tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32737015390716467772011-12-20T11:20:40.403-05:00JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.comBlogger341100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-25503350043658117512011-12-07T17:28:00.001-05:002011-12-07T17:28:57.840-05:00

The detail is worth the click thru.

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-73323994588684695272011-12-07T17:13:00.003-05:002011-12-07T17:16:52.185-05:00

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

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-78919188375016355832011-08-17T17:50:00.002-04:002011-08-17T17:54:06.058-04:00

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).

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-41811818013415564682011-03-23T11:13:00.003-04:002011-03-23T11:58:18.261-04:00

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

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-54172117977485930532011-03-18T16:23:00.004-04:002011-03-18T21:20:02.138-04:00

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.

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-86590574582591722672011-03-18T10:19:00.006-04:002011-03-18T16:33:52.192-04:00

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,

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-60245989774860395012011-02-01T10:41:00.002-05:002011-02-01T10:41:51.831-05:00

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

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-9111838930027813792011-01-15T13:09:00.001-05:002011-03-18T21:42:53.439-04:00

Tunisia has its third president in 24 hours, and the weeks-long, country-wide protests against the government continue unabated.  From what I have heard from former students and friends in the country, there is a lot of uncertainty and fear in minority Christian communities about how this will turn out and what it will mean for the church in Tunisia. The Los Angeles Times/Reuters has a recent

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-57848657581636783042011-01-05T16:01:00.000-05:002011-01-05T16:01:01.497-05:00

Wronged by a sister: Charlotte's tearless eyes, pleading face, and expression that says "Really? I mean, really?"

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-16586488059593627212011-01-04T10:08:00.004-05:002011-01-04T11:33:03.390-05:00

The recent church bombings in Egypt and Nigeria may or may not have been closely coordinated, but either way they do have implications for the region and for the US.  Horrific events like these are not merely manifestations of local, sectarian tension, and the precarious political situation, particularly in Egypt, only amplifies the problem.  In this article, George Friedman provides a helpful

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-17393724640127027242011-01-01T21:41:00.012-05:002011-01-03T16:09:29.892-05:00

Preaching on Mark 2 tomorrow, the passage about Jesus' encounter with the paralytic.  This one part struck me tonight, perhaps given some recent events in my own life.   Notice how the most passive, quiet, inactive man in the story is the paralytic. The friends at least lower him down on the stretcher.  The scribes are active in their hushed critique.  The whole scene closes on the crowd

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-5682580075810836432010-09-21T10:25:00.002-04:002010-09-21T10:50:57.743-04:00

From John Owen on The Holy Spirit and His Work:And the Spirit of God hath no other aim in granting these his enlightening gifts, wherein he manifests his care of the church, and declares the things of the gospel unto any man, but that they should be used to the profit, advantage, and edification of others. They are not bestowed on men to make their secular gain or advantage by them, in riches,

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-71242793235361158642010-04-23T15:58:00.004-04:002011-01-15T13:14:58.278-05:00

Grading papers and exams reminds me of the state of constant flux of the English language. One must fight the temptation to be judgmental, but it is hard not to tender a few pet peeves. I think a few coping mechanisms would be appropriate.

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-80238579291933712982010-01-15T21:31:00.006-05:002011-03-19T10:24:09.550-04:00

The origins of a symbol that has always struck me somewhat arbitrary. Cameron Chapman gives a short intro to its origin and helpfully shows what a pretzel ampersand would look like. The ampersand can be traced back to the first century AD. It was originally a ligature of the letters E and T (”et” is Latin for and). If you look at the modern ampersand, you’ll likely still be able to see the

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-17781085685247140442010-01-11T15:19:00.004-05:002010-01-11T15:23:26.396-05:00

This is oddly funny.HT: TBT

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-43631348383864835512009-05-06T15:55:00.006-04:002011-01-01T23:42:07.447-05:00

Mark 4:35-5:20 “Sea-Storm and the Man of the Tombs”(CTK, Raleigh, N.C. March 8, 2009) Two summers ago my wife Jenn and I got to take our oldest daughter Naomi to the Busch Gardens Theme Park which is not far from Jenn’s parents’ house in Williamsburg,VA. If you’ve ever been to Busch Gardens you know that the Park is made up of little Old World themed villages that have stores and restaurants and

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-50621025336883356352009-03-27T13:06:00.001-04:002009-03-27T13:08:12.399-04:00

Dinosaur comic from this week:

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-24417471666004054412009-03-12T21:19:00.003-04:002009-03-12T21:22:52.216-04:00

Somebody pitched this concept and they decided, "Let's run with it."Moses shoots W's, for Word of God, at Israelites in a quest for national redemption.Just one of the 14 wierdest video games posted on Neatorama.

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-68138320917934388012009-02-20T13:15:00.002-05:002009-02-20T13:21:12.116-05:00

HT: Zoomdoggle

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-24053486365284621792009-02-19T13:06:00.003-05:002009-02-19T13:14:20.587-05:00

At Slate, a review of Alan Wolfe's profile of the American liberal (new sense of the term) or, at least, a profile of how a liberal fancies himself.It is wrong, therefore, Wolfe argues, to see the divide between liberals and conservatives as grounded in a difference in attitudes toward human nature. It is not, as Thomas Sowell has claimed, that liberals believe that people are naturally good

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-52000675625571147882009-02-05T11:26:00.001-05:002009-02-05T11:27:58.679-05:00

See the picture on the filing cabinet in the background.  I think the longest shot is at about 5:07 in playback.

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-4335153833459215492009-01-30T16:27:00.005-05:002009-01-30T21:37:48.291-05:00

Something about this report is just satisfying.  Perhaps it is just the knowledge that an obscure logo does not necessarily hide a dark, chthonic reasoning (see Proctor & Gamble's 20+ year struggle), and that the Morton's Salt slogan actually makes sense in a mid-industrial society.

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-69743036970143316832008-10-28T14:52:00.004-04:002008-10-28T15:08:18.255-04:00

Here is an interesting panel discussion of Prof. Nicholas Wolterstorff's paper entitled "Theology, Morality and the Public Life" moderated by Prof. Beth Elshtain.Wolterstorff comments on Rom 13:1-7:If we reject the view all too prevalent nowadays, that government at bottom is nothing else than the playing out of self-interested power relationships and if we instead embrace the traditional view

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-21153369254881100942008-10-27T18:18:00.005-04:002010-11-08T09:47:10.783-05:00

Click here for audio. Sermon Text: Romans 13:1-7 at CTK, October 26, 2008 WHERE OUR HOPE LIES Good morning. Elliot has been preaching through some biblical passages that deal primarily with where our hope as followers of Jesus Christ lies, and in doing so he had mapped out the distinction between the kingdom of God, the heavenly and cosmic kingdom, on the one side, and earthly, temporal

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-4775822199879558062008-07-17T14:39:00.003-04:002008-07-17T15:03:32.589-04:00

Christian communal set-ups like this one reported in the New York Press inevitably spring up, and I wish them all the best on their project. Two things about this story, however, catch my attention:1. The columnist Joseph Huff-Hannon is largely positive in the tone in which he describes the evangelical beliefs of his subjects. I know that the New York Press is not a mainstream outlet, but it is

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-25496471756860564732008-06-18T11:24:00.003-04:002008-06-18T14:47:46.354-04:00

Here is a smart article by Nicholas Carr from this month's Atlantic Monthly. I cited it in a sermon last Sunday in reference to the fact that people read differently now due to internet use and that we should be aware of this as we plan our personal Bible reading times. This is the quote that strikes me as personally true:Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-87929843985952602882008-05-24T12:22:00.005-04:002008-05-24T12:35:19.181-04:00

I recommend Thomas Bartlett's account of the fallout from last year's Gospel of Judas fiasco. What is interesting is how the "dream team" of scholars have splintered somewhat in the aftermath of their controversial claims about the gnostic gospel. Pagels, Ehrman, and Meyer do not come out looking good.But it all makes for a great story: a farmer stumbles upon the find of the decade, backroom

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-70669397168991763792008-05-22T17:31:00.002-04:002008-05-22T17:40:57.037-04:00

In a piece entitled "Why I Had to Lie to My Dying Mother," Susan Sontag's son David Rieff relates the painful process and effect of abetting his mother's delusion that she was not actually dying of Leukemia. What is alarming to me about his tragic and articulate account is the depth with which his mother yearned for immortality, even when she had rejected all claims to it. Rieff writes, "I

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-36482865756291839642008-05-19T15:24:00.003-04:002008-05-19T15:43:28.344-04:00

With the very probable chance that we will see a Democratic presidential nominee who is a heavy smoker, it might pay to take a few moments to reassess the smoking sub-culture in America. The first installment of this reassessment considers the recent history of the American smoker. David Sedaris writes in the New Yorker about the trouble with "finishing" smoking. Quitting just doesn't quite

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-89734921695200833882008-05-14T19:57:00.006-04:002008-05-14T20:09:26.456-04:00

Robert Irwin is not lying when he says, "So many academics want the arguments presented in Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) to be true." But wishing does not make them so. The recent critiques of post-colonialist literary critic Edward Said should not (will not) undermine Said's lasting legacy, but it does pay to remember the greatest weakness of all argumentation: false premises. Read here . . .

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-7094637492617755092007-09-13T13:25:00.000-04:002007-09-15T23:56:25.765-04:00

The claim that modern Aramaic is the language of Jesus over-reaches a bit, but the dialect of Jesus does belong to the same language family as the modern type described here (called Ma'lula).See the clip.

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-72517922672896949462007-09-13T12:51:00.000-04:002007-09-13T13:00:16.796-04:00

No Thanks, Mr. NabokovBy DAVID OSHINSKY (New York Times)In the summer of 1950, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. turned down the English-language rights to a Dutch manuscript after receiving a particularly harsh reader’s report. The work was “very dull,” the reader insisted, “a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.” Sales would be small because the main

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-80975264096654565882007-08-13T12:13:00.001-04:002007-08-14T10:56:00.905-04:00

This is an older piece (by Parker Williamson), but it is helpful in the way it lays out the precipating factors for the recent and continuing exodus from the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA), a movement whose members have adopted the moniker "New Wineskins."Williamson concludes his brief survey of mainline deviations on a hopeful note:But the Kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus himself said so,

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273701539071646777.post-37375434204765950272007-08-10T14:12:00.000-04:002007-08-10T16:21:45.726-04:00

Herein lies the first post of a tentative experiment with the blog phenomenon. Can one be more non-committal? Let me try: the title was produced in a 10-second, one-man brainstorming meeting. The singular nominative was taken, the plural available and somewhat more communal. This is, after all, an online community, is it not?

JSRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18365859786604475316noreply@blogger.com2