Christianity Today has posted their 2009 Book Awards. Two of my favorite books of the past year made it on the list- albeit in two different ways.

The first is the winner of the Christianity and Culture award: Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch. I really can’t say enough about this book.

The second didn’t win the award, but came in second place for Theology/Ethics: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright. Again, I can’t say enough about this book either.

Both of these books have really transformed the way that I look at culture and the place of Christians within it. Crouch really changed my view of the purpose and reason for Christian interaction with culture, and Wright strengthened my convictions on the role of eschatology as the hope of Christians. The two are more tied together than we tend to think, as Paul ends his discussion on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 by saying, “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

You can find out about Tim Challies’ recent conversion at his blog.

So Louisville, like a lot of other places, has been hit with a pretty significant snow and ice storm. Classes have been canceled all week, which has given me a lot of time to read. I’ve taken the time to read through Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses,” which I highly recommend.

My apartment does not have power, so I’m at a friend’s house using their internet. And heat. And bed. So it seems that the absence of substantial posts here will continue for a little bit longer. Quite honestly, I don’t have any ideas for further posts at the moment either. Hopefully soon!

Brent, pastor of Church of the Cross in Glendale, AZ, and (former) author of the blog Colossians Three Sixteen, has moved: Check him out at Holiday at the Sea.

Today I was taking a look of the idea of “blessing” in the book of Genesis and found some interesting facts- like the fact that the term is used in Genesis 1 – 11 as an action of God five times, and then used five more times in Genesis 12:1-3. Certainly an interesting literary device to connect the primordial narrative with that of the narrative of the Abrahamic covenant which basically is the rest of the book (as it gets repeated to Isaac and Jacob).

I also stumbled across an interesting discussion in Walter Brueggemann’s INT commentary, in his section on “Blessing Theology.” Brueggemann argues that in God’s blessing of creation, where he proclaims it “Good” and “Very good,” that he is not giving it a moral/ethical value, but an aesthetic value. He says that the word טונ should actually be translated “beautiful” instead of “good.” This is the first I’ve heard anyone mention this that I can remember- unless I just passed over it in skimming a page. Jenni-Westermann¹ lists this within its semantic range, as does TWOT ², though I am unfamiliar with this use in the Old Testament (by this I mean, I don’t know enough to know when this is the word behind my translation). What do you guys think? Anyone else put this forward as their interpretation of the creation account?

I was able to move into my new apartment this week, but it will still be a few days before I get the internet. In the meantime, I’ve been reading The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith
by Christopher Wright.

The book has been incredible so far. It’s very refreshing to see a biblical scholar talk about the fact that he doesn’t have all the answers, and still have hope and faith. The introduction is telling about this. In it Wright speaks of a conversation he had with some fellow believers over dinner. This conversation on the topic of suffering served as the impetus for the book. Just because we don’t have an answer for the explicit origin of evil- apparently a mystery sovereignly kept by God (Deut 29:29)- does not mean we cannot trust or believe in the God who is putting everything right. Certainly, we have the origin of intrusion into life itself in Genesis 3, and we have the biblical narrative from 3:15 to Revelation of what He is doing about it. Wright tackles some weighty issues, and I’m pretty excited to continue digging in with him.

Chris Wright has written some fantastic books- and I have yet to read one I don’t like. Here are some other books by him:

-The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative
-Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament
-Salvation Belongs to Our God: Celebrating the Bible’s Central Story (Christian Doctrine in Global Perspective)

At Sojourn Community Church, we are doing a year-long preaching series on the Old Testament. Every Sunday we will be looking at snapshots throughout the Old Testament narrative, as we see how it builds to a crescendo in the coming of the Messiah. Already, we have looked at the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2, followed by a look at the fall in Genesis 3. In order to facilitate reading through the Old Testament, Sojourn has produced a reading guide for the entire year of 2009. It’s a great way to go through a portion of the Bible that is often overlooked or ignored today.
Read the rest of this entry

A few blog posts have come up on my reader recently about translation, specifically the method of translation. The first link, from Accordance developer David Lang, is an excellent article on fighting “Strongnosticism.” By this he means the tendency to look up a word in a dictionary like Strong’s, find a english gloss, and insert it into the text in such a way that they find a “deeper meaning”- all while ignoring the many factors that should be taken into consideration. Some of these factors include context (ex: should logos be translated as “word” “message,” “logic,” or any of the other glosses found in its semantic range?), author’s usage (Does Paul use “worship” the same way it’s used by Matthew?), etc. His first response to this (he promises more to come) is simply “[r]ealize that Greek and Hebrew are merely languages, and think about how you use language every day.”
You can check out David’s post here: Contra “Strongnosticism”

The second link is for the better bibles blog, where Wayne Leman takes a recent ESV article that included a chart dividing translations up between whether they are “word-for-word” and whether they are based on the “best manuscripts.” Wayne’s point of contention, and mine, is over the idea of a translation being “word-for-word.” There are no translations, other than an interlinear Bible, that can be called word-for-word. Wayne uses John 3:16 as an example of why the translations in the chart cannot be considered word-for-word. Another example that I like to use is in 2 John 12, where John uses a phrase: στόμα πρὸς στόμα λαλῆσαι which literally means “mouth to mouth to speak.” No translation would render it in such a “word-for-word” fashion. Most would translate it idiomatically as “talk face to face” because the idea behind the idioms (mouth to mouth in Greek, face to face in English) match.
Wayne, who is a far better linguist and translator than I, speaks to the issue here: comparing the five leading versions.