Blue Cord

The Biblical Studies Blog Carnival for May was delayed a bit, but Tyler Williams now has it up and running at Codex. A few hours later, the carnival for June was ready to go at Ketuvim. I know you are probably too busy to go to two carnivals in one day, but the weekend is coming up soon. Toss your tent in the trunk and shove the kids in the car and make a two day trip of it!

I have been tagged in the Binary Biblical Studies Carnival 11111 meme by Jim at Idle musings of a bookseller. Although Jim changed the number from 31 to 63 through the addition of a digit, I still feel compelled to play along.

The rules are as follows:

1. Tag five Biblical studies bloggers.
2. Invent fictional posts that they might have written over the last month.
3. Link to the original meme post at Lingamish.

Here is my offering for the meme:

1. Christian Brady at Targuman: “The Study of the Targumim Matters. No, Really!”
2. Steve Cook at Biblische Ausbildung: “Why So-Called ‘Second Isaiah’ is Actually the Work of the 8th Century Prophet.”
3. Jin Yang Kim at Old Testament Story: “Daniel the Wise-Guy: Interpreting the Book of Daniel as a Marx Brother’s Routine.”
4. Calvin Park at Random Bloggings: “How to Get Your Church Youth Group Interested in Learning Akkadian.”
5. Chris Heard at Higgaion: ” Simcha Jacobovici Has Asked Me to Write His Next Script!”

Chris Brady at Targum has been posting a series of notes about the current troubles in the Anglican Communion. I had been meaning to respond to a couple of them, and I finally did so yesterday on a post entitled “NPR Report – ‘Anglican Conservatives Step Back from Split Threat’.” Chris responded to my comment, I commented on his comment, and he responded to that. It has been a fruitful conversation, so I thought I would move it to the level of actual posts instead of it being buried deep in the comments. I will post my responses here and I encourage Chris to continue posting on his blog. I would also like to see other Anglican bloggers (such as Steve Cook) jump into the mix as well. Perhaps we can get this whole problem solved in the next few days and the schism will be averted.

My comments will jump around a bit, since I am responding in turn to points that Chris made in his last comment. Readers may want to read the series of comments on the original post before reading further in this post.

In Chris’s latest comment, he notes that the Elizabethan Settlement was itself a power play. He is right, of course, I certainly would not defend the many excesses that occurred in the enforcement of the Settlement. But be that as it may, it doesn’t change the fact that the Settlement was established and has been the basis of our Anglican polity ever since. I think it has to be taken into account in any discussion of how we are to live our common lives as Anglicans.

Chris asserts that one of the problems is that we have no real way of asserting what the teachings of the Anglican Church are. I would disagree. I think they are formulated quite nicely in the creeds of the church as presented in the Book of Common Prayer. These have been the creeds that have held Anglican churches together for almost 600 years. We have been able to come together for common worship based only on those fundamentals. Certainly, there are many other Anglican traditions that have been held in various places and times, and I would not want to reduce Christianity to merely the creeds. But I will say that I am willing to be in fellowship with anyone who shares the creeds with me, regardless of their standing on other issues.

That is what via media means. It is not merely the lowest common denominator. No one has to give up their own beliefs, as long as they are willing to grant others the same freedom. And it certainly does not mean that we stop theological debate on issues where we disagree. But within those disagreements we have to have the charity to admit that others may be Christian even when they disagree (something that is severely lacking on both sides of the current debate).

I would disagree that there is no Evangelical polity. I think there is a fairly clear one, although it is certainly not the polity of the Presbyterian Church. I think the best examples are found within modern Baptist circles and non-denominational churches. It is a polity that bases fellowship and communion on theological agreement. Although most say that you only have to agree on essentials, they usually end up with a list that defines some pretty marginal issues as essential. I think that polity has been evident in a number of conservatives in the Anglican Communion who say they cannot have fellowship with those who disagree with them on homosexuality. You would be hard pressed to define a particular stance on homosexuality as central to what it means to be Christian, yet it is a make-or-break issue for some people. That indicates that their polity is more Evangelical than Anglican.¹

Chris laments the fact that the mechanisms of discipline are weak in the Episcopal church and often do not function well. I would certainly agree. I think, for example, that Bishop Spong should have been removed as a bishop for his unorthodox views (i.e., there were major sections of the creeds that he did not believe). But I don’t see that as a reason to abandon Anglican polity and put a more Evangelical or Catholic version in its place. We should fix the structures so that they function according to our canons and traditions. We need to make the church more Anglican, not less. There is no reason to throw the Anglican baby out with the revisionist bathwater.

I think the most insightful question Chris asks is, “Is polity more important than the view of Scripture?” I would answer that Scripture is more important to how we function as Christians, but polity defines how we live together as Anglicans. If our view of Scripture is the basis for our fellowship, than I doubt that we will survive as a denomination.

Chris finishes with this:

Anglicanism must be something more than structure and procedure if it is to survive. What do we believe? How do we worship? These are the issues at hand and we seem ill equipped to deal with them in any means other than shouting and that means that the loudest (or longest) voice wins.

I certainly agree, and I think it always will be more than that. But the question is whether we have to define what that “something more” is in more detail than the creeds do. What do we believe? The creeds, plus whatever your local congregation and diocese decide, even if that is something different than the congregation down the street. How do we worship? By using the Book of Common Prayer. To paraphrase an old Evangelical saying, “If it was good enough for Cranmer, its good enough for me.” The Anglican church has survived for almost 600 years on that basis, and I see no reason to change it now.

1. I agree with Chris that there are a number of “home grown” Evangelicals within the Anglican church, but many of them have a more Evangelical than Anglican polity as well. [back]

It has been almost three weeks since I last posted, so I thought I would let people know there is a good reason for my absence.

This whole month I have been busy writing articles for the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. I wrote about one hundred articles for it when assignments were first made, but last month they contacted me to ask if I would be willing to write a number of articles that other scholars had failed to submit on time. Since I had just finished up at Wartburg College, I agreed to do it.

Two weeks ago they decided that they needed additional editors working on the project as well, and they asked if I would be able to do that. I was more than happy to agree, so I am pleased to announce that I am now working as an editor on the fourth and fifth volumes of the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. No, I am not one of the big-name editors who are listed on the front of the book. Instead, I am just one of a number of editors who reads through the articles to format them correctly, double check citations, insert transcriptions, and make any number of other changes as needed.

I am thoroughly enjoying the work. Basically, I get to read Bible dictionary entries all day, which I do often enough even when no one is paying me. And since I have to read articles that I wouldn’t necessarily read otherwise, I am picking up a lot of new information.

Nicholas Carr has a fascinating article in the current issue of Atlantic entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”¹ In the article he discusses the fact that the Internet is changing not only the way in which we access data but also the way in which we process it. Drawing on his own experience and the research of others, Carr discusses the way that the media through from which we draw information actually rewire our brains. He laments his own transformation from someone who used to be able to delve deeply into books and process their arguments into someone who gets distracted easily when a complex argument goes on for more than a few pages.

Carr states:

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist . . . “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Out ability to interpret text, to make rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

As a biblical scholar, this is troubling to me. The Bible is not exactly a book that rewards skimming. Of course, the style of biblical study that we do now is very different than that done by Christians and Jews throughout most of our history, since easily flipping back and forth between passages became possible only when we developed the technology to print comparatively small books that contained the entire Bible. And up until the last few centuries, the vast majority of Christians didn’t read the Bible themselves; they only heard it read, usually in the setting of worship.

Of course, Carr is aware of history enough to know that previous changes in technology also changed our way of thinking, so he admits that his predictions of doom may not come to pass. After all, as he points out, Socrates lamented the spread of writing, predicting that it would lead to people receiving information without receiving instruction in critical thinking (a charge that has also been leveled against the Internet). But while some of Socrates predictions concerning the effects of writing did come to pass, writing has also benefited us in ways that he could not have imagined. The same is true of the Internet. We do, however, need to recognize that the boon of the Internet also carries with it the possible bane of losing the ability to read deeply.

I have to admit that my own experience mirrors that of Carr. It takes more of an effort for me to read large sections of text (with the exception of fiction). I used to attribute this to the fact that I am getting older² or to my depression³. But now I know the truth: the Internet maked me unsmart.

1. Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Atlantic 302.1 (July/August 2008): 56–63. [back]
2. I turned all of 40 this year. [back]
3. Which affects my ability to concentrate and retain information. [back]