theo|digital

Clifford Christians , a national expert on media ethics and communications professor at the University of Illinois, is also a Christian who has thought deeply about spiritual implications of new media.

Writing a recent book forward, he explains that, regarding new media technologies, a fundamental debate remains unresolved. The issue is whether communication is most productively oriented:

1. To the epistemology of virtual reality (What does it mean that our relationships are disembodied?)
2. To the nature of the human (What is authentic humanness in virtual space?)
3. To social structures (Are political and social formations offline and online fundamentally different?)

Christians writes his forward in Understanding Evangelical Media: The Changing Face of Christian Communication.  The book also features a website with additional content .

One of easiest ways to stress myself out is spin myself into a materialistic web of anxious theological book shopping.  The Logos/Libronix software is my downfall on this. When I first hit seminary, I realized a Bible software program could be really helpful.  Though my professors tend to use Bibleworks in class, I looked at the options and chose Logos for two reasons:  it seemed better suited for a well-rounded collection with commentaries, etc.  And it’s interface design was significantly better than Bibleworks (which has toolbars that look as if a programmer mashed them together using tinkertoys).

I had sticker shock when I first looked at the base-packages—they range from $150 to $1379.95—whoa! Because my degree was going to be more theological in nature and wasn’t going to allow me to do any original language work, I chose the Bible Study Library package. It really didn’t have everything I wanted, but I couldn’t justify jumping to the Scholars library, which had lots of resources I’d just never use (I really think they ought to have a better “between” package there… but maybe more on that another time).

So now I’ve slowly been buying additional resources to add to my library, which is fun but really expensive.

Until Nov 10th, Logos has a sale again for North Park students (they do this every semester), so I’m back to wanting more stuff.

Here’s the possibilities:

1. Interlinear LXX (Septuagint) – $109.  Greek version of the Old Testament.  Almost essential to word studies, etc.
2. BDAG/HALOT – $275.  The most authoritative academic standard lexicons (dictionaries) for Greek and Hebrew.
3. IVP Reference Dictionaries.  $120 Includes Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, and like eight others.
4. Anchor Bible Dictionary.- $250  More comprehensive, scholarly, and liberal than the IVP stuff, but will it be too redundant?
5. The TDNT (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, aka. “Kittel”) – $199.  Massive standard comprehensive theological dictionary.
6. The Word Biblical Commentary Series.  $700  Pretty much all my Bible professors (including McKnight and Snodgrass) say that you shouldn’t purchase one particular series of commentaries–each book tends to have it’s best author, and it can be published in any one of the major series.  But the upside to buying an entire series at once is PRICE… Word Biblical Commentaries tend to be $35-$40 each.  Buy all 60-ish volumes at once?   $12 each!

Argh!  I can’t afford all that!  I can’t afford even smaller portions of that.  I’m not sure who these prices are made for, but not for seminary students living off part-time ministry financial support and student loans.  But to take advantage of the student discount I can get (which helps cut these prices a little, but not enough), I should buy now, while I’m in school.  Plus, I can USE them while in school.  I’ve gotta think about this as long-term investments, I think.

Decisions, decisions…  the sale ends Nov 10.

Happy Fall Semester 2008! Here’s what I’ll be reading.

That the newest Christian culture blockbuster sported shiny endorsements from Michael W. Smith and Wynonna Judd almost had me quitting before I started. But Eugene Peterson’s reassuring quote (plus the predictable rumors of heresy) drove me in to the William P. Young novel about a father who faces God after losing his little girl.

Theologically, The Shack has been condemned by everyone from Mark Driscoll to the Amazon.com review panel (“Trojan horse subtly infiltrating the Christian community”). But what first caught me was the writing. Its opening words sketched wind and color with a soft touch, a paragraph of hope breaking the clouds of Christian mediocrity. No sunshine followed. As quickly as it began, the weather froze into painfully unrealistic dialogue, belabored scenes, and complete loss of point-of-view, that clever tool invented by writers to provide characterization via appropriately framed perspective.

Trudging past overt lines underlining the writer’s agenda (“This came as a shock to Mack’s religious system”), some nicely constructed themes still emerge. Young’s representation of God the Father as a large, generous Black woman is effective reminder of God essential gender neutrality. That she is “especially fond of” both Mack—and every other person she’s made—brings a smile, and seems just about right. And I like the Holy Spirit portrayed in Sarayu’s wildflower garden: chaos from within but an intricate fractal pattern from above.

I find no heart-stopping theological points insidiously poised to hijack orthodoxy. Still, poor attempts at plot (reconciling with a father we’ve never met?) and a slew of eye-roll chapter titles don’t add up to a new generation’s Pilgrims Progress (sorry Eugene) as much as a novel hastily nailed together and soon to be left forgotten in the woods.

Scot McKnight has posted up two more of my reviews on Don Evert’s short book series. If you’re familiar with them, feel free to agree or disagree there.

• Jesus Creed: Don Everts 3
• Jesus Creed: Don Everts 4

Thanks again to Scot for the opportunities and challenges he’s providing me.

“Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing… What Orwell feared was those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one…

In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”

~ Neil Postman, writing in his forward to Amusing Ourselves to Death, an old favorite that I finally just bought to put in the permanent shelves (go Amazon impulse buy). This guy wrote in 1985, and still has a lot of power. Love it. So good. Love it. Yep.

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Now playing: Sigur Rós – Ágætis Byrjun
via FoxyTunes

Scot McKnight asked me recently if I’d look through a four part series of books InterVarsity staffer Don Everts wrote recently. I reviewed each, and Scot today posted the first of my takes on his blog Jesus Creed.

ps – have you noticed that Starbucks is closing all 7,100 stores tonight? And I’m already reading the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report… hopefully some thoughts when I get done.

When the semester started, I didn’t bring this up right away. But here they are, my spring semester assigned textbooks:

I’m about to dive into a new semester at North Park, and it leaves me suddenly with a lot to write about. I’ll try to report new textbooks as they arrive via Amazon love (though there are a few sitting in boxes that I refuse to open because I haven’t yet made shelf space). I haven’t finished writing thoughts on Christianity and culture. And I’ve committed to attending a gathering through the new Ecclesia network to see my friend JR Woodward and hear thoughts from that crazy Australian pastor Alan Hirsch.

Hirsch’s most recent book is The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. But I haven’t yet read his previous book in conjunction with Michael Frost: The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church. So knowing that he’ll probably talk about his newer thoughts, I’m going to get his foundational ones first. My interest was peaked by my friend Ty, who has read both and probably had told me half of the concepts in conversation anyway.

That said, I plan on noting quotes from the book along the way. Like this, three key parts of their definition of missional church thinking (p12).

1. The missional church is incarnational, not attractional, in its ecclesiology. By incarnational we mean it does not create sanctified spaces into which unbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the missional church disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don’t yet know him.

2. The missional church is messianic, not dualistic, in its spirituality. That is, it adopts the worldview of Jesus the Messiah, rather than that of the Greco-Roman empire. Instead of seeing the world as divided between the sacred (religious) and profane (nonreligious), like Christ it sees the world and God’s placein it as more holistic and integrated.

3. The missional church adopts an apostolic, rather than a hierarchical, mode of leadership. By apostolic we mean a mode of leadership that recognized the fivefold model details by Paul in Ephesians 4 a. It abandons the triangular hierarchies of the traditional church and embraces a biblical, flat-leadership community that unleashes the gifts of evangelism, apostleship, and prophecy, as well as the currently popular pastoral and teaching gifts.

a. footnote on Ephesians 4. It actually reads Ephesians *6* in the book. Not sure why, I can only assume I missed something or it’s a genuine misprint.

Haven’t posted all week. Have plenty of posts in the works, but I have eight new books on my shelf (six from library, two more Amazon) to read (at least scan)… and it’s just not happening.

Am definitely feeling a lack of expression… lots of intake (reading/study) and not so much output, esp. creative. I’m not writing. Not speaking. Not making music. Need to make a change soon.