writer's block

At the moment, I am suffering from a rather severe case of writer's block. Having spent the past several weeks preparing to argue a thesis that I have now had to abandon, I am left scrambling to put together the pieces of the research that has essentially exploded in my very hands. The lesson to be learned, I suppose, is that when it comes to the study of Scripture, things are never quite as simple as they may at first appear. My research has raised about twenty questions and yielded, perhaps, three or four tentative answers which in turn have raised further questions. I am stumbling about in blind alleys and my time is short.

Since the source of my present anxiety is a paper on allegorical interpretations of the Song of Songs, I will offer my own allegory:

4 My beloved put his hand to the latch, and my heart was thrilled within me. 5 I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, on the handles of the bolt. 6 I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer. 7 The watchmen found me as they went about in the city; they beat me, they bruised me, they took away my veil, those watchmen of the walls. 8 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him I am sick with love.

My beloved is the thesis that had seemed so near but that now eludes me. The night watchmen are the other assignments that are detaining me and hindering my pursuit of my beloved. (An alternative reading of the watchmen would be to understand them as Professor Enns, on account of the beatings.) You are the daughters of Jerusalem--if you have any ideas for how I might bring this paper home, please send them my way.
It looks like the final impetus towards finishing this paper is going to end up being last minute panic.

Spinal Tap to reunite!

The legendary rock group Spinal Tap is coming together to fight global warming at Live Earth '07! I repent of ever mocking global warming.

a reason for accepting the Solomonic authorship of Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs

Ok, sure. Linguistic considerations make Solomonic authorship of Ecclesiastes more unlikely than the revival of Sanjaya's singing career. And, yeah, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs are about as explicit about Solomonic authorship as Clinton was about what else the definition of "is" might be. But you have to admit that there is something appealing about the thought that a single roguish writer is responsible for the two most mischievous books in the Bible. That's gotta count for something.

But I too have my doubts about Solomon's having penned either of these works. I don't have any suggestions as to who wrote Ecclesiastes. However, I do propose as an alternative to Solomonic authorship of Song of Songs the theory that the Song was written by Marvin Gaye. For further elaboration of this theory see my forthcoming monographs "What has Jerusalem to do with Motown?: Marvin Gaye and the Soul of Solomon" and "If You Feel Like I Feel, Baby: An R&B Re-Reading of the Song of Songs."

Mr. Deity, J.L. Mackie and Jonathan Edwards on evil

Here Mr. Deity and Larry have put their fingers on the classic philosophical Problem of Evil. David Hume’s character, Philo, more succinctly but less entertainingly summarizes the problem thus:
Epicurus’ old questions are yet unanswered.
Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?[1]
At the end of the day the problem comes down to whether or not God has a sufficiently good reason for allowing, decreeing or permitting evil to (at least temporarily) be. The reason that Mr. Deity gives to Larry, that it would be too easy for people to believe in him without evil, is, needless to say, a little silly. But that hasn’t prevented some theologians from giving that basic answer.
Recently the most popular tactic amongst Christian theologians for fending off the problem of evil/suffering has been the ‘free will defense.’ Basically this view says that giving a sort of libertarian free will to humanity is a good or a necessary precondition of a good (like ‘genuine love’) sufficient to justify God’s permitting evil to be. Libertarian free will is so a great a thing that the attendant risk of absolutely free creatures falling into sin and unleashing all manner of evil and suffering upon the world was totally worth it. This strategy, however, is fraught with difficulties, as J.L. Mackie brilliantly demonstrates in his book, The Miracle of Theism. Just one of the difficulties with it is, as Mackie points out, the question: “If God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is evil, why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good?”[2] Mackie points out that for Christians who believe in Heaven, saying that it is impossible for men to be made such that they always choose the good is not really an option. He writes:

For at least some theists this difficulty is made even more acute by some of their other beliefs: I mean those who envisage a happier or more perfect state of affairs than now exists, whether they look forward to the kingdom of God on earth, or confine their optimisms to the expectation of heaven. In either case they are explicitly recognizing the possibility of a state of affairs in which created beings always freely choose the good. If such a state of affairs is coherent enough to be the object of a reasonable hope or faith, it is hard to explain why it does not obtain already.[3]

It would seem that this consideration alone should lead Christian theists to abandon the “free will defense.”
The problem that Mr. Deity and basically Arminian conceptions of God have in common is that God so conceived is, to borrow J.B. Phillips' phrase, “too small.” There is a vast difference between the petty and thoughtless Mr. Deity and the immeasurably excellent God of the Bible, whose ultimate reason for doing anything, including decreeing that evil be, is that his infinite glory would shine forth. Jonathan Edwards, the great American theologian, explains:

It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of His glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionately effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all….
Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, His authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of His goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all.
If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in His providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever He bestowed, His goodness would not be so much prized and admired….
So evil is necessary, in order to the highest of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which He made the world; because the creature’s happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and the sense of His love. And if the knowledge of Him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect.[4]

Thus, we may take heart that the evils before us, shootings and tsunamis, suicide bombings and cancer, are not gratuitous, aimless or without their place in the grand scheme of things. These light and momentary afflictions are a difficult but necessary part of God’s perfecting the happiness of his chosen people in the greatest thing there is: his glory. His glory is the end for which he made all things and the only reason sufficient to justify the permission of gross and unspeakable evils. And so we look forward with anxious hearts to the day when his great self-portrait will be complete, present evil will have served its purpose and been done away with and his majesty will finally be unambiguously writ large upon the New Heavens and Earth. For all who are gripped by God in all of his splendor, this is a word of hope. But, of course, this answer to our problem will not satisfy everyone or even fully satisfy the most devout Christian all of the time. The glory of God is an acquired taste and until that taste is acquired things are very hard.

[1] Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, p. 63
[2] Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, p. 164
[3] Ibid.
[4] Edwards, “Concerning the Divine Decrees,” p. 528

an inconvenient truth

How's this for an inconvenient truth: it's April and it's snowing outside. Mr. Gore, I think the Academy may want their Oscar back.

my poem

I figured that, in the spirit of Mike and Mark, I would post one of the poems I wrote my freshman year in college. I'm sure many of you have had similar experiences.



The girl I love, sent from above
Dragged me to a sushi bar
The time was ample, for me to sample
Delicacies from afar

She ordered hers, it couldn't be worse
It was rice, fish and wasabe
I took one look, it wasn't cooked
At least not the way it oughta be

Oh, no! Here it comes, "Here, try some,"
She said with a grin on her face
I began to wonder if my "heavenly" lover
Hadn't come from the other place

First I thought, "Hey, why not?"
But then sanity kicked in
I'd already saw that that stuff was raw
And could very well do me in

I wanted to say "no", to get up and go
I started looking for my coat and hat
But I caught her eye, sat down with a sigh.
How could I say "no" to that?

I grabbed my chopsticks and snatched up the toxic
Perilous piece of fish
I dipped it in sauce and prepared to toss
My cookies all over my dish

I put the thing in and started chewin'
I thought the end must be near
My stomach churned, the wasabe burned
I thought, "Farewell, my dear!"

I finally swallowed, I thought Death would follow
To take this poor, fish-eating lad
I reached for my drink. She asked, "What'd you think?"
I said, "Actually, not bad."

of digesting and Initech

Peter: The thing is, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy. It’s that I just don’t care.
Bob 1: Don’t…don’t care?
Peter: It’s a problem of motivation. Alright? Now if I work my a** off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime. So where’s the motivation?
*Bobs 1&2 shake their heads incapable of answering the question*
Peter: And here’s something else Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob 2: I beg your pardon?
Peter: Eight bosses.
Bob 2: Eight?
Peter: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled. That and the fear of losing my job. But you know what, Bob? That’ll only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
- Office Space (1999, Mike Judge), scene 12

"The digests will not be graded; however, failure to complete and turn in the digests by the required date will result in one half of a letter grade deduction on the final exam. So, if a student were to fail to hand in all three digests, an A final exam would be a B, etc."

- ST 313 syllabus

Let the reader understand.

indigestion

It's been some time now since I've posted anything due to the demands of my schoolwork and a general lack of inspiration all around. But at the moment I felt compelled to blog before throwing myself headlong into my next seminary related task.

I had been looking forward to Spring Break. I had thought that a week off from classes meant a week of uninhibited research and paper writing, which, to my mind, is the best of all seminary assignments. I enjoy researching for and writing papers. Grappling with and analyzing knotty texts and issues and creatively detailing the results of my enquiry are two of my favorite things to do. I personally invest myself in my papers, treating them as works of art, revising them again and again to make them just right. This is not to say that I'm a great writer or that my papers are anything special. It's just to say that I love to prepare and write them.

But, to my great dismay, I realized this morning that rather than enjoying the creative outlet of paper writing this week I shall be engaged in the soul siphoning, spirit shriveling, mind numbing task of digesting. In 11 days I will have to turn in my second round of digests for Salvation II and will thus be reading in rapid succession numerous theologians (who more or less all say the same thing) and summarizing each of their nigh indistinguishable formulations in a Word Document. Digesting is not my favorite thing to do. In fact, on my list of "Things that I Dread Most" digesting falls just below being forced chew up clay flower pots and sitting in a bath-tub full of scissors. No other task fills me with that sense of irony about seminary that I'd mentioned before. *Sigh*

Please pray that these digests don't undo me.