Just a writing update ... [Updated]

Just a writing update:

My New Year’s Resolutions for 2017 were to write one essay a week, finish writing two books, resume work on my Moody book project (lectures in Biblical Theology 42), start work on a new book on ministry, and start looking for publishers.

I wrote 40 essays this year but eventually stopped in September to devote my writing time fully to that new ministry book. This is why I haven’t posted anything new since September 6th.

Early in the year I finished my first book of essays. The second book I wanted to finish this year is an adaptation of my thesis, The Use of Jonah in the Luke-Acts. I started revising it earlier in the year but still have a little more to do on it.

The Moody book project is progressing. I’ve been re-reading many of Dale Moody’s works and much of the secondary works about him. Mostly I’ve been focusing on writing the opening biographical work. I was able to finish the introduction and biography on Thursday and have begun some initial revisions of my previous work.

I began writing the new book on ministry in September and, with 16 chapters completed, I am about halfway done with it. The last three months have been difficult as I focus on the central chapter which combines Aubrey J. Johnson’s analysis of the Hebrew conception of corporate solidarity with Walter Wink’s analysis of the Biblical conception of Powers, and then how these two conceptions can be applied to ministry. Yeah, this is why it took me three weeks just to outline the argument of the chapter. I’ve had to reread all of their works on the subject, read critiques of these works, and study all the relevant Scriptural passages. I finally finished this central chapter just this evening.

At the same time I’ve been listening to a series of lectures by clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson on a psychological interpretation of early Biblical stories. Peterson is not a Christian but he does have a healthy respect for the Biblical stories and takes them very seriously. His approach is phenomenological in basis, interpreting the stories from a Jungian psychological, Nietzschean, biological standpoint. Some of what he has to say about the biological and neurological basis of human consciousness and how it’s communicated through the most ancient of Biblical stories has relevance to my studies of Aubrey and Wink. So far there are 13 of these lectures, each two and a half hours long, and I finished them two weeks ago. A 14th lecture is expected.

With regards to finding publishers for these books, I have only stuck my toe in that water. A more extensive search will come in 2018.

A Quick Thought on Property and Natural Law

The concept of Natural Law (found in Hebrew-Christian thinking, Greek philosophy, Aquinas, Hobbes, and Smith among many others) argues that there are manifest, inalienable rights inherent to reality that can be comprehended by human reason and are universal to all mankind. One of these natural rights is that of private/personal property. This can be understood by the existence of the individual. The individual is fundamentally a personal/private property unto him or herself. ...The concept of private property begins with the acknowledgement of the existence of the individual. From this come ideas of the right to life, the right to privacy, the right of self-preservation, abolition of slavery, freedom of association, and freedom of religion among others.

Marxist thought (drawing from Rousseau, Hobbes and Hegel) - in an attempt to undermine the philosophical structure that undergirds capitalist thought - rejects the concept of private property down to its most fundamental level, arguing that property and rights come from the state and administered by government. This rejection is the philosophical basis for why in so many socialist countries (Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China, North Korea, Cuba, etc.) there are severe human rights violations, abolition of private property, forced labor, collectivism, no freedom of association, and political executions. If there is no natural right to private/personal property, then the state grants to individuals rights and property. Under socialism, you don’t own yourself; the collective state owns you. And if the state is administered by the government, then government can effectively and legally deprive you of life, liberty, and property in the name of the interests of the collective state. For the individual to claim for himself or herself life, liberty, and property apart from the state would be considered, at the very least, stealing. This is why many socialists proclaim “Property is Theft.”

Therefore, when the government seeks to cut taxes for the populace, and particular individuals complain that cutting taxes is “giving it to the wealthy” and “stealing from the national treasury”, now you’ll understand the philosophical underpinning that guides such statements.