Why I'm resistant

Why do Christians treat the argument for blessing same-sex unions so harshly? Why do we - by "we" I mean what are usually termed conservative Christians - why are we so resistant to a discussion on this issue? Particularly when we are, not very, but at least more open to the egalitarian discussion, various social justice issues, millennial disagreements, classical versus more process theism, and so on. Why is this issue different?

One, it is new. Almost every possible interpretation, view, and heresy has been raised and shouted about at some point in the church's history. The blessing of homosexual relationships is not there in the church until a couple hundred years ago. It wasn't even a heresy! Not even an incorrect reading. People doing allegorical readings and historical-grammatical readings, Arians and modalists and Pelagians and Arminians and Calvinists, none of them saw this as a issue that needed discussion. Why has it only come up now?

Two, it is timely. Yes, the natural response is that the church has been blinded by a homophobic, or at least heterophilic, understanding of the Christian ethic. And this is possible. But is it not also possible that the church has been seeing clearly on this issue, and now faces a confusion of clear teaching? Neither is a priori true; and if one is theoretically possible, the other must be as well (working in both directions).

When we look at a culture which every sane observer has to admit has gone absolutely loco in its sexual ethic, and at the same time as the culture goes off the rails the church starts to read the Bible's teaching on sexual ethics slightly differently...the timeliness is suspicious.

Three, it is multi-pronged. Egalitarians read a different meaning in a couple of texts, and on that basis they interpret many other texts differently. In an even more profound way, to alter the traditional Christian understanding of homosexual relationships, the reader must read not two or three texts differently, but almost the entire narrative of the Bible. Right from Genesis to Leviticus to Matthew to Corinthians to Romans to Revelation. Two or three new interpretations are not combining to shed new light on our understanding: a dozen or more new interpretations are breathing fire on our understanding. These interpretations may be correct and the fire may be needed. The fact remains that it is a whole nexus of new teaching, not one or two changes.

Four, some of its friends are shifty. Not all, and probably not even most. But some of the people agitating for this change seem to have little interest in Jesus as Lord and Saviour. And the beginning of the issue within the church came from pressure and writing from people with more interest in reshaping the church than reforming it in line with scripture.

Five, it raises methodological (hermeneutic) issues. Every theological dispute does, in a way. One of the streams of thought which has flowed into the river of same-sex marriage is a concern with the state of sexual ethics at the time the apostles (particularly Paul) were writing. If Paul is addressing specific understandings or formulations of homosexual behaviour, then the application to us now is greatly weakened or obviated. This approach puts the New Testament in a box and labels it "Greco-Roman context", so that a shove from the New Testament - against homosexual acts as consonant with the progressive sanctification of a Christian - is transmuted into a shove against part of the social box the documents were written in.

Six, the fruit is (at the very least) mixed. Advocates of blessing same-sex relationships often talk about the "fruit" of traditional teaching producing the poisoned fruit of shame, exclusion, suicide, homelessness, and so on. The relationship between Christian teaching and the dislocation of gay individuals is beyond my understanding and this blog; I will simply note that there appears to be a case to answer for the orthodox church.

But there are other kinds of fruit to consider. The drive to reconsider orthodox teaching on homosexuality has a distinct overlap with redefinition of scripture's function and authority in the church. Moving out from under scripture as the first and final (though not only) guide for the church seems to often lead to changing your mind on same-sex marriage, as well as the reverse process.

This is a conclusion to this meaningless list of reasons.

Surprise! It was the church...

(The context, here, is that I am involved in a multidenominational evangelistic youth camp.)

So I was involved in a conversation about leader growth and how we accept/reject leaders for camp. A great many wise things were said. And during the conversation I mentioned I was uncomfortable doing presbuteros-y things as a camp director. I feel weird asking leaders about their spiritual health, their ability to model Christ to kids, because I am a camp director rather than their elder or pastor. And someone else said that camp directors are not pastors and I was quite right to feel odd about it.

But I do have pastoral responsibilities. I do have spiritual authority over leaders while on camp (and, to some degree, before and after it). How can I not? I decide (with co-directors) who is qualified to be a leader, what it means to be a leader, what behaviour will make us send a leader home. I cannot do any of these things without feeling and being in some way responsible for my leaders' wellbeing (spiritually, mentally, emotionally).

Essentially a camp director will by necessity be a little bit like a pastor or elder. We can't help it. So I was thinking about what would make me more comfortable with that. And I realised it would be best if roles that included pastoral duties...were performed by pastors.

I want stuff to be run by churches. I don't want to gather up four dozen leaders from a dozen churches to run this camp. I want churches to run their own camps, within their own demesne.

The interesting thing is that my denomination has been trying to get its own youth camps off the ground, and leaders such as myself have been apathetic because multidenominational parachurch organisations already do that camping stuff. They do it bigger, slicker, and better organised.

But I'm now starting to realise the pastoral benefits of church camps which are smaller, rougher, and not always as smoothly administrated. If you think why is this person trying to exercise spiritual authority over me the answer is because that is part of them serving in this church. There are so many things which I can't follow up on with my leaders. I don't have the time, the energy, the authority, or the long-term consistent involvement in their life to disciple them properly.

I've been feeling increasingly weird about parachurch organisations. Surprise! What I wanted was the local church all along.

What does it mean for God to be angry?

So I read a book called God is Impassible and Impassioned by Rob Lister. It's an excellent analysis of the debate over God's passibility for people who just don't have the time or mental energy to read the vast literature. In the second half Lister does a good job of developing the implications of God being impasible and emotive.

But he also takes Weinandy (slightly) to task for talking about impassibility strictly as God not experiencing anything analogous to human feelings, when in fact the doctrine is more about God's emotions always being voluntary rather than forced upon him by the world. In a footnote Lister says that God is responsive to the world, but never passive - his reactions, emotional and otherwise, are always chosen rather than evoked. It is worth noting, as Lister does, that Weinandy seems to have walked his definition back slightly - but I haven't yet read up on that.

As someone who (tentatively) endorses impassibility in the strict sense that Weinandy originally advanced, I want to talk a bit about what it means to have emotion.

Scripture often talks about God being wrathful - usually at Israel. What does this mean? If we narrow the scope to purely righteous anger at sin and evil, we are dealing with an emotion which humans occasionally experience and which it would not be heretical to ascribe to God. So far so good. What does it mean for God to be righteously angry?

We experience anger as a certain sensation. It is mental and physical but we do not reduce it to constitutive elements. It is provoked from us. None of these traits can be true of God. If his emotions are voluntary, then he does not experience sensations of anger - he either draws them upon himself or expresses them without "feeling" them. He does not have a body - he is spirit. He does have a mind, which seems in some respects like ours - order, logic, law of noncontradiction - but we see this only in how he talks to us, and how his actions match up with his words.

What I am saying is that God's righteous anger is something we see in his condescending actions towards us. We do not see God in himself, except as Jesus makes him known. And of course Jesus has emotions - he has taken on human nature. What I am saying is that God's energies, his extension of his power into the world, express righteous anger. But this does very little to establish that God chooses to be angry.

The anthropopathic language, in both Testaments, is clearly right and true. I would not hesitate to say in a sermon, "God is angry in this passage". By that I mean God is expressing anger, that anger is the pure and holy response to the situation; but I do not mean that God is wracked with fury. Because I do not have any special access to the face of God. God reveals how he chooses to relate to us, and we trust that his self-disclosure is founded upon truth. I emphasise we trust because we have no ability to probe God's immanent character apart from his self-disclosure.

And if God chooses to be angry, does he also choose to not be angry at evil? Is the atonement God's way of showing that he has flipped an internal switch in his relationship to his elect?

I am not arguing that an impassibilist has to hold to Weinandy's original strict definition. I am saying that if you want to talk about voluntary emotion in God, a la Lister, you have to maintain a very deep disjunction between divine emotion and human emotion on every level and attribute. The easiest way to do this, it seems to me, is to say God's energies - the economic trinity - expresses emotion to us. This self-disclosure is founded upon something true to God's nature ("the economic trinity is the immanent trinity, and Rahner is its prophet") but we don't understand the "something true" in God because we don't know God. We only know him as revealed through Jesus, and Jesus reveals God as united to human nature. The person we see when we look at Jesus is Jesus. Through him we see the Father, as every child is in some way the image of their parent, but we are first and foremost seeing Jesus. Not the Father or Spirit.

To conclude: God relates with anger. I don't think he is angry.

strophe

Checked my phone nine times on the bus.

Still no reply. Unsurprised.

You don't ask someone out by text message,

which is why I did.

How could a palm of screen link us heart to heart?

How could I declare my true affections in one hundred and sixty characters?

Perhaps if I knew Mandarin.

I will never know enough.

I know the process well enough to sabotage, watchmaker

precision.

No one is to blame. No one is at fault.

All my romantic failures are accidents. First a rear, and then the ending.

I don't know how to drive.

There are living people on the bus and I try to fall in love.

Nothing. Once a day is my limit.

If I stay on the bus it might keep going. I don't have to get off.

We can race towards the dawn, bus driver. You might be tomorrow's

lucky winner.

Your uniform, your cropped hair, your professional demeanour.

If it is you

I promise I won't let on.

Just don't let me off until the dawn.

The bus driver does not hesitate. Sticks to schedule.

Hauling reality a little closer to plan.

No love in this bus. I touch the corner of my eye.

Check my phone again.

strophe

The worst prayers come in the shower.

Do you love the idea of a wife more than me,
Son of dust,
Says the Lord?

My heart is all in reach
I cannot grasp the smallest.

Surveillance

So the United States charged Edward Snowden with a few things, including espionage. He's probably guilty of communicating classified material to an unauthorised person - that's materially shown by the information be leaked to the Guardian. Espionage, however, is a crime of intent. It's hard to argue that he reasonably expected the information would be used against the United States when he was giving it to a reporter.

But whatever. I'm an Australian.

I sat down and thought for a bit about surveillance in Australia. And I really have no reason to think the federal police, or ASIO or whomever, is doing the same thing here. I also have no reason not to think that they are doing the same thing.

The Australian government has, since September 11 2001, stuck with the USA. It makes sense to maintain a military alliance which has been central to our security since the beginning of World War Two. What bothers me is that the Australian government has also been remarkably craven when it comes to being part of the broader "war on terror" - extraordinary rendition (a term which is the definition of Orwellian - it means kidnapping and torture), broader and broader powers for police and national intelligence agencies, and the chorus of fear-mongering used to justify all these things.

So when I imagine Australia being (secretly) asked to spy on certain Australian citizens without warrants or any real evidentiary basis and then give the results to the FBI or NSA or DHS or any of the alphabet of terror, the request is met with "Sure, here you go!"

An election has been called for later this year. Why aren't our federal politicians being asked about this? Is this done in Australia? Would you allow it? What limits would you place on it? Instead we get another round of speculation about internal Labour Party politics and ugly barracking about our ass-backwards racist fearful pointless policies intended to stop refugees from coming to our shores.

I don't like the idea of government employees being allowed to spy on me without a judge allowing it. I don't. I'm more scared of it than being blown up by a pressure cooker bomb. The spying thing is a betrayal. The bomb is a crime, and it doesn't deserve my fear.

The Problem of Suffering...

...runs like this: God is omnipotent (can do anything) and omniscient (knows everything). He is also perfectly good. But there is suffering in the world. Either God cannot do anything about this suffering (not omnipotent and/or omniscient) or he chooses not to, in which case he is not perfectly good.

In summary, for suffering to exist in the world God must either be powerless over it, or be a real big jerk.

This question of whether suffering is compatible with belief in God (I mean the God of Abraham and Paul, the great unchangeable I AM) perplexes and discourages many Christians. It is often a stumbling block for those seeking God. And it has been a powerful argument for atheism for thousands of years.

I am a Christian, so I will approach the problem from a Christian point of view. I will be making certain assumptions that I feel no need to defend. I do not have to defend all of my faith every time I defend part of my faith.


What's the problem? 
The problem of suffering is even bigger than you think. Every terrible thing that happens on this planet happens, in one sense, because God does not prevent it. Every death. Every rape. Every mugging, mutilation, assault, arson, war crime, and act of littering happens because he does not prevent it. I believe he does not cause these things to happen, he does not actively will them, but nonetheless he certainly allows them to happen.

But let me restate the question of "what is the problem?" in a slightly different way. How do you identify this problem? When you say that the world should not be this way, should not contain suffering, against what are you comparing it? No human has ever experienced a world without suffering. Yet suffering is not only not hardwired into our expectations of the world, we actually expect or hope for a world without suffering.

This could be called imagination. I call it an awareness of what we are supposed to be and have. What we all silently expect is a perfect world. Most people try to create it for themselves while knowing it is impossible, but that is their desire: a perfect world. I believe perfection is not just a concept.

Perfection exists, and its name is God.

Perfection exists, and the state of humanity experiencing perfection is called perfect relationship with God. Heaven. The new creation.

So the problem, phrased differently, is: why am I not in heaven already?


Why not straight to heaven? 
If God is so good and loves us so much, why didn't he create the world and put us all straight into heaven?

Well, he sort of did that.

God created humanity and put them in a garden. He told them to take care of the garden. He visited regularly. The only negative instruction he gave them was don't eat from that tree there, because if you do you will die. Humanity was created to obey God and reflect his glory, to see and revel in his total amazing perfection. Adam and Eve (yes, both of them) chose to disobey God's instructions and make their own rules. They wanted to run their own lives.

God doesn't kill them. He could have wiped away the world and started again. Instead, he boots them out of the garden and they have to work for a living. But he promises them that one day Eve's descendants will triumph over the serpent - that is, the creature that tempted them into disobeying God.

What does all this have to do with you? Well, if you were put in Adam or Eve's place you would make the same decision. That's what makes you a human - all humans are disobedient now. You can't overcome what you are. Ever since the first two humans disobeyed God we have all been unable to obey God. We are all sinners.

It is this sin which messed the world up. God created the world as good, harmonious, fruitful. Human sin made it chaotic, painful, riddled with suffering.

It is humanity that is responsible for suffering. I don't mean that you yourself directly cause your own suffering, but the choices of Adam and Eve - the same choices you yourself would make - have broken the world. We choose to disobey God every day. Can we really get pissed at him when we suffer as a result of past disobedience?


Can't God fix it? 

Yes he can. He's omnipotent.

But consider this. Your sin is mixed up with the suffering in the world. Your sinful desires don't cause the suffering, but they come from the same source: the original sin of humanity. God can sweep in and take away the suffering. In fact, he is going to.

But when he does he will deal with the problem at the source. He will judge sin, and everything that is not perfect will be swept away by his anger. This includes people. Have you ever sinned? Have you ever done one thing that would not make God proud of you as his child? Then you're going to be swept away by his wrath as well.

God has provided a way out of this problem. He sent his son Jesus to pay for everyone's sins. Everyone who trusts in Jesus is shielded from wrath because God sees Jesus' perfection instead of human sin (Jesus being God, and therefore perfect).

The only reason God holds back the end to suffering, the re-creation of the world, the terrible flood of his righteous and judging anger, is so that as many people as possible will be saved by trusting in Jesus. Suffering will end. Judgement will come. 

Electronic Economics

I was given a $30 gift card for JB Hi-Fi for my birthday, and since I now have a computer that might be able to run Starcraft 2 and was pretty sure I'd seen the game at JB for $34, off I went to purchase it. Maybe that $34 pricetag was only there for the Christmas sales, or maybe I only imagined it. Either way - I wasn't getting SC2 from JB without forking over sixty bucks. Sorry, $59.95. 

Now that is fine. Sometimes prices are oddly high or low at stores for reasons I can't guess at. But by this point I had been imagining finally getting this game and playing online games with my friend Big Josh. I hopped on to the Blizzard website to buy SC2 digitally. 

$39.99. I assume that is US dollars, so probably a little less in AUD at the moment. Wait, no, after logging in with my Battle.net account I see it is $49.95 AUD.

Leaving aside the fact that from the splash screen Blizzard actually requires you to enter a Battle.net account to see the price (click buy from this screen) this is a ridiculous price. First of all, this is a game that came out three years ago. Computer games usually experience a fairly swift fall in prices after the first 6-12 months. For example, Deus Ex: Human Revolution came out in 2011 and is $25 online through Steam (without taking sales into account). I'm sure it was around sixty dollars on release. This might seem like a steep drop-off but big-budget games aren't so different to big-budget movies: first the expensive release price for those want to have it now (at the movies). Then the lower price for those not prepared to pay so much, or only vaguely interested in the experience (buying or renting DVDs; also streaming video or Pirate Bay). 

But there is another reason why this price is ridiculous: it is only ten dollars less than the in-store price. This seems like a funny thing to say. It is very convenient to buy a game over the Internet; why should the publisher knock down the price for such a superior delivery method? 

In fact digital purchase is vastly less convenient than a physical disc. You have to download all the files for install rather than having them to hand, you have to re-download them if you get a new computer or have to re-format, and you cannot do any of this if the publisher's servers are down or you lack Internet access. That might be fine now, but in three years that publisher may not even exist. Companies merge, split, dissolve or are dissolved all the time. And who will be supporting the publisher's guarantee of access to the data you paid for? Probably no one. 

Not to mention that a digital copy is not "yours" in any physical sense. You can't sell it secondhand, or give it to a friend, or trade it in for something new. Digital purchase is a purchase of access to data and services, not of any clearly defined "thing". This is why it is cheaper for the publisher. They do have to pay for server space and so on, but this is much less than burning and shipping DVDs (packaging, quality control, security, so on and so forth). 

We also have to look at the competition. Blizzard's big enough to distribute its own games, but many companies aren't. In the world of digital distribution of games, there is Steam and Origin (we don't talk about Microsoft's efforts). I haven't really used Origin but I do use Steam. What is my experience of Steam? Games often cost the same on Steam as physically, but because of the frequent sales this is a fiction. Because of Steam, my attempt to buy SC2 was my first attempt to physically buy a computer game in years. Games are cheap and Steam's cloud backs up my progress in case of a hard drive failure. Yes, the same fears about access to what I paid for continue to exist. But the marketplace is cheap, slick and  most importantly Valve have been in the business for a while and to a degree have earned my trust. 

The final reason $50 is an outrageous price? This year Heart of the Swarm, the next standalone expansion pack (don't ask) for Starcraft 2, will come out. Multiplayer is the main reason I wanted to buy this game and Heart of the Swarm will have a separate multiplayer ladder (no crossover with basic SC2 players). Most dedicated SC2 players will upgrade. Essentially, base SC2 will be obsolete. And yet the price is still $50. 

I've put thirty-nine very enjoyable hours into Mark of the Ninja. I bought it on sale on Steam for five bucks. 

What kind of world are you living in, Blizzard?

Failing

You may have noticed that there are rather less posts in the Calvintaries series than you might expect, since I declared a M-W-F timetable for them. The truth is I have totally failed to do what I hoped and planned to do. Let's talk about why.

The first reason was a blow to my morale. When I struggled with the posts about Romans (more on why below) and missed several deadlines, I wasn't really sure how to deal with it. I had lost my momentum. I was going to break my self-imposed schedule, which would make me feel bad. The only way to avoid that feeling was to ignore the project and pretend it didn't exist. This has been a pattern in my behaviour for years.

The best way to fix this response to failure is to, upon missing that deadline, commit to getting the next thing done without reference to time. I think that this will help restore momentum (upon which I emotionally thrive) and get me over the shame of failure. Yes, even for a little blog project which like five people will ever see, I experience shame when I fail.

I struggled (struggle) with summarising Romans not because I can't understand what Calvin is saying but because I found it difficult not to simply transcribe the commentary. What I really want to do is look at what Calvin is saying about the passage, and how it relates to that passage, and why he might expound it in that particular way. Really I want to analyse Calvin's hermeneutic. This takes more time and brain power than I anticipated.

So that's why the blog has been dead. Hopefully it will regain some life in the near future. 

Skyfall Is A Beautiful Mess

As an action movie experience, Skyfall works. It is exciting to watch. It is engaging. It draws you into its world and movements. It is the most visually beautiful Bond movie I have seen, and by far the best-directed of the Craig films.The theme song by Adele is beautiful and sums up the spirit of the film - but which film? Because Skyfall tries to be three different movies; and so it is totally lacking in cohesion and internal logic in both a narrative and thematic sense.

Also, there's a massive helping of misogyny to the point that I felt uncomfortable because my female friend didn't feel uncomfortable. Has she been living with this kind of stuff so long that it no longer registers? Anyway, spoilers (misogyny isn't really a spoiler).

As I said, this is a movie in three parts. There is the traditional Bond movie which holds our attention at the start and appears in brief flashes later: far-flung locations, Bond being charming and deadly, a villain with a plan that threatens the world. There is also a rather more grim movie in there about the challenges that MI-6 faces in a new world as its enemies not only proliferate but splinter, endlessly, into so many different faces that they might as well not have identities. And there is the beating heart of the movie which asserts itself most in the last quarter: the origins of both Bond and his enemy, and the dread machine of human intelligence into which they were both fed. Or into which they fed themselves - the movie is intentionally ambiguous about that point (and I can't really tell if that's a good thing).

The problem is that these three movies, these three plots, have very little to do with each other. The villain's identity as ex-MI6 rather undercuts the idea of MI6 suffering fundamentally new threats. And the intimacy which the villain shares with both Bond and M means the missing list of undercover operatives which ought to drive the plot never gets the space it needs to feel properly threatening. And as for the villain's big evil plot...it turns out to be to shoot M. Marvelous. The same M who was traveling about London in a Jaguar for much of the movie, and Jaguars are not known for their bullet-resistant properties. I understand that it is the mentality of the villain which drives this complicated plan, but the villain himself is a problem.

He's a former agent with a bone to pick with MI-6 and particularly M, who gives a brief justification of her abandonment of him. This issue is never questioned or expanded upon by any of the characters. Skyfall is content to let us know that there might be a moral issue here, but it has no interest in actually dealing with it. The brutal use of people, fed into the machine of human intelligence and gunfights that is the recent Bond movies - that goes unexamined, even though the entire motivation of the villain is to get M to examine herself. Because Rodriguez nee Silva never gets a chance to be right, he is never proved wrong and so his hatred of M lingers with the viewer longer than I think it was intended to. That Javier Bardem makes the character work at all is a testament to his talent and presence on screen.

Let's now talk about the misogyny. First of all, the easy example. Bond meets a henchwoman in Macau. Her name is Severine (though in fact the movie develops her so little I had to look up her name on Wikipedia), and she is magnetic. The self-control covering gnawing fear, the self-possession of her body language, the strange and fragile hope which she places in Bond to free her from slavery. Then she is killed by the villain to mess with Bond. Perhaps the point is that Bond failed her, that agents cannot rescue everyone who needs rescue - but this is never pointed out in any way by the movie, and in fact her quiet, senseless death is overshadowed by the arrival of Bond's backup. What should be a stirring moment was for me a waste. Why couldn't they have arrived ten seconds earlier and saved her? Why is her death so meaningless? Why is she in this movie if she has no purpose? Is she just here to look pretty and vulnerable, sleep with Bond, and then die?

Do not, please, tell me that this is part of the Bond movie milieu. Skyfall is not based on a Fleming novel, and even if it were there is no reason that an adaptation has to carry across misogyny and the linking of female sexuality and death. Nor ought it to contain its other strange message about gender: that women cannot be trusted in fieldwork or authoritative positions. Early in the movie Bond tells Eve that field work is not for everyone, and near the end she accepts his advice and accepts an administrative posting, becoming Moneypenny. This might fly if it was a decision she made herself, but because of Bond's blunt assessment earlier it has nasty undertones of women can't do this manly manly job. Screw you, Skyfall.

Now, I'm a Christian. I get my spiritual truth from the Bible. Let's flick to Judges chapter four, down to verse eighteen. Jael invites this guy in to her tent, gives him a drink to put him at ease, and when he's asleep hammers a tent peg through his skull. Now, this might not have been a moral thing to do. But it was certainly stone cold and I think's it pretty clear evidence - which is borne out in the world around us - that woman are just as capable of violence, and duties which involve violence, as men.

Also M is treated oddly. She tells Eve to take that shot, even though Bond is in the way. Later she gives a perfectly reasonable justification for her decision and Bond says she lost her nerve. Yes - because the heads of intelligence agencies are commonly very nervous people. The whole thing has nasty undertones of oh women are so emotional. And at the end of the movie, after M's death, she is replaced by a man. This would be no problem if it wasn't for all the weird gender roles stuff the movie had spent so much time implying. As it is, it reeks of the idea that women can't control their emotions and so can't be trusted with Important Decisions.

In summary: a beautiful movie as long you don't listen to anything anyone says.

Solomon's Story (First Draft)

I was king of Israel, and I ruled from the city of Jerusalem. I decided to spend my life studying, to become wise and understand the things that happen in this world. I studied everything that happens under the sun and none of it meant anything. It was like a dog chasing cars.

And I said to myself, "I am the wisest king my country has ever had. I know as much as anyone in the world about wisdom and knowledge." So I stuck with my study of the world. I studied madness, and folly. And I realised that my wisdom didn't mean anything, either. I was no better than a dog, still chasing those cars.

So I stopped studying and started having fun, just enjoying myself. And the fun meant nothing. Laughter got nothing done, fun got nothing done. I started drinking and acting like an idiot. If human lives were short, I might as well do whatever.

I built things. Great projects and monuments. I built more houses for myself, and vineyards, and gardens and parks with all kinds of fruit trees. I built dams and water tanks so I could water my trees. I owned slaves, and sheep, and cows: I was the richest man who had ever lived in my country. I had silver and gold and music and sex - all the things that make a man happy. And I was still wise.

I knew that it was better to be wise than be an idiot. But then I realised that I was going to die, just like an idiot; and death wasn't going to care that I was wise. So I hated all the things I had built, and all the wealth I had, because it was all going to go to someone else when I died.You can work as hard as you like but it won't last. What do people get out of all their hard work? So I hated the whole world, and I decided it meant nothing.You can't do any better than eating, drinking, and enjoying your work. But no one can enjoy anything without God.

I looked at the world and saw that in the places where it was supposed to be fair and just, it was evil. And I decided that it was like a test. A test so that humans can see that they aren't going to live forever. And who knows what happens after we die? I saw that there was no point being envious of someone else. And there wasn't any point being greedy. Nothing we have will last after we die.

So I decided the best thing anyone could do was eat and drink and enjoy their work. It's a gift from God, and people who are happy don't worry about how long they are going to live. Some people are rich, some people are poor. Some people live for a long time, some people die young. But they all go to the same place. Sometimes good people die because they are good. Sometimes evil people live for a long time because they are evil. And really, no one in the world is always a good person. God created humans to be good people but none of us are.

I realised that wisdom is better than being an idiot, and better than power. But even a wise person dies and is forgotten. There is so much to learn that no one can learn it all. The only thing you can do is to listen to God and obey his instructions. Because everything you do gets judged eventually, even the things that you do in secret.

Calvintaries 02 - Romans Part One

ROMANS

(gosh it looks funny written out in allcaps)

Translator's Preface 

I think it is important for this project to at least skim-read these prefaces. I am reading a translation from the Latin: the translator's mindset has affected the text I read in some way. Even the most rigorously literal translation does that. The translator is Reverend John Owen, who I think wrote a rather useful commentary on Song of Solomon (though I might be thinking of another Rev Owen).

Owen first places Calvin within a tradition of commentaries on Roman stretching back to Origen and forward to Fry, Haldane, Chalmers - Owen's contemporaries. I believe he is doing this to show that Calvin need not do everything that could possibly be done with Romans, for other works exist as well; but also to implicitly put all Catholic use of Romans outside faithful tradition and thereby render that institution's view of Romans irrelevant.

Secondly, Owen addresses Calvin's style of commentary. Calvin does little verbal criticism but mainly tries to show the logic and sequence of thought. Owen spares a few paragraphs to rebuke those who insists on finding novel meanings for bits of scripture; I have noticed from prior reading of Calvin that he is quite definite about what passages mean and not given to embracing ambiguity.

Thirdly, Owen notes that the style of the epistles is Hebraic and steeped in Torah rather than largely classical. Certainly it is true that Paul was a Hebrew, a Pharisee son of Pharisees, but he was also a Roman citizen who likely had rhetorical training. It is not entirely out of line to see some classical touches to his epistles, so long as they are not first seen as classical letters.

Fourthly, Owen assumes a consensus on Romans being written about AD 57-58, to a church which was not founded by Peter and Paul together; Owen suggests that strangers from Rome were converted at Pentecost and started the church on their return. This is important for an understanding of Paul's original audience, and also refutes contemporary Roman tradition.

Fifthly, Owen lays out several potential structures for Romans. The analysis he presents at length is address-justification-God's dealings-Christian duties-conclusion. He presents the two main themes of Romans as merit and grace; as he puts it, "the righteousness of man and the righteousness of God". He also notes that just because there is argument about the meaning of Romans doesn't mean that there is not a single, clear, correct meaning. Owen attributes the false understandings of Romans - those that deny its assertion of salvation through grace alone - to the earthly man not being able to discern spiritual truth without the Spirit in him. I think this is an important point: not all interpretations are equal, and some of them are wrong because of a dearth of salvation rather than a dearth of logic or linguistic understanding. This point is particularly important here in Australia, where the culture is positive towards entertaining the possibility of all manner of spiritual things being true, but negative towards the certainty of just one Spirit. Pluralism is good as a mechanism for facilitating the formulation of beliefs - it is not, and functions badly, a means of encouraging everyone to be uncertain about anything society cannot agree upon.

Owen further notes that the doctrine of salvation by grace touches the very heart of human sin and pride. Even those who profess belief can try to earn their salvation through ceremonial acts, their moral acts being obviously insufficient - and this Owen ascribes also to Israel, who substituted the rituals of true religion for the religion itself and thus stripped themselves of faith and hope. The solution is Paul's: to show what all men are, and how all men may be saved through unmerited grace, and thus to show how worthless are all our moral works.

So you can see that there is useful stuff even in the translator's preface, and one gets a clear impression of Owen as a devout man wrestling with Papist doctrine. I apologise for my style here - I tend to absorb the writing style of those I read, so you have gotten an attenuated version of Rev Owen's style. He translated Calvin's commentary on Romans from the Latin in 1849. Praise God for his work.

I assume hope that my summaries of the prefaces will get shorter as the summer continues.

Epistle Dedicatory 

If the preface has benefited us, how much more the dedication by Calvin himself?

Calvin describes the expounder's goal as "lucid brevity", to lay open the writer's mind as succinctly as possible. He sees an understanding of Romans as a passage to understanding the whole of scripture. I can agree, but then all of scripture is a passage to understanding all of scripture. One could just as easily pull salvation by grace alone out of Lamentations: it is how things must work, and so it is how things do work, all through scripture.

He then summarises the commentaries of his contemporaries. Melancthon - useful on the main points, avoids tricky bits. Bullinger - learned but in a plain style. Bucer - gifted with many excellencies and hard-working. Calvin says that he will cover what others have covered, so that he has a complete exposition for the humble reader. He notes that even people of faith can disagree about points of interpretation, and all we can do is make sure that we don't disagree for stupid reasons (hatred, defamation, a desire for novelty) but only by necessity.

Calvin closes by asking Simon Grynaeus, to whom the book is dedicated, to judge the commentary. Calvin humbles himself not before every reader but before a friend and colleague.

Argument 

What on earth is this bit? Well, as far as I can tell, it's the sixteenth century version of an introduction. Calvin lays out his general understanding of Romans and his view of its structure. He describes Romans as methodical and artful in its construction, dealing primarily with the relationship between man's action and his salvation (or rather the lack of such, as signalled in the dedication).

What follows is my summary of Calvin's summary of Paul. Don't take it as gospel - read the book yourself.

1. Paul first deprives both Jew and Gentile of any defence or excuse they mighty have against God's judgement, then returns to the subject of justification by faith.
2. As above, so below.
3. He ends the third chapter by claiming the same salvation by faith for all people.
4.  In chapter four this is defended by the example of Abraham and the words of David. He takes the opportunity to discuss how Abraham was righteous without circumcision, and how salvation does not come from the law.
5. The fifth chapter is largely illustrations and comparisons to show that God's mercy is greater than our sin.
6. Chapter six discusses sanctification, reasoning from baptism as participation in Christ that we are buried and resurrected with Christ. The death of the human with Christ is what allows new life in Christ - so no one can be saved without regeneration. He mentions the law as being "abrogated" (Calvin says, though I would say consummated or perhaps recapitulated).
7. Law is useful because it condemns us plainly, but our own state means we cannot obey and so cannot be saved through the law. The Spirit and the flesh are in opposition to each other as long as we live in mortal bodies. 
8. Consolation for the regenerate in the forms of: the absence of condemnation, the testimony of the Spirit, the certainty of eternal life and God's power over all evil.
9. Israel isn't the people who are descended from Abraham, but those who trust in the promise he was given - hence references to where faithful son inherits rather than all sons inheriting.Essentially, God rejects some and elects other and it is just, but without any higher reason than the will of God. Calvin sees some sort of predestination even in the family narratives here, or at least in Paul's reading of them. 
10. Paul essentially discusses whether the Jews are in any way different from Gentiles. The conclusion seems to be that, in salvation terms, they are not. Paul quotes Isaiah to show that God was always speaking to Israel, and they rarely heard him; and now he speaks to the Gentiles too, without ceasing to speak to the Jews. The whole point of this is to gather all Israel to him - not the nation, but the people of God. The faithful. 
11. I struggled with this, because the eleventh chapter appears to vanish from Calvin's argument of Romans. In any case it follows the trajectory of chapter ten and closes with a very Hebraic doxology.
12. General precepts on Christian life. It is interesting that this bit of Romans, which shapes the modern church so powerfully, is summarised in a single clause while other chapters get multiple paragraphs of argument. Perhaps it is because Calvin is more interested in expounding Paul's movement towards his conclusions than the conclusions themselves, which are quite plain once the logical flow is explained.
13. Establishes that spiritual freedom does not require rebellion against what Calvin terms "magistrates". 
14. Neither contempt nor unquestioned honour for the Mosaic law is helpful. The guiding or enclosing principles ought to be love and edification.
15. Repetition and conclusion of the subject: the strong should help the weak. Paul tries to establish unity in the one salvation his audience shares, and gives them hope of a personal visit.
16. Calvin mentions that the last chapter of Romans is salutations and a "remarkable prayer". My NIV only has fifteen chapters of Romans. It is possible that Calvin had different divisions, which would solve the Mystery of Chapter Eleven. I imagine the actual exposition will give some hint about this.

In summary, Calvin's argument of Romans is focused on Paul's discussion of the differences between Jew and Gentile, and between the weak and strong in faith. There is very little discussion of the fundamental Christian doctrines which Paul explains in the process of his argument; our translator, Owen, felt a need to talk about justification and sanctification but Calvin does not. This could be because he wants the argument to give an understanding of the letter, not what we take away from the letter; it could be because Calvin only proceeds to systematic or biblical theology after doing structural exegesis. Doubtless the exposition will clarify this issue - or not.

Next part of Romans goes up on Monday. The book will probably be at least three posts.

Calvintaries 01 - Intro

My resolution for the summer holidays was to read all of Calvin's commentaries. I picked up the series second-hand for a remarkably fortunate price this year, so I might as well actually use them rather than let them sit prettily on my shelf. Well, they're actually sitting messily on my floor.

I am planning to read them in the order Calvin wrote them. I am going by the dating of his dedications; if I get them a little out of order I won't be that worried. I will try to maintain a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule but I don't think that will last long.

First up is Romans, coming atcha live from the year 1539.

The Analysis of the Ending of the Videogame called Mark of the Ninja

I finished the aforesaid game recently. It is a 2D stealth platformer puzzle...thing. Very enjoyable. I particularly liked the ending and I have been thinking about why I liked that ending sequence so much, when the third act is usually when I stop playing a game.

I think the answer is something to do with thematic integrity. Spoilers ahoy, by the way. And they are important spoilers which will damage your enjoyment of the game.

No Ending For You

I have been thinking about videogame endings since I finished Mark of the Ninja. I usually don't finish games. For example, I've put around a hundred hours into Deus Ex (the first one) but never played it all the way through. I thought I'd quickly list some reasons why I stop playing games before the game tells me I'm done.

First of all is difficulty. Games often ramp up the difficulty near the end, usually to increase tension. Sometimes this works. But it works best when the game feels more difficult without actually becoming so. If the game gets substantially harder I move through it at a different speed; I have to reload saved games more often; I get so familiar with the level that my every move is known to me minutes in advance. I stop trying to defeat my enemies (who or what ever they are) and start trying to beat the game itself, which is no way to play.

Secondly, new mechanics stop being introduced. Well, that's not true - that happens earlier. When a game moves into its ending it not only stops giving you new tools/environments/opponents but it stops combining them in new ways. For the ending has come! And you must draw upon all your hard-earned skills!
...
Except that I'm an exploratory player and I've now run out of things to explore. If this gameplay is going to be the same as before, but harder and put together a little differently, then what benefit do I get from continuing? Now, I do get the end of the story. But I am not reading a book, I am playing a game. If the gameplay is not drawing me onwards, if the things I am doing to advance are not important to the progression of the story, then I am no longer playing a game - I am watching a badly made movie.

Thirdly, sometimes I just don't give a damn about the things I am supposed to. Let's use Deus Ex as an example. That game is full of vast, impersonal conspiracies tugging the strings of the world and of the player character (JC Denton). But that's too large and vague to hold in my head. I didn't give a damn about M-12 or the Illuminati or what UNATCO was really created to do. I cared about the people I had met - Gunther Hermann, Anna Navarre, my brother Paul. Once their story arcs were resolved I had no emotional connection to draw me further into the game when I stopped exploring the gameplay (as discussed above).

I can only think of three points right now, so this post will end now.

Strain

Sometimes there's not enough of all too much
To keep your mind off your spiritual poverty.
It's a good look for me.
Keep an eye on your mental property.
You're not Mr Clean
You're not miserable.
Something heavy in your gut like Advil
Or an anvil
In your landfill.

It's not enough to proposition the universe
Or for you to get possessive
In the second person plural, literal
I'm just standing here
Seeing clear
Slap me if I get mystical.

You see humanity through a lens
It's your own faulty intent
Can't swim on land
Without getting the bends.

As long as I'm speaking in this person singular
You'll be drawing back now.
Keep talking all you like
I've got no space for all you.

Dubai International Airport

The first sign of being in a foreign airport is the helpful signage.
The blast of Western ads brands cares is solid, so solid it wears at the base.
It's all familiar, no alienation, how are you meant to feel at home?
No shopping centre or terminal back home gives you any help:
this is your manor, your patch, of course you know your way around.
A native will never get lost, so signage is not for the natives.
Nor for the lost.
If you are well lost no sign, not even lightning and fire, will help you.
Signage nullifies the possibility of getting lost and so, with no adventures
(mis or otherwise)
you never burrow into the landscape like a native.

This is all perfect for airports.

There is sure a limit to how much you can learn about a city from its airport
But, as the layovers hits that middle sweet spot not long enough to go
see something but just too long to be passed by several pots of tea
and conversation,
I shall similarly hit the sweet limit of my knowledge.

The staff all were in a hurry, the world about to fly apart if they
are not doing the best automaton impression they could be
No passengers hurry.
Some of them move like maniacs, sure
But that's just the downshift.
Stand on a travelator and walk off the end, feel the earth sap your momentum:
the downshift.
Going from screaming three hundred kays or more through the air –
sitting still –
to moving nowhere, fixed in transition, despite all the locomotion in the world.

I'm locomoting, putting each foot down with precision
As if the wrong distribution of weight may start a riot, make me the cautionary story.
Not tired but plenty wired, on lack of sleep and lack of coffee, which I self-denied to – note! get some sleep on the plane.
No one sleeps on a flying death tube, unless they are foolish or pilots or not me.
Wired, pock-eyed, pockmarked with pores and pimples stretched with hundreds of oil molecules cratering into my face, digging for whatever,
I roam the terminal like a caged tiger (if my moustache were more impressive)
See the people sprawled on chairs and floors, casualties of eighteen or sixteen hour flights from some place they didn't want to be to another place they didn't want to be
Trying to suck in the emotional oxygen to get through another flight, veterans now, one trip and they're veterans of this war on geography.
The defibs have signs saying they don't work, don't bother, do you want to wake up back in an airport?

Did catch some of Dubai during the descent.
Thirty-three Celcius at four o'dark! I'm convinced it's the streetlights.
An ocean of orange, careful to illumine all of the no cars.
Four a.m., okay, but Dubai – known for its hotels and everyone going to bed at nine with a glass of milk?
Pacing cross-legged sitting down, staring at a grey cityline in a grey morning.
Is Dubai even real? Are the houses you see from the flight path fictional, a city invented by rich bastards to golf or fuck or, unlikely, make love without marriage intruding?

Of course Dubai's real, of course it is. Dubai Dubai Dubai we've all been there man.
The ceiling is the same colour as a cloudy – or smoggy, I'm from Brisbane what do I know from smog – sky outside. In Dubai. 
I can't take it any more.
This terminal is making me free, master of my own destiny, I can't stand it.
I can see the fences and razor wire but I need them closer.
Need some boundaries to ricochet around to keep me moving.
I'm like a shark – only one piece of me worth selling.

Thank god for the bars along the terminal walls or we would never get out.

Democritus (?)

He would have loved to be remembered on canvas

maybe.

To stamp his imprint on a nation

we believe.

No one laughs like a philosopher.

Perversity is the root of humour

so they laugh and laugh

at death, taxes

inevitability

long words and short phrases

long socks and short skirts

long lives and short loves.

My standup routine goes:

Democritus walks into a bar

and the barman says )?(

and Democritus says

_ | _

Canon

A room full of saints, in the Spanish style,

Violent drama

From quiet to whisper loud.

They never meet your eyes.

Ashamed

Caught on canvas doing things.

Things they never did

All marked in heart's-blood

Sympathetic magic

From their heart to mine

A long line of carmine

Passing the eye, the mind, the word

Clawing at the under-soul

The heaving breathy bellows

With ten thousand flensing knives.

An image, a snapshot

In salvation history

Tarted up with royal Photoshop

Here a tear, there an attribute

Every artifact tilted

Every illumination falsified.

Ah, my love, let us be true to one another,

Said the forger to his brush.

To A Metre

Gallery-noise is a seasonal beast

Now sharp, now young; now soft-treading away.

Touching the eye with the touch of the fray

Gallery-love is immovable feast.

A certain mad haste is checked by the door

None becalmed, the still mind snared fast

Today's daily colours now torn from the mast

To heal, one lances the festering sore.

The orphaned eye, once fed, hungers for more,

Surfeit and surcease draw further apart,

The mind dwells, weaves spells, runs after fancy,

So go write upon the danger of art!