"But of course the black eye would make him look that way whether he was or not. It was a garish, overdone display, about a quarter of an acre, with deep magenta and black and a few isolated blue stripes. That is what had happened when Pastor John Mitchell had extended the right hand of fellowship forcefully to Chad's left eye . . . John Mitchell had perhaps missed his calling as an amateur boxer, but he had clearly not missed Chad" (Evangellyfish, p. 143-144).

"Many a wife desperately wants her husband to be a 'spiritual leader,' but only to the extent that he leads where she thinks he should be going" (For a Glory and a Covering, p. 75).

This was truly a refreshing book. Every liberal pastor needs to get and read it as part of the process of becoming evangelical. Moreover, and this is the crucial thing, every evangelical pastor needs to get and read it as part of the process of becoming evangelical. We have gotten to the point where we think we know what certain words mean because they are much in use, but it is high time we clicked the refresh button.

One of the things I have noticed over the years is how theological fads and fashions blow. It is astonishing to me -- particularly among theologians and pastors, where the authority of the text and the life of the mind are held in such prominence -- how certain doctrines "go out" the same way and for the same reasons that wide ties did.

The formal battle for inerrancy was won a generation ago, for example, and yet in the years since, a certain drift has set in so that we are now in the merry position of owning inerrant Bibles that have mistakes in them. The faddists will do what the faddists will do, and the advantage of their method is you never have to formulate or advance any arguments. You just hop in the inner tube and float downstream.

Gregory Thornbury has done a marvelous job here. The book begins by describing the lost world of classic evangelicalism (as distinguished from pop evangelicalism), and he then moves on to discuss a series of important philosophical and doctrinal issues -- epistemology, theology, inerrancy, culture, and evangelicalism.

"Finally, after repeating several phrases unnecessarily (the sermonic equivalent of a blinking fuel gauge), John decided that he had to wrap up. He didn't feel any better. He felt like he had just tried to give a tar baby a bath in vegetable oil. Lester didn't look any cleaner, and John just felt gunked" (Evangellyfish, p. 140).

"The way we live reflects whether or not we know that God has been gracious to us in Christ. We live by grace or we live by works. We live by grace married or we live by works married. If the former, the result is gratitude for the ongoing kindness of God. If the latter, then the result is always some form of misery and condemnation. And in condemning the folly, it is crucial to note that we are not simply being 'negative.' The only thing we seek to put to death is the way of death" (For a Glory and a Covering, p. 74).

So here below is a friendly rejoinder to a response to my recent jab at hermeneutical humility. My thanks to Micah Neely for the interaction. The nuances here may seem exquisite to some and very fine, but I actually think a great deal rides on it. It is le big deal, as the French put it so wonderfully.

My rejoinder has three points, making it, I suppose, a trijoinder.

First, if we think in terms of which hermeneutical approach makes truth "possible," I think we have already lost the game. In order to function in robust scriptural categories, we need a hermeneutical approach that understands truth as inescapable.

We are not setting out with a hermeneutical flashlight, looking for a particular pebble of truth at the bottom of Carlsbad Caverns, but rather our problem is that we are running off to the basement with our hermeneutical flashlight in a vain attempt to get away from the sun. The earth is full of His glory (Is. 6:3). Day unto day pours forth speech, and the words go to the end of the world (Ps. 19:4). The invisible things of God are clearly seen, and have been since the creation (Rom. 1:20). So we need a hermeneutic capable of supporting the weight of inescapable, omnipresent, won't-leave-us-alone truth, and not just possible truth. The hunt for truth is not looking for a needle in a haystack. It is more like looking for hay in a haystack.

This morning I tweeted this, and some consternation ensued.

"In honor of the first openly gay NBA basketball player, I think we need to redefine a swish as bouncing one off the rim. And give it 4 pts."

Lots of people liked it, but there was some idea that I did not know about the double entendre that I had perpetrated, or that I did know about it, and was being naughty. First, let's define a double entendre -- it is a phrase with two meanings that can only be taken one way.

There were two words in there that could have attracted this attention -- one was "swish" and the other one was "rim." I was aware of the alternative meanings of both words when I wrote what I did, but was not making word play with either one of them.

Assume that either one was a play on words, and what you get is something that makes no sense. In basketball, a swish is a basket that hits nothing but net, and in other quarters it serves as a term for an effeminate male. If anybody can explain what sort of convoluted point I was trying to make by having both meanings echo through the room, then they have more wit than I. And "rimming" is a detestable sexual practice, but bouncing one off the rim is what happens when you play basketball with cinder blocks.

So if anyone wants to insist that I intended to make a play on the word rimming, I will simply deny it, but will admit that I was aware at the time of tweeting that some might want to take it that way. For those who insist that this is what I meant, I will leave them to it -- and ask them to explain to the general public what rimming actually is, and will further express the hope that they will also go on to explain how this is a natural, normal, and healthy thing to do.

That said, I have no problem using either one of those words in the "other" sense, but my one stipulation is that it would have to be a joke that made some kind of sense.

So the point of the tweet was more straightforward. Attempting to redefine marriage as allowing for male on male or female on female is as silly as redefining a basket as a ball that doesn't go through the basket. It is like hooking up your stereo by using the Supreme Court's special electrical tape to bind two male couplings together. It is like watering your garden with a hose that is connected wrong way to the spigot using egalitarian twist-ties.

"At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore" (Ps. 16: 11)

The Basket Case Chronicles #114

“Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?” (1 Cor. 10:18).

Paul here points to a covenantal reality that undoes quite a few metaphysical theories about the sacraments. What is happening in the Lord’s Supper is not a one-off situation. It happened to Israelites “after the flesh” in the time of the old covenant. The same thing happens to pagan worshipers when they sacrificed (v. 20), resulting in fellowship with devils.

This is a covenantal connection, and it is the way the world is built to work. We have only two appointed sacraments in the Christian faith (baptism and the Lord’s Supper), but nevertheless the world is jammed full of “sacramentals.” Those sacramentals may be participated in by faith, or they may be seized in rebellion, and they remain what they are regardless. A man may become one flesh with his wife (Eph. 5:31), but if it is with a hooker, the unity of flesh still happens (1 Cor. 6:16). One man communes with Yahweh at His altar by eating part of a roast, and another man communes with demons by eating the same part of the roast from another cow, and this all happens without any changes whatever happening to the meat (1 Cor. 10:28). The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. The meat is not demon-possessed, and the meat doesn’t have Yahweh in it. We participate in the world sacramentally, which is to say, we do so by faith.

So whatever was happening when a man sacrificed to Aphrodite, and slept with one of her priestesses, it was not anything like consubstantiation, transubstantiation, or mere memorialism. Nothing was happening to internal essences while leaving the external accidents intact. Neither was it a mere sign pointing to something else happening someplace else entirely. It really was fellowship with devils. And whatever happened when a man brought a peace offering in ancient Israel, it was not the meat of the sacrifice turning into another substance. Nevertheless, that man was truly becoming a partaker of the altar.

This kind of covenantal participation does not require a priest, or special magic words. Ours is a covenantal participation at one of two possible tables, and we do so by virtue of simply being alive in this world. The only question is where we are partaking by faith, not whether we are.

There are so many exciting developments going on here in Moscow that it is hard to keep track of them all. Why, just yesterday, Christ Church rolled out its new app for iPhones and Android, and if that doesn't get us out of the Idaho woods, I don't know what can. Just go to the app store, and search for Christ Church app, make sure which CC it is, and then download it for free.

On another front, I recently wrote about all the doings at Canon Press, and what they have been doing in their new Logos Press division. For just one example, in the fall, Nancy will be teaching an on-line seminar on biblical femininity, which you can read more about here.

To give you a big overview, you can read the following summary from Larry Stephenson, either just below for your convenience, or you can read it here on the Logos site. If you go to the Logos site, you will have access to all the embedded links. The bottom line is that we really want to be full-service providers for the reformational work we are all called to do.

Anyway, here you go . . .

"He wasn't thinking three chess moves ahead like a man in his position really ought to be doing" (Evangellyfish, p. 138).