Wednsday Edition
Posted by RazorsKissJan 26
Apologetics:
Updated:
Vox Apologia III will be at “Revenge of Mr. Dumpling”, and entries can be sent in, starting tomorrow, on the subject of “Euthanasia”.
There is a LOT more info on his site, in this post.
Entry deadline is Midnight, Sunday the 30th.
Alex is taking a break from blogging – to take a vacation. In fact, he’s visiting pretty near me. my parets vacation in Gulf Shores quite a bit.
Weapons of Warfare has a good post, titled The Tension of Evangelism.
News:
Updated:
Eric, from Evangelical Underground, announces his first annual “Evangelical Blog Awards”. These awards have many, many categories, so go check it out – then submit your nominations, per the instructions in his post. I think the only ones I would qualify for would be “Apologetics”, and “New” 😀 (And, if you ask me, Weapons of Warfare should get the nod for apologetics, if he keeps his current rate up.)
Catez, from Allthings2All has established a “Women’s aggregator” for faithbloggers, titled “Women4God”. Read about it here.
Jeremy, at Parableman, cracks down on WorldMag.
My response? From the comments at Parableman:
I have to disagree with you, for one simple reason: How the sentence is constructed.
It doesn’t match what I was told to expect. It doesn’t match your
description, when I read it. I don’t even read World Mag – so I don’t
care either way – but I dislike a big ado about nothing.Rolling Stone’s agenda in deciding to not run that ad was, indeed,
anti-Christian. The sentence structure used clearly denotes that the
subject of the “anti-Christian” statement, was, in fact, Rolling Stone.
They are anti-Christian because their worldview is antithetical to
Christianity, and their decision to not run the ad was based on a supposed policy to exclude ALL religious advertisement. (Which, incidentally, I think is a lie, through their teeth.)The only time the post mentioned “anti-Christian” was linked
to a noun, via possession. “Rolling Stone’s anti-Christian agenda”. I
don’t know how the statement could be any clearer. Rolling Stone has
never, ever, ever been pro-Christian. It’s a ROCK magazine.The sentence, (read in my mind’s eye paraphrase), reads “despite the TNIV’s gender-inclusive language, the anti-Christian agenda of Rolling Stone may bear fruit for Zondervan.
The subject of the sentence prior is Zondervan, and the storm of
media attention garnered for it. The “gender-inclusive” statement is
simply referring to the prior media storm created by that gender inclusiveness.So, what they are in essence saying, is that Rolling Stone’s bungle may have negated the storm of negative controversy, by potentially promoting Zondervan positively, as being “discriminated against”.
I don’t see anywhere where they call anyone who doesn’t agre with the TNIV as “anti-Christian” – they call Rolling Stone
anti-Christian. Which, if you’ve kept up with Rolling Stone’s policies,
and articles over the years, is indeed consistently
anti-Christian/Judeo-Christian moral values.The article makes no “endorsements” of the TNIV, calls noone “anti-Christian”.
I don’t know World Mag, and I really don’t care either way what they
say – as I rarely read them, unless linked to them, like I was here.But, looking at the linguistic elements, I don’t see either of the above, in any way, shape, or form.
Reading the sentence as written, even with a anti-article outlook
going in, due to your post, I saw absolutely nothing of what you
described. Linguistically, your problem doesn’t exist. If you want it
to say something other than written, thus implying that he mistakenly wrote something, but meant something else… you might have a chance to make that work. I don’t see any reason to think so, however.Anyway – that’s my take. I don’t care about World Mag – but I don’t
see anything even remotely close to what you’re talking about in that
sentence, as written – unless you take a healthy dose of
“interpretation” to it. A VERY healthy dose.
Bleh. I hate controversy within the body – I really do. But, I’ll respond to it, if I feel it needs to be responded to. I’m an apologist, yes. However, within the body, to someone I respect… I really don’t like doing it. Oh well. I’ll just suck it up, won’t I?
Weapons of Warfare weighs in from a different perspective, with Jeremy replying.
*sigh* (HT: Smart Christian – who is also debating Jeremy’s decision.)
6 comments
Comment by Jeremy Pierce on January 26, 2005 at 10:28 pm
You’ve gotten it all backwards. I’ve responded in my own post, but the order is the other way around. The bias is against the TNIV, not against those who oppose it. They themselves have opposed it all along and long before it was the TNIV. The reviews of the NIVi in that magazine were some of the most hateful things I’ve ever read from a Christian.
I suspect that’s why you couldn’t see what he was saying. The point is fairly clear. Considering that there is evil and anti-Christian gender-neutral language in the TNIV, the ad will serve the anti-Christian agenda of Rolling Stone. Please read the post again, and I think you’ll see it.
Even those who have disagreed with my on my substantive point have agreed with my interpretation of the post. I don’t consider Rey and David Mobley to be quick toward pointless controversy (not that I am myself), and they agree with me completely. Rebecca of Rebecca Writes seems to agree with me in the main, and she also tends to avoid things like what you describe it as.
Comment by Andrew on January 26, 2005 at 10:29 pm
I don’t pretend to like it either, but I felt it needed to be addresed. I think Jeremy went way overboard on this one.
Comment by RazorsKiss on January 26, 2005 at 10:50 pm
Well, like I said – if you want to add that interpretation to the English used, liberally, it can say what you’re saying it does. However, reading the actual English – grammatically – it doesn’t say that.
I didn’t say anything about my personal opinion concerning the TNIV, by the by – that is purely speculative. I simply said they got negative press – and that the reference to the media attention they were given by this issue with Rolling Stone, would, more logically, if you follow the sentence progression, speak about “press”, or “media attention”, MUCH more logically than it would about their personal opinion concerning the TNIV, or make the further stretch to equate TNIV support with “anti-Christian”.
That’s what I mean about reading things into words. I said one thing – you read it differently. I simply said, following the sentence structure, and subject, that Zondervan was the object/subject of the previous sentence, along with “media attention”. When you read further to the next sentence, it would be more logical to continue that progression, instead of making a jump to an opinion statement, nowhere supported by the sentences in question, or the structure of the context, would it not?
I understand completely what you are saying – and, I spent 10-15 minutes tearing the grammar apart to “examine, to see if it was so”. We shouldn’t JUST be Bereans about Scripture. It doesn’t say what you say it does. You may think it means what you are saying it does – but it doesn’t say that. Not grammatically, not according to the context, and not according to the words themselves – unless taken severely out of the structure in which they are arranged.
You’re free to your opinion – but, I don’t think that opinion is based on what it actually says. It looks to me like your opinion of the meaning is not based on the words used, but on past history with this blog. Which, in my opinion, negates the entire argument you’re trying to make – as you’re trying to assert that it says something else entirely, because you think it means something else.
There will always be people who will agree with you. That is a given. So, I’m not really concerned with “who supports you”.
Whether you are all right, is something else entirely. I don’t think your “take” on what they said is accurate, from a grammatical standpoint. I saw a short link post from Smart Christian, didn’t even read the text. I just clicked through to here. Your opinion on it was the first I read, and I went straight to the source article, as you made a serious accusation. I wrote the comment above, and then checked out some other blogs, to see what else people had said, concerning it. The result is on my blog.
Take my comments with a grain of salt. It’s not supposed to be accusatory – it’s supposed to be explanatory. I was trying not to be accusatory – so if I came/come across that way, my apologies.
Comment by Jeremy Pierce on January 26, 2005 at 11:50 pm
Where did I say anything about your opinion of the TNIV? I thought this was about World‘s opinion of the TNIV. If you think I ever said anything about your interpretation, then you must have been misreading me, which might explain a few things.
I now finally understand what your interpretation is even saying. I read it on my blog and here, and I failed to see how the words there could even possibly mean that. Then I read it again in your comment on the post itself, and after looking back and forth between your comment and the text, I can now see how you can stretch the words to mean that. It doesn’t seem very likely, given the highly negative attitude toward the TNIV over there, that selling more copies would be considered fruit. It also doesn’t seem very likely that “Considering the TNIV’s gender-inclusive language” can mean “despite the TNIV’s gender-inclusive language”. That’s the part that seems like a stretch to me. It seems to me to be more a causal relationship. Because of the gender-inclusive language, it will bear more fruit, and what it will be bearing more fruit for is the anti-Christian attitude of the magazine. That’s my argument from the text.
Even if it turns out that I misread it, you have to admit that virtually everyone has read it the way I did. You are the only person to disagree with my interpretation out of every single one of the many who have commented here or elsewhere on my post, including those who have agreed with me and those who said extremely harsh and unfair things about me. All the others, whether they agree with my view on its signficance or not, agree with my interpretation of it. Andrew does. Joe Carter does. Rebecca does. David M. does. Rey does. That doesn’t mean our interpretation is right, but it does show that it’s a much more obvious interpretation than you’ve been making it out to be, and I really had to struggle even to see how the words could mean what they must mean if your interpretation is right, so it’s not as obvious as you’re making it sound.
I don’t see how it makes a difference that the subject of the sentence is the name of the magazine, because the form of the sentence doesn’t carry all its meaning. If the sentence means “because of the gender-inclusive language, it will bear more fruit for the anti-Christian attitude of the magazine”, then it doesn’t matter that what’s explicitly referred to as anti-Christian is the magazine. If the TNIV is bearing fruit for that, then the translation philosophy that they refer to as bearing fruit for an anti-Christian agenda had better itself be something with anti-Christian consequences.
Comment by Andrew Nichols on January 27, 2005 at 12:36 am
Actually, I read it the same way RazorsKiss did at first. I can see it read both ways, though.
Comment by RazorsKiss on January 27, 2005 at 1:28 am
Further fisking in a separate post. Comment fisking is annoying on this software – no preview 😛