OK, we're back finally. Man is there a lot to catch up on. Have lots of nice presents to put away, have to update here, have some work to do, and not least of all, have to read all of your silly blogs that I missed last week. This was the fisrt time I was thankful that Joel hadn't updated his in a while. One less thing for me to read. Speaking of reading, got a good ways into The Count of Monte Cristo on my trip. Not deep, but a great adventure story. Also finished An Instance of the Fingerpost which is one of the most unusual mystery novels I've ever read. Four different narrators tell their recollection of the events with an actually suprising ending.

TTFN

Leaving on vacation this morning. We're heading to Cleveland tonight to drop off a kitten for my sister-in-law, then on to Westland, MI---my home town and also the only city in the US named after a shopping mall. May or may not have any blogs til I get back. Just check back here every hour or so just to be sure :)

How does one family produce two such smart men? This word from Jaysuprised me with that simple ring of truth. I guess there's probably much to explore here. There are a few things in scripture about private meditation, but we should compare them by volume with the "public" things Jay mentions.

How does one family produce two such smart men? This word from Jaysuprised me with that simple ring of truth. I guess there's probably much to explore here. There are a few things in scripture about private meditation, but we should compare them by volume with the "public" things Jay mentions.

Thanks to Mark for this link:N.T. WRIGHT ON JUSTIFICATION. A few poorly thought out points from me (if you haven't read Wright and don't feel like reading the linked article just bail out now).

First, Hill seems to do Wright injustice regarding the definition of justification. Wright clearly says (somewhere) that justification is a judicial declaration by God. Obviously, Wright feels that the justification talked about by Paul declares those who believe in Jesus to be members in good standing of the true people of God. Undoubtedly Hill's thoughts and Wright's thoughts on justification are not completely identical, but I think they are much closer than Hill thinks they are.

Second, Hill doesn't say enough about historical context to justify criticism of Wright in that regard. Since my knowledge of first century historical context is extremely poor, I'll say no more.

Third, and lastly for me here, is that Hill seems to want to draw a sharp distiction between "righteousness before God" and "covenant membership". Without dwelling on the subject, it seems to me at least that Wright and many others don't see that distinction so sharply. I'll leave exposition of covenant membership to the more qualified.

I will certainly agree with Hill that Wright probably needs to make more explicit where he does and does not differ with the mainstream of protestant theology. Most of the criticisms of Wright I've seen deal more with what he doesn't say, e.g. the second coming, than what he does say.

I just love this one fromJohn Derbyshire. Here's a snippet:

What do I think about all this? Well, first I think that the directors of the Tate Gallery, which receives funding from general taxation, should be locked up in prison and made to do hard labor scraping the rust off bolts for 20 years or so with nothing to eat but cold oatmeal porridge. Then I think Mr. Creed should be stripped naked, sprayed all over with bright blue paint, and made to run round and round Piccadilly Circus until he drops from exhaustion, after which he should be killed by some not-very-humane method. Then the Tate Gallery should be reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment, the rubble carted away to be used as landfill, and the ground sown with salt. Then the fools who pay good money to look at this "art" should be packed into boxcars and tipped off the white cliffs of Dover, and their mangled corpses left to be feasted on by dogs, crows and crabs.

Sorry, comments are down for now. Apparently no one like giving away large amounts of server space for free for these things.

Props out to Joel and ladydusk for having the good sense to link to my site :) Of course Mark was the leader of the pack. If anyone else has linked to me and I haven't noticed, feel free to give me a shout.

Sunday afternoon we went to an organ concert in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Flentrop organ at Duke chapel. Quite satisfying. We heard a Bach prelude and fugue, a piece by Cesar Franck, and a new composition by the organist, David Arcus. All were performed flawlessly. Interesting thing about an organ concert in a cathedral type setting, as a couple of people noted, is that you don't get to look at the performer (or even the instrument unless you put yourself in an uncomfortable position). I found that this actually helped me listen more to the music, rather than noting the peculiarities of the performer.

Today at the post office I saw the following:

Letters to Santa

Letters to Santa should be addressed to:



Santa Claus

P.O. Box xxxxx

Greensboro, NC

I've come up with a puzzle that is both long, difficult, musical, mathematical and, I think, soluble given some patience. Here goes:

Answer each of the folowing clues, then find the 2 patterns that emerge, one mathematical, one musical.

1. Square, or H
   
2. Sweet (or Candles?)
   
3. A cold month in a year that doesn't hop
   
4. North Dallas
   
5. A Pack of fun, no joke
   
6. Commander of a fleet (of old computers?)
   
7. Meditate on the flag
   
8. The end of my job, in a sense
   

The first person to come up with the full answer gets a BIG prize, which I'll think up later :)

I've already read two Roosevelt Biographies, but I may need to read a third. NR has a review this month of Edmund Morris' Theodore Rex, and I'm captivated. From his first speech to congress as president (on foreign terrorists):

The wind is sowed by the men who preach such doctrines, and they cannot escape their responsibility for the whirlwind that is reaped. . . . They and those like them should be kept out of this country; and if found here they should be promptly deported to the country whence they came; and far-reaching provision should be made for the punishment of those who stay.

Can you name me a past president you would rather have in office today??


I suppose my favorite quality of TR's was his astonishing breadth of learning. Someone wote to him in 1903 asking what he head read in the first two years of his administration. His answer, in part:

Parts of Herodotus; the first and seventh books of Thucydides; all of Polybius; a little of Plutarch; Aeschylus' Orestean Trilogy; Sophocles' Seven Against Thebes; Euripides' Hippolytus and Bacchae; and Aristophanes' Frogs. . . . [biographies, in French, of Prince Eugene, Adm. de Ruyter, Turenne, and Sobieski]. . . Macbeth; Twelfth Night; Henry the Fouth; Henry the Fifth; Richard the Second . . . Church's Beowulf; Morris' translation of the Heimskringla . . . Sienkiewicz's Fire and Sword . . . Rob Roy; Waverly . . . Pickwick Papers; Nicholas Nickleby; Vanity Fair.

Several months ago I found, on the free or very cheap rack at a used book store, Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, published bak in '67. Lots of great words you can't find elswhere. For instance:

Jack-a-Lent

1. a small stuffed puppet set up to be pelted as a sport in Lent

2. a simple or insignificant person

Or just weird definitions:

Jack(2)

To hunt or fish at night with a jacklight

Makes you think twice about saying you are "jacked".

Attention all bloggers! Don't forget to sign up for Secret Santa.

Hooray!! Comments are up and my words aren't on top of each other any more. I'll edit the links soon. The current ones are just ones I knew off the top of my head. I do find the fact cat amusing though.

If there were a "sermon on the net", it should read, in part:

And do not criticize your brother for not updating his blog for a couple of days when you update yours every six weeks on average. First update your own blog, then flame your brother.

BTW Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods is very entertaining. Give it to someone you like for Christmas.

Mark---or anyone else interested, just wondering if you've heard of this book. Seems to be a dispensational critique of modern studies on Jesus, including N.T. Wright. Saw it on sale, but upon further review, it didn't look as appealing as the title suggested.

I am really thinking now about this. Mark, of course, is always bringing up something to think about. I'm off to a "retro" Christmas party. I'll let you know how it goes.