Why didn't the amillennialist cross the road?

I recently had the pleasure of a chat with good brothers Carl Trueman and Todd Pruitt, and esteemed sister Aimee Byrd.

The latter favored me with a list of reasons why the dispensationalist would not cross the road. I thought it would be unkind not to offer her the same filial gesture, and so... ten reasons why the amillennialist would not cross the road:

1. The road is Jesus. Why would I want to cross Jesus?
2. This road is not mentioned in the Three Forms of Unity.
3. So many have already crossed it before me. Who am I to cross it for myself?
4. "Road" sounds so literal...which means it's carnal, which means no.
5. 2000 years ago roadcrossing was inaugurated, so I'm already living in the Age of The Other Side of the Road.
6. Nobody said anything about this road before 1800.
7. Hal Lindsey crossed a road once. You'll never catch me doing it.
8. Crossing the road might be taken to mean two ways of salvation.
9. Pretty sure Calvin, Knox, Owen, Berkhof and Van Til never crossed this road, and they're my heroes.
10. Most people who cross roads are not Calvinists.

Can You Take a Joke?

“It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.” -- G.K. Chesterton

There is much to admire in Chesterton, a Roman Catholic, and he is eminently quotable. I highly recommend his “Father Brown” mysteries as delightful children’s reading with great moral applications.

The point he makes in the above sentence is worth contemplation. We all tend to take ourselves too seriously. This does not mean that such a thing as blasphemy does not exist, for it does. But it seems to me that there are a lot of people who find their job is to defend God, as though he is not capable of doing a perfectly good job of defending himself. There also are atheists who see their job being to angrily dismiss God (without seeing any humor in the notion that their anger is so directed at someone they do not believe exists).

It is just the person who is secure in his religious view who can take a joke about it. As an evangelical Christian, there is much that I find humorous about my faith and the way it is practiced. To be jumpy and offended every time someone finds something humorous about my faith would be evidence that I am not very secure about its truth.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “Defend the Bible? I would as soon defend a lion! Unchain it and it will defend itself.” Spurgeon is making the point that, rather than defending the Gospel, one might give consideration simply to proclaiming it. A careful, reasoned and kind defense of the Christian faith is sometimes helpful, indeed necessary. However, to fail to see humor in parodies of the Robertsons or of Tim Tebow seems to me to reflect an insecurity unbecoming of the Christian faith.

It goes without saying that some religions do not countenance joking. “Saturday Night Live” has creative freedom to do a parody of Jesus meeting Tim Tebow, but I think we will wait in vain for a network television parody involving some religious views. That is because joking is not allowed on threat of death. The folks at “Saturday Night Live” feel pretty secure in the idea that their parody of Christianity will not lead to death.

To me, and to Chesterton, that is a test of a good religion.

Monday Music - Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins

Nothing about this isn't fun — particularly how clearly tickled a guitarist as great as Clapton is to be playing with his elder counterparts.

(Thanks to Jeremiah Halstead for the recommendation)

On the other hand: when literal is misleading

In today's post at Pyro I make the point that sometimes less-literal translations can mislead and/or obscure the original author's point. Here I observe that the reverse can also be true.

In Tremper Longman's commentary on Proverbs, he translates Prov. 9:4b this way: "she says to those who lack heart." The bolded phrase is a rendering of  חֲסַר־לֵב (chasar-lēb). It is very literal, and literally accurate — could be "lacking heart" or "short on heart."

You'll see that all versions get a little dynamic here, ranging from "him who lacks sense" (so essentially ESV, CSB, NIV, RSV, NRSV, etc.), to "him who lacks understanding" (so essentially NAS, NET, ASV, KJV, NKJV), to "those who lack good judgment" (NLT).

So what does "heart" mean? Here's what I said in God's Wisdom in Proverbs:

Contrary to years of Christian traditional definition, the heart is not primarily the seat of the emotions, but rather of intellect, volition, and evaluation. It is used specifically of memory in various places, including Deuteronomy 4:39 and Proverbs 4:21.

Wouldn’t “brain” be the better modern term for this idea? Why is the heart used for the mind, rather than “brain”? As a matter of fact, the word “brain,” as a part of the body, is never mentioned in the OT. The word simply was not in use in the Hebrew working vocabulary as it is in modern English. The question is not, “Why didn’t the Hebrews use our word,” but rather, “What Hebrew word (if any) has a meaning equivalent to ‘brain’?”—and usage shows that the answer is, “Heart.”

[Phillips, D. (2011). God’s Wisdom in Proverbs: Hearing God’s Voice in Scripture (p. 115). Woodlands, TX: Kress Biblical Resources.]

So why not translate it literally, as Longman does? Because "lacking heart" is a familiar English expression with an established meaning. When we say someone "lacks heart," we aren't saying that he is deficient when it comes to God-fearing wisdom, as Solomon means. We mean that he lacks courage, he lacks fortitude, he lacks spirit — none of which is Solomon's sense.

So there we have to opt either for something a bit dynamic, as above, or do what I do: "short on brains," with a footnote like "Literally 'lacking of heart.'"

Because in this case, the literally literal is literally misleading.