Advent & Humor: stop taking yourself so seriously [casual fri]

December 14, 2012January 13, 2014 / Paul Burkhart / 6 Comments

In one of the posts in last year’s Advent series, I posed this question:

“Why [did Mary, Joseph, and Jesus] flee to Egypt? If they stayed and Herod killed the child Jesus, would that not still be Jesus, the Son of God–the Incarnate God–dying unjustly at the hands of a Roman provincial governor attempting to cement the reign of the powers and principalities of the world? Why go to all that effort to wait 30 years later for the same thing to happen on a cross?”

The answer we discussed was that Christ’s purpose for coming was much bigger than the cross. He did not come just so he could die. As St. Paul said, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of this Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

Jesus couldn’t die when he was so young, because the benefits we receive from his Advent are not limited to his death, but also his life. We receive his life of lived-out righteousness as our own when we come to know him.

I thought about this yesterday when pondering stand-up comedy.
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Herman Bavinck on the Advent Election of Mary [QUOTE]

December 12, 2012January 13, 2014 / Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

In a comment on yesterday’s post on Mary, occasional blog contributor Austin Ricketts posted this quote, another gem by Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck:

[the] entire preparation of the incarnation in the preceding centuries is concentrated, as it were, and completed in the election and favoring of Mary as mother of Jesus. Mary is the blessed one among women. She received an honor bestowed to no other creature. In the undeserved favor granted her, she far exceeds all other people and all other angels. Rome was right in maintaining this; those who deny it are not taking the incarnation of God seriously…Among all Protestants who confess the incarnation of the Word, Mary is held in high esteem. She was chosen and prepared by God to be the mother of his Son. She was the favored one among women. Christ himself desired her to be his mother, who conceived him by the Holy Spirit, who carried him beneath her heart, who nursed him at her breast, who instructed him in the Scriptures, in whom, in a word, the preparation of the incarnation was completed.

—Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 3, pp. 274; 281-282

Herman Bavinck on the Advent Incarnation

December 5, 2012January 13, 2014 / Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

The doctrine of Christ is not the starting point, but it certainly is the central point of the whole system of dogmatics. All other dogmas either prepare for it or are inferred from it. In it, as the heart of dogmatics, pulses the whole of the religious-ethical life of Christianity. It is ‘the mystery of godliness’ (1 Tim. 3:16). From this mystery all Christology has to proceed. If, however, Christ is the incarnate Word, then the incarnation is the central fact of the entire history of the world; then, too, it must have been prepared from before the ages and have its effects throughout eternity…the incarnation is not an incidental decree that emerged later: it was decided and determined from eternity. There was not time when the Son did not exist; there was also no time when the Son did not know he would assume and when he was not prepared to assume the human nature from the fallen race of Adam. The incarnation was prepared from eternity; it does not rest in the essence of God but in the person. It is not a necessity as in pantheism, but neither is it arbitrary or accidental as in Pelagianism.

—Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 3, pp. 274; 276-277 (found this by way of friend-of-the-blog Austin Ricketts)

Welcome to Advent, 2012.

November 30, 2012January 13, 2014 / Paul Burkhart / 13 Comments

This Sunday marks the first Sunday of Advent. This is the New Year’s Day of the Christian Church Calendar. It’s the season in which we celebrate and meditate upon the “Advent” (latin for “Coming”) of Jesus into the world in the Incarnation. This season begins this Sunday and lasts until Christmas.

In this time, we stare deeply into the reality that the Creator God of the universe came into human form by way of human birth.

The season is marked (as with every Church season) with a profound tension. We meditate on the darkness into which Christ entered the world, as well as the light he brought in his Coming. Advent is a time that we sit in the tension of past, present, and future, and see how this most-differentiating belief of Christianity has profound implications on these places in time, and indeed, the whole of human life and experience.

This is why, for this year’s Advent, I’ll be doing a series meditating on how Advent affects seemingly unrelated parts of human life: art, politics, sexuality, singleness, women’s ordination, social justice, Evolution, suffering, humor, the city, and more.

There are several other ways you can engage in this season:
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On Women Leading Stuff in the Church: 1 Timothy 2:8-12

November 28, 2012June 3, 2018 / Paul Burkhart / 7 Comments

In this series on women in the church I haven’t taken the usual approach of jumping right to Bible verses. I feel there are far deeper things that affect how we interpret before we even opened the Bible. I thought we should talk about that.

This has also been a really hard post to write. For much of my readership (especially those whose minds I am most interested in changing–male church leaders who disagree with me), I don’t know what I can say that’s different than what they’ve heard before. I don’t like feeling like I’m contributing to the noise.

So here’s what we’re going to do. I’m just going to try and deconstruct the more conservative view of these verses (this post), and then offer a reconstruction of how I view the verses now (the next post). If people need me to cite sources and such, then I can do that in the comments. I won’t bog down this post with that stuff, because the people that care are generally the people that both know where to find the information and/or already know it and have incorporated it into their view. So here we go.

the text

Here’s the text in question. This is the single most “problematic” text for those that see a valid place for women in the ordained leadership offices of the Church. The text is 1 Timothy 2:8-14 (ESV):
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Could you maybe help me win some Bible stuff? One click is all that’s needed.

November 26, 2012November 26, 2012 / Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

Hello, blog readers. I just ran across this sweepstakes on the site of my favorite Bible Study software, Logos. To celebrate the release of Logos 5, they are giving away a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet with Logos 5 on it. With my seminary and graduate school studies starting anew, both of these items would be of great, great value to me, my thinking, my studies, and my writing. Which means, if you all help me win this, I promise you’ll reap the benefits here on the blog as well.

With that being said, could I humbly ask you to click the this link? For each person that clicks, I get 5 more entries into the drawing: http://ptab.it/iGGA

Thanks again.

Women & the Church: 2 things that began changing my mind

November 19, 2012June 3, 2018 / Paul Burkhart / 20 Comments

the journey

If it’s not obvious so far, I wanted to make something clear before we begin: these posts in this series on Women the Church are walking through the same path my own journey took get to where I am.

In my last post, there was a concern that a friend brought up that I didn’t get to talking about the biblical texts enough. Well, this is because both egalitarians and complementarians are looking at the same biblical texts. In my own shifts on this issue, the key changes were not “new” Bible verses I found.
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Women & the Church: we’re ALMOST to the Bible, but first…

November 15, 2012February 5, 2015 / Paul Burkhart / 11 Comments

Well, we’ve gone through some of my own journey and some of the ways this discussion goes, but the real meat of this discussion centers around a few key biblical texts. Various refutes and refutations’ refutes can be found with any easy Google search. I don’t necessarily want to re-hash the more widely-publicized textual minutiae of the issue, though some of that will be necessary.

In this post, I could easily just list the three primary offending texts and then talk about how my view differs from others’ views. But those other people’s views don’t come out of thin air. They are based in many more (and, epistemologically more important) assumptions and bigger issues that usually never get touched on.

And so, as I continue this series, today I just want to touch on the ways people go about using the Bible in this, and then defending how I feel like we should use the Bible here. After this post, beginning next week, I promise we’ll start getting into actual biblical texts. But we need to do this first.

Because, as anyone that has studied theology begins to realize, everything comes back to your chosen interpretive method and filters–what’s usually referred to as a “hermeneutic”.

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Okay, election: done. Time to get this blog back on track. [casual fri]

November 9, 2012November 9, 2012 / Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

Well, on this blog we’ve contemplated electing Romney, electing Obama, each of the election debates, laughing at the election, the election foreign policy, the election domestic policy, reminded ourselves it’s all going to be okay, voted, laughed on voting day, partied on election night, prayed for the election, and we prayed for the elected officials.

Now we’re all election’d out.

It has now become almost as cliche as election-season Facebook politics posts, to complain about those election season Facebook politics posts. In fact, I think my Facebook feed was filled with more complaining about political posting than actual political posts. (This is not to discount the very real experience that many of us had, to be sure, with those one or two people ib our feeds that would put 12 to 15 posts up a day and carry on endless vitriolic arguments in the comment section.)

I wonder if our malaise wasn’t even as much about other people posting as much as it was the campaign itself. With all the politicking having already wearied us, seeing anything more on Facebook surely just put many of us over-the-top. For any ways that I may have been “that guy”, please forgive me. I had hoped I would be a more clear-headed voice in the political wilderness.
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Hope of the Earth: a political eschatology (we can all breathe) [REPOST]

November 8, 2012November 8, 2012 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

In light of the election, I wanted to re-post this article from a couple of weeks ago. I hope it’s encouraging.

November 7th, we will wake up to front pages declaring with finality the results of the American Presidential Election. Most of us will see these headlines and have some sort of emotional reaction (especially those of us that stayed up as late as we could to know the results early).

Depression? Fear? Anger? Injustice? Sadness? Joy? Elation? Ecstasy? Worship? Peace?

I remember after the 2004 election when Bush beat Kerry. Going to a large, urban University dominated by idealistic and passionate liberal youth, the campus was in mourning for the rest of that week. People walked in silence, hugged one another, and I saw a good number of people crying as they resigned themselves to what they felt would be the end of every good thing they’d ever thought about this country.

This election cycle, I was certainly active–probably more so than ever before (especially on this blog, at least). I’m almost certain that I have been blocked from my fair share of Facebook feeds and removed from some feed readers in the past six months or so. I’ve been quite passionate on those few issues that have guided so much of my writing and reading.

But I haven’t lost a bit of sleep over any of that stuff. I’ve been able to enjoy good books and beers, and pipes and peers, without any discussion of politics or debates or elections.

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[image credit: Untitled piece by Arielle Passenti. Read my review of this piece.]

Hope of the Earth: a political eschatology (we can all breathe)

October 25, 2012October 25, 2012 / Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

Depression? Fear? Anger? Injustice? Sadness? Joy? Elation? Ecstasy? Worship? Peace?

But I haven’t lost a bit of sleep over any of that stuff. I’ve been able to enjoy good books and beers, and pipes and peers, without any discussion of politics or debates or elections.
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I like answers better than questions {a reblog}

October 23, 2012October 23, 2012 / Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

Here’s a return to some more meditative reflections on God and life by Kimberly Novosel at The Ooh La La Life. This is so true of me. It was an encouragement to be reminded. (By the way, I posted similar thoughts about a year ago in my post: “to “why?” is human, to “what” is divine“)

The Ooh La La Life

A year or so ago I sat down with the counselors from my church, freshly broken-hearted, folded my hands in my lap and said, “Ok, how do I heal from this?” I may as well have had a notebook and pen, poised to take rigorous notes. They looked at me for a moment and, ever so gently, pointed out that there is no checklist for sorting though emotions. Even further, they handed me a page listing the stages of grief and pointed out that they would NOT happen in order, some would last longer than others, and they would repeat an unknown number of times.

I guess I wasn’t their first type-A.

It’s true though, there is no path through the sometimes dense and dark forrest of the things we struggle with in life, whatever they may be. Not even a winding path – no path at all. You have…

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Christianity: paradox & Paradise, fall & Fall

October 8, 2012October 12, 2012 / Paul Burkhart / 10 Comments

I had the privilege of spending a long weekend these past few days in western Pennsylvania under the kindness and hospitality of my girlfriend and her family. It’s a place that is hard to describe without falling into cliches of big sky, clear air, and bright stars. It’s near the area that Johann Jacob Burkhardt, my first ancestor in America, settled in 1754 after sailing from Germany and landing in Philadelphia exactly a week ago today. I made almost the exact same trek as Johann and his family, from the rivers of Philly to the rural countryside of unsettled Pennsylvania.

Strangely, in the rest of Pennsylvania that I have seen, the trees are still mostly green and just starting to turn for the Fall. But here, this weekend marked the peak of that beautiful transition. The pictures above and below should testify to this (click them for larger versions). They were taken only a couple of days ago–with my phone (fun fact: the picture directly above this text was taken from Mt. David, the highest point in Pennsylvania).

I can’t express to you the beauty my eyes and soul were able to behold.
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Debates with Atheists (And Good News for Them)

August 27, 2012November 13, 2012 / Paul Burkhart / 17 Comments

Recently, a friend sent me a link inviting me to a debate between a prominent evangelical intellectual and a prominent atheist thinker. It made me remember how I used to eat those sorts of things up when I was in college, and I really appreciated this friend sending it, but at this point in my life, I genuinely had no interest whatsoever.

Eventually, you realize that every debate of this sort goes the exact same way. At some point–without fail– there’s comes a moment when the evangelical says something to which the atheist responds with “well, what proof [or “evidence” or “basis” or “reason”] do you have to make such a claim!”, to which the evangelical responds with something like “well, it’s faith” (or something like that).

And then the debate should end. The fool’s errand of these events has been exposed.

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The Best Bible Resource I’ve Ever Read [casual fri]

August 24, 2012August 24, 2012 / Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

To do this Bible Class that has consumed the past few months of my life (and this blog–I swear I’ll stop talking about it soon), I had to read a lot of stuff, including these (as well as their New testament counterparts). I checked out stuff from the Philadelphia library, and watched a bunch of lectures from iTunesU (especially these). I looked through commentaries and websites and articles and handbooks and sermons.

In other words, I at least glanced over a lot.

But there was one resource that I found more helpful, clear, and amazing than any other Bible resource I’ve ever found. No exaggeration. No hyperbole. I’m serious.

It’s a pair of textbooks (one on the Old Testament, one on the New, one combined with both) written by a theologian I had never heard of before. his name is John Drane (here’s his painfully poor-designed website as well). Yes, textbooks. And I read most of the Old Testament one and all of the New Testament one.

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