January 12th, 2005 | Published in General
January 11th, 2005 | Published in Technology
Today Apple released four major new products–two hardware and two software.
“Time to mix things up. Meet iPod shuffle, the unpredictable new iPod. What will it play next? Can it read your mind? Can it read your moods? Load it up. Put it on. See where it takes you. Choose from pocket-size 512MB or 1G models starting at $99 and surprise yourself.”
“Live the digital life in stylish simplicity. Just 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall, Mac mini provides what you need to have more fun with your music, photos and movies — right out of the box. And it boasts a miniscule price to match: Mac mini starts at $499.”
“Take photos? Shoot video? Make or listen to music? Even if you’ve never considered yourself a creative person, iLife ’05 — a suite of tightly integrated applications that places no limit on your talent or creativity — makes it easy and fun to learn new skills.”
“Got ideas? iWork ’05 brings them to life with Keynote 2 — offering cinema-quality presentations for everyone — and Pages — a word processor with an incredible sense of style.”
January 11th, 2005 | Published in Technology
MacCentral has live coverage and a good summary of what is going on at the Macworld Expo for those interested.
January 10th, 2005 | Published in Essays, Religion
A brief review of Reclaiming the Center: Confronting Evangelical Accommodation in Postmodern Times, ed. Millard Erickson, Paul Helseth, and Justin Taylor (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), 365 pp., $20.00.
Experience over doctrine. Inclusivistic instead of exclusivistic. Discomfort with propositional truth. Synergistic. It may sound like ordinary heterodoxy, but it is a movement posed to take over normative church life—indeed, in some circles, it has already done so.
Reclaiming the Center seeks to reclaim what is being lost through the influence of “postconservative evangelicals” like theologian Stanley Grenz and pastor Brian McLaren. This recovery is presented from a wide-range of viewpoints—from philosophy to theology to historiography to third-world perspectives.
This theological pilgrimage begins with a concise and informative introduction to the issues (written by Justin Taylor), as well as an overview of how the book is organized and what each chapter is about (which I have in turn summarized in the next few paragraphs). Next is a chapter by D.A. Carson “summarizing and critiquing the broad outlines of Grenz’s vision for evangelicalism” (p. 26).
After the introduction, a philosophical framework is begun. The three chapters in this section take a philosophical approach to answering postconservative accusations by discussing the correspondence theory of truth (Goothius, Ch. 3), foundationalism, reliabilism, inerrancy (Moreland and DeWeese, Ch. 4), and finally with epistemic/linguistic access to the real world (Smith, Ch. 5).
After setting up the philosophical framework (for every theology needs a foundation), the book moves on to theological assessment. Two of the chapters have to do with postconservative’s view of Scripture. The postconservative cultural-linguistic model of Scripture is shown to be unreliable and the canonical-linguistic is put forth as a biblical alternative (Caneday, Ch. 6), and then Steve Wellum (Ch. 7) shows how “their doctrine of Scripture is incompatible with the Bible’s own claims for itself and weakens the possibility of doing theology in a normative fashion” (p. 28). The final chapter in the section evaluates postconservative theology from a Third World perspective (Ch. 8, Donkor).
After the philosophical framework has been set and theological assessment made, the book moves on to historiography. Paul Helseth leads this section by showing that postconservatives have become a new brand of fundamentalism that they sought to remove themselves from (Ch. 9). Bill Travis then shows how orthodox doctrine has been a central concern throughout the centuries—even by those who have influenced postconservative ideas, contrary to the postconservative claim that commitment to orthodoxy is a relatively new “neo-evangelical” idea (Ch. 10). Finally Chad Brand wraps this section up by defining evangelicalism and showing what has been its historic doctrinal beliefs (Ch. 11).
The final section deals with the future of postmodernity. Jim Parker predicts a transmodern period, one that embraces the strengths of modernism and postmodernism but avoids both extremes (Ch. 12). Millard Erickson concludes with a prophetic vision for the future of evangelical theology that will help us navigate through the current “theological fog.” It is a global, objective, practical and accessible, postcommunial, metanarratival, dialogical, and futuristic vision (Ch. 13). Such a vision is extensive and time will only tell if such a theology will result.
There are many strengths in this book. It is edited by three highly skilled theologians who promise to give you a fair and balanced look at the issues. The diverse nature of the chapters give the reader a taste for the many implications that such a shift in “evangelicalism” has.
This could also not be released at a better time. More people than ever are hearing about the “emerging church”. Relevant magazine continues to grow in popularity. The interest of laymen continues to peak—especially with the younger Christians (whose culture has been “lobotomized by television” and the ever-present image), who realize some of their mumbo jumbo postmodern theology has a name.
All this brings me to two criticisms, both minor. The first is its highly academic nature. This is, of course, their intention because “as goes the academy, so goes the church” (p. 31), however, it would be helpful if it were a little more in reach of the average laymen who does not have extensive theological or philosophical training. I do believe most of the chapters are accessible to the majority of Christians, but for some of the more philosophically oriented chapters (especially 3-5) I recommend having something like the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy or the Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion handy.
My second criticism is the book does not deal with the practical church and dialog issues as much as I would have liked. How are we to interact with postconservative evangelicals in church settings? What is the best way to combat these tendencies from taking over our churches? In what way should we use medium—such as the Internet, one of postconservative’s major strengths—to our advantage? Questions like these might take a sequel to answer. However, we may have to look to the upcoming Becoming Conversant with Emergent by D. A. Carson (expected April 2005) to address these questions.
While Reclaiming the Center is a thoroughly academic work, there is no reason for the book to be read only by those in academia. But don’t just take my word for it. This book has endorsements by famous scholars such as J.I. Packer, Albert Mohler, Timothy George, Richard Mouw, and David Dockery. And, with them, I conclude that anyone who is interested in the emergent church movement will find this helpful and enlightening, and I highly encourage you to examine it and consider the devastating effects of postconservative theology in our calling to “test all things” and “hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
Joshua Sowin
Minneapolis, MN
January 10th, 2005 | Published in Culture
U.S. bad for immigrants’ waistlines
Another sad commentary on our society.
“Part of the American dream and sort of life of leisure is that you also have some of the negative effects, and obesity is one of the major side effects of the success of technology and just having a life of leisure,” said co-author Dr. Christina Wee of Harvard Medical School. “It’s a double-edged sword.”
A life of leisure? What in the world do most people do with it? Lobotomize themselves with TV, movies, video games, and anything else that is shiny, flashes and makes noise.
January 7th, 2005 | Published in Culture
Frederica Mathewes-Green has a good article over at BeliefNet entitled When All We Can Do Is Watch. Here is an excerpt:
When Neil Postman published his epoch-making book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death” in 1984, he called the relevant chapter, “Now… This.”
Those are the little words a television announcer uses when moving from one story to the next, and Postman proposes that they constitute a grammatical innovation: if a conjunction joins things, “Now… this” not only separates them but establishes a bright line of irrelevance. The words, Postman says, “indicate that what one has just heard or seen has no relevance to what one is about to hear or see, or possibly to anything one is ever likely to hear or see.” No news can be so miserable, titillating, or alarming that it can’t be briskly erased, and the way cleared for something new.
Postman would have felt vindicated by the main page on AOL the morning I left. It showed a closeup photo of a distraught young man with dark brown skin, his head cradled in one hand and tears streaming down his face. The headline read (if memory’s correct), “70,000 Feared Dead.”
But below that there were several other news stories. After all the tsunami wasn’t the only thing happening in the world, you can’t think about it all the time. Each had a short headline marked with a bullet point. The last one read: “Holiday Travel Nightmares.”
As an old professor of mine used to say, “Now that’s the point!”
However, she said “Postman would have felt vindicated” when I think he has been vindicated since the day his book was published–before then, if possible. The “look at the thousands dead!” to the “aww, what a cute doggie that was lost!” reaction in 10 seconds has been America’s favorite pastime for decades now. We have 20 seconds of news analysis followed by 5 minutes of commercials (not any one longer than 30 seconds) that have no relation to one another.
Oh, Postman has been vindicated alright.
January 6th, 2005 | Published in Technology
Microsoft has released a beta version of their upcoming spyware/adware remover. This is a good idea for them, and fits in with their profit model perfectly. For those who don’t understand Microsoft’s profit model, here it is:
Of course, I hope that after “Profit!” everyone gets sick of being kicked around and switch to Apple. But it is doubtful.
January 6th, 2005 | Published in Humor and Satire, Politics
I despise, hate, loathe, abhor the ACLU, but I completely agree that this is where we are headed (Flash)… or are we already there? The government already knows all this stuff, but it will take a few years to work its way down to the local pizza place.