Listen to the hour-long interview of Pete Enns, author of Inspiration and Incarnation, on NPR’s “Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane” here.
Tommy
Aug 132008
Aug 122008
The Bush era may have created a polarized political environment, but the differences between Obama and McCain are more than political. Increasingly voters are asked to consider the socio-cultural differences between the candidates, whether it be age, race, ideology, or some other factor.
Two recent stories illustrate this trend.
First, and close to my nerdy heart, here is an analysis of Obama’s recent announcement that SMS and Email would be the information medium of choice for his upcoming VP announcement. It’s a move that simultaneously galvanizes young voters, for whom SMS in particular is a primary method of communication, and functions as a kind of pot-shot at McCain’s less than sophisticated utilization of technology.
Second, NPR takes penetrating news analysis to a new level with this story about the candidates top music choices. This kind of thing also appeals to a younger crowd, for whom musical preferences are a way of creating personal identity. In this regard, I wonder how McCain’s choice of ABBA–twice–will resonate.
Check out this list of handy websites for writers. Here are a couple that I have found particularly useful:
SparkNotes Ultimate Style. The web’s ultimate guide to grammar provides a searchable database of topics and an easy-to-search A-Z list of common questions.
MIT OpenCourseWare. MIT offers dozens of free writing courses through their OpenCourseWare program. Course topics include short story writing, fiction writing, expository writing, technical writing, essay writing and poetry.
Also be sure to check out the Internet Archive, which contains a ton of resources in the public domain. It is a great place to look for old books, lectures, etc. And while your browsing, you can download live music (or go here, particularly if you like bluegrass or the Grateful Dead)!
You will need a good Bittorrent Client to download large items from the Internet Archive.
Aug 072008
At first it may seem that the Garfield comic strip has nothing to do with my aforementioned open-source agenda. But check out this post, which not only tells us about the benefits of a culture of sharing, but also provides an interesting perspective on art, language, hermeneutics, and the contextual nature of meaning.
Going back to school? Getting ready for school is more than just pens and pencils nowadays. Summer is the time to take a software/webware inventory. This post offers some advice on web applications that might come in handy. I would only make one change: replace their recommended bibliography application EasyBib with Zotero, which, while not technically a web-app, promises web syncing in the near future and is much more robust than EasyBib.
A future post here will describe the steps I have taken to sync Google and Remember the Milk with Mozilla’s excellent Thunderbird email program. Want to make sure you catch this up-coming post? Then subscribe to this blog!
Here is an interesting post by John Walton about children’s Bible curricula.
If we are negligent of sound hermeneutics when we teach Bible to children, should it be any wonder that when they get into youth groups, Bible studies and become adults in the church, that they do not know how to derive the authoritative teaching from the text?
He identifies 5 common and easily avoidable mistakes. The fifth I found particularly convicting:
Focus on people rather than God: The Bible is God’s revelation of himself and its message and teaching is largely based on what it tells us about God. This is particularly true of narrative (stories). While we are drawn to observe the people in the stories, we cannot forget that the stories are intended to teach us about God more than about people. If in the end, the final point is “We should/shouldn’t be like X (= some biblical character)” there is probably a problem unless the “X” is Jesus or God. Better is “we can learn through X’s story that God . . .”
Read the whole thing at Zondervan’s recently launched koinonia blog.
Aug 052008
Tim Keller and David Powlison offer some biblical reflections on what we should do when we hear negative criticism about an individual. Justin Taylor indicates that such biblical reflection is particularly important for bloggers.
Aug 042008
Here is Darrell Bock on Gesine Robinson on the recently-hyped Gospel of Judas.
Aug 042008
I have come across a wealth of interesting quotes as I prepare for New Testament Introduction class next term. Here’s one on the importance of Marcion (remember Marcion, the 2nd century semi-gnostic theologian who created his own canon?) in the development of the church’s canon consciousness:
The theological and methodological deficiencies of [Marcion's] canon should not…prevent us from appreciating the fundamental importance of the attempt. Marcion’s bible tabled once for all the question of a new canon, that is, the question of the ‘authentic’ witnesses to the original gospel, which were to provide the standard of all later tradition and the norm for the preaching of the Church. The Church as she was then situatied could not ignore this question if she wished to hold her own. But there was still a long way to go, through crises and controversies of many different kinds, before an answer was found. That answer stands today as our New Testament; but at the outset of the conflict such a thing did not exist. (Campenhausen, Hans. The Formation of the Christian Bible. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972. p165).
It’s a powerful reminder of God’s gracious providence in history, especially in times of trial and opposition. A man who fought against God’s gospel with incredible passion and consistency ultimately spurred the Church on to recognize what we know today as the New Testament.
Aug 032008
As a computer nerd who nevertheless has a strange love of LPs and dusty old books, I found this article interesting. Here are a couple of highlights:
While 73 percent of American adults use the Internet (only 35 percent 65 or older), according to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, it’s likely that many of them would rather have a president who can get Osama bin Laden than get online. And there is a common belief that says being president should be more a “vision” job than a “management” job, and that the clutter of a digital life can only distract from the Big Picture and Deep Thoughts a leader should be concerned with. In other words, would we really want a president “friending” from the Oval Office, scouring Wikipedia for information on Iran’s nuclear program or fielding e-mail from someone claiming to be “Nigerian general” seeking an American bank account for embezzled millions?
Computers have become something of a cultural marker — in politics and in the real world. Proficiency with them suggests a basic familiarity with the day-to-day experience of most Americans — just as ignorance to them can suggest someone is “out of touch,” or “old.”
“I do understand the importance of the computer,” Mr. McCain reassured in The San Francisco Chronicle last week. “I understand the importance of the blogs.” He said, “I am forcing myself — let me put it this way, I am using the computer more and more every day.” But keeping up with technology “doesn’t mean that I have to e-mail people,” he said. “Now, I read e-mails.” The staff is “constantly showing them to me as the news breaks during the day.”
Read the whole thing.
