Archive for Personal
A little housekeeping
First of all, I have decided to try to use this blog as something other than a distraction from my doctoral work. Specifically, I’m going to try to figure out ways of including aspects of my research for my dissertation here (but not so much that I get ripped off, of course). For those who don’t know, I am ABD in a PhD program in historical linguistics at the University of Georgia. My dissertation involves translations of the Gospels into a few languages for whom those translations are among the earliest attestations. It’s more interested in linguistic aspects of those translation languages than the Gospels qua biblical literature, but my interaction with them is bound to bleed over, at least in my understanding and familiarity with them. So we’ll see how that goes.
I also wanted to take an opportunity to give a shout-out to my man, Y6P5QSETK3RE. You know who you are.
My best meme ever
What an…honor(?) to be tagged with the Honest Scrap Meme by one Joshua Cecil Horne at the Smoak House.
Honest Scrap Award
I’ll let Josh tell you about it:
When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it (hence my over-the-top cocky title for this post), including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to said person so everyone knows he or she is real. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have 7 friends. Show the 7 random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with “Honest Weblog.” Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. List at least ten honest things about yourself. Then, pass it on!
So without any further ado, here I go…
- I kinda hate memes a lot. But I also kinda like them a little. I’m a bit uncomfortable with talking about myself so much since people don’t read this site to find out about Steve. But the blog’s been quiet lately, so I welcome the chance to break the silence.
- I talk a lot about things that are controversial to my evangelical background on this blog. By my reckoning, there’s only one major departure from my base that I haven’t come clean on. Like to know what it is? Sorry, not yet.
- My most annoying habit: my annoyance at annoying habits. It’s usually my dear wife who gets nagged, although the things that annoy me aren’t unique to her.
- I am a picky eater. Among the common foods I hate: onions, tomatoes (although I will eat ketchup and tomato sauce in limited quantities), and nuts. I also hate almost anything slimy, but I do love cooked Brussel sprouts.
- When I was a kid — ok, even when a young teenager, I used to — well, ok, probably even when I got to college (you happy?), I used to pretend my life was fully televised. This began years before The Truman Show, so it was an independently created psychosis.
- I am a musician. In order of proficiency, my instruments are piano, clarinet, trombone, and bagpipes. Seriously.
- For the first couple years of my adolescent period, I wanted to be Benny Goodman. That morphed into wanting to be a band teacher; to that end, I memorized the ranges for all kinds of instruments, studied how they were played, etc.
- When I went to college, I started off as a music major because of the band teacher thing and also because I wanted to learn about composing instrumental music, something I played at all through high school, and less frequently since college. But the college didn’t have such an emphasis, so I had to become an instrumental major; I auditioned for piano, but quickly washed out and became a clarinet major for my second semester. Turns out, that year was wasted, as my sophomore year I switched to Bible and Theology.
- I served as one of the original officers for my college’s opera club, “Aria da Capo”. I didn’t then, nor do I now, care for opera.
- Although I can read (with varying proficiency) six dead languages, I still don’t know Latin! Major weakness for an historical linguist, that. However, I’ll be learning Latin along with my children as I start teaching my daughter next year for second grade. Of modern languages, besides English I can only read a bit of modern German, and I speak even less — which is an even more major weakness than no Latin.
In keeping with my general principle for memes, I’m not going to tag anyone specifically. There’s usually poor response among those I tag anyway. Anyone who likes can participate in my comments. Thanks for reading!
Personal news
Looking through this site, you’ll probably notice that there is a minimum of personal info about myself. It’s largely unintentional, since this site is about ideas more than about me as a person living a normal life. I just don’t have much to say about me here on this blog.
One area of my personal life that I’ve purposefully let bleed over into posts and comments, mostly in attempts to explain my absence this last summer and the past few weeks, has been my request for prayer, but I’ve also been purposefully obscure about what exactly was going on. This reticence was caused by personal insecurity. Now that the storm has passed, I thought I’d share for the record what it has been all about.
Yesterday morning, I officially became a PhD candidate at the University of Georgia. Having completed all the coursework towards my doctorate (in historical linguistics), I was required to take a comprehensive written and an oral examination in order for me to be eligible to write a dissertation, the final step of the doctoral program. I have been studying for these exams for over a year now, and finally this Fall I took and passed both of them. The oral examination was yesterday morning, and upon my successful completion of that, I am now considered by the University to be a “doctoral candidate”: a more common, colloquial term for my current position is ABD, which stands for “all but dissertation” — a quite accurate description of where I am in the program right now.
Being ABD is a much better place to be. In the next few months, I will begin research on my dissertation topic (once the proposal is finalized), and as soon as that has happened, I am actually hirable by colleges and universities as-is, although I will not actually be rewarded the doctorate until the dissertation is completed and defended (this is still a couple years in the future). It is assumed by academia in general that, even though it might take a few years, doctoral candidates will eventually complete their dissertations, so that those still in the process of working on their dissertations are not necessarily barred from employment by prospective employers (once again, in academia, anyway). One possible contingent factor for me is the fact that I do not have an intermediate graduate degree (a Master’s Degree, for instance): I was accepted to UGA’s linguistics program with only a BA in Bible and Theology, but moved directly into this consolidated doctoral program. So as it stands, I have a Bachelor of Arts and almost a PhD; this will discourage some schools from hiring me because on paper, I don’t have any graduate degree whatsoever. However, sometimes an MA student who has not completed his/her thesis will be hired in a temporary status contingent upon its completion, which is analogous to my situation and so might apply.
That said, I’m not looking for new employment yet. For one thing, I still have some work to do in order to be able to demonstrate that I’m working on my dissertation, beginning with the dissertation proposal that kicks the whole thing off. But it’s a great feeling knowing that all those headaches and all that heartache has paid off. I’m actually looking forward to getting into the research and analysis that will go into my dissertation (whose precise subject is TBD and TBA).
See, I was very much afraid and convinced that I had worse-than-average chances of passing my comprehensive finals. The biggest reason was that, rather than taking my comprehensives a couple months after completing my coursework, I completed my coursework in May of 2005 and just now took the exams. What this means is that I was practically out of it for two solid years. And do you know what “comprehensive” means? It means that I was responsible for knowing everything I was taught in my two years of coursework, plus material from about thirty books I had to read on my own. I forgot so much in that interval, but at the time, I had little choice but to get a job and take care of my growing little family. But after we found out that my wife was expecting our third child, I realized that I had to get busy and get this thing finished! By then, there was so much catching up to do — and I don’t have the best memory. I was faced with the very real possibility that I’d not pass my finals and get kicked out the program. How humiliating!
So that’s why I held this somewhat close to my chest when talking about what was going on this last year: flunking the program would have been embarrassing enough in front of all my loving family and friends, so I had no intention of suffering such humiliation writ large (i.e. all over the internet)!
But I passed. And believe me, I know more than ever that God guides the steps of the righteous. If God hadn’t put me here where I am, I wouldn’t be here – couldn’t be here – and that’s all there is to it.
To all who pledged their support and prayers, thank you. Your encouragement meant a lot to me.
Five favorite things
My long-time friend Heather has tagged me with a meme listing my five favorite things (in no particular order). So here we go!
1) Receiving and spreading knowledge. I am an education nut (read: “nerd”); I love to receive it, and welcome opportunities to share it.
2) Discussing important topics. I want real back-and-forth dialogue on things that I’m interested in. I’m not much of a small talk guy. I like big talk: theology, politics, pressing interpersonal problems, anything that matters or strikes my fancy as unique. Discussion of sports does not qualify.
3) Studying origins. I’m not primarily talking about the evolution/creation controversy here: I like to know about the beginning of almost anything. This has led to almost choosing ancient history as my postgraduate field, and it did lead to my choice of Indo-European/Germanic linguistics, which seeks to uncover the details of the origin of each language family. I like visiting historical sites so that I can experience, as much as possible, times and circumstances anterior to my own – and the earlier, the better.
4) Experiencing nature. I have not had much luck at spending time out there in recent years, due to my young family, my schooling, and my urban residences. My ideal summer would be a hike down the Appalachian Trail or some other wilderness experience. For now, the occasional camping trip has to suffice.
5) Having a family. This is definitely my #1 favorite. I’m a husband and a father of three, and I can tell you with all conviction that, as a Christian, nothing else is nearly so fulfilling or important – even essential – as having a family. My life isn’t just about me, or just about a woman I love and enjoy during my lifetime, but about what we build together that will last. My wife and I will probably die within 60 years and everything I will have said or written will quickly fall away, but our children and their children will be our living, self-perpetuating legacy. More so than anything I believe or do while I’m here, what knowledge I gain, what great discussions I have, it will be how I perform as a husband and a father – how I mirror our Lord – that will serve as my greatest act of worship. My family is the treasure I will lay down at the feet of my God when I stand before Him. I married young and became a father young, which is countercultural nowadays; I am grateful that in so doing I didn’t have the chance to bury the money He entrusted me or squander it on self-fulfillment, but that I invested it early on in something that will grow and honor Him in ways that I will have ample opportunity to observe within my own lifetime. Sure, it’s been harder to perform by the world’s standards: I would have finished this degree long, long ago, could have already had a nice house of my own and lots of possessions to be proud of, would have already hiked the Appalachian Trail, etc. But when I look at eternity…who needs a degree? Who needs stuff? I have a family! Thank you for this blessing, dear Father.
Runners up:
Scifi/fantasy. Gotta love it. Don’t read much of it, but I like to see a good scifi/fantasy film or TV series.
Movies. Good movies. I’m picky, but I definitely appreciate a well written and well executed film, especially a well written and well executed scifi/fantasy film.
The internet. Yeah, this makes me sound like a hopeless, couch (desk?) potato geek (but see number 4 above). The thing is, it’s not the internet’s slant towards goofing off and time-killing that make me enjoy it: rather, it’s the currently unparalleled potential to aid me with favorites 1, 2, and 3 above.
If you read this, you’re tagged! If you have a blog and care to, do it there; otherwise, you may simply wish to list your five favorites in a comment below.
Radio silence
Effective this post, I’m going into radio silence for approximately one month. Well, not exactly. I mean, for one thing, this isn’t radio. And for another, I hope I’ll not be altogether silent over the next month, but there are no promises, either.
What’s the occasion? Well, let’s just say that the outcome of the event that transpires in the next month is the single most definitive turning point for me so far and will largely determine what I do for the rest of my life. Am I overstating things? Hardly.
I hate that this comes now when my blog traffic is at a record high. But as I said above, I’m not planning on unplugging completely: I will still be on to respond to comments as necessary, maybe put up a link I’ve found, summarize a thought going through my head, etc. So don’t take me off your blogroll yet. 
If you would, whenever (if ever) this blog comes to your mind in the next month, drop to your knees and send out a fervent prayer on my behalf – or at least whisper, “Lord, help jog Steve’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad memory.” 
Thanks!
~Steve
My preterist testimony
I was in college. In my fourth of five years, I heard about a professor who was fairly “liberal” in theology. A friend of mind took his class on Revelation, and was disturbed by how good the arguments were that Revelation was written about first century events. When my friend explained to me in brief terms the professor’s argument, I, too, was apalled – and intrigued. Something about the whole thing rang true. However, I would put it somewhat on the backburner for a little while.
By the time I was out of college, I was ready to dive in and find out if there was anything to this belief system. A few internet searches, and I found that the name for this scandalous view was “preterism”. I looked at a lot of arguments, asked a lot of questions. I discovered that there are two main types of preterists. Partial preterists see only some of prophecy as related to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and hold out for a future something or other (usually the Second Coming and the Resurrection) in the future. Full preterists, the main type of preterist with whom I corresponded on the theological forums, believe that all eschatological events were fulfilled in those events of the first century. Around this time I was starting to see the Bible as literature rather than as a magic text independent of its original cultural context. I saw that the prophetic diction in the New Testament was not a brand new creation, but that it was built upon the tradition of the Old Testament prophecies, and with this revelation and what it did to the Olivet Discourse (Mat 24-25), I was a preterist. Of some sort, anyway.
Then came to a momentous (and stupid) decision: I would decide whether full preterism was true or not by praying and then reading through all the epistles, trying to see if it all made sense from a full preterist standpoint. I didn’t get all the way through before the inevitable happened: I could not reconcile the relevant eschatological passages as I understood them in my fully dispensationalist mindset with the view of preterism. Surprise, surprise, huh?
*ahem* “Meme me me!”
Ok, it’s been long enough for me to do another meme, and because I am a good sport, I will respond to both memes I was tagged with by one merciless (mercilessly funny, that is) blogger friend of mine, Kev at Special Kind of Stupid (you want a laugh? check him out!). Unfortunately, my answers will not be particularly funny. But come on, Kev, just be glad I’m doing these at all
Where have I been?
Well, I got a Macbook. I’ve been spending a lot of time getting acquainted with it, and no time on my PC. My blog has suffered, because instead of posting online I had been using blog editing software called Zoundry. Great program. Well, it doesn’t offer Mac support, so I’ve been looking into other options. Then it occurred to me that I might as well post this one here within my browser. Trouble is, I’m somewhat addicted to having a stand-alone editor, so I can hardly stand to write any more right now. I will tell you that Qumana, which is free, works ok, but it has no support for the <—more—> tag that allows the first part of the post to appear on the main page with a link to the full post at the end. Because I have frequently used and fully intend to continue using this feature, due to my extra long posts, I cannot stick with Quamana. I haven’t really found any other free options that work. Any suggestions?
The Literary-Generic Principle
This is the fifth of a series of posts on inspiration, inerrancy, and hermeneutics.
The Importance of Determining Genre
Because the Bible is a compilation of literary works, in order to get the sense of it, we must interpret each of them in the manner in which it was intended, viz. according to the appropriate literary category. Surely the principle of interpreting things in the manner in which there were intended approaches tautology, but how many Christians ever really follow it through? As mentioned before, the assumptions that determine the “manner in which it was intended” are too often based on what meets the eye alone. So what do I mean by interpreting the Bible as literature?
You read a novel in much the same way that you read the newspaper, realizing that they are both forms of narrative. How you interpret the narratives in each, however, depends on your recognition of the type of literature you are reading. No one would say that Great Expectations was “errant” or “a pack of lies” unless he thought it was written as history. The same goes for the Bible, which is far from uniform in literary genre. We have farmers, shepherds, doctors, and kings for authors; what thoughtful person, recognizing that God chose this diverse crowd rather than three or four prophets or priests to bear witness to Himself, would conclude that God would homogenize their testimonies into one nameless genre, erasing the distinctiveness of each one in His quest to dole out a series of unanalyzable propositions? Instead, within the pages of Scripture we find a broad range of writing styles that includes poetry, wisdom literature, prophecy, apocalyptic, and epistle.
Moreover, there is not always a one-to-one genre-to-book correlation. Not every segment within the book of Genesis, for example, is to be interpreted as the same sort of narrative, as is somewhat obvious to someone doing comparative literary analysis on the type of stories being told. The Creation part of Genesis shares many characteristics of Ancient Near Eastern mythology, whereas the stories of the Patriarchs remind us of the Icelandic sagas, collections of family stories that give a group of people a common heritage.
The historical-grammatical (or grammatico-historical) method of biblical interpretation is the practice of taking into account the original language and the culture of the original audience when researching the original meanings of Scripture. By and large, though, inerrantists have used this principle as a defensive and reactionary measure to clear up problems rather than as an active interpretive method: for instance, it is responsible for the observation mentioned before that Judah (and later Israel) used accession year dating, because Edwin Thiele looked at Persian (and that of other ANE cultures) record-keeping and saw that this explained a lot of long-supposed errors in the dating of the kings. The historical-grammatical method has been modified by many exegetes to act as a sort of middle-ground that suspends the value of a plain reading if by any means it helps to demonstrate the scientific inerrancy of the Bible. What is missing from that version of the historical-grammatical hermeneutic is the principle we have been discussing that insists upon interpreting the Bible in terms of the literary characteristics, devices, and genres that make it up. We may call this the literary-generic principle; this principle is a tool that cannot be neglected by anyone claiming to use the historical-grammatical method of interpretation and exegesis.
Seekers welcome
“Knowledge puffs up.” This phrase is customarily pulled out of the rest of 1 Corinthians 8:1 and cast as a slur upon those like myself intrinsically driven to seek more learning and understanding. Even the immediate context of this phrase in 1 Corinthians 8 shows, however, that not only is knowledge necessary, but that it is actually deficient, incomplete knowledge that puffs up, knowledge devoid of love (for more on this, see this great article from bible.org).
A lover of learning is the type of person who, while his eyes pass over the landscape, notices each glint and out-of-place shadow, and is all but incapable of resisting the urge to investigate. Sometimes I really don’t like being the type who questions things. I fear that it appears I’m doing it for fun, or because I think it’s cool to “question everything”, or because I assume everyone is wrong but I. I fear this because I’ve identified those motivations in other people who like the limelight of being unique; yet I can honestly say that I would hardly put myself through the hassle of critiquing views held by the majority or especially by those I love for no other reason than a little self-aggrandizement.
But this Christmas I began to consider the two groups of people to whom the birth of Jesus was announced. The first group was the Jewish shepherds. They were minding their business, faithfully tending to their responsibilities. They weren’t seeking anything except the protection of their livelihood. They saw the angel and heard the voices of the heavenly hosts, and at once left to find the newborn Christ.
The other group was the Magi from the East, from as far away as Persia. These Gentiles were of a completely different faith, being a priestly class from the Zoroastrian religion. They were astrologers whose dedication to the study of their writings and what they thought the stars and planets told them was so great that they trekked up to a thousand miles to confirm it. Chances are great that they did not see Jesus until at least a couple years later. These men were seekers. There was no special annunciation given to them: God spoke to them through their own learning. This gives me no end of encouragement.
Many quarters of the church nowadays, at least in America, hold instruction in and critical examination of our faith at arms’ length; few denounce those pursuits outright, but most look sideways at it, fearful of becoming “puffed up”, afraid that what they learn might make them want to live out the faith even less. They look at academic, liberal theologians and equate the first adjective with the second. What they don’t do is acknowledge that there is definitely no shortage of liberals and libertines from among the unlearned masses as well. The issue is not of knowledge making the truth-seeking Christians “puffed up”, but of satisfaction with an insufficient amount of the truth of God; this is equally a problem with the learned who are distracted by empty truths and with the ignorant who are content with what gets them their next experience. It is the truth of God that saves: belief in Christ’s lordship and confession thereof are what matters, and even the “experience” side of the equation is dependent on antecedent knowledge of the existence of the thing to be experienced.
I sometimes envy the unquestioning, simple-trust sort of believers whom I know. They just believe and that’s it: this sort of belief, while tending too far towards “blind faith” and utterly impossible to pass on to unbelievers, is apparently sufficient for their own lives and helps them worry less over details. Similarly, the shepherds, being Jewish, were privy to the honor of experiencing the angelic visitation; but don’t forget that the point of the visitation was revelation, which is itself knowledge. God wants us to know so that we can experience. For this reason, God wishes to educate even those in the humblest circumstances. Those who seek, who delve deeper and deeper — God is faithful to lead us the whole thousand miles to bring us to the same place. Thank God for that.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
The Jacob to Israel experience
Many of you will be happy to hear that this post is not about preterism (check the category and tags!). It’s more about the importance of developing the Christian mind. It was, however, my recent discussion of preterism that brought this to my thoughts, so I will use my struggle with full preterism as an example.
I certainly didn’t come quietly into full preterism. Since my first encounter with it, I kicked against the goads for about five years before I could no longer say that I struggled against full preterism.
This is not to say that I do not still struggle with it. There are some things one cannot understand about a subject without first accepting it on its own terms. I have accepted full preterism fully, and will now continue to wrestle with it for the rest of my days. Even before being entirely convinced of preterism, I had to accept it provisionally in order to see more clearly what claims it was making and why. This sort of engagement with things we are at odds with is an important stage and a necessary component of maturing as a Christian. »» The Jacob to Israel experience
Are you getting tired of this yet?
I’ve always rolled my eyes when I encountered the “Revelation” nuts in the church: obsession with the day’s headlines, thinking that they elucidate the details of the fulfillment of end-times prophecy, this bugs the ever-loving stew out of me.
I realize I’ve been talking a lot of eschatology lately. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a one-trick pony or that I’m unhealthily devoted to discussion of this particular doctrine. I thought I’d dedicate a post explaining why I’ve been talking about this, and why I am not likely to completely stop posting about eschatology in the future (although I’m sure it will slack off here and there).
I never could stomach codswallop, and especially widely celebrated codswallop. It’s always been natural for me to be critical of things handed to me to believe, even when I understand that the majority believes it. And then sometimes I discover that I have unquestioned, inaccurate presuppositions on a subject. Now, when I realize that I have been eating food with a hair in it, I make absolutely sure that I have purged my mouth by rinsing it with drink and stuffing it with a prodigious amount of uncontaminated food. So it was with my eschatology. Having long since rinsed my mouth out and cleared away the bunk I believed before, for the last few years I have been on the mission of preparing and chewing up the replacement meal. I am using this blog as a way of probing everything and getting my own ducks in a row, but also of answering the questions of some friends who have lately been asking questions.
Although my interests are by no means limited to one or two topics, I do bury myself in one or two at a time until 1) I reach a dead end, 2) I’m distracted by the luster of another topic, or 3) I obtain a measure of comfort with what I believe on that topic. And when this last is achieved, the teacher in me makes me dig just a bit deeper so that I can explain it to others.
This is where I am with eschatology. I am fully aware that there are some divisive topics which do not request to be voiced abroad, or if so, more as a heads-up full disclosure than a “Repent of your contrary belief!” sort of thing. Christianity can tolerate a lack of homogeneity of belief on a number of peripheral topics.
But eschatology is different. Not only does futurism needlessly make Christianity a laughingstock with its endless failed predictions, it’s based solely on a ludicrous hermeneutic for Scripture interpretation that undermines even our Lord’s own credibility. Moreover, my eschatology needs to make substantial gains in acceptance within the Church if its chief implication, the victory of Christianity throughout the world, is to be realized any time soon.
So please don’t roll your eyes when you see me writing about this particular topic, and please do make sure that you’ve tried to understand why it means so much to me and that you are satisfied that you have given it the level of importance that it deserves.
Loading ...