Yesterday was my 29th birthday. Celebrated with family during the weekend, they are such a rich blessing. My wife said this is my “Golden Birthday” since I turned 29 on October 29th.  Also, 29 is a prime number, so this birthday is a force to be reckoned with. My children spoiled me rotten and bought me a stack of books for my birthday. Top to bottom of the stack . . .

The Miami Indians of Indiana: A Persistent People, 1654 – 1994 by Stewart Rafert.

Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture by Rene Girard with Pierpaolo Antonello and Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha.

The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Christianly About the Arts by Leland Ryken.

The Presbyterian Hymnal: Hymns, Psalms, and Spiritual Songs 

Scripture’s Doctrine and Theology’s Bible: How the New Testament Shapes Christian Dogmatics edited by Markus Bockmuehl and Alan J. Torrance.

Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture by Jaroslav Pelikan.

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan.

Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places by Peter Nabokov. 

Today’s installment is over Tracks 7, 8, and 9 of Blaster the Rocket Man’s 1999 release, The Monster Who Ate Jesus.

Go here for initial comments on album and the linear notes.
Go here for comments on Tracks 1, 2, and 3.
Go here for comments on Tracks 4, 5, and 6.


Track 7 – Ransom vs. the Unman

Straight forward Rat-a-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat drumming, well placed palm-muted guitars, punk-rock guitar pick slides denoting the transition into the Chorus.  Track 7 and 8 lyrically draw from Lewis’ Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. Growing up with Blaster was a blessing. I was a kid raised on a farm in mid-central Indiana, smack in the middle of corn fields, and Blaster was a musical and literary gateway to things outside the normal planetary rotation of rural Hoosier life.

Into the nightmare monster’s embrace

The teeth and the claws and the jaws of the face

The ripping of skin and the reeking of breath

The real life enacting of myth

(For he loved not his life unto death) 

[Chorus]

Ransom! vs. The Unman!

Ransom! The Unman!

Ransom The Unman!

Ransom The Unman! (4x) 

He flung himself on the death that was living

“His hands taught him terrible things . . .

He felt its ribs break . . . heard its jaw-bone

crack.”

As they pummeled and scraped and attacked

(But he’s not of those who shrink back)

repeat Chorus

“In the sphere of Venus I learned war.

In this age Saturn will descend.

I am the Pendragon” (C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength). 

Macrobes! Macrobes!

Here come the Heads!

The Chosen Heads of the Bodiless Men

Macrobes! Macrobes!

Here come the Heads!

Here come the Chosen Heads

of the Bodiless (Men)

From ape to man to god

by rape we plant the pod

to propagate the fraud

From ape to man to god

by rape we plant the pod

to liquidate the body

You could be a vessel for

that hideous . . . strength

You could be the gateway

The time is here

They’re drawing near

Can you feel the tension

from another dimension?

Leave flesh behind.

There’s only mind.

Or set the brain apart

to elevate the heart

Whatever happened to the individual? (N.I.C.E.)

Where is his soul? (R.A.P.E)

(As you walk along the brightly lit corridors

you hear a soothing, androgynous voice

overhead.)

“Welcome to the National Institute for

Coordinated Experiments where we offer

Rationalized Alternatives to Plausible

Evidence,” etc.

There’s no unity

in your dichotomy

Section by section

dissection

Vivid vivisection

at the point of integration

with no relation

to the whole

You’ve no choice left you

but to make

an irrational leap of faith

For the Macrobes are marching over you!

Marching Macrobes

Marching

Macrobes on the march (cha! cha! cha!)

This is an instrumental “surf-rock” sounding song with Spanish counting thrown in for good measure, “Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro!” Conventional guitar riff opener eventually transitioning into a reverberated guitar phrasing, and “Cinco, Seis, Siete, Ocho!”

“When the enemy attacks the foundations, we must be able to protect these foundations” (24).

“The church’s doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God is based upon and is the logical consequence of God’s absolute self-existence” (33).

“It is really only the Christian who can speak of implication, because no one but him really takes the idea of an absolute system seriously” (35).

“The proper way to begin with facts is therefore to claim that unless they are what Christians say they are, they are unintelligible” (41).

“All men are either in covenant with Satan or in covenant with God” (68).

“Once man has sinned, his intellect is disturbed no less than are his emotions or his will” (75).

“The average philosopher and scientist today holds to a nontheistic conception of reason and therefore also to a nontheistic conception of evidence” (87).

“Surely the Christian, who believes in the doctrine of creation, cannot share the Greek depreciation of the things of the sense world” (93).

“Either man is created by God, or he is not” (97).

“The assurance of the truth of revelation is the work of the internal testimony of the Spirit” (103).

“Without the testimony of the Spirit, even Adam and Eve in Paradise would have lived in uncertainty and doubt” (104).

“Revelation is always testimony . . . . [i]t is always authoritative testimony and as such requires obedience” (114).

“The revelation of God was deposited in the whole of creation . . . . [m]an was to be God’s reinterpreter, that is, God’s prophet on earth” (129).

“Nature cannot be studied fruitfully except in combination with man. Man is the reinterpreter of God’s universe” (134) [I know. I know. This is a two-liner.]

“The Christian can obtain his philosophy of fact from no other source than Scripture” (152).

“Man is and remains God’s self-conscious creature” [cf. Romans 1:19] (160).

“The created personality is the highest manifestation of the personality of God” (160).

“No sinner can interpret reality aright” (164).

“Revelation in nature is but a limiting concept, a concept incomplete without its correlative [correlative concept is what is needed for a limiting concept to be understood] as found in supernatural communication” (171).

“The foolishness of the denial of the Creator lies precisely in the fact that this Creator confronts man in every fact so that no fact has any meaning for man except it be seen as God’s creation” (174).

“Salvation means that man, the sinner, must be brought back to the knowledge of himself as the creature of God and therefore, to the knowledge of God as the Creator” (195).

“It is a common mistake of modern theology to mix the categories of the ethical and the metaphysical” (209).

“The distinction between Creator and creature has not been changed in the least by the incarnation of Christ” (212).”

“When sin came, it would have destroyed true prophecy. Then God gave the mother promise” [Genesis 3:15] (213).

“The central miracle of Christianity, as it is in the person and work of Christ, is necessary not because man is man, but because man is a sinner” (219).

“Man needs true interpretation, but he also needs to be made a new creature” (219).

“[A] healed soul in a healed body needs a healed nature in which to live” (220).

“Now God, in special revelation, actually brings the true interpretation into the possession of the souls of those whom he has chosen” (222).

“Revelation had to be historically mediated” (224).

“Jesus was the greatest religious expert that ever lived. Accordingly, we ought to attach great weight to his words” (231).

“It was necessary that the ethical alienation should be removed in order that the original metaphysical relation be able to function normally again” (232).

“Scripture needs no additional revelation” (240).

“[O]nly God himself can testify to the revelation that he has given of himself. Special revelation must, in the nature of the case, be self-testified” (243).

All quotes from An Introduction to Systematic Theology: Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God (P&R, 2007).

Today’s installment is over Tracks 4, 5, and 6 of Blaster the Rocket Man’s 1999 release, The Monster Who Ate Jesus.

Go here for initial comments on album and the linear notes.
Go here for comments on Tracks 1, 2, and 3.

Track 4 – Stampede!

This is a cowboy punk-rock anthem about a stampede of intergalactic cattle/celestial beasts. Musically quite fun, a very rowdy song, and was a crowd favorite at shows. This song is the first track on Blaster’s Live CD (Disc 2 of The Anatomy of a Monster), which, as far as live albums go, is a pretty rough record from a production standpoint. However, punk-rock generally hast not placed much merit in the metrics of production.

Stampede is lyrically a lot of fun. Anytime a song allows me to chant “Stampede!!!” and “Yippy ki ay!” and “Whoa hoss, easy fella!” it makes me giddy like a kid again. As enjoyable as that is, lyrically the song is a neat allegory with a twist of fantasy. 

Out on the range one night
We saw a strange sight comin’ right out of the sky
It was a monster herd of the unheard of
Livestock of the Cosmos
A multifarious multitude of intergalactic cattle
Well, round here we don’t take kindly
to no otherworldly
And a cowboy’s gotta’ do what a cowboy’s gotta do
I took my rifle from the saddle and my lassoo too
Let’s round us up some supper, boys!
Ride ’em fast! Ride ’em hard!
(Chasin’ the Devil’s herd)
Move along, move along, move along
lil’ dogies!
(Drivin’ the monsters from the Earth)
Yippy ki ay, Yippy ki oh
Keep that cattle movin’
Got it rollin’ to the killin’
Gonna’ rope up the unwillin’
Saw a rocketship wagon
driving’ hideous horses
Had the whole team in its tractor beam
They gave an awful, eerie scream
that chilled my blood and spooked my steed
but I shook it off and took aim at the cockpit
Well, the boys were firin’ too
and we all know we hit our target
as we watched the spacecraft
goin’ down in flames
Then our eyes bugged in surprise
as the skies turned into chaos
The herd was loose
STAMPEDE!
Steady boys, there’s gonna’ be noise!
Ride ’em fast! Ride ’em hard!
(Chasin’ the Devil’s herd)
Move along, move along, move along
lil’ dogies!
(Drivin’ the monsters from Earth)
Yippy ki ay, Yippy ki oh
Keep that cattle movin’
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ rawhide!
We’ll kill ’em when we catch ’em on earthside
I’m back on the range
to keep the strange from further invasion
Protecting my family and my property
I’m back on the range
to keep the strange from further invasion
Protecting my family and my property
I’m back in the saddle again
where you don’t know who’s your friend
and the queer-horned cattle feed
on the lonely, bluish weed
Sometimes at night
I hear the mournful cryin’
of bestial extra-terrestrials
Whoah hoss. Easy fella’

Track 5 – Human Fly Trap (Our Hero Escapes from Venus)

The following is the introduction to track 5 in the album’s linear notes.

In the seemingly limitless possibilities of science fiction there are many Venuses to be explored. Let not this one be confused with Lewis’s transcendent vision of Perelandra which is referred to elsewhere on this album. In fact, it is basically an alternate reality of the  Perelandrian paradise in that it shares  her sensuous beauty but not her unfallen state.

This “evil twin” is not a New Eden, but a False Eden that entices its isolated explorers toward self-gratification which slowly transmogrifies them into a suitable food for consumption – namely, the Fly. (And how does this half-human, half-fly monster escape, you ask? by eating Jesus, of course!)”

This song begins with delayed guitars and also has some excellent keys/organ parts. Lyrically this is a song that reveals its narrative’s moral by antithesis–the Hero has mutated into half-fly/half-human and in order to escape this “False Eden” he must “FLY” (as in fly away, flight, run away). He is caught in a False Eden, a world that has teeth. This Hero is caught in the trap of a False Eden/Venus Fly-Man Eater. However, this is a Salvation story. Our Hero escapes. He escapes because the Lord severs him from the “maw of death”. Salvation and grace, indeed.

“If the shuttle is leaving
I’ll not be cleaving.
Lord, sever me
from this maw of death.
The same word that describes what I have become
also defines my graciously given means of escape.
To flee. To run away”
FLY!
FLY!
FLY!

Track 6 – [Untitled]

Ever wonder what John Calvin would sound like if he was Yoda? I ran the first paragraph from the Institutes through an English-to-Yoda translator. No need to wonder now.

First paragraph per John Calvin . . .

The First Book treats of the knowledge of God the Creator. But as it is in the creation of man that the divine perfections are best displayed, so man also is made the subject of discourse. Thus the whole book divides itself into two principal heads—the former relating to the knowledge of God, and the latter to the knowledge of man. In the first chapter, these are considered jointly; and in each of the following chapters, separately: occasionally, however, intermingled with other matters which refer to one or other of the heads; e.g., the discussions concerning Scripture and images, falling under the former head, and the other three concerning the creation of the world, the holy angels and devils, falling under the latter. The last point discussed—viz. the method of the divine government, relates to both.

First paragraph per Yoda . . .

Of the knowledge of god the creator the first book treats. But in the creation of man that the divine perfections are best displayed, it as is, so made the subject of discourse, man also is.  To the knowledge of god thus the whole book divides itself into two principal heads—the former relating, and to the knowledge of man the latter.  In the first chapter, considered jointly, these are; and of the following chapters in each, separately:  Occasionally, however, with other matters intermingled which refer to one or other of the heads; e.g., the discussions concerning scripture and images, falling under the former head, and of the world the other three concerning the creation, the holy angels and devils, falling under the latter.  The last point discussed—viz.  Of the divine government the method, to both relates.

“The average philosopher and scientist today holds to a nontheistic conception of reason and therefore also to a nontheistic conception of evidence” (Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 87).

Today is Moses’ third birthday, and I am grateful for paid-time-off.

After breakfast Moses says, “I want to sing from church book.” Of course I say, “That is fine. Go grab a book.” (Moses refers to my 38 Volume/Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene Fathers as “church books”.) Moses grabs Vol. 4 of Ante-Nicene Fathers off the bookshelf and runs back to the breakfast table, opening the book he points and says, “Sing this!”

So, together we sing  an excerpt from Origen Against Celsus, Book I., Chap. XXIV:

After this he continues:  “These herdsmen and shepherds concluded that there was but one God, named either the Highest, or Adonai, or the Heavenly, or Sabaoth, or called by some other of those names which they delight to give this world; and they knew nothing beyond that.”  And in a subsequent part of his work he says, that “It makes no difference whether the God who is over all things be called by the name of Zeus, which is current among the Greeks, or by that [About right here Moses says, “Done singing.” And goes and puts the book away.], e.g., which is in use among the Indians or Egyptians.”  Now, in answer to this, we have to remark that this involves a deep and mysterious subject—that, viz., respecting the nature of names:  it being a question whether, as Aristotle thinks, names were bestowed by arrangement, or, as the Stoics hold, by nature; the first words being imitations of things, agreeably to which the names were formed, and in conformity with which they introduce certain principles of etymology; or whether, as Epicurus teaches (differing in this from the Stoics), names were given by nature,—the first men having uttered certain words varying with the circumstances in which they found themselves.  If, then, we shall be able to establish, in reference to the preceding statement, the nature of powerful names, some of which are used by the learned amongst the Egyptians, or by the Magi among the Persians, and by the Indian philosophers called Brahmans, or by the Samanæans, and others in different countries; and shall be able to make out that the so-called magic is not, as the followers of Epicurus and Aristotle suppose, an altogether uncertain thing, but is, as those skilled in it prove, a consistent system, having words which are known to exceedingly few; then we say that the name Sabaoth, and Adonai, and the other names treated with so much reverence among the Hebrews, are not applicable to any ordinary created things, but belong to a secret theology which refers to the Framer of all things.  These names, accordingly, when pronounced with that attendant train of circumstances which is appropriate to their nature, are possessed of great power; and other names, again, current in the Egyptian tongue, are efficacious against certain demons who can only do certain things; and other names in the Persian language have corresponding power over other spirits; and so on in every individual nation, for different purposes.  And thus it will be found that, of the various demons upon the earth, to whom different localities have been assigned, each one bears a name appropriate to the several dialects of place and country.  He, therefore, who has a nobler idea, however small, of these matters, will be careful not to apply differing names to different things; lest he should resemble those who mistakenly apply the name of God to lifeless matter, or who drag down the title of “the Good” from the First Cause, or from virtue and excellence, and apply it to blind Plutus, and to a healthy and well-proportioned mixture of flesh and blood and bones, or to what is considered to be noble birth.

Go here for initial comments on album and the linear notes. 

Today’s installment is over the first (1st) three (3) tracks of Blaster the Rocket Man’s 1999 release, The Monster Who Ate Jesus.

Track 1 – Deploy All Monsters Now!

Destroy! [repeat, etc.]
.  .  .
I will date the girl from Venus
Flowers die and so will I
Yes, I will kiss the girl from Venus for science!

This is a great song. This is a great Track 1. A great way to kickstart an album. Blaster draws the listener in with familiarity but then introduces tension and offset the initial coherence with mystery (both musically and lyrically). Call me a sucker, but I am hooked!

Track 2 – It Came from Down South

This track is an instrumental. Western, chink-a-chink rhythm guitar and hand-claps (with bass and drums, obviously), which is then offset with a simple and infectious guitar lead. It will make you dance and smile.

Track 3 – Hopeful Monsters are Dying Everyday

A punk-rock (Ramones feeling, somewhat) tune with vocal vibrato. The oscillating voice really grips you, especially the repetitious “bodies, bodies!” The song is short and sweet . . . less than a minute and a half long. Overall, music is strong but it is the lyrics that are absolutely fantastic.

We’re all hoping for a beneficial mutation
in our bodies, bodies
Beyond adaptation or variation
of our bodies, bodies
We wanna’ take the next step
We wanna’ transcend, but
Hopeful monsters are dying everyday

We wanna’ breed the new breed
of bodies, bodies
Searching for a mate
who’ll thwart the state
that is the fate of our bodies, bodies
They say if anyone can
The “superman” can
Still hopeful monsters are dying!

New creatures in Christ
inherit bodies glorified
yet we carry in our bodies
the Death of Jesus
which is the hope
of life eternal

The hope of glory
We hope in God

Take up and listen!

My undergrad alma mater (Indiana Wesleyan University, Marion, IN) just rolled out a five-year blended B.S./M.A. program for training pastors. B.S. or B.A. course work would be completed the first 3 years and the M.A. course work the last 2 years, with the final year’s course work completed while ministering in a local church under the supervision of an assigned pastor.

That is the key. The local church has to be meaningfully involved with training pastors. Kudos, IWU.

This sounds like a great program. When IWU launched their Seminary a few years ago they were very innovative–the program required students to be engaged either in part-time or full-time ministry within context of the local church. I’m glad they’ve found a way to compress the overall time it takes to train ministers without compromising involvement in local church.

Notes on Preface and Chap. 1.
Notes on Chap. 2.