A Friendly Atheist

An old man walked into my barbershop the other day. He sat down and started to talk to the guy cutting his hair and he offered up a bit of personal information, namely that he was an atheist. My coworker is a believer as well so he started in on the guy. He shared the gospel with him and tried a few apologetic arguments. I just kept on cutting my client and listening in on their conversation.

The older gentleman stated several times that he envied my coworker’s faith and wish he could believe, but he’s seen too many atrocities (he’s a Vietnam vet) to believe that God exists. He kept saying that if God is real then he should fix the world’s problems. I chimed in and told him to be patient. Everything he’s asking for will happen, just not right now. He repeatedly said that if he was God he’d do things differently and fix all the world’s ills.

I chimed in again and told him that it didn’t sound so much like he didn’t believe in God, but rather that he did believe and was just angry at him. I thought about Doug Wilson’s two tenets of atheism: 1) There is no God; 2) I hate him. Throughout the course of the haircut the guy never got belligerent with us; he didn’t exhibit anger toward us; and yet his hostility toward God was palpable.

When he was done with the cut he got up, paid for the service, had a couple of cookies, and said goodbye. I left him with this food for thought; I said, “You keep talking about what’s wrong with the world and how God should fix it if he’s real. You keep appealing to these things as if we should somehow know why they’re wrong and instinctively agree with you. And we do, but only because there is a standard outside of ourselves that we can appeal to to know what’s right and wrong. I want you to ponder what that standard is and why you keep appealing to it.”

This guy will definitely be back and when he is I can’t wait to have a deeper conversation with him.

B”H

In Appreciation of Larry Hurtado

I was saddened to hear the news of Larry Hurtado’s leukemia reactivating after having been in remission for 9 months. I pray his strength in the Lord as he explores whatever options for care that he has, but I wanted to take a moment to note my appreciation for him and his work.

It’s no secret that I’m a lover of books and that I have a decent sized personal library. But there was a time when my library consisted of a single KJV Bible, an NIV Bible, and a Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. This was what I had for the first 3.5–4 years of my salvation. And then in 2006 I purchased Brenton’s Septuagint, a New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha, Robert Letham’s The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship, and Simon Gathercole’s The Preexistent Son.

Letham and Gathercole were both springboards into various streams of scholarship in trinitarian theology and early Christology. I had been studying these doctrines in Scripture, researching them on the internet, and debating them with detractors in chatrooms but I hadn’t really been exposed to academic books on these subjects. And then on July 21, 2006 I printed out an article from a website called For an Answer by L. W. Hurtado. This article was entitled “What Do We Mean by ‘First-Century Jewish Monotheism’?.”

I gleaned a lot from this article while having no idea who its author was. And then in my reading of Letham and Gathercole I saw the name Larry Hurtado referenced several times throughout their books. I looked at their bibliographies and then took to Amazon. I purchased Larry W. Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity and gave it a careful and slow reading. This book would change the way I thought about, argued in favor of, and defended early Christology.

I proceeded to spend years getting my hands on all of the Hurtado resources that I could find. I have a folder on several hard drives (in the even that any one of them crashes) filled with articles that he has written and most of the books that he has authored (save a few of his more recent volumes) and have read them all with great profit.

On three separate occasions I have emailed Professor Hurtado and three times he graciously responded. The first time was a question concerning a claim about Matthew 28:19 not being original. At the time he was preparing for a 3 week lecture trip to Australia and Singapore and passed my question along to Paul Foster who replied promptly. The second time was a note of appreciation, which I will reproduce along with his response below. The final time was to run a few of my disagreements with James McGrath’s The Only True God by him and see if they held weight (he thought that they did). But I’ve said all this to say that even being as big a name in the field as he was, he always took the time to offer a response to a nobody like me.

And while I don’t find Hurtado’s arguments as substantial now as I once did I still have the greatest appreciation for his work and the paths it led me down. My library grew by leaps and bounds from reading his footnotes and bibliographies. My thinking about the importance of actual real life worship practices wouldn’t be what it is without him. I’d take a lot more issue with his work these days than I did in those days but I’d still argue that it’s necessary reading and has to be dealt with by anyone talking about early Christology and Christian origins.

I will be praying for him and his family as he deals with his health issues and I invite you to join me in doing so.

– – –

Below is my email in appreciation of Prof. Hurtado and his response. I’ll note that he responded to me on July 4, which is my birthday.

July 3, 2009, 1:59 PM

Hi Prof. Hurtado,

My name is Nick Norelli and I’ve emailed you a couple of times in the past to ask questions and you’ve always graciously responded; for that I am thankful.  I was writing now, not to ask any questions, but rather to express my appreciation for your work.

Having come to Christ in mid-2002 in a small Pentecostal church in New Jersey I wasn’t immediately exposed to works of scholarship.  I was of the ilk who thought that the best that Christianity had to offer could be found on the Trinity Broadcastng Network with the likes of Benny Hinn and T. D. Jakes.  It wasn’t until I really got interested in learning more about the doctrine of the Trinity that I was exposed to what I’d consider ‘real’ scholarship.  I noticed your works One God, One Lord and Lord Jesus Christ cited in the footnotes and bibliographies to the books I had been reading so I dutifully got a copy of LJC.  It was life changing in terms of the way I argued for a divine Christology and understood the New Testament.  It’s also the book that got me interested in Biblical studies as much as I was interested in theology.  And I also credit LJC with giving me an appreciation for historical inquiry into Christian origins.

Since then I’ve tried to get my hands on everything that you’ve written (articles and books) and I can’t tell you how encouraged I’ve been by your work.  I consider you the top scholar in the field, and I do so after having read the work of many of your peers.  I just wanted to write this note to let you know how appreciative I am for all that you’ve done for me without even knowing it.  May God continue to bless you and your work.

All the best,

Nick Norelli
https://rdtwot.wordpress.com

– – –

July 4, 2009, 7:41 AM

Dear Mr. Norelli,

I’m very grateful for your taking the effort to send me your  encouraging words.  It is very heartening for a scholar to be read at all, and for me especially so by readers beyond one’s circle of fellow academics.  It is even more encouraging that my works communicate clearly and effectively to you and others.

So, thank you again for your encouragement.  It is really appreciated.

Best wishes,
Larry Hurtado

Turn My Eyes

Yesterday was Thanksgiving in the US. It’s a day that many of us gather together with family to give thanks and eat and enjoy each other’s company. I started the day at my sister’s house where I didn’t overindulge since I knew I’d be heading down to my in-laws’ house for a second meal. I must have eaten something that disagreed with me because I felt like death warmed over. I’ll spare you the details but suffice it to say that I was ill. Very ill.

In the midst of all of this I prayed. A lot. Like a whole lot. And during my prayers I once again became convicted of something that I read in Psalm 119 last year. The psalmist said, “Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways” (Ps 119:37). When I read this last year it prompted me to get off* of Facebook. I wasn’t on there much but any time I spent on the app was an exercise in looking at worthless things.

Then in January of this year I took a hiatus from Instagram. I realized that I was spending way too much time scrolling through pictures in a mindless daze. After several months I decided to give Instagram another shot. I wasn’t on there nearly as much as I had been but as I was praying yesterday I became convicted that even the time I spend on there scrolling nowadays is too much. So I once again got off*. I don’t know if I’ll be back but I suspect that I won’t be.

Paul told the Ephesians to “walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:15-16 KJV). I won’t speak for anyone other than myself but I know that for me personally, looking at social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram is neither wise nor a means of redeeming (“making the best use of” [ESV]) the time. Twitter is another animal altogether. I actually sharpen my mind on Twitter through discussions, debates, and mere observation, but that’s another post. 

So even though I spent Thanksgiving feeling ill I’m thankful for the Lord using that as a way to once again convict me and get me back on track. As we approach the end of the year I’d like to make better use of my time and devote myself to looking at things that are worthwhile, like Scripture or the myriad books I own to help me understand Scripture better. I don’t want to wait until the new year to make this resolution.

B”H

 *When I say “get off” I mean that I deleted the apps from my phone and no longer use them. The accounts still exist in case I ever do need or want to resume use.

On Punctuality (or, More Barber Stuff)

My barbershop uses an app to book appointments. The app allows our customers to rate the barbers and the barbershop overall. Recently I’ve seen a few reviews that have deducted a star for punctuality. Allow me a brief moment to speak on this subject and correct any misconceptions that people may have about how certain types of barbershops operate.

To start, at my barbershop we work by appointment while also accepting walk-in traffic. It is our sincere desire to be able to accommodate everyone who would like to get their hair cut. So in the midst of servicing our appointments we also have to squeeze in the occasional walk-in. This can, at times, cause us to run over and into the time that someone else has scheduled for a haircut. We don’t like to run late but it can and does happen. I can assure you that it’s not a case of not respecting someone else’s time or thinking that ours is more valuable than theirs, which seems to be how some people feel.

Secondly, I’d like to remind people that we’re dealing with people; real life human beings. We’re not machines and neither are they. So there’s no guarantee that every haircut will take the same amount of time for any number of reasons. For example, say that we have blocked out 30 minutes for a haircut but our client runs 5 minutes late. If it does indeed take us 30 minutes to do that cut then we are now going to run 5 minutes late and that will cut into the next appointment. If this happens a few times throughout the course of the day it can have a snowball effect that causes us to run much further behind than we’d like to.

But let’s suppose that our clients are on time, there’s still no guarantee that the haircut that is blocked out for 30 minutes will get done in 30 minutes. If it’s a new client we have to take the time to learn their head and hair. If it’s a returning client who wants to change up their style we have to take the time to make it look how they want. The lighting can be bad at any given moment. We can run into technical difficulty with our equipment. The phones at the shop may be ringing off the hook and we have to take time out to answer them (we don’t have a receptionist at my shop). The point is that there are any number of things that can cause a barber to run behind.

My boss holds to a philosophy that says an appointment guarantees a haircut, not necessarily a haircut at the time of the appointment. I understand that idea, and in truth it’s one that doctors and dentists have been operating on since the dawn of time, but it’s not necessarily my personal philosophy. I like to be on time, I really do, and to the best of my ability I try to be. I recognize that clients choose particular times for a reason and I try my very best to honor those times. We all do.

So I’d urge anyone leaving reviews online for their barbershops or salons of choice to take these things into consideration when talking about punctuality. Also take past experiences into account. I had one client deduct a star for the lone time I ran 10 minutes late. Never mind every other time when I was on time. I didn’t get rated for that, but rather for something that was out of my control. It’s not the end of the world but it is somewhat annoying.

B”H

It Ain’t the Haircut

I don’t regularly talk about my job on the blog. I guess I don’t regularly talk about anything anymore, but I often have clients ask me what’s the hardest type of haircut to do. The answer is that it isn’t as simple as there just being a hard type of cut. There’s a lot that factors into the degree of difficulty for literally any type of haircut. We have to deal with varying head shapes; varying textures of hair; irregular growth patterns; scars; skin conditions; and a host of other things that you wouldn’t normally think of.

For example, I can do the same haircut on the same client two weeks in a row and have it be more difficult the second time around because he came in with bed head or hair product already in his hair. Or I can have two friends come in and both request the same style of haircut but one has Asian hair, which tends to be thick and pin straight (generally accompanied by a very pale scalp underneath) and the other have very fine thin blonde hair. The style is the same but the way I have to go about achieving the end result is different. And for the record, in such an instance there is no way possible that both cuts could look the same.

But aside from physical factors such as head shape, hair type, or the premature application of hair products, there’s a decidedly psychological aspect to the task that can complicate things. Sometimes we have to deal with people who border on obsessive compulsiveness with their high level of pickiness. They’ll notice the most microscopic detail and insist that it be fixed only to go on and notice something else that isn’t to their satisfaction. Sometimes someone will sit down and be incredibly vague in describing what they want (e.g., they’ll say, “just give me a regular cut,” not knowing that “regular” is relative). Certain people are simply jerks and you’d rather not deal with them in general. Others make things awkward by doing things like staring directly into your eyes while you’re trimming their facial hair.

The bottom line is that it ain’t the type of haircut in and of itself that’s difficult; it’s all the things that go into doing it that is.

B”H

Non-Coincidental

I started reading Scott and Kimberly Hahn’s conversion story Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism and in the opening chapter Scott tells a story in which he stopped by to see an old friend at random and caught his friend on the way out of the house. After a few hours of catching up Scott said that he noticed he had his jacket on and was leaving when he walked up to the house and asked him where he was going. His friend pulled out some rope from his jacket and said that he was on his way to hang himself. Scott’s visit had saved his friend’s life. What seemed like a random visit was divinely orchestrated.

This story is actually a familiar one. I manage a barbershop; my pastor owns it. A guy came in for a cut one day and as he sat in my pastor’s chair they got to talking and he basically said that doesn’t believe in religion and that he’s heard all the arguments for God and doesn’t find them convincing. He asked my pastor to make his case. His case basically went like this: “I know God.” The guy said something and my pastor’s response was, “I’m not telling you what I believe; I’m telling you that I know him.” He proceeded to give his testimony, which opened the door for him to minister to the guy concerning different things in his life.

When it was all said and done the gentleman paid and then asked to speak to my pastor outside. He broke down in tears and told him that this was actually the haircut was getting for his funeral. He was planning on killing himself. He’s now been a regular customer for nearly a year and he’s not talking about how he doesn’t buy into religion anymore. Again, what seemed like a random encounter was divinely orchestrated. He could have gotten his hair cut anywhere. He could have sat down with another barber that day. But God, who knows the end from the beginning, knew just where to put him and just what he needed to hear.

To God be the glory!

B”H

On Aesthetic Sensibilities and Changes to my Book

So a little while ago I noted that I decided to collate a bunch of my reviews on books about Christology and produce a slim volume that I self published with Lulu. I got the original version in and it was offensive for a number of reasons.

Reason #1 – A plethora of typographical errors. From the first page of the first review to the back cover there were a number of typos that I had managed to overlook. The problem with editing one’s own work is that they know how it should read/look so they read in such a way as to mentally apply corrections that haven’t actually been applied. The typos ranged from punctuation to grammar to spelling. It was awful.

Reason #2 – The format. I had initially began each chapter with the full bibliographic details of each book under review. On my blog this wasn’t really a problem as this was my preferred method in the latter part of my review writing. In a book format it just looked awkward. In addition to this I had formatting issues that were caused by downloading Lulu’s template for a 6×9 book. That brings us to…

Reason #3 – The fonts and spacing. I had created the original file on Lulu’s template in MS Word. My preferred font is Minion Pro for English and the SBL fonts for Hebrew and Greek. I also like my spacing at exactly 1.15 and I prefer for there to be spaces between footnotes. Well, when I uploaded my completed Word document to Lulu’s servers they changed everything to Times New Roman and single spacing! The only fix was to upload a PDF file. The issue there was that when I saved it as a PDF it saved as an 8.5×11 document. Lulu then shrank it down and it created margins that were unacceptable and a font size that was smaller then I wanted.

So in order to fix everything I ended up importing the document into Pages, which is Apple’s proprietary word processing program. I began by getting rid of full bibliographic information at the top of every page. Instead I inserted chapter numbers, the title of the book under review, and the author of said book. This made it look much more like a real book and a lot less sloppy. Here’s the difference:

I then combed through the manuscript innumerable times in order to fix the typos. I also caught some mistakes in formatting that I had initially missed. All of my original font choices were restored and I tried my best tp standardize certain things such as section headings and the way I cite page numbers, footnotes, scripture, etc.

Finally, I added some front matter (e.g., copyright page, dedication page) and in the final version a bibliography of the books reviewed. This is where all the information removed from the beginning of each review now appears. So while I’m calling this final version the “First Corrected Edition,” it’s technically the second.

But how did I manage to get everything the way I wanted it when I uploaded to Lulu’s servers?, you ask. Well, Pages exported the PDF document exactly according to the template that the document was created in. So no more 8.5×11. This was 6×9. And the PDF allowed for all of my fonts and spacing. In the end I ended up with something that looks a lot more professional and doesn’t offend my aesthetic sensibilities.

Pick up a copy if you’d like to check it out. 

B”H

My Mike Brown Moment

Dr. Michael Brown often shares his testimony of God saving him as a teen from a life of drug abuse and rebellion. He talks of how he would voraciously read the Bible and memorize verse after verse in order to evangelize and apologize (in the sense of defend) but when some Jewish counter-missionaries showed up at his house they’d tell him that his knowledge of the Scriptures in English just wouldn’t do. This led Dr. Brown to studying Near Eastern languages and literature at NYU and eventually earning a PhD in the field. Now he can speak to the counter-missionaries with as much knowledge of the language as they have, and in many cases more because he can appeal to the languages that influenced Hebrew.

I share this to say that I had a moment like this yesterday as I stood in my barbershop. A nice Sephardic Jew came in and complemented us on the shop and its name (Zebulun Jesus is Lord Barber Shop) and shared a bit about what the Scriptures say about Zebulun. He told us that he’s a descendent of Judah and that the Syriac Jews have kept meticulous genealogies for over two millennia. Then he asked if we knew the Bible well enough to discuss it. My pastor (who owns the place) and I said yes and then our discussion began.

As my pastor, who has been working in the midst of the Jewish community in Lakewood, NJ for over 20 years began to share the gospel and why we believe that Jesus is the Messiah this man kept interjecting and telling us why he didn’t think so. There came a point in the conversation where he said, “Listen, I couldn’t care less what you believe because it doesn’t effect me, just like what I believe doesn’t effect you.” He continued to say, “You have your interpretations, and that’s nice, I’ll listen, but this is my book. I know the language and I read it in the original so trust me when I say that I know it better than you.”

At that very moment I decided to take the study of Hebrew seriously. I’ve been dabbling for years but I’ve never devoted the time or attention to the language to be able to say that I “know” it. I can read the words, sure, but I don’t know what most of them mean. I couldn’t tell you hardly anything about rules of Hebrew grammar or syntax. I know how to use a lexicon and all the resources at my disposal but put a Hebrew Bible in front of me and there’s very little I can do. I can’t stomach this any longer.

So I’ve pulled out my Basics of Biblical Hebrew Grammar, Workbook, Flash Cards, and DVDs and I’m going to give this a real go. The plan is to wake up early every day and devote at least one hour in the morning to it. I am more than willing to accept any and all help that any of my dear readers want to offer. But the bottom line is that I need to become well versed in the language.

B”H

Recent Goings On

So much has been happening and I’ve not kept my faithful readers abreast of it all.

First, thanks to those of you who have stuck with this blog during its dormancy.

Second, I’ve received a couple of books over the past few months for review. Yes, I still plan to review books when I have the time. My Twitter followers have been made aware of these but my blog readers have not.

Wipf & Stock sent along Kevin Giles’ The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity. I was made aware of this volume from a post on Scot McKnight’s blog. The material he quoted had Giles quoting Denny Burk so I naturally tracked the original material down and found that Giles was taking Burk out of context and misrepresenting him. Burk confirmed as much on Twitter when I brought it up to McKnight. So I’m looking forward to a more than likely scathing review of this book. I’ve admitted to being unnecessarily harsh to Giles’ work in the past but then I reread it or read something new and think that maybe it was necessary.

The other volume I received for review came courtesy of Mohr Siebeck. It’s Benjamin Pacut’s Redescribing Jesus’ Divinity Through a Social Science Theory. Tim Bertolet had good things to say about it so I’m hopeful that it will be good.

Thirdly, in other news, Fortress Press has partnered with an organization called Givingtons and they’re running a ridiculously discounted sale on a bunch of books. I had initially ordered a copy of David Congdon’s The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology. Okay, so this has a $99 list price. Amazon sells it for just under $70. They had the Kindle version available for like $7 for a while but I’ve never once read any of the Kindle volumes I own. I can’t see starting now. So I was pretty much out of luck with this one. Until this sale. I found out about it on Facebook from Congdon and proceeded to order his book for a paltry $9! I also added a book on Incarnation.

But then some wacky stuff started to happen. Two weeks after placing the order I emailed customer service to check on the status of the order since nothing had even been shipped. I was refunded the money for Congdon’s book with the explanation that they were out of stock and didn’t expect to receive any from the publisher. This was disappointing. But they assured me that they were sending the other book. I told them thanks, but no thanks, and canceled the entire order. The other volume was merely an add-on.

So I took to Twitter and lamented the state of affairs. I also emailed the customer service rep and asked why people who had ordered the book after I had received a copy while I had been declined. You see, I know for a fact that there were people who missed out on the initial sale and ordered during a second wave. They had received books while I had not. I was given an unsatisfactory answer. But Congdon was good enough to contact his people at Fortress and get to the bottom of it all. I ended up being contacted and told that they were getting a new batch and that I could order it again, this time with free shipping for my inconvenience! So that I did. I also added a book on a non-sacramental reading of John 6.

Fourthly, I got off Facebook. I had initially signed up to meet my wife. We met. We dated. We married. The end. I still have the account; I just deleted the app.

Fifthly, I’ve self-published a collection of book reviews on books about Christology. It’s called Christology in Review: A Layman’s Take on Books about Christology. You can purchase a copy here if you’re so interested. It’ll cost you $6. Almost all of these reviews are available for free on the blog. I have added a review essay of Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God, which is a bit more detailed than the review I have on the blog. I’ve also slightly edited the content of the some of the reviews and have done my best to format them all similarly; at least where possible.

And that’ll just about do it for this update.

Oh, and I’m happy to note that my brother from another mother Fr Esteban Vázquez is back to blogging! It’s substantive stuff too; not drivel like this!

B”H

Home Library/Office Tour

I wanted to do this for a while. I had some time today. One day I’ll get a good camera and give this thing some real production value.

B”H