Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Other

Exegesis, Biblical Theology, Historical Theology, Systematic Theology, and Practical Theology: What the Categories on My Blog Mean

by

This blog is now much better organized:

  • I used to label a blog post with one or more of some 200 categories (e.g., “D. A. Carson,” “Calvinism,” “preaching”).
  • But now I label a post with just one of six categories:
  1. Exegesis. What did authors intend their texts to mean? This includes hermeneutics. (Hermeneutics concerns principles of interpretation, and exegesis applies those principles.)
  2. Biblical Theology. How has God revealed his word historically and organically?
  3. Historical Theology. What have people thought about exegesis and theology?
  4. Systematic Theology. What does the whole Bible teach about certain topics? What is true about God and his universe?
  5. Practical Theology. How should humans respond to God’s revelation? This includes, for example, culture, ethics, evangelism, marriage and family, money, pastoral theology, politics, and worship.
  6. Other. This covers what doesn’t fit in the above categories.

My blog is called “Thoughts on Theology,” so those seem like the right categories. [Read more…] about Exegesis, Biblical Theology, Historical Theology, Systematic Theology, and Practical Theology: What the Categories on My Blog Mean

A Note to Those Who Follow My Blog via Email or Twitter

by

If you follow my blog via email or Twitter, then you haven’t been receiving automatic updates since June 12. (If you subscribe via the RSS feed, then you shouldn’t have experienced a problem.) On June 12, I somehow included an unsupported character in a blog post that broke the feed. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Many thanks to my webmaster, Phil Gons, for figuring this out and in the process redesigning the site with a new theme.

Here are links to the eleven blog posts I published between June 12 and July 6 (#10 is my favorite):

  1. Sale on Dispatches from the Front DVDs
  2. Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
  3. Covenant Eyes
  4. A New D. A. Carson Collection from Logos Bible Software
  5. Some Kevin DeYoung MP3s
  6. Voting as a Christian
  7. My Favorite Four Bible Atlases
  8. Pictorial Library of Bible Lands
  9. Free New Book Edited by Kevin Bauder
  10. Announcing Emma Elyse Naselli
  11. Why, Where, and How Do We Draw the Line?

Announcing Emma Elyse Naselli

by

God has graciously given us our third daughter: Emma Elyse Naselli was born this morning!

(click image to enlarge)

About Her Name

Emma is from emunah (אֱמוּנָה), the Hebrew word for faithfulness.

Elyse is from eleos (ἔλεος), the Greek word for mercy. The Greek translation of the Old Testament typically uses this word (213 of 248 occurrences) to translate the Hebrew word chesed (חֶסֶד), which refers to loving loyalty or loyal love based on a committed relationship that results in kind deeds.

For the LORD is good and his love [KJV: “mercy”; Heb. chesed; Gk. eleos] endures forever;
his faithfulness [Heb. emunah] continues through all generations. (Psalm 100:5)

The cadence of Emma Elyse fits with our other girls: a four-syllable name with the emphasis on one and four:

  1. Kara Marie
  2. Gloria Grace
  3. Emma Elyse

The Back-story

Emma Elyse’s name will constantly remind us of God’s mercy and faithfulness. Here’s part of the back-story, lightly edited from a blog post that Jenni wrote on February 1:

[Read more…] about Announcing Emma Elyse Naselli

Successful Rereading: Maintaining the Magic

by

HP

This week Jenni and I finished re-listening to Jim Dale’s masterful reading of the Harry Potter series.

We enjoyed it so much the first time that we read the books again two years later, and the timing was just right. We loved it right out of the gate in book 1. We made so many more thematic connections the second time through that we missed the first time. (We initially focused on putting together the broad storyline.) What a pleasure.

We can relate to what Alan Jacobs writes about here—at least with reference to Harry Potter and Narnia—in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011):

Children often have this experience:

Ten Narnia Resources

by

My oldest daughter just finished hearing The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time. After we finished The Last Battle, Kara asked wistfully, “Daddy, are there any more Narnia books?” I had to confirm what she already knew: there are only seven Narnia books.

But she’s already looking forward to reading them again and again and again.

We utilized ten resources to enjoy Narnia, and I recommend them all:

1. The Unabridged Books

These are essential. All other resources merely supplement them.

It is pure pleasure to read these aloud to your children. [Read more…] about Ten Narnia Resources

Linspired

by

Books on the rise of Jeremy Lin are starting to become available (e.g., Ted Kluck and Timothy Dalrymple), and I just read one of them:

Mike Yorkey. Linspired: The Remarkable Rise of Jeremy Lin. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012. 176 pp.

Yorkey was following Lin long before Linsanity began.

(By the way, Lin had surgery on his knee this week, and the Knicks expect him to miss the rest of the regular season and the first round of the playoffs.)

[Read more…] about Linspired

Emotional Intelligence

by

Jenni and I are listening to the seven Harry Potter books again, and it’s even better the second time.

While listening to book 5, this dialogue—in which Hermione is explaining to Harry and Ron how Cho Chang is feeling—made us laugh again:

“Well, obviously,

  • she’s feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying.
  • Then I expect she’s feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can’t work out who she likes best.
  • Then she’ll be feeling guilty, thinking it’s an insult to Cedric’s memory to be kissing Harry at all [Of course, I think that such recreational, self-gratifying, romantic involvement between immature teens is foolish, but that’s not the point of this post!],
  • and she’ll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry.
  • And she probably can’t work out what her feelings toward Harry are anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that’s all very mixed up and painful.
  • Oh, and she’s afraid she’s going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she’s been flying so badly.”

A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, “One person can’t feel all that at once, they’d explode.”

“Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have,” said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again. (ch. 21, formatting added)

Listening to this coincided with another book Jenni and I were both listening to:

Daniel Goleman. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. 10th Anniversary ed. New York: Bantam, 2005.

I really needed to read Emotional Intelligence because I don’t have very much of it. My wife’s EQ, on the other hand, is off-the-charts genius-level, yet she read the book twice because she enjoyed it so much. She says that it has helped her understand everyone around her so much better.

Her skills sure come in handy when we’re together with other people because afterwards I can ask her what really happened. I tend to hear words; she tends to read people. (Yes, I’m jealous.)