temporality and baptism

reading Ricœur on temporality in narrative, who says with reference to Genesis 1 & 2-3 (and even the Abraham narrative) that we don't need to see there being a relative temporality. that is, the story of Abraham isn't necessarily a succession from Genesis 1-11; in a sense they could be co-terminus. they are stitched together in the narrative not to imply succession but so we might 'superpose' them on one another.

Colossians 2.12-14 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

i wonder if there is a sense in which, at baptism, when there is a sense that as you close your eyes to go into the water, you are to picture yourself as grasping on to Jesus as he descended to the place of the dead, and as you continue to grasp, you are raised with him in his resurrection, being recreated. so while it is true that Jesus' death and resurrection 2000 years ago brings about my salvation, is it not also true that he dies and is resurrected when you are baptised, that it is 'as if' that great salvation event were happening then and there.

i've been reading Ricœur's book 'Thinking Biblically' and the chapter 'Thinking Creation' and have obviously some thinking to go!

Hebrews 4.14-5.10 Chiasm

what do you think:

A 4.14 – Because he’s ascended to heaven let us hold fast
    B 4.15 – Jesus an empathetic human priest.
        C 5.5 – Jesus a Son-priest
            D 5.6 – Jesus a Melchizedek-priest
    B’ 5.7 – Jesus lived an earthly life
        C’ 5.7 – Jesus learnt obedience despite being the Son
A’ 5.9-10 – Source of eternal salvation for those who believe.
            D’ 5.10 – Jesus the Melchizedek-priest

i was hoping it could be a little prettier.
maybe can't even call it properly chiastic. more recursive.
but i'm preaching on it tomorrow morning, important as the chiasm is it might have to wait...

punny hebrew

i think the consensus is to not talk about Hebrew in talks. which is sad. there's three really cool puns in Genesis 3.14-24 that i'd love to mention. but i think those i've talked to are probably right, it's better not to.

but my faithful reader can surely handle them!

the crafty עָרוּם (arum) serpent is cursed עָרוּר (arur) by God.

from the tree עֵץ (aitz) comes trauma עֶצֶב (etzev) in childbirth.

he ate from the tree עֵץ (aitz) but will now eat from his tears זֵע (zai - sweat).

i think they're all pretty cool. but maybe i can mention the first one? it's probably the clearest and maybe the least nerdy. but i'll probably not mention any. that's probably best.

(apologies - not sure why the Hebrew unicode looks so weird - all the vowels should be under the letter to the right.)

the story of Genesis 2-3

there's a pretty clear chiasm, which Blocher (In the Beginning, 1984) and Walsh (JBL, 1977) both explain:

A 2.4-17 God made man and put him in the garden
    B 2.18-25 God made the animals and the woman
        C 3.1-5 Dialogue 1: between the snake and the woman
            D 3.6-8 The Sin
        C’ 3.9-13 Dialogue 2: between God and his disobedient creatures
    B’ 3.14-21 God declares his verdict on the animal and the humans
A’ 3.22-24 God kicks the man out of the garden

(with my adapted titles).

the thinking i was doing a couple of years ago on this topic led me to think this story is best read as a story, explaining the way things are. that is, in order to explain the existence of a tree lying on the ground, you can talk about a wind having blown it over. now there's a big disanalogy here, in that you can accurately hypothesise with a fallen tree in a way you can't with the universal sinfulness of humanity.

the difficulty comes when within the story itself there are various aetiologies - childbirth hurts because of sin; snakes don't have legs because of sin; work is hard because of sin - but how do i then talk about the relevance of the story to the state of affairs now? that is, can i say more than that it teaches us that the way things are isn't right, and that they will one day be made right (particularly now we know Jesus was raised bodily)?

Mark 5 Chiasm

after an extended break - what else but a chiasm!

i may be doing a talk on this next week
so i needed to check if there was a chiasm
i think that's my general rule these days - no chiasm, no talk

A out of the boat
B     demoniac runs to Jesus
C         demoniac doesn’t want Jesus around
D             the people are afraid of the demoniac
D’             the people are afraid of Jesus
C’         demoniac wants to be around Jesus
B’     demoniac goes from Jesus
A’ into the boat

a theme i particularly noticed doing a talk on Mark 16 a while ago was the movement from fear to faith. Mark keeps showing us (and particularly in the narrative around the sea) that Jesus wants people to 'not fear, only believe' (5.36). each time we see fear (for example at Mark 16.8), the point is: how are you going to react to Jesus - are you going to fear, or have faith?

piper and mclaren on suffering

i may or may not be doing a seminar on suffering on sunday afternoon. but i thought i should mention these links i found over at chris's blog.

you've got Piper against McLaren on suffering.

Piper's point is that God's absolute sovereignty means he desired, for various and inscrutable reasons, the japanese earthquake. in so doing, he garners biblical data

McLaren counters by arguing that God doesn't delight in evil, and that Jesus indeed identifies with us in our suffering.

worth a read and a think.

how to read a narrative

here's a great list of 10 questions on how to read narrative (biblical or otherwise).

1. who is the hero?
   
2. what constitutes the quest?
   
3. who are the helpers and the antagonists? (this can include people as well as factors)
   
4. do you sense the presence of the narrator anywhere in the text?
   
5. what does the narrator do with the chronology of the events?
   
6. what happens with the narrated time? (does it speed up, slow down, stop, are there gaps?)
   
7. is the plot clear on its own, or is it only understandable within a larger narrative? (if the latter, what is the macroplot?)
   
8. what can you say about the dialogues?*
   
9. what word choices or other style/structure characteristics strike you?
   
10. how is the unit divided? are there further subdivisions?

* i don't think the order is important, yet it is interesting that this comes so far down.

This list is adapted from Jan Fokkelman, Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (Louisville, K.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999 ET), as quoted in Provan, Long and Longman, A Biblical History of Israel (also Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), p90.

I was reading aBHoI as I think some more about narrative and history.

my question is: to what extent is it necessary to pursue/argue for/maintain the historicity of the claims to make sense of the text, particularly as one seeks to live a godly life in response to scripture? They (ch4 is mainly V. Philips Long's) argue that because biblical narratives make historical truth claims, 'ahistorical readings are perforce false misreadings' (p81).

i want to think some more on this.

patients and clients

i've been meaning to write about this for a while now.

when i went to university the first time round, one of the first things we were told is that we didn't have patients anymore, we had clients. and we all nodded, recognising we weren't splint-makers, but health-service providers. we had an important task to work out in concert with our clients which services best fitted their needs. no more were we caring for, looking after, or helping people. we were professionals.

in the olden days, prosthetist-orthotists like me, wouldn't have been like me. they would most likely have been war veterans, with at the very least one prosthesis. their patients would have been people who lost their legs a little later than them, and, chances are, if they were up to it, would've been trained up to help the next lot.

but today, we're university educated, with a nice piece of paper, and we are the clients' health service providers.


i think my question is, what does this change in nomenclature mean for a) the way we treat patients, and b) for their expectations of us?

the words patient, treat, care, look after - all imply that there is something wrong. that there is something that needs to be made right. it is not about wants but needs. this doesn't mean the needs will always be met, that we will work toward goals, but if someone has lost a leg, their need is to be able to walk again, even if a wheelchair may be the best outcome considering various factors.

but the words client, health-service provider, management, service, imply a contractual relationship, where one's services are engaged for a particular agreed-upon purpose. the sense of caring for someone who unable is gone.

likewise, the recent don't dis- my -ability campaign baffles me. i get what it's saying. but, if i may make a tandem point (this is a blog, after all), part of being in community is helping those who need help. we (should) help people with prams on and off buses, we (should) give up our seats for others. yes, you can crawl the kokoda track, but why should that ever make it condescending for someone to offer or to receive assistance from a fellow human being.

after all, the worth of a person is not in what they can or can't do, or how many functioning limbs they have. but our value is in our created-ness, our innate image-bearing. and indeed, it is often those with so little who contribute so much - triumphing over adversity to achieve the unachievable.

in my short time working in the health-care industry, i have served patients from all walks of life - homeless, teachers, public officials, artists - and compassion, care and serving those unable to serve themselves has been what has driven the same level of care for all.

the road to clients is a road that means the end of multi-disciplinary teams, the end of public health care, the end of sympathy.

Those who are well have no need of a doctor, but those who are sick. Mark 2.17

you might want to make your own extrapolations for what this means in a ministry context.

doubt

æ has written a great post, 10 thoughts about doubt

i added my own thought in the comments there, but thought i'd expand on it here:

doubt often drives us in the wrong direction. when we are faced with doubt, we tend to withdraw from those who (we think) don't doubt, not sharing with them. the people who are most likely to know what we're feeling, and to have been through what we're going through, are often ironically the last ones we share with.
and instead of being driven back to the bible to recall what we first believed, we read material of those we think are fellow doubters, but who never shared out faith in the first place. so if we are wondering about evil, we read 'God is not great'. if we wonder about whether we were brainwashed as a child, we read 'The God Delusion'.
in doubt, which happens to all, we need to go back to first principles. speak with, or read the thoughts of, fellow believers who have shared your doubts - what got them through? why did they believe despite their tragedy? how did they survive their philosophy degree without giving up hope?

projected project

a couple of years ago i read a bit of Paul Ricœur at a reading group, from figuring the sacred. i didn't understand much, but over the next couple of years at college i kept trying to read him, using him for essays on the historical fall and historicity versus theological intent.

broadly speaking, he's been really stimulating for my thinking about hermeneutics - how we read the bible. Ricœur's big thing, best understood in contrast, is an hermeneutic of trust, not one of suspicion.

so what i hope to do is look at his work, and think about how some other guys in the hermeneutics field do it - people like Brevard Childs, John Goldingay, Walter Brueggemann, Francis Watson.

it doesn't mean i fully get him yet, nor do i expect to after this year. but i hope to be challenged about how to read the old and new testaments on their own and together, and to be able to keep pushing others to do their own thinking.

carbon tax

my initial response to the carbon tax is ... yay!
the increases in the price of electricity and petrol will hopefully force us to be energy wise, and less car-reliant.

my hesitation is that this is just a tax dressed up in green. how many dollars of tax to be paid by the industrial polluters will be refunded them in subsidies? i fear that it will be almost 1 for 1.

and this carbon tax will only be appropriate if the money is used in helping rehabilitate the world we've polluted, and in investment in green energy sources, in particular solar.

Jesus the Leper

three thoughts on Mark 1.40-45

1

people with disfiguring skin ailments weren't allowed in camp with the rest of Israel, they had to be outside the camp, in desolate places, calling 'Unclean! Unclean!' to warn people away from them. (See Lev 13)

Jesus met such a person, and what is particularly striking is the way he took the man's place. the man is unclean, outcast, rejected, excluded - and Mark tells us Jesus was himself in such a place, where he met the man, and remained in that place. yet the man was healed, cleansed, and was able to join again into his society.

furthermore, Jesus was killed, cursed, and buried outside the city walls. the life the man was condemned to live Jesus took.

2

after Jesus healed the man he told him to present himself to the priest, to fulfil the law in offering the appropriate sacrifices. (See Lev 14) but we are told by Mark, he instead went and told people about Jesus.

i wonder whether the reason he didn't offer a sacrifice is because the true sacrifice was standing there right in front of him. he was both physically clean, yet through faith he understood that Jesus also had cleansed him on the inside.

3

the issue of the messianic secret pops up here also. for the uninitiated (and please correct me if i've remembered this wrong), this is the idea suggested by Wrede that Jesus was a failed messiah, like many others. therefore he wanted to keep the whole subject secret. this explains why it was only after his death (and particularly with Paul's missionary activity) that people began to acknowledge him as the messiah.

this was countered by others who read the synoptic gospels as primarily historical, and that if Jesus told people to say nothing, then that's what he did. the reason? he had a plan, and being outed as the messiah anytime before 'the hour' was not on - he had his own divine schedule and it was the resurrection, rather than any miracles or preaching, that would reveal his true identity.

from a narrative position, i wonder whether the messianic secret is there for the benefit of the readers. as we read him telling people not to tell anyone, we say - as if you couldn't! it's obvious who he is! what excuse could an ex-leper make to explain his healing?! - reinforcing in the reader who we know Jesus to be - the messiah, the beloved son of God.



looking forward to Dave's talk on Mark 1.40-45 this sunday at wildstreet@5 - see what he has to say!

Ricoeur on Evil

i'm still reading through Paul Ricoeur's Figuring the Sacred (Augsburg Fortress, 1995), but i really liked this on evil in the introduction:

While the Bible does offer a theodicy of retribution in which the victims, because of their faithlessness, are held responsible for the violence inflicted upon them, Ricoeur argues instead for a wisdom theodicy of lamentation and anger where the perennial cries of Why me? and How long? are seen as the most adequate responses to unmitigated evil.
Mark I. Wallace, introduction, Figuring the Sacred, p32.

having read David Bentley Hart on evil (the doors of the sea) and Miroslav Volf on forgiveness (exclusion and embrace), this is close to where Hart ends up (for whom God is always opposed to evil) - and quite different to Volf (who emphasises the responsibility of both the perpetrator and victim in seeking reconciliation).

i like the way he's not systematising, but using the bible's language we see in the context of suffering in evil.

hebrews + matthew OR zechariah

i gots to decide - one year of college left, and i need to choose between OT in hebrew (where we do the entirety of Zechariah) or NT in greek (where we do Hebrews then Matthew). i could do both but that knocks out an elective and doing a project means i can only do two electives.

so far we've done
(nb: eng means only eng, heb or gk means both)

• OT
  Numbers (eng)
  Deuteronomy (heb)
  1-2 Samuel (heb)
  Psalms (heb)
  Job (eng)
  Isaiah (eng)
  Ezekiel (heb)
  Daniel (eng)
  Jonah (eng)
  

i'm hoping to do aramaic as one elective, so that would mean i'd get to do the aramaic section of Daniel and the aramaic paragraph of Ezra. we also did a bit of Ruth in hebrew, but just to think about text criticism.

• NT
  Mark (gk)
  Luke (gk)
  John (gk)
  Acts (gk)
  Romans (gk)
  1 Corinthians (gk)
  Ephesians (eng)
  1-2 Timothy (eng)
  Titus (eng)
  1 Peter (eng)
  Jude (eng)

reasons for NT4

1. can complete the quadrafecta (quadrilla?) of gospels
   
2. can study a non-Pauline epistle in greek
   
3. long term in ministry greek will probably be used more - and i'm more likely to take it for granted (i.e. i should keep working on it this year)
   
4. i i don't think i'll do ATBGE (advanced topics in biblical greek exegesis - or simply, nerd greek), but i plan to audit it
   
5. doing aramaic means i'll be doing a language related to hebrew anyway

reasons for OT4

1. we can do a whole book of the bible in an original language - everything else has been overview, with a deeper focus on particular areas only
   
2. zech is a pretty crucial book in the NT (particularly matthew i think)
   
3. it's my last chance to study in hebrew - i don't think any masters subjects are in hebrew, only greek
   
4. it'd probably make sense to keep hebrew up whilst learning aramaic

so that's my thinking. what do you think, faithful reader(s?)?

book reading tizzy

i've loved getting my head into some books of late.
first came Gulliver's Travels (via gutenburg.org), then i finished off Calvin's Institutes, then Ben Elton's Inconceivable, then the diary of Anne Frank, then a penguin excerpt from Herodotus, Xerxes Invades Greece.

Gulliver was great, particularly as i'd only ever read a dumbed-down version of the first part, the voyage to Lilliput (which the supposed abomination of a film is broadly based on). what was striking was the decline in humanity evidenced in each of the four parts. the God-fearer Swift was interested to show the absolute depravity of man, which is revealed bit-by-bit throughout. indeed, by the end of the book (SPOILER ALERT) Gulliver cannot stand the sight nor smell of others of his species, so disappointed is he with the race he was unfortunate enough to be born of.

Calvin was long. and often concerned with defending orthodox Christianity against people who are long-gone and arguments long-forgotten. i was struck with his thoughts on baptism, as well as confirmation, which i will write about soon. i'll probably have to read it all again when i finish college - the beginning, read two years ago on the bus, is a distant memory.

Elton is a great writer, whether for TV or his novels. he did a great job in this book of making the whole vibe associated with trying to conceive a heck of a lot lighter. this isn't why i was reading it - but the depths of despair i understand can be associated with this issue, when cut with Elton's humour, couldn't hurt. i think...

Anne Frank was great. seeing the war from a little teeny-bopper's perspective (i refuse to say tweenager) was very different. i've talked to people who were her age but in Australia (my nan) - a thoroughly different perspective - as well as someone her age in Germany (my Gast-Oma). it's funny to think that they probably all would've gotten along well. what i found hard reading it was as the dates got closer to (SPOILER ALERT) her being found and taken to a concentration camp was her ignorance. the last entry shows her to be a typical selfish child - like all 14 year old girls the world over since time immemorial - who just happens to be in hiding with seven others in Nazi-occupied Holland. so she whinges to her diary - and that's it. no warning. the hagiography in the beginning of the book was a bit odd, yet not unexpected. but a great example of the pointlessness of war, greed, xenophobia, that catches all and sundry up in its wake.

finally, Xerxes. this is where the inspiration for the movie the 300 came from. a couple of years ago i read Thucydides' the Peloponnesian War, which has a very similar style. frustratingly, there are 9 and a half blank pages, and the story isn't finished - (SPOILER ALERT) Athens is sacked - and the book stops! what happens to the ships that have sailed down south? does Xerxes make it across the isthmus? of all the relatively inane things that are included, why include them, and not finish this part of the story, AND leave blank pages? what are you doing with Penguin Epics mr/mrs Penguin? anyway, it was interesting to read Herodotus explain the origins of all the various tribes and nations - where they'd come from, who they moved on, their descent, origin of their name etc. it is bizarre to think of a time when you could emigrate somewhere where there was noone where you were going - hey, this looks like a good place to start a settlement that will still be here in a few thousand years!

but otherwise, onto some serious reading. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred. should keep me going a little while.