Odds & Ends

Not much time for blogging these days, and even when there is, the office firewall doesn't always play nice with Blogger. I know, excuses, excuses. Anyway, here are a few links for your perusal.

Re:Greek is an online Biblical Greek resource from the folks at Mars Hill Church. From my limited poking around, it looks like the site has plenty of neat features, including parsing, lexical tools, concordances and what-not. Plus, it's FREE.

N.T. Wright spoke at Asbury Theological Seminary (Kentucky) earlier in the week, with chapel messages on "Use of Scripture in Contemporary Political Discourse" and "God is Public? Biblical Faith in Tomorrow's World." You can listen online at the Asbury chapel site. (Scroll down to 11/13 and 11/14 for high- and low-bandwith recordings of both talks.)

I have already listened to the first one, which was good. Wright gives an overview of how politically-minded folks in both the US and Britain use Scripture to advance their causes, noting that they tend to cherry-pick a few verses here and there while ignoring major themes and key passages. He then offers some insight on how the full story of Scripture (with particular attention to the Gospels) can and should inform the Church's interactions in the world. (Apparently, there was a third talk on Acts with Q&A, but it does not appear on the webpage. Pity.) Update: The third talk is now available.

Speaking of the Bishop of Durham, I just received my copy of John Piper's newly-released The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright in the mail this week. I think I would have been more interested about this book a year or two ago, but I'm still going to read it. I might even write a review.

Sufjan Stevens has a great Christmas present in the works: the rights to one of his songs. Contestants enter by submitting an original song. The winner gets to exchange the rights to his/her song for the rights to an unreleased Sufjan song.

Oh, and Sufjan has put up his entire (excellent) Christmas box set for free streaming here.

And finally, as a shout-out to Duke fans everywhere, here's a site devoted to their upcoming bowl game.

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