I Got What Tim Challies Wanted for Christmas...

One of my Christmas presents was the DVD of Petra's Farewell tour. I thought I would take a moment to reminisce a bit. Only a year and a day late for Petra Appreciation Day...

My history with the band Petra stretches back all the way to about 1985. I had heard the song "Blinded Eyes" at a church youth group, and I decided I needed to hear more of them. It turns out that my dad's best friend from high school (the same one who produced To End All Wars) knew the band (specifically Bob Hartman, if I remember right). He gave me a copy of Not of This World, which is still my favorite Petra album. They were on the Beat the System tour at the time, and Mr. Hafer was also kind enough to get us tickets to the concert, as well as backstage passes.

The concert was great. Opening for them were two unknowns (unknown to me anyway). One was a young lady with an amazing voice; it was Kathy Troccoli. The other opening act was a guy and his band--a bunch of rowdies jumping around on stage in basketball jerseys and a Gumby head on. But what made an impact on me that night was when the band left, and under a single spotlight he played this new song from a couple of yellow legal sheet pages. The song was "Rocketown," and the artist, of course, was Michael W. Smith.

After Petra was done, we were able to go backstage and meet the band. I don't remember much about it, except that the "X" in Greg X. Volz's name stands for nothing (he has no middle name), but it was great.

Shortly after that concert, word came out that Petra was breaking up, and their live album, Captured in Time and Space came out. By that time, I had picked up Beat the System, and over the course of time, I was able to go back and pick up all the old albums, including the original self-titled album and Come and Join Us. (I suffer from a completist compulsion, which I suppose goes along with my perfectionist tendencies).

Petra added John Schlitt as the new lead singer, and my mom and sister took me to see them on the Back to the Street tour. We all remember the same thing--it was loud! The Celebrity Theater in Phoenix is a great venue for a lot of different types of events, including concerts, but not rock concerts. Ironically, DeGarmo & Key, who opened for them, was actually louder than Petra, though that may have been a combination of them not having adjusted the two piles of 6 speakers until after them, as well as the earplugs they handed out at the break.

In any case, I followed Petra at a slight distance from that point forward, still collecting albums up through Unseen Power. Out of the John Schlitt albums I have, I think the best is Beyond Belief. In fact, I think that may actually be their best album period--polished pop rock produced by the Elefante brothers.

But no matter the new albums that came out, the Volz era remained my favorite. Songs like "Run for the Prize" and "Second Wind" came to mind as I participated in high school sports. Just something about that voice, I guess...

In the meantime, I had gotten older, married, and was buying music that my wife and I both liked, I finally decided that the new direction wasn't as interesting to me, so I didn't really follow them anymore, except if they had a song that hit Christian radio (and if you're familiar with the band, you'll know how seldom that is).

The DVD is a real joy to watch. There were some songs I wasn't familiar with, but which were good nonetheless. Former lead singer Greg X. Volz and former keyboardist John Lowry come up on stage for a few songs, as well as being included in interviews.

Petra is one of those bands that you think "they'll go on forever," and it's hard to believe that it's finally over. Although I just read on the website that Bob Hartman & John Schlitt are teaming up for a new worship record, so who knows...

(A belated) Congrats to the guys on 30+ years of ministry and music.

The Fat Man Dwarfeth

This picture, recently given to the TR Secret Police by an anonymous source, was reportedly taken outside the house of a prominent TR Blogger's home.

If true, this would violate Section 15, Sub-section 8, Paragraph 4, regarding PDIS (Public Display of Inflatable Santas) height limits.

Any information regarding the owner of this home should be forwarded immediately to TR headquarters...

Christmas Letter 2006

No internet since about 2pm yesterday. Wasn't sure whether I would be able to get this posted Christmas Day or not.

Here is the Gumm Christmas letter for 2006. Enjoy.


Dearest Family and Friends,

As another year comes to a close, we again find ourselves so thankful for God's provision in our lives. Of specific note this year is the birth of our fifth child (and fourth son), Isaac Brenton. God's blessing remains upon us, and we can truly rejoice that our quiver is full!

Our daughter (and princess) Averee is in Second grade; she is reading up a storm, as well as enjoying piano.

Trevor, our eldest son, is in Kindergarten this year, and is learning to read. He is a whiz at math, and demonstrated natural talent on the soccer field this year, too.


Our four year old, Caleb, is loving preschool, and enjoys his therapy, which is good, because he gets speech, occupational, and developmental, in part (we think) because of the one-on-one attention he receives--something that has been hard for Hollie or me to provide. He is making huge strides in his development.

Jayden is talking almost non-stop, and gets remarks every week on his high degree of cuteness. He loves to play with his siblings and his friends at Sunday School.


Isaac is a sweet baby, and has been a true joy to all of us. Each of the bigger children takes seriously their role as big brother/sister to "Baby Isaac," and they have been wonderful with him.



With this crew, Hollie is busy, as you might imagine. She also homeschools the older two, and is the primary logistician in the household, which probably equates to 3 or 4 full-time positions in the work world. As it is, she does it with composure and grace, and we struggle to adequately express our appreciation for all she does for us.

In September, I undertook my largest job change to date--I left Stephens, Inc. (and financial services altogether) and joined Capital Research, doing commercial real estate appraisal. I'm grateful for my time at Stephens, but also thankful for this opportunity, as it will provide more schedule flexibility, which is important as the kids grow older.

One highlight of my new job is that I am taking classes to get certified. Actually, the classes themselves weren't the highlight, but the fact that I was able to stay with our friends Laurie and John while I was in Dallas, and Scott and Kim and their two sons in Boca Raton, Florida. Both of those times were very special.

The word "Christmas" evokes many different thoughts, and word associations; but something that most people don't think about during Christmas is God's wrath--His anger and His punishment. Yet, if Jesus came as a Savior, it must be to save us from something. That something was our sin and the resultant punishment. Many people are indifferent to the Savior, just as the chief priests and scribes were in Matthew chapter 2; they knew he was in Bethlehem, but they didn't care to go see him. Some, like Herod, become disturbed, or even angry, because if Jesus is more than just a baby in a manger, then there might be something he requires. But some, like the Magi, find Jesus, and are filled with exceeding joy, and worship him.

That is the true meaning of Christmas, and we hope and pray that you and your family will find and worship the one who is the Savior of the world.

The "Primer" primer

When I mentioned the movie Primer a couple of weeks ago, Nate (who says I never link to him) wanted to know what blew me away. But I wasn't sure I could do it justice, so I called in the big guns.

TheLyamhound, a gentleman who some of you may remember from our atheist discussions earlier in the year (he represented the Buddhist perspective in our discussions), has kindly agreed to write a brief intro. He is imminently eminently more qualified than I, since he is actually "in the biz," so to speak--he is an actor, involved in the arts, and because of that he brings a unique perspective to the table.

So Matt posed a question several posts ago as to whether any of his readers had seen Primer, noting that he and his spouse had been "blown away" by the film. I concurred, but offered little else on the film. Now, for the benefit of a member of Matt's audience--hi there, Nathan--I've been asked to describe the film in greater detail (though hopefully not to explain it, as I'd be hard-pressed to do so).

Let me first say that the last time I recall seeing a film dealing with the issue of time travel that was so patently unreliant on F/X was probably back when Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour did Somewhere in Time, and that was less a time travel movie per se than a seeping historical romance with a time travel element to offer a tragic twist to the end as silly--and as effective--as the deus ex machina of your choice. That film was a sentimental favorite. But Primer revels a good deal more freely in the mechanics of time travel itself, as its characters attempt to evade responsibility, courting paradox and dissolution at every turn.

The premise would be simple, were it not so maddeningly vague: Two men working on a machine designed to . . . well, I'm not sure, really, but it seems like something wonkish and numerical, like a statistical error-checking machine (the beauty of marketing a science fiction film to me is that I can claim only the broadest, most abstract understanding of any science whatsoever). In any case, they begin finding mold in the machine that takes longer to grow than the machine has been in existence, and realize that they have inadvertently created a time machine.

Given that setup, it's only fair to say that not much happens in Primer, at least not on the surface. The guys try to profit from use of the machine, and things, predictably enough, go wrong; they then spend the remainder of the movie trying to undo the paradox created while each still attempts, subtly, to subvert the other. The whole thing weighs in at a lean 78 minutes. What I find impressive is that the film relies on the talents of its cast and its script; direction is highly economical, even spartan, and the real joy and drama emerges from the endless--and, for me, ultimately unsolved--puzzle presented.

Also, as a 30-something actor/writer with no film credits, it's heartwarming to see a 30-something actor with no film credits pull something together that's so deceptively simple, and that manages to inject some high-minded ingenuity into a genre that's needed a good kick in the backside for a few decades.


To that, I can only add that after you see the movie, if you want to try to unravel the mystery, you might take a look at this site, which offers discussion of the movie, as well as a graphic that tries to piece together the sequence of what happened.

Anonymous Expert weighs in on James 1:21

OK, so the next part of my James 1:21 series was going to be a discussion of the meaning of σῴζω and ψυχή, but then Frank posted this, and seriously, anything that I could say about the matter pales in comparison.

So I am reprinting Anonymous Expert's critique, and I will close out the series later on hopefully really soon with a discussion of what I think 1:21 means (I'll throw an abbreviated discussion of the translation part in with it).

Take it away, Anonymous...

One of the problems of the GES in defending their views from the LXX is that they don't seem to take into account theological development. In particular, the belief in the bodily resurrection and (thus, implicitly, the afterlife) doesn't appear explicitly until Daniel 12. Hence, any texts prior to the sixth century BC would not be relevant to the discussion. At the same time, there are several references listed in the LXX, three of which are in apocryphal works and thus late. This is of course useful information, but whether it is entirely relevant may be a different matter.

A critique, however, would be as follows:

1. The use of BAGD is myopic: although marshaled as an authority on each word, the author of the piece on Jas 1.21 does not look at what BAGD (let alone BDAG) says about the usage in Jas 1.21. There, the lexicon lists swvzw in Jas 1.21 as meaning "save/preserve from eternal death." So, is the GES author claiming that this lexicon is mistaken in its assessment? BDAG is remarkably objective; the authors have few axes to grind. Perhaps the error is on the part of the GES interpretation rather than on the part of everyone else.

2. The author did not look at the apostolic fathers. But on a theological trajectory, it is important to see how the expression was used in the Greek immediately after the NT was written by those who followed the teachings of the apostles. Further, in the AF the bodily resurrection and afterlife is already well established. Thus, apart from three instances in the LXX that come after Daniel, we might say that the usage seems to move in a different direction-toward salvation from hell. Cf. 2 Clem 13.1; 15.1; Barn 19.10; Shep 61.1.

3. Of course, in the rest of the NT we would expect to see the best parallels. To be sure, the phrase does refer at times to saving a person from physical death (cf. Mark 3.4 and parallel, Luke 6.9). But that seems hardly to be the force in Matt 16.25 and parallels (Mark 8.35; Luke 9.24): If someone loses his life he saves it: does this mean that if he loses his physical life he saves that? or does it mean that if he commits his life to the Lord it is eternally saved? Surely the latter is closer to the truth.

4. The reliance on Moulton-Milligan strikes me as myopic as well. Why should we expect to find treatments of eternal life and death in the non-literary papyri? (BTW, the author consistently misspelled papyri as papyrii.) If belief in the afterlife was not prominent among non-Christians (cf. 1 Thess 4.13), then should we expect the phrase to bear this meaning in their writings?

5. The collocation of 'save' with 'soul' and with other key terms used normally for eternal life and death matters is ignored by the GES. In Jas 5.20 we read "the one who turns a sinner back from his wandering path will save that person's soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins." Sinner, save, soul, death, sins are all terms that are theologically rich. Where else do we read of such a cluster of terms where only physical life is in view? This strikes me as the greatest single error of the GES in this matter: they refuse to look at the collocations in James when making their judgment. Of course, the cluster in Jas 2.14-26 that has almost a dozen verbal and conceptual parallels with Rom 3-4 is not to be missed in this discussion. That is way too many for a mere coincidence (as GES members would assert). There, 'soul' does not occur but 'save' does. Even by itself, the verb can often, especially in certain contexts, bear the sense of save from hell. To ignore all of the contextual clues and simply to look at statistics is hardly the way to do proper lexical research.

Blogger/Blogger Beta

For those out there who have done both, are you glad you switched? Any reason not to do it?

English Grammar Links

For all you homeschool moms (and wannabe Greeklings) out there, I found this reference page that lists links to English grammar.

I haven't reviewed the individual pages yet, so I don't know the overall value. Maybe someone with an English degree can go check them out and do a review.

What I do know is that most of the Greek books I have indicate that people's problem with learning the language is usually a deficiency in understanding English grammar.

Gojira Weighs In

Gojira has gotten a spark from something Danny said here, and it looks to have moved to a full-fledged fire. (Notice how I refrain from quoting the James passage about tongues and fire, despite the delicious irony).

"Christian confessions, creeds and statements of faith" from Wikipedia,

As a little break from our James discussion, and to present you with a little weekend reading, I present the Wikipedia page of Christian confessions, creeds and statements of faith. Lots of interesting reading here.

Who's This "We" You're Talking About?

A point has been raised, and I think it's a good one. "Why are you saying we shouldn't use the Septugint for our vocabulary definitions when the lexicon you've referenced says that the LXX is by far one the most influential of their own sources?"

That's a fair question. So let me amend my previous statement with this qualifier about who "we" are. We are not everyone in the world who want to know what Koine Greek means. We are people who haven't spent their lifetimes studying the language, various papryii, documents from not only the New Testament, but also the NT psuedopigrapha, the writings of historians, philosophers, and the common people, as well as the LXX. And if you are one of those people, I would suggest that you would do well to start your search for what a word means with a reference book devoted to that purpose, instead of a translation of another document, even if the translated document had a profound influence on the development of a language.

Think about it this way. If you were going to try to found out what an English word means, would you go to the King James Bible, or would you go to the Oxford English Dictionary? Most people (the "we" here) would go to the dictionary, despite the fact that the King James Bible had a profound influence on the development of our language.

In the same way, we have no need to limit ourselves to a single source, because we have a source that discusses those words--it talks about the semantic range they have, and it discusses them in context. And that source, as I've previously mentioned, is A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature.

By the way, as an aside, if you want to know which one you have, the easiest way to tell is the cover. Blue boards are BAG (1957), green boards are BAGD (1979), and maroon boards are BDAG (2000).

I'm still one my way to discussing the meaning of the two words in question (σῴζω and ψυχή). We'll follow that with a discussion of how people have translated James 1:21 (not interpretation yet) down through the years, and why it's significant the no one has translated the phrase "save your souls" as save your lives. And finally, we'll end with a discussion of the verse in context, and attempt to reason out it's meaning.

Hope you'll stay with me while I, er, we, make this journey together.