On being the Presbyterian Curmudgeon

I subscribe to Stephan Pastis' Pearls before Swine by e-mail. This is just one reason why.

Setting Up the Sheep for Heresy, again

Modern Reformation has published my piece "Setting Up the Sheep for Heresy: How the Sufficiency of Scripture Is Undermined by Learned Preaching," an expansion of an essay which originally appeared on this blog, in its current (November/December 2008) issue (online at http://www.modernreformation.org/default.php?page=articledisplay&var1=ArtRead&var2=979&var3=issuedisplay&var4=IssRead&var5=102).

On bicycling & belly fat

We finally got our first autumn snow last night: just a light coating, and, given that it was in the 60s yesterday, not nearly enough to make the streets anything but damp. Thus, I geared up and rode my bike to the Church building this morning while it was still in the mid-20s (thank you, Accuweather). As I did so, I wondered whether I really put myself through this frigid misery every winter, and whether I want to do so this year as well.

Then I remembered the recent news of the terrible dangers posed by belly fat (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96922213) and the two bratwursts I had packed for lunch. I decided, no, I do not want to bike in this weather, and I will keep doing so as long as food tastes good.

You are Yahweh, you alone

The tradition of translating the Hebrew name for God as "the Lord" obscures the peculiarity of Isaiah 37:20, in which Hezekiah prays Judah will be delivered from the Assyrian Empire's army so "that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you are Yahweh, you alone." Since "Yahweh" is not interchangeable with "God," one would not expect the world to be wondering who, exactly, Yahweh is; if they pondered this question at all, the peoples of the world would think Yahweh is the parochial god of Judah. This was certainly the perspective of Sennacherib, the Assyrian emperor, who viewed Yahweh as no different from the gods of the nations he and his predecessors had destroyed (Isaiah 37:10-13).

In his commentary (vol. 2, p. 487), E.J. Young says the point is that Yahweh is alone; in other words, there is no other god. Alec Motyer puts it more pithily: to say "Yahweh" is to say "the one and only God" (on p. 282 of his Isaiah commentary).

Still, to say "the one and only God" is to speak of divinity, and all that is entailed by the notion of the God who is, who is God alone, and thus is truly divine. But that is not the same as saying "Yahweh," the personal name that God has given himself. By using this name, Hezekiah invokes everything which Yahweh has revealed about his own identity and character. All the kingdoms of the earth will not merely learn Yahweh is God; rather, through his deliverance of his people, they will learn who Yahweh is.

Which, of course, in why in his Incarnation he chose for himself the name "Jesus," which means salvation, or deliverance.