Sun felt that they needed to clarify the whole issue of porting StarOffice to Mac OS X. They’re not doing it. Clear enough?

I’ve noticed that people here in the Chicagoland area (see, I’m talking like a local!) have this annoying habit at stop lights. No, not picking the nose, that is ubiquitous. They sit until they feel that the light should have changed then they inch up a couple of times. You’d expect that means that they’re ready to roll when the light turns but no. They’re just as slow on the launch as anyone else so I don’t inch with them and then use the gap to get rolling so when the finger emerges from the nose and the foot hits the pedal, I’m alredy moving.

I hate second aorist verbs and will be revisiting that chapter a few more times. First aorist are much better behaved.

Kai ho logos sarks egenato kai eskenosen en hemin,
kai etheasametha ten doxan auto

Our teacher wrote this verse (in Greek) on the board this morning and we parsed it together as a class. It is John 1:14, a verse I am very familiar with and have taught on. I know the Greek dichotomy between flesh and the Word. I know that the English word “dwelt” is weak compared to the Greek word used. None of that was new to me. What struck me was seeing it in Greek. John’s words are rich with power and they thumb their nose at human wisdom.

The Word (ho logos) is sitting right there next to its supposed opposite, the flesh (sarks). Even on the page they are touching, something Greek thought said couldn’t happen. The tabernacle (skena) was where God’s glory (doxa) dwelt. The Word came and “tabernacled” amongst us and we beheld His glory. But “beheld” is weak. You can see something from across the street and say you beheld it. “Etheasametha” is more than just “looked at” it is more like we experienced, we examined, we handled. Moses beheld the glory of God but that wasn’t like what we did.

All of this came together as I looked at Greek letters scribbled in black on a white dry erase board and it struck me how much more Jesus is than we give Him credit (and praise) for. A bumper sticker or t-shirt with a cute phrase can’t capture and express that. When we sit quietly at the word and meditate on this it shuts our mouths in awe. “God in a skin-suit” is not just a stupid heresy, it completely misses the majesty of the Word becoming (not merely taking on) flesh. Wow.

Note: I’m not pulling a Muslim “you have to read the Koran in Arabic to get it” kind of thing here. Our English translations express these thoughts quite well, you don’t have to read it in Greek to “get it”. It was just seeing it in Greek that hit me.

The other day I commented on Microsoft’s threat to stop producing Office for OS X. I was pleasantly surprised by Apple’s “Fine, take your ball and go home” reply. Well it turns out that Apple had good reason for being a bit cocky. They’re teaming up with Sun to produce an OS X version of StarOffice. It is compatible with Office file formats and the kicker is that “Sun is also considering offering StarOffice for free, where Office v .X typically costs $300 to $500.” Ha!

I get the feeling that we’re seeing the beginning of the downfall of Microsoft. Not that they’re going to go out of business or anything but I think they’re going to start losing their grip on our PCs. They’re getting too greedy and may be getting out of touch with the market they feed. There are plenty of young-and-hungry’s out there who’ll grab any advantage they can.

The surest sign of their deflation would be if they have a WorldCom/Enron type of “oops, we seem to have been cooking the books for a few years” revelation. I’m not predicting it mind you, just saying that if you see the signs…

June 20th was the last day I used my razor. I’d retired from the Air Force and wanted to grow a beard. I trimmed it to keep it nice looking but I wasn’t shaving. My wife didn’t like it so as a compromise I just turned it into a goatee. We’ll see how that works for a bit.

I wasn’t too interested in seeing S1M0NE until I found out that it was written by Andrew Niccol. I’ve loved his other movies (‘The Truman Show’ and ‘Gattica’) so maybe I will give this one a spin.

Though I have often thought that Doug Wilson too frequently engages in some snooty “not one of us” jibes in Credenda/Adgenda, I was pleased, very pleased to read some quotes of his in an article by Jamey Bennett over at Razormouth.

A lot of what Wilson and Bennett have to say goes in to why I decided to attend Trinity instead of WTS-CA. Part of it was a money issue but a lot had to do with being fed the party line. At Trinity, there are a lot of Reformed professors but there are dispensationalists and Arminians too. This is the exposure to evangelicalism I wanted. It is too easy for us Reformed folks to criticize evangelicals as a whole based on the folly of a few. We may say things about Arminians that just aren’t true. We may accuse dispensationalists of things they are not doing. Engage them and all of the sudden you find out that Arminians love God just as much as Calvinists do and that dispensationalists are honest with scriptures also.

Oh, I am in trouble. I went to the Maul, erh, Mall just to scope it out and I came across a used music store. Searched in vain for Herbie Hancock and Art of Noise but I did find $25 worth of CDs to pick up. Alright, if you must know, they were Bobby McFarrin Bang!Zoom! (the one without Don’t Worry), Crash Test Dummies Give Yourself a Hand, and 10,000 Maniacs unplugged. If you have a specific older, hard-to-find CD in mind, let me know and I’ll take a look.

A while ago I ranted about pre-packaged music radio stations and praised ecclectic music like Morning Becomes Ecclectic from KCRW. Well, now that I’m in Illinois I’ve started missing Morning Becomes Ecclectic. That is until I found WXRT in Chicago. They’re not as ecclectic as KCRW (which is fine with me) and only play rock (okay, but not a preference), however they play some unsigned artists and less known stuff. Beats the daylights out of stations that stick to the safe stuff. I don’t like every song they play but I do like a lot of it. Cool.

Note: Unfortunately they don’t webcast.

So far I’ve been hovering around a B to B+ in Greek. The problems I’ve (largely) had have been attention to detail and some memory words that won’t stick. Today’s quiz was my low point. I got 74% and most of the problem came from memorization words and attention to detail. When I memorized the relative pronouns, I knew that they all had a rough breathing mark and an accent which differentiated them from the definite article. I failed to pay attention to what kind of accent though and marked them all as grave when a handful are circumflex. Got them all marked wrong.

The bummer is that when if comes to actually translating passages, I’m doing steller. It is the little things will get you. When I left class today, I was really bummed and figured I’d be taking Intro to Greek again this fall. I probably won’t but right now I’m pretty darn blue. I’ve been studying non-stop since school ended. Taking a break now for dinner and then back at it.

This is a warning to the unwary. Beware of those who base their teaching exclusively on the Bible! Whenever you hear voices raised distancing the Bible from the teaching of the ecumenical councils of the first five centuries, be on your guard! The Reformers were opposed to the teaching of the Church of their day because it deviated from Scripture and the councils. They held Scripture to be the highest, supreme court of appeal, but their interpretation of Scripture — and ours — must always be tested against the Confessions of the Church. ‘Submit to one another in the fear of Christ (Eph. 5:21). This is because we are placed by Christ in the Church, not distributed randomly as freewheeling individuals. Today, non-confessional evangelicals have nothing to restrain them, other than themselves. Like Jehovah’s Witnesses they are free to study Scriptures and abandon the church’s confessions — all in the name of the Bible.

Since we are all influenced to some extent of other by the philosophical and cultural milieu in which we were taught and in which we live, if we leave behind historic Christian teaching we open ourselves to other influences as we come to read the Bible.

Dr. Robert Letham, Adjunct Professor of Systematic Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia and Senior Minister, Emmanuel Orthodox Presbyterian Chruch, Wilmington, Delaware, quoted from Is God Omniscient?, an article examining the claims of open theism in the May-June 2002 edition of Reformation Today magazine.