New Essay up at The Foundation and other thoughts

There is a new essay up at The Foundation. Other than that I fell down a flight of stairs yesterday and hurt my ribs so I've been taking it kind of easy.
Here are some stuff I've been thinking about:

• I read "Paul" by E. P. Sanders. Two big things struck me:

1. "A doctrine of the work of Christ was never achieved and one can only speak in theories of the atonement." This was a bit of a relief, I always kind of wondered if I just missed a specific explaination of how Christ saved us.
2. The French destroyed the Anglo-American understanding of Paul (I'm sure Dan will be pleased to know this). As most of us know when the French conqued England English vocabulary changed. For example the "swine" is what the English peasant in the field tended, whereas "Pork" is what the Norman French ate at the table. For the most part this just made our language more descriptive, but in some cases the old Anglo-Saxon words were removed completely. This is especially true with legal words. Sanders contends that we translate Paul's "dikaioun" and "pistis" were improperly translated with the French "Justify" and "believe" instead of the Anglo-Saxon "rightwisian" (aka "to make right") and "to have faith." This makes us assume that when Jesus died for us he Justified us in a court sense, that is he kind of made an excuse for us, for our opinion of him, instead of that Jesus actual makes us right by our faith in him.

• Also I've been reading some exestantialists and have concluded that they are bookish elitists who have gotten so caught up in studying truth and life that they have lost sight of both. Their only out is to find a worldly woman who pulls them out of the world of the book they are trapped in (no! This post is NOT autobiographical!!!), or fall asleep and be transported to a world that pays ultimate homage and ultimately manifest their ideas about utopia (again, not autobiographical)...or at least thats what they write about. Not entirely sure what to make of them other than they have a lot of angst.

That's actually about it. Right now I'm reading "The Pain That Heals" which is a very mystical look at suffering from a Hinduish Anglican Priest/psycologist... Very weird. I'm also reading Rumpole Of the Bailey, a very British, and very comical collection of short stories about Rumpole, a lawyer who would just as soon quote poetry as defend his client.

Peace,

Chris