Scot McKnight on Historical Jesus Studies

http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2009/05/historical-jesus-studies-a-dea.html

Let me define historical Jesus studies as the attempt to get behind the canonical Gospels to discover what the real Jesus was like. Inherent to the historical Jesus discipline is the belief that the canonical Gospels and the Church got Jesus wrong or are biased -- or should I say that the Church believes too much about Jesus and that the real Jesus was less than the Church's Christ. In other words, historical Jesus studies attempt to construct an image of Jesus in distinction from the canonical Gospels and the Church's beliefs.

...

Let me say this one more way: Yes, historical Jesus studies try to get back to what Jesus was really like but involved in that is the belief that the real Jesus and the canonical Gospel Jesus are not the same. I know some conservatives conclude that virtually everything is authentic and conclude that the canonical Gospel Jesus is the same as the historical Jesus. But I don't think such studies really are historical Jesus studies. Critique of the Church's belief about Jesus is inherent to historical Jesus studies.

...

I like this book, not because I agree with Allison's own conclusions about specifics, but because I came to some similar conclusions when I wrote Jesus and His Death. When I was done I wrote an introductory chp that sketches historical method and I concluded that the historical Jesus has very little use for the Church and that, essentially, we face a choice: we either believe the Church's construal (the Gospels Jesus) or we make up a Jesus for ourselves with the methods that cannot prove certainty. The historical method can only do so much -- and I tried my best in that book -- and the one thing it cannot do is get us back to a Jesus before the Gospels. Every construction always looks like the one who writes the history.

Great Quote from J. Michael Straczynski (JMS)

"Hitting age 50 and realizing that you've never pursued your dreams is one of the great horrors of the human condition. And totally inexcusable. Not following your passions is the greatest sin you can commit, it means surrendering the fire of your ambitions to the fears of other people. It's psychological treason."

Publication dates Asimov "Foundation" series sequel books

Foundation's Edge (1982).

Foundation and Earth (1986).

Prelude to Foundation (1988).

Forward the Foundation (1993).

---------------------

Foundation's Fear (1997). By Gregory Benford. The first novel in the Second Foundation Trilogy, it takes place after the first chapter of Forward the Foundation.

Foundation and Chaos (1998). By Greg Bear. The second novel in the Second Foundation Trilogy, it takes place at the approximate time of Hari Seldon's trial.

Foundation's Triumph (previously titled Third Foundation and Secret Foundation) (1999). By David Brin. The third novel in the Second Foundation Trilogy.

John Frye on "USAmerican Evangelicalism: Ritalin* for the Soul"

http://www.jesustheradicalpastor.com/usamerican-evangelicalism-ritalin-for-the-soul

USAmerican Evangelicalism: Ritalin* for the Soul

Mar 23rd, 2009 by John

ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2006) — Social stigma and feeling lifeless and/or alienated from one's peers are some of the reasons why children and adolescents stop taking prescription stimulant medications used to treat attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a new study published in the Journal for Specialists in Pediatric Nursing.

"Social stigma" has produced the 'secret service' Christian…no one knows but God.

"Feeling lifeless" has produced the stimulate me on Sunday morning Christian. That's the church's job.

"Alienated from peers" has produced the tribal units–Calvinists don't like open theists, KJVers don't like TNIVers, Vineyard experiencers shy away from the dogma-driven, "feed me, feed me" whiners populate most pews and a myriad of other ghetto Christian groups exist in blissful isolation from the others.

Aaah, popular USAmerican evangelicalism. Ritalin* for the soul. No one gets too excited about the faith. No fanatics allowed. The term "extreme" must never be used of Jesus-followers, especially those dwelling in suburbs. The closest anyone gets to "fire in the belly" is a glass of warm milk at bed-time.

Evangelicalism in America is a "market" or an entertainment industry. God and Jesus and the Bible are products and worship services are shows.  If I'm in the market for a solemn,  sacred spirituality, I can go to the Episcopal service. If I'm shopping for the latest feel good, spiritual high, I can buy a ticket to the charismatic service. If I just want "the facts, M'am, just the facts," I can go to a good Bible-teaching church. If I want Starbucks and brie, I can go to the emerging church. Get it? Isn't it great to be an American Christian?  But it's all Ritalin* for the soul. Just keep calm.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer explored "religionless Christianity;" popular USAmerican evangelicalism exports passionless Christianity. "Balance" is the mantra of the bored masses. We must live a "balanced" life. As if. Balance is just a code word for bland. Bland is beautiful. Bland doesn't rock the boat. Bland can sing about "the blood," but can't or won't shed a drop for another person. Bland likes to baaaaa like sheep.

Balanced, bland lives don't get crucified; they get homogenized and are remarkably self-absorbed…"Am I balanced? Am I balanced?" Balanced, bland lives are always looking for the boundary lines–can't get out of step with the herd. What are the rules? Am I keeping them?

The authentic individual zealous for God is an embarrassment to the balanced ones. I know, conformity to the world is absolutely taboo to the balanced ones. Yet, unquestioning conformity to their sheer balanced boredom is deemed really wise. Go figure.

Young people fleeing evangelicalism's "balanced" life like rats fleeing a sinking ship are considered misguided at best and rebellious at worst. But what if these youth have gotten in touch with the unbalanced Jesus of the Gospels and want to follow him even if it costs their lives? What if they have caught just a glimpse of the Jesus Who never heard of Ritalin*? These youth aren't drinking the kool-aid of nice, conformist evangelicalism.

A whole generation of USAmerican young people are seeking and finding and following a first century Jew named Jesus. They are discovering that this Second Temple Judaism prophet whose words and ways whipped his culture into a frenzy is breathtakingly magnetic. Jesus offers a life like no one else or nothing else offers. The backwoods nobody from Nazareth is a man on fire, a dynamo of love and truth, a grenade with its pin pulled. The last thing Jesus was, was balanced. God is Jesus, walking and talking, teaching and healing, provoking and troubling. They didn't have Ritalin* to deal with Jesus. They did, however, have a cross.

A whole generation of USAmerican young leaders are bearing the scorn of the boring wise ones, bearing the label "heretics" because they dare to be obedient to Jesus, bearing the rejection of those whose minds are petrified by a theology of the 1500s. These young leaders rather not mindlessly spout the blandness of the current, popular evangelical party line. There's no fire in it. It's cool…really cool, and it's brought the USAmerican evangelical church to its weakest place in its brief history.

 

Ritalin* is one of many stimulants prescribed to help those who are diagnosed as ADD, ADHD, etc. With this post I do not intend to criticize those who need or use Ritalin or Adderall, etc.

C.J. Mahaney on "Biblical Productivity" (Index of Posts)

Biblical Productivity

1. Are You Busy?

2. Confessions of a Busy Procrastinator

3. The Procrastinator Within

4. Just Do It

5. In All Thy Ways

6. The Sluggard

7. Time. Redeemed.

8. Roles, Goals, Scheduling

9. Roles (Part 1)

10. Roles (Part 2)

11. Goals (Part 1)

12. Goals (Part 2)

13. Goals (Part 3)

14. Goals (Part 4)

15. Scheduling the Unexpected

16. The To-Do Lists Are Never Done

17. Self-Sufficient

Peter Kreeft on Beauty and the Existence of God

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm#17

17. The Argument from Aesthetic Experience

There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Therefore there must be a God.

You either see this one or you don't.

Scot McKnight Briefly Summarizes the New Perspective on Paul

http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2009/04/the-new-perspective-and-resurr.html


...Now the New Perspective in three lines, though mine are not as funny or clever:

1. Judaism was not a works-earns-salvation religion.
2. Paul was therefore not opposing a works-earns-salvation religion.
3. Therefore, the Reformation's way of framing the entire message of the New Testament as humans seeking to earn their own redemption rests on shaky historical grounds.

What do you know about the New Perspective? How do you summarize it? Do you think my three lines gets to the heart of it? What light has the NPP shed for you? What do you think are its major weaknesses?

Another way of summing up the NPP is this: the Augustinian anthropology that undergirds much of Reformed theology (humans as depraved and totally dead and in need of grace and humans, in true Pelagian fashion, want to prove themselves before God) may well be true but it is not what Paul was talking about.

Willimon & Wilson on The Busy Church

From http://reformedreader.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/willimon-on-the-busy-church/

William Willimon & Robert Wilson, Preaching and Worship in the Small Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), 39-40.

"'What you do outside the church is more important than what you do inside the church,' was how the slogan went.  Church school classes, youth-fellowship meetings, weekly prayer and Bible study groups, social action programs, elaborately designed educational activities, and seemingly endless committee meetings, all conspired to convince the people that worship was only one small part of the full program."

"Such thinking had an undeniable appeal to the pragmatic, utilitarian, work-oriented society, such as we have in the United States.  Time spent in worship tends to be thought of as idle time–unused time.  We are a nation of doers and achievers.  How can the 'acts' of worship compete in importance alongside activities such as Christian education, counseling, youth programs, board meetings, Bible study groups, and charitable work?  The 'active' church with its doors always open, meetings in progress every night of the week, newsletters recruiting participants for a host of activities, insuring that every person is kept busy during the week (provided that person truly wishes to be an 'active' church member), has become the paradigm for any church that aspires greatness."

"The 'active' pastor, with a full round of weekly meetings, community activities, and supervisory chores, which keep all the machinery oiled and running smoothly at the full-program church (provided that the church truly wishes to be a 'viable' church), has become the paradigm for any pastor who aspires to greatness.  Somehow the centrality of Sunday worship has been lost amidst these pragmatic, program-oriented, organizational images of success."

That's what happens when "work ethic" has a say in the church.  Good thing a huge theme of Scripture is "rest" instead of "do;" that is what we must emphasize, even though it goes against what is written on our DNA!  Actually, Willimon and Wilson say it better: they say such a busy church looks more like the local YMCA than a church, and the pastor looks more like a program director than a preacher (p. 42).  Here's the deal-sealer: "Theologians have noted that our Pelagian busyness is frequently a works/righteousness cover-up for our spiritual emptiness" (Ibid.).

R. Scott Clark's Helpful Definition of "Reformed"

[T]he most reasonable definition of the adjective "Reformed" is, "the theology, piety, and practice confessed by the Reformed Churches in their public, ecclesiastically sanctioned, summaries of God's Word, i.e. their confessions and catechisms."


http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/is-there-a-monolithic-reformed-view-of-justification/#more-3979

Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder quotes

PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE PERSONALITY DISORDER (PAPD)

People with PAPD are characterized by covert obstructionism, procrastination, stubbornness, and inefficiency.  Such behavior is a manifestation of passively expressed underlying aggression. 

PAPD patients characteristically procrastinate, resist demands for adequate performance, find excuses for delays, and find fault with those on whom they depend; yet they refuse to extricate themselves from the dependent relationships.  They usually lack assertiveness and are not direct about their own needs and wishes.  They fail to ask needed questions about what is expected of them and may become anxious when forced to succeed or when their usual defense of turning anger against themselves is removed.

In interpersonal relationships, these people attempt to manipulate themselves into a position of dependence, but others often experience this passive, self-detrimental behavior as punitive and munipulative.  People with this disorder expect others to do their errands and to carry out their routine responsibilities.  Friends and clinicians may become enmeshed in trying to assuage the patients' many claims of unjust treatment.  The close relationships of people with PAPD, however, are rarely tranquil or happy.  Because they are bound to their resentment more closely than to their satisfaction, they may never even formulate goals for finding enjoyment in life.  People with this disorder lack self-confidence and are typically pessimistic about the future.


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*FEAR OF INTIMACY - Guarded & often mistrusful, he is reluctant to show his emotional fragility.  He's often out of touch with his feelings,  reflexively denying feelings he thinks will "trap" or reveal him, like love.  He picks fights to create distance.

*FEAR OF COMPETITION - Feeling inadequate, he is unable to compete with other men in work and love.  He may operate either as a self-sabotaging wimp with a pattern of failure.

*OBSTRUCTIONISM - Just tell a p/a man what you want, no matter how small, and he may promise to get it for you.  But he won't say when, and he"ll do it deliberately slowly just to frustrate you.  Maybe he won't comply at all.  He blocks any real progress he sees to your getting your way.

*FOSTERING CHAOS - The p/a man prefers to leave the puzzle incomplete, the job undone.

*FEELING VICTIMIZED - The p/a man protests that others unfairly accuse him rather than owning up to his own misdeeds.  To remain above reporach, he sets himself up as the apparently hapless, innocent victim of your excessive demands and tirades.

*MAKING EXCUSES & LYING - The p/a man reaches as far as he can to fabricate excuses for not  fulfilling promises.  As a way of withholding information, affirmation or love - to have power over you - the p/a man may choose to make up a story rather than give you a straight answer.

*PROCRASTINATION - The p/a man has an odd sense of time - he believes that deadlines don't exist for him.

*CHRONIC LATENESS & FORGETFULNESS - One of the most infuriating & inconsiderate of all p/a traits is his inability to arrive on time.  By keeping you waiting, he sets the ground rules of the relationship.  And his selective forgetting - used only when he wants to avoid an obligation.

*AMBIGUITY - He is master of mixed messages and sitting on fences.  When he tells you something, you may still walk away wondering if he actually said yes or no.

*SULKING - Feeling put upon when he is unable to live up to his promises or obligations, the p/a man retreats from pressures around him and sulks, pouts and withdraws.


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INTERPERSONAL ASPECTS:

* Superficially submissive.
* Indirect control of others without taking responsibility for actions, or anger, denies/refuses open statements of resistance/maintains own "good intentions."
* Cannot say a direct "no," indirectly expressed resistance to demands of others for performance, thwarts/frustrates authority/spouse/partners/relatives.
* Intentional but unconscious passivity to hide aggression, denial of/confusion over own role in conflict, gives mixed signals ("go away and come close") hostile defiance alternating with contrition.
* Overcritical, "left-handed" compliments, subtle attacks, blames, insults, complains to others/"bitches," critical of boss/all authorities/those with power/control over him/her, carping/fault-finding as defense against intimacy/commitment, unnecessary and prolonged argumentativeness.
* Autocratic/tyrannical, demanding, manipulative, harassing, ruminates, troubled/conflictual relationships.

AFFECTS:

* Denial of most emotions (especially anger, hurt, resentment), hostile motives, deeply and persistently ambivalent, sullen, envious, resentful.


VOCATIONAL/ACADEMIC ASPECTS:

* Intentional inefficiency that covertly conveys hostility, veiled hostility, resents control/demands, fails to meet deadlines.
* Qualifies obedience with: tardiness, dawdling, sloppiness, stubbornness, sabatoge, "accidental" errors, procrastination, forgetfulness, incompleteness, witholding of critical information/responses/replies, leisurely work pace.
* Not lazy or dissatisfied with job, but spotty employment record, no promotions despite ability.