Highlights from the Biblio-blogsphere

Just a few things I’ve enjoyed reading lately:

1) Theology for Beginners: Election over at Faith and Theology (yes I’ll offend Ben Myers and call his blog a biblioblog). This is the best one in ther series so far, I think.

2)  Chris Tilling examines Christian Zionism (parts one and two). This should be a good series. I’m relatively new to reading Chris Tilling’s blog regularly, but I’m enjoying what I’ve read. It’s just too bad I don’t know German.

3) Stephen Peltz has a tantalizing series on annihilationism (parts 1, 2a, 2b, and 3). Check it out.

4) And finally, Byron has a really cool picture here. Oh yeah, and the post is interesting too.

Happy surfing!

Ernesto…and Kyle?

Well, I spent the night at my mom’s house. The hurricane was mostly a dud, but I was one of the few who lost power. Thankfully we invested in a very nice generator earlier this year, so I still have power.

So I’ve been spending my time playing the piano and talking to Kyle about all sorts of things like inerrancy, ancient israel’s religion and theology, messianic proof-texts and the like.

School will resume tomorrow (yay) and that’ll be that for this bit of the storm season. I just hope others don’t foolishly presume that just because we got so lucky on Ernesto that any other storm won’t totally screw us up. It would be a tragedy to see people unprepared for the next one, ’cause it’s very likely that we’ll get more.

Hurricane: Feels like Home

Yeah, so storm season has begun. I’m out of school for tomorrow. If I’m not on for a few days, assume that my electricity is gone and I’m pining for it and realizing what a slave I am to modern commodities.

It is in dying…

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love

Where there is injury, pardon

Where there is doubt, faith

Where there is darkness, light

Where there is sadness, joy

Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console

To be understood, as to understand

To be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned.

It is in dying, that we are born to eternal life.

- St. Francis of Assisi

I must say Mike inspired this.

The Great Escape

“God takes account of how we live for Him in the here and now. Today counts forever. If the early Christians had only been concerned about heaven, then there would have been little need for Rome to deal with Christians like Paul. But the early church believed in God and history, heaven and earth, this age and the age to come. This is why Paul and his followers were considered a threat. If he had only been “other worldly” where the only legitimate sphere of Christian activity was heaven, then Rome would have dismissed him and others like him as religious mystics. But the gospel Paul preached forced men and women to choose sides, and the choice of sides had an effect on the world in which they lived.”

Another excellent article by Gary DeMar  on how Christians cannot espouse an escapist eschatology and call it biblical.

A Reading Proposal

Because I am taking AP Literature this year, I have decided to adjust my reading plans a bit. Here’s my idea: read one book on the AP list, one book I want. Seems simple enough, and I hope it gives me what I need to excel on the AP Exam at the end of the year, and also not to get out of touch with what’s going on with the author’s I like in biblical studies. I hope to read Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses when it’s released, and also The Pre-existent Son: Recovering the Christologies of the Synoptics (don’t remember the author’s full name for that one).

So, back to my Text of the New Testament. Then afterwards Don Juan and Tartuffe by Moliere, though the latter may overcome the former if the test is next week or something.

And as I get back to reading books about God and the bible, I will maybe have posts with more substance coming these days. Maybe.

Where’s this Rob guy?

Yeah, I know. You probably all think I’ve been raptured or something (and if I have, that’s trouble for you all!), but I’m still here. I’m just bogged down by studies, after-school activities, late arrivals and home and sleep. I really need to finish reading Gulliver’s Travels.

I’m having a music overload right now, and I’m loving it. Band, choir and muisc theory everyday, and piano lessons on Tuesdays by some Canadian guy.
Hope you are all blessed!

Goodbye

Today is the last day that my girlfriend will be in town. I’ll be going up with her family to her college, and then coming back down on Sunday. I wish her the best in college, and I hope that it is a new, different, maturing and broadening experience. God bless you! Now, thankfully we have the ability to leave comments, because I know you were all dying to wish her well and say goodbye.

Spoiled Again

I was looking up info to see whether the Death Note movie would be coming to the US, and once again I read a gigantic spoiler in a comment on a blog, I think. I am so frustrated. I can’t believe I let this happen twice. Why must such a fantastic series be so ruined! I guess it’s horrible to know the person dies. At least I don’t know under what circumstances, right?

I also got Death Note volume seven in the mail today. And I’m done with it. My girlfriend has it now. Hope she enjoys it.

Anyway, all of you who haven’t read Death Note yet, stop reading this and go buy it now. Yes, now. Even if you are not a fan of manga or comics, it is a very thought-provoking and well written tale, with a number of twist and turns to keep you twisting in your seat and turning those pages.

And if you read it, I’ll have someone with whom I can discuss it!

Crime and Punishment

Because of my participation in AP classes last year and this year, I have done and will do a fair amount of writing. As I receive my essays or papers and think they’re at least half-way decent, I’ll post them on here.

Here’s my book report, completed around one in the morning the day it was due, on Crime and Procrastination Punishment, with some slight alteration. If you haven’t read the book, there are major spoilers since the report concerns the plot.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterful work, Crime and Punishment, provides a thorough treatment on the nature of man and criminal acts. Through brilliant storytelling, Dostoevsky brings together a host of characters who, seemingly not related at all, interact to provide a suspenseful, deep, and believable world in 19th century Petersburg, Russia. At the center of this story is Rodion “Rodya” Romanovich Raskolnikov, a former university student with a murderous mind. The plot can be broken into three parts: the events leading up to the murder, the murder itself and the subsequent events, and the events culminating in Rodya’s confession.

In the introduction of the book, Dostoevsky acquaints his readers with Rodya and his meager living situation, and also with the morbid thoughts that seem to plague him from time to time. In what seems to be a bit of a scattered section, Rodya actually spends much time walking his city and interacting with a host of characters, most notably Mr. Marmeladov who becomes, with his family, incredibly influential later on in the plot. Eventually, Raskolnikov learns that the woman whom he seeks to murder will be left alone at a certain time, and this spurs him to take back up the evil desires which he had previously renounced concerning her.
Raskolnikov succeeds in putting an axe to the head of Alyona Ivanovna, and also does the same to her younger sister, a detail which was unforeseen in his plans. Instead of robbing Alyona the pawn-broker, Rodya only takes the money for a short while and finally deposits most of it under a rock in an abondoned area. Immense paranoia ensues for Raskolnikov, who cannot live at peace after the crime, being in a more miserable state than he was before the crime. After the crime, Rodya meets the family of Marmeladov more closely, and also becomes reuinited with his own family.
The characters and subplots that Dostoevsky introduced in the beginning of the book all join in surprising ways to pressure Raskolnikov to his breaking point. The chief investigator is highly suspicious of Rodya, and allows Rodya to be well aware of it. Family pressures lead Rodya to break off with this family and to find solace only in Marmeladov’s daughter, Sonia, who is also a harlot. Things become too much for Rodya, and, as one character so aptly puts it, Raskolnikov is left with the options of “the bullet or Siberia.”
Rodya chooses Siberia, which is prison, and instead of jumping into the river and committing suicide, he enters the police station and confesses that he is the murderer.
This riveting story concludes with Rodya imprisoned for eight years. During his sentence his mother dies, and his sister marries his best friend. The most important change for Raskolnikov during his imprisonment, however, is the blossoming of his love for Sonia. After he wraps his arms around her in an act of sheer love, his seven year sentence is no longer a tremendous burden; instead, he, like Jacob, will work happily to finish his term and enter into the happiness that awaits him with Sonia.
This book can be given nothing less than superior praise. It succeeds as a “psychological thriller”, as the introduction describes it, and boasts some passages of paranoia that are very fun to read. The reader is truly thrown into Rodya’s mind, and he learns what a frightening and fearful place it can be. The book was thoroughly enjoyable and should be required reading for all high school students.