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A La Carte (11/9)
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It’s Tuesday, and Tuesdays are a strangely busy day for me. So without further ado, let’s get to today’s A La Carte links:
T4G via Hip Hop - I don’t know that anyone could have predicted the Calvinist resurgence we’ve seen in recent years. And even if someone could have predicted it, I don’t know that he would have foreseen the accompanying movement within the world of Christian hip hop. Erik Raymond writes about a recent show he took in and the ways in which it encouraged him.
Be Rare - Part one of this series has drawn my attention. Parts 2 and 3 will follow today and tomorrow. “While I was out running (er, jogging leisurely) this afternoon, two words popped into my mind. They were (you guessed it) ‘be rare.’ Shortly after I moved to California, a friend spoke those words to me over the phone. She said, ‘Leanne, be rare.’ I don't remember much of anything else that we talked about those six-ish years ago, but those two words stayed with me. Today, they returned to the forefront of my mind and I wanted to share some thoughts with you.”
Interview with Ken & Joni - I don’t often listen to audio interviews, but I enjoyed this one with Ken and Joni Tada. It’s great to hear of their great love for one another and the way that God has sustained them through her fight with cancer.
1 Timothy 2:12 - Denny Burk takes a look at the rendering of 1 Timothy 2:12 in the new NIV (2011). “There is a reason why countless articles and even an entire book have been written on the interpretation of this single verse. In many ways, this verse is the most disputed text in the debate. It is clear that Paul is prohibiting something, but just what he prohibits has been fiercely contested.”
An Average Family’s Gas Prices - There’s probably something a little bit obsessive in a guy who tracks the price his family pays at the pump over a long period of time. Nevertheless, here it is. It’s amazing to see how the prices fluctuate. I remember those carefree days in the fall of 2008!
Twenty Untranslatable Words - Here’s a list of twenty words from around the world that just don’t lend themselves to easy translation. Like Jayus, an Indonesian word that refers to “a joke so poorly told and so unfunny that one cannot help but laugh.” I could use that word sometimes…
A letter may be written, when it is not sealed; so grace may be written in the heart, and the Spirit may not set the seal of assurance to it. —Thomas Watson
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Comments (13)
I don’t understand the Thomas Watson quote. Can you explain it to me? It sound like you can lose your salvation.
Denny Burk has been using my NIV2011 comparison pages:http://www.slowley.com/niv2011_comparison/
Hopefully they’re of use to other people too.
I’m a complementarian, partly because of that passage in 1 Timothy, but it would not have occurred to me to read “assume authority” the way Denny Burk says it leans until this blog post. In that context, I read “assume” like “take up” or, well, “exercise.” One would have to read into the word the concept of “sinfully assuming apart from the delegation of the church,” which is something (in my opinion) egalitarians already do with “exercise” anyway. The best question is not “which side does this support?” but “what does the text say?” Doug Moo’s comment was helpful, I think.
I just wanted to tell you that I love love love your A La Carte posts. They offer interesting tidbits that I look forward to reading every single day! Thank you for sharing them…as well as your other reflections that I also thoroughly enjoy.
@Joanie, this sounds like something that was talked about much during Puritan times(don’t hear it as much now) about how not everyone would have “assurance” of salvation, even if they were in fact saved. Assurance was treated as a separate(and not necessarily inevitable) result of salvation, not a requirement. I think that’s what the quote is getting at.
Re: translations of 1 Tim 2:12:
Its worth noting that the KJV uses the phrase “usurp authority over the man” which is conceptually similar to the new NIV translation. And its not like the KJV was a big egalitarian experiment.
The word in question (authenteo) is used exactly once in the new testament. Strong’s has the following meanings:
1) one who with his own hands kills another or himself2) one who acts on his own authority, autocratic3) an absolute master4) to govern, exercise dominion over one
Strong’s obviously isn’t inspired canon, but to the extent that it accurately represents the English meaning of the Greek, it certainly seems like the word has a wider connotation than just “be in authority over”.
Wow, that quote is really cool, I also really like that article about all the untranslatable words.
i’m *hoping* to see the Unashamed tour this weekend in the NY/NJ metro area. Erik’s post makes me even more pumped about going :)
Re: Untranslatable words, number 9 on the list is known informally as ‘flashing’ amongst Nigerians. As in ‘My little brother just flashed me because he’s broke so I have to call him back’.
RE 1 Tim. 2:12, I wish Burke, Moo and the other scholars in the debate would address how the surrounding text (should) contribute to the understanding and translation of the verse as we always advise — context, context, context. The preceding verse (11) comands that women learn in quiet submission, and the subsequent verses (13,14) establish gender order both from creation and the fall. This should weigh *huge* on the connotation and therefore the best translation of the verse in the middle. I’m sick of seeing complementarians lose debates by playing the egalitarian’s single-verse-debate game. They try to wiggle and nuance a single verse (or a single word, if they can get away with it), utterly bereft of any surrounding context. The Scriptures are not a series of fortune cookie saying strung together and likewise severable.
Hahaha never thought to find the word ‘jayus’ here! Would be interesting if you or other people start adopting that word in english conversation :)
A comment on the gas prices piece: In South East England where I live, we currently pay 5.45 GBP ($8.80) per gallon of unleaded fuel for the car, and over the last 3 years the price has hardly ever been below 4.50 GBP ($7.25) per gallon. So I trsut you’re all praising God for the blessing of cheap fuel over there in North America…!
@Adrian: What percentage of that 5.45 GBP is taxes? There’s a common American perception that everything is so expensive on the other side of the pond because everything and everyone is hyper-taxed to fund a socialist system.
Good question Eloquorius! According to the information at http://www.petrolprices.com/price-of-petrol.html, if a litre of fuel costs 1.20 GBP at the pump (petrol has been sold in litres here rather than gallons for a good number of years now), value added tax (VAT) and fuel duty (yes, we pay 2 taxes on our petrol!) total 75.05 pence - or 62.5% of the total price paid. Needless to say, we’re not happy about that, but being good Christians, we do have to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s! I shall stay away from discussing the politics of all this though, if you don’t mind, except to say that the common perception on my side of the pond is that North Americans are living in cloud cuckoo land at everyone else’s expense, with a multi-trillion dollar debt that seems to trouble no-one. Needless to say, both perspectives are, I’m sure, incorrect… :-)