Ched Spellman

What Does the Enemy Find in You?

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:15:00 +0000

Our Lord said, 'The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me' (Jn 14:30).

But when the Enemy comes to us, he finds not only something, but much that is compatible with his purposes. Our hearts all too readily echo the voice of Satan. When he sows his weeds, the fields of our old natures soon produce a harvest. Evil remains even in those who have been redeemed, and it infects all the faculties of their minds.

Oh, if only we could get rid of the memory of sin!

–C. H. Spurgeon, Finding Peace in Life's Storms, 10-11.

Second-Hand Scholarship

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:15:00 +0000

Where an author's foreign-language citations are both few in number and strikingly long in the tooth, it is hard to resist the uncharitable suspicion that they have been "recycled."

–Markus Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 35.

Beware the Self-Sustaining Hermeneutical Discourse

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:15:00 +0000

A good (if overworked) caution:

Anyone abreast of the mass of hermeneutical discussion operating across the theological subdisciplines at the beginning of the twenty-first century will be aware of an odd feature of that discussion: it is easy to allow the hermeneutical discussion to become a self-sustaining discourse increasingly distanced from the actual tasks and practices of reading the particular texts that go to make up the Christian Bible.

–Richard Briggs, The Virtuous Reader, 35.

Lamenting the Avalanche of Secondary Literature

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 16:15:00 +0000

By any standard it is now impossible to keep up with the sheer quantity of publications, increased exponentially by two and a half decades of word-processing technology.

The "publish or perish" mentality, long since dreaded especially by junior scholars, has become an all-encompassing output culture that is at once wholly unrealistic in its expectations and encouraging of staggering superficiality in its Diktat to leave no thought unpublished.

–Markus Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 33.

Seeing From the Inside

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:15:00 +0000

There are limits to how much you can usefully say about the stained glass windows of King's College Chapel without actually going in to see them from the inside.

–Markus Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 74.

Bockmuehl uses this image to illustrate the inability of New Testament interpreters to successfully avoid dealing with truth claims and the impinging nature of the reality to which the texts point.

Textual Inhabitants of Biblical Lands

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:15:00 +0000

We cannot venture into the Bible as tourists, we must become inhabitants of the land.

–Mariano Magrassi, Praying the Bible: An Introduction to Lectio Divina, 81.

Never Fully Appreciated Texts

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:15:00 +0000

Any text that one could fully appreciate would be unlikely to be worth the effort.

–Hugh S. Pyper, "Judging the Wisdom of Solomon: The Two-Way Effect of Intertextuality," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 59 (1993): 30.

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:15:00 +0000

The new issue of Themelios is out, and it contains my review of Alan Jacobs' recent book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, which is possibly a "must read" (for why I put "must read" in scare quotes, well, you'll have to read it, or at least my review!).

The first and last paragraphs of the review:

The literary landscape is strewn with signposts decrying the decay of print publication and robust readership. Can readers continue to flourish in the strange new world of new media?

With this volume, Alan Jacobs enters the fray by examining the effect of this cultural climate on the task of reading. As a professor of English at Wheaton College, Jacobs is a vocational reader who has reflected on these issues carefully. With no traditional chapters, the book takes the form of an extended essay where each section or heading begins a new topic or idea. With this meandering format, each step further into the book develops an element of Jacobs's overall perspective on the task of reading.

---

Jacobs's prose surely ambles but never seems to ramble. Along the way, he entertains a delightful assortment of variegated asides, including discussion of the cognitive processes involved in the task of reading, the stunning plasticity of the brain, the lurid myth of multitasking, the odious art of marking up library books, the joy of "getting lost" in a good story, Machiavelli's reading habits, and Harold Bloom's disdain for the Harry Potter series.

Though most readers will recognize that there are certainly other modes of reading that must be pursued at times (e.g., digesting dense theological tomes!), Jacobs makes a persuasive case that reading for pleasure should remain a live option in any discipline. There might also be room in this account for further considering the distorting effects that sin can unleash upon our readerly whims and desires (i.e., What should we do if the "joy" of reading that Whim brings us turns out to be Turkish delight?).

The book as a whole makes many compelling points and refreshingly celebrates the God-given gift of reading in an age where texts are ubiquitous but often neglected. As he warmly reminds us, "The books are waiting" (p. 25). His waits as well. He has given us a rumination on reading that is instructive while also itself a pleasure to read. So, violating Jacobs's own embargo on mandating books for someone else to read, tolle lege . . . but only if you want to.

The Grammatical Mascot of a Sentimental Age!

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 19:57:00 +0000

Today the exclamation point is used with unprecedented, hyperventilating frequency in correspondence, deployed to soften underlying hostilities or to gin up excitement where no true reason for it suggests itself.

As a default punctuation setting, occupying the place in email and texting where the staid, neutral period once stood, the exclamation point is the grammatical mascot of an age that values the public projection of sunny emotions and feeling.

–Pamela Haag, "Death by Treacle," in American Scholar

Man's Ultimate Calling According to the Psalter

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:15:00 +0000

Again and again, the psalmists tell us that man’s ultimate calling is to use the resources of human language to celebrate God’s greatness and to express gratitude for His beneficent acts.

–Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms, xx.

Things I Have Learned in the PhD Program (9)

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:15:00 +0000

9. Be careful what you tweet about your dissertation when your supervisor is following you.

Recently, I tweeted,

Which reminded me of a cautionary tale from earlier this year. One morning I wrote this:

And a few minutes later I read this:

France is Bacon . . . obviously

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:15:00 +0000

A delicious misunderstanding demystified:

(via)

Beginning a History of the Alexandrian Library

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:15:00 +0000

Deep in my study, as the outer world resounded with the havoc of war, or limped in slow recovery from its frightful toll, I thought I would write the history of the Alexandrian Library, itself the perfect victim of military madness and of the frenzy of the heart and soul of man.

–Edward A. Parsons, The Alexandrian Library: Glory of the of the Hellenic World, ix.

Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian, Book Review (Shorter | SBJT)

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:15:00 +0000

Title: Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian: For the Church's One Bible
Author: Daniel R. Driver
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck, 2010
Price: € 69,00 (amz)
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 328

In this revised version of his doctoral thesis completed at the University of St. Andrews, Daniel R. Driver seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of Childs’ oeuvre and to uncover the inner workings of his brand of biblical theology.

After surveying Childs’ life and the history of the canon debate, Driver divides his analysis into three main parts. In part one, Driver gives a sort of reception history of Childs’ work both in English and German contexts. In part two, he exposits Childs’ canonical approach itself and examines its internal coherence. According to Driver, Childs makes two major shifts or turns in his career. The first is Childs’ movement from a focus on “form” to a focus on “final form.”

In part three, Driver examines the second major shift in Childs’ career, which relates to his reflection on the relationship between the Testaments. Childs’ concern in this area is to affirm that Christ is the subject (the res) that both the Old and New Testaments witness to in their own discrete voices. After providing a test case for the issues raised throughout his discussion (on the scope of Psalm 102), Driver concludes with an epilogue that surveys recent work on the canon and suggests its relevance to Childs’ approach.

One of the consistent criticisms of Childs is that he is inconsistent and that his approach is in need of reconstructive surgery. This perception was encouraged by James Barr’s biting criticism of Childs throughout his career. According to Driver, this critique in particular has helped generate a “bi-polar Childs” in much secondary literature (36-50). On the one hand, Childs champions a focus on the final form of the text, but on the other he engages in various forms of historical criticism in his treatment of biblical material. Many critical biblical scholars would decry a privileging of a final form, which they view as arbitrary, and many evangelical biblical scholars would balk at the use of critical methodology, which they view as dangerous.

For Driver, what is missing in the contemporary discussion is the historical Childs, or better, the canonical Childs. Though one might surely still take issue with elements of Childs’ work, Driver maintains the importance of recognizing that for Childs, there is an internal logic to his version of the canonical approach. Driver points out that the “missing link” many critics neglect is the notion of canon-consciousness (71, 144ff) and that Childs sees an integral connection between the “pre-canonical” forms of texts and traditions and the shape they take in the canon as part of the church’s Scripture.

Driver’s articulation of Childs’ “career thesis” is that “the historically shaped canon of scripture, in its two discrete witnesses, is a Christological rule of faith that in the church, by the action of the Holy Spirit, accrues textual authority” (4). Driver’s overall contention is that Childs’ approach is complex but ultimately coherent.

Evangelical and historical-critical scholars alike who are wary of all things "canonical" would do well to situate Childs in his academic context. Driver demonstrates that throughout his career, Childs reflected on the relationship between historical-critical and biblical-theological methods and assumptions. And there are important differences between his application of these critical tools and “business as usual” in the scholarly guilds.

In a sense, the burden of Driver’s volume is to answer thoroughly the question, “What happens if Childs’ work proves to have a logic of its own, even if it is a logic one finally chooses not to enter?” (59). It is this suggestive yet balanced approach that makes Driver’s volume an instructive hermeneutical guide for reading Childs.

See also,

My ~~overly garrulous~~ more developed review/interaction with Driver's volume (and a few relevant links)
This shorter version also appears in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 15.3 (Fall 2011): 97.

Canon Formation as a Survival of the Fittest

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:15:00 +0000

At the conclusion of his excellent and wide-ranging discussion of the formation of the New Testament (The Canon of the New Testament, 286-67), Bruce Metzger makes a few well-put general comments:

Instead of suggesting that certain books were accidentally included and others were accidentally excluded from the New Testament Canon--whether the exclusion be defined in terms of the activity of individuals, or synods, or councils--it is more accurate to say that certain books excluded themselves from the canon. Among the dozen or more gospels that circulated in the early Church, the question of how, and when, and why our four Gospels came to be selected for their supreme position may seem to be a mystery--but it is a clear case of the survival of the fittest.

From this point of view the Church did not create the canon, but came to recognize, accept, affirm, and confirm the self-authenticating quality of certain documents that imposed themselves as such upon the Church. If this fact is obscured, one comes into serious conflict not with dogma but with history.

Yielded Secrets

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:15:00 +0000

One of the wonderful things about books is that they don't grow agitated or dismissive. They patiently bear all the scrutiny you choose to give them, and the more carefully you read them the more of their secrets they yield.

–Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, 53.

The Complexity of Unalloyed Dialogue

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 05:15:00 +0000

Updike on Hemingway:

It was he who showed us all how much tension and complexity unalloyed dialogue can convey, and how much poetry lurks in the simplest nouns and predicates.

–John Updike, "Foreword," in John Updike: The Early Stories, x.

The Entire Fabric of the Bible

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:15:00 +0000

Christ not only fulfills the Old Testament but fills out the entire fabric of the Bible, summing up all things in Himself.

–Joshua E. Williams, "How the Birth of Jesus Fulfills the Old Testament"

The Purpose of Liberty

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:15:00 +0000

Liberty is intended by God for you to use as an instrument for loving others (Gal. 5:13), and not as an instrument for suiting yourself.

–Doug Wilson

Art and Splendor

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:15:00 +0000

Art is worthless
unless it plants
a measure of splendor in people's hearts.

–Taha M. Ali, in Poetry 199.3 (Dec 2011): i.

Updike on the Aging Writer

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:15:00 +0000

In the work Updike was editing before he died, he muses about the "advantages, for a writer, of youth and obscurity."

You are full of material--your family, your friends, your region of the country, your generation--when it is fresh and seems urgently worth communicating to readers. No amount of learned skills can substitute for the feeling of having a lot to say, of brining news. Memories, impressions, and emotions from your first twenty years on earth are most writers' main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant.

By forty, you have probably mined the purest veins of this precious lode; after that, continued creativity is a matter of sifting the leavings. You become playful and theoretical; you invent sequels, and attempt historical novels. The novels and stories thus generated may be more polished, more ingenious, even more humane than their predecessors;

But none does quite the essential earthmoving work that Hawthorne, a writer who dwelt in the shadowland "where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet," specified when he praised the novels of Anthony Trollope as being "as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case."

–John Updike, Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism, 3-4.

A Language the Dark Voices Do Not Understand

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:15:00 +0000

The gospel gives me hope, and hope is not a language the dark voices understand.

–Andrew Peterson, from the foreword to Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative, by Russ Ramsey (via).

Giving Thanks For God

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:26:00 +0000

I'm thankful for this reminder from Jason Lee about the effects that our thanksgiving discourse has on how we think about the God who gives. A few excerpts that I appreciated:

On the Implications of "Thanks-Giving":

For the secular mind, the whole holiday makes no sense. Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving somehow implies that I am not in charge of my own destiny. Thanksgiving somehow implies that a higher power not only exists but is in some way personally interested and personally involved in my life. To the secular mind, the very notion of “Thanksgiving” is repulsive and must be replaced. So, the movement to the title of “Turkey Day” is no real surprise.

On Thanksgiving To God:

Believers recognize that we are not just thankful for the good things that we have but that we should direct our thanksgiving to God. If we do not add to whom we are thankful, then our thanksgiving becomes little more than a progress report or satisfaction quotient. So, it is not just that we are thankful for (i.e. happy with) our jobs, our homes or our health. We are thankful to God who is our provider, our protector and our sustainer.

On Thanksgiving For God:

See, it is not just that we remember that we should be thankful to God, but that we are also thankful for God (e.g. Ps. 9:1-2). It is true that we are often overwhelmed by the gracious and loving acts of God including His good gifts of material provisions and life/health for us or our family. We are truly amazed at His provision of spiritual benefits such as forgiveness of sins, the fruit of the Spirit or a loving community of believers.

However, we must never let our thanksgiving for the good provisions of God overshadow our thanks for God Himself. We need to thank Him because of His glorious nature. There would be no possibility of wonderful things such as love, mercy, truth, righteousness, beauty and life, except through God who IS these things. So, pass the rolls, but first remember to be thankful to God for God.

Hey, It Looks Like You're Installing Windows . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:15:00 +0000

This might only be funny if you were once a heavy user of MS Word 2003 (and a lover of arid paronomasia):

Fleeting Affluence and Empty Cathedrals

noreply@blogger.com (Ched) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 01:15:00 +0000

A good word from a Reformation Day sermon I heard in 2005:

Right now is the time for American Christianity to influence the world for Christ.

We cannot be sure how long our time will last. We can spend our time, money and energy constructing affluent church buildings, but I have been to the great cathedrals of both Protestant and Catholic Europe–those cathedrals are empty.

How did they spend their days of affluence? How will we spend ours?

–Jason K. Lee, "Faith and Freedom," 6.