I finished reading Alvyn Peterson’s book on the theology of Athanasius a month or two ago.
It is a nice introduction to Athanasius’ thought.
There is one insight among many in that exposition of the theology of Athansiaus that is noteworthy: the distinction between the creator and the creature. This may seem like a theological obscurity but in the squabble with Arius it was the dividing line between orthodoxy and heresy. Arius placed the Logos on this creaturely side of that line. Only the Father was God; the Son however exalted was a creature.
Athanasius, in contrast, placed the Son on the God side of the line. The distinction was crucial since, if the Son was a creature, then he was by definition dependent on the Father.
Creation was an act of the Father’s will. Creation was ex nihilo, out of nothing. All creatures are dependent and exist on account of and continue to exist on account of the will of the Father. All that stood between creatures and nothingness is the Father’s will.
If the Son of God was a creature, this is true for him as well. He would not be a life giver but a life receiver, one who could not provide salvation but only receive it. He was in the same spot as us. When Athanasius placed the Son on the God side of the line, he was removing him from dependence, contingency, and placing him in the realm of the Creator.
This all has implications for human nature as well. The idea of creation out of nothing and the distinction between Creator and creature as one of dependence has implications for how we view ourselves and our relation to God. Athansius view was of a humanity and creation as utterly dependent on God, as contingent beings. Our entire being, our ontology, is not self sufficient but contingent. We have no independent being except in God and his creative act. Without God’s creative Word, we fall into nothingness.
Put another way, dependence or faith is at the heart of our existence. Faith and grace is the constitutive stance of humanity over against God. Faith and grace are not for Athanasius somehow new attributes of our relation to God on account of Christ but words which describe our very existence and created state.
One might say this: being saved by grace through faith not by works is not only a description of our justification but also of our creation.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Looking for Jesus
"Pilgrims flock to image of Jesus on Bosnian tree" is the headline of this article.
Yeah it is kinda funny but it is also kinda sad. People are desperate for something to believe in, they want to have something to look at something tangible that they can see and touch that is God to them. Humans are such creatures of faith. "Faith" is the built in mode of our existence but our faith is disordered and latches onto the wrong things.
We are dependent creatures created to rely on the true God and his presence but sin has disrupted our connection to him and now like a hound dog that has his scent scrambled we think we smell God in every liquor bottle and prostitute and curvy lines on a tree.
Yeah it is kinda funny but it is also kinda sad. People are desperate for something to believe in, they want to have something to look at something tangible that they can see and touch that is God to them. Humans are such creatures of faith. "Faith" is the built in mode of our existence but our faith is disordered and latches onto the wrong things.
We are dependent creatures created to rely on the true God and his presence but sin has disrupted our connection to him and now like a hound dog that has his scent scrambled we think we smell God in every liquor bottle and prostitute and curvy lines on a tree.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Food in Salvation History
The topic could be a book to itself. Some very preliminary thoughts.
Adam and Eve eat from the tree of life in order to live forever.
Eating from the other tree leads to death.
Food in God's intention is sacramental, it is knowledge of him, eternal life.
Sin makes food an act of selfishness, a grasping after what is not given to us.
The Passover connects eating with redemption and freedom from captivity.
Christ, God in flesh, feeds the five thousand, recapitulating the creation goodness of God providing for his people.
Christ calls his own flesh food ( John 6)
Christ gives his flesh and blood to be eaten and drank at the Last Supper until he returns.
Christ gives his flesh as a sacrifice on the altar of Calvary.
The faithful eat his body and drink his blood for salvation and real, fleshly connection with the Creator.
The faithful look forward to the wedding feat that has no end.
The faithful say "grace" before every meal thus marking food as a moment of God's and self revelation.
Adam and Eve eat from the tree of life in order to live forever.
Eating from the other tree leads to death.
Food in God's intention is sacramental, it is knowledge of him, eternal life.
Sin makes food an act of selfishness, a grasping after what is not given to us.
The Passover connects eating with redemption and freedom from captivity.
Christ, God in flesh, feeds the five thousand, recapitulating the creation goodness of God providing for his people.
Christ calls his own flesh food ( John 6)
Christ gives his flesh and blood to be eaten and drank at the Last Supper until he returns.
Christ gives his flesh as a sacrifice on the altar of Calvary.
The faithful eat his body and drink his blood for salvation and real, fleshly connection with the Creator.
The faithful look forward to the wedding feat that has no end.
The faithful say "grace" before every meal thus marking food as a moment of God's and self revelation.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
A Christian, Holy People
Ok, here is paragraph description, from the publisher, of a chapter in a book. I do not know if the chapter is as good as the paragraph description. I intend to read the whole article.
Anyway, I wholeheartedly concur with the words that follow:
Starting from recent uneasiness with Protestant individualism, this article asks whether Luther's theological insights might help address the unintended cultural consequences of the Reformation. Luther's mature thought defines the church as a tangible "Christian, holy people" within history, constituted by distinctive public practices. This church is necessarily institutionalized: the "universal priesthood" is corporate rather than individual, and cannot be fully realized without ministers acting in persona ecclesiae.
Ordered ministry and common priesthood are interdependent and mutually constitutive. Finally, following his central principle that God gives spiritual gifts only through public, bodily means, Luther allows no separation of justifying faith from bodily adherence to the Christian people.
Here is the bibliographic info:
"A Christian, Holy People" : Martin Luther on Salvation and the Church
by David S. Yeago
in
Spirituality and Social Embodiment
Edited By: L GREGORY JONES, Duke University, North Carolina
JAMES J BUCKLEY, Loyola College, Maryland, Blackwell Publishers (April 1, 1997)
Anyway, I wholeheartedly concur with the words that follow:
Starting from recent uneasiness with Protestant individualism, this article asks whether Luther's theological insights might help address the unintended cultural consequences of the Reformation. Luther's mature thought defines the church as a tangible "Christian, holy people" within history, constituted by distinctive public practices. This church is necessarily institutionalized: the "universal priesthood" is corporate rather than individual, and cannot be fully realized without ministers acting in persona ecclesiae.
Ordered ministry and common priesthood are interdependent and mutually constitutive. Finally, following his central principle that God gives spiritual gifts only through public, bodily means, Luther allows no separation of justifying faith from bodily adherence to the Christian people.
Here is the bibliographic info:
"A Christian, Holy People" : Martin Luther on Salvation and the Church
by David S. Yeago
in
Spirituality and Social Embodiment
Edited By: L GREGORY JONES, Duke University, North Carolina
JAMES J BUCKLEY, Loyola College, Maryland, Blackwell Publishers (April 1, 1997)
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
The Life Giving Flesh of Christ #2
That the flesh of Chrsit is life giving is of central importance to the Christian faith.
If one accepts this Scripture doctrine and places it squarely in the center of one's theological universe, as it ought to be, then all other matters fall into place: the centrality of the Incarnation , the splendor and mystery of the Atonement, the power of the sacraments, the place of the liturgy and the dignity and value of human flesh (even little squibs of life nourished in a mohter's womb.).
Here are a couple of random selections from the Book of Concord in support of this view of the communication of the divine to the human nature of Christ:
Dr. Luther says also in his book Of the Councils and the Church: We Christians must know that if God is not also in the balance, and gives the weight, we sink to the bottom with our scale. By this I mean: If it were not to be said [if these things were not true], God has died for us, but only a man, we would be lost. But if "God's death" and "God died" lie in the scale of the balance, then He sinks down, and we rise up as a light, empty scale. But indeed He can also rise again or leap out of the scale; yet He could not sit in the scale unless He became a man like us, so that it could be said: "God died," "God's passion," "God's blood," "God's death." For
in His nature God cannot die; but now that God and man are united in one person, it is correctly called God's death, when the man dies who is one thing or one person with God.
Luther. BOC, Solid Declaration, 44.
But as regards the assumed human nature in the person of Christ, some have indeed
wished to contend that even in the personal union with divinity it has nothing else and nothing more than only its natural, essential properties according to which it is in all things like its brethren; and that, on this account, nothing should or could be ascribed to the human nature in Christ which is beyond, or contrary to, its natural properties, even though the testimony of Scripture is to that effect.
But that this opinion is false and incorrect is so clear from God's Word that even their own associates rebuke and reject this error. For the Holy Scriptures, and the ancient Fathers from the Scriptures [in which they were fully trained], testify forcefully that, for the reason and because of the fact that it has been personally united with the divine nature in Christ, the human nature in Christ, when it was glorified and exalted to the right hand of the majesty and power of God, after the form of a servant and humiliation had been laid aside, did receive, apart from, and over and above its natural, essential, permanent properties, also special, high, great, supernatural, inscrutable, ineffable, heavenly prerogatives and excellences in majesty, glory, power, and might above everything that can be named, not
only in this world, but also in that which is to come [Eph. 1, 21]; and that, accordingly, in the operations of the office of Christ: the human nature in Christ, in its measure and mode, is equally employed [at the same time], and has also its efficaciam, that is, power and, efficacy, not only from, and according to, its natural, essential attributes, or only so far as their ability extends, but chiefly from, and according to, the majesty, glory, power, and might which it has received through the personal union, glorification, and exaltation.
BOC, Solid Declaration, 49-51
If one accepts this Scripture doctrine and places it squarely in the center of one's theological universe, as it ought to be, then all other matters fall into place: the centrality of the Incarnation , the splendor and mystery of the Atonement, the power of the sacraments, the place of the liturgy and the dignity and value of human flesh (even little squibs of life nourished in a mohter's womb.).
Here are a couple of random selections from the Book of Concord in support of this view of the communication of the divine to the human nature of Christ:
Dr. Luther says also in his book Of the Councils and the Church: We Christians must know that if God is not also in the balance, and gives the weight, we sink to the bottom with our scale. By this I mean: If it were not to be said [if these things were not true], God has died for us, but only a man, we would be lost. But if "God's death" and "God died" lie in the scale of the balance, then He sinks down, and we rise up as a light, empty scale. But indeed He can also rise again or leap out of the scale; yet He could not sit in the scale unless He became a man like us, so that it could be said: "God died," "God's passion," "God's blood," "God's death." For
in His nature God cannot die; but now that God and man are united in one person, it is correctly called God's death, when the man dies who is one thing or one person with God.
Luther. BOC, Solid Declaration, 44.
But as regards the assumed human nature in the person of Christ, some have indeed
wished to contend that even in the personal union with divinity it has nothing else and nothing more than only its natural, essential properties according to which it is in all things like its brethren; and that, on this account, nothing should or could be ascribed to the human nature in Christ which is beyond, or contrary to, its natural properties, even though the testimony of Scripture is to that effect.
But that this opinion is false and incorrect is so clear from God's Word that even their own associates rebuke and reject this error. For the Holy Scriptures, and the ancient Fathers from the Scriptures [in which they were fully trained], testify forcefully that, for the reason and because of the fact that it has been personally united with the divine nature in Christ, the human nature in Christ, when it was glorified and exalted to the right hand of the majesty and power of God, after the form of a servant and humiliation had been laid aside, did receive, apart from, and over and above its natural, essential, permanent properties, also special, high, great, supernatural, inscrutable, ineffable, heavenly prerogatives and excellences in majesty, glory, power, and might above everything that can be named, not
only in this world, but also in that which is to come [Eph. 1, 21]; and that, accordingly, in the operations of the office of Christ: the human nature in Christ, in its measure and mode, is equally employed [at the same time], and has also its efficaciam, that is, power and, efficacy, not only from, and according to, its natural, essential attributes, or only so far as their ability extends, but chiefly from, and according to, the majesty, glory, power, and might which it has received through the personal union, glorification, and exaltation.
BOC, Solid Declaration, 49-51
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
The Life Giving Flesh of Christ
Here are a couple of favorite texts from the fathers of the church. The first is the third anathema of Cyril of Alexandria's twelve anathemas against Nestorius. The second is paragraph seven of the third Letter to Nestorius from Cyril.
These texts are so important because they show the connection between the Eucharist and Christology a connection which Luther and Lutheran fathers shared. The Eucharist is not an addendum to the Gospel, however precious. It is the Gospel. It is Christ.
The language of the "life giving flesh" of Christ is taken from John 6. That the flesh of Christ is live-giving is a central tenet of the faith, crucial to the atonement and to the Eucharist. If Christ's flesh can secure the life of the world on the cross then his flesh is also life giving and present in the Eucharist. The central point in either case is the presence of God in created things for salvation. Incarnation is the beating heart of the crucifixion and the Supper.
The first citation is from John McGuckin's St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy : Its History, Theology, and Texts. The second is the Post-Nicene Fathers translation swiped from the Internet and is in the public domain.
1. If anyone does not confess that the Lord's flesh is life giving and the very own flesh of the word of God the Father but says that it is the flesh of someone else different to him, and joined to him in terms of dignity or indeed only having a divine indwelling , rather than being life-giving as we have said, because it has become the personal flesh of the Word who has power to bring all things to life, let him be anathema.
2. And of necessity will we add this too: Declaring the Death in the Flesh of the Ony-Begotten Son of God, that is Jesus Christ, and confessing His living again from the dead and His Assumption into Heaven, we celebrate the Unbloody Service in the churches, and thus approach to the Mystic Blessings, and are sanctified, rendered partakers of the Holy Flesh and Precious Blood of Christ the Saviour of us all. And not as though we were receiving common flesh (God forbid) nor yet that of a man sanctified and connected with the Word by unity of dignity, or as having a Divine Indwelling, but as truly quickening and the own Flesh of the Word Himself.
For being by Nature Life as God, since He became One with His own Flesh, He rendered it Life-giving. So that even though He say to us, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood [John 6:53], we shall not account it also as that of one of us (for how will a man's flesh be life-giving in its own nature?) but as having truly become the own Flesh of Him Who for our sakes both became and was called Son of Man.
These texts are so important because they show the connection between the Eucharist and Christology a connection which Luther and Lutheran fathers shared. The Eucharist is not an addendum to the Gospel, however precious. It is the Gospel. It is Christ.
The language of the "life giving flesh" of Christ is taken from John 6. That the flesh of Christ is live-giving is a central tenet of the faith, crucial to the atonement and to the Eucharist. If Christ's flesh can secure the life of the world on the cross then his flesh is also life giving and present in the Eucharist. The central point in either case is the presence of God in created things for salvation. Incarnation is the beating heart of the crucifixion and the Supper.
The first citation is from John McGuckin's St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy : Its History, Theology, and Texts. The second is the Post-Nicene Fathers translation swiped from the Internet and is in the public domain.
1. If anyone does not confess that the Lord's flesh is life giving and the very own flesh of the word of God the Father but says that it is the flesh of someone else different to him, and joined to him in terms of dignity or indeed only having a divine indwelling , rather than being life-giving as we have said, because it has become the personal flesh of the Word who has power to bring all things to life, let him be anathema.
2. And of necessity will we add this too: Declaring the Death in the Flesh of the Ony-Begotten Son of God, that is Jesus Christ, and confessing His living again from the dead and His Assumption into Heaven, we celebrate the Unbloody Service in the churches, and thus approach to the Mystic Blessings, and are sanctified, rendered partakers of the Holy Flesh and Precious Blood of Christ the Saviour of us all. And not as though we were receiving common flesh (God forbid) nor yet that of a man sanctified and connected with the Word by unity of dignity, or as having a Divine Indwelling, but as truly quickening and the own Flesh of the Word Himself.
For being by Nature Life as God, since He became One with His own Flesh, He rendered it Life-giving. So that even though He say to us, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood [John 6:53], we shall not account it also as that of one of us (for how will a man's flesh be life-giving in its own nature?) but as having truly become the own Flesh of Him Who for our sakes both became and was called Son of Man.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
The Memoir as Post Modern History
I have spent the last 4 or 5 weeks reading memoirs. I don’t know why I’ve done this. I started reading one and, being a bit compulsive, have now read a bunch of them.
I am not sure there is a strict difference between memoirs and autobiographies. However, there is a difference in connotation and feeling. Autobiographies connote something more weighty, researched and perhaps that the person is famous or important. Memoirs, by contrast, are more informal, written by seemingly ordinary people.
The memoirs I‘ve read are also not really about the facts of a life. (Auto and “normal”) biographies usually adhere to some standard of research or factuality. If they do not, there is the threat of lawsuits . But memoirs are recollections of life lived by the persons who lived through them. They do not pretend to be factual accounts of “what really happened” . They are interior. They are not “the true story”; they are how I experienced what happened.
Memoirs seem to be very popular in the last 5 to 10 years. They also seem to be written in large part by younger authors, in their twenties and thirties. This suggests that memoirs are a symptom of what some like to call post-modernism. I do think that post-modernism is over done as a category. We throw anything new or current into this grab bag called post-modernism but the memoir is a good example of the shift away from modernism. Modernism calls for biography, historical fact and a researched account that appeals to the “truth” as an external category. Biographies (and often autobiographies) have footnotes. There are no footnotes in memoirs. Memoirs occur within the mind of the author, with no disputing whether the text relates what did or did not happen. There is no external criterion, simply story.
This, it seems to me, is the essence of post-modernism. Truth is the story as I experienced it. Truth is the story.
Here are the books I read :
My Friend Leonard by James Frey
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
A disclaimer : the books listed above have more than their share of bad words, bad things and immorality. That said, they are worth reading. All are well done.
I am not sure there is a strict difference between memoirs and autobiographies. However, there is a difference in connotation and feeling. Autobiographies connote something more weighty, researched and perhaps that the person is famous or important. Memoirs, by contrast, are more informal, written by seemingly ordinary people.
The memoirs I‘ve read are also not really about the facts of a life. (Auto and “normal”) biographies usually adhere to some standard of research or factuality. If they do not, there is the threat of lawsuits . But memoirs are recollections of life lived by the persons who lived through them. They do not pretend to be factual accounts of “what really happened” . They are interior. They are not “the true story”; they are how I experienced what happened.
Memoirs seem to be very popular in the last 5 to 10 years. They also seem to be written in large part by younger authors, in their twenties and thirties. This suggests that memoirs are a symptom of what some like to call post-modernism. I do think that post-modernism is over done as a category. We throw anything new or current into this grab bag called post-modernism but the memoir is a good example of the shift away from modernism. Modernism calls for biography, historical fact and a researched account that appeals to the “truth” as an external category. Biographies (and often autobiographies) have footnotes. There are no footnotes in memoirs. Memoirs occur within the mind of the author, with no disputing whether the text relates what did or did not happen. There is no external criterion, simply story.
This, it seems to me, is the essence of post-modernism. Truth is the story as I experienced it. Truth is the story.
Here are the books I read :
My Friend Leonard by James Frey
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
A disclaimer : the books listed above have more than their share of bad words, bad things and immorality. That said, they are worth reading. All are well done.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Church Discipline
Here is an interesting little essay on church discipline in Christianity Today. It seems as if there will be more essays forthcoming but I am not sure.
The piece is worth reading though some of it has a Reformed flavor to it. I must applaud the desire for a restoration of church discipline. The author wisely points out that that church discipline has largely fallen by the way on account of the disconnect between church membership and actually being a Christian. Revivalism has indeed fostered the view that one can be a follower of Jesus without being a member of a congregation.
I am not sure about his laying much of the blame on the legacy of church state-ism. A better analysis would be to lay the blame for the disrepair of church discipline on the disintegration of moral codes whatsoever coupled with a default gnosticism that cannot connect what we do in our lives and with our bodies with our "spiritual" lives.
The piece is worth reading though some of it has a Reformed flavor to it. I must applaud the desire for a restoration of church discipline. The author wisely points out that that church discipline has largely fallen by the way on account of the disconnect between church membership and actually being a Christian. Revivalism has indeed fostered the view that one can be a follower of Jesus without being a member of a congregation.
I am not sure about his laying much of the blame on the legacy of church state-ism. A better analysis would be to lay the blame for the disrepair of church discipline on the disintegration of moral codes whatsoever coupled with a default gnosticism that cannot connect what we do in our lives and with our bodies with our "spiritual" lives.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Best Song in the history of the world
Pastor Steigemeyer tagged me to come up the best songs in the history of the whole world. Quite intimidating. So this list is just a list of good songs I came up with today. Ask me tomorrow and the list would be completely different. These are songs that kinda capture the reality of sin and fallenness in which we live. That’s the list I felt like making.
I’m A Loser … The Beatles. The Beatles have to be on this list. “I am not what I appear to be.”
However Much I Booze … The Who. A obscure song … not the most well known by the Who but articulates a despair and longing that is extraordinary. “I’m a faker, a paper clown.” “There ain’t no way out.”
No Feelings … The Sex Pistols. THE great post modern anthem. “No feelings for anybody else I’m in love with myself.” Besides it rocks.
Cadillac Ranch … Bruce Springsteen. Any song about love, old American cars and death is a must.
Looking for a Kiss … The New York Dolls. It may seem strange to include the New York Dolls (cross dressing heroin addicts) in a list suggested by pious Lutherans but there you go.
Honky Tonk Blues … Hank Williams. Any Hank tune would do but this is one is good.
Unsatisfied … The Replacements. Again, a lonely song about needing something, anything to fill up the hole inside. Not the best Mats song but good for this list.
Ask me tomorrow and I would have a different list. Looking over this list it heavy on depressing songs. Sigh. Oh well.
I’m A Loser … The Beatles. The Beatles have to be on this list. “I am not what I appear to be.”
However Much I Booze … The Who. A obscure song … not the most well known by the Who but articulates a despair and longing that is extraordinary. “I’m a faker, a paper clown.” “There ain’t no way out.”
No Feelings … The Sex Pistols. THE great post modern anthem. “No feelings for anybody else I’m in love with myself.” Besides it rocks.
Cadillac Ranch … Bruce Springsteen. Any song about love, old American cars and death is a must.
Looking for a Kiss … The New York Dolls. It may seem strange to include the New York Dolls (cross dressing heroin addicts) in a list suggested by pious Lutherans but there you go.
Honky Tonk Blues … Hank Williams. Any Hank tune would do but this is one is good.
Unsatisfied … The Replacements. Again, a lonely song about needing something, anything to fill up the hole inside. Not the best Mats song but good for this list.
Ask me tomorrow and I would have a different list. Looking over this list it heavy on depressing songs. Sigh. Oh well.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Thoughts on Weddings
I have been out of town and in and out of the church for the past month or so and this blog suffered. I do not know if anyone is still out there but here goes.
Summer is the time for weddings and they can be the bane of a pastor's existence . Wedding ceremonies often bring out the worst elements of the popular culture in which we live and these elements come crashing into the culture of the church when couples want to have a "church wedding" and also wish to scratch the itches they acquired while maturing ( or not ) in our day and age.
Weddings are also a curious blend of sacred and secular. Marriages are licensed by the state yet Christians solemnize them in a church service. Weddings are, of course, a legitimate civil function. The state has an interest in marriages and families. A wedding is not a just a private thing ( witnesses are required even in a civil ceremony) but truly a communal one. A community has a self interest in perpetuating itself through its husbands and wives. The wedding is the alma mater, the nourishing mother, of the community itself. For there, in the union of man and wife, is the community itself, in utero, as it were. There is its future, its workers, its leaders, its members. The state licensing marriages is the community's way of saying, "We have a stake in this. This is good, indeed indispensable, for the life of this community."
This is why gay marriage and homosexual unions are inherently destructive of a community's life. They are by definition non-productive. There is no mater in the relationship, no womb which carries the future within itself. Gay marriages are the epitome of the relational selfishness which has infected our way of thinking. Relationships ( a horrible generic word in itself) are thought of as ways to satisfy the individuals in them. They are ways to be happy or self fulfilled. But marriage is more than just a selfish inwardly turned device to make us happy. It is the crucial link in a communal web of life giving and life sustaining. In other words, marriage is a communal act not just an individual one. Communities, cultures and nations spring from the union of a man and a woman.
Well, maybe, that’s one reason why everyone is so frazzled when the wedding ceremony actually rolls around.
Summer is the time for weddings and they can be the bane of a pastor's existence . Wedding ceremonies often bring out the worst elements of the popular culture in which we live and these elements come crashing into the culture of the church when couples want to have a "church wedding" and also wish to scratch the itches they acquired while maturing ( or not ) in our day and age.
Weddings are also a curious blend of sacred and secular. Marriages are licensed by the state yet Christians solemnize them in a church service. Weddings are, of course, a legitimate civil function. The state has an interest in marriages and families. A wedding is not a just a private thing ( witnesses are required even in a civil ceremony) but truly a communal one. A community has a self interest in perpetuating itself through its husbands and wives. The wedding is the alma mater, the nourishing mother, of the community itself. For there, in the union of man and wife, is the community itself, in utero, as it were. There is its future, its workers, its leaders, its members. The state licensing marriages is the community's way of saying, "We have a stake in this. This is good, indeed indispensable, for the life of this community."
This is why gay marriage and homosexual unions are inherently destructive of a community's life. They are by definition non-productive. There is no mater in the relationship, no womb which carries the future within itself. Gay marriages are the epitome of the relational selfishness which has infected our way of thinking. Relationships ( a horrible generic word in itself) are thought of as ways to satisfy the individuals in them. They are ways to be happy or self fulfilled. But marriage is more than just a selfish inwardly turned device to make us happy. It is the crucial link in a communal web of life giving and life sustaining. In other words, marriage is a communal act not just an individual one. Communities, cultures and nations spring from the union of a man and a woman.
Well, maybe, that’s one reason why everyone is so frazzled when the wedding ceremony actually rolls around.
Saturday, July 02, 2005
Bono a Roman Catholic?
Friday, July 01, 2005
Real Parenting is Countercultural
A good quote from Neil Postman via Rod Dreher in the latest Touchstone:
If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture.
If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture.
Scientology, the Media and Liberalism
Here is a series of articles on Tom Cruise's publicity stunts on behalf of scientology, Sctientology beliefs, and press coverage of the religion. It has some good information on the bizarre nature of Scientology. As the author states Scientology is a more recent sci-fi version of Gnosticism where the body and creation is devalued and even made into an enemy and a convoluted myth concerning the origin of humanity and its purpose and nature replaces a creator and creature relationship.
The media attention on Cruise and his beliefs has been interesting to observe. While the incredulity concerning Scientology is welcome, it is revealing to see how squeamish any strongly held belief makes mainstream "liberal" Americans. I abhor Tom Cruise's beliefs (they are pagan and devilish). But what makes the media so uneasy is his dogmatic insistence on his beliefs. The media is just as uneasy with Christians who feel strongly about their creed.
Today's culture and elite cannot understand or fathom anyone or any group that has a deep and strongly held faith. The prevailing attitude is skepticism and cynicism. Doubt and uncertainty about eternal matters is the only comprehensible outlook. This skeptic's mindset gives rise to people like Cruise who get entrapped in Scientology and other religions. An attitude which destroys every belief, every stability, every tradition lays waste to the soul of a people and culture. When this emptiness really takes root, people find they cannot live with it and they latch onto something (Scientology, money, alcohol drugs, sex) to fill that hollowness.
The media attention on Cruise and his beliefs has been interesting to observe. While the incredulity concerning Scientology is welcome, it is revealing to see how squeamish any strongly held belief makes mainstream "liberal" Americans. I abhor Tom Cruise's beliefs (they are pagan and devilish). But what makes the media so uneasy is his dogmatic insistence on his beliefs. The media is just as uneasy with Christians who feel strongly about their creed.
Today's culture and elite cannot understand or fathom anyone or any group that has a deep and strongly held faith. The prevailing attitude is skepticism and cynicism. Doubt and uncertainty about eternal matters is the only comprehensible outlook. This skeptic's mindset gives rise to people like Cruise who get entrapped in Scientology and other religions. An attitude which destroys every belief, every stability, every tradition lays waste to the soul of a people and culture. When this emptiness really takes root, people find they cannot live with it and they latch onto something (Scientology, money, alcohol drugs, sex) to fill that hollowness.
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