St. Aidan's new internet home

St. Aidan Anglican Church has a new website. Check it out: mjanglican.org.

Nebby the Vulcan (well, almost)

Perhaps it's all the Star Trek I've watched this past summer, but as I've been working through the Aramaic sections of Daniel, I have found that Nebuchadnezzar's benediction to the peoples of the earth makes him sound almost Vulcan:

First, upon witnessing how superior is the God of Shadrack, Meshak, and Abednigo in comparison to the gods of Babylon, he "made Shadrack, Meshak, and Abednigo prosper in the province of Babylon" (Dan 3:30).

In the next verse, Nebuchadnezzar declares to all the peoples, tribes, and tongues who dwell in all the world, "May your peace grow greatly" (Dan 3:31 MT; Dan 4:1).

These things together sound a little like Mr. Spock's, "Live long and prosper" (a line which Leonard Nimoy adapted from the kohanic blessing in Judaism).

Of course, Nebuchadnezzar's Vulcanhood is precluded by his unabashed display of emotion when he realized that the three men were not burning to death in the furnace, but were able to emerge unscathed. If Nebby were a true Vulcan, he would have taken one look at the scene, raised an eyebrow, and respond, "Fascinating."

Unlikely Origin (2)

The other volume arrived this week. Nothing too special to report about it. Unfortunately not from Briercrest Bible College like its counterpart... This one comes from the Lewis & Clark Library in Helena, Montana.

Unlikely Origin

Yesterday my copy of The Death of the Messiah (vol. 2) by Raymond E. Brown arrived in the mail. It came quickly, and for a very good price. The strange thing is where this book originated... The bookseller, kbooks, shipped the book from Toronto, Ontario, but when I opened the book, a most curious stamping greeted me. The inside cover was stamped "Archibald Library." That sounds awfully familiar! I turned the page to find:

Archibald Library

Briercrest Bible College

Caronport, Saskatchewan, Canada

So, after going through Abebooks and a week of shipping, I end up with a book from a library that I can see from my house. I'm very interested to see where volume 2 comes from in a week or so!

Now that's innovation!

Many interesting things came into the world around the 1830's: Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the rapture theory... but most notable of all, without a doubt, is --- the mustache cup! In our visit to Elbow, Saskatchewan today, we stopped in at the little museum of Elbow, and this gem was just waiting to be found:

Because of the glorious mustaches of those days, a clever 'mustache guard' was put into place, more visible in this angle:

φωνὴν μεγάλην (Mark 15:37)

I'm currently researching Markan motifs for the Gospels class I took at the start of June. In some of the reading, I've come across some very interesting interpretations. The most noteworthy thus far concerns the centurion's confession at Jesus' death. Robert H. Gundry explains that the centurion's confession that Jesus is Son of God is not brought about by seeing Jesus suffer and die (he had probably witnessed that a hundred times), but is "evoked and defined, rather, by the supernatural strength that enables Jesus at the moment of his death to shout with a superhumanly loud voice and with exhalant force so powerful that it rends the veil of the temple. . . he sees Jesus die in a way that defies naturalistic explanation. It is Jesus' overcoming the weakness normally caused by crucifixion, not dying itself by crucifixion, which evokes the centurion's declaration." (Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross. Eerdmans, 1993, 974).

Programming Code and Gospel Motif

An odd combination for sure. I guess that because these are my two worlds right now --- tracing Markan motifs that climax in Jesus' death, and immersing myself in the various coding languages of the internet --- I've begun to see parallels between how the two of these things operate. Both seem to ebb and flow like well-written classical music. Just yesterday I was listening to CBC Radio 2, whose host was playing John William's score from "Return of the Jedi". I found the flow of the music so interesting. Elements of the highly recognizable themes of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker are introduced and pulled back, repeated, reinforced, interwoven, and finally brought to a climax that makes goosebumps suddenly form. There is foreshadowing and echoing and finally full-blown revelation.

I have found that Gospel motifs work like this too, as the author introduces a theme, develops it slowly, and in the case of motifs leading to Jesus' death, brings them to such a head that they can hardly be ignored. Maybe an analogy to Visual Basic programming is a bit of a stretch (and I don't know if I understand it well enough yet to give a very helpful explanation), but here too, the first module contains a sub-routine that points forward to the next module containing the actual commands referenced in the first module. The second module's sub-routine might include a reference which propels the program to the third module, and so on. With each move forward, the program always returns to the beginning to find its instruction, forming a continuous cycle of forward and backward movement until the program fulfills its mission and the program ends.

If nothing else, thinking about similarities between code syntax and narrative development helps to keep coding interesting. (And I think I'm beginning to understand how Dr. Karen H. Jobes of Wheaton College made a transition from computer science to exegesis...)

Dominion Day Adventures

Canada Day this year was spent with our good friends Paul and Darcie. We headed up to Regina Beach for the afternoon and contentedly browsed through the boutiques, basked in the sun at the beach, enjoyed some frisbee and Bocce Ball, and helped some drunkards get their car started. As it grew dark, we headed to the Legislative building for Regina's fireworks show, which was great because it happened to be the retirement celebration of the man who has put on the fireworks for the last 25 years. Very impressive!

But the best light show happened on the way home... Toward the end of the afternoon and throughout the evening we saw lightning in the distance. On the road home to Caronport, the storm met us full on. I haven't been in a storm like that in years! A wall of water and hail came on hard, thunder roared, and so much lightning flashed at once that we had to shield our eyes! It was amazing. I love being in the grip of such power, knowing that at any moment my life could be threatened. I've always, secretly, wanted to be a storm chaser. I'm absolutely thrilled by violent storms. To top all of this off, we saw a funnel cloud begin to form. It never really materialized, but we saw the beginnings of a cone shape start to swirl and angle toward the ground before it dissolved. (The picture above is of the same cloud that was over us, but the picture doesn't do the storm justice. You really had to be there.)

It's like canoeing to Japan with only a spoon for a paddle.

What am I referring to? Web development, obviously! Today I met with one of my supervisors to discuss what my training will entail, and how much new information I'm to consume in the next couple of months. The title of this post pretty much sums it up.

Prayers for Oliver

This afternoon a mudslide hit my old hometown (and present home of my brother), Oliver, BC. It sounds pretty fierce. A wall of mud from a blocked up creek in the mountains came crashing down the mountainside, sweeping away more than 10 homes, and destroying many acres of vineyards and orchards. But God is merciful: there are no reports of injuries or deaths. Pray for Oliver, if you think of it. This sort of destruction will take years to restore. Check out CTV for more.

Musical Chairs

The last few months I've been playing musical chairs with employment. I've gone from construction to educational assistant to security to Prairie South sub desk to Academic Services. And now, one more switch. It wasn't an easy decision, but I've made it. Starting first thing in July, I'll be assistant to the Webmaster at Briercrest College & Seminary, to eventually take the main seat myself. It will be a few rigorous months of training because of the steep learning curve, but I'm very excited! The new position allows me to pay for Seminary as I study, and to gain some pretty awesome experience that will allow me to make money while I wait for that proverbial academic post in the future... whenever that will be. Anyways, web development is fun, so I'm looking forward to digging in.

The Importance of Syllabi

I'm in the last week of preparation before my first Seminary class begins, and I just realized that I have become far too prepared... Part of the requirements of the upcoming class on the Gospels is to lead an hour-long seminar on one of the various topics given in the syllabus. Over the past several days, I dug (hundreds of pages) deep into all sorts of secondary sources to get to know my topic (reader-response criticism) very well, only to find out that the one most important source I should have read was: my syllabus.

If I had started there, I would have learned that the seminar is to be based mostly on the three articles for the seminar topic in the required reading. It's not exactly an 'open-ended' assignment. So, I guess this will be much easier to prepare for than I anticipated... At any rate, I guess I'll be (overly) prepared if people have questions outside of what the syllabus requires!

Grace

I'm pretty grateful today. I've been sick the past couple of days, and am back at work today. Knowing that my work partner is gone today, I thought I'd have a crazy day, having to do the work of two people in my short morning. But when I arrived to work today, it seems that another worker had mercy and decided to fill in for my partner, thus eliminating all of the stress I was anticipating. This is a small little occassion, but I'm very grateful!

Oily Mess: this is not subduing the earth...

When God commanded Adam to subdue the earth, I doubt he meant, "Lubricate my fish in a slimy haze." But that is what has been happening the past few days. Resulting from an explosion on an off-shore oil drill on April 20, 750,000 litres of oil spew up into the Gulf of Mexico every day. This spill hasn't yet reached the catastrophic levels of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 (40.9 million litres spilled), but it is expected to become the worst in history if a solution isn't found soon. Today the placement of a compression dome is being attempted to cap the leak in the underwater oil well. (See Vancouver Sun's article for more.)

Hopefully this sort of diaster will get people moving on the fuel cell so we can leave behind such a nasty dependence on crude oil. Sorry, little fishes.

Congratulations, Grads!

Illinusian Excursion

Last week Jenn and I jumped in the car and drove the 20 hours down to Wheaton, IL to visit Tyler and Tamara and to take in Wheaton College's 19th Annual Theology Conference: Jesus, Paul and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N. T. Wright. Click here to listen to/watch/download audio and video from the presenters. There was quite a good cast this year, including N.T. Wright (of course), Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer (whose paper I strongly recommend), Jeremy Begbie, and Richard Hays. Most notable for me was to hear, in his own words, why N. T. Wright does what he does (you can hear if for yourself in his first lecture).

Since we got to Wheaton a day early, I was able to tag along with Tyler to a couple of classes: Hebrews with Doug Moo and Systematical Theology: Atonement with Kevin Vanhoozer. Very excellent. Hebrews felt familiar as I've taken a lot of exegesis classes, and Atonement was a lot of fun because of the jovial nature of Kevin Vanhoozer.

As at most of these 'academic resorts,' as Jenn put it, there was a fairly good book sale. Not a huge amount of publishers were there, but a few: Baker, Wm. Eerdmans, IVP, and one more that I can't recall. I'm the happy owner of a few new friends: Holmes' Apostolic Fathers, N.T. Wright's NTPG, the Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, Snodgrass' Stories of Intent, Bailey's Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, and Perrin and Goodacre's Questioning Q (one of the free books for being one of the first 400 to check in!).

We also had a load of fun traipsing around Wheaton and area, exploring and eating funny American food, like a Buffalo salad, which was a Buffalo burger patti slapped onto some lettuce with a little US flag sticking out of it!

All in all, a super time in Illinois!

Caronport is on the (Google) Map!

Does this look familiar to anyone?

View Larger Map

While looking ahead to our upcoming Wheaton trip, I accidentally clicked a link bringing me to a "street level" view of Caronport, which I didn't think would actually load. But lo and behold, it appears the Google Cam has made its way through our little town. All of Caronport is navigable. A little creepy, perhaps, but very interesting. This would be an excellent tool for the school's website, I bet, to give newcomers a virtual walk-around. Google, you amaze me more and more every day.

Seminoid

I'm in! This morning I received my confirmation email telling me I'm an official seminary student. Good news to receive on the day I found out that I can have the week off of work to take Wes Olmstead's Gospels class. Full steam ahead!

"Expletive"

"An expletive is a word which serves no grammatical function, but which fills up a sentence or gives emphasis."

- Moreland and Fleischer. Latin: An Intensive Course. University of California Press, 1977 (p. 15).

Dodd

Here's a fun quote from a lecture by D.A. Carson:

There once was a man named Dodd
Who was thought to be rather odd.
To spell his name he used three D's
When one was enough for God.

Superman, the Illegitimate Savior

I've been a fan of Superman for a long time. In the comic book world, he's usually recognized to be the greatest of all heroes. Though the original creators of Superman didn't aim to connect Superman with Jesus, over the past 70 years the mythos has taken on attributes that make allusions to the Gospel. However, there is a fundamental difference that negates any of these connections. But first some similarities. 


Superman, or Kal-El, is the only son of Jor-El. He was sent by his father from Krypton to the earth in order to save its people. In the 1978 movie, Superman, Jor-El tells his son, "They're a great people Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son." 

Kal-El is raised on the earth by human parents, Jonathon and Martha (in place of Joseph and Mary), who give him the name Clark Kent. They teach him virtues such as peacemaking, the sanctity of human life, and the importance of self-sacrifice. Superman spends his life saving people from calamity and defeating evil doers by amazing feats of physical strength. Ultimately, Superman dies in a battle with the great Kryptonian destroyer, Doomsday, but, because of his unique heritage, he is resurrected some time after.

In the more recent movie, Superman Returns, Superman sacrifices his life by hurling a mountain of kryptonite off of the earth to foil an evil plot of Lex Luthor's. As the poisonous mountain fades into space, Superman floats back toward the earth in crucifixion pose. After a few dramatic scenes, we find that Superman has been resurrected once again, alive once more to save earth for another day. 

In the pilot episode of the TV series Smallville, Clark is strung up on a wooden cross like a scarecrow, as part of a high-school hazing ceremony. He hangs there in a noticeably cruciform pose. In the show's 9th season, Clark is described as the one who gives hope to the world, and is compared to Jesus Christ by Tess Mercer (a hench-woman of Lex Luthor's). She desires to see him fight Doomsday (whom she likens to Judas Ischariot), claiming that once he has overcome his great betrayer, he can go on to accomplishing his greatest challenge -- that of saving the world.


Superman first 'took flight' in the early days of WWII, as many wished for a mighty hero who could defeat the Nazis and end the growing war. This savior was born of the wisdom of man, wishing for a strong savior who could defeat any enemy just by sheer force, perhaps much like what Jesus' disciples hoped for in a Messiah. However, the Savior God has sent was humble and meek, and, with regard to the world's understanding, weak and helpless, as a lamb led to the slaughter. The words of the Lord to Isaiah ring very true here: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways" (Isaiah 55:8).

Here is the fundamental break-down precluding any legitimate connection between Superman and Jesus. The 'salvation' that Superman brings is accomplished through power and strength -- his "powers far beyond those of mortal men." In this way, Superman is quite distinctly opposite to Jesus. Jesus came in weakness, putting away his heavenly glory. He refused to enlist the help of the multitude of angels who would have raced to his aid in Gethsemane, had he called for them. He submitted to a passive death, not defending himself. He was born in shame, to a mother accused of adultery, and died the most shameful way possible, on a cross. The hope of the world is bound up in a crucified Savior, rather than in a mighty Superman.

However 'cool' the comic book world may be, I'm glad I live on this side of the page.

Official Things

Today two good and official things happened that spur on my plans for the next little while. My passport arrived, which allows me to go to the US, which allows me to attend the Wheaton Theological Conference in under a month. Secondly, I completed my application to Briercrest Seminary. I'm hoping to start my seminary studies with Wes Olmstead's Gospels Seminar, which kicks off May 31. It's nice to have these important details down. Now I can just focus on getting the necessary reading done.

Learning the Basics of Biblical Greek... with Stephen Harper?

I made a shocking discovery today. I realize now why Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament. It was to release the 3rd edition of his best-selling Greek grammar, Basics of Biblical Greek! Or wait... didn't Bill Mounce write that? Well, the mistake is an easy one to make. Look for yourself:

I don't know about you, but this creeped me out a little -- and also made me proud to be Canadian. You have quite the doppelganger, Mr. PM!

Vocational Trifecta

Well, the dust has settled. My employment search is finished, and I think I've emerged the victor. I am now a Faculty Assistant (as I have been for some time), Campus Safety/Custodian for Briercrest, and a brand-new member of the Prairie South School Division. In that post I'll call in subs in the early hours of the day and spend the rest of the time cleaning up the paper work I created in the first hours. All these varied shifts leave me with free time in the afternoon, which, hopefully, will be a perfect time for reading and studying (and Olympics-watching).

I'm grateful for the work that has been offered to me. Our needs have been very providentially met and exceeded!

10 Baptisms Today!

Today, church at The Gathering was truly wonderful. I always greatly enjoy baptismal services -- it's always so encouraging to hear people's stories, and to watch those who care about them come around with encouraging words of edification and scripture. This morning was more memorable than many others I've witnessed. Originally there were five people to be baptised. Interestingly, the first two quoted the same scripture, Acts 22:16, in which Paul asks, "And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptised, and wash your sins away, calling on his name." Taking this as a cue, Kevin and Sean (pastors) announced to those gathered, "If anyone of you feels led to respond to these words this morning, then, 'What are you waiting for? Get up, be baptised, and wash your sins away, calling on his name'!"

The result was powerful. As the remaining three 'originally scheduled' people were baptised, five more came forward! It was wonderful to see these ten people declare their union with Christ today.

I love these services. Watching each one go under, and resurface anew, I felt a deep sense of gratitude for what God has done through his Messiah for us. What a powerful image Jesus has left us with in baptism, that of entering into his death with him, and rising again.

Lectio Sodalitas

Two books just arrived today that will pave the way to the Wheaton Theology Conference I'm attending in April: NT Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God and Richard Hays' Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. Since NT Wright (keynote) and Richard Hays are speaking at the conference, I thought I'd pick up two notable books to acquaint myself with both scholars before I show up to hear them speak. These will have to wait, though, until I'm through Westerholm's Perspectives Old and New on Paul: the Lutheran Paul and His Critics, which has been really helpful in catching me up to speed on Pauline perspectives (and is also hopefully preparing me to think about what I will hear at the conference).

Name That Passage!

It's been a while. I've updated a couple of things, and uploaded a new title image. Can anyone guess what passage it is?

How It Should Have Ended

Here are a couple of hilarious 'alternate ending' videos by the good people at howitshouldhaveended.com.


Superman: The Movie
In the world of Superman, some make him vulnerable to pain, and cause him to completes great feats with obvious strain. Some make him wildly powerful and (nearly) impenetrable. While the former makes for more interesting (and perhaps easier) story-telling, the latter is fun to watch now and again. Such as this clip:





Terminator/Back to the Future
Doc had no idea what he started...

Believe the hype: Windows 7 works

A couple of days ago, Jenn and I took advantage of a student deal with Microsoft Canada and snagged a couple of copies of Windows 7. Just the laptop has it running for now; our rather slower desktop is awaiting a gig of RAM before I upgrade it. So far I'm very pleased. With Windows 7, the laptop 'resumes' much faster than with Vista (now it fires up in under 5 seconds!), and the irritating security warnings that made Vista a headache are gone. It looks like Vista, but the filing system is nicer, and everything seems to run a little faster.

I'm looking forward to upgrading the desktop to see how the home network thing will work. If you're still contemplating the upgrade, it's worth the trouble. (The only downside so far is the work of having to reinstall all my programs and back up all my files. Vista Home Basic and XP don't upgrade cleanly, so you have to start from scratch.)

Fast Food Taco Song

This comic duo is quickly becoming one of my favourite internet stops. Enjoy this Fast Food Taco Song, especially with reference to the amazing server who actually remembers their whole order!