Studying Galatians

In the adult Sunday School class that I teach, we have been using as our texts the small books written by N.T. Wright in the Paul for Everyone series, following the lead of Macon and Walter when they taught their Sunday School class at West Lake.  They started with Wright's study on Romans, and we followed, then to the Gospel of John, and now to Galatians.  With each of these studies, I used other commentaries and texts. I have been able  to acquire most of these other books in used editions at a reasonable cost through either  half.com and abebooks.com.  I buy the N.T. Wright texts new from Amazon, however.  At the end of a study, most of the students will give the Wright texts back to me, and I put them on half.com and recover about 40% of their cost.

To supplement the Galatians study, I am using Stott's The Message of Galatians in The Bible Speaks Today series published by Intervarsity Press.  I would use a Stott study as the main text, in preference to Wright's, in every case, but the IVP editions are more expensive than the Wright texts, and many of the people in the class pay for their class text.  Furthermore, Stott doesn't necessarily have a study for each book in the NT.

I am also using Luther's Commentary of the Epistle to the Galatians, which, according to Stott who quotes often from this commentary, is based on lectures delivered by Luther in 1531.  Amazon publishes a Kindle edition of this commentary and charges nothing for it.  I also have John Brown's An Exposition of Galatians, which Stott also cites from time to time.  John Brown was a Scottish minister, born in 1784, who "entered the University of Edinburgh at the age of 13, and in three session in the Arts faculty, gained such a command of Latin as to read it in like his mother tongue," according to the introduction in the reprint edition of this commentary published by Sovereign Grace Publishers in 1970.

Greenberry Jefferson Stokes

Later in life.

Go here for more details.

Whom does he resemble? Put your thumb under his nose and note the upper part of the face:  the large nose, deep set eyes, bushy brows, large head.

Bananas under Grave Threat

In Central America:

The government in Costa Rica, one of the biggest suppliers of the fruit, has already declared a “national emergency” over the state of its crop.

The country’s half-a-billion-dollar banana export industry has been hit by two separate plagues of mealybugs and scale insects, with up to 20 per cent of its produce written off.

Magda Gonzalez, the director of the agriculture ministry’s State Phytosanitary Services (SFE), told The Tico Times last week that climate change had boosted insect populations in recent years, making plagues increasingly likely across the world.

In Asia, Africa, Jordan, and Australia:

Meanwhile, a Scientific American report warned of a variant of banana-eating fungus which is currently threatening key plantations around the world.

Scientists believed the disease, caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp.cubense (Foc), was limited to parts of Asia and Australia. Yet it has now been found in Jordan and Mozambique, and in a new strain to which the vast majority of bananas are susceptible.

“It’s a gigantic problem,” said Rony Swennen, a breeder at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

-from Britain's The Independent, noted on the current Drudge Report, and brought to my attention by Carol.

Here's the link to the Scientific American report.

Meanwhile, we have two stalks currently on our trees, but our little grove is in grave need of some TLC.  I'll get on it.

The Bitter and the Sweet of Learning

1633 portrait of Johannes Wtenbogaert by Rembrandt.

Arminius as a youth may have attended St. Jerome School [Sint Hieronymusschool] in Utrecht.  Carl Bangs connects him to that school because of his friendship with Johaness Uitenbogaert [Wtenbogaert], “who was to become a lifelong, intimate friend of Arminius.”  Bangs is certain Uitenbogaert attended that school.  Bangs writes:

Of his teacher [Cornelius] Lauerman, Uitenbogaert later said, “I still remember that the teacher often said to me and my fellow students that the root of study is very bitter to bite into but that the fruit is very sweet.”

-from Carl Bangs, Arminius– A Study in the Dutch Reformation, Second Edition (Frances Asbury Press 1985) p. 35

Timer to Turn on and Off an Outside Faucet

We have some plants outside that can't be reached by our current sprinkler system, and we hand- water them with the hose.  What do you do when you go out of town for a couple of days?  You first go to Home Depot and buy gadgets.  This time its a Melnor "Automatic [Digital] 1 Outlet Water Timer" (SKU 558-026) ($30) and an inexpensive Oscillating Sprinkler (SKU 619-344) ($7).  (I already have the hose.)

The timer unit is encased in a sturdy little plastic box, runs off two AA batteries (not supplied) and has an input port that fastens to the faucet and an output port to which the hose fastens.  Before installing the unit, however, one programs it - which is a snap, with some simple written instructions.  The unit has an LED screen to assist in the programing that is easy to read.  

When I first installed the unit, which I had programmed to be "off" but to turn on 15 minutes later for 30 minutes, the water poured through it when I turned on the faucet.  The instructions had a "trouble-shooting" chart, and the first thing on it was that problem.  The valves, the chart advised, may have come "open" during shipping.  Take out the battery holder, wait 30 seconds, and re-install.  I did that and then needed to slightly touch up the programming.  Back on the faucet it went, and no water ran through.  I installed the hose, fastened the sprinkler to the other end, and waited the 15 minutes.  Bingo.  Problem solved.

The timer is an elegant little work of applied technology.  The timer I bought was Melnor's basic digital timer product.  It makes more involved ones in its "Aqua-Timer" line.

Eight million dollar man

Associated Press/Photo by Brian Kersey

Zac Vawter

Zac Vawter’s right leg is a mechanistic marvel: Made of aluminum, it has a computer, two motors, and 13 sensors to measure movement or pressure, and weighs less than his left leg. For Vawter, who lost the bottom half of his right leg in 2009 after a motorcycle accident, walking comes as easy as thinking.

 

Too bad he’s not allowed to take the leg home just yet. The bionic leg is part of a project at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, funded by about $8 million from the Defense Department. Electrodes fitted to Vawter’s right thigh sense muscle movements associated with walking or bending an ankle, and read his intention to bend an ankle, walk, or climb stairs.

The smart leg, according to a September report in the New England Journal of Medicine, cuts falls and unnatural movements nearly in half, compared to regular prosthetics.

-from World Magazine's issue of 11-2-2013.

Here's the "preview" for the NEJM article to which World Mag refers.

Jay Leno's Interview of George and Laura Bush: Terrific and a Must-See

Ann Alhouse links to it here.

The Film "Pacific Rim" and Climate Change

I finally saw this movie, via Amazon, when the price finally dropped into the realm of reasonableness.  (Do people really pay $12.99 and above to watch a non-Prime Amazon movie?)

Inside all the fantastic photography and sympathetic characters and competent acting, the producers tuck a  climate change theme.  The aliens who climb out of the Pacific Rim and wreck havoc on the West Coast, are aliens who, millennia before, introduced the dinosaurs to our planet as a sort of guinea pig species.  Those creatures died out, however, because the atmosphere was not toxic enough.  So the aliens waited until humans polluted it to the extent that Earth is ready for them.  So here they come.

Please.

On the other hand, humans and their technology defeat the aliens in Act 3, using a nuclear device.

So what's the moral here?  Are humans and their polluting technology bad or are they good? Or do we have a mixed bag?  Or are the creators of the movie just sloppy or cynical?  I vote for sloppy.

Maybe we will find out in the inevitable sequel.  I sure hope del Toro is doing it.

The Bangs, Father and Son, the Dutch Reformation, the Pilgrims, and Jacobus Arminius.

The November - December edition of The University of Chicago Magazine, presents a profile of Jeremy Bangs, X'67, entitled "Going Dutch."  It not only introduces me to that gifted scholar,  but also to Leiden in the Netherlands, the Reformation as it took place in that country, and reintroduces me to the Pilgrims, "yes, those Pilgrims" as Lydialyle Gibson, the article's author, writes.  (What a beautiful name, Lydialyle.)

The article also introduces me to Jeremy's dad, Carl Bangs, PhD'58,

a church historian and theology professor, and an expert of the 16th-century Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius.  Carl Bang's biography, Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation (Abingdon Press), is a definitive text. 
 
Arminius!  But he was so wrong!  Isn't that just like a UChi scholar, picking such a subject to write about?

But over to Amazon, to look at that book.  Here's a great review:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Unique, Enlightening, and Rewarding Study (Especially for a Calvinist)., June 18, 2006

By 

Nelson Banuchi "atdCross" (Concord, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arminius: A study in the Dutch Reformation (Paperback)

Mr. Bangs presents a very systematic and, sometimes, personally affective account of James Arminius. Not only does he present Arminius objectively as a pastor, theologian,and professor but also a few yet essential insights of a man who has had his share of sorrow.

I was warned many years ago not to read this book. I was told by Calvinist-leaning individuals that it would upset my faith and cause me to fall away. I have read this book 5 times and filled it with highlighting and notations. Apparently, the one who warned me never read the book. And I think that is a big problem with those who adhere to Calvinism when discussing issues regarding election and predestination. I would encourage every Calvinists to read this book not for the purpose of changing their view but to understand what Arminius really taught as, it seems, many books by Calvinist theologians misrepresent terribly the teachings Arminius espoused. To call him a heretic is to be wholy misinformed or uninformed about the man Arminius and his teachings.

Reading "Arminius" has helped me to understand the significance of Arminianism, it's value and importance in Christian theology, the essential issues that divide two camps of believers (one, Calvinism, and the other, Arminianism), and it has provided me with an alternative (and better, in my estimation) understanding of certain "problem" texts in the Bible.

Most important of all, to me, it has brought me closer to a man after my own heart; a man who knows the pain of lose, still trusts in God, and seeks to present God in a way that makes Him available for all sinners to embrace in repentance and faith.

I highly recommend reading this book. If you do not, you will miss a very important phase in Christian history. It has gotten to a point that when I'm going to my study to read this book and his "Works", I tell my wife I'm going to spend some time with my best friend.

Buy it, read it, you won't regret it.

Also, read "The Works of James Arminius", London Edition, 3 vols. So far, I've read all volumes three times. It is a little difficult to read at first, but once you get use to how it is written, you'll find it very rewarding.

Now, over to half.com, to find a $6.00 "Acceptable" copy on sale (although,you never know just what you are going to get with "Acceptable" - other than a real bargain).  Can't wait to read it.

The reviewer quoted above, Mr. Banuchi, writes that he "read 'The Works of James [Jacobus] Arminius', London Edition, 3 vols.  .  .  . three times"!  There are editions of those works at Amazon in Kindle Editions.  Here is volume 1 of the edition published by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library ("CCEL").  CCEL's website is worth exploring.

Luther, the Wedding at Cana, the Three Estates, the Three Wonders, and Marriage

On January 10th, 1529, the lesson was the wedding at Cana of Galilee.  This passage, said Luther, is written in honor of marriage.  There are three estates: marriage, virginity, and widowhood.  They are all good.  None is to be despised.  The virgin is not to be esteemed above the widow, nor the widow above the wife, any more than the tailor is to be esteemed above the butcher.  There is no estate to which the Devil is so opposed as to marriage.  The clergy have not wanted to be bothered with work and worry.  They have been afraid of a nagging wife, disobedient children, difficult relatives, or the dying of a pig or a cow.  They want to lie abed until the sun shines through the window.  Our ancestors knew this and would say, "Dear child, be a priest or nun and have a good time."  I have heard married people say to monks, "You have it easy, but when we get up we do not know where to find our bread."  Marriage is a heavy cross because so many couples quarrel.  It is the grace of God when they agree.  The Holy Spirit declares there are three wonders: when brothers agree, when neighbors love each other, and when a man and wife are at one.  When I see a pair like that, I am as glad as if I were in a garden of roses.  It is rare.

-from Bainton's Here I Stand: a Life of Martin Luther, (Abingdon Press; 1950) p. 352.

Luther and Congregational Singing

[Martin Luther's] last and greatest reform of all was in congregational song.  In the Middle Ages the liturgy was almost entirely restricted to the celebrant and the choir.  The congregation joined in a few responses in the vernacular.  Luther so developed this element that he may be considered the father of congregational song.  This was the point at which his doctrine of the priesthood of all believers received its most concrete realization.  This was the point and the only point at which Lutheranism was thoroughly democratic.  All the people sang.  Portions of the liturgy were converted into hymns: the Creed and the Sanctus.  The congregation sang not "I believe," but, "We believe in one God."  The congregation sang how the prophet Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up and heard the seraphim intone Holy, Holy, Holy.

-from Bainton's Here I Stand: a Life of Martin Luther, (Abingdon Press; 1950) p. 344.

Goodby Gatsby, Hello Common Core

For high school [Miami-Dade County Public School] English teachers like [Chris] Kirchner, Common Core is prompting consequential and contentious changes in what students read and how the books are taught: The new standards call for a focus on depth over breadth, more challenging readings, and increased emphasis on nonfiction.

Students will be expected to make written arguments using specific evidence from reading assignments, often pulling together examples from multiple texts. No longer should teachers ask students to write solely based on their personal experience or opinion — arguing for or against school uniforms, for instance.

“It’s encouraged me to give up some practices I had a great allegiance to,” says Kirchner, “specifically, the teaching of whole novels.” -from this morning's print edition of the Miami Herald. The entire article, written by reporter Sarah Carr, is well worth reading.

I remember how much I enjoyed it when my high school English teacher, Ms. Campion, would throw out big, open-ended questions about Gatsby and the class would discuss and argue their answers.  It was so much fun, and it encouraged wide reading.

Read more here: http://www.momsmiami.com/2013/10/18/3696938/good-bye-gatsby-hello-common-core.html##storylink=cpy

Luther, through Bainton, on Vocation

In one respect Luther was more conservative than Catholicism because he abolished monasticism and thus eliminated a selected area for the practice of the higher righteousness.  In consequence the gospel could be exemplified only in the midst of secular callings, except that Luther refused to call them secular.  As he had extended the priesthood of all believers, so likewise he extended the concept of divine calling, vocation, to all worthy occupations

Our expression "vocational guidance" comes directly from Luther. God has called men to labor because he labors.  He works at common occupations.  God is a tailor who makes for the deer a coat that will last for a thousand years.  He is a shoemaker also who provides boots that the deer will not outlive.  God is the best cook, because the heat of the sun supplies all the heat there is for cooking.  God is a butler who sets forth a feast for the sparrows and spends on them annually more than the total revenue of the king of France.  Christ worked as a carpenter  .   .   .

-from Bainton, Here I Stand: a Life of Martin Luther (Apex Books 1950), pp. 232-233

Of course, I know this doctrine and embrace it.  But I did not get it from the pulpits I sat under, and I have sat under a lot of them. Here's more on this from Bainton:

The Virgin Mary worked, and the most amazing example of her humility is that after she had received the astonishing news that she was to be the mother of the Redeemer, she did not vaunt herself but went back and milked the cows, scoured the kettles, and swept the house like any housemaid. Peter worked as a fisherman and was proud of his skill, though not too proud to take a suggestion from the Master when he told him to cast on the other side.    Luther commented:

"I would have said, 'Now look here, Master.  You are a preacher, and I am not undertaking to tell you how to preach.  And I am a fisherman, and you need not tell me how to fish.'  But Peter was humble, and the Lord therefore made him a fisher of men."

The shepherds worked.  They had a mean job watching their flocks by night, but after seeing the babe they went back.

"Surely that must be wrong. We should correct the passage to read, 'They went and shaved their heads, fasted, told the rosaries, and put on cowls.'  Instead we read, 'The shepherds returned.'  Where to? To their sheep. The sheep would have been in a sorry way if they had not."

Chicken nuggets: Please don't feeed them to my grandchildren.

Through a laboratory testing of chicken nuggets from two unnamed major national fast-food chains in Jackson, University of Mississippi researchers found that they contained just 40 to 50 percent meat, the remaining  50 to 60 percent comprised of bits of chicken-by-products such as fat, skin, connective tissues, blood vessels, nerve tissues, organ parts and ground bone fragments.

More here, including a video interview of the researcher.

But didn't Adam have a point? (Just asking)

But Luther's question was not whether his sins were big or little, but whether they had been confessed.  The great difficulty which he encountered was to be sure that everything had been recalled.  He learned from experience the cleverness of memory in protecting the ego, and he was frightened when after six hours of confessing he could still go out and think of something else which had eluded his most conscientious scrutiny.  Still more disconcerting was the discovery that some of man's misdemeanors are not even recognized, let alone remembered.  Sinners often sin without compunction.  Adam and Eve, after tasting of the fruit of the forbidden tree, when blithely for a walk in the cool of the day; and Jonah, after fleeing from the Lord's commission, slept soundly in the hold of the ship.  Only when each was confronted by an accuser was there any consciousness of guilt.  Frequently, too, when man is reproached he will still justify himself like Adam, who replied, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me" – as if to say to God, "She tempted me; you gave her to me; you are to blame."
There is, according to Luther, something much more drastically wrong with man than any particular list of offenses which can be enumerated, confessed, and forgiven. The very nature of man is corrupt.  The penitential system fails because it is directed to particular lapses.

-from Bainton's Here I Stand: a Life of Martin Luther, (Abingdon Press 1950, page 55)

"For God's Sake, Would You Stop That Coughing!"

On my 10 minute drive to the Metrorail station in the mornings, I'm usually listening to Classical South Florida, 89.7 FM.  The radio station is owned by the people who purchased WMCU from the rascals on the board of Trinity International University years ago, to the dismay of a large, South Florida evangelical audience that had supported the old station for many years, including myself.  That being said, WKCP Miami has proven itself to be first rate.

As I was listening this morning, John Zech, who is tops as an announcer, presented a recording by Julian Bream, the lutist.   It reminded me of a performance of his during my freshman year at Duke.  He played in Page Auditorium, the main auditorium.

The large crowd consisted not predominantly of Duke undergraduates but people from the much wider Duke and Durham community. It was cold outside, and people came in bundled up.

Bream began to play beautifully, of course, gently and with great care.  A sort of intimacy began to fall over the auditorium.  But then someone coughed in the audience.  As if that person gave others permission, coughing began to punctuate the performance.  It would have been a different  thing if the Philadelphia Symphony had been playing Beethoven, and you weren't sitting right by the hacker, but this was Julian Bream and his lute, all alone up there on the stage.  It was bad.

Finally, Bream had enough.  He stopped playing, looked at the audience, and said "For God's sake, would you stop that coughing!"

Absolute silence.  Bream went back to his lute as if nothing had happened.  Nobody moved.  Nobody coughed. Nobody did anything but listen, and with a bit of apprehension.  It was wonderful!

Every time I have attended a concert since then and heard the first cough, I think of Julian Bream and his lute.   Until just a few years ago, he was still giving concerts and producing recordings.  He certainly taught me something.

The Miami-Dade English Dialect. Sounds like home to me!

"What's noteworthy about Miami English is that we're now in a third, even fourth generation of kids who are using these features of native dialect," said Florida International University sociolinguist Phillip Carter, who studies language in U.S. Latino communities. "So we're not talking — and let me be clear — we're not talking about non-native features. These are native speakers of English who have learned a variety influenced historically by Spanish."

-from Saturday's Miami Herald, an article well worth a read.

Supposuvly, it's not just an accent, it is a true dialect, irregardless of what you might think.

More from the article:

Miami has always been home to Latin American immigrants, but the first sizable wave arrived from Cuba during the 1960s, followed by the Mariel influx of the 1980s and then the balseros of the 1990s. They were joined by political refugees fleeing regimes in Nicaragua and Venezuela and by immigrants from Colombia and Mexico and other countries to the south.

Immigrants overwhelmed the city's population so quickly that before long children growing up in Miami were learning English from people who were not native English speakers themselves. This led to a number of nonnative features like Spanish vowels and "L" sounds being incorporated into the language.

The first sizable wave of Stokes kids arrived in the 70s and early 80s.  

On one of the first telephone calls from Macon after his arrival Freshman year at Davidson, he said, "Dad, I feel like a Cuban!"  I said, something like "you are a Cuban; you just happen to look like everyone else up there."

Home as a Better School for Character than a Monastery

After [Luther's] marriage his tone shifted and his concern was much less to establish the necessity of marriage [in light of the otherwise "uncontrollable" sexual impulse] than to portray the home as a school for character.  In this sense it was for him a substitute for the monastery.  All the vexations of domesticity, the tension of the sexes, bawling babies, and of disobedient children led him to say there is no need to go hunting for crosses.  At the same time he was often lyrical over the consolations of the married state.

-Bainton, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, pages 256 - 258.

Let's Not Forget Cranmer's Wife

Henry [VIII] for all his effrontery was not unmoved by the unrest among the populace, and the intransigence among the distinguished.  He resolved to hew all the more closely to the line of schism without heresy, and in the latter part of his reign enacted the Six Articles popularly called the "bloody whip with the six strings" whereby a denial of the real presence was visited with death and clerical marriage was forbidden.  Archbishop Cranmer, who had married the niece of one of the Continental reformers, was compelled during this period to keep his wife at home or when traveling to conceal her in a chest; when it was turned upside down she was somewhat inconvenienced – and ought to be included among the minor martyrs of the Reformation.

-more from Bainton's The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, Enlarged Edition, p. 198.

Calvinism and the Scots

Scotland was the name in Europe above all others in which Calvinism became most firmly entrenched  .  .  .  [I]n no other land did Calvinism effect so tremendous a change in the national character and the national destiny. 

Calvinism transformed the Scots.  In the Middle Ages they were a notoriously rough and disorderly people who preferred to raid rather than to raise cattle .  .  .    The Reformation changed all that.  The Scots were to become a different people and the alteration was effected by the new kirk armed with the Book of Discipline.

-The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, Bainton, Roland H. (Englarged Edition 1985), pages 178 and 179.  (Google has the book here, but less pages 183-248.)

I would venture the speculation that Reformed Christianity in China has been working a similar transformation since the 19th Century.  Would that God again open the Middle East to the Gospel.