Pistis Christou, Bartering Barth and Prison

I’m ill and I feel like crap.

And I'm confused. I still don’t know what way to go with regards the pistis Christou construction in Paul (objective or subjective genitive). After making an extensive lists of pros and cons for each position, downed a few cups of coffee, stared at the evidence again … and again, wrote another list, drunk more coffee, shifted from convinced by the subjective to objective genitive interpretation (at one point in a matter of minutes), and then back again etc. At the end of this tearing-my-hair-out experience, I was left in a sort of miserable ‘post-exegesis’ daze. And I still haven’t frigging made up my mind. To be honest, I don’t see any hope of doing so either, at least not for the next few years. Pity. I’d kind of wanted to at least make a preliminary exegetical decision about this one. I know its the old Fundie in me, but I just can’t be doing with yet another grey-area.

Nevertheless, and here things get decidedly more cheerful: one rather exciting silver-lining to the day is that I may, after all, be getting my hands on a second hand copy of Barth’s entire kirchliche Dogmatik! Oh yes oh yes!

The only obstacle is: I have to get the seller to reduce his offer a tad (surprise). The question that is keeping me awake at night is, of course, how can I get him to lower his price? Violence wouldn’t work as, well, he’d kick my arse all over Tübingen (he’s considerably bigger than me). Plus, violence and Chris Tilling are as far apart as Benny Hinn and Bultmann. Apart from that, the only martial-art manoeuvre I know is the ‘Chinese burn’ (learnt it from the wife). Hardly enough to prise the Church Dogmatics from his grubby hands.

Alternatively, late at night I could ‘ram raid’ the book shop with my car, burst a hole in the wall, stuff the Church Dogmatics in the passenger seat and flee. But I’ve been hovering around Barth’s books, asking the book-shop owner questions etc. for a while now – so if the CDs are the only missing items after the raid it would look a bit suspicious, and so I couldn’t ever return. And that would be a pity. Besides, the shop is a few doors away from the police station, which leads me to point out: if ever I did get caught and thrown into jail, the ‘great Church Dogmatics thief’ is hardly a reputation to get by when rubbing shoulders with hardened criminals. I could sell Anja to some Arabs for some extra cash – but she’d Chinese burn me if I tried. And even I have my limits.

If you’ve actually read through those paragraphs of total crap, I’m sorry you wasted your time. But if you read this bit: Please get on your knees and pray that the book-seller feels awesomely and overwhelmingly generous when I see him next, or that he is smitten with blindness so that I can scarper with the volumes under my arms while he’s fumbling for the light-switch.