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"To Thy blest cross, O Christ, we come,
And falling down before Thee,
And humbly make confession full
Of all our sins before Thee.
For Thou Thyself art very God,
And freely cam'st to save us;
And in our flesh the fetters broke
With which our sins enslave us.
Therefore we own with grateful hearts
The joy our Saviour brought us,
Who came to earth, and in our sins
With love and pity sought us."

--"To Thy Blest Cross, O Christ, We Come"

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

I think if it weren't for hydrocodone, I would have gone crazy by now.  The actual pain from the surgical incisions isn't really that bad... but the pain is in addition to my pretty irritating base level of pain, and I think I might've gotten scratched with a surgical implement or something under my tongue.  So yeah, thank God for painkillers.  At least the swelling is going down.

I figure that I might as well talk about the past couple sermons at my church.  Lately my church has been doing a sermon series based on Gary Chapman's The Five Love Languages.  It sounds pretty cheesy, yes, but so far they haven't done terribly with it.  Last week's sermon was devoted to "Quality Time", and my senior pastor was preaching.  ...He managed to find an occasion in the sermon to explain what Gnosticism and Docetism are, and why we need to guard against false teaching.  Have I mentioned lately how much I love my pastor?  The scary thing was that he actually managed to make it somehow fit the sermon; that's talent.  The sermon was based on 1 John 1:1-4, while this past Sunday's ("Words of Affirmation") was rooted more in Proverbs 15:1 and 18:17-21.  My associate pastor took this one, and it was geared towards the church kids, so with that taken into consideration, it was a decent sermon.  Mostly just moral exhortation; God didn't even get mentioned until about halfway through.

Yesterday I did some more work with the church library.  We made some good progress; by my calculations, we catalogued 169 books and got quite a few more sorted.  So it was productive, and I'll be tackling some more of the library in a week.

At any rate, these are the books I've finished reading since my last post:

• In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity by Oskar Skarsaune
• In the Language of Kings: An Anthology of Mesoamerican Literature, Pre-Columbian to the Present, eds. Miguel Leon-Portilla and Earl Shorris
• The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey
• The Essence of Religion by Ludwig Feuerbach

Skarsaune's book was excellent.  Like I said before, I highly recommend it to any and all readers.  It does a masterful job at presentation and covers a wide breadth of topics in a fairly natural order.  I could wish that Skarsaune's treatment of proselytism and conversion in Judaism and Christianity had interacted a bit with, e.g., Zeba Crook's superb Reconceptualising Conversion, but that's a relatively small complaint, and probably not a terribly reasonable one in light of Skarsaune's focus.

I'm glad to be done with all the Mesoamerican literature.  A lot of it was interesting, sure, but much of it was scarcely comprehensible to me.  I suspect that's more my fault than the literature's or the translators', so perhaps I'll glance back at select portions if I ever get a better grasp on Mesoamerican culture... but some of that stuff was dang trippy, IMHO.

Hal Lindsey's book was definitely... interesting.  There were a lot of flaws, but... let me just say a few words in Lindsey's defense.  In this book, at least, he did not set himself up as any sort of prophetic figure.  He explicitly stated several times that he had no idea exactly when things were going to end, and that his predictions were only speculations based on his fallible interpretation of Scripture and his analysis of current trends.  He did his best to be very, very clear about this.  And he earns a little bit of respect from me for doing so.  The frightening people are the ones who do act as though they were prophets, whether claiming it explicitly or being a bit more implicit about it.  So I appreciate this degree of humility from Lindsey.  However, on the whole, Lindsey's book had a lot of flaws.  I got the impression that he largely deemed other eschatological views as being completely unworthy of discussion.  The exegetical and hermeneutical gymnastics into which he was forced didn't even cause him to bat an eye; to him they were obvious, because clearly pre-millennial futurism was the plain teaching of Scripture.  He did briefly mention that post-millennialism and amillennialism are out there... but post-millennialism was put down as a dead view, and amillennialism was tarred as a denial of the 'plain teaching' of Revelation.  And, of course, the text was saturated with a rather fundamentalist view of religion and society.

Feuerbach was pretty laughable.  He never really seemed to argue for his position, per se.  He more or less took it for granted as a general perspective and then rammed selective proof-texts into place, often while employing blatant non sequiturs with a bit of nonsense on the side.  At least it was a quick read; I'd hate to have suffered through much more of it.

Things that I'm currently reading:

• The Qur'an: Text, Translation, and Commentary, trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali
• Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, ed. Keith Miller
• Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments), ed. James Charlesworth
• American Islam: Growing Up Muslim in America by Richard Wormser
• Christianity in Crisis by Hank Hanegraaff

The Qur'an is, I have to admit, phenomenally boring.  I'm sorry, I really am.  I know I'm probably not grasping the full majesty of it, because I'm reading a translation.  And, for that matter, a somewhat King James-y translation.  I have a feeling that if I were reading it in Arabic, I would enjoy it more.  I have a Qur'an reciter on my computer, and I enjoy listening to it.  It's melodious and beautiful (but, I would argue, not half as wonderful as the Psalms are when chanted or sung in Hebrew).  And perhaps if I were seeking spiritual nourishment from the Qur'an's pages, it would take on a sacred quality that would make it enlivening somehow.  But... as it stands, I find it rather dull.  This is just my subjective, unsympathetic take on the text, of course.  And if I were persuaded of the truth of Islam, no doubt my perspective would change to a much more positive one.  And I would never attempt a real critique of the Qur'an without attempting to familiarize myself with the major commentators, trying to grasp the historical context, investigating the defenses used in Muslim apologetics, etc.  But Muhammad's arguments against his opponents are often poor, and at times the portrayal of God in the Qur'an falls short of both the Old Testament and the New Testament.  The "final revelation" seems to contain little of use that can't be found better in the literature that preceded it.  The occasional portrayals of Christianity are uniformly inaccurate, and many of the stories borrowed from the Old Testament or Jewish tradition end up stripped of most details, which to me gives the impression of being a bit botched.  (Yusuf Ali defends the Qur'anic use of material as being more "spiritual" and therefore superior, to which I can only say... no.  No, it doesn't come across as more "spiritual" at all.)  Now, I should again emphasize that I'm reading Yusuf Ali's translation of the Qur'an, not the Qur'an itself in Arabic, so I'll grant that the tone--which is really my biggest gripe--may owe more to Yusuf Ali than to Muhammad.  But at any rate, I've been slacking off on my Qur'an reading lately.

Now, as for Miller's book, I think it's excellent.  I can't say I agree with everything--particularly, I wasn't keen on the first half of Hyer's chapter--but on the whole, it is just a good book.  (I do have some other complaints: chiefly, there wasn't enough direct interaction with creationist literature for my taste.  The chapter on astronomy, for example, mentioned briefly a few creationist explanations for the starlight problem, but Humphrey's alternative cosmology was omitted.  So my one big gripe with this book is that it doesn't interact sufficiently with the creationist arguments and explanations, and even where it does so, it doesn't cite specific documents readily enough.  I think that would've been a big asset; hopefully some other books on the topic do that job.)  I was especially pleased with the chapter--I think it may have been Chapter 4--which dealt with science and miracles.  It was an excellent treatment.

Most of my readers are probably aware, I think, that I am a theistic evolutionist.  I used to be a rather committed young-earth creationist (YEC).  Gradually, I became more and more convinced of the scientific credibility of evolution, as I found more and more tidbits of data that were difficult to accomodate within a YEC framework.  Finally, I found myself personally at the point where I couldn't maintain YECism anymore.  At the same time, I observed the discourse taking place in the Natural Science board of TheologyWeb.  To say that I was underwhelmed by the YEC performance there would be an understatement.  Intellectually, there's just no contest: the evolutionists have consistently refuted the YEC case time and time again, and the YECs have not been up to par.  And if this were just any generic case, I'd hardly be surprised... but the YECs have included even some rather prominent figures: Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, a famous creationist author who actually got banned from TWeb (and that is tough to do!); Dr. John Baumgardner, a creationist geophysicist who was part of the creationist RATE project (you may recall my report on a RATE conference from back when I was yet a YEC); and perhaps Jorge Fernandez, whose work I remembered from the True.Origin Archive (a rather incomplete creationist counter to the Talk.Origins Archive, which was also influential in my shift of opinion--although some things are handled very, very poorly at Talk.Origins), if I'm not mistaken that it's one and the same guy.  If anyone should be able to handle that subject in that section, these are excellent candidates, and yet the paucity of their case was plainly evident for public viewing.

Now, let me also interject that it isn't uncommon in there for some of the evolutionists to act like jerks to the creationists, or to use the occasional bad argument.  I would personally advise evolutionists to just stick to the facts and avoid the use of harsh rhetoric against creationists, because this just feeds some YEC perceptions of a world of hostile forces arrayed against them and armed with bluster rather than truth.  In other words, I think that Ben's part of the discussion on the subject archived here is spot-on and definitely worth reading.  Of course, I also realize that many creationists have nothing but absolute scorn for (esp. theistic) evolutionists--see, for example, this recent sample of creationist fulminations, including such 'Christ-honoring' gems as:

• "I have to say that I like atheists better than I like 'Christian' evolutionists (which is actually an oxymoron, hence the quotes)."
  • Ah, interesting.  Seems that it's impossible for an evolutionist to be a Christian now, at least according to this blogger.  Hey, contributors to Perspectives on an Evolving Creation?  Yeah, sorry to tell you this, but I guess you aren't saved after all.  Have fun in everlasting fire for seeing Genesis and the scientific evidence in a different light than this guy on the Internet and his ideological compatriots.  Apparently Christ isn't enough now.  (Sorry, Jesus, looks like you've been demoted from your position of absolute supremacy.)  You've got to adhere to a particular school of protological thought as well.  Remember, everyone: "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead and also that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, you will be saved!" (Romans 10:9 YECV)
• "There are a multitude of powerful heresies that go along with accepting a position like theistic evolution."
  • ...Such as?  I can personally say that I am both a theistic evolutionist and a fully orthodox Christian.  I affirm in their entirety the early creeds of the church that define precisely what orthodoxy is.  Seems I can't think of a single recognized heresy that follows from theistic evolutionism.  Arianism?  Nope, clearly not.  Same with Sabellianism.  How about Macedonianism?  No, no connection there.  Alright, well let's see, how about Gnosticism?  No, no reason why a theistic evolutionist should be a Gnostic.  Same goes for Docetism and adoptionism.  Perhaps Nestorianism or Monophysitism?  Nay, no such luck there.  Perhaps some heresies as specified outside of the creed, such as Donatism or Pelagianism?  Nope, also completely independent of evolution.  Well, I suppose I'm just all befuddled then.  Can't seem to find this "multitude of powerful heresies" anywhere!  Perhaps the aforementioned blogger will do us all a kindness and enlighten us with some substantiating details on this point.
• "One has a better chance of being a Christian Moslem than a Christian Evolutionist."
  • Oh?  And here I thought silly things like the Bible and maybe even the ancient Christian creeds mattered.  Because see, here's the thing: the New Testament's descriptions of what one needs to do to be saved are compatible with being an evolutionist, but not with being a Muslim (in the sense of believing in Muhammad's message, not in the etymological sense).  Can an evolutionist believe that Christ was the only-begotten Son of God, born of the virgin Mary, performed mighty works, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried, rose from the dead, and subsequently ascended to the right hand of the Father, from whence he shall return to judge the living and the dead?  Absolutely.  Can a Muslim believe the same?  Not on your life.  Seems that one has a vastly better chance of being a Christian evolutionist than a Christian Muslim after all!  At least judging by biblical standards.  Perhaps the blogger is endeavoring to one-up Scripture?

I have no problem, naturally, with many, even perhaps most, creationists.  I was one once, and I have no particular desire to force my new views down the throats of those still on that side of the fence.  I have quite a few YEC friends, and some of the YECs who read my blog on occasion are immensely intelligent and wonderful brothers in Christ.  I do, however, object to the sort of remarks as quoted above.  If one wishes to affirm a belief that evolution is unbiblical, fine.  I once believed quite firmly that that was the case, just as I now believe that it was not.  But this is a natural disagreement.  If one wishes, however, to denounce evolutionists as damnable heretics who only make a pretense of Christianity but in fact are set against Christ and the kingdom of God... well, needless to say, this is an unfathomably grave charge against fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and is furthermore an offense against the sacred unity of Christ's church.  (May God forgive him of this sin.)

Anyway, getting back to my own story, the two of these things (re-assessment of the scientific evidence, and TheologyWeb) together, along with an increasing openness to seeing the early portions of Genesis as narrative but not meant to convey a straightforward depiction of history, led to my turn from YECism to a tentative belief in theistic evolution.  Once I had done so, I can certainly attest that I saw things in a different light!  Of course, I don't have all the answers and never will, but I look forward to the project of constructing my protology anew.  I think this book will be quite helpful in the task.  I hope to do a more detailed post on it later.

(Also, let me add that any of my creationist readers are welcome to jump in the fray over at TheologyWeb, and I wish you the best of luck!  And creationists, if you want to understand the other side or at least be challenged, read Perspectives on an Evolving Creation.)

As for Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, I'm loving it.  I've finished just a few documents so far, including 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, and 3 Enoch.  Some portions are dull, but others are absolutely fascinating.  The Sibylline Oracles are up next.  I'm glad I finally have these volumes to read.  I've been meaning to get around to all these texts eventually.  Things I'm finding interesting:

• In the traditions I'm used to, Michael is typically portrayed as the mighty 'warrior angel', while Gabriel is the 'angel of revelation'.  But the Enochic tradition has Gabriel as the warrior angel, while Michael is the angel of mercy and benevolence.  I suppose it just never occurred to me that the roles of the angels might vary within the diversity of Second Temple Judaism.  Don't know why it never occurred to me, though.
• The Enochic literature has a heavy focus on the rebellious angels, using them to interpret the story of the Nephilim in Genesis 6.  In this literature, the imprisoned angels often beg Enoch to intercede before God on their behalf.  And God's answer tends to be, "No, screw them."  ...I'm paraphrasing a bit there.
• Also, God and Enoch point out to the rebellious angels that the angels are supposed to intercede on behalf of mankind, yet here the angels are asking a man to intercede on their behalf.
• In 2 Enoch, Melchizedek is Noah's nephew.  Very interesting.  Also, Melchizedek is conceived apart from sexual intercourse, although the footnotes make very clear that this is not a virgin birth and likely has no connection to the story of Jesus (and because of the chronology, it would likely be Christian influence on that portion of 2 Enoch, not the other way around).  Anyway, in the text, it seems that one of the archangels (Michael in one recension, Gabriel in another) takes Melchizedek to Eden before the Flood.
• 3 Enoch is very foreign to most trends in Second Temple Judaism.  This is where we get Metatron, the archangel-ized Enoch, as "the lesser YHWH".  3 Enoch is thought to date from around the fifth or sixth century AD; it's most likely post-Talmudic, at the least.
• 3 Enoch elaborates on the ideas in Daniel about nations having angelic 'princes'.  Here, each of the seventy-two nations has an angelic advocate in the heavenly court.  Michael is, naturally, the Prince of Israel, while the Princes of Rome and Persia, Samma'el and Dubbi'el respectively, are basically affiliated with Satan, as I suppose is deemed appropriate for nations opposed to Israel.  I can only wonder, though, how the author would have worked out this angelology in light of the rise and fall of nations.  For example, would there now be an angelic 'Prince of the USA'?  Or, perhaps more potentially on the mind of the author: what happened when the reign of Solomon led to the Divided Kingdom?  Was there a Prince of Israel and a separate Prince of Judah?  Whence the new angel?  Is one promoted every time a nation secedes?  If a kingdom splits, which one gets the original?  Or, if both nations have the same angelic prince, how does he represent their conflicting interests in the heavenly court?
• I will always be fascinated by Merkabah mysticism.

With regard to American Islam, I'm nearly done--it isn't very long--I can definitely say that at least the beginning gives a very 'pro-Islam' perspective on history, in a way that seems like a rather selective use of facts.  Sad to say, it isn't really a terribly informative book, although at least it's brief and easy reading.  Makes a nice break from the weightier tomes I'm working through right now.

Finally, Christianity in Crisis is a classic book--using Hanegraaff's annoying penchant for acronymns--critiquing the Word of Faith movement.  It's very well documented, and so my only complaint thus far is that the book has endnotes instead of footnotes.  This is exactly the sort of book that needs footnotes, because the footnotes contain plenty of substantiating quotes from prominent Word of Faith teachers, and those quotes are quite damning.  I can only ask... what are these people thinking?  Also, it's pretty easy to tell that Hanegraaff is the successor of Walter Martin.  But, aside from that, it's a pretty good book thus far.

So far this year, I've finished 51 books.  I'm rather pleased with that sort of progress, considering that it isn't even June yet.  And especially since some of those books have been quite long (e.g., Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom; Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature; In the Language of Kings: An Anthology of Mesoamerican Literature, Pre-Columbian to the Present).

Anyway, since in my last post I blabbed on and on about the sites I visit on the Internet, and since I feel the strange need to talk about something besides what I'm reading, I figure this time I'll talk about television.

• House, M.D. - Classic.  I'd like to think that I'm at least a marginally nicer person than Dr. House, but probably not by much some days.  (I still can't believe how the last season ended...)
• 24 - I think they may have managed to hit the maximum amount of action that can possibly be packed into each episode while still retaining a thrilling plot.  WIN.
• Burn Notice - This show is just great.  I'm very eager for the new season to begin.
• Law and Order: SVU - I like the other 'Law and Order' variants, but SVU is hands-down my favorite.
• NCIS - Another winning show.  Mark Harmon is a great actor, as are the rest of them.

These are really the primary shows I watch, when I have the opportunity.  But I caught the series premier of Mental last night, and it was excellent, so if I can remember to keep watching it regularly, it may well earn a place on that list.

Also, can I just say that 'Law and Order: SVU' is a great show for raising ethical and legal issues?  For example, I watched an episode a few nights ago ("Blinded" - season 9, episode 7) in which a pedophile turned out to be a schizophrenic who genuinely believed that he was saving the girls whom he, in fact, was raping.  When he was put back on medication and became lucid, he insisted--against the wishes of both his defense attorney and the prosecutor--that he be sent to Louisiana and given the death penalty.  But... what do you do with a case like this?  He committed insidious, despicable acts while under the delusion of a mental illness that led him to believe he was actually defending the victims against those very same acts as committed by others.  I'm curious to know the ethical intuitions of some of my readers.

Another episode I watched recently ("Confession" - season 10, episode 2) involves a 17-year-old boy who confesses having urges towards pedophilia - he believes he was born that way - and wants to get help to stop his urges for his younger stepbrother.  The result, naturally, is a great deal of family strife, but the interesting part is the character Jake Berlin, who operates a website struggling with pedophiliac urges.  The site features non-pornographic pictures of children and promotes the motto "Look but don't touch".  Berlin self-identifies as a "pedosexual" who never engages in pedophilia, and who in fact is able to monitor users of his website to keep them in check as well.  When confronted by SVU detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson about 'pedosexuality', Berlin argues his case from parallels with homosexuality--and he notes that he never goes after children because he knows they can't consent, and he's a law-abiding man.  I bought the episode on iTunes so I could find the conversation (14:10--15:22), since I can't seem to find the clip online:

Berlin:  I don't get the appeal [of little boys].  I'm into little girls.
Stabler:  You're a steaming bag of crap that I would love to shove down a hole.
Berlin:  I'm not the enemy.  I look, I don't touch.
Benson:  So you're a good pedophile.
Berlin:  I prefer the term "pedosexual".  I spend every waking moment controlling my appetites.  I can't change who I am.  I... I was born this way.
Stabler:  No one's born a deviant.
Berlin:  Homosexuals were called deviants, and now it's widely accepted that their orientation was hard-wired at birth.  Just like mine.  I wasn't abused as a child.  I mean, I don't choose to love little girls, any more than they choose to love the same gender or you choose to love women.
Stabler:  Gay people don't have sex with children.
Berlin:  Neither do I.  I admit I like delicious little angels, ages 3 to 9.  There's nothing I can do except keep my distance, since they can't legally consent.
Benson:  Your website is like a kiddy treasure map, what happens if other predators don't follow your rules?
Berlin:  They suffer the consequences.
Stabler:  How do you know that?
Berlin:  Well, a sexually satisfied pedophile loves to share, and since there's no anonymity on my website, believe me, I'd know.  And I have names, addresses...  I take the law very seriously.
Stabler:  So do I.

Thoughts on Berlin's arguments?

There was a third SVU episode I wanted to mention, but this post is long enough, so I'll save it for next time.  (Besides, the system managed to lose the lengthy portion I had about it, and I'm not in the mood right now to redo all of that.)  I would like some feedback on the ethical and legal questions raised by the two other SVU episodes, though.

Gratia vobis.