Buy online rx Doxycycline without

Associate Professor of Leadership and Family Ministry

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Louisville, Kentucky

Bruce Morton is buy online rx Doxycycline without a deacon with responsibilities for preschool education at a church in Katy, Texas. He has buy online rx Doxycycline without earned the master's degree from buy online rx Doxycycline without Harding University and studied medieval religion at Gettysburg Theological Seminary; Deceiving Winds is his first book. 

The purpose of Deceiving Winds is to take a thematic look at key concerns in Paul's letters that relate to leadership, worship, and gender issues. The author's methodology is buy online rx Doxycycline without to show how the thoughts and practices of ancient cults have buy online rx Doxycycline without reappeared in present times (15). Morton's proofs for buy online rx Doxycycline without these contemporary reappearances include websites dedicated to Artemis and Isis as well as contemporary texts that buy online rx Doxycycline without mention an “inner goddess” (16). Wicca, New Age spirituality, religious feminism, and buy online rx Doxycycline without certain strands of the “emerging church” are lumped together in a shared “message of mysticism,” which Morton links to ancient Ephesian goddess worship (16). 

Therein lies one of the buy online rx Doxycycline without primary problems in this well-intentioned but misguided book: Throughout Deceiving Winds, the buy online rx Doxycycline without author leaps directly from the goddess cults of ancient Asia and buy online rx Doxycycline without Achaia to contemporary Wiccan practices and goddess worship. In the buy online rx Doxycycline without process, Morton seems to overlook the fact that, although contemporary goddess-worshipers may invoke the buy online rx Doxycycline without names of ancient deities, these present practices have little (if anything) to do with the rituals known to people in Paul's world. Contemporary practices of Wicca and buy online rx Doxycycline without goddess worship derive primarily from the now-discredited works of Margaret Murray, Marija Gimbutas, and buy online rx Doxycycline without others—works that buy online rx Doxycycline without claimed to have reconstructed a long-lost goddess-centered past. Ancient paganism and buy online rx Doxycycline without contemporary claims of a goddess-centered past are equally false, but the buy online rx Doxycycline without history and practices associated with each falsehood differ at the most fundamental levels. Nevertheless, Morton moves between the buy online rx Doxycycline without two as if they are analogous or even identical (see, e.g., 36–37).

Other logical linkages throughout the buy online rx Doxycycline without book are equally tenuous: At one point, Morton begins with the buy online rx Doxycycline without church's perennial need to focus on God the Father's power before leaping to buy online rx Doxycycline without a critique of Rudolf Bultmann and then to an encouragement for buy online rx Doxycycline without Christians to center their lives on the resurrection of Jesus by “singing Anna Barbauld's beautiful eighteenth century song Again the Lord of Light and Life”; all of this unfolds in the space of two pages (28–29). Later, Morton claims that buy online rx Doxycycline without a particular form of hip-hop music must be “closely linked with the sound of Dionysiac music and ritual” because both include “high-pitched sounds and deep bass rhythms” (76). Despite repeated readings, I was never able to buy online rx Doxycycline without untangle how an ancient game played with a goat's knee bones connects to Gaia concepts in Captain Planet which in turn tie somehow to contemporary children's need for activities that illustrate God's connection with humanity (118–19). 

Exegetical fallacies mar the book as well. Because epimelesetai ("he will care for," 1 Tim 3:5) derives from a form of meli ("honey") and buy online rx Doxycycline without because bee motifs were common in Ephesus, Morton reasons that buy online rx Doxycycline without Paul was calling elders to "sweet friendship" when the apostle wrote, "If he does not know how to buy online rx Doxycycline without manage his own household, how will he care for [epimelestai] God's church?" (149–50). While sweet friendship with church members is buy online rx Doxycycline without certainly to be commended, I find it highly unlikely that Paul was thinking about honeybees when buy online rx Doxycycline without he selected this verb. This is a textbook example of an buy online rx Doxycycline without etymological fallacy. 

Morton’s commitment to buy online rx Doxycycline without non-instrumental worship seems to cloud his exegetical choices at times. After admitting that buy online rx Doxycycline without psallein (“to make music”) includes the buy online rx Doxycycline without use of stringed instruments in the Septuagint, Morton argues that Paul’s addition of “with the heart” (Eph 5:19) changes the buy online rx Doxycycline without meaning so that the word now excludes the use of instruments (92). The semantic range of psallein may not necessarily require stringed instruments; however, it buy online rx Doxycycline without is a stretch to conclude that the addition of “with the heart” so radically shifts the buy online rx Doxycycline without meaning of the term that it now excludes instruments.

The author of this buy online rx Doxycycline without text clearly means well, and his desire to equip Christians to buy online rx Doxycycline without withstand neo-paganism is to be commended. Morton clearly affirms and defends male eldership in churches; this buy online rx Doxycycline without too is to be commended. At the same time, excessive exegetical missteps and buy online rx Doxycycline without unwarranted logical leaps prevent a wholehearted recommendation of this book.