Ramble On

Zondervan sent me a free review copy of John H. Armstrong’s “Your Church is Too Small”.  The book weighs in at 199 pages + glossary and notes.  Throughout the text difficult or technical words in the text are bolded and explained in glossary.  This allows the text to use jargon like Kerygma or make references to literature that some might be familiar with, like the Didache.  Those knowledgeable about these subjects aren’t distracted with footnotes or slowed down with an explanatory paragraph and those who aren’t familiar aren’t left in the dark.  The discussion questions at the end of each chapter show that this book is certainly aimed at a wide audience.

The big idea behind the book is that we should take our Christian unity seriously by working towards it.  This thesis is an idea I was sympathetic too before reading the book:  I was baptized and confirmed in a Presbyterian (PCUSA) church, in college was involved with InterVarsity (multi-ethnic chapter), helped plant a Vineyard church, am enrolled in an inter-denominational seminary and now attend an American Baptist church. I love the diversity and certainly agree with Armstrong’s argument that our unity does not lie in uniformity of doctrine but on the work of Jesus Christ.

I have read about a number of attempts to move churches towards ecumenism and Armstrong avoids some common pitfalls.  We can’t move towards the lowest common denominator and we cannot pretend like these differences are not substantial or even mutually-exclusive.  Armstrong investigates a number of schemes to categorize doctrine as essential and non-essential in an attempt to reveal a large amount of common ground.  I greatly appreciate the way that Armstrong challenges the readers (and me) to take Jesus’ command for unity seriously, his incorporation of Trinitarian theology, and his emphasis on relational and visible unity.

One major question cropped up in my mind reading through the first half of this book.  I agree that the Apostle’s Creed is a faithful statement of Christian doctrine, but I don’t think it says everything that needs to be said.  Put more concisely, I believe that the Apostle’s Creed is necessary but not sufficient.  The “four marks of the church” – one, holy, catholic, apostolic – do not exhaust everything that can be said about the church.  And we may want to expand or have multiple definitions for each one of those words.  Under the heading of “holy” I would also include that the church is not a free association of members and not simply “the set of true believers” but a spiritual reality that sets the corporate body of Christ apart from “the world”.  Under the heading of “one” I would also remind Christians that the church is the one institution that God gave us for salvation – there is no other Utopia.  This is not to discount the work of para-church organizations or sodalities (remember I was in InterVarsity!) but that Christ viewed it better for Himself to go and ascend to the Father than not. God’s Spirit and God’s Word given to God’s people in God’s church led by God’s disciples was considered sufficient.

Finally, consider the nature of the Apostle’s Creed itself – does saying “I believe in the Holy Spirit” really quite encompass all that there is to know about God’s Spirit in and among us?  Or think of the Chalcedonian Creed – it does much more to tell you what the incarnation isn’t than what it is.  While I agree that these Creeds are historic and necessary, I don’t think that a reduction to any set of doctrines will really satisfy or foster unity without a parallel statement of orthopraxy.  We’ll see if the second half of the book answers these questions and concerns.

I recently got the opportunity to review Zondervan’s new “Illustrated Bible Background Commentary” for the Old Testament. I was given Volume 1 (which covers the Pentateuch) to review. The series contains 5 hardcover volumes and is in the same vein of their New Testament commentaries of the same name (4 volumes).

A friend of mine in Old Testament Survey at Urbana Theological Seminary recently had to write her final research paper on polygamy and she asked me for help.  I flipped open to the back hoping to find a topical index, but alas, no such thing.  That’s about the only negative thing I have to say about this commentary.  They have a picture index (which spans all five volumes) but no entry for polygamy or marriage – not that I would want to see a picture of those things.  Undeterred, I flipped open to the first major instance of polygamy I could think of – Abram, Sarai, and Hagar (and Ishmael) in Genesis 16.

Flipping to Genesis 16 (pp. 86-87), I found a extended discusion on marriage in its Ancient Near Eastern context along with a picture of an ancient marriage contract.  The text notes

The solution proposed by Sarai is not as shocking or outlandish as it would seem to us today. In the ancient world, barrenness was a catastrophe… because one of the primary roles of the family was to produce the next generation… Marriage contracts of the ancient world, therefore, anticipated the possibility of barrenness and at times specifically dictated a course of action.

The text then goes on to describe a particular marriage contract found by archeologists and even includes some text from the contract itself. The text then concludes that “it is therefore plausible that Sarai is simply invoking the terms of her marriage contract.”

The biggest strength of the commentary is that it collates the most pertinent background information and summarizes it.  In terms of value per page, you will not find anything better than this.  For a full discussion of all of the background material, a detailed commentary on that specific book (or section of the book) would be needed.  Still, the inclusion of primary source material and the extensive biography is a great starting point for those looking to go deeper; it would simply not be possible to find all of this information without already have some exposure to the primary sources or some expertise in the field.  Finally, the pictures, charts, tables and timelines are indispensable in illuminating the context.

They’ve got some of the best scholars in the field writing in their respective niches; whether you agree with John Walton about bara or not, he has an amazing grasp on the relevant background material.  For those looking to shore up the “historical” in their grammatical-historical exegesis, I highly recommend this series, both Old and New Testament.  While not replacing specific commentaries (nor claiming to), Zondervan’s Illustrated Bible Background Commentaries should be on your shelf next to other useful tools like Carson & Beale’s Commentary on the NT’s Use of the OT.

(Originally a paper for PM 503 – Biblical Preaching: Theory & Practice at Urbana Theological Seminary)

Summary

Graeme Goldsworthy lays out a foundation for Christocentric preaching in Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture.  The book is divided into two parts:  part one deals with Biblical Theology and part two takes a closer look at genre.  Together these parts argue for the preacher to use and view Scripture within both the larger salvation historical narrative, the canonical genre, and the immediate context of the passage with the ultimate goal of interpreting all Scripture through a Christological lens. Goldsworthy’s main question, which shows up in almost every chapter, is “How does this passage testify to Christ?” By setting up a Biblical framework for the unity of the Bible about God’s salvation (Chapter 2), Biblical theology as redemptive-salvation history (Chapter 3), the words preached as pointing to the Word (Chapter 4), Jesus’ own Christological lens on Scripture (Chapter 5), Biblical literary diversity as ultimately unified (Chapter 6), the Gospel as the objective work of Christ for, in and with us (Chapter 7), Biblical revelation as judgment and redemption moving towards an ultimate eschatological redemption (Chapter 8), Jesus as the ultimate telos of all preaching (Chapter 9) Goldsworthy discusses large sections of the canon organized by Genre: Old Testament historical narrative (Chapter 10), Old Testament law (Chapter 11), Old Testament prophets (Chapter 12), wisdom literature (Chapter 13), Psalms (Chapter 14), apocalyptic (Chapter 15), the Gospels (Chapter 16), Acts and Epistles (Chapter 17).  The book closes with a discussion on how to preach Biblical theology in general (Chapter 18).

Strengths and Weaknesses

The most salient strength of the entire work is that Goldsworthy is “unashamed of the Gospel” in a very powerful way.  His repeated insistence on asking how the text points to Christ is not only a necessary reminder but a norm and standard of measurement for any preaching.  Goldsworthy enables us to preach this way with integrity and confidence because he plainly lays out the Biblical plan of salvation and helps us place any text within the flow of that history.  In short, Goldsworthy saves us from arbitrarily “finding Jesus” in every letter and story and instead allows us to preach the original text by showing that Christ is the ultimate telos of all Scripture.

Two weaknesses tarnish Goldsworthy’s work: his outline of salvation history is too reductionist and his genre categories are too rigid.  The boundaries on the epochs of salvation history seem to be somewhat arbitrary, and he spends a great deal of time trying to distinguish between David and Solomon to place an epoch boundary marker.  Ultimately, classifying certain periods of time as one epoch can distort the theological message of a book: Can we really say that the period of the Judges was primarily positive? Genre identification suffers from a similar problem: Is the purpose of Job to show where true wisdom can be found, or is it displaying righteous suffering and the spiritual powers behind it?

Reflections

If all Scripture testifies to Christ, then all preaching must testify to Christ! This is an excellent point to remind ourselves with.  The content of revelation is not just information but grace, the Word of God spoken into our lives.  And pragmatically we say that there may be someone in the audience who’s first and last Sunday is today so we should always preach the Gospel.  While this is true and certainly important (as salvation is on the line), this type of reasoning does not provide a theological reason for such preaching.  The best part of Goldsworthy’s argument and the part that impacted me the most is his reframing of Christological preaching: the question is not “Should Christ be preached from every sermon?” but “Why wouldn’t you want to preach Christ from every sermon?” Which question we ask ultimately betrays our convictions, and while I can confess an evangelical and high view of Scripture, not preaching Christ as the telos of all revelation seems to undermine that.  Similarly, I may confess that I want to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified, or that certain truths are of “first importance”, but if my preaching boils down to conveying information at best or how clever my idiosyncratic interpretation is at worst then I have not grasped the Gospel.

I found this book incredibly stimulating to read and very powerful in shaping my convictions about not only the content but the ultimate purpose and direction of preaching.  Nonetheless, at times I found this book difficult to read for a number of reasons.  First, I think the title is slightly misleading, or rather I was expecting more of Dr. Sunukjian’s book rather than a treatment on Biblical theology and genre. Ultimately, I think the emphasis in the title is not “Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture” nor “Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture” but “Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture” – the first one being very different than the last.

Second, there was some repetitive material and I felt that the same essential message could have been brought across more succinctly.  If I’ve made it to part two, I probably agree with your assumptions and you can stop defending them, nor do I need to be led by the hand through every genre.  Simply stating the distinctive features of each genre with a few illustrative examples would be equivalent to the extended discourses on it.  Maybe I’m just burned on out genre because every class except Hebrew I’m taking this semester is talking about genre.

Third, I found his picture of salvation history too reductionist.  Rather than marking out large portions of history as one epoch, I would say that every epoch is marked with both judgment and redemption, and that the two are never apart.  That is why character studies are fundamentally dangerous – we don’t want to imitate anyone but Christ! Goldsworthy himself identifies this principle: “Once again we see that the salvation that God works for his people is inseparable from his deeds as the mighty judge.  Salvation and judgment in the Bible are the two sides of one coin.” (207)

Fourth, I found Goldsworthy’s use of genre too rigid.  This was especially evident in his discussion on the wisdom literature.  Job is not about the where wisdom can be found but about the possibility of righteous suffering and the spiritual reality of suffering.  Ecclesiastes is about wisdom from “under the sun” and without reference to God such pursuits are vain or meaningless. The preaching of  Revelation should not be “mainly … determined by the particular eschatological stance adopted.” (215) In Goldsworthy’s own words, “It is a book about the gospel and the triumphs of Christ in his gospel.” (217)

Google Summer of Code ended on September 3rd and I’ve uploaded the final product.  That is to say I hope people use my code and find bugs and fix them I can develop the module further… I started fixing some bugs in CGI.pm as a way to contribute back to the perl community (and also beef up that resume (oh who am I kidding I’m going to take a gigantic pay cut – “deferred pay” and enter ministry)).  Current busyness: school has started full swing again and I’m taking Hebrew I, Greek Exegesis through Colossians (what would be the 3rd semester for most but 4th for me), Gospels, Hermeneutics, and Preaching. Work is transitioning me away from maintaining our old system (written in PHP, about half OO and clean the other half disgusting and old) and wanting me to maintain our facebook app and start development with Ruby on Rails.  I’ve got a lady-friend whom I’m spending a lot of time with.  And to top things off, my roommate and I are heading full-speed into a possible church schism (a small one, but one nonetheless).  Add to that the regular reading (for aforementioned classes and for leisure and edification), time with friends, time to be a hermit, and private devotional time.  All I need to do is balance my time so I don’t fail my classes, neglect my girlfriend, lose my sanity, get fired from my job, fail my brothers and sisters at church, and gain forty pounds.  We’ll see how this goes.

Hey ya’ll, sorry for the lack of postage this month.  Google Summer of Code is coming to a close and all the remains for my project is some housekeeping and polishing.  I’ve updated the inline documentation (and that should cover everything that is going on there) as well as begun work on some basic optimizations.  The results so far are great: the running time for the benchmarked XT has gone from 9.39 -> 8.16 -> 7.33 -> 6.38 seconds, a 32% increase in speed.  I am using a new guide and Devel::NTYProf to help guide me in these endeavors.

I’ll keep working on optimizing and speeding up the whole process, and posting more results here.

I was debating if I should add another extended test, testing the first 1,000,000 primes on next_prime().  “Nah, I don’t need it…” Well, I added it anyways and it turns out that there was a bug in next_prime().

Short story: if you think you should have more tests or less tests, have more tests!

Haven’t updated my GSoC status in a while… I just added the prime counting function ( π(x) for all the nerds) which is just a simple for loop that uses is_prime().  Of course there is a better way to do that, but I’m going to save making algorithimic improvements for the optimizes phase.  There is both a test and an extended test and π(x) has been spot-checked up to around 10^6.

I also rewrote the XT for is_prime to pull a datafile from a different source… still works, but is kinda slow.  Again, I’ll be benchmarking these tests and seeing what kind of improvements I can make.  Right now the is_prime skips even numbers but that can be improved to check numbers modulo 8 or maybe someo ther base.  I can also include a list of small primes and do some trial division before hitting the more computationally intensive tests.  That should speed up the tests significantly.

Another posibility is to just replace the guts of is_prime with AKS – a deterministic polynomial-running time algorithim.  The benefits of would be pretty fantastic, but implementing it might be a little hairy.  All I’m saying is that it’s on the radar.

I’ve just commited an extended test (in the XT directory) that tests is_prime() against all primes less than 20,000,000.  They pass.  Huzzah.  The next step will be to document and write some more examples and then benchmark Math::Primality (esp. vs. PARI, the module we’d like to replace).  I’d also like to have an XT that will verify the next_prime() method as well.

I consider Math::Primality now feature complete;  what remains are bug fixes for edge cases and optimizations and documentation. After that, my mentor and I will focus on getting a Math::Factoring module up and running.  This will contain a number of factoring methods.  I’ll keep ya’ll updated when we get a roadmap in place.

So I’ve commited some changes to the documentation for Math::Primality.  Just some stuff that is a little more substaintainal – diving into what the functions actually do and a little bit of math.  I also cited our primary sources and re-ordered and removed some unnecessary stuff.

Next on the docket – extended tests (XT) and probably a function to do some quick trial division of small primes.

This is moving a lot faster than I expected – maybe I’ll have time to do some optimizations, such as figuring out an appropriate upper bound for trial division (i.e. what exactly is a “small” prime), maybe removing some of the code used to generate the Lucas sequence with the GMP Lucas sequence code… etc. etc.  More to come.

Well, that was nice.  We (the youth group of Knox Presbyterian Church + alumni + adults, 154 strong) went to Cedar Rapids, IA to do disaster relief with AmeriCorps.  We built a very sweet lady’s house.

Psalm 127:1 – “Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain.”

Hebrews 3:4 – “For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.”

‘Nuff said.

Anyways, being back means more work + school + Math::Primality.  So I’ve got some housecleaning tasks – adding documentaiton to the methods that describe the algorithm, citing our sources for the implementation and math guts, and, of course, adding more tests.  The underlying module that provides the Perl bindings to the GMP C library, Math::GMPz, has been updated.  I’ve tested and installed and everything checks out.  I’ve pushed those changes to my repository on github.

One tiny rant – I wish that the maintainer of Math::GMPz would use some type of source control, even if it be CVS – that would make all of this testing and merging and working much easier.