Right Reason

A friend of mine pointed me to this entry over at Michael Spencer’s blog, The Internet Monk. It’s a decent post actually, and I recommend giving it a read. The point that my friend was intrigued by was the exhortation that as we read and interpret the Gospels, “Don’t harmonize the Gospels.”

Don’t harmonise them? Why not? Michael’s reason is fine. He says:

Don’t harmonize the Gospels. That’s like taking four paintings and combining them into one. You come up with something no one painted and no one intended to paint. Let each Gospel author be an artist in his own right. However, a Gospel synopsis, such as those available from UBS, are very useful and important in comparing Gospel texts to one another WITHOUT harmonizing them.

It has long been thought, and rightly so, that each of the four Gospel writers portrayed Jesus differently, and intentionally so. They emphasised a different side of his character, or a different focus of his mission, or a specific angle on his status (e.g. Luke has a clear emphasis on concern for the poor and eschatological reversal of fortunes, and John went out of his way to emphasis the divinity of Christ).

Simply as a matter of respecting what the writers were trying to convey, you should refrain from trying to map one Gospel onto another, blending them to get one picture rather than multiple pictures. But there’s another reason too. This is a subject I’ve been considering broaching for some time, and this question has given me a good platform to do so. Here goes:

The other reason that you shouldn’t harmonize the Gospels is that to do so presupposes a very strong doctrine of inerrancy, and that doctrine is false.

There. I said it. I’m not an inerrantist.

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For a paper that I am writing, I am trying to locate the following story, which is widely cited as appearing somewhere in the Palestinian Talmud (also called Palestinian Talmud or Talmud of Palestine). Usually this is no trouble, but this particular source is proving to be a bit fiendish to locate. Here’s the story as reproduced online without citation:

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Whoops, I missed it by a couple of days.

On Friday the 26th of May 2006, the first ever blog entry appeared at Say Hello to my Little Friend. Has it really been that long? Actually, the first one you see was meant to be the second one. Being a bit of a blogging newbie, and insisting on installing the blog on my own domain, I managed to screw something up and lose the very first blog entry, which contained an introduction to the blog plus a short tribute to the then recently deceased Ron Nash.

Those were the old days when I didn’t even have a podcast! The first episode (a test episode) of the Say Hello to my Little Friend came on the 20th of May 2008, nearly two years after the blog started. Time flies! Although there is (obviously) still a blog here and hopefully a relatively interesting one at that (last I heard it was in the top 50 New Zealand blogs), the podcast has become the main attraction here (it rose quickly to become New Zealand’s top Christian podcast, which is a scary fact – and one that brings extra expenses).

I wish I had more time and resources to put into the blog and podcast, and I hope that my career direction in the not too distant future (sigh) will make that possible, but I think it’s fair to say that after three years things aren’t too shabby. I don’t know how long I would have kept it up had there been no signs of people actually reading and listening, which has been really encouraging. I’ve been blown away by some of the feedback I’ve received via my contact page (click “Main Site” in the right hand column to go to the front page where you can get to the contact page). So thanks to all of you who follow this blog and keep me going! Remember, if any of you want to write something for the site or the blog, let me know.

Thanks for being a part of this endeavour!

Glenn

According to Simon Clarke, religion is “the biggest obstacle to thinking clearly about social and political issues.” Yes, the biggest. [UPDATE 6th August 2010: that link no longer works. Here is a link to a different presentation of what looks like the same article.]

The main reason that he gives is roughly like this: Some people think that religion provides the foundation of morality, so rather then use their own mental steam to try to figure out the answers to moral and social questions, they simply appeal to a list of commandments, and that is that. No clear thought is required. When it comes to assessing the claim that religion is the basis of morality, Clarke declares, “Nothing could be further from the truth. What religion says is irrelevant to deciding what we ought to do.”

And how does Dr Clarke lay out and defend his case for this claim? Here’s where alarm bells start ringing.

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In Perth in the year 1559, John Knox preached a sermon that is credited by some with kick starting the Reformation in Scotland. Knox aroused the parishioners to destroy the religious idols and graven images of the saints in their churches. In reaction to the uproar, Mary of Guise sent troops to lay siege to Perth, but in defence of the new protestants, Alexander Cunningham, 5th Earl of Glencairn, defeated Mary’s troops by leading a force of 2,500 soldiers against them. These were stirring times where people were prepared to pay the ultimate price for their convictions.

Four and a half centuries later (today, in fact), I visited Knox Presbyterian church here in Dunedin, named after the Scottish Reformer himself. If you’re lucky enough to visit what is really a lovely church, here’s what you’ll see. First, before you enter the front door, you’re greeted with this:

It’s a bust of the Rev Dr D M Stuart, the conservative first minister of Knox church.

Once you enter the church, here is the stained glass window that dominates the view:

Click on the image for a larger view. Along with the four evangelists, the stained glass image features St. Andrew (Patron Saint of Scotland) and St. Margaret (11th Century Queen of Scotland). The figure on the bottom right is D M Stuart, and the man on the bottom left? John Knox himself.

Make a sentence out of the following words: his in grave Knox is turning John.

Glenn Peoples

Part 2 of the podcast series on philosophy of mind is well underway, and it’s shaping up to be an interesting series (for me, at any rate!).

In the meantime I wanted to share something with you purely for the sake of comic relief. I discovered this a few days ago (thanks Stacey!). My kids love it, and I have to confess to finding it thoroughly amusing. Enjoy! 🙂

If you’re one of the people waiting for the next installment of the podcast series on philosophy of mind, or you’ve notice that the rate of production for blog posts is fairly low at the moment, and you’re wondering “Glenn, why are we always waiting for stuff?” read on.

There are some really great Christian blogs and podcasts out there. Not as many as I’d like, but there are some fantastic ones. A lot of them have some (but not all) of these features in common: The people whose material appears there don’t work on the blog or podcast, which is handled by people who do that and get paid to do that; the blogs/podcasts are those of people who are currently working in their academic area of interest and who – as part of their time spent in their normal employment, are researching and writing material some of which will appear in their blog or podcast; the blog or podcast is itself part of a full time professional ministry activity so there is no day job to get in the way of that ministry; they are not themselves working full time, eight hours a day five days a week (perhaps they are students or they work part time), and as a result have considerably more time than some people to work on material for their blog or podcast; they are either unmarried or they do not have children, so they do not spend their time on their spouse and/or children; their blog and/or podcast is created by a team of two or more people so that they are not the only person creating posts or episodes. There may be other situations that escape me right now, but those are the ones that I can think of.

None of these scenarios resembles me and what I do at Say Hello to my Little Friend, as much as I might like one or two of them to.  I go out each morning at the start of the day and work eight hours a day in a job that has nothing whatsoever to do with my academic qualifications or areas of interest. I come home, have dinner, and get to spend just a couple of short hours with our children, I get a little quality time with my wife, and I’m left with precious little at the end of it. I use that time to write blog posts, respond to comments, do research for future blog posts or podcast episodes, write and record podcast episodes, search for academic job listings in my field of interest, apply for jobs (writing application letters, filling our application forms, tweaking my CV for specific roles, etc) and so forth. Unless I have something pre-written from another project, it can take up nine hours or so to write a podcast episode, and I have to get up the next morning to go to work again, so I can’t stay up to the wee hours to get it done.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I just want to make sure everyone realises the major mismatch between what I’d like to do here and what I’m able to do here, so they appreciate what they actually get here just that little bit extra, and also to temper any expectations I might have created for listeners/readers here with a dose of reality. 🙂

[Note: This blog entry also appears as a guest post over at MandM, the blog of Matt and Madeleine Flannagan.]

I take some things for granted. People with a background in theology, biblical studies and hermeneutics or literature will be familiar with theories of meaning, but not everyone has (or wants) this background, and not everyone is familiar with theories of meaning. I thought it might be interesting to some readers to say a few words about it. Think of this as a very introductory post to the subject.

The question has importance for scholarship in general, but as a professing Christian the issue has a special importance to me because I believe that in the Scripture of the Old and New Testament we have something with a unique type of authority, so the way we interpret it is important. The issue centres on the following question: What does a piece of writing mean? To some the question seems a bit silly. If you want to know what it means you just read it and find out. It means what it says! But strictly speaking, even someone who says this is likely to admit that not everything means exactly what it says. Writing comes in all genres: literal history, biography, poetry, parable, apocalypse and so forth. There are cases where meaning is bound to be unclear to many readers. So what, in principle, does a piece of writing mean? To the unfamiliar reader, I’m going to outline two major alternatives: an authorial intent theory of meaning and a reader response theory of meaning.

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