Scott Schultz

Epiphany

2012-01-08T22:10:00.001-05:00

In the Spirit of St. Francis, we routinely catechize our dog in the doctrine of the Trinity every Sunday when we leave for church by giving him three dog treats.

Keep "Christmas" in Christianity

2011-12-25T06:58:00.000-05:00

Why don't we chalk up all the ails of evangelicalism to abandoning the lectionary? If we don't read the Scriptures through the rubric of the history of Christ, then we have to subject them to various and sundry 'other' histories, necessarily un-Christ-ian histories, histories which warp the gospel. As we abandon a reading of Scripture which is not everywhere attentive to the Holy Gospels, we instead read it subject to our whims, opinions, and fantasies. (Even "expositional" methods of preaching the Scriptures are subject to scrutiny, as they are vulnerable to exaggerations, false-emphases, and pet theologies.)

It seems, then, for example, that Christmas - along with every other feast and fast observed throughout the liturgical calendar - is at the heart of rightly dividing the Word of God.

The Politics of Baptism

2011-11-11T07:04:00.002-05:00

This is the manuscript for the speech I gave last night at our parish's 4th "Christ and Culture Dinner." The topic for the evening was "A Christian Role in American Politics." The speech went quite well, better than the last one I gave (on Islam), but some people have asked for a written version. Here it is.

When meeting with the “Christ and Culture” committee, I was asked for a “young person’s” perspective on politics. I told them that I’d be a horrible person to represent “my generation” on the whole topic. I explained how warped and confused my approach to the political process is: They were discussing the problem of voter apathy, of people simply not voting because they felt like their votes were insignificant in the political process (which I think is absurd – voting is absolutely significant – the act of voting is absolutely effective – I don’t see how anyone could ever think that it’s not) – but I shared with them, I simply don’t take it for granted that because voting is effective and powerful that, therefore, Christians have a responsibility to vote in elections. That might be true. But it’s not obvious to me that it is.

Now, to be clear, I have voted before. To memory, I’ve voted in every presidential election since I’ve been legally able. I remember riding my bike up to my local voting precinct and did my part in bringing President George W. Bush into power in 2000. Last election, after having a few years of college to further distort my thinking, I started writing-in people.

I’ve long been registered as NPA – no party affiliation – but I re-registered as a Republican just long enough to vote in the primaries for my favorite candidate, Ron Paul. When he didn’t win the nomination, I changed back to NPA, and wrote him in for the general election, voting by conscience rather than following party lines. Apparently, there weren’t a lot of other people who wrote him in, so he ended up not becoming president. I don’t know if I’ll vote for him in 2012. He seems like a good man – a lot of integrity. That’s what I like about him. That’s why I’d vote for him, if I do. Who knows? But my point is I’m not overly worried about the whole thing.

I don’t get too stressed worrying about elections. This is because, to a certain extent, I’m not overly convinced there necessary. Especially for presidents. I don’t take for granted, for example, that the democratic model of government is obviously the best model. It might be, but I couldn’t prove it you without borrowing from the anti-authoritarian rhetoric against monarchy that I’ve grown up with. I understand the reasoning, of course, for constitutions and rebelling against tyranny and a government that represents the intentions of the people rather than the whims of a fallible individual. I’m duly familiar with the meaning of phrases like “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So I have some idea of why people like democracy. I certainly understand its merits. But that doesn’t sway me. Why?

What could be so wrong with me that I could be so dense about the basic assumptions of Western Civilization? What could have happened to me to make me so oblivious to what seems obvious to any run-of-the-mill American citizen? After being forced to think about it, the only thing I can think of to explain how I could have become so culturally absurd was that, in August of 1998, I underwent Christian Baptism.

“I underwent Christian Baptism.” That’s a strange thing to say, I think, for two reasons: One: It’s simply a fact that most American Christians, especially Protestants, don’t understand how important baptism is. Whereas, I believe it’s essential to our entire faith, the historic trends in the post-Reformation West have led to a devaluing of material things like sacraments, in favor of more “spiritual” things like “emotional states” or “personal relationships with Jesus.” This is so much the case that many Christians have to hold their breath at the part of the Nicene Creed (once considered the outline of genuine Christian Orthodoxy) where we altogether confess our belief in “one baptism for the remission of sins.”

Secondly, it’s strange to comment that Christian Baptism could have anything to do with separating one from American and Western Tradition since, being Christian and being Baptized are fairly commonplace in our country. It might even be weird to say that you are an American and that you have not been baptized. Maybe not anymore, but at least at one point that was true. Especially, here, in the Bible Belt.

But I stand by what I said. I can’t think of anything else that might have been more influential on my adult life than being baptized. In fact, it was not until after I was baptized that I started reading to learn. Baptism marks the beginning of education for me. I mean, obviously, I had read books before – I was in school, good schools. But it wasn’t until I was baptized that I started reading books, large amounts of books, because I wanted to learn what they had to say.

The 39 Articles describe baptism as something which we “receive” (that’s the language, “receive,” like a gift) – something we passively undergo. It is the gateway into Christ’s mystical body, the Church. For this reason our articles say that baptism is our guarantee that our sins are forgiven, and that we are made sons of God through adoption. This is remarkable. Think about it. Not only are our sins forgiven, but the upshot of this is that we are each, individually, adopted by “God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all this is seen and unseen.”

Stop for a second and really think about that. Once somebody has been baptized, they can look at the wonder and majesty of the entire universe and say, “You know who made that? That’s my dad.”

Now, it’s obviously important to distinguish between the way the Father is our father and the way the Father is the father of the Eternal Son. Christ is the Son by nature. He is “eternally begotten,” “not made” – unlike us, who are created. We are made. The glory of the cross, however, is that God has made a way for us to share in the life of the Son. The Holy Spirit goes out from the Father to unite all things to Christ. The Spirit joins us to the Son, in such a way that both the Anglican Divines and the Bible describe what happens as “adoption.”

Reflect for a moment what it means to be “adopted.” When someone is adopted, they receive more than just a change of custody from, say, the State, or maybe an abusive parent. Adoption is far more than a pledge to care for someone. Adoption is to make them a part of your family, to make them your kin. An adopted son or daughter is not legally understood to be an “adopted son” or an “adopted daughter.” Rather to be adopted is to become a son or daughter in a very real and binding sense. To be adopted is to receive a new identity. Who you are actually changes.

And this is what it means to be baptized.

In being baptized we receive a new answer to the question,” Who am I?” When we are born from our mother we receive a name. We are born into a world of death and violence, covered in blood and other bodily fluids. (Being born is itself is a fairly violent act. Ask a mother. ) We live a life of a mixture of pleasures and pains, enduring losses of various sorts that remind us at the end of the day that our grandest successes are finally dust and ashes, vanity. Our naming into this world is the naming of our death as much as our life. But in baptism we receive a new name, being born into a new world.

Of course, baptism is not something so naïve as to ignore death and violence. Rather, in baptism, we are united to death – or specifically to one death, Christ’s death. We lose our own death and instead receive the death of Christ. Why is this special? Because sharing in Christ’s death, we also share in his endless life, the life that brought death to its end, the death that made futility futile. In sharing Christ’s death through baptism, we equally share in his Resurrection, the second birth, the birth from above, the heavenly birth, the birth of the Spirit, the birth of peace. Christ’s Resurrection signals the death of death and so it signals the death of the world of death and violence. This is the gospel: that death is dead and where it isn’t, it will be destroyed.

We, Christians, believe this. The work of the Spirit is the work of disarming the world of its fondness for death. This is why we celebrate Pentecost, right? Remember the tower of Babel – that time when men came together to build their own Holy City of Man, a city of blood. If you know the story at all, you remember that Yahweh destroyed their work by confusing their languages, causing hatred and discord and division among them (Babel, by the way, means “Confusion”). But the moment of Pentecost, Acts 2, when the Spirit is poured out on all humanity, remember what happened there? Everybody was speaking in different languages, but who was confused? It wasn’t the disciples. No, at Pentecost, God took the languages and people from all the world (I mean, Jewish people, but still Jews from all over the world), and brought them together. Instead of reaping confusion, these tongues of fire were reaping unity. A new tower of Babel was birthed at Pentecost, a new city, but this city wasn’t forged in the tradition of blood and violence. Rather, this was the city of God, a new Jerusalem from above – we call it “the Church.”

If you are baptized, then this is where you live. This is where you’re from. This is who you are. You might have been born American or Mexican – or somehow Canadian – but by the grace of God, you died in those waters. That’s no longer who you are. You have born in the womb of Mary, because you have been united to the eternal Son of God, who was himself conceived there. This is why Jesus is so dismissive, at times, of domestic concerns. “Call no man ‘father’” and “Who are my brothers and sisters?” Because he understands the radical meaning of baptism.

You’ve probably heard at some point the phrase, “Blood is thicker than water.” It’s a way to express how important family ties are. For the Christian, though, the opposite is true, “Water is thicker than blood.” The waters of baptism create a deeper bond between Christians, then, any amount of genetic relationships. This is a hard saying. It’s not one that we all necessarily believe or practice. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

On another matter, there is also power in Christ’s words “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” This isn’t some ridiculous preview of future American political theory about the separation of Church and State. This is an attack on imperial cult, right? You understand that in this context in history there weren’t clean divisions between religion and politics. To be emperor was, in Rome, to be a sort of demigod. Jesus is being a “dualist” here (in the best sense of the word). God is over here, Caesar is over there. He’s looking at claims of Caesar and saying, “Nope.” You are not God, you are only Caesar. Your image might be stamped on the money, but the image of the infinite God – however skewed – is stamped on you. You are a man. You are clay. You are dirt. You are dust and ash. You serve me.

Not only do our family ties get relativized by Christ, but even the political realm gets reoriented.

Now, baptism isn’t just the joining of individuals to Christ’s death. Because people are the subjects of baptism, human culture is also the subject of baptism. As much as our old selves are drowned in those waters, the same can be said of our world, our culture. This is why it even makes sense for these “Christ and Culture” discussions to happen. We’re exploring what our baptisms mean for all of life. This particular evening is about politics, and when they asked me what I thought about politics, I said, “I wouldn’t even know how to begin to talk about politics without discussing baptism.” Hopefully, by now, it’s kind of clear why that is. Baptism is the beginning of politics because it’s the foundation of the City of God, the city to which we all belong.

Alright, now that we know what city we live in, let’s talk about how we run things here. That’s what politics is, right? Managing, ordering the city? Here’s how we do things in the Church. First of all, we require very little to become a citizen in this city. We ask that you “repent and believe” and then we get you wet. After that you’re in. That’s it. We just want faith. That’s the lifeblood of everything we do here. Once you’re baptized you’re welcome to participate in the most important thing we do. You might even say it’s the core of everything we do: the Eucharist.

This is a grave scandal. Or at least it was in Ancient Rome. To understand how baptism posed a problem for the Romans, you have to understand some things about their politics. For them, the city was, fundamentally, a religious order. Like Judaism, sanctity took the form of a duality between priest and non-priest, holy and common. At the center of political life were the “patricians.” “Patricians” were the exclusive ruling class who lived in the city proper. These people were able to worship in the temple at the top of the hill (You’ve probably heard of the “acropolis,” right? This is that). These are the “priests” of Roman civic order and that’s where they’d meet.

This priest-class literally “marginalized” those outside of the aristocracy. The people on the “outside” were “literally marginalized” because they were geographically outside the acropolis. They were in the foothills of the temple mount. They are known as “plebeians.” These are the common folk. They were not only in the margins of the landscape, but they were also excluded from cititzenship. (Remember that “citizenship” literally means being a part of a “city.”) These people were not allowed to partake in the religious worship of the national gods, so they were not allowed to partake in the political life of the city. If you compared this to the current “Occupy” movements, you might say these guys are the “99%.”

As you might expect, a good bit of tension existed between the “priestly patricians” and the “plebeian commoners.” A number of violent revolutions took place in Rome’s history. Plebeians, apparently, were dissatisfied with their exclusion and fought for a place at the center of the city. They finally got what they wanted, but at the price of a lot of bloodshed.

Now, picture Christianity showing up on this scene. Here is this world that, on one front, Rome, you have this violent city built on a conflict between an exclusive priestly citizenship and an excluded, you could call them ,“lay” population with no political voice. On the other front, you have Judaism and all it entails. And while priests and people don’t seem to have an antagonistic relationship, that tension does exist. (The antagonism could be subdued by the fact that, even for lay folk, a certain holiness is ascribed to them by virtue of their mere Jewishness. So, for the Jew, while the offerings were largely communal meals for the priests, there was still some sense in which the “common” Jew shared in those priests’ holiness.) Nonetheless, in front of this violent world of Jews and Gentiles, the apostles’ preached a gospel that said this holy-common tension doesn’t exist within the kingdom of God.

After you get baptized, you are pulled out of the violence of your old city and you are made into a priest. Everybody becomes a “patrician” you could say. What’s so great about that?

This is a hard question to answer because a lot of us have this idea that the job of priests is to do things, like slaughter animals, so that God forgives our sins. That’s only a tiny bit true. The problem with that idea is it kind of ignores that the joy of being a priest was you actually got to eat some of the sacrificed meat with God himself. The temple sacrifices, many of them, weren’t as much intended for absolution as they were intended for eating. To be a priest meant you got to share in a holy meal. This is what the Eucharist is. It’s our holy meal of Communion with God, and it’s what our baptisms entitle us to do.

The Roman “patricians” also had a communion meal with the gods of their respective city. An important part of being “politically active” in Rome was participating in these cultic meals. The Christian Church, acting in this world, understood the political impact of this act and acted against it. How did the Church act against Roman paganism? By being itself. Every celebration of the Eucharist was a treacherous slap in the face of Rome – treacherous for several reasons:

It was a participation in the cultural rites of an alternate city, a rival city.
It was worship of another god of a different city (Jesus).
It was blasphemous worship in which patrician and pleb, Jew and Gentile, parents and children were all welcomed and considered equal in holiness before God.

These are the politics of baptism. Baptism tells us who we are. It also proclaims who we are not and to whom we no longer belong. It calls into question every political process, asking which God or gods are being served in practice. Finally, it calls us to realize that simplicity of being a Christian, of being baptized into the Church, and of celebrating the Eucharist is already the most extreme form of political activism, and calls into question the meaning of all other political processes.

Thank you.

The Nature of Grace

2011-11-05T20:43:00.000-04:00

Here's the text of my paper (sans footnotes and such) for PMR 2011.

I. Sacraments as the Crux of Nature and Grace

Transubstantiation, for Calvin, is – among many other things – a cosmological heresy. In transforming the substance of the bread and the wine to make way for the substance of Christ’s body and blood, transubstantiation places the created cosmos at odds with the redemptive purposes of God. Grace annihilates nature.

Sacraments, then, being material tokens of creation and spiritual tokens of redemption, seem to provide a remarkable locus of theological reflection on the relationship between “nature” and “grace.” Because of their overlapping character, sacraments represent microcosms of larger theological concerns regarding the universe, humanity, atonement, and eschatology. Therefore, the careful outline of their nature is not irrelevant to every other question of theology – making them structurally figurative for many other topics.

In many ways and forms, sacraments are roundly understood by the Church catholic as signs or symbols. Whatever else one may one want to add about the event of, say, the Eucharist, all parties agree that questions of metaphysics aside, some aspect of the event must be accounted for in terms of its symbolic function. Questions about the presence (or absence) of Christ in the bread of Communion – however much they may speculate into ontology – take for granted the symbolic nature of the act. Thus, the primary discussion in sacramental theology regards semiotics. A genuine sacramentology relocates itself into a discussion about the relationship of symbols to reality. What I intend to demonstrate here is that, Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, albeit excellent in many respects, frames its discussion of the sacraments in such a way that symbol and reality represent an unhelpful tension between grace and nature.

II. Calvin’s Economy of Sacramental Words

Without doing too much reductive violence, we can summarize the latter half of the Institutes as an outline of, first, the internal and, second, the external work of God in redemption. Book III details what has classically been called the ordo salutis and Book IV identifies the created means by which the ordo is accomplished. To Calvin’s credit, this scheme implies that the created universe is not only relevant to the gracious work of the redemption of men, but also that it is instrumental in it. On a superficial level, this places nature and grace in harmony.

The divine works which fill the third book are the internal works of the Holy Spirit. Book IV identifies the normative means of this divine work, naming the ministry of the Word and the ministry of the Sacraments as the two primary means, working alongside each other under the direction of divinely appointed ministers.

Despite identifying Word and Sacrament as twin vessels of the Spirit’s work, Calvin identifies the priority of one over the other, noting that they differ in function: the Word as message, the Sacrament as seal. Thus, the presence of the Sacrament serves to confirm, to assure, to guarantee the validity and significance of the Word itself. Yet, for Calvin, there is such a closeness of import between Word and Sacrament that he at times speaks of a “sacramental word” and speaks of the “truth” of the sacrament, speaking frequently of the sacraments as containers of truth, enveloped messages.

This brings us to our first problem: for Calvin, sacraments are dispensable signs, signs that deliver and fade as the mind elevates beyond them. The dissection of sacraments as containers bleeds as well into his understanding of words. A water sign (baptism) is no less transient than any spoken verbal sign.

Calvin’s attention to the provisional nature of the created means correlates to his alignment of both Word and Sacrament with the senses. Word corresponds to the ear, while Sacrament corresponds to the eye. This equivocation of “created” means with “sensible” means is instructive. It suggests that whatever can be said of Calvin’s treatment of the “senses” in soteriology can be said of his treatment of “creation” in eschatology.

Additionally, his treatment of the means as two moments of the sensible makes sense of the Augustinian reduction of the two means into different kinds of words, one audible, one visible. Calvin’s (Augustine’s) definition of sacraments as “visible words” exposes a slippage in his distinction between Word and Sacrament. On the one hand, the means of grace are Word and Visible Word. On the other hand, the means of grace are Sacramental Word and Sacrament. For Calvin’s sacramentology, Word and Sacrament, while distinct, extend into one another. Hence Calvin, “the sacraments have the same office as the Word of God.” All this is meet and right, as far as it goes. But for Calvin, the model of Word and Visible Word (Sacramental Word and Sacrament) is weighted heavy on the side of Word. Even Calvin’s figure of sacraments as “seals” refers to seals upon letters. By no means uniquely, Calvin sees the work of the Spirit as fundamentally linguistic and logical (in the sense of λογος). Thus, illumination is the act by which God allows the carnal man to discard sensible signs for their spiritual (intellectual) meaning. Is Calvin, too, given to an heretical cosmology? If sensible nature is discarded for the sake of intellectual grace, then does not grace annihilate nature?

III. Sacramental Sensibilities and Cosmology

Calvin’s trivializing of the sensible sign indicates something of cosmological proportions: that signs are finally arbitrary and external means to intellectual ends. This is problematic for the nature-grace relationship because it implies that the grace of signs is a layer placed atop a more fundamental surface of being. Against this, I am arguing that the natural state is always already encoded in an economy of signs. If symbols are not to be rendered as so much dross, put away to yield a pure spirituality, then symbolic orientation must be the texture of what it means to be “spiritual.” If grace does not annihilate nature, then the Spirit must not excise man from a symbolic order – rather, he must transform man from an Adamic symbolic order of death to the new symbolic order of Christ.

That Calvin fails to see this is most evident in his description of sacraments as “appendix.” Naming them such indicates their place. Prior to the Sacrament is the more pressing matter of the Word. The essence of God’s means, then, is merely communicating “spiritual truth,” under the form of propositions and, for the sake of emphasis, illustrations. This is problematic because, under this rubric, “[w]e are able to understand the Word without the help of the appendix, as we can read many books with profit without reading the appendix. So long as baptism and the Supper are seen as ‘appendixes,’ they will be seen as expendable.”

More troubling than naming sacraments appendices is the logic underwriting it. In the Institutes, Calvin identifies the function of sacraments as a condescending movement of God to accommodate to our creaturely lowliness. Calvin is fairly explicit on this point:

Here our merciful Lord, according to his infinite kindness, so tempers himself to our capacity that, since we are creatures who always creep on the ground, cleave to the flesh, and do not think about or even conceive of anything spiritual, he condescends to lead us to himself even by these earthly elements, and to set before us in the flesh a mirror of spiritual blessings. For if we were incorporeal (as Chrysostom says), he would give us these very things naked and incorporeal. Now, because we have souls engrafted in bodies, he imparts spiritual things under visible ones. Not that the gifts set before us in the sacraments are bestowed with the natures of the things, but that they have been marked with this signification by God.

Noting the plain opposition of visible, earthly, bodily existence to spirituality, Calvin describes sacraments as a twofold accommodation: first to our depravity (like the Word), but secondly to our human nature (much unlike the Word), in all its bodily finitude.

The creation narrative of Genesis is the driving force behind the theological project of reconciling nature and grace. God explicitly names the protological cosmos “good.” Yet we understand that the Gospel of grace represents the eschatological inbreaking of a new cosmological order, the kingdom of God. The heavenly kingdom is both continuous and discontinuous with the protological “earthly” kingdom. Mapping out the ways in which the new kingdom preserves the good of the original, and the ways the old and the new kingdom differ is precisely the undertaking of a theologian of nature.

The natural man is created visibly, earthly, and bodily finite. This prelapsarian state, called “very good,” cannot be understood as spiritually privative. Yet Calvin’s doctrine of accommodation contradicts this. What God calls good, Calvin calls weakness. For Calvin, the introduction of “visible forms of invisible graces” stems, not from anything proper to those invisible graces – rather, the opposite is true: Calvin teaches that sacraments exist despite invisible grace.

Accommodation is problematic because it implies that sacraments add something to the (more spiritual) Word that is not already implicit in the Word. That is, the gospel of grace uses nature as a prop to itself, then disposes of nature. The Word accomplishes its purpose through sacraments, but sacraments are ontologically alien to the Word.

What is the solution here? Calvin is by no means the only theologian guilty of “the primacy of the intellect” and all its implications. To be sure, he’s certainly closer to the mark than, say, Zwingli. What fundamental lack in Calvin opens him to criticism as a spiritualiser of religion? I suggest that Calvin has a sacramentology in search of a cosmology. If he understands the sacraments as fundamentally symbolic rites, then he is in need of a universe that is fundamentally symbolic, a sacramental cosmos.

IV. Who do you say that I am?

This brings us to the center of the universe, the cosmic mystery of Jesus Christ. According to Maximus the Confessor, the Incarnation is exactly not an accommodation to bodily existence. On the contrary, the Incarnation is the eschatological telos of, not only human nature, but all nature. As “the divine purpose conceived before the beginning of created things,” the Incarnation is the eternal “Yes! Let it be so!” of all corporeality as such.

For Maximus, the Incarnation is not only a momentary co-incidence of the divine and human natures. Rather, it was according to an eternal plan to unite all things into himself, raising them up to share (and rest) in the divine nature. “This union has been manifested in Christ at the end of time, and in itself brings God’s foreknowledge to fulfillment, in order that naturally mobile creatures might secure themselves around God’s total and essential immobility.” The bringing together of the divine and human in the person of Jesus Christ, for Maximus, is the ground of the deification of the cosmos, the joining of heaven and earth, the harmonization of grace and nature. In fact, many of the questions that we bring to Calvin’s Insitutes (for example) are simply moot on account of Maximus’ privileging of nature as the logic and grammar of grace. Corporeality can hardly be described in any way as an “appendix,” any more than the Incarnation can be seen as an appendix to the Trinity.

In keeping with this trajectory, Maximus overturns the primacy of the intellect (and thus, all its woes). Distinguishing between two types of divine knowledge, which can crudely be distinguished as ‘knowledge about’ and ‘knowledge of,’ Maximus believes that the latter eventually displaces the former due to the relative authenticity found in the experience (αἴσθησις) of participation. This ‘knowledge of’ or ‘mystical knowledge’ is the means of our deification.

The primacy of αἴσθησις makes way for a double affirmation of the visible and invisible in his Mystagogia. In his explication of the symbolism of the Eucharistic liturgy, Maximus expresses this affirmation in terms of mutuality.

[T]he whole spiritual world seems mystically imprinted on the whole sensible world in symbolic forms … and conversely the whole sensible world is spiritually explained in the mind in the principles which it contains… Indeed the symbolic contemplation of intelligible things by means of visible realities is spiritual knowledge... For it is necessary that things which manifest each other bear a mutual reflection in an altogether true and clear manner and keep their relationship intact.

Thus for Maximus, the tension between the sensible and the intellectual is resolved by an analogy inherent in created being. The book of nature and the book of grace mutually reveal one another because of an analogical relationship that finds its deeper analogy in the bond between Creator and creature.

This cosmology frees Maximus to interpret Scripture and the world in terms of one another. For Maximus, the Church (as the image of God ) images the World, and Man, and Man images the World. So the symbolic acts of Man in synactic rite are simultaneously the movements of the Church and the World. This idea of Man as a microcosm, holding symbol and reality together, place anthropology at the center of cosmology, and thus vest the ritual acts of Man collectively as “cosmic liturgy.”

V. Maximus’ Cosmic Liturgy and the Redemption of Calvinist Sacramentology

One of the more remarkable features of the Mystagogia is the absence of any clear comment on the Eucharist itself in the midst of the synaxis. One of the plainer points on the matter is that Maximus seems to defer to Dionysius the Areopagite, the “truly divine interpreter,” who covered the topic extensively in his Ecclessiastical Hierarchy. Maximus comments, “it should be known that the present work will not repeat these same things nor will it proceed in the same manner.”

Calvin has no lack of things to say about the Mystical Supper, but not without his own amount deference. “Whenever this matter is discussed, when I have tried to say all, I feel that I have as yet said little in proportion to its worth.” For Calvin, the Eucharist is the Sacrament of sacraments. Reading from left to right, one gets the initial impression from the Institutes that Calvin has a univocal definition of the “means of grace,” the preaching of the Word, the baptism of water, and eating and drinking of the Lord’s Supper, all neatly existing as parallel vessels of the Spirit’s work. But Calvin’s chapter on the Lord’s Supper explodes this idea.

Calvin’s sacramental treatment contradicts two poles. Though, Barth observes, this is never manifest “as a mediating path either here or elsewhere.” Rather, (in the case of the Eucharist) Calvin plainly affirmed both ‘Lutheran’ objectivity of the sacrament and ‘Zwinglian’ subjectivity and relatedness. This is to say, Calvin unflinchingly claims on the one hand, “I am not satisfied with those persons who … make us partakers of the Spirit only, omitting mention of flesh and blood.” Against them, Calvin locates the Eucharistic presence square in the body and blood of the historical Christ, ascended to the right hand of the Father. What sets Calvin apart from the papists and the Lutherans is that he refuses to allow for the Incarnation to leave the side of the Father in heaven.

Calvin’s reasoning here marks out his most important theological contribution: the doctrine of ‘illocal presence.’ Calvin roundly rejects any Eucharistic theology that removes Christ from his heavenly throne, yet he repeatedly insists that Christ’s flesh and blood are to be our sustenance and means of deification. How so? Not by bringing Christ down from heaven – but through the lifting up of our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

In Calvin’s Eucharistic theology, the Spirit transcends the space between sign and signified, uniting the sensible symbol with a heavenly reality. Yet Calvin stutters in his most passionate affirmation: as much as he intends to proclaim that the Spirit crosses the distance between the heavenly and the sensible, apparently “truly” uniting Christ’s members to his body, he shows his presence “as if” he were present in the body – which is to say that Christ is not “really” present, only symbolically, visibly. For Calvin, Christ’s Eucharistic presence lies in the presence of “visibility,” which according to his universe has the presence of a shadow – a trace of lack, an absence of light. Until Calvinist Sacramentology can close up this distance between visibility and being, until it can account for symbol as a natural cosmological phenomenon, it cannot account for the sacraments in any way that lends them credence as tokens of grace.

The Confessor takes us a long way there. In the universe according to Maximus the Confessor, plundering the Incarnation under the rubric of Chalcedon, all the λογοι of creation are, in accordance with the Scriptures, comprehended in the union of two natures, the eternal and the corruptible, in the single existence of the incarnate Λογος, the perfect image of the Father. In Christ, image and being are not discontinuous, but coextensive. As all λογοι find their origin and end in Christ the icon, the icon of Christ, namely the Eucharist, can begin to be explored not as a reduction of the infinite, but rather it marks the opening of the finite to the eternal economy of the life of the Triune God.

A Worthwhile Goal

2011-10-30T22:50:00.000-04:00

On the flight back from PMR 2011, I started sketching out an outline for an hypothetical systematic theology, were I ever to pen my own:

I. Sacrament
   II. Eschatology
      III. Theology Proper
         IV. Christology
      V. Anthropology
   VI. Pneumatology
VII. Ecclesiology

I like this outline because:

The margins and the center (I, IV, and V) fill out the three moments of the corpus mysticum.
Eschatology (II) parallels Pneumatology (VI), which pulls together the mystery of redemptive history.
Christology (which is centered as the telos of it all) inscribes both aspects of the imago dei, Theology Proper (III) and Anthropology (V).

Who knows if anything will come of it, but it seems a far better rubric for doing theology "systematically" than the usual order. (Theology Proper, Anthropology, Christology, Soteriology as something other than Christology and Ecclesiology, and Ecclesiology and Sacraments tacked on before Eschatology.)

Evelynn Mae Schultz

2011-10-19T23:21:00.003-04:00

She's named after two different bands.

Complete and Utter Excess

2011-10-08T23:58:00.000-04:00

Folds of glory. Watch on full screen if you can manage.

[source]

Grace Restores Nature?

2011-09-12T19:03:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure "Grace restores nature" is quite right. It seems insufficiently aware of the apocalyptic character of grace. The death of Jesus is the death of the natural man. It doesn't make much sense to call that "restoration." And the resurrection after that didn't seem to be "restoration" in any sense of a return to Adam in quiet Eden. Does the gospel reiterate liturgical patterns that echo throughout redemptive history, all the way back to a protological bliss? Certainly. But, as anyone who has participated in the wild festivities of incense, chanting, crossing, and feasting of Holy Eucharist, Christianity is the great eschatological breaking in of something Edenically unfathomable. (There are angelic hosts.)

What can we say then of "grace and nature"? Is the gospel the end of the ontological peace of Creation? Absolutely not. But as apocalypse, it is a great unveiling. An unveiling of what? Of nature. Grace is the revelation of nature. This is more visible in Christ than anywhere else (as he is the firstfruits). In Christ, created being, most especially in the imago Dei of human being, finally comes into its own, man for the first time truly bearing the image of the Father in such a way as to wholly share in his nature, without shadow. Grace lets nature - at least, human nature - finally be.

Update

2011-09-09T22:12:00.002-04:00

Hufflepuff is the size of a lime and has a pulse rate of 158 bpm.

Also, I finally started writing.

Surprise!

2011-08-10T16:49:00.000-04:00

Sacraments an Appendix to the Word?

2011-07-13T22:33:00.002-04:00

Is the universe an appendix to God's "let there be"? Is the Incarnation an appendix to the Trinity?

This Is Really Important

2011-06-30T10:16:00.001-04:00

Quoth HUvB:

For Maximus, both kinds of cult take their place alongside each other, implying a mutual interpenetration and transcendence in the direction of a cult that is truly comprehensive. For even the intellectual activity that seeks God through the symbolism of nature and Scripture has a kind of sacramental structure, while the sacrament, on the other hand, needs intellectual understanding if it is to be performed correctly. This understanding, however, is not something that empties the ritual act of its integrity; its intelligibilty is possible only within the performance itself, not alongside it, since it "binds us to God through what has been performed, in a condition and a form determined by the [sacramental] thing itself." (p. 315)

Education

2011-06-29T11:22:00.001-04:00

True scholarship takes the learner by the hand and walks them into beattitude. It teaches learners how to learn. It is pedagogical before it is didactic.

Lately

2011-06-07T00:12:00.001-04:00

My boneless one, I find, is gettin' all swagjacked by the local skaters. Nevermind that I've been pullin boneless to tail stalls on quarter pipes since I was 17. Whatever. I'm an unheralded legend, it seems, as my neverending insistence on using boardrails and hands over against kickflips and wussy 360 flips, has finally taken hold after, what, a decade? only for me to fade out of the local skate scene and take on a life more adult... That said, the past two nights have been pretty fun.

Also, I'm mildly ashamed to admit that too much time has been spent during the last week perusing the techno-house-electronica genre, for a needle in a hay stack mission of sorts, though yielding a new found fondness for a subgenre of a subgenre (yes!) known as dubstep. There may have been some mp3 downloads involved... it's been weird.

And of course, this is my last week of teaching classes before the Summer. Come Friday, Summer break starts. Good times ahead, my friends - better times.

Why the Lag

2011-05-18T17:15:00.000-04:00

I'm looking forward to a week where work doesn't involve police involvement. Maybe next week. Three more and then it's back to gettin' crazy with the Confessor et al.

Indeed

2011-04-24T08:56:00.000-04:00

[source]

The Nature of Grace: Calvin's Semiotic Sacramentology - Outline

2011-04-23T00:06:00.000-04:00

Wrote a very rough cut of an outline for a paper I'm working on:

I. Sacraments as the Crux of Nature and Grace
II. Calvin’s Economy of Sacramental Words
III. Sacramental Signs, Signifieds, and Cosmology
IV. Salvation as Deification
V. Sacramentology is Anthropology
VI. Maximus’ Cosmic Liturgy and the Redemption of Calvinist Sacramentology

Being Ignorant

2011-04-20T20:12:00.000-04:00

Through the miracle of transferring between several different schools during my college education, I managed to successfully never learn the proper way to format a paper. MLA, APA, it's all Greek to me. I don't know when to tab, when not to; when to double space, when to single space; when to space between footnotes, when not to; how to correctly write a footnote; when not to use footnotes, when to use in text citations, when not to; when to use endnotes (which I here is "never"); the differences between works cited and bibliographies, et cetera, et cetera.

Yet strangely, I've gotten by. The vast majority of papers I've written have been in Verdana, size 10, 1.5 spacing, with a different citation scheme for every paper. No complaints, no nonsense, nothing. One professor just told me, "Doesn't matter as long as your consistent." Fair enough. Also, it seems, true enough.

Onward

2011-04-16T07:41:00.000-04:00

One of my students was taken away by a couple policemen yesterday. Another student, not mine, was found with a BB gun. Eventful day. In my classroom, we learned how to construct circle graphs. Some students said it was the funnest activity of the year, save for a day that involved Skittles and probability.

In other news, I finally got some of that reading time in. FCAT testing was this week so I had a bit of free time to fill. Spent some time here, here, here, and here. Today'll involve ample time in those texts as well. Possibly some coffee, too.

Something's Come Between Us

2011-04-05T22:12:00.001-04:00

I've been carrying around volume 2 of the Institutes with me for the past few days, meaning to sit down and spend some time in Book IV, but stuff just keeps coming up. The way it looks, me and Calvin won't get any quality time until this weekend... maybe.

Arbolic Trivium

2011-03-17T07:40:00.001-04:00

Just noticed that in Genesis 3:6, Eve judges ('saw') the Tree of Knowledge as delightful threefold. It is good for eating ('The Good'), a delight to the eyes ('The Beautiful'), and desirable as a source of wisdom ('The True').

Because I'm so Hardcore

2011-03-07T19:15:00.000-05:00

Went to the doctor today. Apparently I have bursitis. The doctor is fairly certain it was caused by using the kneelers in church. Wikipedia confirms it. I've been walking with a cane all afternoon. It's a dream come true.

Tithe and Eucharist

2011-02-21T08:16:00.001-05:00

Wrote this during the offertory a few weeks ago:

We give to God the gift that he has given to us that we may give a portion back to him that he may give himself to us that we may give him to the world that they may give him his glory.

Which is why ecclesiology has to be conceived in economic terms.

Actually

2011-01-05T19:35:00.000-05:00

This, it turned out, was a lie. Within a couple hours of writing it, I immediately put away everything but Rushdie and picked up Zizek/Milbank. Finding Zizek rather unconvincing thus far, the most inspirational thing I've read has, in fact, inspired only the wonder of disgust. We leave you with this question: Why would anyone dedicate ten pages to Meister Eckhart? The suffering, dear reader, it hurts...

In keeping with my new found decision to start reading books I haven't read yet, I'm also thinking of beginning the trek through Theology and Social Theory. (This choice being made, of course, only because I found it in a nearby library.)

In Which We Never Read Again

2011-01-03T18:33:00.000-05:00

Most of the reading since leaving seminary has been books I've already read. Leithart, Knight, Zizioulas, Hart, and now Candler (incidentally, the first book I read when I started seminary). I'm even in the middle of Rushdie, too. (Thus meeting my "one fictional work a year" quota.) Even Rorty this summer was stuff I read as an undergrad. Other than Marion and Schmemann, I'm not sure I've read anything new. I've even been craving some re-reads of Lewis and Wright. Apparently, I will never read another book.

Oh and I forgot how splendid Theology, Rhetoric, and Manuduction is. Probably the best book I've read on reading Scripture.

Of Rabbit Trails

2011-01-03T02:48:00.000-05:00

It is possible, you know, that fascination with Modernity and how it is the bane of the Church has the potential to warp one's view of the Gospel. One may get the sense that the Gospel is that we can be saved from being Modern, that there is hope that we may return to our earlier, purer premodern selves, societies, worlds or what have you. (Which is to replace the "premodern era" with Eden - which isn't sufficiently eschatological to mirror the true Gospel anyway.) [We write to remember this.]

In Which We Finally Run Across Something Interesting

2010-12-30T21:23:00.001-05:00

[source]

Our Little Homestead

2010-12-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

This is why writing has been sparse around here. Things is coming around. We've had over thirty people over at the house in the past two days.

Finished my third reading through of BasC recently, finished part 1 of BoftheI (this is my second time through), and just started the second chapter of Schmemann's little book on baptism today.

Postlib or Emerging?

2010-12-02T22:54:00.000-05:00

[source]

And Repeat

2010-11-29T19:50:00.000-05:00

Kid steals 50 bux. I tell kid that Aristotle says he's gonna be criminal when he grows up. Kid returns 50 bux.

I think I've got some sort of knack for this teaching gig.

Light and Eschatology (Redux?)

2010-11-15T21:27:00.001-05:00

I decided a couple days ago that I would probably like to do thesis and/or dissertation type study on light.

Historical Theology

2010-10-28T22:10:00.000-04:00

So what's the connection between Maundy Thursday and Thanksgiving Day? Someone, help me out here.

On Understanding the Gospel from the Gospels

2010-09-26T22:47:00.000-04:00

Reading the Gospels a lot more lately. Starting to think that N.T. Wright might be right about a lot more than people give him credit for...

If you're wondering...

2010-08-29T21:56:00.001-04:00

The reason is because I've been in the midst of things such as buying a house. Closing date is set for September 22.

Started teaching again this week. Things are going awesome. Probably going to be my best year ever.

Still in the midst of this and this, but tonight I'm starting this (HT: D.Hou).

Thinking tonight: 2010 is going to have been quite an action-packed year: new church, new degrees, new friends, new house. In fact, our new church is moving into its new building (Lord-willing) over the next few months, hopefully having its first service in the new location on Christmas Eve. Exciting times, these.

P.S. Earlier this month, Nick and I biked over a 100 miles in a day.

Take Warning

2010-08-05T10:22:00.001-04:00

I love the revival of love for the Church as much as the next guy, but I have to say, it's not without some concerns. Unless the new ecclesiocentrism actually fills out our understandings of the word, sacraments, liturgy, polity, and - above all - the doctrine of God, challenging and restructuring the way we understand the Christian life - if that doesn't happen, then we are pouring new wine into old wine skins, and inevitably the skins will burst as so many other fads. My concern here is that so much ideological talk (though we oughtn't call it "theology") about the need for Christians to orient their lives around the authority and structures of "the church" are merely covert attempts to secure power for a manipulative oligarchy, effectively ensuring that, in terms of piety, nothing actually changes and we can carry on with our blissful status quo.

The Eschatological Economy

2010-08-03T16:30:00.000-04:00

[source]

Read it.

I'll take it.

2010-08-02T07:06:00.001-04:00

Saw Berek off to Princeton this weekend and, in the process I received two things of note: these (from Tokyo) and the graded/commented version of this. Both have been deeply fulfilling - the Haribo because they are delicious, the paper so that I could discover more precisely what Dr. Carson thought of my work other than the posted "B" I received. The paper is commented throughout, but the summary comment is pretty much a tell all:

You have the same strengths and weaknesses of Leithart - a good prose style and a very bright mind that dissipates good judgment in fixating on one rather narrow slant that ends up in an unconvincing reductionism.

There ye be.

Noahic Promises - or Why the Orthodox pray that even Satan might be forgiven

2010-07-29T15:27:00.001-04:00

People. There is a reptile that bears the entire spectrum of visible light running from head to tail. Listen to me. These creatures are essentially rainbows creeping along the ground. Incredible.

An Update: In Miniature

2010-07-27T21:26:00.000-04:00

Been reading some Richard Rorty lately - how can something so wrong feel so right?

Been working a couple of fulltime jobs this Summer, both pay very well in their own way. Hasn't really been much of a break, though.

Started house shopping, also.

Been wanting to re-read some Zizioulas recently. Also, Hart would be nice. And I want to finish re-reading some Knight. Will I ever get time or inspiration to go through Deep Exegesis?

Might be taking up more responsibilities among them Anglicans in the next year. Met with the Bishop last week, and meeting with our rector this week. We'll just have to see. All in all, though, things look positive.

Going to ride my bike to St. Augustine in a week-and-a-half-or-so.

Not sure I'll ever finish Being and Time. Read about a 1/3. Not sure I feel like getting back into it.

You guys, btw, are crazy. I've still been checkin the sitemeter from time to time. Not a day has passed without a visit, and yet the site hasn't been updated in over a month.

And will I ever respond to Thomas???

Seek Wisdom - A Parable

2010-06-09T21:42:00.000-04:00

A week ago, I was debating with my (non-christian) friend as to whether or not we should say the Pledge of Allegiance. I invoked the poet Wendell Berry's line, that we should "love the flag and hate the government," as evidence that it might be good to pledge allegiance to the flag. Nick asked what Wendell Berry had to do with any of it and why should we listen to him? I said we should listen to him because he is wise. Nick remained unconvinced.

It later occurred to me that "wisdom" might not be something universally meaningful or valued among all people everywhere at all times. There's something intrinsically "Christian" about wisdom that escapes the mind of the run-of-the-mill modern secularist and it's as if it's not naturally an ethical/epistemological category - and perhaps its not.

Zizek and Christian Atheism

2010-06-07T07:29:00.000-04:00

Via fb: Alastair, linking to this article, comments helpfully (as usual) on why Zizek is interesting:

For some minds the appeal of Zizek's brand of atheism to theologians lies in the fact that it flatters them that their work has a broader significance than is generally acknowledged and that even atheism must adopt a sort of theological approach. To my mind, much of the appeal lies in the fact that, no matter how mistaken he might be on many points in his reading, Zizek recognizes something of the particularity of the Christian faith, most particularly the strong atheistic moment that exists within the Christian faith itself.

It is no accident that the first Christians were widely regarded as 'atheists'. Christianity involved an uncovering and overturning of the foundation of the ancient world and an exposing and a ridiculing of the pantheon. Christians know, probably better than any, what the critique of religion ought to look like. Christians have been subverting the idea of the divine for two millennia. We are radicals who want to drive this subversion of the idea of divine down to the very roots of society, our understanding of the world and our humanity.

This is why, despite my significant disagreements with them, I feel a distinct affinity to the projects of thinkers like Feuerbach, Nietzsche and Zizek, and their forms of atheism. They retain the radical atheism of Christianity, and seek to expose the myth of the divine completely, to think without flinching of the radical consequences of being human in a world in which the gods do not exist.

This is also why I lack respect for the work of the 'New Atheists'. Theirs is a lazy and conservative atheistic dogmatism, unprepared to drive their critique of the myth of the divine through into a more searching and troubling uncovering of the roots of society and humanity itself. They are unwilling to examine the degree to which the Christian legacy infects the entire Western project, our concepts of the world, culture, society and humanity.

The sort of atheism that Christians have historically been committed to is one that is deeply discomforting and unsettling, and one that leaves the thinker himself deeply exposed and vulnerable. I have a genuine respect for any atheists who have the courage to continue in the tradition of thought. [source]

Additional Miscellany

2010-06-05T14:45:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia, while noting the southern vibe, also describes ETID as "mathcore" - which I get - which brings us back to wonder how they could escape anyone's interest.

...

The "Evidence and Bedazzlement" chapter here is good times.

...

A friend and I are planning on biking down to St. Augustine some time this Summer.

Evening

2010-06-04T23:24:00.001-04:00

Been listening to a lot of Every Time I Die lately. Truly one of the most interesting bands in hardcore, IMHO - not to mention one of the last truly hardcore bands out there. If I had to sum them up I'd go with "lyrically-driven nihil-rock with southern tendencies." It wouldn't be insane for some Wheaton-esque type to put to writing a thematic analysis of the band's discography. How anyone could be disinterested in the pervasive biblical-religious allusions enmeshed in sarcasm, vulgarity, and unabashed paganism is beyond me.

...

P.S. I graduated a couple weeks ago. I've finally achieved two whole degrees outside my field of work, recently receiving a Master of Arts in Theological Studies. A two-year degree in four-years - can't complain.

Seriously, though, I went to a weird Reformed seminary, and I'm thankful for every bit of it. Never did I expect to be somewhere where classes occasionally begun with devotionals from Meredith Kline and Karl Barth, with as much N.T. Wright favorably blockquoted as Ridderbos and Calvin and Turretin and Witsius. Even James Jordan and Peter Leithart would get an occasional shoutout from time to time. Other pleasant surprises entailed a paedocommunionist professor or two, and a nearly unanimous support for weekly communion among the professors I studied under. Being in seminary also changes your perspective a little bit on the controversies that have plagued theological blogdom for the past 8 years or so, professors and even students having a much more tempered understanding of topics such as the Federal Vision and the NPP than the children that run amuck in the trite little worlds of internet polemics. There's not the same sort of tendencies toward faction among the grown-ups there.

...

Reading the Civitate kicked my butt. I'm still recovering from the two-week cram before graduation. It made me hate reading a little bit.

...

I've only got one week of teaching left for the year and then starts summer vacation - for most people. What with Cathleen having started her residency a few weeks ago, we're now paying for her to spend three months working for free. To compensate for the lack of summer income, I'm going to be working for a couple months at a day camp for some younger children. So we'll see just how relaxing my "break" is.

It's been a crazy year, career-wise. I've taken on a ton more responsibility and I've learned a lot. Also, I've been working for the district a bit the past month or so, helping put together the new curriculum for 7th grade next year.

...

Finally, I've been thinking frequently about the utter vulnerability of our planet, and all us inhabitants on said Earth. There are giant rocks and galaxies flying through our universe, any one of which could render us annihilated at any second. And with that I bid you, good night...

A Stick, a Carrot, and a String

2010-05-28T12:25:00.001-04:00

From It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright:

The horse's hay beneath his head,
our Lord was born to a manger bed
that all whose wells run dry
could drink of his supply.

To keep him warm, the sheep drew near,
so grateful for His coming here.
Come with news of grace,
come to take my place.

The donkey whispered in his ear
"Child, in 30-some-odd years
you'll ride someone who looks like me
untriumphantly."

The cardinals warbled a joyful song,
"He'll make right what man made wrong
bringing low the hills
that the valleys might be filled."

Then "Child", asked the birds,
"Well, aren't they lovely words we sing?"
The tiny baby layed there
without saying anything.

At a distance stood a mangy goat
with the crooked teeth and a matted coat,
weary eyes and worn,
chipped and twisted horns,

thinking "Maybe I'll make friends someday
with the cows and the hens in the rambouillet.
But for now, I'll keep away
I've got nothing smart to say."

There's a sign on the barn
in the cabbage town,
"When the rain picks up
and the sun goes down,
sinners, come inside,
with no money, come and buy.

No clever talk, nor a gift to bring
requires our lowly, lovely king.
Come now empty handed, you don't need anything."

And the night was cool
and clear as glass,
with the sneaking snake in the garden grass.
Deep cried out to deep,
the disciples fast asleep.

And the snake perked up
when he heard You ask
"If you're willing that
this cup might pass
we could find our way back home
maybe start a family all our own."

"But does not the Father guide the Son?
not my will, but yours be done.
What else here to do?
What else me, but You?"

And the snake who'd held the world
a stick, a carrot and a string
was crushed beneath the foot
of your not wanting anything. [source]

Blogger

2010-04-29T20:40:00.001-04:00

Blogs will become interesting again when they return to their ham radio roots.

Genesis Redux - Pt. 1

2010-04-24T10:56:00.000-04:00

From Darren Doane:

[source]

Light and Eschatology

2010-04-19T20:07:00.000-04:00

Introduction
One of the more challenging aspects of interpreting the First Epistle of John is understanding who John is writing against. Since this information is not plainly disclosed by the Apostle, Christians use clues both from the letter’s content and from what we know of its historical context to reconstruct likely scenarios which offer deeper understanding of the letter’s purpose and message. The most plausible and widely-received of these interpretive guesses are neatly divided into two general assumptions: either John was addressing a prototypical form of the Gnostic heresy or John was addressing a sort of Judaizing influence.

Both reconstructions have much to commend them as well as a number of difficulties that frustrate their sustainability. Coherently and competently arguing for any position on the matter would require commentary length analysis of historical questions and thematic features throughout the letter. Our purpose here is only to offer a single (albeit a highly significant, if not central) piece of the puzzle: we will show that the Johannine figure of “light” in the Epistle is an eschatologically-loaded expression which has, at the fore, New Covenant significance. In doing so, we imply that the Johannine dualism between darkness and light is primarily to be read as a contrast between the covenant of Moses and the covenant of Christ. We will do this by accounting for light as it used by John outside of the First Epistle: in the Gospel and in the Apocalypse. Because John’s first usage of light (in the Gospel Prologue) draws upon the creation account in Genesis, we will attend to the significance of light in that passage as well. Finally, we will apply our reading of light to the tricky issue of identifying John’s opponents in the First Epistle.

Light in Genesis
Genesis is a story of worlds and stories. It is a story of worlds because the creation week depicts the establishment of domains and the establishment of dwellers. It is a story of stories because the creation week depicts God’s creative process as a purposed movement from an alpha stage to an omega stage, from protology to eschatology, from the first day of the week to the Sabbatical finale.

On day one, a realm of darkness divided from light is created, and three days later (on day four) God fills it with sun, moon, and stars. On day two, a realm of waters above divided from waters below is created, and three days later (on day five) God fills it with birds and fish (respectively). On day three, a realm of waters divided from land is created, and three days later (on day six) God fills it with land animals and man. This divine making takes existing stuff, breaks it up and reorganizes it, yielding a new world which is subsequently filled three days later. These three worlds (dark/light, sky-waters/low-waters, and water/land) taken together form the different levels of a single three-story world with a ceiling-firmament above, land-pillars in the middle, and water below, establishing what might be best described as a “house” for Yahweh. God creates a world for himself out of worlds for his creatures. He builds them a house, and then they move in. He builds himself a house and then he moves in. Yahweh’s house is a mansion with many rooms.

Light plays an interesting role in this narrative. First, light isn’t first – it’s second. In Genesis i, 2 we read that before there was light there was darkness. The first act of the creation week was a movement from darkness to light. Darkness and light continue to play a vital role in the creation week, individuated and given correlative identities essential for marking out time. The first day, itself an eschatological development out of darkness, establishes the grounds by which every other day occurred. The creation of light is essential to creation.

It is worth noting that it is specifically light which is judged “good” – not darkness. We are left wondering what to make of the darkness until the very last verse of the chapter where we find that the entire prelapsarian creation – which includes darkness – is good. This is instructive. While there is no evil intrinsic to darkness, it is created in order to give way to the superior glory of light.

So the Creation narrative is a procession of better things out of good things. Darkness yields to light, and out of this first day proceeds the rest of creation. The creation itself, measured in differences between darkness and light is inherently eschatological, each day bringing forth the consummate glory of the previous day, first forming three domains, and then filling those three domains with life, finally bringing forth a domain where the glory of the Lord will rest.

Light in the Gospel of John
The Theologian’s Gospel can soundly be read as a polemic against the Jews for their rejection of the Messiah. This reading is difficult to challenge considering this Gospel’s reputation for “anti-semitism.” As such, John draws upon a slew of Old Testament motifs to illustrate the “Christ-ness” of Christ, and cast doubt upon doubters. One of the primary motifs he employs is Christ as “light.” (Curiously, Christ is no longer called “the light” after the Book of Signs.) Here we will examine only two significant examples – The Prologue and the Healing of the Man Born Blind – but it’s worth mentioning that “light” shows up in seven chapters, and it could even be considered the dominant motif (of at least the first twelve chapters) of John’s Gospel if one grouped “light” with the references to “glory,” “sight,” “the Spirit,” and “anointing” as the multiple properties of the shekinah glory-cloud and all its tabernacular fullness.

Beginning “in the beginning,” John begins the Gospel with the beginning of the Torah (the beginning of Genesis, the beginning of the world), analogizing his own message with “the foundation of Israelite religion: God’s creation of heaven and earth.” Herman Ridderbos comments, “All that now follows in the Gospel has to be understood from the perspective of that ‘beginning’: It arises from that beginning, and that beginning is its deepest and most essential Sitz im Leben.” And if that’s true, then “light” has to be understood from the perspective of that beginning – which means light, here, is not merely borrowing from generic religious light imagery – rather, this light is creation-light, light from the beginning.

The Prologue chiastically frames the mission of the Incarnate Christ (“the true light”) with the ministry of the Baptist, a ministry designed merely to prepare the way for the light. (v. 6-15) This, in turn, is framed by the light of creation matched with the final revelation of Jesus Christ. (v. 1-5 and 16-18, respectively) The light, John writes, overcomes the darkness. (v. 5) Jesus Christ, likewise, supersedes Moses. (v. 17) In i, 11 John tells us, at the center of the chiastic Prologue, that “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.” John tells this story throughout the Gospel: The light was sent into the darkness of Moses’ people, but the people did not receive him.

The Messiah heals blind people, especially Jewish people. The Jews have known this since the days of Isaiah. John knows this, too – which is why he describes the healing of the man born blind in terms of light and darkness. Jesus, as usual, identifies himself as the light of the world (ix, 5), then miraculously restores vision to a Jew. (ix, 6-7) When the enlightened man suggests that the Jewish Pharisees become disciples of Jesus they retort that they are disciples of Moses. (ix, 27-29) So Jesus, the light, consigns the Pharasaic Jews to their shadowy unrepentant blindness. (ix, 39-41)

Light in the Apocalypse
Light shows up most prominently in xxi-xxii, 5 of Revelation, the portion of the Apocalypse that describes the New Creation and the Church made perfect. As this work is regarded the arch-eschatological book of the Bible, it would be difficult not to perceive the eschatological pregnancy of light throughout Scripture, or at least in the Johannine corpus.

Chapter xxi cues us right away that creation is in view – a new creation, one which sprouts forth in the wake of a passing old creation. John tells us that the heavens above, the earth below, and the waters of the sea – that is, the cosmological house of old – has given way to a new cosmos, one in which God dwells among his people in a fullness that exceeds Eden, that exceeds the pillar of light in the wilderness, that exceeds the sanctification of the Exodus Tabernacle, that exceeds the indwelling of Solomon’s temple – that even exceeds the great outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.

The new creation takes the form of a renewed Jerusalem, a holy city descending from heaven, a point having more to do with a covenant community than architectural structures. This connection between creation and covenant is wholly consistent with the covenantal patterns of Scripture. In every administration of the Covenant of Grace, in Noah, in Abraham, in Moses, David, and even in Christ, Yahweh is understood to be re-creating, working again with the cosmos, to build a house for his name. Covenantal reconstruction always involves cosmological destruction and renewal. That the holy city to come is specifically named new “Jerusalem” highlights the destruction of old Jerusalem, (v. 1-2) that is to say the Mosaic order – which is to say, the end of Moses is the end of the world.

Curiosity of curiosities, there is no temple in the New Jerusalem. (xxi, 22) John notes this and just as quickly notes that there is no need for light. (xxi, 23) The Lamb, Christ, is the embodied eternal replacement/fulfillment of both. Here, John pulls together temple, light, glory, lamp, and eschatology into the singular entity of the Lamb. Christ the Lamb exceeds in every way the dim light of the Jerusalem-Temple, eternally bringing an end to the darkness of old, reflecting the glory of God more purely and perfectly than every type because he is God (with us).

Light in the Apostle's First Epistle
In no other writing can we find light playing so central a role as in John’s First Epistle. The apostle writes bluntly: “God is light.” (i, 5) This summarizes the Gospel message for John, and properly, as gospel, this message underpins the central burden of John’s plea that his “children” would walk in the light. So understanding the force of the rhetoric, “God is light,” is plainly vital to reading the Epistle.

The first verse of the first chapter echoes the first verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of John, which in turn echoes the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis. This raises the question: To which beginning is John referring, the Creation narrative or the beginning of the Gospel? This is a false question. It fails to understand that John’s use of “beginning” in his Gospel identifies the beginning of Christ’s ministry as a new recapitulation of the original creation. As Peter Leithart comments, “By alluding to the ‘beginning’ of Genesis 1, [John] wants emphasize that the incarnation of the Word is the beginning of a new beginning. It’s the beginning of a new creation story.” At the get go, John’s light is the light of creation, eschatological light.

John proclaims the gospel of light so that his audience may have a fellowship with the apostles (i, 3) – which, in turn, is a fellowship with Jesus Christ (ii, 1) – which, in turn, is a fellowship with the Father. (i, 3) Bound up with the matter of walking in the light are questions of fellowship. To walk in the light is to walk in fellowship with the Christ of the apostles which is to have fellowship with the Father. Walking in darkness, then, must indicate the opposite: the golden chain of fellowship has been broken. And as Johannine light is the eschatological light of creation, questions of light and darkness must be questions of eschatological fellowship.

The First Epistle of John – if we read “light” along Johannine lines, and if we read the message that “God is light” as central to the Epistles’ message – addresses a problem of fellowship that flies in the face of eschatological-historical circumstances which John takes for granted. If this is true, then all questions of fellowship, atonement, knowledge, truth, love, antichrists, teaching, sin, righteousness, and idolatry – all important loci of John’s discussion – must be interpreted under a rubric which does justice to the Johannine eschatology that unifies the diverse subject matter into a (presumably) coherent message.

Light, Eschatology, and Hermeneutics
There are a number of reasons to doubt that John’s First Epistle is written to address the spread of Gnosticism. Chiefly, were it not for the input of extracanonical literature, you could not have guessed it. (This argument may sound “biblicist” in slant but the careful reader will detect our subtlety.) Given the course of revelation, given the history that springs forth as inspiration progresses from covenant to covenant, there is a final Christian witness. This fact is the heart of what is called “redemptive-historical interpretation” and, assuming its essential truth, we believe a certain overarching history can be discerned by means of Scripture alone. This is not to undermine the unquestionable dialectic between natural revelation (archaeology, patristic studies, etc.) and special revelation (Holy Writ, etc.), but only to insist that the nature of God’s speech is such that it creates its own context. A convincing case that John the Elder wrote at great pains to defeat the Hellenistic “Gnostics” requires demonstrating that this state-of-affairs fits better in redemptive-historical context than a story about Jews and apostasy. That this is so is hardly obvious.

Rather, given John’s penchant for incorporating eschatology so heavily into his primary letter, one wonders why it is not more obvious (even if undemonstrated in other respects) that Judaizers are in view. After all, the Elder points us to that new creation that has already happened (i, 1-3), the bearable light-ness of God (i, 5-7), an inaugurated eschatological state of fellowship between God, his people, and each other (ii, 8-11), marking the end of a world of darkness which we must not love since it is passing away (ii, 15-17). Indeed, he writes that this is the last hour, the hour of antichrists (ii, 18). Perhaps, the decision to detect something other than Judaism, here, stems from forgetting the connotative import of the “christ” in “anti-christs.”

Perhaps it stems from forgetting that John the Elder is also John the Jew. As such, we would do well to remind ourselves one more time that “Christ” (“Messiah”) is not a surname – it’s a vocational title. Calling Jesus “the Christ” signals the convergence of (at least) several Jewish themes of Davidic kingship, prophecy, and Temple, all of these comprehended in terms of the final stage of history. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that disciples of the Christ-Messiah came to be named after him, implicitly sharing in his calling (Acts xi, 26). Beyond this, though, two meanings emerge which should be here considered: the literal rendering which denotes anointing with oil and the much grander meaning which refers to the role of the eschatological Sabbath-Spirit. In calling Jesus “the Christ,” John tells us that Jesus is the one on whom the Spirit rests (John i, 29-34), explicitly linking oil and Spirit with messianism.

This shines some light on John’s discourse on antichrists, in which he links the themes of anointing, Spirit, and confessing Jesus as the Messiah (I John ii, 18-27). Literally, “antichrist” means an “adversary of Christ,” and John describes this adversary as a liar who “denies that Jesus is the Christ,” a denial of the Father and Son (v. 22) (a denial of both because denying the Son implies denial of the Father, v. 23). If the adversary of Christ is the one who denies that he is Christ, then we are pressed to wonder who would do such a thing? We are inclined to think that only those for whom “Messiah” carries substantial meaning (meaning pregnant with the oil and Spirit of which and to whom John refers) can take serious issue with the confession that Jesus of Nazareth is that person. In short, only the people who are promised messiah can deny messiah: Jews. And unsurprisingly, this is exactly what we see in chapter viii of John’s Gospel. Jesus announces that he is the “Light of the World” to the Jews and that to know him is to know his Father (v. 12-16). They deny that Jesus is who he says he is and he denies them the Father.

This isn’t the end of the story. It would be reckless to suggest that all relationships between the Johannine texts and Gnosticism (prototypical or otherwise) are imagined. Historically, a number of Fathers drew from the Johannine Epistles to combat the Gnostics, the Docetists, and the Cerinthians, especially with regard for their heretical Christologies. In fact, Eusebius and Irenaeus name Cerinthus as an actual contemporary and opponent of John. This shows us that the error John confronts in the Epistles bears significant analogy to the error of the Gnostics and their first-century predecessors. It does not follow, however, that John’s opponents are therefore not Judaizers. Rather, given the internal evidence that John is dealing with Judaizing, it follows that the error of the proto-Gnostics significant analogy to the error of the Judaizers. That is to say, the overlap of Judaism and Gnosticism may be larger than we are used to accepting. Peter J. Leithart, from the viewpoint that proto-gnosticism could better be described as either a “Judaizing Gnosticism” or a “gnosticizing Judaism,” has outlined these similarities in his commentary, From Behind the Veil. Reading the Apostle’s light/dark dualism in terms of covenantal progression from old to new, he sees that Judaizing and “Gnosticism [arise] from the same set of fears and desires.” Judaizing flees from the God who comes as man, preferring instead the mediation of angels that marks out the Old Covenant order. Gnosticism, too, prefers the god who is far off, the mediated god. Leithart notes, the Old Covenant functioned by mystery and hiddenness, noting especially the veiled Most Holy Place, and the privileged nature of God’s will to which only priests and prophets had access. In the age of the Gospel, the veil is torn, and the mystery of Christ was revealed to the whole world. “All that was in shadows is brought to the light. Judaizing attempts to maintain the age of secrecy that Jesus brought to an end; so does Gnosticism.”

Both Judaizing and Gnosticism deny “that God emerged from the twilight and shone like the Sun in visible, audible tangible flesh.” Thus, when John the elder wrote to the elect lady in exile, he wrote what would bring the Church through some of its “darkest” errors. In telling the tale of humanity growing from Adam to Christ, Douglas H. Knight has written, “In the first place sin is childishness.” Judaizing and Gnosticism both manifest that latent sinfulness that Christ has yet to purge from the whole world, that tendency to shy from the maturity that we are given in Christ. In the First Epistle of John, though, the Apostle recounts the whole of redemptive history, and assures us that we share in that same Spirit of Light which rests on the Son.

A Decent Question

2010-04-17T18:13:00.000-04:00

Civitate VII.31:

For although we can never sufficiently give thanks to Him, that we are, that we live, that we behold heaven and earth, that we have mind and reason by which to seek after Him who made all these things, nevertheless, what hearts, what number of tongues, shall affirm that they are sufficient to render thanks to Him for this, that He has not wholly departed from us, laden and overwhelmed with sins, averse to the contemplation of His light, and blinded by the love of darkness, that is, of iniquity, but has sent to us His own Word, who is His only Son, that by His birth and suffering for us in the flesh, which He assumed, we might know how much God valued man, and that by that unique sacrifice we might be purified from all our sins, and that, love being shed abroad in our hearts by His Spirit, we might, having surmounted all difficulties, come into eternal rest, and the ineffable sweetness of the contemplation of Himself? [source]

Babel as the Theological Grammar of Pentecost

2010-04-12T19:29:00.003-04:00

Learning the Biblical Langue
As Pentecost marks the birth of the Christian Church, a better understanding of the meaning of the event leads to a better understanding of the Church’s own identity and purpose. But the Church has, from time to time, struggled to understand the meaning of the event, and so the Church has, from time to time, struggled to understand herself and her calling. The Church learns who she is from God, and God speaks to her from the Scriptures – which means learning from God consists of learning language.

Language consists of two aspects: vocabulary and grammar. Vocabulary is the realm of names, what we call things. Grammar is the realm of rules, how we say things. The Church seems decently aware of biblical vocabulary, of the words we use to name and know the world. Most of us have heard of “Pentecost.” Many of us could quickly show where to find “Pentecost” in the Bible (Acts ii) - if we weren’t sure, we might find it in a concordance first. What seems more difficult, though, is grammar – how do we talk about Pentecost? How does the Bible talk about Pentecost?

The Bible is an excellent book because it is the sort of book that teaches you its grammar as you read it. Very, very often, the Bible reads present and future events in light of past events. (And sometimes it reads past events in light of future events, too!) The grammar for talking about “Jesus Christ,” for example, is found in passages about Adam and Noah and Abraham and Moses and David. Pentecost is no different. There are rules in the Bible for understanding Pentecost and if we learn those rules, we can understand it better, and thus understand God better and thus understand ourselves better.

Essential to understanding the event of Pentecost is the event of the Tower of Babel. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the biblical record of the Tower of Babel offers us a theological grammar for reading, writing, and speaking about Pentecost, teasing out (hopefully) a much richer and clearer description of the identity and calling of the Christian Church than is popularly available. We will do this, first, by meditating on the Babel text in Genesis xi, 1-9. Secondly, we will trace themes addressed in the Babel text through Scripture, highlighting any development the theme may have over the course of redemptive history. Finally, we will read Acts ii according to the “rules” we learn along the way.

Idolatry and Idle Chatter
The Tower of Babel (Genesis xi, 1-9) is sandwiched between two sets of genealogies, the first (known as the “Table of Nations”) describing the seventy nations of the sons of Noah, the second narrowing its focus to only the descendents of Shem (which leads to Terah which leads to Abram). This hints that the story of Babel is also a story of Shem (who we will remember is to be blessed) and thus draws on both Noahic and Abrahamic themes.

Attending to the Noahic themes, chapters x and xi depict the fulfillment of Noah’s prophecy at the end of chapter ix (v. 24-27): Ham/Canaan is cursed, Shem is blessed, and Japheth is blessed through Shem. Chapter x frames the Table of Nations with the comment that all these that fill the earth are descendants of Noah’s three sons, establishing an organic unity between all men (and by extension nations). Noah is a veritable new Adam¹ and we even read that he became “a man of the soil” (ix, 20), planting a new vineyard/garden. But even the Noahic order succumbs to a Fall. The Table of Nations ends tracing the Shemites down to Eber’s two sons: Peleg (“Division”) and Joktan. The “division” between Eber’s sons, ultimately, is a division between the righteous and the wicked – not all of Shem is true Shem. The Tower of Babel is the story of the Shemitic Fall at the hands of Joktan’s lot. (Leithart, A House for My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament 2000, 58-59)

Chapter x, 25-30 shows us that Joktan’s descendents migrated east. Already, this hints at apostasy as eastward movement indicates moving away from the Garden of Eden rather than towards it. (Leithart, A House for My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament 2000, 53) Genesis xi, 2 emphasizes that this is exactly where construction of the tower had begun: in the East.

Reasserting the substantial unity of the nations first noted in the Table, the Babel text couches the substance of the men’s unity primarily in their common language – or more accurately in their “one lip.” The one-lipped Shemites, we read, conspired to build “a city and a tower." Waltke helpfully notes that the nature of this city is essentially a protective wall and that the tower is most likely a ziggarut, a Mesopotamian temple structure, serving as a stylized mountain. (Waltke, Bruce K.; Fredricks, Cathi J. 2001, 178-179) Kline comments:

It is… to be understood in terms of those ancient staircase-mountain structures, the ziggurats, which are frequently described as having their top in the heavens and bear names like “the house of the mountain,” “the house of the link between heaven and earth,” and “the house of the foundation of heaven and earth” (thus, the ziggurat at Babylon). (Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview 2006, 273)

In choosing to build a temple-city, the people of Joktan recall the tradition of Cain who also built a city in the East. But here, the god-who-intervenes comes to thwart the foundation of the Cainnite city-temple of blood.

One unpronounced aspect of the passage merits comment, particularly with attention to cult and culture. Note that the foil of God’s redemptive purposes is not mere cultic paganism. It’s paganism as city. This, of course has not gone unnoticed, but it has gone (in our view) misinterpreted. Meredith Kline reads this passage as a tacit condemnation at any synthesis of culture and cult in the post-diluvian, pre-Advent world. (Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview 2006, 272-278) Such a reading is hardly germane to the text and strikes this author as a projection of Kline’s anti-theonomics into a text which pushes more strongly for a polemic against pagan brands of city-craft. Subjecting this text to Kline’s reading calls into question the always already culture-cult nature of Babel’s noble twin, the Church.²

The Babel narrative lends itself to two structural readings: one that highlights the words of men (v. 1-4) contrasted to the words of the Lord (v. 5-9), and one which takes a well-attested chiastic form which pivots on the fifth verse. (Waltke, Bruce K.; Fredricks, Cathi J. 2001, 176) Obviously, these structures are not mutually exclusive. In this specific case, the literary structure actually adds an important dimension to the story as chiastic structure, with its steps, imitate the zigguratic structure of the “tower” itself. In fact, it is at the zenith of the (literary/architectural) structure that “the Lord came down” (v. 5). Precisely at this point, too, the words of men meet the words of the Lord.

That the text tells us that “the Lord came down,” by the way, is hardly mere description. The language of God’s condescension, here, communicates less the humility of the Incarnation than the poverty of the Babel building project. Or rather, while the Lord condescended to humiliate himself, it is through this humiliation that he humbles the proud plans of man. It is not only that the foolishness of the Cross is the glory of God, but it is through the glory of God that the foolishness of men’s wicked plans are exposed – even as they raised up Christ (crucified) to make a name for themselves. And they intended nothing less than this:

Let us make a name for ourselves.

Let us make a “shem” for ourselves, said the Shemites. Shem sought to magnify his own name, posturing as an anti-Adam, as one who enters Sabbath rest in the east, opposing the command to be fruitful and multiply, refusing to swarm over the earth. (Genesis xi, 4; cf. Genesis ix, 1-7) Yet, God’s purposes will not be frustrated – which leads us to mention (but only briefly) that it’s through the elect Shemite Abram that the promises to Noah are vindicated.

The story of Babel then outlines the transformation of man from Noah to Abram. The Lord strikes at the lip of man both in judgment,³ dividing⁴ the linguistic unity that made possible the Babel project, and as a means of accomplishing his goals for humanity, causing them to fill the earth (which has been the frustrated human vocation since Adam).

Lips and Logos
God is nothing if not a speaker. The god-who-speaks is (logically) prior to the god-who-creates-of-nothing, for God’s speech is what brings the cosmos into being (further, it is his speech that brings an end to the cosmos). The Father speaks the Son upon the breath of the Spirit and a truly “Christian” account of language proceeds from this matrix of Word and Being. Essential to the human vocation, then, is to image this speech of God.⁵ Babel exemplifies the pride intrinsic to postlapsarian man’s speech. The speech of men still build-creates cities, but fallen man speaks violence, founding every city upon the blood of brothers. The Babel narrative depicts this contest, the contest of the word of men against the Word of God. When the Lord came down at Babel he divided the tongues of men, thus dividing the works of men against themselves. The City of God is borne of pure words borne upon pure lips, and a cursory search of Scripture for the word saphah (lip) reveals that the subject shows up well over a hundred times, so a thorough study of Babel must needs attend to this phenomenon.

The most well-known account of labial religious themes is likely Isaiah vi, the call of the prophet Isaiah, wherein Isaiah despairs of his inadequacy to bear the oracles of God upon his “unclean lips.” He cries that he dwells in the midst of a people with “unclean lips.” This, however, recalls older statements to the same effect: Moses challenged the Lord’s charge to challenge Pharaoh, complaining that he bears “uncircumcised (and thus unclean) lips.” (Exodus vi, 12, 30) Both cases betray the concern that the purposes of God require purification of the lip. The Moses-Isaiah link gives an important prophetic dimension to speech, and Isaiah tells us that the lips of the prophet are made pure by the application of holy fire. (Isaiah vi, 6-7) G.K. Beale helpfully points out that Isaiah speaks of tongues and fire in at least two other places: xxx, 27-30 and lxvi, 15-24. (Beale, The Descent of the Eschatological Temple in the Form of the Spirit at Pentecost: Part 1: The Clearest Evidence 2005, 84-87) In the former case, Isaiah compares the coming of the tongues of fire to the Sinai theophany (cf. Exodus xix), and in the latter case he emphasizes the Lord’s fiery rebuke as simultaneously an act of purifying judgment and the occasion of the ingathering of the nations into a new creation, a new Israel – in both cases, Isaiah is clear that the pure and holy tongues of fire are the Lord’s.

Lip/speech theology continues to receive play throughout the prophets. Zechariah’s vision of the golden lampstand describes the seven lamps of the gold menorah as seven lips (of fire). (Zechariah iv, 1-7) John understands the lampstands as the churches (Revelation i, 20), and so the lips of fire are the mark of the New Covenant Church. (Kline, Glory in Our Midst: A Biblico-Theological Reading of Zechariah's Night Visions 2001, 131-136) Most impressively, though, the prophet Zephaniah tells us that on the occasion of the Judgment of Jerusalem, when the nations are being converted:

[A]t that time I will change the speech of the peoples
to a pure speech,
that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord
and serve him with one accord. (Zephaniah iii, 9)

So the Lord explains that, at some point, he will pour out tongues of fire upon the nations such that the speech of the nations is changed and purified, that all people might call upon the name of the Lord. They will do this because he will put his words in their mouth. (Deuteronomy xviii, 18⁶) In inheriting the prophetic call, one exhibits the theophanic glory of the burning tree, the burning bush, the menorah flame, the Shadrachs of Scripture, pure and unscathed by the glory-flames of God.

It is for this very reason that we should not be surprised in the least that John’s Gospel states that the Word became flesh⁷ and dwelt among us (“And the Lord came down…” Genesis xi, 5). We should not be surprised at all that the Shekinah-Spirit comes and rests upon the one who comes down from heaven. It is unsurprising that this Word of God, who knows what is in man (John ii, 23-25), is baptized in the very Spirit-fire that he intends to pour out over the entire world. Christ is the pure word, the unifying creed of the holy city, the humbled word of the Cross, that the Father exalts as the foundation of the final eschatological temple. As such, Christ is the language by which humanity is reunited, reconfigured toward shalom, the means by which the Lord will fill the Earth with presence, bringing together all nations under his lordship.

Rebuilding the Ruins: Pentecost and Polis
On a literary level, two features stand out which suggest Luke intended to read the Pentecost event with Babel-tinted glasses. The minor hint is that in both narratives, there appears an enumeration of all the nations of the world. Babel is preceded by Genesis x, the “Table of Nations,” and Acts ii situates the Pentecostal miracle in the midst of “every nation under heaven.” (v. 5) The greater hint is stronger: Babel tells the tale of God confusing men’s tongues, dividing them up to set them against one another. Pentecost tells the opposite (though corresponding) tale of God of bringing men together, harmonizing men’s tongues that they might hear and understand each other. It is for this reason that Pentecost is read as the reversal of Babel. (Johnson 1997, 60, Ferguson 1996, 60, Beale, The Temple and the Church's Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God 2004, 201-203)

Pentecost reverses Babel, sure enough. But we pay mere lip service to the miracle of tongues if we fail to attend to what this means. That God destroyed one city is duly noted. That he juxtaposes Pentecost with the event tells us more than that Pentecost merely negates the curse of old. Such a reading reduces Christianity to mere soteriology – at the expense of eschatology. But no such theological triviality can be attributed to the Apostles. To the question, “What does this mean?” Peter responds, in no uncertain terms, that Pentecost is the end of the world. (Beale, The Temple and the Church's Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God 2004, 212-215) So Pentecost is apocalypse. But of what sort?

The Pent-ocalypse marks (among many other things) the eruption of a new Babel (which we will remember was a temple-city complex) upon the face of the earth. As temple-city, we do well to note the foundations. Contra Babel-Cain’s city of blood, the city of heaven subverts the Cainite programme of old, resurrecting the brethren murdered in its wake as the foundation. (Singing with Tertullian, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”) Which is to say, the Church rests upon our murdered brother, “this Jesus whom you crucified.” (Acts ii, 36) And from our brother rains the rushing wind of ordination (cf. Numbers xi, 25), creating a nation of priests through a mighty Baptism. As the Baptist foretold, the Messiah came to baptize with Spirit and fire. With Ferguson we must affirm that this may not be something necessarily beneficent to all present company, which is why Peter answers the earnest question “What shall we do?” with a pressing “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts ii, 37-40) (Ferguson 1996, 61)

The Table of Nations makes it very clear that the Noahic world was unified by blood. The advent of Pentecost transforms this. By the Spirit the new city is yet again knit together with blood, but as Peter Leithart has commented, “it is blood shed, not blood transmitted in birth.” (Leithart, Against Christianity 2003, 93) Were we to remember that Pentecost tells us that men are yet again being re-bound by the gift of the harmonizing Word, we would do well to consider the way in which this Word supplants the wicked word of men: The Word binds men together in itself through the work of the Spirit, offering itself under the form of holy bread and wine, flesh and blood that all disciples are called to feast upon. (John vi, 53-58 and I Corinthians x, 14-22) The disciples understood this and that is why Luke indicates that breaking bread was an essential mark of fellowship in the Pentecostal Church. (Acts ii, 42)

Symbolic though they be, Baptism and the Eucharist become, under this reading, key elements of embodying the Church as a legitimate rival to Babel. In Baptism, believers are preserved against the judgment of the god-who-comes-down. In the noble Cup, all nations share in a blood-Word who binds them together, drinking and eating with lips made holy by the gift of the Spirit. In fact, not in spite of their symbolic nature, but precisely because they are symbols – words – are they the substance of the rhetoric which brings all things to their proper end, be that end the end of glory or that end the end of wrath – the peace which (simultaneously) passes (and founds) all understanding. (Philippians iv, 7)

Notes
1. This is the point of the new creation language throughout the Ark narrative. (Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview 2006, 220-230)

2. Peter Leithart outlines the “church as polis” reading quiet pointedly in his book Against Christianity. (Leithart, Against Christianity 2003)

3. Note v. 5: the Lord came down to “see” the tower-city. Seeing indicates God’s action as judge. (cf. God’s “seeing” in the Creation narrative.)

4. It needs to be noted somewhere that Joktan’s brother Peleg, whose name means “division,” is not so named because there was an earthquake near his birth, as Robert Alter strangely suggests. (Alter 1996) Rather, his name refers to the separation of the families at Babel. Waltke defines this literary practice as a “paronomasia.” (Waltke, Bruce K.; Fredricks, Cathi J. 2001, 163)

5. See James Jordan’s explanation of this task in his chapter “Symbolism in Worldview.” (Jordan 1999, 29-38)

6. Which means that interpreting Pentecost in light of Babel offers a powerful polemic against Islam.

7. That the Word became flesh indicates something important about anthropology and the imago dei. It obliterates static understandings of language since it says that the Word of Being is a “human word,” a Word-Man.

Bibliography
Alter, Robert. Genesis: Translation and Commentary. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1996.

Beale, Gregory K. "The Descent of the Eschatological Temple in the Form of the Spirit at Pentecost: Part 1: The Clearest Evidence." The Tyndale Bulletin 56, no. 1 (2005): 73-102.

Beale, Gregory K. "The Descent of the Eschatological Temple in the Form of the Spirit at Pentecost: Part 2: Corroberating Evidence." The Tyndale Bulletin 56, no. 2 (2005): 63-90.

—. The Temple and the Church's Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004.

Dempster, Stephen G. Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003.

Ferguson, Sinclair B. The Holy Spirit. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996.

Gaffin, Richard B. Perspectives on Pentecost: New Testament Teaching on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1979.

Johnson, Dennis E. The Message of Acts in the History of Redemption. Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1997.

Jordan, James B. Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999.

Kline, Meredith G. Glory in Our Midst: A Biblico-Theological Reading of Zechariah's Night Visions. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001.

—. Images of the Spirit. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999.

—. Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006.

Leithart, Peter J. A House for My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament. Moscow: Canon Press, 2000.

—. Against Christianity. Moscow: Canon Press, 2003.

—. Blessed are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper. Moscow: Canon Press, 2000.

Pelikan, Jaroslav. Acts. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005.

Reno, R.R. Genesis. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2010.

Vos, Geerhardus. "The Eschatological Aspect of the Pauline Conception of the Spirit." In Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, by Richard B. Gaffin, 91-125. Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1980.

Waltke, Bruce K.; Fredricks, Cathi J. Genesis: A Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001.

Thomas (the Lesser) on "Evangelism"

2010-04-11T23:30:00.000-04:00

A drama in miniature:

Him: Are you saved?
Me: Sure...
Him: So you accept Jesus...etc
Me: Occasionally.
Him: What...?
Me: I'm baptized, not a damn thing I can do about it. I just work here. Say, are *you* baptized?
Him: Me? Yeah, I...
Me: Then you're saved. Let's get a beer and talk about it.
Him: What? Wait, I...
Me: Say, you like bread and wine?

via fb.

More Importantly

2010-04-09T11:46:00.001-04:00

We have to ask, though, does anyone who affirms the Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Eucharist actually believe it's only a symbol? As if, there were something insufficient about being a symbol. As if, in being symbolic, the Supper was meaningless. (Is it even possible for a symbol to be meaningless?) Much more, how is Christ's Presence in the Supper less "Real" if we say he is so by means of his Spirit? Is the Spirit's presence unreal? Does the Spirit fail to really make Christ present among us? Can any Lutheran actually deny that symbolism is really present in the elements and circumstances of Communion? The way out, here, seems to lie in affirming the absolute symbol-laden quality of reality. Is the Presence Real or Symbolic? That is a false question. The correct view of the Supper must be that, in it, we have the Presence of a Real symbolism, symbolism that we can believe. In the Eucharist, with its manifold imagery drawn together, things are taking place before us that are so utterly real and foundational, that we can barely grasp at describing the mechanics of it, things which we lack a sufficient metaphysics to describe, things so real it requires faith to perceive it.

Calvinists and Lutherans alike believe that the "is" means "is." But only a robustly creational ontology, one that gives heed to the biblical view of the world can make since of what "is" even means. I tend to think both traditions have some helpful insight on how to sketch that out, but we all know that excommunicating Baptized Christians because they disagree about the meaning of the word "is" is treachery.

Just so you know...

2010-04-09T09:53:00.000-04:00

Cathleen and I have found a church: link.

Church of the Redeemer is one of 100s of Anglican churches exiled from the ECUSA. Just after paying off the mortgage on their gorgeous building, they lost it to the diocese a few years ago, and have been meeting in a messianic synagogue ever since, currently residing in the newly founded Anglican Church in North America.

If you divide up Anglicanism into the three strands of Evangelical, Reformed, and Catholic, Church of the Redeemer's on the Reformed side of Evangelical - there's a Packer, Piper, Stott influence, but an undeniable hand-raising, praise chorus, PowerPoint, Billy Graham-ish vibe to it as well. It kinda feels like a baptist church sometimes, but it still follows the essentials of the prayerbook liturgy, and mixes in some good hymns every now and then. The clincher is that it's got a strong communal presence, with people of all ages there, and a worship that Christianly consummates around Christ's bread and cup. There are some other especially commendable things about it (like the bishop and the rector there, and my friends that are there as well), but that's the long and the short of it. It's a church like so many others that has its share of annoyances, but Christ is there, and we are here, so it's somewhere we can happily commune.

A Tale of Two Cities

2010-03-19T09:03:00.001-04:00

IV.3. Whether the great extent of the empire, which has been acquired only by wars, is to be reckoned among the good things either of the wise or the happy

Now, therefore, let us see how it is that they dare to ascribe the very great extent and duration of the Roman empire to those gods whom they contend that they worship honourably, even by the obsequies of vile games and the ministry of vile men: although I should like first to inquire for a little what reason, what prudence, there is in wishing to glory in the greatness and extent of the empire, when you cannot point out the happiness of men who are always rolling, with dark fear and cruel lust, in warlike slaughters and in blood, which, whether shed in civil or foreign war, is still human blood; so that their joy may be compared to glass in its fragile splendour, of which one is horribly afraid lest it should be suddenly broken in pieces. That this may be more easily discerned, let us not come to nought by being carried away with empty boasting, or blunt the edge of our attention by loud-sounding names of things, when we hear of peoples, kingdoms, provinces. But let us suppose the case of two men; for each individual man, like one letter in a language, is as it were the element of a city or kingdom, however far-spreading in its occupation of the earth. Of these two men let us suppose that one is poor, or rather of middling circumstances; the other very rich. But the rich man is anxious with fears, pining with discontent, burning with covetousness, never secure, always uneasy, panting from the perpetual strife of his enemies, adding to his patrimony indeed by these miseries to an immense degree, and by these additions also heaping up most bitter cares. But that other man of moderate wealth is contented with a small and compact estate, most dear to his own family, enjoying the sweetest peace with his kindred neighbors and friends, in piety religious, benignant in mind, healthy in body, in life frugal, in manners chaste, in conscience secure. I know not whether any one can be such a fool, that he dare hesitate which to prefer. As, therefore, in the case of these two men, so in two families, in two nations, in two kingdoms, this test of tranquility holds good; and if we apply it vigilantly and without prejudice, we shall quite easily see where the mere show of happiness dwells, and where real felicity. Wherefore if the true God is worshipped, and if He is served with genuine rites and true virtue, it is advantageous that good men should long reign both far and wide. Nor is this advantageous so much to themselves, as to those over whom they reign. For, so far as concerns themselves, their piety and probity, which are great gifts of God, suffice to give them true felicity, enabling them to live well the life that now is, and afterwards receive that which is eternal. In this world, therefore, the dominion of good men is profitable, not so much for themselves as for human affairs. But the dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater licence in wickedness; while those who are put under them are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, "For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave."

Remember:

2010-03-14T00:42:00.002-05:00

He's not done until he's killed you.

Jenson on Ezekiel ix

2010-03-05T21:38:00.000-05:00

Specifically, Ezekiel ix, 3-8 (p. 84):

The Lord instructs the recording angel: he is to go through Jerusalem and mark the foreheads of those in the city who have remained faithful - obviously not an overwhelming number, since there is one angel to do this and six to follow him and destroy the rest. There is wordplay here: the word for "mark" is also the name of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, tau. We could therefore translate "make a tau on the forehead" - which indeed is how rabbinic tradition read the passage (Levey 1990: 37). Thus we know the shape of the mark; in the orthography of ancient Hebrew the tau was a cross. It is impossible not to notice: the angel is told to perform the very gesture of baptismal chrism and of Ash Wednesday's marking with ashes. [source]

History and Providence

2010-03-03T21:38:00.000-05:00

90 pages into the Civitate, I notice that Augustine's demythologizing of Roman deities bears a striking resemblance to the same arguments that might be lodged against anyone who attributes specific historical events to the will of the Christian God.

What's interesting, though, is that rather than use these arguments to go ahead and say, "Therefore, we cannot know the providential acts of God," Augustine uses these arguments to say, "Actually, it's not the Roman gods that deserve credit for the blessings of Rome, but actually the God of the Christians."

P.S. I like where he's going with this.

BTW, FYI

2010-02-28T17:13:00.000-05:00

Cathleen has started a blog: here.

In Which We are Greatly Perplexed by the Words of John Murray

2010-02-19T19:49:00.000-05:00

Circa page 134 of Redemption: Accomplished and Applied:

In modern theology it is sometimes said that men by adoption come to share in Christ's Sonship and thus enter into the divine life of the trinity. This is grave confusion and error. [source]

Tolle Lege

2010-01-09T17:22:00.000-05:00

For the record, Sinclair Ferguson is a total shredder.

Atonement and Anthropology

2009-12-31T23:51:00.000-05:00

I was just perusing this, where Peter comments that the controversy about God loving man by killing Jesus is a Trinitarian discussion (pp.56-57), and it seemed to me at that moment that the only way to resolve the tension between the Father and the Son was to understand man as essentially the prototype for the Incarnation. (Which is to agree with Zizioulas and Knight and countless others - though certainly not everyone.) This is because, in making Adam the prototype of the Incarnation, we can understand that the Father's wrath (which is really only a jealous love anyway) is poured out on the Son as failed Adam rather than the Son as God. In doing so, the Father's wrath is the purging of the Incarnate Son's failure as the first Adam, leaving behind only the victorious history of the new Adam, paving the way for men everywhere to share in this victory, aiming to renew all men to become Sons of God.

At least, that's what I thought at the time. Could be completely off-base. I'll delete this whole thing if I need to.

In Which We are Deeply Moved by Danny DeVito

2009-12-24T15:00:00.000-05:00

[source]

Pneumatology and Ecclesiology

2009-12-12T11:19:00.004-05:00

It's true that the Church as "the Body of Christ" is, in some ways, a continuation of the Incarnation. It's also true that salvation is only possible through union with the Incarnate King of Heaven and Earth, Jesus.

Some churches argue from these two premises that, because the Church is the Incarnation and one must be united to the Incarnation to be saved, therefore one must be united to the Church to be saved. This really is a collapsing of soteriology into ecclesiology, and some acknowledge this unapologetically. But it's pretty much wrong.

But if we said it differently it could be pretty much right.

It's true that Christ's Body is really present as the Church as much as Christ's Body is really present as eucharistic bread. But the Gospel of Luke teaches that Christ's Body is really present as Jesus of Nazareth by the work of the Spirit (Luke i, 35). The Incarnation was (and is) the work of the Spirit. Likewise, it's the work of the Spirit that presents Jesus as the Christ. (Though we all still know it's not the Incarnation itself that saves, simply by being Incarnate, but the work accomplished by the Incarnation that saves.)

Further, the Spirit not only brought about the Flesh of our Lord, but it is also the Spirit who baptized our Lord (or more accurately, the Father baptized the Son with the Spirit), making him a fit candidate for the mission to the Cross (John i, 32-34). It was the Spirit who sent him there, who carried him along all the way until death. And it was the Spirit who raised him up on the third day (Romans viii, 11). And finally, we are united to the Son, and thus reconciled to the Father, but that unity is one accomplished by the Spirit (Romans 8, 12-17).

We say all this to say, the importance of Calvin's Cyprianism notwithstanding, Christian ecclesiology must proceed from pneumatology, for the Church proceeds from the Spirit and not vice versa.

mewithoutYou - A Disco-Videography

2009-12-12T08:33:00.005-05:00

Pretty neat to watch the progression over the years, starting off with their post-hardcore, angst-rock, and finishing off with folk-laden melodies:

First this: Bullet to Binary
Then these: January 1979, Disaster Tourism, and Paper Hanger
Next this: Nice and Blue (Pt. 2)
And finally (for now) this: The Fox, the Crow and the Cookie

Gaffin is Great

2009-11-25T09:12:00.003-05:00

Perspectives on Pentecost is one of those books that deserve frequent re-printings. Thirty years old now, the slim little beast has all appearances of being a lite, devotional-esque essay on the spirituality of New Testament Christianity - that, or an obnoxiously polemical little text against speaking in tongues and the charismatic movement. But it's just not that kind of book - and I'm loving it.

One of the first things I noticed about it was how deceitfully short it is. At 120 pages, one might expect it to be the sort of book one could stroll through in a couple of days. But it's just not that kind of book. I'm finding myself only making it through about 10-12 pages an hour, and not because of awkward prose or unintelligible jargon. Gaffin simply writes in a style that loads every sentence with a pointedness and depth of biblico-theological insight that turns out something not much different than wine, a thing to be carefully sipped and savored.

I do find it somewhat humourous, though, that the book supposedly was written with hopes of reaching a popular audience (this, at least, is why Gaffin said he dropped the footnotes). Only twenty five pages into it, between the untransliterated greek and a couple latin theological quips, along with a host of distinctively Vos-ian and Kline-ian (and Ridderbos-ian) (and thus, esoteric) assumptions, I'm fairly convinced that Gaffin was a little bit naïve.

Still, not even through the first chapter yet, I haven't found a paragraph that wasn't worth quoting yet, so I figured that demanded a wholesale endorsement to anyone vaguely interested in a biblico-theological approach to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

"Active" and "Passive" Obedience

2009-11-22T18:30:00.001-05:00

What about "Adamic" and "Paschal" obedience instead? I think it works. It's at least more biblical terminology.

Beautiful Disease

2009-11-21T00:55:00.001-05:00

Oh dear reader, you're in for a treat. Once again, I can't sleep so here comes the midnight rant...

[source]

Currently, thoughts have been swirling about less "eternal" things, such that I've given up on bedtime after trying for the past hour-and-a-half.

Seems the work I do requires me, well, to work - and hard, at that. And certainly that offers little basis for whining, which I don't think I'm planning on, but it does occasionally put me in a stress of sorts that's rather out of sorts with my normal demeanor. The situation is this:

My district has a program, a program titled "Standards Based Promotion." This program is kind of a second chance of sorts, a chance for kids and the like that have gotten in over their heads with being held back a couple years or so. The idea is that the students can be promoted one grade level to help them get back on their feet and give them a little incentive to continuing pressing on (rather than ultimately dropping out). They're fully responsible for the material of both the new grade level and the one that they're being promoted from, which means extra work and all, but still. They get a shot at not being 2 or 3 years older than every one of their classmates and they tend to like that so it's kind of a good deal for them.

The problem is (and there are definitely problems with this arrangement) these students tend to be of a certain stripe. Whatever you want to say, it's a fact that there is a strong correlation academic performance and behavior (because all knowledge is related to virtue). This is to say, the students that typically receive this special promotion tend to be students that are simultaneously lacking in knowledge and social niceties. SBP kids are often (though not always) tough kids.

This is all well and good. It's my job to work with adolescents of diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. There will always be hard kids and easy kids. It's my job as a teacher to do far more than simply convey data. Anyone who's ever actually been in primary and secondary education knows that among other duties, the teacher is responsible for managing souls that are still learning proper behavior, which means we've got to manage a classroom much as a captain would manage his crew, with rituals, routines, and high levels of discipline. Some students will require very little guidance in with these subjects and some will require much more.

But still...

There is, even for public schools (that whipping boy among those fond of whipping), a limit to what is acceptable and understandable given the learning curve for that age group. There are often 12-year-olds who act like 10-year-olds. With a little correction these can quickly be reminded of who they are and what they need to change. But there are also those occasional - special - students who are twelve, thirteen, or fourteen who act like they are six. As it turns out (big surprise), some of my SBP kids are pretty durn special. And I get to deal with all their specialness on a daily basis.

Now I'm still a fairly young and inexperienced teacher and, while I've made huge strides this year, I still struggle to perfectly "steer the ship" as it were. This means, occasionally, I get a little bit stressed because I kind of have a hard time with some of the more challenging kids. Today, however, pushed me harder than I've been pushed in a long time.

One of my SBP students stands out as being especially challenging to motivate and control. There are good days, to be sure, but today was not one of them. Today, my student - oh dear - my student, wholly unprovoked, for reasons I cannot fathom, came into my room and decided the thing he most wanted to do was knock various items away from their proper place. He decided it would be fortuitous to go ahead and hit something off my desk - just for the fun of it? - and then walked toward the front of my room and decided to shove my overhead projector to the ground - ya know, cause Why not?

It's a real struggle, this student, because I know that I'm not going to be getting rid of him anytime soon. But I am simply at a loss. This student - who is clearly well on his way to sociopathy - is under my care for a couple of hours a day. And everything inside me wants to punish the hell out of him. But there's a part of me that knows better, or at least knows myself well enough to know that I just want to lash out at him for all the stress he's causing me. I take all this very personally. And, to me, I think there's something very right about that, but my mind can't rest because of it all. I feel responsible.

This may be the root of many criticisms of public education, but there is a sense in which it is very true that my job is to takeover for a parent for about 7-8 hours a day. For better or worse, I'm responsible for the well-being of other people's offspring in a way for which I'm held highly accountable. Silly as this sounds, I'm "dad" for those kids on a daily basis. (For some of those kids, there is a sense in which I am the only "dad" they know.)

This is hard for me, as I don't have experience as a father. I am only getting a glimmer of the struggles that true parents have, the utter befuddlement that their children can cause with their most radical failures in obedience and maturity. And it's hard. I'm aware of some of the circumstances behind this student's behavior, and there's a sense in which his actions are totally to be expected. But I'm wrestling with what strategies I can employ to teach that child that those circumstances aren't acceptable excuses. The trick, I think, is finding how to be simultaneously firm and encouraging to the lad - and figuring out how much firmness he needs and how much encouragement he needs - which is always the question, isn't it?

In Which We Consider Why We Haven't Migrated to Moscow, Idaho

2009-11-20T20:04:00.001-05:00

[source]

Bavinck on the Spirit

2009-11-18T21:24:00.001-05:00

Taking a break from this, I thought I'd take a look at what Bavinck might have to say about the third person of Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

Pulling Volume 4 of Reformed Dogmatics, "The Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation", I began searching the Table of Contents for a chapter specifically about said trinitarian person only to find that the entire volume (all 944 pages) is Bavinck's Pneumatology. There was no place that could be described as a simple theology proper. Rather, Bavinck's work on the Spirit is found only amidst chapters on the the Church, Sacraments, Resurrection, and Eschatology.

Instructive, methinks.

New Plan

2009-11-17T21:12:00.003-05:00

Dropped this [pdf]. (Way too much pointless writing.)

Registering for this [pdf] ASAP. (I've already started reading for it.)

I went ahead and registered for this [pdf]. (I'll be taking a week off from work and staying at the Hutchison's with Berek and Jason.)

And that leaves 1 credit hour that I'm planning on filling by reading this alongside this. (I just need to find a professor to coax into sponsoring it.)

Hopefully, all goes according to plan. (Though it never does.)

Towards a Christian Ecclesiology - or - Those united to Christ also commune with Christ, do they not?

2009-11-13T19:43:00.006-05:00

I'm constantly battling not to turn into Stanley Hauerwas.

...

Ill-related (or is it?):

[source]

Additionally, I'm not gonna lie: I take great personal offense to the positions of the Romanists, the Byzantines, and the Lutherans for their anti-christian approach to communion.

A pastor's wife recently told me that "the doors to the Church should be no narrower than the requirements of entering the Kingdom of God." And she's absolutely correct. To fail to see this is to fail to see that the Church is the place where our King Jesus reigns - that is to say, the Church is God's Kingdom. Those outside of the dominion of our Lord cannot legitimately claim to be in "the shadow of the wings" of Yahweh. (Psalm 17) And that is why there is no hope outside of it. To be outside the Church is to be outside of the care of our god and king - and as there is no salvation outside of God, there is likewise no salvation outside of his reign: his Church.

Of course, this brings to the fore the ever-pressing question, who then consists of God's Church? That is, Who are his people? For only for them may we expect redemption and forgiveness of sins. And we all desire redemption and forgiveness of sins, don't we?

And so it begins, the quest for the True Church. We may begin with a process of elimination, wisely excising the heretics from the orthodox, chopping off first the Gnostics, then the Arians, later the Donatists... and eventually we become aware of the monophysites, and even the franciscans and the liberals. And once we have found the one Church faithful to the apostolic witness, we aim to take refuge in its doors alone, leaving behind the various apostates as so much dross and a sad collection of sadder stories.

That is one way, at least. Myself, I can't stomach the method.

I can't stomach it because it's, to my mind, so plainly disinterested in our Lord Christ and his Gospel. Were I to be in search of which church to repair to (Indeed, I am!) I would start with the right question: Rather than "Where are those who are faithful to Christ?" I would ask "Where is Christ?"

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. [John x, 27]

In my more introspective days, I used to struggle (rather deeply!) with whether or not I was really, really, really one of His sheep. At some point I realized, however, that this question wasn't for me to discern. Belief that oneself is truly one of the Redeemed is just as much an article of faith as the Incarnation or the Resurrection or the Real Presence - implicit in Christian belief is the belief that one is in fact, just that, a Christian. (This isn't really that novel - it's implied by the first word of the Nicene Creed: credo. HT:Berek)

Having given up trying to peer into the depths of my own heart (Jeremiah xvii, 9), I've taken instead the path of greater faith, taking Christ at his word (or at least attempting to), and setting aside the entire question of Who are truly of the Faith?, trusting that Christ himself will sort all that out at the End. Instead, I've decided instead to make the Son of Man my food and drink (or at least try to) (John vi, 50-59). This is the sum of the entire Christian calling and as such it is the sum of the calling of the Church. And the Church, our mother (Galatians iv, 26), has a single calling:

His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” [John ii, 5]

Her calling is to call us, her baptized children, to do the will of the Father which is to feast with our whole being upon the Son in the (de)light of the Spirit.

The Church is our mother and she is ours if we have been united to the Christ whom she serves. Her service to Christ is to serve (offer) Christ, his body and and blood, before our tired and parched and hungry souls, that we may take and eat in faith. But with the visible Church always being a mixture of purity and impurity, from time to time, she acts harshly.

It's a fact that there are a number of Christian sectarians (and this is where Rome, the Orthodox, and the Luderans come up), who will openly confess that those outside their doors are truly united to Christ, whilst (especially in the the case of Rome and the East) confessing to be the single body in full continuity with that "one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church" we all confess. The end of result of this is that I, personally, am told that while I am not outside of Christ, I'm forbidden from his Table. While it's true that I've been united to Christ, that's not sufficient for allowing me to share in Christ's life - or at least this is what I'm being told. Union with Christ isn't sufficient - something more is required. (Mere faith is insufficient, we must also be circumcised and keep Torah if we want full privileges of fellowship.) (Galatians iv, 17)

It's here that I commend the Presbyterians, the Anglicans, and the Evangelicals for their fairly Christian approach to communion, properly guarding the Eucharist from those outside of Christ, while not requiring more for than baptized participation in the Gospel to eat the bread and drink the wine as True Brethren.

While Communion proceeds from Union, Union is sustained by Communion. Therefore, preaching Union whilst forbidding Communion is to preach a damned Union, which is to preach damnation, which is to preach no gospel at all.

Oh, Prophecy - or - We Keep Talking and Talking and Don't Know What We Talkin' 'Bout

2009-11-11T22:51:00.003-05:00

25 years ago, the character Egon Spengler (from Ghostbusters) commented, "Print is dead."

Mind you, that's before the internet revolution, before YouTube, before Wikipedia, before Google, before blogs, and Kindle. Heck, that's before there was a computer in every house, before iPods and netbooks.

RE: The Orthodox Church

2009-11-01T15:33:00.004-05:00

Not that I'll ever convert to Orthodoxy or anything, but aside from the Joel Osteen sermon, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom was rad.

Oh, Homily

2009-11-01T12:55:00.004-05:00

One curiosity that I've discovered over the last few years is that there is no necessary correlation between denominational affiliation and theological insight. It was men with extraordinarily bright theological minds that led me to appreciate liturgy, tradition, and the sacraments in such a way that really opened my eyes to the sheer breadth of Christ's Church, teaching me how narrow my own theological outlook was. As a result, I had come to expect that the higher church denominations would be bastions of homiletic richness. It came much to my surprise, then, that many Anglicans, Catholics, and Orthodox are no more naturally blessed in biblical exposition than a non-denominational preacher in a small country church. The sermons in the "high traditions" are just as rife with moralism and pious platitudes as those of any other tradition.

Of course, the merit of those higher church traditions is that the Ministry of the Word is not reduced to the homily. The Word is fed to the people by means of several lectionary readings, psalm chantings, and creedal recitations in addition to the sermon. Much more, the written prayers are shot-through with biblical language such that, even if the present minister is a shoddy exegete (or is disinterested in exegesis altogether), the gospel can still be proclaimed. In fact, these churches have the virtue of decentralizing the role of a single man in their worship, preventing the frequent problem of churches built around celebrity preachers (personality cults).

I know where to go for brilliant homiletics, I think. But a mere sermon does not Christian worship make. It's part of it, to be sure - but only that.

This is how we do it - in exile

2009-11-01T06:56:00.004-05:00

8AM - here.
10AM - here.
~~6PM - here.~~

And next Sunday: here.

Almost Home

2009-10-24T16:16:00.004-04:00

A decent review of the new Evergreen Terrace album, Almost Home pretty much sums up my own thoughts:

Evergreen Terrace is [a] band that sticks to what they know. What they know is fun, melodic hardcore with breakdowns galore. They do this better than anyone else...

At times [the new album] is angrier than anything they have ever done, and at times Evergreen Terrace reaches a level of melody that they never previously reached. [source]

The Descent of the Holy Spirit

2009-10-16T21:14:00.002-04:00

Another addition to our collection:

Lewis on Church Membership

2009-10-15T21:35:00.002-04:00

Here, one devil writes to another:

My dear Wormwood,

You mentioned casually in your last letter that the patient has continued to attend one church, and one only, since he was converted, and that he is not wholly pleased with it? Why have I no report on the causes of his fidelity to the parish church? Do you realize that unless it is due to indifference it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that 'suits' him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.

The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organisation should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy desires. The congregational principle, on the other hand, makes each church into a kind of club, and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or faction. In the second place, the search for a 'suitable' church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil. What He wants of the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise - does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going. (You see how grovelling, how unspiritual, how irredeemably vulgar He is!) This attitude, especially during sermons, creates the condition (most hostile to our whole policy) in which platitudes can become really audible to a human soul. There is hardly any sermon, or any book, which may not be dangerous to us if it is received in this temper. So pray bestir yourself and send this fool the round of the neighboring churches as soon as possible. Your record up to date has given us much satisfaction...

Your affectionate uncle
Screwtape [pp. 81-82]

There's something here for all of us.

Role Models

2009-10-12T20:44:00.004-04:00

Dr. Perry Cox is, without a question, the character I most revere and aim to emulate as I grow and mature as a leader of America's youth:

[source]

Of course, I've got a long way to go.

Not Kidding

2009-10-09T23:16:00.002-04:00

Having moved on to The Screwtape Letters, I'm continually impressed by Lewis' (we'll call it) "extrinsicism" - that is, Lewis' emphasis on the "externals" of religion.

Very frequently Lewis rails against introspective religion (that is, that self-centered piety that consists of heavy doses of self-examination). In his biography, I read a letter in which he believed that abstaining from introspection was the key to avoiding insanity in one's later life. In Mere Christianity, he virtually identifies humility as the opposite of introspection. And in The Screwtape Letters he has more or less identified that sort of piety as the subtlest form of idolatry, one of the demons' key tactics in causing apostasy.

(This is not even to mention his oft-quoted discussion on the sacramental nature of matter and spirituality, in which he points out that "God likes matter. He invented it.")

In retrospect, it's pretty obvious that my early encounters with Lewis' cleared the way for Peter Leithart's later iconoclastic tract, Against Christianity. (And this is all to say that the entirety of the Federal Vision controversy can be summed up in the question: Was C.S. Lewis Reformed?)

¿Dónde está mi chica puertorriqueña?

2009-10-02T18:15:00.004-04:00

On Monday, the powers-that-be transferred my little Puerto Rican girl to a team with more Spanish speaking teachers. Sad, but probably for the best for her. Today, however, she came by and handed me a brown bag filled with chocolates and a card from her mom:

Hi, Mr. Schultz,

I wish to thank you so much... and [the little Puerto Rican girl] as well!

For us, you are a great teacher and a human being. I am sorry that you will not be [the little Puerto Rican girl]'s math teacher anymore but I am sure she will never forget you. Good luck in all aspects of your life and keep up the good work! You realy got a positive result out of [the little Puerto Rican girl].

Blessings!
[Mom]

It's nice for lots of reasons, not least because it was the first spontaneous gift I've ever received from a parent.

My Sweet New Ride

2009-10-01T20:45:00.002-04:00

[source]

Exponents

2009-09-29T22:10:00.003-04:00

I'm pretty proud of today's lesson. It was the first time I designed a fully student-directed lesson. We're learning some laws of exponents, laws like what you can do when they've got common bases, or if you've got an exponent on an exponent:

3^5 * 3^2 = 3^7
3^5 / 3^2 = 3^3
(3^2)^5 = 3^10

for example. And I think the students really got it.

I broke them into groups of threes and fours and gave them three different problems that, in being worked out, hint at the above listed laws. It was great to see them working together, debating their answers, enthusiastically sharing their discoveries with each other, and doing all those synergistic things that you can generate in student-led, group-structured activities. (I'm also starting to see a lot of that in their work with integer operations, and especially on last Friday's lesson on the various effects of negative signs on exponents.) Being early into my second year teaching, I know I'm still pretty much a novice at the whole thing, but it's good to see that I'm on the right track to really mature pedagogy.

...

I've been reading a lot of Jack lately and I will be for the next couple months. It's really refreshing in a "getting back to the basics" sort of way. Finished a really worthwhile biography on Mr. Lewis last weekend, and I've started reading through Mere Christianity for probably my fourth time. It's interesting, on a personal level, to see how I've matured intellectually over the past six years since my first taste of Lewis. Whereas I once honestly (innocently) considered whether or not C.S. Lewis' work might be inspired in a way not much different than the Bible, I find now I have a healthy critical distance between Lewis' beliefs and my own. Much more, I'm able to map out the weaknesses and strengths of Lewis' arguments in ways that previously escaped the weaker reasoning of my freshman/sophomore years.

I'm finding some new angles and questions for Lewis, too. For example, What is the compatibility of Lewis' logic with the twenty-first century man in light of the linguistic turn in contemporary philosophy to which he was rather self-consciously immune? And, Might it be valuable for Covenant Theologians to import Lewis' description of the "Law of Nature" (as he calls it) and use such language in elaborating the principals of the Covenant of Works? Further, Lewis' dealings with Christian dogma, especially with regards to theories of atonement, share a curious similarity to remarks made my men of FV/NPP sorts. Is this something we can attribute to the common influence of Anglicanism? Or is it a coincidence?

Anyway, I'll be (re-)reading through a lot of the Lewissian corpus over the next few months, and honestly, I'm pretty happy about it. Lewis, Wright, and Leithart being my three favorite authors, being forced to spend time with works I cherish and have long cherished is hardly a school assignment I'll be complaining about.

...

Unrelated: That last post wasn't intended to be about anyone but me, nor should it be read as about anything but my own shameful spiritual struggles. Just in case there was any question about that. Also, it was written (with great intention) rather vaguely. Be careful about assuming you get the point. There's none but myself who should take offense to what was written there.

...

Additionally unrelated: I've been meaning to make it a comment somewhere that all reductio ad absurdem arguments are (strictly speaking) inherently "reductionistic." Hence, the "reductio." So let's all be much more careful about what we mean by pointing out an interlocutor's "reductionistic" reasoning as if it were clearly a flaw. To illustrate that, when you strip away (i.e., "reduce") the pomp and trite argumentative garb of another's position to its plain and simple absurdity, you are not failing to be reasonable. Your opponent is simply failing to be honest.

How's it going?

2009-09-26T00:07:00.001-04:00

Well, for starters, the work is so much easier this year. I've got a significantly larger bit of control over the classroom, coupled with a better group of kids. I know a bit more about what I need to teach and how to get it done. I know how to keep the kids moving and I'm really enjoying it.

Also, the students are really enjoying it. Many of my students are coming to class with focus and even a bit of zeal. I've gotten so comfortable with what I'm doing that I'm able to entertain the kids a bit, laying on pretty thickly a split-personality of militaristic discipline and haphazard, sarcastic rambling.

Additionally, I'm no longer teaching just Pre-Algebra (which is the advanced curriculum for 7th grade), but I'm additionally teaching a standard Math 2 course, and an Intensive (read: remedial) Math course. This means that instead of planning for one class, I plan for three. I don't prefer this, but it's really not that overwhelming and, professionally, I'm sure it's good for me to be stretched. (Additionally, I've got the added challenge of a Puerto Rican girl who speaks very little English.)

I've taken on some extra duties. I'm now the person responsible for organizing and maintinaing data on my team and I represent us at a shared decision making committee called "Senate." Further, I've been appointed by the principal to lead an "Action Team" that deals with schoolwide concerns over the way data is collected, shared, and utilized at our school.

It's been fun. Also, my classroom looks pretty awesome this year. I get lots of compliments. (I've even worked in some Wendell Berry and Vern Poythress posters - shhh! Don't tell.)

...

Cathleen and I have visited all the churches that we are currently considering joining and we are now making second round visits. We've eliminated at least one choice from our list of six. So in about six weeks we will be making a choice about which church we'd like to start visiting on a regular basis. If it goes well, we could have a church home by Thanksgiving, or at the very latest, Christmas - which would be nice.

Ideally, I think I would really enjoy it if we ended up at a high-church ACNA Cathedral with a large population with a diverse demographic make-up. Alas - no such church seems to exist in Jacksonville. So no matter where we end up, there will always be something for me to whine about. Oh well.

Settling though I will be - actually, no matter what, both Cathleen and I will be settling for something - I really am looking forward to normalizing my religious life. Frankly, and to the point, I feel like over the past couple years, I've become increasingly malnourished, spiritually speaking. It's not a good thing either. I've come to hate pietism so much, that I have additionally grown to resent "piety" as well. I feel as though much of the confidence and (for lack of a better word) obsession I've had with Christianity and such has waned for want of not being so publically abrasive. This is in part due to a personal lack of courage on my part, combined with a cautious bit of indifference stirred by my own simple-mindedness mixed with a saturation of learning.

But what I really mean to say is that, I truly do miss those days, those nine months or so I spent at an Anglo-Catholic APA Cathedral, wherein such time I grew more as a believer than I think I ever have. Circumstances beyond my control ripped me from that situation, but I still remember the height of my faith in those days: I remember how, for the first time in my life, I would be thinking all Saturday evening, while I'm closing up a Starbucks, mopping floors at midnight, thinking with actual joy in my heart about the goodness to come when I wake in the morning. I still remember (I remember this whenever I take a bike ride) the Sunday morning bike rides to church, listening to Aaron Weiss guide me with his sad, sad songs, all the way to the House of the Lord. Much more, I remember the pleasantry of hearing week after week that my sins were forgiven and I, dog that I am, have been made welcome to sup with the Lord. I remember how it would nearly bring me to tears to sing hymns as the Holy Gospel would interrupt our song to tell us of our Lord Christ, only to be followed by the second half of our song. And I certainly - most certainly - remember the soaring of my baptized heart as we would, on high occassions, not merely confess, but sing the Nicene Creed, genuflecting at the appropriate parts. Never before in my life did everything I had been studying come together so harmoniously, suddenly making sense of all the things that previously had been mere abstractions to me. There was no longer any division in my heart between liturgy and life, and the worship of the Lord so stirred my passions that I would sing the various anthems of Christian worship all week long, unashamed to chant "It is very meet, right and our bounden duty, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee. O Lord, Holy Father..." while making lattes and washing dishes.

But Judaizers stripped me of that one glimmer of the Holy Spirit in my twenty-something years, and I ended up instead spending the next two years under the scrutiny of those less interested in the visio beata than myself. (This is too harsh, but bear with me dear reader, as I am only ranting.)

The bottom line is, I was in heaven for a time, and it's been my mission ever since to get back there. But until such a time, if I truly make the Lord my food and drink, then I truly must starve without him. My hope is that, in our quest for a church, I can find once again that sustenance.

A Video Meditation on the Lord's Supper

2009-09-05T18:10:00.002-04:00

This is why one of the primary criteria Cathleen and I have chosen for our next church is, at the very least, bi-weekly communion:

[source]

The Hospitality of Abraham

2009-08-30T20:44:00.004-04:00

Forgot to mention that, less than a couple hours after visiting an OPC church, Cathleen and I stopped by here and purchased a copy of this for our bedroom:

There is irony here. We visited an iconoclastic church in the morning only to purchase an icon in the evening.

Schedule of churches we will be/have been visiting:

2009-08-29T20:53:00.002-04:00

Saint Barnabas - [ACNA] (August 16)
Covenant - [OPC] (August 23)
Church of the Redeemer - [ACNA] (August 30)
Westminster - [PCA] (September 6)
All Souls - [AMiA] (September 13)
Christ Church - [PCA] (September 20)

Credo - Baptism

2009-08-18T22:37:00.003-04:00

I'm going to go ahead and post this for several reasons. One, cause I can't sleep right now - not sure why. Two, because I'm not in the least ashamed of its contents (save for its imprecision). Three, because I want to be very open about a thing which has been unnecessarily taboo.

This document was originally written about a month ago with two intentions. First, I wanted to give the elders of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church a statement of my beliefs on the doctrine of Christian Baptism. Second, I wanted to demonstrate that there is nothing I believe that cannot easily be found within the confessions of the Reformed Protestant Tradition.

While there are Scripture prooftexts cited for each statement, I should admit that many of the prooftexts were drawn from the Reformed confessions themselves. This was only to further illustrate the harmony of my own beliefs, even in how Scripture is to be read, with the Reformed Tradition.

So, the Scripture prooftexts are not heavily employed here to prove anything. This is not an argument, much less is it an argument from Scripture. It's a confession, a coming clean of sorts.

For those unaware, the most widely adopted confessions of the Reformed Tradition can be divided into two categories: The Westminster Standards (The Westminster Confession of Faith, The Westminster Larger Catechism, and The Westminster Smaller Catechism) and The Three Forms of Unity (The Belgic Confession of Faith, the Canons of Dort, and The Heidelberg Catechism). The observant reader will note that I draw from both of these systems of doctrine, as much as possible, for many of the statements, but that there is perhaps a slight emphasis on the Westminster Standards. This is because the Westminster Standards are more broadly accepted here in the States, and should my beliefs need examination by a Reformed communion in the States, I would like as much as possible to emphasize my preference for those documents (though they are not without their faults). For the reader's interest, I have also cited The Nicene Creed and The London Confession of Baptist Faith where appropriate.

Additionally, I should mention that in my holding to these doctrines, I have cost my wife and myself a great deal. These are not doctrines that I rejoice in believing, but one's to which I am soberly bound by conscience to assert. God save me from error.

Finally, important as these doctrines are to Christian faith and practice, I should like to mention that I do not hold that agreement or disagreement with these named doctrines represent the bounds of the Gospel of Christ by which all Christians are bound together. Requiring that my brother or sister believe these things in order to share in Christ's Church alongside myself would be idolatry. Christ accepts his members in all their weaknesses, insofar as they have him as their head. That is to say, it would be sin for me to require more of my brothers and sisters than God requires.

What is baptism?
Baptism is a sacrament of the New Covenant. (Matthew 28:18-20; WCF 27.4, 28.1; WLC Q165; WSC Q94; BCF 33, 34; HC Q68; LCBF 29.1)

What does it mean for baptism to be a “sacrament”?
As a sacrament, baptism is both a sign and a seal of the work of God. (Romans 4:11; WCF 27.1; WLC Q163, Q165; WSC Q94; BCF 33, 34; HC Q65, Q66; LCBF 29.1)

What does it mean for baptism to be a “sign”?
As a sign, baptism symbolizes the work of God.

What does it mean for baptism to be a “seal”?
As a seal, baptism guarantees God’s promise.

What is signed and sealed in baptism?
Baptism signifies and seals the covenant of grace, ingrafting into Christ, regeneration, remission of sins, and being given up to God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life. (Romans 4:11, Colossians 2:11-12, Galatians 3:27, Romans 6:5, John 3:5, Titus 3:5, Mark 1:4, Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16, Rom. 6:3-4; NC; WCF 28.1; WLC Q165; WSC Q94; HC Q66, Q69, Q71; LCBF 29.1)

What else is signified and sealed in baptism?
Baptism symbolizes many other things such as anointing, resurrection, judgment, deliverance, purification, and glorification. In being baptized, one is assured that these things belong to him by faith alone. In short, baptism signifies many, if not all of the virtues of the covenant of grace. (Exodus 40, I Corinthians 15:29, Romans 6:5, Psalm 69, Exodus 14, I Corinthians 10:1-2, Hebrews 9:13-14, Revelation 21; BCF 34)

What is the relationship between sacramental signs and what they signify?
There is a spiritual union between the sign and the thing signified, such that when these things happen, the one is to be attributed to the other. Additionally, it should be noted that there may be a variance in order, and even a span of time between the two things. (Romans 4:11, Genesis 17:4, Matthew 26:27-28; WCF 27.2, 28.6; WLC Q167; BCF 33, 34; HC Q71, Q73)

What does the baptismal rite entail?
Baptism entails the application of water to a person in such a way that the ritual symbolism reflects what is signed and sealed in the sacrament. Whether this involves immersion, effusion, or sprinkling depends on which element of baptismal imagery one wishes to highlight. Immersion well symbolizes death and resurrection. Effusion well symbolizes the eschatological pouring out of the Spirit. Sprinkling well symbolizes the sprinkling of Christ’s blood upon our filthy souls.

Regardless of which baptismal imagery one emphasizes in baptism, Christian baptism is performed in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. If one understands Jesus to be the Second Person of the Trinity, then it is acceptable to baptize in the name of Jesus alone. (Acts 8:36, 38, Acts 10:47, Matthew 28:19, Hebrews 9:10, 13, 19, 21, Mark 7:2-4, Luke 11:38; WCF 28.2, 28.3; WLC Q165; WSC Q94; BCF 34; HC Q69, Q71)

Who should baptize?
Normally, baptism should be administered by an officer of the Gospel, duly appointed. (Matthew 28:18; WCF 28.2; BCF 34)

Who should receive the sacrament of baptism, the sign and seal of the covenant of grace?
All who repent and believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ should receive the sacrament of the covenant of grace. Because baptism is a covenantal sacrament, and because covenantal sacraments are applied to entire houses, the sacrament should be applied to the children of covenant members. (Acts 2:41; Acts 8:12-13; Acts 16:14-15, Genesis 17:7-14, Galatians 3:9, 14, Colossians 2:11-12, Acts 2:38-39, Romans 4:11-12, Matthew 19:13, Matthew 28:19, Mark 10:13-16, Luke 18:15-17, I Corinthians 7:14; WCF 28.4; WLC Q166; WSC Q95; BCF 34; HC Q74)

What is the role of baptism in salvation?
Baptism is an ordinary means of God’s redemptive work. While the Spirit of the Risen Christ is the primary cause of salvation, the Spirit ordinarily works through the baptismal promise, in addition to the preaching of the Word, to accomplish his will. Inasmuch as it can be said that the Spirit ordinarily uses the preaching of the Word to save, so can it be said that the Spirit uses baptism, in conjunction with the preached Word, to bring about faith, and thus to save.

It should be made clear, however, that while God ordinarily works through his ordinary means, God is free to make exceptions. That is to say, salvation is not necessarily withheld from the unbaptized. (Acts 2:38-40, 1 Peter 3:21-22; WCF 28.1, 28.5; WLC Q161; WSC Q85, Q91; BCF 33, 34; HC Q71)

What is the relationship between baptism and church membership?
Baptism is the initiatory rite of membership in the visible church. (I Cor. 12:13; Gal. 3:27-28; NC; WCF 28.1; WLC Q165)

Why is it proper that baptism be related to church membership?
Baptism corresponds to church membership because baptism is a covenantal sign. As membership in the visible church is to be understood as membership in a covenantal community, so it is proper that we view membership in the church according to baptism.

How many times should a person be baptized?
Once. For Christ himself was baptized once – that is to say, he suffered unto death once and for all. Additionally, God’s promises need only be issued once to be true. (Romans 6:3-7; NC; WCF28.7; BCF 34)

NC = Nicene Creed
WCF = Westminster Confession of Faith
WLC = Westminster Larger Catechism
WSC = Westminster Shorter Catechism
BCF = Belgic Confession of Faith
HC = Heidelberg Catechism
LCBF = London Confession of Baptist Faith

Dever-Hart Talk

2009-08-14T19:14:00.005-04:00

Thought it was cool to hear Mark Dever say at about 16:10:

I think many modern American Christians understand the importance of novelty - and there is importance to novelty, "sing a new song" - I mean, there is importance to novelty. But they don't understand the importance of repetition.

Our children, now, they want to hear the same stories again and again. When we're on our death beds, we're not singing a brand new song, usually - we're singing a hymn that we've known from childhood or early in life.

American evangelicals are pretty bad at understanding the importance of repetition. [source]

And at 17:19:

I repeat things a lot here, my congregation is very tolerant. I repeat the same wedding sermon at every wedding.We use the same vows, we use Calvin's vows from Geneva. I use basically Cranmer's form for the Lord's Supper. And I've done the exact same thing for fifteen years here. [source]

I can actually testify to that bit about Cranmer as I actually attended a worship service at his church once.

L'Chaim!

2009-08-08T17:00:00.004-04:00

Whilst perusing our local organic grocer yesterday, Cathleen and I stumbled upon this little gem:

The Jews have done it again. Additionally, note that this particular brew, Messiah Bold, is described as "The Beer You've Been Waiting For!"

The Bending

2009-08-06T11:13:00.001-04:00

Apropos commentary on recent events:

[source]

Jenson on the Theology of the Church

2009-07-30T12:00:00.002-04:00

Robert Jenson's Systematic Theology (p. vii):

Theology is the church's enterprise of thought, and the only church conceivably in question is the unique and unitary church of the creeds. Therefore theology may be impossible in the situation of a divided church, its proper agent not being extant - unless, of course, one is willing to say that a particular confessional or jurisdictional body simply is the one church. To live as the church in the situation of a divided church - if this can happen at all - must at least mean that we live in radical self-contradiction and that by every churchly act we contradict that contradiction. Also theology must make this double contradiction at and by every step of its way.

We commonly speak of such things as "Roman Catholic" or "Baptist" or "Lutheran" theology. Such labels can be used in a harmless historically descriptive sense, as one can say that "Orthodox theology" tends to a Cyrillean Christology. They may be used in a somewhat more ominous descriptive sense, as someone might say that "Reformed theology" cannot accept certain ways of asserting papal primacy. But a theologian who described her or his own works as "Lutheran" or "Reformed" or whatever such, and meant by that label to identify the church the work was to serve, would either deny the name of the church to all but his or her own allegiance or desecrate the theological enterprise. [source]

Again, Let the Reader Understand

2009-07-29T10:16:00.001-04:00

Psalm lxix:

To the choirmaster: according to Lilies. Of David.

Save me, O God!
    For the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire,
    where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
    and the flood sweeps over me.
I am weary with my crying out;
    my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim
    with waiting for my God.

More in number than the hairs of my head
    are those who hate me without cause;
mighty are those who would destroy me,
    those who attack me with lies.
What I did not steal
    must I now restore?
O God, you know my folly;
    the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.

Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me,
    O Lord God of hosts;
let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me,
    O God of Israel.
For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach,
    that dishonor has covered my face.
I have become a stranger to my brothers,
    an alien to my mother's sons.

For zeal for your house has consumed me,
    and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.
When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting,
    it became my reproach.
When I made sackcloth my clothing,
    I became a byword to them.
I am the talk of those who sit in the gate,
    and the drunkards make songs about me.

But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.
    At an acceptable time, O God,
    in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness.
Deliver me
    from sinking in the mire;
let me be delivered from my enemies
    and from the deep waters.
Let not the flood sweep over me,
    or the deep swallow me up,
    or the pit close its mouth over me.

Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good;
    according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.
Hide not your face from your servant;
    for I am in distress; make haste to answer me.
Draw near to my soul, redeem me;
    ransom me because of my enemies!

You know my reproach,
    and my shame and my dishonor;
    my foes are all known to you.
Reproaches have broken my heart,
    so that I am in despair.
I looked for pity, but there was none,
    and for comforters, but I found none.
They gave me poison for food,
    and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.

Let their own table before them become a snare;
    and when they are at peace, let it become a trap.
Let their eyes be darkened, so that they cannot see,
    and make their loins tremble continually.
Pour out your indignation upon them,
    and let your burning anger overtake them.
May their camp be a desolation;
    let no one dwell in their tents.
For they persecute him whom you have struck down,
    and they recount the pain of those you have wounded.
Add to them punishment upon punishment;
    may they have no acquittal from you.
Let them be blotted out of the book of the living;
    let them not be enrolled among the righteous.

But I am afflicted and in pain;
    let your salvation, O God, set me on high!

I will praise the name of God with a song;
    I will magnify him with thanksgiving.
This will please the Lord more than an ox
    or a bull with horns and hoofs.
When the humble see it they will be glad;
    you who seek God, let your hearts revive.
For the Lord hears the needy
    and does not despise his own people who are prisoners.

Let heaven and earth praise him,
    the seas and everything that moves in them.
For God will save Zion
    and build up the cities of Judah,
and people shall dwell there and possess it;
    the offspring of his servants shall inherit it,
    and those who love his name shall dwell in it. [source]

Nice.

2009-07-28T17:48:00.002-04:00

Vos at his spunkiest ("Christian Faith and Truthfulness of Bible History" from Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, p. 460):

I think we are all to some extent conscious of how much more interesting and congenial it is to study the Bible from the point of view of the human experience of the people of God than from that of divine procedure of redemption and revelation. [source]

Radner, Briefly

2009-07-22T15:29:00.004-04:00

Via facebook, Dan Brinkmann, the good man who married Cathleen and I, noticed my posted copy of Ephraim Radner's comments on the nature of biblical types. He thought to probe a bit, asking:

Can you sum this up in your own words?
And what does it mean to you personally?
How does it impact you emotionally?
How do you apply it practically?

All worthwhile questions, I took a little time between building legos and grocery shopping to give him a fairly lengthy answer.
...
In my own words, what Radner is addressing is a very popular, well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided approach to typological interpretation of the Old Testament. I share in his frustration as it becomes very tiresome to hear over and over that each sort of sacrifice in Leviticus ultimately pictures "the wretchedness of sin" or "its bloody consequences" or "the wrath of God that Christ suffered on the Cross for us." It's not that these things are wrong, per se; but it makes reading the vague figures of the Old Testament rather redundant in light of the relative clarity of the New Testament. Even the most bizarre typological readings of Leviticus (Radner gives us some good examples) stem from the same interpretive principle: That the Old Testament says in shadowy images what the New Testament says quite clearly. Ultimately, this makes it fairly challenging to defend spending much time reading the Old Testament literature, save for the possible historical material it may provide.

Radner's point is that, while it is certainly defensible to inform our readings of Leviticus by the events of the Gospel Narratives, it is equally important for us to read our Gospels in light of the details of Leviticus (though this obviously applies to far more than just the book of Leviticus). There is a complex interplay between the themes and content of the Old Testament and the themes and content of the New Testament. While it is encouraging to see people eager to see Christ in the pages of the Old Testament, it would be even more exciting to see a people eager to see things like Exodus patterns, Paschal imagery, and Tabernacle-Temple allusions in the New. Understanding the Exodus, for example, (and its various repetitions throughout the Old Testament!) teaches us important things about Baptism. Things like this are what Radner's after.

Personally, it means a lot. For one, seeing it in publication by a reputable publisher is encouraging because it affirms sentiments that I have already been persuaded by. Also, applying what Radner says to my own Bible reading forces me to really slow down. I spend a lot more time attending to every detail of OT narrative, knowing full well that, with every reading, there is something I haven't seen yet. It assures me that reading the Bible is hardly something I can do lazily.

Additionally, I should note that seeking to find harmony between the Old and the New Testament has been a quest of mine for many years now. It's something that has played a significant role in preventing my apostasy during the university years, and it's something that, as a result of its importance to my faith, has had a great deal to do with my theological and spiritual development. (The details are boring.)

Emotionally, in addition to the warm feelings of affirmation, it has made Bible study something that I get very excited about. Practically, I do this by, well, doing it. I try my darndest to be fair to Scripture, making a very concerted effort to hear it on its own terms rather than importing what are often unhelpful (unhelpful because they mask more than they reveal) biases into the text. This may from time to time leave me unsatisfied with a passage. I have come across things before that, for the life of me, I could not make sense of in a way that cohered with the fullness of the context - but I'm thankful for these times. I'd rather walk away from Scripture befuddled by it than do violence to it for the sake of making my life easier.

Hope I fairly answered your questions, Dan. I'd love to hear some feedback.

Radner on Typology

2009-07-21T23:20:00.004-04:00

This is a fantastic excerpt from Ephraim Radner's commentary on Leviticus (pp. 57-59). It's the preface to the chapter on Leviticus iv, 1 - v, 13. For all you lazy/busy folks out there, I'll embolden the part that most sums up the whole (but you really should read it all if you can, especially since I spent an hour typing it up - with one hand - in a dimly lit room!):

The sacrifices of Lev. 1-3 are given generally. They lay out the form of human history that is gathered up in and by Christ, but they do so with a sweep that universalizes the character of that history of redemption. As the next chapters unfold, we are taken to a more concrete plane, one in which the forms of history are particularized in the actions and consequences of individuals or groups in time. The sacrifices enjoined in this section will take the form of those outlined already - for example, the sin offering of Lev. 4 explicitly partakes of the forms of both the peace offering (Lev. 4:10) and the burnt offering (4:4, 12). They are sacrifices, then, that specify, that elaborate, that engage in the particular stories of the larger history. But they do not alter it or provide alternatives.

The Christian tradition has therefore to tended to read these details almost, in musical terms, as improvisations upon the central themes of the types of Christ's death that were seen as originally laid out in the first chapters. As already noted, Origen was explicit in this claim, and when he comes to these chapters he uses it to bolster his summarizing exposition: "Almost every victim is that is offered partakes of some aspect of the image of Christ, for in him every sacrifice is 'recapitulated'" (Homilies on Leviticus 3.5). This is temporally proved, he says, by the historical fact that, once Jesus died upon the cross, all these particular sacrifices "ceased" (at least for the church).

Origen is well aware of the redundancy this may create in Christian interpretation of a book like Leviticus: everything will inevitably sound the same theme, over and over again. In response, the Christian reader of the book's details will engage in a kind of jouissance, to use Roland Barthe's description, of interpretive experiment, so long as it remains tethered within the central christic figuration that the text exposes. The sacrifices are, in each case, the same offering of himself, but seen from the perspectives of redeemed and fallen flesh respectively. (And this accounts, therefore, for the different treatment of and emphasis upon the fleshly details of skin and excrement in Lev. 4 in contrast to Lev. 1 and Lev. 3.) Similarly, and on a more specific basis, Origen will take up the differing aspects of a particular sacrifice, as in 4:1-12, and relate each to elements of Christ's own self and mission: the kidneys that are burnt refer to Christ's freedom from carnal perturbation; the seven sprinklings of blood by the priest represent the seven gifts of the Spirit; the four horns of the altar that are touched by blood are tied to the four-gospel renditions of the passion; the lobe of the liver stands for human rage, consumed at the altar; and the blood that is poured at the base of the altar points to the final grace of Israel's conversion, which takes place after all the nations are brought in by the church (Homilies on Leviticus 3.5).

In all this, history is explicated and fills out the core meaning of the sacrifice as being Christ's. Still, we might wonder if this history has already been somehow circumscribed by the tight typological fit given it, and in the unidirectional fashion with which is applied, so that Leviticus itself ceases to elucidate in its own right even the figure of Christ, by the time of the Reformation (e.g., Calvin 1996: 2.345).

By the time we reach Calvin, we see something of this pinched character emerge more clearly. If the sacrifices of Leviticus exist for the purpose of indicating Jesus, on what basis do they offer any divine sustenance today for those who know Christ clearly and therefore need no further signs drawn from the obscure reaches of the past? The pedagogical theory - the law as training wheels for the infantile Jews - is dusted off, and the clear sacraments of Christ are retrojected into the Israelites' life as a kind of image staring out from the murky depths of time, but the details of the text - the kinds of animals, the actions taken, the parts of the bodies cut - are important only because they demand care in worship, and of course all people must be careful in their devotion to God. It is a good lesson to bear in mind.

There is an incipient, and understandable, hermeneutic at work in Calvin, comparable to the contemporary practice of engaging foreign culture on the basis of some purported and radically shared existential experience. The Israelites did things so strange to us that we are left trying to find some basic, if only general, bridge by which to make any sense of it (e.g., just like us in our best moments, they tried to be scrupulous in their devotion, they were held to an external account for their behavior, they recognized a God beyond their own manipulation, and so on). The irony is that this kind of fallback on a putative species of common human religiosity derives from a tenacious Christocentricity. The problem, however, is not with the typological framework itself that Calvin uses, which is both inevitable and necessary, but with the historical meaning of its linkages. Not only should the character of the sacrifices be elucidated by the figure of Christ; but, if the subjecting and formative power of the word at work and visible in the Scriptures is to be honored, the figure of Christ ought to be, in a sense, explicated by the sacrifices.

In this case, the movement into the sin offering, and its peculiar character in Lev. 4, represents not simply a restatement of the central dogma of atonement, but rather a detailing of sin's shape as it is engaged by Jesus. And thus, the contours of the Christ are here clarified in a way that would be impossible apart from the fullness of the Scriptures given in this book in particular. Christ's ingathering journey goes through this landscape nor only contingently, but essentially. [source]

This has been said much more simply (though by highlighting a different aspect of biblical interpretation) by the long-hidden Dennis Hou as:

[T]here is the temptation to swallow up the uniqueness of every person and event by typological categories. Everyone is a new Adam, or Moses, or Israel; everything is a new creation, or exodus, or tabernacle. Yes, Joseph is a type of Christ, but so is every other human being that ever was, is, or will be. God makes these categorial cups run over with glory in each individual's life, for life is repetition with difference, so we must never flatten redemptive history into a line or rob particulars of their particularity. How is Joseph a type of Christ in a way that Benjamin isn't? If Solomon is a new Adam, what makes him greater than Adam? Christ recapitulates Adam and Israel, but in fulfilling these roles, does He not also exceed and redefine them? [source]

The Mighty Burden

2009-07-21T12:14:00.003-04:00

A mysterious excerpt from a hidden manuscript written by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named:

With Rieff, we can well ask, Where are the priests? Who is manning the boundaries?

And the answer is that this dimension of pastoral ministry has all but evaporated. Pastors see themselves as proponents of Christianity, teaching "religious" things or assisting people on their personal spiritual journeys. Pastors have lost any sense that they are overseers of a new city and that they thererfore have responsibilities for governance.

In part, this is an effect of the degeneration of the pastoral vocation. If the tension between duty and desire has lost its existential edge in the twenty-first century, it is not because desire has become more vigorous. Instead, the tension has eased because duty has been collapsed into desire. Since Hume, moderns have been forbidden to derive an "ought" from an "is," but it has become second nature to derive an "ought" from a "feels." The consequences lie strewn on the surface of today's social landscape, too obvious to require enumeration.

Historically, a pastoral candidate's desires often had little to do with the Church's call to service in pastoral office. Far from seeking out positions of leadership, the greatest of the church fathers resisted with all their strength. Augustine had to be dragged into the cathedral for his ordination to the bishopric of Hippo. When he was a deacon, John Chrysostom made a pact with a friend that they would enter the priesthood together, but when the friend went forward John was nowhere to be found. Martin of Tours was carried from his cell and conducted to his ordination under guard. Gregory the Great, so we are told by his earliest biographer, fled from Rome to hide in the woods when rumours began to circulate that he was being considered for bishop. A humble anchorite saw in a vision where Gregory was hiding, and the Romans trooped out to bring him back for ordination. Calvin was persuaded to remain in Geneva only because Farel's warnings made leaving even more terrifying than staying. So common was such resistance to ordination that as late as the nineteenth century the patriarchs-elect of Alexandria were led to their ordination wearing shackles.

In the modern church, calling has been reduced to little more than a strong desire to hold position of ecclesiastical leadership. The terror of responsibility for the Church described by many of the leading pastoral writers if earlier centuries is seldom expressed during ordination exams. Candidates with even slight reservations about entering into the ministry are treated with more than a little suspicion.

This dramatic shift in the Church's understanding of calling is part and parcel of what David F. Wells has identified as the professionalization of the clergy, the reduction of the ministry to technical and managerial competence. Pastoral ministry, Wells charges, has been detached from its theological moorings, and has become another career option for the upwardly mobile "helping professional." One might well recoil from a duty imposed by divine vocation; but one aggressively markets oneself for a career. It is no accident that so many pastors disdain the clerical collar, which is, after all, the collar of the slave.

The Church will find herself in a healthier, if more intense and serious, condition when pastoral candidates begin again to appear for their ordination exams wearing chains.

Vos on the Distinction between the Reformed and the Lutherans

2009-07-16T13:39:00.002-04:00

Read this in a really interesting essay on the "Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology" from Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation (pp. 246-247). The paragraph is long, and Vos' prose can be tedious at times, but for what it's worth, it does seem to highlight an important advantage the Reformed have over the Lutherans (though I'd be interested to hear some Lutheran feedback on the issue).

Let us now consider how the requirement of God's honor is reckoned with in this doctrine of the covenant of redemption. After the fall man will never again be able to work in a manner pleasing to God except a completed work of God be performed on his behalf. Earning eternal life has forever been taken out of his hands. Everything that subjectively happens within him can only be a principle and phenomenon of eternal life itself and in no way a prerequisite for eternal life. The obtaining of eternal life thus comes to lie in God, as a work that is His alone, in which His glory shines and of which nothing, without detracting from that glory, can be attributed to the creature. On this point the entire Reformation, both Lutheran and Calvinist, took exception to Rome, which failed to appreciate this fundamental truth. Yet the reasons which had driven both sides to this protest were different. With Luther it was the thirst for peace and stability for a restless conscience which could find no tranquility in Rome's salvation by works. As long as the sinner himself has to do something for his acquittal, his work remains unstable. Thus the sola fide became the shibboleth of the German Reformation, justification, its principle doctrine. One will agree that, despite all the purity with which this doctrine develops and in which, in developed form, it is given anew to the church, the highest point is still not reached, namely that point from which the Scripture itself views the matter when, in the words of Paul, it sees the heart of Abraham's faith in his "giving God the glory" (Romans 4:20). Even in its doctrine of justification Lutheranism did not catch hold of this idea in its fulness. Not a purely theological, but a partly anthropological motif ran through it. It was different with the Reformed. They, too, felt the same necessity to leave the waves of Rome's salvation by works and once again stand on solid ground. But beside and behind this necessity there lay a deeper longing: a thirst for the glory of God that did non primarily meditate on its own peace. When the Reformed takes the obtaining of salvation completely out of man's hands, he does this so that the glory which God gets from it might be uncurtailed. What is more important for him is the realization that God glorifies Himself in the salvation of sinners, whereas the Lutheran is satisfied when it merely becomes evident that man brings nothing of his own instability into the picture. For the Reformed the center of gravity does not lie in justification as such, but in the principle by which the latter is to be judged and which the Scripture everywhere applies when it teaches us to regard the work of salvation in its totality as being exclusively a work of God. [source]

The Parable Explained

2009-07-12T17:29:00.005-04:00

The Eucharist, being that moment when the Word heard becomes the Word embodied and consumed, that moment of feasting together upon the Body of Christ (under the form of Bread and Wine) as the Body of Christ gathered to give thanks, that moment when the Holy Communion of Saints gather to partake in Holy Communion, that moment when the Lord's People gather on the Lord's Day to partake of the Lord's Supper, is the consummation of Christian Liturgy.

34.2 Miles

2009-07-11T16:30:00.004-04:00

This is what Nick and I did today.
And hardly without incident, too. I snapped the brake line to my front tire and my rear brake barely worked at all, so we had to stop at a bike shop on the way home (so as to keep me from getting hit by a car). They fixed me up pretty good, after giving me a good shaming for letting the poor girl really let herself go over the past fifteen years or so.

MJ/WH Intertextuality

2009-07-03T21:50:00.004-04:00

Am I the only person in the world who noticed that

I have the stuff that you want; I am the thing that you need

from "Dirty Diana" shows up five years later as

I've got the stuff that you want; I've got the thing that you need

in "Queen of the Night"?

I mean, quibble if you want with the slight differences between the two, but the rhythmic similarities and common aural tone really betray some sort of intentional link (conscious or otherwise).