Bully's Blog

Covenant Theology on a keyboard

The three is a five. The four is a seven. The five is a seven. The seven is a twelve.

Some excerpts from David P. Goldman’s essay, “Admit It, You Really Hate Modern Art,” in It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations.

Why is it that the audience for modern art is quite happy to take in the ideological message of modernism while strolling through an art gallery but loath to hear the same message in the concert hall? It is rather like communism, which once was fashionable among Western intellectuals. They were happy to admire communism from a distance, but very few chose to live under communism.

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“Surf weasel Leithart’s out there getting barreled
and Carson doesn’t find it ‘convincing’?”

Some more on the Bandwidth of the Bible:

Don Carson has written a chapter in “Theological Commentary: Evangelical Perspectives.” It’s called, Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Yes, But… (see Carson’s Evaluation of Theological Interpretation of Scripture. There is a link to the chapter in PDF.)

Very briefly, his assessment is that the revival of biblical theology is a good thing, but anything in this revival that is new is bad. Whatever his assumptions, the bottom line is that no new ground of any consequence has been broken.

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Thanks to Brian Nolder for this one.

More than thirty years after the release of their hit song, “Down Under,” (1978) Australian rock band Men at Work were hauled into court for ripping their flute riff from a nursery rhyme. The issue came up after discussion on a popular rock quiz TV show. [1]

Most Aussies of my generation knew the original (really uncool) song, and the use of it as a motif in a rock song was, well, really cool. The very fact that it didn’t have a big yellow sticker on it saying “This bit is from Kookaburra,” and the listener picked it up, was gratifying. All good music does this. All good movies do this. TV shows also use subtle allusions to past episodes as a nod to faithful viewers (and no show does it with the concrete-cracking understatement of Mad Men).

In this case of the flute riff, any dunderhead could pick it up. While I think that the current owners of the copyright, Larrikin Records, are a bunch of opportunistic bastards (and though they were once considered indie and cool, I guess they are now really uncool), it pains me that modern teachers of the Bible are too cautious to read the Scriptures in this way, too conservative to pick up the motifs, phrases and structural allusions that are obvious once they are pointed out. They are looking for the big yellow sticker, and it ain’t coming.

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Rejoice, rejoice! Christ is born
Of the Virgin Mary — rejoice!

The time of grace has come—
This that we have desired,
Verses of joy
Let us devoutly return.

God has become man,
To the wonderment of Nature,
The world has been renewed
By the reigning Christ.

The closed gate of Ezechiel
Is passed through,
Whence the light is born,
Salvation is found.

Therefore let our gathering
Now sing in brightness
Let it give praise to the Lord:
Greeting to our King.

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James Jordan Interview

A reader wrote:

After spending about two weeks on Bible Matrix, I’ve found that my greatest challenge has been learning to think differently. Have you written anything on learning how to make the transition from thinking about the Bible as a specimen in a laboratory to thinking about the Bible as a work of art? I sense that to communicate this stuff to the average Joe (and even to take on this mode of thought as my own) it would be helpful to know how to explicitly go about making that transition. Or maybe you see that as part of the problem? This stuff is more caught than taught? Continue reading

From the best Bible teacher in the world…

“There is a curse on Mankind.
We may as well be resigned.
To let the devil, the devil
take the spirit of man.”

War of the Worldviews

I first heard Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds when I was 11. My brother and I and some cousins listened to it in a dark room. It was electric and terrifying. Hearing it again years later, the worldview behind the story is much more apparent. One song in particular lays it bare, The Spirit of Man.

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