The UmBlog

I took my boo review down. Of the 12 people who read this blog, 2 thought I was a jerk. Lesson learned, don't post the rough draft, even if only 12 people will read it. After vacation, I will write a more thorough review. I will have to spread it out over a few posts like Scot Mcknight did at Jesus Creed when he reviewed Carson's Emergent book. I apologize Allen, for the ad hominem. Please forgive me.

It's time for our family road trip. We leave tomorrow night for an all night drive to Ottawa, Ohio for a wedding this weekend. Then to Dearborn, Michigan for a day at Greenfield Village . Then we will spend a few days in Toronto, Ontario , which has a great deal called the city pass which gets us into all the tourist stuff we want to do. We hope to do a day trip down to Niagara Falls . We will spend a couple nights with friends in Montreal, Quebec . Finally, we will visit a friend in Richfield Springs, New York . All this is my excuse for not blogging until August.

Julia Sweeney who was hilarious as Pat on Saturday Night Live years ago just wrapped up her one woman play, Leting Go of God. You need to listen to it on This American Life . It's the 2nd half of the show. I think it is fascinating outsider exegesis. And it is criticisms of Bible stories thrown out rapid fire that accumulate into the reason for her atheism. Some things are addressed by saying, "the humans in this story are responsible for their own actions," but some involve a little more time. This play was so successful the book and DVD are forthcoming. Expect her criticisms to be parroted by those not interested in Christianity. At least she read the book. Her priest wasn't too helpful though. He assured her that the stories are fictional narratives. I'm not sure how there is comfort in philosophical naturalism, other than the pride that she can face the "facts" and not flinch. Do read, do listen, do prepare.

Al Mohler's review came out in June but I just found it tonight.

Here you go. A Place Called Vertigo :: A Generous Orthodoxy? I'm also working on a book review of a lesser know book. Hopefully i will get it done before I leave on vacation. The blog is offline, but the archive of this post is here. Book review on McLaren . " While I agree that we often fight the symptoms of the disease and not the disease itself, I find McLaren's diagnosis of the disease incorrect. It is not the system; the system is another symptom. The disease is ourselves! In the previous chapter, McLaren dismissed the doctrine of "total depravity" as "depressing" (page 177). Yet Scripture is clear that the disease is our own sinfulness/depravity—e.g., Genesis 6:5; 1 Kings 8:46; Psalm 14:1-3; Ecclesiastes 7:20; Jeremiah 17:9; Mark 7:20-23; Romans 3:9-23, 7:7-25, 8:5-8; Ephesians 2:1-3; 1 John 1:8-10. Regardless of how "depressing" McLaren finds the doctrine of total depravity, the important thing is whether or not this doctrine is true!...

In case you couldn't guess, I'm not an N.T. Wright fan. Here's some links. Critics NT Wright - Justification useful powerpoint slides Paul Perspective a quote farm White on Wright via Wilson J. Ligon Duncan Fans unofficial nt wright page The Jollyblogger

Dallas Willard summarizes the issues of the Postmodern view of truth. He writes towards the end of this article, "The second main argument against "Real truth" rests upon the widespread assumption that consciousness (language, history, culture) transforms its objects in "touching" them, so that they are never "in themselves" what we take them to be in becoming aware of them or knowing them or introducing them into language. It is useful to call this the "Midas Touch" epistemology, because of the similarity, on this account, of consciousness/language to the mythological King Midas, who turned everything he touched to gold." Scot Mcknight isn't alone in the EC to embrace this. He writes "theology is always context-shaped because we can't avoid it." He concludes this blog entry with, "if the Fall impacts our mind, then we are bound by our conviction that our theology should be more humble and and conversational. P...

Do-It-Yourself Impressive Theological Constructs "Compose 10,000 impressive sentences. Select a phrase from each column to form statements which sound profound." Thanks for the pointer Joe...

See Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . INTERVIEW . D.A. Carson . July 8, 2005 | PBS where many of the concerns I have Carson has, but he is far more charitable than I make any space for here. some highlights are "What I want to see in the movement is less focus on emerging as a category and more focus on the Gospel, because otherwise, if the Gospel is merely the assumed thing rather than the thing about which we are passionate, in another half-generation, another generation, the Gospel itself becomes diluted, even denied. The successors and heirs of the current leaders to the movement will be passionate about the things they are passionate about, and they are being stamped now, it seems to me, by whether they are or are not sufficiently emerging, rather than being stamped by whether they are or are not sufficiently faithful to the historic Gospel." he says what i said in my last post "I think that the movement itself is likely to split. In fact, in some ways it al...

Please forgive me, I never knew that, As a legal non-profit (501(c)(3)) corporation, Emergent has had a Board of Directors and an annual business meeting, as required by law, for several years now. I guess this isn't true for all things emerging outside of the US. First, I must say, this is so NOT postmodern. But now this, Tony Jones, Emergent-U.S. National Director, no, strike that, Coordinator. The spin from these systematizing anti-systematizers couldn't be beat by any politician from Washington D.C. Just when I'm getting ready to write about the birth of a new denomination/affiliation/movement with the requisite gatekeepers and doctrinal fences, I get another gift from these guys. I know the meeting happened last month but emergent-us isn't part of my regular rounds of emergent's blogdom. I actually ended up there from Andrew's blog on the ec's tension points where someone mentioned the trashing a, presumably, orthodox Presbyterian minister named tooa...