I’m studying for the Poimenics midterm tomorrow – Poimenics being the study of the pastoral and interpersonal side of the ministry. We read through a small book by Pierre and Reju called The Pastor and Counseling: The Basics of Shepherding Members in Need.
Related to that – and at the same time unrelated – here’s a counseling classic:
Somehow over the course of my seminary career I’d gotten into the habit of getting sick during holidays – even one-day holidays. Or, more accurately, my immune system had the habit of letting me down during the holidays. For whatever reason, it took a break whenever I did, and while I don’t want to claim any kind of consciousness for my immune system, the uncanny parallel between sickness and holidays is highly suggestive.
Last semester was different, though, and I stayed healthy all the way through, even through the Christmas break. But the dues have come, as they always do, and I and my family have been paying them these first two weeks of school. Alas.
Anyways, here’s a rundown of this semester’s courses. I’ve included the brief course description from the syllabi and listed the textbooks. Do note that a textbook is merely a book from which readings are assigned, not a book that we read cover to cover:
Continue reading
In one sense, Scripture is like nature. A scientist looks at a tree and says, “If you look here at the bark you will see the lenticels through which the oxygen is diffused.” A woodworker looks at a tree and says, “That burl there will make a perfect desktop.” A poet could say, “We move above the moving tree / In light upon the figured leaf;” while a child moves within the moving tree, thinking about the treehouse he plans to build. There are as many ways to see nature as there are people in the world, and no single view can show you nature for all that it is. In fact, you can never know a single tree for all that it is.
This is like Scripture in that there are many different methods that can give you a view into the text. A lexicographer studies individual words; a historian studies people and events; a dogmatician pieces together doctrines across books. And the preacher has to take account of all these things in order to deliver a simple, edifying message on Sunday morning. One of these methods of interpretation is called “narrative criticism,” and we are studying this method in New Testament Exegesis class.
In regular English the word “criticism” has negative connotations. Even when you throw the word “constructive” in front of it, this doesn’t always remove the the sharpness. “I’m only trying to constructively criticize your cooking,” is really not the best choice of words. So perhaps you wonder why we speak of “criticism” when we speak of interpreting Scripture. I mean, doesn’t criticizing the Bible put you in a rather regrettable position? It certainly does, but that’s not the sense of the word here. The word “criticism” here derives its meaning from its Latin root, which means “able to discern.” We need to correctly handle the Word of truth, Paul tells Timothy, and this of course requires discernment. So another way of saying narrative criticism is “narrative discernment.”
Continue reading
For this semester’s New Testament Exegesis class we were assigned passages from Paul’s letter to the Romans. As with Old Testament Exegesis, two students are given the same passage but write their own papers. That way the class has two different takes on the same passage when it comes time for the class discussion. Third-year Jake and I were given Romans 11:25-32, famous for the phrase, “And so all Israel will be saved.” It’s an intense passage, and by that I mean that the interpretation of every section of it is contested and requires careful thought and study. Third-year Hilmer told me he dodged a bullet by not getting my passage.
The following is the introduction from my paper. It introduces the major questions posed by the passage, and outlines my arguments for how it should be read:
When you tell Dr. Van Vliet that you are working on Romans 11:25-32 for New Testament exegesis, and he responds with a clap on the shoulder and a “Sterkte, brother,” I think you are justified in feeling a flash of self-pity. This is one of the most contested passages in Romans. Eminent and orthodox scholars study these same few words yet arrive at very different conclusions, each convinced of conclusive evidence for their own reading. Thus it is a humbling thing for an amateur exegete to wade into the passage himself, and to find himself disagreeing with scholars with much greater skill and experience than his own. Yet one cannot remain neutral; a position must be taken.
On Friday mornings you may just find the senior students gathered ‘round the small classroom organ, all ears as Dr. de Visser explains the inner workings of the Genevan melodies. Just what you’d imagine seminary to be, right? But besides having the correct amount of Reformed quaintness, those moments really are wonderful, a welcome interlude to the daily lectures.
The class is Liturgics, one of those double blocks that form the backbone of the week’s lectures. So from 8:50-10:30 Friday morning we study the form of public worship our church has adopted, but also with an eye to other liturgical traditions. Regarding the latter, one assignment had us attend a Roman Catholic mass and write a reflection paper on it. But overall, the purpose of the course is to teach us, as the syllabus has it, “to lead God’s flock courageously yet compassionately in public worship.”
Lately we’ve been reading about the history of the Genevan psalter from G. Van Rongen’s book, Our Reformed Church Service Book. Overall it’s a fine book that does what it’s supposed to: it gives us the information about the development of our Book of Praise. But the author at times just asserts things out of the blue, without providing any reason why those things should be true. For example, after describing the history of Psalm singing in Britain he concludes, rather abruptly, that such singing “cannot be regarded as truly reformative in character.” Along similar lines he asserts that prior to the arrival of the Book of Praise, the history of psalm singing in North America “is not a joyful one.” But without defining what reformative psalm singing is, or what a joyful psalm-singing history should look like, there is no way for the reader to know for certain. The statements simply remain afloat on the ether of opinion, a rather unsatisfying place for the discerning reader.
Continue reading
It’s only the beginning of the second week of classes, but I’m happy to have one of my papers out of the way. It was a relatively small Ethics paper in which I had to reflect on one of Plato’s dialogues, Euthyphro. If you’re wondering why we’re reading Plato in Ethics class, it’s because, really, there’s hardly a field of study in which Plato is not relevant. But also, and more importantly, before coming to what Ethics looks like in our practice, it makes great sense to begin with what Ethics looks like in our thought. As a result, Dr. Van Raalte has spent the first few classes acquainting us with the good, the true, and the beautiful, and how these noble concepts have concerned philosophers through the ages, both Christian and not. Plato’s Euthyphro is a classic text on the good in particular, and how the good relates to God.
The setting of the dialogue is a conversation between Euthyphro and the philosopher Socrates. Euthyphro is prosecuting his own father for murder, an act which his family rejects as “impious.” Euthyphro doesn’t think his family knows the first thing about piety, so he in turn rejects their opinion. Socrates is intrigued that Euthyphro understands piety so well, so the philosopher asks him: What is piety? If you’ve ever read Plato, you’ll know that Socrates loves to trip up his overly assured conversation partners, so it’s no surprise that Euthyphro soon gets stuck trying to answer this simple question.
One of the questions that Socrates puts to him is this: Is an act pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love an act because it is pious?
Put another way: Is the good that which God commands, or does God command it because it is good?
Continue reading
It’s standard procedure at CRTS to have Greek and Hebrew every semester. This works out to eight of each through four years, but with sabbaticals and other things that number is cut by one or two. One of those other things is that for one semester during those four years, students are given the option of taking Aramaic instead of Hebrew. Not all students choose to do so, and there’s wisdom in that. Mastering Hebrew is probably not all that different from fighting a trophy salmon, and taking a semester off to study Aramaic is akin to letting your line go slack to check out a neat rock.
But it’s okay to be optimistic like that, to think that you can have your rock and salmon, too. And so it is that I’ve found myself, with a few others, sitting under Dr. Smith’s tutelage, stuttering through another quasi-alien language. Only quasi, though, because it uses the same alphabet as Hebrew, and even some of the same words. Like English and French, I guess.
The reason CRTS offers the course is because parts of the Old Testament were originally written in Aramaic. According to our textbook, those parts are a few chapters in Ezra, a few in Daniel, one sentence in Jeremiah, and two words in Genesis. It’s not much, but that’s also why only one semester is offered, and it’s an elective at that. It’s hard to tell from this point whether that one semester will have any lasting impact, but again, optimism.
There’s also the fact that for centuries Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Near East, just as English is for the world today. You could travel to Palestine, Arabia, or Persia, and reasonably expect to communicate in Aramaic with anyone you’d come across. This was the way things were from the days of Daniel to the days of Christ, who, at the end of His passion, cried out in Aramaic, eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani. So, in addition to the appeal of getting into the spirit of such exotic places as ancient Arabia and Persia, you also get a glimpse at what was the native tongue of our Saviour.
Also, you get introduced to things that probably have no practical value whatsoever, like the king whose name I chose for the title of this post. I’ll let you figure out who it was, but his name in Aramaic is a few phonetic pints more rollicking than the way it normally is in our Bibles. Just remember to gurgle the “ch,” like in Bach.
This semester we’ll be taking the first of two Church Polity courses offered at the seminary. We’ll cover articles 1-43 of the church order, and articles 44-76 next year. The textbook for the course is The Church Order Commentary by Idzerd Van Dellen and Martin Monsma. My copy of that book was a gift from Rev. Janssen before I came out here, and it looks as books should look: hard-covered, plain, and well-aged. I don’t know if it was stored in a bookcase made of American oak, but then again I’m not sure that’s so important for books.
A book like that deserves to be used, and since arriving here I’ve looked forward to using it. You may be more interested in staring blankly at a piece of moldy fruit for a few hours than in reading through a commentary on the church order, and I would leave you to it. I’m quite excited, really, to study the way that our church governs itself, to acquaint myself with the mechanisms by which our federation is held together.
Partly this is from having attended a church in the past that had no such mechanisms. When a dispute arose amongst the church leaders, the only solution was to split the church. There were no other means, no higher courts of appeal or rules of order, to which they could appeal to solve their personal differences with each other. And schisms are terrible things.
So although church polity looks like a dry subject, it is yet a very practical and necessary one. The assignments for the course reflect that. A pair of students are given a church political scenario that they have to research and for which they have to argue a certain course of action. The students are supposed to write individual papers, however, and then discuss their respective approaches in class. So third-year Jon and myself will each write a paper on the following scenario:
“Classis Ontario North receives an appeal against the preaching of the minister in Arthur Church (fictional). It is not quite clear what the appellants want, but they argue that their consistory has not listened to their concerns about his preaching. They supply some documents but a study of the dates of the exchange of letters as well as their contents leads the delegates to think that some documents are missing. Some delegates argue that the appeal is inadmissible. Others request that the Classis call the appellants to appear before it and explain their case better. In response other delegates state that article 31 only allows the Classis to judge based on the documents at hand. How should this issue be resolved? May a Classis (or Regional or General Synod) hear the appellants in person and perhaps cross-examine both parties? Outline what you think is the optimum appeal process. Should all appeals be dealt with in exactly the same way?” (From the syllabus).
This is enjoyable work, and I look forward to the research and to developing strong and refined arguments. The paper is due November 18, with the class discussion happening the following week.
I began this post as a reflection on translating Scripture, and it grew from there into a rambling Christmas meditation. The joys of non-linear holiday thinking.
There’s a real pleasure in the grunt work of translating Greek and Hebrew, and it’s probably related to math. This doesn’t strike most people as a source of pleasure, but it’s similar to being shut in by the weather and then finally going out for a walk. That is, it exercises certain mental muscles that aren’t always used in the more philosophical and ideas-driven work of seminary. Of course, in the actual practice of things your mind doesn’t work in such neat compartments. You’ll never write a good Dogmatics paper without practicing good analysis, for example. But the simple, logical work of translating is quite distinct from our other work, and in this it offers a unique experience.
When you translate, the passage is revealed to you detail by detail. Some details are insignificant, some are the difference between heaven and hell. So as a translator you peel back the layers of language with great care, which in turn forces a sustained reflection on the passage. If the passage is a moving one, such as Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead, then it moves you by degrees, from morpheme to morpheme. The value in this is that while the profundity of Scripture can escape you in reading a familiar translation quickly, like racing along a busy motorway through the English countryside, the slow translating of an amateur is like sweating uphill through a sheep field, and scraping your knee on the stone fence at the far end.
It really is an experience. Sometimes I listen to music while I’m working, and sometimes the music articulates as only music can some aspect of the work. This morning I was getting a head start on our Hebrew translation for next semester. We began this last semester at 1 Samuel 3, worked through 1 Samuel 4:19, and next semester will continue from where we left off. I was working this morning, then, on verses 20-22, which describe the wife of Phinehas giving birth to her son, Ichabod.
I was also listening to Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3, a piece of music mentioned in a book I’m reading, The Aesthetics of Music by Roger Scruton; a piece that I listened to for the first time last night. Since my musical ear, unfortunately, has largely been trained by pop music, if “trained” is even the right word, I find I have to listen to a classical piece multiple times before it begins to work on me. Thus it provided the background for this morning’s translation work. Gorecki, a Pole, composed this symphony from three Polish folk songs, each of which are about the separation of a mother from her child. The other title for the piece is “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs,” which puts it plainly. It is about death and grief and the intense reaching of the soul that is brought about by great loss.
So it very much deepened what I uncovered from the Hebrew text. The wife of Phinehas learns that her husband has been killed in battle, and that her father-in-law lies dead in the house of God. The ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts has been taken. As a result she “bows down” in labour, and the convulsions “turn over and over upon her.” Giving birth is killing her, and both her body and mind understand the significance of what has come to pass. When the midwives tell her “Do not be afraid,” and announce the birth of her son, she does not listen and “her heart gives no heed.” As she passes, and her heart drowns in terrible sorrow, she gives her son the name Ichabod, “without glory.” Verse 22 gives us her final words (with my translation work):
וַתֹּ֕אמֶר גָּלָ֥ה כָב֖וֹד מִיִּשְׂרָאֵ֑ל כִּ֥י נִלְקַ֖ח אֲר֥וֹן הָאֱלֹהִֽים
“And she said (3fs.QAL.Impf.Vav-cons.’amar., to say), ‘The glory is removed (3ms.QAL.Pf.galah., to uncover, remove) from Israel because the ark of God has been taken’ (3ms.NIF.Pf.laqach., to take).”
The darkening night of grief and God’s disfavour took away her life. Gorecki’s symphony, then, eloquently captured the mood of the passage as I worked. Indeed, had Scripture ended with that passage, the deep longing for redemption that underscores the symphony would have ever remained just that. For while the last thing that the wife of Phinehas beheld was a horizon without glory, the sun of God’s favour having set, the inglorious twilight she saw was decreed to be redeemed by a more glorious dawn. The favour of Yahweh would be found many centuries later, with another woman and another birth: “And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” The nameless woman of long past was told not to fear, but her heart paid no heed. Mary was told not to fear, and her soul magnified the Lord, her spirit rejoicing in God her Savior. The birth of one son brought death for his mother; the other, life to all. At the name of Ichabod his mother bowed in pain; at the Name of Jesus every knee will bow in praise. The one son lost his glory when the ark was carried into exile; the other son became the ark, and received his glory when the clouds returned him home.
But neither was the music of haunting grief absent from Mary’s life. In fact, the first of the three movements of Gorecki’s symphony is based on a 15th century folk song that describes Mary’s lament at the cross. Scripture doesn’t tell us if or how she grieved at the crucifixion of her child. While we do know that Mary believed the promises about Jesus, it would have been no less fitting for her to weep over his suffering and death. Jesus wept at the death of his beloved friend, even though he knew that Lazarus would rise moments later. We, too, properly grieve the loss brought about by death, knowing full well that those of our beloved who have died in the Lord will rise again to new life. Music has the power to ennoble our grief, to give it form and purpose. To grieve without hope is to experience a shapeless and irredeemable madness, a meaningless flailing in the emptiness of nothing. But to reach with the refrains of this vale of tears toward God is the very reason for the hope we remember at Christmas.
Death had the last word for the wife of Phinehas, but it is death now that has been overcome by the Last Word. The seating of the Alpha and the Omega at the Father’s right hand is a declaration of glorious permanence. Never again will we say that the glory of God has departed from his people; this has been made impossible. That glory used to be a gold-covered box of wood, but on Christmas day we remember that that glory became us. In the simple act of going to the bookshelf, opening Scripture, and reading those wonderful passages from Luke, we behold everything that matters. For “the time came for her to give birth,” and into history was delivered the glory and salvation of Israel, the Light of the world, the One who redeems us for the full brilliance of God’s everlasting presence.
A very blessed Christmas to you all!
It’s reading week at seminary, although, as second-year Hilmer astutely noted, it should be called writing week. This has been a remarkably busy semester, with word floating about the seminary halls that it’s the busiest anyone there has seen. I take breaks here and there, of course, if even to whip up a blog post. But those breaks are shrouded in guilt; and when I do take the odd whole night off, I do so sheepishly under the intense glare of the many thousands of words waiting to be written.
So this reading week is devoted to silencing as many of those glares as possible. I spent the last day and a half writing a paper for our New Testament Background class. In that class we study the world in which the New Testament was written, its culture, economy, politics, and society. The idea there is that by studying that world we can come to a more full understanding of the text. The paper was a fun 2800 words to write, so I’ll share a summary of it here with you.
The Corinthians were fond of a certain style of teaching that was more like an intellectual contact sport than anything else. There were no regulations and no standards whatsoever for education in the Roman empire, meaning that there were no credentialed teachers. So the way it worked was simple. If you felt like you were a teacher who deserved some students, you went to the marketplace and delivered a speech. Not just any speech, though, but a speech on a topic chosen at random by the crowd. Continue reading
Sixteen Seasons 