Month: May 2007

Top honors go to Concordia Seminary, for getting there first with the most. When Apple announced iTunes University, Micah tipped me off that Concordia already had copious course material ready to offer online for prospective students and anyone else who wants to learn about systematic theology, Greek, the weekly Bible readings, and various other topics. It’s great to see institutions putting the Disseminary model into practice, even if it turns out that I couldn’t be part of it.

But there’s still room to go. First, the Missouri Synod Lutherans leave a wide swath of the theological landscape open for technological evangelism. And although Concordia has hit some valuable, highly pertinent high points, it’s not as though their whole curriculum is online. I would advise an institution to keep their clips shorter; five to ten minutes will produce more digestible units without locking viewers into a time slot that demands more continuous attention. And of course, I’m not on the whole Missouri Synod Lutheran wavelength theologically. But a very impressive showing overall, Concordia — well done!

[Later: Also checking out Thomas Sheehan’s course at Stanford on the Historical Jesus. Sheehan’s not someone I would think to rely on for such a course; his syllabus notes Paula Fredriksen’s book From Jesus to Christ, but not her more a propos Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews; the other authors I would not have drawn on for such a course.]
Continue reading “Prize For Cluefulness”

I taught the last session of New Testament 1 this morning; I’m through with classes till September 2008, hard as that is to imagine. We worked on apocalyptic literature, specifically the Revelation to John — a fitting topic for the final session.

But even as I was closing the books for the 2006-07 academic year, my attention came to the website of the “Arian Catholic Church,” evidently a contemporary resuscitation of Arian christology dressed up as an authentic ancient tradition. The site doesn’t say anything about where they’ve been between the Council of Constantinople and, say, last year — nor who ordained whom to serve as clergy (there’s a coy reference to “three Bishops sympathetic to the Arian Catholicism” having consecrated their new Archbishop of York. Mmmm hmmm. And their site repeats the groundless proposition that “at least 300 Holy scriptures were burned by the Roman Catholic church at the behest of Emperor Constantine during the fourth Century and much of the detailed history of Jesus’ life has been lost” and proposes that “there is powerful evidence that he spent time in Britain.” Right, got it.

On my last teaching day of the year, I’m thrown back on my Early Church History class.

Oh well; for the positive side (for a Latin learner and liturgical conservative), it looks as though Benedict XVI will permit more general use of the Latin Mass.

(A) The power brick for my computer gets very warm.

(B) My coffee cup cools off fairly rapidly.

Why hasn’t someone built a cupwarmer into a power brick? Or made an adapter that somehow channels the heat energy escaping from your brick to warm your coffee cup?

Patent pending.

Hat tip to Árni : a very simple guide to prominent Open Source alternatives for users of Mac OS X.

Michael has posted an exquisite series of photos at his Flickr area, celebrating Lily’s first Communion – she’s growing so fast! It seems like ages since we saw her.

Yesterday we sang a hymn by Michael Hewlett that describes the Holy Spirit’s action apart from the people of Israel and the church:

His the truth behind the wisdoms
Which as yet know not the Lord

which struck me as an impressively nuanced way of making the theological point that divine truth can be known (albeit perhaps obscurely) apart from committed faith – especially impressive since Hewlett managed to say it in rhymed lyric.

That, in turn, reminded me of my favorite little-known Isaac Watts hymn verse, a Lesser Meter doxology:

Glory to God the Trinity
Whose name has mysteries unknown;
In essence One, in person Three;
A social nature, yet alone

Next time I’m in charge of a liturgy, I’ll try to work that one in.

Mustering my tattered energies, I put together a very short contribution to a project in which Blogaria’s own Mark Goodacre is involved: a textbook on methods of New Testament interpretation, with examples of each approach. My assignment was to describe “the history and theory of Theological interpretations of the New Testament” – in 700-800 words. The brevity was, of course, an attraction and an impediment at the same time. I managed to say most of what I wanted to, but goodness gracious, what gross oversimplification!

Now, to finish grading, produce three overdue lectionary essays, three overdue book reviews, and close out the academic year. (Mini-essay after the jump)
Continue reading “Whew!”

St. Luke’s celebrated a wonderful Feast of the Pentecost, whereat we welcomed a couple of beautiful new souls to the Body of Christ.

And Lily made her first Communion. Yay, Lily!

I was running through my group of Pippa’s images on Flickr, taking advantage of the option for flagging images as “Art/Illus” (as distinct from photographs, the originating premise of Flickr — a distinction that aroused some controversy). In the course of adding the “Art” flag where appropriate, I spotted a number of images that people had requested for particular Flickr groups. (This has happened to me, too; I stopped joining them after I joined “Bunny Lovers,” no I’m not kidding, so they could share the photo. But really, do I want to belong to a group called “Bunny Lovers”? I do not.)

Why can’t I share Pippa’s Lloyd Dobler poster with the “Johnny Everywhere” group without joining the group? I don’t mind if they look at it; I just am not that fascinated with pictures of people pretending to be John Cusack. Why can’t I share Pip’s sketch of the Nativity with the “creche” group without joining?

By the way, speaking of Pippa, she got her hair cut for the first time ever yesterday (I mean, cut as opposed to trimmed). I’ll try to elicit a picture of her as soon as I can.

Tom has contributed a lovely investigation of JSTOR, its presence in Google’s search results, its firewalls, and its future. I’ve been following with interest as Tom earlier alluded to this exploration; what was he getting at? The conversation with Bruce Heterick unveils what had been shrouded.

JSTOR’s practices arise from a weird series of contingencies. Where once a robber-baron-cum-philanthropist would fund public libraries so that everyone had open access to knowledge, now foundations fund an operation that prevents access to information — though first it tantalizes the excluded inquirer with crumbs of the essays they may not consult. Because print constitutes so expensive a medium for academic journals, and because digital media emerged after the point where the tenure system and the post-baby-boom surge of grad students produced the current proliferation of minor journals and monograph series (made necessary in order to produce extrinsic credentials for the tenure-eligible academic scholar, or to burnish the credentials of the tenure-holder), print publication has become a watermark of genuine achievement. Even though more readers would benefit more from more useful digital publications, many academics quail at the thought of disseminating their work online. Likewise, the costly structure of printed professional journals – heightened by the cost of production, distribution, and archiving – necessitates limiting access to these.

Were I not loath to compare my friend to a former B-movie actor, I might wish that Tom exhorted his interlocutor, “Mr. Heterick, tear down these firewalls!”

It turns out that tomorrow is Towel Day, a memorial to author and geek icon Douglas Adams. That’s a neat coincidence, because on my note cards of topics to bring up in discussing Christopher Hitchens and so on, I had noted that Hitchens seems to be audtioning for the role of Oolong Coluphid in reality’s unfolding production of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

If you’re going to be an atheist — and I don’t doubt that you have a long list of good reasons, I’ve heard most of them, please trust me on this — you might as well take Douglas Adams for your model rather than the bombastic assassins of honest discourse. When Hitchens informs Prof. Glaude that the Princeton professor has been speaking “white noise,” I recognized a great deal more than what CH seems to have thought he was saying; Hitchen’s incapacity to make sense of Glaude’s points was very white indeed, and arrogant, and peevish.

Why not rather be gentle, funny, self-deprecating, and endearing? I don’t have anything particular against atheists, but I have developed a pronounced antipathy to Christopher Hitchens and his apologists. Tomorrow, I’ll raise a towel to Douglas Adams, with respectful disagreement.

The Chris Lydon interview appears here, now.

As my head rested on the pillow last night I remembered an ill-considered (more to the point: unconsidered) expression. I gave a very harsh description of Alasdair MacIntyre’s writing style, an opprobrious description that a humbler and more thoughtful interviewee would have avoided. I assume Prof. MacIntyre has better things to do than listen to me on the radio, but if he was slacking last night and hears of this, I tender a heartfelt and embarrassed apology.

In my defense, Chris Lydon was rushing the interview at that point, and I was grasping at straws, trying to come up with authors whom I would recommend to the particular audience he seems to have attracted. I wanted to indicate my respect for MacIntyre, but to caution the radio audience that several orders of magnitude of readability separate his books from, let’s say, anything Christopher Hitchens has published. I was thinking particularly of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, a particularly convincing-but-very-dense book. Sadly, that’s not what I said.

I can’t say with a high degree of confidence — I wasn’t listening, I was talking — but I think the conversation on Open Source went OK. Chris seemed pleased, Allen and I got along well and complemented one another. I didn’t have the chance to say a lot that I’d have wanted to, but I also don’t remember having said anything egregiously stupid.

I’ve been trading emails and phone calls with the good folks at Open Source Radio today — I mean, they’re probably all good, but I’ve been in touch with Chris Lydon and David Miller — about me appearing on a follow-up segment to their show last night with Christopher Hitchens. I’ve said “yes,” foolishly no doubt.

I’ll sit down with Margaret to figure out what I really want to say about what’s so wrong with Hitchens’ representation of faith, to figure out what that’s worth saying I can squeeze into intelligible one- or two-sentence sallies. In the meantime, I have a ton of tasks and errands to move around my desk while I muse about what to say on the radio.

I gather that Adobe has consigned Freehand, the drawing program that they acquired when they absorbed Macromedia into their graphics empire, in favor of Adobe-originated Illustrator. I preferred Freehand to Illustrator, so this comes as a disappointment to me (and a constituency of other Freehand users, to judge from the response on the Net.

The quick-witted entrepreneurs at Freeverse Software (motto: “We’re not just Burning Monkeys any more”) have jumped at the opportunity. Reasoning that Freehand appealed to non-Illustrator users because of its more intuitively-useable interface, Freeverse has announced that for the next week or so, anyone who buys their drawing application Lineform from Freeverse can enter the word “Freehand” in the promotional/coupon code box on the order form, for a $30 discount. I haven’t pushed hard on Lineform, but my initial impressions are positive; it’s not an all-purpose vector graphics Swiss Army knife that also microwaves your ramen noodles, but it looks like a highly-founctional vector drawing program at an optimal level of complexity for casual users.

Among the things I’d call to my colleagues’ attention (if I were ever accorded the prerogative of programming a faculty event), I’d surely want to include Sir Ken Robinson’s talk at TED (link by way of Jeremy and, earlier, Jordon). Earlier Jordon had pointed to Richard Baraniuk’s talk about online education (thought I had linked to it, but I can’t find such a reference) — that’s another I’d show. But then, no one’s asking.

Philippa Grace was confirmed yesterday, by the Bishop of Chicago (“the XI Bishop of Chicago,” as they say). She’s been studying up — taking this as seriously as she takes everything — and preparing, shoe-shopping and meeting with her sponsor. It was a big, impressive service, and (I think) the confirmations of Pippa and our friend Käthe were the highlights of the morning. The sermon — well, better to say nothing at all. The music was lovely, the Lord was praised, and I had a chance to catch up with Jim McGee, whose son Derek was also being confirmed. OK, add “Derek” to the highlights above, though I don’t know him; Jim’s word is good by me.

Anyway, chalk up another sacrament for the family, and a lovely day all around.

The family has been watching Emily’s YouTube videos “Code Monkey” and “Don’t Make Me Dance” over and over; she’s terrific, and we’re rooting for her to land a professional gig. We want to see more.

For all the reasonable arguments against The Long Tail and other internet “boosterism,” the fact remains that it would have been exceptionally difficult, if possible, for Emily to have produced those videos, for her to have distributed them widely if she had made them, and for people like an academic theologian in Evanston to have encountered them — apart from technologies that depend on or have been catalyzed by the Internet. And — and this drives me batty with impatience, makes me want to grab people by the lapels and shake them — this constitutes evidence of something pertinent to the future of church and theological academy. Somebody, listen!

Margaret’s plane lands in an hour or so. Have I said that I’m proud of her and I’m intensely eagerly awaiting her return?

This afternoon, Pippa and I will roll down to Midway Airport to pick up Josiah and Margaret. Si will be home for the summer; Margaret is coming home for good, after having been based in Durham for three years.

That’s a pretty weird experience for a married person. Most of the time, once people marry, they live together pretty regularly. Margaret and I set up separate homes almost three years ago so she could study for her theology doctorate at Duke; at this point she’s got her dissertation proposal mostly hammered out, she’s through with her course work. She’s going from strength to strength, and I couldn’t be prouder of her.

Now she’s saying goodbye to friends who have loved and supported her through three complicated years — people who are her friends, who know her for herself. That has been wonderful for her, and it’s very hard to tear up those roots and move back to Evanston (in this way, it’ll be especially good that we’re spending next year in Princeton).

Meanwhile, Pippa and I have learned to manage all right as a two-person family. We have ups and downs — I’m more comfortable with freezer food, Pippa vigorously insists that we cook real entrees, for just one example — but the rhythm has worked out okay. In moments of triumph, I exult that in three years of transition in a young girl’s life, I did not totally mess up as a single parent! Woohoo!

So much great stuff has happened that we’ve managed to keep the edge off the loneliness and frustration of living in different time zones. Now we won’t have that to keep at bay; we can hug, Margaret can rest her head on my shoulder, we can actually help one another with daily life. And we can get back to the marvelous gift of being married, together, finally!

Thinking in the shower this morning — really, why don’t I just spend the whole day there? it’s when I arrive at most of my best ideas — it occurred to me to summarize my area of scholarly interest as “systems of expression and inference.” That touches on the way that articulating and uptake constitute complementary aspects of the same process: we speak/write as “I want David to understand this when I address him, so I’ll say that, which seems most likely to evoke the reaction I want,” and we hear/read as “I’d most likely have chosen those words to evoke that reaction.” The expression and inference are systemically related, and no single “law of meaning” governs all such systems. They interact and deflect one another such that one can never fully isolate a natural sign or a conventional signifier and assert a single determinate meaning for it.

Thus assertions about reading “literally,” whether in favor or against, always operate by excluding pertinent contextual data; there’s no “literally” there. (Fred Clark has been pursuing this topic with his characteristic exquisite patience here and here.) Words never arrive at our attention without some accent or inflection, and if we devised a way to transmit them “neutrally,” that very “neutrality” would communicate some metatextual data, in the way that people frequently infer a great deal from a “robotic” voice. Words in a book signify differently from words spray-painted on a wall; words spoken in a flat, unmodulated tone signify differently from words whispered into one’s ear or shouted enthusiastically. But there’s no acontextual venue for words, so even the OED constitutes a context for meaning that affects interpretation (start, for instance, from its Englishness).

Anyway, the shower ended, so I have to go get grubby and shower again to figure out what comes next. But that phrase, “systems of expression and inference,” I want to save and return to.