Effective policing

My utter lack of perspective

At the risk of revealing just how miserably out of whack my priorities are, I here make known to the world that one of the few things which sustains me through the dark dark months of January and February (besides passive-aggressively neglecting to take down the Christmas lights from the roof) is the arrival in my grocer's freezer of Dreyer's Girl Scout Thin Mint ice cream. Its rich creamy chocolatey goodness, with the crunchy delicate deliciousity of thin mint cookies, brings joy into a landscape of otherwise relentless bleakness.

But not this year. Oh, no. Not this year.

This year, this sad, grim, economically miserable, precipice-of-the-next-great-depression year, Dreyer's has decided to shift its Girl Scout cookie ice creams over to its "slow churned," i.e., light line. In point of fact, this new version is not half-bad. It has none of that horrible artificial sweetener taste, and though it's lower-fat, the churning method spares it the ice-milk abomination which is too many "diet" ice creams. So, for the record, I actually enjoy the new Thin Mint ice cream.

Nonetheless.

I like cheeseburgers a great deal, but that doesn't mean I want to live in a world which has only cheeseburgers and no prime rib. I'm inclined to say Dreyer's has ruined my life by taking away my Thin Mint ice cream, but that would clearly be an exaggeration. However, Dreyer's has most certainly pushed me back into full-on curmudgeonliness.

Blame them. I'm just another victim of the Man.

Immediately

In his Gospel, Mark uses the word "euthus" ("immediately") so often it seems less a stylistic choice than a verbal tic. It is even more frequent than it appears to be in English translations because the versions do not translate it uniformly: sometimes they use "immediately," sometimes "at once," sometimes "just then," and so forth.

What Mark means by "immediately" is not necessarily obvious. On some occasions, it no doubt means "at that very instant," which is what we might expect. But in Mark 1:28, it seems incredibly unlikely that the reports of Jesus, which after all were transmitted verbally, from one person to another, went throughout Galilee instantaneously.

It seems to me, then, that Alexander Bruce is on to something in the old Expositor's Greek Testament. In vol. 1, p. 345, he writes "euthus: almost = idou ["behold"], Matthew's word for introducing something important."

Mingus Mingus Mingus

I'm in the process of transferring all my audio onto an external hard drive. Although our CD collection has collapsed into disarray, the Ms are still relatively near one another. So earlier in the week I was listening to The Mavericks, and today it's Charles Mingus. Oh wow.

Mingus Mingus Mingus.

Mingus. Ah um.

Boy, am I conflicted

The BBC reports more Britons than Americans died on the Titanic because the former were more "gentlemanly" and the latter more "individualistic" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7843154.stm).

So do we celebrate this as further evidence of America's inevitable triumph over our monarch-loving oppressors, or shamefacedly admit we're a bunch of selfish greedheads?

Circuit City gift cards

In light of what the Circuit City website says about gift cards ("Yes, customers holding Circuit City gift cards may redeem them at full value at our stores during the liquidation sales. Once the stores are closed and the company is out of business, the gift cards will have no value." http://www.circuitcity.com/closed.html), it's hard to get excited about this offer on the receipt I got today after buying some really cheap DVDs.

Working on a Dream

They're streaming Bruce Springsteen's new album Working on a Dream, due out next week, over at npr.org (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99173117). It's well worth your while.

Current favorites: "Queen of the Supermarket" and "Surprise, Surprise." (The Presbyterian Curmudgeon is feeling melancholy yet upbeat, a mood which few do as well as Springsteen.)

Rising contender: "The Wrestler." (When the Presbyterian Curmudgeon returns to pure melacholic form.)

You are Number 6

Patrick McGoohan died yesterday (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7829267.stm). He was not only the star of, but also the creative and motive force behind, The Prisoner, a 1960s BBC program which makes Lost seem remarkably clear and straightforward by comparison. I discovered it on late night reruns on PBS back when I was in high school (that's right, children: there was a time before DVD box sets). I'm pretty sure the entire series was an allegory having to do with man's relationship to God, or maybe it was just a spy thriller. At any rate, it was, and continues to be, fascinating and challenging. I have no idea what was going on in McGoohan's head, but it was some kind of genius.

UPDATE: Neal Conan paid tribute to McGoohan's earlier series, Secret Agent (which provided the implied backstory to The Prisoner) on NPR's Talk of the Nation earlier today (listen to it at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99353056). He claims The Prisoner is "beloved by paranoids everywhere;" that characterization, in my sober opinion, is yet more proof the conspiracy continues. Still, we can all be grateful for another chance to hear the as-awesome-as-ever Secret Agent Man.

Like a dove

The Synoptic Gospels all tell us the Holy Spirit descended at the time of Jesus' baptism "like a dove." While some commentators take that to mean the Spirit had the physical form of a dove, I am of the school which thinks it describes only the manner in which the Spirit descended. That is, the Spirit descended from heaven in the same manner in which a dove might.

Whichever of these options one settles on, one still wonders, "Why a dove?" Any number of theories exist: some find a connection with the Spirit's hovering over the deep in Genesis 1; others look to the dove Noah sent out of the ark to find dry land. I am not crazy enough to think I've got the final answer, but I do have a suggestion.

If I'm correct that the Evangelists put the accent on the manner in which the Spirit ascended, then the point may be that doves tend to flit about (like a pigeon in a courtyard): their flight patterns seem willful and unpredictable. This is like Jesus' description of the Holy Spirit in John 3: there, he says the Spirit is like the wind in that he goes where he wills and can be controlled by no one. In other words, Matthew, Mark, and Luke draw a connection between the Spirit's descent at Jesus' baptism and our Lord's Spiritual doctrine as recorded by John.

On Richard John Neuhaus

The First Things website announced the death today (Jan. 8, 2009) of Richard John Neuhaus, a Roman Catholic priest who had converted from a Lutheran pastorate, and also one of our nation's last public intellectuals. As a reactionary old presbyterian who still thinks the pope is the antichrist (as 25.6 of the Westminster Confession originally stated), I can't countenance any move from protestantism to Romanism. Still, in reading Neuhaus over the years, it seems to me his conversion was driven by a school of Lutheranism which sees itself as separated from Rome, a true but erring Church; in time, he could no longer find sufficient reason to maintain that separation. Thus, his ecclesiology may have been what enabled him to make the doctrinal hurdles necessary to renounce protestantism (and doctrinally, he was a fully committed Roman Catholic).

That ecclesiology is likely why I appreciate much of what he had to say in the pages of First Things. Consider this excerpt from the December 2008 issue, in which Neuhaus is reflecting on comments made by James Turner in the book The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue. "Evangelicalism accents the doctrinal ('core beliefs'), the affective, and, usually, the moral. Catholicism accents the the communal (ecclesial) and sacramental, joined to a mix of the moral and aesthetic. ...Catholics are ecclesial Christians. By contrast, one identifies oneself as an evangelical if one adheres to the core beliefs, has had a conversion experience, and is not a Catholic or a liberal Protestant. Evangelicals are, in the sociological jargon, elective Christians."

In my opinion, one could substitute "presbyterian" for "Catholic" in the above quote without doing much damage. I don't think Neuhaus ever quite understood there are protestants who have as robust an ecclesiology as Rome does, yet deny that Rome is owed any obligation. This may be why it was relatively easy for him to find common ground with evangelicals (particularly through the efforts of "Evangelicals and Catholics Together"): evangelicals have no ecclesiology which might conflict with Rome's.

Neuhaus observed the public square with wit and a great deal of Christianized common sense. I'll miss his pen.

The benefits of Tetris

The BBC gives me another reason to play Tetris (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7813637.stm), but doesn't tell me what to do about the repetitive-motion injury.

The Christian Church and the Emergent Church

[In the January 2009 issue of New Horizons in the OPC, Danny E. Olinger wrote an article called "Christianity and the Emergent Church." What follows is my letter to the editor concerning it, so I recommend you read it first: http://www.opc.org/nh9.html?article_id=589. (For those of you who may not know, Danny Olinger is also the editor of New Horizons, so my letter, which refers to him in the third person, is actually written directly to him. Weird, but such is the art of letters to the editor.)]

New Horizons in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church

January 6, 2009

Dear Editor:

I find myself very much in agreement with the substance of Danny E. Olinger’s article “Christianity and the Emergent Church” in the January 2009 issue of New Horizons. However, its last sentence contains a grammatical difficulty; reflection on that point of style may help us discern how best to take the stand which Mr. Olinger urges.

Mr. Olinger hearkens back to Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism and Van Til’s subsequent homage, Christianity and Barthianism. In both titles, the “and” was a subtle but definite means by which to contrast Christianity with a system of belief, a doctrine, which was something other than Christian. Grammatically, this device worked because both words were nouns. What Mr. Olinger similarly identifies as something other than Christian is “the emergent” (p. 9); unfortunately, despite the definite article, “emergent” insistently remains an adjective, not a noun. More grammatically pleasing is the article’s title; however, it fails by contrasting two different sorts of things. While both nouns, “Christianity” is a doctrine and “the emergent Church” is an ecclesiastical body.

This stylistic problem points out a difference between the stands taken by Machen and Van Til and that which we must take in our day. Liberalism and Barthianism were systems of doctrine which sought to (and, in very many places, did) displace that of historic, confessional Christianity. Both, however, were content to leave the structures, practices, and liturgies of the Church in place. Thus, Machen and Van Til took their stands on doctrine.

At roughly the same time, what we today call “evangelicalism” came into its own on the American scene. Because the evangelicals agreed with and defended the historic doctrines of Christianity, we tended to regard them as allies. But while they left Christian doctrine pretty much alone, the evangelicals regarded the historic structures, practices, and liturgies of the Church as secondary and optional matters. In very short order, evangelicalism in the second half of the twentieth century was overtaken by a pragmatic faddism: since they believed historic Christianity could be believed and taught without regard to form, evangelicals radically changed (amongst other things) the role and work of the pastor and the manner in which worship takes place. While many confessional presbyterians distanced themselves from these perpetual innovations, many others saw no reason to criticize evangelicals who remained defenders of historic Christianity.

Now we have a generation of evangelicals who realize that doctrine and practice are not so easily divisible and earnestly desire more substance than did their fathers. They seek not merely a doctrine (“Christianity”), but a faith which finds its form in a community (“Church”): therefore, we cannot properly call them “the emergent” without adding the noun “Church.” If this is the case, then the stand we take today cannot be on doctrine alone. Instead, we must take a stand on doctrine and practice, on how it is that those with our faith are to be the Church.

This is the stand we should have taken against evangelicalism a very long time ago. It is not a stand taken by the publishing of books or the holding of debates, however. Instead, it is a stand taken by a rededication to first principles of historic presbyterian practice: thoughtful liturgy, Sabbath-keeping, catechesis, home visitation by pastors, elders, and deacons. The emergent Church, for all their talk, continue to be evangelicals in the only way that matters: they invent their practices according to their own inclinations, and so their doctrines follow. Our stand against this innovative tendency is simple: be the Church the way we and our fathers properly understand the Bible has taught us to be, by being presbyterian in practice just as much as we are in doctrine. Perhaps then the dissatisfied children of the evangelicals will see that the real choice is between the non-church of evangelicalism and the Christian Church.

grace and peace,
Matthew W. Kingsbury

NASB paraphrases Luke 22:70

Though I use it frequently, I consider the New American Standard to be the most annoying modern English version of the Bible due to its claims to be a "literal" translation. Most people think of a literal translation as one which gives the most straightforward and simple rendering of a text in the receptor language. While the NASB on occasion does this, it frequently does not. At times, it goes beyond translation to interpretive paraphrase, as in Luke 22:70.

A literal translation of Jesus' reply to the Sanhedrin's question "Are you the Son of God, then?" is offered by the English Standard Version: "You say that I am." As most commentators note, Jesus' reply is deliberately ambivalent. None of that ambivalence is found in the NASB of Luke 22:70, however: "Yes, I am." Now, there may be a solid argument that Jesus intended no ambiguity by his answer, and this interpretation drove the NASB translators here. In no sense, however, can their rendering be called "literal," since a literal translation would not have the word "yes," and would include the second person plural for "say" and the particle "that."

Properly speaking, the NASB should describe its translation philosophy as "somewhat wooden with the freedom to paraphrase when the translators feel like it." Perhaps that wouldn't give it quite the marketing hook it presently has, but that would at least have the virtue of honesty.