Greenflame

Followed one link about the release of the whole of Today’s New International Version (TNIV) of the Bible (previously only the NT was available) and ended up following all sorts of discussions. In a couple of the discussions people raise good points about how adding section headings to the biblical text adds interpretative layers to the text. For the same reasons I went out of my way to find copies of Bible translations I use that don’t have headings (nor “red-letters”).

Anyway because I’m interested in questions of translation and interpretation of texts and the cultures of interpretation that go along with them I thought I’d make a list of the different postings/sites to put it all in one place for my own reference. (Some of these span months, if not years)

• TNIV official web site
• Full TNIV PDF available here
• Pros and Cons of NIV (The Grace Pages)
• NIV, TNIV, and Ephesians 5 (Hugo Schwyzer)
• The Religious Right Strikes Again… (Lauryn at Feministing.com)
• Words and the word (3) (Maggi Dawn)
• Gempf in shock book-banning threat! (Conrad Gempf – TNIV translation consultant)
• TNIV Resource Center (basically CBMW’s list of what they think is wrong with it)

As always there are some really good comments at some of the blogs (as well as some not so good ones).

Sometimes I just don’t want to read anymore books or papers on robots or virtual reality or cyberspace or transhumanism or the imago Dei. Just want to read something different to refresh myself. So today I dipped into the desert fathers and mothers, partly to look for something for another project and partly just to imbibe their wisdom. This passage struck me,

John said that a hermit saw in a rapture three monks standing on the edge of the sea and a voice came to them from the other side saying, ‘Take wings of fire and come to me.’ The first two did so and reached the other shore, but the third stayed where he was crying and weeping. Later on wings were given to him also, not of fire but weak and feeble so that he reached the other shore with great difficulty, sometimes in the water, sometimes over it. So it is with the present generation: the wings they are given are not of fire, they are weak and feeble.

You can make of it what you want but thoughts that struck me were what are the wings of fire we are being offered today and will we take them and fly to the farther shore? Or do we wail and gnash our teeth at the world, the church, our lives and settle for something less. The parable of the talents also springs to mind.

Short article discussing the state of conservative/post-conservative theological dialogue – next-wave > church & culture: The state of the debate by Steve Bush. Bush uses the recent book “Reclaiming the Center”, a response to Stanley Grenz’s “Renewing the Center”, as a starting point for looking at where fruitful (and not so fruitful) conversation might take place.

The next step for postconservatives will have to be to challenge the evangelical obsession with epistemology, which in turn reveals a privileging of theory over practice and philosophy over cultural, economic, and political theory. Yes I know everyone is afraid that their kid is going to stop believing in Absolute Truth, and soon thereafter convert to satanism and start doing drugs, but there are other things to talk about.

Steve Bush blogs over at Harbinger which looks an interesting read.