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"I always think I'm right, but I don't think I'm always right."

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"You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have."
Gandalf to Frodo, 
LOTR i.2

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"Oh, miracle -- thus to be able to give what we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands!"
Diary of a Country Priest

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"This is not pleasant to you, Emma--and it is very far from pleasant to me; but I must, I will,--I will tell you truths while I can; satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now."
Knightly to Emma

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My writing is like Shakespeare's.  At lease in the sense that I use many of the same words.

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My son Sam reflected once on the nature of a great closing line in a story by saying that it should be both inevitable and unpredictable.  I think the example he had in mind was the great Peter Falk line at the end of the movie The Princess Bride.  There may be ways to refine his observation, but it certainly does seem true in a way that is fun to recognize when a story gets it right.  Some critics even say that in the best stories, the end is fully contained in the beginning. 

I think something like that operates in theological discussions.  I've been following a discussion about the nature of Reformed Theology, especially concerning the slogan "Semper Reformanda" ("Always Reforming").  Does that mean (1) that we are supposed to be making forward progress, or does it mean (2) that we should constantly be checking ourselves to make sure we never leave the fundamentals of the faith as articulated by the creeds and councils of the early church?   If you set these two against each other, then I think you have to choose (2).  But I don't think anyone really means to say (2) if it includes the claim that we have exhaustively and perfectly understood the doctrine of, say, justification.  Does anyone really want to argue that the ultimate theological definition of justification was given at the Westminster Assembly in 1647, and that no one will ever have any more to add?

And so I think that in this sense theology is like a long story and theologians are like writers and editors.  A good writer throws away lots of stuff that he comes to regard as a waste of time because he has to admit that it just doesn't work in the story.   And if he gets his story right, then the last chapter and the last line will be a perfect completion of the opening sentence and the first chapter.  But he doesn't stop writing after the first chapter, just because he has a perfect opening.  And the theologians don't quit thinking about things like justification or the Trinity just because the church has already said some true, necessary, and wonderful things about them.

Keep working.  Semper Reformanda.  When you get to the perfect final line, well, then comes the end, right?

Other people are people, too.

A great anecdote from Hutchens in the Mere Comments blog:

A number of years ago a correspondent to Touchstone wrote a scathing letter, which we published, in response to something I had written. Later I had occasion to sit beside her at one of our sponsored functions. Neither of us knew who the other was. I left my seat briefly and was advised by one of my colleagues that this was the person who had written “that letter.” During a break I made the point of engaging her on topics unrelated to our disagreement, found her to be the kind of person I tend to like very much indeed (a intelligent young woman of strong opinions, firmly based in charity and good will), and when it appeared that she was enjoying the conversation, I introduced myself. To say she was mortified would be putting it lightly. At the end of that day, though, we had both, by one of those curious coincidences one must think is one of God’s amusements, gained a friend, and been reminded that the person is infinitely deeper, more complex, and often engaging, than any of his or her singular effects.

It's been a long time since I lived and breathed and had my being in dBase III+.  I even taught evening classes at the Lincoln School of Commerce and did a free-lance database system for a local charitable organization.  So I feel like I'm not a dummy.

But that was all in the old days of DOS text screens and command prompts.  Things have changed a lot since then.  And now I have a couple of itches that really need a simple database scratch.  My first thought is that there must be some simple Windows shareware / freeware database applications out there that let me define a couple of simple tables, a customizable data entry form, and even design a simple report or two.  How complicated does that need to be?

Well, so far it appears that you either get something that is so simple and single-minded that it's useless unless you're collecting the same kind of stamps as the guy who built it, or you get something that is so powerful and generalized that you soon are scratching your head wondering what few features among the thousands are the ones you really need.  

It feels like somewhere there must be a simple, medium-level product that thinks the way my poor obsolete brain thinks.   And of course it must accommodate itself to my desire to spend no time actually reading any kind of manual or documentation.

Three cheers for N. D. Wilson.  He's the guy who has been in the news for showing how the shroud of Turin could have been produced with easily available techniques during the relic-crazy middle ages.  He does not prove that the shroud is a forgery, but he does provide an answer to essentially every aspect of the thing that has puzzled modern analysts.  Christianity Today has one of his articles online, Father Brown Fakes the Shroud.

This is especially fun because Nathan is the son of Doug Wilson, the, er, colorful pastor of Christ Church in Moscow Idaho, whose Blog and Mablog I enjoy.  He raised his many children with in-your-face home schooling and Christian schooling, and has been disparaged by many for the schools he and his church have helped establish.  His son's brilliant work on the shroud question is a sweet kind of vindication for New Saint Andrews College, for example, which in the eyes of the critics, offers graduates about as much respect as is due people who send in for diplomas offered on Cracker Jack boxes. 

Two excellent posts on Dying of Thirst in Mere Comments.

Well, what you think you're going to get in the Army isn't always what you get in the Army.  Sam had expected a "fast-track" through the music school, but now finds out that they're not doing that, so he will be in Norfolk VA for the full 21 weeks; and they don't start the next 21 weeks for another month or so.  Thus he has a much longer stay than expected.  It appears that this extended training comes with very few leave opportunities, so we won't see him in Lincoln any time soon, plus he will have to miss some weddings this summer that he had hoped to attend.  

He is in a dorm-style barracks with a bassoonist roommate.  Among other discoveries, they want to maintain their Physical Training regimen at a pretty high level and keep testing everyone at 4-week intervals. 

Houah.

 

March 23

Whatever you think about the concerns the Mississippi Valley Presbytery has raised in its report on the Federal Vision, this comment in the response from Mark Horne, one of the targeted PCA pastors, should give pause to everyone involved.

I am presuming to disagree with a person or persons of much greater stature in our denomination, and indeed with the official act of an entire presbytery. The only reason I believe it is right (and required) that I write on this issue is because this is, in my (admittedly brief) experience, an unprecedented act. A court, without the due process of a trial, has publicly and officially denied the doctrinal orthodoxy of ministers in good standing in the Presbyterian Churches of America. I have never been given the opportunity to confront my accusers, to stipulate the items admitted into evidence, to gain representation. Yet I have now a verdict pronounced over my head, one that has quite substantially hampered my ministry.

Similar responses have been offered by others who were named in the MVP report: 

"Response to Mississippi Valley Report" by the Rev. Dr. Peter Leithart, PCA, Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature, New St. Andrews College

"The MVP Précis on the 'Federal Vision': A Response to Its Referencing My Writings" by S. Joel Garver, Assistant Professor, La Salle University

"A Layman's Response to the MVP Report" Dr. Paul L. Owen, Assistant Professor of Bible and Religion, Montreat College

"The MVP Final Report: Some Initial Reflections" by S. Joel Garver

The way the PCA at large treats the accusations and claims of the MVP report and the responses given by those named therein will say a lot about just what kind of gang we really are.  

Of course, if you aren't following the MVP kerfuffle and don't know from "Federal Vision", it's probably just as well.  

I got whipped by a better tennis player last night.  I played Bob Lewis in singles and was only one break down for most of the first set.  But I lost my serve in the last game, and didn't win another all night.  Bob was stepping in to my best serves and bossing them around without conscience.  He's not shy about winding up and blasting a winner, and one can only hope such an opponent will miss his aim.  My basic strategy is to hit the ball back and hope my opponent makes the next error.  Bob was just not doing his part. 

 Acts 10 is impressive for the way that the new Gentile inclusion is so explicitly given to the church through angels.  It's not something the apostles worked out on their own from the revelation and instruction they already had, even though outlines of Gentile inclusion were already there and we can imagine that they would have eventually seen it.  Thus Cornelius sees an angel who instructs him, and Peter sees the vision of the great sheet, which includes the voice telling him to rise, kill, and eat; and after the vision the Spirit tells him directly to go with the men from Cornelius.  The men from Cornelius tell Peter than an angel directed Cornelius to send for Peter, and when Peter gets to Caesarea, Cornelius again tells about the angel who came.  God is communicating directly and clearly in order to move the church ahead to the next thing.

I wonder if this is related to the odd comments about the agency of angels in the coming of the law.

Hebrews 2:2 (ESV) For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, ...

Acts 7:53 (ESV) you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it." 

Galatians 3:19 (ESV) Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 

These verses seem a little odd to us because when we read Exodus, we see Moses and Sinai and the tablets, but at the end of the story we don't come away ready to summarize the events by saying "the law came through angels."   So I'm wondering if the writers say "the law came by angels" in order to emphasize this direct, new thing that God did, which had been promised before, but which was now come, and which required immediate and unmistakable revelation.  Saying "the law came by angels" includes the fact that the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in Exodus 3:2, and the angel of God led the way in Exodus 14:19, but it is not simply a description of the particular agency employed in the event.  Even more, it is a way of emphasizing that this was a breakthrough event that God chose to accomplish among men by employing the very messengers of heaven.

Well, this is a half-baked idea, and I'm not entirely comfortable with it yet.  But I have the feeling that there is something to it.

Fort Jackson, South Carolina.  There and back again.  Sam graduated from basic training and it was great to see him.  We were impressed. He makes a good looking soldier:

Nine weeks of crawling, running, pushups, yessir's, and acquiring lethal skills do leave a certain mark.  Sam seemed more serious, more confident, and in a way, quieter.  

He's now in the Virginia Beach area for an indeterminate period at the army music school.  He has an idea that it will be at least 4 weeks; possibly 8; some spend several months.  It varies with the soldier.  But since Sam has had good marching and musical training, he doesn't expect it to take very long.  Then perhaps some time at home in Nebraska before shipping to Japan.

Along the way we had nice visits in Somerset KY, Nashville, and Saint Louis.  

In Saint Louis we watched The Affair of the Necklace with Glen and Audrey.  The movie makes a point to let us know that this story is based on actual events in pre-revolutionary, rotten, debauched, corrupt France.  These events have a place in history since they added to the hatred for Marie Antoinette, France's queen, by a populace who had neither bread nor cake to eat.  I leave such a movie just shaking my head.  There ends up being no one to cheer for.  The royalty is despicable, the aristocracy thoroughly debauched, the church corrupt, the general population without virtue.  I guess the filmmakers think we should be rooting for the heroine who sets out to restore her family name and honor, but her methods turn out to be no better than those of the people she hopes to deceive.  My main thought ends up being something like, well, if the church allows such corruption to go undisciplined in her own leadership, well, there's something about being trodden underfoot by men who are humming the Marseillaise and pulling levers on guillotines.

Luke 21:27 (ESV) And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 

I think the Juno computer is clean now.  Repeated iterations by AVG, Norton, and Ad-aware SE.  None of the three seems to catch all of it, but between the three of them, after countless scans and re-boots, I finally got all three to run without listing anything bad or suspicious.  And the machine's initial behavior seems to be okay.  Though I can't quite get over the feeling that the alien mother is still down there in a dark corner of the system somewhere laying more eggs ...

I have re-named Internet Explorer as "MS Virus Gate" on the desktop, and made Firefox the default browser.  That may help.  Many viruses and trojan horses are designed to exploit specific weaknesses in IE, since it's the biggest target.

And as I rebooted and rescanned and rebooted, I got to read a good bit of one of Ralph Smith's books on the Trinity (Paradox and Truth) while babysitting the process.  (Why is it so hard for the world to admit that Cornelius Van Til was right?  The Trinity is the answer to the philosophical problem of the one and the many.  Maybe it's because CVT is so hard to read ...)

"For God so loved the Son that he gave his only-created world ..."

John 17:6-10 I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. [7] Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. [8] For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. [9] I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. [10] All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 

We're taking off for Fort Jackson SC tomorrow, with coming-and-going stops in Somerset KY, Nashville TN, and STLouis MO.  We'll go to church Palm Sunday at the new PCA congregation (particularizes April 10) where my old pal Glen Woita is a recently-approved Elder.

We watched Napoleon Dynamite.  Quite odd.  Enjoyable after a fashion, but I guess I don't "get it" like the young'uns do.  (GOSH!)

We also went to Merchant of Venice at the Ross.  Very well done, but with some questionable choices.  I'll give you one guess at how the filmmakers chose to set the context of Antonio's love for Bassanio.   And "Christian" Venice is presented as quite decadent and debauched (was it really the fashion for women, even women of the brothel, to expose their nipples so regularly in public?).  Such choices work against Shakespeare's text, which almost certainly deserves an overtly Christian treatment.  Again, refer to Ralph Smith's Shakespeare lectures.  He does a very nice job explaining Merchant of Venice.

But the movie belonged to Al Pacino's Shylock.  Just perfect.  I guess one thing that Shakespeare and the filmmakers do agree on is the guilty Christian treatment of the Jews in Europe.

The bug on the Juno computer is vile.  It adds random links to web pages that you visit.  For instance, from the Juno computer, in the entry below for March 10, the word "video" in the phrase "chairman of the video portion" appears as a link, which if selected, takes you to a page advertising adult videos.

These people must be found and sent somewhere nasty.

After a couple of late nights, I finished the Zion DVD project and delivered the master.  (Who needs sleep?)  There are pleasing aspects about the result, but I'm not completely satisfied.  Alas, too often you run out of time and just have to go with what you've got.  Time and schedule pressures as they were, I had to do the voiceover narration myself.  I had been hoping to get Morgan Freeman, who does pretty good work.

I still have a mind to do a Deluxe Edition that offers a Director's Cut that is longer than the 10 minutes we have.  At least it would be nice to offer a Bonus Materials section for the slides I didn't get to use.  There were several good ones that got cut.  I'd like to group the unused pix by photographer, so you can see what Rebecca, Lindsay, and Alyssa each contributed.

I did find out how to make an MPEG for the web.  We'll probably post it on the Zion site.

And this served as a good tune-up project for a more general "Welcome to Zion" DVD for the brochure table.  I wonder if I'll be able to *finish* such a thing, not having a deadline.

I have been working like mad to meet a deadline for the DVD project for Zion's capital campaign.  For whatever reason, God knoweth, I am the chairman of the video portion in the Print and Visual Committee.  The Print and Visual information packets are due to be assembled on Monday for the teams to begin delivering them to the homes of the congregation.  Brochure, fact sheet, devotional guide, and a 10-minute DVD.

Well, the master DVD needs to be in the hands of the wonderful Dan Ehly tomorrow so he can start cranking out 250 copies, which is not exactly like running a copy machine.  So tonight, before I close my eyes to sleep, one way or the other, I will finish my part.

This has been a learning process.  Now right there, that should tell you that there were probably better choices out there than Ghormley.  What we don't need is a guy who is learning how to drive as he gives a mountain bus tour.

I have had some excellent pictures submitted by my squad of volunteer camerades, and think I have them in a story sequence that works.  Matching the narration to the image stream is the real trick, but after last night, I'm pretty well satisfied that I finally have something that is right.  Or at least right enough.

I'm using Roxio's Easy Media Creator 7, which came bundled with my hardware DVD-R drive.  (I purposely bought the Plextor brand just for the Roxio software suite, which looked like the best deal.)  Roxio's DVD Builder module does most of what it feels like I need to do.  You can put in any number of slides, manage how long each slide displays, add pan and zoom effects, and select transition styles.  (I'm not using the "star wipe").  Add a music background and a voice narration and presto; what could possibly go wrong?

Yeah.  Ask me tomorrow.

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