Undeception - Latest Comments

Re: Religious experience: so what if it’s all in your head?

Kay — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:41:58 -0000

No worries Steve. Thanks for finding it. (I looked on the Premier Christian Radio website, but had no luck. Probably just blind. :) )

Re: Religious experience: so what if it’s all in your head?

Steve Douglas — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:56:06 -0000

Kay, here's a direct link to the audio file: http://media.premier.org.uk/un...
Should have linked in the article, too. Sorry about that!

Re: Religious experience: so what if it’s all in your head?

Kay — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:41:45 -0000

Hey Steve - I tried to find the interview with Ward (whom I love) and couldn't track it down. Do you have a link by any chance?

Re: Diachronic considerations in biblical lexicography

Joseph Kelly — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:57:00 -0000

This is actually a bigger question than you might realize. To comprehend what intertextuality signifies in literary critical circles requires that one understands theories of language that have developed from structuralism to poststructuralism. Simply put, it isn't citation/allusion/echo, despite the way biblical scholars have appropriated the term.

Re: Diachronic considerations in biblical lexicography

Joseph Kelly — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:52:23 -0000

John, I hope that if my paper gets published, you will have an opportunity to read it and that we will have an opportunity to revisit the discussion of this multi-step trajectory. It is not insignificant, in my opinion.

Re: Diachronic considerations in biblical lexicography

John Hobbins — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:35:01 -0000

I think the trajectory of the creed is a great topic.But I don't see any reason to assume that at the beginning of the trajectory the word in question referenced obligated fairness and only later came to reference acts of beneficence and unrequired goodness.

Furthermore, I'm skeptical of multi-step trajectories without solid evidence. Yes to
Exodus -> Jonah, yes to
Exodus > Joel, yes to
Exodus -> Numbers and
Exodus -> Nehemiah and
Exodus -> Psalm 103, etc., but not Exodus -> Jonah -> Joel.

Re: Diachronic considerations in biblical lexicography

Steve Douglas — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:53:34 -0000

To remedy my ignorance, exactly how would you differentiate intertextuality from influence studies?

Re: Diachronic considerations in biblical lexicography

Joseph Kelly — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:45:13 -0000

I typed "miscategorized." I think I accidentally allowed my spell checker to change the word.

Re: Diachronic considerations in biblical lexicography

Joseph Kelly — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:43:18 -0000

I've submitted a manuscript to CBQ on the trajectory of influence of the Yhwh Creed (Exodus -> Jonah -> Joel), but I am still waiting to hear back from them on that. I'll be presenting a paper in Ann Arbor over the summer on the Yhwh Creed at the Orality and Literacy conference. Hopefully this all contributes to my research into influence studies (often categorized as "Intertextuality").

Re: Diachronic considerations in biblical lexicography

Steve Douglas — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:34:49 -0000

That specific line of inquiry (the influence of the YHWH Creed) is fascinating. I look forward to reading more on it!

Re: Diachronic considerations in biblical lexicography

Joseph Kelly — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:55:08 -0000

This is actually something I would do well to study more! I am theoretically sympathetic to what you are suggesting. There is no reason to begin with the assumption that the word must have a single unifying meaning throughout the text, or that there is only one concept of ḥesed in the Hebrew Bible. This has to be supported by the evidence. I simply haven't put the effort into doing the necessary research to draw my own conclusion on the matter as I have been more focused on the trajectory of influence of the Yhwh Creed, particularly as it pertains to Joel and Jonah. I have the opportunity this summer to do a more expansive project, so I probably need to devote some time and energy to this matter.

Re: Religious experience: so what if it’s all in your head?

Steve Douglas — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:38:14 -0000

Thanks, Luke. Good to hear from you!

Re: Religious experience: so what if it’s all in your head?

Luke Holzmann — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:32:31 -0000

Thanks for writing up this summary. I haven't read much on this topic, so this was fascinating!

~Luke

Re: Lewis agreed with me about the Canaanite genocides. Smart fella!

Steve Douglas — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:00:47 -0000

Hi Edwin, I thought the same thing myself but I could not find a source that actually had the word "insult" instead of "consult", so I left it in just in case there was a meaning that he intended that I was unaware of. I do not have access to any published version of this letter. If anyone supplies it to me I would be happy to change the post!

Thanks...

Re: Lewis agreed with me about the Canaanite genocides. Smart fella!

Edwin — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:40:15 -0000

One textual emendation: I think it's pretty clear that in the third line of the last paragraph "consult" is a corruption of "insult."

Re: Lewis agreed with me about the Canaanite genocides. Smart fella!

Edwin — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:38:18 -0000

It is indeed a stretch to say that Lewis believed in penal substitution. He includes it as one legitimate model in Mere Christianity, true. In The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe he presents a view that some might call penal substitution, but I would not, because of the strong presence of ransom/Christus Victor themes. It's the Witch who wants to kill Edmund, not Aslan. That's key to the present discussion.

Re: The “full humanity” that Christ brought

Justin Topp — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:51:45 -0000

Awesome post.

Re: The “full humanity” that Christ brought

Eric Gregory — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 20:31:38 -0000

Just a quick follow up that I thought was relevant:

http://www.anglocatholicsocial...

Re: Lewis agreed with me about the Canaanite genocides. Smart fella!

Steve Douglas — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:51:29 -0000

Details, details. ;-)

Re: Lewis agreed with me about the Canaanite genocides. Smart fella!

Arni Zachariassen — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:35:57 -0000

No. YOU agree with HIM. So YOU'RE the smart fella. :)

Re: Lewis agreed with me about the Canaanite genocides. Smart fella!

Terrence Andrew Davis — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:11:52 -0000

God said war was "servicemen competing". Just image teenage male video games if there had never been war. God wants praise for Creation. Don't criticise Creation!

I chuckle -- don't worry about atheist critics. Oh, God exists, all right. They should be so luck that He's a wimp!

God says, "infinitude ask endurance whit gratuitous ."

Re: Lewis agreed with me about the Canaanite genocides. Smart fella!

Steve Douglas — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:15:26 -0000

Granted. I'm just not nearly as bothered by the fuzzy distinctions of where to draw the line as some are. At the risk of repeating myself, having to err I'll err on the side of "God is more good and loving than I can imagine Him, but not in an altogether different way." Not having any reason to believe in inerrancy means that stuff in the Bible is subjected to that standard. I might be wrong, but if I'm His child I trust He'll lovingly correct me one day.

Re: Lewis agreed with me about the Canaanite genocides. Smart fella!

Jeff — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:27:53 -0000

Fair enough Steve; but to simply close the loop, it's no stretch to say that /Lewis/ believed in penal substitution, /Lewis/ believed in sin, and /Lewis/ believed in Hell. So if we want to discuss his views about what implications God's goodness has on the authenticity of "troubling" passages, even if we accept the letter in question as coming down on the side of errancy, certain extrapolations from there would nevertheless be incompatible with Lewis' views, and that was what the first paragraph of my comment immediately preceding this one was trying to assert.

Re: Lewis agreed with me about the Canaanite genocides. Smart fella!

Steve Douglas — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:06:29 -0000

Given the amount of time I've discussed these topics on the blogs (have a look around) I'm afraid it'll have to suffice to say that I firmly disagree with almost everything you wrote. I do not believe in penal substitutionary atonement, and I do not believe that holiness can be anything other than perfected love. You simply cannot square perfect, self-sacrificial, all-consuming love with a standard of holiness that requires sending people off to their eternal deaths. I side with Lewis that God's goodness, and by "goodness" he agreed that it must mean what we mean when we say "goodness", is the only permissible reason to worship God; all the conceivable "holiness" (by your definition) in the universe could not manage to make God worthy of our worship apart from love.

Re: Lewis agreed with me about the Canaanite genocides. Smart fella!

Jeff — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:44:42 -0000

Actually, I think it's the exact opposite -- I think it's meant to counteract the license that rendering the text inauthentic appears to grant. For if our moral compass is allowed to become the arbiter of the authenticity of a text, then where do we draw the line? On what other passages are we permitted to wield the scalpel of revision?

I guess that for me, while I can say "I can't imagine the circumstances that would have necessitated so drastic and terrible an act", I'm reluctant to extrapolate from that to "therefore, it must not have actually happened." And I do think we too easily forget that sin is far worse than we imagine, and that the cure for sin is far more severe than we can stomach. (Who among us, after all, would be willing to volunteer his son to be brutally executed as payment for the crimes of others?)

To put it a different way; God is good and God is merciful, but God is also Holy, and His holiness supercedes His mercy -- it /must/, because His goodness and His holiness are inextricably bound. I think this creates situations that are unpleasant but necessary. I don't think God derives any pleasure from condemning persons to Hell, and it hardly seems like a "good" thing. Some things are necessary without being pleasant.

This of course doesn't mean that the text is authentic, either!