on Jesus' need for the Holy Spirit in his life and ministry

 Quite a while back, I came across an article about the nature of the Holy Spirit's work in Jesus' life while he was here on earth; it seemed well worth reading, but I didn't have the time then. I finally got around to reading it. It's excellent. I have pasted the key thought below, but I highly recommend the article.

... Jesus needed to live a perfectly sinless life in the power and by the grace of the Holy Spirit. It was not sufficient for Him--as the second Adam and representative of a new humanity--to merely live according to His Divine nature. What we need as fallen men is a human Redeemer who would gain a human holiness for His people and would die a human death in their place. As was true for Adam so it was for Jesus--the Last Adam. The Savior needed the Holy Spirit to sustain and empower Him to obey His Father, even to the point of death on the cross. (emphasis mine)

The author points out that few theologians have written about this particular aspect of the Trinity's interaction, but Sinclair Ferguson and John Owen do have some discussions of it. The author summarizes those, as well as R. A. Finlayson's thoughts. I was unfamiliar with him.

excerpts on "Language" from Lost in Translation

No, I’m no patriot, nor was I ever allowed to be. And yet, the country of my childhood lives within me with a primacy that is a form of love. It lives within me despite my knowledge of our marginality, and its primitive, unpretty emotions. Is it blind and self-deceptive of me to hold on to its memory? I think it would be blind and self-deceptive not to. All it has given me is the world, but that is enough. It has fed me language, perceptions, sounds, the human kind. It has given me the colors and the furrows of reality, my first loves.

***

The very places where language is at its most conventional, where it should be most taken for granted, are the places where I feel the prick of artifice.

***

Telling a joke is like doing a linguistic pirouette. If you fall flat, it means not only that you don’t have the wherewithal to do it well but also that you have misjudged your own skill, that you are fool enough to undertake something you can’t finish – and that lack of self-control or self-knowledge is a lack of grace.

***

So each language has its own distinctive music, and even if one doesn’t know its separate components, one can pretty quickly recognize the propriety of the patterns in which the components are put together, their harmonies and discords.

***

When I speak Polish now, it is infiltrated, permeated, and inflected by the English in my head. Each language modifies the other, crossbreeds with it, fertilizes it. Each language makes the other relative. Like everybody, I am the sum of my languages – the language of my family and childhood, and education and friendship, and love, and the larger, changing world – though perhaps I tend to be more aware than most of the fractures between them, and of the building blocks.

Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language (p. 74, 106, 118, 123, 273). 

And, a thought from this immigrant child, concerning writing "home"...

There is no way, I know, that I can convey the nature of my new life to her, and besides, she is one of the many affections that are only causing me the pain of nostalgia, and that I therefore try to numb or extract from myself like some gnawing scruple, or splinter lodged in a thumb.

Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language (p. 23). 

On Eternal Occupation (excerpts)

On half a dozen occasions, I have commented on Kevin Bauder's writings on this blog. This week's essay from him had some beautiful thoughts that I want to share.

In fact, part of the way that humans were intended to enjoy and glorify God meant looking away from Him rather than looking at Him.

If Adam had refused to shift his gaze from the divine presence, then he would actually have missed an occasion to worship and serve God.

We humans discover God’s character by looking at what God does. His mighty works of creation and redemption are the arena within which He puts Himself on display. That is why most of the Bible is a story, and all of the rest of the Bible is reflection upon that story.

We worship God, not merely by enjoying His presence and offering Him our praises, but also by serving Him. Serving Him requires us to focus, not upon God Himself, but upon the task that we are performing for His glory. 

Our Recreation

Worth reading in its context in Charles Spurgeon's Sermon #2189, page 2.

"Our rest is in the Lord's service; 

our recreation is in change of occupation."

Chiasm and Biblical Narrative, simplified

 Jackson Wu's blog post on chiasm, the biblical narrative, and Western culture's difficulty with using and embracing chiasm is informative as well as thought-provoking. I particularly appreciated his graphic showing the narrative structure of chiasm. I recommend it to my friends who are students of biblical literature especially, but it may be equally useful to those who pursue the study of other literature and of storytelling, biblical or otherwise.

Boston in 2 hours: with ecclesiastical and humanistic comments

 I got the chance this month to explore Boston for a couple hours before boarding my plane. Below are a few pictures of things that I noted as I wandered through one section of the city. 

Two comments:
1. Harvard station
2. A subway is a subway is a subway. 

The next 4 pictures below were taken at the historic Park Street Church.

Lowell Mason: an influential hymnwriter whom I was unfamiliar with
Apparently he is considered the "Father of American Church Music" with over 1,500 hymns, at least 70 of which are still sung. His most famous hymn is "Nearer My God to Thee." He was the first organist at Park Street Church in 1829, as well as being influential in bringing music into the Boston public school system.

Ockenga and Graham, leaders of (the New) Evangelicalism of the '50s and beyond

As a student of theology, I know why I stepped inside. But why do others visit this building, especially when they are walking "The Freedom Trail"? 

The pipe organ looked very impressive, but only the piano and violin were being practiced. Too bad.

Tremont Temple Baptist Church: the first integrated church in America
It was founded in 1838, free to attend by any race, free of cost.
It wasn't open to the public.

the Old Massachusetts State House
a place of rebellion

the site of the Boston Massacre
The history of this particular event seems, to me, to find echoes in modern society.

Lincoln's Childhood Area

Replica farm house on Tom Lincoln's land

 The Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in Indiana was an interesting little place to visit. The kids loved it, because it includes real life stuff. I was a bit amused to be visiting a place of myth on this trip - understanding that 'myth' does not relate to the truth or falseness of an event or figure - but it was actually fascinating because while the site itself is associated with Thomas Lincoln, Abe's father, it is simply presented as an example of a living farm of the era with many fascinating features. The people who staff and serve on this farm were extremely knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful.

more of the farm

  Also, I appreciated the public recognition of the 'myth' aspect of Lincoln as the sign said that this  park was to show "respect and reverence." Indeed, I suspect that he, along with Washington and MLK, is one of the most reverenced myths in American history.

Evoked by the Flag

Van Dyke said, "We love our land for what she is and what she is to be."

Inclusion - Exclusion

Sorrow - Numbness

Freedom - at Home

Heritage - Conflict

Brainwash - Power, squash!

Ideals - Prideful

Opportunity - Identity

What has she been, what is she, what ought this land to be?

  These thoughts were drawn from a collection of views that were shared as single words following the display of the American flag. They relate to this post from a year ago on Patriotism vs. Nationalism.

A "we" as big as humanity

  Since I am studying in proximity to a good library right now, I am also trying to examine some of the books that I have had on my 'wishlist' for a while and see how good they really are. In Lustig and Koester's Intercultural Competence, I found this nugget which relates directly to the need I constantly see for us to meet and be in relationship with those we fear or reject, whether our fears are cultural, economic/vocational, religious, or martial. It is difficult for us to love 'them' - whoever 'they' might be - without meaningful relationship.

The casual we for most of us does not include the 50 percent hungry, the 60 percent in shantytowns, and the 70 percent illiterate. Most of us construct our we without including them. Thinking of the world close up, as if it was a village of one thousand people, forces us to confront what we mean when we say "we." ...

How often does our we come to include people of other faiths, other nations, other races? How often does our we link rather than divide? Our relation with the "other" may move, as Smith puts it, through a number of phases. First we talk about them - an objective "other." Then perhaps we talk to them, or more personally, we talk to you. Developing a real dialogue, we talk with you. And finally, we all talk with one another about us, all of us. This is the crucial stage to which our... dialogue must take us if we are to be up to the task of creating communication adequate for an interdependent world. 

- Diana L. Eck, as quoted in Lustig's Intercultural Competence, pg 5 (italics original)

If the world were a thousand-person village... (2001 stats; ibid., 4)

Consumerism, Zen, and this TCK

 Ewa Hoffman's Lost in Translation is assigned reading for my MA class; overall, it is excellent, but Part 2 "Exile" has been especially poignant to me, as a TCK who rejected the torturing consumerism of American culture when he was ten. (Technically, the author is a CCK, cross-cultural kid, not a third culture kid, but that's beside the point.)

 She also describes many of the feelings of lostness within and disengagement from a culture graphically. Yet, it was at the point where she began describing her response to materialism that the book really grabbed me. I don't recall having read anything so near to my own feelings about materialism. Finally, she speaks of being alone in a dorm over the holidays in a way that vividly recaptured that experience for me.

Concerning Her Reponse to Materialism and Consumerism:

  After battering myself again and again on the horns of lust and disgust, I begin to retreat from both. I decide to stop wanting. For me, this is a strange turn: my appetites are strong, and I never had any ambitions to mortify them by asceticism. But this new resolution is built into the logic of my situation. Since I can’t have anything, if I were to continue wanting, there would be no end to my deprivation. It would be constant, like a never-ending low-level toothache. I can’t afford such a toothache; I can’t afford to want. Like some sybarite turned monk who proves his mettle by placing himself in seductive situations, I can now walk between taffeta dresses and silk lingerie without feeling a shred of temptation. I‘ve become immune to desire; I snip the danger of wanting in the bud.   By the same sleight of consciousness, I’m becoming immune to envy. If I were to give vent to envying, there would be no end to that either. I would have to envy everybody, every moment of the day. But with my new detachment, I can gaze at what my friends have as if they lived in a different world. In this spatial warp in which I have situated myself, it doesn’t make any difference that they live in big houses with large yards and swimming pools, and cars and many skirts and blouses and pairs of shoes. This way, I can be nice to my friends; I can smile pleasantly at their pleasures and sympathize with their problems of the good life. I can do so, because I’ve made myself untouchable. Of course, they might be upset if they guessed the extent of my indifference; but they don’t.

[...]

 In my lush Western Sahara, I’m confronting a tantalizing abundance that doesn’t fill, and a loneliness that carves out a scoop of dizzying emptiness inside.

Concerning Eastern religions in American culture:

Two decades later, when the Eastern religions vogue hits the counterculture, I think I understand the all-American despair that drives the new converts to chant their mantras in ashrams from San Francisco to Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The gospel of detachment is as well suited to a culture of excess as it is to a society of radical poverty. It thrives in circumstances in which one’s wants are dangerous because they are surely going to be deprived – or because they are pulled in so many directions that they pose a threat to the integrity, the unity of one’s self.

[...]

...America is the land of yearning, and perhaps nowhere else are one’s desires so wantonly stimulated...

Concerning lonely breaks:

...in my nearly empty dorm during a holiday break, I forget my ascetic techniques, and the desire for the comfort of being a recognizable somebody placed on a recognizable social map breaks in on me with such anguishing force that it scalds my spirit and beats it back into its hiding place.

Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language (pp. 136-140). Plunkett Lake Press. Kindle Edition. (Emphases added.)