Plato’s universe

Stephen Nichols, in his For Us and For Our Salvation: The Doctrine of Christ in the Early Church, gives a helpful description of Plato’s view of the universe, which influenced Greek philosophers in the ancient world, including the early centuries of the Christian church.  Below is a chart that’s in his book, with some further explanations drawn from his book in brackets:

The Ideal [God-like, but impersonal]

The Demiurge (creator god) [created by the Ideal]

The World, Humanity and Matter [these are the perfect concepts, or ideals, of justice, beauty, and truth, as well as the forms of material things]

[boundary between World of Forms (above this line) and material world (below)]

Males

Females

Animals

Flora and Fauna

Rocks and Dirt

Nichols writes that according to Plato, our souls would escape their imprisonment in our bodies upon death and then go to be in the world of Forms.  Also, Plato’s separation of God in the Ideal and the Demiurge influenced docetists like Valentinus who believed that God in the Old Testament was the Demiurge, rather than the God of both the Old and New Testaments.

From the Didache: Prayer for after the Eucharist

The Didache (The Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles by the Twelve Apostles), Chapter 10:

And after you have had enough, give thanks as follows:

We give you thanks, Holy Father,

for your holy name, which you have caused to dwell in our hearts,

and for the knowledge and faith and immortality that you have made known to us through Jesus your servant;

to you be the glory forever.

You, almighty Master, created all things for your name’s sake,

and gave food and drink to humans to enjoy, so that they might give you thanks;

but to us you have graciously given spiritual food and drink,

and eternal life through your servant.

Above all we give thanks to you because you are mighty;

to you be the glory forever.

Remember your church, Lord, to deliver it from all evil and to make it perfect in your love;

and from the four winds gather the church that has been sanctified into your kingdom,

which you have prepared for it;

for yours is the power and the glory forever.

May grace come, and may this world pass away.

Hosanna to the God of David.

If anyone is holy, let him come;

if anyone is not, let him repent.

Maranatha!  Amen.

But permit the prophets to give thanks however they wish.

Source: Michael Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers in English

Elections in the Arab world

Writing for Marc Lynch’s blog, Nathan Brown of George Washington University writes that the Palestinian elections called for by Mahmoud Abbas are not really that important because they were constitutionally required.  Besides, elections in the Arab world don’t mean the same thing that they mean to us:

In the Arab world, elections are routine.  It is their cancellation or postponement that has to be explained. As my Carnegie colleague Michele Dunne has reminded me on several occasions, the timing of elections is usually fairly clearly established in Arab laws and constitutions.  On a few occasions—generally if there is extensive international intervention or if there is internal crisis—elections are postponed. But the days of Arab regimes routinely cancelling elections completely is gone.

Can that be? Is the Arab world really so democratic?  Well, no.  The problem is that while the fact of elections seems to be written in stone, the rules by which they are conducted are written on water. Authoritarian rulers constantly tinker with the formal rules, electoral mechanisms, and oversight of voting in order to get the result they want.  Opposition movements beg, bargain, or threaten boycott to get a place on the ballot and a handful of seats.  So some elections occur on what might be called the Tunisian or Syrian model (overwhelming majority for the regime with token opposition) or on the Jordanian and Egyptian model (where the opposition is allowed to win a few more seats but is kept very safely away from a majority).

Marc Lynch on confronting Islamic radicalism

Marc Lynch sees a different, smarter approach at work in the Obama administration.  Rather than the Bush approach of choosing (and unwittingly delegitimizing) moderate Muslim allies, the Obama administration has chosen to allow the debates to take their course.  Lynch comments:

The Obama administration understands this dynamic extremely well. As the Cairo speech showed, he has designed America’s outreach to the Muslim world around deflating the extremists through indirect action and a reorientation towards common interests.  Instead of building up al-Qaeda and its affiliated movements with an exaggerated focus on “violent extremism”, he isolates and marginalizes them by switching the conversation to other things about which ordinary Muslims and Arabs care far more.

While there hasn’t been as much public follow-up to the Cairo speech yet as many of us had hoped, the internal work that they’ve been doing is beginning to pay dividends.  The new $150 million Arab technology fund announced the other day (to little American notice) is only one of a whole range of programs which will likely be rolled out in the coming months.  This approach has already dramatically and impressively undermined the appeal and relevance of al-Qaeda in the Arab world– an important achievement all the more noteworthy for the administration’s not making a big deal of it.

New Calvinism and holy hip hop

I just finished listening to a 9Marks Audio installment where Mark Dever interview Christian hip hop artists shai linne and Voice.  I’ve heard shai linne’s “Atonement Q&A” before; it’s something like a rap catechism that’s part of his album “The Atonement.”  Shai and Voice are both theologically Reformed, and they view their work as a way to build up the church with “lyrical theology.”  If you’re interested in their explanation of the purpose of their work, the best 15 minutes to listen to are from about 40 minutes in through about 55 minutes in.  They see their artistry as God’s redemption of a sinful medium to be used for his glory.  It’s not intended to replace preaching or congregational music, but instead to do what rap does very effectively: communicate a worldview.  Dever has become a fan and actually says that no other form of music matches the “theological density” of shai linne’s music.

In the last 30 years or so, there have been a lot of Christian “knock-offs” of secular music, clothing, etc.  I think that the “holy hip hop” movement is more original and edifying, although I don’t know for sure yet.  For one opinion, check out Thabiti Anyabwile’s short explanation here.

Adding to the list of great things about the New Calvinist movement is that it’s building relationships between black and white Christians, something that the church desperately needs to do.  The unity of believers across racial lines has long been one of John Piper’s passions, and Desiring God Ministries cooperated with Christian rap laber Reach Records and artist Lecrae last summer.  Thabiti Anyabwile seems to be a leading figure in New Calvinist circles, part of the core group for Together for the Gospel and speaking at one of Dever’s conferences.  Dever’s interview and commendation of shai linne and Voice fits right in with this exciting trend.

I now want to check out two albums from shai: The Atonement and Storiez (a children’s album).

“Emerging adults” and religion

Christianity Today’s Katelyn Beaty interviewed sociologist Christian Smith for the current issue.  Smith’s new book, Souls in Transition,  looks at the religious attitudes and practices of 18-29 year-olds.  The idea that this phase of life is now a prelude to married life has come out in several things that I’ve read.  Some good examples are an article about twentysomething “child-men” from the City Journal (warning: some crude descriptions of a crude young male culture), Joel’s post dissecting the attitudes of “Our Mad World,” and Christianity Today’s recent article “The Case for Early Marriage.”  Here is Smith’s explanation of this development:

Much social transformation since the 1960s and ’70s has created it. A higher proportion of American youth are spending more years in higher education. They are waiting a lot longer before they get married and have kids. That’s partly related to wanting to stay in school longer. It’s partly related to wanting to be “free” longer. It’s also associated with things like the availability of artificial contraception.

Another factor is changes in the global economy that make jobs more fluid and unpredictable. You no longer settle into a job that you’ll have the rest of your life. You may be transferred, you may lose your job, you may need retraining, you may need specialized education. All of this puts young people on edge, wanting to keep their options open when it comes to work.

All this has also created cultural changes that perpetuate an interest in being wild and free, sexually hopping around, for a time. As they exit the teenage years, young people basically understand they have up to 12 years before having a family and settling into their “real job.” And those are very important years.

Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders argue about the scope of jihad

Marc Lynch links to Jihadica, which tracks Sunni jihadist thought.  Apparently, Taliban leaders have portrayed their movement in terms of Afghan nationalism and better relations with neighboring states, drawing criticisms from al-Qaeda leaders who want global jihad.

Lynch quotes Jihadica’s Vahid Brown: “Mullah Omar’s Afghan Taliban and al-Qa’ida’s senior leaders have been issuing some very mixed messages of late, and the online jihadi community is in an uproar, with some calling these developments “the beginning of the end of relations” between the two movements.”

Lynch has some musings on what this could mean, including a comparison to Iraq:

How representative are these forums in the Afghan case? I don’t know.  But Brown’s post reminds me of the online furor over the Islamic State of Iraq which foreshadowed the dramatic split in the Iraqi insurgency in which key insurgency factions flipped to the U.S. side and formed the backbone of the Awakenings/ Sons of Iraq.  Back then, in the fall of 2006 through early 2007 we saw growing discord on the forums between al-Qaeda in Iraq’s umbrella group the Islamic State of Iraq and key insurgency factions.  Some of the discord focused on local complaints (ISI attacks on moderate imams), but a lot focused on this tension between the nationalist goals of the Iraqi insurgency factions (which mainly wanted to drive American forces out of Iraq) and the universalist goals of AQI (which mainly wanted to use Iraq as the base for global jihad).

Those tensions on the forums proved to be a crucial leading indicator of real splits on the ground which energized the “Awakenings” movement.   Like I said, I have no idea whether a similar eruption of such arguments on the forums today will have the same significance.  I’m generally leery of comparisons from Iraq to Afghanistan, and in particular the relationship between the forums and the factions may well be different in this context.    But Brown’s post should be food for thought.

Lynch also mentions some articles that have talked about the potential merger of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.  I’m hoping to read those soon.

Book Review: Divided by Faith, by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America is a historical and sociological study of white evangelical attitudes toward white-black relations.  I found it fascinating.  I should also try to read some reviews by trained sociologists who may be able to offer some insight into their research methods.

Emerson and Smith state that America is a racialized society in which “race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life opportunities, and social relationships” (7, emphasis in original).  They define racism sociologically, in that it does not have to be intentional; instead, it is an inequality in power that disadvantages one group or another.  One interesting example of this is that more educated whites tend to have fewer prejudices against black people, but at the same time tend to take actions that increase racialization because they are able to pursue higher-quality schools and neighborhoods that tend to be predominantly white.  Thus they are actually more segregated from African Americans.  They also quote another study that argues that racializing practices are becoming more hidden and institutionalized rather than direct and expressed in the language of race (9).

Reaching the next generation with substance, not style

Kevin DeYoung, pastor at University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan, did a series this week on his five-part plan for “reaching the next generation” with Christ: “Grab them with passion.  Win them with love.  Hold them with holiness.  Challenge them with truth.  Amaze them with God.”  The focus of the series is this: substance is more important than style, truth and depth and holy living are more important than a cool presentation or appearance, and a challenging, God- and gospel-centered message is more important than being non-threatening.  In fact, DeYoung argues, these meaningful things are often what people want, rather than something watered-down or shallow.  Presentation is important, he says, and there’s nothing wrong with thinking about presentation, but more important is what you’re presenting.

The European heritage of Zionism

I’ve been episodically reading David Engel’s Zionism in Pearson’s “Short Histories of Big Ideas” series.  It seems like a good, fair, and readable introduction to the topic.

He distinguishes Zionism from “activist messianism.”  The latter, a religious movement,  grew in the 16th and 17th centuries and resulted in migration to Palestine in the 18th and 19th centuries.  A small group of Jews hoped that their efforts would lead God to send the Messiah.

Zionism, on the other hand, is a more secular movement based on trends in Europe, where so many Jews lived.  Many of the Zionists were influenced by European trends of the 19th century: