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History Repeats Itself

In describing current events in the church as global politics, the main character in Ian Morgan Cron’s book Chasing Francis makes a pretty convincing case that things now aren’t so different from the way they used to be:

Another similarity between the Middle Ages and today has to do with the state of Christendom. In Francis’s day, the church was hemorrhaging credibility; it was seen as hypocritical, untrustworthy, and irrelevant. Some people even wondered if it would survive. Clergy were at the center of all kinds of sexual scandals. It had commercialized Jesus, selling pardons, ecclesiastical offices, and relics. Sermons were either so academic that people couldn’t understand them or they were canned. Popular songs ridiculing the church and clergy could be heard all over Europe. The laity felt used by the professional clergy, as if they were there to serve the institution, not the other way around. The church had also become dangerously entangled in the world of power politics and war…The demise of feudalism and the return of a money economy brought the rise of the merchant class and a ferocious spirit of aggressive capitalism. Greed ran riot in the culture. To top it all off, Christians were at war with the Muslims.

Sound at all familiar?

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God: More Poetry than Prose

I’ve never read Walt Whitman’s masterpiece Leaves of Grass, but I came across this excerpt from it in Chasing Francis, by Ian Morgan Cron.

After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,
After the noble inventors – after the scientists, the chemists, the geologist, ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet, worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come, singing his songs.

This is really quite wonderful! God is at once all these things, and we, in his image are reflections of those facets. He is a great captain and warrior. A meticulous engineer and designer, crafting the very fabric and physics of our universe. He created all the foundations of biochemistry and how protein in our cells interact in our bodies to keep us alive. He tossed all the stars and heavenly bodies into space in just such a way and even fashioned our own earth our of many different materials. Finally, he is very concerned about ethics, obedience, but also grace and gifts. He has hard rules of justice written on our conscience from birth, yet in his kindness finds all sorts of ways to break them.

And yet, God is NOT finally about ethics (and I’ll include the rest of philosophy and theology in there too). He is an artist. A painter, a musician, a sculptor, and creative designer. A writer of poetry and not just prose. The arts end up getting closer to explaining/describing God than do any of the other disciplines.

Cron goes on to quote some great commentary by Pope John Paul II on this subject:

In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the church needs art. Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. It must therefore translate into meaningful terms that which is in itself ineffable. Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colours, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look or listen. It does so without emptying the message itself of its transcendent value and its aura of mystery.

The last part is the best. Even when the message is “converted” into art, it doesn’t lose it’s contents. The Bach B minor Mass surely points to God, even if you don’t understand the German being sung. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel isn’t just illustrations off passages from the Bible. The skill that went into the choice of colors, the lines of the figures – all of it points to the Lord. Good fiction points to God. Must smarter people have explained this all better than I can right now.

One of the character’s in Chasing Francis adds his commentary to this:

The church is realizing that there is an awareness of God sleeping in the basement of the postmodern imagination and they have to awaken it. The arts can do this. All beauty is subversive; it flies under the radar of people’s critical filters and points them to God. As a friend of mine says, “When the front door of the intellect is shut, the back door of the imagination is open.”

The emphasis above is mine.

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Vain Novelties and Rumors

Thomas a Kempis on why you don’t need to surf YouTube all evening:

If thou wilt withdraw thyself from speaking vainly, and from gadding idly, as also from listening to novelties and rumors, thou shalt find leisure enough and suitable for meditation on good things. (The Imitation of Christ, Ch. 20)

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C.S. Lewis on Free Will

Found this quote:

God’s omnipotence means [His] power to do all that is not intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say, “God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it”, you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words “God can.” It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives — not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God. -C.S. Lewis

I like this quote, it’s a piece of very sound rationalism. Remembering this can keep us from holding on to some of the silly ideas we come with about God. However, that’s all it is: rationalism. It can only be applied correctly to the degree that you really understand what you are talking about. Watch out, for the free will of God’s creatures is a deep and rather mysterious thing; a confusing thing when viewed from the perspective of the creatures (us). It would be wise to reckon there is more to it than you may grasp.

Someone with a straight-forward view of predestination would look at this quote and say, “Well of course. Duh! Is God in control? Well, yes, of course he is. So your not. They’re mutually exclusive. End of discussion.” That’s pretty sound now, isn’t it? Except wait. God’s sovereignty versus our free will is a false dichotomy. It’s possible to have both (in some way), because they are apples and oranges. Now what way is that? It’s a mystery.

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My favorite music I almost never listen to

Has there ever been a piece of music that just won’t let go of you? Of course, if you really love music you’ll know what I’m talking about. There are so many works and recordings I could say that about. Many of them I play over and over again. A few I hide away and almost never take out. I don’t want them to lose their magic. Over the years, the one that seems most special to me has been a melancholy gem on one of Maire Brennan’s earlier solo albums. I stumbled upon it and at first thought the album was pretty weak. However, “Misty Eyed Adventures” conveys a beautiful sadness with an underlying undying faithfulness. The opening marimba chords are sublime. The way the words “call” and “fall” are subtly swapped in the last chorus just works so darn well when you hear it. It’s the simple things done just right that can matter the most. I don’t expect anyone to understand what I hear in it, but here it is nonetheless:

Moya Brennan – Misty Eyed Adventures

Misty Eyed Adventures

Gently reach the blossom
Part the leaves and journey on
Don’t be afraid, seas are deep
Stay close to me
Picture ships full of treasures
Stormy weather, warning clouds
Don’t be afraid, oceans are wide
Feel our time is precious

Fol la low ro fol la low
Promising that you turn to me
Side by side, arm in arm
My love is true

Misty eyed adventures
Frame of thought, be brave and bold
Don’t be afraid, birds will sing
Always for you
Springtime days will grow longer
Building castles happy and sad
Don’t be afraid, years will pass
Feel our love is endless

Fol la low ro fol la low
Promising that you turn to me
Side by side, arm in arm
My love is true

Echo sound of raindrops call (Echo sound of raindrops fall)
Never fear, I’m there when you fall
Echo sound of raindrops fall
Side by side, hand in hand
Never fear, I’m there when you call
My love is true
Side by side, hand in hand
My love is true

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Christmas from 4 Feet and Up

We put up our little Christmas tree yesterday and my wife helped our 3-year-old daughter hang up the ornaments. When we were finished, a picture was snapped to email to some of the family far away, along with pictures of the kids playing in the snow. Looking back through the pictures though, I couldn’t help but notice what was swimming around in the bottom corner. It pretty much sums up what our house is centered around. So Christmas is from 4 feet and up. Below swims the year-old and three-year-old sharks. Swim away, swim away!

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When Truth is Odd

While waiting for the son to drift off to sleep late last night I turned to reading back trough part of Chesteron’s Orthodoxy. There really are some wonderful things in chapter six, “Christianity and Paradox”. The paradoxes and mysteries of Christianity are difficult to describe, but G.K. really presents some brilliant illustrations here.

THE real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. I give one coarse instance of what I mean. Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon up the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing about it was that it was duplicate. A man is two men, he on the right exactly resembling him on the left. Having noted that there was an arm on the right and one on the left, a leg on the right and one on the left, he might go further and still find on each side the same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin eyes, twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain. At last he would take it as a law; and then, where he found a heart on one side, would deduce that there was another heart on the other. And just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong. It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is the uncanny element in everything. It seems a sort of secret treason in the universe.

Now, actual insight or inspiration is best tested by whether it guesses these hidden malformations or surprises. If our mathematician from the moon saw the two arms and the two ears, he might deduce the two shoulder-blades and the two halves of the brain. But if he guessed that the man’s heart was in the right place, then I should call him something more than a mathematician. Now, this is exactly the claim which I have since come to propound for Christianity. Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but that when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an illogical truth. It not only goes right about things, but it goes wrong (if one may say so) exactly where the things go wrong. Its plan suits the secret irregularities, and expects the unexpected. It is simple about the simple truth; but it is stubborn about the subtle truth. It will admit that a man has two hands, it will not admit (though all the Modernists wail to it) the obvious deduction that he has two hearts. It is my only purpose in this chapter to point this out; to show that whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth.

If he were to discern where the heart was, he would be less a mathematician and more like a god. We are in the creator’s image, but we are not him. Our world is a place we can ponder to great end, but yet only so far. The God who revealed himself years ago to the Hebrews, the God who stepped down in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the God whose spirit works invisible this hour, he alone fills in all of the odd truths and gets them all right, even when we don’t understand how it could be possible. He alone gives us free will and yet doesn’t lay down his sovereignty to do it. He alone can hold grace in one hand and vengeance in the other in a way that actually amplifies the glory of both, instead of canceling them out.

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The Bible as Literature

In our local university, there is a course called “The Bible as Literature”. I’ve always been told the very idea was the height of sacrilege. Of course, this particular course is taught from an atheistic point of view where it’s not even an option for anything (other than some of the historical references) to actually be true. I’ve always viewed the Bible as a special book that is so different from any kind of other literature as to be off in a special category all by itself. Lately though, I am beginning to realize that this can give us an incomplete understanding of the passage. The holy spirit gives us understanding regardless of how much we understand, but let us strive to understand more.

The Bible is true and divine, but it also IS literature. Each book was written down by a human being and directed, not to just generic Jews or Christians, but intended for a specific audience. It has clear genres. Some of it is straight up history, as reported by a royal chronicler. Job is NOT history literature (regardless of whether or not it describes actual events). Psalms and Song of Songs are poetry. Philemon was a letter written to one recipient. Corinthians was written to a whole group of Greek people, not Jews. Now, all of this seems pretty obvious, so why mention it?

It’s because if you throw these things out (which happens more often than I ever realized), then you can come up with all kinds of goofy ideas. Grabbing a verse from Song of Songs to back up a particular point of doctrine from Romans might not actually work. Really! Revelations is full of metaphors and imagery. When you take something from it and stick it next to some verses from Mark, it may sound more “literal”, but that is only confusion. This is beyond just the idea of context, but stretches to the authors original intention for each particular section of the Bible.

A recent commenter at the Boar’s Head Tavern pointed out an excellent example of this:

Let’s say you are studying Deuteronomy, and right at the beginning of the study, one of your students says the following:

“I’ve been reading this book for years and it clearly teaches that, if you obey and worship God, he will financially and materially bless you. It’s plain and clear. Anyone can read it in chapter after chapter. Obey, worship and God will bring you prosperity and wealth.”

What would be your response? (No seminary level answers allowed. These are regular laypersons.)

I would tell him to be aware of who God’s talking to. The Bible is not God’s personal letter to you, and in this case, he really DID promise Israel prosperity if they as a nation continued in his commandments and his worship. He made no similar promise to any other nation.

Posted by: Josh S

The Bible is not God’s personal letter to me? I’ve been told so many times that it’s his personal LOVE letter to me. Actually, I still think this is true (in some sense), but if you just stop to think, you’ll realize that in many other ways, it never has been. Above is a great example. Can you find an image of God’s love for you in the types and liturgical instruction in Deuteronomy? Yes, I believe you can. But it actually was written for some old guys with beards living in tents in the desert 3500 years ago. The author (God, through a human writer) wasn’t EXACTLY writing it for you sitting on your couch listening to your iPod. That’s fine, but that must be taken in to account!

I hope to explore the different genres of the Bible in the next while and maybe blog some about how that has helped me to understand (and appreciate) it better.

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Sola scriptura

Eric Raymond over at Irish Calvinist quotes James White in a clarification of the doctrine of sola scriptura. I think this really gets confused in a lot of people’s minds. Growing up Baptist and then charismatic in college, I always assumed a high and “only” view of the Bible. Nonetheless, both groups end up coloring the idea of “scripture alone” in various directions. That’s fine of course (to some degree) and to be expected. The reformed crowd appears to be shooting for more of a historical take on the doctrine. They are asking, “What did “scripture alone” mean to the early reformers?” It ends up being colored a reformed shade, but probably a little more carefully.

Anyway, the reason I think all of this is worth bringing up is because sola scriptura really IS very important to Christianity. When you marginalize it, you set yourself up for all sorts of trouble.

Sola sciptura is not a….

1. claim that the Bible contains all knowledge;
2. claim that the Bible is an exhaustive catalog of all religious knowledge;
3. denial of the Church’s authority to teach God’s truth;
4. denial that God’s Word has, at times, been spoken;
5. rejection of every kind of tradition;
6. denial of the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding the Church

A Summary of sola scriptura…

1. Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith.
2. No other revelation is needed for the Church.
3. There is no other infallible rule of faith outside of Scripture.
4. Scripture reveals those things necessary for salvation.
5. All traditions are subject to the higher authority of Scripture.

Growing up baptist, sola scriptura was often used as a stick to beat up charismatics: “Look! The Bible is all we need! Prophecy is definitely not allowed.” It was also used to beat up the Catholics: Hey, the Bible is all we need! All those traditions you have are worthless and diluting the Bible. Apparently scripture alone implies a low liturgy.

In the charismatic circle I was part of, Smith Wigglesworth (an early 20th century evangelist) was held up as a hero. He ONLY read the Bible, owned no other books, and was credited with making people throw their newspapers away when he was around. This was seen as something to stand in awe of. Reading the bible daily was pushed really hard. (Which is great!) But reading much of anything else was thought to have little value. This is just part of the anti-intellectual atmosphere that appears to exist in most charismatic circles. We used to look at the reformed folks with their Bible sitting next to Virgil and Tacitus and just shake our heads. How can that other stuff possibly be of any use? Especially old pagan writers! Why don’t you just read the bible? (There is actually a decent answer to this.)

I think it’s most important to remember points #2 and #5 from above.

We don’t NEED anything besides scripture, but other things CAN be very helpful.

Everything we do (traditions, ideas, methods) are subject to the HIGHER authority of scripture.

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