Monday, May 31, 2004

The only reason for capital accumulation: creational justice

If the gospel is not about creational justice (social, ecological, political, economic: ultimately, religious (or familial)), then Christ's kingship is not good news.

I think Bono knows this, and I salute him for it. Part of his address to the graduates at the University of Pennsylvania, at which he accepted an honourary Doctorate of Laws (video, fwd to 1:56:00), reads (via Gideon Strauss):
"...my question I suppose is: What's the big idea? What's your big idea? What are you willing to spend your moral capital, your intellectual capital, your cash, your sweat equity in pursuing outside of the walls of the University of Pennsylvania?

...

I went to Ethiopia with my wife, Ali. We were there for a month and an extraordinary thing happened to me. We used to wake up in the morning and the mist would be lifting we'd see thousands and thousands of people who'd been walking all night to our food station were we were working. One man--I was standing outside talking to the translator--had this beautiful boy and he was saying to me in Amharic, I think it was, I said I can't understand what he's saying, and this nurse who spoke English and Amharic said to me, he's saying will you take his son. He's saying please take his son, he would be a great son for you. I was looking puzzled and he said, "You must take my son because if you don't take my son, my son will surely die. If you take him he will go back to Ireland and get an education." Probably like the ones we're talking about today. I had to say no, that was the rules there and I walked away from that man, I've never really walked away from it.

...

Africa makes a mockery of what we say, at least what I say, about equality and questions our pieties and our commitments because there's no way to look at what's happening over there and it's effect on all of us and conclude that we actually consider Africans as our equals before God. There is no chance."
Read Bono's full address.

The stuff I wish I had more time for...

Liberal democracies. Gideon reflects on the deeply liberal nature of Canadian politics, saying it is "a political culture that at its very roots is committed to the greatest possible degree of individual autonomy". He quotes Jonathan Chaplin with approval:
"The presence of constitutional democracy in the world today - however flawed or hypocritical its actual embodiments - is a truly momentous historical achievement. We should never be complacent about its survival..."
I don't know if I want to agree. At the least, I want to investigate all the qualifications that Gideon himself makes. One day...*sigh*

Sunday, May 30, 2004

what a pleasant weekend.

Friday night after work I went to a farewell for Peter at The Feathers. Peter's off to Dunedin for the rest of the year. (Rewards are fun. Teehehehe...)

After that, I went to see my parents, who had come down from Auckland. We played cards with my brother for the evening. Saturday morning I got up absurdly early to catch a train to Petone, where David and the Humber picked me up to go to a 'MAD' (Mentors and Disciples) breakfast in Upper Hutt. David's father did a great talk on his life history and the value of honouring thy parents.

In the afternoon I saw my parents again. When we weren't eating dinner at Chicago we were playing cards. O, and I took Ben H to the airport. Which reminds me. The 10-minute trip to Jono's house in Ben's car, after leaving Mum & Dad's motel, took 55 mins, because 10 were proceeded by 45 trying to get the key to turn in the ignition. Eventually I hit upon the answer. Literally.

After breakfast Sunday morning, Tim and Jono and I went with young Master Oostabaan to the Waikanae Africaans congregation, where we spoke to their youth about supporting them and building up their youth group. This experience sparked some good reflection & planning on our part afterward. Hopefully our efforts will bear fruit. Tim & I are also very keen to work hard on the planned (Christians in) Business Seminar to be held by his Dad.

This afternoon I saw my parents. We played cards, then took them to the airport. Matt & I have subsequently spent the evening (after a nice Kebab) walking around Wellington talking 'bout various things. Some highlights that I recall right now were

- a review of exciting events, directions or changes within our local church;

- the coalescence of various threads of thought regarding 'intellectual vertigo': the personal process of going through a sudden paradigm shift akin to the theory of scientific revolutions proposed by Thomas Kuhn. The buildup to such events is likely to be both gradual and relatively unnoticed;

- the dynamics of our bible study group, & options for development;

- the divestment of individual owner responsibility inherent in public company structures (and the evils thereof);

- a recognition that principles of stewardship, when properly internalised, are likely to reduce advocacy for strict private property boundaries;

- wondering if right-wing responses to Marx have addressed his worry about the alienation of the worker from his labour (and the note that communism alienated the worker even more!);

- a tentative conclusion that the way we use 'capitalism' is to mean 'the unfettered-by-State-power allocation of capital': leaving the issue of other allocation criteria open;

- the limitations of words, their tendency to promote false ideas of stasis, and their proper function as pointers away from themselves;

- the mystery and infinitude that is present everywhere, including within people (we raised but did not synthesize the observation that people are also patterned in thought & behaviour);

- a recognition that the dualism which cares nothing for this world (especially as found in dispensational premillenialism - 'polishing brass on a sinking ship'), which is rightly criticised by the Reformed tradition, often burgles the house through the back door anyway: disguised as a concern that if we focus too much on the things of this world (environmental care, social justice), we will mistake where our treasure and 'the truth' really lies.

- a polemical conclusion from the above that to reduce the gospel to either a form of words or an after/other-wordly heaven is to fail to preach it at all;

- a recognition that certain selfless purposes and tasks are better builders of relationship and unity than almost anything else, including intellectual discourse (and we weren't unaware of the irony).

Blessings saturate the night.

The breeze plucks a silent tune
On the billowing curtains

Friday, May 28, 2004

Quote of the Week

" 'there are many truths' is not the same thing as 'there are no lies' "

- Matthew Henry John Bartlett

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Troy

Deb reviews Troy, with an excellent discussion of homosexuality and the exclusion of women one way or another (extending to comments).

(via matt)

Worship & Culture

In 1996 the Lutheran World Foundation produced the Nairobi Statement on Worship and Culture. The third paragraph of the introduction reads (via Gideon Strauss):

Christian worship relates dynamically to culture in at least four ways. First, it is transcultural, the same substance for everyone everywhere, beyond culture. Second, it is contextual, varying according to the local situation (both nature and culture). Third, it is counter-cultural, challenging what is contrary to the Gospel in a given culture. Fourth, it is cross-cultural, making possible sharing between different local cultures. In all four dynamics, there are helpful principles which can be identified.

Worthy of further reflection.

It's all about balance

Email from an American soldier detailing excellent progress in restoration

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Pax Americana

I'm aware that the powerful Americans who promoted war in Iraq were looking at things in a way which obscured certain viewpoints; which tinted the world one way and not another. The combination of democracy and force would save the day, they thought. If only people experienced it, they would understand. Really, the oppressed masses longed for this liberation.

What I find inexcusable is that such tinting was the result of a deliberate choice not to be otherwise informed; in fact, to be ill-informed. To select some sources of information and not others is what we all do all the time. But when you are in charge of an empire, you do not have the freedom to be ill-informed; much less to refuse to wonder, even for a moment, upon such a basic question as why America is hated and mistrusted with such strength by so many.

The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, considered the most important security think-tank outside the United States, reports that al-Qaida is only growing stronger; that it sees the war as a death struggle between civilisations, and that its complaints "have been transformed into religious absolutes and cannot be satisfied through political compromise". Political stabilisation in Iraq will require, it thinks, the impossible provision of 500,000 troops. In short, American imperial glasses have been proved very myopic.

God opposes the proud.

Resonances

As the leader of the Mediterranean church, Augustine once received a letter from a Roman Christian, Laurentius, who was trying to flesh out the meaning of his faith as he watched his own civilization beginning to crumble. Laurentius asked, "What do we believe?"

Augustine replied in part, "...when there is a question as to whether a man is good, one does not ask what he believes, or what he hopes, but what he loves." (via Gideon Strauss)

Sharing divinity

Joel Garver reflects on a conference on theosis (deification). Among the pieces I picked up:

- image and likeness are apparently differentiated in Orthodox theology, which was something I've previously attempted to ask about

- theosis appears in some form in Calvin

- participation of the human in the divine is implicated strongly by theosis, but the latter redefines both 'human' and 'divine' away from ancient philosophical categories

-> in particular, our philosophical reading of metaphysical categories into God-ness may be firmly challenged by theosis, to the point that my suggested reading of (for instance) the 2nd & 3rd commandments becomes much more natural and obvious. This challenge is implicit in the saying, "To err is human, to forgive divine"

- theosis is present in Paul in the movement from psychical ("of the soul") existence to pneumatic ("of the spirit") existence, among other things

- theosis may be exactly the thing I have been groping for in thinking about our
(a) imaging of God,
(b) belonging to His family, and
(c) belonging to the man who became divine

-> in particular, theosis may help me understand how Christ's divinity, figured so often in terms of his imaging God, is a complement rather than a competitor to the pre-existent Second-Person-of-the-Trinity. There may in fact be the most beautiful of harmonies orchestrated in the person of Christ and described in the scriptural story. (I have struggled with this harmony for some time).

Reformed Catholicsm would be nice

via Barb

Why can't beauty be pretheoretical?

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

It's fantastic when Christian faith shapes response to tragedy in such a life-affirming way

Covenant baptism

The primary reason that the Reformed have always baptised their children, over against the practice of believers' baptism, is that the Reformed see God's friendship as something He gives to a people in all their generations. We do not find, in Scripture, a God of isolated individuals, but of entire families. This applies as much in judgment as in blessing. Hence, all of humanity - even those yet to be born - were included in God's relationship with Adam, and then with Adam were excluded from God's place in the Garden. Adam was a king, a federal head to represent and in some sense to rule everyone. And so, when God was pleased with Noah, Noah's whole family went into the ark - and, symbolically, the whole creation went too, in all the animals. Again, when God established a relationship with Abram, that relationship involved Abram's entire household - adult servants and all. They were all circumcised. Thus, the mark of belonging to God under the old dispensation - circumcision - was applied to everyone in a particular household. Through that household's head, the entire hosehold had been brought into a restorative relationship with God. God said to Abram, "I will be a God to you and to your children". The relationship established is with the whole group; all generations.

The application of covenant thinking can be compared to someone building a house for your mother and father when the old one burned down. The Reformed view would let you and your brothers and sisters live in the new house; the typical believers' baptism view would only let the parents in. So, when the Reformed baptise an infant, we are saying that God has made Himself God to that child by providing a house for the entire family. So, God gives the child the privileges of Christain family membership and expects them to respond faithfully in return. This pattern of God-initiated relationship and expectation of faithfulness in return is what we mean when we say covenant.

The house analogy above is not meant to imply that the adult-baptist has no legitimate concerns. Believers' baptism emphasises the individual's response: at some point the child will self-consciously take upon themselves, and begin to exercise, the identity and privilege God has called them to. They will begin to look after the house. This is well and good, and there is nothing wrong with expressing this commitment formally. However, the function of baptism, just as with circumcision, is not to speak of this response. Something more glorious than that response has happened prior to it, and it is this something to which both circumcision and baptism point (all the while, of course, requiring the faithful response): God has chosen to be God to us. He has built the house. It is therefore crucial to understand that the Reformed are not saying something about the child's response when they baptise. They are saying something about God's grace.

It is much more amazing that God could love and restore rebellious, disowned sons than it is that those sons could respond to such love. For this reason, the Reformed have always rightly emphasized God's grace as the most marvelous of the matters to be highlighted. So, because the covenent ceremonies God instituted point to it, and because the initiation is greater than the response, the Reformed have always held that to give the proper content, meaning and application to baptism is to give the proper glory to God.

Monday, May 24, 2004

Welcome Jenny to blogdom.

Sermon Reflections

Rev. Goris' two sermons on Sunday were both great.

In the morning he contextualised and gave content to 'blessed are those who mourn' very well. In the afternoon he reflected on the faithfulness of God, as appealed to by whomever wrote Lamentations (Jeremiah?), shown in the rising of the sun every day. I particularly appreciated the way that he placed Nehemiah, Jeremiah, and Psalm 137 in the story of Israel's exile and Jeresalem's destruction.

I still feel very moved to think that we, with the Psalmist and with Jeremiah, are going to learn to speak these words as our own.

Saturday, May 22, 2004

Slavery

Once, there was a form of debt servitude allowed by God among Israel, and a form of slave-keeping of gentiles. Confederate (Southern States) slavery was different, but not, I used to think, wholly evil. In particular, I was convinced by Robert L. Dabney's movingly written A Defence of Virginia and the South that one could not appeal to Paul in order to justify abolitionist arguments. What made Dabney's arguments even more compelling was the prescience of his collateral attacks: when he wrote in the 1860s, he saw and warned against consequences of the abolitionist movement that I saw around me in the mid 1990s - in the State school system, in feminism, and in the homosexual rights lobby.

Certainly, the common argument that Paul did not want to set a disruptive torch to the social order is nonsense. Both Dabney and Greg Bahnsen in Theonomy in Christian Ethics point out that Paul was not at all afraid to preach that Jesus and not Caesar is Lord; one could hardly ask for a more disruptive attack on the social order in any Roman society.

Yet there remain a massive percentage of Christians who think Confederate slavery was wrong. Granted, many of them have never thought about it in depth, simply picking up the modern social milieu. Thus, I was able to dismiss their view as par for the course in such an egalitarian society as ours. But their numbers and the conviction of a few have weighed on me, and in recent years I've begun to doubt my initial acceptance of Dabney's central claim. This claim was very strong: that Paul positively sanctioned slavery, following old covenant precedent. So, left in doubt, I've been wondering: what did Paul really mean to do?

Tim Gallant writes on the subject and has singlehandedly shifted me a considerable way to the 'Dabney was wrong' conclusion. Far from finding excuses for Paul, and without being facile, he shows that the apostle did actually set a torch to that social institution. This comes in the course of an argument defending Paul against relativisation to cultural norms, and crescendos in railing bitterness at the empty 'liberations' of feminism, champion of the relativist critique.

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Be thankful for our freedom, because Canadians are losing theirs
(via matt)

Balance

In conservative circles it's common to hear that we should allow our views to be informed by scripture and not by experience - especially when the interpretation of scripture itself is in view. Most people 'get' the point, and think they know what it means.

But as I've said below, in terms of its expression, this view collapses into meaninglessness in the real world. There is no useful dichotomy between reading scripture and experience. And this is a problem, because any decent philosophy student would be able to shake the foundations of a bible-believing Christian with a fairly straightforward argument. And they do.

The important thrust of the point is that scripture ought to anchor and inform us, not only in our interpretation of scripture itself, but in our general opinions. But how can we put it so that our bible-believing son or daughter, at university for the first time, can defend their tradition?

I suggest that it is not pitting the bible against experience, but pitting one experience of the bible against another that will help. The alternative experiences I have in mind are

1. a deep grasp of the historical origins and meaning of the text, within a community that itself brings the text alive, and

2. a thoughtless reading straight-off-the-page that pours into the text whatever contemporary meanings it finds lying around.

What the conservative view attempts to capture with its appeal to 'scripture' is in fact a particular hermeneutic. What it needs to avoid is the impression of a somehow magical (because it is beyond or outside experience) process of reading scripture per se. And so, what it needs to emphasize when making the point is proper receptivity to the original meaning of the text, within a contemporary lived expression of the text.

Of course, there are a whole range of difficulties employing such a hermeneutic. We cannot easily divorce our contemporary experience-infused meanings from ourselves, so that when we read the text we are reading it 'authentically', as if we were a person of the time. But that is the subject for another post.

As our bible-believing sons and daughters deal with these issues (and they will face them), it is good for them to be able to employ categories and responses that are not seen either as unthinking dogma or as superstitions, but rather as the clear reflection of an attractive, deeply satisfying (intellectually, emotionally, physically) way of looking at the world. It is even better if others conclude that they'd love to be part of that kind of world.

Experience is all

There's a discussion going on at Matt's blog about meaning, experience, and scripture. In frustration that sola scriptura had been raised as a way to say that one's opinions should only be informed by the scripture (against Matt's observation that his opinons are informed by all manner of things), I suggested that scriptural meaning may be mediated through other things that we experience - such as a friend's conversation or a CS Lewis novel.

In discussing it with Matt afterward, it seemed that his point was more profound than mediation.

His real point (for which I have an 'amen') is this: that reading the bible is not an isolated category which imparts a non-experience-infused meaning to us. Even in reading, we are 'enmeshed' in a context and shifting kaleidoscope of meanings - all of which are imparted by the totality of our experiences.

This seems to me to be completely true. One cannot maintain a simple dichotomy between 'reading scripture' and 'experience', saying that opinions should be informed by one and not the other. In the way the world actually is, that kind of position makes no sense at all.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Apostacy and Assurance: two difficult words

Al reflects on James Jordan (for whom I have the greatest admiration) writing about faith.

Solicitations

I'm not quite sure how this whole new sections thing is going to work (in terms of organising them), but I have written a short essay on the matter of cultural problems. It is my introductory thinking on the subject. Feel free to read and offer comments or (constructive) suggestions. It can be found here.

Cheers.

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

New Directions

This blog is going to take some new directions.

In response to the fundamental call to be light to the world, I'm going to start a new section that will consist of cultural problems & priestly answers. Hopefully, there will be many contributors to this, and perhaps it may be of some help to us as we live, move and have our being in Christ's kingdom.

In response to the need to develop stories within which we can live, the meshes of shared imaginative space that bind us together, I want to continue with theological reflection and interaction, as poorly as I know I do that. Scripture and its living tale is at the heart of all we are.

In response to my own need to be more responsible and diligent, I'm going to start a section on books read, being read, and reflections thereof. These too will hopefully spark discussion about the authors that can help us and who can add fruitfully to the conversation we share.

In many ways this blog began as 'my space', and I wrote for myself. Somehow, it's become, even if very modestly, part of more lives than mine. I'd like to see the best possible use made of that.

'Culture' and 'problems'

Introduction

A culture is the summed set of meanings, and the means by which they are communicated, within an identifiable people-group. In this brief essay, I want to explore what I intend by dealing with 'cultural problems'.

'Culture' and the story

I have deliberately given 'culture' a very broad definition. Virtually everything that occurs within a society, or at least all those things which are mediated through or interpreted by persons, must be available to analysis as a cultural event or artefact. My conviction that this is so rests upon a prior commitment to the story of creation: that YHWH made all things, made man in His image as His representative, and set him within the earth to care, nurture and rule it.

Man's vocation to represent God stamps a certain character upon his actions. He is constitutionally religious; he cannot help but represent God for good or ill in all that he does. The creation groans and rejoices, we are told, the one because it suffers under unjust rule; the other, because the sons of God - those who truly represent Him - are revealed.
In man's constitution he finds great and unparalleled nobility. But he also finds unrivaled responsibility, and a great jealousy in the One of whom he is the representative. Tragically, this jealousy has not always been left unprovoked. The treachery of man's first king and father, Adam, caused YHWH to expel the family of man from the land of God's dwelling. God's house was left desolate.

Yet even while His disowned children became wild and dissolute, God saw reason to be pleased with some. And since the time of the expulsion, God the Father has been pleased to initiate and accomplish the great task of setting a new king in Adam's place, of gaining for Himself a new and faithful son. Under that King as eldest brother, He has restored the rule of creation to new sons in His household. Now, from the reinhabited house of God, His sons go forth into the earth, nurturing, healing, and ruling.

Man's culture, then, is inescapably part of this great cosmic story. And if we who read this - as some few of the sons of God's household - are to play our part, then we need to understand the story and act within its terms.

Culture and the identification of 'problem'

The last 50 years of philosophical reflection has bequeathed on our times the insight that not everything means the same thing to everyone. This is an insight to trust, but not to take too far. It may be thought, for instance, that it is rather bold of me to presume to identify 'problems' in culture. Who has the problem, it may pointedly be asked?

My answer, again, is rooted in the narrative of the creator God, YHWH. I said above that culture involves all those things interpreted through or mediated by people; but now I ask you to reflect on the fact that God Himself is a person. Our personhood reflects His. We are in fact theomorphs: signs pointing back to God.1

YHWH's personhood means that nothing at all can be excluded from the true realm of 'culture'. At every point there is a meaning assigned by God to everything. Yet there is not one contiguous realm between God and man, but two realms, one the orginal and the other the analogue. Man's culture is a microcosym within God's macrocosym, sustained and upheld by Him. And such is our creation imago dei that we are entitled to overlap, add, and re-interpret the meanings God has for things.

The crucial question for analysing our culture is to ask whether our meanings cohere or clash with God's. It is well if the two are coordinate (even if not identical), but they must not clash. Else we will lose, as Adam found in the Garden. The analysis we wish to perform asks where and how our culture clashes with God's, and what we might do to subvert, heal or restore it. Thus, for the one who finds the idea of 'problem' problematical, we will pass over the internal contradiction, and point instead to the overarching and loving rule of YHWH, creator and redeemer of creation.

Conclusion

Those of us who have found our identity within the story that opens "In the beginning, God..." have a sure anchor and a vast sense of place. We are compassed about with the history and meaning of God's love, and are oriented toward the reflection and representation of that love within the creation that God made good. Our sense of direction, vocation and hope far surpasses the empty, nihilistic uncertainty of those elements of man that are both self-destructive and yet self-aggrandising. Our own story and calling is certain, but we are actors by grace, by the great condescending love of God. Let us never, then, deal in pride or arrogance. Let us imitate our Lord and King, who while walking before his God on the way to claim the throne climbed upon the cross, allowed himself to be nailed upon it by exiled men, and there prayed "Suffer them Lord, for they know not what they do".

___________________________________
1. I owe this way of putting it to Steve McNicholl.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

The Gospel of Galatians according to Tim Gallant

Or, What Saint Paul Should Have Said

"Peter's schismatic activity in 2:11ff. is not about theory. It is about severing table fellowship with Gentiles who have not been circumcised, and who are thus not in submission to the Mosaic law."

This is the best thing I have ever read on Galatians. Ever.

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

But touch my tears with your lips
Touch my world with your fingertips

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

HOLD UP

I'm dropping Doug Wilson from my favourite persons list; he wants to deny me a pleasure

Improvements

Blogger now provides comments. I'd like to trial these. So feel free to use the lower of the two comments options. *UPDATE*: I've decided Blogger comments are no good - (1) don't give a count, (2) no option for a link the commenter's blog/email

The other issue they've fixed is links to individual posts. They now actually work!

Bare-faced questions

If your wife should ask you whether she looks better with or without clothes, the right answer is apparently 'without'.

Beck, Sing it Again

a town of disrespect
the trains are wrecked
the night is younger then us
nowhere is anywhere else
you keep to yourself
stirring the dregs where i have layed
the exit signs are flashing
dead ends they won't come to life anymore
i pledge the rest
i should have guessed
your love was hanging by threads
tongues tied under the moon,
my love is a room of broken bottles
and tangled webs
the misers wind their minds
like clocks that grind their gears
on and on
and if its meant
some accident
some coincidence
crumbs fall out of the sky
when you wander by
the dust clouds blow
nobodys home
oh won't you lay my bags
upon the funeral fire and sing it again

oh won't you lay my bags
upon the funeral fire and sing it again

Faith: An alignment performed by God

Tim Gallant on the faith of infants; thus to be admitted into baptism (commenting on the Heidelberg Catechism with good discussion in comments)

To start the day

A fine post on Pslam 3; and I especially like the question, 'how can we sing this?'

Monday, May 10, 2004

The Monastery of Saint Catherine

Apparently one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in existence (via PENSATE/OMNIA)

Peter Leithart

Worth reading, anytime. Two recent entries:

To be a prophet is to understand the plot-lines of scripture

Baptism as a naming ceremony

Congratulations

To Dan & Michelle, expecting their first baby

Catholic and Enjoying it!

Mark Shea is one reason I have a growing respect for Catholics. His blog is a veritible barrage of strident attacks on the stupidity of sin and the foolishness of American culture. If we had more people like him, the age would more obviously be ruled by Christ.

Knowing the times, in the times

At the end of a lengthy post recommending the study of various influencers, Joel Garver says:

"Invaluable, of course, is simply ongoing conversation with other thoughtful Christians at church, in Bible studies, at conferences, in email discussions, on this blog, and so on. The struggle to speak and write and express oneself in order to be heard and heard accurately is a rewarding struggle and I'm deeply in debt to all of my conversation partners over the years."

Amen.

Incense

I became a christian in a presbyterian tradition, & then moved to an orthodox reformed tradition. I was highly suspiscious of incense. But a friend took me to a high Anglican service a couple of times. This convinced me that reformed traditions have regrettably eviscerated their worship services. Life is the more drab for our refusal to acknowledge the full-bodied-ness of what pleases God.

Friday, May 07, 2004

Silliman muses on community in various ways:

- The search for community among Christians manifests itself as primitivism opposed to a Christianity centered on an isolating and individualizing church service, and seeking a faith subsisting of a life lived together.
- The search for community among Christians manifests itself as a move toward liturgy, where worship is recognized as a communal and participatory action and the Church is not a thing of tenants and propriety but a body of the living and the dead in the service and worship of Christ.
- Primitivists and liturgists, ostensibly polar, both believe that true faith and doctrine take place within the community that is the Church.
- The recent history of Christian movements is divided between those seeking "a personal faith" and those seeking a tradition.
- The Scripture, textually and historically, is not a thing of private devotions and revelations, but a public book. The Reformation's strength or weakness is found here, for it either made the book available all, saving the bible from clerical gnosticism, or made the book an individual affair, sheering it of its communal openness and limiting it to private exegesis.
- The two primary doctrines of Christianity, the Trinity and the Incarnation, are by nature communal.

I recognise myself in here.

Merit vs. Ethnicity?

Josh asks,

Are "merit legalism" and "ethnic superiority" mutually exclusive? Many contemporary studies of St Paul's theology seem to assume so. So, from whence the assumption that there is a complete and clear break between works-righteousness and ethnic pride; that the two are somehow unrelated? It seems to me that works-righteousness always brings with it a notion of being part of the Super-Holy Holiness Club, and ethnic pride always comes with "My nation is holier than yours, because we celebrate the Feast of Garter Snakes every year."

Response

This is a good point. God’s giving of Torah as a whole separated Israel from the nations into covenant with Him, as teh family of Abraham. Performing the works of the law therefore marked a Jew out as distinct and privileged, but it was more like re-affirming a distinction & privilege already gained. So, 'merit legalism' and 'ethnic superiority' DO come together indistinguishably.

'Earned grace' seems different again, though. It seems to assume a universally low starting point for atomised individuals (no covenant structure), and a universal system of timeless 'good deeds', performed individually to gain God's favour. While both systems result in pride, are they the same mechanism? I'm not sure, but I suspect not.

I suspect 'earned grace' is in fact so far from any recognisable biblical mentality that a far wider and more profound range of arguments apply than those typically used since the Reformation (Pauline arguments against Jewish use of Torah-works for ethnic privilege). The latter seem best suited for contexts more solidly biblical to begin with.

A counterargument to earned grace

Earned grace is built on an utterly alien foundation: the late western notion of the isolated, self-contained individual. Any counterargument must therefore start with the biblical narrative of covenant structures (kings and a people).

So we should narrate the story of exile under those covenant structures - humanity sent out of God's garden under the fallen king, Adam. We should procede to the restoration in proptotype under Abraham and his household, and to the giving of the law 430 years later to distinguish and covenant with Abraham's seed. In this part of the story we should emphaisze the relationally dependent aspects of restoration, just as we emphiasized the relationally dependent aspects of the exile. So, Abrahams household and decendants participated in the restoration God established with Abraham as head.

Perhaps we should note (in an aside) that God's restoring favour is by grace and choice alone, because it was the desendants of Abraham by promise that were to receive the naming as Abraham's seed, and not by flesh. We do this in an aside not because we disparage grace and choice, but because we are not attacking a mentality that requires this kind of emphasis in a response. That mentality says 'God is bound to show me favour, because I am related to Abraham.' Rather, we are attacking the mentaility that says 'God is bound to show me favour, because I am a self-made man of good deeds'. Grace and choice do not operate in scripture against good deeds, but rather affirm them (see for example Noah). Grace and choice operates against the presumption of automatic fleshly privilege: and our imagined opponent can't even begin to understand what that is yet; he's still a complete individualist.

So, with that aside given, we procede to the story of a replacement king, a king who will be in the line of David yet a sucessor to Adam; a king in whom the whole creation finds its rest and redemption. We should emphasize the urgent call to Israel during the arrival and just after the enthronment of this king, "Align yourself with the king! Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and destroy you in his wrath!"

We should emphasize that in line with the entire story, this is a relational call out of estrangement: forsake the exile of humanity, enter restoration - and when you come, bring all your people. Thus, entire households are called out of Israel and the gentiles to align themselves with the new king, and do so through baptism.

The narrative should continue, emphasizing the same points, over and over. Israel's destruction as a people signalled the end of the age of division between Jew and Gentile, and the beginnning of an age where humanity was one man again. But rather than being exiled under Adam in their oneness, we are restored in our oneness to the redemptive rule of Christ. It is creation, the earth, the people, that God has dealt with, and in relation to them every 'individual' stands.

So this idea that the atomised timeless individual can employ a timeless, universal system of earned grace to climb into favour is completely out-of-whack to begin with. It doesn't even get off the ground, in terms of the biblical story. There's no room for it. If God is ever pleased with anyone, it is emphatically (1) a matter of taking a role in the unfolding story, (2) always for the sake of others, and (3) because they aligned themselves with and entrusted themselves to God's purposes - latterly expressed in the new king.

Now, if our imagined earned-grace opponent should ever get past his individualism and begin to exalt in his relationship to one who was shown favour, or even to humanity as a whole (these days shown favour in Christ), then is the time to bring in specifically Pauline arguments against the presumption of fleshly inheritance, against the grace that must come because we are children-of-Abraham with circumcision and temple (or in this case, of Christ with baptism and right doctrine).

Then we must show him that merely because he is a human gurantees nothing; merely because he is of a Christian family guarantees nothing: if he would be assured of God's favour, he must have the faith that aligns himself with God in Christ. That means that he must do the things of faith; he must be a particular sort of person: a renewed one. Flee then to Christ if you would have God's favour assured.

One Xon...

" Yet another blog devoted to Reformed theology. We like presuppositionalist, postmillennialist, quasi-theonomic, Credenda-Agendaish, culturally-trasnformative Christianity around here. But don't let that fool you. Sometimes I talk about college football. Or other things."

Xon was kind enough to link to my post on postmoderninty and meaning (below). And he knows Latin. Two things which, in my view, give multiple brownie points.

Once again, Douglas Wilson...

abortion, schooling, and the judgment of God

Thursday, May 06, 2004

Tonight,

As promised, the incomparable Vikster and husband Dave will be dining at La Casa Pasta, 37 Dixon St, Wellington, at 7pm (2nd floor, directly opposite Te Aro Park). There will be some other guests. If you know who the Vikster is, you are cordially invited to join us.

Anyone who uses 1 Cor 11 as a defence against paedocommunion MUST read this (by Tim Gallant)

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Postmodernity, community, and meaning

A reader comments that some postmodern jurors deny any possibility of shared meaning.

Their basic position strikes me as having some valid points. Postmodern theory has, after all, uncovered some trustworthy insights. But without a doctrine (forgive my use of the word ;)) of creation and community, it becomes completely destructive, as those jurors demonstrate.

Against modernism: people are not exhaustive clones of one another, sharing all things without differentiation, especially not the 'rationality' rooted in one cultural milieu. But against postmodernism: neither are they autonomous gods, generating their own truth and their own realities, of necessity sharing nothing.

Rather, people are made in communication by the single God, sharing a God-given common source in both being and history. They can't escape this. They also share senses that are trustworthy for their purpose (because God is not a trickster). Thus they can reliably interact with a common environment, including others, in their vocation as God's images. Yet they are, in God's image, creative and exploratory, capable of creating and sustaining sub-pools of meaning, culture and significance. So they are at once unified and differentiated - modern and post-modern.

But in speaking to philosophers, we have more at hand than our narrative of creation in communication. For, God Himself has explicitly used the commonality He created to communicate to persons and people. And very significantly, this occured within the sub-pools of meaning and culture that they themselves re-created, acting in His image. This alone proves the trustworthiness of both unity and differentiation.

So, I suggest that the insights of postmodernity are useful only when subject to the constraints of a biblical narrative of creation and man. Shorn of those constraints, they only tear us into a false atomism, even as modernity only welds us into a false uniformity.

depression envelops me like a dirty muslin shroud. Can see through it, but all is grey.

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

opposing fortresses unwillingly occupied

Recent debates about how we interpret scriptures have helped me realise, again, how important it is to acknowledge - as best you understand it - what your interlocutor is saying.

So, I take the point stated and urged against my position (scroll down to 'an anchorless text') to be this: that God has not left us floundering around, unable to read Scripture adequately without detailed lessons in reconstructed history.

I agree with this point. I would not want to be pressed, unwilling, into a fortress of opposition to it, merely becuause I keep saying, but. So here is my yes.

The point I want to press, though, is that insofar as we have not been left floundering around, it is because we understand the history and context of the text. We have interpretative commonality with the writers and original authors. This is not a mysterious operation of mystic knowledge, I want to say, but a very real working of God's grace within the created order. And here, I acknowledge that mystic knowledge is probably not what my fellows in debate wish to affirm. That position is not their fortress.

So, my hunch is that we are not really in opposition over the way we know the text. What then is the difficulty?

The difficulty comes when I advance a particular view of a text's meaning, based on (what I assert is) historical reconstruction of original meanings. If someone says in response that the text cannot mean this, because it can be read without my history lesson in quite a different way, then if we are not careful, we will head toward those opposing fortresses. What is not being said (at least, I hope not), by the respondant is that history has nothing to do with it at all.

Rather, what is really happening is that the respondant is pitting one form of historical knowledge - the transmission of meanings down to us - against a much more specific, and different, set of historical claims. What is not in question at all (or ought not to be), is the vital importance of history to both positions.

So the fortresses are not opposed over the question of history. What they are opposed over seems to be the following assumption: God's grace to us would not allow us to mistake such a seemingly central set of meanings. In other words, the interpretative commonality that we think we have with the original readers and authors does in fact exist at these central points, and, moreover, this is guaranteed by the grace of God.

Now, I think that this is a highly questionable claim. Scripture itself does not appear to support it. We are not told that we can forsake the ordinary forms of meaning-analysis on an assumption that we've got it right already. So, at the very least, the claim should be allowed to be verified for any given case. After all, if the apostle Paul, direct witness and authoritative representative of Christ, could be checked against scripture for accuracy, should not the vagaries of a non-authoritative tradition, 2000 years removed from directness? So: do we really share interpretative commonality with the original authors and readers of the gospels?

Our own Reformed tradition harks back to just such a question. NT Wright notes that it was asked when Martin Luther "took the gospel word metanoeite and insisted that it didn't mean 'do penance', as the Vulgate indicated, but 'repent' in a much more personal and heartfelt way. The only way to make that sort of point is to show that that's what the word would have meant at the time. That's the kind of serious biblical scholarship the Protestant Reformation was built on..." NT Wright, The Shape of Justification

Thus, history itself is not a threat, but the very guardian of an original meaning. This should be our starting point, and I believe it's one the various views share. It's important, therefore, to be clear about the actual points of difference, rather than allow rhetoric or labels to force us into unwelcome (and ridiculous, when thought about) positions. And as I have thought about it, it seems to me that the vital question revolves about the assumption identified above. Is it warranted?

To the history books, then. Some of which, of course, will be the the other texts included in our bible: the ones that hold so much of the imagery being built on.

Islam and revelation

Peter Leithart reviews French historian Alain Besancon's contention that Islam cannot be a revealed religion. Along the way, he notes

(1) that a hallmark of revelation is its progressiveness. And progression is not "the transmission of an eternal preexisting text." This is why we need to read our scripture from within its roots in the progression. God is a God of revelation within the creation, using and sanctifying created means to hold meaning. Only this affirms the goodness, the spirituality, of the creation. Mohammed, on the other hand, "does not play a role akin to that of Moses and Jesus. He does nothing but receive texts, which he repeats as if under dictation."

(2) that Islam is a mirror in which we we as Christians can see our own flaws and misconceptions. I have previously found much interest in reading about the leading thelogians underpinning the radical Islamic movements. They critique western, and specifically western Christian, culture, seeing in it a radical dualism which divides life into the inner spiritual and the outer wordly. (I will try and find the link.) While my own Reformed tradition has actually done much to hold against this tide that has swept much of the church, it is not exempt from the same criticism - hence my interest in the ways we interpret scripture. Besancon's analysis suggests some strikingly similar conclusions regarding the ways in which Islam may fall to the same criticisms of dualism as some its theologians make of us.

Lastly, I note with interest amusement that despite having gone to print with Against Christianty, Leithart speaks positively in terms of 'Christianity', and of what it does or does not teach. This illustrates the importance of reading rhetoric for the point intended - which Robbins, ever the literalist, utterly fails to do in his critique of Leithart.

Monday, May 03, 2004

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:

A wife on the ugliness of wives and the Christlikeness of husbands

(cheers Matt)

Ode to baptism

Baptism is a call to faithfulness. It goes beyond the general status of man, already given over to the representation of God by virtue of being created in His image. History passed after that creation, and Adam fell. Baptism, then, no less than circumcision, is a specific call to recognise a restoration between God and man, and to embody that restoration in your own life.

Yet baptism goes beyond circumcision, as the latter went beyond the general status of man. Circumcision was a sign of one nation's restoration to one small part of the earth - a corner of the ancient middle-east. A proto-garden of promised land to a proto-people of earth, to be sure, but proto nonetheless, and under kings who were no faithful replacement for Adam.

Baptism therefore invokes a narrative continued even further. History passed beyond circumcision, and here comes the Christ, second Adam and king about to be crowned. Here he is, in that dusty corner of the middle-east, following John's inauguration: promising and signifying through baptism what was expected through the Temple and circumcision. Proto is about to expand and grow to cover the whole world, and through baptism it comes. And there he is, taking the throne of David, stamping on the serpent's head. There he is, gone to the grave in Adam's exile, the baptism of death, but - lo! raised again by the power of YHWH, to the new life long-promised. There he is, breathing on his disciples in image of re-creation. And there he is, ascended and crowned, Lord of the whole earth, sending the new breath at Pentecost, the new genesis for man, that the message might at last be carried to all the world: Christ is KING!

To be baptised into that purpose and that name is the highest of all mission statements. It is the ultimate raison d'etre. It is the most strident of calls, the most noble of identities. It is an identity more connected to the deepest realities of this world than any other. Movie-stars, presidents, rich, famous, CEOs be damned: we are the Christians, the priests of God. Baptism is a call to forsake the mis-representation typical of exile, of the estrangement between God and man, and even of the proto of Israel. It is an invitation and a command to take your part in the wonderful cosmic drama of God redeeming his lost bride. It means that you, and that you amidst your people (for God is not just a God of random individuals, but of people together, of restored communities) have been called to show forth His glory, to be representatives of and agents for that restoration, to be the redeemed of the Lord for the sake of the world; to write in every fibre of your being the plot of this great drama.

Who are you? You are an actor, and baptism is your commission to take your role.

And that is exactly why Lord's Supper is to be taken by all the baptised, because together they are the actors in Christ, the community of the redeemed, the new body of man gathered around the new family table, the politico-culturally subversive alternative polis. And it is also why, as Doug Wilson says, the command to participate in Lord's Supper that must go to all the baptised is a command to utter faithfulness. No slackness there: baptism constitutes and commands unto utter truthfulness the body of Christ. Let us, then, feed on his flesh and blood in the unity of mutual love: mankind restored to God.

Unifying experience

Tim Gallant suggests that Word & Sacrament should be thought of as event and promise. Very rich thought. It neatly cuts away a lot of the platonising tendencies - seeing everything as a Truth to be apprended and participated in with the mind - that I think can be associated with the more usual designations of word and sign.

Three things:

Book review: recommends When Shall These Things Be?: A Reformed Response to Hyper-Preterism. I would like to read this.

Warning about doctrine: this is (sort of) what I think, too

Historical Essay: A very informative, witty and insightful anaylsis of the defeat of Hannibal by Scipio Africanus in 202BC, with sound lessons for Christian cultural victory today (via Matt Colvin)

Sunday, May 02, 2004

Reflections on the sermon text: Christ Entering Jerusalem (Matt 21:1-11)

The narrative

Jesus enters Jerusalem in the manner of triumphant kings. Matthew affirms that he did this deliberately, invoking the prophet:

“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'"


What's more, the crowds and people receive him as a king. Matthew records 3 signifiant invocations of the crowd:

1. Jesus is heir to David's throne (contrary to the Herodian dynasty):

“Hosanna to the Son of David!"

2. Jesus is come in the name of the Lord, with His authority:

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"

3. Jesus is come to fulfil Israel's hopes:

“Hosanna!...Hosanna in the highest!" ('Hosanna' apparently means 'to save')

To invoke the three motifs of kingship, authority and salvation man was to unmistakably proclaim the long-looked-for restoration of Israel - something meant to be accomplished by YHWH Himself. Hence, the indignation of the chief priests and scribes at the children who were also proclaiming Jesus: (v15): the restoration of YHWH, they thought, could not possibly have been happening or sanctioned under that man, whose agenda and politics were so very unwelcome.

Yet Matthew is very clear about who that man was - even dramatically arranging the dialogue to establish the point. The crowds know, he tells his readers, that Jesus is the prophet from Nazereth in Galilee:

“Who is this?” (asked by 'the city')
“And the crowds said, 'This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.'"

Thus, Jesus the Nazarene comes where YHWH was expected, doing what YHWH was expected to do, in the name of YHWH. And Matthew presents the point as both accepted and acclaimed by the crowd. He reflects the basic Jewish mentality which saw no distinction between God accomplishing something and a man doing it. For them, YHWH was finally come to Israel - and yet there sat Jesus the Nazerene on a donkey.

Background

Matthew's narrative thrust, demonstrating that the crowd proclaimed Christ in YHWH's place, reflects a basic Jewish mentaility and the most basic fact about human existence: we stand in the place of YHWH. God made us in His image; as His representatives. What we do, God can be said to do. This is why is was so important for Adam to pass the tests of faithful representation in the garden: showing kingly authority by naming the animals, and creaturely obedience by obeying that one small command. Adam, had he imaged God properly, would have stomped on the serpent's head, rather than allow an alien invader and rebel to dwell in His garden.

The quintessential means of articulating this concept for a Hebrew was to speak of sonship. A son is heir to and representative of all a father has and is. It is therefore no accident that Christ called God his Father, and called himself the Son, or that Israel herself was meant to be a son.

Christ, then, came to Israel as the face of God: as he said, in him Israel had seen the Father. The Jews understood this connection between original and representative, and for that reason saw in the donkey-borne prophet from Nazereth the arrival of YHWH.

Reflection

We do not in our day have that easy Jewish instinct for representation. We tend to think more 'scientifically' of it, either in terms of substance and essence of natures, or in terms of veracity: having the right truth to tell. We are further pushed from saying things like "we are God to the world" by today's neo-paganism, with its pantheistic identification of creature to creation. My own reaction when I first heard similar things was to shrink back. And yet, the old Jewish understanding reflected by Matthew's narrative provides a way to affirm the amazing privilege we have as humans, and yet honour the distinction between original and representative.

Nor should we let knowledge of sin bar our way to seeing out our God-given vocation. The treasure we have may be in earthern vessels, but God has been pleased to put it there. Humanity in Christ has been restored to God's garden, and He is not ashamed to call us sons. In the re-issued breath (the Holy Spirit), first breathed into Adam, we have the ability to act as sons. To refuse the image of God because of the fall is to miss the whole point of the restoration in Christ.

So consider - next time you're out and about, or moving about the house, ask: "is what I do now the act of YHWH? Would God do this?" Think about how you treat your family, your employees, your animals, the creation. Consider if you bring hurt or healing, nurture or plunder. Ask whether in you, the creation sees the face of God. Consider the issue of representation.

In that consideration you will find a purpose more noble than any other, a dignity to shame kings, and a clear calling: be faithful, as Christ the king was faithful.

Saturday, May 01, 2004

Doubt

Without understanding all that lies behind this, I like it lots; it's very visceral:

Let God be dead and every man a liar
A interplay of voices


They ask they ask, but what do they want? The vision of the blind? The revelations of nothing? The riddles of the unhinged?

Spit in my eyes again, o son of man. Perform another peasant parable today we pray. For when the waters parted there was no bottom, no place to stand, no outside, no last appeal, no safe place. Another parable another parable another parable and let us not rest in peace.

This is our banquet of doubt, our ancient tradition without a secret, our bequest of a labyrinth of many rooms.

In agnosia I went again, again to the catacombs of perpetual catechumens who undermined every kabbalah, where martyrs said 'even if it kills me', knowing only the empirical fact of burning flesh and the ever presence of doubt.

We die not for the verifiable but for the doubtful.
Even if he doesn't save us.
Even if he slays us.
Even if he didn't rise..

Did you think the walls of the credible held up any house but my own? It rains through the breach of faith.

From Daniel Silliman

Ah, sweet melancholy

'The boys' have been having a weekly Saturday morning 7.15am prayer meeting, which despite my expectations is actually one of the best things that's happened for a long time. (And now, hip-hip hooray, 'the girls' are starting one as well!)

This morning at 2am, had you been here, you would have found me at my desk, foolishly trying to do some coding. Would my body rise this morning? No. Did I miss a breakfast immediately after the prayer meeting for young leaders in the church? Yes. Had I made a commitment to both events? Yes. Will I learn my lesson this time?

Yes. No more late-night coding.