Weekend Report 01.14.2006

Top Stories

Gospel Studies

I made only one New Year’s resolution this year: to get back to good old biblical exegesis and stop paying so much attention to the theologians.  I guess I don’t mean that I don’t want to pay any attention to theologians, but rather, in my own practice, I want to bridge the gap between biblical and systematic theology and stop thinking of them as two entirely different branches of study. 

So this year, my reading list will not be nearly as long as last year’s.  I plan to keep plugging through works of fiction.  I’m in the middle of a Narnia re-read right now.  I’m planning at least one Harry Potter re-read, maybe two, and after my Mythology class is over, I’ll do a Lord of the Rings re-read. 

But my primary and central focus this year is the study of the gospels themselves.  I’m working my way through Raymond Brown’s Introduction to the New Testament, and throughout the course of this year, I’m going to focus on his gospel chapters, the four gospels themselves, and I’ll put my $500 Bible study software to good use. 

Sword of Gryffindor Updates

J.K. Rowling’s Favorite Shakespeare Play - How MacBeth influenced Harry Potter.
Book 7 Will Be Finished  This Year - JKR says so.
The Finality of Death - Why Dumbledore is dead and won’t be coming back.

Also, in case you missed it, a lengthy discussion is continuing in the comments section of one of my old posts, "Is Harry a Horcrux?".  Your thoughts are welcome. 

Entertainment

House, M.D.

My wife and I spent the entirety of last weekend watching all of Season One of House, M.D.  This is such an incredible show, I highly recommend it to all.  It was also a wonderful weekend with my wife. 

We’ve got two movies on deck for this weekend: The Interpreter and The Constant Gardener. 

Sports

Playoff Football

I got two out of four of last week’s predictions.  Here are this week’s picks: Seahawks, Patriots, Colts, and Panthers.

Editorial

The Institutional Church

I heard it again this week.  "I still believe [privately, and it has no effect on my life] in all the basic teachings about Jesus, but I don’t like the institution of the church." 

I’m baffled that we’re unwilling to put up with sin in the church, so we exchange it for sin everywhere else that sin is found in great abundance.  I agree that it is easy to replace the Christian faith with human tradition, but I hardly think this is a reason to abandon the church.  The church needs the folks who see where we’ve gone astray to actually remain in the church. 

Even more frustrating are those who attempt to argue that Jesus never really intended the church in the first place, but rather, he wanted to bring us all into our own private relationships with God.  Michael Spencer has written this week on the church, and I’ll let his words conclude this post:

Baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the apostolic teaching: these
all originated with Jesus, and were put into the hands of the apostles
in order to form an intentional movement; a visible church identified
with Jesus in culture and history. They are the building blocks of the
church, and they do not exist meaningfully in a freestyle,
individualized “relationship with Jesus.”

Explanations of the origins of the church that assume Jesus himself
had no intentions of founding a church are simply implausible.

I start out here to make a very basic point: Jesus followers who
wish to eliminate, reinterpret or reduce the church face the problem
that nothing in the New Testament is on their side. Seeing Jesus as
the guru of individual Christians, or the church as some kind of
accidental fan club that institutionalized a spontaneous spiritual
experience, simply cannot be done without doing radical surgery on
Jesus himself. A church-less Christianity requires such an edited,
reworked Jesus, that the New Testament could no longer be read with any
kind of integrity. This needs to be faced squarely and honestly.