Attention BHT Santa: make sure Michael’s copy is accompanied by the life-size cutout and subliminal recording.

Michael Patton at Reclaiming the Mind has been gracious enough to fix me up with a room at Connection Gate. I’d like to invite BHT fellows and readers to get the free software and be able to join me for some events in the “IMonk” room.

Connection Gate is a “chat/IM” type client, but it is tailored for online education. Seminaries, churches and businesses use the software. It’s rather impressive. (It’s also Windows only at this point.)

When you get registered at Connection Gate, you’ll log on, go to “rooms” (tent icon) in the “Public” area, look for Christianity and then look for my room and some of the rooms run by RTM, such as the First Things room. If you have a microphone, we can enable complete audio interaction.

RTM uses this for their “Converse With Scholars” program, which I think is one of the best uses of technology I’ve seen in the Christian blogosphere. You can find archived episodes at RTM.

I’ll be announcing some discussion events in the room in the near future. The more of you that have the software, the more fun we’ll have. This is going to be a good thing and I hope you’ll give it a try.

One secular reviewer says that God died in Harry Potter.

Tanned and rested John has blogged two entries on Ellul. John: where do you find that kind of theological imagination outside the Reformed world? ;-)

One of the signs of hopelessness is that we live in the age of derision, which is “shown to the aged by the young, towards politicians by the media, and in many branches of the arts. (...) [O]ne aspect of modern life is exempt from this derision:”

Technology is not ridiculous. It is not made the object of derision … [Man] cannot compete with technology in power, precision, finesse, and intelligence, so he founders in self-accusation. The system of derision is really an essential aspect of a society in which technology becomes God.

To question the sanctity of technology is the near unpardonable sin. Technology is the sacrament of the Holy Spirit. It is the Excalibur that ensures divine blessing upon our benevolent rule. John’s closing to the second post deserves an echo:

Even in the church, the centre of devotional gravity has shifted away from the Word and sacraments to other things: charismatic gifts, upbeat music, acts of service, political involvement. Not that all these things are wrong in themselves, but that the apparent lack of power in the Word and sacraments, the apparent need to employ other means to bring and keep people in, provides some confirmation that the Holy Spirit is not working as powerfully in the church as we might wish to believe.

One of the reasons, I think, that such a radical critique as Ellul’s isn’t believed is because we put ourselves in the position of wielding Excalibur to defend the church, the people of God, from all corners. This includes needed prophetic critique from within. This puts us constantly at work reassuring ourselves, sometimes precisely on those points on which we should not be reassured. It just can’t be that the Holy Spirit is no longer speaking in our active, noisy, vibrant churches. We have the numbers and market share to prove it, right?

What do we find attractive, and why? John’s phrase is an elegant way to ask the question: where is the “centre of devotional gravity” in our church?

I chose to interpret the Happy Feet thing as more of a Fundies against Non-Fundies sort of thing; it made for a much more enjoyable movie experience.

What’s the definition of a Tradition?  Something we believe and do just ‘cause we always have and not ‘cause we’re supposed to?

BCF 26.4. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, in whom, by the appointment of the Father, all power for the calling, institution, order or government of the church, is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner; neither can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God; whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.

Can my view of tradition repudiate the view that the pope is the antiChrist?

Can my view of tradition reject the idea that Catholics can’t be saved if they believe Catholic doctrine?

There are four verses on the antiChrist in the NT. None of them apply to the pope.

I’m not aware that anything in Catholic doctrine that denies faith in Jesus as the means of salvation.

Do I believe in salvation outside the visible catholic church? That’s always been a tail chasing question. One of the worst hours of my life was reading Cyprian on that one. (Stop spinning Van Til.)

Do I think the ECFs went off the road at places? Absolutely. Augustine was screwed up about sex. Ever-Virgin? Sorry. Scripture is clear that is not the case. Does this leave us with quietism, etc.? Why should it?

I can call Mary the Mother of God with no problem, but I understand that we have a history to contend with. What do you believe your pastor should stand up and tell the flock must be believed about Mary?

>How competent are we as individuals to determine how loosely or firmly some teaching is “based” on Scripture?

Let me get my RC catechism off the shelf and I’ll be right back with you on a page number for that one. (jn)

BTW, we plan on coming to Lexington sometime in the future to attend the Latin Mass at St Peter’s. Should we pick you up? :)

How come all the people I like seem to be wrestling with the same decision? :)

Okay, I don’t disagree with what you’ve written in your first paragraph, Michael. It isn’t to my point, but that’s fine. If you think it is to my point, which your response to my example of the passage from John suggests, then I think you’ve misconstrued a historical/dogmatic question (mine) for a theological question (yours). I don’t disagree with you about sufficiency, priority, etc.

The British army’s “longest continuous military operation” comes to an end tonight: Operation Banner, the army’s security operations in Northern Ireland. The operation “lasted 38 years and involved 300,000 personnel, of whom 763 were killed by paramilitaries”.

Now, if it takes 38 years for order to be sufficiently restored in Northern Ireland for the army to be withdrawn, I will leave it to others to speculate on how long it will take to reach a similar point in (ahem) other current theatres of operation.

Losing KG will be bad for the T-Wolves. For me, it’s a big yawn. It’s fun to go to a game occasionally, but I’ve never been into basketball. Only very recently have I been able to sit with people and watch an entire baseball game. (There’s hope for me yet, Michael.)

the donkey Jesus rode upon later cured all who rode upon him of all diseases.

EDIT:  Nope, mules are sterile, not donkeys…. someone politely informed me… Oh well, I do like this tradition of the donkey having healing power….

A lurker emailed me on the Happy Feet topic, as follows:

Y’know, I did have that problem until I read what you said. Then I suddenly could see the other side of the coin. Must be my contrarian nature.

It could just as easily be a metaphor for Jesus and the disciples (young) against Pharisees (stern, stuck in their ways, unbending).

Or it could be the 16th century reformers (young) against the Catholic hierarchy which excommunicated them (old guys)

Or it could be the modern EC (young) against the old traditional church hierarchy.

It’s a story as old as the hills. A young person comes along with a new idea that doesn’t fit the mold. He is outcast by the circle of elders … until the day comes when he saves the day and everyone realizes he was a good thing, not a bad thing. A variation even appears in the book of Judges, chapter 11.

=====
Y’know, I can’t remember a disney movie for as long as I can remember where authority figures got any respect. Robin Hood. Aladdin. Pirates of the Caribbean. Happy Feet. The story Disney tells over and over is of the young dealing with older authority figures who are rigid, unbending, and frequently corrupt.

“Pirates” is especially ironic, given just how vicious pirates were and are. To me, the redcoats are the heroes in those movies, even though they’re putatively the ‘villains’.

Which isn’t to say, they don’t have a point. Time and again, we do build old, stale orthodoxies which the young have to rebel against and tear down to make something new, which becomes the new orthodoxy, which gets in turn by other young reformers in another few generations.

It’s also, in a very real sense, a Christian idea. Can you imagine a conservative Muslim producing such a film? How about Confucianism? All other major religions that I am aware of give all authority to the old, the established, the wise. I can’t think of any except Christianity that make room for the young rebel as well.

My reply is after the fold: More »« Less

I’m probably the only one here who cares, except maybe for Adam or Jason, but this is so sad.

John:  No, I saw it too.  A good number of animated kids movies these days are pushing that, or the PC Tolerance agenda.  No surprise.  Christians try to work their beliefs into their films/books, etc.  So do the non-Christians.  If it makes you feel any better, though, I thought the baaaad penguins were supposed to be Scottish Presbyterians, so you should be OK.

Just been watching “Happy Feet” with my family, and – well, I’m not normally one for “culture war”, “Disney is polluting the minds of our kids”-type stuff, but did anyone else find some of the themes in “Happy Feet”... troubling? All those stern, nasty religious types up against the freewheeling “backsliders”? Am I turning into Jerry Falwell in my old age, or does anyone else think those aspects of the film were problematic?

Joel: I don’t have an affirmation of tradition that can turn a typological Bathsheba into an immaculately conceived and venerated Queen of heaven. I’ve listened to Catholic apologists all day on this one and the “dialog” is “Where can we find anything that can be cooked up into some foundation for this useful dogma?” Scripture and tradition in dialog got us to an articulation of the Trinity and the Two Natures. Tradition provides an articulation in words not in scripture for what is clearly, exegetically present in scripture. Your illustration of John’s “much more” doesn’t mean there is an entire library of doctrine about Jesus that is not in scripture and Christians can authoritatively argue from someone’s claims about traditions not found in the Gospels. The words of pre-NT creeds, baptisimal formulas, hymns, etc. are not in contradiction to the NT and they don’t lead us to conclude the NT is insufficient. They also don’t lead us to assume scripture takes a back seat to tradition because tradition preceded the canon.

D.H. Williams makes it clear that the “rule of faith” and other expressions of tradition were modest and focused, not encyclopedic and far ranging. The view of tradition that says a pope 1800 years later can propagate a must-be-believed immaculate conception is a long way from any kind of modest interaction of tradition and scripture. It’s an abuse of both, not to mention a ridiculous unnecessary dividing of the church. Millions of Christians can honor Mary as the Mother of God. What’s the purpose of the further dogmas if not to expand the power of the church and to further relegate scripture to a mumbling witness.

>So, I’d like to hear more about what sense of tradition you don’t have a problem with that isn’t identical or reducible to that which is explicitly presented in Scripture. It seems the price you’re paying to have an argument for why you don’t have to believe Marian dogmas in order to be saved is too steep.

The Canon. After that, it’s a matter of articulation, as I said. Tradition and scripture are different articulations of truth, but when the dialog occurs, tradition looks for the truths it articulates in the text.

I don’t have to pay a price not to believe Marian dogmas any more than I am obligated to believe the donkey Jesus rode upon later cured all who rode upon him of all diseases.

Traditions that are explicitly stated in scripture aren’t traditions are they?  They’re doctrine.  I can’t answer for Michael, but for my part, I don’t mind traditions that seem to be somewhat loosely rooted in scripture (although I feel little obligation to take them seriously), but I don’t care for traditions which seem to based on only a pretense of scripture (such as Marian dogmas), or those which seem to expressly defy scripture.  I’ve no wish (right now) to turn this into a baptism debate but for for me, paedobaptism falls into that latter category. (please, let’s not get into that right now. It’s just an example)

I recently had to write a paper explaining my views on Scriptural authority. I mention Sola Scriptura in one of the bullet points. Have at it.

I. The Authority of Scripture: For a claim to be authoritative it must cohere with and correspond to what is true. That which is false has no legitimate claim to authority. The authority of Christian Scripture, or any writing claiming any authority, derives its authority from being in line with the intrinsic authority of truth as it corresponds with reality. Deductively speaking, since God is ultimate reality (He was, is, and is to come [Rev 4:8]), ultimate knowledge (He knows all truths and believes no falsehoods [Heb 4:13]), and ultimate character (He cannot lie [Heb 6:18]) it follows that whatever He communicates by the means of divine revelation is of ultimate authority. If we are to suppose (and I do) that such means of divine revelation are found within Scripture then whatever it says is normative for the rule and guide of faith and practice. Therefore, if the commands contained in Scripture are disobeyed then so is God disobeyed, or if the promises contained in Scripture are disbelieved then so is God disbelieved and so on.

• I believe the authority of Scripture to be unmatched. It is not subject to or on the same the level with creeds, confessions, theological tradition or ecclesiastic authorities like it is in the Roman Catholic Church. While it is acknowledged that the fruits of tradition are brought to bear on the interpretation of Scripture, no tradition can be added to or made as equal to what is already contained in Scripture. This is to preserve the principle of sempler reformenda—to be “always reforming”—in the goal of ever-conforming our notions of religious truth to the teachings of Scripture.


• I believe Scripture has priority over the Church and Orthodoxy, and is the originator of each. Scripture does not have its genesis from either; rather, for the Church, it is recognized as inspired by God, and for Orthodoxy, it is the inventor its canons.


• I deny that sola Scriptura—or “Scripture alone” —implies that tradition, reason, and experience are rendered as invalid sources of religious truth. Sola Scriptura simply means that Scripture is highest of these in what has been called the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.”


• I deny that private experiences, mystical claims, prophetic dreams or charismatic utterances (such as prophecy), though possibly being a category of special revelation, are of the same authority of that which has been recorded and canonized in Scripture. Such experiences must be tested against Scripture to be authenticated as special revelation (1 John 4:1).

I got this video from a friend. It is very interesting. I am not sure if the topic of abortion is deadhorsed or disallowed or whatever so maybe this will just get moderated. If it doesn’t get moderated, maybe someone can tell me how to make the fancy little youtube window show up in the post because I can’t do it. But anyway, the question is posed to some anti-abortion demonstrators “if abortion is deemed illegal what should the punishment be for a woman who gets an abortion?” The answers are…well….not.

Let me go ahead and say that I in no way am posting this as a pro-abortion post. I also realize that video can be cut and edited to make people look sillier than they actually are. So by posting this I do not want to embarrass the people on the video. That said, this is a legitimate question. If you want the legal system to control peoples’ actions then you have to think it all the way through.

EDIT: I just got an email that this video link is dead now, citing “ This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by a third party.” Sorry, the post is pointless without the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T95avZoqlhE

RE-EDIT: The video is available at another link now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo

1. “I have no problem with tradition.”
2. “I do not believe in infallible tradition.”

Okay, help a fellow non-Messalian figure out what meaning—functionally—’tradition’ has for you. (It would also be interesting to hear what regulates that for you, but that is beyond the scope of my questions here.) I affirm your two claims; however, it seems that claim #1 means something like this to you: “I have no problem with tradition as long as it is dogma that I can find explicitly in Scripture.” Which is why when you respond to someone like Jesse, it seems that tradition really doesn’t have any meaningful content of its own. So it might help if you fleshed out to what extent “what the apostles told us” helps us (or has helped us) read Scripture and shape church life and practice.

You do operate with a notion of tradition as normative. The development of the doctrine of the Trinity and the two natures of Christ were the peculiar responses to specific historical-cultural challenges. What did it take to formulate, develop and defend these doctrines? Could it be done without the apostles’ teaching and theological imagination? Those who were literate could take that teaching back to the Scripture and interpret it accordingly. Didn’t it require Scripture and tradition in dialogue? Is the belief that “He descended into hell” validated by the supremacy of Scripture? Isn’t that typology that the NT doesn’t itself use?

I get the supremacy of Scripture standard and agree with it; I just don’t get the strong bifurcation between Scripture and tradition, especially since it is evident that Scripture itself recognizes that there was more said authoritatively than what we have recorded in the canon (John 21:24-25; 3rd and 4th Corinthians, etc.). Did these stories too numerous to be recorded become constitutive of apostolic teaching about one Lord, one faith, one baptism, or not? So, I’d like to hear more about what sense of tradition you don’t have a problem with that isn’t identical or reducible to that which is explicitly presented in Scripture. It seems the price you’re paying to have an argument for why you don’t have to believe Marian dogmas in order to be saved is too steep.

The Taliban have murdered a second Korean Christian humanitarian worker.

I’m learning to ask this question: What do you mean when you use the term sola scriptura?

I get these notes saying I don’t believe in tradition, which, of course, I do, but not in infallible tradition. James Leo Garrett said we actually believe in the supremacy of scripture, which I agree is a much better description.

I believe that the canonical OT verse for that is Daniel 12:2: “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”

However, if the question-behind-the-question is “Did the apostles believe in sola scriptura with regards to the OT”, then I believe the answer is no. We have plenty of other examples of things that the apostles believed and practiced that can’t be found in the OT canon.

Can you establish the doctrine of eternal punishment from the Old Testament scriptures alone? If so, how? If not, what are the implications for Christians? Is hell an example of essential tradition that existed before the NT was written?

“What do you like on your pizza?” might soon replace “What’s your sign?” as a favorite pickup line. Well, at least for vegansexuals. “Peppers, onions, olives, tomatoes, and no cheese? Oh, that’s hot.”

The Korean/Taliban hostage story hasn’t been very prominent in the blogosphere. D.J. Chuang has a complete set of links.

Joel: Oh NOW is the time Reds’ fans get bitter. Thanks for the heads up. I’d started sometime around 1992. And btw, what’s this Samson thing YOU’VE got going on? A little role playing at the house? Watch out for that Delilah.

It was a great trade. Watch for the Dotel pickup, too.

(You’re just bitter—it’s that time of the year for the Reds.)

Mark, I’m glad you’re seeing the superhero possibilities. I’m getting the whole set. We’re going to reenact the Acts 15 council, except I’m going to have Samson barge in with a metal folding chair and just wear out James with it. Paul will spring to James’ defense, catch Samson with a penetrating glare and use his classic “go castrate yourself” wondertwin power on him (Peter will become something lame like a sheet of ice).

My First Mac. Excellent web site if you want to swim the….whatever it is from Windows to Mac.

Traffic at IM is requiring me to buy more server space. The podcasts are doing well. Comment threads are crazy with business, 99% of it really positive and classy.

The Braves traded their 1, 2 and 3 prospects for a Texas Ranger. Is the liquor cabinet locked down there in Hotlanta?

I did a fun thing on the new podcast. I’m sure I’ll pay, but you gotta have fun with the schoolyard bully.

From the Onion AV Club, two women liveblogged their reading of Deathly Hallows (replete with spoilers, if you are so slow that you haven’t read it yet). Comparisons to Lewis and Tolkien are made, and this is definitely not the kind of crowd that bends over backward to make Potter fit within the Christian worldview.

Warning: Commentors have potty-mouths.

Mike Yaconelli did one thing: point people to Christ. Thanks for that video Michael. And thanks for helping with that post. (sorry about the nonsense).

Michael, Thanks for the Mike Yaconelli video link. He rocks, and I needed to hear that today. 

Joel:  Do you mean battles like this?

Update: the battle for the toy box. It’s about time we got back to our spiritual roots by manufacturing, distributing, retailing and buying christian toys, before the courts and the ACLU take those rights away from us, too. Have good clean Bible fun by reimagining all the possibilities, like Goliath having to go up against the truly righteous Moses, with a second helping of serious hurt waiting with M-Dog’s tag team partner, Samson. The winner takes that sweet P31 philly home. Your kids will have hours of fun.

C’mon christian soldiers, get off those wallets. Don’t let the terrorists win.

As a young youth minister, no one influenced me more with his HONESTY and his JESUS than Mike Yaconelli. He would have been 65 years old today. I miss him and his messy spirituality. He was responsible for much of the good – and some of the bad- that’s happened in evangelicalism the last 20 years. I miss his version of the Door and his incredible back page editorials. There’s no one I wanted to be more like. Rest in Jesus, Mike.

To Adam:

Bravo, dude. Don Pablo’s – that’s awesome.

Paul Zahl is fantastic, one of the best Episcopalians teaching today. Sufjan Stevens is sweet like sugar-coated honey, and I highly recommend his entire catalog, not just the states series. Heck, there’s an entire disc of “extras” from the Illinoise disc!

Ok, all you cantankerous historical theologian wannabes I am here to interrupt your apostolic succession [edited…made no sense] the latest video from our RockTV production team: America’s Next Top Pastor. Enjoy.

On a different topic, are there any Sufjan Stevens fanboys here?  I got Illinois from the library.  What a wonderful sprawling mess of an album.  It’s like being with Paul Simon and the Flaming Lips and all their friends on a magic balloon ride across the state.

 On the Berean mindset, it’s not new.  Look at Isaiah 8:20 “To the law and to the testimony!  If they do not speak according to this Word, they have no light of dawn.”  Isaiah counseled his audience to check it out with the Word. 

Also, it’s not enough to  simply claim and say., “our doctrine is Apostolic”.  You have to also say, “and it’s right here in the scriptures, see for yourself.” Whenever I have changed a point of view, a practice, a preference, it has always been because my conscience was convinced by scripture.  This is why I preach anchoring what I say in the text of scripture.  Otherwise, people will and perhaps should discount what I say. 2 Corinthians 4:2 “By the manifestation of truth to each man’s conscience in the sight of God”.  That’s true apostolic ministry, and I believe it is aggressively Berean.  1 Thessalonians 5:21 “Test everything. Hold on to the good.”

And yes, I throw  claims to truth into the garbage bin  whether they be PRESBYTERIAN CLAIMS or  Mormon claims or RC or EO claims unless they can be found in scripture.  So Amen, it’s the same rules for all.  Prove your truth is in the scriptures.  The irony is, that any group that agrees that the criteria is whether scripture teaches it has just achieved significant common ground with me, even though we might have huge disagreements over specifics.

On another note,  New  personal discovery of preacher I enjoy and commend to you,  Rev. Paul Zahl, sermons are  here .  His practical application of Law and Gospel is one of the best I’ve heard.  Very culturally relevant and aware, tons of illustrative material, always gets to the heart of things.  And, he’s Episcopalian. 

If rejecting the Immaculate conception as dogma isn’t a slam dunk…. That doesn’t make anything simple, but it takes the invention of new dogma off the table.

Guess what? I completely agree! That’s part of why I’m going EO and not RC. The EO have no doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and a lot of other things (e.g. the Dormition) are believed but not presented as dogma.

MOD: Amen. I can’t see any difference between the RC approach to promulgating new dogma and the methodology of Mormonism. Like a lot of Protestants, I sometimes feel “naked” in comparison to the RCC’s use of tradition, but when I see what’s been done with that arrangement, I can’t see the difference between Brother Billy Bob getting a new revelation based on a creative reading of some passage and Marian dogmas being cooked up from next to nothing.

Four different kinds of screws and a lot of trouble, but this Apple geek cleaned the Mac Pro keyboard.

If rejecting the Immaculate conception as dogma isn’t a slam dunk by that standard, then we should announce that the Bible is little more than a scratch pad for us to doodle whatever launch points we’d like from the text. Arians have a library of Biblical evidence in comparison to the later Marian dogmas. Arguing that some typological use of Bathsheba establishes something as a “Biblical teaching” is simply a vote for a complete field day. “Apostolic teaching” and every other kind has to be correctable by some standard. I’ll accept that agreeing on the methodology of the standard may be another source of chaos, but the passage- and Luke 24- set up a clear relation of scripture as the verifier. That doesn’t make anything simple, but it takes the invention of new dogma off the table.

On the same topic, Steve, a BHT Lurker, writes…

Hello Michael,

I’ve been lurking around the Tavern for a while now and your July 29 post has prompted me to pop out of the lurkosphere (if bloggers are in the blogosphere then why shouldn’t lurkers have a sphere as well) and comment.

Should we point to Luke 24 as evidence that the RC’s are wrong about their view of infallibility? I don’t know but IF I was a RC and you were to use Luke 24 to attack apostolic infallibility I would be tempted to respond with something like one of the following:

1) You’re looking into the process of the apostles gaining their knowledge and authority. They didn’t start off with all of the knowledge about salvation that they passed on to us. Just because we can point to where someone learned something doesn’t necessarily mean that we should question what they have passed on to us or how they passed it on.
2) If the scriptures are so clear and can be rightly interpreted by all then why did Jesus have to open the minds of the disciples so that they could understand what was written about him?

Thanks for the Tavern and IMonk; they both give me a lot to think about.

In all seriousness, now, the Bereans were commended for checking if the apostolic gospel is actually in accordance with the OT prophecies. Proving this fact has been a popular pastime for Christians ever since then, and it is entirely good. You want to extend that approval to also cover checking if contemporary church practices are in accordance with the apostolic teachings—-which I actually think is a fine application of the verse, even if it does require you to take it slightly out of context. But it won’t faze any serious RC or EO, or even me, all of whom would say that the teachings of their churches are in agreement with the apostolic teaching.

There are no slam dunks. Not even, on our side, 2 Thess. 2:15 (“So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word [of mouth] or by letter from us.”)

Geee. You’re right. The Bereans were actually screwed up. There must be a lost verse.

“And lo, Paul saith unto them….”Wait a minute. Who is commending you people? What a bunch of knuckleheads. Get your noses out of the Hebrew scriptures and pay attention to me.”

Does that mean that we get to evaluate apostolic teaching (the NT) on the basis of the Scriptures that the Bereans had (the OT)? Because if you thought Protestantism was fun now, just wait until we start redacting Romans based on “What Leviticus Means To Me”. Edit: (JN)

Somebody has really gotten [name deleted]’s attention.

Wyman Richardson has a 5-CD set on “Lies Parents Tell Themselves” that looks really good. The messages are available on line as well. Check this out. Very good idea.

Grammatically, it’s not a command. I grant that. But it’s not too hard to imagine Paul telling them to do it.

This passage is a slam dunk, imo. If it’s not in the Bible, even Paul’s preaching isn’t to be accepted as God’s truth. You betcha that sets in judgment on a pile of things from the SBC’s view of alcohol to the Immaculate Conception. Most of all, it arranges the elements of Scripture and tradition into the reformation paradigm.

One thing that I find interesting about the difference between Paul’s teaching and Jesus’ teaching is that Jesus really did speak as someone with authority, and not just any authority, but God’s authority. His whole “you’ve heard it said X, but I say to you Y” bit is notable because they’d heard it said from God, not just any old schmuck off the street! So there Jesus was, flat-out speaking in ways that utterly redefined what the people thought about what God said, and not just in a “Rabbi so-and-so says X and I think maybe Y” sense.

Nobody else does that, or at least nobody else in the canon (shut up, Jim!), and the commendation to the Bereans seems to help me understand why. Nobody else—and I’m thinking mainly of Paul here, because he wrote so much—had the authority. Peter quotes the Old testament on Pentecost, Paul quotes it throughout many/most of his letters, and so on. While Jesus spoke for Himself, the apostles all rely heavily on existing Scripture to make their case, even though Peter recognizes that what Paul is writing is also Scripture.
Paul commends the one group that seems to diligently double-check his work, which says a lot to me. Command? Probably not, but I think it’s straining at gnats to distinguish between commands and good advice. Whatever you call it, it seems to be a Good Thing to ensure that whatever is being taught lines up with what we aleady find in Scripture. Which, yes, knocks out some of the church of Rome teaches, and also a lot of things I heard in various churches growing up, and definitely anything that doesn’t point directly to Jesus.

But that’s just my opinion. I don’t speak as one with any authority. :-)

Tom Snyder is dead. Remember that guy’s laugh? And SNL’s parody of his show?

Interesting data on the Obesity Map, particularly the good news that Ky has found a way to lead the nation.

[name deleted] finally gets to Carl Olson.

Martin Marty has good suggestions for responding to the current surge of atheism.

Dan Kimball asks the obvious question about Southern Baptists and alcohol.

Another good one from Kimball: Do Christians like being hated? (C’mon Dan. Don’t you read the right blogs?)

Among the new material at the N.T. Wright page is the a presentation (in various formats) on “Can a Scientist believe in the resurrection?”

Well let me cut to the chase.

Is this a verse that Protestants should point to as evidence the RC view of infallibility is wrong? If scripture doesn’t teach it, it’s not true. Apostolic teaching- in this case about Jesus- must conform to scripture and can’t go beyond it as infallible tradition.

In the same way, in Luke 24, Jesus opens the minds of two disciples to understand what the scriptures teach about himself. Why do that if apostolic testimony ALONE is infallible?

It’s an interesting question, Michael, because the “these things” of the passage is most likely a direct reference to the Gospel itself. So the popular reading of the passage, which is “The Bereans were always double-checking the apostle’s exegesis from the weekly expository sermon to make sure they weren’t twisting Scripture at all” is probably not what is being commended here. Specifically what is being commended is that the Bereans received this new, fascinating way of reading the Old Testament (in light of the dead and resurrected Christ, as He himself interpreted it to the disciples on Emmaus Road) – in other words, what it’s probably saying is, “The Bereans received the message of the gospel with joy, and they scoured the Old Testament to find out if it really was talking about Jesus, like the apostles said it was.”

Whether that changes the application, I don’t know. It still seems like the principle, “Search the Scriptures to see if these things are so” would apply across the board – but if my analysis above is correct, then at the very least, it should make the whole process more Christ-centered (rather then centered on nit-picky exegetical points).

Michael,the line between command and commendation may be a thin line when you consider the data…..

• Yes, I think when the Holy Spirit calls the Bereans “NOBLE-MINDED” He is calling all Christians to that standard.   This can be abused, but the “accept it because church leaders told you to” without accountability to the Word has been disastrous to the church. 


• When Paul commanded Timothy in 1 Timothy 4 to devote himself to the public reading of scripture and teaching and preaching the Word he was anchoring pastoral ministry in an informed congregation. 


•  This kind of preaching produces grass roots leadership/elders/Presbyters who have the quality of being able to both teach  sound doctrine refute false doctrine. (Titus 1). EDIT:  I Guess this data would point to the reality that all Christians will not reach this level of Biblically grounded epistemological self consciousness…  but elders and those who teach the Word must have a firsthand encounter with the scriptures forging and fortifying their convictions…

Michael, I don’t see any command there, just a commendation of the Bereans for eagerly receiving the word and examining the Scriptures. Which means it’s a very commendable thing to do, but falls short of a command.

The Wandering Heretic actually does something with my infrequent communion/infrequent sex joke. Fascinating post.

Why should ordinary Christians have to examine the scriptures to see if something an apostle says is true?

Acts 15:10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

Just in case you missed it, the boys on the Relevant podcast went to the “museum” and even though they are sympathetic, were deeply disappointed. It’s not a museum at all, but a recreation of Genesis 1-11 with evangelism taking over the last third. They said calling it a museum was “bait and switch.”

Before we leave this discussion, let me share a brief anecdote. The other day I got Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting from the library. When I started reading, I saw that someone had put little post-it notes over all the naughty bits. I just thought that was funny and timely.

Edit: I found this link on Christians in art at the bottom of the Creation Museum article.

Occasionally the voice in my head snarks like H.L. Mencken.

Michael: I can’t look at that and not think like a chair manufacturer.

Van Til: If you give me a treat, I’ll tell you whose live web cam I took that from.

Dude, if Weezer were leading worship in my church, that would mean well, awesomeness.

=w=

Speaking of nudity that I don’t want to think about, President wannabe Hillary Clinton showed some cleavage on the Senate floor this week. A WP fashion writer turned it into a column which said, among other things:

With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding—being a voyeur. Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed.

To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d’oeuvres is a provocation. It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style. Any hint of ambivalence makes everyone uncomfortable. And in matters of style, Clinton is as noncommittal as ever.

Presidential cleavage. I knew that Grover Cleveland had it, but I never thought about the complications a female President would face. We are one weird culture.

I recently took a video camera to Matthew’s church and came back with this footage of the contemporary emerging service. This demonstrates everything wrong with evangelicalism. It speaks for itself.

If you don’t know why some BHTers are so quick to defend nudity…. More »« Less

Kent: I agree completely. I want to be clear that I don’t advocate any of the stuff that falls under the general “culture war” heading. The church has no mission to talk to the world about sin, sexual or otherwise.

But when we talk among ourselves I assume the source of sexual ethics (read: looking at naked women on television) is biblical revelation, not art theory. If it is, then all that separates us is an exegetical task. If not, then we should just talk about baseball and forget it.

I stipulate I don’t know what God thinks about the Sistine nudes. I personally think that ceiling is the greatest instance of skill in painting in…all of history. But I am certain that whatever God thought in 1500 B.C. or 90 A.D. about looking at naked women other than my wife is exactly what He thinks now. He had no Renaissance. In fact, we are not having this discussion because of anything that happened in Palestine in 30 A.D. We are having this discussion because of what happened in Italy in the high middle ages. There would have been no significant debate about this question in the church for the first thousand years.

Since I’m being the “prude” here, I’ll go a step further: though I hope and in fact suspect that God likes Michaelangelo’s work, I have no evidence He thinks nudes are bad if badly painted but good if rendered by a genuis.

Does all this create a tension between my aesthetic sense and my ethical beliefs? Yes. So?

EDIT: And I think my self-imposed 5 minutes on this subject is over, so I’ll be done.

I’ve always found it telling that God made the first set of humans and the first suit of clothes (granted that the first humans tried to make clothing).  Humanity lived in total nudity until the presence of sin and afterward a level of modesty was imposed by both conscience and divine direction.  Marriage is as Tim stated a place where the clothing appropriately disappears.

This isn’t about repressing sexual expression or prudishness, it’s about context.  As an artist I’ll not depict nudity or sexual activity because I don’t want my work to violate one individual’s privacy nor would I care to provide another individual with pornography.  I certainly have the right to produce art that includes nudity and I certainly admit that other much better artists than I have created incredible works that include nudity that should never be witheld from public display.  The appropriate (non-sinful) context for nudity is marriage.

My role is not to control access to what is sinful; and this is the pile of dung that Christians seeking to reform culture often step in.  My role is not to confront nor correct non-believers; this is another pile of dung that I avoid as it’s none of my business what non-believers do.  But in a conversation between believers (such as this) my role is to support my fellow believers in their struggle against sin…a struggle in which definition is often as pivotal a skill as resistance.

What gets sorta dumbass about this sort of conversation between believers is that we argue about whether something is actually sinful (which reflects our tendency to redefine sin to meet our own needs) rather than confessing and sharing the burdens of our real struggles with sin. 

Jim: no.   I’m sure there are multiple levels of sarcasm in all the responses I honestly miss.

Should the church “shut up” about sex?  Why do we have the right to shut up about sex?  How about this radical notion: the church say the same things about sex the NT says.  Or say the same things Jesus said.  Which means we’ll talk about it every once in a while.  Not much, but not nothing.  Paul’s main concern, more than sex, was bickering in the church.
I could never follow the argument that we should cover up Michaelangelo’s nudes, but I also would not paint nudes.  I’m stunned by the logically MEDIOCRE argument that if we object to nudity on biblical grounds we are “mediocre” artisticly.  The two features ARE characteristics of the evangelical ghetto, but have independent causes.  Scheaffer was passionate, and broadly helpful, but failed to make distinctions.

I can’t believe that I have to write this.

The difference between on-screen sex and violence is that sex tempts me to sin, while violence doesn’t. I have the temperament and opportunities for sexual sin, while I have neither the temperament nor opportunity for much violence. Furthermore, as long as we’re still agreed that lust is a sin, I can start sinning without leaving the theater—and that’s the purpose of most film depictions of sex. On the other hand, seeing Bruce Willis blow up a building doesn’t fill me with thoughts of blowing up that same building or set me pondering what it would be like to beat the crap out of my neighbor.

There are probably people that need to stay away from movie violence the same way I need to stay away from movie sex. There are probably people who have the opposite reactions from me. But honestly, I think my predicament is that of 85% or more of the males in this country.

Tim, BTW, is right about the essentially private nature of sex. Now that I’m married I see that more clearly than ever.

I recall Franky Schaeffer telling this anecdote. He was at some Christian book convention to push his book Addicted to Mediocrity which features a cover showing a little cartoon character with a IXThUS fish on his jeans foolishly painting over Michelangelo’s naked Adam. A fairly prominent member of the Christian right approached him to say something like “Congratulations, sir. It’s about time someone stood up against nudity”. This, in turn, reminds me of a pastor I know who once taught the kids in my youth group that the Sistine Chapel was an immoral place because of all the nudity. Aaarrgghhh!!! I am not making this up.

But where is the imputation of the active obedience of Christ? Draft some overtures to the synod! Pass resolutions! Reassure the faithful! Let’s tap a keg of Haterade and have a discernment bacchanalia!

People goes ape-poop over the innuendo, but nobody says a word when I suggest that stripping a woman to take pictures is OK if we shoot her first.
Everything that’s wrong about how the church deals with sexuality is present in some form in this discussion. It’s no wonder the world laughs at us.
Tim: Can I look at someone else’s naked wife if I promise not to enjoy it?

I think it’s pretty clear that God made us to 1) enjoy our own spouses’ nakedness but no-one else’s, and 2) be non-violent. The closer we can come to that, the better. Since both are simply forms of love, when Jesus changes the heart these expressions of love become more nearly natural to us. Otherwise, they make us despair.

They simply have to be talked about separately.  The corrupt forms of the two things, and the pathways toward their respective corruptions, are like apples and oranges. More »« Less

Jim’s first paragraph should get some kind of award. Perhaps an Enzyte Smilin’ Bob shirt would be a suitable prize. (And I’ll add a classic AOL “Me Too!” to the point of his post.)