Transmission of the Bible: not like the telephone game

Dan Wallace, from Dallas Theological Seminary on the nature of textual variants in the New Testament (i.e. places where the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament differ from each other). If you've ever been told that the Scriptures have been corrupted by copying and then have come to find out that there are in fact differences in many of the Greek copies of the New Testament that we have, then this article will be a big help. Dan Wallace is one of the best Greek and New Testament scholars around, but he's also a good teacher too!

In it he notes that at most only 1% of the textual variants in the New Testament manuscripts are meaningful with respect to influencing Christian doctrine and viable as being part of the original writer's words. So, 99% of the things that don't match between the different copies of the NT are inconsequential!

Confessions #8: the gift of worship

"Therefore he who made me is good, and he is my good, and I exult to him, for all the good things that I was even as a boy. My sin consisted in this, that I sought pleasure, sublimity, and truth not in God but in his creatures, in myself and other created beings. So it was that I plunged into miseries, confusions, and errors. My God, I give thanks to you, my source of sweet delight, and my glory and my confidence. I thank you for your gifts. Keep them for me, for in this way you will keep me. The talents you have given will increase and be perfected, and I will be with you since it was your gift to me that I exist."
- Augustine

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and he said, "It is good." He made the heavens above and the earth beneath and filled them with birds and fish and plants and other animals, and he made man and woman after himself to govern and cultivate the earth as his stewards. But man and woman chose to worship the things they were to rule over, even themselves, and we continue to plunge ourselves into "miseries, confusions, and errors."

It's like becoming spiritually inbred. We worship ourselves and so complicate, multiply, and propagate the corruptions in our own nature. So Jesus comes to fix our broken, crooked DNA with "the word of life, which is able to save our souls."

Maybe that's why he's the "seed of Abraham". Like a human genome project in the divine laboratory, and project to map our flaws and inject the healing strand, the seed of new life, from which sprouts true worship, in spirit and in truth, to the creator himself. This true worship, spreading like a virus of light throughout the darkest rooms of our heart to realign, renew, rebuild, refresh, restore.

It says of Jesus that when he ascended "gave gifts to men", gifts of worship I assume, so that in possession of them we are possessed by the one who gives them, in thankfulness, in worship.

Some say that this life is merely preparation for the next. If that is true, and gifts and talents are really gifts for worship, then I had better get busy worshiping. Or else, I might not have much to do in the next life but sit on the bench. Whatever the afterlife (or life after life after death, as some say) holds, it sure isn't a place you'd want to be "benched" at for lack of practice.

Time to start existing.

Confessions #7: In the image

"In you are the constant causes of inconstant things. All mutable things have in you their immutable origins. In you all irrational and temporal things have the everlasting causes of their life."
- Augustine

"God has instituted prayer so as to confer upon his creatures the dignity of being causes."
- Blaise Pascal

Blog reading level

Not the highest, but I'm satisfied... :)

What's yours?

"authentic Christian mission"

“Historically the church has indeed seen its mission in these broad terms. It is not a matter of engaging in both the gospel and social action, as if Christian social action was something separate from the gospel itself. The gospel has to be demonstrated in word and deed. Biblically, the gospel includes the totality of all that is good news from God for all that is bad news in human life–in every sphere. So like Jesus, authentic Christian mission has included good news for the poor, compassion for the sick and suffering justice for the oppressed, liberation for the enslaved. The gospel of the Servant of God in the power of the Spirit of God addresses every area of human need and every area that has been broken and twisted by sin and evil. And the heart of the gospel, in all of these areas, is the cross of Christ.”
- Christopher J. H. Wright (italics mine)

- found on the front page of The Boars Head Tavern blog

Confessions #6: Woe to the Silent

"But in these words what have I said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What has anyone achieved in words when he speaks about you? Yet woe to those who are silent about you because, though loquacious with verbosity, whey have nothing to say."

In the notes, Chadwick observes that in the Confessions "the loquacious" are usually "either pagan philosophical critics rejecting the Christian revelation or Manichees." So, it was not for want of speaking about the divine that Augustine criticized these, but for want of speaking truly and meaningfully about God. They were somewhat like the smooth-talkers and the weak-willed women of 2 Timothy who were "always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth" or those from 1 Timothy who devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship which is from God by faith."

Instead of these wanderings and divergences, as Paul told Timothy, "the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." And as Augustine observes, in love we must speak of God, of His goodness and his nature, or else we will find ourselves like the prophet Jeremiah who said,

If I say, "I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,"
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.

So, "since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, 'I believed, and so I spoke,' we also believe, and so we also speak" with words that at best fall just short of the Word whose words are "spirit and life". If we don't speak, it is true, the rocks will cry out. But why wait for them, when it is we who have been charged to speak to the mountains and have them cast into the sea?

I will end with Augustine's words that led to his observation above:

"Most high, utterly good, utterly powerful, most omnipotent, most merciful and most just, deeply hidden yet most intimately present, perfection of both beauty and strength, stable and incomprehensible, immutable yet changing all things, never new, never old, making everything new and 'leading' the proud 'to be old without their knowledge'; always active, always in repose, gathering to yourself but not in need, supporting and filling and protecting, creating and nurturing and bringing to maturity, searching even though to you nothing is lacking; you love without burning, you are jealous in a way that is free of anxiety, you 'repent' without the pain of regret, you are wrathful and remain tranquil. You will a change without any change in your design. You recover what you find, yet have never lost..."

Peterson on living in reality

Every call to worship is a call into the Real World.…I encounter such constant and widespread lying about reality each day and meet with such skilled and systematic distortion of the truth that I’m always in danger of losing my grip on reality. The reality, of course, is that God is sovereign and Christ is savior. The reality is that prayer is my mother tongue and the eucharist my basic food. The reality is that baptism, not Myers-Briggs, defines who I am.

—Eugene H. Peterson
Take & Read

-Found it on the front page of City Church of San Francisco

Confessions #5: Heart-rest

"You are great, Lord, and highly to be praised," begins the first paragraph of Augustine's Confessions. Although humankind bears "'his mortality with him', carrying with him the witness of his sin and the witness that you 'resist the proud'...Nevertheless," Augustine prays, "to praise you is the desire of man, a little piece of your creation. You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Doubtless you have heard this refrain before but possibly did not know where it came from. "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you." It is the theme of the Confessions and of Augustine's story found in its pages.

"The LORD our righteousness", the Israelites said of YHWH, their faithful, covenant, creator-God.
"He himself is our peace", said the apostle Paul of Jesus, YHWH incarnate, God in the flesh "reconciling the world to Himself."
Jesus himself says, "come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
And we therefore follow the urging of the author of Hebrews who says, "let us therefore strive to enter that rest."
So we say, "Yes, Lord. You urge us to 'keep ourselves in your love, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.' So fill us with 'joy and peace in believing' so that we may 'abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit'. We are yours; you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you."

Confessions #4

So the final comment on what is written in the the introduction (I must get on to the book itself!) will be in relation to this quote:

"In Augustine's time there were a few educated people for whom all religion was superstition; but the dominant consensus held to belief in divine providence, visible in the mathematical order and coherence of the world, and given special manifestations to individuals by dreams and oracles. Design was evident to the eye."

How different it seems to be in America these days! Do you agree? Is belief in "divine providence" more common than not among the average American?

Throughout his life and wanderings, as Chadwick observes, Augustine "never lost his belief in the being and providence of God." Even though he was at times very far away from the Christian faith, he still seemed to hold on (unknowingly) to the promise of Hebrews 11:6 that "whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him."

Even in the very first paragraphs of the Confessions, this theme of seeking and finding is already apparent:

"In seeking them they find him, and in finding they will praise him. Lord, I would seek you, calling upon you--and calling upon you is an act of believing in you...It is your gift to me."

So, in Augustine's day, although there was a common assumption in divine providence with the occasional divine "flare up", it seems that the belief in a real, immanent God who is actively involved in world and people's lives was not the reigning perspective. But Augustine discovered otherwise. Let us pray that would be the case in this day as well.

Confessions #3

In discussing the events leading up to Augustine's conversion, Chadwick notes in the introduction that Augustine's move to Milan from North Africa coincided with a growing intellectual crisis in which his "lost belief in Mani (the leader of a gnostic religious group) was replaced by a skepticism about the possibility of any certainty. He devoured the writings of skeptical philosophers of the Academic school telling him that certainty is not available except in questions of pure mathematics." Chadwick rightly observes that it was this disillusionment with Manicheism and resultant skepticism towards any certainty that laid the ground work for his later conversion.
As a side note, if in the 4th century pure mathematics was the only discipline in which one could hope for any certainty, then as of the turn of the previous century, that's not an option either. I guess certainty needs to be of a different sort and come from outside of us if it is to achieve what we hope "certainty" would achieve. Maybe this is why, later on in the Confessions, Augustine said "My desire was not to be more certain of you, but to be more stable in you." So the "certainty" or "stability" we need is not so much a scientific and cognitive one as much as it is a relational and holistic one.
It seems to me that we are in a period of skepticism much like Augustine's where disillusionment with a disappointing worldview and the proponents thereof have led to a radical skepticism about certainty and any sort of realistic hope for meaning and change. Could it be that we are being readied for conversion? Would it be that the Spirit who groans and intercedes for us on our behalf would cause Augustine's same prayer of "stability in you" to be our prayer in such unstable times? Would the Spirit who also convicts the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment use this to bring the restless skeptics despairing of certainty and meaning to Jesus to "find their rest in Him"? Yes Lord! Amen!

the 700+1 Club

Pat Robertson endorses Giuliani for president. Either the situation is desperate or the 700 Club has decided to broaden its membership. I guess you could see this a sign of hope for those on the far right that they will look at the big picture a bit more, or a sign of defeat and compromise. It will be interesting to see how this affects things.

Confessions #2

Still in the introduction, the second thing that caught my attention was Chadwick's discussion of Augustine's first exposure to the Bible. Augustine was first led to pick up the Bible after reading Cicero's Hortensius in which Cicero taught that "happiness is not found in physical pleasures of luxurious food, drink, and sex, but in a dedication of the mind to the discovery of truth." Prompted to explore the foundation of true happiness as the "discovery of truth", Augustine was turned off by the language of the 200 year old Latin Bible he found. The language of the translation was so rough that it immediately offended the sensibilities of Augustine who was used to classic and skilled Latin of those like Cicero and Virgil. As Chadwick notes, "Augustine found that once he had put it down, it was hard to pick up again. Moreover, he was offended by the polygamy of Old Testament patriarchs and the different genealogies of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke."
When I first read this I was again struck by the similarities in Augustine's reaction to the Bible and of the reactions of those in our own day. We are descendants of the Western culture that found its birth not long before Augustine's time, and we still suffer much of the shortsightedness and cross-cultural tension that Augustine did when he read the Bible for the first time. Although Augustine was much closer to the original setting of the New Testament than we are, his philosophical mindset and worldview was still far removed from the earthy aspect of Christianity and its roots in the world. He was not prepared to take into account the translational "gap" that had arisen over the 200 years of change and learning. He was also not prepared for the differences in genre and perspective that the Biblical authors used to communicate their religious realities and experience. The earthy and literary nature of the Jewish writings and worldview were different enough from the abstract and speculative reason of the Hellenistic philosophers to cause Augustine to stumble over the Scriptures. Yet, in time, by God's sovereign grace Augustine came back around to understand, appreciate, and believe the Scriptures and the God they presented.
All of this underscores the fact that we need fresh and current translations of the Scriptures that speak in the language and to the thought patterns of all different kinds of people groups that exist and will emerge in our time; we also need to be aware of the methods, customs, skills, symbols, aims, and worldview of the Biblical writers' over against our own cultures' methods, customs, skills, symbols, aims, and worldview when we read the Scriptures and let them speak to us; but finally we can trust in God's sovereign grace through all these efforts that He will work above and beyond our failures, inabilities, and carelessness to advance His kingdom and build His church. Soli deo gloria!

Confessions Writing Project #1

I'm going to attempt to summarize and highlight my experience of reading through Augustine's Confessions as writing project to build my writing skills and develop my reading and retention skills...and of course to talk about Augustine's Confessions. It goes without saying that I won't be saying much compared to everyone else who's responded to Augustine over the past 1600 years, but, no matter, I have other aims for now.

I'll start with the introduction to the Oxford University translation by Henry Chadwick. In discussing the aims and situation of Augustine's writing of the Confessions, Chadwick mentions that at the end of his life, Augustine wrote a review and reappraisal of his work entitled Retractationes (which, Chadwick says, cannot be translated 'Retractions', because Augustine affirms nearly all of what he wrote). Chadwick says this about Augustine's perspective on the Confessions,
"When he came to the Confessions he observes that they serve to excite the human mind and affection towards God; the act of writing the book had done that for himself at the time, and 'that is the effect when it is read now'."
When I first started reading the Confessions, I made a note next to this saying, "this is when it is good to write." That was back in 2003 (it took me a while to come back around to the book to finish it apparently). I still feel the same way. Of course, in the discipline of writing as in any discipline there are times of awkward and painful growth, many times the soil gives way to beautiful fruit, ten, twenty, and one hundred-fold. "Inspiration or feeling is borne of regular daily work," said Camille Pissaro, the 19th century French Impressionist painter who has been called the "Father of Impressionism" . (I saw this quote while at an art gallery in Florence last spring break. Sometimes you just get lucky and see the right things...)
Chadwick goes on to explain that Augustine wrote his Confessions over the course of three years at the end of the fourth century as a "man in his mid-forties, recently made a bishop, needing to come to terms with a past in which numerous enemies and critics showed an unhealthy interest." As with many other aspects of Augustine's life, there is striking familiarity with contemporary figures and situations. Chuck Colson and his book Born Again come to mind first.
But I'm digressing. I mentioned this first to recognize that it took three years for Augustine to write his Confessions. On the one hand, that's a heck of a long time to write a book, let alone one's own story, but on the other hand (maybe a tired one at that after all that writing), he wrote it all by hand. No typewriters, no computers, no editors. Pretty impressive. So, even if it takes a while and is not easy going, writing is good and well worth it, especially when it serves to "excite the human mind and affection towards God", both for the writer and the reader.
Lord, may that be true of all that I ever write, whether for myself alone or for others with me.

JESUS and CHANGE

Mars Hill Church's 10th anniversary video. (This year is now their 11th year, and the two things they say have remained constant are JESUS and CHANGE.)

God, would you continue
and increase
this same work of
transforming lives
by the Gospel of Jesus
in cities all over America
and beyond.
Make us true disciples and disciple-makers,
for your glory
and for the good of the world around us.

Orthodox and Born Again

Dr. Brad Nasiff of North Park University and an Orthodox theologian reflects on what has kept him believing in Christ after years and years of scholarship and life. His answer may surprise you!

http://audio.ancientfaith.com/nassif/so5_pc.mp3

Great Light of the World Come to Impart (old and new)

I make the cross of Christ upon my breast,
over the tablet of my hard heart,
and I beseech the Living God of the universe -
may the Light of Lights come
to my dark heart from Thy place;
may the Spirit's wisdom come to my heart's tablet
from my Saviour.

-From the Aidan compline, who lived in the early 7th century in Ireland.

Sometimes at night
I am afraid
I cover my eyes,
Cover my shame
So here in the dark
Broken apart
Come with your light
And fill up my heart
Oh great light of the world
Fill up my soul
I’m half a man here
So come make me whole
Oh great light of the world
Come to impart
The light of your grace
To fill up my heart

The wind of this world
Can push us around
Folding us up
Backing us down
But here in the dark
I’m not alone
So come with your strength
And carry me home
Oh great light of the world
Fill up my soul
I’m half a man here
So come make me whole
Oh great light of the world
Come to impart
The light of your grace
Oh great light of the world
Fill up my soul
I’m half a man here
So come make me whole
Oh great light of the world
Come to impart
The light of your grace
To fill up my heart
The light of your grace
To fill up my heart

-Bebo Norman, Great Light Of The World

The Two Tasks

"...Responsible Christians face two tasks-that of saving the soul and that of saving the mind. No civilization can endure with its mind being as confused and disordered as ours is today. All our ills stem proximately from the false philosophies that have been let loose in the world and that are now being taught in the universities.... Save the university and you save Western civilization and therewith the world."

-Dr. Charles Malik, Lebanese educator and statesman

______________

The United States Supreme Court ruled, "The classroom is peculiarly the 'marketplace of ideas.' The Nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth 'out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection."

.
— United States v. Associated Press, 52 F. Supp. 362, 372.

______________

"We have a gospel to proclaim. We have to proclaim it not merely to individuals in their personal and domestic lives. . . . we have to proclaim it as part of the continuing conversation which shapes public doctrine. It must be heard in the conversation of economists, psychiatrists, educators, scientists, and politicians."

—Lesslie Newbigin, Truth To Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1991), p. 64.

->for more on what some are doing about this, check out www.clm.org

We ignore the academy and marketplace of ideas at great peril to the rest of the world that is at their mercy and the subject of their policies and publications. Let us embrace the call to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Only then can we fulfill the call to love our neighbors as ourselves.

With M. Teresa in view...

You must have often wondered why the enemy [God] does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree he chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the irresistible and the indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of his scheme forbids him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as his felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve.... Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs--to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.... He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand.... Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.*
-Uncle Screwtape
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

*See also, Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith in TIME

Who can tell?

Morning Prayer from
				The Book of Common Prayer
				Sunday, 2 September 2007 The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity

All
Almighty and most merciful Father,
we have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.
We have followed too much the devices and desires
of our own hearts.
We have offended against thy holy laws.
We have left undone those things
which we ought to have done;
and we have done those things
which we ought not to have done;
and there is no health in us.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.
Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults.
Restore thou them that are penitent;
according to thy promises declared unto mankind
in Christ Jesu our Lord.
And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake,
that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life,
to the glory of thy holy name.
Amen.

First Reading: Jonah 3.5-9

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:
But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

Second Reading: Revelation 3.19-22

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

Today's Morning Reading

From today's morning reading of the Book of Common Prayer:

from the OT reading, Habakkuk 3:2
O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.

from Te Deum Laudamus

				O Lord, save thy people and bless thine heritage.
				Govern them and lift them up for ever.
				Day by day we magnify thee;
				and we worship thy name, ever world without end.
				Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.
				O Lord, have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us.
				O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us, as our trust is in thee.
				O Lord, in thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.