Mark 2 Chiasm

not sure if this post will work - blogger's doing some funky things tonight - if it starts behaving again i'll remove this and maybe add a picture if any buttons appear to allow me to do so!

this sunday at GBC* we're doing Mark 2.1-12, and believe it or not - i've realised it's a chiasm.

A 2.1-2a - the big picture, a crowd astonished at Jesus

      B 2.2b-5 - movement to Jesus, Jesus speaks

                  C 2.6-10 - opposition's negative reaction, Jesus' positive reaction

      B' 2.11-12a - Jesus speaks, movement away from Jesus

A' 2.12b - the big picture, a crowd astonished at Jesus

mark does this a heap, or at the very least sandwiches (A B A' - cf Mark 5.21-24a; 24b-34; 35-43)

it's not so much a theological comment as a narrative device, guiding you into and then out and onwards.

* if you're a german speaker, you may be interested in coming along to german bible cafe - check out our facebook or blog if you're keen.

wishlist updated

in the sidebar, or just click here!

any suggestions i should add to the list?

what would you have in yours?

cocktail church?

wow. crazy.
a weeknight, food, drinks - and church?
what will they think of next!

anyway, you may be free on Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 October from 7.30 pm, and live somewhere near st albans lindfield - if so, get along, bring a friend or two.

apart from food and drink, there will be a talk each night:
27th :: A hell of a Life
28th :: A hell of a Death

get into to it!

Batman the Musical

been oddly talking about musicals a bit lately. my parents took us to see the very fun wicked the other day, which fits in between the wizard of oz and return to oz - surely one of the scariest movies ever. i guess sort of like the sarah connor chronicles in between the terminator and T2. the interesting thing about wicked was the not just the freudian analysis of the wicked witch of the west - what made her the 'wicked' witch, why was glinda the 'good' witch. but if people talk about good and wicked, do we need to rethink what those titles mean; who gave them the titles; are we just buying into the hype?

and for some strange reason people are still banging on about buffy the musical which i pray i will never have to see.

anyway, this is a little more my taste. complete with the music meister and the black canary.

praxis vs theology

chatting about evil again. reading david bentley hart's doors of the sea again.

but this time it's with others, including mark and steve, who have been interviewing christian counsellors for their pilgrims podcast.

the reason i mention this is not to promote them (they do enough self-promotion as it is), but to raise the question of how what we say to people relates to what we think - and particularly in the context of suffering.

if we believe evil is evil, an affront to God, an absurdity, then let us say this.

however, if we believe in a divine, universal harmony, where nothing happens but by the hand of God, and we are talking to someone suffering - why can we not say this? is this not the gospel of comfort to the suffering, the poor, the bound? but we realise that saying 'it's all a part of God's plan' is no comfort, and not pastorally appropriate.

my question is, if what we believe does not match with what we are willing and comfortable to say, are we too weak to say the truth that might hurt, or is our theology profoundly impersonal and thus leaving us in a schizophrenic state as we try to comfort the suffering?

what do counsellors do? what do you do?

can we in a clear conscience preach one thing from the pulpit and say another in the hospital room?

if evil is evil, it is evil. let us proclaim the goodness of God despite that evil.

no fall put to the test

last night at bible study we did the final in our series based on Tim Keller's "The Reason For God". we looked at Sin, through the lens of Genesis 3:1-13, Romans 1:18-32, Romans 3:21-26.

as you would know, i've just finished an essay on the consequences of denying an historical fall (here, here, and here). the position i finished at was that the idea of "the fall" is not what Genesis 3, nor the rest of the testimony of the bible, is trying to get across.

rather, as Karl Barth agreed with me, "the first man was immediately the first sinner." (CD IV.1 §508)


so as we discussed the idea of the fall, we didn't use the terminology of "fall", but analysed what the story said. and it said that sin consists of disobedience, selfishness, disrespect, but primarily trusting Satan's lies. we agreed that none of us would have been different, and that this grasping against God is something we all continue.

i can perhaps post some of the best bits of my essay a little later, but i just thought it would be helpful to show where this thinking has ended me up (if that sentence makes sense!).

Markus Evangelium

Übernächstewoche fangen wir bei German Bible Cafe eine neue Serie an. Hier ist meine entwurf der Werbung:

if you know any German-speakers who may be interested in studying the Bible in German, please bring them along.
if you're one of my German-speaking friends reading this, you know I'd love you to come along.

spread the word!

Historical Fall in the key of B

so far i've narrowed my doctrine essay down to the following points:

• Babes or bound (the historical debate - Pelagius vs Augustine)
  
  
• Blocher or Barth (the current debate)
  
  
• (Bavinck and Bloesch - minnows, relatively, yet helpfully starting with a B)
  
  
• Bible (Romans 5 and Genesis 3)

and finally, inevitably, painfully:

• Bibliography

i'll probably talk about Ricoeur also, but i may have to deliberately rename him Bicoeur for the purposes of this essay.

check here and also here for the background.

don't know why all this matters? this is why.

temporary new blog address

for the special period of the AFL final series, in homage to the very important MTV awards, my blog has been moved to here. for a limited time only. this blog will return to the regular location after then.

(it only makes sense if you click)


h/t John

Naked. living in the past.

Naked (1993, by Mike Leigh) is one of my favourite films ever, despite N, S, D, L, A, and any other warnings you can think of appropriately being on the video cover.

in other words, not a date movie.

but the following clip is from a section of the movie where Johnny (David Thewlis) is given a tour by Brian (Peter Wight) around the building he guards. their conversation reminds me both of conversations i've had with people who are not so well mentally, or alternatively of very very late-night chats that just get weird.
i think the only warning for this clip is L.


a great line from Johnny:

"So you think you can make the present palatable by projecting into the future. you're living in the past, pal. it's the future that f***s you up, Brian. it's the maggot in the apple."

the myth of the fall

i've been thinking this week through the question of the theological consequences of denying an historical fall. one thing that has been growing on me today is the question of where the idea of the Edenic sinless perfectionism comes from. i'm sure everyone's seen the first two boxes of 2WTL (click on the link if you are unaware), the first one being the one where everything's perfect, sort of like the island the Phantom puts all his animals, after he's taught them to be piscetarians (is that what people who eat no meat except for fish call themselves?).

now the whole point of showing that everything was tops was to explain

1. why life isn't always tops now, despite a good God, and
2. to give a picture of what we're looking forward to.

however, on 2/, despite the line in the otherwise great Rob Smith song 'Worthy of All Praise' back to the garden, we don't really want to go back to the garden, but look forward to the new creation. so now i'm trying to work out the importance of 1/ - why do we need to say there was something perfect that humanity "fell" from?

it sort of smacks of platonism, and i have this vibe that it promotes a dualistic view of things. so can we read the account of "the Fall" in Genesis 3:1-13 differently? not that it doesn't depict perhaps the first direct transgression of God's law, but is it such a great "fall" as all that? where does our eschatology fit with a fall?

and yes, this is linked to my previous post!

[apologies for my absence. exegetical to hebrew to greek to doctrine has made for a busy period of time.]

nice guy jesus

was with a friend trying to find some to talk to about jesus at sydney uni, and ended up chatting to this girl who had founded her own religion (membership = 1). what frustrated me most in the conversation was her inability to see the complete arbitrariness of a system that takes a foundation of pop-buddhism, part new-age-spirituality, and the nice-guy jesus who said some things that the gospels are just trying to distort.

it's not at all an uncommon thing, but i really don't know how to get through to this kind of person. C.S. Lewis' famous quote came back into my head as i've been reflecting on the conversation:

... you must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

quote originally from Mere Christianity, this one in From Narnia to a Space Odyssey, a conversation between Arthur C. Clarke (who could be classed as believing in 'scientism') and C.S. Lewis (who rejected the claim that science answered all of life's problems). book edited by Ryder W. Miller, iBooks, N.Y., 2004.

H. Richard Niebuhr on Sin

how do you like this as part of a working definition?

Sin is not quite so much lawbreaking as vice; it is the perverse direction of the drives in man, or of his will in general, towards ends not proper to him.

H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self, Harper and Row, 1962?. p131.

for those interested, i think my next essay, due in around four weeks, is going to be discussing how important it is or isn't to affirm an historical fall (i'm thinking Romans 5:15 is pretty key).

Club Member or Kingdom Citizen

as mooted, here is my article published just recently in AFES's Salt.

i should add, i didn't think of the title, that was all their idea. but it's something i want to keep thinking about, particularly as it has real impacts for how people think about what Christianity is when they first investigate it. maybe think, as you read it, how this way of thinking about Christianity (if you agree) could come in handy as you chat to people.

[i think my article's the 2nd row, 3rd from the right!]

A friend of mine was considering becoming a Christian. Maybe you too, dear reader, one day did the same. And like my friend, did you weigh up the pros and cons? Did you ‘count the cost’ as we say?

Is that a right view of becoming a Christian – is this the right way of working it out?

[Christianity is heaps like a club]

My friend was in many ways right to evaluate Christianity like a club. As he observed it, we all have a common purpose, we all share a love of the same thing (Jesus), and although we don’t have a dress code (Kathmandu jumpers and polo shirts aside), we do have an ethical code. We try to think things through in light of God’s commands and how they’re renewed in Jesus. You join up by applying (praying) and you’re accepted (Acts 16:31)!

BUT these are only things in common with a club. Indeed, most of the problems we see today in the church world have come from people seeing Christianity as a club and changing the rules as you might in a club: if Christianity is a club, then it’s a democracy. It’s got people who are voted in, and if enough of you want to change the rules of the club, or the emphases of a club, you do it.

[Christianity isn’t a club :: it’s a Kingdom]

One massive theme in the New Testament is that Jesus is the King of the whole world. He didn’t get voted for, there was no election, there was no charter of responsibilities and so on. The only one who had any say on the matter (God!) said that Jesus was His chosen son, Messiah, King.

You might feel a bit disenfranchised by this – why don’t I get a say, you say. Well possibly, because the club you would’ve made wouldn’t last!

If you’re part of a club – what do you have at the end of the day? You might get to along to a few meetings, get the club t-shirt (everyone loves those Christian t-shirts), and really have a great time of it. But if that is all Christianity is to you, then at the end of the day you’ve been sold a lie. The club will fold when there isn’t a quorum to vote, the club will get taken over, you’ll find out the things you signed up for in the first place aren’t even part of it anymore.

Christians believe that God speaks to us specifically, that the Bible is God’s Word to his people, by his Spirit, about his son. However in a club we don’t need this specific revelation; we can work it out for ourselves. Being part of a kingdom sees a purposeful revelation, a royal proclamation, with warnings, encouragements, promises and reasons to rejoice with your sovereign.

If Jesus is King, then there is a much bigger picture of reality we’re part of.

Philippians 3:20: “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ”. This is a deliberate portrayal of the peace won by Christ (Pax Christi) in terms of the Peace won by Rome (Pax Romana). Jesus guarantees your safety, will bring his army to protect you, will not let the enemy prevail.

If Christianity is a Kingdom, then you are safe. You will be safe. You are part of something bigger than yourself, which will continue on into eternity. You haven’t signed up, but you’ve been conquered. If you trust in Jesus, you are part of a kingdom that will never fade, spoil or perish, but is united and galvanised around the only sure anchor in the storm, and you serve under a king who gave his life for you, the one who sits in the power-seat of the universe, at the Right Hand of the Almighty.

Salt :: Identity

that's right, pre-empting AFES's announcement, the new edition of Salt is out, on identity. it's so hot off the press there's not even a picture on their website to look at!

my article on Club Member or Kingdom Citizen? wasn't the leading article, but p23 is usually where you find the key ideas for most important books. check out CD, inst, the Bible, to cite just a few books with killer p23s.

explaining the thrust of the article just now, what i didn't write but would've been excellent, was:

a club reflects its membership, a kingdom reflects its king.

that's what it's about. i'll post the full article up here soon.

pick one up from your nearest AFES office, MTC mailroom, or university christian ministry (do go to AFES to find one if you aren't involved and are at uni - what's the worst that could happen?). you'll also get the chance to read some articles by Michael Jensen, Mark Barry and many others.