Topical Christianity: opinion, Orthodoxy, and the pursuit of foolishness

St. Jude pray for us

2006-11-14T00:58:00.000-08:00

Long recognised as the patron of one of the finest children's hospitals in the world, St. Jude is known to Catholics as a patron of hopeless causes. His novena is considered most powerful in a desperate situation. Having myself completed a novena to St. Jude, I wanted to encourage anyone in despair to seek the prayers of this near kinsman to Jesus.

Mercy, Mercy Me

2006-10-04T20:38:00.000-07:00

You know the story of the publican and the Pharisee. The Pharisee thanked God that he was not a publican, and the publican beat his breast saying "Lord, have mercy on me a sinner". Jesus stated that the publican went away justified. Three things stick out to me. 1. The publican acknowledged his own guilt. One cannot receive mercy unless it is needed. 2. He showed signs of contrition, sorrow for sin. 3. He accknowledged that God is merciful, and sought justification on that basis rather than his own righteousness. That powerful prayer has been used by Christians for centuries, as a means of praying constantly, and the story serves as an excellent paradigm for understanding our justification before God, but none of these things are my subject. The question I wish to examine is "what is mercy?".
Mercy is an unmerited attitude of favor towards someone who has wronged you. In the old testament, the words for mercy and grace were synonymous. Mercy is similar to forgiveness, but goes even farther. Suppose a man, the president of a bank, is found to have embezzled a great deal of money. Forgiveness says "You are guilty, but we will declare you aquitted." The debt is paid by the one who is owed. Mercy says "You are aquited, and you may have your old job back. Welcome home." Wait, you might say. To put a known embezzler back in charge of a bank is not very intelligent. At least, have someone do a monthly audit for a while. That would make more sense. It would, but then it wouldn't be mercy. Mercy is radical. It's saying"your debt is forgiven" and making another loan. It is turning the other cheek. Not merely forgiving one blow, but allowing another.
Consider the prodigal son. He essentially tells his father he wants him dead. Wastes everything his father made, and when it doesn't work out, he disgraces his father even further by coming back home. To add insult to injury, he asks his father for help. Sure, he admits his guilt, but still expects his father to give him work. The father's response is scandalous. Not only had he been anxiously waiting for his son to return, but ran to meet him the moment he appeared on the horizon. Not satisfied with forgiving his son, in his mercy, the father restores the inheritance (the squanderer still receives a third of what his father leaves. Might explain why the older brother was so bent out of shape), restores his status as a son, and treats him as an honored guest. The father was the real prodigal.
Mercy is terribly unfair. Our merciful God paid our debt Himself, and allows us to abuse that grace. He who was without sin, became sin for us. It is scandalous, but the power of that mercy is transforming. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.

correction

2006-09-29T05:38:00.000-07:00

The feast of St. Francis is Wed. Oct. 4th. Mea Culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

2006-09-29T05:26:00.000-07:00

If you don't recognize the line from Hamlet, learn it and impress your friends. If you don't recognize Hamlet, shame on you.

Today is the feast of the Archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Yesterday was the feast of St.Wenceslaus, yes, that Wenceslaus, who did indeed go out on the feast of Steven. Tomorrow is the feast of St. Jerome, Bible translator, and general curmudgeon. He has been described as a disgruntled badger in a bunny-hutch. One of the most vitriolic of the Church Fathers, Jerome could easily give the wildest Pat Robertson-esque demagogue a run for his money. Rude and insulting, he reminds us that God can use anyone.
Monday, is a day to honor your guardian angel, Tuesday, the feast of St. FRancis, patron saint of animals. Francis was most well known for his preaching to whatever was at hand. People, animals, or most anything else. A good example of preaching in season as well as out of season.
All this is leading up to Friday, the feast of St. Bruno. I know nothing about him, but it's wonderful pipe tobacco. That's your liturgical calendar for the next week. God bless you.

Scars

2006-09-29T04:47:00.000-07:00

If we have never sought, we seek thee now;
Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;
We must have sight of thorn-marks on thy brow,
We must have thee, O Jesus of the scars.

The heavens frighten us; they are too calm;
In all the universe we have no place.
Our wounds are hurting us; where is the balm?
Lord Jesus, by thy scars we know thy grace.

If, when the doors are shut, thou drawest near,
Only reveal those hands, that side of thine;
We know today what wounds are, have no fear;
Show us thy scars, we know the countersign.

The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak;
They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but thou alone. -Author unknown (to me anyway)

A priest, a faithful priest (I thank God daily for having known this man.) used to say to me that we are all wounded. Being reminded of my own wounds this week, two thoughts came to mind as I worked on setting this text to music (my training is in composition).

1. We tend to be like wounded animals, lashing out at everything, even the hand that would heal us. How often we make our own wounds worse in trying to heal them ourselves. We are in great need of mercy. Compassion is feeling sorry for someone when bad things happen that is beyong their own control. Mercy is pitying someone for the trouble they create for themselves. I am very rarely worthy of compassion, but often need the mercy of those around me. This week, in saying some things I should not have and their effect being compounded through misunderstanding, an act which put at risk the most significant human relationship in my life outside of family, I was reminded of the preciousness of mercy. When a human relationship is damaged, making satisfaction is difficult, reconcilliation a slow, painful process, but the experience makes me all the more thankful for the satisfaction made by Christ for my sin, and the reconcilliation I enjoy with God because of it. The temptation to take God's mercy for granted is all too easy to give in to.

2. What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. Nonsense. It can make you bitter. Or it can just hurt. I read a church sign once that said, "God doesn't count your degrees, but your battle scars." Well, I have many, and very few of those were won honorably. My only consolation is the great power of Christ's wounds, which give our wounds meaning. Even those we inflict ourselves may be redeemed. The wounds that weaken us have the promise that in our weakness, His strength is made perfect. I wonder if all of our wounds will survive death, or only those wounds of victory. Perhaps they may be transformed from evidence of failure to reminders of grace. That might not be a bad view to take. For the moment, they still hurt.

As I said, I've been setting that text to music. Quite sad sounding, really. One day I may set it again a tune that is a bit more...hmmm?... hopeful. We'll see.

Looking a gift horse in the mouth

2006-09-27T05:28:00.000-07:00

I intend, over the next several posts, to expand on a statement made in a previous blog, " Is Christianity something that is given to us, or something we make for ourselves?". I lean toward the former, and will consider the implications of that opinion. This will essentially be a long, protracted apologia for the Catholic faith, not least because I do not believe that the protestant faith withstands logical scrutiny, but of much greater importance, because I am convinced that there is nothing greater for one who loves Jesus than to experience unabridged Christianity. Don't see this as an attack on protestantism, but an invitation to seriously consider the Catholic faith as the fullness of Christ.

The Unexamined Faith

2006-09-25T18:17:00.000-07:00

Theology is, after a fashion, poetry; it is most itself in the doing, and doing theology is a necessary evil. Every person in every decision says something about his personal theology (and his anthropology). In doing Christian theology, or in doing theology rooted in any faith tradition that may be properly called theistic, there is a certain bifurcation between the sort of theology that is the queen of the sciences and the theology that is, for lack of a better way to put it, usefull. While I would posit that the study of theology is one of the most patently usefull things a man can do to grow in his faith, there is a common tendency to ascribe to "Theology" a certain academic functionality, and little else. Accepting this division as valid for the moment, I would like to backtrack to some of the first principles endemic to the two branches, and see if that produces any useful notions.
What I will term academic theology, specifically Christian theology, has several first principles but among the more significant are 1. The validity of theism over atheism (the word validity of course assumes several hierarchically sub-ordinate first principles in axiology and epistemology and half a dozen other philosophical disciplines) 2. the validity of theism over deism, and by extension the validity of religion 3. The validity of a particular religion, Christianity in this case, over other competing systems. In doing theology, one may assume any one of these premises with no ill effects, but they are underlying questions that must be grappled with at some stage. There is a question which more properly falls under the heading of apologetics, but does, I suggest, have profound implications for practical theology: the validity of one variety of Christianity over another.
This is important because once one leaves the pool of "mere" christianity, theology must very quickly become specialized into one particular Christian tradition or other. This specialization is unavoidable, because the areas of theology that address the actual problems people are actually worried about, tend to fall outside the realm of "mere" Christianity, and the traditions are widely varied as to how these problems are approached. How to get to heaven, how to please God, why we suffer, all of these things are answered differently, in some cases wildly differently, by different traditions within the churches, and those differences demand an answer. If Christianity is not something that we make up for ourselves, but is something that was given to us, we had best decide which Christianity is the right one. (If we can make it up for ourselves, it doesn't really matter.) Denominationalism, the wild child of the Reformation, is the greatest blow to the vision for His people that Christ expressed in His High Priestly prayer of John 17. The differences matter, and I think, must be addressed.
Hence the title of this post. I state unequivocally that the average Christian is ill-equipped to answer this question. We live in an age of unexamined faith. Most know what they believe on most things, but few know exactly why they believe much of anything. The result, their faith is not something they own, but something they borrow from whatever authority sounds good to them. To own one's faith, one must understand from a logical, exegetical, theological point of view why you believe what you do. Anything else is less than faith. It is opinion, even strongly held opinion, but I don't think it's faith.
This deficiency has two very practical results. 1. If our desire is to know God, to know Him better, what we believe about Him must be correct. The more accurate our knowledge at the intellectual level, the richer our knowledge at the experiential level. While a division of head and heart is popular in Christianity, God gave us both, and we are to love Him fully with both. 2. This lack of knowledge is a disservice to those we are called to bring into the kingdom. If we cannot give account, a reasonable account, for the hope that is within us, we are failing in the evangelistic mission given to us by Christ. I have stated that theology is the basis for answering the problems common to man, and we as the people of God proclaim that we have those answers, or to the point, the Answer. We must be able to adequately defend that Answer to a questioning world.
Socrates, the wisest man after Solomon, said "The unexamined life is not worth living." Neither perhaps is the unexamined faith.

who are we fighting?

2006-09-08T03:14:00.000-07:00

In the five years the war on terror has raged, I fear we may have forgotten who our enemy really is. While this is not a war on Islam, it is a war against the ideologies and ethical imperitives of Islam. Islam is a religion of peace. Peace being defined as submission to Allah, by force if necessary. We are battling a particular view of God, and the working out of that theology in the world. We are battling ideas. I am convinced that our weapons do no good against a genuinely held belief. To win a war on terror, we must change the minds of terrorists. But let us not suppose that logic will necessarily win. This is not a battle of wits, but of dogmas, and the only way to stop a dogma is to run over it with someone's karma. I think our liberal democrats have shown us a most effective method. When the secular humanists wished to reduce the power of christianity and it's ideas, they first set about ridiculing it's tenets, and making that ridicule a sign of academic sophistication. Then, they made the most odious practice imaginable a matter of the greatest political concern. Finally, they actively pursued all means to eliminate the right of Christians to practice their faith in the public square. And they largely succeeded in eliminating Christianity as a significant force in american life. That is how we win a war on terror. Ridicule their beliefs, teach them to slaughter their children, and deny them the right to complain about either. This is a war with Islam, we just aren't fighting it.

Et Spes Nostra

2006-08-15T00:55:00.000-07:00

Today, both lungs of the Church, Catholic and Orthodox believers, celebrate the Assumption of Our Lady, Mary's bodily entrance into heaven. As one of the Holy Days of Obligation, all faithful CAtholics attend Mass on this day, and I thought it appropriate to offer a few observations.
While there are many sources of contention where Marian dogma is comcerned among believers on different sides of the Reformation (the Protestant Revolt), I prefer to ignore them to focus on the significance of Mary herself, and the meaning of this event in her life for us. The Orthodox liturgy states the real point of Marian devotion beautifully and succinctly: "Commemorating Our Most holy, pure, blessed and glorified Lady, Mother of God, and ever-virgin Mary, we commend ourselves and our whole life to Christ, Our God."

Everything we affirm about Mary is related to some Christological truth. We call her Ever -Virgin because He was God Incarnate. She is the Immaculate Conception because He is without sin. As the Son of Mary, Christ is fully man. As Theotokos, the God-bearer, she bore a child who was fully divine. You cannot have correct Mariology and faulty Christology, one supports the other. Let it be remembered that Mary only matters because she is Christ's Mother. Had she born any other Jewish carpenter her name would not be remembered, let alone honored, but having birthed the Son of God, we rightly venerate her as Our Mother, Our Advocate, and Our Hope.
Therein lies the reason the Assumption is significant. Mary stands as the first of humanity to receive bodily ressurection. That she has entered heaven, soul and body, serves as earnest of our future. The glory she enjoys in the presence of the Father, we will inherit as heirs also, but to reach that glory, we must follow her example of perfect conformity to the Father's will, through the Holy Spirit working in us. As she said, "let it be done to me according to thy word." I encourage all believers to contemplate the mystery that God made an ordinary woman a key player in His Great Plan. There is hope for the rest of us.

The Defeminization of the church

2006-07-28T06:25:00.000-07:00

Evangelical churches report a record low in church attendance among men, due, according to some analysts, to a trend toward femininity in worship. Apparently, church has become too girly for most men. Granted, with worship songs that sound like top 40 love songs, the "Jesus is my boyfriend" genre as some detractors call it, and an increased emphasis on feelings and emotions in the discipleship programs in the churches, the analyists may be correct. Among Catholics, critics cite the opposite problem, that the Church is still a male hierarchy that is two steps behind society. Adamantly opposed to the ordination of women, and insistent that women do not have a fundamental right to artificial contraception, or abortion on demand if the contraceptives don't work, the Church is certainly not keeping up with what is, unfortunately, still called progress. I would posit that while these matters of dogma are often presented as barriers to the equal rights of women, they are in reality, a means of preventing the rapant defeminization that characterizes the view of women in modern society from taking root in the Church.
"Defeminization you say?" I do indeed. It begins with contraception. Contraception robs women of their greatest power, reproduction. What every ancient pagan knew, and celebrated, was that the power of woman lay in her ability to bear children. While women were often subjugated socially, in popular religion, the ubiquitous fertility goddess was, in every culture, a goddess most powerful, worthy of many sacrifices. By making it acceptable, even obligatory, for a woman to alter that proclivity, society has made her to be less than woman. The natural extension of contraception, abortion, not only devalues the life of the mother, but desecrates the life of the child as well. By denying women these two wonders of contemporary medicine, the Church does not subject women, but frees them to glory in the gift that is alone theirs.
The issue of ordination is more subtle, but potentially more destructive. The Christian faith affirms that God created man in His own image, male and female he created them. Both masculinity and feminity are facets of the personality of God, that He has chosen to reveal in creation. Indeed, every individual represents some facet of God's mind it pleased Him to share with the world. This reality is the foundation for the inherent difnity of the human person. Abortion denies the reality of that dignity by granting one generation the right to slaughter the next, but more subtly, the arguments offered in support of the ordination of women ultimately begin to deny the unique distinction between the genders that is a picture of God Himself. The Church's primary argument against the ordination of women lies in the understanding of the priest as a living icon of Christ, a living picture of Christ ministering in the Church. Because Christ is a man, His icons must also be men. The theology is much more involved than that thumbnail suggests, but my concern is for the denial of gender that tends to accompany most rebuttals.
Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church (the one built on Peter), and I am confident that the Holy Spirit who leads the Church into all truth, will keep her on a steady course in the troubled waters that are gender issues in today's world. I am also convinced that to capitulate to these fads will ultimately do a great diservice to the women these trends purport to help. With the firm assurance that we are made in the image of God (who called Himself Jehovah Jireh,the image is of a nursing mothers full breasts), both male and female, let us celebrate womanhood. In a couple of weeks, we observe one of the great Marian feasts of the year. It speaks volumes that the key mortal player in the Gospel story was a woman, and a young woman from a small town at that. Far from subjecting the fairer sex, I think the Church rightly honors all women in encouraging them to live the dignity for which they were created.

et resurrexit

2006-04-16T00:02:00.000-07:00

Christ is risen, He is risen indeed! The joy of the Resurrection be with you.

My thoughts on the Resurrection come from a small detail.

"and he saw the linen wrappings lying there,
and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself."

Resurrection is messy. To live again, you have to die. What the Resurrection left behind was a bloody burial cloth. This was not corn syrup and food coloring in a church musical, but very real human blood, spilled by unspeakable violence. The Resurrection did not obscure that reality, but transformed it. Christ bears in His body, the marks that left those wounds.
Easter is also the remembrance of our Resurrection. We have been raised with Christ, a very difficult thing to believe when our lives are in shambles. That is why that detail matters to me. The death I have been raised from leaves evidence. My body bears the scars of sin I have been saved from. My prayer for myself and you this Easter, is that we may look to the burial cloths we have been left, run our fingers over the scars in our hearts, and say this is what Resurrection looks like.

a thought

2006-04-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

The difference between Protestant and Catholic is not between one variety of Christianity and another, or of one set of theological opinions versus another, but of one particular understanding of who Christ is, what He did, and what He said (and what He meant) versus another. Every pagan religion argues over and against Christianity. You won't see any books trying to show that the Buddha was really a Moslem. In the same way, every Christian denomination argues over and against Catholicism. I have seen no ministry groups targeting Southern Baptists (other than the Mormons), or seeking to draw Presbyterians out of their churches into "real" Christianity. I'm not aware of John Ankerberg having a single show devoted to Methodists. Strange.

Palm Sunday People

2006-04-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

Dedicated to my learned friend, where half my brain lives.

Palm Sunday is terribly ironic. The Sunday worshippers would turn on their King come Friday. Typical. What must be remembered is that these were not just fickle peasants led about by the religious leaders. On this side of history we forget the great disappointment of seeing the Hope of Israel battered and bruised in Roman chains. They were seeking a Ruler and got a Shepherd. We are not so different. How often do we want a Jesus to conquer the culture rather than a Jesus to redeem our enemies. Just as they wanted an earthly kingdom, so our religious leaders like Dobson and Robertson want legislated salvation. We don't want an earth that only the meek are fit to inherit. We have become Palm Sunday people.
Let us proclaim the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. The Hope of Israel lay not in conquest, but in surrender. Our victory in the world is won by dying to the world. Let us put aside politics and programs, marketing and methods. Let us learn to glory in our weakness again, when our only weapon was the Word and the real secret to the Spiritual Life, genuine happiness in God, was not the latest book by the most trendy guru, but the rather unexciting task of earnest prayer. This Easter Season, let us remember that the Kingdom is here. There are no wars left to fight.
"In this world you will have tribulation, but fear not. I have conquered the world."

here we are

2006-04-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/pc_article.php?id=7151

Here is review from a magazine we should all read. (that's biting sarcasm for the uninitiated)

Two observations. While I would probably agree with assessment of evangelicalism offered in the work reviewed, I find it somewhat amusing that the reviewer is so "You peggeed them, man". What he seems to miss is that Relevant is as smarmily evangelical as any Billy Grahamite with a "Honk if you love W" bumper sticker.
Merely being a bit less legalistic and using slang with a bit more fluidity does not free a magazine from the snares of Christian wannabe-ism.
The author seems to understand this as a parody of Christian sub-culture. By all appearances, this is what mainstream Christianity has become. Relevant would itself be a sub-culture to evangelicalism in that case.

To be relevant

2006-04-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

Polemics aside, what does it mean to be relevant? That what you have to say matters.

On a personal note, I have a cold. I just found out that my licence to preach as a Southern Baptist has been revoked. I'm having atomic shepherd's pie for lunch. (no, the shepherd wasn't irradiated, I used habanero jack cheese) I like chinese food. Gershwin was the man. (or the bomb) (if he was a shepherd, would he then be atomic?)

Response no. 3

2006-04-04T06:39:00.000-07:00

my first response was one of opposition. reading this quote made me apprehensive that the author's meaning was that christianity's embrace of pop culture in relating to the world is intrinsically wrong.
The question is one of mode and meaning. 1. is the mode one of conforming the church to the practices of the lost world in order to make the unchurched feel more comfortable? 2. Is the reason a matter of making the Gospel more palatable? If there is a yes to either, then I think there is a problem. The Church is not for the lost. For that matter, the Church is not for the Christian. The Church is God's. He has commanded our prescence to do Him homage under His own terms. The question is not for us to be relevant to anyone, but to fulfill the Divine mandate in an acceptable fashion.

this bothered me because of what mr. davis pointed out. God transcends time. very t.s. eliot of God, don't you think?

What I am not suggesting is a church with an inability to interact with the culture around it. But I do believe that interaction to an extent stops at the Church door. When we enter the temple, we are in eternity for that time. The issue is not whether we understand or enjoy whaty goes on, but whether we please God. i'm kidding...i thought of ii corinthians. to be relevant in culture. the mission of many churches. the mission of so many lives. yet i initially missed the point, which led me to the following.john fischer published an article in the recent relevant, "When Christians Go Underground". in this article, he advocates that due to the stigmatized stereotypes of christians existent in western culture, christians may indeed "have to go underground and then resurface with a new unified mindset". meaning that as doctors, coffee baristas, firefighters, preschool teachers, police persons, musicians, artists, garbage truck handlers, clerks, professors--you get the point--we must be the dynamic people that we are created to be and, as he puts it, christians second.saying it in this way is difficult for me to stomach, as Christ is the most important part of who i am. if there were one song i could sing (and i had any musical talent), that would be it. yet i like the concept.

I must confess that I am troubled by the concept. It seems to be the result of privatization of religion on a grand scale. I would suggest that Christianity has earned its reputation by being false to itself and to Christ. If we were to reverse the relevance games this minute, engage the culture in an unapologetic (though not without apologeticS), un compromising way, and challenge the world to experience the truth of the Church, we might not have a single convert, but we would be a bit more honest. Suffice to say, I think mr. Fischer should consider soaking his head in cold water several times before doing any more writing.

part of the difficulty of the embrace of pop culture by contemporary christianity is that it may very well lead us into bondage because we lose sight of the focus. granted, since my stay in europe, i've often wondered if the egocentric american perspective blinds us altogether.someone i love articulated it well. yes, God is to become all of who you are, giving up self to become like Him. yet there is a stout difference between being selfless and self-less. the latter circumstance strips the identity until there is nothing left, disregarding the intricately made being that was created. i see this a great deal in the christian subculture, a people afraid to be who they are, so they rely on what they know will be accepted. the former allows the person to be others-focused, but utilizes personality and all the unique things about the person to serve that goal of becoming more like Him. He has to have something to use. i like the way haseltine put it, "Bring the full weight of who you are into your relationships". yet this idea seems to deal more with the individual lives than i-church. then the question always becomes, how does this play out in the i-church?

What is the i-church?

Response no. 2

2006-04-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

I think that Christianity's relevance to life, society, or anything else for that matter, lies in its truth. If it is true, then it is the only way we can relate, for it is the way God relates to us. If it were not true then it would not relate in any case.There is nothing new under the sun, so to invent a relevance thru pop culture is superfluous. The only relevance that matters already exists.

Another friend's response. http://www.thethingsunderthesun.blogspot.com/ is where one may find shifty.

I think your take is absolutely correct, but very unpopular. No one ever suggests that conversion to Christ is something you should do because it's the right thing to do. Modernism has made the truth content of a particular idea or system of ideas rather incidental to its value or importance, both in the academy, the popular mind, and the church (or as Kathryn would call it, the i-church).

Response no. 1

2006-04-04T06:04:00.000-07:00

What will follow is my response to a comment left on the wonderful quote blog. There will be three such responses, one for each comment.

The commentor, Elliott davis, to be found on myspace.com (wonderful songwriter), is my closest friend. Certain points of my response take into account years of conversations on this very topic, so if there are any things unclear, please let me know.

The quote:

Institutional Christianity, fearing its very survival, has latched onto "relevance" as the means of security. The adoption of pop culture in services seems to build congregations and so secure viability. Of course, all at the expense of substance. True worship has nothing to do with structure, neither Mount Gerizim nor Jerusalem, but is of "spirit and truth." The glory of this age, this system of things, may seem to secure our survival, even give success, but it will inevitably result in our bondage to darkness

The Response:

agree sir, but what is the solution? i dont think we should return to the past because we have no impact there either. christianity trancends time so how do we relate?

My commentary: These are related to the six statements of the quote itself.

1. I think the problem is not necessarily with "institutional" christianity, but in a particular, very specifically American christianity which attempts to avoid institutionalism while artificially establishing a permanent structure.
2. I agreee that 'relevance" has been the tool of choice, but would point out that it is a problem because it's not useful relevance. The church should not avoid being relevant; being relevant is not a bad thing. Wyhat must be emphasised is the main area of identification with the lost world:sin.
3. If you understand relevance as making the lost comfortable in church, rather than making them conformable to christ, the only method is to infuse the world's culture into public christianity.
4. I agree that substance has been sacrificed, but I do not concede that the quoted author has made his case.
5.Again a good observation, but unproven.
6.This last statement may be true, but is not substantiated.
The question is one of preservation. in the church fathers, the church is the young bride. She is eternal. She has institutional structures to last for eternity, but also lives paradoxically, with the expectation of the immediate culmination of the age. Th kingdom of god is here, and the kingdom of this world is ending. both realities are endemic to the mission of the church.
As to your question, the problem is not really defined in this quote. The real problem with modern worship is false intimacy. the intimacy that ois rightly placed in the private devotions of believers is not the same as the communal prayer of the church. The songs "I want to see you', "open the eyes of my heart". All are me centered. there is never the us element. The us is what the church is. Christ has a body made up of many believers. what has been done is to translate the individusalistic tendencies of twenty first century democrats (little d) and the modern privitization of religion into congregational worship. What we lose is the community of faith praying together. the great "our" of the our father. When there is no real community, there is no need for corporate worship. the only way to create artificial congregational identity, is to have lots of people that come because they have a good time. as long as they come, the illusion of permenance is created. Thats why these small boring churches are failing. it's not because they're boring, people do boring stuff all the time with sufficient motivation. The idea that the act of coming together is itself important has been glossed over.
With faith alone theology, the 'just me and jesus" mindset is easy to fall into. Also, faith alone feeds our notions of self sufficiency, we don't need a church to bring us to God, we come on our own turf. We just may do it together.
the solution is, as i have stated many times for many years, objective, god centered worship. The recognition that our only true relevance in the lost world is that they are dying and we know the path to life. To love them with the love of christ for his sake and theirs. to drop the results oriented competition for converts and bring them into true intimacy with the father. (end)

As you can see, I am less enamored of the quote the more I analyze it. Really, it has become an exercise in discussion. Not a bad thing necessarily.

a wonderful quote

2006-03-21T16:41:00.000-08:00

ii] In the harsh loneliness of the desert the people of Israel looked for a more tangible, powerful force, to take them onward. A Golden Calf, the symbol of Egypt's might, seemed the perfect answer. Jesus could secure the Kingdom with a similar submission to dark powers, even though they cringe in the sight of God. Institutional Christianity, fearing its very survival, has latched onto "relevance" as the means of security. The adoption of pop culture in services seems to build congregations and so secure viability. Of course, all at the expense of substance. True worship has nothing to do with structure, neither Mount Gerizim nor Jerusalem, but is of "spirit and truth." The glory of this age, this system of things, may seem to secure our survival, even give success, but it will inevitably result in our bondage to darkness.

That you may be holy...

2006-01-25T16:26:00.000-08:00

Num. 15:37 Again the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 38 "Speak to the children of Israel: Tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a blue thread in the tassels of the corners. 39 "And you shall have the tassel, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the LORD and do them, and that you [may] not follow the harlotry to which your own heart and your own eyes are inclined, 40 "and that you may remember and do all My commandments, and be holy for your God. 41 "I [am] the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I [am] the LORD your God."

The word for tassel is tzit-tzit. These ornaments were the BMW's of the ancient world, to know a man's status, look at the decoration on his cloak. The details which God gives to Moses tell us much about His covenant people. First, they were a royal people. The word for blue here is techelet. This referred to a very specific dye made from the excretions of a rare snail in a very small area of Palestine, such that it was affordable only for royalty. Every Son of the Covenant wore a kingly garment. (This also served as an equalizer, no one wore more than any one else, and everyone could afford the needed four strands.)
Second, they were a priestly people. The techelet blue was also the color of the priest's robe, and the threads made of flax were customarily worn on a wool garment. This mixture of wool and flax was only used for the priestly garments, being outlawed in the Torah for anyone else. These two elements marked each man as a priest for his family.
Third, they were a Messianic people. The blue thread has been understood as a symbol of the Messiah. Isaiah records that Messiah would have healing in His wings, the word is tzit-tzit. In the Gospels, the woman with issue of blood who grabbed His garment, is described as literally grabbing the "twisted coil" at the corner. That act of faith was not just belief that He could heal her, but that He was the Holy One of Israel. The blue thread is referred to as the Shammash, the Servant. Jesus also applied the Servant Songs of Isaiah to Himself.

God Himself tells us the purpose of these tassels. To teach holiness. 39 "And you shall have the tassel, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the LORD and do them, and that you [may] not follow the harlotry to which your own heart and your own eyes are inclined, 40 "and that you may remember and do all My commandments, and be holy for your God.

The structure of this statement is itself a lesson in the process of sanctification. The structure is called chiasm, in which each half is a mirror image of the other. I've arranged the key words as they appear in the verses.

Look (eyes)
Remember (heart and mind)
do (action)
not follow (action)
heart
eyes

While I am in a structural mood, the entire second section of the passage is a bipartite structure (of which the first section is a chiasm)exhibiting progressive parallelism. (The commandment is recapped with an added detail. 40 "and that you may remember and do all My commandments, (a repeat) and be holy for your God. (the new detail). )

The central idea is holiness, and we may derive three principles about how one becomes Holy.

1. Guard your heart by guarding your eyes.

The first purpose of the tassels was to have something to look at, a sign. (covenant signs were very important. Every time a Jewish man went to the bathroom he was faced with the Covenant.) What you look at has the single greatest impact on your thought life. Looking at the tassels brought the commandments to remembrance. By thinking on those things, they did not follow the harlotry of their heart or of their eyes, but this assumed they knew the commandments, which brings us to...

2. The Scripture you memorize is the Scripture you will utilize.

For the tassels to do their thing, so to speak, you had to know the words of God, to be fulfilling the directives of the Torah. The tassels have a very interesting way of doing this. First, they are tied with five double knots, representing the five books of Law. Second, these make ten single knots, bringing to mind the Ten Commandments. Between those knots there are wraps of the Shammash, 7,8,11,and 13. The hebrew alef-bet has a numerical value for each letters. The letters connected with the number of wraps spells YHWH Echad, the Lord is One, bringing to mind the Shema of Duet. 6:4, the first and greatest Commandment. Take those values and that of the word tzit-tzit, you get 613, the number of individual commands in the Torah. The tassels very literally reminded you of God's commands. For our purposes, recognize that the more we are immersed in Scripture, the less trash we are putting into our hearts. That is what brings about genuine transformation.

3. Ask not why a man does something, but what he will do next.

This maxim of Aristotle's is dead on. A man acts according to how he thinks. To understand why a man does something, see what he does next, and this will tell you what he thinks about, which gives you a good clue as to what he is putting into his brain. The central core of that chiastic structure is action. I am reminded of the parable of the two sons. One says "yes" to his father's orders but doesn't fulfill them. The other refuses, but ultimately obeys. The second was the one who was righteous. How we behave is of great importance. (Balance this with the sermon on the mount, evil thoughts are tantamount to evil acts.) This is the final step, put good things into your brain, think right, do right.

41 "I [am] the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I [am] the LORD your God."

God calls us to be holy so we can have fellowship with Him. Christ who has redeemed us as our own Passover Lamb, desires that we share eternity with Him, to be our God.

I hope this rambling lesson has been of some interest to you. Please let me know anything that needs clarification.

The mystery of love

2006-01-12T17:33:00.000-08:00

I offer two observations on love from a sort of mystical perspective. I am not a mystic, but find great value in those transcendental experiences which illuminate the life of faith on occaision.

The first experience that forms my practical paradigm of love was several years ago, on a college trip home for the weekend. Mother had gone to Wal-mart and bought a small birthday-style cake at the bakery. There was no occaision, and that small gesture transformed an ordinary weekend into a celebration. Later that night, in tears, I understood something I had not before. Love needs no occaision but itself. The gratuitousness of love is the greater part of its nature. On a deeper level, God's love for us, and His grace mediated to us, originates in HIS own Divine nature. God does not love us because He created us, nothing in us demands that He care for His creation. God who is love, in the act of making that which was not Himself, began the process of drawing us into participation in the Divine-communion that is the trinitarian existence. All that from a cake.

The second event that transformed my understanding was a weekend trip to Daddy's. My own father died before I was a year old, Daddy is the father of a friend from college who claims me as his. Being an insomniac, I often sleep downstairs to keep from disturbing the household in my midnight ramblings. One cold night, Daddy came in and covered me with a blanket. The gesture was touching, but reflection brought a deeper understanding of his kindness. In that act, he wasn't being nice to a guest, but was treating me, caring for me as one of his children. That moment, Daddy shared with me a part of himself. In that self donation, he became a daddy and I became a son. That is the second truth of love, self giving. The covenant with God is the same way, its purpose is to make children out of strangers. In God's self-giving grace, we are adopted as heirs.

A parable

2006-01-05T12:20:00.000-08:00

The story is told of a circuit rider in the back woods of Tennessee who, while riding home on a Sunday night, was chased by a bear into a panther trap, a deep hole lined with sharpened sticks. Hanging by an old root, hoping the bear would leave so he could climb out, the preacher man suddenly felt sharp pains in his legs. Looking down, he was being stung by a swarm of bees whose nest he had disturbed as he fell in the trap. His attention was turned above his head by the sound of chewing. A rat was gnawing through the root he was clinging to. As he gazed upward at this new problem, a drop of honey fell from the bee's nest and landed on his tongue. If he climbed out, the bear got him, if he stayed where he was, the bees would get him, and when that root gave, he was done for in the panther trap. What did he do? Reach for more honey.

The moral: Life is a panther trap, we will not get out of it alive. It is full of pain and death, but by the grace of God, the stinging bees make honey, and we must learn to reach for it.

The spiritual truth: The only true honey in this life is the pursuit of intimacy with God. Our sanctification is the only thing that will make us truly happy.

The problem of trying to be like Jesus, is that we must die trying.

42-a disputation

2006-01-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

1. The answer to life, the universe, and everything. The problem is not knowing the question. Well, I posit that the ultimate question is "Why Am I here?". The thing that seperated us from animals is sentience, self awareness. We know that we are. This brute fact, the most brutal fact, demands the most basic question, "why?".

2. I propose that this question is the starting place of the Gospel. The Gospel begins"In the beginning, God created..", and the entirety of salvation history is the working out of the reason that God made that which was not God. I also propose that the answer is this: we are here to experience radical intimacy with God.

3. This radical intimacy is being made over into the likeness of Christ, the union of God and man. To be made into Christ's likeness we must learn perfect love, the nature of God. Love is self-donation. The exchange of selves in this radical intimacy demands the full surrender of our obedience to the Father, and participation in the self-sacrifice within the Godhead.

4. This participation takes place through Christ's death and ressurection. When we are baptized into Christ, into His Body, that inter-personal donation takes place, we enter into the life of the Trinity. That entrance into the Trinitarian existence culminates in our being made holy, where every barrier to our dwelling with God is removed.

5. Our being made holy is the purpose of the Church. In the Church, we are incorporated in Christ's body and sealed with the internal witness of the Holy Spirit, Who works that purging during our earthly lives.

6. Accepting these premises as true, the evangelistic mission is not merely to bring people to a particular belief about Christ, but to bring people into a relationship with Christ Himself. This relatationship should not be a spiritual connection only, but a physical absorption into Christ's earthly body, the Assembly He left behind.

7. Evangelism that focuses on calling people not only to Christ, but to the Church as well, is not a "Jesus and..." message, but a call to enjoy intimacy with the fullness of Christ. Proclamation to the lost world must not be to an invisible Savior only, but to a living Savior, present in the Sacraments He established.

8. Through the Sacraments, believers abide in Christ who abides in them. In the Church, we participate in the Divine life of the Trinity. In that life, we find the radical intimacy for which we were created. In Christ and His Church, we find the answer to that ultimate question.

Hi

2006-01-02T14:34:00.000-08:00

Hi. New blog for you http://www.myspace.com/makarias

Totus Tuus

2006-01-01T07:40:00.000-08:00

Totus Tuus, the Episcopal and later Papal motto of Karol Wojtyla, whom history will, I suspect, remember as John Paul the Great, translates "totally yours". (St.) John Paul II lived before the eyes of the world, in his life as well as death, true consecration to Christ through His Mother. Her feast under the title "Mother of God" is celebrated today. God bless your new year; Holy Mary, pray for us.

On the Spiritual Life

2005-12-31T07:10:00.000-08:00

With the tradition of making New Year's resolutions to break, I thought this as good a time as any to get all this off my chest. It should also be noted that I am in a much better position to give you a leg up as to what not to do in regards to my aforetitled subject, (I have I think mentioned that I am a screw-up) but there is a long tradition among Christian writers of holding forth on matters of which one knows nothing about, and my unhallowed hands will not soil it.

I was once asked what my key to the Spiritual life was. My first answer, "If all else fails, sin" was, apparently, not what my interlocutor had in mind. (I suppose she had more in mind how I got it right, on the rare occaisions I opened myself up to grace, rather than where I generally ended up when left to my own devices.) So my second answer was "repetition", and that is still my answer.
The story is told of a monk who planted a tree on the top of a mountain and sent his disciple to care for it. "Water it until it blooms." Every day, the young man filled a cup with water, climbed the mountain and poured the water on the spindly little sapling, and returned to his monastery. For three years this process continued with little result. Then one day he filled his cup as always, but upon climbing the mountain, found not a sapling, but a blooming tree, small yes, but a tree.
The moral. At first glance one might say perseverance, and it's a good answer, but there is something more to it, the value of a system. If you were to perform the same action at the same time every day for long enough, the world would simply have to change, you would simply have to change. That is, assuming the action was good. I posit that a person praying the same prayer at the same time every day for as long as it took could alter the course of human life as we know it. Let it also be noted that a regimented approach to prayer is not legalism. Legalism emerges when the time that you pray becomes more important than what you pray, or to whom you pray, but this method, if you will, is more than just doing the same thing over and over.
There is another perspective of viewing repetition. Consider the Mass. Every day, at altars all over the world, Christ is sacramentally present in the sacrifice of the Eucharist, but this is not understood as a repetition of an event, but a single eternal act continually superimposing itself on temporal reality. It is repetitive because it is eternal. Apply this idea to our discussion. Rather than making the spiritual life an act of repeated prayer, the task is to encapsulate our existence in a single unending oratio, to pray with out ceasing. But I do not mean a great, continuous dialogue, but rather a shift in perception, to view each prayer, each word, as an eternity to itself, to live our faith in the present moment. It is not saying the same thing over again, but spanning that singularity over a month, a year, or a lifetime.
That perspective has two immediate results. First, the great easing of our burden. I am not able to keep from sinning all day. I can, I think, keep from sinning for the next moment. Put positively, I can do the next right thing. Ten minutes from know, who knows, but the next right thing is possible. Rather than seeing the big picture, years of struggle for holiness, there is one single moment of being holy, over and over again.
The second is less obvious, and more difficult to obtain. The great problem of sin is remembering it. It is not easy to have faith in God's forgiveness when sin is so fresh on our minds. With learning the holiness of the moment, there must come the turning from the past, to make each moment new. Jesus admonished us not to worry about tomorrow, but we must learn not to worry about yesterday.
This is my New Year's resolution. To live in the present moment, seeing only enough of the past to avoid it's mistakes, and only enough of the future to do the next right thing. I hope to make this year an experiment in repition. I intend to change the world.

"forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,
I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."

Merry Christmas

2005-12-24T02:39:00.000-08:00

I don’t know at which point I began to lose my romanticized notions about the first Christmas, but now, standing in the freezing cold, midnight on Christmas morning, those visions of a long distant December 25th, complete with a neat stable, tidy shepherds, and gift-shop angels, give way to a scene much more foreign. It is not December, but early spring. The shepherds are in the fields to guard the new born lambs that will, in the fullness of time, be slaughtered as atonement for their caretakers. The angels send these agrarian nobodies to a dirty cave to see a baby that cries and has to be changed. The creeping realization of these things doesn’t change the way I perceive Christmas, but it does affect how I feel about it. This is a Christmas devoid of sentiment.
Sentiment is not bad per se. There are certain places and things whose value is their sentiment, this grants them the power to restore absent friends and lost loved ones. Faces may fade in my memory, but the feeling produced when I see these objects, that mix of pain and joy which is sharp enough to go undistorted brings back, for a moment, the real person in a way no other experience can. Sentiment, however, when not born of things seen, touched, and loved, becomes a means of having an experience without letting that experience change you. A Christmas dressed up in sentimental trappings never becomes the real vision it is meant to be.

Those words are a year old. They began a meditation on the feast of the Nativity that was never finished and will not be (at least this year). Looking back, I still feel as I did, but also appreciate more that some sentimentality may not be all bad. My favorite carols are the lullabye carols, celebrating the pristine white child of the Creche. My favorite holiday foods are the fruit, the sausage-balls, and other pedestrian dainties whose power alone lies in association with this holiday. Let sentiment thrive as long as it draws us to the true Christ child.
My Christmas gift to you is a poem written by a friend of mine 25 years ago today. I hope you enjoy it.

Christmas Past, Present, and Future

Once again the Christmas lights glow softly in the windows,
Shedding a strange, ethereal beam upon the night,
Like the soft radiance from the manger of Bethlehem,
A deep, distant glitter which for two-thousand years has been eclipsed but never extinguished.
Above in the winter sky, the same stars pierce the dark blanket of the night
With rays which have been traveling Earthward since before the first Christmas.And with a surge of painful joy, memories of long-past Christmases crowd into our minds;
Voices now stilled whisper out of eternity, bringing nostalgia,
Faded regrets,Twinges of dead anger, and vague, tantalizing longings for accomplishments which might have been;And with the odor of long-dead pine trees, an unworldly peace overpowers the soul.
What reaches us with each returning Christmas? How important is this experience which stirs the depths of our beingWith thoughts, hopes, desires and longings which cannot be uttered? The values and standards of the world overpower us with their insistent cry
That money and influence are all-important - the old, tired, jaded refrainThat these “all-powerful” yet unsatisfying forces alone make the world function.Yet what are we? Robots manipulated by those who control us through the “Almighty Dollar”? Or is there something more, some One who speaks to us through the confusion and strife,Whose voice is nearly drowned out by the babble of the world around us? Yet we cannot ignore completely the far-distant summons, Which somehow preserves our broken hopes and our lost dreams. Something which penetrates the hard shell of our compromised ideals,Which alone are practical, and enable us to live and work after a fashion in this world.The quiet shrill voice which goads us to move a little closer to the “impossible dream”.That there may be, sometime, somewhere, that peace among men who are made in God’s image
Which is now so horribly marred.

Meanwhile, the Generals go on shedding the blood of confused, bewildered youth For their own impossible dream, which would only be a monstrous nightmare if it ever could be fulfilled:To make the world over into their own terribly distorted image,To establish a “free” society in which the rich and powerful are free To oppress and exploit the poor and powerless,Who in turn would be free to be oppressed and exploited.Is this the gift which a Christian nation and people render back to the Babe of Bethlehem?Have two-thousand Christmases then been meaningless?A divine voice within silently, yet terrifyingly shouts “NO!”Yet how can God redeem the world so distorted and disfigured
By human hate, greed, envy, jealousy, and hypocrisy?Are those who worship one economic or political system, Which safeguards their special interests at the expense of the majority’Really capable of redemption?How can such a tremendous and shattering change be made?Yet, is anything to hard for God? Thanks be to God, that deep down inside the human soul there is a response
Which reaches outward and upward from the depths of despair and futility,That there is a truth that will not stay crushed under the wreckage of time, the debris of the ages,That there is something within us each which will not be satisfied, Will not accept the temporary, false solutions offered by a man, a party, a nation, or a system,
Something which cannot find true peace here and now, yet it cannot ever die. This is the real self, the soul, spirit, or mind, that comes from God Who has made us for Himself, and will give us no real peace until we find our rest in him.It may take ages, yet truth eternal cannot finally be defeated - can never be destroyed.So this is why the angels sang above Bethlehem so long ago:To proclaim the truth that must still be grasped, recognized, accepted;Which dawns, Fades, and dawns again, ever so slowly With the weariness of the ages, and with excruciating pain,Yet at the same time, it contains the freshness, new life, and hope Of an ever approaching, eternal tomorrow. Then let the Christmas lights shine on, Casting their multi-colored, unearthly, angelic glow upon the worlds night.The star of Bethlehem radiates forever,As the true Wise Men of every age Seek the meaning of all things Again at the Manger.Life, light, hope, faith, joy, and love eternal Speak to the world, shout to the universe,“Behold your God!”

Arthur W. MatthewsChristmas 1970

God's peace.

in obscura

2005-12-14T12:19:00.000-08:00

Today is the feast of St. John of the Cross. It is perhaps appropriate that I am, for the moment, in my own dark night of the soul. It may be nothing more than typical holiday hum-drums. Three attempts to lengthen this post have failed. Es ist genug.

Advent

2005-12-06T03:38:00.000-08:00

Well, the tree is finished. Three days of placing 300+ ornaments on the Walmart made dendrite have produced a passably festive objet d'art. Being the only Catholic in the house, Christmas begins after Thanksgiving; Advent is not something Baptists pay much attention to. (In Catholic tradition, the tree, nativity scenes, etc. are not put up till Christmas Eve) For that reason (since most of my readers are Protestant) I thought i'd talk a bit about the Advent season. (I don't really have much to say to Catholics, nearly every time I have shared some great new insight the reply is something like "well, yeah, why do you think the Church has taught that all along". )

Contrary to expectation (mine anyway) Advent is not nearly so concerned with Christ's first coming as His second. The gospel readings in the lectionary almost all deal with eschatalogical events. One very practical value in this is by recalling the return of our Savior and celebrating the redemption of our bodies, we are better able to deal with the abscence of loved ones during the holiday season. (Blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on.) A second value is keeping the big picture in view. The Gospel is not just Christ's death, but His Incarnation, birth, life, death, Ressurection, Ascension, and final return. Christ's second Advent is the great hope of our salvation. Preparing for Christmas by remembering His coming keeps the totality of Christ's mission in view.

I hope this gives you something to consider over single-malt (I reccomend a Speyside, Glenlivet 12 or his eighteen-year-old brother) and a good cigar or pipe (Kendall brown flake).

another memory and its train of thought

2005-12-01T19:14:00.000-08:00

The frontman for some Christian rock band was having "share time" in between songs. What stuck out to me was his description of God as being "crazy in love" with us. I was bothered by this first because of the picture I got of God as a teenager waiting by the phone for one of us to call, which is, I'm sure, not at all what the fellow was going for. As I considered it, I realised that my gut response was conditioned by a shift in the language used to talk about God among evangelicals. Whether the "Jesus is my boyfriend" lyrics de riguer in christian music, to calling God "Dad" in prayer (a practice that is not wrong per se, but still makes me nervous.), the trend is toward anthropomorphism in Christianese. That can of worms is not my subject however. This meditatatio is on this question: What does it mean to say God loves us.The starting point would be, I think (guess?), the disparity between human and divine love. There is a human tendency, the result of the fall, for love to be either a function of one's own need for another person, or a simple development of natural affection. Both are ultimately selfish. Even in the moments I desire the greatest good for one I love, there is the motivation that if they harm themselves, they could deprive me of their prescence. My own need for them is at the root. (This is not to say that this is all love is, I have full confidence that when our love is given to God, He directs His love for them through us; He redeems Fallen love to make it holy. ) On the other hand, there are some I love because our relationship has outgrown plain mutual liking. I am not yet willing to give myself to them as I have my close friends, but I have deeper feelings for them than I do casual friends. It is still a sort of selfishness. The ideal love is self-donation. This self donating reaches it's pinnacle in the sanctity and sacrament of Christian marriage, but every friendship of long duration and deep communion is a marriage of sorts.The problem then with understanding the love of God, is imagining love without sentiment and love without need. (Recognise that by sentiment, I do not mean just gushy feelings, even love as hard as iron is a sort of sentiment.) We also cannot imagine a love that is omniscient. When we love, we desire the best good for the beloved, which is all well and good till the best thing for them is a benefit we cannot provide or understand, or when the best thing hurts. While those who have raised children can identify with having to allow pain for the beloved's greater good, this dynamic is almost wholly foreign to love between friends or neighbors. Another obstacle is imagining love without favoritism. We value those we love more than anyone else, it is our nature. Do we really believe that God loves none of us better than any other? I have certainly known Christians who seemed to think that the Almighty stayed up nights admiring them.All of this has been to illustrate the great difficulty in grasping what God's love is like.Why I bother you with all of this relates to yesterday's derailed train. We say God loves us, all well and good, but how often do we complain about the working out of that love. Besides us, what of those who hear the "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." I suspect the only sort of love the average pagan can relate to is almost if not entirely unlike the real consuming fire God's affection for us really is. Second, what about God's idea of a wonderful plan. One of those wonderful plans involved the execution of an innocent man. But again, the wounds of victory.All this is going somewhere I hope. God bless

a memory and train of thought

2005-11-29T04:02:00.000-08:00

While a seminary student (at a Baptist seminary) I overheard a conversation between one of the institutions best and brightest and another student. After listening to the girl tell him all her problems, the future Spurgeon said, "Well, first we need to make sure you're saved". On the surface this seems like a good, if not a bit too pat answer, but on reflection it carried three implications which trouble me. The first is the underlying suggestion that if she came to Jesus, her problems would be solved (a phenomenon have written on. No one seems to advocate conversion because it is the right thing to do.), which encourages conversion out of wrong motives (and I think motives matter). Second, what if she does what he suggested, which in his paradigm consisted, I suspect, of saying the magic prayer and being set for all eternity, and her problems stay the same. Unless her conversion was genuine, it is likely that she will become disillusioned, a possible barrier to real conversion later on. Third, it never entered his mind apparently, that her problems were there for a reason. As I read the Scriptures, the central motif is the salvation of mankind. God's business is drawing us to Himself and making us over into His image. I believe that every trial and every joy we encounter comes to us for our sanctification. Whether lost or children of the Father, we are being moved as we are willing, towards God. What that student did not realize, something foreign to the Protestant tradition, is the redemptive value of suffering. Even the Old Testament judgement of God was to bring sinners to repentance. I have sometimes thought God was judging me, but now think that He was merely molding me. Whether Judgement or Justification may depend on what we do with it.
I serve under a blind preacher. I recognize that in order for Him to be made over into Christ's likeness, he has been denied sight. As a side note, I wonder if he will be blind in heaven. My first thought is no, of course not, but perhaps that handicap may become under the grace of God, a crown to cast at Jesus' feet. It has been written that martyr's wounds will be badges of honor, the wounds of victory. We are being made into the likeness of a Savior with scars.
Here the train of thought derails. Your thoughts, please.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

2005-11-23T19:10:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving

2005-11-23T12:48:00.000-08:00

Finding something to say about a holiday whose icon is my least favorite fowl, culinarily speaking, is not easy. If I didn't have the need that I assume most writers have, the unfailing need to comment on any given event, particularly one that is supposed to be meaningful, in the hopes of saying something meaningful, I wouldn't bother.
The images of Thanksgiving, the over the river and through the woods iconography of the quintessential american holiday, football, food, family. Most are somewhat lost on me. I have no interest in football, I don't care for turkey (There has been in my family, a commandment that turkey must be served at the dignified insurrection that is Thanksgiving dinner, but my efforts to get it removed have finally been sucessful. We are having chicken this year. I admit that such pedestrian fare lacks the panache, the overstuffed grandeur of the avian titan that is the very essence of this day in the popular mind, but I just prefer chicken.), and outside my immediate family (three of us), the vast majority of my relations are crazy.
With deeper reflection, I am reminded of something else those icons hearken to. Thanksgiving, Eucharist, was the name given to the communion meal in the early church. Though in separate homes at separate tables, we all are one family called to gather at Christ's Supper. For these Thy gifts which we are about to recieve, make us truly thankful.

reminder

2005-11-22T23:08:00.000-08:00

I encourage you to read the blog I am linking to again. characteristically excellent. http://www.mattcrash.blogspot.com

In memoriam C. S. Lewis

2005-11-22T17:49:00.000-08:00

On this day, Nov. 22, 1963, Jack Lewis took the long journey. Lux Aeternam luceat eis. Amen.

The loss of the Holy

2005-11-18T20:08:00.000-08:00

I have written about the shifting away from traditional styles of church for more "user friendly" models of worship, but in the previous context the observation was only a subpoint in a different argument. I think it a problem not only because of the paradigm shift of which it is a symptom, but think that the matter in itself is a grave loss for many people in the Church (or the churches) today. What has been lost is the sense of the holy, of what would have been called the numinous a hundred years ago. The trend is to more casual, more familiar (the sirt of familiarity that breeds contempt), and just more worldly atmosphere when engaging in congregational worship. Even liturgical churches have opened themselves to every wind of fashion in the christian marketplace.
The first cause I think, is that church in the traditional mold tends to be, well, not fun. Fun isn't the point mind you, but getting lost people to sit in church long enough to get saved when the Christians don't even want to suffer through it is not easy business, so making Church more (hmmmmm?) commercial is the easiest option. (I also posit that the service is not for non-believers. They were not permitted for half of the service in the early Church. The service is a holy gathering of God's family. Evangelism is more effective out of the Church service itself, and making it the primary emphasis on sunday denies the believers one of their priviledges as a child of God, dinner at home with the family.) Of course, this is a result of individualism. The focus turning towards what I can get out of church. When this becomes the central question in planning worship, what you get is either spiritual entertainment (little Joel again) or semi-Christian self help sessions (Robert Shuler.)
The second cause (or the first) (I will get into trouble for this) is the Reformation. When Luther threw the sacramental imagination out of the church, the church lost its dynamic force. The thing that has been forgotten (and this is the reason for the shift toward individualism) is Christ's prescence within the Church. Through the Sacraments, catholics believe that Christ is literally and physically present in the Church, within the very building. It does make a difference. In the Old Testament, the cetner of Israel's worship was God's actual prescence in the Tabernacle or in the Temple. David danced before the Ark because God was really there in an entirely different sense than being omnipresent. God was locally present. This same sense of locality, of Heaven itself touching down, so to speak, is what animates the Mass. For a Protestant (most anyway) the presence of Christ is purely Spiritual, and the tendency is out of sight, out of mind. (This also accounts for the trend towards emotionalism in worship in my opinion. We want to have an experience of some sort, and because Christ is only here in Spirit, it must be a "spiritual" experience, and the only way that may be realized is through feeling something.)
Setting sacramentalism aside, in every gathering of Christians, there is the special promise that Christ is in their midst. Worship should be reclaimed as the time we meet with Christ. Church is not intended to be fun. Moses described God's presence as terrifying. Renewing the awareness of God's immediacy is the hope for a decaying Church in a dying world.

The Myth of Relevancy

2005-11-17T21:45:00.000-08:00

Something of great concern to the Christian church in the last fifty years has been keeping Christianity meaningful in today's fast-paced world. Whether the folk-Mass or Christian rappers with "rivalries", the task of transforming the world of the human and temporal through the divine and eternal Gospel has caused a blending of secular and Christian culture not seen since the byzantine era. (And granted, the secular culture was Christianized, not vice versa.) The motives are good motives, and I suspect that this is why fewer Christians are yelling bloody murder about what is happening in our Churches.
The reason given for the change (or rather the excuse) is the need for relevancy. This has been used to justify the exchange of well written (admitedly badly performed) Christian music, for badly written and badly performed sort-of Christian music. (I heard a song on secular radio the other day which I happened to know to be a "worship" song. Change three words, and this song will get you a date. Try it.) I do not dislike Christian rock. I don't believe it is necessarily appropriate for congregational worship, but think it a good and vital means of expression to be used for God's glory as much as anything else. (I listen to southern Gospel for heaven's sake. I can't say much.) The idea is (I get this straight from Rick Warren. I am not making this up.) to make lost people feel "comfortable" by styling worship after the top forty. (One commentator noted that this would not have happened fifty years ago. Then they knew rock music was not for Church but for the back seat of a car. And, no, I am not one of those evil african sex music with back-beats idiots. As a classically trained composer, I will agree that some rock music is musically profound and beautiful. I just like "victory in Jesus" alot.) But music is not the only place.
Traditional Church is fading. I have read about churches broadcasting services in a church run coffee house for those less comfortable with going to "church." Of course there is the mega-church phenomenon. I have no problem with large churches, but the theology associated with these faith-malls tends to be sketchy (can anyone say Joel O'Steen?), and you lose the communal aspect of Christianity. The ability to grow within the "family of God", has been replaced with the oversized beauracracy of God.
Another symptom is the trend in Church staffing. How often do you see a youth minister over thirty? The claim is that anyone old enough to have children themselves are too old for teenagers to "relate" too. This bothers me for two reasons. 1. The justification. Teenagers need to relate to someone. I don't believe a whif of this. I have found that people in general have less a need of people with similar backgrounds and ages to be their ministers, and more a need of people of genuine integrity to love them with the love of Christ. A youth minister who genuinely loves his kids will be more effective than the most "relevant" post-pubescent the church can wrangle. 2. The method. Churches seem to think "He's young with no experience, let him be the youth minister." This horrifies me because it takes many years of training and experience to be able to deal with teenagers. This age group has the highest level of social and psychological of dysfunction of nearly any demographic within the Church. Letting another teenager loose on them is a disservice to the people we are called to minister to.
The last problem I can cite is one I have allready written on, the dumbing down of the Gospel. In the early Church, people became christians not because of good marketing (in fact much doctrine was kept secret until a person had been a Christian for some time.), but the ethical content of Christianity. As Jesus said, "They will know you are my disciples because you love one another."
There are my examples. Here is my conclusion. Relevancy is a myth. Is eternal truth relavant to those who have no understanding of eternity? Do the living have any relevancy to the dead? Paul described christians as being an "odor of death unto death" to the lost world. I posit that our goal should not be relevancy to the world, but the calling of people out of the world. Love the lost. (Love them sacrificially for their own sake, not just to get them saved.) Be people of integrity. (They can spot a phony. A lot of Christians are phonies and they know it. I'm pretty sure that's why we are having to play so many relevancy games now.) The lost don't need companions, but guides to the right road.

Seek and ye shall find?

2005-11-16T20:15:00.000-08:00

Our faith in Christ presents us with many paradoxes. How do you square "Ask anything of the Father in My Name and He will give it to you" with "When you ask you do not recieve, because you ask with evil motives, intending to squander what you recieve on your own pleasures."? The paradox comes when I ask for good things which I know God desires for me to have but don't get them. I pray for contrition, deep conversion, holiness, humility, freedom from besetting sin, but God doesn't seem to want me to have those things. My conclusion is that the problem must be in my motives. Do I wish to be holy for Christ's sake, or for my own? Of course I want to be holy because I want to serve God more perfectly, but must admit that I want credit for that holiness.
This disparity is at the heart of what the Church means when it says we must work for our salvation. The point is not that we work to get into heaven, but work to be ready for it. It could be that I am not yet ready for the sort of holiness I desire. I must learn humility first, or self control. I am reminded of Paul's admonition "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you." Give me your thoughts.

Women in ministry

2005-10-31T18:00:00.000-08:00

There are two paths to this subject the relatively short and the really long. I'm opting for the short one for now.

The question of ordination of women is realitively cut and dry for the Catholic. (For the Protestant, the issues are much more complicated. There is the particular view of the pastoral ministry, questions of trinitarian doctrine, to deal with without even touching the sociological points of the debate. I'm not touching this one yet.)

For the Catholic, the priestly ministry is not just a calling to a type of service, but a decision of the Holy Spirit working through the authority of the Church, to irrevocably mark the soul of a man with the chrism that when he performs certain liturgical actions, uniting his intention with that of the Church, Christ Himself works through the priest. In other words, the understanding that when the priest pronounces the absolution, you are forgiven because Christ forgives you in the person of the priest. Christ forgives you, but He has chosen to mediate that forgiveness by working through the priest. (I use penance as an example, this is the essence of sacerdotal theology.) Because the priest works in Persona Christi, acts on Christ's behalf at Jesus' command, and for this reason Christ effects the spiritual reality through the physical action of the priest, the priest is an icon, an image of Christ. Therefore, a woman cannot, metaphysically cannot, be ordained a priest, she may not be the living image of Christ in the body, the Church.

Because the Protestant churches lack the sacramental understanding, the issue is at once much simpler and infinitaly more complicated. As I said, I won't touch it yet.

On Evangelism

2005-10-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

I went to a judgement House tonight. (For those unfamiliar, this is a sort of drama in which two or more characters die, some go to heaven, some to hell, and we get to watch.) My observations on the event itself are as follows. First, the acting was awful. Second, the sets were horrible. Hell looked like a dance club lorded over by a Satan who looked like the Emperor from Star Wars. Heaven looked like a cocktail lounge, lots of mirrors, mood lighting, elevator music, etc. ( I also learned something about myself, how much my imagination of Jesus has been affected by Aslan. When Jesus spoke my only thoughts were, the voice is wrong.)
All this is neither here nor there. What struck me was the message presented. The Gospel weas not, "You are a condemned sinner, repent, convert, and serve", but "Jesus will solve your problems, make you happier and better." It was marketing. (If the details of the story are taken into account, you'll get the girl too.) Whenever a character had a conversion expereience the message was "Pray this prayer, you'll feel better." At a funeral scene, grieving parents were told, "Jesus will help you with this situation". Yes He will, but that is not motivation for converting. The whole affair left a bad taste in my mouth.
This needs developement, but please give me your thoughts.

In response to a comment(you do read the comments?) let me say this. There is a long tradition of evangelistic drama, often involving the dramatization of heaven and hell. It does work, whether Dante or Milton, and I have no doubt there are some who will listen to this voice and no other. As to my criticism, I must bear in mind that Messiah was sent to bind up the broken hearted and that facet of redemption is as much a part of evangelism as any other.

on authority.

2005-10-24T21:04:00.000-07:00

Talking points:

1. Scriptures are not Divine revelation per se, but records of Divine revelation. Revelation is the events themselves, Scriptures are the records of those events. Inspiration refers to the work of the Holy Spirit in preserving these records from error. This does not mean that there are no accurate records of Divine revelation outside of Scripture. Accurate, not inspired. Just as modern scholars rely on textual criticism as a means of affirming the inerrancy of Scripture, the Church may appeal to the preservation of Holy Tradition as evidence for the validity of extra-Scriptural doctrine.

2. Most Christian teaching is an interpretation of Scripture, in other words, a logical extrapolation from the text of Scripture. Therefore, inerrancy is not the key feature of inspiration. You can have an inerrant phonebook. The question is that of infallability, whether the Scripture makes any false or misleading statements, more so than inerrancy, whether the texts are free from error.

3. The problem of infallibility is this, if the Scriptures are infallible, why so many different interpretations that claim to be right. There must be some means of determining the right interpretation to the necessary exclusion of all others if infallibility is to have any meaning.

4. The early church understood that the bishops, speaking from their common experience of faith under the direction of the Holy Spirit, were infallible in the sense that they could recognise truth from error. They also understood that the Bishop of Rome, by virtue of his office, also exercised this particular grace. Note that this does not imply that the Pope may make infallible statements about anything. He cannot speak about what he does not know or that which cannot be known. Papal infallibility is limited to matters of faith and morals, and again refers to the quality of recognising truth from error.

5. Would Christ have left the Church an infallible book without an infallible interpreter? For sole authority to have rested in the Scriptures alone would have been difficult. Before the fifth century a declaration had not been made as to which books were Scripture. (An interesting problem, if the Scriptures are the sole authority, to what do you appeal to determine what is Scripture, since there is no canon in a text recognised as inspired? Without the Church, this becomes tricky ground. ) Before the sixteenth century, there were no printing presses so copies of the Scriptures were hard to come by. Before the nineteenth century, most people were illiterate, rendering Bibles useless to the vast majority. Leaving sole authority in a book doesn't seem to work. Where was the source of authority before Bibles were readily available?

6. Since all Church dogma is understood as ultimately an interpretation of Scripture, the question is not Scripture alone versus Scripture and tradition, but, modern interpretations of Scripture versus Scripture and the traditions of Scriptural interpretation held by the early church, men who knew the writers of Scripture and the disciples of those men, the majority of believers for the first fourteen centuries of the church, and modern believers who have faith that God can and has granted an infallible teacher to His people that they may be led into all truth.

A few reasons I like the idea of purgatory

2005-10-16T02:14:00.000-07:00

I don't think I would enjoy heaven. There is no where to sin. I like sin (apparently). If I were to go to heaven now I would be miserable. Some might suggest that the desire for sin dies with the body. This is problematic because the desire for sin isn't purely somatic. I sin in my mind. For this reason, death cannot be the end of sin. If I sin in mind as well as body, for death to end sin, part of my mind would have to die as well, part of what makes me who I am. More than the spirit must survive, because spiritually dead people have personalities. There is more to who we are than spirit. If that part survives the death of the body, desire for sin does also. Hence purgatory. If sin cannot enter heaven, and the part of me that is made for heaven is capable of sin, it must be cleansed. The doctrine of purgatory is the only Christian teaching I know of that answers this problem.

A word to Vespasian

2005-10-11T00:11:00.000-07:00

Hello. I apologise for having failed to respond to an email, but I have not, to my knowledge, recieved one. I recieve comments by email, but cannot respond to them. Leave me an address in a comment to this post and I'll happilly send you my address. God Bless. M

What was the thorn in the flesh?

2005-10-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

Without making too much speculation, I will note two points of Paul's words. While the word refers literally to the body, it is also used to refer to the spiritual nature of the old man. It is the thing we war against in our own bodies. It is often associated with sexual temptation.
Second, it is identified as a messenger, literally angel, of satan sent to do violence. This thorn, or even stake, seems to be spiritual rather than physical, in other words, probably not just an ailment satanically caused, and it is violently destructive.
Paul says that his spiritual torment is allowed to keep him humble, because of the great wisdom God has given him. We have the idea that God only uses holy people, or that God can't use us when there is sin in our lives. It could be that God uses us despite the sin for His own glory. As one who struggles with besetting sin, this idea is at once wonderful and chilling. Does God allow me to live in the unholiness I invariably do when left to myself, to break me of a deeper sin I am less concerned about? I'm hesitant to try to answer. What are your thoughts?

2005-10-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

This is an emailed response to a blogger who left a comment. www.honestwithgod.blogspot.com is the link

Greetings,

I hope you don't mind if I make a few comments on the link you sent me.

Conf. 2 Firstly, I agree that most religious writers operate in a sort of attack mode. I don't know that this is bad. There is, at least in most ethical-theistic traditions (belief in some sort of god and some sort of morality) Christianity, Islam, (and even ethical-pantheistic traditions as in Buddhism) the urge to proselytize. This arises from two ideas, that their beliefs are true (and that truth matters), and that there is a benifit to holding their beliefs to the exclusion of all other systems, which because of the philanthropic character of the ethical content of these systems, demands apologetic to draw other people into something for their benefit. While there is a tendency towards demagoguery, the intentions are generally good.
That being said, we must hope that these proselytizers (of which I am one) are ultimately great lovers of the truth, and can, if truth demands it, accept a greater truth than their own beliefs provide. I myself am a convert from one side of Christianity to another. I understand the tremendous difficulty of bridging the gap. I don't condemn this "attack mode" stance if it is entered into openly.

I would question whether a western cultural slant is intrinsic to Christianity. While Radical Islamists seem to equate the two, Christianity retains many features indicatory of its Oriental heritage. It would be accurate to say that Christianity has been the primary shaping influence of Western culture, but I don't think Christianity itself is necessarilly western.

Introduction. This is an idea that gets alot of press, but I simply don't believe it. First, it was within the context of a Christian worldview that modern science originated. Second, it is rooted in a different use of the word science. Here you seem to use it to refer to a something, an entity which exists on it's own and may be opposed. The problem is that science is not a thing, per se, but a method whereby we understand things. Christianity may not care for the conclusions drawn through science (and should deal with these disagreements on the same playing field, logic), but that is not a war with science, but an assertion of science's validity, that it's methods and conclusions may be questioned because it is a servant of the truth. What most Christians don't like, and in the act of saying so tend to make the same ambiguous usage of the word science, may be more properly called Scientism, a religion where science is deified.
An example would be epicycles. Medieval scientists believed that the sun revolved around the Earth in a circular orbit. When their observations suggested otherwise, they proposed a system of epicycles, several circles along which the sun traveled. When this still didn't jibe with observable phenomena, the epicycles became more complex still. It had ceased to be science. Rather than junking the theory when the empirical evidence didn't matchand coming up with one that did, they exalted the theory above the evidence, the theory above the method, and turned science into religion.
There is a tendency among scientists to tenaciously grasp theories which do not jibe with the evidence they find because they don't like the theory which the evidence suggests. Darwin did it, and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. To war with this pseudo-science is a testimony to the belief in the possibility that human reason may percieve reality as it is.
I disagree that this belligerence towards science is a religious phenomenon as such. Religion is too broad a category to make this assertion. Certain religions, particularly those of the far east, which deny the law of non-contradiction, are unperterbed by science. Two opposing realities may both be "true". I posit that it is only among theistic religions, and those who believe in some kind of intelligent design, who have this attitude toward science, or more precisely, scientism. I also disagree with equating a disagreement with "science" as a disagreement with empirical evidence. Much of what we "know" in science is theory, for the very reason that it is not empirically verifiable. The fact that science deals with physical phenomena that is largely unverifiable (in the sense of clear, demonstrable protocol) and that religion deals with either super or supra- natural phenomena that is equally unverifiable does not make one any more likely or true or logical than the other. The type of evidence does not determine truth content, neither does the type of question.

"If there is a God, then He is either the creator of all the universe and
everything in it, or He isn’t. If He weren’t – if, in fact, He was a partial
diety and some other god-like entity did the actual creating of the universe then very few of those who argue His case would consider Him to be God. On the other hand, if He is the only God and He did create the universe, then it seems clear to me that He also created all truth and reality. In other words, if God created the entire universe then science is not only NOT against Him, but actually belongs to Him. If He exists and He is God, the ultimate creator of all that is, then everything that is true and real was created by Him. "

Firstly, your initial statement is too limited. While you admit you are writing of God from a western perspective, you provide no evidence that He must be as you argue Him to be. You rely on facts not yet in evidence. It does not necessarily follow that God is the creator or not. There are other options, you haven't created a valid dilema. That apologists wouldn't argue for another type of God is, at best, a groundless assertion.

The second statement is better. I would firmly agree that, given the truth of the Judeo-Christian concept of God, He would be the Creator of truth, and science, so long as it followed the rules of logic with intellectual honesty, would be the friend of God's purposes. I would add that a science that assumes materialistic is not real science any mor than a science that assumes theistic creationism. The science given the most press, is pseudo-science.

"A particular scientist may not personally believe in God, but if he’s employing arguments based on essential logic like, 1 + 1 = 2, or based on empirically verified results of experiments under controlled conditions, and his means and conclusions are thereby real and true, then that scientist is literally coming to understand God’s creation. Indeed, that scientist is proving the truths of God, and he may be proving previously unknown truths which means he is teaching me new truths of God’s creation. To think otherwise I would have to admit that those realities and truths belong (calling on the most infamous antithetical example), to the Devil. If God exists, and He created the universe, then He has to own all of the real and true stuff!And thus, it seems obvious to me that if all the warriors who think they’re fighting for God on the religious side would agree that God is the author of all truth and reality . . . and science is ferreting out what is true and real, and eliminating falsehood and fraud, then how come there’s a war here? "

All this is true, but it assumes a dispassionate, logically consistent science. Modern science tends to fail on both points. Your argument does not take into account the actual situation of late twentieth century and twenty-first century scientific inquiry. There is a real, very necessary battle, of truth and ideology.

"The pursuit of religious faith, (as with many other philosophical systems for which there may be a lack of empirical evidence, e.g., patriotism, cultural ideals, moral codes, etc.) tends to provide some wonderful illustrations of mankind’s propensity to the embarrassingly self-contradictory, if not downright spurious. The examples are plentiful, especially via the broadcast media, by which (some might say, unfortunately) they have often become the most recognizable representatives of faith. We have watched famous televangelists weep before their audiences, remorseful at being caught hiring prostitutes
(though the remorse did not seem to interfere with a habit which they had apparently indulged for years); we have watched them go to prison for financial fraud while continuing to plea for our donations; we have watched them broadcast to the nation that God causes terrorism and disease because He is mad at our liberal laws; and, in perhaps the most unique fundraising appeal of all time, we saw at least one TV preacher tell his audience they must immediately write checks to the ministry for millions of dollars or God “would take him home” (i.e., cause his death). "

You seem to be confusing the truth content of the particular claims about reality made by a religion and the disparity between the behavior of that religion' adherents and the ethical teachings of the religion itself. Whether Christians are Christ-like or not does raise the question of whether the Christians actually believe Christian doctrine, but is not germaine to the truthfullness of the doctrine itself. The fact that a VCR will malfunction if one does not follow the instructions has no bearing on the quality of the VCR.

"The most common irony in our pursuit of faith – our most fundamental fraud – is our willingness to fake God. Here’s what I mean. Underlying every church service, every sermon, most of our hymns and prayers, and every piece of bric-a-brac to which we have assigned some religious significance (from candelabras on altars, to the robes of our ministers, from the humblest wood-framed Appalachian church, to the 13th Century Rose Window of Notre Dame in Paris – as the U.S. Library of Congress entry reads, “A window so powerful that it has been described as supernatural . . .”), and underlying our emotional (some will want to say “spiritual”) attachment to each of these things is a basic and critically important deceit – that any of us knows that God exists. "

Let me restate this to make sure I understand. Using the trappings of religion (whichever it may be) to "get in touch" with God, is faking God because we don't really know He exists. A usefull thought experiment is to use the same logical steps in a different context. Your ststement could be put into an anology, insisting on having a parachute to jump out of a plane is deception, because we don't know that the law of gravity exists. We may only say that every time something has been dropped into the open air, it has operated under the terms of what we call gravity, but we have no evidence it will happen the next time, so we really don't know. Let me put up a few more quotes to draw this together.

"...when we were thinking critically and analytically, we admit that we cannot be absolutely certain that God exists. In my opinion this is where our propensity for self-deception seems to kick into a higher gear. Many (not to say “most” though I have my suspicions) faith seekers find themselves, at one and the same time, holding directly contradictory and incongruous views – that we cannot know for sure that God exists, but that they know God.It is the conclusion of this writer that this seemingly minor manipulation of the language is a core component of all religious culture, and in fact, the primary reason it can be argued that no religion, Christianity or otherwise (to the extent it relies on this twist of logic) ought to enable our relationship with the God of creation. "

I will now say what I have been waiting to for a while. This is nonsense. There I said it.

What you have ignored, or not considered, is the possibility of revelation. We cannot know that God exists, but that does not mean we should ignore the possibility that he does, and ignore the means whereby we might relate to Him, if He does. I don't know empirically that I have a brain, but I still believe in neurologists. If God does exist, and if we concede your dilemma stated earlier, we must admit trhat God can reveal Himself to us. Religion, while operating in faith, due to that uncertainty, cannot be denied wholesale as a means God has chosen to interact with mankind. Your argument neither proves He does not, cannot, or has not revealed Himself. I may not know God exists, but I think he does, and until you offer positive evidence that He does not (not merely a negative assertion) you cannot deny that it would be possible for me to know Him (unless you offer positive EVIDENCE to the contrary). Your argument is invalid.

I hope you will consider these responses. My intent is not to simply say "You're wrong". I think you are gravely mistaken, but if you are trying to reach the truth, I hope this is a step on the journey. I wecome a response from you.

Brother Makarias

Caveat blogger

2005-10-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

I perceive that one of the great dangers of being open about ones problems in a public forum, particularly spiritual problems, is the tendency towards pride. Rather like reformed sinners vying for the best "I was a bisexual, drug-addicted, rapist, but now I never have a bad day in Jesus" story during testimony time at a Primitive Baptist funeral, there is a risk of seeking to be praised for one's transparency. I have seen small groups where confession of sin almost became a Christian status symbol. The balance must come, I think, in honesty for its own sake, for the sake of accountability and mutual encouragement, avoiding the trap of glorying in sin.

In praise of ornamental gourds

2005-09-30T19:49:00.000-07:00

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I discovered today a profound liking for ornamental gourds. I had not, to my knowledge, actually seen one before, but I was quite taken with them. The one sitting next to me is shaped rather like an aubergine, yellow with apricot stripes. Exquisite. You may, by this time, have noted that I am rather eccentric. (I'm poor enough to just be strange, but why waste a good poly-syllabic word) I am delighted with these flamboyant cousins to the zucchini for almost the precisely opposite reason we like flowers. Flowers are valued not merely because they are beautiful, but because they are fragile, transitory. Luxuries are like that. Take caviar or Italian sportscars. No one likes caviar. People want it because it's rare and thus a delicacy. (No one seems to notice that the reason caviar is rare is because the fish it comes from is rare, and the fish it comes from is rare because we are eating all of the eggs. Actually let them reproduce and the whole nonsense could be done away with) Same thing with the little Italian sports cars. They aren't comfortable. They have no trunk space. They're just expensive, so everyone wants one.
This is the problem with flowers. Because we prize the rarest varieties, before long, we no longer desire them for their beauty alone(which is really their only intrinsic value), giving praise to Him that made it, but desire them for their rarity, and thus worship the creation rather than the Creator. So I sing the praises of the ornamental gourd. Not at all rare. Largely inedible. Sturdy but useless. Rather unattractive in form, either knobbly and warted, or grotesqeuly curved and elongated. Its value is the paradox of the grotesque besplendored in a most glorious array of color, each speckle, a prayer of adoration to the God who made it to glorify Himself. I'm tempted to rewrite the old gospel song, "Don't spend your money on flowers, just a gourd will do".

Hail Mary, Full of Grace

2005-09-30T04:32:00.000-07:00

I post this on the feast day of St. Jerome. Though described as an irritable porcupine in a bunny hutch, he was one of the great defenders of Mary's place in the life of the Church.

The danger of reactionism is simple, throwing the baby out with the bath water. As a protestant, my dislike of what I perceived as excessive infatuation with Mary limited my appreciation of a singular person in the history of Redemption. Without attempting an apologetic for Marian dogma, let me make two observations on Catholic teaching. All teaching about Mary is related to some point of Christology. The Immaculate Conception safeguards the sinlessness of Christ, Perpetual virginity a guarantor of the Virgin Birth. Mary is hailed as Mother of God in profound affirmation of the Incarnation. Second, whether you accept these doctrines or not, there is no better example of a godly woman in Scripture, and no greater reminder of God's faithfullness to His people. She was the last page of the Old Testament, and the first page of the New. What the Scripture says of Mary is a storehouse of God's gifts to His children.
She is first described as highly favored, literally in the fullness of Divine grace. Just as God Himself became the Incarnate Word in her womb, so the Living Christ dwells in us through the Holy Spirit. She is the archetype of every believer.
Gabriel then says, "The Lord is with thee." This hearkens back to the prophecy of Isaiah, "Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name, Immanuel, God is with us." God is with us not just in the sense of proximity, but in the sense of identification. The two titles, Son of Man and Son of God, do not merely describe progeny, but embodiment. (pardon the example) If I call you a son of a B**** , I'm insulting you not your mother. Those two designations function in a similar way. Not just the son of a man, but embodying all that man is. Not merely the offspring oof God, but the embodiment of Deity. The Incarnation is the central truth of Christianity. That God has chosen to save mankind from within.
Christ lived a human life, died a human death, was the firstfruits of what will be a human ressurection, and ascended into heaven in a human body. One of my favorite events in the Gospel is the Ascension. Christ ascended in the body. He did not rise as spirit, but as flesh and blood(a glorified flesh and blood). As Christ has entered God's realm in a human body, so God's realm descends into a new Heaven and a new Earth, and the tabernacle of God is with men. Mary is a reminder of the beautiful promise that has been fulfilled, God is with us.
"Blessed are you among women." She is, and deserves a place in the life of every believer. She herself said that all generations would call her blessed. Read the prayer Mary prays in the Gospel of Luke sometime, commonly called the Magnificat (My soul magnifies the Lord). This was a woman who knew the Scriptures, who loved the Lord, and who submitted to His will in a singular way. She is an example to all who call God their Savior. I simply repeat words Christ Himself said, "Behold your Mother."

Lead me not into temptation

2005-09-30T04:29:00.000-07:00

The subject: the temptation of Christ
The cast: Jesus and the Devil
The place: the wilderness

Let's consider this in the context of Luke's Gospel. From the first, Luke is establishing Jesus identity. We have the birth narratives, the most detailed in the Gospels. We have the character of John the Forerunner entering early on, prophecying about Messiah, identifying himself with the "voice crying in the wilderness" of Isaiah 40. The Voice from heaven at Jesus' baptism proclaiming Him as "My Son". The backwards geneology ending with son of Adam, son of God. Luke is piling evidence of Jesus' divinity from the first. After baptism, filled with the Spirit, Jesus goes to the wilderness to be tempted. After forty days of tempting, with Jesus tired and hungry, the Devil makes his last effort. The sweet voice of reason and concern with which temptation always speaks asks"If you are the Son of God....."
We must realize that, Dostoevsky aside, the key to interpreting this text is the beginning of each question, the main point Luke has been building to since his first sentence. This is the clincher. This test passed, Jesus begins His public ministry, the chain of events inexorably leading to His death. "If you are the Son of God....." The three questions should, I think, be understood with this dynamic in mind.
First there is the turning of stones to bread. You're hungry, feed yourself. Your fast is almost over, it would be so easy. What strikes me here is the humanliness of hunger. If you are the Son of God, why are you hungry? The temptation seems to be that of working outside of the Incarnation, in spite of it. It's one thing to do miracles to prove His identity to others, but to do a miracle to obviate part of being fully man seems to be a violation of God's plan to redeem humanity from the inside.
Then the offer of kingdoms. What Satan offered was not his to give, it belonged to Christ who would be given all authority in Heaven and on Earth. The pull here seems to go for the end result, authority over the world, without redeeming the world, Christ's mission, the Kingdom without the Cross.
Third, the verse in the Psalms. "Fulfill a prophecy, just one, then I'll know You're the Son of God." (from what I understand of the geography of the temple mount, this would have been a very public miracle) The point seems to be to violate free will. Signs were given only to those who would believe. God gives us only as much knowledge of Himself as we need for faith to take over. If God proved He existed, faith would be pointless. Such a public display of power would throw faith out the window.
The theme of Jesus' identity having been glanced over, there is a pattern I think may be usefull in our own lives.

1. All temptation is, at some level, spiritual warfare. Be aware, use the equipment we are given as believers (see on spiritual warfare) to extinguish the fiery darts of the Devil.

2. We are tempted by what we want. This seems obvious I'm sure, but it came as a great suprise to me when I realized that the reason give in to temptation is because I want to. No, it's not fair.

3.We tend to be tempted by good things. The temptation is to seek a good at the wrong time or in the wrong way. Sex isn't bad, it's just very limited in it's appropriate context. We want something we were created to desire, but we want it without limitations.

4. The most difficult element of temptation is spiritual deception. Satan's method whether in the Garden or in the Wilderness, is to make God say things He didn't say. We interpret conditional statements as promises, or commands as suggestions and miss the mark.

5. The safe guard is Scripture. We are less likely to be decieved as to what God has said when we are immersed in the Scriptures. Jesus defeated the Devil with Deuteronomy. If my spiritual well being rested on my knowledge of Deuteronomy, I would be in trouble.

6. God provides a way of escape. I don't think it's a hidden exit in the back of the dark room we are being lured into, but the good sense not to go in there in the first place. Don't worry about what you will do when temptation comes, pray without ceasing, know the Word, and I think the fleeing will come naturally.

Feed my Lambs.

2005-09-30T04:16:00.000-07:00

Since I have spoken of my some of my struggles, I thought I might offer a word of encouragement for other stragglers down the Path. This is as close to sermonizing as I intend to get on this blog. There will be three points and a poem. I'll give you the poem first.

When a fellow yields to temptation and breaks a conventional law, we look for no good in his makeup, but my, how we look for the flaw. No one asks "Who did the tempting?", nor allows for the battles he's fought. His name becomes food for the jackals, the Saints Who Have never Been Caught.
I'm a sinner, Lord, and I know it. I'm weak, and I blunder and fail. I'm tossed on life's stormy ocean, like a ship that is caught in a gale. But I'm willing to trust in Thy mercy, and keep the commandments Thou'st taught. But deliver me, Lord, from the judgement of the saints who have never been caught. (A cross-stitch on my mother's wall. Mother's a strange one)

His name was Peter. The first pope. The leader of the apostles. The great screw-up of the New Testament. Chesterton remarked that his selection as the leader of the Church was a good example of the chain only being as strong as its weakest link. The text is his restoration in John 21. I'll leave you to get the text.
I have advocated the need for at least some understanding of Greek to really get into the New Testament, and this is a passage whose meaning absolutely does not come through in most translations. I have heard many sermons that make the point that Jesus asked the same question three times, once for each denial. No, He didn't. The question is different each time, sometimes only slightly different, sometimes very different. While there is a numeric correlation between the number of denials and the number of questions,the transformation from question to question is of far greater exegetical weight than the similarities.
Consider this text as a little drama, we will portray Peter. Let's look at his probable mindset. He has betrayed one of his closest friends in the last hours of his friend's life. (I think the Passion movie has this detail right. John's account seems to suggest that Peter was in the courtyard where Jesus was. Very probably, Jesus could have looked Peter in the face as he denied Him) His friend has died without reconcilliation. He has betrayed God Himself. Peter, after all, made the great confession, "You are the Christ." All of this and he can't even let time heal the wounds because the Friend comes back to life, so Peter has to deal with the situation. He has seen Jesus twice since His ressurection, and nothing has been said. Peter has abandoned his calling and returned to the nets where Jesus first found him. (It is interesting to note that the other apostles follow him, regardless) The tension must be remarkable.
Take all that emotion, try to feel it, get in character, so to speak. With that in mind, see how Jesus sets the scene. First there is a miracle of fish, the same miracle recorded when Christ first called Peter. Then they eat breakfast, undoubtedly peter was drawn to the last meal he had shared with Jesus. John mentions that Jesus cooked the fish over a charcoal fire, the same sort of fire Peter warmed himself over that Thursday night. Charcoal has a very distinct smell. Smell is a sense very deeply tied to memory. That smell had to bring every detail of his denial of Jesus to the forefront of his mind. Jesus calls him, "Simon , son of Jonah", at once calling to Peter's recollection both the day when Christ first called him blessed, and gave him a new name, and at the Last Supper, when Jesus calls him by his old name and prophecies the imminent betrayal. What we have is a sort of "This is your life" for Peter, his greatest failures and greatest successes on display. Perhaps Peter is finally ready for the 10,000 question.
"Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these?" First, the image of love here is that of divine love, motherly love. The images are of self donation, Christ's love. Peter answers, "Sure, you know I love you." Problem, Peter uses a different word for love. This word implies friendship. Taking this into account we could render the exchange, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me sacrificially, more than these?" "Sure, Lord, you know I like you." Not what Jesus asked, but I think the latter part of the question is more important now. "More then these" In my mind I hear, "Peter, you said you would stick with me when everyone else ran, what do you say now?" I'm not sure if Peter was being honest or merely trying to skirt the question.
Jesus questions him again, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me ?" , again the sacrificial love. "Do you love Me, whether more than these or not, do you love Me?" Again Peter responds, "Sure Lord, you know I like you." Again, not the question Jesus asked, but I think that's the point. Peter has given an honest answer. That hard admission may be the key to Peter's redemption.
The third question is the stinger. "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?" , this is the same friendship love Peter has affirmed in his answer. John tells us that Peter is grieved. I imagine. Peter has been honest, and Jesus even seems to be questioning that. In the first question, Peter's own words are thrown back at him. In the second, his love is questioned. A third time, Jesus seems to say "Simon, you can't say you love Me more than these, you can't say you love Me sacrificially. You have said you love Me as a friend, Simon, do you even love Me like you say you do?".
This is the promised end. All the dramatic tension built up in Peter, all the experiences relived that early morning, all the grief of having to face the Friend he has betrayed culminates in this statement. "Lord, you know all things (learned knowledge, the same word Peter used above when he said "you know"), you know ( a new word, implying deep intimate knowledge, the same sense that Adam knew his wife) that I love You (friendship love)." Peter has been restored. The friendship has been healed, and Peter's sin forgiven.
You will notice that I have said nothing of Jesus' response to Peter each time. "Tend my sheep, feed My lambs." That Jesus response was the same to Peter each time holds two very powerfull truths for those who have, like Peter, betrayed their Lord. Whether Peter loved Jesus as he should have, more than the others or not, Jesus gave him the same commission. Peter's sin had not disqualified him from service. Sinner's or not, whether we love Jesus as He demands or not, we have a calling and a duty. Second, look at the last question. Peter could not say yes to Jesus first two questions, Jesus then asked if he loved Him as he said he did. Jesus accepted what Peter had, whether it was what He demanded or not. God will take what we offer freely, with all its imperfections, and make it into something for His own glory.
Jesus' last words to Peter were the same as His first, and the same ones He says to each of us, "Follow Me".

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God of Judas and God of Cain, God of us who are also murderers and betrayers, Father of sons who have broken every promise, have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and lead us into everlasting life. Amen.

"I'm sorry, so sorry"

2005-09-29T23:20:00.000-07:00

Since I've begun discussing my own spiritual struggles, I may as well talk about another. I have great difficulty being sorry for sin. I have no difficulty with what the Church calls attrition, desire to turn from sin out of recognition of its evil, but contrition, deep sorrow for sin prompted by love for God, is a grace I must pray for daily. The Church understands that attrition, under the working of the Holy Spirit, can be transformed into contrition, and that insight is a source of hope as I pray for that soul sorrow.
I have felt deep sorrow for sin, this was the cause of the nervous breakdown I have written about, but that deep sorrow was a pit of despair, not the sorrow that heals through the power of God. The spiritual catharsis, where tears of repentance are cleansing tears, is much rarer for me. In my last week in New Orleans (Our Lady of Prompt succor, pray for us) I had an interesting experience.
I was walking down a road on campus lined with large trees that were covered in Spanish moss. Immediately, I was transported to my childhood. My family came to New orleans to visit my Aunt Mitt. (I was young, I'm not sure how young) Mother took me to the zoo and bought me a rubber cobra, which I fed with the Spanish moss from the trees outside of Mitt's house. That trip became very present in my memory on that dark road. I remember getting spanked on that trip. It perhaps sticks out in my mind because I was usually a good child. My mother wanted me for something and I didn't want to come. I had no reason, I just didn't want to obey. Mother dragged me up the stairs (they were very steep as I remember) and my backside and her right hand discussed the matter. Having reached an agreement, I promptly forgot the incident until that night so many years later. I'm telling you all this because what happened suprised me. I felt a stange, anachronistic remorse for having disobeyed my mother. There were no mixed motives, being sorry because she was angry or because I got spanked, just a genuine sorrow for disobedience of one I loved so much. With that realization, I had to seek the forgiveness of my Father, for I had sinned first against Him.
That was genuine contrition. A wound, of which I had been unaware, was healed. I hope that I may one day dress some other wounds with those same pure tears, that some scars will soften, that bones, broken and set long ago, will stop aching when rain comes. I pray it doesn't take many years, and a mossy tree in late summer to get me to that place.
My Jesus, mercy. You who came to bind up the broken hearted, break the heart I offer that You may heal it again. Alleluia.

The Chapel of the Mind

2005-09-29T02:06:00.000-07:00

I have always found prayer difficult. Not that I have difficulty talking to God, and I know that that is what prayer is, but that I cannot talk to God as I would anyone else, as I would to a friend. Either I tend to try to compose some pretty, theologically sound, oratio to make God happy, or I mull over my phrasing so I can be sure that He doesn't misunderstand and answer the wrong request, or genuinely begin to talk to the Father in what I hope is the right way and then become conscious of all the wrong motives and bad attitudes present in me as I pray. My goal, communion, meeting my Father with the intimacy of a son, is rarely, from my perspective, realized.
I may learn to simply pray, leave God to supply what I lack in the praying, and be more content in the doing. I'm not there yet. What I have learned, is the great relief of liturgy. There is a great power in having to worry less about the words and being able to focus on meaning. Granted, the little skeptic begind my right ear says "How do you know you mean it? Maybe you're just acting or trying to Feel something." Well, maybe, but I don't know that that's a bad thing. Divine drama.
I do know that liturgy has been the principal form of Christian worship before the last three centuries.
In the context of liturgy, there is a remarkable scope of spontanaity. I remember praying the Great Ektenia during a hurricane. When the part about reasonable weather arrived, the liturgy gave freedom to the fears and needs in my soul for which I had no words to express. This has been repeated in many different circumstances. "In peace let us pray to the Lord, Lord have mercy....."
The other form of ready made prayer I have come to love is the Rosary. Let me go ahead and comment on the two most common objections. The Mary problem. No comment (now). "It's repititious, and Jesus condemns vain repititions". Yes He does. VAIN repititions. He also encourages us to keep asking, seeking and knocking. Repitition of itself is not bad (Consider Psalm 136), just mindless repition, which the Rosary is definitely not.
At its heart, the Rosary is a time of prayer and meditation on the events of Jesus' life. How often do you contemplate the stories of the Gospel? Some are put off by the use of beads to count the repeated prayers. Consider them a means to an end. A way to limit the repetition of prayers so that it does not become vain babbling. Having an object to hold is effective to put one into the mindset of prayer. Many Christians fear the idea of using our bodies or our minds to pray. Any thing used as an aid to prayer is occultic, and using the ways God has designed our minds to work is a New-Age tecnique (Why is it that these anti-everything wackos have appropriated a perfectly neutral word like tecnique? I referred to a tecnique of prayer and a woman thought it was Satanism. Tecnique refers to any means whereby you do something, anything. It is not a New-Age word.). The beads and the repition help to prevent getting sidetracked. Consider this, anything we think about, our mind will think about other things. We will distract ourselves. By essentially performing two mental tasks at once, we can focus with greater concentration on one of those tasks. A close friend has refered to the Rosary itself as "heavenly distraction".
I doubt many readers will take my advice, but if I am not the only one with these difficulties, try using a set prayer or two. Even some prayerbeads. There are many used in Christian, but not Catholic traditions if the Marian element scares you(She's just Jesus' Mother). Above all else, pray.

Where are we and who are we going?

2005-09-23T23:34:00.000-07:00

I had a nervous breakdown my sophomore year of college. The recovery is largely complete in that I have regained most of what I should have. Much was pared away. In retrospect, being poured out allowed a redemption which may not have taken place otherwise. It was a good of a sort we rarely care for at the time. During that dark wandering I think I learned something.
A person requires two things to be, what I will call only for lack of a better term, stable. He must know where he is and who he is. Most neuroses are a confusion of one of these two questions, a man doubts some part of the reality of either his identity or his environment. What I discovered in my own flirtation with despair was that I could handle not knowing one or the other, but not both. Looking back, what caused my mind to dismantle was realizing that I did not know myself, and could no longer rely on the personalistic landmarks I had set up to tell me "where" I was in relation to the rest of the world as I percieved it.
In the years since my visit to the depths (there is a Hell, I have been there) I have found my spiritual life in a similar place, or, perhaps, lack of place. I spend my life, it seems, vacillating between the Path and some indeterminate dry place that isn't the Path, and alternating between being made over into Christ's likeness and fighting the spreading Rock at every turn. Some days, the sinking sand is just more fun.
Seeing the lives of those I love following a similar pattern, praying for their conversion as well as my own, I offer the following proposition. It is ultimately a theory, but I think may be the right answer. I've never been brave enough to find out. The answer, let go of who I am and where I am, and turn only to the Likeness I am being conformed to, and the Heavenlies where I am seated and where my citizenship is. The Mystics always refer to a breakdown of place and identity when entering deep communion. I am not a mystic, but they may have the right idea. Let go of who I pretend to be, enter the place of unknowing. I'm not sure, as I said. But it is better than where I am.

On Spiritual warfare

2005-09-22T21:39:00.000-07:00

Having seen the work of loose spirits, I am no stranger to this popular subject among charismatic writers. I have been in the company of spiritual "warriors" who fearlessly engaged in much "SW" as it was called (I hope the biting sarcasm is coming through). I know two things. Much of what is attributed to spirits in popular Christianity, particularly in the more mystic veins of the non-denominational or semi-denominational, is neither spiritual nor warfare. Also, the real thing is not exciting or "cool" or an indication of one's spirituality. It is a battle, fought willingly or no by every believer, and like all war, is quite literally, hell.
I am not attempting a summary of biblical demonology, or a synopsis of Church doctrine on the subject. This is a short analysis of a strange bit of text, integral to understanding our place in the siege of this world.

"For our wrestling is not with blood and flesh, but rather with the archons, the authorities, the world-rulers over the darkness of this age, depraved spirits in the heavenlies"

This verse uses two constructions which show up several times in Ephesians. The archons etc. and "in the heavenlies". How these two constructions are used throughout the book, shed light on the text above.

I. Our Opponents.
Without attempting to postulate whether the archons and authorities refer to demonic titles or taxonomies, suffice to say the text states three very definite things.
1. They are beings.
2. They are spirits
3. They are wicked.

The names or titles archons, authorities, world rulers, are images of ruling power. They apparently exercise authority over the darkness of this present age (often used in Paul's writings to describe the particular ethos of the lost world, the zeitgeist if you will).

II. Our Battlefield
The battle is described as being "in the heavenlies". In two cases definitely Heaven.
1. Where Christ has been seated (Eph. 1:20).
2. Where we are seated with Christ (Eph. 2:6).

The word "heavenlies" is a bit ambiguous. It may refer to Heaven, as it seems to when refering to Christ and His Church. It also may imply great heights. The beings are described in chapter 2 as being over the kingdom of the air, our very atmosphere. While the battle is Spiritual, in that it is with spiritual beings, it is fought in a disconcertingly physical plane by physical beings.

III. Our Task
Another time we see the Archons etc. is in Chapter 3. The tenth verse describes God's intention to make His wisdom known to these beings through the Church, something He determined to do in eternity through the death of Christ. Somehow, God's dealings with mankind gives these spiritual beings an understanding of God they could not recieve otherwise. Paul speaks elsewhere of things angels wish to look into, and gives a command in 1 Corinthians " for sake of the angels". Perhaps this is what those cryptic phrases refer to. ( What does this say about the fact that we will judge angels?)

IV. Our Confidence
This text comes in the middle of Paul's discussion of the "Armor of God", a wonderful lesson in Old Testament typology I will not touch on here. There are three observations I will make.

1. Christ is seated on the battleground of the heavenlies. He is specifically described as being set above our enemies (Eph. 1:21).

2. We are seated with Christ in the heavenlies, over our enemies (Eph. 2:6).

3. We are in a spiritual battle, with spiritual beings. Eph. 1:3 says we are blessed (can refer to equipping for ministry) with every Spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. We have all we need for the battle. Through Him. With Him. In Him.

An odd incident

2005-09-22T06:38:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a paper being presented by a seminary professor called "How to be a soft libertarian" (I had misread the title as "soft libertine" but by the time I had noticed the mistake it was too late to leave), the paper I mean, I forget the professor's name. (Dr. Something or other) As the title would suggest, it was a defense for the idea that men can make real decisions and that when they do, they could have chosen differently. ( It said nothing about those who can't make up their mind.) An apologetic against determinism. There was a Q & A period afterwards. The final interlocutor (There was ample time for more, but the little twerp insisted on hammering Dr. What's his name for several minutes.) took issue with Dr. ?'s theology. The student (a raving Calvinist) argued for several (several) minutes with Dr. Libertine. (sic. Libertarian) What amused me was that this homunculus argued against the professor's thesis. He argued against the proposition that a person had free will, yet assumed the good Dr. could change his mind. Odd.

Rhetorical questions

2005-09-22T06:32:00.000-07:00

Are fairy tales and myths symbols whereby we understand and deal with real life, or is what we think of as real life a symbol by which we understand fairy tales?

Why do Calvinists salt their food?

editing

2005-09-22T01:14:00.000-07:00

Because I tend to edit posts after they have been published, you may wish to scan old posts for changes. The only major revisions have been condensing three posts to one (Ramblings of a former Protestant) and the almost complete deletion of another (three issues of salvation).

A parenthetical note

2005-09-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

Matter related to previous post (Repent and believe the Gospel)

Is the Gospel simple?

I don't believe it is. In a previous post (repent and believe the Gospel) I present the reasons I believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a much more involved body of truth than can be contained in four bullet points (or four spiritual laws). I posit that the trend of reducing the Gospel to its barest minimum (the least number of things one must believe and the fewest demands on the believer) is a disservice to the lost we are called to reach (there blood will be on our hands). At best a well meaning but misguided attempt at relevancy, at worst, a pseudo-biblical product of American commercialized Christianity. Modern evangelism tends to be more advertising than truth. Granted, the intentions are good. The desire, I think, is to get as many saved as possible. I'm just afraid making a more inclusive , more palatable Gospel is only good for making Christians feel better. Rick Warren, and his mega-church ilk, has set evangelicals back fifty years. Coming up with an easier or shorter road to Heaven (what Bonhoffer called "cheap grace") is no more likely to get anyone there.
Consider this. In the Gospel of Mark the first sentence reads "the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ". This is the title of the entire book. The events of Jesus' life are seen as the starting point of the Gospel, not all of it. I agree that the Gospel is the life, death, and ressurection of Christ, but think it must be remembered that Christ's life is a continuous reality through the Church. The Gospel must also entail what Christ is doing in the lives of His people.

excellent blogs

2005-09-20T01:17:00.000-07:00

www.mattcrash.blogspot.com a friend's
www.loriloo83.blogspot.com
a college friend
www.themilkeyedmender.blogspot.com a friend of the other two

Repent and believe the Gospel

2005-09-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

"All authority has been given Me, in Heaven and on the Earth. Therefore, as you go, disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all I have commanded you. Behold, I myself am with you all days until the end of the age." (translation mine)

I have heard many awful exegeses of this passage. Here is mine.

The first point I would bring out is a rather strange conditional statement "All authority has been given Me in heaven and on the Earth, therefore". On the surface, the direct logical connection between Jesus' authority and our evangelistic mission is only perhaps that since He has authority, we should obey Him. This is true, but there is a deeper level of this command. The word does not appear in this passage, but the word translated as "gospel" in the greek of the New Testament, is euaggelion: literally, good news. While the gospel is good news in and of its self, to a first century greek speaker, the word euaggelion refered to an Imperial pronouncement. Realizing this, the question of Jesus' authority is paramount. His messengers could only carry the euaggelion if He had ruling authority.
The next clause illustrates the dangers of exegesis without an adequate understanding of the text. If I was a typical sermonizer, I would make each verb a point in my sermon . Go! Make disciples! Baptize! Teach! The problem is, there is only one verb in the phrase. "Go therefore" as most translations render it, is simply not what the text says. "Go therefore" is a participle in the greek; "while you are going" (or probably better "as you go") is a much more accurate reflection of Jesus' words. (The question of inerrancy, whether Matthew was first recorded in Aramaic, that Jesus spoke aramaic, etc. put to the side, I believe that the words of Jesus recorded in the Gospel are an absolutely accurate reflection of what He said. There is no need, as some have suggested, to simply aim for a general drift of what He said, or to treat everything as parable, or a bad step in the opposite direction, to completely redefine what He said by a highly allegorical, and it may be added linguistically unfeasable, interpretation of a later Aramaic version of the Gospels. I emphatically affirm that sound grammatical and syntactical analysis of Jesus' words as recorded in greek is the best means of fully grasping the import of what He said.)
The only verb in the text is "make disciples". Both clauses modify this central verb. What I would mention is this, is that it is a verb form of the noun "disciple". The idea as communicated to Jesus' disciples was, if you will, "be fruitful and multiply". If I were making a typical three points and a poem sermon, this would be "The Mission".
The next clause might be called "The Method". This clause consists of two participle phrases which modify the verb, an explanatory note so to speak(The tendency to treat them as individual commands rather than modifiers i.e. Go, disciple, baptize, teach, is common, though a bit puzzling. Even in english, they are participles). The fulfillment of the mission is two-fold: to baptise and to teach. The mission to baptize, whether seen from a sacramental perspective or not, is one to bring people to Christ, into the body of Christ, the Church. Whether as an infant or adult convert, it is a rite of iniation. What I want to zero in on is the second participle, "teaching them to obey all I have commanded you". I have heard countless sermons on this text, and none have zeroed in on the focus. "To obey" is the object of teaching. Teach them what? To obey. To obey what? All that I have commanded you. (This is just English grammar, not even Greek. Teach them "what I have commanded you" or, "teach them ALL that I have commanded you". I have never heard a preacher hit the infinitive.) The hierarchically superordinate construction is the infinitive "to obey".
Teach them to obey. This is one of the two pillars of the evangelistic mission we have been given by Christ. The modern evangelical church seems great at making "converts", but not so good at making disciples. Even the discipleship materials encountered as an evangelical seemed to miss the mark of teaching obedience. I had theese complaints long before I was Catholic(and is one of the reasons I am Catholic). I fear the mission of the church has been watered down.
The evangelism I most often encounter is either "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" or "you're a sinner, come to Jesus". Both statements are true, but I see two problems. People may not care if God has a plan. They may, if they are happy as pagans(that is, happy living the life of pagans. While Christians are stereotyped as hum-drum,legalistic vampires dedicated to sucking the fun out of everyone else's lives, mean old ogres who don't want you to have a good time, sponge-bob hating, teletubby bashing, hypocrites, cat stranglers, and cheese-mongers, I do not wish to imply that pagans should be understood as being a particular comparitive example of happiness in the way that certain mollusks, the proverbial clam for example, are considered to be in the realm of informal discourse), if they are happy as pagans, assume their life as it stands is God's plan.
The problem with the "Come to Jesus" , the kerygmatic evangelism, is it presupposes a certain understanding of who Jesus is. With the hog-wash theories of New Testament textual critics being offered as fact in the popular media, the task in this sort of evangelism becomes apologetics very easily. In the Roman Road the criterion for salvation are offered "believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and that God has raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved". What is difficult to grasp in an english translation is that you are not merely affirmimg His lordship, His authority over the believer, but His identity as Lord, as Kurios. In Paul's writing, the Lord here is not just a title of respect, but a translation of a hebrew word, Adonai. Literally, Lord, it was substituted for the Holy Name, Jahweh (which was never pronounced by Jews), in public reading of the Scriptures. This means an affirmation of Christ's divinity, and presupposes a very Jewish theology. You must know and believe in the God of the Old Testament to believe Jesus is His incarnated Son.
I will offer an example. When we see evangelism directed at Jews in the Scriptures, it is centralised in the Old Testament texts prophecying the Messiah. Jesus was their Messiah. When Paul is on Mars Hill however, he begins with the invisible God and then moves toward Christ. To re-enculturate this, whe dealing with gentiles (the un-churched) we must begin at square one. This is not a task that a four-page tract or a five minute presentation on a street corner can accomplish. I am not saying that a person cannot get "saved" from a tract, but I fear that what evangelicals settle for as salvation may be too simple.
Take another text, "repent and believe the Gospel". Let us unpack this statement. Repent. The word (metanoia)simply means a change of mind(I have heard many preachers describe it as turning around, but that is a different word entirely estrepho, translated to convert); it is a decision to give up sin. I cannot put too fine a point on this. The desire is not just to be free from sin's penalty (do you know you'll go to heaven when you die?), but from sin itself. Experience tells us that the proclivity to sin, the desire for sin, does not just disappear when a person becomes a believer. There must be a willingness to deny the desire when it comes, a facet of repentance not usually emphasized. Conversion (that act of turning around) is repentance translated into behavior, it is the evidence of repentance and, I think James would agree, the best proof of salvation. Again, I fear that five minutes is not enough to bring an unchurched pagan into sufficient understanding to make a real decision.
(Some would argue "But the Gospel is simple!" I find no where in the New Testament where the Gospel is described as simple. We must come to Christ like children, but the Gospel is not childish.)
"Believe the gospel" Literally, have faith in the Gospel. There's a large word, faith. Without offering any homiletic pedantries, let two things be understood: it is an act of the will, a state of being convinced on an intellectual level, and it is an act by the whole person (the soul, the will, and the intellect), a state of trust prompted by this conviction. The conviction of the truth of the Gospel: accepting that Jesus' life, death, and ressurection are historically verifiable events, and that that veracity has demands on the one who believes it, and penalties for the one who does not; putting active confidence in the Person whom the Gospel concerns, that He will fulfill the promise of the Gospel in the individual's own life, this is the criterion for salvation. Let me again say, that this presupposes a belief in God, the God of the Old Testament, and a correct understanding of Who Jesus is. It also presupposes a desire to be saved. A person must know they are a sinner(or be convinced), and then be shown the gift of salvation Christ has bought for them, and then choose that gift along with all of it's demands. That's the clencher, to accept the demands of the Gospel. Many will accept the salvation from a Hell they don't like, but will not be set free (or let go of) a sin they enjoy. (It is funny to me how Socratic the Gospel is. The sinner must be convinced that he really doesn't enjoy a particular sin, that he isn't really happy, in order to see how the demands of the Gospel are freedoms rather than impositions) The happiness gospel and the come to Jesus gospel seem to leave something unsaid. Having spoken at length on the problems I see with modern evangelistic methods, let us go back now to the method given by Jesus.
The mission of teaching obedience is, you will remember, the central task of the Church. Rather than seeing proposing ways this method could be applied, let us work backwards from our intended result, and see if there is any illumination.
The goal is for the believer to be made over into the likeness of Christ. He is holy. Holiness may be defined as freedom from attachment to sin, not without sin, but having overcome sin. Attachment to sin is broken when we see sin as God sees it, not merely agreeing that it is evil (but having some find memories) but being so full of love for God that we despise anything offensive to Him, and have deep sorrow of heart for the sin we have committed (a classic definition for contrition). We develop this love of God. Jesus said, "you are my friends if you are doing what I have commanded you". Friendship with Christ is the state of obedience; we learn to love God by obeying Him. This love for God is the source of true contrition. Contrition, what the Catechism calls radical reorientation of our lives towards God, is the beginning of being made over into Christ's likeness. To teach them to obey, is the key to evangelism and the heart of the Gospel.
To re-examine, re-evaluate, and, if necessary, replace our methods of proclaiming Christ to the world will not be easy. But let us not forget, that the motive and the means (our last two M's) for our proclamation is Christ's continued prescence in the Church.
"Behold, I am(ego eimi, the divine "I Am") with you all days till the end of the age"

Why I am Catholic: a starting point

2005-09-16T15:09:00.000-07:00

What I am offering is not a conversion story (I may at some point) but to offer my reasoning for a rejection of Protestantism and an acceptance of Catholicism.

A few beginning observations.

Catholic doctrine may be put into three categories: 1. dogma derived from Scripture 2. Dogma derived from Scripture and Tradition about Scripture 3. dogma whose justification is primarilly the Magisterium of the Church.
The latter two categories are considered themselves to be derived from Scripture, i.e. Scripture itself insists on the need of Tradition, Scripure itself gives the Church teaching authority.
In the first category, there are, for our purposes, two divisions: things upon which protestants and Catholics agree, and where they do not.
In the case of disagreement, the disagreement is ultimately one of hermeneutic. 1. both positions appeal to Scripture. 2. both positions agree as to what the Scriptures say 3. the question is over what the Scriptures mean 4. thus the disagreement is over hermeneutic 5. or more definitely, hermeneutical method. examples: the Eucharist, Church hierarchy
In the latter two categories, the doctrines generally fall into one of two groups. 1. doctrines related to some point of Christology i.e. Marian doctrine 2. doctrines related to the Eucharist i.e auricular confession.

My posts on this subject will generally follow this outline.

wherever we go, there we are

2005-09-16T14:56:00.000-07:00

There are several pitfalls I am trying to avoid in this blog. One is to go off on an excursus about either eschatology (or a longer excursus) or the doctrines of salvation, which illustrates the difficulty of using such large matters as examples. The second pitfall is to begin hacking away at certain beliefs alluded to which are not only Catholic/Protestant debates, but hardly points of agreement among Protestants. My solution is to put these things to the side for now and even change direction. My original plan was to work on three questions separately 1. The differences between Protestantism and Catholicism 2. Why I am not Protestant (ramblings of a former Protestant)and 3. Why I am Catholic. I hope the pitfalls I was headed for may be avoided by focusing my scope a bit. Deal with the central question of why I am Catholic and look at these other things as they arise. So with a new roadmap, lets go wherever we are.

On Salvation - 1 Peter 1:3-5

2005-09-05T23:23:00.000-07:00

"Blessed is He, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His great mercy, has birthed us again into a living hope through the ressurection of Jesus Christ from among the dead, into an inheritance incorrupt, unsoiled, and unfading, in deposit in heaven for you, who are yourselves being guarded by the power of God through faith, for salvation even now ready to be unveiled at the last time." (translation mine)

This is as good a time as any to say a bit about the interpretation of Scripture. We believe that the Scriptures are the words and Word of God Himself, and I believe because of this, that the reading of Scripture and the pcoclamation (kerygma) of Scripture must be understood as a conversation. The critico-historical method of exegesis that is the norm in modern hermeneutics, I fear loses this dynamic, relational, element to approaching the Bible. A reader will have by this time noted that I have a deep love for old things, the old logic, the old books, and no less here, the old exegesis. The medievals formulated the fourfold method of exegeting Scripture, and it is this approach that allows the exegetical task to be conversation in a way critical methods do not. I think of the four fold sense of Scripture as four questions I direct to the text which are answered by both the text itself through sound hermeneutical method, and by Christ Himself, Who, through the Spirit illumines my mind in the study. The Word then questions me, how will you now live?
These four questions arise out of a recognition of two distinct levels at which Scriptures operate, the literal and the spiritual. Example, Psalm 24 literally refers to David conquering the city of the Jebusites, but spiritually is a Messianic prophecy. This division was developed by the Scholastics into a fourfold sense, the literal being the first, and the spiritual being subdivided into three senses, the allegorical, moral, and analogical senses. The questions are these :1. What does the text say? 2. What is the image of Christ in the text? 3. How should this truth affect my behavior? 4. What does this say about my eternal destiny?
(It should be noted that the allegorical sense is treated more broadly by Aquinas, it is the Catechism which puts emphases on the Christological allegory.)

As to the literal sense of the 1 Peter passage, I think the text is fairly straight foward. A few gramatical and syntactical elements I will point out. First note that God Himself is the subject of the sentence and the topic is God's action of birthing again. The motivation, literally the standard under which the action is implemented, is God's great mercy, He has birthed us again for Himself. Secondly ,the text centers around three constructions of purpose describing this new birth, three things we are birthed into.
1. A living hope. We have this hope because of the ressurection of Christ from the dead, our hope is living because Christ lives.
2. An inheritance. One that does not rot, does not get dirty, and does not even begin to fade because it is under deposit in heaven for us who are ourselves being guarded as a prisoner by God's power through faith.
3. A ready salvation that will be unveiled at the last time.

The second sense is allegorical, in this case, the imagery used to modify the three purpose constructions. There are birth images, the Father, inheritance, but the overarching symbolism is that of a Jewish wedding. The first clue is "a salvation ready to be unveiled at the last time". This is eschatalogical salvation, refered to as the "redemption of our bodies" by Paul and is associated with the final ressurection. This is described in the context of a wedding in Revelation, "The Unveiling". This Salvation is the uniting of the Bridegroom with His Bride. Understanding this reference, the "living hope" comes into focus. In the Septuagint, the Hebrew word "yachal" is rendered with the Greek word "elpida", the word used here. When a girl was betrothed to be married, her fiance went away for a time to prepare a house and save money for the first year of marriage. When his father gave his approval, he went to claim his bride. Upon reaching the city gates, he blew a ram's horn to call his new wife, who had to be ready, never knowing the day and the hour of his arrival. Sounds familiar right? "Yachal" referred to a bride's hope of her husband's return. The ritual was this. While her groom was gone, she went about veiled to signify her betrothal. Every night, she donned her bridal gown and lit her lamp and waited the hour before going to bed to see if her bridegroom would come. If he did not, she placed the gown by her bed, her lamp and plenty of oil, ready to leave at a moments notice. She lived as though her wedding was a present reality. At her wedding, the veil would be removed. The Apocalypse, the unveiling, is not destruction, but joy. Biblical hope is a state of positive expectation. It is this hope be have been birthed into. We wait for our Bridegroom with veiled faces, knowing our Salvation is ready for that last day.

The third question we ask of the text is "How does this affect our behavior?". This is less a question we ask the Scriptures and more one the Scriptures ask us. We have an example to follow in the images used. Are our faces veiled waiting for our Bridegroom, or do we open our hearts to any taker? Are we seeking earthly treasure, or are we rejoicing in a treasure guarded for us? Do we commit acts which damage the gift of faith which is the guard set over us by the power of God? Our salvation is ready for us, are we ready for it?

Theology is, in a certain, sense, a study of what we have. The final question, that of our destiny is answered in two ways. This passage juxtaposes the ideas of now/ not yet, or, if you will, what really have now in a literal sense, and what we really have now in a spiritual sense. What we have now, literally, is a new birth. He has birthed us again through Christ's ressurection, but recognize, that Christ's ressurection is not merely a reversal of death, a movement in the opposite direction as it were, but a ressurection out of death into life beyond death. Our new birth is a spiritual birth, but it is earnest for the physical new birth that awaits us in the day of Christ.

Ramblings of a former Protestant

2005-09-04T18:36:00.000-07:00

Something puzzling to me as I began the process of conversion to Catholicism, was the vitriolic response to my decision from former Catholics. While I could say (this is polemic) that this vitriol is a defense mechanism designed to transfer blame for their spiritual stagnation to the Church, I do not think it completely accounts for the phenomenon. There is that sensation of having been duped. "You (speaking to the Church) told me this was the way to Heaven and you lied. You could have sent me to Hell". (This is a logical fallacy by the way, besides being simply untrue, as is the idea that people everywhere are going to Hell because you didn't tell them about Jesus.) The deep-seated hatred for the Catholic Church seems to be more psychological than theological, more demagogic than dogmatic. (I wonder if karma could run over their dogma?) Having travelled the same road backwards, I believe I have a sort of hindsight into the problem. I posit that the process of conversion, in both directions, is a sort of expansion, in the one case from believing nothing to believing something, and from merely believing ideas to believing in real things. This difference may be seen from the surface theologies. Protestants believe in the Eucharist as a symbol, Catholics believe in it as a Real Prescence,Baptism, Marriage, the same thing, but the Sacramental imagination is not the only way I would make the idea versus real thing comparison. Look at salvation. As a Baptist the question "Are you Saved?" is identical with the question "Are you going to Heaven when you die?" At the surface level, the two are directly connected, if you are saved you will go to Heaven when you die. However, the "This world is not my Home" theology (think Garrison Keilor's tap-dancing chickens) is not Biblical eschatology. New Testament Eschatology is that we do not stay in Heaven. The world is remade, the life after death ends and a re-embodied life after life-after-death begins, God's dwelling place, which Christ returned to, comes out of the heavens to the new earth and the tabernacle of God is with men. It has been forgotten that the many mansions are hotel-rooms and that we are heavenly citizens but we are colonists rather than mere visitors on earth. The eschatology of evengelicalism junks creation and hopes for a world in the clouds. It trades a real thing for an idea.
The reason for this disparity is, I posit, the difference in the primary epistemilogical model of the two theologies. For the Catholic (and every Christian before 1400) it is the Incarnation. For the Reformed thinker, it is the Fall. Whether debating Election, Justification, Sanctification, or Multiplication, this principle colours the differences between the two modes of thought. A fallen creation cannot communicat Grace ex opere operato. As God dwelled in a human body, so physical things may bring us into participation in the Divine Life.

I have said before, that the basis for the differences between Catholic belief and Protestant belief is one of PEM, in the former, the Incarnation, the latter, the Fall. One thing troubles me is that both positions, orthodox Catholicism and Reformed Protestantism, are logically integrated systems, so neatly derived fron their starting point (almost hermetically so), that anything between the two, any attempt at a syncretic Christianity, must be logically inconsistent. There are some points of agreement, but the disagreements are far more interesting. In a certain sense, Catholicism can handle disagreements in a way Protestantism cannot. The purely symbolic character of the Eucharist can be contained in the sacramental character, but not the other way around. Forensic justification can be part of moral justification, but forensic justification itself can never be more than legal fiction. Protestantism can be contained in Catholicism as an embryo that can grow into something greater, but Protestantism cannot expand into Catholicism. One is a truncation of the other. For example, Total Depravity denies any real justification, only allowing a righteousness on paper. In fact, for this reason, as a Protestant, the Incarnation cannot even be a starting point for theology because It itself is a result of some juridical loophole. The Virgin Birth is a contingency plan. The deification of man through the Incarnation of God is outside the scope of Protestant salvation. It is not a denial of the supernatural, but of the supranatural. The difference then is not real vs. idea, or Fall vs. Incarnation, but of one sort of reality versus another, a difference of metaphysics. In the Incarnation, there is a metaphysic where the spiritual and physical realms merge, intertwine, and commune. One can influence the other. This interplay is the starting point of the Sacramental imagination. The denial of this interplay is the beginning of gnosticism.
One of the fundamental tenets of gnosticism was the goodness of spirit and the evil of matter. While Reform theology is not gnostic, this anti-physical tendency is present(I have mentioned a few symptoms of this in previous posts). Five point Calvinism is a good example. I have actually read a Calvinist theologian who claimed that a man could be saved without knowing it. The spiritual reality could fundamentally change with no input from the physical realm. It even, when drawn out to its logical conclusion, makes God the author of sin. (Thank heavens most people are not that logically consistent) An evil world created by an evil god (as in gnosticism, and a good world created by a good(?) God for the purpose of making it evil and damning it's inhabitants. The difference seems only conceptual. While that isn't what Calvinism is saying, it is what Calvinism could mean if developed along its logical course.I am not a Calvinist, and I do not for a moment think that this is a refutation of Calvinism, what this is, I hope, is an illustration of this simple point. A bad starting point produces bad a end. The starting points of protestant theology lead to dangerous places. The tree is known by its fruit. It is in the context of a protestant world view that liberal theology, process theology, and a myriad of other heresies have taken root. Does history suggest that the situation will improve?

What is Truth?

2005-09-02T15:12:00.000-07:00

I must confess, I fear I may be guilty of a fault noted by John Climacus, the ned to explain one's self. A fair question would be "where are you going with all this?" It does appear that I am attempting a sort of apologia for moral absolutism, but that really isn't it, my point is truth and everything I intednded to say by many words I will attempt to render as a sort of credo.
I believe in objective reality, that may be known as such, where we may say a thing is as it is. I believe this is the essence, the substance of Truth, that Truth is true,that true statements are Truth. But....

All truths are not created equal, an idea as distasteful as non-contradiction in a democratic society, but I state it again, all truths are not created equal. That dusky pink is not an appropriate color to wear at a funeral, that dusky pink is a color, and that dusky pink is the color of angel's wings may all be true statements, there is a difference, the type of evidence appealed to, but, as I have said before, this has no impact on the truth content. What I propose is a different term for each, a sliding semantic scale if you will.
In the center is brute fact, truth that is burdensome, that demands you believe it. To the left, truths derived from brute facts, but open to quibbling. On the far right, the Truth that sets one free. Transcendent Truths, the sort revealed in paradox and poetry. I title these opinion, orthodoxy, and foolishness.
Remembering that this is a blog about Christianity, these three divisions serve as a subtitle for the entire operation. Welcome to Topical Christianity: Opinion, Orthodoxy, and the pursuit of foolishness.

Each post will fall into one of these categories. My opinions, orthodoxy ( a large portion of which will be devoted to my reasons for being Catholic), and bits of foolishness, which are harder to classify. If you are old enough to believe in fairy tales, you will understand.

Opinion, Orthodoxy, and the pursuit of foolishness cont.

2005-09-01T19:59:00.000-07:00

The question has been posed "What is Truth?", and we may hope it was hypothetical, Pilate would not have cared for the answer. Aristotle would say that calling something what it is is truth. A statement reflecting reality is true. The dichotomy discussed above is a fallacy, but it may be granted that this definition of truth and its natural result, the law of non-contradiction, assuumes two things: 1. that there is an objective reality 2. and that we may perceive it in a manner consistent with that reality and, it must be admitted, many people deny at least one of these premises. This is odd in that to deny an objective reality demands that one can objectively perceive a subjective reality, the absoluteness of no absolutes.
Most people, even these moderns, recognize the necessity of the law of non-contradiction. If they asked me if I had a black car in my driveway and I told them "yes", they would assume I was mistaken or lying upon finding a red car. Non-contradiction is assumed in such a case. I am bothered by the notion of relying on non-contradiction in trivial things, and denying it in cases that really matter.
Of course it could be argued that things like morality and Truth are not black and red, but teal and aqua. I might consider one a shade of green and the other a shade of blue, someone else vice-versa. Disagreement is not a matter of one being right and one being wrong, after all, we are appealing to the same color-wheel. This seems convincing until our analogies are changed into concrete examples. I say I will pay back a loan and I don't, clearly wrong. Black and Red. I say I will pay back a loan on tuesday, but don't till Friday. Teal and aqua, right? Most lenders would not agree. Movie rental late-fees are a testimony to moral absolutism.

Opinion, orthodoxy, and the pursuit of foolishness

2005-08-31T22:09:00.000-07:00

There is a peculiarity of modern thought I have noted fairly often, that of a distinction made betweeen Truth and that which is true. It is my understanding that true is the adjectival form of Truth, a syntactical difference rather than a semantic one. However, as I see the words used in public forums by those who would proudly label themselves as modern, or at least modernistic thinkers, they seem to be almost entirely opposite of one another, or at least quite different, true being a positive, definite, quality and Truth being a fuzzy, relativistic, abstraction. The difference seems to be the sort of evidence appealed to. Example: When religion says murderers should be executed, that is Truth, but when science says slaughtering babies is perfectly acceptable, it is true. Or, when you say I shouldn't be intolerant it's true, but when I say you shouldn't fornicate it's Truth. Apparently, the validity of the logic depends not on the rules of inference so much as the origin of the propositions.
Suppose you told me my Mother had gone to the local Post Office, removed a large handgun from her purse, and commenced having target practice with the clerks, I would say you were either mistaken or lying, but what you were telling me was not true. You might say, "But, I have proof!", I would say "So do I, but mine is a different sort than yours". In this analogy, I have applied the same standards of evidence to the question of whether my mother is guilty as was applied in the examples above. Change the terms and the fallacy becomes visible.
Let us try a another thought experiment. Replace the words "Truth" and "true" with something else. Imagine an idiot who is not idiotic. If I called you an Idiot rather than someone idiotic, you would not feel less insulted. To alter the basic meaning of a word through capitalization is propaganda rather than logic. I will admit, the Truth /True crowd would probably like the idea of idiocy without its idiot.

Topical Christianity

2005-08-30T19:07:00.000-07:00

After a fashion, the title of this blog serves as a disclaimer. I am neither a theologian nor a philosopher, but a Catholic layman in the Deep South. For this reason, I intend to focus on what I would consider the surface of Christianity, the geography of the Faith with which I am most familiar.

Welcome

2005-08-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

It is a bit of that ephemeral substance which "springs eternal" that prompts a welcome to what I suspect will be non-existent readers. If you are listening, Hi.