A Resolution

Resolved: not to make any grandiose (and vain) resolutions that I will post a remarkable, significant entry to my blog each day.

That being said, I have come to the conclusion that I must find an outlet for pent-up creative energies. Not to mention a way to mollify to those who incessantly prod me to write.

This blog may amount to nothing more than a haphazard travelogue of my intellectual meanderings. But follow at your own risk: sometimes meanderings are but the start of pilgrimages.

Lee

P.S. Also, this might be a fun place to show off all the big words I know.

Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop

I thought some of you might be interested in this recent interview with NT Wright in Time. He's talking about the sometimes unbiblical views Christians have of eternal life. I think does a good job expressing why it is important for us to be more careful in the ways we talk about eternity. When I was a young believer, I remember being taken quite off guard when I first learned that the Bible didn't teach a hellenistic (or gnostic) divide wherein the eternal soul was good and the physical body was evil. I just assumed that was true Christian doctrine and that being saved meant that instead of going to hell, Christians would be in an amorphous disembodied state for eternity. At that time I hadn't heard any teaching to the contrary that gave a clearer picture of what the Bible actually teaches. And you know what, it really does matter: when we're sloppy in talking about this doctrine it isn't harmless. It can have serious negative consequences in how we view our stewardship of our own bodies and of our surroundings. Moreover, it is much easier for us to look forward to and long for an eternal state which isn't either completely undefined or simply mis-defined.

Time

We're taking a break from the study of John's gospel (which we have been working through for more than a year) and spending the next 6 weeks in the book of Titus. John's message on Titus 1:1-4 today was particularly excellent. He was emphasizing the distinction between chronos (as the seasonal, ebb-and-flow perception of time) and kairos (as a critical moment, an in-breaking of God or a moment of realization that something significant has just or is about to occur).

John was describing our experience of chronos as being primarily a function of our observation of sequential movement. A 24-hour day represents one rotation of the earth on its axis; a 365 1/4
-day year the full rotation of the earth in its orbit around the sun. Days, Seasons, Years, Eras, Epochs, all find their markings in our perception of motion.

So this fuels the resurgence of a question I've been kicking around for about 20 years now: Is time (in the chronos sense) a thing? Is time anything? If time is our perception, our making sense, our attempt to accommodate and understand the sequence of movements macroscopic and microscopic, then are we perceiving something tangible which really is? Or are we merely putting the tangible motions into a sequential framework so we can describe it and conceive of it?

If time is not itself a thing, if it is merely our perception of actual things, then in what sense can we ever say that we are 'in time' or that God the Creator is 'outside of time'? Even if time is something, from where do we get the idea that it is something which is localized or spatial, something which one can be either inside or outside?

Is the statement commonly repeated in pop-theology that because God is infinite and eternal, that because he is the Creator of space and matter and all that is, that he is therefore outside of time a true statement? or even a helpful one? If time is perception and not a thing in itself, then the best we could say is that God's perception is infinite whereas ours is limited: our perception has a beginning but no end, while his perception has neither beginning nor end.

I apologize for getting so cosmological here. I'm pretty sure that no one else cares about this. But do any of you have thoughts on this?

How would you explain the verbal overlap between passages in Matthew and Luke not found in Mark?

I would explain the verbal overlap between passages in Matthew and Luke which are absent from Mark as follows: Matthew and Luke both made use of another source to which Mark either did not have access or chose not to utilize.[1] This explanation is in line with the 4-Source Hypothesis. This additional source, now lost to us, is commonly referred to as “Q” for the German quelle (“source”). This collection of Jesus traditions was not necessarily a written document but may have simply been a set of familiar teachings which were part of the oral traditions about Jesus circulated in the early Church. Matthew and Luke sometimes have sections of this source material in the same order with a high degree verbal overlap. Other times they share the source material but use it in different places in their presentation.

Because of the length and precision in some of these instances of verbal overlap, it seems probable that there may have been a written source to which Matthew and Luke had access, though it is possible that it was common oral tradition which they both incorporated. Just as the verbal parallels between Mark and the other two Synoptics suggests a literary dependence, so too the verbal parallels between Matthew and Luke which are not found in Mark suggests that they both were dependent on an additional shared source.

For example, in the case of the Temptation narrative preserved in Mark 1:12-13 // Matthew 4:1-11 // Luke 4:1-13, Mark gives the temptation only the briefest mention, whereas Matthew and Luke devote quite a bit of space in presenting more fully the exchange between Jesus and Satan. Matthew and Luke are very similar in their presentations (in fact, nearly half of their wording overlaps), although they do place the temptations in a different order. Since Mark includes none of the extra material it is plausible that Luke and Matthew are relying on some other source to which they had access in common.

There are many other instances in which Matthew and Luke display verbal overlap in describing traditions which are not preserved in Mark. When Jesus teaches the people concerning John the Baptist in Matthew 11:2-29 // Luke 7:18-35, both accounts report His teaching with a great deal of overlap. While some have argued that this overlap results from either Matthew depending on Luke or Luke depending on Matthew, the slight variation in the specific wording and details suggests to me that both were relying on a third source independent of one another.

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[1]Yes, Brian: utilize. UTILIZE!

pleonasm, n.

The use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; as, "I saw it with my own eyes."


I fear that 95% of the things I say fit this definition.

Ironically, the word of the day is well-matched to the quote of the day:

"The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible." - George Burns

My friend John Mitchell is giving me an opportunity to teach at Poeima Church (www.poiemachurch.com) at the start of July. I promise to avoid being pleonastic, though I may still be sesquipedalian.