Leona Lewis is a 22 year-old English singer-songwriter and winner of the third series of The X Factor (UK version of American Idol). Lewis recently broke records as she is the third UK female artist of all time to reach #1 in the US with a debut single.

She recently made her American debut at the Clive Davis Pre Grammy Awards Party, and is set to make it big in the US with her debut album “Spirit“, being released April 8. (Current singles include Bleeding Love, Better in Time, and Footprints in the Sand)

Check out Leona on her YouTube video channel, or her MySpace page. (Thanks to my sister for telling me about Leona!)

2008 Clive Davis Pre-GRAMMY party
Leona Lewis with Clive Davis and Carrie Underwood

What is it about “beauty is truth”?
Is it true — or is is just poetry?

It’s from a poem titled “Ode On A Grecian Urn” written by John Keats in May, 1819, when he was about 24. Keats was one of the principal poets in the English Romantic movement. The urn is apparently decorated with a picture of a youth playing a flute in a pastoral setting and a young man chasing a young woman around the urn. She may well wish him to catch her–but the important thing is that on the urn, the music is silent and the chase, perpetual.

And of course, it’s worth remembering here that the function of an urn is to hold for eternity the ashes of the dead.

The poem begins with some questions about the figures pictured on the urn, then moves to this statement: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter. . . . / Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss. . . . / Forever wilt thou love and she be fair!”

The poem ends with these lines, apparently addressed to the urn itself:

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”–that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

The words in question — “beauty is truth” — appear to be uttered by the urn, as if it were some sort of oracle–or maybe in the way a shell speaks for the sea when you hold it to your ear.

Unfortunately, the quotation marks appeared in the first published edition, in 1820, but not in any of five other reproductions of the poem made in that year. So no one seems to know now whether the quoted words are spoken by the urn and the rest by Keats or a persona, or whether the persona speaks all of the words. Nor is there much agreement as to whether the lines express a universal truth — or are just poetic blather.

Keats himself apparently never explained his intentions. He died of tuberculosis in 1821, only about eight years after beginning his career as a poet.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats, 1795–1821

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Christianity Today reports:

Two of the hottest issues in evangelical theology right now are the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament and evangelical textual criticism. Peter Enns’s 2005 book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, aimed to pose difficult questions about the human aspects of Scripture. It received both praise and criticism from noted evangelical scholars.

And it made things difficult for Enns at his school, Philadelphia’s Westminster Theological Seminary. A battle over whether the book undermined or contradicted the Westminster Confession of Faith has been raging for some time now, and apparently came to a head Wednesday at the meeting of the school’s board, which decided to suspend Enns (at the close of the school year).

Trevin Wax summarizes the controversy nicely:

1. Enns has been criticized for emphasizing the human nature of Scripture over against the divine.
   
2. Enns has written that the first chapters of Genesis are firmly grounded in ancient myth, which he defines as “an ancient, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins in the form of stories.”
   
3. Enns claims that Scripture is inspired and inerrant, however the way he describes Scripture seems to counter that belief.
   
4. Enns does not seek to harmonize seemingly-contradictory parts of Scripture because he believes the diversity of Scripture is complementary.
   
5. Enns rejects the idea of objective unbiased historiography.

It is very unfortunate whenever any seminary faculty member is suspended or dismissed on theological grounds. Do pray for Westminster Theological Seminary (students, faculty, Board of Trustees, and families) as they go through this controversial time. May we all examine ourselves and our own theology first, and read carefully about what is actually being debated, before pointing any fingers.

If I were to start a new emerging church…

(AND THIS IS A BIG IF)… …

here is a short list of names I would NOT use because they are just SOOOO hip and kool and rad… … …

and already / over- used… … … …

(list to be updated as necessary — feel free to help add to this list)

The GIST

Liquid

Vox Venaie

The Vine

New Generation

House of Mercy

Apex

Vaux

The Ooze

Tribal Generation

Axxess

Vine and Branches

Bournemouth

Sanctus 1

Revelation Church

Matthew’s House

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Roberts, Vaughan. Life’s Big Questions.
Leicester, UK: IVP, 2004. 175pp. $13.00.

Copyright © 2008 by Alex S. Leung. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The Christian Bible is the worldwide best-selling book that has been published in numerous languages and translations. Spanning over 2000 years of history, it was originally written by about 40 human authors in 2 languages who utilized many different literary genres. It is an enormous volume of 66 divinely inspired and authoritative books that form God’s Word to us. With its variety of literary forms and extensive recording of history, any reader would soon wonder how this extraordinary Book could be read in an ordinary way. How can anybody read and understand the Bible as a whole? How can it have a single message that links together all the different accounts of God’s work?

In Life’s Big Questions, Vaughan Roberts shows us how there is unity in the diversity of the Scriptures. Building off of his previous acclaimed work (God’s Big Picture, 2003), Roberts presents the Kingdom of God as a unifying theme for the whole Bible and then seeks to answer six of life’s big questions with this theme in mind. For this book review, I hope to critically analyze the author’s thesis/purpose, the methods he has used in explaining it, and his success in achieving his purpose.
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http://www.resolved.org/

Praise of the suffering servant

Isaiah 52:13–53:12

*This is one of the most famous passages in Isaiah and one of the most famous messianic prophecies in the Bible. In its format, this poem is an encomium—a poem that praises its subject with such formulas as a formal introduction to the subject, the distinguished ancestry of the subject, a catalog of praiseworthy acts and attributes, the superiority of the subject to all rivals, and a conclusion urging the reader to emulate the person or quality being praised. This song of the suffering servant is actually a parody of the conventional encomium: although it praises the subject with the conventional categories, it inverts them and praises him for what the world at large would regard as unpraiseworthy qualities. A lead-in promises to praise the subject in standard terms (52:13), but the suffering servant is then praised for being marred beyond parallel (52:14–15), for being of undistinguished ancestry and social standing (53:1–2), for acts that by conventional standards would render him contemptible (53:3–6), and for a life’s conclusion that is the opposite of a conventional success story (53:7–9). Verses 3–6 stress the subject’s redemptive actions, and verses 7–9 highlight their tragic nature when judged by ordinary standards of success. The concluding section reads more like a standard encomium, as the suffering servant is praised for what his suffering has accomplished (53:10–12). Even here there are reversals and paradoxes, as the suffering servant triumphs not because he defeated his enemies in open combat for personal benefit but because he gave his life for others. Read the rest of this entry »