”It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.”
First Red (2017)
Thanks, Cubbies…
The Chicago Cubs lost the final game of the National League Championship Series Thursday night to the LA Dodgers, who overwhelmed them 11-1. The good guys were outmatched the whole series by the Dodgers’ shut-down pitching and clutch hitting. LA had a remarkable season, and were it not for a long losing streak at the end of the season, it might have been historic in terms of winning percentage. Congratulations to them. They await the outcome of the NY Yankees v. the Houston Astros series, the winner of which will face the Dodgers in this year’s World Series. It will be LA’s first trip to the Series since 1988.
Win or lose, I absolutely love October baseball…
Kike Hernandez, who three three homers, including a grand slam, to give LA the pennant.
One reason I love being Lutheran…
They do great things like brew special commemorative beers for celebrations like Reformation 500. This is Von Bora, a rich, tasty Dunkles Bock brewed in honor of the Reformer’s wife Katie (a craft brewer herself!) by Black Acre Brewing in Indianapolis. The even greater thing is that they’ve partnered with Lutheran Child and Family Services to do this, so we get to drink beer while kids and families receive some of the help they need.
• • •
One of my favorite recent photos…
Bettina Billups, right, helps Brentley Lashum, 2, touch Superman’s hand during superhero window washing day at Children’s of Alabama, as part of the hospital’s Superhero Month celebrations, on October 11, 2017, in Birmingham, Alabama. (Brynn Anderson/AP)
• • •
Apparently, Yoda has become a Christian and bought a farm near me…
• • •
Praying for our friends out west…
A view of hundreds of homes in the Coffey Park neighborhood that were destroyed by the Tubbs Fire on October 11, 2017, in Santa Rosa, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty)
• • •
As we commemorate Reformation 500, ya gotta love the Curmudgeon…
Phil Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” fame, spoke at the 2017 Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. on October 13, 2017. His speech was, well, how can I describe it? — how ’bout a rather old-school mix of patriotism and billboard Christianity.
Robertson focused his remarks on dem Lib’rals.
“I’m almost tempted to ask the Democratic Party four little words: ‘Do y’all love Jesus? The reason I’m asking you, Democratic Party, is I’ve never heard you say one way or the other. Do you love Him? And I’m waiting on an answer.'”
The Duck Commander founder went on to ask mainstream media outlets CNN, CBS and MSNBC the same question.
“Do you folks love Jesus? Because I’ve never heard you say one way or another. Maybe, or do you hate Him? Do you love Him or do you hate Him? I’ll unashamedly say I love Him. I’ll tell anybody that. The final question I would like to ask everyone, including you — what’s wrong with Jesus? I’ve investigated Him. I’ve carefully inspected the Man. I can’t find anything wrong with Him.”
Then he promoted a new series he will be in, “In the Woods with Phil,” by saying,
What does a man do when they try to run him out of town for quoting a Bible verse? I tell you what he does, he goes deep in the woods,” Robertson is heard saying in a promotional video for the new series. “For far too long we have been told to shut up. No more. Here’s the deal, America. These are my woods. Out here, I call the shots. Out here, we reject political correctness, or as I like to say, ‘pontificated crap.'”
Ain’t that America?
• • •
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum…
The pious and righteous entertainment establishment has been falling all over each other saying “REALLY? We had NO IDEA!” and trying to create distance between themselves and reputed sexual predator Harvey Weinstein. For example, Bethenny Frankel, star of that popular show about virtue and chastity, “The Real Housewives of New York City,” tweeted about Hollywood hypocrisy:
Harvey Weinstein himself, of course, responded to all of this with humility, contrition, and wisdom. According to one of Hollywood’s sacred books, People Magazine: “Weinstein said in a statement that he was working with therapists and planned to ‘deal with this issue head-on.’ He has also left Los Angeles and checked into a luxury resort in Arizona.”
In related news, Howard Stern also criticized Weinstein and others (who have gotten caught) from his pulpit of purity: “All these guys that do sexual harassment, I mean, they’re freaks,”
Ya can’t make this stuff up, folks.
• • •
Well, we simply can’t end on a note like that, can we?
In 1978 Rose Crumb, a Roman Catholic mother of 10, worked with others to start the hospice in the remote Pacific Northwest city of Port Angeles, Wash.
Today, the hospice relies on 10 paid staff, 160 volunteers and an annual budget of less than $400,000 to provide end-of-life care for 300 patients each year. They take no money from the government or private insurance, but are funded completely by community donations and the time given by volunteer workers.
In a nation where Medicare pays nearly $16 billion a year for hospice care, and nearly two-thirds of providers are for-profit businesses, the tiny volunteer hospice is an outlier.
Since 1978, the hospice founded by Crumb — a mother of 10 and devoted Catholic — has offered free end-of-life care to residents of Port Angeles and the surrounding area. She was the first in the region to care for dying AIDS patients in the early days of the epidemic. Her husband, “Red” Crumb, who died in 1984 of leukemia, was an early patient.
“He died the most perfect death,” Rose Crumb told visitors on a recent afternoon. “He spent time alone with each of our kids. That meant so much to him.”
But it’s not just about dying. As I tell my patients and families all the time, Rose Crumb’s approach is “Hospice is about how to live each and every day.” We’re all going to face a final season of life. May God provide us all people like Rose to care for us in those days.
“Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.”
• Martin Luther
Martin Luther is certainly my favorite person in church history. Time and again his grasp of the Gospel and unabashed honest humanity have come to my rescue. Luther has an ability to make the Gospel as outrageous as possible, and to chase the rats of legalism out of the attic before they make a nest.
The above quote is a good example. Luther recommending sin? Well…he doesn’t mean adultery or stealing. What Luther is talking about here is something C.S. Lewis talks about in Chapter 14 of The Screwtape Letters: the particular temptations that come to the person who is aware of his/her own righteousness. Even if it is an awareness of love, forgiveness or humility– all bring the possibility of self-centeredness and pride. But Lewis (and Luther) were especially aware of the spiritual dangers of trying to not sin. Yes…trying to not sin.
Since encouraging people to try and not sin is a major occupation of confused evangelicalism, Luther sounds strange. But it’s clear what he means: we can’t get caught in the trap of trying to generate our own righteousness, even in the name of obedience. Luther’s encouragement to sin just to spite the devil is his provocative way of suggesting a Christian TRUST CHRIST and have confidence in justification by faith. So much so, that instead of living in a state of perpetual self-examination, we live with the freedom to be less than perfect.
Isn’t sinning intentionally a really bad thing? A Christian’s attitude toward sin must be based on a thorough acceptance of the fact that our depravity isn’t going to be erased by efforts. Even our righteousness and obedience are thoroughly tainted with sin. Luther says we need to take the sting out of the devil’s condemnation with a willingness to be human, and rejoice that God loves us and Christ died for us.
Let Luther bother you a bit. Particularly if you are starting to get miserable in this Christian life, and wonder where the laughter and honesty are among Christians. We can find it again, but it comes with embracing justification by faith existentially, and not just as a doctrine. In other words, have a drink on Dr. Martin.
As Denis’ military tour of duty came to an end he was faced with several opportunities; one of which was the military would pay for his medical school for him to become a dentist. A nice deal ending in a lucrative career. But being the evangelical zealot he was at the time, he got down on his knees and heard God calling him to be a creation scientist so he could attack the “evilutionists” in secular colleges and universities and save the poor naïve college students from Satan’s lie. He even tried to go to medical school which lasted for 3 days and he calls it his “Jonah experience”. Spit up on dry ground, he reconciles himself to God’s will to preach to the heathen.
To “equip himself for battle”, Denis planned to get a PhD in both theology and biology. So he first began his PhD studies in theology school. And it was here that the props holding up his creation science began to be toppled. As he says:
“Like all theology students, I discovered that interpreting the Bible is more complicated than what we learn in Sunday school. Only weeks into my first term, one of the world’s greatest theologian stated in class that ‘the biblical creation accounts were obviously written in picture language’. I knew that this professor was a marvelous Christian. Many of his books were very helpful in my walk of faith. I had even met people who came to the Lord through his writings. But his claim that the creation accounts had ‘picture language’ rocked me.”
This assumption of concordism; that God has revealed scientific information in the Bible that concords with what we moderns now know is really the foundation of young earth creationism. After all, God is the creator of the world and He is also the Author of the Bible. Therefore, to expect harmony between the Book of God’s Words (the Bible) and the Book of God’s Works (nature) is a reasonable assumption. Only a God who is powerful and transcends time could have given modern scientific facts to the ancient authors of Scripture. In the Science and the Bible course I used to teach at my previous evangelical church this is the first assumption I challenged my students to think through; before I raised or discussed any issues of actual science. I would ask the class, “What is the genre’ of Genesis 1-2 and how do you know that?” The next question would be, “What is the science that is presented in Genesis 1-2; is it modern science or ancient science?”
The genre’ question is not as obvious, especially in English translations. It is more obvious in the Hebrew; from my Science and the Bible post, Lesson 4 :
It is well known that in Hebrew thought the number seven symbolizes ‘wholeness’ as a characteristic of God’s perfection. A well-known example is the seven-candle lamp stand, or Menorah, which has long been a symbol of the Jewish faith and is the emblem of the modern State of Israel. In Genesis 1, multiples of seven appear in extraordinary ways. For ancient readers, who were accustomed to taking notice of such things, these multiples of seven conveyed a powerful message. Seven was the divine number, the number of goodness and perfection. Its omnipresence in the opening chapter of the Bible makes an unmistakable point about the origin and nature of the universe itself. Consider the following:
The first sentence of Genesis 1 consists of seven Hebrew words. Instantly, the ancient reader’s attention is focused.
The second sentence contains exactly fourteen words. A pattern is developing.
The word ‘earth’—one half of the created sphere—appears in the chapter 21 times.
The word ‘heaven’—the other half of the created sphere—also appears 21 times.
‘God’, the lead actor, is mentioned exactly 35 times (7 x 5)
The refrain ‘and it was so’, which concludes each creative act, occurs exactly seven times.
The summary statement ‘God saw that it was good’ also occurs seven times.
It hardly needs to be pointed out that the whole account is structured around seven scenes or seven days of the week.
The artistry of the chapter is stunning and, to ancient readers, unmistakable. It casts the creation as a work of art, sharing in the perfection of God and deriving from him. My point is obvious: short of including a prescript for the benefit of modern readers the original author could hardly have made it clearer that his message is being conveyed through literary rather than prosaic means.”
There is also the well noted parallelism of the days; again indicating a literary structure rather than just a narrative account.
As to the question, “What is the science that is presented in Genesis 1-2; is it modern science or ancient science”, Denis notes that theology school forced him to rethink how God inspired the Bible. It became evident to him that scientific concordism was NOT a feature of the Bible; rather there was an ancient understanding of the physical world. The ancient Hebrews did not have some special “divine” insight on the cosmology of the universe; rather they had the same understanding of all ancient peoples at the time. And this understanding can be clearly seen in the Genesis passages:
The earth is the center of the universe. That is why it can be created before the sun and the stars.
Day and night are created before the sun is created.
The sky is a “firmament” (Hebrew raquia- a beaten copper pot) a solid dome.
There is an ocean above the firmament and an ocean below the earth.
The earth rests on pillars.
The sun and the moon are set or hung in the firmament/sky/heavens.
The moon gives its own light.
The stars are lesser lights.
That this was the viewpoint of ancient peoples can be seen from the image in Luther’s German translation of the Bible that portrays an earth with a firmament and with waters above reflecting the imagery found in the text.
This realization that God accommodated the ancient viewpoint of the scripture writers in their description of creation was the evidence within the Bible itself that began to dismantle Denis’ dream of becoming a creation scientist. When Denis realized that God allowed the inspired writers to use their ancient scientific ideas about origins to reveal the foundational message of faith that He alone was the Creator of the world; it relieved him of the necessity to choose between believing “God’s Word” from “man’s word”. Once the false guilt and pressure of the false dichotomy that you were being faithless to God if you didn’t believe 6-day creationism was lifted from him; Denis was free to judge the science of evolution on its own merits.
Which is what Denis did next as he began his PhD in biology. His studies in theology opened his mind to what the Bible really is, but he was not quite ready to abandon his plan to become a creation scientist. He says:
I realized the Bible is not a book of science, but my original “Grand Plan” to destroy the theory of evolution was still alive and well. I moved on to obtain a PhD in biology. Since I was a dentist, I entered a university program to study the so-called “best evidence” for evolution- the evolution of teeth and jaws. My plan was to collect scientific facts that disproved evolution, and once I graduated as a scientist, I would write a devastating book against Satan’s lie that life had evolved.
Well you can probably figure out what happened. My soul was shaken to the core for a second time. I began to see fossil evidence that indicated evolution was true… For years in Sunday school and at creationist events, I had been taught that there were no transitional fossils… During my scientific training, I saw, and even held in my hands a number of transitional fossils. When I first discovered that these fossils existed, it was not at all comfortable. I tried my best to explain their existence through an anti-evolutionary view of origins. But I could not deny this scientific evidence in the Book of God’s Works, and eventually I accepted evolution.
You can click on each entry in the list for a brief description and explanation.
In the book, Denis talks about fish to amphibian and whale evolution, since both are well represented in the geologic record. But as a dentist, the persuasiveness of the evidence for evolution of teeth and jaws in reptile to mammals made a huge impression on him. From the book the following figures:
Denis also studied embryology and the “Embryology-Evolution Analogy” made a decisive impact on his thinking. Psalm 139: 13-14 says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made…“ Every Christian understands this as a poetic picture of God creating each and every one of us through his ordained and sustained embryological mechanisms. Nobody takes this “literally” as God coming out of heaven to miraculously attach an entire arm or leg to their developing body in the womb. Every single one of us is here by virtue of a natural biologic process. As Denis says:
Could it be that instead of coming out of heaven and miraculously placing each creature on earth, God “knit together” all living organisms through his ordained and sustained natural process of evolution?
Discovering the similarity between God’s creative action in embryology and evolution completely freed me from being afraid of evolution. It became evident that science is the study of the Lord’s creation and all the natural mechanisms that he created, including the process of evolution. Instead of being an enemy of Christianity, science is a gift from our Creator that declares his glory and reveals to us how He made the universe and life.
Denis wraps up this chapter by dealing with the supposed “calling” he received from God to become a creation scientist and attack evolutionists in universities. He now believes that God “accommodated” his spiritual and intellectual level where he was at; trapped in either/or thinking. He thinks that the Lord called him to get the education he did, not to attack evolution, but to attack atheistic interpretations of evolution and defend the belief that the world is his creation.
Well, maybe so. The skeptical critic would say Denis is engaging in a little retroactive special pleading. But how many of us were young and foolish once and yet God guided us to where we are now despite our foolishness? There is no doubt that Denis Lamoureux is a major voice helping Christians get beyond the either/or thinking and false dichotomy of the so-called “evolution vs. creation” debate.
May grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us byhis own glory and goodness.
• 2 Peter 1:2-3
• • •
To follow up on yesterday’s post, we turn to a book that discusses the so-called “Finnish” interpretation of Martin Luther. We’ve mentioned it here before — it’s called Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther. It features top Finnish scholars, with responses by Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson, American Lutheran and ecumenical theologians.
The Finnish school of interpretation is best represented by Tuomo Mannermaa, professor at the University of Helsinki, known for his book, Christ Present In Faith: Luther’s View Of Justification, in which he discusses the relationship between justification and theosis in the theology of Martin Luther.
Here are some excerpts from Mannermaa’s chapter, “Justification and Theosis in Lutheran/Orthodox Perspective.”
In the ecumenical dialogue between the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Russian Orthodox Church it has come out that the idea of theosis can be found at the core of the theology of Martin Luther himself. My task here is to expound this idea of theosis in Luther’s theology and its relationship to his doctrine of justification.
Finnish Luther research has come to the conclusion that Luther’s idea of the presence of Christ in faith can form a basis for treating the question of divinization. The Lutheran understanding of the indwelling of Christ implies a real participation in God and is analogous to the Orthodox doctrine of participation in God, or theosis. When seen in the light of the doctrine of theosis, the Lutheran tradition is born anew and becomes once again interesting.
…Luther does not separate the person of Christ from his work. Rather, Christ himself, both his person and his work, is the ground of Christian righteousness. Christ is, in this unity of person and work, really present in the faith of the Christian (in ipsa fide Christus adest).
…For Luther evangelium is not proclamation of the cross and/or of the forgiveness of sins only, but the proclamation of the crucified and risen Christ himself. It is one of the main themes of Luther’s theology that only the crucified and risen Christ himself as present can mediate salvation.
…It is important to appreciate that the conquest of the forces of sin and destruction takes place within Christ’s own person – and, in a sense, in his faith. He won the battle between righteousness and sin “in himself” (triumphans in seipso). Sin, death, and curse are first conquered in the person of Christ; “thereafter,” the whole of creation is to be transformed through his person. And this brings us to a most important insight: salvation is participation in the person of Christ.
Central in Luther’s theology is that in faith the human being really participates by faith in the person of Christ and in the divine life and the victory that is in it. Or, to say it the other way around: Christ gives his person to the human being through the faith by which we grasp it. “Faith” involves participation in Christ, in whom there is no sin, death, or curse. Luther quotes John: “‘For this,’ as John says, `is our victory, faith.”‘ And, from Luther’s point of view, faith is a victory precisely because it unites the believer with the person of Christ, who is in himself the victory.
Theology doesn’t get any more Jesus-shaped than that. It’s all about Christ. He is both the favor of God and the gift of God to humans in need of rescue and transformation (Romans 5:15-17). He conquered the powers of sin, death, and evil in his own person, and then gives himself completely to us, to be received through faith. In the “happy exchange” Martin Luther described, Jesus took all our sin, corruption, and death upon himself, and in return gave us his very righteousness and divine life.
Indeed, the most serious challenges in Luther’s theology may be to the Protestant tradition.
• Phillip Cary
• • •
In this month of commemorating the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation, you would do well to check out the interesting article at First Things by Phillip Cary, Scholar-in-Residence at the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University: Luther at 500.
Cary’s claim is that Protestants as well as Catholics have a lot to learn from Martin Luther, but, surprisingly, he suggests that Protestants may have more to learn than their Roman brethren.
In particular, he argues that we cannot truly understand Luther and what “justification by faith” meant to him without a sacramental perspective. “Protestant theology needs a Catholic notion of sacrament in order to carry out its deepest intention, which is to put faith in the Gospel of Christ alone,” he writes.
As Protestant theology has developed since Luther, it has moved far from the understanding that God saves us through objective, external means of grace, and not through some decision we make or experience we have. Cary calls this “faith in Christ, not faith in faith.”
For Luther, we must believe that we are Christians because Christ said so in our baptism, not because we have made a decision or had a conversion experience or done something to make ourselves into believers. If asked whether we are truly Christians, the answer Luther teaches us to give is simply “Yes, I am baptized.”
This is why we need the ongoing ministry of the sacraments along with the Word. Through them we hear the gospel promise regularly. We remember our baptism daily and celebrate it afresh with each new child or convert welcomed into God’s family. At the Lord’s Table, we hear Christ say to us every week, “This is my body given for you, this is my blood shed for you,” and in his body and blood we receive ongoing forgiveness and renewal as we encounter our Savior in communion.
Another important thing Protestants can recover from Luther, according to Phillip Cary, is a fuller, more robust and life-changing understanding of “justification.” In Protestant theology, justification is a forensic declaration — my sins are no longer counted against me, and I am judged to have a righteous standing before God.
However, Cary notes that Luther actually saw justification as theosis, not mere forensic standing.
What is often overlooked by later Protestant theology is that Christ’s righteousness is the righteousness of God. Recently a strong Finnish tradition of Luther scholarship has repaired this oversight and drawn the appropriate conclusion: that Luther’s teaching about union with Christ, followed by the wondrous exchange in which Christ shares with us every good thing that is his, implies a doctrine of deification. For the goods he shares with us include all that is divine in him, in which we participate—as the Church Fathers say—not by nature but by grace. In Luther’s terms, every divine gift is ours in Christ, who is ours by faith alone.
We are justified because by faith we are united to Christ as wife to husband, and because we are joined to him, everything that belongs to him becomes ours. In the words of David Bentley Hart, we must not think of justification
…in that rather feeble and formal way many Christians have habitually thought of it at various periods in the Church’s history: as some sort of forensic exoneration accompanied by a ticket of entry into an Elysian aftermath of sun-soaked meadows and old friends and consummate natural beatitude. Rather, salvation meant nothing less than being joined to the living God by the mediation of the God-man Himself, brought into living contact with the transfiguring glory of the divine nature, made indeed partakers of the divine nature itself (2 Peter 1:4) and co-heirs of the Kingdom of God. In short, to be saved was—is—to be “divinized” in Christ by the Spirit. In the great formula of St. Irenaeus (and others), “God became man that man might become god.”
This is at the heart of what makes possible what the Augsburg calls “the new obedience” of the Christian. United with Christ, we rise with him into newness of life and the faith which joins us to him frees us to love our neighbor. Freed from the reign of sin and death, united with Christ and therefore endowed with all that belongs to him, I am freed to love and practice good works in the world.
This challenges Protestants who impose a Law-Grace-Law model upon God’s people. Taught that they are saved by grace, many Christians are then plunged back beneath rules and expectations by which their relationship with God is judged.
We later Protestants have a lot to learn from Luther.
In short, the very creation of Scripture stemmed from an ongoing dialogue between God and God’s people, and of God’s people with one another, as they sought to know God and God’s workings in the world and faithfully to respond to God’s call.
• Karl Allen Kuhn. Having Words With God: The Bible As Conversation
• • •
I have just started reading what looks to be a remarkable book on scripture, called, Having Words With God: The Bible As Conversation, by Karl Allen Kuhn. Today, I will just share a quote from Richard Bauckham that Kuhn cites.
These words remind us that the Bible is what Pete Enns calls “messy,” not lending itself to common characterizations of scripture as an inerrant handbook of propositional teachings and practical instructions.
Kuhn will make the case that the Bible is “a conversation,” “an invitation to sacred dialogue.” But before we get there, it is important to recognize that the nature of scripture is much more compatible with this understanding than it is with the “inerrant handbook” view.
Here is Bauckham’s quote:
[T]he diversity [of the Bible] is such that readers of Scripture have their own work to do in discerning the unity of the story. Moreover, the diversity of different versions of the story is not the only feature of Scripture that requires such work. There is the sheer profusion of narrative material in Scripture, the narrative directions left unfinished, the narrative hints that enlist reader’s imagination, the ambiguity of stories that leave their meaning open, the narrative fragments of the stories of prophets in their books of or writers and churches in the apostolic letters, the very different kinds of narrative that resist division into simply alternatives such as “history” and “myth,” or “fiction,” the references to stories external to Scripture. Such features, even apart from the bearing of the nonnarrative literature on the narrative, make any sort of finality in summarizing the biblical story inconceivable…. The church must be constantly retelling the story, never losing sight of the landmark events, never losing touch with the main lines of theological meaning in Scripture’s own tellings and commentaries, always remaining open to the never exhausted potential of the texts in their resonances with contemporary life.’
• Richard Bauckham, “Reading Scripture as a Coherent Story,” in The Art of Reading Scripture, ed. Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays, 43-44.
Karl Allen Kuhn summarizes:
Bauckham’s comments on Scripture’s narrative form help us to see that the goal of Scripture is not simply to provide us with a set of propositional truth claims or a detailed, one-size-fits-all-for-all-time list of the dos and don’ts of faithful life. Rather, the narrative form of Scripture leads us to lively, imaginative, and humble reflection with God and one another on what it means for us to live into God’s will in our time and place. This is its function in our lives of faith. “The church must be constantly telling the story,” Bauckham says, “always remaining open to the never exhausted potential of the texts in their resonances with contemporary life.” [emphasis mine]
After the first two cantata cycles in Leipzig, Bach became discouraged with the level of players and singers at his disposal. More and more frequently he wrote prominent parts in his cantatas for organ, knowing that his son Carl Philip Emmanuel would play them well and emphasized solo voices over the chorus. Today’s cantata is a prime example. It begins with an arrangement of the first movement of the E major harpsichord concerto transposed to D. The solo part is given to the organ and the original string orchestra is enriched by two oboes and English Horn. The sung portion of the cantata begins with an extended arioso for alto with the continuo instruments. The opening line of text “Gott soll allein” functions as a litany through out both this movement and the following delightful aria with organ obbligato. After a brief recitative the strings of the orchestra reappear in a marvelous adaptation of the second movement of the E major harpsichord concerto. Once again the organ takes the solo part with the voice part laid on top of it. What is fascinating is Bach’s enrichment of the harmony in order to color the text particularly the word “stirb”(to die). After another brief recitative the work ends with an harmonization of one of the most beautiful chorale tunes, “Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist.”
The opening Sinfonia is one of my favorite instrumental pieces by Bach, which he took from the first and second movements of the E Major Clavier Concerto BWV 1053.
Enjoy this beautiful music, and may it lift your heart to a place of beauty and grace this Lord’s Day.
Hello, friends, and welcome to the weekend. Ready for some brunch?
You know what I really love about a good restaurant brunch? Well, one thing is that you can eat as much as you want and no-one cares. It’s not like lunch. You can’t order two sandwiches for lunch. You can get a side (chips, fries, an okra smoothie) but only one sandwich. But brunch has no quantity limitations. Brunch is unlimited, man. You can go back for more bacon till your blood has the viscosity of Crisco. It’s all good. The other thing is that brunch has no rules about the menu, either. Oh, sure, it should have some eggs of some kind, and probably a breakfasty meat. But it’s mostly free-range. You can put most anything on a brunch: waffles, cod, mashed potatoes, tacos. And you never know. It’s totally random.
All that to say that today’s brunch is much more random than normal. There’s some serious stuff. A couple jokes. A few odd sayings I’ve run across. Weird pictures. Some videos. There is no theme, here. It’s BRUNCH, baby!!
I’m the guy in the sweet hat
After new allegations emerged that he had engaged in decades of sexual harassment, Hollywood titan Harvey Weinstein was fired Monday from his firm the Weinstein Company for violating the company’s very strict 3,000 strikes and you’re out rule. This after the New York times finally published some of the details of Hollywood’s worst kept secret. Then New Yorker upped the ante by publishing a shocking story (that NBC had spiked) of at least three women raped by Weinstein. Hurricane Harvey was like, “Dude, you’re giving me a bad name.”
Students at Oxford Universitybanned the Christian Union from a freshman fair to protect lonely new undergraduates from “harm” and accused Christianity of being “an excuse for homophobia and neo-colonialism”. Leaders of the student union at Balliol College, which was founded by a bishop, prevented the Christian Union (CU) and other religious representatives from attending the fair. The pushback demonstrated British understatement, I thought: The Rev Nigel Genders, the Church of England’s chief education officer, said: “Freedom of religion and belief is a fundamental principle that underpins our country and its great institutions and universities. Christian Unions represent some of the largest student led organisations in many universities across the country and to exclude them in this way is to misunderstand the nature of debate and dialogue and at odds with the kind of society we are all seeking to promote.”
The trailer for The Last Jedi, the penultimate episode of the Star Wars saga, was released Monday night. And yes, I did post this so I could use the word “penultimate”.
My brother has the heart of a lion and a lifetime ban from the Indianapolis zoo.
An essay defending colonialism has been removed from the journal Third World Quarterly: “The essay, ‘The Case for Colonialism,’ was withdrawn at the request of the journal’s editor, Shahid Qadir, and in agreement with the essay’s author, Bruce Gilley, an associate professor of political science at Portland State University, the notice said. The publisher said that it had conducted a thorough investigation after receiving complaints about the essay and found that it had undergone double-blind peer review, in line with the journal’s editorial policy. However, the publisher’s notice continued, the journal’s editor received ‘serious and credible threats of personal violence’ linked to the publication of the essay.”
Monday was Columbus Day. Did you notice? I didn’t until my son called and wished me, “Happy xenophobic, racist, incredibly lucky, colonialist-who-started-genocide Day.” Or something like that. As I said, Columbus Day was not on my radar screen [it seems to be the “don’t ask, don’t tell” holiday], so it took me awhile to decipher this greeting.
I have no need to defend the man. But the National Review did give some pushback, questioning the origin of the denigration he now faces, and its accuracy in light of the historical context:
But it is not just communists who oppose Columbus. Here, in the United States, the anti-Columbus movement was sparked by white supremacists nearly 100 years ago. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan promoted negative characterizations of Columbus in order to vilify Catholics and immigrants, many of whom celebrated Columbus not only as a source of ethnic and religious pride but also as a symbol of the free and diverse society that resulted from the European presence here. The Klan tried to prevent the erection of monuments to the Great Navigator, burned crosses in opposition to efforts to honor him, and argued that commemorations of his voyage were part of a papal plot. Rather than honor a Catholic explorer from the Mediterranean, Klansmen proposed honoring the Norseman Leif Eriksson as discoverer of the New World and a symbol of white pride.
The modern conception of Columbus as villain is, of course, incredibly simplistic — as is the opposing conception of Columbus as unblemished hero. So too are silly depictions of the native tribes as peace-loving people whose state of harmony was shattered only by the arrival of the Spanish. In truth, the 15th century was a time of great brutality the world over: Some Spaniards did, indeed, commit atrocities. Some of the native tribes desired war with the European explorers; others routinely engaged in human sacrifice and cannibalism. Slavery at the time was practiced across the globe (most notably in Africa, Asia, and the Arab world). But, on balance, the Spanish treated the native people more humanely than did their other European counterparts, and arguably more mercifully than many of them treated each other. …In a world where slavery and barbarism were commonplace, it is remarkable that Columbus’s goal remained trade and evangelization of the natives, not conquest or elimination, and that he punished (even executed) those who abused natives against his express orders.
Thoughts?
Good to see Friedrich Nietzsche got a job writing for CNN:
A recent bill passed by the house would limit legal abortions to the first 20 weeks; In the bill’s description, it made the claim that only 6 other nations in the world allowed abortions after that time. The Washington Post did some research to see if that could possibly be correct.
This [claim] seemed a bit surprising, so we looked into it. And it turned out, it’s backed by data.
There are 59 countries that allow abortion “without restriction as to reason,” or “elective,” or “abortion on demand.” These are countries where the letter of the federal law does not impose specific eligibility requirements for women. The other 139 countries “require some reason to obtain an abortion, ranging from most restrictive (to save the life of the mother or completely prohibited) to least restrictive (socioeconomic grounds) with various reasons in between (e.g., physical health, mental health),” the report says.
Only seven of the 59 countries allow elective abortions after 20 weeks, the group found: Canada, China, Netherlands, North Korea, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam.
The study also found that of those 7, only North Korea, Vietnam and China have no limits on abortion at all. The US and Canada do not have a federal limit, though some states and provinces limit legal abortions (anywhere from 12 to 24 weeks), while the Netherlands and Singapore restrict abortions after 24 weeks (allowing them only in certain circumstances). So out of almost 200 countries, the U.S. and Canada are certainly outliers on this issue. Surprised? I certainly was.
Don’t borrow trouble. Be patient and you’ll soon have some of your own.
The last privately-owned Leonardo da Vinci painting, a portrait of Christ, will go on sale in November. If you’ve got $100 million tucked away in your mattress, this could soon be hanging in your man-cave:
Don’t ever crack open an avocado seed; there is a tiny man inside. His name is Greg. If you set him free then you have to take care of him.
In defense of comments: “Earlier this year, The Financial Times found that its commenters are seven times more engaged than the rest of its readers. The Times of London revealed recently that the 4 percent of its readers who comment are by far its most valuable. ‘You can see the benefits in terms of engaging readers and renewing subscriptions,’ Ben Whitelaw, head of audience development at the Times and The Sunday Times, told the online news site Digiday. When an organization moves these communities onto Facebook, it is handing over everything to the big blue thumb: all of the readers’ data, the control of the moderation tools, control of the advertising, even the opportunity to manage subscriptions — and all in a place where people are more likely to comment without even opening the article.”
The transgender movement is at war with the English language. With a new set of style guidelines, the Associated Press has joined the trenches—on the transgender side…In a series of tweets on Tuesday explaining the changes first promulgated earlier this year, the AP’s editors contended that ‘gender refers to a person’s social identity, while sex refers to biological characteristics’ and admonished writers to ‘avoid references to being born a boy or girl.’ The venerable news agency also endorsed the language- and prose-disfiguring use of ‘they/them’ as a singular pronoun. It even left open the door to more exotic made-up pronouns such as ‘ze’ and ‘zir.’ Tuesday also saw the AP introduce a new rule: Instead of the expressions ‘sex change’ or ‘transition,’ writers are to use ‘gender confirmation.’ This was a deep kowtow to the transgender movement, which believes that physicians don’t alter anything essential or fundamental when they perform a sex-change operation: Caitlyn Jenner was always Caitlyn Jenner. The operation merely confirmed this ontological fact.”
Also this, which should greatly trouble anyone who believes in something as old-fashioned as free speech:
A Canadian bill passed this summer restricts “discrimination” on the basis of gender “expression.” That provision, proponents hope, will lead to “monetary damages, non-financial remedies . . . and public interest remedies” for those who dare use a non-preferred pronoun. (And yet, they insist, the bill won’t trample free speech.) California has enacted similar legislation.
We’ve started a new outreach ministry at our church: spray-painting Bible verses on city buildings and bridges. We call it evandelism.
It’s been a while since it’s rained potatoes. I guess that’s a good thing.
A man who’d been living in a Philadelphia church for nearly a year to avoid deportation to Mexico has walked free. Xavier Flores Garcia left the Arch Street Methodist Church last Wednesday (Oct. 11), surrounded by his family. Garcia took sanctuary in the church last November, when he was to report for deportation. He says he plans to stay in Philadelphia, and that he is entirely sick of communion wafers. This does raise an interesting question: Should churches provide sanctuary for illegal immigrants? If so under what conditions?
I, for one, like Roman numerals.
Pope Francis has issued his strongest statement yet against the death penalty, calling it “contrary to the Gospel.”
The Pope made his comments in an October 11 speech to the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization. “The death penalty is an inhumane measure that humiliates, in any way it is pursued, human dignity,” said Pope Francis. “It is, of itself, contrary to the Gospel, because it is freely decided to suppress a human life that is always sacred,” he added. “In the final analysis, God alone is the true judge and guarantor.”
While recent Popes have criticized the death penalty, this is the first time a Pope has advocating officially changing the church’s teaching. Church Doctors like Augustine and Aquinas, as well as Pope Pius XII, has always viewed capital punishment as a legitimate form of protection of the public from immediate danger and as a legitimate punishment for serious crimes. Aquinas, in his classic defense of capital punishment in the Summa Theologica, argued that “if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good.” Professors Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette have argued that if the Pope were to teach that capital punishment is inherently immoral, then he would be “contradicting the teaching of scripture, the Fathers, and all previous popes, and substituting for it ‘some new doctrine.’”
Francis, of course, is aware of all this. I found his defense very interesting, but felt it also raised a lot of questions.
Tradition is a living reality and only a partial vision can think of ‘the deposit of faith’ as something static. The Word of God cannot be conserved in mothballs as if it were an old blanket to be preserved from parasites. No. The Word of God is a dynamic reality, always alive, that progresses and grows because it tends towards a fulfillment that men cannot stop.”
This “law of progress” appertains to the peculiar condition of the truth revealed in its being transmitted by the church, and does not at all signify a change of doctrine. One cannot conserve the doctrine without making it progress, nor can one bind it to a rigid and immutable reading without humiliating the Holy Spirit.”
That sounds reasonable. But certainly some questions can be asked about this. For example:
What if a later Pope returns to an endorsement of capital punishment? Is that still progress?
If not, why not? What is it, exactly, that we are progressing to, and which Pope gets to determine that?
Isn’t the claim that the Church’s doctrine should change and progress itself a theological claim that should also change and progress? Or is it that part static and immutable?
Well, obviously these things are above my pay-grade. I put them out here as fodder for healthy discussion.
Well, that’s it for this week, brunchers. I leave you with Bobby Pickett weirdly singing The Monster Mash on Dick Clark’s show from October 13, 1964. Enjoy.
Ordinary Time Bible Study
Philippians: Friends in the Gospel Study Seventeen (conclusion): The Last Thing to Say to Friends
• • •
Philippians 4:10-23, JB Phillips NT
It has been a great joy to me that after all this time you have shown such interest in my welfare. I don’t mean that you had forgotten me, but up till now you had no opportunity of expressing your concern. Nor do I mean that I have been in actual need, for I have learned to be content, whatever the circumstances may be. I know now how to live when things are difficult and I know how to live when things are prosperous. In general and in particular I have learned the secret of facing either poverty or plenty. I am ready for anything through the strength of the one who lives within me.
Nevertheless I am not disparaging the way in which you were willing to share my troubles. You Philippians will remember that in the early days of the Gospel when I left Macedonia, you were the only church who shared with me the fellowship of giving and receiving. Even in Thessalonica you twice sent me help when I was in need. It isn’t the value of the gift that I am keen on, it is the reward that will come to you because of these gifts that you have made.
Now I have everything I want—in fact I am rich. Yes, I am quite content, thanks to your gifts received through Epaphroditus. Your generosity is like a lovely fragrance, a sacrifice that pleases the very heart of God. My God will supply all that you need from his glorious resources in Christ Jesus. And may glory be to our God and our Father for ever and ever, amen!
Greetings to every true Christian, from me and all the brothers here with me. All the Christians here would like to send their best wishes, particularly those who belong to the emperor’s household.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
The last passage in Paul’s friendship letter to the Philippians contains the final words you always want to say to your friends: Thank you.
For those who understand grace, as Paul did, — whether the incomparable Gift of God through Jesus Christ or the generous gifts of friends like the Philippians — the appropriate response to receiving grace is always gratitude.
It is only here at the end that we find out a main reason Paul wrote this letter in the first place. He had sent the church’s minister Epaphroditus back from his mission of mercy to Paul in prison to say “thank you” to the congregation for their love and benevolence toward the apostle.
I love the way J.B. Phillips renders the climactic expression of gratitude and doxology in this letter:
Your generosity is like a lovely fragrance, a sacrifice that pleases the very heart of God. My God will supply all that you need from his glorious resources in Christ Jesus. And may glory be to our God and our Father for ever and ever, amen! (4:18-20)
The Philippian’s liberality toward Paul is deemed an act of worship. When we love one another by giving selflessly and sacrificially to support each other, it is a fragrant offering before God.
Also, Paul assures them that their generosity will always be done in the context of a lavishly beneficent God. This is not a tit-for-tat arrangement as the prosperity preachers would have us believe. God is not bound to give to us because we give. Paul is not promoting “seed faith” and promoting some spiritual “law” of blessing. Rather, he is simply reminding them that all our giving is done within a relationship with the Divine in which we are always receiving. The blessed bless others and keep on being blessed.
After that, all that is left to say is:
All glory be to our God!
Greetings and all grace be to you, my friends!
• • •
Ordinary Time Bible Study Philippians – Friends in the Gospel
We are going to blog through the new book by frequent Biologos contributor Denis Lamoureux entitled, Evolution: Scripture and Nature say Yes! The title refers to the book by creationist author Duane Gish, “Evolution: The Fossils Say No”, which had a huge effect on Denis at one time. This book journals the personal journey of Denis as well as dealing with argument for evolution.
Denis O. Lamoureux
Denis Lamoureux is the associate professor of science and religion at St. Joseph’s College in the University of Alberta. Lamoureux holds three earned doctoral degrees—dentistry, theology, and biology. He is a Fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation and cited in the Who’s Who of Theology and Science. He is also a member of the Evangelical Theology Society. Lamoureux lectures throughout Canada and the United States in both Christian and public academic institutions. In 2001 and 2006, he received teaching awards from the University of Alberta Students’ Union. Lamoureux is the author of the books Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution (2008) and I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution (2009).
Lamoureux is generally credited with coining the term “evolutionary creationism” which he and Biologos prefer to theistic evolution because it puts the emphasis on the right noun i.e. creation. That is, he believes in creation but believes that the God-ordained methodology of creation is through the evolutionary process.
Chapter 1, the subject of today’s post is “Trapped in Either/Or Thinking”, and begins with Denis recounting the story of one young women’s tirade in the middle of his college course on science and religion.
“I am so mad! I’m made at my parents for putting me in an expensive Christian school where teachers taught me that Satan had concocted the so-called theory of evolution. I am angry with my youth pastor for telling me I had to choose between evolution and creation. And I’m furious with the senior pastor at my church. On Sunday mornings, he has preached that evolutionists cannot be true Christians!”
Denis told her he shares her frustration and shares his similar story. He was raised in a conservative Christian environment and went to a Christian school. When he left high school he was not equipped to protect his faith from the attacks of a secular education at a public school. Within weeks of his beginning college, professors and older students were telling him intelligent people don’t believe in God. His first biology course was on evolution and by the end of the course he came to what he thought was the logical conclusion; since evolution was true the Bible must be false and Christianity is a lie. Denis says:
This is the main reason why I have written this book. I want Christian students to be prepared to face the challenges of secular education. I want them to know all their options so they can make informed decisions about what they believe about science and faith. I don’t want students to get trapped in the origins dichotomy or the science vs. religion dichotomy. This is the book I wish I could have read when I entered college.
After two years of college, Denis was accepted into dental school and joined the military to pay for his education. After getting his dental degree he remained in the military as a dentist. These were Denis’ “party hearty” years where he abused drugs and alcohol and “treated women with disrespect”; a nice Canuck euphemism for… well you know what it’s for.
Denis was then posted to Cyprus as a UN peacekeeper and previously had met a group of Christians who impressed him with their level-headed practical living. He says he had no dramatic event or major crisis; he had simply become disgusted with himself and his self-serving lifestyle (Denis- dude- piece of advice; you’ve got to dramasex that conversion up for the reprint, I about fell asleep reading it).
Seriously, though, Denis returned to church and renewed his commitment to follow Jesus. He was now a young man filled with fresh zeal. He went to Israel during leave and found Duane Gish’s famous anti-evolution screed, Evolution: The Fossils Say No, and read it in one afternoon. After returning from Cyprus and joining a fundamentalist anti-evolution church, Denis became totally consumed by the topic of origins. He joined the Institution for Creation Research (ICR) and went to their summer school. Denis says:
“A fire started to burn in my soul. I wanted to become a creation scientist to attack evolutionists for brainwashing college students with Satan’s lie that the world had evolved over billions of years. The more I read about creation science, the more convinced I became that it was impossible for a real Christian to be an evolutionist. And I came to the conclusion that the Christian position on origins had to be creation in six literal days about six thousand years ago.”
Denis was convinced that the Lord had called him to become a creation scientist in order to attack evolutionists in secular colleges and universities. His faith had been destroyed by one first-year college course on evolution, and he wanted to protect students from Satan’s lie that life had evolved. To “equip himself for battle” he decided to get two degrees; a PhD in Theology and a PhD in Biology. He believed that by becoming both a theologian and biologist, he would be well prepared to “fight the good fight” against the devil and his evolutionist disciples.
I understand the thought process that Denis is recounting. I became an atheist early in high school and remained so through undergraduate college. I had an encounter with Jesus at the end of my undergraduate years and became a committed Christian. This was about the time the second reprint of The Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris was released. I bought it and read it and was immediately conflicted. When all your close friends are part of your church. When your church becomes your life and everything revolves around it. When this social pressure becomes completely entwined with your commitment to Jesus; then groupthink is inevitable.
Even though the evidence, especially the geological evidence (for me), for six day creationism could not stand up to honest scrutiny; I keenly remember the inner turmoil created by the either/or thinking Denis is recounting here. You know Jesus is alive in you. You know the Scriptures are “God-breathed” because you sense the breath of God while reading those Scriptures about Jesus and his relation to us. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”, of course, how else could it be. And Genesis 1:1 is inextricably tied to John 1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.
To deny the literal interpretation of Genesis is to deny the literal interpretation of John; and therefore, to deny the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To take the word of fallible fallen man over the Word of the Infallible God. Or so the inescapable logic would seem.
Couple this ruthless dialectic of either God’s Word or man’s word with the social pressure of church, friends, and family, coupled with a shabby and inadequate science education, the American distrust of “so-called experts”, especially liberal academic elitist experts… and… well, you get the current situation in American Evangelicalism vis a vis creationism. I still sympathize with how hard it is to break out of this either/or thinking for so many genuinely sincere Christians. Denis Lamoureux was “Exhibit A” of this situation. I think it will be useful to examine his journey and hear his story of how he broke the dichotomy while keeping his faith.
. It features top Finnish scholars, with responses by Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson, American Lutheran and ecumenical theologians.
, in which he discusses the relationship between justification and theosis in the theology of Martin Luther.
In short, the very creation of Scripture stemmed from an ongoing dialogue between God and God’s people, and of God’s people with one another, as they sought to know God and God’s workings in the world and faithfully to respond to God’s call.
, p. 177
The Internet Monk Archives 