Happy Darwin Day...

So, as I'm sure the whole world knows, today is Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. No doubt, the 'net is crowded with tributes to his genius and attacks on those who continue to doubt his theory, all of which is understandable. But I find it all rather bemusing. No one celebrates "Einstein Day" or "Newton Day" or even "Plato Day," despite the fact that all of those men have surely had at least as great an impact on our understanding of how the world works as Darwin has.

I'm sure part of the difference is that there is no concerted effort to deny the insights of those others (well, except maybe Plato!), whereas evolution remains under constant attack. Still, the excessive devotion paid to Darwin the man, and even to his theory, seems quite out of keeping with repeated claims to only be interested in Science™. For a great many people, evolution is clearly perceived as much more than a scientific explanation, however well supported--it forms the foundation for their whole worldview.

So I can't help but laugh at the fuss over Darwin Day, but in the end, I do think his theory is both largely correct and fascinating, so despite my bemusement here's my favorite quote from the man himself. It's only a shame this observation gets obscured by so many of the debates over evolution:

There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

Quote - Seeing Through the Bible

Henry Ward Beecher (HT Creation of an Evolutionist):

The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond; but if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that. The Bible is a thing to be looked through, to see that which is beyond.

Quote - Smallville

From tonight's episode of Smallville:

Saving someone, truly saving them, is not about knocking them out and throwing them in a dark room; it's about helping them find their way back to the right side.

Quote - Nietzsche on Christian Faith

From Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil (translated by Helen Zimmern):

The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit.... Modern men, with their obtuseness as regards all Christian nomenclature, have no longer the sense for the terribly superlative conception which was implied to an antique taste by the paradox of the formula, "God on the Cross." Hitherto there had never and nowhere been such boldness in inversion, nor anything at once so dreadful, questioning, and questionable as this formula: it promised the transvaluation of all ancient values. (pg. 34 Dover Thrift Edition)

Quote - Richard Longenecker on Apostolic Exegesis

Richard Longenecker in Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (as with most things I quote, I could quibble over some details, but it's a good summary):

There is a great deal that was held in common by the earliest Christian preachers and the New Testament writers in their use of Scripture.... All treated the biblical text with some degree of freedom, believing that from among the various textual traditions then current they could do something of textual criticism on a theological basis since they knew the conclusion to which that biblical testimony was pointing. All seem prepared to employ not only biblical citations but also, to a limited extent, statements of truth found outside the canon, whether of Jewish, pagan or uncertain origin. And all of them, most importantly, worked from the same two fixed points: (1) the messiahship and lordship of Jesus, as validated by the resurrection and witnessed to by the Spirit; and (2) the revelation of God in the Old Testament as pointing forward to Jesus. Thus their perspective was avowedly christocentric and their treatment thoroughly christological. (pgs. 189-90)

Quote - McGrath on Reading the New Testament

James McGrath, in his published dissertation, John's Apologetic Christology (which just happens to be directly relevant to my thesis), makes a point that should be obvious but is too easily forgotten:

[A] century was just as long in the ancient world as it is today, and for this reason it is simply unjustified to assume that what was controversial in the third and subsequent centuries was controversial in the first century. Thus, in much the same way that one would be cautious in reading the Synoptics in light of John, much less in light of the council of Nicaea, so one must be cautious of reading first-century sources in light of the views held by rabbis of the third and subsequent centuries. (pg. 73)

And of course, the same applies to the New Testament itself: the time between the 30s (when Jesus taught), the 50s (when Paul wrote) and the 90s (when John's Gospel reached its final form) was just as long in the first century as it was in the twentieth.

Quote - Religion in the Ancient World

A nice summary by John Kloppenborg, in his interesting little book on Q: The Earliest Gospel:

In the twenty-first century we usually think of religion as a discrete and identifiable aspect of culture and distinguish it from economics, politics, education, and other cultural domains. Yet in the ancient Mediterranean languages there is no word at all that is equivalent to our abstract term "religion." There are words for altars, sacrifices, prayers, and temples and words for attitudes towards gods (piety, impiety, fear). But there was no collective word that gathers all of these into a single domain, distinguishable from the city, the empire, the army, trade and professional associations, and other social institutions. Religion in the ancient world was embedded in these institutions. (pg. 85)

Quote - Brueggemann on the Bible

Walter Brueggemann, Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism (quoted by A. Katherine Grieb, The Story of Romans, pg. xxi):

I assume that the biblical text is not a handbook for morality or doctrine as it is often regarded, nor on the other hand, is it an historical record, as many are wont to take it. Rather the biblical text is the articulation of imaginative models of reality in which the... readers in church and synagogue, are invited to participate. (pg. 8)

Quote - Freedom and Virtue

From Jeffrey Overstreet's excellent novel Auralia's Colors (Abascar is a city-state):

Hear this: if you allow Abascar freedom, some people will choose what they shouldn't.... But take away that freedom, and no one has opportunity to choose what they should.

Quote - Modern Paraphrases

Over at Pisteuomen, Scott Bailey made a great observation about modern paraphrase translations like The Message and The Voice. I would add that it goes both ways--if modern paraphrases can have a legitimate place, perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to judge their ancient counterparts:

It is highly ironic to me... that most modern Christians would read some of the Pseudepigrapha, or maybe something like Reworked Genesis from Qumran and be uncomfortable, or even highly critical, of the ancient practices, and here we are in our modern times with authors freely adding to the biblical writers--in some cases obfuscating what the original author wrote or adding to it in a way that is not representative of the original--and that's passable.

Quote - Science Fiction and Heroism

Sean Cubitt, editor of Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema, from an excellent interview at TheoFantastique (HT James McGrath):

In the West today, we live in a deeply managed society. From traffic regulation to the management of crowd movements through malls and stations and airports; from statistical aggregation of behaviour to the management of supermarket stock, our societies work on probabilistic predictions that tomorrow will be pretty much the same as today - within statistical variations which themselves can be planned for. In this kind of world, action is incredibly difficult. It’s even more difficult because we are told over and over in our stories that only individuals can take action. But how can little me make an action that changes global warming? I can’t. We feel like action is impossible. In SF, action is possible, heroism, sacrifice, generosity, making a moral choice, changing the course of history.

Quote - Frans Neirynck on Paul's Use of the Jesus Tradition

In contrast to the last quote (and my own view falls somewhere between these two extremes), here's Frans Neirynck, "Paul and the Sayings of Jesus":

In the Pauline epistles there are two instances of an explicit reference to a command of the Lord, in 1 Cor 7,10-11 and 9,14, but there is not "quotation" of the saying... and [these] can scarcely allow for any general conclusion about Paul's acquaintance with the sayings of Jesus.

Elsewhere in the Pauline letters there is no certain trace of a conscious use of sayings of Jesus. Possible allusions to gospel sayings can be noted on the basis of form and context but a direct use of a gospel saying in the form it has been preserved in the synoptic gospels is hardly provable. Paul's knowledge of a pre-synoptic gospel, of the Q-source or pre-Q collections has not yet been demonstrated. Because of the paucity and the anonymity of the possible allusions and reminiscences, and because of their appearance together with other ethical teaching in the paraenetic sections, it remains doubtful whether Paul was using them as sayings of Jesus. (in L'Apôtre Paul: Personalité, Style, et Conception du Ministère, edited by A. Vanhoye, pg. 320)

Quote - David Wenham on Paul's Use of the Jesus Tradition

David Wenham, "Paul's Use of the Jesus Tradition: Three Samples":

Not only did he know traditions of Jesus' passion and resurrection - see 1 Corinthians 11 and 15 - but also sections of the Sermon on the Mount, Peter's benediction, the dialogue about divorce and the eschatological discourse. He may well have known the woes of the scribes and Pharisees that precede the eschatological discourse in Matthew, also the controversy stories that precede the woes, and probably the mission discourse. This list could be extended, but even this amount of evidence makes it very clear that Paul knew a considerable proportion of what we know as the synoptic tradition (particularly of the material found in Matthew 19-28 and parallels).

The evidence points to Paul's familiarity with a wide range of gospel traditions - traditions attested in the different synoptic strata (so-called 'Markan', 'Q', 'M' and 'L' material) and traditions of different types, not just sayings material. (in Gospel Perspectives Volume 5, pg. 28)

If Only My Wife Would Say This

Ben Byrely's wife (from a great post on "how blogging has tweaked my life"):

If you journal in a notebook with pen and paper, everyone commends you for being spiritual. If instead, you blog in a more communal way, you are wasting time.

Quote - Financial Priorities, Again

Seen on a bumper sticker on my drive home:

It will be a great day when our schools have all the funding they need, and the air force needs to hold a bake sale to buy a new bomber.

Quote - Augustine on Good and Evil

Just in case our economy really does collapse in ruin (though I sure hope it doesn't!), here's Augustine, from the City of God, Book 3:

[E]vil men account those things alone evil which do not make men evil.... It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man's greatest good to have everything good but himself. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2.43)

Quote - Bono on Financial Priorities

From here (via Looking Closer), Bono:

It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.

Quote - Rowan Williams on False Religion

Rowan Williams, in A Ray of Darkness: Sermons and Reflections (cited by A. Katherine Grieb, The Story of Romans, pg. 19):

The dark night is God's attack on religion. If you genuinely desire union with the unspeakable love of God, then you must be prepared to have your “religious” world shattered. If you think devotional practices, theological insights, even charitable actions give you some sort of a purchase on God, you are still playing games. (pg. 82)

Something I Need to Remember

The late Henri Nouwen was a Catholic who left his teaching position at Harvard to work with the developmentally disabled at L'Arche. He had this to say in his book In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership:

I have the impression that many of the debates within the church around issues such as the papacy, the ordination of women, the marriage of priests, homosexuality, birth control, abortion, and euthanasia take place on a primarily moral level. On that level different parties battle about right and wrong. But that battle is often removed from the experience of God's first love, which lies at the base of all human relationships.

Words like "right-wing," "reactionary," "conservative," "liberal," and "left-wing" are used to describe people's opinions, and many discussions then seem more like political battles for power than spiritual searches for the truth.

Christian leaders cannot simply be persons who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of our time. Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for their words, advice, and guidance. (pgs. 44-45)

Far too often, I am more concerned with establishing moral principles or trying to defend truths about God than I am with loving people or seeking God himself.

Jamie Smith on Faith and Knowledge

James McGrath posted a short review today of a book I definitely need to read: What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious by Delwin Brown. As I noted in the comments, the book reminds me of James (or Jamie) K.A. Smith's interesting book The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, which argues that limited perspective and interpretation are inherent to the biblical picture of humanity as created by God (not just "since the fall"), and that this means faith is necessary to knowledge. Here are a few quotes:

There is always already interpretation in every relationship, which means that there is also room for plurality, or rather, plurality is the necessary result of irreducible difference.... But if interpretation is part of being human, then its analogue is a creational diversity: a multitude of ways to "read" the world. (pg. 156)

[I]n the end I would argue that every hermeneutic judgment is a kind of leap of faith, a certain trust or commitment, a belief that gropes beyond mere presence. Every interpretive judgment, then, should be accompanied by a corresponding hermeneutic humility or uncertainty. (pg. 157)

Before knowledge there is acknowledgement; before seeing there is blindness, before questioning there is a commitment; before knowing there is faith.

While blindness is the condition for the possibility of faith, there is also a sense in which faith is blinded because it sees too much, blinded by bedazzlement, "the very bedazzlement that, for example, knocks Paul on the ground on the road to Damascus." (pg. 183, quoting Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, pg. 112)