Recommendation and Review: The New Atheist Crusaders, and their Unholy Grail by Becky Garrison (Reviewed by Clark Bunch)

My good friend and associate Clark Bunch has been blogging for a while, and today he’s contributing a book review. You can read him regularly at The Master’s Table and his own weblog. Thanks for pitching today’s game, Clark.

The New Atheist Crusaders, and their Unholy Grail by Becky Garrison

Becky Garrison is an editor of the Wittenburg Door, which if you’re unfamiliar, is a religious satire magazine. Think of it as Mad Magazine for the religiously minded. The New Atheist Crusaders is therefore written with a bit of wit and a satirical outlook on its subject. That does not mean, however, that Garrison doesn’t ask the tough questions that make the reader’s head hurt just a little at the right times.Continue reading “Recommendation and Review: The New Atheist Crusaders, and their Unholy Grail by Becky Garrison (Reviewed by Clark Bunch)”

Noted: St. Basil has a very good idea

St. Basil the Great had the right idea.

At such a time, then, there is need of great effort and diligence that the Churches may in some way be benefited. It is an advantage that parts hitherto severed should be united. Union would be effected if we were willing to accommodate ourselves to the weaker, where we can do so without injury to souls; since, then, many mouths are open against the Holy Spirit, and many tongues whetted to blasphemy against Him, we implore you, as far as in you lies, to reduce the blasphemers to a small number, and to receive into communion all who do not assert the Holy Spirit to be a creature, that the blasphemers may be left alone, and may either be ashamed and return to the truth, or, if they abide in their error, may cease to have any importance from the smallness of their numbers.

Let us then seek no more than this, but propose to all the brethren, who are willing to join us, the Nicene Creed. If they assent to that, let us further require that the Holy Spirit ought not to be called a creature, nor any of those who say so be received into communion. I do not think that we ought to insist upon anything beyond this. For I am convinced that by longer communication and mutual experience without strife, if anything more requires to be added by way of explanation, the Lord Who works all things together for good for them that love Him, will grant it.

-St. Basil the Great, Letter 113: To the Presbyters of Tarsus

Noted: John Armstrong on The “Easy” God

UPDATE: Trevin Wax posts this Phillip Yancey/Karl Barth quote.

“I have learned one absolute principle in calculating God’s presence or absence, and that is that I cannot. God, invisible, sovereign, who according to the psalmist “does whatever pleases him,” sets the terms of the relationship. As the theologian Karl Barth insisted so fiercely, God is free: free to reveal himself or conceal himself, to intervene or not intervene, to work within nature or outside it, to rule over the world or even to be despised and rejected by the world, to display himself or limit himself. Our own human freedom derives from a God who cherishes freedom.

“I cannot control such a God. At best I can put myself in the proper frame to meet him. I can confess sin, remove hindrances, purify my life, wait expectantly, and – perhaps hardest of all – seek solitude and silence. I offer no guaranteed method to obtain God’s presence, for God alone governs that.”

– Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God, pg. 121

HT to Bill Kinnon for this fine quote from John Armstrong.

The mystic Catholic, Thomas Merton, once noted that: “If you find God with great ease, perhaps it is not God that you have found.”

This statement underscores one of the deepest problems I have encountered over the course of my own life. I settled for thinking that I knew God, or God’s will or purpose, when I am quite sure that I was overconfident many times. The ease with which I spoke, and the ease with which I processed this knowledge, should have warned me but I was too dull oft times.

Theologians rightly speak of the deus absconditus, or of the God who is absconds, or is absent. The Psalmist knew this reality and do did Mother Teresa. Great mystics have known it and so have ordinary saints. Luther and Calvin knew it too. Just when we think we have God, or we have figured him out, he is absent from us again. He will be sought but finding is on his terms. He will be known, but not because we are so wise. His grace is for all, but not all find it unless they seek it. Ours is an age for “easy” this and that. Knowing God will never fit into the category of something called “easy.”

I’ll dedicate this to all those folks who don’t get it when I say I’m rediscovering what I believe about the God I know in Jesus.

Help For People Who Know All About Me

I got a letter yesterday that asked how my chaplaincy training was going, which was a nice thing to ask, except I’m not in chaplaincy training or any other kind of training. I added this to my collection of communications telling me that I am resigning my job, joining the Roman Catholic Church and so on.

When I had sabbatical orientation, they told all of us that this sort of thing would happen. No matter how well you communicated what you were doing on your sabbatical, well-meaning (and otherwise motivated) people would make up all kinds of fiction to explain your absence.

So in order to help those of you who are reading this web page and drawing highly fictional conclusions about what’s going on in my life, I have decided to help you put together something that will, at least, be moderately interesting.Continue reading “Help For People Who Know All About Me”

Post-Evangelical Youth Ministry: Some Incomplete Thoughts

BHT fellow Alex Arnold asks what a post-evangelical youth ministry looks like.

Post-evangelicalism is asking what the church itself looks like when it draws its identity, substance and focus from the larger, deeper, wider communion of the church catholic.

Nothing is more typical of evangelicalism in both its strengths and its weaknesses than youth ministry. Many of us would say that the existence of what can be called the post-evangelical impulse is, to some extent, the result of the triumph of youth ministry as the primary model in almost every quarter of evangelicalism.Continue reading “Post-Evangelical Youth Ministry: Some Incomplete Thoughts”

Coffee Cup Apologetics 42

cca_small.gifPodcast 42 How do we respond to those who ridicule us? and What do we say about “Christians” who are probably false teachers proclaiming false Gospels? (Plus a surprise at the end of the podcast. Wait ten seconds.)

The podcast website is Coffee Cup Apologetics.

All the episodes of Coffee Cup Apologetics are now on iTunes. Go to iTunes and search for “Apologetics.”

The IMonk Spends Five Hours With Scott Hahn: The Full Report

UPDATE: OK. Here we go again. I’m not putting up with it this time. You want to respond respectfully, great. But anything less than calm and reasonable isn’t going to make it.

If you don’t know about my wrestlings with Catholicism, I can’t catch you up. Hit the search engine or ask someone who obsessively reads this blog.

I’ve avoided Scott Hahn completely. For a while, my wife and I had a deal his books wouldn’t be in the house. (I’ve since given up those kinds of ridiculous compromises. I’ve even given her one of his books recently.)

Hahn is a former conservative Presbyterian professor who has been called “Luther in reverse” since his much noted and retold conversion in the mid 1990’s. Today he is a prominent Catholic scholar, apologist and Bible teacher, doing much to encourage Roman Catholic adults to understand their faith and especially its sources in scripture.Continue reading “The IMonk Spends Five Hours With Scott Hahn: The Full Report”

Recommendation and Review: Looking For God by Nancy Ortberg

Looking for God is a collection of personal and topical essays by Nancy Ortberg, loosely themed around the idea of rethinking/rediscovering God through Jesus.

Each essay has a central theme, a Biblical center, good questions and outstanding- really, really outstanding- real world illustration and application.

While the book doesn’t tell me a lot about Ortberg’s rediscovery of God in a narrative fashion, the key moments and lessons captured in these essays are insightfully honest and occasionally deeply moving.Continue reading “Recommendation and Review: Looking For God by Nancy Ortberg”

Riffs: The Biggest Story in Southern Baptist News (and did you even hear it?)

SBC President Frank Page is one in a million. He’s a truth-teller who understands what’s actually going on in his denomination.

Don’t get me wrong. My denomination does love its statistics, but they seldom- never?- go all the way down the field and say “This is where the ball is going to fall.”

Frank did. Frank told the SBC that half of their churches are going to die in the next 20 years.Continue reading “Riffs: The Biggest Story in Southern Baptist News (and did you even hear it?)”