o1mnikent

James Cameron has found and identified Jesus’ bones.  They were dually-natured, attribute-communicating, and radically Chalcedonian.

In other words, Jesus drank a lot of milk.

The Seattle Times reports this morning that Starbucks has lost its soul. Howard Schultz acknowledges in a recent memo that some stores are now “sterile” and “cookie-cutter.” He speaks truth, and I agree. I can’t imagine that a company with more than nine thousand stores could be anything but.

For better or worse, Starbucks offers a consistent taste and a predictable experience at any store anywhere in the world. Starbucks transcends time and space in an eerily pneumatological way. Starbucks provides respite in foreign countries not because it serves as a reminder of American culture, but because it is culturally neutral. Starbucks isn’t American, Philipino, Italian, or anything else. It’s a culture-less zone. It no longer reflects the culture of its hometown, or even of America anymore. The company appeals to the consumer’s taste to buy an experience that he or she couldn’t get in the real world.

Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the first day of Lent. This is the day when we are reminded that we have come from dust, and to dust we return. During Lent, we pass from death into life. So begins our journey to the cross.

Originally, Lent was the period for converts to become acquainted with the church, to learn the catechism, and to begin to experience the life of the creeds and confessions. Easter Sunday traditionally served as the Sunday where the church celebrated baptism. All baptisms happened on Easter: new members were baptized, and the rest of congregation renewed their own baptismal vows. Together, using the words of the Apostles’ Creed as their rule of faith and using the death and resurrection of Christ as their model (and the Israelites’ passage through the Red Sea), they celebrated their passage from death to life.

Lent is devoted to giving, to prayer, and to the spiritual disciplines. For me, I’m hoping to take up the discipline of theological study, but not the kind that’s usually done in the library (as I usually do, preparing for class), but instead, a slow reading and meditating. I’m especially hoping to read a bit of Anselm and a bit of Abelard.

In my Christ and Salvation class, our professor claimed that we are numb to the atonement. We don’t sense its shock value. He posed several questions for us.

Imagine that someone committed a terrible crime. Rape and murder, for example. This person was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. And while they were on death row, an anonymous, innocent person took their place. In doing so, this innocent person was executed, and the person who raped and murdered was then set free. The voting public would not take to well to such a situation, and it would turn into a media spectacle (can you imagine what Bill O’Reilly would say?!) yet this is a viable theory of the atonement.

Why can’t God just forgive without killing his Son? Is God unreasonable? Stubborn? Is the devil the problem, i.e. is God in trouble because sin somehow has control over us? If God’s omnipotent, why does God need to go to such extremes to defeat sin? Why couldn’t God just use his power to defeat a fallen humanity? Why did Jesus need to suffer?

Isn’t it far worse for us to kill the Son of God than to commit any other sin (like eating an apple)? Why wouldn’t killing the Son of God have even greater consequences? Shouldn’t God be even angrier with the human race for crucifying the Son? How would the death of the Son of God please the Father so much that that would bring about our reconciliation?

If Jesus paid the debt to make us free (“sing, o sing of my redeemer…”), then to whom did he pay this debt? To God? To the devil? Does God owe Satan anything? If God owes Satan something, then doesn’t that deny God his “Godness”? If God paid the debt to himself, did he really pay it? Isn’t that like taking money out of God’s left pocket and putting it into his right pocket (e.g. money laundering)?

How can the death of the innocent person atone for our sin? And why would God consider this in such a way that it brings about reconciliation?

If the atonement was violent (which is almost certainly was), does that render pacifism impossible? Did God commit a kind of divine child abuse on the Son? Was it wrong for God to make the Son a scapegoat? Does God condone our suffering?

I answered many of these questions on yesterdays exam, but the answers were largely a regurgitation of Anselm. My discipline for this Lent is to read Anselm, meditate on these questions and internalize their answers, and ponder their implications for God’s call on my own life through the waters of my baptism. Practically, my baptism amounted to nothing more than a few drops of water on my head. But theologically, I was drowning when God pulled me up. I was gasping for air before I could intellectually realize it, and God – for no logical reason other than the absurdity of grace – pulled me up while I was blue in the face, sinking, and dying.

This is the same journey that I experience this and every Lent. My own baptism, after all, depends on the work of God, and the tugging of God, pulling and pushing me through my own Red Sea, passing from death into life. During Lent, I journey to the cross, into the grave, and experience the life of an empty tomb.

I’m rejoicing this afternoon because the temperature finally hit thirty two degrees for the first time since last September. And as much as I’d like to enjoy our balmy weather, I’m trapped inside because I lack the precision and agility to dodge the icicles falling from the gutter onto the front porch. The mailman came to the same realization about an hour ago.

The warm weather means that we’ve now remained below freezing for a total of twenty-two days, which is enough to put us in the record books. The coldest such strech was forty three days, way back in 1918. 1973 and a couple of other years were colder than this one, too. But for now, it looks like the warming trend will continue. Temperatures are expected to top forty degrees later this week. These are temperatures that you can drool over, knowing that your drool won’t freeze before it hits the ground. Because THAT’S awkward.

*draft*

“Dawkins seems to have chosen God has his sworn enemy.
Let’s hope God doesn’t return the compliment.”
-Alvin Plantinga

Richard Dawkins is a distinguished scientist and a prolific writer. His previous books elucidate the complexities of evolutionary theory for a general, non-scientific audience. The accessibility of these books to the reading public has made him wildly popular. In his early books, Dawkins’ denial of God and suspicion of religion remained only implicit assumptions that took the backseat to biology. But in recent books, especially Climbing Mount Improbable, Dawkins brings his polemic against religion to the forefront, which culminates in his most recent book. The God Delusion is almost exclusively devoted to philosophy. In it, Dawkins intersperses his own disdain for religion with social commentary and fiery rhetoric. Nor does he limit his attack toward one religion in particular or religious fundamentalism. Lest his readers miss the point, he makes clear that his attack is against “God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented” (36).

Toward that end, Dawkins several themes emerge throughout the book, including fundamentalist Islam (especially the Danish cartoons), religious indoctrination as a form child abuse, morality from an evolutionary psychology perspective, patriarchal misinterpretation of scripture, and other topics, too numerous to deal with here. This paper will instead attempt to engage Dawkins in only three particular areas. First, it will discuss Dawkins accusation that religion constitutes a source of great evil in the world. This discussion of evil will not attempt to cover each aspect of the problem of evil. This will not be a discussion about the problem of evil, because Dawkins does not use the problem of evil in his case against religion. Instead, the paper will show that Dawkins wrongly concludes that religions are evil because he mistakenly quantifies evil. Second, the paper will attempt to show that the reasons Dawkins gives for God to be improbable are do not conform to good logic. Third, empiricism will be discussed to the extent that its shortcomings are apparent. This will show that Dawkins’ philosophy is not only ill-equipped to speak about God but also self-refuting. Last, the paper will reveal that Dawkins’ claims – indeed, his entire perception of reality – cannot be trusted because they rely solely on sensory input and are not external to a mind which cannot be trusted. Were Dawkins right, we would be forced to conclude that he was wrong. As we will see, no good reason exists to accept Dawkins’ claims, and there is excellent reason to reject them.

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Here’s a name – other than Ann Groten – familiar to anyone who is or has ever been a student of New Testament Greek. He’s the editor of the most recent edition of the Greek New Testament, and the foremost authority on textual variants.

see article

I’ve been sick the past couple days. I spent most of yesterday at home, catching up on, among other things, a paper on The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, which is a truly hideous book. He’s an ardent atheist, nonsensical, and hostile to religion in general and Christianity in specific. The most challenging part of the paper so far has been to respond with more clarity and logic than Dawkins serves his readers.

I’ve also taken a dose of NyQuil for the second evening in a row. Normally, taking NyQuil at 9:00 means that I’ll miss the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, both of which I watch religiously each night from 11:00-midnight. But tonight I’ve decided to try to stay awake. Only one hour to go. Hopefully I’ll make it before complete lethargy sets in.

Paul’s words to the Romans (chapter seven, to be exact) are relevant. Just replace “sin” with “NyQuil”:

¹⁵ I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Stuck inside? Looking for a few good reads?

Jamie Smith reflects on what a Sunday snow day reveals about urban churches. (Personal testimony: I didn’t go to church yesterday.)

If you like George Orwell, then you might like this article, but not if you like him too much.

David Bell argues that we’re over-reacting to 9/11.

Alvin Plantinga reviews Richard Dawkins’ bestseller, The God Delusion. Shizzam.

Reflections on procrastination. I can relate.

Geoffrey K. Pullum dissects and dismantles linguistic prescriptivism in this article.

Steve Sailor thinks that multi-culturalism is a hopeless ideal. I think, despite the great article, he’s wrong.

Two weeks ago, Stephen Colbert and Bill O’Reilly appeared as guests on each other’s shows. This article documents the mayhem.

Scott Hoezee preached on John 1 at last week’s worship symposium.

Virginia Postrel thinks chain stores really aren’t all bad.