Since people round here seem to be celebrating Reformation Day and Halloween with almost equal enthusiasm and little sense of any inherent irony, I thought I'd join in with at least part of the celebration.

This celebrates a great and little-known Reformation figure - Katherine Luther (HT: Pete Jackson).

On an unrelated point, I notice that the 5000 copies of Garry's Da Vinci Code booklet have been moved. The power of the blog?

Huge apologies for not having posted on this for a while. The next section of text is now up with some vocab helps and grammar questions.

If you haven't checked it out yet, you can find it here. Everyone's welcome to join in, add comments and share translation problems/solutions.

It's not too late to sign up for this here though it may be too late to produce a careful and detailed plan.

I seem to have signed up despite promising myself I wouldn't, since time is hardly sufficient to do the things I ought to be doing. But it just seemed like such a good idea...

I can't imagine I'll produce anything worth reading but you never know. Apparently one or two NaNoWriMo novels have been published and done well. Hmm.

Oh, and the 'National' in the title is meaningless. International participants are welcomed. Just in case you thought that let you off the hook.

I've just booked flights from Philadelphia to Manchester arriving on Tuesday 19th Dec and leaving on Thursday 28th Dec.

Hooray!

Tonight I went to a Women of Westminster Faculty Lecture. I haven't been to the rest of the series, but I couldn't resist tonight's topic:

The Gardener-King of Creation: Adam in his Ancient Near Eastern Setting.
(With some other stuff on the king as builder!)

(Now who does that remind you of??!!)

Doug Green gave us lots of examples from ANE texts to show how building and gardening were royal peacetime activities which demonstrated their unchallenged dominion over their enemies.

Which is interesting when we come to Genesis. Doug suggested three ways that the Gen 2 account points to Adam's kingly role:

(i) Adam as a gardener (v15)
(ii) Adam naming the animals (v19-20)
(iii) Adam's formation from dust (v7; see 1 Kings 16:1-3 for this as a metaphor for enthronement and also consider the reverse metaphor, dethronement = being swept away like dust).

And then Doug took us to John's account of the resurrection. Note especially 19:41, the garden setting and 20:15 the appearance as a gardener. And remember the whole context of John's gospel as a re-writing of the creation history from 'In the beginning' to 'It is finished'. The resurrection (which John keeps telling us happened on the first day of the week) is the first day of the new creation, and Jesus appears as the new Adam, in the form of a gardener.

So, it seems to me, the implication is that when we receive dominion and are given our royal robes and crowns to wear, and when the battle is won and all the enemies destroyed so that we're living in peacetime, we'll be engaging in royal peacetime activities: building and gardening.

Better start practising now!

Garry Williams ("Principal of Oak Hill College") may be disappointed to learn that sales figures for his booklet on the Da Vinci Code have been artificially inflated by the large stock being kept under a blue blanket at Westminster. I inadvertently pulled a corner of the blanket which was hiding the books in an unobtrusive corner of Van Til, opposite the soft drinks machine and under the coat rail and was amazed (and amused) to see thousands of the familiar booklet stacked up waist high and clearly unread.

Sorry, Garry.

The leaves are turning and on sunny days it looks beautiful. This is the tree I can see from my bedroom window:

And this is the pumpkin we carved on Saturday:

There are a lot of pumpkins of all sizes and colours around at the moment. Some people even have huge inflatable pumpkins lit up in their gardens. Which is at least preferable to the graves, skeletons and vampires that other people seem to think are fun to decorate their houses and gardens with.

This is our house. We have the top floor (first for my British readers, second for the Americans). There isn't always a man on a ladder.

And this is my car. Notice the absence of a front numberplate - doesn't it look strange?

Robert Jenson again:

It is universal among humankind that, second to sexual intercourse, eating together is the most binding communal act.

Now read Song of Songs 5:1

Robert Jenson in 'Visible Words' suggests that

there would be reason to identify a Christian as someone who regularly joins a meal-fellowship of bread and loving-cup, to give thanks for Jesus.

Of course, he doesn't specify how regularly...

Here's the first few lines of the text we're translating in Ugaritic this week:

ktmefBltnBbAnBbrx
tklyBbAnBoqltn
vlytBdBvbotBracm

Roughly translated, this gives something like:

When you [i.e. Baal] killed the sea-dragon [Litan], the fleeing serpent,
destroyed the twisting serpent, the seven-headed tyrant...

Now have a look at Isaiah 27:1

In that day, the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.

Coincidence?

At church yesterday we had the fourth (?) in a series of sermons thinking about the church's vision for the city.  One of the key texts driving this vision has been Jeremiah 29:7 

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Yesterday's sermon specifically addressed the task of praying for the city.  The preacher suggested that the Jewish exiles would have known how to pray for the city by virtue of the prayers they used for Jerusalem.  So the example of Psalm 122 was taken, with a focus on vv.6-9:

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
May they be secure who love you!
Peace be within your walls
and security within your towers!
For my brothers and companions' sake
I will say "Peace be within you!"
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your good.

Now, it's true that the word for 'welfare' in Jer 29 and for 'peace' in Ps 122 are the same: shalom. 

But it seems to me that there are serious problems with suggesting that the prayer for Babylon should be modelled on the prayer for Jerusalem. 

Just a few psalms later, the exiles express the different ways they relate to Jerusalem and Babylon (Ps 136):

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion."

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, "Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!"
O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!

There is a fundamental difference between Babylon and Jerusalem.  The two are consistently opposed throughout the bible story.  One cannot be substituted for the other.  Babylon can never become Jerusalem, the place of peace and security, because Babylon is not the home of the Lord.  Babylon does not have the temple of which Ps 122 speaks with such joy.  Babylon is the place destined to be 'thrown down with violence.'  In Babylon 'was found the blood of the prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth'.  (Revelation 18:21, 24)

Now, to be fair to the preacher, he did suggest other ways in which Ps 122 could be prayed - for the historical city of Jerusalem; for the spiritual Jerusalem, the church; for the heavenly Jerusalem.  But he was very clear that an appropriate application would be to pray Ps 122 for Babylon - and by extension, whatever city we are 'exiled' to, e.g. Philadelphia.

But my reading of the bible suggests that such a prayer is an invalid application of Ps 122 to Jeremiah 29.  Certainly the exiles were exhorted by Jeremiah not to treat the city of their exile with hostility and to pray for its shalom.  They had to learn to make their home their and to make the best of it.  They were to engage in its society and influence it for good insofar as they were able.  But to pray for it as if it were Jerusalem?  As if it could be a place of true security and wellbeing?  Without the presence of God in its midst?  Surely not.

I am now the proud owner of a silver, 1995 Mazda 626. It's a manual which is very rare round here and takes a little getting used to changing gear with my right hand. But otherwise it's just fantastic to have anything! I had begun to despair of ever getting this far and I'm so relieved and excited to finally have a car again and some feeling of independence.

So thanks to Susan, Ed, Kevin, Liz, Jeff, Trina, Patty, Joe, Jen, Lynn, Marcella, Jeff, Diana, Karyn, Mark, Laura and probably lots of other people I've forgotten who've helped me get the car and/or given me lots of lifts over the last couple of months.

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while but I keep getting distracted by it...

One of the things that's extraordinary about TV in America is which British shows they have. On Sunday evenings you can watch, very appropriately Poirot and Midsomer Murders. But the other programmes that are regularly available are Cash in the Attic, Masterchef, Last of the Summer Wine, Keeping up Appearances, My Family, and (most inexplicably of all), Benny Hill.

By contrast, Spooks (which is known here as MI-5) was cancelled after two episodes of the latest series. Why?

Why?

Why?

The other things I've noticed are how you can have several hundred channels regularly showing nothing of any interest at all and how you can, if you really try, squeeze at least a dozen ad breaks into any given hour of TV. I tried watching the US equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing but when we had ads between the dance and the judging, between the judging and the scoring, between the scoring and the next couple, and between the video clips of the couple and their dance, I switched off in utter frustration.

Which strikes me as self-defeating on the part of the advertisers!

David Peterson has announced that he will be stepping down as Principal of Oak Hill Theological College at the end of this academic year. (See here). He will be much missed and difficult to replace but perhaps one of the esteemed readers of this blog would like to step up to the mark?

So, when I got up this morning I thought the likelihood of me getting a car today was minimal. And, as it turns out, I was right. But what I hadn't expected was that I should be able to get it tomorrow morning.

After two trips to the Drivers' Licence Centre and one interview with the most unhelpful man in America, I now have my Non-drivers Photo ID card which is sufficient, with my proof of insurance, to allow me to buy a car.

But the car salesman is out of the office this afternoon. So he's expecting me at 9.30 tomorrow morning and then, if all goes well, I should be driving my Mazda home.

Hooray!

From 'The Art of Reading Scripture' (See previous post for bibliographical info.)

1. Scripture truthfully tells the story of God's action of creating, judging, and saving the world.
2. Scripture is rightly understood in light of the church's rule of faith as a coherent dramatic narrative.
3. Faithful interpretation of Scripture requires an engagement with the entire narrative: the New Testament cannot be rightly understood apart from the Old, nor can the Old be rightly understood apart from the New.
4. Texts of Scripture do not have a single meaning limited to the intent of the original author. In accord with Jewish and Christian traditions, we affirm that Scripture has multiple complex senses given by God, the author of the whole drama.
5. The four canonical gospels narrate the truth about Jesus.
6. Faithful interpretation of Scripture invites and presupposes participation in the community brought into being by God's redemptive action - the church.
7. The saints of the church provide guidance in how to interpret and perform Scripture.
8. Christians need to read the Bible in dialogue with diverse others outside the church.
9. We live in the tension between the "already" and the "not yet" of the kingdom of God; consequently, Scripture calls the church to ongoing discernment, to continually fresh rereadings of the text in light of the Holy Spirit's ongoing work in the world.

I think they're pretty good. What do you reckon?

I've just bought and am very excited about starting to read 'The Art of Reading Scripture' (ed. Ellen Davis and Richard Hays, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

In their introduction, the editors explain how the book arose out of a seminar including scholars and pastors with specialisms including OT, NT, systematics, church history and parish ministry.

As one member of the group remarked, at one time the church's great interpreters of Scripture (such as Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and Luther) did not think of themselves narrowly as specialists in Old or New Testament or in theology or church history; for them the interpretation of the Bible was a seamlesly integrated theological activity that spoke directly to the needs of the church. Thus what we were doing, he joked, was assembling a group of fifteen specialists to function corporately as a "Complete Theologian".

I think it's a laudible project to get specialists in different branches of theology talking to each other. But I also think it's a little sad that we feel the need to make specialists in the first place. Shouldn't we all be seeking to be 'Complete Theologians' rather than what I think David Field used to call 'Monster Theologians' with one part wildly swollen and others barely existent?

I was encouraged that when Doug Green was inaugurated as full professor here last week, he was given the title 'Professor of Old Testament and Biblical Theology' which seems to be at least a nod in the direction of a broadening interest.

(Yes, all right, of course I mean the new heavens and the new earth...)

It's going to be great, isn't it? That was my profound thought for today while I was washing up and giving thanks for the flat but also wishing for a proper home where I can settle down forever. And one day, I'll have one.

Yesterday I finally got my medical form for my drivers licence application signed and this morning I took the theory test and am now the proud owner of a Pennsylvania Learners' Permit.

Boo!

But when I then came to schedule my practical test I found that all those airy 'you can do it the next day' comments were only true in theory. The first available slot isn't till November 8th. Hmm.

So we'll see. Maybe the learner's permit will be enough to buy the car. Or maybe I'll be stranded for another 3 weeks.

'Phyllis Tickle' reviewing 'Real Sex: the naked truth about chastity'

I also note in the same catalogue, this title which may be of interest to some...

'How to be the best Christian study group leader ever in the whole history of the universe'

Can you afford not to read it?

The reviewer adds the slightly less ambitious summary: 'Christian educators are provided with the perspective and the tools they need to be effective as small study group leaders.'

I notice in the latest theological books catalogue I've picked up that there is now a 'Four Views' book on 'The Nature of the Atonement'. Joel Green has contributed a chapter on 'Kaleidescopic' (sic - not sure if this is his spelling or the reviewer's) atonement.

Whatever next, I wonder?

What's odd is that the four views listed: Christus Victor, Kaleidoscopic, Healing and Penal Substitution are neither exhaustive (what about governmental theories, satisfaction theories and so on) nor mutually exclusive (though, of course, without reading Green it's hard to be certain on this).

So perhaps some systematician would like to read Green, summarize and then comment here for the benefit of the rest of us? Steve Jeffery or Andrew Sach, perhaps?

So yesterday I finally had the geological field trip which Jeff has been promising (threatening?) since I got here. Ostensibly we were just going to collect some rocks to put in a turtle tank but once we were out in the country there was no stopping him.

First we went to a creek to collect the stones. It was really very beautiful, in the woods, with just a shallow stream running over the characteristic red rocks of the area. The erosion of the rocks formed them into almost perfect rectangles so that the bed of the stream appeared almost like paving stone, with the water forced into straight channels with right-angled bends. I'd never seen anything quite like it in nature and wished I was still young enough to paddle.

Then we drove around a bit (following the compass, rather than any actual road map) on our way to Ringing Rocks Park. This gave us the opportunity to drive through several covered bridges (like the ones in the film, 'Bridges of Madison County) which are very cute. You can see photos of the ones we drove through and others here (though you'll need to scroll down a bit). We drove along the side of the Delaware River for a bit which is apparently a fun place to visit in the summer but not so good in flood season.

At Ringing Rocks Park we regretted not bringing a hammer to hit the rocks ourselves but fortunately everyone else who was visiting had remembered theirs, so we could hear the ringing sound quite clearly. Boulder Field is the main attraction. It's a field of boulders. It is more impressive than it sounds (yes, I know, you're thinking it would need to be!) You can see pictures here (though there wasn't any snow yesterday). We did trek down to the waterfall to allow Jeff to do some more rock climbing/searching/explaining-the-underlying-geology while we watched from a safe distance and then clambered back through the woods, eschewing the safe, easy trail we'd come down.

So our 'hour and a half, two hours max' trip took five hours, most of which was fun and interesting. And at least Bowser the turtle can breathe again.

of the poetic kind, can be found here courtesy of Matthew Mason.

The name of Jesus is not only light but food also, yea oil, without which all the food of the soul is dry: salt, without which as a condiment, whatever is set before us is insipid; in fine, honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, joy in the heart, and, at the same time, medicine; every discourse where His name is not heard is absurd.

Bernard (I presume of Clairvaux, though it doesn't specify) certainly had a way with words.

Taken from 'Calvin on the Word and the Sacrament', Ronald S. Wallace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957)

or so says David Field

Me? I bless God for the Americans I've met who've befriended me and helped me and been kind to me and loved me.

And for those who are faithfully seeking to teach me God's word.

And for those who are just fun to be with.

But not for those whose entire purpose seems to be to make bureaucracy and frustrate the world with red tape (Penndot, you know who you are).

My friend Angharad gave me a copy of this prayer about 12 years ago when we were undergraduates. I've just pinned the copy she wrote, beautifully decorated with pink flowers, onto my new pinboard. Suddenly the room feels like home.

My God, thou hast helped me see that whatever good be in honour and rejoicing,
how good is he who gives them and can withdraw them;
that blessedness does not lie so much
in receiving good from and in thee,
but in holding forth thy glory and virtue...
that nothing is good but thee;
that I am near good when I am near thee,
that to be like thee is a glorious things:
This is my magnet, my attraction.

Thou art all my good in time of peace,
my only support in time of trouble,
my one sufficiency when life shall end.
Help me to see how good thy will is in all,
and even when it crosses mine
teach me to be pleased with it.
Grant me to feel thee in fire and food and every providence
and to see that thy many gifts and creatures
are but thy hands and fingers taking hold of me.

Thou bottomless fountain of good, I give myself to thee out of love,
for all I have or own is thine to do with as thou wilt,
to honour thyself by me and by all mine.
If it be consistent with thy eternal counsel,
the purpose of thy grace and the great ends of thy glory,
then bestow upon me the blessings of thy comforts.
If not, let me resign myself to thy wiser determination.

Amen.

I'm trying to buy a car. This is harder than you might think given that I have found a car I want and can afford.

First there's the issue of insurance. I have a UK drivers' licence and an international permit. Pennsylvania proudly proclaims that it will honour this for 1 year. But the insurance companies aren't quite so certain. However, I have found someone who will insure me once she gets information from my insurance company in the UK. So that's good.

But then there's the issue of registering the vehicle. For which, apparently, you need a US licence. Or, to be honest a PA licence. I believe even people from other states have to reapply within 60 days (though not take tests). The wonders of the federal system.

So now it gets complicated. To apply for a learners' permit I have to have a medical, an eye test and two proofs of residency (and a whole lot of other stuff too). If I can get all this together, I then have to take a written and finally a practical test. Which includes parallel parking. On the 'wrong' side of the road. Great.

And I'm left wondering in what way precisely does PA honour an international licence? Answers on a postcard.

All this in a place that assumes everyone has a car.

Ben Witherington blogs about last week's shootings in the Amish country.

Inspired by the Daily Hebrew site I blogged about recently, I have created a similar site for keeping up with the Greek. You can find it here. It's a Live Journal page which I found was the easiest place to post Greek text. It allows for comments too, which inspired me to think that this might work as a kind of 'virtual Greek lunch' in which we translate, discuss and help each other work through some portion of the New Testament.

So I've posted a few verses from Romans 1 with a couple of vocab helps, grammar and some questions to get us going.

Feel free just to use the site for your own Greek practice, but if you'd like the help and encouragement of others then post your own translation of all or part of the passage. Any standard from beginner to expert most welcome - be kind to each other! Reflections on the theological significance of our discussions also encouraged, but tangents will be cut off and re-directed (eventually).

Sadly, what we won't be providing is the overcooked pasta needed to recreate the atmosphere of the original.