Saved from Blogger Beta Hell

Heard back from Google suggesting I login to the following URL:

http://www.blogger.com/login.g?directLogin=true

It worked! Now I have no excuse.

Adios.

Blogger Beta Hell

So Google has a new version of Blogger that is forthcoming and they're slowly migrating people over to it. One of the new features is that Blogger accounts will be integrated with Google accounts. As it stands, you have to sign in separately to Blogger and Google (to access gMail or your calendar, for example). All well and good, EXCEPT....

What if you used the same user ID for both Blogger and Google? What then? Well, I'll tell you. Your Google account takes precedence so that everytime you try to sign in to Blogger it takes you to the new Blogger Beta dashboard. That would be fine except if you haven't had the opportunity to migrate your original Blogger blogs (they are only inviting a select few at this time), then you don't have access to your Blogs.

I just sent a second support request (a week after no reply from my first request) so we'll see what happens. In the mean time, the only way I'm able to post here is by "forgetting" my password and then following the email link back to Blogger, reset the password and proceed. Not a recipe for frequent posting (and I need all the excuses I can get!).

C'est la vie!

Reading Paul (& Luther) today

I confess that I've only skimmed the article referenced but I will get back to it in more depth. I've read a lot about the "New Perspective on Paul," especially as its propounded by NT Wright. In the article referenced here, Karl Donfried presents the most balanced counter-point I've read to this perspective. Far from the typical screed you read from reformed theologian who sling more mud than reason when addressing this admittedly sensitive topic, Donfried keeps things measured and focused on substance. In fact, I'm not sure that he doesn't make more of an argument for the NPP even while asserting to be countering it. But I'll reserve judgment until further reading.

Here's the beginning of the article. Clicke the Title of this post to access the full thing.

Reading Paul (& Luther) today
New learnings about the apostle and his world boost our understanding

It’s a fascinating time to study the letters of Paul. Many of you have no doubt heard about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some may even have viewed the scrolls at one of the traveling exhibits in various parts of the U.S. Not widely known is the fact that these documents provide remarkable insights to New Testament scholars who seek a deeper and fuller understanding of Pauline theology.

The Via Egnatia near Philippi, Greece—Paul traveled this road on his voyage to Rome.

Since 1947 when a Bedouin shepherd threw a stone into a cave at Khirbet Qumran alongside the Dead Sea (about a 40-minute ride east of Jerusalem), our understanding of “Judaism” and “Christianity” in the first century has changed dramatically. We can no longer speak about either as unified religions in sharp conflict. Rather, we’ve come to recognize the enormous diversity
of Judaism—one so extensive that it unquestionably included Jesus’ earliest followers.

The last half of the 20th century saw the publication of the majority of the 900 texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of which—including one of the most significant for understanding Paul’s letters—weren’t published until the 1990s. Now, in the first decade of the 21st century, scholars are rethinking the complex phenomenon known as Second Temple Judaism, which is the religious world in which Jesus and Paul carried out their ministries.

But before continuing our story we need to ask: Who wrote these scrolls that are so dramatically altering our perception of the period in which the early church took shape?

In selected scrolls the authors describe themselves as the “Community of the New Covenant,” which may well have been part of a broader Essene movement, one of the Jewish groups. This language about a “new covenant” already allows for a startling observation: Among the Jews of this period, only the Essenes, Jesus and the early Jesus movement, including Paul, speak of a “new covenant.” An interesting coincidence.

Read more...

The Irrelevance of Death

I just returned from a memorial service for the baby of my friends, Norman and Kristy. Their daughter, Eliyana Grace Dannug, was still born 8 months after conception. It was a beautiful service and I was especially touched by the following poem which graced the inside of the memorial card:

Now, when the frail and fine-spun
web of mortality
gapes, and lets slip
what we have loved so long
out of our lighted present
into the trackless dark

we turn, blinded,
not to the Christ in Glory,
stars about his feet

but to the Son of Man,
back from the tomb,
who built fire, ate fish,
spoke with friends, and walked
a dusty road at evening.

Here, in this room, in
this stark and timeless moment
we hear those footsteps

and
with suddenly lifted hearts
acknowledge
the irrelevance of death.

- Evangeline Paterson

New Stem Cell Lines Spare Embryo

Regardless of your position on stem cell research, I think you'll admit that if there had been no barrier to stem cell research using embryo's, the following discovery would probably not have occured: Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: New Stem Cell Lines Spare Embryo : "New Stem Cell Lines Spare Embryo"

Any artist knows that unfettered options does not necessarily lead to the most creative solution. Limits force us to stretch our minds and resolve tensions we'd prefer to ignore but benefit from resolving.