One of the side effects of the late vocations classes I’m taking (currently on the Old Testament), is that after each session I return with wonderful kernels of ideas from which to expand a (hopefully) interesting essay based on the discussions we have in class. Last week one of the books we read was Isaiah.

Isaiah 7 … and particularly Isaiah 7:14 has been a lighting rod for messianic interpretations.

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin
shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

This verse and the surrounding few verses, Christians have traditionally taken as a sign-point identifying the virginity of the Theotokos. Much modern commentary focuses on defending the use of the word virgin. The Masoretic text (MT), which is the primary source for the Western canon (apparently) uses a term which is more ordinarily translated as young or unmarried girl … not virgin. The LXX text however both originates much earlier, might have used a separate strand of source text than the MT, and unambiguously uses a Greek term which translates as virgin. However, that isn’t the core problem. For even if you either buy the somewhat contorted arguments for translating the MT term “virgin” or just use the LXX itself as your base text there remains a problem (of course if you’re going to use the LXX here, then you’ve a problem explaining why you’ve decided to dropped half a dozen or more books from the canon … additionally one of the oldest complete extant LXX copies the Codex Alexandrinus also contains first and second Clement in the New Testament).

Read the rest of this entry

Only in the NY Times will you find an article about how charities are attracting money that could, instead, be funneled through the inefficiency of a government bureaucracy. 

The $300 billion donated to charities last year cost the federal government more than $50 billion in lost tax revenue.

"Lost" tax revenue?  It’s not lost if it wasn’t yours in the first place.  But apparently, the Times, and reporter Stephanie Strom, thinks that’s the ‘default’ position; your money belongs to the government, except that which it loses to charities.

And as Don Surber sarcastically notes:

Why by collecting $300 billion a year from donors to provide social services, those charities are cheating the federal government out of $50 billion — money that could be used for, well, social services.

Hey, let’s try something.  If you get a mail appeal letter from the Salvation Army, reply to it and let’s steal more money from the government.  And it’ll hack off the NY Times, to boot!

Yes, we’re in that time of year when people scurry about, putting up holiday decorations, baking holiday treats, purchasing holiday gifts, writing holiday cards, attending holiday parties, and even trimming holiday trees. And all the while, we’re told by an impotently paranoid culture that we cannot utter the name of THE holiday that all our December actions are based on. Heaven forbid we should actually mention the holiday that everyone KNOWS is being celebrated.

Beginning just prior to Halloween, Disneyland re-decorates their “Haunted Mansion” attraction to combine aspects of both Halloween and that unmentionable day of celebration (which happens to be sometime near the Winter Solstice). Jack-O-Lanterns are mixed with images of Sandy Claws and the like. As one enters the attraction, it is interesting to note the canned narration inviting guests to “come inside and see what happens when two holidays collide!” Well, it’s obvious that one of the holidays is Halloween, but which holiday is it colliding with?

Kwanzaa?

Festivus?

Hanukkah?

Ramadan?

However you celebrate the holiday formerly known as [strong throat clear], take the time to read two sites, written by my friend Ilona, dedicated to the Advent of that colliding holiday (see here and here).

The occasion of the Manhattan declaration has been one in which a number of evangelicals, the very active Frank Turk at Evangel, has decided that the primary reason he will not sign is that it was done in concert with Roman Catholics, and apparently even worse than that, with the Eastern Orthodox. His point of view, and in fact his very reason for not signing has a number of prominent bloggers and those who self-label as Evangelicals who share his point of view. He writes:

I’ve said it elsewhere, so it should be no surprise when I say it here that I am sure there are Catholics who are saved, and likewise for the occasional Eastern Orthodox you may run into who exercises an Evangelical (large “E” intended) understanding of Jesus and the consequences of Him; but to throw out the wide blanket and just call all of these groups “Christian” in an overly-broad sociological sense, and to call all of them “believers” in the sense required to make the rest of the reasoning in this document is much.

This, to my ears, sounds very Pharisaic. Here we have Mr Turk standing in judgement of the whole of Catholicism and Orthodoxy and finding them wanting … except those few who secretly are “Evangelical.” Well, fortunately (apparently) for me, Mr Turk is not my judge, for I have a Judge already. It seems to me the Gospel has a few things to say about those trying to put themselves in the place of that Judge. Read the rest of this entry

This summer I had a class in theology which I sometimes discussed. This class was part of the “late vocations” program offered by in our area by the OCA. Currently, I’m taking the second of these classes, and true to form the reading/work load has been somewhat larger than expected. We’re taking a “great books” approach to the Old Testament, and in our 8 week class … reading and discussing the entire Old Testament …. and for the technically minded, using the Codex Alexandrinus for our canon … which means that the books we read are somewhat extended from the standard Protestant even Catholic set of books. In the below, I’m going to explore a question/point raised in class which I would like to explore in more detail.

Throughout the Old Testament, but certainly notable in Judges through Kings IV (the Orthodox church uses the Septuagint as its basis for the Old Testament, Samuel I and II and Kings I & II become Kings I-IV) there is constant influence from external polytheistic religions. There is not just military conquest and battle back and forth between nations being portrayed, but we find priests contending and confronting those following other gods and abandoning those of other religions. There is a marked contrast between how, for example, Elijah deals with the priests of Baal (Kings III 18) and how today we confront those who believe differently in this modern age. Read the rest of this entry

In our self-absorbed, narcissistic culture, filled with people desperate to find meaning to their lives, is it no surprise we’ve generated the Personal Promise Bible? (HT: STR)

Have you ever inserted your name as you read the Bible to make it more personal? Now you can experience the reality of God’s love and promises in a way you never thought possible. In the Personal Promise Bible, you will read your first name personalized in over 5,000 places throughout the New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs, over 7,000 places throughout the complete Old and New Testaments.

Indeed, with a tagline of “as unique as you are”, such a product only reinforces the notion that the Bible was written directly to us individually. This, I think, is an issue that has crept up in the evangelical church in America. In Bible studies, class discussions, and sermons alike, do any of these phrases sound familiar: “To me, this verse means…”, “What does this verse mean, to you?…”, “My special verse is…”, or “God gave me this verse…”? It’s this “the Bible was written to me” idea which causes so many Christians to literally steal away the intended meaning of scripture. Consider the classic “my special verse” of Jeremiah 29:11,

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

The main problem with this unique-as-you-are Bible is that most of the Bible was not written directly to us! This certainly does not mean we cannot gleam truths, insights, applications and personal significance from the words in God’s Word, but it does mean we should approach the written Word in a manner consistent with how we approach any written form of communication. We must understand the historical foundation of Israel and the early Church which, as with any foundation, precedes us and on which we stand. We must understand that the ultimate author of the Bible (God) has an intent (plan) He is communicating to all people and working out through His church. And we need to realize that the individual authors of the Bible, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote in specific literary genres, to specific audiences, with specific intentions.

If we fail to understand these basic premises, and choose to personalize essentially the entire Bible, we’ll end up with an anti-Word. Consider Jeremiah 29:11 in this unique-as-you-are context: “For I know the plans I have for Rusty,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper Rusty and not to harm Rusty, plans to give Rusty hope and a future.” How many times have you heard Christians take this verse in essentially that personal-for-me context? Yet, are they ready to do the same with the preceding verse? “This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to Rusty and fulfill my gracious promise to bring Rusty back to this place.”

It’s interesting to note, when I’ve pointed out Jeremiah 29:10 to people who want to claim Jeremiah 29:11, the mental gymnastics that take place to suddenly turn the meaning of verse 10 into an allegory or metaphor or something completely apart from the personal promise they are so convinced is contained in verse 11.

Could it be that one reason we’ve drifted into a post-Christian culture is because we completely misunderstand our place in God’s Plan through an ill-educated approach to reading His Word?

And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him till the morning.  And he saw that he prevailed not against him; and he touched the broad part of his thigh, and the broad part of Jacob’s thigh was benumbed in his wrestling with him.  And he said to him, Let me go, for the day has dawned; but he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.  And he said to him, What is thy name? and he answered, Jacob.  And he said to him, Thy name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name; for thou hast prevailed with God, and shalt be mighty with men. [Genesis 32]

Well, so then Israel means something like “one who wrestles with God” or at the very least prevails in his struggles with divinity. The early Church father’s, who by and large were not of Hebrew ancestry, read that through Christ we are all striving to shed our inner Egyptian and cross the Jordan to be come Israelites. The connection of out spiritual state with Israel can be quite plainly seen in Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses. So … let’s take this and see what it might mean for the American Christian today? What does it mean for the individual Christian. How do you wrestle with God?

Back when I was at University, in the 80s and not as I tell my children when the dinosaurs roamed the plains, most of my study was concentrated in maths and physics which essentially was to wrestle with Nature. Which was to ask, how was the world constructed? How can we understand it? How do we interact with it on a fundamental level? However, these are the big questions. People working in the field don’t work directly on the large questions. At any one time, people are working on smaller, more tractable questions which on getting answers will move the larger communities understanding of the big picture forward … or at the very least sharpen our understanding of what we don’t know.

Similarly, it seems to me, we as Christians are called to wrestle in exactly that way with God. How do we understand God? How are we to interact with him and with others? How to understand and work toward Theosis/Sanctification?

So, here’s my question for the gentle reader. What smaller questions are you working on as you wrestle? What knots are you trying to untangle?

John Mark Reynolds takes another tack on the question regarding the heroes in our midst and not in the distant past, although he mentions at least one of them as well.

One approach to the question of the hero is to start with the particular. That is to say, before you have a hero, you have heroic acts. The acts of our heroes are, one might suggest, those momentary flashes, those instances where the ecstatic is made plain for the outside observer. And here the term ecstatic refers to eks – static, the taking oneself outside of oneself. He, in the act, transcends the ordinary and the merely human and displays something more. For it is in these actions a glimpse of the possible, the true, the good, or the beautiful is made plain for the ordinary observer.

Our popular heroes then are people who are gifted enough to regularly display these transcendent moments, normally only in their field of endeavour, such as the football arena of the Brett Favre example used in the prior posts by Mr Reynolds. These individuals, our athletic and artistic heroes regularly perform inspiring acts. Yet, at the same time today’s press revels in revealing that these people have feet of clay and makes no bones about exposing their weaknesses and foibles.

Socrates was informed by the oracle at Delphi that he was the “wisest of men.” After some deliberation and discussion, he arrives at the notion that his wisdom consists of realizing, in part, that being an expert in one thing does not confer expertise outside of the realm in which one is skilled. And this is essentially the equivalent error wherein we attribute excellence and heroism to a ball player off the field of play. This is not as stupid as it sounds. To acquire that level of excellence and expertise requires a number of virtues including diligence,  perseverance, and other qualities of character which are indeed excellent virtues. Yet, the fame and fortune comes with a host of temptations and lures which often bring vices which overshadow or at the very least discolor those same virtues. Achilles excellence at war likely was not accompanied by similar excellence at law, at medicine, or in the nursery. Likewise excellence on the athletic field does not transfer or imply to excellence in ethics.

The first suggestion would be that not fall into the common error regarding our heroes is we confuse the moments which give us glimpses of the good and ascribe that same goodness to an otherwise ordinary man. But there remains a problem. When a scrambling Brett Favre zipps a frozen rope across the grain, a Steve Nash fires a no-look pass in transition, or a Hillary Hahn unfolds a flawless effervescent cadenza … it is that act itself which we should laud, idealize, remember and fixate upon … and perhaps the person not so much.

The other problem, for the Christian, is how to frame and to put into perspective this glimpse of the good, the true, or the beautiful into the framework of virtues extolled by Gospel, Beatitude, and Psalter.  Bridging the gulf, if gulf exists, between that athletic or artistic moment and living a life of love, charity, apatheiea, and humility … is at the very least an exercise for another essay.

The phrase, "No, Lord" is an oxymoron.

If one were to attempt to continue the conversation about the Church in late modernity started by Matthew Lee Anderson here, there are a few avenues one might pursue. In the comments, there are suggestions of following threads from CS Lewis Abolition of Man. One might also suggest Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge, or Huxley’s Brave New World. In the following, the endeavor is made to both step off that beaten track and to ask a question.

As an outsider looking in at the modern protestant (non-liturgical) evangelical church, one thing which strikes me which is synch with the secular enlightenment culture which Mr Anderson highlights is a personalization of the notion of the sacred and a loss of an exterior idea of Holiness. One of the aspects of the enlightenment which is entwined with the Protestant separation is the de-emphasis of the liturgical expression in favor of or over and above the interior spiritual experience.

From Biblical narratives there is no small emphasis of Holiness. “Take off your sandals for the ground on which you stand is Holy” is repeated in Exodus and Joshua. Other examples abound of how being in a Holy place or the presence of God … one changes one’s mode of presentation and practice. A place is Holy not because of Moses (or Joshua’s) interior spiritual experience, but because of a thing outside of either, that is the presence of God was being there, at that place and time. 

At Emmaus the disciples knew Jesus when he broke the bread, and the Church through the ages took that to mean that in the Eucharist God is present in the sharing of bread and wine. One of the common features of liturgical churches like the Catholic, the Anglican, and the Orthodox is that their worship experience expresses and reflects a sense of a sense of Holiness which is not primarily to attain an interior spiritual effect akin but more in line with the taking off of one’s sandals for one is in the presence of the Holy. The Eucharist is a singular Holy event taking place in each Sunday liturgy, and their various liturgical celebrations express this in different ways.

So, as an outsider to the community noted above, (the non-liturgical protestant ones), I have a question. Where is Holiness to be found in your parish? How is it treated? How is it expressed? What does the term Holy mean for your church?

No, not as in golfing.  I’m going to be quite busy this week, so blog posts this week will consist mostly of a collection of links that I happen across.

John Mark Reynolds, writing at the Evangel blog, wonders about that prediction that Christians would become a fringe political force if they stuck with their position on same-sex marriage.  This after Maine, of all places, upheld traditional marriage.  Not mentioned is that the House of Representatives barely squeaked out a health care bill (passing it with only 2 votes to spare) only after a provision was added that prevented abortion from being covered by it.  Wasn’t that supposed to be a losing issue, too?

October, 2009 was the 3rd coldest October recorded in the US.  Can we officially chuck those computer climate models and just admit we don’t really know what’s going on with climate, and thus should refrain from making pronouncements on what is or isn’t changing it?

Racist graffiti, and Al Sharpton isn’t all over CNN denouncing it?  Oh, wait, it’s anti-white graffiti.  Well then, nothing to see here.

Attorney General Eric Holder is endorsing extending provisions of the Patriot Act including roving wiretaps.  It’s one thing to talk it down when you’re not in the hot seat.  It’s another thing entirely when it’s your responsibility, eh?

The European Union, as a whole, could sink underneath the waves of debt very soon, having total debt equaling 100% of its annual gross domestic product.  A special commission "discovered" that a major reason is the socialist pensions and healthcare that the government guarantees.  And we want to follow them into this whirlpool?

And finally, the legacy of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, and a musing about whether or not political correctness will allow a candid and honest public discussion, or if more people will die at the PC altar.

A few thoughts, stemming from the murderous rampage at Fort Hood.

***

While some are cautioning us to not immediately make a radical Muslim connection with the fact that the alleged killer is an Arab American, one has to wonder at how quickly the label “Right-Wing-Extremist” would have been applied had the mass murderer been white.

***

It appears that the alleged killer was stopped by shots fired from a civilian police officer. Per CNN,

A civilian police officer who shot the Fort Hood gunman four times during his bloody rampage stopped the attacker cold, a U.S. Army official said Friday.

Officer Kimberly Munley of the Fort Hood Police Department is a “trained, active first responder” who acted quickly after she “just happened to encounter the gunman,” said Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, Fort Hood’s commanding general.

Cone said the officer and her partner responded “very quickly” to the scene of the shootings — reportedly in around three minutes.

One point of clarification, if Officer Munley was on duty, and responded quickly to the situation, she was a second responder (which in no way diminishes from her courageous actions). First responders would be those initially and directly under fire.

***

President Obama continues, unfortunately, to approach serious issues in amateur fashion. In the video below, consider the fact that Obama took nearly two minutes to actually get to the topic of the shooting at Fort Hood. Evidently, he thought that giving various “shout-outs” had a higher priority.

***

Update: More on courageous Officer Munley who, in addition to responding to the scene quickly, immediately engaged the situation, thereby stopping the killer.

Munley’s toughness and grace under pressure were on display Thursday when she and her partner responded within three minutes of reported gunfire, said Army Lt. Gen. Bob Cone.

Munley, who had been trained in active-response tactics, rushed into the building and confronted the shooter as he was turning a corner, Cone said.

“It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer,” Cone said.

Mark Horne offers some arguments why “he can never be a Roman Catholic.” I’m not a Roman Catholic … but it seems like a number of these reasons are not valid criticisms. I’m going to concentrate on one (and mention one more). Mr Horne offers:

Necromancy is almost as huge a sin and praying to the departed saints is necromancy.  See #1 above.  People raised thinking bigamy is Christian may be true Christians, but people who know better are living in sin and without hope of eternal life unless they repent of such behavior.

Praying to Saints by Catholics is not because Catholics believe that “some other intercessory agency between themselves and God” is required. Examine their liturgy and the prayers they pray. They pray to directly to Father, Son, and Spirit. So they are not asking Saints (or Mary) to pray for them because they think it is required. Something else is going on here, they do it because they think it is efficacious. My understanding of the way prayer to Saints is seen not as a required intermediary but as being equivalent to your asking a friend, acquaintance, or even some Christian you don’t really know, to pray for you. That is it. Just in the same way that Protestants (and every Christian) thinks that the prayers of others on our behalf is beneficial, likewise Catholics (the East and the original Reformers for that matter) think that the dead can pray for us … after all they are not dead but are with God.  You are asking that this Saint, asleep in the Lord whom you believe is “now” outside of time participating in God’s presence (no longer seeing through a glass darkly), to pray for you. How is that akin to bigamy and living a life of sin?

There are two pieces to this that I think give the American evangelical cause to pause. The first is that the notion that a saint from a country far away and centuries removed will be aware of my request that he (or she) pray for me and that furthermore that he (or she) might do so. The second is that in our American notions of egalitarianism and equality Americans find the notion that we are not equal in the eyes of the Lord, a difficult one to master. To the latter, when the disciples were having a debate about who would be seated at Jesus right hand when he came into his glory, Jesus rebuke was not that “nobody would be sitting there” as we are equal in the afterlife, but that they were not the ones to be seated there.

Yet that isn’t really the question.

The real question is why is asking for the intercession by a deceased hero of the Church not adiaphora? And this has a counter question for the East and the Roman Catholic, why is not asking that the Saints intercede for us also not adiaphora?

A final remark Mr Horne objects:

Nowhere are Christians required to do a genealogical study to see if they are members of the true Church.

I for one, have no clue what is he talking about here. Any guesses?

A couple of recent articles demonstrate just how off-track this august body has become.

First, an opinion article from USA Today that speaks out against UN efforts to criminalize the criticism of religion.  This is as clear-cut a free speech issue as you can get, and the cure is worse than the disease.

Thinly disguised blasphemy laws are often defended as necessary to protect the ideals of tolerance and pluralism. They ignore the fact that the laws achieve tolerance through the ultimate act of intolerance: criminalizing the ability of some individuals to denounce sacred or sensitive values. We do not need free speech to protect popular thoughts or popular people. It is designed to protect those who challenge the majority and its institutions. Criticism of religion is the very measure of the guarantee of free speech — the literal sacred institution of society.

You don’t destroy free speech in order to save it.  There are clear exceptions to this rule, but "offense" isn’t one of them.  Thank you, UN

Second is a special report submitted to the UN by its Human Rights Council that has in it a definition of gender that the UN itself has been trying to get enough nations to agree with.  In a report entitled, “Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism” (which clearly involves genders, right?), we find this:

Gender is not synonymous with women but rather encompasses the social constructions that underlie how women’s and men’s roles, functions and responsibilities, including in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, are defined and understood. This report will therefore identify the gendered impact of counter-terrorism measures both on women and men, as well as the rights of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. As a social construct, gender is also informed by, and intersects with, various other means by which roles, functions and responsibilities are perceived and practiced, such as race, ethnicity, culture, religion and class. Consequently, gender is not static; it is changeable over time and across contexts. Understanding gender as a social and shifting construct rather than as a biological and fixed category is important because it helps to identify the complex and inter-related gender-based human rights violations caused by counter- terrorism measures; to understand the underlying causes of these violations; and to design strategies for countering terrorism that are truly non-discriminatory and inclusive of all actors.

Emphasis mine.  Is the UN really unaware of biology?  No, they’re just trying to bend it to their will in order to mainstream behaviors that they deem okey dokey.

This is way beyond a big diplomatic table where nations can work out their differences.  As with any political body, they expand to fill any area they wish, not being otherwise constrained.  This is a body badly in need of remaking from the ground up.