St. Eutychus – Page 193

On the complexity of coffee

Too many people think making coffee is easy (for a significant proportion of that group it simply involves hot water and a teaspoon of coffee flavoured dirt).

Illy is an Italian coffee powerhouse. Giorgi Millio used to work with them. Now he’s a coffee writer. Here’s his description of Illy’s approach to coffee.

“Certainly my views on coffee have been influenced by the company’s scientific environment, created by three generations of chemists; a research and development unit covering agronomy, botany, physics, chemistry, biology, statistics, and computer science; and laboratories dedicated to dedicated to the study of coffee, in areas like sensory perception (not just taste, but aroma as well).”

He’s a coffeesnob. Here’s an interesting fact:

Coffee is intricate and requires education and passion to get right–plus a lot of practice. Espresso is the most complex coffee preparation, containing around 1,500 chemical substances, of which 800 are volatile. There are also more than 100 chemical/physical variables that affect the final preparation—like water composition, the size and distribution of the ground coffee particles, filter dimensions and hole diameter, dynamic water flow temperature and pressure, shape and temperature of the cup, roasting degree, and many, many more …

June 11, 2010

Speaking of economics… my almost resident economically minded friend Ben has kindly produced a three part series on the Mining Super Tax that everybody keeps banging on about in the news. If you’ve been wondering about the economics of the issue, then wonder no longer… all will become clear.

The Resource Super Profit Tax (RSPT) falls into the deepest pit of my taxation system interest. Much has been written about it by the mainstream papers, much of it oddly conflicting. The source documents of note can be found in here (pdf) and here.

At present, mining companies have to pay royalties, which are payments made to the states for taking their resources. Comparatively, the RSPT will tax profits, or more descriptively, will tax the value of the resource at the taxing point (which seems to be a derived value at the mine gate) less all allowable costs in getting the resource to the taxing point, such as exploration costs, mine/well development costs, processing and haulage costs. The stated intention of the RSPT is to collect an appropriate return for the community from private firms exploiting non-renewable resources, via implementing a taxation system that responds to changes in profits. Fair enough.

The mining companies have complained the tax is too high, and that it will stunt business investment, and thus impact on economic output (and therefore employment). The Government was of the opinion the RSPT will “remove impediments to mining investment and production…[and] encourage greater investment and employment in the resource sector”. At face value, the logic would be that higher taxation or decreased profits would reduce investment, however it is the intricacies of the tax that suggest this might not be the case.

The real intrigue about this tax is its application to company’s losses. Articles have thrown around the idea that it is a brown tax, which isn’t the case, though it is understandable why the comparison is being made. Similar to a person’s income tax, a company will be able to use any of its costs of the project as a type of tax deduction. Importantly, as most mining companies are likely to spend the bulk of a project’s costs during the initial phases when setting up a mining process, which will likely also be a period where they make little revenue or profits to offset their costs against, they will be able to carry their costs forward to be deducted as a loss against future income (or deduct them against profits made elsewhere if available). Due to the delay between accruing costs and receiving the credit, the cost offset will grow at the long term government bond rate. This is all fair enough.

However, controversy has stemmed from the initial announcement which suggests that the RSPT system provides that if the company never makes a profit to offset these costs against, they can simply get this amount payed out when they wind-up the project.

This effectively means that the Government will be funding project start-ups, and effectively taking on some of the risk of the project. For example, a new project might be to develop a coal mine at the cost of $1 billion. Ten years later, the coal mine may not have ever made any profits, so the Government may not have received any revenue from it, but will have to pay the company 40% of the $1 billion (grown at the long term government bond rate, so the $1 billion may have grown to $1.1 billion over the ten years). However, this potential cost to the government will be offset by potentially higher revenues from decent mining projects (which, in Queensland’s case, given the absolutely booming situation surrounding global coal demand and prices, will be a lot).

June 11, 2010

What is a human life worth? $6.1 million

Behavioural economics fascinate me. Here’s a story about a guy named Cass Sunstein who’s a friend (and loosely speaking, an adviser) of Obama’s, from the University of Chicago, who wrote a book called Nudge, it sounds Gladwellesque. It might be my next holiday read…

Here’s a bit of a summary from the compelling NY Times profile.

In “Nudge,” a popular book that he wrote with the influential behavioral economist Richard Thaler, Sunstein elaborated a philosophy called “libertarian paternalism.” Conservative economists have long stressed that because people are rational, the best way for government to serve the public is to guarantee a fair market and to otherwise get out of the way. But in the real world, Sunstein and Thaler argue, people are subject to all sorts of biases and quirks. They also argue that this human quality, which some would call irrationality, can be predicted and — this is the controversial part — that if the social environment can be changed, people might be nudged into more rational behavior.

Libertarian paternalists would have school cafeterias put the fruit before the fried chicken, because students are more likely to grab the first food they see. They support a change in Illinois law that asks drivers renewing their licenses to choose whether they want to be organ donors. The simple act of having to choose meant that more people signed up. Ideas like these, taking human idiosyncrasies into account, might revive an old technocratic hope: that society could be understood so perfectly that it might be improved. The elaboration of behavioral economics, which seeks to uncover the ways in which people are predictably irrational, “is the most exciting intellectual development of my lifetime,” Sunstein told me.

Sunstein now works with OIRA – which, being an acronym, is a government department. A department that looks at policy ideas and ways them up economically using a cost/benefit analysis that controversially assigns dollar values to intangible things… it has previously used these values:

The office’s administrators require that federal agencies express the costs and benefits of their proposed rules (lives saved, swampland preserved) in dollars. Moral principles, filtered through this cost-benefit analysis, find their way into confounding little boxes. A human life, the E.P.A. figured in a 2001 rule about arsenic and drinking water, was worth $6.1 million. (If an environmental regulation would save one life but cost $4 million, it ought to be put into effect; if it cost $8 million to save that life, the regulation would be scuttled.) Each I.Q. point a child lost because of exposure to lead was worth $8,346 over the course of a lifetime. A lost workday was worth $83. Many of these estimates used data from surveys — taken at malls, among other places — that asked passers-by how much more they would need to be paid to take on a job that carried, for instance, a 1-in-10,000 risk of death. Richard Posner, who has the most magnificent and chilly mind in this realm, used similar projections to price the benefit of preventing the extinction of the human race at $600 trillion.

Sunstein wants to bring this utilitarian approach together with his “libertarian paternalism” which would be very interesting indeed.

June 11, 2010

Your favourite games… now with extra Bible

I’ve posted a couple of times about lame Christian computer games. I’d dig up the posts but that would take me five minutes. Anyway. Here are a bunch of currently popular games reimagined as Christian… they made me laugh.

It’s sad because once upon a time Christian game producers did in fact take a cool game (Wolfenstein 3D) and a Bible story (Noah’s Ark) and mashed them together into a game where you ran around slingshotting animals with food and sleeping pills so that you could pile them into the ark. Lame.

June 11, 2010

A Beginners’ Guide to Enjoying the World Cup

Ben is considering jumping on the World Cup bandwagon. I thought I’d lend a brother a hand with my guide to enjoying the World Cup. I’ve played a fair bit of football in my time, and watched as much, and played video games (including the boring ones where you manage a team). So I consider myself an expert. I was once almost a sports journalist too… if that counts.

So here’s what you’ll need to do (please note, several of these can be easily faked in order to convince your colleagues that you’re into the World Cup).

Know the format. The World Cup has 32 teams, arriving after an extensive qualifying campaign. These teams are arranged into “groups” of four. These groups play each other once (so three games) and two teams from each group go through to the knockout round of 16, then there’s the quarter finals, then the semis, then the final.
Know that the World Cup is a big deal. It’s the biggest event in the world. It has history. We’re just late to the party.
Call the game “football” for extra snob points, and insist others do the same.
Know your team. Presumably you’re an Australian. So picking the team you’re going to support has only been this easy twice before. Australia plays a pretty physical brand of the game, low on skill (arguably) high on passion (read “aggression”). We’re marathon runners, not sprinters. It’s tortoise and hare stuff…
Decorate your office, your cubicle, your car, and your home. If you want to avoid awkward conversations with colleagues that might reveal your ignorance the more over the top the better. Framed jerseys on your cubicle wall are a great idea. Nobody will talk to you if you appear more fanatical about it than they are. Green and gold streamers are the order of the day. Soccer ball hair cuts are also pretty good.
Practice your cliches. This is sport. Puns about foreign players’ names are fair game. Sporting cliches are a must.
Know the rules of football, or at least the ones where people commonly yell at the ref and debate points of order. The offside rule is a big one. Before someone passes the ball the player they pass to must have two players between them and the goal (usually one is the goalkeeper). The people responsible for upholding this law are the linesmen (or referee’s assistants). Yell at them whenever they make a call, or don’t make a call, whichever one is in your team’s favour. Any time a player from the other team does something that looks a little nasty to one of your players yell “CARD HIM” at the TV. It doesn’t help. Yellow cards are called “bookings” they’re a warning, though if you get enough you get suspended. Red cards are send offs and automatic suspensions. Two yellow cards = a red. Anytime one of your players gets tackled in the box in front of the goals yell “PENALTY.” That box is the 18 yard box – it’s marked with lines, there’s a second, smaller box, the six yard box, that only indicates where goal kicks are taken from. Goal kicks are taken when an attacker kicks the ball over the back line.
Pick your second team. Lets face it. It’ll be a miracle if Australia make it past the group stage. They’ve got probably the second toughest group in the competition. I’ll include a guide to teams that might win it (because who wants to back a loser?) below.
Practice pronouncing foreign names credibly. There’s probably a pronunciation guide somewhere.
Pick a third team, a likable underdog. It’s not us. We’re not likable. We’re bullies and whingers. Mostly. African teams get bonus likability points this time around because the cup is in South Africa. New Zealand are likely to go very badly. Honduras is my third team.
Remember that the games are televised at 12am and at 4.30am. Familiarise yourself with the TV schedule, don’t try to watch two games in one night if you have a day job. Unless you can get your boss into it.

The ten teams I think might have a chance of winning (in no particular order)

Brazil – tend to win every couple of World Cups, it’s probably their turn.
Spain – they have two great strikers (Torres and Villa).
Argentina – they have the best player in the world (Messi) and a couple of decent attackers. Otherwise they’re pretty average. If Messi fires in the big games they’ll be right.
Portugal – they have Cristiano Ronaldo, who some believe is better than Messi. They came fourth last time around.
France – finalists last time around, winners in 1998, don’t have Zidane this time around.
Italy – the reigning champions
The Netherlands – play a nice brand of football.
C’ote D’Ivoire – I had to pick an African team, if Drogba, their striker, is fit, they’ll be a tough team to beat. But they are in the group of death – with Brazil and Portugal.
Greece – they won Euro 2004 six years ago, but are really only in this list to pad it out to ten so that I can then insult England by leaving them out…
Germany – they’re in our group, they have no superstar but a bunch of 8/10 type players who work with German efficiency.

Don’t back England. They never win. They show such promise, and then are rubbish. Players have brain explosions and get sent off, their strikers forget how to shoot, Murphy’s law applies to England in World Cups.

June 10, 2010

How to make coffee at home: Introduction

In a few weeks our church is having a community night where I will be (along with a professional coffee roaster) talking about how to make coffee at home. I’m going to do up a little booklet to hand out on the night filled with tips on how to make coffee using different methods – from plunger to commercial machine.

I thought I might blog the things I write for the night. Starting in the next day or so. In the meantime, here’s a good little article on how to get good espresso based drinks at home…

1. Use the double shot basket (even if you’re only after a single shot).
2. Time your shots – 30 seconds for 30 mL is the basic rule, though if you up your dose of coffee or make your grind finer you can make it go a little longer to produce the oilier ristretto. Which is rich and thick.
3. Watch the colour of the coffee as it hits the cup (which isn’t always possible with cheaper machines) – when it turns blonde (as soon as it does) stop the shot. You’ve finished extracting the good stuff. If it comes out blond your machine is probably too hot or your grind too coarse.
4. Use the right sized cup for milk drinks. Most cups are too big, so most coffee at home is too milky.

June 10, 2010

The umm… err… Communications Minister

This guy is in charge of our interwebs. Doesn’t he sound tech savvy… perhaps he is trying to protect us all from the scary spams with his big filter.

Scarily, he’s also the “Communications Minister” and this is the transcript of what he says in that grab:

“There’s a staggering number of Australians being in having their computers infected at the moment, up to 20,000, uh, can regularly be getting infected by these spams, or scams, that come through, the portal.”

June 9, 2010

Old Testament 101: Judging Judges (Webb)

Barry Webb, in his seminal work analysing the structure of Judges, departed from Noth’s view that it fit into a deuteronomistic history. Noth believed the Judges period began in Judges 2:6 and ended in 1 Samuel 12, this overlap between books meant that few saw Judges as a piece of literature in its own right.

Arguing for the literary cohesion of Judges as a stand alone text does not dismiss its place in a framework of Biblical Theology.

Webb believes Judges is internally coherent. That it deals with two primary characters God, and Israel. God is angry at Israel for disobedience but continues to show faith to his promises. Webb suggests the dynamic is more complex than a simple “repentance/deliverance” cycle. That it is more the case of consistent mercy in the face of apostasy.

Webb says the emergence of the monarchy is the next major narrative movement at the end of Judges. Judges ends “to be continued.” He sees “now after the death of…” as a common biblical means for introducing a new chapter in Israel’s history. From Moses (Joshua), to Joshua (Judges), to Samuel, to Saul (2 Samuel 1), and to David…

Webb suggests any approval of the monarchy in Judges is an approval of the Davidic/Judaic monarchy. Webb argues that the monarchy isn’t fully realised until Yahweh’s chosen king (based on Deut 17), David, takes the throne. Saul is “a king like the other nations” while David is a king after the Lord’s heart. But he sees the monarchy as a secondary issue to the relationship between Israel and Yahweh.

He sees a parallel in the downward spiral of kingship with the downward spiral of the judges, comparing Othniel to David.

Webb’s structure of Judges

Webb, like Wenham, identifies Chapter 1:1-3:6 as a prologue, or Overture.

1:1, opening with “after the death of Joshua” represents both continuity and discontinuity. Chapter one concludes essentially revealing the hopelessness of Israel’s attempts to meet the expectations as laid out. The overture climaxes with the meeting with Yahweh’s messenger who makes it clear that they are not to make agreements with the inhabitants of the land (2:1-5), and God’s speech in 2:20-22 about his faithfulness.

Chapter 2:20-22 lays out Yahweh’s rationale for not giving the whole land over to Israel as promised. They failed their end of the bargain. The structure of the overture is:

Israel comes to terms with the Canaanites (1:1-2:5)
Israel is ensnared by their Gods (2:6-3:6)
Israel is now in conflict with Yahweh (2:20-22)

Webb identifies the same pattern of “The Israelites did what was evil” – six times throughout 3:7-16.31. He identifies motifs like improvised weaponry, worthless fellows, seizure of the fjords of the Jordan, weak women overcoming male heroes, and flaming torches that emerge throughout the narrative. And the following issues as thematic:

Israel’s special status as a nation separated to Yahweh (a holy people)
Israel’s going after other gods in willful violation of this status,
The implied contest between Yahweh and those other gods
The freedom of Yahweh’s activity compared to Israel’s presumption that it can use him as required.

Samson epitomises the Israelite condition – he is set apart, chases foreign women, and calls on Yahweh when he gets into trouble.

Webb calls the concluding chapters (divided along the same lines as Wenham) a coda, because he sees it as bringing balance to the book in terms of literary symmetry. He sees some chiastic closure with Judah receiving prominence in chapters 1 and 19, Jebus/Jerusalem and the Jebusites in 2:1-5 and 19:10-12, the weeping at Bethel and the weeping at Bochim (2:1-5 and 20:18, 26), and the Danite migration in 19 as closure for Dan’s failure to secure territory in 1:34.

June 9, 2010

Old Testament 101: Judging Judges (Wenham)

For my next trick, I’ll tackle the question of how the structure of Judges impacts interpretation. I’ll be interacting with two texts on the subject – Wenham’s superb “Story as Torah” and Webb’s “Judges: An integrated reading”.

Wenham seeks to extract ethical principles from Old Testament narrative. Ethics have traditionally been ignored in interpreting these narratives because the narrator often passes no explicit judgment on the acts reported, he simply reports and the events speak for themselves.

Wenham applies historical, literary, and rhetorical criticism to these narratives. He recognises that ethics ultimately don’t rely on the historicity of the text but the literary approach. If only I’d read this when writing my violence essay… that would have been another footnote. Essentially I agree with him. Though I didn’t know it at the time…

Wenham notes that the narrator of the Old Testament is omniscient – aware of the thoughts and feelings of characters in the story. Some use this as justification for seeing the narrative as fiction, others as part of the case for divine inspiration.

Wenham suggests the first readers of the text read them as though they were historical, which legitimises the approach of extracting ethical principles from the stories as though they are indeed historical…

Wenham on the structure of Judges

Judges opens with Israel’s inability to conquer the land (and thus their inability to meet God’s requirements), and closes with the gloomy “in those days there was no king in the land, and everybody did what was right in their own eyes.” These ideas bookend (and perhaps technically bookbegin) the book.

The stories within the book are intended to shock the reader, and beg the question “what should this character have done” (which I think is one of the best ways to understand the spiraling despair of Judges – 2 Kings, and probably any narrative, it’s one of the first questions I ask – the second is the hypothetical “what would things have looked like if they had” because I like speculative ideas).

The stories in Judges follow a pattern of conquest by foreigners, an agent of delivery acting in Israel’s interest, followed by a period of stability, followed by their deaths, followed by Israel “doing evil in the eyes of the Lord.” Wenham argues this idea is tied to Deuteronomic principles (I reckon Deuteronomy 30 is a pretty key interpretive rubric for these passages – Israel’s national autonomy is linked to their obedience to God).

Wenham identifies three sections in Judges:

The prologue: 1:1-3:6
The Core “Book of Deliverers”: 3:7-16:31
The Epilogue: 17:1-21:25

The epilogue and prologue are split into two parts. The prologue contains a summary of the conquest (failed) of the land (1:1-2:5) and a commentary on the constant apostasy of Israel in the Judges period (2:6-3:6). The epilogue deals with a disturbing civil war and essentially a chaistic repetition of chapter 1 with the repetition of “who shall go up? Judah shall go up” (1:1-2, 20:18).

The six major judges in the middle of the book arise in a formulaic manner – the people do what is evil, they are sold into enemy hands, they pray for deliverance, and the Lord raises up a judge.

These judges follow a downward spiral from Othniel who escapes uncriticised to Samson who is the ultimate flawed hero.

The narrative represents the narrators dismay with the state of Israel’s faith, but delight in the actions and methods of deliverance. Within Judges we see people killing enemies with ox goads and jaw bones, stealth (and toilet humour) and after setting fire to fields using foxes tied together by their tails.

Judges 2:2-3 provides a useful interpretive schema for the whole book: “I [God] said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land… But you have not obeyed my command… So now I say I will not drive them out before you but they shall become adversaries to you, and their gods shall be a snare for you”

This becomes a key theme in the book.

Judges 1 contrasts Joshua 1 while dealing with the same circumstances. Wenham says Joshua is celebrating the success of the conquest while Judges paradoxically declares it a failure. This represents the different literary/rhetorical purposes of the narratives.

Critical wisdom suggested that the epilogue came from a different hand, but it seems more valuable to read it as a commentary on the preceding chapters using the closing refrain as a literary marker (first in 17:6). Wenham argues that it is entirely consistent with the rest of the content. He suggests “doing right in their own eyes” mirrors “doing evil in the eyes of the Lord” but represents an evolution (or devolution) from that position.

Wenham sums up his commentary on the structure as: “Judges portrays Israel becoming progressively more lax in its religious practice, and ever more prone to disunity between the tribes, it reaches a climax with outright idolatory amongst the Danites and a civil war that could have destroyed the nation (nb. which also incidently foreshadows the ten tribes semi-rebellion under David in 2 Samuel and the eventual split of the kingdoms). The reader is driven to conclude that this must not continue, if the new nation is to enjoy harmony at home and peace abroad. A new way of life under new leadership is required…”

Wenham on the date of Judges

A variety of theories – most plausible seems to be for a composition under David prior to his capture of Jerusalem and shoring up of authority (due to a repudiation of Benjamin and Gibeah – Saul’s tribe and birth place), while a post Assyrian editing under Hezekiah (because 18:30 refers to the “capturing of the land” – this editing possibly took place to explain why the southern kingdom survived while the north didn’t) is also plausible if 19-21 are downplayed. The first view almost relies on the capturing of the land being a mistranslation of “the capturing of the ark”…

June 9, 2010

A timeline of (post documentary hypothesis) Old Testament Theology

1870s – Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis (Source Criticism): Identifies JEDP – the four voices alleged in the Pentateuch. Breaking the texts into parts based on their use of names for God, theological focus (on ritual, or law), and on literary style. This followed about 100 years of source criticism.

Here’s what the breakdown of the text looks like (from Wikipedia):

1890s – Vos takes up a position as a professor of Biblical Theology in Princeton in a move designed to combat the emergence of text criticism as the dominant interpretive paradigm. Princeton was apparently looking for someone familiar with the German school and committed to a framework of Biblical Theology, Vos, having studied under the German school was perfect.

1940s – Noth and Von Rad (following Gunkel) introduced the idea of common oral sources (form criticism) for significant moments in Israel’s history. Noth also pioneered “the Deuteronomistic History,” the idea that Joshua to Kings represented a cohesive sociological-historical account of Israel for post exilic (7th century BC) use, at the same time both he and Von Rad saw Joshua as part of the same unit as the Pentateuch, arguing for a hextateuch (to me it seems like only a small step from Joshua to Judges which would make a septicheuch).

1941 – Cassuto, a Jewish Rabbi who wrote in Italian, offered a substantive criticism of the Documentary hypothesis that was not translated into English until 1961. He proposed that the Pentateuch was a single text, written by one author in the tenth century BC. His dating was a subsidiary to his criticism of the Documentary Hypothesis. He demonstrated that textual criticism – the notion of examining inconsistencies in the text to identify separate voices – was essentially cultural imperialism reading modern mores into ancient writings – and that the style of writing presented in the text was entirely consistent with Hebrew literary structure.

1976 – Schmid (another German) almost singlehandly removes the notion of the Jahwist voice (J), and some see him as having done away with all but the Deuteronomist.

1977 – Rendtorff went a step further than Schmid, he did away with both J and E, suggesting a Deuteronomic School was the most likely final editor of the OT, though allowing for a later “priestly” redactor.

My thoughts

Given my bias for Biblical Theology (ie a unified view of the text and an emphasis on inspiration), I’m glad the Documentary Hypothesis is on its way out the academic door. But I think it has provided useful insights (provided it sits under the umbrella of divine inspiration).

So here’s what I think.

The Pentateuch was probably around in some sort of oral/written form pretty early on, which was discovered (and possibly edited into a more cohesive form) under Josiah (there’s reference to a book of law being found in the temple under his reign so it must have existed before then), though compiled in its final form, and attached to the “deuteronomistic history” post exile as Israel struggled to come to terms with its identity. I think the Old Testament as a whole is a subjective retelling of Israel’s history so sociological and literary approaches to the text are useful, historical criticism is useful only insofar as it assumes the accounts will be flavoured in favour of Israel and genre is taken into account.

June 9, 2010

Biblical Theology: Tying it all together

So, in summary, if I was answering a question like “how is Biblical Theology useful for understanding the Old Testament?” I would make the following points (probably with reference to Goldsworthy, Scobie, Dumbrell and Demster):

1. It grounds us in the notion that the Bible is a unified text not a hodgepodge of disparate parts strung together because no other documents existed.

2. It puts other forms of literary criticism in their place as subsets of this view (here I would reference Von Rad, Brueggemann, Barr, the documentary hypothesis and anything else that would demonstrate I knew what was at stake in terms of viewing the Bible as a loose collection of texts).

3. It helps us chart the development of God’s redemptive plans for creation from go to woe. Starting with creation and the fall, through the creation of his people with covenant obligations, the development of kingship, and ultimately culminating with the new creation and Jesus as king.

4. It reminds us that themes carry on, and develop through the Biblical text that are helpful for guiding our exegesis and our preaching.

None of the ideas put forward as unifying concepts for the Bible are entirely satisfying on their own, they all miss something of the complexity of the text (any simplification or summary will inherently do that), but they all play a role in shaping our interpretation. Pointing out linking themes is useful. Provided you don’t want to turn it into the only thread that holds the Bible together.

June 9, 2010

Biblical Theology 101: Demster’s Dominion and Dynasty

Just to add another Biblical Theology into the mix, Demster’s work is part of Don Carson’s “New Studies in Biblical Theology” series.

Like everybody else in the Biblical Theology world he starts with a bit of background on the discipline. He says “of the sixty biblical theologies written in the last hundred years there are almost as many theologies as there are theologians.”

Demster, in a vaguely Hegelian movement, critiques the application of both postmodernism and modernism to Biblical text. This is a cool quote:

“Theologians sailing in the waters of contemporary western culture have to avoid two opposite errors: they have to navigate between the Scylla of modernism and the Charybis of postmodernism. The error of modernism is objectivism, that is the idea that individual subjects can attain the entire value-free truth when examining an object – they can see it as it really is; while the error of postmodernism is subjectivism, the idea that because observers are never value-free or objective, they see the object according to their subjective perspective – they see it not as it is, but as they are (and therefore never really see it). A truly Judeo-Christian epistemology will navigate between these extremes…”

That’s a nice elegant critique with a reference to old school Greek mythology right there…

Barr championed the notion that the books of the Bible must be read separately because they were written separately, and stored as such until a later collation. He says notions of unity are “read into the text” rather than “read out of it.” The same could be said of the Lord of the Rings.

Demster provides a good quote for anybody tackling a question about the ordering or importance of keeping particular books in the Pentateuch:

“The larger literary context of the Tanakh has significant hermeneutical implications. For example, it begins with Genesis rather than Exodus, signifying that Israel’s national history is subordinated to that of world history.”

And one for anybody writing on Judges (this afternoon’s readings) – “The monotonous refrain at the end of Judges that there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25) supplies the appropriate context for interpreting the rise of kingship in the subsequent book of Samuel.”

Demster affirms the cohesive literary value of the whole Old Testament, under its primary role as “scripture.” T.S Eliot said “the Bible has had a literary influence upon English literature not because it has been considered as literature, but because it has been considered the report of the word of God.”

Here’s another cool Eliot quote about primarily enjoying the Bible as ‘literature’:

“While I acknowledge the legitimacy of this enjoyment, I am more acutely aware of its abuse. The persons who enjoy these writings solely because of their literary merits are essentially parasites.”

He uses the analogy of approaching the Bible with a wide angled lens (Biblical theology) as well as a zoom lens (textual criticism). It’s only really worth interpreting with the latter if you understand it in perspective.

Demster, in his summary of the story from Adam to David (conveniently the period covered by our exam) says:

“This story is about the reclamation of a lost human dominion over the world through a Davidic dynasty. In short it is about the coming of the kingdom of God, and it is unfinished.”

His understanding of the Kingdom is essentially the same as Goldsworthy’s, though curiously (given that it was written in 2003) does not reference or interact with his work at all.

Then he brings out the hourglass structure – God’s people starting as humanity, narrowing to Israel, narrowing to Judah, narrowing to Benjamin, and then narrowing to David, before expanding. And he sees this as a typology of Jesus, the new David.

June 9, 2010

Gourmet Crayons

Have you ever looked at the colour of your carrots, peas, or corn and thought “gee, that would make a great crayon?” To be honest, I haven’t either. But I’m still enamoured by this concept – crayons made using food. And they’re edible.

Nice. From Luxirare.

June 9, 2010

Biblical Theology 101: Scobie

Scobie’s “The Ways of Our God” is a significant tome introducing a slightly altered framework of Biblical Theology – God’s Way, God’s Servant, God’s People, and God’s Order…

It opens with a history of Biblical Theology that alone is worth the price of admission – he charts scholarly thought from Augustine (and earlier) through to the reformation, and finally the last 500 years (or thereabouts).

Consensus, at least in the “German School” of textual criticism which sees the Bible as a patchwork document of odd bits and pieces thrown together at the last minute and missing lots of valuable pieces that have been lost forever, is that Biblical Theology is impossible, not only is a unifying idea for the whole Bible impossible in their minds, but to suggest such an idea is possible for either the New Testament or Old Testament is lunacy. Scholars can be dumb. There. I said it. This is one of my most significant epiphanies. Academia is “the emperors new clothes” come to life… let me give you a tangential rant…

Hegel was the ultimate hater of conflict. He’s a compromiser. And proud of it. Hegel believed that in any conflict there were two sides just waiting to be synchronised. This may be a strawman version of his actual position, but it’s a strawman many people have since dressed up and carried around Oz looking for a brain to give him. Hegel’s dialectic works a bit like this:

Someone comes up with an idea (it doesn’t really matter if it’s a good idea or a bad idea). This is the “thesis”…

Someone voices a disagreement with the thesis (it doesn’t really matter if it’s a good disagreement or a bad disagreement). This is the “antithesis”…

We have conflict. Now, suddenly, it’s a good idea to bring those two positions together. In balance. Rather than rejecting either faulty thesis. And that gives us our understanding, until another idea comes along.

There doesn’t, in my mind at least, seem to be any sense of quality control. And so, to continue the Wizard of Oz metaphor, we end up down a yellow brick road wondering why we’re no longer in Kansas, but rather in a mythical land created by our imaginations.

This is pretty much what happens with scholarship. This digression is now over. Lets get back to Scobie’s history of Biblical Theology. Textual criticism (be it sociological, historical, structural, or form) started by doing away with any notion of authorial intent (how very postmodern). As a writer I find that pretty insulting. What’s the point of writing something if you’re just going to interpret it with zero regard to why I’ve written it? I don’t write for writing’s sake. I write to communicate something. The convenience for textual and form critics is that redactors (later editors) play a big part in their understanding of the writing of scripture – which means that anything that disagrees with their presuppositioned conclusion (yes, it is an oxymoron) can just be attributed to an editor and cast off as the scholar burrows into the “true meaning” of the text. Which is whatever they want it to mean. Dumb. Don’t get me started.

Scobie, in discussing the presuppositions that are inherent in any textual criticism makes the following point:

“The underlying assumptions of many practitioners of historical criticism have frequently been positivistic and rationalistic. While claiming to be neutral and objective, many scholars have in fact ignored the most central assertions of the Biblical texts themselves, those relating to the presence and activity of God.”

To paraphrase, Scobie is saying these guys may as well be atheists. That’s how they approach the text.

Brueggemann is more interested in sociological criticism – understanding how texts functioned in terms of shaping the identity of the reader, how they were intended to function in that manner, and how the identity of the writer shaped the writing. This is much more useful, so long as it is approached from a position of acknowledging that God plays some part in shaping the identity of his people via the pen (or quill, or chisel) of the writer.

Scobie concludes his piece on the textual critics by acknowledging that such criticism has a place in establishing the “world behind the text” but he suggests this must play a subsidiary role to the theological function of the texts. And particularly the Biblical theological function of the text. Scobie argues that textual criticism should be focused at the level of the canon as a united work, rather than in parts.

Brueggemann, and others, also want to treat the Bible as literature, paying attention to genre and the art of the text. Which is, I think, my default interpretive position (with the assumption that that will reveal the theological truth). The problem with some of the language used surrounding this literary approach – rhetoric, literary, etc – is that it creates a dichotomy between literature and truth. Not all literature is fiction. Not all fiction is untrue. Fiction – through fables, analogies, allegories, and extended metaphors (all pretty much the same thing) – can be used to express truth. History can be recorded with literary flair.

Scobie shares a good quote from Longman:

“While the Old Testament prose narrative consists of selective, structured, emphasised and interpreted stories… a literary analysis of a historical book is not inconsistent with a high view of the historicity of the text.”

He follows his history of scholarly thought with a short history of the Biblical canon before arriving at the bit that is of interest – a reflection on frameworks or themes identified in popular Biblical Theologies.

He mentions covenantal theology as “foundational” and tracks its development under Eichrodt. Who took the covenant as a heading and proposed:

God and Nation
God and World
God and Men

As three sub-themes of the Old Testament.

Kaiser goes with one idea – “The Promise”…

Von Rad (who has an awesome name) said of the Old Testament, in response “there is no focal-point such as there as in the new.”

He acknowledges the sovereignty of God as a key theme identified by Goldsworthy, and “redemptive history” as a product of German thinking (notably Von Rad).

Scobie says that while the debate has failed to identify one major unifying theme it has recognised multiple important themes that run through the whole Bible.

He comments on a work by Dumbrell that loosely identifies Revelation 21-22 as positing five themes, which Scobie synergises into his own four themed approach which he bases on a proclamation/consumation model of interaction between Old and New Testaments.

His themes and their explanations follow:

God’s Order

Essentially a rebrand of Goldsworthy’s “God’s Rule” – encompasses God’s role and relationship with his creation. It is fulfilled in Christ who brings the dawn of the age, promised in the Old Testament. He brings five sub-themes under this heading.

The Living God
The Lord of Creation
The Lord of History
The Adversaries
The Spirit

God’s Servant

This is obviously fulfilled in Jesus, but the role is played by other characters in the Old Testament – from Israel holistically to kings, prophets and priests… This is essentially a rebrand of part of Goldsworthy’s “God’s People”. But it also tracks the development of messianic themes and other prophecies in the Old Testament that are fulfilled in Jesus.

God’s People

The part of Goldsworthy’s “God’s People” that wasn’t expressed by those specifically acting as God’s agents (above), falls under this category. This captures the ideas of covenant, the theme of God relating to people, and doctrines like election and the church. He also brings Goldsworthy’s “God’s Place” under this heading, arguing that God’s people were always, and are always, intented to be in God’s promised land – from Eden to the New Creation.

God’s Way

Here Scobie departs from previous frameworks to include things like the law, righteousness, ethics (particularly Old Testament ethics – following Childs (1992) who argued that “the Old Testament portrayal of ethical behaviour is inseparable from its theological content.” These ethics are ultimately consummated in the ethics of Jesus and the injunctions of the Epistles.

June 9, 2010

Biblical Theology 101: Covenant Theology

As a good (ahem) Presbyterian it would be remiss of me to talk about Biblical Theology and not mention covenantal theology… Famous advocates of Covenantal theology include Ligon Duncan, Bill Dumbrell and apparently Spurgeon… who said:

“The doctrine of the Covenant lies at the root of all true theology. It has been said that he who well understands the distinction between the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace is a master of divinity. I am persuaded that most of the mistakes which men make concerning the doctrines of Scriptures are based upon fundamental errors with regard to the covenants of law and the covenants of grace. May God grant us now the power to instruct and you the grace to receive instruction on this vital subject.”

Duncan’s work on Covenant Theology is a pretty good primer.

Here are some of his points:

The Covenants give order to creation and redemption. They delineate the Bible’s various historical periods. Many of us are familiar with Scofield’s arrangements of dispensations. That is an entirely artificial arrangement from the standpoint of the Scriptures themselves. But all you have to do is turn to say, Psalm 89 or to the book of Hebrews, and know that the Bible itself talks about the epics of Scripture in terms of covenants. So this isn’t something that men had to think up on their own. The Bible itself talks about God’s history of redemption in covenantal epics. And of course, the covenants have even given us the titles of the Old and the New Testaments.

The covenants unify the Scriptures. The very heart of the covenant is the Immanuel principle, “I will be your God and you will be My people.” This is the very heart of the Scriptures. We could stop today and do a survey of that and you would see that theme of God being our God and of us being His people runs from Genesis to Revelation, as the very essence of God’s design for us. And that principle is a covenantal principal. It pervades and unifies the history of salvation recorded in the Bible. The book of Hebrews, at the very end, in chapter 13, speaks of this everlasting covenant.

He talks about the importance of Covenantal theology in the light of Biblical Theology – seeing the theme of covenant as an important thread running through the whole Bible. Which segues nicely into Bill Dumbrell’s work…

Bill Dumbrell

Where Goldsworthy emphasises God’s kingdom as the unifying theme of the Bible, Dumbrell emphasises God’s covenant – the mechanism by which he relates to his people, or, to synchronise the two, the mechanism that his rule is conducted. The Westminster Confession recognises two covenants – the pre-fall “covenant of works” and the post fall “covenant of grace” – or so it was explained to me. I tend to disagree with this position, I think the Bible speaks of the pre-Jesus Abrahamic/Noahic/Mosaic promises as an old covenant, and Jesus as the harbinger of a new covenant. This covenant is foreshadowed in the Old Testament – like in Deuteronomy 30 (with the promise of an internal writing of the law/new covenant sign ie the Holy Spirit).

Identifying “covenant” as a theme is pretty useful for exegesis. One question to ask, among many, when exegeting a passage is “what role does God’s covenant relationship play here?” Placing a passage within the covenantal framework and asking what the expectations of the people under the agreement are will almost always bring clarity (and is probably useful for application too).

It is particularly useful in understanding the Old Testament though, especially with regards to Israel’s failures to meet their obligations and the spiraling consequences. At every turn in the Old Testament we’re confronted with disasters only mitigated by God’s gracious flexibility with regards to Israel’s obligations. In the conquest narratives Israel fails to take the land, which leads to constant conflict with the remnants of the other nations (and eventually their expulsion from the land), in Judges the Israelites constantly turn their backs on God, which eventually leads to civil war, in 1 and 2 Samuel Israel demand a king like the other nations, who becomes a king like the other nations (which isn’t a good thing), David, the ideal king, commits adultery which leads to the implosion of the Royal family, including fractricide, and a filial coup d’état, then Solomon, at the pinnacle of covenant fulfillment, also meets every negative criteria established for bad kings in Deuteronomy 17. His many wives lead him astray, and it’s downhill from there. Israel fail their covenantal obligations throughout – and God shows them mercy.

June 9, 2010