Britain’s Got Paul

Have you seen Paul Potts?

I wonder whether this guy will popularize opera the way Tiger Woods popularized golf. Just consider that over 15 million people have viewed this on YouTube, and another nearly 11 million people have an alternate version of this same clip.

More Thoughts on the Sacraments

In light of Jacob’s last post on baptism, I’m curious what he would think of John Nevin’s view of the objective power of the sacraments, as summarized by William DiPuccio in The Interior Sense of Scripture.

“Finally, Nevin maintains that the virtue of the sacrament is appropriated only by an active faith. The sacrament is a medium of communication with Christ only for believers. Faith, therefore, is necessary to receive its efficacy. Those who come to the table unworthily (whether they are regenerated or not) receive only the sensible signs of the Eucharist which they eat and drink to their own condemnation. But, faith does not clothe the sacrament with its power. ‘The force of the sacrament is in the sacrament itself.’ Faith is only the condition or instrument by which we appropriate its effects, not the principle of its objective force.”

I ask, because this view seems different from the analogy of the seed which you put forward in the post. In that understanding, faith seems to take a more active role, aided through the sacrament. On Nevin’s view, it seems that faith is merely a condition for a grace to be communicated through the sacrament itself. Is this a case of hyper-sacramentalism? Or just a different way of saying the same thing?

Tom in the Lion’s Den

Well, as every scarlet-blooded Nebraska football fan knows, UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman fired Steve Pederson from the position of Athletic Director and hired Tom Osborne to take his place. This was, in my opinion, a good move. Even though I have been very supportive of and excited about Steven Pederson and the coach he hired, Bill Callahan, I have gotten to the point that I think we need to start from scrap lest we continue to get worse.

So I, like many other fans of similar intensity, was hoping to see blood shed at the beginning of this week, just waiting to see which heads were going to be put on the chopping block. I was thrilled to hear that Pederson had been fired, and I was even more thrilled to hear that the good Dr. Tom was being put in his place. I was humbled, however, when Tom stepped up to the microphone at the press conference on Tuesday.

Justifying War

The following is an adapted version of a part of a paper for my ethics class concerning war. I would appreciate any critiques or comments regarding this.

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Some people critique pure pacifism by noting that the Old Testament is full of war the God himself directed. Others critique this critique by noting that “this argument ignores the difference between a theocracy and our present government, it enjoys great popularity.” [I am referring to and quoting the chapter on war that my professor wrote for this unit, which you can access here.] I would certainly agree that Israel’s warfare is intrinsically different from any warfare that a modern state would employ; however, I do not think that this logic is taken far enough.

Richard Dawkins in Birmingham

I didn’t write anything about a debate between Richard Dawkins (the famous atheist of The God Delusion) and fellow Oxford professor John Lennox (not the Beatle), largely because I share the opinion of a writer (whom I can’t remember, but read recently) who states that all of his atheistic beliefs are innovative and creative…for 19th century. Thus, I don’t make it a huge point of following his movements.

Furthermore, the tickets ranged from $50-$70 a seat, so I couldn’t really afford the trip. I did, however, have some friends who attended the debate, and they said that it was very interesting. Through Mere Comments, I found a link to a Wall Street Journal editorial about the event.

Also, the Covenant Presbyterian Church mentioned is a PCA church right across the street from Samford University, where I go to school. I know a lot of people there.

Resurrection Day

We had midterms this past week, which caused no little stress in my life. This was the perfect storm of schoolwork, and I cannot remember doing more work in one week since I had to write my senior thesis in a week, and then preach that Sunday, a couple of years ago. Praise God for his strength through this week, but I am very glad to have been lifted out of Sheol. (Okay, I might be exaggerating a little bit there.)

Changing the subject, I have been very interested, since I took a Puritan Spirituality class last January, in the relationship between Puritans (who largely led to my Presbyterian denomination) and Anglicans. Certainly, many Anglicans were Puritans, but there were many parts of Anglicanism that caused Puritans to reject the Church of England with great passion.

The Glory of God in His Gospel

I posted this quotation three years ago, but it struck me again as I read it this morning, so I thought it was worth posting again. (This is especially the case since I have had no time to post something more original.)

D.A. Carson, in his For the Love of God, Vol. 2, writes:

We must always remember that: The Gospel is not admired in Scripture primarily because of the social transformation it effects, but because it reconciles men and women to a holy God. Its purpose is not that we might feel fulfilled, but that we might be reconciled to the living and holy God. The consummation [of Christ and the Church in the future] is delightful to the transformed people of God, not simply because the environment of the new heaven and the new earth is pleasing, but because we forever live and work and worship in the unshielded radiance of the presence of our holy Maker and Redeemer. That prospect must shape how the church lives and serves, and determine the pulse of its ministry. The only alternative is high-sounding but self-serving idolatry.

As a seminary student, I would add that the Gospel is not merely a beautiful piece of theology to be observed and appreciated for its elegance, but it is the very power of God unto salvation; and this salvation is not merely so that we won’t go to hell, but is the way that we come to know and enjoy and glorify the great God of creation as he recreates us into the image of his Son.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Spirit–Three in One!
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.
World without end! Amen! Amen!

ESCAPED FROM SIBERIA.; JACOB GERBER SAFE ONCE MORE IN HIS OMAHA HOME.

OMAHA, Neb., Dec. 5 — Jacob Gerber is once more in Omaha, having escaped from the Siberian exile to which he was deemed a year and a half ago. He arrived in the city last night after an absence of twenty-one months. After being a resident of this city for six years he returned to Russia to dispose of what property he had there and to bring his family to this country.

Read the full article.

A Happy Ending

As some of you know, my iBook has had logic board problems since I bought it. It was a widespread issue with the G3 iBooks, so much so that Apple created an extended repair program covering the issue. I had my logic board replaced three times under the program, and it just failed again a few days ago. Upon calling Apple Support, I discovered that the program had ended a few months ago, and so the only solution was an expensive out-of-warranty repair.

Not knowing where else to go, I sent the following email to Steve Jobs:

Dear Steve,

Today the Apple technician at my university diagnosed my Apple G3 iBook (serial # UV342######) with logic board failure. This is the fourth time that my logic board has failed since I purchased it in May 2004, just over three years ago. I called technical support this afternoon only to discover that the iBook logic board repair extension program has recently ended and thus, in order to fix my computer, I would need to pay hundreds of dollars for an out-of-warranty repair.

I’m very disappointed with the way in which Apple dealt with the iBook logic board problem. Apple acknowledged from the beginning that logic board failure on this particular iBook model was widespread and recurrent, as evident in my case, and yet each time they only replaced the logic board rather than fixing the issue. As a student, it was an extreme inconvenience to repeatedly send my computer to Apple each time this occurred (the third time the repair took a month to perform) and be without my computer during the college semesters. When I called tech support the third time (April 2006) and asked if a more permanent remedy could be found, such as replacing the defective iBook with a newer model, I was told that they would repair this issue three times and then replace the iBook on the fourth occasion. Yet now, because the fourth failure occurred just a few months after the program ended, I’m stuck with a defective computer in the middle of my first semester of graduate school.

I was very impressed with the user interface of my iBook and with Apple’s craftsmanship in other products (my iPod has always worked perfectly) and so I was even more surprised and disappointed that instead of recalling and replacing a defective product, in this case Apple merely used stop-gap repairs that never actually fixed the problem. Now I’m left with a defective product and no affordable solution.

I was expecting at most to receive an apology and maybe a iTunes gift card or something. Instead, today I received a phone call from one of Jobs’ representatives who said that they reviewed my case and thought that a full replacement would be the best solution. Since the iBook is no longer produced, they’re sending me a brand new 2 GHz MacBook, which should arrive by Friday.

I guess the moral of the story is that there are still some companies like Apple who take legitimate complaints seriously. Now I wait for my shiny new MacBook.

"I will open my mouth in a parable…"

Psalm 78 opens by declaring:

¹Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
     incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
²I will open my mouth in a parable;
     I will utter dark sayings from of old,
³things that we have heard and known,
     that our fathers have told us.
⁴We will not hide them from their children,
     but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might,
     and the wonders that he has done.

It is interesting that, on one hand, the psalmist describes his psalm as being a “parable” and an utterance of “dark sayings from of old,” which suggests some form of mystery. (Think, for example, of how Jesus specifically used parables to veil the mystery of who he was.) On the other hand, the psalmist insists that he is writing merely things “that we have head and known/that our fathers have told us.”

Certainly, much of the psalm is a survey of Israel’s history, and therefore a story with which ever good Hebrew would have been intimately familiar. I think, though, that the psalmist sneaks in the mystery at the end of the psalm, masquerading its glory as something very obvious in Israel’s history:

⁷⁰He chose David his servant
     and took him from the sheepfolds;
⁷¹from following the nursing ewes he brought him
     to shepherd Jacob his people,
     Israel his inheritance.
⁷²With upright heart he shepherded them
     and guided them with his skillful hand.

What is so mysterious about describing David as the shepherd of Israel? Well, in three of the psalms directly surrounding Psalm 78 (Psalm 77:20, Psalm 79:13, and Psalm 80:1), God himself is described as the Shepherd of Israel. How could both David and God be the Shepherd of Israel?

“I AM the Good Shepherd…”