So far I’ve been hovering around a B to B+ in Greek. The problems I’ve (largely) had have been attention to detail and some memory words that won’t stick. Today’s quiz was my low point. I got 74% and most of the problem came from memorization words and attention to detail. When I memorized the relative pronouns, I knew that they all had a rough breathing mark and an accent which differentiated them from the definite article. I failed to pay attention to what kind of accent though and marked them all as grave when a handful are circumflex. Got them all marked wrong.

The bummer is that when if comes to actually translating passages, I’m doing steller. It is the little things will get you. When I left class today, I was really bummed and figured I’d be taking Intro to Greek again this fall. I probably won’t but right now I’m pretty darn blue. I’ve been studying non-stop since school ended. Taking a break now for dinner and then back at it.

This is a warning to the unwary. Beware of those who base their teaching exclusively on the Bible! Whenever you hear voices raised distancing the Bible from the teaching of the ecumenical councils of the first five centuries, be on your guard! The Reformers were opposed to the teaching of the Church of their day because it deviated from Scripture and the councils. They held Scripture to be the highest, supreme court of appeal, but their interpretation of Scripture — and ours — must always be tested against the Confessions of the Church. ‘Submit to one another in the fear of Christ (Eph. 5:21). This is because we are placed by Christ in the Church, not distributed randomly as freewheeling individuals. Today, non-confessional evangelicals have nothing to restrain them, other than themselves. Like Jehovah’s Witnesses they are free to study Scriptures and abandon the church’s confessions — all in the name of the Bible.

Since we are all influenced to some extent of other by the philosophical and cultural milieu in which we were taught and in which we live, if we leave behind historic Christian teaching we open ourselves to other influences as we come to read the Bible.

Dr. Robert Letham, Adjunct Professor of Systematic Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia and Senior Minister, Emmanuel Orthodox Presbyterian Chruch, Wilmington, Delaware, quoted from Is God Omniscient?, an article examining the claims of open theism in the May-June 2002 edition of Reformation Today magazine.

This is cool. I went looking for a bank today. I figured that I’d stop by a few and get information on their rates and pick the one that charges me the least. Turns out the first one I walked in to, the one closest to my house doesn’t have a minimum balance, doesn’t charge any fees, gives me a free ATM/Debit card and paid me $50 to open the account. So I’m not going to pay to write checks, use the ATM, speak to a teller, do on-line banking and they pay me $50 to join? Works for me. :) Not only that but everyone was so friendly.

Speaking of friendly, my postman is great. He gave me my mail when I had to hunt down a key to the cluster box, then he gets me a key and refunds the rekeying fee. My Thursday trash guy is really nice too and took some stuff the Tuesday trash guy wouldn’t take. I know that not everyone I’m going to meet is so nice but this is a great way to start life away from the Air Force.

I’ve just watched Gattaca on DVD. The end sequence where the genetically impure Ethan Hawke walks onto his spaceship heading towards Titan and the genetically enhanced Jude Law crawls into the incinerator was poignant. According to human engineering standards, they should have swapped places. Hawke had a predisposition to heart disease and Law had “the heart of an ox.” And yet Law always came in second and Hawke fought to escape his lot in life.

Of course the writer believes in evolution but his message is that we cannot take over for natural selection. The movie’s subtitle is “There is no gene for the human spirit.” Andrew Niccol, the writer and director is saying that what still dominates is the will to survive. “Fittest” for him is not the one with the cleanest set of DNA, it is the one who wills to power. This is Neitzche.

On the DVD, there is an extra scene named “Coda” which should have been left in the movie. Text scrolls across a star field that talks about how evolution has delivered us to the point that we can now guide and direct our own evolution. Then it goes on to say that if we’d had this technology years ago some very important people wouldn’t never have been allowed to be born and lists their “defect.” They include Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Ray Charles and others.I would have left off Rita Hayworth and included Beethoven. The scene ends by reminding the viewer that it is quite possible that their own birth might have been prevented likewise.

Pointed stuff. Aside from the evolutionary crap, it reminded me of a very important message. It isn’t “random chance” that produces great people with great defects, it is God. God is providential over all and nothing happens by chance. The 1689 Baptist Confession (and I believe the Westminster says it the same way) explains it like this:

Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly; so that there is not anything befalls any by chance, or without His providence; yet by the same providence He ordered them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently. – BFC 5.2

Through the ordinary means of human decisions and actions (among other means), God causes all things to work out according to His will. So when we say, for example, that abortion must be stopped because how do we know if the person who would find a cure for AIDS wasn’t an unwanted pregnancy, we play right into the evolutionists hands. We employ their rational in defense of our noble cause. If God wanted AIDS ended, that person would have been born (and let’s pray that he or she has been born!) and they will discover that cure.

Is it in God’s will that mankind begin to tinker with his own DNA? Well, we have the capability to do so, so if we actually get around to doing it, yes, it is God’s will. Whether it is God’s will for our good or our destruction is completely another question.

Back to Gattaca. Do we follow Niccol’s line of reasoning and not tamper with our own evolution but instead take the good and the bad as natural selection would have it? Maybe, maybe not. But don’t forget Who’s in control of “natural” selection. Wouldn’t it be fitting if in the age to come, God shows us the possible futures of all of the aborted children, what they could have done, who they could have become? Wouldn’t it be a fitting judgement if He allowed us, through our own greed and selfishness, to murder in the womb men and women who could have been great peacemakers, great doctors, great musicians, great philosophers? Wouldn’t we, in the New Jerusalem, then all rise up and condemn our own sin for the wickedness it is? Wouldn’t it be fitting for us to praise God for His wisdom in bringing things to pass exactly as He did, for His greater glory?

Just pulled my first all nighter. Don’t know how many words will stick after pacing the carpet at 3:30 AM trying to stuff them in my head. Ugh. Coffee.

Let me first say that “I am a catholic” and “I am orthodox”! It bugs me that Roman Catholics and the [fill in the blank] Orthodox have taken those terms. I’m catholic because I believe in and confess a holy, catholic and apostolic church. I don’t believe that it is exclusivly the Roman church though I am sure some Roman Catholics are part of the catholic Church. I am orthodox because I believe and confess what the Church has always confessed about the person and work of Jesus Christ. I don’t believe that you have to take all of the Eccuminical Councils or be part of the Eastern, Greek, Russian, etc. Orthodox Church to be orthodox.

Come to think of it, I’m not so crazy about the Baptists taking that name either. I am baptistic in relation to the sacraments only in that I do not hold to infant baptism. Other than that, I am not what one often thinks of as a Baptist. By and large, Baptists are dispensational, I’m not. By and large Baptists are memorialsts in relation to the Lord’s Table, I’m not. There are some Southern Baptists who are liberal, I’m not. There are a lot of Baptists who are fundimentalists, I’m not.

I guess that at the end of the day, I am best called a disciple of Christ. No, wait, someone has taken that name too! AAaarrrggghhh.

On a whim (a whim I tell you!) I downloaded and installed ThinkFree Office. I had heard that it was completely compatible with Microsoft Office and the only complaint was that since it is Java-based, it tends to run a little slow. The up-side is that it is only $50.00 while Microsoft Office X.v is in the range of $400.00. I’m currently using Microsoft Office 2001 which runs under OS 9 only so I have to fire up the Classic layer. It is getting old.

So far I like what I see. Yes, ThinkFree Office is a little slow but what it does, it does well. The only thing I’ve really used it for so far was making my business cards. I bought card stock and set up the document in Word. I then imported it to ThinkFree and it came over without any formatting errors (although the lines on the table did get turned on which made printing that first time a bit tedious.) ThinkFree doesn’t have a tool to automatically set up labels and envelopes (yet?) but it does give you a bit more freedom with what you can do inside a cell of a table.

The demo is 100% functional but expires in 30 days. I plan on using it for all of those 30 days before I decide. It comes with a word processor (Word compatible), presentation software (PowerPoint compatible), and a spreadsheet (Excel compatible). The controls are pretty much where they are in Word so there hasn’t been a steep learning curve here. Plus they throw in 20MB of web-based Cyberdrive storage for a year.

ThinkFree Office is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, Mac OS 8.6 and Linux.

Sadly I have dropped As The Apple Turns from my daily reading routine. The Millers had a baby (congratulations) and since then production has been sporatic at best and Jack’s writing quality has drooped. Thankfully, Paulo has pointed me to Crazy Apple Rumors and though the language there isn’t always wholesome, it is at least the Apple-oriented humor I love (and its a blog too!). Off-site links have been updated to reflect the change.

I also updated my Current Reading list to reflect “seminary mode.” The only reason “The Gospel According to Abraham” is still there is because it is a small book and remains in the bathroom. Even a seminary student goes in there once in a while.

Fascinating. They found a skull in Chad that is much older than Lucy (the skeleton that is supposed to link us to the apes) which, surprizingly, looks very little like an ape! Humm, is it possible that Lucy isn’t our ancestor and that we didn’t descend from apes?

Now I am not one of those creation science folks (I think they do some terrible things to the book of Genesis) but neither do I believe in inter-species evolution either. This is a very interesting find. Just in case someone asks, I’m not sure what the age of the earth is. The geneologies in the Bible are not exhaustive but selective so I’d say that Bishop Usher got it wrong when he calculated that the world began in 4004 BC.

Poor Paulo has been stricken by an Anonymous Nietzschean (A.N.) commenter. Paulo is handling things pretty well but I would like to comment on A.N.’s misunderstanding of Christianity. The fellow said:

I don’t know how in the world – and I mean that literally – a true Christian can speak of “love” when Christianity hates and condemns everything in this world – ourselves included – as an evil error, and only loves it’s unknown opposite.

What he missed is that we don’t hate the rocks and trees and oxygen and water of this world, we hate the sin of this world. It has all been contaminated by sin and yet it groans under the burden of it. When we go to the beach or to the mountains we don’t look around and despise it all or secretly like it but feel like we’re in sin. We love God’s creation because it is so magnificent. When we look at our fellow man we don’t hate them because they are not Christians, if that were so then missions would never take place. We condemn this sin they are engaged in but our desire is still to call them to Christ.

The underlying misunderstanding here is that A.N. missed the truth that it is all about God. Creation is for His glory and man was created to enjoy and worship Him forever. We don’t hate creation just because we don’t worship it. We enjoy creation as it reveals God’s glory. We long for the day when the world is set free and sin is no more.

I’m not sure what A.N. is reacting against, but I suspect that A.N. is a college student who came from a fairly strict fundamentalist home and has read Nietzsche for the first time. What A.N. needs to do now is to read some more contemporary works (I’d recommend Ravi Zacharias’ A Shattered Visage to start with) who deal with Nietzsche pretty well.

Go get ’em Paulo!