“As far as theology is concerned, “www” might stand for “wild, wild west.” Whatever law may hold sway in the civilized territories of academic theology, it is unenforceable out on the range. Internet theology, unlike other academic disciplines, has not been guided or normalized by the presence of any established institutional presence. With a few exceptions, the most useful internet theology websites are the work of fans and amateurs, students and private citizens who do what they do out of love for the subject. “

That’s how I start a short article called “Theology on the Web,” which is the latest entry in the “Surfing the Sites” series at Catalyst. For more than thirty years the little journal Catalyst has been providing “Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives for United Methodist Seminarians.” The new issue is out, so click on through read my article. It provides some good links, a little reporting, and a dash of analysis. Read it quick before it becomes even more out of date as the web moves on from this snapshot. I conclude the article with the observation:

The internet is a great thing, and someday somebody should do something with it for theology. Disciplines like biblical studies or philosophy can boast of indispensable online reference tools, but to date theology cannot. The theological entries at Wikipedia are as good as anything currently available…

Phoebe age 4 steps up to representational drawing just in time for the Christmas season. You can pick out the human figures to the left and the right, especially if you’re prepared for the bold abstraction of showing all the hairs on their heads by portraying one representative hair. Which one is Mary and which one is Joseph? “I don’t know… I forgot,” says the 4-year old artist.

In the middle is baby Jesus, shaped like a tear drop, nestled into a sea of marks representing the hay of the manger.

Merry Christmas.

If God performed a mighty act of salvation in sending his Son, then we have to interpret the helpless baby of Bethlehem as the conqueror who showed God’s salvation to all the ends of the earth. Filling out so sharp a paradox is a big challenge for the poetic imagination, but a few have attempted it. Chief among them is Robert Southwell (1561-1595), who crafted the second half of his poem “New Heaven, New War” around this sheer cliff of contradiction:

This little Babe so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak, unarmed wise,
The gates of hell he will surprise.
(more… )

A little drawing of a boy getting a nutcracker toy soldier for Christmas, you say? Carried out with characteristic verve, but in the unpromising medium of #2 pencil and crumpled yellow legal pad? No, no, no, there is much more going on here.

Attend to the actual placement of the image on the page. The top blue line and the left red lines define the active picture plane. “Boy” (let’s call him “Boy”) may be contained by the blue college-ruled lines, but the top of his impressive head juts into the open space above. So does the crest atop the head of “Soldier” (let’s call him “Soldier”). “Soldier” is also connected to “Boy” by a remarkably affectionate gaze. “Boy” is either striding forward assertively or has legs of different sizes. (The kids at school, by the way, call himTangent-Neck.)

To the left of the double-red line is the tell-tale wrapping paper that lets you know “Soldier” is new. As for what “Boy” is holding in his other hand, your guess is as good as mine: Those are either his fingers or a smaller toy. Either way, he’s not putting them down anytime this season.

“O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvellous things. His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.”

Clearly Psalm 98 is a psalm about salvation. The word “salvation” occurs three times in a consistet translation of the first three verses (KJV and others interpret the word salvation in verse 1 as “victory,” which blunts the force of the repetition). But it doesn’t give much detail about what you’re saved from, and it doesn’t go into detail about how you get saved. Instead it gives most of its attention to praising the savior, the God who accomplishes this salvation. God is named in this Psalm exactly seven times: 6 as Yahweh, and once as “our God.” And there are exactly seven mighty verbs of divine action, with exactly seven commands to praise God: Sing! Shout! Burst forth! Sing! Make music! Make music! Shout!

But we’ve been avoiding one obvious subject. When did this happen?
(more… )

Psalm 98 breaks down nicely into three parts: Verses 1-3 tell you why to praise God: Because of the marvelous deeds of salvation he has done. Verses 4-6 tell you how to praise: Loudly, joyfully, with guitars and trumpets. Then verses 7-9 say who should praise: The sea, the world, the rivers, the hills, which must mean everybody and the ground they’re standing on.

The psalm begins with the command: Sing to the Lord a new song! This phrase, “a new song” occurs exactly seven times in the Old Testament, six throughout the Psalms and once in Isaiah 42. All seven occurrences are amazing things (worth taking a look at sometime) but maybe Psalm 40 is familiar enough that a few lines will conjure the whole context:

I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He brought me up out of the pit,
out of the miry clay,
He set my feet upon a rock,
and made my footsteps firm.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord. (from the U2 translation, modified)

(more… )

“Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvellous things.” — Psalm 98:1

Psalm 98 is a remarkable Psalm, and according to an ancient Christian tradition, it is a Christmas Psalm, an Old Testament text that is appropriate for reading at this time of year.

What’s Christmassy about it, you might ask. Read through it: there are no shepherds or wise men, no virgin birth or prophecies of the coming of the Messiah in Bethlehem, as we can find plentifully in other passages of the Old Testament. So why read Psalm 98 in the time of advent leading up to Christmas? Why spend precious advent time looking into Psalm 98?

Why? It’s always important to know why we do what we do, especially during a season like this when we’re all behaving oddly according to customs we grew up with. My wife and I took our kids to the store a few weeks ago to buy a Christmas tree, and all along the way, the little elves kept up the questions:

Why are we going to put a tree inside our house?
Why is that man using a chain saw to cut the end off the tree?
What does this have to do with baby Jesus?
Why did you yell at that man who changed lanes?
Why do we put decorations on the tree?
Why are we hanging colored lights all over the outside of our house?
Why don’t we hang a lot more colored lights?

(more… )

The January 2007 issue of First Things is already available, and in the “Briefly Noted” section you’ll find my review of Alexander the Corrector, a book about Alexander Cruden of Cruden’s Concordance fame. The editors at First Things snipped a few words here and there to make it fit better, generally improving the review. If you don’t subscribe to First Things you’re missing a lot of great stuff. But since we’re among friends here, I’ll let you have a peek at the longer version of my review.

Alexander the Corrector: The Tormented Genius who Unwrote the Bible. Julia Keay. Overlook, 288 pages, $23.95

When Cruden’s Concordance was first published in 1737 in London, it was immediately recognized as a revolutionary research tool. In the American colonies, Jonathan Edwards read a magazine ad that same year for a work “more useful than any book of this kind hitherto published,” and soon had his own copy. One man had undertaken this monumental task of indexing the entire Bible, and he had done it working for a dozen years, unassisted and uncompensated. That man, Alexander Cruden, was what we might today call focused and detail oriented. We might also call him eccentric or obsessive. In his lifetime he was interred in madhouses four times, and in subsequent biographies has developed a reputation for having been mad. The rumor is an easy one to spread: after all, only a crazy person would index the whole Bible so minutely.
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As a young man around the year 1723, America’s greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards, wrote out a series of personal resolutions, usually published as “Resolutions of a Saintly Scholar.” These 70 numbered resolutions are soul-searching commitments to lead a life of which he would not be ashamed. #6 is, “To live with all my might, while I do live,” and #70 is “Let there be something of benevolence, in all that I speak.” Edwards stands head and shoulders above the crowd of American theologians of his generation or any other, because he was a profound thinker, a powerful preacher, a missionary, and a culture builder. He combined all these roles in one seamless ministry which baffles onlookers.

Tonight I commend to you another saintly scholar, Mark Hopson. Upon graduating from the Torrey Honors Institute last year, Mark was awarded the Angela Good Service Award, given to the student whose life is most characterized by giving, self-sacrifice, and strategic service to others. Along with this service, Mark also excelled in his academic work, as a humanities major and in his Torrey classes. He did both at once in a seamless college career that baffled onlookers.

How many students do you meet who rise to the high standard set by Jonathan Edwards? One in a thousand? One in ten thousand? One in a million? Who is a student who rises to such a level?

Mark Hopson is not that student.

I mean, let’s be realistic here. Even Jonathan Edwards wasn’t that good at this age.

But Mark is a student who I can get away with naming in the same breath as Edwards without provoking peals of laughter. And he is the student who consistently reminds me of the standard set by Jonathan Edwards, and that is high enough praise. We need more saintly scholars good enough to call the standard back to our minds. Mark is no Jonathan Edwards, but he is devout enough, brilliant enough, and effective enough in ministry that he shows us all how these things can go together seamlessly.
(more…)

“Hello,” says the tall stick figure whose top hat is white and black.

“No te entiendo,” responds the short stick figure whose top hat is black and white. His words strike the other stick figure like a sack of doorknobs, knocking him off balance. The words are jumbled and disorienting.

It’s so hard to communicate with each other. But we’re both smiling in a way that’s charming and disarming, so let’s keep trying. After all, we may be different kinds of stick figures, and our arms may be connected to our bodies at very different points, but nevertheless we are both stick figures sharing the same sheet of paper. You have feet and fingers, but I have a neck. Our top hats may have opposite decorations, but don’t you think it’s worth reflecting on the fact that we’re in a special little club of stick figures who wear black and white striped top hats? I mean, how many people like that could there be in the world? Or on this sheet of paper?

What’s a little language trouble compared to that?