Pope Francis I: Time Magazine's "Person of the Year"

This morning, Time named the Pope the "Person of the Year." While Time admittedly is just a magazine and publisher, this decision is remarkable. Since when does the leader of the Catholic Church win the top spot on a pop-culture list of the best people ever? Since this morning, I guess.

What's most amazing to me is not that a Pope won this contest, but that this Pope did.  Apparently the attributes of Jesus Christ are, even after 2,000 years of human failure in his name, still desirable to our culture. A few weeks ago Francis I wrote an eighty-something page document called "The Joy of the Gospel." In it he emphasizes and reemphasizes his desire for "...a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security."  Yes.

If this man does what he says he'll do, if he continues to change the face of the Church into one of kindness, humility, and self-sacrificial love, while holding fast to the principles of God's created order, he's my man of the year, too.

On the controversial issues, the Time article had this to say of the new Pope:

And so Francis signals great change while giving the same answers to the uncomfortable questions. On the question of female priests: “We need to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman.” Which means: no. No to abortion, because an individual life begins at conception. No to gay marriage, because the male-female bond is established by God. “The teaching of the church … is clear,” he has said, “and I am a son of the church, but”—and here he adds his prayer for himself—“it is not necessary to talk about those issues all the time.”

And to the divorced and remarried who have been disallowed the sacrament of Communion in the Catholic Church, Francis says this: Communion "is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak."  Wonderful.

As Anthony LeDonne said in his post on this same article, "...I care that the Pope is attentive to the longstanding portrait of a humbled and humbling Jesus."

Here's to the Pope.

Albert Einstein and Faith

While reading Dale Allison's Constructing Jesus, I came across this enlightening little quote by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld:

In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism.

And so we are left with theories and models of reality that cannot be proven.  And so we, even if the best of scientists, are left with faith.

In other news, check out this NPR article about the discovery of particles that may move faster than light, thus perhaps leaving E=MC^2 as an old, incorrect theory.

Eyewitness Accounts in the New Testament?

I came across a gem of a post on the blog of historian Larry Hurtado. He quotes Richard Bauckham commenting on a new book he's working on.  Bauckham has written some incredibly influential books (here and here) on the history of the first century Greco-Roman and Jewish world, and his comment on Hurtado's blog makes me wonder in anticipation what this new project might add to Bauckham's influence on the understanding of the New Testament.  Here's the comment:

“I guess I ought to clarify my position on eyewitness testimony in the Gospels, since it has been raised and you, Larry, say: ‘As I understand him, he doesn’t mean that the Gospels are “eyewitness testimony” such as a court transcript would provide, but that the Gospels draw on “eyewitness testimony” as it circulated in early Christian circles.’ Well, no, certainly nothing like a court transcript, more like “oral history.” But my point was that the Gospels are CLOSE to the eyewitnesses’ own testimony, not removed from them by decades of oral tradition. I think there is a very good case for Papias’s claim that Mark got his much of his material directly from Peter (and I will substantiate this further with quite new evidence in the sequel to [my book] Jesus and the Eyewitnesses that I’m now writing). I think that the ‘Beloved Disciple’ himself wrote the Gospel of John as we have it, and that he was a disciple of Jesus and thus an eyewitness himself, as he claims, though not John the son of Zebedee. Of course, his Gospel is the product of his life-long reflection on what he had witnessed, the most interpretative of the Gospels, but still the only one actually written by an eyewitness, who, precisely because he was close to Jesus, felt entitled to interpret quite extensively. Luke, as well as incorporating written material (Mark’s Gospel, which he knew as substantially Peter’s version of the Gospel story, and probably some of the “Q” material was in written form), also, I think, did what ancient historians did: he took every opportunity to meet eyewitnesses and interviewed them. He has probably collected material from a number of minor eyewitnesses from whom he got individual stories or sayings. Matthew is the Gospel I understand least! But whatever accounts for Matthew it is not the form-critical picture of anonymous community traditions, which we really must now abandon!”

Here's the link to Hurtado's post: 

http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/bauckham-on-eyewitnesses-and-the-gospels/

And here's another little treat.  Bauckham explaining Jesus and the Eyewitnesses:

Noah: The Upcoming Epic Film

"The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." (Genesis 6:5-8, ESV)

This should be entertaining.  Even if Hollywood twists the biblical storyline for the sake of moviegoer's awe, Russell Crowe, Anthony Hopkins and Hermione--I mean Emma Watson--is a team that is not likely to disappoint.  According to IMDb the director and primary writer, Darren Aronofsky, has been intrigued by the Noah figure since childhood because of his experience with survivor's guilt.  The film will be based on the recently published French graphic novel by Aronofsky & Handel, Noé: Pour la cruauté des hommes ("Noah: For the Cruelty of Men").  Below are the trailers for both that graphic novel and the 2014 epic film, Noah, as well as some images from the graphic novel.

If I had to guess, based on the director's past, the content of the trailer, and the images from the graphic novel, this film will be quite dark and violent.  Perhaps it will, then, do a better job at capturing the nature of humanity.  John Byron said the following in expectation: "The film starring Russell Crowe and Emma Watson seems to promise a technological feast for the eyes and ears as Hollywood tries to do a better job of destroying the world than God."  So it continues.


Edit (bit of a spoiler here): I've done a bit more research and have found some interesting little tidbits about the thrust of the film.  Apparently the earth is destroyed because humankind disrespected the plants and animals.  That is, our current global-warming debate has been handed off to Noah and friends.  Here's what Aronofsky said: "It’s about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what’s going on on this planet. So I think it’s got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist."  Basically, it looks like Noah is going to be the good guy, and God and everyone else will be the bad guys.  For a lengthy summary of the script, click here.

Some pages from the French graphic novel:

N. T. Wright talks about Paul and the Faithfulness of God

Two things: (1) Fortress Press released this photo of Paul and the Faithfulness of God, and (2) they've released a few interviews in which Wright discusses the scope and main themes of his magnum opus (see below, and follow this link).  I am very much looking forward to its release next week.

Preston Sprinkle on First Century Greek and Roman Sexuality

Lately I've been doing a bit of research on the first century view of the nature of sexuality.  I'm particularly interested in this topic because of the recent debates in Christian circles concerning the biology of sexuality and our interpretation of the New Testament based on modern biological discoveries.  Today I came across a series of posts on this issue by Preston Sprinkle.  Click on these links to be directed to Sprinkle's posts: Part I, Part II, Part III.

I would add to Sprinkle's evidence the story told in Plato's Symposium explaining, mythologically, the natural tendencies of human sexuality. Click here to read that story in the Symposium (once you've navigated to the page, the text appears in short chunks.  In order to continue reading, you'll need to click the blue, right-facing arrow just above the English text.)

This is a concern that needs to be handled with careful love.  Please read these posts as parts of an ongoing conversation, and feel free to add to that conversation by commenting.

Sociologist Peter Berger on the Core of Christianity

Today on campus at Gordon College--our sister school just down the street--I had the honor of meeting Peter Berger. His life has been a rare combination of vocation and belief: while he's almost unanimously named the most influential sociologist of religion (perhaps of sociology as a whole) of the second half of the 20th century, he is also a believing Christian. During today's forum he told a story to depict what he calls the irreplaceable core of the Christian faith. The story also appears in his book, Questions of Faith, so I'll quote it from there.

In one of the campaigns to promote atheism a Communist official was sent into a village. The villagers were forced to attend a meeting. The official made an hour long speech, explaining how religion was nothing but superstition, designed to divert people from the task of building a better society. At the end of the speech he said, magnanimously, that the village priest would be allowed to make a rebuttal, but that he would be given just five minutes to do so. The priest, a very simple man, came forward. He said that he did not need five minutes. He turned to the assembly and said: 'Brothers and sisters, Christ is risen!' The villagers responded with the words of the Easter greeting: 'He is risen indeed!' The story does not tell what the Communist official did after that.

After Dr. Berger told this story he said, "If you lose that, if you lose the resurrection, you lose everything." And that is one of the most brilliant minds of our age. 

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