“WHAT IS TRUTH?”

There is the famous passage in John 18 where Jesus is before Pilate and they are in conversation. Jesus concludes by saying, “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” Pilate famously replies with, “What is truth?” (v.37-38) And that’s how the conversation ends.

People have always found it odd that Jesus does not appear to answer Pilate’s question. Those less inclined to the Christian Faith will often say, “Ah-ha! See? Jesus couldn’t answer that question.” Honestly, even if Jesus couldn’t answer that question or didn’t know the answer to that question, do you think that the author of a book that argues that Jesus was equivalent with the God of the universe (1:1-2; 8:58; 10:30; 14:7-11) would record a question to Jesus that didn’t have an answer?

Those more inclined to the Christian Faith will scramble for an answer, some concluding that Pilate turned away before Jesus could answer him. For a similar reason as above, this seems unlikely.

So what is the answer?

The answer is found most explicitly in 14:6. Jesus says, “I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life, and no one comes to the Father, but through me.” (See also the slightly more cryptic 5:33; 8:32; 17:17). Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus is shown to be full of truth (1:14). He tells the truth (8:40, 45, 46; 16:7; 18:37). Truth comes through him (1:17; 8:32; 17:19; 18:37). The Spirit of Truth comes through him (14:17; 15:26; 16:13). The word “truth” is used over 25 times in the Gospel of John and almost exclusively in relation to Jesus.

Interestingly, Pilate’s use of the word is the last in the entire book. I believe the author is employing some irony here. After inundating the reader with the Truth, Pilate’s question is an incident of someone just not getting it (of which there are numerous examples in this book). If he had known the Truth, he would have asked, “WHO is truth?”

So Jesus, in fact, has answered Pilate’s question and had been answering it for 18 chapters. Jesus is the Truth.

A Short Review of “Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet” by Dale Allison

Today I finished reading “Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet” by Dale Allison. I thought this book was okay in many respects. It’s primarily a new defense of the idea that Jesus was an eschatological prophet. It is a defense in the sense that Allison critiques and challenges the methods and conclusions of scholars such as John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Stephen Patterson who reject such an idea in favor of seeing Jesus as either a Jewish Cynic or aphoristic sage. It is new in the sense that Allison qualifies Jesus’ eschatology as taking the forms of millenarianism and asceticism.


Allison’s critique of the methods of Crossan et al is both thorough and enlightening. In some places, it’s fun. I’ve never taken Crossan, Borg, and their ilk seriously, but it is amusing to see them taken to the scholarly woodshed.

While I do appreciate Allison’s defense of the eschatological nature of Jesus ministry, I am not convinced that Jesus and his fledgling pre-Easter movement can or should be categorized as millenarian. At the very least, that is too broad a term to be adequately applied to Jesus’ context.

On the other hand, Allison’s examination of Jesus asceticism was thoroughly enjoyable and highly thought-provoking. In particular, I was intrigued by the notion that Jesus ascetic practices of property, money, poverty, sex, and housing were a part of his belief in a “realized eschatology” that pointed back to a pre-Fallen Edenic world and towards a New Creation. Interesting.

The place where I find the biggest fault with Allison here is his adherence to the view that Jesus did indeed expect an imminent, catastrophic end of the world. His errors: 1) He dies not sufficiently understand the characteristics, purpose, and role of apocalyptic language and literature. 2) He underestimates Jesus’ grasp of the apocalyptic. 3) He seems to maintain that any supposed popularity of misinterpretation of a literary form during its lifetime negates an author’s intentions if holding true to that form. 4) Is a common era that would take too long to explain but involves incongruity between what some scholars think that the Gospel writers did with the predictions of Jesus and what one would have expected them to do if these same scholars are correct.

Still, a very good book.

A Short Review of “The Historical Figure of Jesus” by E. P. Sanders

Last night I finished reading “The Historical Figure of Jesus” by E. P. Sanders. I did enjoy the book – admittedly, some parts more enthusiastically than others. Some of his methodology is a little stale and he is hindered because of it. I really enjoyed his analysis of the political setting of Jesus’ life in 1st century Palestine, although I think he underestimates the Jewish perception of Roman oppression.

He’s too quick to dismiss the reliability of the confrontation scenes between Jesus and his “enemies” because of the weakness of “enemy” arguments and because of the theological arrangement of such scenes by the Gospel writers. I do think this leads Sanders to minimize the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees, which is puzzling since he ends the book with such a forceful (and, in my opinion, accurate) statement of Jesus’ self-conception of his role: Jesus regarded himself as having the right to say who would be in the Kingdom of God and he held that God was acting directly and immediately through him, bypassing the Law.

While he repeatedly states how important the Scriptures were to Jesus as a first century Jew and while he agrees that Jesus was enacting some of the Old Testament prophecies (particularly in his final week), except in a far too generalized fashion, Sanders shies away from exploring Jesus’ understanding of the Scriptures and prophetic traditions and how it influenced his conception of his ministry and mission.

This is perhaps one of the reasons Sanders makes the big mistake of rejecting the idea that Jesus understood the Kingdom of God has having a present as well as a future reality. In some places I believe he violates his own methodology in order to keep Jesus’ teachings of the Kingdom to be “at hand” and never “among you.”

Where I believe Sanders gets it very right is the reason Jesus was arrested. Namely, Jesus’ enacted parable of “cleansing the Temple” was seen and rightly understood as a prophecy predicting the Temple’s utter destruction by God.

A very well written and researched book.

Immersing Cancer Patients [Updated]

So far this month we’ve had six individuals make commitments to follow Jesus (i.e., “get saved”). Four have been youth and two have been adults.

Of these adults, one is a lady who is a former Buddhist. She is also suffering terribly from cancer.

Here is the issue:

This woman wishes to be Baptized into Christ (and this become a member of the church) but … her illness prevents her from being Baptized by immersion.

…

What shall we do?

It appears that our senior pastor is going to ask the deacons to either waive Baptism by immersion for church membership in this woman’s case OR, if she really wants to experience Baptism, allow her to be sprinkled.

Interesting scenario, huh? No unique but somewhat uncommon in Baptist circles.

[UPDATE]

I can now tell you that the woman in question was Baptized by Sprinkling, not immersion. In the tradition of Baptist pragmatism for the sake of the Gospel, this woman, lying in a hospital bed in Chapel Hill, NC, was Baptized by the sprinkling of water ... using a North Carolina Tar Heel cup.

The worst part is that both she and her husband are NC State Wolfpack fans.

Riddles With No Answers: Textual Variances in Through the Looking-glass

In Through the Looking-glass, by Lewis Carroll

In the chapter titled, “Queen Alice”, Alice is sitting with the Red and White Queens engaged in an absurd conversation. The Red Queen continues to lecture and moralize and ask silly questions of Alice. Eventually, Alice wearies of any attempts to make sense out of the Red Queen’s madness. In most common additions of the book, the text reads as follows:

Alice sighed and gave it up. 'It's exactly like a riddle with no answer!' she thought.

Note the indefinite article accompanying “riddle”.

However, my Norton Critical Edition with the supposed authoritative text reads as follows:

Alice sighed and gave it up. 'It's exactly like the riddle with no answer!' she thought.

Note the definite article accompanying “riddle”.

So we have two versions of the text. Which is correct? This is not a small matter of textual variance because there could be an important link to the previous Alice book, Alice in Wonderland.

In chapter 7 of that book, titled, “A Mad Tea-Party”, Alice is sitting with the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Dormouse, engaged in an absurd conversation. The text reads:

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, 'Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'

…

'No, I give it up,' Alice replied: 'what's the answer?'

'I haven't the slightest idea,' said the Hatter.

…

Alice sighed wearily. 'I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, 'than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.'

As you can surmise, if, in Through the Looking-glass, Alice actually used the definite article then it highly indicates that she is thinking about the Mad Hatter’s Riddle at this point. If she used the indefinite article then we have her thinking of no such riddle in particular.

The annotated editions of Alice that I’ve read have all drawn the connection between Alice’s statement in Through the Looking-glass and the Mad Hatter’s Riddle, even when the text these annotated editions are using contain the indefinite article. The editions usually state that the Mad Hatter’s Riddle is an example of a riddle with no answer.

And all these annotated editions use texts lacking the definite article. In fact, I’ve only been able to find one edition of Through the Looking-glass that includes the definite article in the text: the Norton Critical Edition, both the 1971 and 1992 editions of this book.

Therefore, because I hold the Norton Critical Editions to a high standard, because I deem a scholarly and authoritative edition to be a superior reference to that of any so-called “standard” edition, and because I believe that Carroll was quite conscious of the connection he was making between his two Alice books in this section, I must conclude that most editions of Through the Looking-glass are in error at this point and only the Norton Critical Editions offer an accurate version of Lewis Carroll’s true literary intention.

“What can we do to make the actual walking and living with Jesus more significant?”

“What can we do to make the actual walking and living with Jesus more significant?”


1) We must realize that the purpose of that walk and life is the furthering of the Kingdom of God, the realization of New Creation, and the summing up of all things in Christ.

2) We must realize that God has both created us and is equipping us for this purpose, and it is in this purpose that we discover who we are and where we find our ultimate fulfillment.

3) We must pursue this purpose.

Evangelicals and Excessive Sex: Mark Driscoll and Ed Young from Augustine's Perspective

I am linking above to a blog post that I read from Wade Burleson.

I find this interesting because though I didn’t find this blog post until today, last night I gave my lesson to the youth group on Chastity: the Christian Virtue of Sexuality.

I taught the youth that:

1) Chastity isn’t the Resistance of Sexuality, but it is the Pursuit of the Highest form of Sexuality.
2) God created sexuality
3) God created sexuality for a purpose
4) It was designed to be experienced in a particular way: In a lifelong committed marriage relationship
5) It’s physical but also spiritual
6) “The Two become One” (1 Corinthians 6:16; Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5)
7) When we engage in sexual activity, something spiritual happens
8) This is why sex outside of a lifelong committed marriage relationship can be so devastating
9) Wait for that marriage relationship for the spiritual connection to take place
10) Don’t Settle for a Watered Down, Degraded, Generic form of the Most Incredibly Intimacy Two People Can Have

I’ve started positing the PP of my lesson outlines online.

I actually mentioned Ed Young’s antics on the subject. Ed Young is a performance-artist. Art is his background and he uses his God-given gifts and passions for ministry purposes. If you really want to understand him, study the performance art of the prophet Ezekiel and the enacted parables of Jesus for where Pastor Young is coming from.

Ed Young believes that the Church in America MUST address the huge and seemingly all-encompassing problem that sexual immorality is in our country. And he’s doing so by proclaiming God’s great intention for sex and how small and degraded the world’s form of sex is.

As I told the youth: God is crazy about sex! He created it. It was his idea. It was one of his best ideas. BUT he created sex for a purpose and that’s a lifelong committed marriage relationship.

Recent and Current Reads

RECENT READS

Duino Elegies, by Rainer Maria Wilke

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson

The House at Pooh Corner, by A.A. Milne

Letters to Orpheus, by Rainer Maria Wilke

The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

The Sign of Four, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame

Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne



CURRENT READS

Divine Comedy, by Dante

The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann

Moby Dick, by Hermann Melville

Omeros, by Derek Walcott

The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis

I TAKE IT BACK ...

In 2010, I state how pained I was when Stone Temple Pilot's eponymous album flopped in my estimation. Well, I take that back.

A year has gone by and I revisited the album last month and have been relistening to it for several weeks. My opinion has changed.

I now believe that this is a very good album and is worth the listening. In fact, I have yet to put it down.

But why did I initially not like it? Here is my theory:

For this argument, there are three types of albums for me:

- Albums I initally enjoy.
- Albums I do not like.
- Albums I do not initially like but then learn to enjoy over subsequent listenings.

Now STP was my favourite band of the 1990s and I have either loved or really enjoyed all of their albums. Core (1992) and Purple (1994) are in my Top 50 Favourite Albums and the latter has occasionally been in my Top Ten.

Furthermore, I have either loved or liked every single STP album at first listening. Not a single variation in their first five. But here is their sixth and I do not like it on the first go.

I was flummoxed. But now that I have had more opportunities for the tunes to settle in and find their groove ...


I am now very much relieved. I can now happily state that STP has made 6 albums in a row that I have enjoyed.

Bring on number seven!

MY TOP ALBUMS OF 2011

Best of Gloucester County (2011) – Danielson

I discovered Danielson and he (they) became one of my favorites real quickly. I lauded Ships (2006) as probably the best “Christian album” I’ve ever heard. Well, it is the best “Christian album” I’ve ever heard and it was the best album I heard last year. In fact, Ships has now been moved into my Top 10. Top 10! Do you know how often that occurs? The last time was 2004! But what about the dreaded follow-up? No fears. This is another great album by one of the best Christian musicians out there. I highly recommend it.



Helplessness Blues (2011) - Fleet Foxes

I discovered Fleet Foxes last year and immediately fell in love with them. Their album, Fleet Foxes (2008), - which has now been moved into my Top 50 - was one the best albums of last year. Wonderfully, their sophomore effort was just as brilliant and is the best album of the year. Their EP Sun Giant (2008) was an honorable mention last year.



Oh, Perilous World (2007) – Rasputina

Here is a quirky little album of cello-rock. Yes, cello-rock. These songs combine great songwriting and arrangement, good production, good singing, great lyrics (many about historical events), and the cello. A great listen. I’m currently listening to the follow-up album, Sister Kinderhook (2010)



Ringo (1973) – Ringo Starr

I first learned of this album while I was in high school. Think about it:

- This album came out in 1973
- ALL FOUR BEATLES wrote songs for the album
- ALL FOUR BEATLES perform on the album

Can we not argue that this is practically the LAST Beatle album? But throw all that out and it’s still a really great album with top-notch songs. Ringo Starr appears in Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper’s ... (1967), and The Beatles (1968) which are in my Top 50 and in Abbey Road (1969) which is in my Top 10.



Seven Swans (2004) - Sufjan Stevens

Here is another fantastic album by certainly one of the best musicians who happens to be a Christian. In fact, I think this album is my favorite of his and once of the best Christian albums I’ve ever heard. I highly recommend it. His album, Illinois (2005) appeared on my last year’s Top Ten. His album, Age of Adz (2010), appears as an honorable mention.



Smile (2011) – The Beach Boys

After forty plus years, The Beach Boys finally released Smile. This was to be the follow-up to Pet Sounds (1966) but was abandoned by the group before it could be completed. For the following decade, songs from the Smile Sessions were “salvaged” for subsequent Beach Boy albums. These, plus many of the unreleased songs, found their way onto bootlegged copies of Smile. It wasn’t until 2004 that Brian Wilson released a newly recorded Smile as a solo album. The popularity of this solo album (and the release of The Pet Sounds Sessions [1997]) sparked renewed interest in this unfinished project. So finally, this year, The Smile Sessions was released and included all of the recordings that were to be a part of the originally proposed album. Now obviously, since the project was abandoned, much of the album lacks the polish that one heard in Pet Sounds and which one can hear in Smile (2004). Think of it in terms of The Beatles Anthology (1995-1996). Nevertheless, this is a great album and a wonder to finally behold. Smile (2004) by Brian Wilson is in my Top 10 and also my favorite album.



Write About Love (2010) - Belle and Sebastian

Belle and Sebastian continue to amaze me with their superb songwriting, vocals, and arrangement. The lead singer and songwriter is a christian and his faith often appears in his songs, Write About Love is no exception. This is a really great album. Their albums, Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant (2000), If You’re Feeling Sinister (1996), and Tiger Milk (1996) all appeared as honorable mentions last year. Dear Catastrophe Waitress (2003) is in my Top 50.



HONORABLE MENTIONS

Age of Adz (2010) - Sufjan Stevens

Band of Joy (2010) – Robert Plant

Berlin (1973) – Lou Reed

Blue Cathedral (2004) – Comets on Fire

I’m Going Away (2009) - The Fiery Furnaces

In the Wake of Poseidon (1979) – King Crimson

Joe’s Garage (1979) – Frank Zappa

King of Limbs (2011) – Radiohead

Logos (2009) – Atlas Sound

The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1975) – Rick Wakeman

Oar (1969) – Skip Spence

Octopus (1972) – Gentle Giant

S.F. Sorrow (1968) - The Pretty Things

Simple Things (2001) – Zero 7

Thickfreakness (2003) – The Black Keys

Vampire Weekend (2008) - Vampire Weekend

Veckatimest (2009) – Grizzly Bear

Volume One (2008) – She & Him

Widow City (2007) – The Fiery Furnaces

Yeah Ghost (2009) – Zero 7