• Revitalizing the Economy
• Ending the War in Iraq
• Providing Health Care for All
• Protecting America
• Renewing American Global Leadership

‘We’ve hit a rich songwriting vein and we don’t want to stop.’ Bono has been talking to U2.Com about how the songs are shaping up for the new record and plans for 2009 to be their year.

‘This is our chance for us to defy gravity once again, ‘ explains Bono, calling in from a break in recording sessions in the south of France. ‘ We have what it takes, we have the songs, new rhythms and a guitar player who is not ready to re-enter earth’s atmosphere until he’s taken a slice of the moon!

‘It’s been fun, it’s been maddening… there have been injuries and recoveries, no babies born that I know of, but this one is nearly ready for the new year of 2009.’

The band have been writing and recording the follow-up to ‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb’ since last year, and the feeling is that they’ve hit a creative groove so there are no plans to stop. Everyone, he says, is excited about where the recording is taking them.

‘When we set out on this record it was Larry who came up with the plan not to have a plan. He put up this idea that wouldn’t it be great just to make music for its own sake, not for the purpose of a live show or on album but just to see what we’re capable of…’

It’s an idea that’s paid off. Following sessions in Morocco, in Dublin and through the summer in France, the band have written ‘fifty or sixty’ tracks. And counting.

‘We’ve hit a rich songwriting vein,’ he explains. ‘It gets a bit dark down here but looks like we’ve found diamonds not coal. I thought a while back we might have the album wrapped by now, but why come up above ground now if there’s more priceless stuff to be found?

For now, they’re keeping a promise they made to themselves when they started writing: ‘We said to each other that if we got to the great place then we wouldn’t stop…’

So the writing and recording continues and while they now know what shape most of the album will take, they’re not leaving the studio just yet.

‘We know we have to emerge soon but we also know that people don’t want another U2 album unless it is our best ever album. It has to be our most innovative, our most challenging … or what’s the point ?’

They have no doubts that it will be as important a release for U2 as any. ‘It’s a brand new chapter for us, and everyone we’ve played the tracks to has said that musically it feels like another departure.

‘The last two records were very personal, with a kind of three piece at their heart, the primary colours of rock - bass, guitars and drum. But what we’re about now is of the same order as the transition that took us from The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby.’

He also mentions that the recording in Morocco was the first time the band have worked in a studio open to the sky: ‘On that track you can hear the sound of a swallows nest close to the building - it’s beautiful.’

Longtime collaborators Danny Lanois and Brian Eno have joined the band at different times, and, more recently, Steve Lillywhite – usually a tell-tale sign that a record is nearly done. ‘Steve has that ear for a top line melody and a good hook.’

But while Bono is itching to get the music out he says it’s going to be early 2009 when we first get to hear the songs.

‘I’m always the one who underestimates how easy it is to simply ‘put out the songs now’, if it was just up to me they’d be out already! But early next year people will be able to start hearing what we’ve been doing. We want 2009 to be our year, so we’re going to start making an impression very early on …’

This is a fantastic article by the editors of The New Yorker that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the election and my choice.   Certainly, governments and their elected officials are imperfect but that doesn’t mean there is no hope.  Ultimately, my hope is in the triune God, so I hold quite loosely to my expectations for a president.  But, I still have some pragmatic opinions about our country and the world as a the setting in which the kingdom of Jesus can be tasted and shared by his people.

Never in living memory has an election been more critical than the one fast approaching—that’s the quadrennial cliché, as expected as the balloons and the bombast. And yet when has it ever felt so urgently true? When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a Presidency has—at the levels of competence, vision, and integrity—undermined the country and its ideals?

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign. The only speaker at the Convention in St. Paul who uttered more than a sentence or two in support of the President was his wife, Laura. Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.

The Republican disaster begins at home. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak. During the Bush Administration, the national debt, now approaching ten trillion dollars, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a half-trillion-dollar deficit, a precipitous fall from the seven-hundred-billion-dollar surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush Administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top one per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half. The unfairness will only increase if the painful, yet necessary, effort to rescue the credit markets ends up preventing the rescue of our health-care system, our environment, and our physical, educational, and industrial infrastructure.

At the same time, a hundred and fifty thousand American troops are in Iraq and thirty-three thousand are in Afghanistan. There is still disagreement about the wisdom of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his horrific regime, but there is no longer the slightest doubt that the Bush Administration manipulated, bullied, and lied the American public into this war and then mismanaged its prosecution in nearly every aspect. The direct costs, besides an expenditure of more than six hundred billion dollars, have included the loss of more than four thousand Americans, the wounding of thirty thousand, the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and the displacement of four and a half million men, women, and children. Only now, after American forces have been fighting for a year longer than they did in the Second World War, is there a glimmer of hope that the conflict in Iraq has entered a stage of fragile stability.

The indirect costs, both of the war in particular and of the Administration’s unilateralist approach to foreign policy in general, have also been immense. The torture of prisoners, authorized at the highest level, has been an ethical and a public-diplomacy catastrophe. At a moment when the global environment, the global economy, and global stability all demand a transition to new sources of energy, the United States has been a global retrograde, wasteful in its consumption and heedless in its policy. Strategically and morally, the Bush Administration has squandered the American capacity to counter the example and the swagger of its rivals. China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other illiberal states have concluded, each in its own way, that democratic principles and human rights need not be components of a stable, prosperous future. At recent meetings of the United Nations, emboldened despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran came to town sneering at our predicament and hailing the “end of the American era.”

The election of 2008 is the first in more than half a century in which no incumbent President or Vice-President is on the ballot. There is, however, an incumbent party, and that party has been lucky enough to find itself, apparently against the wishes of its “base,” with a nominee who evidently disliked George W. Bush before it became fashionable to do so. In South Carolina in 2000, Bush crushed John McCain with a sub-rosa primary campaign of such viciousness that McCain lashed out memorably against Bush’s Christian-right allies. So profound was McCain’s anger that in 2004 he flirted with the possibility of joining the Democratic ticket under John Kerry. Bush, who took office as a “compassionate conservative,” governed immediately as a rightist ideologue. During that first term, McCain bolstered his reputation, sometimes deserved, as a “maverick” willing to work with Democrats on such issues as normalizing relations with Vietnam, campaign-finance reform, and immigration reform. He co-sponsored, with John Edwards and Edward Kennedy, a patients’ bill of rights. In 2001 and 2003, he voted against the Bush tax cuts. With John Kerry, he co-sponsored a bill raising auto-fuel efficiency standards and, with Joseph Lieberman, a cap-and-trade regime on carbon emissions. He was one of a minority of Republicans opposed to unlimited drilling for oil and gas off America’s shores.

Since the 2004 election, however, McCain has moved remorselessly rightward in his quest for the Republican nomination. He paid obeisance to Jerry Falwell and preachers of his ilk. He abandoned immigration reform, eventually coming out against his own bill. Most shocking, McCain, who had repeatedly denounced torture under all circumstances, voted in February against a ban on the very techniques of “enhanced interrogation” that he himself once endured in Vietnam—as long as the torturers were civilians employed by the C.I.A.

On almost every issue, McCain and the Democratic Party’s nominee, Barack Obama, speak the generalized language of “reform,” but only Obama has provided a convincing, rational, and fully developed vision. McCain has abandoned his opposition to the Bush-era tax cuts and has taken up the demagogic call—in the midst of recession and Wall Street calamity, with looming crises in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—for more tax cuts. Bush’s expire in 2011. If McCain, as he has proposed, cuts taxes for corporations and estates, the benefits once more would go disproportionately to the wealthy.

In Washington, the craze for pure market triumphalism is over. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson arrived in town (via Goldman Sachs) a Republican, but it seems that he will leave a Democrat. In other words, he has come to see that the abuses that led to the current financial crisis––not least, excessive speculation on borrowed capital––can be fixed only with government regulation and oversight. McCain, who has never evinced much interest in, or knowledge of, economic questions, has had little of substance to say about the crisis. His most notable gesture of concern—a melodramatic call last month to suspend his campaign and postpone the first Presidential debate until the government bailout plan was ready—soon revealed itself as an empty diversionary tactic.

By contrast, Obama has made a serious study of the mechanics and the history of this economic disaster and of the possibilities of stimulating a recovery. Last March, in New York, in a speech notable for its depth, balance, and foresight, he said, “A complete disdain for pay-as-you-go budgeting, coupled with a generally scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement, allowed far too many to put short-term gain ahead of long-term consequences.” Obama is committed to reforms that value not only the restoration of stability but also the protection of the vast majority of the population, which did not partake of the fruits of the binge years. He has called for greater and more programmatic regulation of the financial system; the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, which would help reverse the decay of our roads, bridges, and mass-transit systems, and create millions of jobs; and a major investment in the green-energy sector.

On energy and global warming, Obama offers a set of forceful proposals. He supports a cap-and-trade program to reduce America’s carbon emissions by eighty per cent by 2050—an enormously ambitious goal, but one that many climate scientists say must be met if atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be kept below disastrous levels. Large emitters, like utilities, would acquire carbon allowances, and those which emit less carbon dioxide than their allotment could sell the resulting credits to those which emit more; over time, the available allowances would decline. Significantly, Obama wants to auction off the allowances; this would provide fifteen billion dollars a year for developing alternative-energy sources and creating job-training programs in green technologies. He also wants to raise federal fuel-economy standards and to require that ten per cent of America’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2012. Taken together, his proposals represent the most coherent and far-sighted strategy ever offered by a Presidential candidate for reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.

There was once reason to hope that McCain and Obama would have a sensible debate about energy and climate policy. McCain was one of the first Republicans in the Senate to support federal limits on carbon dioxide, and he has touted his own support for a less ambitious cap-and-trade program as evidence of his independence from the White House. But, as polls showed Americans growing jittery about gasoline prices, McCain apparently found it expedient in this area, too, to shift course. He took a dubious idea—lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling—and placed it at the very center of his campaign. Opening up America’s coastal waters to drilling would have no impact on gasoline prices in the short term, and, even over the long term, the effect, according to a recent analysis by the Department of Energy, would be “insignificant.” Such inconvenient facts, however, are waved away by a campaign that finally found its voice with the slogan “Drill, baby, drill!”

The contrast between the candidates is even sharper with respect to the third branch of government. A tense equipoise currently prevails among the Justices of the Supreme Court, where four hard-core conservatives face off against four moderate liberals. Anthony M. Kennedy is the swing vote, determining the outcome of case after case.

McCain cites Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, two reliable conservatives, as models for his own prospective appointments. If he means what he says, and if he replaces even one moderate on the current Supreme Court, then Roe v. Wade will be reversed, and states will again be allowed to impose absolute bans on abortion. McCain’s views have hardened on this issue. In 1999, he said he opposed overturning Roe; by 2006, he was saying that its demise “wouldn’t bother me any”; by 2008, he no longer supported adding rape and incest as exceptions to his party’s platform opposing abortion.

But scrapping Roe—which, after all, would leave states as free to permit abortion as to criminalize it—would be just the beginning. Given the ideological agenda that the existing conservative bloc has pursued, it’s safe to predict that affirmative action of all kinds would likely be outlawed by a McCain Court. Efforts to expand executive power, which, in recent years, certain Justices have nobly tried to resist, would likely increase. Barriers between church and state would fall; executions would soar; legal checks on corporate power would wither—all with just one new conservative nominee on the Court. And the next President is likely to make three appointments.

Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, voted against confirming not only Roberts and Alito but also several unqualified lower-court nominees. As an Illinois state senator, he won the support of prosecutors and police organizations for new protections against convicting the innocent in capital cases. While McCain voted to continue to deny habeas-corpus rights to detainees, perpetuating the Bush Administration’s regime of state-sponsored extra-legal detention, Obama took the opposite side, pushing to restore the right of all U.S.-held prisoners to a hearing. The judicial future would be safe in his care.

In the shorthand of political commentary, the Iraq war seems to leave McCain and Obama roughly even. Opposing it before the invasion, Obama had the prescience to warn of a costly and indefinite occupation and rising anti-American radicalism around the world; supporting it, McCain foresaw none of this. More recently, in early 2007 McCain risked his Presidential prospects on the proposition that five additional combat brigades could salvage a war that by then appeared hopeless. Obama, along with most of the country, had decided that it was time to cut American losses. Neither candidate’s calculations on Iraq have been as cheaply political as McCain’s repeated assertion that Obama values his career over his country; both men based their positions, right or wrong, on judgment and principle.

President Bush’s successor will inherit two wars and the realities of limited resources, flagging popular will, and the dwindling possibilities of what can be achieved by American power. McCain’s views on these subjects range from the simplistic to the unknown. In Iraq, he seeks “victory”—a word that General David Petraeus refuses to use, and one that fundamentally misrepresents the messy, open-ended nature of the conflict. As for Afghanistan, on the rare occasions when McCain mentions it he implies that the surge can be transferred directly from Iraq, which suggests that his grasp of counterinsurgency is not as firm as he insisted it was during the first Presidential debate. McCain always displays more faith in force than interest in its strategic consequences. Unlike Obama, McCain has no political strategy for either war, only the dubious hope that greater security will allow things to work out. Obama has long warned of deterioration along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and has a considered grasp of its vital importance. His strategy for both Afghanistan and Iraq shows an understanding of the role that internal politics, economics, corruption, and regional diplomacy play in wars where there is no battlefield victory.

Unimaginably painful personal experience taught McCain that war is above all a test of honor: maintain the will to fight on, be prepared to risk everything, and you will prevail. Asked during the first debate to outline “the lessons of Iraq,” McCain said, “I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear: that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict.” A soldier’s answer––but a statesman must have a broader view of war and peace. The years ahead will demand not only determination but also diplomacy, flexibility, patience, judiciousness, and intellectual engagement. These are no more McCain’s strong suit than the current President’s. Obama, for his part, seems to know that more will be required than willpower and force to extract some advantage from the wreckage of the Bush years.

Obama is also better suited for the task of renewing the bedrock foundations of American influence. An American restoration in foreign affairs will require a commitment not only to international coöperation but also to international institutions that can address global warming, the dislocations of what will likely be a deepening global economic crisis, disease epidemics, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and other, more traditional security challenges. Many of the Cold War-era vehicles for engagement and negotiation—the United Nations, the World Bank, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—are moribund, tattered, or outdated. Obama has the generational outlook that will be required to revive or reinvent these compacts. He would be the first postwar American President unencumbered by the legacies of either Munich or Vietnam.

The next President must also restore American moral credibility. Closing Guantánamo, banning all torture, and ending the Iraq war as responsibly as possible will provide a start, but only that. The modern Presidency is as much a vehicle for communication as for decision-making, and the relevant audiences are global. Obama has inspired many Americans in part because he holds up a mirror to their own idealism. His election would do no less—and likely more—overseas.

What most distinguishes the candidates, however, is character—and here, contrary to conventional wisdom, Obama is clearly the stronger of the two. Not long ago, Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said, “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” The view that this election is about personalities leaves out policy, complexity, and accountability. Even so, there’s some truth in what Davis said––but it hardly points to the conclusion that he intended.

Echoing Obama, McCain has made “change” one of his campaign mantras. But the change he has actually provided has been in himself, and it is not just a matter of altering his positions. A willingness to pander and even lie has come to define his Presidential campaign and its televised advertisements. A contemptuous duplicity, a meanness, has entered his talk on the stump—so much so that it seems obvious that, in the drive for victory, he is willing to replicate some of the same underhanded methods that defeated him eight years ago in South Carolina.

Perhaps nothing revealed McCain’s cynicism more than his choice of Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who had been governor of that state for twenty-one months, as the Republican nominee for Vice-President. In the interviews she has given since her nomination, she has had difficulty uttering coherent unscripted responses about the most basic issues of the day. We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy. This is funny as a Tina Fey routine on “Saturday Night Live,” but as a vision of the political future it’s deeply unsettling. Palin has no business being the backup to a President of any age, much less to one who is seventy-two and in imperfect health. In choosing her, McCain committed an act of breathtaking heedlessness and irresponsibility. Obama’s choice, Joe Biden, is not without imperfections. His tongue sometimes runs in advance of his mind, providing his own fodder for late-night comedians, but there is no comparison with Palin. His deep experience in foreign affairs, the judiciary, and social policy makes him an assuring and complementary partner for Obama.

The longer the campaign goes on, the more the issues of personality and character have reflected badly on McCain. Unless appearances are very deceiving, he is impulsive, impatient, self-dramatizing, erratic, and a compulsive risk-taker. These qualities may have contributed to his usefulness as a “maverick” senator. But in a President they would be a menace.

By contrast, Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. It is part of what allowed him to overcome a Democratic opponent who entered the race with tremendous advantages. It is what helped him forge a political career relying both on the liberals of Hyde Park and on the political regulars of downtown Chicago. His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.

Nowadays, almost every politician who thinks about running for President arranges to become an author. Obama’s books are different: he wrote them. “The Audacity of Hope” (2006) is a set of policy disquisitions loosely structured around an account of his freshman year in the United States Senate. Though a campaign manifesto of sorts, it is superior to that genre’s usual blowsy pastiche of ghostwritten speeches. But it is Obama’s first book, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” (1995), that offers an unprecedented glimpse into the mind and heart of a potential President. Obama began writing it in his early thirties, before he was a candidate for anything. Not since Theodore Roosevelt has an American politician this close to the pinnacle of power produced such a sustained, highly personal work of literary merit before being definitively swept up by the tides of political ambition.

A Presidential election is not the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize: we elect a politician and, we hope, a statesman, not an author. But Obama’s first book is valuable in the way that it reveals his fundamental attitudes of mind and spirit. “Dreams from My Father” is an illuminating memoir not only in the substance of Obama’s own peculiarly American story but also in the qualities he brings to the telling: a formidable intelligence, emotional empathy, self-reflection, balance, and a remarkable ability to see life and the world through the eyes of people very different from himself. In common with nearly all other senators and governors of his generation, Obama does not count military service as part of his biography. But his life has been full of tests—personal, spiritual, racial, political—that bear on his preparation for great responsibility.

It is perfectly legitimate to call attention, as McCain has done, to Obama’s lack of conventional national and international policymaking experience. We, too, wish he had more of it. But office-holding is not the only kind of experience relevant to the task of leading a wildly variegated nation. Obama’s immersion in diverse human environments (Hawaii’s racial rainbow, Chicago’s racial cauldron, countercultural New York, middle-class Kansas, predominantly Muslim Indonesia), his years of organizing among the poor, his taste of corporate law and his grounding in public-interest and constitutional law—these, too, are experiences. And his books show that he has wrung from them every drop of insight and breadth of perspective they contained.

The exhaustingly, sometimes infuriatingly long campaign of 2008 (and 2007) has had at least one virtue: it has demonstrated that Obama’s intelligence and steady temperament are not just figments of the writer’s craft. He has made mistakes, to be sure. (His failure to accept McCain’s imaginative proposal for a series of unmediated joint appearances was among them.) But, on the whole, his campaign has been marked by patience, planning, discipline, organization, technological proficiency, and strategic astuteness. Obama has often looked two or three moves ahead, relatively impervious to the permanent hysteria of the hourly news cycle and the cable-news shouters. And when crisis has struck, as it did when the divisive antics of his ex-pastor threatened to bring down his campaign, he has proved equal to the moment, rescuing himself with a speech that not only drew the poison but also demonstrated a profound respect for the electorate. Although his opponents have tried to attack him as a man of “mere” words, Obama has returned eloquence to its essential place in American politics. The choice between experience and eloquence is a false one––something that Lincoln, out of office after a single term in Congress, proved in his own campaign of political and national renewal. Obama’s “mere” speeches on everything from the economy and foreign affairs to race have been at the center of his campaign and its success; if he wins, his eloquence will be central to his ability to govern.

We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country’s image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks. At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.

—The Editors

• I am no computer expert, simply an avid user. I have no programming education or experience and have learned most things through trial and error and through the advanced expertise of former roommates and brothers-in law. I like to use sophisticated Bible software (Bibleworks, Libronix, etc.), I have lots of pictures and music (about 50-60 GB’s worth), I like to do web editing (with Frontpage), I sync my devices with the computer (iPod, Blackberry, Pocket PC), and I use most MS Office Applications (Word, Excel, & Outlook). Thus, I like to have a lot of things running at once.
• I have used most phases of Windows, including Windows 3.5, 95, 98, 98 Second Edition, ME, XP Home, and XP Professional (through each service pack). All have had their difficulties, but I found XP Pro to have the least issues.
• I have used a few versions of Linux, including Fedora Core 5-7 and Suse Linux 9. I enjoyed the layout of these systems, but had a great deal of difficulty with drivers and optimizing my screen view (oddly enough). I wholeheartedly support the efforts of open source operating systems and other software, and do enjoy the concept of the Live CD or DVD to run off.
• This is the probably the most important point of all: I added to my RAM by 2 GBs before I upgraded XP to Vista. Even before I upgraded and still had XP, it was a massive difference in the speed and performance of my computer. To upgrade to Vista, it requires at least 1 GB of RAM and I only had 512 MB.

Now, with all that being said, I realize that the Mac (and/or the world) vs. Windows is much like the PR battle of the Democrats (and/or the independents) vs. Republicans. Windows is the corporate product whereas a Mac or Linux OS is a product for the people. Like productive political discussion, however, it is necessary to stick to the issues and not the hype or rumors. After all, it all comes down to how a particular system pragmatically delivers our greatest spread of ideals. I have heard so many people talk about Vista as a disaster, a mistake, poorly planned, and crippled with flaws. However, I am hard pressed to find any specific examples of problems with the actual operating system. Of course, the most common problem with any OS upgrade is hardware/driver compatibility. For PCs, there is really no way around this because the hardware components are all made by different companies, and they are responsible for creating new drivers that are compatible for the latest operating systems. As a matter of fact, even after an entire year of using Vista, the company who made my sound card has not updated their drivers for it such that I cannot get my microphone or line-in jacks to work. I really don’t use them so it’s not that big of a deal to me, but I wouldn’t consider that a “failure” for Vista. And by now, as the first Service Pack is available, most driver issues have been resolved and issues of that nature have been resolved.

I have found Vista to be a very welcome and timely update to XP. I’m glad Microsoft slowed down their production of operating systems, because up to 2001, there was a new one pretty much every year. So they took their time with Vista and gave themselves 5-6 years. Thus, they were anticipating changes of the way in which we use computers. For instance, they have a voice recognition component built into the OS. It may not be the same quality of the amazing Dragon Naturally Speaking product by Nuance, but it provides the service for those who would like to try it. They have also significantly enhanced Windows Media Center, as it will serve in the future as the way people watch TV, movies, photos, and listen to music. It will replace TiVo or a DVR for those who have the vision to centralize their media on their computers. I have seen this in action at my sister’s house where my brother-in-law runs everything through his Windows Media Center server and he accesses the media at each TV through Xbox. It looks and function much better than TiVo or my Comcast DVR, and completely replaces the need for Apple TV. But, you don’t hear people talking about that, because most people have not been exposed to the far-reaching, forward-thinking capabilities of Vista. Of course, I could mention that the Vista interface looks really nice and as appealing as Linux or Apple, or that they’ve simplified the folder structure of Vista to make it a bit more intuitive, but that should be expected. Issues of visual aesthetics are all customizable even for XP. If you have XP, you can make your interface look like a Mac or Linux, or even Vista if you wanted to. You can even add the widget features of Mac or Vista to XP. So, it is no surprise that these things have been updated with Vista.

Two components to the OS that I find have greatly enhanced Vista, which most people don’t like, are Windows Update and User Account Control.  My computer is on 24/7, so Update runs every day at 3:00 AM and it includes all critical updates and even defrags once a week.  Of course, you can turn off this feature.  User Account Control is the big change people feel inconvenienced by.  This alerts you when anything wants to run or install, and gives you the choice to allow it or not.  I find this helps me know exactly what is going on my computer and eliminates spy ware at the front end.  Of course, you can turn off this feature if you do not care to use it.   But, I think it is helpful in most cases.

Other features that I don’t use often but think they are necessary are Windows Backup and Restore Center, Shadow Copy (this creates shadow copies of your computer), Remote Access, Sync Center, and Windows Easy Transfer.  You can always go to the Vista site and demo all the features.

Overall, I am very happy with the upgrade and know it will serve me well for the future.  MS is already close to completion on “Windows 7″ and will be starting “Windows 8″ soon (Vista is “Windows 6″).  I do think that the most important factor in my upgrade was increasing my RAM.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  My wife has only 1.25 GB, and her computer is noticeably slower running Vista.  So, keep that in mind if choosing to take the plunge.

(FYI: I started this post like 8 months ago and just finished today, just so you know)

But, as you can see, learning about 2 topics that have been pretty foreign to me until last fall has contributed to keeping my blog relatively silent. But rest assure, although I could go on and on about politics, I find golf much more interesting because there is more concrete information to learn.  Politics is simply a glorified ad campaign centered around a person or group.

Just got finished watching a fascinating NOVA program entitled, “Ghost in Your Genes” which was about epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of genetic modifiers called “epigenomes” that are instrumental in turning on and off the varied features of any given genome. The Human Genome Project of the early 90’s was monumental as it mainly purposed to identify all of the genomes or “genes” in the DNA make-up of humans. In 2000 they reported that they had found 22,000-23,000 genomes, which was surprisingly less than they had anticipated. That’s roughly the same that can be found in worms, rats, and frogs. Since it has been thought that humans are more genetically complex, it left many questions about what causes some genes to appear and others not to appear. The salient example of this question is how identical twins which have the exact same DNA structure can develop differently. The answer that has been found in the past few years is the discovery of “epigenomes” which can attach themselves to certain genes or gene sequences and turn them on or off depending on the circumstances. Moreover, they are finding that epigenomes can be influenced early in development, showing that although we inherit genes and epigenomes naturally through our parents, it is how we are nurtured that can determine which traits develop in us. That is certainly a simplification of very complex research, but nonetheless very compelling. They have now launched the Human Epigenome Project to try to identify what could be millions of epigenomes influencing genetic development. This is very exciting, and they have already benefited from this kind of research in cancer treatment.

Here is the TV Program Description
Here is the Program Manuscript
Here is the Program Preview
Here are some links and resources
Here is the Wikipedia entry for Epigenetics

I was excited that my favorite NPR (WBUR) program “On Point” was discussing this news yesterday, but I was quickly turned off by the fact that the host, Tom Ashbrook, got quite carried away by his misunderstandings of the project. He was calling it the G-phone or Google phone, which is a radical misnomer because there are over 30 companies involved in the alliance, and was very concerned that Google’s agenda with the OS would be to make money by planting ads in phones. Also, he raised the question about security and privacy because he thought that since it is open source it could be tampered with. He had at least 3 field experts on his panel for discussion, and I thought they did a good job talking about the possibilities of the project. However, they also had some of the same misinformation which was also furthered by some of the callers, and I think many people walked away from the discussion thinking falsely that Google has become a phone developer with a few partners putting out an insecure phone that invades peoples privacy. The discussion really missed most of the goals of the alliance in developing “Android” and I hope that in the coming weeks and months that Tom updates this story with a clearer apprehension of the significance of the alliance and it’s project(s).

If you feel you are out of the loop with regards to the recent discussions about the doctrine of justification in Pauline theology, particularly the writings of E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, and N.T. Wright I would suggest checking out thepaulpage.com and Monergism.com’s “New Perspective” section. For many N.T. Wright sources there is also the ntwrightpage.com.

Click here to browse the book or here for the PDF.

Work has been crazy the past few weeks as we just ended our fiscal quarter/year. I’m glad that is finally over and we are back to relative normalcy.

We’ve been taking a break for church the past month and a half as things have been super busy for all of us. Hopefully, we should begin meeting again. 10/4 marked a year that we’ve been gathering.

Kalila has been in classes for the past few weeks. She is taking 3 classes: 1 Monday evenings, 1 Tuesday/Thursday in the afternoon, and 1 Saturday mornings. Her Monday night class is her favorite. It’s an American Lit class I think, but her prof is very intelligent and can teach well. He actually taught them about Jonathan Edwards.

Right now I am at my sister’s house in the Seattle area. My dad and I are visiting my little niece Julia who is 16 months old. She is the cutest thing in the world I think. I’ll put some more pics up soon. Also got to visit Mars Hill Church yesterday. I’ll be back tomorrow to work a half day and get to see my wife for the first time in 4 days!

If the main focus of a sermon is to preach Christ, what do we do with the book of Proverbs and a host of other Biblical texts that seem to focus on wisdom for life, or our own personal growth in holiness, etc? That’s the focus of this edition of the White Horse Inn as Michael Horton talks with Dennis Johnson about his new book, Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ in All the Scriptures.

This is interview is a great primer on what it means to preach/teach a passage in it’s historical-redemptive context. Josh has been focusing on this book and this topic over at his blog as he has been studying with some friends at his church. This book is a bit on the lengthy side for most people, but in it Johnson clearly lays out the issues, options, and methods of historical-redemptive biblical theology. Even if you are on interested in his book, his interview at the White Horse Inn is worth your time.

The only deficiency I observed in the interview was the lack of discussion on the nature of typology and how it should be distinguished from allegory. The book makes up for that lack, however, so I do not hold it against Johnson; the interview was only 25 minutes after all.

Here is the link to the audio.

With regards to focus, I have been able to continually shift attention from the trees to the forest, to “see the microcosm in macro vision” (line from Depeche Mode song “Macro”). Taking a few steps back from analyzing topics and subtopics of thought into the greater panorama has facilitated my ability to ask more questions. This isn’t just with biblical studies either, this has been with many things in life. There is a great need for both macro exegesis and micro exegesis and an oscillating focus between the two for all areas of life. In particular for me, stepping back from the Bible and assessing the great methods (e.g. discourse analysis) and structures (i.e. historical-redemptive biblical theology) I have come to love has helped me to read the whole Bible in my head. I know that sounds funky, but hear me out. The Bible is a large collection of writings spanning 2000 years of people, nations, backgrounds, and events while employing at least a dozen different genres from about 40 different personalities. Familiarity with this kind of material takes lots of time, which is a major reason to read it consistently. For me, 4 years of a Biblical Studies degree and 3-5 years of a Master of Divinity degree have fostered a generous amount of familiarity. Now, it is impossible to read the whole Bible in an hour or even a day because there are simply too many words and too much information. But when one gains a certain degree of familiarity with the Bible (or anything for that matter), it is really an indication that a mental table of contents or index (or even concordance if you wish) has formed in their mind. Thus, when another person mentions a book of the Bible, or a character, or event, or topic, one can recall or mentally recapitulate whatever is mentioned. The contents of this index are varied for us all and are shaped by the methods and structures we were taught or employ. The more we read the Bible, the sharper and more comprehensive this index becomes (hopefully). This index is what we walk away from the Bible with and can allow us to “read” the Bible in our minds. We can “read” the Bible this way very quickly because of the miracle of instantly thumbing through our index. Thus, I think since I have had time away from “index-building” (or micro exegesis), I’ve had more time to review the index (running it through the logic filter) and ask more questions of it (macro exegesis). I have found this very refreshing and of greater value when I jump back into both my Bible and my books.

With regards to freedom, I have no obligations or demands on me to study which has allowed me to think freely; read less and think more. I still find myself drawn to certain people’s works like Meredith Kline, Gerhard Forde, N.T. Wright, and John Piper, but for the most part I’m trying to work out things on my own and in a small community of close friends. Granted, these friends are on the same page and entertain even the most ridiculous ideas I might have, but I have the freedom to be wrong. I taste much freedom also knowing that I need others. Boy does that take pressure off in the “theological project”.

I think much of what I am talking about has coalesced beautifully with our little home group/church on Tuesdays. It’s been an immense blessing to have a teaching outlet and an on-going discussion with wonderful saints that are relatively flexible and available.

A few months back however, I met up with my buddy Josh over at the cigar shop “The Federal Tobaccanist” in Portsmouth,NH. We had a great time looking around at their fine pipes and cigars. We were also engaged in a good cigar tutorial by the one of the helpful people that work there. Thus we spent a lot of time in their walk-in humidor checking out their vast aray of quality smokes. As I perused the room one last time before we left, I noticed the inside cover of a box that seemed strangely familiar to me. It took me no more than a second after I stopped to look to recollect where I had seen that design and color scheme. Take a look for yourself:

It was then I realized that one of the higher ups at Crossway involved with the marketing of the ESV must be a cigar smoker. What a clever guy. Josh agreed with me instantaneously. Don’t be fooled by the piety of those involved with the ESV. They are stealing their marketing ideas from a vintage cigar company. Keep that in mind the next time you open your ESV for devotions tomorrow. Hehe.

Although I can see how this job will open up many opportunities for me in the future, it certainly is not my first love. I do go into work everyday feeling a little empty inside, knowing that I want to do something else, namely, working full-time at a church. I want so badly to study Scripture and read all day, to have an open schedule so that I can meet with people all the time, and dreaming with saints about God and his glory spread to his people. I find it funny that I have gone into great debt and spent may years in theological education, while volunteering time for ministry with the goal of working in a church, yet nothing has opened up for me. Yet, I have no degree in business and just about 3 years of experience and I got 3 job offers in one day in early February. Figure that out. People are willing to pay me more money than I would make in most churches even though I have no where near the same level of qualifications.

Well, for now I am rolling with the providence alotted for me in Grace, and am stoked about the prospects of the Gospel in our area. We have a wonderful group of saints gathering on Tuesdays now in Haverhill. In the sixth month of our habitual meeting, I have encountered Christ in very sweet levels. Praise be to him for is infinite power and grace and wisdom to channel his waterfall in the greatest direction possible. Soli Deo Gloria.

SANCTIFICATION, IF IT IS TO BE SPOKEN OF AS SOMETHING other than justification is perhaps best defined as the art of getting used to the unconditional justification wrought by the grace of God for Jesus’ sake. It is what happens when we are grasped by the fact that God alone justifies. It is being made holy, and as such, it is not our work. It is the work of the Spirit who is called Holy. The fact that it is not our work puts the old Adam/Eve (our old self) to death and calls forth a new being in Christ. It is being saved from the sickness unto death and being called to new life.

In German there is a nice play on words which is hard to reproduce in English. Salvation is Das Heil—which gives the sense both of being healed and of being saved. Sanctification is Die Heiligung—which would perhaps best be translated as “being salvationed.” Sanctification is “being salvationed,” the new life arising from the catastrophe suffered by the old upon hearing that God alone saves. It is the pure flower that blossoms in the desert, watered by the unconditional grace of God.

(more…)

http://mhadigital.org/index.php?post_category=podcasts

Here is a link to a different version of the same sermon: “Pity Not Them Who Rise With Christ”

…I spent last evening with Joel Osteen.

On a dark and stormy night I (and 10,000 others) came to see the charming preacher with bright eyes and a huge smile. I fought mile long traffic to be there…with Joel.

True confession: I came with expectations in hand that “An evening with Joel Osteen” would be bread and circus for the spiritually impoverished. If you want to know my conclusion you’ll have to keep reading through to the end, though in fairness I tried to leave my ref21 hatchet at the door.

I assumed that I would meet those unfortunate souls who at the opening of Joel Osteen’s fifteen city, four nation road show were what we (Reformed types) are so often befuddled by, those teeming hordes of sweet semi-Pelagians who seem to make up the bulk of the American Christian ghetto.

I was expecting to see the poor, uneducated and easy to command, as the Washington Post once famously described evangelicals. People who couldn’t help themselves from being there because they were put under a Vulcan mind meld from their local pastor. I expected to find ancient women with blue hair in attendance from nearby towns like Greer with pre-trib glossy magazines in hand connecting the “ten horns of Revelation” to the activities of nearby Bob Jones University.

I arrived early (taking “Jack Bauer type” precautions that I wouldn’t be followed, and notifying a Ruling Elder in my “CTU friendly” church a head of time), while searching in vain for someone who understood Carl Trueman and had heard of the Ante-Nicene fathers.

Just who exactly comes to a Joel Osteen confab?

I came expecting to find Benny Hinn people and I found instead a Tony Robbins seminar drawing a good representative sample of my community. Indeed, demographically speaking it was astonishingly integrated. It was full of upper middle class Gen X couples (and late boomers) with kids. They came in their tribes of tens and twenties with iPods rather than NIV’s.

My guess is that I was face to face with “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” free-market fundamentalists who were blissfully unaware of the Federal Vision, undecided on the importance of the OT, but definitely unamused by those rascally Calvinists causing trouble in the SBC. Simply because I could, I bought popcorn and Coke and enjoyed the spectacle of Christian roadies doing sound checks on the coliseum floor.

The overall production value of the stage, set and imagery was very good, while at the same time simple and in most ways not overly distracting. There was the obligatory dry ice machine, a few multicolored spotlights and images of the Osteen “rotating open globe thing” that seems to be the symbol of Lakewood Church. In the center of the stage there was RC Sproul’s famous nemesis, the dreaded “portable plexiglass pulpit.” It had one spotlight on it all times (except when the blonde worship leader was singing). There was a box of tissues inside its casing.

The pre-game music was surprisingly toned down (really not unlike that of an RUF meeting). I sensed that the organizers were more worried about turning folks off then they were about meaningfully engaging in crowd prep. I was somewhat proud that those present from my community were on the whole not participatory in the music and theater. Most did not know the words well enough to engage in correct contemporary praise posture. Maybe people at an Osteen event just come to watch?

Why were all these people here? What were they looking for? How had Joel Osteen come to be so important to them? These were the questions I was trying to understand.

My guess is that they came to see this strangely alluring man with his emotionally charged appeal for brotherhood, good works, and hopefulness, who is touching a raw post-modern nerve in the culture; that’s why I came. They also came –unknowingly I think—because Joel Osteen has found a new way to treat their spiritual maladies: ignore root causes and tackle the symptoms.

From the start of the event it was a family affair. The night was opened by Joel Osteen’s brother-in-law, and at different points most of his family present held forth on various matters. His mother, the Venerable Dodi, juxtaposed some classic old school “name it and claim it” with some new fangled power of positive thinking in a moral exhortation centered on recent health issues in her life. She had the line of the night, “If you have a problem, find a verse in there (the Bible) and tell the Almighty what you need.”

Victoria (the Difficult) spoke to us on the fascinating subject of what exactly it means to be married to Joel Osteen. Her story is complicated. She used to work in a jewelry store and then one day (((Joel))) came in to get a watch fixed. She ended up selling him a new watch and soon came marriage and a baby carriage. Joel’s brother (a doctor) asked people to give money to the ministry, after challenging those in the audience to give their tithes first to their local churches. At other points in the show his family in attendance including children, nephews and nieces were recognized to applause. The Osteens, it would seem are the Kennedy’s of the Charismatic Nation.

What would Joel speak about when all the introductions were over with I wondered?

Osteen would speak not once but many times throughout the evening in a succession of unscripted 10 minutes pick–me-up-talks. Each presentation was a variation on the previous theme: “Things are gonna get better… Keep positive.” It was almost entirely bereft of Scripture. In a superfluous way it was very encouraging! I found myself throughout the entire night waiting for the shoe to drop, and saying to myself is this it?

Osteen tells his life story, which in many ways is a classic American success story. He inherited his father’s position (without wanting to) and with one week of preparation takes over the family business. The church grows from 6,000 to over 40,000 in 5 years and has recently bought an $80 Million dollar sporting arena. Osteen strikes me as being amazed as everyone else at own his success and very proud of the family business, Lakewood Church of Houston, now the nation’s largest. Only in America.

The story of Osteen’s success would be a fantastic story of God’s providence if he believed in such a thing. For years he watched the ministry behind a camera, editing and overseeing the development of media. In many ways Joel understood the ministry better than most because he was involved with it in a way that would one day be instrumental in its growth. He also learned a good bit about the charismatic and Pentecostal way of preaching because he listened to these messages everyday in a studio, editing them for television and radio.

Joel’s own sermons are not like those of his fathers (the late John Osteen). They strike me as the next generation of the Charismatic movement. They aren’t about experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit in your life; they are just about encountering your feelings. He talks over and over again about your relationships with other people and in the end he doesn’t really ask you to do anything - except try to change. His language is a mix of manifest destiny and late night infomercial. If I had to characterize the 600 words “sermonettes” I heard I would say “Charismatic emergent, non-threatening, non-spritualized therapeutic language.” Maybe American Idol with Paula as the lone judge.

Never once did I hear the words Gospel, Jesus Christ, Trinity, Sin, Cross (except in Scripture songs sung by performers and in a video testimony played before the Osteens arrived in arena)

So what conclusions can be drawn from An Evening with Joel?

Joel Osteen is the slick and polished face of non creedal American Evangelicalism. Joel is youthful, exuding Opie from Mayberry, aw shucks Americana that is uplifting, believable, and even to this cynic, soothing. Joel Osteen is wonderbread.

Now I recognize that everyone (whether we realize it or not) probably has someone in their life like Joel Osteen, a relentless optimist, who simple mindedly prods one to excellence, selflessness, and endurance. I’m just thinking Joel Osteen is not actually doing this with his people. At the end of the day, Osteen encouraged his crowd not to seek Christ as the solutions to their problems but something else. That something else seemed to be a clever but highly charged view of self. Self-interest, Self-gratification, Self-fulfillment, Self-realization, Self-actualization, with a little bit of sanitized obligatory righteous buzz words thrown in to make it appear evangelically kosher for the uninitiated.

What took place at Osteen’s erstwhile crusade in my city can only be described as the next step in Post Modern Pentecostalism. It is the health and wealth gospel for healthy and wealthy people. If the Christian religion is medicine for souls that are poor and needy than Osteen is a bottle of vitamins in an operating room.

Mel Duncan’s blog can be found at http://riverandrhett.blogspot.com/

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

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Old Testament Survey, by Douglas Stuart

Old Testament Theology, by Paul House

New Testament Survey, by William Mounce

Inductive Bible Study, by George Guthrie

Bibliology and Hermeneutics, by Michael Patton

History of the English Bible, by Daniel Wallace

Greek Tools for Bible Study, by William Mounce

Introduction to Theology, by Michael Patton

Systematic Theology, by Bruce Ware

Trinitarianism, by Michael Patton

Worship, by Gary Parrett

The World Mission of the Church, by Timothy Tennant

Christian Ethics, by Ron Nash

Apologetics, by Ron Nash

Educational Ministry of the Church, by Gary Parrett

Advanced Worldview Analysis, by Ron Nash

Islam, by Timothy Tennant

Hinduism, by Timothy Tennant

Biblical Theology Bulletin (Seton Hall University)

Biblica (Rome Pontifical Institute)

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (Evangelical Theological Society)

Journal of Biblical Literature (Society of Biblical Literature)

Journal for the Study of the New Testament (Sheffield Academic Press)

Trinity Journal (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)

Neotestamentica (New Testament Society of South Africa)

Filología Neotestamentaria (University of Cordoba)

Theology Today (Princeton Theological Seminary)

Kerux (Northwest Theological Seminary)

Denver Journal (Denver Seminary)

Southern Baptist Journal of Theology (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary)

Semeia (Society of Biblical Literature)

Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry (New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary)

Criswell Theological Review (Criswell College)

Institute for Reformed Theology Bulletin (Union Theological Seminary)

Protestant Reformed Theological Journal (Protestant Reformed Theological School)

Western Reformed Seminary Journal (Western Reformed Seminary)

Currents in Theology & Mission (Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago)

The Master’s Seminary Journal (The Master’s Seminary)

Journal of Religion & Society (Creighton University)

Reformed Review (Western Theological Seminary)

Journal of Biblical Studies (exclusively online)

Journal for Christian Theological Research (Luther Seminary)

Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism (McMaster Divinity School)

McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry (McMaster Divinity School)

Stromata (Calvin Theological Seminary)

Journal of Ministry & Theology (Baptist Bible Seminary)

Concordia Theological Quarterly (Concordia Theological Seminary)

TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism (Society of Biblical Literature)

Themelios (Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship)

Vox Evangelica (London School of Theology)

Bulletin for Biblical Research (Institute for Biblical Research)

Evangelical Quarterly (Paternoster Press)

I was finishing up When Time Had Fully Come: Studies in New Testament Theology by Herman N. Ridderbos, and I thought that the following topic could make for an interesting discussion. Ridderbos says, “The question arises, then, of the relationship of Jesus to Paul. When for example, the Sermon on the Mount greatly stresses compliance with the commandments, as we believe we are able to maintain, is it then at all possible to speak of a unity between the Gospels and the epistles of Paul, because the former stress is laid upon the positive meaning of the law, and in the latter upon the negative meaning? (pp. 61-62) I would love to read what others may think about the actual or so-called negative Pauline remarks of the law.

What a wonderful question and topic for discussion. Regarding Paul’s view of “the Law”, I believe his view depends upon what Law is being referred to in a particular context, because without defining our terms ambiguity will abound. I think that Paul makes a distinction between the Sinai Code/Law of Moses (Old Covenant/Letter) and law of God/Christ (New Covenant/Spirit).

In two specific sections in his writings he discusses at length historical-redemptive covenant theology in 2 Cor.3:1-18 and Gal. 3-4. In these passages, he gives his rationale for why the Mosaic Law offers only death and how the New Covenant transcends by it offering life. In 2 Cor.3:1-18, he zeroes in on the Letter/Spirit contrast resident in the two covenants. He even goes as far as to label the Law of Moses as “the ministry of death” (vs.7) and “condemnation” (vs.9) as it was, written on tables of stone. He contends that this “letter” brings death, surely drawing from his argument in Rom.7:7-11:

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment deceived me and through it killed me.

He likens the Law to the glory that was on Moses face which needed to be concealed to Israel by a veil over his face (vs.7). Even then, there was a veil over their hearts every time they read the Law (vs.15) because their hearts were hardened by it (vs.14). However, the glory of the New Covenant revealed in Christ is infinitely superior because it does not fade and has no end (vs.11). It is written not on a tablets of stone, but on the tablet of the heart (vs.3), drawing on Ezek.36:26 and Jer.31:33. Since this covenant is imparted directly by the Spirit on the heart with no outside mediator, those in it are now with “unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord and being transformed into the same image” (vs.18). So we can summarize by saying that the Letter/Spirit contrast is about the difference in the nature of the Mosaic and New Covenants.

In Galatians 3-4, Paul focuses on the purpose of the Mosaic Covenant in light of the New Covenant. He is trying to remind the Galatians very forcefully that no one will be justified by the works of the Law (3:11). In other words, no one can please God escatologically by trying to execute their duties as prescribed by the Law of Moses. The reasons for this are because no one is truly able to execute this covenant so we are cursed in trying to do so (3:10), and the purpose of the Law was to make transgression fully visible and never to offer eternal life (3:18-19). This covenant came to bring us into slavery and imprisonment so that we could be rescued by Christ (vs.23-24). So Paul is setting up two different covenantal strands that find their culmination in the allegory of Hagar and Sarah in 4:21-31. Hagar corresponds to the slavery that exists under the Mosaic Law and is demonstrated in the contemporary Judaism that is visible in Jerusalem (vs.25). Sarah corresponds to the freedom that exists under the New Covenant and is demonstrated in the promises God offers His people in the New (spiritual) Jerusalem (vs.26-28). So the Mosaic Covenant existed to serve as a physical template that would anticipate the spiritual realities to come in the new age that has been inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Christ. Thus, in order to partake of this inaugurated Covenant, we need to believe in what Christ accomplished on our behalf and so cast out the “slave woman” (the Mosaic Covenant) (vs.29-31).

In light of these passages, I think it is evident that the Mosaic/Old Covenant was an external code which does and can only demand. God designed it this way in order to magnify sin in Israel, as Israel is simply Adam on a corporate/national scale (Hosea 6:7). Neither Adam nor Israel could ever have kept, executed, or complied to the Law given to them. Even if they could have, there was no promise for eternal life. It wasn’t the function of the Law given to them. But, both Adam and Israel’s failure have become the canvas for God to promise grace in the death of Jesus. The death of Jesus ratified the New Covenant which does and can only promise eternal life. In the New Covenant there is no code to keep or demand upon us, but the promise of life in Christ itself produces faith in us which will result in us keeping the law of God/Christ, which is essentially loving God and loving our neighbors.

What did the resurrection and the glory of Jesus Christ that Paul saw in his vision reveal to him about where he stood in the history of God’s plan for His people and His creation?

T