Westminster Bookstore has just established a very wonderful scheme to advertise its services in the blog world. For every 50 people who click to a WTS books link from this blog, I will earn a $10 gift token. Oh yes. I believe they have checks in place to make sure that I (or anyone else) don't just sit here clicking for credit all day - they have to be genuine people. You don't, however, have to buy anything for the scheme to work.

Sadly, there is no international shipping facility. However, it is still a great place for my UK readers to check out the best of the best in reformed theology and other American Christian literature. Where else can you see what Sinclair Ferguson and Tremper Longman recommend should be on every pastor's bookshelf?

This may be of interest.

Here is a sure-footed guide to the message of the cross – and therefore to Christ himself, and ultimately to God the Trinity.

Sinclair B. Ferguson

As a biblical scholar, I enthusiastically commend the authors for their careful exegesis... From this point on, critics... must interact with the arguments of this book.

Tremper Longman III

This book is important not only because it deals so competently with what lies at the heart of Christ's cross work, but because it responds effectively to a new generation of people who are not listening very carefully to what either Scripture or history says. One of the delightful features of this book is reflected in the subtitle: the authors make no apology for their thesis, but underscore the glory of penal substitution. This book deserves the widespread circulation achieved by corresponding contributions a generation ago - the contributions of Leon Morris, Jim Packer, and John Stott.

D. A. Carson

Want to see what these (and many, many others) are getting so excited about?

'Pierced for our Transgressions: Rediscovering the glory of penal substitution' by Sachy, Jeffers and Mad-Eye Ovey. Coming soon to a bookshop near you.

There are some who, regarding laws in their literal sense in the light of symbols of matters belonging to the intellect, are overpunctilious about the latter, while treating the former with easygoing neglect. Such men I for my part should blame for handling the matter in too easy and off-hand a manner: they ought to have given careful attention to both aims, to a more full and exact investigation of what is not seen and in what is seen to be stewards without reproach. As it is, as though they were living alone by themselves in a wilderness, or as though they had become disembodied souls and knew neither city nor village nor household nor any company of human beings at all, overlooking all that the mass of men regard, they explore reality in its naked absoluteness. These men are taught by the sacred word to have thought for good repute, and to let go nothing that is part of the customs fixed by divinely empowered men greater than those of our time.

It is quite true that the Seventh Day is meant to teach the power of the Unoriginate and the non-action of created beings. But let us not for this reason abrogate the laws laid down for its observance, and light fires or till the ground or carry loads or institute proceedings in court or act as jurors or demand the restoration of deposits or recover loans, or do all else that we are permitted to do as well on days that are not festival seasons. ...It is true that receiving circumcision does indeed portray the excision of pleasure and all passions, and the putting away of the impious conceit, under which the mind supposed that it was capable of begetting by its own power: but let us not on this account repeal the law laid down for circumcising. Why, we shall be ignoring the sanctity of the Temple and a thousand other things, if we are going to pay heed to nothing except what is shewn us by the inner meaning of things. Nay, we should look on all these outward observances as resembling the body and their inner meanings as resembling the soul. It follows that, exactly as we have to take thought for the body, because it is the abode of the soul, so we must pay heed to the letter of the laws. If we keep and observe these, we shall gain a clearer conception of those things of which these are the symbols; besides that we shall not incur the censure of the many and the charges they are sure to bring against us.

Four Jobs I Have Had:

* Waitress
* Chef
* Maths teacher
* Parish Assistant

That's it, I think. None to actually choose between.

Four Films I Could Watch Over and Over:

* The Sound of Music
* Lady Jane
* Moulin Rouge (to be honest, anything by Baz Lurhmann)
* Mansfield Park

Four Books I Could Read Over and Over:

* Little Women
* Busman's Honeymoon
* The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
* The Cricket Term

But to be honest, I've read most of my books over and over again.

Four Places I Have Lived:

* Stafford
* Oxford
* Gillingham (Kent)
* Southgate

Oh, and Philadelphia.

Four TV Shows I have Enjoyed:

* Rentaghost (anyone else remember that?)
* Dawson's Creek
* The Forsyte Saga
* American Idol (oh yes, I'm addicted. Anyone else waiting for Antonella and Sundance to be knocked out?)

Four Places I Have Been On Holiday:

* Wales
* Norfolk
* Dorset
* Cornwall

So I'm not that well-travelled, okay?

Four Websites I visit Daily:

* Facebook
* David Field's blog
* BBC Radio 4
* Westminster Seminary Library

And a growing list of friends' blogs.

Four Favourite Foods:

* Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate
* Roast beef and yorkshire puddings
* Bacon sandwiches
* Oh, who am I kidding, chocolate anything...

Four Places I’d Like To Be Right Now:

* Home
* Home
* Home
* Home

Hmm. Can you tell I'm feeling a little bit homesick at the moment.

Free Tank & Lip Gloss With $35 Beauty Purchase. Details Inside.

Don't let Osama bin Laden get on the Victoria's Secret mailing list.

In the service of wider cultural awareness, I should explain to my American readers that today was celebrated in the UK as Pancake Day (or, more formally, Shrove Tuesday). The last day before the season of Lent was traditionally important in the church as the day to be 'shriven', i.e. to receive absolution for sins. Practically, it was also the day to use up all your rich foods before they were forbidden in Lent. Which meant pancakes.

These are not like American pancakes (good though the latter are), but a bit more like French crepes, although not precisely the same. They're good eaten with lemon juice and sugar, and better with chocolate spread and banana. 'Tossing the pancake', i.e. turning it by flicking the pan, is a traditional activity with much potential for disaster. Some places still hold pancake races in which contestants run while tossing their pancake.

Anyway, I did mean to make pancakes tonight but I forgot. So I'm blogging about it instead.

But if you're looking for a Lent discipline, Alastair is having a series of guest bloggers through the season which should be really worth checking out. Each is contributing a reflection, poem, piece of artwork, video or other on some aspect of Christ's public ministry. I'm excited to see what others come up with and wondering what to send in myself.

About this time last year, in the women's book group at Oak Hill, someone put forward the view that the skins in which Adam and Eve were clothed after the fall were in fact their human skin. I think I collapsed into giggles, imagining the skinless Adam and Eve before this moment.

However, I now find that such a view has strong historical precedent:

Adam and Eve received their sentence: He [God] made garments of skin for them and they put them on, that is, the skin which is stretched over the [human] body, causing the pain [that humans feel].

From Cave of Treasures (W) 4

Still seems pretty unlikely to me!

Something I like to do from time to time is write letters. I don't mean personal letters to friends and family (though I do also sometimes do that). I mean letters of complaint and letters of protest.

It's a while since I wrote to Tony Blair about anything, though I did write to my MP last year about the religious hatred bill. However, I've just discovered that one can sign up to online petitions at the 10, Downing Street website. I signed a couple and have just received a 'personal' response from Tony. So I've emailed him back, explaining precisely where his arguments are fallacious and what he needs to do instead.

It seems to me that in a modern democracy, we all have a responsibility to hold the government accountable. I like to complain about politicians, but I don't feel I have the right to do so unless I've done my part by voting and by letting them know my opinions.

Apparently for every one person who bothers to write to Tony, his office calculate that there are 10,000 who agree but can't be bothered to write. So that's quite an incentive. And you always get a letter back, which is kind of fun.

So next time you want to groan in protest at some idiocy, why not pick up a pen and tell the idiot exactly what you think?

This from James Kugel in 'Traditions of the Bible':

It is certainly no accident that... only 'half' the Bible's story has generally been found worthy of study in universities, for example. Courses there - elsewhere as well - tend to be devoted exclusively to what, with some justification, might rather be called the 'pre-Bible'. Students are led backward through the stages of individual biblical books' composition, breaking things down to their putative original components, which can then be studied and explained in terms of the political or social history of the ancient Near East. None of this is particularly harmful, I think, but the fact that this is all most students are likely ever to know about the Bible certainly is. How difficult would it be for such courses to be reconfigured so as to complete the picture, moving from the 'pre-Bible'... to the Bible proper, those same chapters or books as they were known to, and interpreted by, Jews and Christians in the formative centuries...?

And again:

The activity of ancient biblical interpreters was a - perhaps the - striking instance of how interpretation is inevitably a kind of second authorship. It was their Bible, and no ragtag collection of ancient Near Eastern texts, that was canonized in the closing centuries of the Second Temple period, and their Bibles is, to an extent with which all who love God's word must reckon, ours today.

I am reading James Kugel's 'Traditions of the Bible' with an eraser in my hand. He has helpful and interesting things to say. The imbeciles who have read this copy previously and left their marks all over it, do not. It almost makes me want to spend the $90 or so to get a pristine copy of my own.

So far I have identified at least three distinct culprits. One writes in capital letters with a spiky pencil and leaves notes where he disagrees with Kugel, accusing him of ambiguity and evasion. The second has a softer pencil and leaves fewer comments. His aim seems to be to guide the subsequent reader by labelling sections with stars or with instructions to 'skip'. The third and fortunately least prominent critic, uses a yellow highlighting pen and should be shot.

Many of my readers have been leaving excellent suggestions of poetry for the unpoetic to sharpen their teeth on. Amanda reminded me of Housman. I love Housman for lots of reasons but mainly because his poems are so firmly grounded in a particular place that is part of my childhood as well as his. Reading them now, in a foreign land, they make me homesick and happy in almost equal measure.

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

And this:

  In my own shire, if I was sad,
Homely comforters I had:
The earth, because my heart was sore,
Sorrowed for the son she bore;
And standing hills, long to remain,
Shared their short-lived comrade's pain.
And bound for the same bourn as I,
On every road I wandered by,
Trod beside me, close and dear,
The beautiful and death-struck year:
Whether in the woodland brown
I heard the beechnut rustle down,
And saw the purple crocus pale
Flower about the autumn dale;
Or littering far the fields of May
Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,
And like a skylit water stood
The bluebells in the azured wood.

  Yonder, lightening other loads,
The seasons range the country roads,
But here in London streets I ken
No such helpmates, only men;
And these are not in plight to bear,
If they would, another's care.
They have enough as 'tis: I see
In many an eye that measures me
The mortal sickness of a mind
Too unhappy to be kind.
Undone with misery, all they can
Is to hate their fellow man;
And till they drop they needs must still
Look at you and wish you ill.

Read more!

Yet again the selection of Google ads deemed likely to be of interest to readers of this blog utterly astounds me. Those on the page just now included 'Impeach Bush', 'The George Bush book' and 'Prosecute Bush.'

Now I may have occasionally made a throwaway remark about Bush and it's unlikely to have been wholly positive. But impeachment? Where did that come from? And how can you do it online?!

The very excellent David Field who teaches everything at Oak Hill is putting many of his lecture handouts online (link here). There are notes on ethics, the Puritans, the doctrine of God, eschatology, the book of Revelation and many more, all of which I commend heartily to my readers.

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

For David Field and Doug Green who have lots of things in common, including a love for this poem.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things,
And, though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs
because the Holy Ghost, over the bent
world broods with warm breast and with - ah! - bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

This is the only poem I (almost) know by heart. I love the sense of hopefulness and joy - not because of what man has done to the world, but because of God's continued care for it, like a hen brooding over her chicks. And that opening line sends tingles down my spine, you can feel the electric charge of God's glory as you say it.

A small handful of people have signed up for the email subscription. Only one has an email address I recognise. Now, of course, this is a public blog and anyone's welcome to subscribe - I won't be screening you. But if you do, I'd love it if you leave a comment and say hi and maybe how you came across the blog or something.

I was disappointed, but not surprised, today in class when Pete Enns asked who in the room loved poetry and, out of around 40 students, only my hand (actually my pink fluffy pen) went up.

I'm guessing that all those other students who don't love poetry also, therefore, don't spend a whole lot of time reading poetry. And that's fine.

Except...

Quite a lot of the Bible is written in poetry. And it's there for our benefit as the church. And for the benefit of the churches that many of these students will be ministering too. So it seems quite important to me that, even if they don't love poetry, these Christians and future ministers have some idea about how to read and appreciate poetry. Or at least what questions they should be asking when they come to a poem.

One approach to that was exemplified in Dr Enns's class - that of analysing the poetic devices. The predominant device in much (though not all biblical poetry) is parallelism and various people have written (some more, some less helpfully) about this at length. There is certainly value in being able to recognise and interpret poetic devices.

But, as Dr Enns, following James Kugel, concluded, poetry is merely a heightened form of prose. The devices appear more frequently in poetry and often in a more intense form, but they are not what makes a poem a poem. A poem need not display any one characteristic device in order to be a poem.

Here's my wholly inadequate definition of what distinguishes poetry from prose: Poetry seeks primarily to work on the affections (though it may do so by also informing the mind), prose seeks primarily to inform the mind (or do some related speech act at the level of the mind) though it may thereby also have an effect on the affections.

All the poetic devices of parallelism, assonance, alliteration, metaphor, simile, rhyme and metre are there to serve a purpose - that of causing the reader to engage with the emotional world of the poem. Let me give an example of how that might work. When you read the book of Ecclesiastes, you may not understand it. You may not be able to summarize 'what Ecclesiastes is teaching.' But you probably experience feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction. Or when you read the book of Job, you may not quite be sure of the message of Job, but you know that when you've slogged through those chapters you feel browbeaten and small.

Analysing the devices can be helpful in ensuring that our response is the intended one (particularly when we're working mainly from translations), but if the poem is well-written, we should be on the right track before we've done any of that work, merely from letting the poem itself affect us.

So, I want to suggest that the most important question to ask of a poem is not, 'What does this mean?' which can lead to a prose 'translation' which can then be taught. Rather, we need to ask ourselves 'What does this do?' We'll need to grasp what it means as well, but we can't reduce a poem to its prosaic meaning. How a poem says is as important as what a poem says.

And how do we get better at being sensitive to what poems do as well as what they say? The only way I know is to read more poems!

So here's my crash course for non-poetry lovers who want to be better bible-readers and teachers:

George Herbert - almost anything! These are short, Christian and simple in form.

John Donne's Holy Sonnets - sublimely beautiful Christian poems.

Gerard Manley Hopkins - God's Grandeur, The Windhover, Glory be to God for dappled things. Just let these crash over you like waves at the beach and wallow in the depth and richness of his imagery and phrasing (don't let the accents put you off, they can be ignored fairly safely at first).

All of which can easily be found online.

Any of my readers have other helpful suggestions?

It's over a week since anyone commented here. Now, that may be because I've had nothing interesting to say. Or it may be that you're all too busy. But I'm just wondering if the problems with leaving comments that used to plague this blog have returned? Perhaps if you know my email address and you've been having problems you could let me know that way. Not that I promise to be able to solve the problem if there is one!

Now we're onto Chain Reaction in which Jack Dee is hilariously interviewing Jeremy Hardy. I've always liked Jeremy Hardy on the News Quiz and 'Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation'. This interview is very likeable and lots of laugh out loud moments. Available, of course, on the radio 4 website, to listen again.

I have Gardeners Question Time on in the background at the moment. The question was 'which plant should be re-named Essex Girl?'

Bob Flowerdew suggested pampas grass: 'Blonde and fluffy on top, looks delicate but is actually as tough as old boots, and if you tangle with it, it'll cut you up.' Perfect.

We have snow. Not the six feet of snow that fell in New York last week but more than the half inch of snow we've been getting on a semi-regular basis for the last few weeks. Driving home last night was not fun at all. Westminster is closed for the day today, which is not a big deal for me since I have no classes on a Wednesday anyway. I have books to read, chocolate to eat and tea to drink - who needs to go outside?!

This semester began nearly two weeks ago but for one reason and another it feels like it's only just getting going properly. I have now had all my classes, so for those who are interested, this is what will be occupying my time for the next few months:

Ugaritic. Following on from last semester, but now starting to think more about literary issues rather than language, and doing some work on comparisons with Hebrew. I hope to write a paper about Ugaritic poetic technique by comparison with Hebrew (or something along those lines).

Hermeneutical Foundations. A more abstract look at principles of interpretation. Haven't decided what to write about here but maybe something about the history of interpretation of the Song of Songs and the role of community in interpretation. Hmm. Needs more thought.

Biblical Interpretation of the Second Temple Period. Does what it says on the tin. Some general discussion then student presentations introducing the interpretive techniques found in particular bodies of second temple literature. I plan to look at Philo's allegorical method.

OT reading. May have mentioned this before.

German. Have to take exams in reading theological French and German. I'm hoping I remember enough French that, given a dictionary, I can make it through on my own. But my German is pretty much at the level of asking the way to the station and writing a postcard to an imaginary penpal, so I thought I'd better sign up for the classes.

And finally, I'm being a teaching assistant for an MDiv course on Poets and Wisdom. This involves writing and marking Hebrew tests, writing part of the final exam, lecturing on the Song and possibly being involved in marking essays on the Song. I'm very excited about this. I also get to meet the guest lecturers (Tremper Longman and C.K.Seow) when they come, so that should be fun.

All in all, it looks like being a busy time, but I think I'm looking forward to it. Better stop blogging and get on with some work now.

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Corinne arrived on Monday evening from Nashville. She's not from Nashville, she'd just been staying there before she came here. We've spent the last few days talking, giggling, eating, doing arts and crafts and - most excitingly of all - visiting New York!!

On Tuesday we had a late morning and a long breakfast. My class had been cancelled so we decided to go into the Philadelphia Art Museum. People had told me how good it was but I'd never got round to going. We were really impressed. There was a really interesting collection of different pieces imaginatively displayed. I loved the rooms they had taken from different places around the world - a Robert Adam drawing room from London, an eighteenth century French room, a Tudor hall. It was a bit like having a tour of twenty different stately homes, interspersed with more traditional galleries. There was good modern art too, though a disappointingly small costume and textile collection.

The shop was fabulously tempting, though I didn't get the $600 rug, deciding instead that I really could make it myself.

On Wednesday we had the great New York expedition. This involved two trains and takes just under 3 hours. But we made our connection with minutes to spare and arrived at around 11.30am. Corinne was very excited on the train:

Though that may have had as much to do with the book she was reading as the fact the we were going to New York:

The most noticeable thing when we got off the train was how cold it was. Several degrees below freezing. We quickly made our way to Lindy's diner and had lunch. I was very excited to read in their menu that this was where Damon Runyon used to hang out and was the basis for Mindy's diner in Guys and Dolls. Nathan Detroit even tries to make a bet about how many slices of cheesecake (the best cheesecake in New York) Mindy's sell, but Sky Masterson doesn't take the bet. We had cheesecake and it was very good.

We braved the cold once again, with the firm intent of taking as many photos of as many sights as we could:

The Chrysler Building


Grand Central Station


Times Square


NYPD Blue


Corinne taking photographs.

Corinne and the Statue of Liberty. Can you spot the difference?

Corinne, Manhattan and the Stars and Stripes.


The Statue of Liberty


Or is this the Statue of Liberty?


New York taxis

Broadway!


The Empire State Building. We didn't go up.

We took a ferry out to the Statue of Liberty, which was fun not only to see the statue itself, which is much bigger than I'd always imagined it, but also for the views of Manhattan. Here's the information board pointing out the different buildings.

And here's the real thing.

I noticed two things. First, how small the Empire State Building looks from here, though up close it seems unbelievably tall. And second, just how much taller the World Trade Center was than the very tall buildings around it.

We walked up to Ground Zero and looked at the exhibition of photos there and were amazed at how many of the closely surrounding buildings are still standing. And I think I was struck in a new way at the enormity of what happened on September 11th.

From now on, Corinne and I shall be able to have conversations that begin, 'Do you remember when we were in New York?' And I expect we'll do that a lot!

On Thursday I had to go in for classes all morning. We spent the afternoon pottering around Chestnut Hill and buying beads to make bracelets. So that was the evening's activity.

On Friday we just had time for a browse around Reading Market before Corinne had to fly back down South, to the warmth of Tennessee.

Blogging has taken something of a back seat over the last week or so while real life has been full of excitement. Last weekend I went away with some of the women from our neighbourhood pizza night. We went to the New Jersey shore, which is characterised by long thin (just a few hundred yards wide but several miles long) islands that form sheltered bays with the main land.

It was very cold and windy, but sunny and beautiful and just right for clearing the head at the start of semester. We ate lots, talked lots, laughed lots and had a good time. Thanks, Nancy, for inviting us all.

The introduction and first two talks in a series of four by Matthew Mason are online now. See here for the link. Wonderfully evocative and affective talks on Christ's love for us and ours for him. Stuff that stirs the soul.