One of the great farces of our day is the supposed “war on inflation” being waged by civil governments everywhere. In every continent, politicians pledge themselves to an all-out war on inflation, conveniently neglecting to state that the immediate cause of all inflation in the modern era is the increase of the supply of money and credit by the central civil or statist agencies. Inflation is an act of state, a very highly desirable act of state from the standpoint of politicians and the bureaucracy, because it increases vastly the powers of the state. The rise of the modern totalitarian state has its economic origin in the abandonment of gold coinage for paper money. As the creator of fiat money, of instant money by means of legalized counterfeiting of wealth, the state is always the wealthiest and most powerful force in society. As inflation increases, so too does the power of the state. Every civil government thus has a vested interest in inflation. For a state to halt inflation is to diminish its power. The cry, “Stop inflation,” is another way of saying “Castrate the state,” and no state or bureaucracy has yet favored its own castration.
Inflation is thus a way of life to the modern, humanistic power state, because power is its goal. The fundamental premise of modern political science is that the state is god walking on earth. This same Hegelian (and in origin pagan) doctrine is basic to Marxism, fascism, Naziism, democracy, Fabianism, and other modern political theories. It means that the state claims sovereignty, an attribute of God alone, and therefore claims the power to create. The result of this assertion of sovereignty and the power to create is fiat laws (laws with no basis in God’s law and purely arbitrary assertions of the state), fiat money (money created by state decree and having behind it the value of statist coercion), and fiat everything. Above all, it means fiat justice; justice ceases to be grounded in God’s being and righteousness, and is grounded instead in the arbitrary judgments and decisions of the state, its bureaucracy, and its agencies.
The more humanistic the power state becomes, the more it removes its law-making policies from the elective process. The goal of the humanistic state is to replace God as the ultimate power and authority over man, and hence it works, in the name of man, to separate itself from man. Most lawmaking in the United States is not an act of Congress, or of a state legislature, but of a bureaucracy which enacts vast powers unto itself through the Federal Register or in like ways. A sovereign power is always transcendental; it transcends those whom it governs. God is beyond man and nature and separate from them; hence we speak of the supernatural. Similarly, the would-be sovereign state seeks to be transcendental, beyond man in the name of man, and its rule becomes more and more a fiat and arbitrary rule.
The goal is total power; the key or the means is money, the creation of fiat money; in brief, inflation….
Inflation thus has a religious root. It is a consequence of the attempt by the state to play god and to resolve all human problems, not by religious and moral answers derived from the Bible, but from humanism. The state believes that, by playing god, it can abolish the problems of man and society. Instead, it aggravates those problems.
-- Rousas John Rushdoony, The Roots of Inflation
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Thursday, December 06, 2007
The Resurrection of Israel
So there’s a theory I’m working on with regard to the structure of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. The theory is that the epistle is, among other things, about the death and resurrection of Israel. Scholars like N. T. Wright, whose commentary I’ve been working slowly through, point out the recurring theme in the Old Testament of Exile and Restoration. We see repeatedly the exile of an individual or groups of individuals, which in time is followed by restoration, if not of those individuals, then of their descendents. Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden, and those who trust in Christ are restored to the Garden (Rev. 22). Joseph was exiled to Egypt, was later joined by his family, and the entire family of Israel was later restored to the land. Abram and Sarai were symbolically exiled to Egypt (Genesis 12), as a type of Israel’s later exile. One may also suggest that the sojourn of Elimelech and his family in Moab (Ruth 1) was an exile, which curiously relates typologically to Abram and Sarai’s sojourn in Egypt, as both families went to other countries as the result of a famine. Israel and Judah, after being brought back from Egypt, suffered exile again in the days of the divided kingdom because of their unfaithfulness. Elijah, symbolizing Israel, was exiled twice (I Kings 17 & 19). David, already anointed to become king, experienced exile as Saul chased him around the wilderness. David himself was exiled a second time, as a result of the rebellion of Absalom. And our Lord suffered exile in different ways, both in his forty days in the wilderness, and in his wanderings around the country prior to his entering Jerusalem.
A closely connected concept to this, I would suggest, is the idea of death and resurrection. Ezekiel makes this connection for us in the vision of the valley of dry bones found in Ezekiel 37. Speaking to Ezekiel, the Lord makes this explicit in verses 11-14. Death, we find, corresponds to exile, and resurrection corresponds to restoration.
Jesus Christ himself bore the sins of the world, and in so doing, specifically bore the sins of Israel. He died and was resurrected, and so was exiled and restored for the salvation of Israel as well as the world.
But here’s where Romans comes in. As I’ve been studying Romans, I was struck by the fact that in the first few verses of the book, Christ’s resurrection from the dead was specifically mentioned, whereas the circumstances of his death were completely absent. The fact that his death was by crucifixion (a point that we make much of in the modern church), along with the fact that his death was propitiatory, was completely left out. Now Paul elsewhere in Romans deals with Christ’s death in more detail (3:25, ch. 5), and so it isn’t as if Paul considers this a secondary matter. But I believe it is reasonable to suggest that Paul is stating the highlights of the epistle in these first few verses, as they read as a summary of his thought on a particular matter.
It was as I was studying ch. 4 that the idea occurred to me. Paul there rehearses the case of Abraham and his faith in God. Abraham believed God in a situation that seemed impossible, and his faith was counted to him as righteousness. In verse 19, Paul says of Abraham, “He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.” Abraham and Sarah, as we see, were both well past the normal years of bearing children. Yet look at the language Paul uses to describe this. Abraham was “as good as dead”. Sarah’s womb was barren, that is, dead. Paul seems to be saying here, I would suggest, that in the conception and birth of Isaac, a sort of resurrection, a sort of life from the dead, took place. Resurrection is mentioned in regard to God’s character in verse 17, as Paul speaks of our God, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” That Paul is keeping resurrection in the forefront of his mind is also confirmed by the closing words of the chapter, as he speaks of Abraham’s faith: “It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” Christ’s resurrection is mentioned twice within the same sentence, as if Paul wanted to make the point clear. God promised Abraham a child, Abraham believed, it was counted to him as righteousness, and God gave him a child. Through that child, Abraham would inherit the world. So how does this correspond to us? Paul does not spell it out fully here, but based on what he says here and later on in the epistle, I think we can determine what he is getting at. Those who have the faith of Abraham are his seed. God promised to Abraham and his seed the world (vs. 13). The summary is that we that have the faith of Abraham are heirs of the world, or, if you will, the cosmos (the Greek word for “world” here is, transliterated, “kosmou”, the genitive form of “kosmos”). And so when the passage is examined carefully, we find, rather than merely justification narrowly conceived, a Postmillenial dominion theology at its finest. It is important to point out, however, that contextually, both in this passage and in Scripture more broadly, this dominion does not come about through sheer power and through the forcing of one’s will upon another. This dominion only comes through death and resurrection, willing exile and restoration. Once again, Joseph leaps to mind.
I am still working my way through the epistle, and so a further explication of my theory will have to wait until later. One other important matter to point out regards the placement of Paul’s discussion of Israel in the letter. Rather than being a mere side note, as if Paul changes topics at the beginning of chapter nine, Paul’s discussion of Israel here is one of the major points of the letter, and belongs at the place Paul puts it according to the flow of the letter. Chapters nine through eleven are built upon the foundation that Paul lays out in all the preceding chapters. And essentially, Paul says this: God has made promises to Israel. Will He raise her from the dead again? Will God bring Israel back from exile once more? Paul essentially says yes, but the form Israel will take in her resurrection and restoration is different from what Israel might expect. Lord willing, I will discuss this at a later time.
A closely connected concept to this, I would suggest, is the idea of death and resurrection. Ezekiel makes this connection for us in the vision of the valley of dry bones found in Ezekiel 37. Speaking to Ezekiel, the Lord makes this explicit in verses 11-14. Death, we find, corresponds to exile, and resurrection corresponds to restoration.
Jesus Christ himself bore the sins of the world, and in so doing, specifically bore the sins of Israel. He died and was resurrected, and so was exiled and restored for the salvation of Israel as well as the world.
But here’s where Romans comes in. As I’ve been studying Romans, I was struck by the fact that in the first few verses of the book, Christ’s resurrection from the dead was specifically mentioned, whereas the circumstances of his death were completely absent. The fact that his death was by crucifixion (a point that we make much of in the modern church), along with the fact that his death was propitiatory, was completely left out. Now Paul elsewhere in Romans deals with Christ’s death in more detail (3:25, ch. 5), and so it isn’t as if Paul considers this a secondary matter. But I believe it is reasonable to suggest that Paul is stating the highlights of the epistle in these first few verses, as they read as a summary of his thought on a particular matter.
It was as I was studying ch. 4 that the idea occurred to me. Paul there rehearses the case of Abraham and his faith in God. Abraham believed God in a situation that seemed impossible, and his faith was counted to him as righteousness. In verse 19, Paul says of Abraham, “He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.” Abraham and Sarah, as we see, were both well past the normal years of bearing children. Yet look at the language Paul uses to describe this. Abraham was “as good as dead”. Sarah’s womb was barren, that is, dead. Paul seems to be saying here, I would suggest, that in the conception and birth of Isaac, a sort of resurrection, a sort of life from the dead, took place. Resurrection is mentioned in regard to God’s character in verse 17, as Paul speaks of our God, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” That Paul is keeping resurrection in the forefront of his mind is also confirmed by the closing words of the chapter, as he speaks of Abraham’s faith: “It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” Christ’s resurrection is mentioned twice within the same sentence, as if Paul wanted to make the point clear. God promised Abraham a child, Abraham believed, it was counted to him as righteousness, and God gave him a child. Through that child, Abraham would inherit the world. So how does this correspond to us? Paul does not spell it out fully here, but based on what he says here and later on in the epistle, I think we can determine what he is getting at. Those who have the faith of Abraham are his seed. God promised to Abraham and his seed the world (vs. 13). The summary is that we that have the faith of Abraham are heirs of the world, or, if you will, the cosmos (the Greek word for “world” here is, transliterated, “kosmou”, the genitive form of “kosmos”). And so when the passage is examined carefully, we find, rather than merely justification narrowly conceived, a Postmillenial dominion theology at its finest. It is important to point out, however, that contextually, both in this passage and in Scripture more broadly, this dominion does not come about through sheer power and through the forcing of one’s will upon another. This dominion only comes through death and resurrection, willing exile and restoration. Once again, Joseph leaps to mind.
I am still working my way through the epistle, and so a further explication of my theory will have to wait until later. One other important matter to point out regards the placement of Paul’s discussion of Israel in the letter. Rather than being a mere side note, as if Paul changes topics at the beginning of chapter nine, Paul’s discussion of Israel here is one of the major points of the letter, and belongs at the place Paul puts it according to the flow of the letter. Chapters nine through eleven are built upon the foundation that Paul lays out in all the preceding chapters. And essentially, Paul says this: God has made promises to Israel. Will He raise her from the dead again? Will God bring Israel back from exile once more? Paul essentially says yes, but the form Israel will take in her resurrection and restoration is different from what Israel might expect. Lord willing, I will discuss this at a later time.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Blog blah blah
Here it is, November 26th, and my last serious blog was almost three weeks ago. And, as is to be expected in the world of blogdom, the vast number of visits I formerly was receiving on this blog has ground nearly to a halt. But who can blame you? I wouldn’t visit a blog if there were nothing on it that I wanted to read.
But I have a valid excuse, of sorts. One of these past three weeks was spent at the beach, sans computer. Okay, so I only have a valid excuse for one week. But if you count the week before as preparation, and the week after as recovery, that takes care of all three, doesn’t it?
The truth be known, this is just a busy time of year. The shoe business has been especially overwhelming this year, and I find myself most evenings recovering from the day’s labors. But I have a job, which many people don’t, so I am grateful. I had my vacation, and then covered for a co-worker who was on vacation. Then there was Thanksgiving Day, on which, actually, I was sick at home and unable to join friends and family for the customary feasting and revelries. And Christmas chaos has begun, with me having done none of my shopping yet.
Our Bible Study group is working slowly through Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and I’ve been trying to devote most of my study and reading time to the Scriptures and books related to our study. I have still been finding time to work in other reading, mostly of a political nature. I have been reading slowly through Ron Paul’s book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom. If you are dissatisfied with the current field of candidates for president, you need to check out Ron Paul. I won’t take time now to discuss this further, other that to say no other candidate matches up to him, and I am extremely glad that we finally have somebody worth voting for. I had also begun reading Frederic Bastiat’s classic of political theory simply entitled The Law. And I had worked halfway through Anthony Flew’s book, There Is A God, which is Flew’s explanation of how he moved from being an atheist to being a theist of the Aristotelian variety.
I’m bad about not finishing books I start, and there are many others besides these that I have wanted to get back to, yet without success. But they will all have to go by the wayside for now. It looks as if I will be joining some other folks for a Bible study in which we will be studying the Book of Daniel. I haven’t even read Daniel in several years (yes, years…), and I’ve never studied it in any depth. When you grow up in Dispensationalism, as I did, and then leave it for Reformed theology, sometimes the last thing in the world that’s appealing to you is a book that your former co-theologisers majored on. But the more I’ve been trying to dive into the Old Testament, the more conspicuous it’s become to me that I need to study Daniel. So this is timely, or Providential, if you will. I just ordered this commentary, which I’m excited to dig into as soon as it arrives. And so with a Bible study on Daniel, and a Bible study on Romans, I’ll be feeling like I’m back in school, deadlines and all.
So, will blogging go entirely out of my life? No. I think what I will try to do is to blog shorter pieces, some only a few sentences in length, most of which will no doubt be related to what I’m reading. I’m constantly renewed in my amazement at how deep and complex the Scriptures are, and so I expect to have a lot to write about. And I welcome any comments that the reader might offer. I’ve had a great increase in visitors here, and I hope that will continue. But does what I’m writing make sense to you? Do you find it helpful? If so, or if not, I’d like to know. Don’t be afraid to speak out. I enjoy writing, but I want it to benefit others, too.
But I have a valid excuse, of sorts. One of these past three weeks was spent at the beach, sans computer. Okay, so I only have a valid excuse for one week. But if you count the week before as preparation, and the week after as recovery, that takes care of all three, doesn’t it?
The truth be known, this is just a busy time of year. The shoe business has been especially overwhelming this year, and I find myself most evenings recovering from the day’s labors. But I have a job, which many people don’t, so I am grateful. I had my vacation, and then covered for a co-worker who was on vacation. Then there was Thanksgiving Day, on which, actually, I was sick at home and unable to join friends and family for the customary feasting and revelries. And Christmas chaos has begun, with me having done none of my shopping yet.
Our Bible Study group is working slowly through Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and I’ve been trying to devote most of my study and reading time to the Scriptures and books related to our study. I have still been finding time to work in other reading, mostly of a political nature. I have been reading slowly through Ron Paul’s book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom. If you are dissatisfied with the current field of candidates for president, you need to check out Ron Paul. I won’t take time now to discuss this further, other that to say no other candidate matches up to him, and I am extremely glad that we finally have somebody worth voting for. I had also begun reading Frederic Bastiat’s classic of political theory simply entitled The Law. And I had worked halfway through Anthony Flew’s book, There Is A God, which is Flew’s explanation of how he moved from being an atheist to being a theist of the Aristotelian variety.
I’m bad about not finishing books I start, and there are many others besides these that I have wanted to get back to, yet without success. But they will all have to go by the wayside for now. It looks as if I will be joining some other folks for a Bible study in which we will be studying the Book of Daniel. I haven’t even read Daniel in several years (yes, years…), and I’ve never studied it in any depth. When you grow up in Dispensationalism, as I did, and then leave it for Reformed theology, sometimes the last thing in the world that’s appealing to you is a book that your former co-theologisers majored on. But the more I’ve been trying to dive into the Old Testament, the more conspicuous it’s become to me that I need to study Daniel. So this is timely, or Providential, if you will. I just ordered this commentary, which I’m excited to dig into as soon as it arrives. And so with a Bible study on Daniel, and a Bible study on Romans, I’ll be feeling like I’m back in school, deadlines and all.
So, will blogging go entirely out of my life? No. I think what I will try to do is to blog shorter pieces, some only a few sentences in length, most of which will no doubt be related to what I’m reading. I’m constantly renewed in my amazement at how deep and complex the Scriptures are, and so I expect to have a lot to write about. And I welcome any comments that the reader might offer. I’ve had a great increase in visitors here, and I hope that will continue. But does what I’m writing make sense to you? Do you find it helpful? If so, or if not, I’d like to know. Don’t be afraid to speak out. I enjoy writing, but I want it to benefit others, too.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Idolatry takes many forms, #2: The Messianic State
Government schooling is inevitably an exercise in statist brainwashing, not genuine education; and it is hardly “moral” for a large gang (government) to (legally) rob one segment of the population, keep most of the loot, and share a little of it with various “needy” individuals.
-- Thomas J. DiLorenzo
-- Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Interpretation is Inevitable
A few years ago, I had one of those conversations that will stick in your mind forever and keep you scratching your head long after it is over. It was with an old friend, and the topic was eldership in the local church. He had been attending an eldership training class in our church, and we were talking about the qualifications required for one to be an elder as listed in 1 Timothy 3, specifically regarding the controversial phrase “husband of one wife”. There have been many readings of the phrase, some believing it forbids polygamists from becoming elders, while other believe it forbids divorced men from becoming elders. There have been other views on the passage, but our conversation was limited to this, as I held the former view and my friend held the latter. The conversation went as such:
Friend: I don’t know why so-and-so is taking the class. He can’t become an elder.
Myself: Why not?
Friend: He’s been divorced. He hasn’t been “the husband of one wife”.
Myself: I don’t believe you’re interpreting that passage correctly. The passage is referring to polygamists, not to those who have been divorced. Someone who has been divorced and remarried only has one wife.
Friend: No, you’re interpreting the passage. I’m just reading what it says.
Once I was done picking my jaw up off the floor, the conversation continued along a slightly different path. It wasn’t that I was offended at his statement. Like I said, he’s an old friend, and I don’t think anything he could ever do would offend me. But I had never heard such a ridiculous statement in my life. My friend, God bless him, isn’t a complete idiot, but he’s not exactly a Rhodes scholar, if you get my drift. This was simply a misunderstanding of language, and meaning, and, well, truth. But I thought that would be the last time I would hear anything like that.
And it was – until this morning after church, as I was carrying on a conversation with an older lady in our church. She likes to refer to herself as “an Episcopalian, Charismatic, Pentecostal Fundamentalist”, and the redundancy of including both “Charismatic” and “Pentecostal” in that phrase doesn’t seem to bother her in the least. We were discussing our former president Jimmy Carter’s masquerade of traditionalism, in the realm of politics, but especially when it came to his claims to be a good old Southern Baptist stalwart. This drifted into a conversation about what true fundamentalism looks like, including the idea of taking the Bible “literally”. I should have known I was in deep water at this point, but the reality of the situation slipped past me. As the idea of “taking the Bible literally” has been used as an excuse for all sorts of shoddy Scriptural interpretations in the past two hundred years, red flags normally start flying at this point for me. Blame it on the communion wine, but I didn’t see this iceberg coming. It happened a bit like this:
Lady: Have you ever read Isaiah?
Myself, in disbelief: Uhhh, yeah.
Lady: I read it forty years ago, and I knew immediately what it was about.
Myself, with bated breath: What’s that?
Lady: Isaiah talks about all the Jews living throughout the world and God bringing them back to their land. I saw God doing that and knew that’s what Isaiah was talking about.
Myself, with much hesitancy: I actually believe that happened two thousand years ago.
Lady: No, it didn’t. That’s never happened before in the history of the world, because nobody inhabited the United States back then. Jews would have had to have been in the United States for them to come back from all over the world.
Myself, in over my head: Have any Jews ever inhabited Antarctica?
Lady: I don’t know. The point is that that’s what Isaiah was talking about.
Myself, waiting for impact: I guess what I’m getting at is that there are different interpretations of that. Yours is a very new interpretation in the history of the church.
Lady: You don’t interpret the Bible. You just read what it says.
Myself, looking for an exit: Yeah…right…
Things fizzled rather quickly after that, farewells and other pleasantries dispensed with.
It’s a rather strange bird, this whole idea that “interpreting” is a bad thing to do. What surprised me in both these conversations is that both these people thought they weren’t interpreting the meaning of a text when they read it. But that, in fact, is all that is meant by the word “interpret”. And I can’t help but wonder where this confusion came from. Whatever its origin, it is a strong characteristic of Fundamentalist types. By Fundamentalists, I’m not referring, as the secular media does, to those who have some religious belief and actually live by it, even when it stands in stark contrast to the accepted practices of mainstream culture. I’m referring to Fundamentalist Christians, of the stripe that existed in abundance during the twentieth century, who think that they are able to understand everything perfectly and don’t think that they could actually be wrong about something. But Fundamentalists aren’t the only ones guilty of this.
Though many scholars have begun to recognize the error in it, most people are still living with the notion that there is actually such a thing as objectivity – that they can look at a truth claim and judge it in a perfectly unbiased manner. But this is false. Every person who has ever been born (apart from Jesus Christ) has a limited perspective and therefore never has all the information necessary to make an infallible judgment. Along with this, we are all sinners. Our motives are never perfect, and our sin is so deep we often don’t know when and how it shapes our thinking. Another way of referring to this is as the myth of neutrality. No one is neutral in their judgment, nor should they be. Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and that is exactly the way God intends it. Our judgments, therefore, are to be biased towards what is true and good.
It’s this myth of objectivity that stands behind conversations like the ones I’ve just mentioned. These people have somehow come to believe that to “interpret” a text means to insert a meaning into a text that isn’t there – what scholars call “eisegesis”. They, however, believe they are pure in their desires and perspective (in contrast with everyone else in the world), and so they think they can perfectly understand the text apart from any outside influence, be it good or bad. The sad thing about this is that it is a subtle and devious form of pride.
But how can one break through the fog and help people see their error in this? I don’t know. These people have been shaped this way by factors in their lives that I could never determine or undo. There are aesthetic factors which, if we could pull these people away from, would cease influencing them in this direction. Polemically discursive news and talk shows, as well as Fundamentalist TV preachers, are central to this, but you can’t exactly change another person’s habits for them. When talking to people like this, I personally find I’m more on the listening end than the talking end, because it’s nearly impossible to get a word in. And certainly, God can break through to a person like this. I know my duty is to listen patiently, and to point out key errors like this as I have opportunity in such a way that the person feels respected and not rebuked or insulted. Beyond that, prayer, as well as the demonstration of a more humble approach to life, can do wonders in influencing others for the better. Change might not come as quick as we would like, but it will come as quickly as God wants, and as He is the only one who knows all, He knows what is best.
Friend: I don’t know why so-and-so is taking the class. He can’t become an elder.
Myself: Why not?
Friend: He’s been divorced. He hasn’t been “the husband of one wife”.
Myself: I don’t believe you’re interpreting that passage correctly. The passage is referring to polygamists, not to those who have been divorced. Someone who has been divorced and remarried only has one wife.
Friend: No, you’re interpreting the passage. I’m just reading what it says.
Once I was done picking my jaw up off the floor, the conversation continued along a slightly different path. It wasn’t that I was offended at his statement. Like I said, he’s an old friend, and I don’t think anything he could ever do would offend me. But I had never heard such a ridiculous statement in my life. My friend, God bless him, isn’t a complete idiot, but he’s not exactly a Rhodes scholar, if you get my drift. This was simply a misunderstanding of language, and meaning, and, well, truth. But I thought that would be the last time I would hear anything like that.
And it was – until this morning after church, as I was carrying on a conversation with an older lady in our church. She likes to refer to herself as “an Episcopalian, Charismatic, Pentecostal Fundamentalist”, and the redundancy of including both “Charismatic” and “Pentecostal” in that phrase doesn’t seem to bother her in the least. We were discussing our former president Jimmy Carter’s masquerade of traditionalism, in the realm of politics, but especially when it came to his claims to be a good old Southern Baptist stalwart. This drifted into a conversation about what true fundamentalism looks like, including the idea of taking the Bible “literally”. I should have known I was in deep water at this point, but the reality of the situation slipped past me. As the idea of “taking the Bible literally” has been used as an excuse for all sorts of shoddy Scriptural interpretations in the past two hundred years, red flags normally start flying at this point for me. Blame it on the communion wine, but I didn’t see this iceberg coming. It happened a bit like this:
Lady: Have you ever read Isaiah?
Myself, in disbelief: Uhhh, yeah.
Lady: I read it forty years ago, and I knew immediately what it was about.
Myself, with bated breath: What’s that?
Lady: Isaiah talks about all the Jews living throughout the world and God bringing them back to their land. I saw God doing that and knew that’s what Isaiah was talking about.
Myself, with much hesitancy: I actually believe that happened two thousand years ago.
Lady: No, it didn’t. That’s never happened before in the history of the world, because nobody inhabited the United States back then. Jews would have had to have been in the United States for them to come back from all over the world.
Myself, in over my head: Have any Jews ever inhabited Antarctica?
Lady: I don’t know. The point is that that’s what Isaiah was talking about.
Myself, waiting for impact: I guess what I’m getting at is that there are different interpretations of that. Yours is a very new interpretation in the history of the church.
Lady: You don’t interpret the Bible. You just read what it says.
Myself, looking for an exit: Yeah…right…
Things fizzled rather quickly after that, farewells and other pleasantries dispensed with.
It’s a rather strange bird, this whole idea that “interpreting” is a bad thing to do. What surprised me in both these conversations is that both these people thought they weren’t interpreting the meaning of a text when they read it. But that, in fact, is all that is meant by the word “interpret”. And I can’t help but wonder where this confusion came from. Whatever its origin, it is a strong characteristic of Fundamentalist types. By Fundamentalists, I’m not referring, as the secular media does, to those who have some religious belief and actually live by it, even when it stands in stark contrast to the accepted practices of mainstream culture. I’m referring to Fundamentalist Christians, of the stripe that existed in abundance during the twentieth century, who think that they are able to understand everything perfectly and don’t think that they could actually be wrong about something. But Fundamentalists aren’t the only ones guilty of this.
Though many scholars have begun to recognize the error in it, most people are still living with the notion that there is actually such a thing as objectivity – that they can look at a truth claim and judge it in a perfectly unbiased manner. But this is false. Every person who has ever been born (apart from Jesus Christ) has a limited perspective and therefore never has all the information necessary to make an infallible judgment. Along with this, we are all sinners. Our motives are never perfect, and our sin is so deep we often don’t know when and how it shapes our thinking. Another way of referring to this is as the myth of neutrality. No one is neutral in their judgment, nor should they be. Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and that is exactly the way God intends it. Our judgments, therefore, are to be biased towards what is true and good.
It’s this myth of objectivity that stands behind conversations like the ones I’ve just mentioned. These people have somehow come to believe that to “interpret” a text means to insert a meaning into a text that isn’t there – what scholars call “eisegesis”. They, however, believe they are pure in their desires and perspective (in contrast with everyone else in the world), and so they think they can perfectly understand the text apart from any outside influence, be it good or bad. The sad thing about this is that it is a subtle and devious form of pride.
But how can one break through the fog and help people see their error in this? I don’t know. These people have been shaped this way by factors in their lives that I could never determine or undo. There are aesthetic factors which, if we could pull these people away from, would cease influencing them in this direction. Polemically discursive news and talk shows, as well as Fundamentalist TV preachers, are central to this, but you can’t exactly change another person’s habits for them. When talking to people like this, I personally find I’m more on the listening end than the talking end, because it’s nearly impossible to get a word in. And certainly, God can break through to a person like this. I know my duty is to listen patiently, and to point out key errors like this as I have opportunity in such a way that the person feels respected and not rebuked or insulted. Beyond that, prayer, as well as the demonstration of a more humble approach to life, can do wonders in influencing others for the better. Change might not come as quick as we would like, but it will come as quickly as God wants, and as He is the only one who knows all, He knows what is best.
The Church is Full of Hypocrites...Or So They Say
One of the common reasons cited by people who don’t attend church as to why they don’t is, “the church is full of hypocrites”. It’s amazing how sayings like this get started and spread, just like urban legends do. I can’t help but wonder who the first person was to make this statement. And you can tell in each case that this wasn’t an original thought the person had, because it is always phrased in exactly the same way – “the church is full of hypocrites”. And to think Christians are the ones accused of being thoughtless in their adherence to certain beliefs.
There are a couple of responses I’ve found to this statement. The first is, “what better place is there for hypocrites to be?” This one might not fly with the average unbeliever, because they don’t really think the church is a good place to be, or else they’d be there themselves. Nonetheless, it’s a point well considered. If the church is the place to go if one wants to be cured of their sin, and hypocrisy really is a sin (as all sides seem to agree on), then hypocrites need to be in the church. One just can’t expect them to be cured of their hypocrisy overnight, however. Christians spend their whole lives being straightened out by God, and the thing isn’t completed until we die.
But there’s another response, and it gets more to the heart of what the person is implying when they make this statement. And that is to say, “There are hypocrites outside of the church, too.” What I find implied by the statement, “the church is full of hypocrites”, is two things. One is simply the idea that if Christians really believe what they say they believe, then they should live more in accordance with their beliefs than they do. This is a fair assessment. We North American Christians are doing a horrible job in the area of holiness, and the average unbeliever knows it, and has probably experienced it first hand on numerous occasions. Sometimes, this is simply that unbelievers think they know what holiness looks like, and when they see us failing to live up to what they believe our standards are, they think we are living hypocritically. This is true when it comes to things such as drinking alcohol, which, though certain Christian groups believe is sinful, actually is not. But these non-issues to the side, there are many areas in which we simply are failing to obey God, and we are failing miserably. This, despite their thoughts to the contrary, excuses no unbeliever for their failure to repent. When we all stand before God one day to give an account, all finger pointing will be dismissed outright as inadmissible. When God addresses me, he will hold me accountable for failing to demonstrate Christ to others. But He won’t dismiss anyone on that basis. All this considered, as John Calvin said, “We are all partly unbelievers until we die.” And since all sin exists because we fail to believe God, sin is inevitable. I believe God; therefore I seek to obey Him. But I struggle with unbelief, and therefore sometimes I sin.
But the other implication is that people outside of the church aren’t hypocrites. Just as everyone, both inside and outside the church, is at least partly an unbeliever, so everyone, both inside and outside of the church, is partly a hypocrite. Nobody ever lives 100% consistently with what they say they believe, and those who say they do are either self-deceived or outright liars. Inasmuch as we never know ourselves as well as we think we do, the former is probably the far more frequent occurrence. But hypocrisy is common in all people. Christian pastors preaching against adultery sometimes make the big mistake of sleeping with their secretaries (and hopefully are removed from office for it), and pagan relativists actually stop at red lights. Believers sometimes surf the web on company time when they know better, and non-Christians who believe it’s wrong to take illegal drugs sometimes give in to peer-pressure and find themselves at a party with a joint between their fingers. Hypocrisy is a common, everyday occurrence.
In conjunction to this, one gets the impression from unbelievers that those who don’t attend church are easier to get along with. I personally have found this, quite frankly, to be a load of, well, you-know-what (if you will pardon my brief departure from detached, scholarly discourse). Those who don’t attend church lie and steal. They cheat on their boyfriends, girlfriends, and spouses. They are greedy, they abuse others, and they murder. In fact, they do every sin you can think of, and, from my experience, sin much more actively and freely than most every Christian I’ve known. To top it off, all these things create disharmony in their families and communities. Thus, to pretend that there is a world of non-believers out there just doing their own thing and not hurting anybody else is dishonest.
But back to the question of hypocrisy, why is it always applied to Christians, and rarely to non-Christians? Part of the reason is that Christians are so vocal in the so-called culture wars. And the liberal media has also done such good job demonizing Evangelicals that non-Christians act like we’re armed to the teeth and ready to start raiding houses at any moment. (In case you’re wondering, we aren’t.) Non-Christians are afraid that Christians are trying to take over society and enforce their moral standards on them. This is partly true, depending on which Christian group you’re talking about (some are trying to force morality, whereas some could care less what you do) and which moral standard you’re talking about. But those interested in enforcing Christian morality, so far as I know, are interested in doing so through legal methods. The point being that in such an atmosphere as this, where the church is pointing fingers at the unbelievers in the culture and trying to get them to “shape up”, the tendency by other believers is going to be to want to fire back with accusations. I, for one, would rather bring others to our side through persuasion than through hostile engagement.
Sometimes the person has had a bad church experience, as the increasing number of child abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church has shown us in recent years. To say this is understandable is an understatement. But I think if we were to ask around, we would find most everybody has had some sort of bad experience in the church, though some are much worse than others. The solution to this isn’t to escape the church for good, but rather to embrace it and seek to change it for the better. Once again, the world outside the church is full of hypocrites and wicked people, too.
But another reason why unbelievers respond this way is simply guilt. As Paul tells us in Romans 1, God has revealed Himself to all mankind and they have refused to serve Him. They see God in creation, refuse Him, and God gives them over to their sin. And so when unbelievers say things like this, it’s a smokescreen. It’s simply a way of masking their guilt. They know God calls them to obey Him, and by bringing up the church, we are simply putting before them the thing they’ve been running desperately from, and that’s God.
So, to you believers, don’t be afraid to engage a person when you meet a response like this. If you do, you’ll do the person a disservice by allowing their resistance to Christ to continue. Sure, there are plenty of hypocrites in the church. But, as true as this is, it excuses no one from repenting and trusting in Christ.
To those of you who would offer this as an excuse, you might put off the person who would share the gospel with you. But you aren’t fooling God. He calls you to repentance, and that for your own good. You can find salvation in Him – don’t resist Him.
There are a couple of responses I’ve found to this statement. The first is, “what better place is there for hypocrites to be?” This one might not fly with the average unbeliever, because they don’t really think the church is a good place to be, or else they’d be there themselves. Nonetheless, it’s a point well considered. If the church is the place to go if one wants to be cured of their sin, and hypocrisy really is a sin (as all sides seem to agree on), then hypocrites need to be in the church. One just can’t expect them to be cured of their hypocrisy overnight, however. Christians spend their whole lives being straightened out by God, and the thing isn’t completed until we die.
But there’s another response, and it gets more to the heart of what the person is implying when they make this statement. And that is to say, “There are hypocrites outside of the church, too.” What I find implied by the statement, “the church is full of hypocrites”, is two things. One is simply the idea that if Christians really believe what they say they believe, then they should live more in accordance with their beliefs than they do. This is a fair assessment. We North American Christians are doing a horrible job in the area of holiness, and the average unbeliever knows it, and has probably experienced it first hand on numerous occasions. Sometimes, this is simply that unbelievers think they know what holiness looks like, and when they see us failing to live up to what they believe our standards are, they think we are living hypocritically. This is true when it comes to things such as drinking alcohol, which, though certain Christian groups believe is sinful, actually is not. But these non-issues to the side, there are many areas in which we simply are failing to obey God, and we are failing miserably. This, despite their thoughts to the contrary, excuses no unbeliever for their failure to repent. When we all stand before God one day to give an account, all finger pointing will be dismissed outright as inadmissible. When God addresses me, he will hold me accountable for failing to demonstrate Christ to others. But He won’t dismiss anyone on that basis. All this considered, as John Calvin said, “We are all partly unbelievers until we die.” And since all sin exists because we fail to believe God, sin is inevitable. I believe God; therefore I seek to obey Him. But I struggle with unbelief, and therefore sometimes I sin.
But the other implication is that people outside of the church aren’t hypocrites. Just as everyone, both inside and outside the church, is at least partly an unbeliever, so everyone, both inside and outside of the church, is partly a hypocrite. Nobody ever lives 100% consistently with what they say they believe, and those who say they do are either self-deceived or outright liars. Inasmuch as we never know ourselves as well as we think we do, the former is probably the far more frequent occurrence. But hypocrisy is common in all people. Christian pastors preaching against adultery sometimes make the big mistake of sleeping with their secretaries (and hopefully are removed from office for it), and pagan relativists actually stop at red lights. Believers sometimes surf the web on company time when they know better, and non-Christians who believe it’s wrong to take illegal drugs sometimes give in to peer-pressure and find themselves at a party with a joint between their fingers. Hypocrisy is a common, everyday occurrence.
In conjunction to this, one gets the impression from unbelievers that those who don’t attend church are easier to get along with. I personally have found this, quite frankly, to be a load of, well, you-know-what (if you will pardon my brief departure from detached, scholarly discourse). Those who don’t attend church lie and steal. They cheat on their boyfriends, girlfriends, and spouses. They are greedy, they abuse others, and they murder. In fact, they do every sin you can think of, and, from my experience, sin much more actively and freely than most every Christian I’ve known. To top it off, all these things create disharmony in their families and communities. Thus, to pretend that there is a world of non-believers out there just doing their own thing and not hurting anybody else is dishonest.
But back to the question of hypocrisy, why is it always applied to Christians, and rarely to non-Christians? Part of the reason is that Christians are so vocal in the so-called culture wars. And the liberal media has also done such good job demonizing Evangelicals that non-Christians act like we’re armed to the teeth and ready to start raiding houses at any moment. (In case you’re wondering, we aren’t.) Non-Christians are afraid that Christians are trying to take over society and enforce their moral standards on them. This is partly true, depending on which Christian group you’re talking about (some are trying to force morality, whereas some could care less what you do) and which moral standard you’re talking about. But those interested in enforcing Christian morality, so far as I know, are interested in doing so through legal methods. The point being that in such an atmosphere as this, where the church is pointing fingers at the unbelievers in the culture and trying to get them to “shape up”, the tendency by other believers is going to be to want to fire back with accusations. I, for one, would rather bring others to our side through persuasion than through hostile engagement.
Sometimes the person has had a bad church experience, as the increasing number of child abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church has shown us in recent years. To say this is understandable is an understatement. But I think if we were to ask around, we would find most everybody has had some sort of bad experience in the church, though some are much worse than others. The solution to this isn’t to escape the church for good, but rather to embrace it and seek to change it for the better. Once again, the world outside the church is full of hypocrites and wicked people, too.
But another reason why unbelievers respond this way is simply guilt. As Paul tells us in Romans 1, God has revealed Himself to all mankind and they have refused to serve Him. They see God in creation, refuse Him, and God gives them over to their sin. And so when unbelievers say things like this, it’s a smokescreen. It’s simply a way of masking their guilt. They know God calls them to obey Him, and by bringing up the church, we are simply putting before them the thing they’ve been running desperately from, and that’s God.
So, to you believers, don’t be afraid to engage a person when you meet a response like this. If you do, you’ll do the person a disservice by allowing their resistance to Christ to continue. Sure, there are plenty of hypocrites in the church. But, as true as this is, it excuses no one from repenting and trusting in Christ.
To those of you who would offer this as an excuse, you might put off the person who would share the gospel with you. But you aren’t fooling God. He calls you to repentance, and that for your own good. You can find salvation in Him – don’t resist Him.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Hardware Mispronunciations, pt. 2
Here are a few more:
Roach Defoggers – roach foggers
Flexible Duck Hangers – flexible duct hangers (I know, the “t” in “duct” is almost silent, and so maybe this one isn’t legitimate. But the thought of “flexible ducks” is just too funny to pass by.)
Profane tanks – propane tanks
Stubs – studs
Cylinder blocks – cinder blocks
Masonite bits – masonry bits
Light Stick Department – fluorescent bulb department (?)
Racket – ratchet
Humourous – humus
Cow Compound – cow manure
Cadillac Converter – catalytic converter
Spastic Moss - Sphagnum Moss
Saliva Rocks – lava rocks
Spazling – spackling
Protane tanks – again, propane tanks…
Roach Defoggers – roach foggers
Flexible Duck Hangers – flexible duct hangers (I know, the “t” in “duct” is almost silent, and so maybe this one isn’t legitimate. But the thought of “flexible ducks” is just too funny to pass by.)
Profane tanks – propane tanks
Stubs – studs
Cylinder blocks – cinder blocks
Masonite bits – masonry bits
Light Stick Department – fluorescent bulb department (?)
Racket – ratchet
Humourous – humus
Cow Compound – cow manure
Cadillac Converter – catalytic converter
Spastic Moss - Sphagnum Moss
Saliva Rocks – lava rocks
Spazling – spackling
Protane tanks – again, propane tanks…
Friday, October 19, 2007
Anglo-Catholicism and Homosexuality
While perusing David Virtue’s website last night, I ran across this essay discussing the link between Anglo-Catholicism and homosexuality. It originally appeared in the journal Victorian Studies, which is published by Indiana University Press. While the connection between Catholic practice (whether of the Roman or the English variety) and a more effete sensibility has been apparent to me for some time, I was surprised upon reading this essay at how explicit a connection there has been historically since the founding of the Tractarian movement. Anglo-Catholics might not like it, but the essay is well documented, and I think the author argues his point quite well.
There are a couple of caveats I would like to offer, however. Upon reading the article, one might be left with the idea that any interest in aesthetic matters and ritual automatically leads one towards homosexuality. On the contrary, men are often drawn towards ritual, and this has nothing to do with any latent or explicit homosexual tendencies. Rather, it is because ritual, when done right, conveys a sense of honor, or of nobility, or of respect. This, in the church setting, is usually described with the word “reverence”, though the word is more vague than we often recognize, and is sometimes used to describe a type of worship that I would prefer to call “dead”. What men long for is a sense of honor, and they will be drawn towards ritual that has that ethos about it. This is often implicitly acknowledged in our culture. When, for instance, was the last time you saw a military recruitment commercial on TV that used a Barbara Streisand song as background music? Or, for that matter, a Vineyard worship-style song? Men find in military ritual a sense of honor symbolically conveyed. This is also demonstrated in the vast ritual practices of predominantly male groups such as the Freemasons.
Also, one could read the essay and come away with a sense that the rise of homosexuality in Western culture was solely the result of the rise of Anglo-Catholicism. But sin is simply more complicated than that. Wherever there is a failure in a culture, the blame falls as much on the family as anywhere else, and primarily that on the failure of fathers to rule their homes in love. Nonetheless, the connection is clear, and Anglo-Catholicism is no doubt to blame for part of the problem.
I found the following advice, cited in the essay on page 23, which was taken from “an influential guide for Anglican confessors” to be worthy of some comment. When instructing confessors on how to deal with those who struggle with homosexuality, the guide states that the “only treatment lies in the strengthening of the will to resist temptation.” But how does one strengthen his will? Unfortunately, we don’t have the context of the statement with which to clarify it. Nonetheless, I think it is telling. So often, in dealing with any sort of temptation, we think, on the basis of supposedly reliable counsel, that this is the way to go about it – just pull yourself together, and everything will be okay. Anyone who has tried to follow this advice knows how fruitless it is. And if what the manual means is that one must flee temptation, as Scripture puts it, then that is true enough. But there are a couple of other indispensable things one must do in order to flee temptation. One is simply the worship of the Triune God. When Paul, in Romans 1, discusses the descent of humanity into sin, he points out to us that it began with a failure to worship God and to give God the glory. All the other sins that Paul lists were merely derivative of these twin failures. So if one wishes to avoid any sin, he must begin by worshipping God and actively giving Him glory. The other solution to temptation is simply the right use of the thing we’ve been misusing. In the case of sexual temptation, the solution to sexual perversion is sexual activity as God intended it within the confines of marriage. While there are sins for which the solution is simply self-deprivation from the thing we are misusing (drug addiction, for instance), things don’t “not exist”, and neither can we. If we must remove something illicit from our lives, we have to replace it with something licit. If we don’t, we will inevitably replace it with another illicit thing. Both means of dealing with temptation are a latent admission of our non-independence, the admission of which John Donne made when he said, “no man is an island”. We are creatures of God, and as such are dependent primarily on Him. But we are also dependent on other of His creatures as vehicles of His grace, whether it be food for nourishment or spouses for procreation – or, for that matter, either one simply for the enjoyment of life. Such is idolatry only when they are enjoyed outside of the boundaries the Creator has set for them.
There are a couple of caveats I would like to offer, however. Upon reading the article, one might be left with the idea that any interest in aesthetic matters and ritual automatically leads one towards homosexuality. On the contrary, men are often drawn towards ritual, and this has nothing to do with any latent or explicit homosexual tendencies. Rather, it is because ritual, when done right, conveys a sense of honor, or of nobility, or of respect. This, in the church setting, is usually described with the word “reverence”, though the word is more vague than we often recognize, and is sometimes used to describe a type of worship that I would prefer to call “dead”. What men long for is a sense of honor, and they will be drawn towards ritual that has that ethos about it. This is often implicitly acknowledged in our culture. When, for instance, was the last time you saw a military recruitment commercial on TV that used a Barbara Streisand song as background music? Or, for that matter, a Vineyard worship-style song? Men find in military ritual a sense of honor symbolically conveyed. This is also demonstrated in the vast ritual practices of predominantly male groups such as the Freemasons.
Also, one could read the essay and come away with a sense that the rise of homosexuality in Western culture was solely the result of the rise of Anglo-Catholicism. But sin is simply more complicated than that. Wherever there is a failure in a culture, the blame falls as much on the family as anywhere else, and primarily that on the failure of fathers to rule their homes in love. Nonetheless, the connection is clear, and Anglo-Catholicism is no doubt to blame for part of the problem.
I found the following advice, cited in the essay on page 23, which was taken from “an influential guide for Anglican confessors” to be worthy of some comment. When instructing confessors on how to deal with those who struggle with homosexuality, the guide states that the “only treatment lies in the strengthening of the will to resist temptation.” But how does one strengthen his will? Unfortunately, we don’t have the context of the statement with which to clarify it. Nonetheless, I think it is telling. So often, in dealing with any sort of temptation, we think, on the basis of supposedly reliable counsel, that this is the way to go about it – just pull yourself together, and everything will be okay. Anyone who has tried to follow this advice knows how fruitless it is. And if what the manual means is that one must flee temptation, as Scripture puts it, then that is true enough. But there are a couple of other indispensable things one must do in order to flee temptation. One is simply the worship of the Triune God. When Paul, in Romans 1, discusses the descent of humanity into sin, he points out to us that it began with a failure to worship God and to give God the glory. All the other sins that Paul lists were merely derivative of these twin failures. So if one wishes to avoid any sin, he must begin by worshipping God and actively giving Him glory. The other solution to temptation is simply the right use of the thing we’ve been misusing. In the case of sexual temptation, the solution to sexual perversion is sexual activity as God intended it within the confines of marriage. While there are sins for which the solution is simply self-deprivation from the thing we are misusing (drug addiction, for instance), things don’t “not exist”, and neither can we. If we must remove something illicit from our lives, we have to replace it with something licit. If we don’t, we will inevitably replace it with another illicit thing. Both means of dealing with temptation are a latent admission of our non-independence, the admission of which John Donne made when he said, “no man is an island”. We are creatures of God, and as such are dependent primarily on Him. But we are also dependent on other of His creatures as vehicles of His grace, whether it be food for nourishment or spouses for procreation – or, for that matter, either one simply for the enjoyment of life. Such is idolatry only when they are enjoyed outside of the boundaries the Creator has set for them.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Hardware Mispronunciations, pt. 1
Several years back, I went to work for a small, family-owned hardware store, where I worked for about a year and a half. For a long time before my going to work there, they had been keeping a list of mispronunciations of products asked for by customers who came into the store, plus mispronunciations of other related things. I had the privilege of adding to that list during my time there. Some of them are downright hilarious, whereas some are just weird. I’ve been planning to post some of those on occasion, and here are the first few of them. Enjoy.
Strews and boats – screws and bolts (this one was rather common)
Dog change – dog chain
Exceptional – receptacle
Garden tilter – garden tiller
Benolia – linoleum
Scream wire – screen wire
Chalking – caulking
Tile gout – tile grout
Crematic tile – ceramic tile
Scrubbery – shrubbery
Manantha paint – enamel paint
Rockwilder – Rottweiler
Tweedle nose pliers – Needle nose pliers
Potty soil – potting soil
Collard pins – cotter pins
Strews and boats – screws and bolts (this one was rather common)
Dog change – dog chain
Exceptional – receptacle
Garden tilter – garden tiller
Benolia – linoleum
Scream wire – screen wire
Chalking – caulking
Tile gout – tile grout
Crematic tile – ceramic tile
Scrubbery – shrubbery
Manantha paint – enamel paint
Rockwilder – Rottweiler
Tweedle nose pliers – Needle nose pliers
Potty soil – potting soil
Collard pins – cotter pins
Friday, October 12, 2007
Ron Paul, on baseball and Congress
I do believe that if the Democrats and the Republicans played more baseball and legislated a lot less, the country would be much better off. I am convinced the annual baseball game played by the Republicans and the Democrats must be considered one of the most productive events in which the Members of Congress participate.
-- The Honorable Ron Paul, before the House of Representatives, September 19, 1984
-- The Honorable Ron Paul, before the House of Representatives, September 19, 1984
Monday, October 01, 2007
Idolatry takes many forms, #1
Liberals hate conservatives and conservatives hate liberals, and that makes both feel good about themselves.
-- Richard John Neuhaus
-- Richard John Neuhaus
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Leftist Consumerism #2
Our local Barnes and Noble stores have Starbucks Coffee shops in them, and as a coffee addict, I’ve been known to get a cup of coffee or two while perusing the shelves. It has increasingly been a struggle, however, as I’ve become aware of Starbucks’ involvement in some less than honorable social practices. Starbucks, I've learned, is notoriously sympathetic to the extreme Left. The newspapers they sell are leftist in their ideology. Starbucks has been known to support gay pride parades and other aspects of the homosexual agenda. And chances are slim that, among the CD’s they sell in their stores, you’ll find Handel’s Messiah or contemporary Christian artists like Third Day. Artists known for their anti-Christian lyrics, like Dave Matthews, however, are there in abundance.
But, knowing all of this, I was still surprised to discover the messages they’ve been printing on their cups and the ideas they were promoting through them. How, as a reader, I have never read what’s on the cup of coffee they give you, I don’t know.
My co-worker had stopped by Starbucks on the way to work the other morning, and she had bought latte’s for both of us. And so the day was starting well until I read this:
I was surprised. I couldn’t believe that Starbucks would be so brazen in publishing an attack on Christianity like this. And if I were Mr. Scheel, I personally wouldn’t want my ignorance spread throughout the world like this. To assume that faith in God is contrary to being consistently cognitive is to reveal a lack of knowledge of the Scriptures and the entire Christian tradition. Many have come to faith in Christ simply because of the historical evidence and Christianity’s logical coherence. In fact, Christianity is a religion built on the verity of historical claims. And to assume that we have the ability to inside ourselves apart from God to overcome difficulties is to assert quite a bit of over self-confidence, which many a dead humanist could testify against, could they communicate with us.
My co-worker was as shocked as I was, so we were intrigued to find the quote on her cup:
I’ve heard of Pearson before, but knew nothing about him. According to his website, he is promoting a “gospel of inclusion”, which is just a modern way of saying that all those passages in the Scripture that teach a literal Hell to which all the unrepentant will be sent when they die are simply untrue. Historically this has been called Universalism, and historic Christianity has, for the most part, rejected it as heresy. In fact, Pearson’s website notes that his viewpoint on Hell has been deemed by his Pentecostal colleagues to be heretical.
Pearson seems to have other errors besides this one, as indicated by this quote from his website:
Yet Scripture says Adam was a created being, made of the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7). And while God gave Adam life, to say that we, who are descended from Adam, are made of the same substance as Divinity, is to claim something contradicted by Scripture. God repeatedly sets himself apart from man throughout Scripture as a unique being and reminds us that we aren’t Him, but are rather created by Him. This statement instead sounds like the sort of statement one finds in Eastern philosophy, the kind that Pearson seems so intent on merging with Christianity, as he understands (or misunderstands) it.
I have a hard time understanding how one can say hell is “an invention of man” when God clearly teaches us this through His word. And if truth isn’t taught, then why does Pearson bother to teach? And what “pre-incarnate consciousness” is he talking about? This is something that is nowhere found in Scripture. There is no “pre-incarnate consciousness”. Eastern philosophy teaches this; Christianity does not.
But this is clever on the part of Starbucks. Find a guy wearing a clerical shirt who calls himself a Bishop and masquerades as a Christian minister and put a quote by him that clearly contradicts Christian teaching on your cups.
So am I suggesting, as Evangelicals often do, that we should boycott Starbucks or Barnes and Noble? No, not exactly. History has proven that boycotts accomplish little. Evangelical Christians from the ‘80’s through today have tried to power corporations into submission through boycotts, and it has proven largely ineffective. I’m not saying that you as an individual might not want to take your business elsewhere. As I said, it’s a struggle for me. I do regard the two companies as different, however. With Barnes and Noble, the increase of purchases of books and magazines that promote a more Biblical worldview might cause B & N to increase the prominence of better books on displays and on shelves. Ron Paul’s book might just make it onto the “In the Media” display, for instance. With Starbucks, however, it’s different. There’s no such thing as Christian coffee. They don’t provide a better choice when it comes to newspapers, and I doubt they’ll be sponsoring majoring Christian events any time soon. And while I like a lot of the music they sell, and wouldn’t have a problem buying it (somewhere else, that is), they are promoting a worldview that is the problem. You the consumer have to make your own decision on these things.
There is a bigger issue here, though. How do we as Christians change society? It isn’t through boycotts. As Paul spoke of the Jews, “For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Romans 2:24). And the same is true today. If those who aren’t God’s people speak ill of God, it is because of a failure on the part of God’s people. If we fail to worship God properly, if we fail to give him the glory and praise He is due, if we fail to show love and mercy as he does, and if we fail to live holy lives, then we will continue to fail to influence society for the better. If, however, we begin to do these things, God will honor our deeds, and blogs like this one won’t need to be written any more.
But, knowing all of this, I was still surprised to discover the messages they’ve been printing on their cups and the ideas they were promoting through them. How, as a reader, I have never read what’s on the cup of coffee they give you, I don’t know.
My co-worker had stopped by Starbucks on the way to work the other morning, and she had bought latte’s for both of us. And so the day was starting well until I read this:
The Way I See It # 247
Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.
- Bill Scheel, Starbucks customer from London, Ontario. He describes himself as a “modern day nobody.”
I was surprised. I couldn’t believe that Starbucks would be so brazen in publishing an attack on Christianity like this. And if I were Mr. Scheel, I personally wouldn’t want my ignorance spread throughout the world like this. To assume that faith in God is contrary to being consistently cognitive is to reveal a lack of knowledge of the Scriptures and the entire Christian tradition. Many have come to faith in Christ simply because of the historical evidence and Christianity’s logical coherence. In fact, Christianity is a religion built on the verity of historical claims. And to assume that we have the ability to inside ourselves apart from God to overcome difficulties is to assert quite a bit of over self-confidence, which many a dead humanist could testify against, could they communicate with us.
My co-worker was as shocked as I was, so we were intrigued to find the quote on her cup:
The Way I See It # 250
In reality, hell is not such an intention of God as it is an invention of man. God is love and people are precious. Authentic truth is not so much taught or learned as it is remembered. Somewhere in your pre-incarnate consciousness you were loved absolutely because you were. Loved absolutely, and in reality, you still are! Remember who you are!
- Bishop Carlton Pearson
Author, speaker, spiritual leader and recording artist
I’ve heard of Pearson before, but knew nothing about him. According to his website, he is promoting a “gospel of inclusion”, which is just a modern way of saying that all those passages in the Scripture that teach a literal Hell to which all the unrepentant will be sent when they die are simply untrue. Historically this has been called Universalism, and historic Christianity has, for the most part, rejected it as heresy. In fact, Pearson’s website notes that his viewpoint on Hell has been deemed by his Pentecostal colleagues to be heretical.
Pearson seems to have other errors besides this one, as indicated by this quote from his website:
" Since we came from God, we are made of the same substance as Divinity. "
Yet Scripture says Adam was a created being, made of the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7). And while God gave Adam life, to say that we, who are descended from Adam, are made of the same substance as Divinity, is to claim something contradicted by Scripture. God repeatedly sets himself apart from man throughout Scripture as a unique being and reminds us that we aren’t Him, but are rather created by Him. This statement instead sounds like the sort of statement one finds in Eastern philosophy, the kind that Pearson seems so intent on merging with Christianity, as he understands (or misunderstands) it.
I have a hard time understanding how one can say hell is “an invention of man” when God clearly teaches us this through His word. And if truth isn’t taught, then why does Pearson bother to teach? And what “pre-incarnate consciousness” is he talking about? This is something that is nowhere found in Scripture. There is no “pre-incarnate consciousness”. Eastern philosophy teaches this; Christianity does not.
But this is clever on the part of Starbucks. Find a guy wearing a clerical shirt who calls himself a Bishop and masquerades as a Christian minister and put a quote by him that clearly contradicts Christian teaching on your cups.
So am I suggesting, as Evangelicals often do, that we should boycott Starbucks or Barnes and Noble? No, not exactly. History has proven that boycotts accomplish little. Evangelical Christians from the ‘80’s through today have tried to power corporations into submission through boycotts, and it has proven largely ineffective. I’m not saying that you as an individual might not want to take your business elsewhere. As I said, it’s a struggle for me. I do regard the two companies as different, however. With Barnes and Noble, the increase of purchases of books and magazines that promote a more Biblical worldview might cause B & N to increase the prominence of better books on displays and on shelves. Ron Paul’s book might just make it onto the “In the Media” display, for instance. With Starbucks, however, it’s different. There’s no such thing as Christian coffee. They don’t provide a better choice when it comes to newspapers, and I doubt they’ll be sponsoring majoring Christian events any time soon. And while I like a lot of the music they sell, and wouldn’t have a problem buying it (somewhere else, that is), they are promoting a worldview that is the problem. You the consumer have to make your own decision on these things.
There is a bigger issue here, though. How do we as Christians change society? It isn’t through boycotts. As Paul spoke of the Jews, “For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Romans 2:24). And the same is true today. If those who aren’t God’s people speak ill of God, it is because of a failure on the part of God’s people. If we fail to worship God properly, if we fail to give him the glory and praise He is due, if we fail to show love and mercy as he does, and if we fail to live holy lives, then we will continue to fail to influence society for the better. If, however, we begin to do these things, God will honor our deeds, and blogs like this one won’t need to be written any more.
Leftist Consumerism #1
A friend of mine gave me a Barnes and Noble gift card a couple of weeks back that’s been burning a hole in my pocket, so I got the notion in my head yesterday that I needed to use it to buy Ron Paul’s book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom. I was surprised when looking on the B & N website, however, to find that they didn’t have any in stock. This is a major Republican presidential candidate for the ’08 election who has published a book this year, and they didn’t have it in stock. How strange. “Could it be that they sold all their copies immediately upon Paul’s win in the debate last week?” I thought to myself. There’s no way of knowing, I guess.
So I visited Amazon.com out of curiosity. Not only did they not have any listed in stock, they didn’t even show they could order new copies. And so the story gets weirder.
I was going to be out near one of the local B & N’s, so I thought I’d stop by and see if they had any of them. And sure enough, back in the corner in the “Politics” section they had two copies.
But what surprised me the most met me as I was walking up to the checkout. It was a display table in the middle of the aisle marked “In the Media” (which it was quite literally. But I digress). And what was on that table? Obama? Yes. Hillary? Of course. Ron Paul? Noticeably absent.
Is this how you spell the word “bias”?
If you want to buy the book, you can get it here. They’re actually interested in selling it, and I imagine they won’t have to special order it for you.
So I visited Amazon.com out of curiosity. Not only did they not have any listed in stock, they didn’t even show they could order new copies. And so the story gets weirder.
I was going to be out near one of the local B & N’s, so I thought I’d stop by and see if they had any of them. And sure enough, back in the corner in the “Politics” section they had two copies.
But what surprised me the most met me as I was walking up to the checkout. It was a display table in the middle of the aisle marked “In the Media” (which it was quite literally. But I digress). And what was on that table? Obama? Yes. Hillary? Of course. Ron Paul? Noticeably absent.
Is this how you spell the word “bias”?
If you want to buy the book, you can get it here. They’re actually interested in selling it, and I imagine they won’t have to special order it for you.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Ron Paul, the GOP's black sheep
I was amazed this evening as I was watching Hannity & Colmes at how quickly Sean Hannity dismissed Ron Paul’s decisive win at the GOP debate the other night. Anybody have any ideas why so-called conservatives are so quick to dismiss Paul? Is it because these so-called conservatives are really about big-spending and centralism and Paul isn’t?
For those of you familiar with the Constitution Party, you might find the comments on their website about Paul interesting.
For those of you familiar with the Constitution Party, you might find the comments on their website about Paul interesting.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Pick your method of indoctrination
ABC Family, that cable station that barely shows anything suitable for a family to watch, has showed The Sound of Music several times over the past couple of days. Aside from the songs carrying some seriously humanistic messages (“I have confidence in me”, “Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good”) I like the movie. I blame it on repeated watchings through middle and high school chorus classes. Just don’t tell any of my male friends that I like it, okay?
It’s rather interesting timing, coinciding with the beginning of the government school year as it has. Did somebody mention fascism? Oh, right, I did. Good thing we don’t deal with that in the U.S. today. (That’s sarcasm, folks.) In case anyone was wondering, the Von Trapp children were homeschooled. (That’s not sarcasm.)
I had forgotten the repeated line of Herr Zeller, Hitler’s lackey – “Nothing has changed in Austria.” Shades of Animal Farm. Orwell certainly knew what he was talking about.
You know the sad thing about channels like ABC Family? They might show a good movie occasionally like The Sound of Music. But if I had a family, I couldn’t let them watch the channel simply because of the commercials. I don’t feel so good about watching them myself.
“I must have done something good” – or was that, “I must have done some supererogatory works”? You know, the Roman Catholic theme is beginning to become clear…
It’s rather interesting timing, coinciding with the beginning of the government school year as it has. Did somebody mention fascism? Oh, right, I did. Good thing we don’t deal with that in the U.S. today. (That’s sarcasm, folks.) In case anyone was wondering, the Von Trapp children were homeschooled. (That’s not sarcasm.)
I had forgotten the repeated line of Herr Zeller, Hitler’s lackey – “Nothing has changed in Austria.” Shades of Animal Farm. Orwell certainly knew what he was talking about.
You know the sad thing about channels like ABC Family? They might show a good movie occasionally like The Sound of Music. But if I had a family, I couldn’t let them watch the channel simply because of the commercials. I don’t feel so good about watching them myself.
“I must have done something good” – or was that, “I must have done some supererogatory works”? You know, the Roman Catholic theme is beginning to become clear…
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Scriptural Speculations 3: The Heavenly Boaz
When one comes to a conviction that the Eucharist plays a more central role in the worship of the church than is typically practiced in Evangelicalism, it’s amazing how frequent one finds bread and wine together throughout Scripture. In a singles’ group I’ve been attending on Sunday evenings, we recently finished up a study of the Book of Ruth. But the relationship of the following verse to the Eucharist didn’t occur to me until the other day:
In the context, Ruth has gone to glean in Boaz’s field in order to provide for herself and Naomi. After working through the morning, the workers have broken for lunch. Boaz wasn’t required to provide for her lunch too, only to allow her to glean after his field hands. But he not only tells her not to go to any other field to glean (2:8-9), but he also calls her to sit and feast among his servants, in essence treating her better than her status as a poor person of the land would dictate. The similarity with James’s instructions on loving one’s neighbor (James 1:27 – 2:17, as well as other verses in James’s epistle), not to mention Jesus parable of the wedding feast (Luke 14:7-11) should not go unnoticed.
But in addition to this is the appearance of bread and wine in the passage. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, we shouldn’t suppose that he was starting all over with elements that had never been seen in the history of Israel before. God not only foreordained the appearance of these things in the history of Israel, but allowed them to appear in the Hebrew Scriptures for all to see.
The last phrase in the verse also signals us to Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand (Mt. 14:13-21; Mk. 6:30-44; Lk. 9:10-17; Jn. 6:1-13) and the feeding of the four thousand (Mt. 15:32-38; Mk. 8:1-10). The fact that the crowds, like Ruth, are described as being “satisfied”, as well as the comment that in each case there was food left over, suggests not only that the Gospel writers were intending to point out the parallel with Ruth’s situation, but that God Himself intended the similarities.
We might also note the number of baskets of food left in each case. In the feeding of the five thousand, there were twelve baskets left, no doubt pointing to the twelve tribes of Israel. In the feeding of the four thousand, there were seven baskets left, no doubt pointing to the seven day week God had instituted in the creation, and specifically to the Sabbath rest God had given to the world and which he had especially given to Israel. Incidentally (or Providentially), when one adds the one ephah of barley that Ruth gleaned in ch. 2 (vs. 17) with the six “measures” (presumably also ephahs, as the word describing the measurement is absent in the Hebrew) of barley that Boaz gives her in ch. 3 (vs. 15), we find that Ruth gains seven measures of barley from Boaz.
“But there is no wine at the feeding of the five thousand, or at the feeding of the four thousand,” you might be thinking. True enough, and that’s why Jesus’ discourse on being the bread of Heaven (John 6:22-71) is so important. This takes place the day after Jesus fed the five thousand (Jn. 6:22). Jesus criticizes the people for seeking Him only because he fed them and not because He can give them eternal life. But most significant for our discussion is that Jesus, toward the end of his discourse, tells the people that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life (Jn. 6:53-56). In that our Lord referred to the cup as his blood in the institution of the Supper, we can be assured that his words here are meant not only to point back to Old Testament passages like the one we find in Ruth, but also forward to his institution of the Supper.
As Boaz became the bridegroom of Ruth, so Jesus came as the Bridegroom of his New Israel (also in John, 3:29). And just as Boaz called Ruth to feast with him, so our Boaz calls us to feast with Him.
And at mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine.” So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain. And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over. (Ruth 2:14)
In the context, Ruth has gone to glean in Boaz’s field in order to provide for herself and Naomi. After working through the morning, the workers have broken for lunch. Boaz wasn’t required to provide for her lunch too, only to allow her to glean after his field hands. But he not only tells her not to go to any other field to glean (2:8-9), but he also calls her to sit and feast among his servants, in essence treating her better than her status as a poor person of the land would dictate. The similarity with James’s instructions on loving one’s neighbor (James 1:27 – 2:17, as well as other verses in James’s epistle), not to mention Jesus parable of the wedding feast (Luke 14:7-11) should not go unnoticed.
But in addition to this is the appearance of bread and wine in the passage. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, we shouldn’t suppose that he was starting all over with elements that had never been seen in the history of Israel before. God not only foreordained the appearance of these things in the history of Israel, but allowed them to appear in the Hebrew Scriptures for all to see.
The last phrase in the verse also signals us to Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand (Mt. 14:13-21; Mk. 6:30-44; Lk. 9:10-17; Jn. 6:1-13) and the feeding of the four thousand (Mt. 15:32-38; Mk. 8:1-10). The fact that the crowds, like Ruth, are described as being “satisfied”, as well as the comment that in each case there was food left over, suggests not only that the Gospel writers were intending to point out the parallel with Ruth’s situation, but that God Himself intended the similarities.
We might also note the number of baskets of food left in each case. In the feeding of the five thousand, there were twelve baskets left, no doubt pointing to the twelve tribes of Israel. In the feeding of the four thousand, there were seven baskets left, no doubt pointing to the seven day week God had instituted in the creation, and specifically to the Sabbath rest God had given to the world and which he had especially given to Israel. Incidentally (or Providentially), when one adds the one ephah of barley that Ruth gleaned in ch. 2 (vs. 17) with the six “measures” (presumably also ephahs, as the word describing the measurement is absent in the Hebrew) of barley that Boaz gives her in ch. 3 (vs. 15), we find that Ruth gains seven measures of barley from Boaz.
“But there is no wine at the feeding of the five thousand, or at the feeding of the four thousand,” you might be thinking. True enough, and that’s why Jesus’ discourse on being the bread of Heaven (John 6:22-71) is so important. This takes place the day after Jesus fed the five thousand (Jn. 6:22). Jesus criticizes the people for seeking Him only because he fed them and not because He can give them eternal life. But most significant for our discussion is that Jesus, toward the end of his discourse, tells the people that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life (Jn. 6:53-56). In that our Lord referred to the cup as his blood in the institution of the Supper, we can be assured that his words here are meant not only to point back to Old Testament passages like the one we find in Ruth, but also forward to his institution of the Supper.
As Boaz became the bridegroom of Ruth, so Jesus came as the Bridegroom of his New Israel (also in John, 3:29). And just as Boaz called Ruth to feast with him, so our Boaz calls us to feast with Him.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Greek Festival
For those of you who live in the Greensboro, NC area, the Greek Festival at the Dormition of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Church will be Friday September 14th through Sunday September 16th. For specific times, see the church website here. It’s a great time of becoming acquainted with various aspects of Greek culture – food, music, dancing, art, and worship. As one who believes that American culture is fairly vacuous in comparison to older traditional cultures like that of the Greeks, I have often found the beauty of Greek culture to create a measure of jealousy in me, such that I understand why a Protestant might jump ship and head to the Orthodox Church. (Yet the truth of Scripture has kept me from making such a leap.) So check it out, and be sure to take the tour of the church while you’re there.
In honor of the festival, let me share one of my favourite prayers from A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers. It is entitled “Prayer for the Acceptance of God’s Will”, and is attributed to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow:
In honor of the festival, let me share one of my favourite prayers from A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers. It is entitled “Prayer for the Acceptance of God’s Will”, and is attributed to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow:
O LORD, I know not what to ask of thee. Thou alone knowest what are my true needs. Thou lovest me more than I myself know how to love. Help me to see my real needs which are concealed from me. I dare not ask either a cross or consolation. I can only wait on thee. My heart is open to thee. Visit and help me, for thy great mercy’s sake. Strike me and heal me, cast me down and raise me up. I worship in silence thy holy will and thine inscrutable ways. I offer myself as a sacrifice to thee. I put all my trust in thee. I have no other desire than to fulfil thy will. Teach me how to pray. Pray thou thyself in me. Amen.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Politically Incorrect Guides
I’ve talked to a handful of people recently who have been reading some of the books from the Politically Incorrect Guide series. While I haven’t looked at any of them myself, the reviews I’ve heard have been more than favourable. So I was quite glad when last night on Book TV on C-Span 2 I discovered presentations from two of the authors from that series. The first was from Elizabeth Kantor, the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, and the second was from Carrie Lukas, the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism. Both talks were sponsored by The Eagle Forum, a conservative pro-family group I had not heard of before. And both talks were very interesting and informative, not to mention being a nice contrast from the liberal indoctrination and otherwise unintelligent babble found on TV. Ms. Kantor’s talk is free for the viewing on Book TV’s website, so I highly encourage any and all to watch it. It doesn’t appear that Ms. Lukas’s talk is up yet, but it may be added in the future, so keep your eyes open for it. Those of you who take a special interest in women’s issues will find Ms. Kantor’s talk as informative on these matters as Ms. Lukas’s, as Ms. Kantor briefly addressed the view of women in Western thought as it has been historically expressed in Western Literature.
There was also a presentation this evening by Christopher Horner, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism. I haven’t watched that one yet, but here’s the page for those interested.
There was also a presentation this evening by Christopher Horner, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism. I haven’t watched that one yet, but here’s the page for those interested.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
St. Jerome on Apostolic Succession
While surfing the net a couple of months back I found this interesting quote on the website of New Life Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Midland, Texas. As you’ll see, it is a quote from St. Jerome on the matter of the Apostolic Succession of Bishops. It is quite revealing, as Jerome here argues against the idea that, since the founding of the church, bishops have been ordained by other bishops as set apart from presbyters or priests – in other words, that the bishopric is an entirely separate office from the presbytery, and that the presbytery is derived from the bishopric, rather than the other way around. And this from the guy who translated the Latin Vulgate. It’s a wonder he ever became a saint and a church father.
St. Jerome to Evangelus, Letter 146 - http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001146.htm
We read in Isaiah the words, "the fool will speak folly," and I am told that some one has been mad enough to put deacons before presbyters, that is, before bishops. For when the apostle clearly teaches that presbyters are the same as bishops, must not a mere server of tables and of widows be insane to set himself up arrogantly over men through whose prayers the body and blood of Christ are produced? Do you ask for proof of what I say? Listen to this passage: "Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi with the bishops and deacons." Do you wish for another instance? In the Acts of the Apostles Paul thus speaks to the priests of a single church: "Take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." And lest any should in a spirit of contention argue that there must then have been more bishops than one in a single church, there is the following passage which clearly proves a bishop and a presbyter to be the same. Writing to Titus the apostle says: "For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain presbyters in every city, as I had appointed thee: if any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God." And to Timothy he says: "Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery." Peter also says in his first epistle: "The presbyters which are among you I exhort, who am your fellow-presbyter and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: feed the flock of Christ' ... taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly, according unto God." In the Greek the meaning is still plainer, for the word used is episkopountes, that is to say, overseeing, and this is the origin of the name overseer or bishop. But perhaps the testimony of these great men seems to you insufficient. If so, then listen to the blast of the gospel trumpet, that son of thunder, the disciple whom Jesus loved and who reclining on the Saviour's breast drank in the waters of sound doctrine. One of his letters begins thus: "The presbyter unto the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth; " and another thus: "The presbyter unto the well-beloved Gains whom I love in the truth." When subsequently one presbyter was chosen to preside over the rest, this was done to remedy schism and to prevent each individual from rending the church of Christ by drawing it to himself. For even at Alexandria from the time of Mark the Evangelist until the episcopates of Heraclas and Dionysius the presbyters always named as bishop one of their own number chosen by themselves and set in a more exalted position, just as an army elects a general, or as deacons appoint one of themselves whom they know to be diligent and call him archdeacon. For what function excepting ordination, belongs to a bishop that does not also belong to a presbyter? It is not the case that there is one church at Rome and another in all the world beside. Gaul and Britain, Africa and Persia, India and the East worship one Christ and observe one rule of truth. If you ask for authority, the world outweighs its capital. Wherever there is a bishop, whether it be at Rome or at Engubium, whether it be at Constantinople or at Rhegium, whether it be at Alexandria or at Zoan, his dignity is one and his priesthood is one. Neither the command of wealth nor the lowliness of poverty makes him more a bishop or less a bishop. All alike are successors of the apostles.
St. Jerome to Evangelus, Letter 146 - http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001146.htm
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
A couple of websites, in my absence
I’ve had little time for blogging as of late, so thank you to those of you who continue to visit. Hopefully I’ll be able to do some more writing before too long. For now, here’s a couple of my favourite websites, in case you want to check them out.
Issues Etc. is a radio show that airs on KFUO am in Missouri. It’s hosted by Todd Wilkins, a minister in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. (Some of you might know it’s former host better – Don Matzat, author, LCMS minister, and sometime Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals board member.) Wilkins & co. address theological issues, as well as a host of cultural and political issues from a Lutheran perspective, and they interview a wide variety of guests along the way. They air four times a week live, with the Sunday evening show being syndicated (so it might even air on one of your local Christian stations). And they archive everything they do, so if you miss it, you can go back and listen to it later. I’ve been listening to it when I’ve been eating or just bopping around the house doing various things. It’s quite enjoyable, and it’s one way for me to catch up with the latest national and international news that really is worth hearing about without turning on the idiot box and filtering through all the garbage. Among the recent topics, I think my favourite was Wilkins & co.'s visit to Joel Osteen's church (July 17).
And for something on the humorous end of things, not to mention politically incorrect, check out Engrish.com.
Issues Etc. is a radio show that airs on KFUO am in Missouri. It’s hosted by Todd Wilkins, a minister in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. (Some of you might know it’s former host better – Don Matzat, author, LCMS minister, and sometime Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals board member.) Wilkins & co. address theological issues, as well as a host of cultural and political issues from a Lutheran perspective, and they interview a wide variety of guests along the way. They air four times a week live, with the Sunday evening show being syndicated (so it might even air on one of your local Christian stations). And they archive everything they do, so if you miss it, you can go back and listen to it later. I’ve been listening to it when I’ve been eating or just bopping around the house doing various things. It’s quite enjoyable, and it’s one way for me to catch up with the latest national and international news that really is worth hearing about without turning on the idiot box and filtering through all the garbage. Among the recent topics, I think my favourite was Wilkins & co.'s visit to Joel Osteen's church (July 17).
And for something on the humorous end of things, not to mention politically incorrect, check out Engrish.com.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Martyrdom
When Christ calls a man, he bids that man to come and die.
-- World War II martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The latest issue of Christianity Today features a short article (less than a page long) on the martyrdom last April of three Christians in Malatya, Turkey. German missionary Tilmann Geske, local pastor Necati Aydin, and former Muslim Ugur Yuksel were assaulted, tortured, and murdered by a group of Muslims. The article, interspersed with several verses of Scripture about the necessity of a Christian’s suffering for his faith, was well written and inspiring.
Nonetheless, there’s one problem I have with it. It cleaned up the facts of exactly what happened in the death of these men. The article says that they were tied to chairs, “stabbed…slowly and deliberately”, and that then their throats were slit. This is all true, but the most gruesome details were left out. Here they are, for those with the stomach for them:
[Details of the torture–
* Tilman was stabbed 156 times, Necati 99 times and Ugur’s stabs were too numerous to count. They were disemboweled, and their intestines sliced up in front of their eyes. They were emasculated and watched as those body parts were destroyed. Fingers were chopped off, their noses and mouths and anuses were sliced open. Possibly the worst part was watching as their brothers were likewise tortured. Finally, their throats were sliced from ear to ear, heads practically decapitated.]
A fair bit more than what CT presented, isn’t it? The question I’m asking is this – why leave out the details? They would offend some, certainly. And maybe the reason why CT’s writer (whose name is not with the article) would leave out the details is the same reason I would signal my reader in advance that they are about to read something that not all can handle. But why not signal the reader just as I did? It could just be that the writer was attempting to present the facts in a narrative fashion, and including such details would have seemed out of place. I suspect, however, that something else is going on here.
Let’s be frank here. Most American Evangelicals are pansies. We walk into our Christian Junk Stores and the hallucinogenic smell of perfumed satchels with Scripture verses emblazoned on them waft into our nostrils while we fill up our baskets with the latest cheesy Christian t-shirts and plastic inspirational dust catchers. Somehow, we aren’t any holier for all of it, and I can’t help but think that it does more to separate us from the heart of our faith than anything.
On the other hand, we live in an extremely violent culture. I’m more amazed each day at the lengths that TV shows will go to as they push the edges of accepted decency. This is especially true on the 24 hour a day news channels, where they seem to compete constantly over who can create the greatest sense of excitement and thereby deceive you into believing that what they are really presenting to you is “news”. Every time they say, “What we are about to show you may offend some,” they know there ratings are about to go up, which is really what it’s all about for them.
Christians watch these shows, and so violence is nothing new for them. And it’s also true with movies. I’d dare say most Evangelicals have seen Braveheart, and so, while Wallace’s torture and death scene was not very explicit, the rest of the movie was. On top of this, most people probably know something of the historic practice of drawing and quartering. And for those who haven’t seen Braveheart, most certainly have seen Mel Gibson’s more recent film, The Passion of the Christ.
This leads us back to the history of martyrdom in the church. Anyone who’s spent a significant amount of time in the Evangelical church, I would think, would know something about martyrdom. Sadly, the presentations I’ve met with having grown up in the church have often been sanitized. Hearing about those who were martyred generally involves the following: the person is captured and killed, end of story. To mention that they were tortured was an extra step that was usually left out. But, once again, those who are martyred usually suffer much, much more.
And so I see the church’s treatment of martyrdom, and of violence in general, to be somewhat contradictory. We’ll watch it on TV or in the movies, where we’re able to view it from a distance. We can remain uninvolved and unaffected. This way, we can say we’re addressing it without there being any cost to us.
But the heart of the Christian faith is entirely different than what we often treat it as being. N. T. Wright addresses this in his book What Saint Paul Really Said:
It is an obvious truism to say that the cross stands at the heart of Paul’s whole theology… We are in danger of being lulled by this constant refrain [of the importance of the cross] into insensibility to what Paul was actually saying – and, equally importantly, was heard to be saying in the world of his day. Crucifixes regularly appear as jewellery in today’s post- Christian Western world, and the wearers are often blissfully unaware that their pretty ornament depicts the ancient equivalent, all in one, of the hangman’s noose, the electric chair, the thumbscrew, and the rack. Or, to be more precise, something which combined all four but went far beyond them; crucifixion was such an utterly horrible thing that the very word was usually avoided in polite Roman society. Every time Paul spoke of it – especially when he spoke in the same breath of salvation, love, grace and freedom – he and his hearers must have been conscious of the slap in the face thereby administered to their normal expectations and sensibilities. Somehow, we need to remind ourselves of this every time Paul mentions Jesus’ death, especially the mode of that death.
Paul, as did the other writers of Scripture, recognized that there are far more important questions than whether or not our sensibilities are offended. The more I’ve read Scripture over the past couple of years, the more it has occurred to me how often the faithful men and women of Scripture went out of their way to offend people. Certainly, it was never being offensive simply to offend, or as an attempt to control and manipulate others (say, in the way the marketers of Christian merchandise attempt to do). Rather, it was to bring to light the evils of sin and to lead to salvation. Nonetheless, they were offensive, and Scripture presents this as being something worth doing at times in order to accomplish God’s will. As Paul himself tells us in 1 Corinthians, the cross itself is an offense.
In American Christianity, we have a hard time imagining that following Christ could include such commitment or result in so gruesome a death. But for those who through the centuries have sought to obey God’s word, this has often been their end. One of the most violent deaths in the history of the church that I know of is that of the Scottish Covenanter martyr, David Hackston. Hackston stood with the Covenanters and fought against the king’s dragoons during the Killing Times of the 17th century. After a time of resistance, he was captured and carried to Edinburgh, where he received his sentence:
That his body be drawn backward on a hurdle to the Cross of Edinburgh; that there be a high scaffold erected a little above the cross, where in the first place his right hand is to be struck off, and after some time his left hand; that he is to be hanged up and cut down alive, his bowels to be taken out, and his heart to be shown by the hangman to the people; then his heart and his bowels to be burned in a fire prepared for that purpose on the scaffold; that afterward his head be cut off, and his body divided into four quarter, his head to be fixed on the Netherbow, one of his quarters with both his hands to be affixed at St. Andrews, another quarter at Glasgow, a third at Leith, a fourth at Burntisland; that none presume to be in mourning for him, nor any coffin brought; that no person be suffered to be on the scaffold with him save the two ballies, the executioner and his servants; that he be allowed to pray to God almighty, but not to speak to the people; that the heads of [Richard] Cameron and [John] Fowler be affixed on the Netherbow; that Hackston’s and Cameron’s heads be affixed on higher poles than the rest.
Jock Purves, from whose book Fair Sunshine I am taking this account, goes on to describe the execution:
Already dying from his ghastly wounds, he was led away to suffer. While great crowds looked on, there was done upon him by the hangman a gross, painful barbarity not mentioned in his sentence. Then he endured with firmness and patience the cutting off of his hands, but, the hangman having taken such a long time to hack off his right hand, he asked that his left hand might be taken off at the joint, which was done. With a pulley he was then pulled to the top of the gallows, and when choked a little was let down alive. The hangman then with a sharp knife opened his breast, and putting in his hand pulled out his heart. It fell upon the scaffold and moved there. The hangman picked it up on the point of his knife, and, carrying it around the scaffold, he showed it to the people saying, ‘Here is the heart of a traitor.’ Patrick Walker says that it fluttered upon the knife. The rest of the sentence was duly carried out. The free grace of God was glorified in David Hackston, so that whoever thinks of him must think of his Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, too.
The most amazing thing is why the Covenanters died. They opposed the King’s attempts to require certain worship practices and a certain form of government in the church. These died horrible deaths over Sunday worship and church government, and we have a hard time getting out of bed to go to church anywhere on Sunday morning. We are a sad lot.
But are the details in describing a martyrdom really necessary? Certainly, not every detail needs to always be shared. Even in Purves’ account, he speaks of a “barbarity” that he declines to mention more specifically. And one can also either grow numb to the violence through excessive exposure, such as is caused by violent entertainment, or simply grow to delight in it, which is a horrible thing in itself. Nonetheless, to always refuse to speak of the details is to ignore the fact that following Christ is to “participate in his sufferings”. Christ suffered because there is sin in this world, and we will suffer in some small measure in Christ’s name for the same reason. The details remind us that we are still in a sinful world, a world that is yet to reach the fullness of redemption. We can rest assured, however, that this redemption will come, as it was accomplished through the suffering of the God-Man, Jesus Christ our Lord.
-- World War II martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The latest issue of Christianity Today features a short article (less than a page long) on the martyrdom last April of three Christians in Malatya, Turkey. German missionary Tilmann Geske, local pastor Necati Aydin, and former Muslim Ugur Yuksel were assaulted, tortured, and murdered by a group of Muslims. The article, interspersed with several verses of Scripture about the necessity of a Christian’s suffering for his faith, was well written and inspiring.
Nonetheless, there’s one problem I have with it. It cleaned up the facts of exactly what happened in the death of these men. The article says that they were tied to chairs, “stabbed…slowly and deliberately”, and that then their throats were slit. This is all true, but the most gruesome details were left out. Here they are, for those with the stomach for them:
[Details of the torture–
* Tilman was stabbed 156 times, Necati 99 times and Ugur’s stabs were too numerous to count. They were disemboweled, and their intestines sliced up in front of their eyes. They were emasculated and watched as those body parts were destroyed. Fingers were chopped off, their noses and mouths and anuses were sliced open. Possibly the worst part was watching as their brothers were likewise tortured. Finally, their throats were sliced from ear to ear, heads practically decapitated.]
A fair bit more than what CT presented, isn’t it? The question I’m asking is this – why leave out the details? They would offend some, certainly. And maybe the reason why CT’s writer (whose name is not with the article) would leave out the details is the same reason I would signal my reader in advance that they are about to read something that not all can handle. But why not signal the reader just as I did? It could just be that the writer was attempting to present the facts in a narrative fashion, and including such details would have seemed out of place. I suspect, however, that something else is going on here.
Let’s be frank here. Most American Evangelicals are pansies. We walk into our Christian Junk Stores and the hallucinogenic smell of perfumed satchels with Scripture verses emblazoned on them waft into our nostrils while we fill up our baskets with the latest cheesy Christian t-shirts and plastic inspirational dust catchers. Somehow, we aren’t any holier for all of it, and I can’t help but think that it does more to separate us from the heart of our faith than anything.
On the other hand, we live in an extremely violent culture. I’m more amazed each day at the lengths that TV shows will go to as they push the edges of accepted decency. This is especially true on the 24 hour a day news channels, where they seem to compete constantly over who can create the greatest sense of excitement and thereby deceive you into believing that what they are really presenting to you is “news”. Every time they say, “What we are about to show you may offend some,” they know there ratings are about to go up, which is really what it’s all about for them.
Christians watch these shows, and so violence is nothing new for them. And it’s also true with movies. I’d dare say most Evangelicals have seen Braveheart, and so, while Wallace’s torture and death scene was not very explicit, the rest of the movie was. On top of this, most people probably know something of the historic practice of drawing and quartering. And for those who haven’t seen Braveheart, most certainly have seen Mel Gibson’s more recent film, The Passion of the Christ.
This leads us back to the history of martyrdom in the church. Anyone who’s spent a significant amount of time in the Evangelical church, I would think, would know something about martyrdom. Sadly, the presentations I’ve met with having grown up in the church have often been sanitized. Hearing about those who were martyred generally involves the following: the person is captured and killed, end of story. To mention that they were tortured was an extra step that was usually left out. But, once again, those who are martyred usually suffer much, much more.
And so I see the church’s treatment of martyrdom, and of violence in general, to be somewhat contradictory. We’ll watch it on TV or in the movies, where we’re able to view it from a distance. We can remain uninvolved and unaffected. This way, we can say we’re addressing it without there being any cost to us.
But the heart of the Christian faith is entirely different than what we often treat it as being. N. T. Wright addresses this in his book What Saint Paul Really Said:
It is an obvious truism to say that the cross stands at the heart of Paul’s whole theology… We are in danger of being lulled by this constant refrain [of the importance of the cross] into insensibility to what Paul was actually saying – and, equally importantly, was heard to be saying in the world of his day. Crucifixes regularly appear as jewellery in today’s post- Christian Western world, and the wearers are often blissfully unaware that their pretty ornament depicts the ancient equivalent, all in one, of the hangman’s noose, the electric chair, the thumbscrew, and the rack. Or, to be more precise, something which combined all four but went far beyond them; crucifixion was such an utterly horrible thing that the very word was usually avoided in polite Roman society. Every time Paul spoke of it – especially when he spoke in the same breath of salvation, love, grace and freedom – he and his hearers must have been conscious of the slap in the face thereby administered to their normal expectations and sensibilities. Somehow, we need to remind ourselves of this every time Paul mentions Jesus’ death, especially the mode of that death.
Paul, as did the other writers of Scripture, recognized that there are far more important questions than whether or not our sensibilities are offended. The more I’ve read Scripture over the past couple of years, the more it has occurred to me how often the faithful men and women of Scripture went out of their way to offend people. Certainly, it was never being offensive simply to offend, or as an attempt to control and manipulate others (say, in the way the marketers of Christian merchandise attempt to do). Rather, it was to bring to light the evils of sin and to lead to salvation. Nonetheless, they were offensive, and Scripture presents this as being something worth doing at times in order to accomplish God’s will. As Paul himself tells us in 1 Corinthians, the cross itself is an offense.
In American Christianity, we have a hard time imagining that following Christ could include such commitment or result in so gruesome a death. But for those who through the centuries have sought to obey God’s word, this has often been their end. One of the most violent deaths in the history of the church that I know of is that of the Scottish Covenanter martyr, David Hackston. Hackston stood with the Covenanters and fought against the king’s dragoons during the Killing Times of the 17th century. After a time of resistance, he was captured and carried to Edinburgh, where he received his sentence:
That his body be drawn backward on a hurdle to the Cross of Edinburgh; that there be a high scaffold erected a little above the cross, where in the first place his right hand is to be struck off, and after some time his left hand; that he is to be hanged up and cut down alive, his bowels to be taken out, and his heart to be shown by the hangman to the people; then his heart and his bowels to be burned in a fire prepared for that purpose on the scaffold; that afterward his head be cut off, and his body divided into four quarter, his head to be fixed on the Netherbow, one of his quarters with both his hands to be affixed at St. Andrews, another quarter at Glasgow, a third at Leith, a fourth at Burntisland; that none presume to be in mourning for him, nor any coffin brought; that no person be suffered to be on the scaffold with him save the two ballies, the executioner and his servants; that he be allowed to pray to God almighty, but not to speak to the people; that the heads of [Richard] Cameron and [John] Fowler be affixed on the Netherbow; that Hackston’s and Cameron’s heads be affixed on higher poles than the rest.
Jock Purves, from whose book Fair Sunshine I am taking this account, goes on to describe the execution:
Already dying from his ghastly wounds, he was led away to suffer. While great crowds looked on, there was done upon him by the hangman a gross, painful barbarity not mentioned in his sentence. Then he endured with firmness and patience the cutting off of his hands, but, the hangman having taken such a long time to hack off his right hand, he asked that his left hand might be taken off at the joint, which was done. With a pulley he was then pulled to the top of the gallows, and when choked a little was let down alive. The hangman then with a sharp knife opened his breast, and putting in his hand pulled out his heart. It fell upon the scaffold and moved there. The hangman picked it up on the point of his knife, and, carrying it around the scaffold, he showed it to the people saying, ‘Here is the heart of a traitor.’ Patrick Walker says that it fluttered upon the knife. The rest of the sentence was duly carried out. The free grace of God was glorified in David Hackston, so that whoever thinks of him must think of his Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, too.
The most amazing thing is why the Covenanters died. They opposed the King’s attempts to require certain worship practices and a certain form of government in the church. These died horrible deaths over Sunday worship and church government, and we have a hard time getting out of bed to go to church anywhere on Sunday morning. We are a sad lot.
But are the details in describing a martyrdom really necessary? Certainly, not every detail needs to always be shared. Even in Purves’ account, he speaks of a “barbarity” that he declines to mention more specifically. And one can also either grow numb to the violence through excessive exposure, such as is caused by violent entertainment, or simply grow to delight in it, which is a horrible thing in itself. Nonetheless, to always refuse to speak of the details is to ignore the fact that following Christ is to “participate in his sufferings”. Christ suffered because there is sin in this world, and we will suffer in some small measure in Christ’s name for the same reason. The details remind us that we are still in a sinful world, a world that is yet to reach the fullness of redemption. We can rest assured, however, that this redemption will come, as it was accomplished through the suffering of the God-Man, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
George Grant on the Call to Dominion
We are not to stop with simply telling the nations that Jesus died for the sinner’s sins. We are to demonstrate Christ’s lordship in our families, in our churches, in our work, in our communities, and in our cultures. We’re to make disciples who will obey everything that He commanded, not just in the hazy zone of piety, but in the totality of life. This is the thrust of the Great Commission. It is the spiritual, emotional, and cultural mandate to win all things in the name of Jesus. And though we know that only Christ Himself can fulfill that mandate in its entirety at the close of history, our duty is but to trust and obey. We are to occupy until He comes. The tendency of modern Christians to sidestep all of the implications of the Great Commission except soul-saving has, in stark contrast, paved the way for inhuman humanism’s program to afflict the helpless and crush our liberties and despoil our culture. We tend to be very quick to point the finger, and say, “Oh, woe is Washington! Oh, woe is Hollywood!” – when, in fact, it is our unbelief, our refusal to actually believe that God expects, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” to be answered in the affirmative. We have reduced the Gospel to snatching a few brands from the flickering flames of perdition and, as a result, virtually all Christian influence has been removed from the world. There is little or nothing to restrain the ambitions of evil men and movements. It is no wonder then that whole cultures, whole nation states, set themselves to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. God’s counsel goes unheard and unheeded because we don’t really believe that Jesus is Lord.
- George Grant, from a lecture entitled “Ruling All the Earth”, given at the Highlands Study Center conference, “For the Beauty of the Earth”, April 2, 2004.
- George Grant, from a lecture entitled “Ruling All the Earth”, given at the Highlands Study Center conference, “For the Beauty of the Earth”, April 2, 2004.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Another Catholic convert
A few months ago, I was talking to a friend about some of his studies in church history, particularly in relation to the historic relationship between Islam and the Christian Church. My friend, a Protestant, was lamenting the loss of a unified front against Islam, which was the result of the Protestant Reformation. He also expressed his concern over new, start-up denominations, and his tendency to more naturally trust those Christian groups whose claims to historicity are verifiable. The nature of his statements was such that I questioned him about his Protestant credentials, but he assured me that he still believed in the doctrines that set the Reformation apart from Rome. And so far as I know, he is still standing with the Reformation.
It was less than a week later when I found myself having answer some of the same charges. I was reading a book on the Latin rite of the Roman Church as it was in practice in the U. S. prior to Vatican II. A friend of mine, who is a more staunch Presbyterian than I am, saw that I was reading it, and began questioning me about it. To be fair to him, I think he had been concerned for me for some time, as he observed my interest in liturgy grow, and as he watched me join an Anglo-Catholic church. My reason for reading on the Mass had nothing to do with any inclination to depart from Protestantism. I had actually been leading a book study group through a story by Flannery O'Connor, and decided it would be good to familiarize myself with the form of worship she would have participated in during her life in order to get a better understanding of her writing. Thankfully, my friend is one of the more reasonable sorts of staunch Presbyterians (a rare breed indeed), and so believed me when I explained myself to him.
This anecdotal situation is probably one more and more common these days. There's a paranoia in Reformed circles about Romanism in general. I don't think this is entirely new; I get the impression from the things I've read that since the sixteenth century the Reformation has had too much of a tendency to define itself according to what Rome isn't. And yet this has been amplified in recent years. The past twenty years has seen Protestant after Protestant venturing to Rome to find whatever, that whatever seeming to vary from person to person. Add to this the converts to either Anglo-Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, and the numbers are sufficient to give anyone bearing the moniker "Reformed" a perpetually sustained nervous twitch.
I think there are things that the Reformed need to learn from this trend, though I won't try to enumerate those things now. I gladly bear the moniker "Reformed" myself, and have no intention of casting it off any time soon. But I remain Reformed with the hope that my fellow Reformed brethren will wake up to their own failures that are causing this movement.
I write these things due to another report of a departure for Rome, this time coming from a member of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. The person involved this time isn't a pastor or theologian, but philosophy professor Robert Koons. For those who want to read it in his own words, you will find his report of his conversion here. I won't use my blog to report on every person converting to this or that group, but I found this story particularly interesting. I think that my favorite statement in Koons' piece was this one:
The [Roman Catholic/Lutheran] Joint Declaration and the recent Catechism of the Catholic Church aided me in giving a closer and more charitable reading to the anathemas of the Council of Trent (which I still believe to be have been written in an unprofitably provocative way).
I'm not entirely sure how one gives a "more charitable reading" of anathemas, but apparently it's possible. At any rate, it's important to read stories like this one, if the Reformed church is ever going to be able to answer the charges against it effectively.
It was less than a week later when I found myself having answer some of the same charges. I was reading a book on the Latin rite of the Roman Church as it was in practice in the U. S. prior to Vatican II. A friend of mine, who is a more staunch Presbyterian than I am, saw that I was reading it, and began questioning me about it. To be fair to him, I think he had been concerned for me for some time, as he observed my interest in liturgy grow, and as he watched me join an Anglo-Catholic church. My reason for reading on the Mass had nothing to do with any inclination to depart from Protestantism. I had actually been leading a book study group through a story by Flannery O'Connor, and decided it would be good to familiarize myself with the form of worship she would have participated in during her life in order to get a better understanding of her writing. Thankfully, my friend is one of the more reasonable sorts of staunch Presbyterians (a rare breed indeed), and so believed me when I explained myself to him.
This anecdotal situation is probably one more and more common these days. There's a paranoia in Reformed circles about Romanism in general. I don't think this is entirely new; I get the impression from the things I've read that since the sixteenth century the Reformation has had too much of a tendency to define itself according to what Rome isn't. And yet this has been amplified in recent years. The past twenty years has seen Protestant after Protestant venturing to Rome to find whatever, that whatever seeming to vary from person to person. Add to this the converts to either Anglo-Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, and the numbers are sufficient to give anyone bearing the moniker "Reformed" a perpetually sustained nervous twitch.
I think there are things that the Reformed need to learn from this trend, though I won't try to enumerate those things now. I gladly bear the moniker "Reformed" myself, and have no intention of casting it off any time soon. But I remain Reformed with the hope that my fellow Reformed brethren will wake up to their own failures that are causing this movement.
I write these things due to another report of a departure for Rome, this time coming from a member of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. The person involved this time isn't a pastor or theologian, but philosophy professor Robert Koons. For those who want to read it in his own words, you will find his report of his conversion here. I won't use my blog to report on every person converting to this or that group, but I found this story particularly interesting. I think that my favorite statement in Koons' piece was this one:
The [Roman Catholic/Lutheran] Joint Declaration and the recent Catechism of the Catholic Church aided me in giving a closer and more charitable reading to the anathemas of the Council of Trent (which I still believe to be have been written in an unprofitably provocative way).
I'm not entirely sure how one gives a "more charitable reading" of anathemas, but apparently it's possible. At any rate, it's important to read stories like this one, if the Reformed church is ever going to be able to answer the charges against it effectively.
Friday, May 18, 2007
You said, "I love you"
You said, “I love you,” and I know it is true.
I love you too, but I responded with silence,
Because mine is a love you would never countenance.
I am a particle of your life, kept conveniently in its place,
Present when you want, and away when you wish.
As we are apart, I am alone wondering
Where you are, and whom you are with,
And in part, I know.
You are riding the wind wherever it may blow,
As a leaf flies in a storm, landing
Where it may or may not wish.
You are wandering as a nomad, from here to there,
Seeking what, you do not know,
But ever convinced that it lies
Beyond the next dune.
I would shield you from the winds, if you would let me,
And make you a home
That you need never again wander.
But though you love me,
You love your winds and wandering more.
And so I will ever respond in silence,
For yours is a love
I could never countenance.
I love you too, but I responded with silence,
Because mine is a love you would never countenance.
I am a particle of your life, kept conveniently in its place,
Present when you want, and away when you wish.
As we are apart, I am alone wondering
Where you are, and whom you are with,
And in part, I know.
You are riding the wind wherever it may blow,
As a leaf flies in a storm, landing
Where it may or may not wish.
You are wandering as a nomad, from here to there,
Seeking what, you do not know,
But ever convinced that it lies
Beyond the next dune.
I would shield you from the winds, if you would let me,
And make you a home
That you need never again wander.
But though you love me,
You love your winds and wandering more.
And so I will ever respond in silence,
For yours is a love
I could never countenance.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Scriptural Speculations 2: Water from heaven
As I’ve been studying the Book of Revelation recently, the importance of gaining a right understanding of the covenant in Scripture has become more apparent to me. This was also brought to my attention this morning as I read the Old Testament text assigned for the Morning Prayer service in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. The text was Deuteronomy 11:10-17, but let’s begin at verse 8:
8 “You shall therefore keep the whole commandment that I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess, 9 and that you may live long in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. 11 But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, 12 a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
13 “And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. 15 And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. 16 Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; 17 then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.
In the first section of verses, Yahweh speaking through Moses draws a contrast between Egypt, which the Israelites had left, and the Promised Land, which Yahweh was giving them. The point of contrast is interesting, being the different ways each of the two lands were watered. In Egypt, the Israelites had to work hard to irrigate the fields so that the crops might be watered. But in the Promised Land, they are told, this work would not need to be done. Water would come from heaven, directly from the hand of Yahweh Himself. God Himself is the Supreme Gardener.
This should have immediately brought two historical matters to mind for the Israelites. First, the Israelites were still at this point receiving the manna from heaven every morning as the means by which God was feeding them. Even as Israel was receiving bread directly from God’s hand, they would soon in the Promised Land receive water directly from God by which they might be sustained.
Secondly, this promise should have brought the Garden of Eden to the mind of the Israelites. Prior to the fall, we are told that “a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden” (Gen. 2:10). Even though God put Adam in the garden to tend it, one work that Adam didn’t have to do was irrigation. God Himself provided for that. He was essentially telling Israel that He was giving to them a new Garden of Eden. Certainly, the effects of the Fall remained. Man would still work “by the sweat of his brow”. But God was redeeming the world through Israel, and his first step in redeeming the world was to put them in a new Eden.
In the last section of verses, Yahweh sets out the possibility of either covenantal blessing or of covenantal cursing. If Israel walks in faithfulness, God will send rain, and Israel’s blessings will overflow. But if they turn away from God, He will shut up the heavens and Israel will perish. This is repeated later in Deuteronomy (28:23-24), and had already been spoken to Israel once when they began their journey in the wilderness (Leviticus 26:19-20). Both passages speak of the earth and the heavens, as well as iron and bronze. (It is interesting that in Leviticus 26:19, the heavens are spoken of as becoming like iron and the earth like bronze, whereas in Deuteronomy 28:23 the two are reversed, the heavens being spoken of as becoming like bronze, and the earth becoming like iron. I have no idea what the reason for the switch might be.) The contrast between these two passages and Deut. 11 is that these two passages only contain the negative sanctions and Deut. 11 contains the positive as well.
Knowing that Yahweh made this declaration is important in making sense out of later portions of Scripture as He entered into judgment upon His people. Solomon invoked this promise of Yahweh when he prayed at the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 8):
35 “When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you, if they pray toward this place and acknowledge your name and turn from their sin, when you afflict them, 36 then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of your servants, your people Israel, when you teach them the good way in which they should walk, and grant rain upon your land, which you have given to your people as an inheritance.
Here Solomon not only remembers God’s promise of judgment for unfaithfulness, but prays for God’s forgiveness for those who repent, reminding Him of His promise to do this (Deut. 30:1-10). In 2 Chronicles 7 we are told that when God appeared to Solomon in the night after the dedication, God promised that He would indeed do as Solomon asked (vss. 13-14).
In time, however, Israel did follow after other gods, and Yahweh brought this promised curse upon Israel. Yahweh sent His prophets as covenant lawyers to pronounce to Israel that He was entering into judgment with them. The prophecy of Amos recounts a time when Yahweh did withhold rain (Amos 4:7-8). But the most well known case of this is probably the account of drought pronounced by Elijah during the days of Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kings 17-18).
This is a point where I have found understanding the covenant to be so helpful. I have spent most of my life thinking about the various stories in Scripture in a disconnected way. Whereas I knew that God was, in the days of Elijah, for instance, disciplining Israel for its disobedience through the drought, I had never connected that with His establishing of a covenant with Israel. God, when He chose to discipline Israel this way, didn’t pick drought out at random. The choice of withholding rain was based on His special blessings given to them of a land watered by His own direct working, and was tied into the covenant in a special way. We also see in this that God is not a fickle, unpredictable God. He had warned Israel long before what He would do if they were unfaithful to Him. When He entered into covenant with them, He stated the stipulations of the covenant, and so in shutting up the heavens, He was simply keeping His word.
Jesus recounted Elijah and the drought when He appeared in the synagogue in Nazereth at the beginning of His ministry:
23 And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.” 24 And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. 25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.
At first we are told that “all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth” (vs. 22). Yet Jesus, as he was wont to do, opted to pick a fight with those that weren’t looking for one, and so he stated the words above. Why would Jesus’ words have caused the men in the synagogue to be “filled with wrath”? Well, for one thing, he proclaimed himself to be a prophet. Since prophets were lawyers bringing a lawsuit against the nation, a prophet wouldn’t have been good news for people who thought that everything was going just fine. If these people had a problem, it would have been with Rome ruling over them, not with themselves – or so they thought.
But secondly, Jesus was invoking the memory of two occasions in Israel’s history in which Israel suffered for their disobedience and God chose to bless Gentiles instead of Israel. To those who clung to their parentage as if it alone would save them, these would not have been welcome words. Both of these occasions foretell of the day when Gentiles would be welcomed into the Kingdom without becoming Jews. And Jesus came to bring that day in its fullness.
The promise of God to withhold rain as a covenantal judgement continued in the Revelation, as we are told of the destruction of Jerusalem in relation to the two witnesses (Rev. 11:6). The language of drought and plagues has caused commentators to relate the two witnesses as being Moses and Elijah. Adding to this is the statement that the prophets would prophecy 1260 days, and that the holy city would be trampled for forty-two months (Rev. 11:2-3), also drawing the parallel to Elijah’s drought. That Jerusalem is in view here is no question, as the allusion to it in 11:8 is drawn clearly. God had promised certain curses for disobedience, and on the basis of that covenant He acted in the destruction of Jerusalem.
All of this brings us back to Zechariah 14. The covenantal blessings and cursings apply to us today. I do not pretend to know how this plays out practically. Certainly the covenant has been reshaped and transformed by Christ’s work. But as Zechariah testifies regarding the nations, for those who do not worship the LORD, the plague of drought remains a curse (Zech. 14:16-19). For those, however, that would serve the God of the covenant, rivers of living water are promised to them (Zech. 14:8, Rev. 22).
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Scriptural Speculations #1: Zechariah 14
As I mentioned before, I am part of a Bible study group that is currently discussing the Book of the Revelation. Everybody in the group other than myself is premillennial, if not fully Dispensational, by default, as is most everyone in the American Evangelical church scene these days. Nonetheless the group has been welcoming to my different perspective, and our conversations have been quite enjoyable.
I came in late to the group. They had been meeting for a while before I joined, and had already made it to Revelation 16. The book the group is using as a guide is David Jeremiah’s Escape the Coming Night. The book is a standard, popular-level Dispensational treatment of Revelation. And as much as I have benefited from Dr. Jeremiah’s radio program through the years, we differ significantly on many things, of which the Book of the Revelation is one. To put it less politely, I think Dr. Jeremiah misses the point of Revelation entirely. It isn’t about the events beginning with the rapture and continuing through the end of the world. Rather, the book is about the events surrounding the dissolution of the Old Covenant world, connected with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
We just finished ch. 16 of the book, which corresponds with ch. 16 of Revelation. In this chapter Dr. Jeremiah, as other Dispensationalists do, runs through the Old Testament picking out passages about destruction here and there, and links them together to create his schema for the future. One section that figures prominently is the last few chapters of Zechariah. I don’t have the entire Bible figured out (who does?) but I have some thoughts on Zechariah 14 in particular that come from my own preterist perspective. I wrote these up and sent them to our fearless Bible study leader, but he has yet to respond, which I hope is not a sign of just how convoluted my ideas are. I’ve thought for awhile about starting a blog series entitled “Scriptural Speculations” though, and I figured that maybe this wouldn’t be a bad way to start that series. The following is rough, in that it is simply the email as sent with very little editing. I hope it’s possible to follow it anyway. Also, these thoughts are far from conclusive. I haven’t read any commentaries on the passages in question, so I don’t know if any scholars would agree with me. And if you the reader have any thoughts, I welcome them, so please post them in the comments or email them to me.
The questions we’ve been dealing with involve Typology in relation to prophecy. It seems to me that most Dispies like to reserve Typology to the person and work of Christ. In fact, growing up in the Plymouth Brethren, I was taught that Typology in Scripture only functions in relation to Christ. In other words, there are no types that find their antitypes in, for instance, the Church. So I was taught that Israel in the Old Testament couldn’t refer to the Church in the New Testament. But when I became Reformed, I realized that this was wrong.
As a preterist, I would tend to interpret such passages in relation to the first century, as you know. What happens in this approach is that statements that refer to Israel are interpreted as referring to the Church. Also, statements that refer to the nations refer to the enemies of the Church, which enemies would include unbelieving Israel. Of course, this is overly simplistic. Jesus is the True Israel, and the church is Israel only through Him. So Israel could refer to Christ Himself rather than the church.
The thoughts I have refer specifically to Zech. 14. Simply put, it seems to me that the parallel to Zech. 14 (or, at least, one parallel) is found in John 7, and possibly part of John 8. There are two parallels that cause me to believe this. First is the context of John 7. The context is the Feast of Booths (or Tabernacles, as it’s sometimes called). The related passage in Zechariah is Zech. 14:16-19. The second parallel is John 7:37-39:
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
It is interesting to consider what comes right after this as well:
40 When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” 41 Others said, “This is the Christ.”
The parallel to this is Zech. 14:8-9:
8 On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea. It shall continue in summer as in winter.
9 And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one.
See also Ezekiel 47:1 and following, as well as Genesis 2:10-14. Also to consider here is the river that flowed into (or out of – I don’t recall) O.T. Jerusalem (I couldn’t find a text reference for this one). All of these, I would suggest, are parallel, along with Revelation 22:1, 17. The point to be made here, which is typified in each case, is that wherever God dwells, from there, water of life flows out into the whole world. And the water is connected with the Spirit of God. This is often related to the historic defense of Baptismal Regeneration. The picture here is also one of life flowing out to the rest of the world from the people of God, which in the OT meant Israel, but in the NT means the Church. So today, the fountainhead of salvation is to be found in the Church. There’s a rabbit trail I could follow further here, but I’ll resist the temptation.
If you want to carry the parallels with Zechariah 14 over into John 8, one more parallel is possible, and that’s in John 8:12, right after the controversial beginning of the chapter:
12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
The parallel in Zechariah is in 14:6-7:
6 On that day there shall be no light, cold, or frost. 7 And there shall be a unique day, which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but at evening time there shall be light.
There is little else to consider in looking at John 7-8, because most of the text deals with Jesus defending Himself as a true prophet from God and the various discussions among the Jews about the genuineness of His profession. Nonetheless, I would consider these parallels significant, and would suggest that Jesus is here at least saying, “The fulfillment of Zechariah 14 is coming in conjunction with my ministry.” Now I think part of that came in His incarnation and establishing of the Church (the establishing of the kingdom, Zech. 14:6-11, and the coming of the nations to Jerusalem, Zech. 14:16-21), and part of it came in the destruction of Jerusalem as a covenantal judgment, which included the rescue of the Church (Zech. 14:1-5, 12-15). Part of this might also be projected into the future coming of Christ, depending on how one reads Revelation 22 (see Rev. 22:1-5; parallel Rev. 22:1 with Zech. 14:8 and parallel Rev. 22:5 with Zech.14:7). I don’t really know how all the details play out, but I haven’t spent the time that figuring all of this out would require.
Two other passages you might want to consider in connection with this is Ezra 3:1-7 and Nehemiah 8:13-18. In each case, the Feast of Booths is specified as something key that the Israelites resumed observing in the process of returning from Exile into the land. For Israel, returning from physical Exile also meant returning from spiritual Exile. Jesus, in calling to “anyone” to come to Him, was calling for a return from spiritual Exile. This was true specifically for Israel, though the call was different from Ezra and Nehemiah’s days, in that the call was also now open in a new way to the nations. Cf. again Zech. 14:16 & following.
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