The suspicious beeping box at Fuller Seminary
My Greek Reading class was canceled this evening because the building in which it meets was closed down “due to the receipt of a suspicious package in a nearby building.” We received an update later this evening that things are back to normal after the Fuller Psychology building, the bookstore and the 490 E. Walnut Building had been closed from approximately 4:45 p.m. until 7:25 p.m. while police were investigating.
What was this suspicious box?
The box came from an unknown sender and made a beeping sound. An appropriate response was taken and a thorough investigation was made. We were relieved to hear from the police that the box contained normal desk clocks. We are grateful that the issue has been resolved and we appreciate your patience during the closure of these three Fuller buildings and the surrounding campus area.
I’m glad things are under control and I sure hope that those are some darn good clocks.
Update (05/04/07): I have gotten some more details about this. The box was apparently unsolicited (so it wasn’t a placed order of desk clocks, but rather a “gift” from a third party vendor) and the address was hand-written, with the return address being the same as the sending address (even though it was postmarked from somewhere in Texas). The bomb squad x-rayed the contents first and could tell there were clock-like devices in there, but didn’t know what else, so they “detonated” the box themselves. They could tell it was merely a box of clocks from the exploded remnants left behind. In retrospect, then, I hope that they weren’t darn good clocks.
Open to Dialogue: Homosexuality and Messiah College
Disclaimer: Let me say from the start that this post is not about whether or not homosexuality or homosexual practice is a sin. This post is concentrated on how discussions surrounding the issue of homosexuality should be handled in academic communities, particularly those academic communities that affirm a Christian confessional stance.
For those of you who have never heard of Equality Ride, and I was one of these people not too long ago, it is basically a gay rights protest bus traveling to Christian schools that have a policy on record (explicitly or implicitly) declaring homosexual practice to be a sin. The effort was initiated by Soulforce, the purpose of which is to realize “freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from religious and political oppression through the practice of relentless nonviolent resistance.” Equality Ride clearly fits squarely within this purpose. Some of the institutions that they have visited or plan to visit include Bob Jones University, Gordon College, Calvin College, University of Notre Dame, Bringham Young University, Pepperdine University, Seattle Pacific University, and of particular interest for me, Messiah College [The schools with links on this list have something online discussing the visit that still remains as I write this (Seattle Pacific once had something, you can see the google cache of the FAQ here)]. Also of interest is the take of the Soulforce organizers for each visit, which can be found via the links on pages for their East Bus Route and their West Bus Route. For Messiah College, we find a report of “success” where the Equality Ride author concludes:
As a native of Pennsylvania, I was very thankful and proud of the hospitality that was demonstrated at the school we visited in my home state, through the efforts of students, administration, and community members.
If you look to Messiah’s dedicated web resource on Equality Ride, you find that this hospitality as an expressed purpose for the visit:
While we did not seek this visit, and we clearly disagree with Equality Ride’s perspective, as a Christian institution of higher education, Messiah College is willing to address difficult contemporary issues through civil debate and discussion. The College is also committed to preparing students to think critically about human sexuality from a biblical perspective. Accordingly, the College has decided to respond to Equality Ride’s visit as an opportunity to model gracious Christianity and hospitality to those who express different viewpoints, to encourage meaningful campus conversation about a complex social issue, and to equip students to better understand human sexuality within a biblical framework. This response, which will take place within a caring Christian educational community, is consistent with Messiah’s ethos and heritage, and with our mission to prepare students for lives of service, leadership, and reconciliation in the Church and society.
For me, this is what is at stake here. People will disagree on the issue of how the Bible should be interpreted regarding homosexual acts, and the school may not budge from its particular stance (see under “Scriptural Guidelines” on the fourth page of the PDF, page 22 of the Student Handbook overall), but it is willing to engage a “complex social issue” in a very intentional and communal way. By all accounts, aside from an uninvited party-crashing counter-protest called Repent America, the day went rather smoothly.
I have heard that behind the scenes Messiah’s more conservative alumni, parents, and donors have been letting the Alumni and Parent Relations folks know that what they appreciate about the visit is that Messiah stayed the course, so to speak, and kept to its “biblical perspective” on homosexual practice. Personally, I would like to announce my support for the way the school handled the visit because of its hospitality and willingness to have meaningful conversation. This is the beauty of going to a relatively small Christian school that is committed to more than simple acquirement of knowledge, but in a communal development of character: to prepare students for lives of service, leadership, and reconciliation in the Church and society, as the school’s mission statement says.
For me, I am happy that the school “sticks to its guns,” if you will, on counter-cultural issues, such as its commitment to not having a flag pole on campus (HUGE AMEN from me!) [although, I am annoyed that it permits advertisements in the student newspaper from the US Army]. But a more sensitive and dialogical approach is required when it comes to a complex social issue such as homosexuality and homosexual practice, where those who feel the brunt of the conservative “gun sticking” are people who feel victimized by both church and society. A lot of Christians are fond of saying “hate the sin, love the sinner,” but is this what most Christians practice? I have my doubts. Even if you believe that the practice of homosexual practice is sinful behavior (and I’m intentionally not going to “weigh in” on this here!) , a true Christian community must show love to those they deem “sinners” by exhibiting gracious Christianity. Messiah College has shown gracious Christianity in this instance.
This approach is not only is beneficial to the discipleship of committed Christians, but also affords an academic community an opportunity to grow stronger as it practices difficult dialogue and conversation. Messiah College, keep being true to your mission! I hope that other like-minded folks who have an interest in Messiah College will contact the Alumni and Parent Relations Offices with me to “cast a vote” for genuine hospitality and gracious dialogue.
Other links of interest include a balanced article written by the Harrisburg Patriot-News, which (as school President Kim Phipps says) thankfully has influenced balanced press coverage from other news media. I appreciated the quote of Messiah’s Provost Randy Basinger in the article on Messiah’s criticism from both the left and the right: “We have Christians who think we are way too open on this issue and Christians who think we are way too closed. We are trying to model conviction with the willingness to dialogue and discuss.” There is also good front-page coverage in April 20th issue of the student newspaper, The Swinging Bridge. A
gain, I also recommend perusing Messiah’s online resource regarding the visit. As an alum, I am proud to see how Kim Phipps and others in the administration handled the situation. And in addition to the Equality Ride website itself some individual bloggers from Equality Ride have posts about the visit (for example, see here, here, and here). Something else that may be of interest is a site that you may otherwise not come across (since it is not officially sanctioned by the school), is the Gay at Messiah website, which features testimonials and apologia for promoting LGBT causes on Messiah’s campus. Finally, you can also see a few photos from the visit here.
[Further disclaimer: Comments that I feel are inappropriate (i.e., hostile remarks) will be removed.]
The Pledge of Allegiance and Civil Religion
I would like to highlight an article from the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, written by Grace Y. Kao and Jerome E. Copulsky (both assistant professors at Virginia Tech), entitled “The Pledge of Allegiance and the Meanings and Limits of Civil Religion.” If you’re logged in, you can find it here on the OUP Journals website, or you can find the link to the journal from the AAR website if you’re a member. Though it is not directly biblical studies related, it is related to the interpretation of texts generally and to the concept of communal memory. For those who cannot get the article from the above links or from a library database (or don’t have time to read through it at the moment), here is the abstract:
Recent court challenges to the constitutionality of teacher-led recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools have centered on the question whether the Pledge is to be understood as a religious or secular ritual, given its post-1954 addition of the phrase “under God.” After a brief discussion of Establishment Clause jurisprudence on this question, we argue that the category of civil religion usefully illuminates what is at stake in constitutional debates about the Pledge and in similar rituals. We develop four perspectives through which the Pledge of Allegiance in particular, and civil religion in general, can be understood to function: preservationist, pluralist, priestly, and prophetic. Thus the ongoing controversy surrounding the Pledge of Allegiance is best understood not as a dispute between “believers” and “atheists,” but on the contested meaning, significance, and propriety of civil religion in America itself. In the end, we suggest that even without the contested phrase, the Pledge would remain a potent ritual of civil religion, serving all four functions, and urge further serious study of the religious significance of the phenomenon of civil religion.
I am in full agreement about the refocusing here. The most important facet of the Pledge of Allegiance is not the “under God” phrase (which I think is abhorrent for my own religious reasons), but rather to what we are compelling children to pledge their allegiance: the flag, the country, and not God. God is an afterthought here, a tacked on phrase to make the pledge sound more religious in the face of communism; it just makes the Pledge worse. These are my opinions, not the arguments of the authors.
You may know that Anabaptists have advocated the right for their children not to say the Pledge, and have taken their challenge about this and other school-related issues to the courts (which is an interesting theological issue in itself, that Anabaptists would appeal to civil authorities to challenge the enforcement of civil religion). For a relatively recent court challenge of the Pledge by a Mennonite, here’s a Washington Post article that might interest you. You may also be interested in this article by the Mennonite scholar, J. Nelson Kraybill: “A New Patriotism: Pledge of Allegiance.”
Video: Pagels on Colbert Report
Colbert: “What the hell is the Gospel of Judas?”
Originally premiered 4/17/07. For those who don’t know, you can read an English translation of the Gospel of Judas on the National Geographic website. You can also see their Coptic transcription. April DeConick suggests that the National Geographic translation has errors and that Judas is actually “as evil as ever” in this Gospel of Judas. You can find comments from Jim Davila of PaleoJudaica about this. Dr. DeConick is working on getting a book published on what the Gospel of Judas really says. Maybe Stephen Colbert will have her on the show!
As you saw, Pagels mentions Irenaeus (that “chatty Cathy” in Colbert’s words) in this interview. I am interested to see whether Dr. DeConick interacts with Irenaeus’ mention of the Gospel of Judas in his Against the Heresies. Here is an English translation of the brief reference (you can find the surrounding context here):
They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.
I could be wrong, but it seems that this quotation indicates that Irenaeus thought something like Pagels and King are advocating in regards to the message of the Gospel of Judas. Would Dr. DeConick suggest that scholars working on the Gospel of Judas are too quick to accept Irenaeus’ understanding of its message (if not his judgment of it as heresy) and let it influence their translation? Or perhaps I’m reading too much into things.
Also of interest: you can also find Bart Ehrman’s interviews on The Colbert Report (aired 06/20/06) and The Daily Show (aired 03/14/06) on his book Misquoting Jesus. Stephen Prothero, Chair of the Department of Religion at BU, was recently interviewed on The Daily Show (03/19/07). At a more popular level, The Colbert Report has interviewed Tony Campolo (02/27/06) and The Daily Show has interviewed Jim Wallis (01/31/05). I think it’s great when religion is talked about on these shows. Not only do Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert make complicated subjects more accessible, but they (usually) do so in an intelligent way. And it’s funny.
UnSpun update: We're rockin' the vote
I just checked back on Amazon UnSpun since I’ve seen it posted on so many blogs since I did my rankings. On the UnSpun homepage, their Most Popular Lists breakdown for the past 30 days currently has our biblioblogs list (“Best Blogs about Biblical Studies“) at #2, behind “Missing Apple Announcements.” Come on, we can beat out all the iStuff fanatics! 
Also of interest, “Top Theology Blogs” is listed as #3 and “Best Bible in English” is #4.
I’m still not sure how reliable the ranking is, but hey, it’s fun anyway.
Layout change: offshoring the links
My list of links on the right-hand side was getting to be a bit unwieldy, so I’ve taken a note from Jim West and have relegated them to a google page. Google pages are free and easy to use. I remember when the internet was just opening up to popular use while I was in high school. My friend Matt and I did all kinds of crazy stuff with HTML and weird psychedelic backgrounds. Nowadays, you don’t have to know anything about anything to make a webpage. I guess the same goes for blogs! I hope I didn’t just indict myself there. Over time, I’ll work on organizing the links and adding comments to make it more helpful.
All of this to say that I want to make more space on the side for other things. I will only keep the blogs that I personally visit most often, especially the less publicized blogs, because I would like to give a tip of the hat to a few worthy links. Don’t be offended if you’re not on the list! Like Mark Goodacre, taking a glance at my Google reader “shared items” feed on the right gives you an idea of what I’m reading from a much larger list of blogs (some unrelated to biblical studies, but perhaps of interest to bibliobloggers among others). If you want to see more than what is displayed, you can wander over to the page dedicated to displaying all of my shared items. That’s right, I’m using Blogger (owned by Google), Google pages, and Google reader. Google owns more and more of my life every day.
For what am I making room? Two things. I would like to copy others who have links to their most popular posts (like Chris Tilling) or have helpfully categorized some of their own favorite posts (such as April DeConick under her “Weblog Archive Highlights”). That’s a longer term project I’ll have to put together as I have time. Second, I am also jealous of other blogging platforms that allow you to show recent comments on the side, like WordPress (I’m particularly thinking of Shawn Anthony’s blog). A lot of interesting things happen in comment discussions and I don’t think you should have to click on every post to see where the latest comments are. I did notice that Blogger’s layout tool allows you to add a “feed.” If any other Blogger users are wondering, your comment feed should be “http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default”. The last five comments (including your own) will be shown with date and author. But it does not indicate the title of the post being commented on. I also noticed that Alan Knox uses a javascript widget created by hackosphere and modified by Beautiful Beta, which allows for all of these things, so I am giving that a whirl until Google perfects their tool for sharing comments.
[Incidentally, you know what would also be nice? If Google/Blogger told you all the comments that you left with your Blogger profile on other blogs. I can't keep track of all of them myself, so I don't always check back to see how the blog's author responded.]
This is all a work in progress. If any of you have suggestions for improvement, please let me know.
Biblioblog rankings… I guess.
I just learned from Jim West that there is this list ranking Biblical Studies blogs on this thing called Amazon UnSpun. I’ve never heard of Amazon UnSpun, but apparently it’s related to Amazon.com and it seems to be a community of lists. People vote and comment on the items on these lists. I guess that’s interesting. The seventh most popular list in the past 30 days is “Best Things about Rhodesian Ridgeback Dogs.” I entered my own blog on the list (of biblioblogs, not Rhodesian Ridgeback Dogs) since it wasn’t there yet and then it just appeared at #6 on the list! I don’t know what’s up with that. I’m sure it will change soon. Also, they put some mysterious number on the right side of each item and I don’t know what that’s about either. At first I thought it was the amount of votes and since Jim West had 3333 next to his blog name, I thought he must have voted for himself a couple thousand times. Alas, not even he would do such a thing. Here’s a widget of the voting thus far:
I put some others on there too. Once I started rearranging my own personal rankings (which is very easy to do), it made a significant difference in the order of the community rankings… so that apparently makes a bigger difference than just voting, at least it does right now, while not many people have voted yet. I currently have a much inflated position on the list. I’m sure it will get more realistic with more votes!
What is the Brethren in Christ denomination?
My fellow Brethren in Christ (BIC) blogger, the prolific Shawn Anthony of Lo-Fi Tribe, has given a synopsis of the three streams of our BIC heritage: Anabaptism, Pietism, and Wesleyanism. He has done this since “most” of his readers are not familiar with the denomination. I, too, have the feeling that most of my readers are not that familiar with the Brethren in Christ denomination. I commend Shawn’s helpful and accessible post to you if you are curious about some of the theological underpinnings of this small and quirky (but wicked cool [yeah, I'm from Massachusetts]) denomination.
Historically, I sum it up this way: the Brethren in Christ are basically Mennonites who like to get caught up in revivals. The denomination was initiated by Mennonites in Pennsylvania who felt like their own Mennonite community did not have the kind of “heart-felt” relationship with Jesus that they should have. The historic movement of the BIC church, I think, was motivated less by theology in their adoption of Pietism and Wesleyanism, and more by the passionate spirituality of those movements. The fact that these traditions did not conflict too much with their Anabaptist heritage helps. One of the connecting factors for all of these movements, I believe, is a commitment to radical and visible obedience to God.
Now the BIC church struggles with the influences of generic Evangelicalism, and even a little bit of fundamentalism in some areas of the country, which I think is unfortunate. But that’s true of a lot of denominations. One of my Anabaptist professors said that a lot of Mennonite churches in the South are basically fundamentalist congregations with a peace stance. Kind of odd. Anyway, I’m getting away from myself a little bit here. Mainly, I’d just like to send you over to Shawn’s post.
Big paper on… the Philippians hymn?
Against my better judgment, I have foolishly chosen to explore the possibility of doing a paper on the Philippians hymn (that’s Phil 2:5-11 for those who are unfamiliar). The paper is for the class The Cross in the New Testament, taught by Marianne Meye Thompson, and it primarily focuses on the death of Jesus and related atonement theories (it fulfills the New Testament Theology [NTT] requirement for the Fuller Seminary MDiv program–it’s my third NTT class). This is not simply another class paper, I should have you know. This is also intended to be the basis for my writing sample that will be sent off to doctoral programs. On top of that, I am considering submitting it as a paper for the regional religion conference in 2008 (which is conveniently meeting at Fuller Seminary). All things considered, I need to rev up all available engines on this project. Perhaps it is not wise to give my potential competition a glance at the topic of my research and my strategy, but things are at their beginning stages for this paper, so I’m not too worried about it. I don’t even know if I’m going to stick with the Philippians hymn.
Speaking of which, one who is not on the “inside” of biblical studies may wonder what the big deal is about this passage. The big deal is that there is a massive amount of scholarly literature about this small section in Paul’s epistle to the Philippians. It is believed to be one of the earliest hymns of the Christian church and, furthermore, one of the earliest compact statements of a clear christological outlook. The hymn contains the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the subsequent exaltation of Jesus by God. It is packed with theology. From my cursory understanding (as I said, I’ve only begun the research process), a large deal of the scholarly literature is focused on individual elements of this hymn; the “emptying” of Christ, for example. I am possibly narrowing my focus on one element as well, and that is the role that the death of Jesus plays in the hymn and the importance of obedience, even obedience that should be modeled by the followers of Jesus. I’m not sure how much scholarly literature focuses on this aspect of the hymn.
Another huge topic in the study of this passage is its literary form. A great deal of ink has been spilled analyzing how the form fits together and from where it comes. I have a different interest. I am particularly interested in how it might have functioned and what it might have meant to early communities of Christians, as far as we can know or guess these things. There has been a great deal written on the function of hymns generally in early Christianity, and that will be one place I will have to spend time. I am also interested in sociological studies related to communal or social memory. I believe these studies may provide a window into how the theme of Jesus’ obedient death as a model for imitation might have functioned among early believers. You may have noticed my earlier post when I declared I would be working on the memory of Jesus in the early church for this paper. This is the “angle” I’m now considering for that paper.
April DeConick has recently blogged a series of posts regarding the tendencies of communal memory. These are the tendencies she has posted about thus far:
- Communal memory depends upon shared frames of references within a culture as it thrives on remaking the past into a history with contemporaneous meaning. [more here]
- These remembrances do not represent the sum total of what actually happened, but are fragments of the past that have been rearranged and reconnected into a new interpretative framework. [more here]
- [T]he process of recreating the past is ongoing for the group since it is constantly under pressure to adjust and respond to societal, political, cultural, and religious pressures that the group experiences. [more here]
She has also pointed to a collection of articles to which she has contributed. Interestingly, I actually found the book the day before noticing that she had mentioned it on her blog. It is entitled Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity and is edited by Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher. You can also find it on Amazon, where it is a “Search Inside” book, and is 30% off (at least, it is at the moment).
Again, I am not as interested in “getting at” the history behind the text regarding the historical Jesus, the historical Paul, or even this historical hymn, though there are certainly implications regarding these in my project. Nevertheless, I do think the concepts of communal memory may be helpful in exploring how the early church remembered Jesus.
All of this to say, I may just be insane. As I look back at what I have just now wrote, I am thoroughly daunted and may indeed take on a different topic. I will explore the possibility, though, and see what happens.
Which Church Father Are You?
I saw that Jim West (Tertullian) and Judy Redman (Melito of Sardis) tried this out and a bunch of others too. I like my results: You’re St. Jerome!
You’re a passionate Christian, fiercely devoted to Jesus Christ and his Church. You are willing to labor long hours in the Lord’s vineyard, and you have little patience with those who are less willing or able to work as you do. Your passions often carry you into temptation zones of wrath, lust, and pride.
Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!
That’s quite a combination of temptations! At least I’m pretty darn good with languages. As it happens, Michael L. Westmoreland-White turns out to be Jerome as well. Must be some proto-baptist spirit in Jerome. Michael also points out that there are no “church mothers” in the quiz which is a complaint that I have too. But seeing as Jerome was interested in women and their capabilities (we won’t go too far into that one), perhaps that’s as good as we can get in this quiz.
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Elsewhere . . .- Blog titles beginning with "A" to "Z" on your reader Mark Goodacre
- Of making many books there is no end Chris Brady
- Free Online: The Liddell-Scott Jones Lexicon S and C
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? II agathos
- Steven J. Friesen and the Identity of Satan’s Throne in Pergamum alan
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? agathos
- Bloomsbury buys Continuum Mark Goodacre
- Imperial America Peter J. Leithart
- C.F.D. Moule on the Birth of the New Testament d. miller
- Responding to Kostenberger (with comparisons to Marshall) Jeremiah
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Research assisted by: