A Petition: That Esteban Vazquez should post more often

We, the undersigned, petition Esteban Vazquez, of The Voice of Stefan, to post more frequently on his blog.

(If you agree, leave a comment indicating your support)

Trying Coffee that has Passed Through an Animal

Here’s my guide to trying coffee that has passed through an animal – in 6 easy steps…

1. Grab jar of Kopi Luwak coffee that was kindly given to wife by Malaysia-based brother…

2. Look closely at label, noting graphic representation of the Paradoxurus (Luwak), which eats the coffee beans, passes them through its system, and smirks as humans collect them up, roast them, and sell them as presents:

3. Observe the coffee beans, noting their distinctive earthy aroma:

4. Grind beans and extract coffee in espresso machine:

5. Add textured milk:

6. Taste. Grimace.

Teaching Greek: Beginning with Aorist Imperatives

We’ve just started the academic year here, which means I’ve just started teaching a new year of introductory Greek. I like to begin by using conversation in Greek, coaxing the students to understand things by my gestures and emphases, rather than by translation:

• Hi!
• What is your name?
• My name is Matthew
• I’m a teacher.
• What are you doing?
• I’m writing letters
• etc

But this year I’ve reflected some more on how this has been working, and I’ve decided to add aorist imperatives in, right at the beginning:

• Listen!
• Write!
• etc

Although we’re not yet reflecting self-consciously on what we’re doing with the language, I think that introducing the aorist as the default tenseform for general imperatives will hopefully communicate the fact that the aorist is not primarily about “past time.” The idea is that this will allow the issue of verbal aspect to arise a little more naturally from communicative practice. We’ll see how things go.

The intolerance of pluralism

Today, together with a few others from College, I went to hear the chief Rabbi of the UK and Australia, Lord Jonathan Sacks. He addressed the topic of religious plurality. He’s an engaging speaker and had some intriguing exegetical suggestions, some insightful comments on society, and a controversial approach to pluralism. Here’s a window into each:

Exegesis

Noticing that the confusion of language at Babel (Gen 11) occurs after God has already divided people into different language groups (Gen 10), he sees the story as affirming God’s desire for diversity, rather than domination. This view is not entirely new to me – I know that my dad (a linguist!) views Genesis 11 as being God’s liberating response to monolingual dominance.

Society

Chief Rabbi Sacks reflected that the most abominable abuses of human liberty in the twentieth century happened in the centres of the so-called enlightenment – Berlin, Paris, etc. He suggested that the twenty-first century will undoubtedly be more religious than the twentieth.

Pluralism

He rightly argued that the God of the Bible stamps his image onto each person in a unique way – and that the God of the Scriptures enjoys and approves of biological and cultural diversity. So far so good – great in fact! But then he went from here to make two logical leaps: 1) Such a God approves of soteriological diversity – that people can be saved through a variety of faiths; 2) Therefore – because God approves of different means of coming to him – those of us of different faiths can embrace each other in ties of friendship that cross boundaries.

I have a problem with both of these leaps: 1) Why would God’s approval of biological and cultural diversity lead us to think he approves of soteriological diversity? This is far from obvious. 2) Why do we need to believe in a pluralistic soteriology in order to embrace others in ties of friendship that cross boundaries? I find the very idea somewhat patronising – as though I can only be expected to love people who, deep down, are really the same as me. That’s not the message of the Good Samaritan.

Disappointingly, Rabbi Sacks was at his most passionate at the end of the lecture when he insisted that those who deny such a pluralistic understanding of God are fanatics and fundamentalists, and should be opposed with as much passion as can be mustered. Despite enjoying much of his lecture, then, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth – the intolerance of pluralism.

Religious commitment to a pluralist society

Just heard that Chief Rabbi Ronathan Sacks will be in Perth next week – I’ll be attending this lecture (info from here):

CHIEF RABBI JONATHAN SACKS WILL ADDRESS THE TOPIC

Religious Commitment to a Pluralistic Society

Perth Town Hall, Cnr Barrack and Hay Streets, Perth

Monday 23 January 2012 – 11.00am to 12.00noon

In a recent debate in the House of Lord on Christian minorities undergoing persecution, Rabbi Sacks noted:

I have followed the fate of Christians in the Middle East for years, appalled at what is happening and surprised and distressed by the fact that it is not more widely known. We know how complex are the history and politics of the Middle East and how fraught with conflicting passions, but there are two points that I wish to make that deserve reflection.

First, on the Arab spring, which has heightened the fear of Christians in many of the countries affected, we make a great intellectual mistake in the West when we assume that democracy is, in and of itself, a step towards freedom. Usually, that is the case, but sometimes it is not. As Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill pointed out in the 19th century, it may merely mean the “tyranny of the majority”. That is why the most salient words in the current situation are those of Lord Acton, in his great essay on the history of freedom, who said:

“The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities”.

That is why the fate of Christians in the Middle East today is the litmus test of the Arab spring. Freedom is indivisible, and those who deny it to others will never gain it for themselves.

Secondly, religions that begin by killing their opponents end by killing their fellow believers. In the age of the Crusades, Christians fought Muslims. Between the Reformation and the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, Christians fought Christians-Catholic against Protestant. Today, in the Middle East and elsewhere, radical Islamists fight those whom they regard as the greater and lesser Satan, but earlier this week we mourned the death of 55 Shia worshippers at a mosque in Kabul and another 28 Shia who were killed in a terror attack in Iraq. Today, the majority of victims of Islamist violence are Muslim, and shall we not shed tears for them, too? The tragedy of religion is that it can lead people to wage war in the name of the God of peace, to hate in the name of the God of love, to practise cruelty in the name of the God of compassion and to kill in the name of the God of life. None of these things brings honour to faith; they are a desecration of the name of God.

May God protect Christians of the Middle East and people of faith who suffer for their faith, whoever and wherever they are.

                                                                                                       All welcome – no cost

A mystical view of Paul

Over a year ago I was asked by a journal to briefly review a book presenting a mystical view of Paul. Well I sent the review in a year ago and either they didn’t get it or they didn’t use it, so I’m putting it here. I appreciate the corrective that the book seeks to initiate, but I’m not convinced that a “mystical” approach is the way to go…

Jean Paillard, In Praise of the Inexpressible: Paul’s Experience of the Divine Mystery (Peabody,Mass.: Hendrickson, 2003).

Review by Matthew R. Malcolm, Lecturer in New Testament at Trinity Theological College,Western   Australia.

For Jean Paillard, Paul is a person whose formative experiences, and whose resulting presentation of an experiential faith, have been seriously downplayed in scholarship.  Paillard’s corrective presents Paul as a “mystic” (p.46) whose dramatic initial experience of Christ led to an ongoing progression of experience, maintained by religious contemplation.  For Paul, the revealed “mystery” of the gospel of Jesus Christ creates believers who are characterised by the cries and sighs of an experienced relationship, and who go on to plumb the unsearchable depths of this relationship by contemplating the “irreducible remainder” (p.105) of God’s mysterious will.  Through this contemplation, individuals gradually perceive the deeper realities under the words of Scripture, and are thereby awakened to a deeper experience of God.

Although I am sympathetic to Paillard’s discomfort with a lack of scholarly acknowledgement of Paul’s formative experience, I find myself uncomfortable with his solution.  It seems that Paillard’s fascination with what lies beneath God’s revealed mystery of the gospel (the “irreducible remainder” of his mysterious will) results in a sidelining of the gospel of Jesus Christ itself, and an imbalanced focus on that which must ever remain comprehension-defying ambiguity.  It is true that Paul brings doxology out of reflection upon salvation, and relates this doxology to God’s mysterious underlying purpose (Romans 11:34); but he arrives at this brief moment after eleven chapters of explicating – to use Paillard’s correct terminology – the revealed mystery of the gospel.  One must question whether this doxological moment provides a prescription for the focus of day-to-day Christian spirituality.

Why study hermeneutics?

Just yesterday I finished writing a little summary of Thiselton’s approach to hermeneutics, so I was interested to encounter this recent video today, in which Thiselton considers what hermeneutics is, and why it is important:

New page: links to my resources

I’ve just added a new page to this blog, in which I provide an annotated list of resources I’ve authored or edited. I’ll update this from time to time, and some of the links will be to full text versions. You can click on this page up the top of the screen.

“the most elaborately constructed straw man I have ever witnessed”

I’m just reading Matlock’s review of Douglas Campbell’s book The Deliverance of God. Wow – what a comment:

It is the most elaborately constructed straw man I have ever witnessed, and to watch Campbell parry and thrust with it across hundreds of sprawling pages is a singular and uncanny spectacle.

He goes on to point to…

the most outrageous stretch of argument I have ever encountered in the field

You can find the review (to which Campbell responds in the same edition of JSNT) here.

New book on hermeneutics

Today on the train I began reading a new book on hermeneutics, by Stanley Porter and Jason Robinson:

So far I’ve finished the introduction, and it looks like a good read… you can find it here.