anastasis

where am I?

2005-10-25T20:36:00.000-04:00

Well, more blogging news to report.

I've accepted the invite to join WordPress, graciously extended by Travis Stanley. My Square Space site is still up for the time being, links and all, as I transfer things over to the WordPress blog.

This site will, as far as I know, remain active. Don't, however, look for many new posts here.

testing, testing

2005-10-15T13:47:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the lack of posts recently. Anyway, I've been toying around with a new blogging format. You can see the results here. Let me know what you think, but don't go changing your links just yet. I may be back here when my trial at Square Space runs out.

Memento Vivere: Podcasting and Classics

2005-09-22T15:49:00.000-04:00

There's some great stuff in this post on podcasting. Now, if only I had an iPod...

newnan, ga

2005-09-18T21:00:00.000-04:00

So, we've been in Newnan for a month -- time for a bit of reflection.

The job is going well -- so well that some days I think I could do this for several more years. That's not an idea that I allow myself to entertain for too long, mainly because I know that in reality I would be miserable. But, really, this year is running so much more smoothly than last year. Not even my worst group of kids can get me down like one bad day would have last year. I also find that I don't dread going in to work in the morning like I did last year -- decent classroom management will do that for you...

Getting used to Newnan has been a little bit more uncertain. We love our apartment -- it has been nice having a place to come home to that is not a 2-hour's drive away through downtown Atlanta. The town itself is a different matter. It is difficult to know just what to make of this place and the people who live here -- lots of disaffected teenagers, etc. We've found a congregation with which to worship and some wonderful people there. We've also begun to find decent restaurants/coffee shops to hang out at.

All in all, I'm looking forward to autumn and to cooler days -- and to visits from family and friends over the next couple of months. My good friend, Mark, was down this weekend -- we got to go hiking in Warm Springs even though it was probably too warm to do so. Spending time with him has got me looking forward to Furman's Homecoming in late October and to reconnecting with our Greenville friends.

Book News:

The setup of the Latin textbook that I use has caused me to delve more deeply into Roman social history and physical infrastructure (roads, aqueducts, gardens, etc.). Some things on my plate right now:

The Roman Family by Suzanne Dixon

Slavery and Society at Rome by Keith Bradley

Greek and Roman Slavery by Thomas Wiedemann

The Roads of the Romans by Staccioli

I do feel now that I have a more solid grasp on some issues relating to the family that will help me approach Paul's letters -- especially the moral codes in Eph. and Col. more knowledgeably (I plan to read Wayne Meek's The First Urban Christians soon).

merton

2005-09-12T19:03:00.000-04:00

"We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of foregone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge in him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture."

- Thomas Merton

labor day weekend

2005-09-05T19:58:00.000-04:00

Just returned from a weekend trip to Nashville to be with family. As some of you know, my grandfather suffered a minor stroke last week, so it was particularly opportune for us to go and be with him. He has recovered admirably: he had regained all of his speech and motor capabilities within 48 hours, but it shook all of us up nonetheless.

While we were at home, I got to go up to Bowling Green, Kentucky, and spend some time with Dan Greeson. We worshipped with him at a new congo there -- the church at Bowling Green. We were tremendously blessed by our time there on Sunday.

This congo has taken positive steps in breaking some of the bonds of traditionalism and toward revitalizing their worship in meaningful ways. This is particularly apparent with respect to Holy Communion. The Lord's Supper has been a topic that I've spent quite a bit of time on recently, reading everything that I can get my hands on -- both inside and outside of the Stone-Campbell tradition. I've read John Mark Hicks' Come To The Table and some others advocating Lord's Supper reform among churches of Christ and have been intellectually persuaded by what they had to say.

I had never experienced it, however. The church at Bowling Green is the only congo among NI churches of Christ to my knowledge which has thought through and implemented changes in the practice of Communion and last night I got to be a part of that.

It was an amazing occasion to sit around a table with brothers and sisters in Christ and share the body and blood of the Lord and discuss the meaning of the Supper as we were participating in it. Gone was the silent, funerary character of our typical practice of Communion -- in its place was good discussion and sharing about the Lord Jesus Christ and a true meal setting in which these discussions could take place.

More soon...

Pat Robertson

2005-08-27T09:55:00.000-04:00

Scot McKnight's blog contains a good discussion on Pat Robertson's suggestion that the US government "take out" Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Particularly worthwhile was this nugget from poster Bob Robinson:

Pat Robertson represents the syncretism in American Christianity that has allowed the politics of the Right to blend into our Christian faith. Most Christians I know cannot differentiate between the politics of Rush Limbaugh and the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The Christian Scriptures are constantly warning us against syncretism, when aspects of one religion are assimilated into another thus changing the purity of the original faith.
Robertson’s syncretistic Christianity is not the pure religion of Jesus Christ—it is a syncretism of Christianity with American capitalism (because of the oil interests in Venezuela) and extreme right-wing politics (because of Chavez’ leftist agenda). This syncretism has taken Robertson “captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition” (Colossians 2:8) so much that he is no longer following Jesus Christ—it is no longer Christianity.

What’s sad is that he does not even know it. What’s sadder is that many of his viewers don’t know it either.

W.H.C. Frend

2005-08-22T21:21:00.000-04:00

W.H.C. Frend, church historian extraordinaire and author of The Donatist Church, has passed. Here are obituaries from the Church Times and the Daily Telegraph.

checking in

2005-08-11T20:29:00.000-04:00

Started back to work last week -- I'm swamped. The kids seem o.k. so far, but then again everyone plays nice the first week. This is my second year teaching and while I feel much more confident and much more 'together' than last year, there are still many things to learn and to balance.

I'm glad tomorrow is Friday. The tired feeling hit me hard about midday today. That's exactly what I don't need when I have to deal with 6th graders at the end of every day!

Anyway, enough of that. On a lighter note, I get to crow about my latest book purchases: the Clyde Pharr translation of the Theodosian Code and John Matthews' Laying Down the Law (a monograph on the Theodosian Code). Yeah, I know it's totally dorky, but I'm thrilled. My very own copy of the Theodosian Code sitting handsomely on a shelf. Maybe I'll post some more pics later in the week...

Anyway, on a completely different note, go look at the most recent issue of Sojourners magazine. There is a great deal of good sense in this article by Brian McLaren.

is that you?

2005-07-21T19:21:00.000-04:00

Carson Reed has a nice post on the recent decision by the United Church of Christ to affirm same-sex marriages. My wife had a similar experience to his: one of her uncles, a devout Baptist who has only the vaguest knowledge of our religious affiliation, thought that we belonged to the UCC and called in shocked amazement that we belonged to such a group. She cleared up his confusion with a simple, "No, that's not us."

Historically speaking, though, the matter is not quite so simple. There is a connection, albeit a very distant one. As most people familiar with the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement know, Barton Stone and John T. Johnson (representing Alexander Campbell) met in Lexington, Kentucky, on 1 January 1832, and with a handshake brought together Stone's "Christians" and Campbell's "Reformers" in unity. In actuality, the process was much more gradual, but that's another post.

Anyway, not all of Stone's followers went along with the merger, considering their disagreements with the teachings of Alexander Campbell to be too severe to set aside. Geographically, these Stoneite churches were located in Ohio and into New England. As the UCC website puts it:

"The majority of Stone's followers did not join Campbell and instead reaffirmed their ties with the original Christian Connection founded by [James] O'Kelley, [Abner] Jones and [Elias] Smith."

After a period of decline in the late 19th century brought on by sectionalism and other matters, in 1931 the remnants of the Christian Connection joined with the Congregational Churches. In 1957, the group then known as the "Congregational Christian Churches" became one of the founding organizations of the UCC.

So, there you have it. Churches of Christ have distant (yea, very distant) cousins in the UCC.

update

2005-07-16T12:36:00.000-04:00

It's been a hectic last few days.

We are in the process of moving. Thus you will notice that my profile location has changed. The official moving date is Monday, the 25th, but much tearful :-) boxing up of books has taken place already. We spent the day yesterday in Newnan, taking measurements of our new apartment and getting shameless new cell phones.

Last night, back at home, we went to the release party for the new Harry Potter at our local Borders. We hadn't reserved a copy beforehand, but with the help of some highly-caffeinated beverages, we managed to score a copy of the new book around 2 a.m.

I've been hungry for some good fiction for a while, so while we waited, I became engrossed in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (go here for a plot summary). The book is by Susanna Clarke and has been called a sort of "Harry Potter for adults." Imagine Jane Austen and Charles Dickens meet J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis' Narnia series (she lists all of these as especial influences). Anyway, I couldn't put it down and ended up walking out with my own copy.

Lastly, check out this post from Michael Spencer's Internet Monk. It gets to the heart of small church ministry and his own experience is eerily similar to the experience that the minister at our congregation has gone through for almost 4 years now. Christians, take good care of those who proclaim the good news to you!

Stone-Campbell Dialogue

2005-07-14T15:03:00.000-04:00

After a lengthy official silence, the Stone-Campbell Dialogue has released the results of another official meeting -- this time in Dallas, June 5th and 6th. It appears that the envisioned Communion Celebration for 2009 may just come off after all.

Does anyone have any more information than this press release gives us?

UPDATE: Here's a fuller story from DisciplesWorld magazine.

"new" Sappho

2005-07-11T10:34:00.000-04:00

This is a bit late, but Sauvage Noble has a nice post (including text) of the newly discovered Sappho poem (no. 58).

On another scholarly note, Serendipity (scroll down a bit) gives a nice German mnemonic (Eselsbrücke) for the UNUS NAUTA adjective group in Latin. Just wait till I sing this one to my 8th graders!

books!

2005-07-09T12:48:00.000-04:00

So, I've been "tagged." Here goes:

1. How many books have I owned?

I have about 730 (partly in boxes -- we're moving) at our apartment. I have at least another 700-800 -- probably more like 1000 -- in storage at my grandparents' house.

2. What was the last book you bought?

Philip Yancey's The Bible Jesus Read. I've been reading through chunks of the OT in the mornings along with Yancey's thoughts.

3. What was the last book you read?

I'm almost done with Philip Jenkins' The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. I picked this up from the library -- I'd love to own a copy, though. It's a very timely work.

Also, I'm almost done with a collection of Wendell Berry essays entitled Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community. I was in Crawfordville, Georgia, (the home of Alexander Stephens) last week with a friend of mine. We were taken by the fact that the town itself it completely dead -- deserted except for the county courthouse. This is something that I noticed more this week as we drove through essentially dead towns in south Alabama. How do towns that were active and thriving 50-75 years ago die? Is it Wal-Mart? Decline of an agricultural economy built around small farmers? Berry writes about the problem in a useful way and suggests some possible solutions.

Finally, Peter Brown's The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. Brown essentially created Late Antique studies through his work during the 1960s and 1970s. Everything he has written is worth reading -- not just for classicists and scholars of Early Christianity, but also for general readers. The Body and Society is no different.
Read it to get a clear sense of Christian ideas about the body and sexual mores that have persisted to our own times: e.g. the development of the celibate priesthood and Christian squeamishness about sex.

4. What are FIVE books that have meant a lot to you?

Aside from the Bible and in no particular order:

1. I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. I first read this in high school and find myself constantly going back to it.

2. Reviving the Ancient Faith.

3. The Tennessee (in two volumes). I could have listed other books here, but this one ignited an enduring interest in local/state history and helped me to appreciate who I am as an 11th generation Tennessean.

4. Herodotus' The Histories. In college, I participated in an afternoon reading group with my Greek professor in which we read all of Herodotus in translation. More than anything this first set me down my current career path.

5. I could have easily filled this list with works on cofC history and theology, but that would hardly have been completely representative. So, in closing (and to cheat a bit), I'll list anything by Leonard Allen (The Worldly Church, The Cruciform Church, Things Unseen, Participating in God's Life, Discovering Our Roots).

5. Tag five people who haven't played yet.

Five?? How about three?

Curious Incidents
Mark Horner
Theosebes

I'm back

2005-07-09T10:30:00.000-04:00

So...we were in south Alabama all week. Little news from the outside world for the first few days, certainly no internet access (the in-laws had somehow managed to fry their computer).

You go out of town for a week and everything happens. We spent twelve hours on the road yesterday fleeing Hurricane Dennis -- which looks set to hit the Alabama/Florida Gulf Coast directly where we were spending the past couple of days.

Of course there were other things -- Live8, the G-8 meetings and -- above all -- the London bombings. Our last two days on the coast were spent with my brother-in-law and his wife and our new niece. Most of that time was spent on the couch absorbing the 24-hour news cycle via CNN. The news shifted endlessly back and forth between hurricane coverage and events in London. The strange thing, though, was that none of it seemed real -- the news anchors are so glib, so perfectly coiffed, so inane as they spew the meaningless words that keep them on the air constantly, so "I'm American, foreign events don't matter to me." Isn't it ironic that technology that touts its ability to shrink distance and create a global village creates such a distance of empathy and emotion?

More later...

worship as higher politics

2005-06-24T12:38:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Travis Stanley for this link to a Christianity Today article on fundagelical reverence for Dubya.

In the heat of partisan politics (out of which many of these overstatements and misunderstandings arise), we are tempted to forget that the most potent political act -- the one act that deeply manifests and really empowers a "kind and noble society" -- is the worship of Jesus Christ.
In worship we signal who is the Sovereign, not of just this nation, but of heaven and Earth. In worship we gather to be formed into an alternate polis, the people of God. It is here that we proclaim that a new political order -- the kingdom of heaven -- has been preached and incarnated by the King of Kings, and will someday come in fullness, a fullness to which all kingdoms and republics will submit:

"I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. ...The city does not need the sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the Earth will bring their splendor into it" (Rev. 21:2, 23-24).

"contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints"

2005-06-23T17:15:00.000-04:00

I teach Sunday School to a group of high school guys. Currently, we're working our way through the tiny letter of Jude. Jude's letter is deceptively short: it's packed with OT and apocryphal allusions which make simple, Sunday School-style explication difficult because these texts (the Book of Enoch, the Testament of Moses, rabbinic interpretations of stories from the Pentateuch, etc.) are unfamiliar to many Christians.

In addition to being a challenging read, Jude is, arguably, the most neglected letter in the NT -- except for verse 3. In studying Jude, I've come to see just how this verse has been abused and decontextualized in such a way that it has been (and continues to be) used as a weapon against those with whom you disagree. In my own study, I've been relying on Richard Bauckham's very thorough commentary (in the Word Biblical Commentary Series). He argues, and rightly so I think, that the meaning of the phrase "contend for the faith" is governed by how the letter is structured. He provides the following outline:

1-2 Address and Greeting
3-4 Occasion and Theme of the Letter
3 A. The Appeal
4 B. The Background to the Appeal
5-19 B. The Background to the Appeal: A Midrash on the Prophecies of the Doom of the Ungodly
5-7 (1) Three OT types
8-10 plus interpretation
9 (1a) Michael and the Devil
11 (2) Three More OT Types
12-13 plus interpretation
14-15 (3) The Prophecy of Enoch
16 plus interpretation
17-18 (4) The Prophecy of the Apostles
19 plus interpretation
20-23 A. The Appeal
24-25 Closing Doxology

To simplify: after greeting the recipients of his letter, Jude describes their situation, saying that the false teachers who are among them are "designated for...condemnation as ungodly." He then gives several OT and apocryphal examples of people (ungodly teachers and prophets) who had already come to a bad end.

Why is this important?

To quote Bauckham (p. 32): "The structure of the letter is most important for establishing what Jude intended his readers to do to continue the fight for the faith. What his appeal means he spells out in vv. 20-23, which contain entirely positive exhortations." In other words, Jude does not leave his readers in the dark as to what he has in mind by the phrase "contend for the faith." He exhorts them to:

"build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on some who are wavering; save others by snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies."

These are, indeed, positive exhortations that focus on the inner life and one's own spiritual formation and that of one's community (ekklesia). There are some things that Jude very definitely does not have in mind here: slandering one's brother in a public fashion, "writing up those who honestly and sincerely disagree with you on a given issue. By Jude's definition, this is not contending for the faith. Neither is this.

Thoughts?

x & y

2005-06-22T11:41:00.000-04:00

I got the new Coldplay album, X & Y, last week and have listened several times now. Favorites so far are: "Square One," "White Shadows" and the single "The Speed of Sound."

I agree, so far, with several reviews I've read that the ending of the album is somewhat discursive, but I felt the same way about the last album -- it grew on me after several spins, though.

tennessee state flag

2005-06-17T21:56:00.000-04:00

While Hannah and I were in Nashville, we stopped by the Tennessee State Museum to see a fantastic exhibition on the Tennessee state flag, which is 100 years old this year. Above is a picture of a flag displaying the results of a bill passed in the State Legislature in 2000 which mandated that all state flags produced for official use have the top end stamped to prevent them from being flown upside down (which is all too common in my native state).

british churches of christ

2005-06-17T21:21:00.000-04:00

As promised, after a week of frequent Internet outages (gotta love Atlanta!) and a week of vacation, here is the fruit of some Internet browsing into the British Churches of Christ, which I was introduced to in the tasty new Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement.

Anyway, here are a few links:

The United Reformed Church -- In 1981, the majority of British Churches of Christ merged with other groups to form a united body of churches. From the URC website:

In October 1997 the United Reformed Church celebrated its 25th anniversary. Formed in 1972 by the union of the Congregational Church in England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church of England, the United Reformed Church has continued to express its deep commitment to the visible unity of the whole Church. In 1981 it entered into union with the Re-formed Churches of Christ and in the year 2000 with the Congregational Union of Scotland.

A small group of congregations declined to enter the merger. These churches are known as the Fellowship of Churches of Christ (no website available).

There were several influential figures among the British churches whose names are scarcely known in America. Some of them can be found here. Perhaps the most well known of these is J.B. Rotherham, who is widely acclaimed for his Emphasized Bible and his writings on Holy Communion, which are, unfortunately, out of print.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, missionaries from British Churches of Christ made their way to Australia and New Zealand.

Churches of Christ in Australia

Associated Churches of Christ (NZ)

Last, but not least, the umbrella organization that attempts to maintain lines of communication between these groups and their American brethren in churches of Christ, Independent Christian Churches and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is:

The World Convention of Churches of Christ

more on prisoner abuse

2005-06-09T18:48:00.000-04:00

This is a bit belated, but go check out 2005 Amnesty International Report on human rights. Particularly worth looking at is the report on the US.

Newsweek, the Koran and the administration (part 2)

2005-06-09T18:28:00.000-04:00

About a month later, we have official (DoD) confirmation that American interrogators did in fact "kick, step on" and "splash urine upon" the Qu'ran.

The most telling part of the article, aside from fudging the urine stuff: "Southern Command released its findings on a Friday night."

summer of oprah?

2005-06-09T17:51:00.000-04:00

I like William Faulkner. No, I really like Faulkner. He's not the easiest or most accessible author; there's still a great deal about a novel like Absalom, Absalom (for instance) that I just don't understand. That, after having sat through classes devoted to Faulkner in college under an expert who had read Absalom some 30 times and told us that she learned something new each time she read it.

Which is why I was more than a little surprised when I walked into my local Borders the other day and saw this. The latest Oprah's Book Club selection is a box set of three Faulkner novels: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August. I love the idea of reading groups and large numbers of people reading and discussing the same book. I am all for Faulkner gaining a wider audience and for responsible scholars working to make the material accessible (on the hand, doesn't the most rewarding part of reading come from reading and re-reading and wrestling with a text?).

But Oprah?!??

Go ahead, call me elitist, but it strikes me that the average Oprah viewer won't get more than a few pages into, say, The Sound and the Fury, before he throws his hands up in frustration and bafflement. Where The Heart Is this ain't.

varia

2005-06-04T22:47:00.000-04:00

I'm done for the summer, so there'll be lots more time to read, blog, etc.

I finally checked out a copy of the Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, and have spent many hours this past rainy week perusing it. I'm fascinated with the long history of the movement in Great Britain and the theological emphases that Stone-Campbell churches in the UK, Australia and New Zealand have pursued. I'll post some links in the next few days along with, I think, fascinating bits of information.

More to come...

Newsweek, the Koran and the administration

2005-05-17T20:39:00.000-04:00

Linked above is a statement from Mark Whitaker, editor of Newsweek, retracting a recent story which stated that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Qu'ran down a toilet as an interrogation tactic.

Immediately, the administration slammed Newsweek because, in Scott McClellan's words, "the report had real consequences. People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged."

How ironic, coming from this administration. It seems to me that the key issue here is not whether the story is true or false, but simply that it is plausible. Those who are disposed to oppose the U.S. don't need any more confirmation than that.

Given what we, and the rest of the world, know about what U.S. interrogators have proven themselves capable of at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay and about the endless capacity of top-level administration officials to insist that the taint of scandal not rise above the level of a "few bad apples," it hardly seems appropriate for the administration to pontificate about what Newsweek should do. Our credibility on the world stage is already shot, irrespective of mistaken or less-than-thorough reporting on Newsweek's part.

A Christian Affirmation (Part 3)

2005-05-09T20:27:00.000-04:00

Two things:

For some very well thought out analysis of the Affirmation, go here. I was previously unaware of Jimmy Shaw's blog, but will definitely be stopping in more frequently!

At least one signer of the Affirmation has posted some thoughts on why he signed. I appreciate what Dr. Hicks has to say and I pray that all of those who have blogged about the Affirmation recently will find their way to his site and his explanation for signing the document. Here's to similarly irenic and reflective statements from the other signers!

XP,

Chris

A Christian Affirmation (Part 2)

2005-05-06T10:49:00.000-04:00

Some more thoughts on A Christian Affirmation...

Comments on the Affirmation are proliferating across the web (among many others, go here, here and here). Some of the comments center around the perception that the signers wrote the document for nefarious, hurtful purposes: to close ranks, to say who is in/out, to establish a creed, or to say that the 4 items discussed are at the center of the gospel.

As a whole, it seems to me that the Affirmation is designed to be a restatement, not of what is at the core of the gospel, but of the distinctive practices and traditions of Churches of Christ over the past two centuries. To my mind, there is a great deal of difference between the two.

The author(s) of the Affirmation list and discuss four distinctives:

the New Testament is the "original design" for the Church
baptism
weekly Communion
a cappella singing

These four items are not all equal in their proximity to the Cross, to the center of the Christian faith. A cappella worship is not on the same level as the Resurrection. But this is not a document about the core of the Christian faith. Rather, it is about the core of cofC identity and needs to be interpreted as such.

The fundamental question, for the signers, seems to be: can we, in the cofC, slough off our "legacy of legalism, sectarianism, and divisiveness" and at the same time maintain what is best about the restorationist impulse (in a non-sectarian manner)? As I see it, the answer is "yes," and the Affirmation represents a first attempt to do just that -- to place our traditional emphases on a less dogmatic, more reflective and non-sectarian basis. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to me that the Affirmation is meant to be a "once for all" document. Rather, it was meant to invite discussion in order to further clarify these distinctives. As to the wisdom of reserving discussion for "ministers, elders and teachers," this does seem to limit discussion quite a bit. But I would want to know the motives of the author(s) before I pass judgment on this choice.

That's what I think. Your thoughts?

just for fun...

2005-05-04T20:11:00.000-04:00

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Howitzer of Reasoned Discussion.
Get yours.

I wonder what a cofC version would look like...

A Christian Affirmation

2005-05-03T18:48:00.000-04:00

Linked above is a document that appeared in the most recent issue of the Christian Chronicle, a news magazine that serves Churches of Christ. It has occasioned quite a bit of discussion (to follow some of that, go here).

First off, take a few minutes to read the Affirmation. It is, to be sure, a clear and eloquent statement of historic cofC theological stances regarding the New Testament as "constitution" (to use Alexander Campbell's phrase) of the Church, baptism, Eucharist, and a cappella singing in corporate worship. These are (to borrow a Baptist buzzword) the distinctives of cofC identity and have been called into question in recent years. Some of this rethinking has been quite healthy and, generally, presented in an irenic tone. Some of it, on the other hand, has not: in the rush to disassociate themselves from ugly expressions of sectarianism, some have abandoned these markers of the faith as well -- attacking them as legalistic requirements that are merely "traditions." Mindful of these varied movements within Churches of Christ, the signers of the Affirmation explicitly reject the legalism and exclusivism that have dogged our fellowship during the 20th century.

A few specific thoughts occurred to me after reading and chewing on it for a while:

The place of tradition: Jaroslav Pelikan famously said: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition." I think that the signers of the Affirmation recognize this implicitly: there is value in the understandings of our spiritual forebears. For them, cofC understandings of baptism, Communion, etc. are based upon the received wisdom of our ancestors (Stone, Campbell, Scott, etc.) AND sound exegesis of the Holy Scriptures. But, in saying this, they have cut themselves off from one of the foundational impulses of Churches of Christ: distrust and rabid skepticism of tradition. To make myself clear, I doubt that very many of their readers (at any place on the cofC theological spectrum) will even accept the validity of an appeal to tradition. Progressives and conservatives regularly display knee-jerk reactions to the concept of tradition (which is seen as "legalistic," "denominational," or "Catholic"). This is unfortunate in the extreme: the stabilizing force of tradition could, I think, be effective medicine for many of our intramural arguments.

More thoughts later. There are other points that I'd like to make about the Affirmation regarding creedalism, unity, and "things of first importance" (1 Cor. 15.3).

kinko, kinkere, bibipi, jamitum

2005-05-02T17:30:00.000-04:00

Sauvage Noble has a wonderful little post on the trials of theses/dissertations (the deadlines, the lack of coherence, etc.).

Remembering a Sometimes Progressive Pope

2005-04-26T18:37:00.000-04:00

Not to belabor papal issues, but here's a pretty good article about the late John Paul II. Mrowka has some pretty good comments about how JPII's definition of the phrase "culture of life" has been hijacked and truncated to refer almost solely to abortion by neo-con politicians in the US.

For the late pope, the culture of life was a (as I've read elsewhere) "seamless garment." While it included abortion, it also included opposition to state-sponsored death (war, capital punishment, genocide) and took into account the ways that societies enable a culture of death by creating conditions which perpetuate poverty and turn a blind eye to disease (think HIV/AIDS in Africa). But where does your average Republican politician stand on these issues? When is the last time that you heard a neo-con pundit talking about the culture of life in relation to the 100,000+ civilian deaths that resulted from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (according to Johns Hopkins University study)?

(This is my last pope post -- I promise :-)

Latin is back at the Vatican

2005-04-23T09:08:00.000-04:00

This past week, my kids were floored when I told them that the new pope had delivered his first sermon in Latin (and then passed around the text). This BBC article notes that Latin is making a comeback in the Vatican. Enjoy!

Shock! New Pope a Catholic!

2005-04-22T08:57:00.000-04:00

Opinion - Gerard Baker

Baker hits the nail on the head regarding much of the media coverage of Benedict XVI. Spectacular ignorance of the internal dynamics of the Catholic Church has led the media to treat this selection process like a U.S. presidential election and, I think, to overexaggerate the importance of American Catholics (which, I read somewhere, make up about 6% of the worldwide Catholic Church). Dire predictions of an exodus of American Catholics have revealed the shocking arrogance and self-absorption of the American media -- which comes out in the form of them not-so-subtly suggesting to the Catholic Church what it should have done.

more on benedict xvi

2005-04-19T21:04:00.000-04:00

What appears to be a new blog has just about everything you need to know about the new pope:

Pope Benedict XVI

Hopefully, this site isn't a fly-by-night novelty item.

habemus papam

2005-04-19T20:48:00.000-04:00

I've been giving my students Latin phrases (pontifex maximus, cum clave, etc.) to help them digest the events taking place in Rome. Some appreciate, some don't. Some haven't heard of the pope. One of the more common responses I've gotten is "I'm not Catholic." To which I typically respond, "Well, I'm not either. But this man is the spiritual leader of over 1 billion people; you should probably at least know who he is."

Anyway, I bought and have begun to digest the first sections of the Catholic Catechism. The text clarifies some points in ways that preachers that I have known never have. More later...

Interesting link for the day:

How I Made My Peace With the Roman Catholic Church

If that isn't enough to get me in trouble, here's some more:

What place does the pope have in the lives of non-Catholics?

Enjoy!

in america

2005-04-12T20:21:00.000-04:00

The editors of The Atlantic recently invited Bernard-Henri Levy to take a Tocquevillian excursion around America and chronicle what he found. The first installment appears in this month's Atlantic.

Levy's America can be a depressing place: one is reminded of Herodotus in reading his narrative of the moribund condition of the northern cities (Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit): "For most of those which were great once are small today; and those which used to be small were great in my own time. Knowing, therefore, that human prosperity never abides long in the same place, I shall pay attention to both alike."

It can also be downright weird. Especially of interest to me were his comments about America's mega-malls, both spiritual and secular. Levy makes stops at the Willow Creek megachurch in suburban Chicago and the Mall of America in Minnesota.

The banks in America look like churches. But here is a church that looks like a bank. It has the coldness of a bank: its futuristic, somber architecture. No cross, no stained-glass windows, no religious symbols at all. It is ten o'clock in the morning. The faithful are beginning to pour in. Or perhaps one should say "the public." Video screens are pretty much everywhere. A curtain rises to the side of the stage, revealing a picture window that opens onto a landscape of lakes and greenery. And now the bank begins to resemble a congress.
On the stage a man and a child in shorts, under a tent, discussing the origin of the world, eating popcorn.

Levy, an atheist, gets to the heart of what, for many, is the real issue with the contemporary church fad:

Inspired by a former member of the Baptist church on the Avenue du Maine, in Paris, deliberately "nondenominational" and, because of this, using every marketing technique to target a maximum number of customers (sorry—potential faithful), the Willow Creek Community Church, in South Barrington, Illinois, gets 17,500 worshippers every weekend, and has 10,000 affiliated churches dotting the country. Power? Political influence and aim? That remains to be seen. What is obvious is the power of a religion whose secret is perhaps, simply, to get rid of the distance, the transcendence, and the remoteness of the divine that are at the heart of European theologies. A present God this time; a God who is there, behind the door or the curtain, and asks only to show himself; a God without mystery; a good-guy God; almost a human being, a good American, someone who loves you one by one, listens to you if you talk to him, answers if you ask him to—God the friend, who has your best interests at heart.

Nicely paired up with the Willow Creek carnival is the Mall of America. I'll quote Levy at length here:

It's a mall. The biggest one in the United States. The second biggest in the world, after the one in West Edmonton, Alberta...It's a New Age temple of consumption. It's a church—yet another!—to the glory of triumphant capitalism and neo-American living for business. Except—and this is where things get interesting—it's meant to be a lively gathering place. It's the one place in maybe all of Minnesota where lonely social misfits, addicted to the Internet and to the glamour of the virtual, come to experience reality and get a shot of physical community. There are day-care centers here. Restaurants. Cinema multiplexes showing the best Hollywood has to offer. A bank where you can deposit your money before you spend it. An amusement park, "Camp Snoopy," with a roller-coaster and elaborate fountains. Lego dinosaurs in the Lego Imagination Center. A business school, the National American University, for hardworking teenagers. Greenery. A health clinic. What haven't the mall designers thought of? What possible circumstance of existence hasn't found a setting in this cocoon, this happy metropolis, where you could, in principle, spend your entire life? There are "mall walkers," about 200 a day, who come here not to buy anything but just to walk, because it's free, the weather is always clement, never too hot or too cold, and, above all, it's safe, without danger, under surveillance 24/7. They even ended up forbidding children under fifteen to enter after 6:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays unless accompanied by an adult, when word got out that bands of wild children were preparing to sow terror here, like wolves. Hence the patrols of volunteer "Mighty Moms" and "Dedicated Dads" who come on the weekends to watch over and chaperone unruly children. So you have to wait till you turn fifteen to have the privilege of attaining the holy of holies and becoming a true Mall goer. The ideal thing is to celebrate your eighteenth birthday here at the Mall. There is an entire population in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul whose dream is to come here on the major occasions of life, to these long, windowless galleries, devoid of fresh air, dotted with surveillance cameras and the occasional sniffer dog, noisy, stifling. They come here to pick one another up. Flirt. Lift their spirits when things aren't going well. Hang out. Give themselves a festive honeymoon. Get married.

And, for Levy, the chilling future that this portends:

What is the effect on the Americans of today of this confined space, this aquarium, where only a semblance of life seems to subsist? It brings to mind the easily led, almost animal-like face Alexandre Kojève said would be the face of humanity at the arrival (which he described as imminent) of the end of history. It brings to mind the "absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild" authority predicted by Tocqueville, the dominant characteristic of which would be a state of "perpetual childhood" in which the master is "well content that the people should enjoy themselves provided they have only enjoyment in mind." And in both cases we are gripped by an obscure terror, as if, suddenly, we have discovered the true face of Big Brother: enveloping and gentle, pure love—and thus all the more perilous.

Food for thought.

back from vacation

2005-04-08T22:39:00.000-04:00

Well, I dropped off the face of the earth for a week; now I'm back! My wife and I just spent the week in New Orleans. We had a wonderful time.

While in the city, I picked up a copy of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. I had been made to read this book in high school, but I distinctly remember not enjoying the book at all. This is a quintessential New Orleans novel, so I decided to give it another try. Given another decade of education and a trip to New Orleans, I was in a much better position to appreciate the novel. To begin with, it is absolutely hilarious. Ignatius J. Reilly's combination of absurdly learned discourse and "worldview" with his complete shiftlessness was immediately compelling -- I couldn't put the book down.

A couple of choice quotes from Ignatius:

"Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate."

and

"'Then you must begin a reading program immediately so that you may understand the crises of our age,' Ignatius said solemnly. 'Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda. Now that I think of it, you had better skip the Romantics and the Victorians, too. For the contemporary period, you should study some selected comic books...I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he's found himself. His morality is rather rigid, also. I rather respect Batman.'"

But Toole sets this larger-than-life screwball in the midst of a landscape filled with equally flawed characters all convinced of their personal rectitude. This is ultimately what drives the book and what engenders its most powerful lessons.

More soon...

Good night!

varia

2005-03-28T18:51:00.000-05:00

It has been a hectic week: for quite some time now, I've been on the verge of finishing a draft of the third chapter of my M.A. thesis. Well, it's close now; I can taste it. I expect to defend by the summer.

I have to say that I've been enjoying this last stretch of research immensely. It has taken awhile, but I think that I have gotten my head around the role of miracle in the early hagiographies (for which, see Clare Stancliffe's St. Martin and his hagiographer [Oxford, 1983]).

Other recent reading includes:

God's Plagiarist by R. Howard Bloch (University of Chicago Press, 1994). It deals with the Abbe J.-P. Migne, who is best known in the world of patristics as the man who edited the Patrologia Latina and the Patrologia Graeca, a huge collection of approx. 500 volumes presenting original texts of virtually every late antique and mediaeval theologian, ecclesiastical historian, et al.

We got tickets!

2005-03-19T17:03:00.000-05:00

We got tickets! My wife and I are going to see U2 in Atlanta in November!

Restating the obvious...

2005-03-19T08:55:00.000-05:00

Click on the link above for some thoughts on congregational autonomy. Jason doesn't say anything particularly earth-shattering, but how often we forget these truths!

New Books!

2005-03-14T19:34:00.000-05:00

Always a time of great excitement. Let's see, there's:

Worship in the Early Church (Eerdmans, 1974). This is an older text, but still useful -- chapters on prayer, hymnody, preaching, baptism and the Eucharist, among others.

and

Colossians Remixed (IVP, 2004). I hope to begin reading this soon -- thoughts forthcoming then.

And for the kiddies...

Learning Latin through Mythology (Cambridge UP, 1991). This seems like pretty good supplemental material for Latin I students -- at least that's what I'm banking on.

thoughts on worship

2005-03-13T21:42:00.000-05:00

Just got in from a long day -- two worship services and an afternoon of fairly successful thesis writing.

It's nothing new, but it struck me squarely in the face today: our worship (i.e. the worship of the congregation with which I assemble) is crippled by ritualism. For the millionth time, the "president" of the Lord's Table (to borrow a now-archaic term) read the standard biblical passages regarding the Eucharist (Acts 20.7, 1 Corinthians 11.23ff.).

What is wrong with these passages? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But something is definitely wrong when they -- read without comment -- are the only way, week in and week out, that the minds and hearts of the congregation are prepared for the Supper.

It seems that these passages are read because they give us a law, a ritual, that we have to observe in order to be pleasing to God. There is no intimation, ever, that there might be any deeper level of significance to the bread and the wine. What is significant, in the minds of those who officiate week in and week out is the performance of the act -- that we have done it on the first day of the week, every first day of the week.

There are so many important theological themes that the Supper addresses -- suffering, sacrifice, community, fellowship, unity, anticipation of heaven, et al. But these are themes that are ignored in favor of emphasizing merely that we do it.

We've made an idol out of the performance of the act itself. Can this sort of self-centered worship be truly acceptable to God?

Life on the Vine

2005-03-12T17:02:00.000-05:00

More thoughts from Philip Kenneson's Life on the Vine:

Our gathered worship might also remind us that not all relationships must be rooted in self-interested exchanges. We do not offer our praise and thanksgiving to God because God needs it. God is ceaselessly and eternally praised by innumerable hosts whom we simply join when we lift our voices in praise and adoration. This is not to suggest, of course, that God does not take pleasure in our worship. I suspect, however, that the pleasure that God takes in our worship is inseparable from its being offered freely, from its character as a gift. We do not gather to praise God with an eye toward what we will receive in return, or in order to keep God pacified for another week.

Nor, for that matter, do we ultimately gather merely because "we are supposed to" or in order to make sure that we have checked off each of our five acts of worship for the week. Too often, local congregations have become so concerned with the actual performance of the acts that the significance of the acts (esp. the Lord's Supper) gets lost.

So, what is worship about? Kenneson provides more clues:

We gather first of all out of gratitude, as a response to God's prior activity. We gather to give God praise for creating and sustaining the entire cosmos and for creating us in the divine image in order that we might have communion with God and with one another. We gather in order to give God praise for creating a covenant people, Israel, who would be a light to the nations and through whom all nations would be blessed. We gather to give God praise for sending the Son in the person of Jesus Christ, in order that we might be reconciled to God and the rest of the cosmos. We gather to give God praise for pouring out the Spirit upon the church that we might be the body of Christ for the world.
There are, of course, many more reasons why we might gather to praise God. I hope, however, that the point is clear: in gathering to praise God as God deserves to be praised, we attempt to set aside our self-interestedness and focus our attention on the One who creates and sustains all life. (italics mine, CRC)

What sort of self-interestedness might we bring with us to worship? One that is often overlooked is the idol of precision and of the five acts. When the mere performance of the acts becomes our primary focus, focus on God and his mighty acts can (and often does) become secondary.

The Beirut Wall Isn't Falling

2005-03-11T18:57:00.000-05:00

The article linked above examines some of the premature assertions -- in this case, comparisons to 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall -- made in the media, foreign policy circles and other places about the political situation in Lebanon.

I am all for the expansion of freedom in Lebanon and the expulsion of an occupying force, but it is important that the Lebanese uprising be understood in its immediate context rather than in the context of the at-home political fortunes of the Bush Administration.

more on lebanon

2005-03-07T18:20:00.000-05:00

Well, it's a bit late, but here's a gem from the President from last week. He references a meeting between Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and the French foreign minister and says that he applauds the meeting:

"where both of them stood up and said loud and clear to Syria, you get your troops and your secret services out of Lebanon so that that good democracy has a chance to flourish."

Pot?
Meet Kettle.

(audio of quotation can be found at NPR).

a real trend?

2005-03-07T12:39:00.000-05:00

As a follow-up to Daniel Schorr's comments about Lebanon, go here for more thoughts on what the latest wave of democratic movement (in Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) means for the Bush administration.

Life on the Vine

2005-03-05T13:33:00.000-05:00

I've just begun reading Philip Kenneson's Life on the Vine. Here's a worthy observation from the introductory chapter, titled "Dying on the Vine?"

Theological reflection that is of service to the church must be bilingual, speaking of both theological truths and cultural realities. To be able to speak only one language is to rob the church of the perspective it needs in order to sustain a faithful witness to the world. The church must always be prepared to make critical discernments about itself and about the wider culture in which it participates. Such discernments, when exercised under the guidance of the Spirit, help to prune the unproductive growth from our lives. Without good pruning, trees or vines use all of their available resources simply to sustain their expanding network of branches. For this reason, the farther the branches grow from the main trunk or vine, the less likely they are to bear good fruit. Furthermore, as Jesus remarks in the Gospel, even the branch that is already bearing fruit remains a candidate for pruning, since such activity may spur the production of even more and better fruit.

Kenneson's use of the metaphor of language is powerful. Conservative (i.e. non-institutional) churches of Christ often miss this very important point. We have been quite strong in speaking the language of pure doctrine about the work of the church, MDR, etc., but we have failed (sometimes spectacularly so) to learn the language of the culture that we live in, i.e. in making our message comprehensible to anyone other than ourselves. For all of the recent zeal among our brethren to explore new media of communication, such as the Internet (and this is a good thing), we have neglected to frame our message in ways that are understandable to those who may encounter it.
Our engagement with the culture in which we are embedded has been ambivalent at best. Those who do most of our thinking along these lines (e.g. the writers for Truth Magazine) have virtually refused to address the intellectual currents of our day (e.g. postmodernism, biblical scholarship) in any serious way other than to dismiss them out of hand. This only serves to spread irrational fear among members in local assemblies and to stifle discussion within our own ranks. This has to change, if we are to survive.

a crown of thorns

2005-03-03T21:07:00.000-05:00

While we're on the subject of Civil War history, here's a snippet from a Catholic blogger, speaking of Jefferson Davis' imprisonment in Massachusetts awaiting trial:

While sitting in prison awaiting a trial for treason (a trial which would never come), Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederate States of America and not a Catholic, received a gift of consolation from His Holiness Pope Pius IX. The gift was a crown of thorns (with thorns measuring two inches long) woven by the pope himself and an portrait of the Vicar of Christ, autographed with the words from Holy Scripture, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." The crown of thorns and the portrait are both on display at the Confederate Museum in New Orleans, LA.

I had heard this story before, but was only recently able to trace the provenance of it. Enjoy!

4 March 1861

2005-03-03T18:34:00.000-05:00

4 March 1861 marks the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's accession to the presidency of a truncated United States. His first inaugural contains this gem regarding the "domestic institutions" of the South:

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that--
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:

Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause--as cheerfully to one section as to another.

(italics mine, CRC) I suppose the point to remembering this less-than-honorable moment in the life of our only sainted president is that historical reality is often messier and much more tentative than the rosy glow of later histories let on.

Lebanon and Iraq

2005-03-01T19:15:00.000-05:00

[First off, for links to the latest on the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister and today's promise (?) from Syria that they would withdraw troops, go here and here.]

Anyway, I was on my commute home this evening listening to NPR. They were carrying Daniel Schorr's commentary on the situation in Lebanon (which Condoleeza Rice has somewhat fatuously dubbed the "Cedar Revolution"). Schorr is usually a reliable source for some of the most delicious anti-administration commentary around. But not today.

In addressing the peaceful demonstrations in Beirut, he tied them to the 30 January Iraqi elections. He reminded his listeners of how, in the months prior to the invasion of Iraq, the President had spoke of bringing democracy to Iraq and thereby transforming it into a beacon of freedom in the Middle East. Noting that the Iraqi elections were "successful," he went on to say that, perhaps, President Bush had been correct.

There is a problem with this, as I see it. Consider the circumstances: Iraq has had democracy brought to it at gunpoint. For the past two years, the U.S. military has occupied Iraq, unleashing an ever-expanding native and foreign resistance that has crippled its economic and political stability and created an environment of fear which most Iraqis live with day in and day out. The election was a belated carrot, supported chiefly in regions of the country that had the most to gain by it. That's not to say that it wasn't a step in the right direction; it seems to me, however, that the election has done little to salve religious and ethnic tension and can hardly serve as a beacon under the circumstances.

In Lebanon, on the other hand, what seems to be occurring is a peaceful grassroots revolt against foreign domination that takes its cues from the recent peaceful uprisings in Georgia and the Ukraine. In the face of a violent act, the Lebanese people have named the evil among them and, through non-violent action, are expelling it from their midst. They have, so far, rejected the cycle of violence and retaliation that has engulfed the U.S. presence in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So, no, I'm not quite sure that the moves toward democracy in Iraq and in Lebanon are parallel or necessarily have anything to do with one another.

Reflections on Elections

2004-11-03T20:55:00.000-05:00

Linked above is a pretty neat article, written by commentator Joseph Sobran, about the problems with democracy, which are ever more apparent with each passing election.

The past two election cycles have indicated just how the institutions of the Republic have been gutted. Kerry's quick concession will have one benefit: the Electoral College will survive for at least one more election cycle. But I wonder just how much longer an institution that is perceived to be elitist and anti-egalitarian can survive?

I'm back

2004-09-25T20:37:00.000-04:00

Hi all,

Well, after a couple of months off getting settled into a new job, I'm ready to start blogging again. So check back soon for more.

One more thing...

2004-07-21T15:02:00.000-04:00

A big thanks to Travis Stanley for this post on his "Blogging with the Saints" site. St. Ephrem's respect and humility before the text would serve us well when we start to obsess about every detail of the Genesis account.

Public Less Fearful of Terrorist Attack

2004-07-21T14:28:00.000-04:00

According to an article in today's Washington Post, the Bush administration worries that Americans just aren't as scared as they should be. These people constantly talk about protection and "homeland" security, but when it comes right down to it, this man's re-election is based upon fear, upon convincing people that we need him to protect us from our worst nightmares.

I'm thankful that God calls his children to be "peacemakers" (Matthew 5.9) and to "live in love" (Ephesians 5.2). One of the NT writers said that "perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4.18). I'll take that path; Mssrs. Bush and Cheney can take theirs.

The aim of knowledge

2004-07-09T17:45:00.000-04:00

So, I've been reading Richard Weaver's trenchant Ideas Have Consequences. There are plenty of snippets that I could share but here's one that encapsulates alot of my thinking about the purpose and direction of my life as an academic.

The split in the theory of knowledge which took place at the time of the Renaissance is enough to account for that form of ignorance which is egotism. Under the worldview possessed by medieval scholars, the path of learning was a path to self-deprecation, and the philosophiae doctor was the one who had at length seen a rational ground for humilitas...An opposing conception comes in with Bacon's "knowledge is power." If the aim of knowledge is domination, it is hardly to be supposed that the possessors of knowledge will be indifferent to their importance. On the contrary, they begin to swell; they seek triumphs in the material world (knowledge being meanwhile necessarily degraded to skills) which inflate their egotism and self-consideration. Such is a brief history of how knowledge passes from a means of spiritual redemption to a basis for intellectual pride.

As I've gone through college and, now, through the first few years of graduate study, I've discovered the paradox that the more I learn, the less I know. And, as Weaver indicates, that is the beginning of humility. None of this is to toot my own horn. But I have noticed in so many churches a fear of higher education that springs (I think) from a fear of how the educated handle their knowledge (with arrogance, with contempt of others). So, it remains for me and for all who pursue higher education to consider how we use our knowledge and the responsibility that that knowledge places upon us.

a warning for IE users

2004-07-07T17:50:00.000-04:00

I usually try to avoid techie stuff, but this looks like it's worthy of wide distribution. In short, if you use Internet Explorer, you may want to reconsider.

Remembering the 'restoration' - Saturday, 06/26/04

2004-06-26T17:00:00.000-04:00

It's been a hectic week! We've just finished VBS at our congregation (which I was in charge of) -- we had almost 60 kids the last two evenings.

Anyway, back to blogging.

The Tennessean (Nashville's daily newpaper) contains an article on this weekend's festivities at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the signing of the "Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery" in 1804. Also mentioned is the long-awaited debut of the Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement.

Alexander Campbell Saved? (Part 2)

2004-06-18T15:24:00.000-04:00

The evolution of Alexander Campbell's understanding of baptism

As noted in my first post on this subject, Thomas and Alexander Campbell labored and studied extensively before reaching the conclusion that immersion was God's will. Being convicted of that, they submitted to baptism at the hands of Matthias Luce, a Regular Baptist preacher, in June 1812 [Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, 1.395]. Yet, almost a decade later, at the time of the Campbell-Walker and Campbell-McCalla debates, we find that Alexander Campbell was still studying and that his understanding of the design (i.e. the purpose) of baptism was still developing. Richardson himself hints at this when he says, at the end of chapter 18 of the Memoirs: "The full import and meaning of the institution of baptism was, however, still reserved for future discovery" [1.405]. It was only during the 1820s, a full decade after his baptism, that Campbell came to the conclusion that baptism was "for the remission of sins."

Several questions come to mind at this point for brother Hafley:

1) Campbell, it is well known, was never re-baptized, even after he came to the understanding that baptism was "for the remission of sins." Why not? Was his first baptism, done in obedience to the command of God, valid?

2) What about Matthias Luce, the Baptist minister who baptized him? Does the fact that he was a Baptist invalidate Campbell's baptism? To put it another way, do the beliefs of the baptizer in any way determine the validity of the baptism? I don't want to read too much into brother Hafley's article, but I have often heard it said on this topic that "one cannot be taught wrong and baptized right." Is this true? (Campbell, after all, taught himself on this subject.) If it is true, what does it say about the power of God?

3) Should Campbell have undergone re-baptism many years later when he understood that God, in baptism, effects the remission of sins? Campbell clearly did not think so. Roderick Chestnut, in an article entitled "John Thomas and the Rebaptism Controversy," [in Baptism and the Remission of Sins, ed. David Fletcher, Joplin, MO: College Press, 1990] discusses Campbell's views on this very point. Campbell likened baptism to a wedding ceremony. Working off of 1 Corinthians 3.21-23, he asserts that the believer who is "in Christ" through baptism has all things:

"Because we are Christ's, we have all things. . . .Among these 'all things' we can easily find the forgiveness of sins. . . .Some persons have thought that because they did not understand the import of christian immersion, at the time of their immersion, they ought to be immersed again in order to enjoy the blessings resulting from this institution; but as reasonably might a woman seek to be married a second, third, or fourth time to her husband, because at the expiration of the second, third, and fourth years of her marriage, she discovered new advantages and blessings resulting from her alliance with her husband, of which she was ignorant at the time of her marriage" [Campbell, "Ancient Gospel -- No. VI [:] Immersion," Christian Baptist 5 (2 June 1828): 447].

This is not to say that Campbell thought that all baptisms were necessarily valid. He does think that there are reasons for baptism that are invalid. But it is clear that, in Campbell's view, perfect understanding was not necessary for a baptism to be valid. In other words, God remits sins in baptism whether we fully understand that at the time of our baptism or not.

Pro-Life

2004-06-17T22:32:00.000-04:00

Travis Stanley blogs today about the meaning of (pro)life. I read the article in Sojourners that he cited a couple of weeks back and it really challenged me to think about my own pro-life stance more deeply especially as it relates to political affiliations. The Republican Party does oppose abortion, but that opposition often comes across as rather shallow; in other words, Republicans don't seem to care about the baby once it leaves the womb. Furthermore, they seem intent on prosecuting wars all around the world that take the lives of innocents in untold numbers. The Democrats seem to have the opposite problem: they oppose war but wholeheartedly support abortion. All this without even mentioning other life-and-death issues (euthanasia, the death penalty, etc.).

At any rate, it looks as though there are now resources for a more comprehensive pro-life ethic. Check out A Seamless Garment (a.k.a. A Consistent Life Ethic) for more information.

New Books

2004-06-15T09:54:00.000-04:00

Just finished The Return of the King. It left me feeling lonely at the end -- when you spend a great deal of time with a group of characters, often you are loath to part with them. On the subject of Tolkien, I just bought Matthew Dickerson's Following Gandalf, but I probably won't get to it for a couple of months at least. Dickerson interprets Tolkien's Middle Earth tales through the lense of free will and moral responsibility and makes what appears to be a convincing case for a Christian interpretation of the works.

Also, for bedtime reading, I've begun Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. I've owned this book for years but have never read it. My interest was rekindled after a recent vacation that my wife and I spent on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina. Ocracoke is best known as the site, in November 1718, of a bloody naval battle that resulted in the death of Capt. Edward Teach (a.k.a. Blackbeard). Anyway, the story is told in A General History of the Pyrates, which was for many years attributed to Daniel Defoe. As it turns out, that's not the case; the book still makes for great reading though. Aarrgh!

Link of the Day: "Torture, War, and Presidential Powers" by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) (via the always-provocative LewRockwell.com).

Alexander Campbell Saved?

2004-06-09T20:49:00.000-04:00

A few thoughts on the article linked above...

First, pace my brother Hafley, A. Campbell's view of baptism did evolve. Richardson's Memoirs (I.396-397) indicates that both Thomas and Alexander Campbell had spent a great deal of time studying and developing their views on the subject of baptism at the time of their baptism in June 1812:

"In a very long address, he [Thomas] accordingly reviewed the entire ground which he had occupied, and the struggles that he had undergone in reference to the particular subject of baptism, which he had earnestly desired to dispose of, in such a manner, that it might be no hindrance in the attainment of that Christian unity which he had labored to establish upon the Bible alone....but having at length attained a clearer view of duty, he felt it incumbent upon him to submit to what he now plainly saw was an important Divine institution."

Richardson goes on to say that they (Thomas and Alexander) understood baptism to be a command of God and were thus immersed. It was only later, at the time of the Walker and McCalla debates (in the mid-1820s) that Campbell formulated his understanding of baptism "for the remission of sins."

The fundamental question, which Hafley doesn't quite address head on, is this: "Was Alexander Campbell saved?" This is an uncomfortable question for him, though, because of its implications. According to brother Hafley's baptismal theology, Campbell cannot have been saved because he was not baptized specifically "for the remission of sins." On the other hand, however, it is embarrassing to state outright that the man who initiated the Restoration Movement is currently burning in hell. So, brother Hafley is left with a conundrum.

It is not a new conundrum though. In a 1901 written debate carried in the Gospel Advocate, J.D. Tant and James A. Harding discussed the following proposition: "The Scriptures teach that a man must believe and understand that baptism is 'for,' in the sense of 'in order to,' to the remission of sins at the time of his baptism to make said baptism valid." Tant affirmed and Harding denied.

In the course of the debate, the subject of A. Campbell's baptism came up. Tant is caught on the horns of the same dilemma that our brother Hafley is caught upon: from his rigid insistence that baptism is only "for the remission of sins" it follows that Campbell was not scripturally baptized. But Tant can't bring himself to say that outright. Harding catches him in this. A statement in Harding's "Fourth Reply" to Tant brings this dilemma into sharp relief:

"He [Tant] likes Campbell and Scott, hence he appears to be satisfied with their baptism, though they did not then understand eis remission; he has no such partiality for Baptists in general, so he repudiates their baptisms, though they understood eis remission just as well as Campbell and Scott. If to understand eis remission is necessary, it is certain they were not baptized."

So it is with brother Hafley.

Disciples mourn passing of Ronald Reagan

2004-06-08T22:07:00.000-04:00

DisciplesWorld.com has a nice article about Ronald Reagan's affiliation with First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Dixon, Illinois and Disciples-related Eureka College. Reagan was the third president to be affiliated with the Stone-Campbell movement (along with James Garfield and Lyndon Johnson).

Recently, I've been involved in a discussion group that is reading Thomas Hobbes' magnum opus, Leviathan. Personally, I'm coming from this work from two different angles: first, I'm pursuing a description of Bushian neoconservatism as "an overenthusiastic reading of Hobbes' Leviathan" and second, I'm tracing for myself Alexander Campbell's Enlightenment milieu. Anyway, the following quote comes from Leviathan 5.3:

"...so is it in all debates of what kind soever: and when men that think themselves wiser than all others, clamour and demand right reason for judge; yet seek no more, but that things should be determined, by no other men's reason but their own, it is as intolerable in the society of men, as it is in play after trump is turned, to use for trump on every occasion, that suite whereof they have most in their hand. For they do nothing else, that will have every of their passions, as it comes to bear sway in them, to be taken for right reason, and that in their own controversies: bewraying [revealing] their want of right reason, by the claim they lay to it.

A stinging rebuke of a political and religious dogmatism...

Down in the River to Pray

2004-06-07T22:23:00.000-04:00

This will probably be the first of several comments/quotations from this book by John Mark Hicks and Greg Taylor (Leafwood Publishers, 2003). Anyway, here's a gem from Martin Luther:

"Your baptism is nothing less than grace clutching you by the throat: a grace-full throttling, by which your sin is submerged in order that ye may remain under grace. Come thus to thy baptism. Give thyself up to be drowned in baptism and killed by the mercy of thy dear God, saying: 'Drown me and throttle me, dear Lord, for henceforth I will gladly die to sin with thy Son.'"

More later...

Hey

2004-06-06T15:52:00.000-04:00

In a fit of haste and impetuosity (that I will probably regret later), I've created a blog. Is it just self-absorbed navel-gazing? Probably. Will anyone care? Probably not.

Maybe anonymity will work to my advantage.

Anyway, if anyone is reading this, expect posts on the usual: politics and religion. You don't have to agree (you probably won't), but your thoughts will always be appreciated.

XP,

Chris