Jesus of Nazareth (Zeffirelli)

It's interesting watching films of the gospels...

This is probably the most critically acclaimed one, but not necessarily the best. For what it's worth, the Passion of the Christ is better in every respect from Gethsemane onwards.

Important points to note about this film:

• Overwhelmingly white and British. Most characters have RP accents. Donald Pleasence as one of the Magi is particularly unsettling. And that also means they don't show enough emotion.
• It's done in the style of a "film of the book" where they mess about with the plot-line quite a bit. They even mess up bits of the theology (Jesus on the Law, for example).
• Lots of good incidental stuff - it actually looks like 1st century Judea for much of the film (geeky note - though they get the temple wrong. The stones are much too small, for one thing).
• Very few special effects, which means very few miracles.

What's interesting on the subject of miracles is that the film actually seems to be telling the story in a sceptical way - kind of like >Shadow of the Galilean, but less extreme. Most films from books jazz the plot up a bit. This does the opposite. So the only miracles are the feeding of the 5000, raising of Lazarus and Jairus' daughter (done so there's questions over how dead they were), the healing of a man born blind (done with questions over whether he was blind at all, even before he is healed). There's no darkness at the crucifixion, not even a storm.

The Resurrection is particularly oddly done - you don't see Mary meeting Jesus, but you do see her telling the disciples. There's then a long scene where Peter seems to persuade everyone that Jesus is alive because they all betrayed him and so they have to spread his message (not sure how that was meant to work). Then you have the Great Commission scene, where after the previous scene you're not sure if it's fantasy or not. I honestly wasn't sure whether Zeffirelli wanted to say the Resurrection happened or wanted to try to explain how people might have thought it happened. He probably left it deliberately ambiguous.

I'd be happy with using clips from this in church - the Triumphal Entry, for example, is done well, and there's some good discussion over expecting the Messiah to be a military figure. And it's good to be reminded of large chunks of the gospel narrative. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's actually telling the same story as the gospels.

A Great Birthday Present!

A couple of months ago now, it was my birthday. One of the presents I was given was a copy of the whole ESV being read out in MP3 format. It was a great present.

I do quite a bit of driving. My placement next year, for example, is over 30 mins away by car. It takes 2½ hours to drive to my parents' place. And having the Bible on MP3 means that I can spend a good fraction of that time listening to the Bible.

It makes getting a big picture of books and so on much easier. It makes revising for my Bible exams much easier. It makes studying the Bible while I'm running or walking or something much easier.

So thanks again!

Ryle - worship

The first two of these quotes could be seen as heavily critical of the practices of modern conservative evangelicalism...

For another thing, true public worship must be the worship of the heart. I mean by this, that the affections must be employed as well as our intellect, and our inward man must serve God as well as our body.

J.C. Ryle, Knots Untied - Worship

Reason and common sense alike teach the usefulness of the practice of publicly reading the Scriptures.... What safer plan can be devised for the instruction of such people than the regular reading of God's Word? A congregation which hears but little of the Bible is always in danger of becoming entirely dependent on its minister. God should always speak in the assembly of His people as well as man.

J.C. Ryle, Knots Untied - Worship

Whatever man may please to say, the grand test of the value of any kind of worship is the effect it produces on the lives of the worshippers... The best Church Services for the congregation are those which make its individual members most holy at home and alone. If we want to know whether our own public worship is doing us good, let us try it by these tests. Does it quicken our conscience? Does it send us to Christ? Does it add to our knowledge? Does it sanctify our life?

J.C. Ryle, Knots Untied - Worship

Let me add in a criticism of my own, and one which I think many charismatics do much much better than we do. So often in a good sermon I can sense that God is working in people's hearts and convicting them. And so often afterwards, I can hear the same old conversations about football or work or whatever starting up again and sense the Devil snatching away the seed that was planted. Why do we not follow sermons and/or services with extended periods for prayer, alone or with others? Yes - let people talk about ephemera if they want to, but why do we not encourage a culture of prayerfully taking things to God and struggling with them before God?

Marriage and Society

From a discussion I had over lunch today:

In English schools, lots of society stuff is taught in PSHE lessons. Sex education, drugs, eating disorders, all that sort of thing. But marriage isn't on the syllabus at all.

Where do non-Christians learn about marriage, apart from soap operas?

Is it any wonder the marriage rate is declining?

General Revelation

I've had to do quite a bit of reading recently on the idea of General Revelation and Natural Theology - basically what we can tell about God from looking at the world around us.

I still think Calvin's treatment of it is about as good as they come. He points out that we should be able to tell lots about God from creation, but that we can't see all of it, and we often get bits wrong because we're sinful and blind, and because the blindness and the sinfulness are linked, it's our fault that we don't see God more clearly in the world.

What's interesting though is seeing what the Bible tells us we should be able to tell about God from the world around us.

• That God is real
• That God is powerful beyond our understanding (e.g. Job 38)
• That God is wise beyond our understanding (e.g. Isaiah 55:8-9)
• That God is reliable (e.g. Jeremiah 33:25-26)
• That we should obey God (e.g. Jeremiah 8:7-9, 18:13-15)
• That God is patient

In other words, what we should be able to know about God from the world around us isn't enough that we can be saved. But it is enough that we should be able to see that we desperately need saving, and that we can trust God to do it. It's enough to point us to Jesus, but not enough to replace him.

Being able to see God in the universe doesn't mean that we have authority or power over God - it's because he graciously made us as human beings and made the universe in such a way that we could tell a bit about him from it.

Those things we can tell about God from the universe actually sum up lots of the reasons I enjoyed studying physics so much...

I could put in lots of stuff here about the Barth / Brunner debate, but I can't be bothered, and I don't think it would help that much.

Recent Economics

My knowledge of statistics is decent; my knowledge of economics is not. But even I (after a little reading) can tell that the sub-prime loans crisis was due to people forgetting that probabilities need to be independent for simple maths to work on them.

Here's an example:

Let's say the probability of Man Utd winning the Premiership is 1/3, the probability of me getting over 60% on my patristics exam is 1/2 and the probability of Arsenal finishing outside the top two of the Premiership is 1/4.

Now how I do in my exams is pretty much independent of what goes on in football, so I can say that the chance of Man Utd winning the Premiership and of me getting over 60% on my patristics exam is 1/3 x 1/2 = 1/6.

But the chance of Man Utd winning and Arsenal finishing outside the top two aren't independent. If one happens, the other is more likely to happen. So the probability of that isn't just 1/3 x 1/4 = 1/12. It's going to be more than that.

That's roughly what happened with the sub-prime mortgages. They took lots of events which actually were connected to each other, in this case the chances of poor people in America being unable to pay their mortgages, but just multiplied the probabilities when assessing the risks. If someone had done that in a GCSE maths class I was teaching, I'd have told them off. But when they're doing it with the global economy, they probably deserve to be sacked and sued until they can't get any kind of mortgage, especially because the people their incompetence hurts most will be the poor. It pretty much always is.

Here's a great rant:

As a result of America's mortgage crisis, we have learnt that, to play in banking's premier league, you need much more than a degree from Harvard Business School, the morals of an alley cat and an unbridled lust for riches. These attributes help, but the sine qua non of a seat at the top table is a willingness to suspend disbelief until junk loans to trailer-dwelling welfare claimants can be diced, sliced, spiced and resold as triple-A securities. This takes some doing, as the business - quite clearly - makes no sense.

It is like a restaurateur opening up cans of dog-meat, sprinkling it with herbs, presenting the mix as steak tartare, and charging £25 a portion for something that will poison most of his customers. The difference is, passing off chopped donkey for Aberdeen Angus would be illegal; the repackaging of toxic sub-prime mortgages as high-quality investments was not.

Tom Ambrose

Thought it was worth posting to say that this looks to be one of the worse miscarriages of justice I've seen in the C of E. I don't know all the ins and outs of the case, so I might conceivably be wrong, but I don't think I am.

Yes, there may well have been a breakdown in relationships, but in this case the solution to that is internal church discipline of the offending parties, if necessary backed up by the bishop, archdeacon, etc. If half of what Ms Gledhill writes is true, Mr Ambrose has been very hard done by indeed.

Calvin - Delight in God

Here's John Calvin sounding like John Piper:

But although our mind cannot conceive of God, without rendering some worship to him, it will not, however, be sufficient simply to hold that he is the only being whom all ought to worship and adore, unless we are also persuaded that he is the fountain of all goodness, and that we must seek everything in him, and in none but him.

...

For, until men feel that they owe everything to God, that they are cherished by his paternal care, and that he is the author of all their blessings, so that nought is to be looked for away from him, they will never submit to him in voluntary obedience; nay, unless they place their entire happiness in him, they will never yield up their whole selves to him in truth and sincerity.

Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.2.1

The Boston Molasses Disaster

At a quiz tonight, to my great surprise, I got a question on the Boston Molasses Disaster correct. It deserves to be better known, as at least 21 people met a sticky and surprising end.

At 529 Commercial Street, a huge molasses tank 50 ft (15 m) tall, 90 ft (27 m) in diameter and containing as much as 2,300,000 US gal (8,700,000 L) collapsed. Witnesses stated that as it collapsed there was a loud rumbling sound like a machine gun as the rivets shot out of the tank, and that the ground shook as if a train were passing by.

The collapse unleashed an immense wave of molasses between 8 and 15 ft (2.5 to 4.5 m) high, moving at 35 mph (56 km/h) and exerting a pressure of 2 ton/ft² (200 kPa). The molasses wave was of sufficient force to break the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway's Atlantic Avenue structure and lift a train off the tracks. Nearby, buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Several blocks were flooded to a depth of 2 to 3 feet.

Omnipresence?

From time to time, I find it helpful to question things which are often assumed in Christianity. I don't mean things that have been discussed and agreed on, like the Nicene Creed or the Chalcedonian definition or anything, I mean things we always take for granted because we're always taught them, like "Jesus wept" being the shortest verse in the Bible (it isn't; it's three words in Greek; 1 Thess 5:16, 17 are each only two words in Greek, and 1 Thes 5:17 is two words in most English translations as well, though 1 Thes 5:16 is shorter in terms of letters). Sometimes I change my mind partly as a result of thinking it through, like I did with Soul sleep, (mind change).

Anyway - omnipresence. Here's what I think at the moment:

The Bible doesn't teach that God is omnipresent. It teaches he is with believers whereever they are. It teaches he can see everywhere, he can act everywhere and anywhere, but it doesn't teach that he actually is everywhere.

In fact, the idea of God being spatially located in that way doesn't actually make a lot of sense to me. I think it's a leftover from Greek philosophy, and has a nasty tendency to head towards panentheism. Anyone want to argue / agree?