLY
MAKING MONEY DIRECTLY OFF OF PEOPLE GOING TO LOOK AT PORN.
THAT IS, UNTIL NOW.

If you’re not familiar with how AdWords work, it’s a simple concept: Customers can create small, text-based ads linking to their website that will appear along with the organic results when a user searches for designated terms. (They are the links that appear on the side and top of the page when you Google something.) The more specific and in-demand the terms themselves are (and, depending on how much custom demographic targeting you want to include) the more expensive they are. Advertisers pay Google a small amount every time someone clicks on the ad. Ideally, everyone wins: The advertisers get a customer looking for their website, and customers find what they are looking for.

AdsWords are also extremely profitable for Google. A 2012 study estimated that the company made $100 million a day just from AdWords campaigns.

But, by allowing ads to porn sites, Google was essentially making money directly off of people going to look at porn. That is, until now.

What Is Google Giving Up?

It’s hard to know how much money this new policy will cost Google. But, considering some stats estimate that 12 percent of all websites contain pornography, and 25 percent of all search engine requests are porn-related, the number could be massive.

How Is This Different?

GOOGLE IS SHOWING THAT IT IS WILLING TO SACRIFICE A LARGE CHUNK
OF CONSTANT REVENUE IN ORDER TO NO LONGER PROFIT FROM THE PROLIFERATION OF PORNOGRAPHY.

It should be noted that this isn’t Google’s first action against porn. They recently banned the sale of apps that contain pornographic material from being sold for Glass, and have invested substantially in fighting child porn.

The AdWords policy though—which actually first changed in March—is different.

Their efforts in partnering with law enforcement to find Internet users who exploit children is admirable, but it isn’t a threat to its business model. With this new stand, Google is showing that it is willing to sacrifice a large chunk of constant revenue in order to no longer profit from the proliferation of pornography on the Internet.


Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change, Part 7 - Christopher W. Skinner


Christopher W. Skinner

“aha” moments: biblical scholars tell their stories (6): Christopher W. Skinner
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/07/aha-moments-biblical-scholars-tell-their-stories-6-christopher-w-skinner/

by Peter Enns
July 9, 2014

Today’s “aha” moment–the 6th in the series–is by Christopher W. Skinner (PhD, Catholic University of America), Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Mount Olive in North Carolina. Skinner is the author or editor of 6 books, including John and Thomas: Gospels in Conflict?: Johannine Characterization and the Thomas Question (Wipf and Stock), What Are They Saying About the Gospel of Thomas? (Paulist), and Characters and Characterization in the Gospel of John (T & T Clark). His current book project is Reading John and will be published in the Cascade Companions series. He blogs, along with Nijay Gupta, at Crux Sola.

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I was raised in a tiny town in southeastern Virginia where I spent much of my childhood inside the small Southern Baptist church nestled at the corner of Chesapeake Avenue and Guerriere Street. From the earliest age I was taught to love and revere the Bible—that it was the repository of everything God wanted us to know and do in this world.

In addition to affirming its truthfulness and authoritative status, we used terms like “inerrant” and “infallible” to describe the Bible. We were fond of saying things like, “The Bible is a perfect description of our realities and the perfect prescription for our ailments.”

The Bible was always correct in whatever it affirmed, and if a situation arose in which the Bible appeared to be incorrect, this discrepancy could easily be answered by those who knew more than I did. Any apparent inconsistency could be explained, resolved, or harmonized if given the right amount of time and attention.

This perspective carried me through my time in undergraduate school, where I involved myself heavily in a campus para-church group, and even my early days in vocational ministry where I served as an overseas missionary with the same organization.

In those early days, there were few challenges—either internally or externally—to my received convictions about the Bible. But as I entered seminary and began to immerse myself in the study of ancient languages, the history of interpretation, and other complex areas of inquiry, a nascent sense of cognitive dissonance began to emerge.

I had been led to believe that there was something like a one-to-one correspondence between what I read in the Bible and what I saw in the world, but my own experience seemed to contradict this.

In fact, when first learning about how to “do” theology, we were introduced to the Wesleyan Quadrilateral—the idea that we must keep Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience in dialogue while constructing our theologies.

We were cautioned that, above all, the Bible MUST play the most important role of the four.

My problem was that my personal experiences and my own (admittedly feeble) attempts at reason very often disagreed with what the Bible seemed to be saying.

During my second year in seminary, I began a love affair with the Gospels from which I have yet to recover. I began to read them all the time in English, and as my skills improved, in Greek. I read every commentary I could get my hands on and trolled the campus and local bookstores for other books that could help me better understand these four texts.

At this time, I began to experience an even greater sense of cognitive dissonance. In these Gospels I was seeing four very different, yet very compelling portraits of Jesus.

At times the differences were so great that I felt they might never be harmonized. However, I remained resolute in my conviction that any discrepancy I might find was either the result of my ignorance, my inattention to the text, or my own personal sinfulness.

In short, I found myself constantly doubting the veracity of the Bible I had been taught to trust implicitly, and there was no little guilt associated with these doubts.

If only I could have had more faith….a faith that would have allowed me to believe through my doubts.

One of the most poignant epiphanies came during my third year of seminary in an upper-level class called, “Exegesis of Gospel Narrative.” The course was team-taught by two members of our New Testament faculty—one a Synoptic specialist (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and the other a scholar of John’s Gospel.

The class was illuminating in so many ways. We were introduced to Jewish backgrounds to the Gospels, philological concerns, and important insights from 19th century German scholarship.

However, there was still a baseline assumption that for all of their “perceived” differences, these four Gospels could (and should) be harmonized. On the side, I had also begun reading the work of Alan Culpepper and the early NT narrative critics, an exercise that was contrasting sharply with my experience in class.

It was in this class that I ran into my first truly insurmountable problem. Since I had always been taught about the Bible’s coherence and internal consistency, I thought, “Surely the New Testament gives us reliable information about Jesus’ origins?”

This meant that despite my misgivings, there had to be a way to reconcile the conflicting genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3.

From Abraham to Jesus, Matthew lists only 41 names while Luke lists 57. At the time I thought Matthew’s omission of names must be some kind of rhetorical device. However, more problematic for me was the realization that of the 41 names Matthew and Luke should have had in common, they agree on only 17.

How could this be? Surely this level of disagreement was something more than a rhetorical device?

Whenever I raised this question, one solution that evangelical friends and commentators alike continued to affirm was that one genealogy recounts the line of Mary while the other recounts the line of Joseph. However, this solution was immediately unacceptable to me since both texts clearly indicate that the lineage is being traced through Joseph (if you doubt this, please see Matt 1:16 and Luke 3:23).

I also spent considerable time researching the history of scholarship on this issue only to realize that it was not just a problem for my 21st century historiographical sensibilities. As early as Julius Africanus in 225 CE, this contradiction had been a serious problem for commentators on the Gospels.

I wasn’t the only one who saw this problem for what it was—a REAL problem—and I cannot tell you the relief that realization was. I had been wracked with guilt and confusion this whole time.

Finally, I decided to approach the Synoptic specialist in the class—an individual I greatly respect, who is both a brilliant scholar and a man of tremendous Christian conviction. When I told him my concern, he replied that the best solution was to regard one genealogy as Mary’s and the other as Joseph’s.

I objected to this facile solution by pointing to the details of actual text. His response was simple: “We need to trust the Bible even when we don’t understand, even when it seems to be contradicting itself.” Not only did this seem to me like an easy answer, it smacked of the same sort of intellectual dishonesty I had been taught to avoid at all costs.

This was a travesty. I had been taught to ferret out every exegetical nugget, to mine every nook and cranny for insights into the text. I had spent hours and hours learning Greek, textual criticism, and numerous other exegetical skills, only to be told to abandon them when I ran into a problem that contradicted my overarching approach to the Bible.

This was the beginning of the end of my rigid reading of the Bible.

The “aha” moments began to come with increasing frequency and intensity over the next few years. I am genuinely thankful for that moment because it allowed me to begin the process of reading the Bible without my hands tied behind my back.

The assumption (and protection) of a unified, harmonious, problem-free reading of the Bible is endemic to the life of most evangelical Bible readers. However, the Bible we have—as opposed to one we want or are often led to believe we have—does not fall into line with that assumption.

When we ignore or explain away these problems, we do ourselves, our churches, and future generations of Bible readers a serious injustice.

I have come to think that defending the Bible as inerrant is more about maintaining an identity than it is about searching for truth. I like to tell my students that one of my goals is to help them “eschew the culture of easy-answerism.” One of the best ways to do this is to study Scripture together without flinching and let them know that they have nothing to fear.



Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change, Part 6 - Charles Halton


Charles Halton

“aha” moments: biblical scholars tell their stories (5): Charles Halton
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/07/aha-moments-biblical-scholars-tell-their-stories-5-charles-halton/

by Peter Enns
July 7, 2014

Today’s “aha” moment is the 5th in our series and brought to you by Charles Halton (PhD Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion), assistant professor of theology at Houston Baptist University.

Halton is the managing editor of Marginalia and just completed editing Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither?: Three Views on the Bible’s Earliest Chapters (Zondervan, February, 2015). He is working on several other projects, one of which is with co-author Saana Svärd The First Female Authors: An Anthology of Women’s Writing from Mesopotamia (Cambridge, forthcoming). His essays have appeared in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament, Cuneiform Digital Library Notes, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Bulletin for Biblical Research, and Books & Culture. He lives with his wife and daughter in Louisville, Kentucky. Charles tweets from the incredibly creative handle @charleshalton and virtually resides at www.charleshalton.com.

Halton’s “aha” moment will be familiar to many who have studied Genesis–and for that very reason is worth raising…again and again.

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When I was in seminary I was told that if I wanted to learn of the origins of the universe and how humans came to be, then I needed to consult the Bible, and most specifically, the book of Genesis. On questions of science and history, they said, the Bible is entirely accurate. Furthermore, they continued, at no point should scientific discoveries change the way we understand the Bible’s clear, unified story concerning the origins of the world.

In this last point, my professors were merely recapitulating the view expressed in theChicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a document that professors at many conservative Evangelical schools must agree with. Article twelve of the statement includes this assertion: “We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.”

As a young and eager seminary student this made sense to me, particularly when I considered the syllogistic reasoning that often went with it: God spoke the Bible, God always is true, therefore, the Bible is true in all it says including its teaching on the origin of the world. Fair enough, that made sense.

Until I read the Bible.

What I found out, when I paid attention to the details, is that there is no one, singular teaching on creation in Scripture. There are several creation narratives and they conflict with one another. And they conflict on the most superficial level—the order of creation.

For me—like so many others have done—all I needed to do was read the first two chapters of the Bible, the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2.

Genesis 1 presents the world as created in six days. If we take the sequence literally, things are created in this order: light, sky, earth, plants, stars and sun and moon, aquatic animals, birds, land animals, and, finally humans in large number. In other words, humans—and many of them—are created last.

But when we come to Genesis 2, the one human (Adam) is created first, even before plants had grown (Gen 2:5). After the human is made, God sows a garden and plants begin to sprout. After this, God begins the process of identifying a suitable companion for the human.

At this point, it gets a bit tricky if you are reading the Bible in translation. One of the difficulties in studying the Bible is that modern translations sometimes obscure what the Bible really says.

In most cases, the translators have good motives for this and they believe they are doing their readers a favor—making the text more clear and steering them away from error. In many cases this is entirely appropriate and is beneficial.

But then there’s Genesis 2:19. This is where God is trying to find a companion for the human, and so he forms the animals (maybe that will provide a suitable companion for the human?).

Genesis 2:19 reads, “So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the sky….” This conflicts with Genesis 1 where the animals were already created (days 5 and 6) before the humans were.

Two of the most popular translations within the Evangelical world—the ESV and NIV—obscure the natural flow of the passage. The Hebrew verb is a “narrative preterite,” which indicates sequential action (e.g., “and then this happened”). But these translations say “had formed”—i.e., “had previously formed” back in Genesis 1.

In other words, “had formed” is a translation aimed at harmonizing the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2, thus reconciling the contradiction between them. In doing so, these translations opt for a rather forced reading of the Hebrew. (For what it’s worth, ancient Greek versions render this verb with the construction kai + an aorist verb, which shows that they interpreted the verb as a narrative preterite and not as a pluperfect. The KJV also translates it as “formed.”)

Once I saw these conflicting accounts of creation I was fearful. The entire artifice I had learned, which asserted that the Bible alone has the true story of the scientific origins of the world collapsed. If the biblical authors couldn’t agree on the sequence of creation, how could I trust the rest of what they said?

But then, through the help of some very patient friends, I began to understand that God communicates to us in the forms that make up our contextual environment, such as language and culture. It could be no other way.

And this applies to the biblical authors as well. They were people who lived in a pre-scientific age for which discussion of big bangs, the speed of light, and genetic codes would have made no sense. They explored the nature of the universe with the tools that were available to them—the literary forms and tropes of their day, their observations of nature, and their religious understandings.

The authors of Scripture were not concerned, as many are today, about conflicting orders of creation—they put them side by side for goodness sake! This reveals, at least to me, that Scripture begins not with a scientific treatise but with two theological stories. And as we turn to Scripture’s pages we should separate the theological messages of its authors from the accouterments of their cultural context. The fact that the author of Genesis 1 had no knowledge of the human genome nor astrophysics does not diminish the worth of their theological vision. At the same time, we are not required to believe that the earth was created in six days when every single facet of the scientific study of nature tells us otherwise.

I think it is exciting that, in Christian confession, God speaks to us through the writings of people long dead. Instead of trying to change the word of God to accommodate our expectations, the voices of Scripture call us to think beyond our own cultural contexts and contemplate what it has meant and what it now means to follow after God in the myriad of contexts in which the people of God live. This challenges us even on the level of the expectations we bring to our study of the Bible. Should we really prize philosophical consistency and weed out contradiction if the biblical authors saw no need to?

It is also exciting that we as humans have the freedom and capability to study the Scriptures and in them learn of our life with God and also to explore the world that God has made and try to figure out how it came to be. But with this freedom comes great responsibility. Interpreting the Bible well is difficult and we will constantly disagree with one another as we do it.


* * * * * * * * * * *





a brief word on my current series “aha moments from biblical scholars”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/07/a-brief-word-on-my-current-series-aha-moments-from-biblical-scholars/

by Peter Enns
July 6, 2014


I’ve gotten a lot of very positive feedback from many of you, which is always encouraging to hear. I’ve also gotten some messages from pastors and doctoral students who have had their own “aha” moments in their study of Scripture.

It was an oversight on my part to restrict this series to biblical scholars, and so I am broadening the field to include others who have had some formal training in biblical studies (i.e., involving the study of original languages and ancient contexts) and whose view of the Bible has been significantly affected as a result of their study.

Pastors (some of whom also have earned doctorates) have a great existential crisis because their “aha” moments are never too distant from their pastoral responsibilities. Their stories can be quite compelling for this reason.

So just letting you know that as this intermittent series continues (I will post contributions as they come in), you will be seeing pastors and students contributing.

Have a blessed Sunday.



Index to Series -

Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change

Rethinking Hell: Evangelical Conditionalism (Annihilationism), Part 2


Clark Pinnock

Clark Pinnock’s Outrageous Doctrine
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/07/09/clark-pinnocks-outrageous-doctrine/

by Scot McKnight
edits to article by R.E. Slater
Jul 9, 2014

"Eternal Torment" Began with Augustine

Well-known evangelical — originally conservative and then more progressive — Clark Pinnock came to view eternal conscious punishment (ECT - eternal conscious torment) as an “outrageous doctrine” (Rethinking Hell, 60).

He begins his famous essay with Augustine upon whom he lays responsibility for the traditionalist view:

Augustine believed God would torment sinners/the wicked mentally, psychologically and physically endlessly — and when Augustine was challenged how that could happen without their being destroyed, Augustine believed God would ongoingly perform miracles to keep them alive.

Puritan Reformer Jonathan Edwards Continued Augustine's View

Quoting John Gerstner, Jonathan Edwards believed the same.

Pinnock thinks this is like the person who delights in watching a cat being tortured in a microwave and taking delight in it.

Pinnock sees no reason to soften hell into blaming the person or talking about diminishment (which seems to have CS Lewis in view). Augustine was enough of a determinist/predestinationist that human responsibility wasn’t the escape on this doctrine; God chose and God didn’t choose [sic, Calvinistic doctrine of Election], and those whom God didn’t choose are those God has chosen to torment endlessly.

"My, I just don’t know people can believe this sort of thing."

Pinnock says Edwards would simply respond that we “think God as more loving and merciful than he actually is…” and “torturing the wicked presents no problem to God” but he observes that Edwards himself simply did not say things that his system affirmed, so Gerstner — an Edwards student — clarified what Edwards taught.

To accuse the critics of the traditional view of sentimentality won’t work

Pinnock asks right back: “What drives my opponent? Is it hard-heartedness and the desire for eternal retribution?” (60). “Surely,” he says, “a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God” (60).... Here he appeals to ordinary human standards, which if we reject we tend to reject rational thinking.

He asks again, “Does the one who told us to love our enemies intend to wreak vengeance on his own enemies for all eternity?” (60).

Not a Matter of Sentimentality or Liberalism

This is not a matter of sentimentality or liberalism, in spite of what folks like J.I. Packer have said.

Notice this view is held by folks who, on all other doctrines, are considered straight-laced: J.W. Wenham, J.R.W. Stott, P.E. Hughes, S. Travis and E. Fudge.

That kind of knife cuts both ways. Truth is not determined by those who believe something but by what the text says. Pinnock thinks things went wrong from Augustine onwards, and [since] the man was wrong on a number of [other doctrinal] fronts perhaps [he also was] on this one.

[Thus,] we are back to the standard conclusions: the Bible’s emphasis is the idea of destruction, not eternal, conscious torment:


“At the very least it should be obvious,” - Pinnock concludes after marshalling the basics
on destruction-perishing in the Bible - “to any impartial reader that the Bible may legitimately
be read to teach the final destruction of the wicked without difficulty” (65).

I’d like to see how folks respond to this claim: Does the language of destruction at least suggest the possibility of reading the Bible as teaching final destruction? What evidence counters his view?

Pinnock thinks conditional immortality is not the best way to frame [the discussion of hell], but the Platonic theory of the immortality-of-the-soul is at the core of ECT.

[Hence,] Pinnock's view is one of annihilationism.

In review

1 - ECT makes God “a bloodthirsty monster” (67).

2 - Softening hell won’t solve the theodicy: it makes a theodicy hopeless (theodicy = why a good God permits evil). (Hodge and Warfield sought to minimize the numbers; CS Lewis focused on human responsibility).

3 - Unending punishment is pointless in a theory of justice. It is crude retribution.

4 - Does ECT not suggest an eternal cosmological dualism?



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