Sistine Chapel POV

The detail is worth the click thru.

Peter Berger on the Reformed movement among Southern Baptists

Peter Berger, sociologist of religion and current director of Boston University's Institute of Culture, Religion and World Affairs, takes note of the growing interest in Calvinism among Southern Baptists.  Berger obviously has no truck with the New Calvinism, but his prediction of where it is going, particularly in politically active circles, is worth reading.

The New Calvinists have shown a particular interest in a Dutch theologian whose work seems particularly relevant to the American situation. Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) also used the term New Calvinism to define his position. He combined orthodox Calvinist theology with a strong commitment to the separation of church and state (he split with the official Dutch Reformed Church over this issue). As far as I can make out, he accepted the doctrine of predestination, but without emphasizing its negative portion (the bit about predestination to hell). He taught the sovereignty of Christ over all realms of reality, but he believed that, if grounded in a strong Christian culture, Christians could participate in a pluralist society and a democratic state. He visited America and lectured at Princeton. Kuyper founded a political party, and he was prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. One can understand how Kuyper would appeal to Baptists, who always held a strong belief in the separation of church and state.

Read the rest here. 

Intertextuality in Literature

How do we distinguish between intertextuality, allusion, and brute plagiarism? Or rather, would Shakespeare have survived turnitin.com?

Of course, un-cited quotations are not new.

John Sutherland at Literary Review looks at Gary Saul Morson's The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture (Yale, 2011).

A brief history of surf reporting

I am thankful for the surf report in all of its forms.  When I started it was in the age of the phone recording and the the thumbs up/down on the drive to the beach.  I hadn't noticed, but you just don't see that anymore.

BTW, the Surf Station in St. Augustine has the format down pretty well

Lava Lake at the Nyiragongo Crater

In June 2010, photographer Olivier Grunewald joined a group of scientists to explore and document the Nyiragongo Crater in Africa.  In late February the Boston Globe posted some of the resulting pictures including a few keepers.

Christ's death as a precursor to the final judgment

Preparing for a sermon delivered this past Wednesday in the RTS chapel where we are preaching through the Apostles Creed, I started thinking about the close connection between the crucufixion, death, and burial of Christ and the reality of the final judgment. They are really are two parts of the same whole.

What struck me was how the atoning death of Christ is a foreshadowing, a promise really, of the final judgment that is to come.  In fact, there is a similarity between the way that Christ’s resurrection is a promise of the final, global resurrection and the way that Christ’s death is is the same for the final, global judgment.

Comfort and Seminary

From a piece in today's RTS newsletter Semper Informanda about the pursuing seminary in a society which glorifies comfort:

Watching the news about the political turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt, I thought of some of my friends who live and minister to the church in North Africa.   It is always good to remember and pray for the minority Christian communities that are caught in the middle of this unrest. 

Working at a seminary in the Mediterranean Basin, I have had the incredible privilege to get to know and teach pastors and lay leaders from the North African church.  The students were men and women who invariably risked their own lives, reputations, and those of their families to pursue training for Christian ministry at offshore sites where religious opposition was not as cruelly oppressive as in their home towns. . . 

Read the rest here.