Gosh I come up with some good passwords! Here let me give you an example of one I’m currently using…uh, nevermind.

Greek is over. I’ve no idea how I did on the final and I don’t think I care to find out. I’ll be starting Greek Exegesis this fall and putting Hebrew off till next summer. In order to sharpen my skills I plan on translating 2 Peter. I know a first year Greek student isn’t going to get far but at least I can parse each word or something. I have to get those forms down or I will forever be running to a book.

To celebrate the end of Greek, I bought a four pack of Tetley English Ale and an eight pack of cigars imported from Honduras. The ale is good but I really wanted a pale or brown ale. This stuff is not nutty enough and is too creamy for my taste. The cigars are nice. :)

I’m continuing to read the Openness debate in the recent Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. Up to Greg Boyd’s response. One thing I’ve noticed in both Boyd’s and Sander’s responses is that they draw arbitrary lines and then can’t understand why other folks don’t follow them. There have been many examples but here is, I think, a clear one:

Ware worries that if we take biblical depictions of God changing his mind, regretting decisions, experiencing surprise, etc. as straightforward depictions, then some might eventually go further and conclude that God has a poor memory, has an uncontrolled tempter, has to travel to different locations, etc. We simply do not see anything in narratives that describes God as thinking about the future in terms of what may or may not happen (e.g. Exod 4:1-9; 13:17; Jer 26:3; Ezek 12:2) or changing his mind (e.g. Exod 32:10-14; Jer 18:7-10; Jonah 3:10) or expecting something to happen that does not come to pass (Jer 3:6-7; 19-20; Isa 5:1-10) that suggests they are anthropomorphisms. Nor do we see what true meaning such texts could convey if they are taken as anthropomorphisms.

Boiling this down, what Boyd is saying is that they are just reading those passages and taking them at face value. If it says that God changed His mind, then He changed His mind. Openness Theologians simply don’t see any reason to take them in any other way.

This is nice and makes Openness sound like it is exegetically driven but it isn’t. For example, what clues in context would tell you that God does not have a poor memory or that He has to travel from location to location, or any other anthropomorphism? Why does Boyd read those texts differently than the ones that talk about God changing His mind? This was Ware’s point and it seems to have been lost on Boyd. Boyd will decide when a text is anthropomorphic and when it isn’t. If we chide him for his inconsistency we have good reason. Furthermore, since Openness Theologians are going to employ a consistent hermeneutic (e.g. not one that changes based on a philosophical presupposition) then what are they going to do with things like God’s prediction of Cyrus in Isaiah 44? This took place (if I remember correctly) something like 100 year after Isaiah predicated it. If we follow the Openness notion of what God knows, then there was a real chance that Cyrus would never have been born or could have died before this prophecy could be fulfilled or his parents might have given him a different name or any other number of possibilities. There is no way that God could have known this would come to pass as it did if He does not posses exhaustive foreknowledge.

Openness Theologians want to decide which verses to take literally and which to take antrhopomorphically and they don’t want any guff for making that decision. To my mind, they just can’t have it both ways. If God does not possess exhaustive foreknowledge then He could not have named Cyrus so accurately so many years before his birth.

The problem here has been and remains the philosophical tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Instead of dealing with these two as the exist in the bible, Openness Theologians want to err on the side of human freedom. Hypercalvinists do the exact same thing but err on the side of divine sovereignty. This is not a horse you want to fall off of. Calvinists and Arminians (and other orthodox systems) may lean to one side or the other but somehow they are able to remain the saddle.

The most recent Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS, June 2002) is pretty much devoted to the Openness Theology debate. Bruce Ware starts the discussion by stating the problems with Openness Theology and then the three big Openness leaders, Pinnock, Sanders and Boyd respond. Sanders’ response is most interesting. In order to maintain his position that Openness Theology is orthodox, he tries to hitch his horse to the Arminian wagon. His tact is that Arminianism is part of Evangelicalism and Ware is just trying to push Calvinism on everyone. It certinaly doesn’t answer the criticisms of the positions but seeks to run for cover.

Still, Sanders tries to answer Ware’s major objections and I just have to comment upon one of his answers. The issue gets a bit complicated but it boils down to this: does God know what every free agent will do throughout all of the future? Openness Theologians say no and classical theists (Calvinist or Armianian) assert that He does. While Openness proponents are trying to put themselves in the Arminian camp, claiming (repeatedly) that an attack on Openness is an attack on Arminianism, Arminians are busy pointing to the difference between them. Sanders cites David Hunt as an example of this and claims that Hunt’s efforts fail. Hunt, in explaining simple foreknowledge, tells this story. Suppose a billionaire decided to give a ton of money to a missions organization if that organization can guess the correct number between 1 and 100 which the billionaire will write down on a certain day. God “previsions” that the billionaire will write down 47 and He informs someone from that agency to select that number. Thus God is in control.

Sanders claims that this won’t work because at the same time God foresees that the billionaire will select 47 he also sees that the missions agency person will select 83 and God cannot then change that or else His foreknowledge would be wrong. What kills me is that Sanders belabors the point that God knows all possible future actions that can come to pass, He just doesn’t know for sure which ones will, and at the same time he misses the fact that amongst the counteractuals God is aware of is the possibility that God could inform the missions agency or change the number on the paper or whatever. In other words, according to Sanders, God’s foreknowledge omits His own actions in time. God can know what every person who will (or might) ever be born might do but unfortunately He cannot know what He Himself will do.

As uncomfortable as I am with simple foreknowledge, I think it is a distinct concept from Sanders view of foreknowledge. To a degree Sanders is correct, some of the difficulties that exist in Openness Theology exist in Arminianism to a much lesser degree. Modern Arminians can work around their problems and the need to make sure that Openness Theology doesn’t hijack them in order to gain legitimacy. Ware is a Calvinist, I wish JETS would have an Arminian publish a critique next.

Wodehouse was a genius. This is from Right Ho, Jeeves and is just a sample of the superb writing. Augustus “Gussie” Fink-Nottle is a rather reclusive schoolmate of the protagonist and “the Bassett” is not a hound but Madiline Bassett, the girl engaged to Gussie. Here’s how Wodehouse describes the arrangement:

Nobody could love a freak like Gussie except a similar freak like the Bassett. The shot wasn’t on the board. A splendid chap, of course, in many ways — courteous, amiable, and just the fellow to tell you what to do till the doctor came, if you had a sick newt on your hands — but quite obviously not of Mendelssohn’s March timbre. I have no doubt that you could have flung bricks by the hour in England’s most densely-populated districts without endangering the safety of a single girl capable of becoming Mrs Augustus Fink-Nottle without anaesthetic.

Later on in the same chapter here is an exchange between Bertie, the protagonist, and his cousin who has gotten engaged to Gussie in order to spite her real fiance:

I curled the lip about half an inch. ‘Being a female, you wouldn’t. You gentler sexers are like that. You pull off the rawest stuff without a pang. You pride yourselves on it. Look at Jael, the wife of Heber.’
‘Where did you ever hear of Jael, the wife of Heber?’
‘Possibly you are not aware that I once won a Scripture-knowledge prize at school?’
‘Oh, yes. I remember Augustus mentioning it in his speech.’
‘Quite,’ I said hurriedly. I had no wish to be reminded of Augustus’s speech. ‘Well, as I say, look at Jael, the wife of Heber. Dug spikes into the guest’s coconut while he was asleep, and then went swanking about the place like a Girl Guide. No wonder they say “Oh, woman, woman!”‘
‘Who?’
‘The chaps who do. Coo, what a sex! But you aren’t proposing to keep this up, of course?’

Credenda/Agenda did an entire issue on Wodehouse. Check it out if you want to know more.

Eat, drink and be merry for in the fall we do Greek Review! I’m just not getting it. I can recite the facts and the endings and spew paradigm after paradigm but it all seems to be unconnected facts floating around my mind. Two days later I can’t tell you what a subjunctive is or does without looking it up. Nothing stays. Liquid verbs? What was that? Oh, there I found it in Chapter 20 which is now only a dim memory. Translations? Well, recognize the words and then remeber the verse from the English bible and make a guess. But parse the words? Not without the book.

It hit me today (since this is the last week of class) that I will be doing exegesis in the fall. That scared the daylights out of me. If I don’t have the basic idea of what’s going on now, what will happen to me in the fall? Throw that drowning man another cinder block!

The reassuring thing is that Einstein failed math in high school and my Calculus professor in college failed Intro to Calc three times before he was able to go on and get a PhD in it. I could never understand why someone didn’t just get math. You do this to the numbers and you get that! What could be simpler? How can you not get that? Well, now I’m going to have a whole bunch more sympathy on people who struggle with math in the future. I’m not getting the basic facts of language even though they should be obvious.

This is actually a great place to start seminary from; weakness. I’m at the end of myself and there is nothing left. Were I not a Christian and were I not sure that God had called me to this, I would be awash in despare. Instead I find that I am without my own resources and can only lean upon God. If He’s called me to this, then He’ll provide when I have nothing else and I will only be able to praise Him for it.

A coffee shop. Trendy enough. And who’s here? There is an artist, I think he’s going to school. He sits hovering over his papers paying attention each detail in his drawing, one pencil clamped between his teeth the other being guided across the paper. Earphones dangle but don’t interfere. When he looks up at people walking past his table I see in his eye an artist’s power of observation. They’re friendly eyes but penetrating, it seems to me that he is seeing more than a face when he looks up. He is observing a face in a way only an artist can.

The table between he and I contains a screenwriter and his laptop and his cellphone. Nice enough guy and ready to talk about his project. I think he said Matt Damon or someone like that is going to be in it. Though the laptop is opened the only thing I’ve ever seen happen there is him showing the unfinished trailer on it. On occasion he seems to be reviewing the script. Once he explained the plot to someone. Something about a discredited FBI or CIA agent and terrorists on their way to Washington DC and no one believes him. Cookie cutter. Still, he doesn’t seem to be making this up, I just can’t fathom why he’s in Chicago and not L.A. He told someone once but I didn’t pay attention. He spends a lot of time on his cellphone. If this is all a farce, the cellphone is a fantastic cover. He could sit in his coffee shop talking into a dead phone about all kinds of wonderful movie deals and plans. If he’s legit then I’m sitting a few feet away from some hot deal making. Either way, the man is involved in fiction, and from the sounds of it it is cheap fiction real or imagined.

And then there’s me. A middle-aged seminary student struggling to keep up with Greek and leaving a family at home with not much money and not a whole lot to do. No cable and nothing on TV. I leave them with the car when I can but my wife doesn’t know her way around very well yet and doesn’t have anywhere to go if she did. Not that my life is much better. School six days a week and then about four or five hours of study afterwards, more for harder chapters. Caffeine is a way of life really. Not complaining, this is the life God has called me to and we (my family and I) know that it is only for a certain amount of time. Then the hard work starts.

Although I liked him, I was never a really big Andy Kaufman fan. I remember when he hosted Fridays. I wasn’t sure if it was for real or staged but that was Kaufman’s style. Leave the audience guessing.

I’m not a very good Baptist, I don’t suppose I ever was (especially since I’ve never belonged to a Baptist church, just a baptistic one.) One of the baptistic distinctives is the autonomy (under Christ) of the local church. I’m beginning to question that. In the Bible we don’t see Timothy starting his own church in Ephesis nor do we see the Ephesian church calling Timothy. We see Paul sending Timothy to them and giving him instructions. Ditto with Titus.

I believe the baptistic way of looking at this is to say that Paul was an Apostle and he had the authority to do that, we no longer have Apostles so that layer of church authority is gone. That strikes me as a convenient argument but not a compelling one. In the local church Paul told Timothy to appoint elders, not have the congregation elect them. The only time we see the congregation being involved in selecting leaders is in Acts 6 where the congregation selects deacons. But what the Apostles said was not to just go ahead and pick some leaders, but that they were to name men “whom we may put in charge of this task.”

This is the kind of stuff that bothers me. What kind of church am I going to pastor? I’m a Covenant Theologian who rejects infant baptism and a baptistic believer who believes a presbytery is a biblical idea! Man, I just wish I could follow party lines, life would be much easier. Baptists won’t take me and Presbyterians won’t either. Hey, I know, I’ll start my own denomination. Yea. That’s the ticket.

A friend pointed this out. I find it fascinating. It comes from page 119ff of the book “Baptisms in the Early Church” by Stander and Louw (both are paedobaptists):

In the first four centuries of Christianity, the literature on baptism clearly shows how, in the majority of instances, it was persons of responsible age (generally adults and grown children) who were recipients of baptism. …The patristic literature of the first four centuries clearly shows how infant baptism developed. Probably the first instances known, occurred in the latter part of the third century, most likely in North Africa, but during the fourth century infant baptism became more and more accepted and though believer’s baptism of people of responsible age still continued in many areas, the development of the Church (after Church and State became reconciled) into a more unified body, controlled by the see of Rome, provided a theological base for infant baptism to be accepted…Finally, it needs to be remarked that the contention often found in modern literature, viz. that adult baptism in the early Church entailed a missionary situation, cannot be substantiated by the relevant patristic literature, since the transition from adult baptism to infant baptism occurred at a time when Christianity was already a widespread phenomenon in the ancient Church. Therefore, it is also unsound to scrutinize the New Testament writings for allusions to infant baptism, since the latter involved a historical development. Moreover, no distinction was ever made between persons coming from a heathen or Christian family. In fact, the reason for the transition to infant baptism was one of theological perspective and had nothing to do with a missionary situation.

Baptize those babies if you want, but don’t tell me that is has always been the practice of the Church. This bit of historic information stands much of Protestant paedobaptistic apologetics on its head.