A Living Text

1. The understanding of doctrine is a major deficiency of modern
Christianity. That is one reason why the Church is now dealing with
heresies like modalism and unitarianism again. The modern church by and
large is exceptionally weak in teaching orthodox doctrine. I say this to
explain the cluelessness of the people you know about the physical body
of Jesus being in heaven.
2. Confessing that something is a mystery is not the same as saying we
know nothing about it. The Catholic Church, for example, calls all of
Jesus’ life a mystery; “The Mysteries of Jesus’ Public Life” for
example. Saying that the Trinity is a mystery is not simply throwing up
our hands and adopting a “your guess is as good as mine” approach.
3. The Trinity is at the heart of all Christian theology and praxis. To
be Christian is to be Trinitarian. You may be a lot of things, an Arian,
a modalist, etc. and say you worship one god or Jesus, but you cannot be
a Christian if you are not Trinitarian. These issues were important
enough for the Orthodox and Rome to go separate ways, they are not small
matters. As Vladimir Lossky has written: “For us the Trinity remains the
/Deus absconditus/, the Holy of Holies of the divine existence, where no
’strange fire’ may be introduced.”
4. When we bring the LDS Church into the discussion, the gulf is
impassable. It seems to pour scorn on the Trinity, while trying to play
at a ‘Godhead.’ Three gods, with the potential existence of more on
Kolob, and an infinitely expanding number of gods in the future is not
even close to the doctrine of the Trinity. If we delve into the details,
I think we will find that at almost every point LDS theology is
anti-Trinitarian and is tri-theistic or polytheistic. This is not simply
‘explaining the mystery differently.’ This obvious and acknowledged
anti-Trinitarianism is what causes me to be baffled when Mormons want to
be thought of as Christians. Other than a PR move, why the desire to be
thought of as Christian while denying the entire stream of Christian
thought?

If I say that I am a Muslim, but believe that Allah is a woman, I can
become another god, and that the Quran is not the final revelation of
Allah, I may be a lot of things, but I am not a Muslim. There is a
historical and doctrinal reality that is Islam, and I cannot redefine
what that is and then say that my beliefs are Islam too.
As I said, Christianity is Trinitarian, period. The LDS church teaches
against all kinds of Christian doctrines, and then says ‘why aren’t we
accepted as Christians?’ If you want to teach all these other doctrines,
fine. But don’t try to be historically revisionist and say that your new
teaching is Christian. Why do you covet that label anyway if it is what
Joseph Smith was protesting against?
The ‘values by which we live’ is precisely the point. Muslims may share
those values, Hindus may share those values, atheists may share those
values. Family, home, country, flag, sexual purity, honesty, etc. do not
qualify as Christianity. They may be an element of it, but they are not
the heart of the faith. The heart of the faith is the worship of the
Holy Trinity, as revealed in His Word. Plenty of ‘good’ Muslims will die
for their faith in Allah, and despise the Trinity, and Jesus as God. Yet
they might live outstanding ethical lives. Do they worship the true God,
or an idol of their own making? Yes, it does make a difference which
view of God one accepts. Think of Jesus in the book of John confronting
the Jews:

John 8:41-47 You are doing what your father did.” They said to him, “We
were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” [42]
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I
came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent
me. [43] Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot
bear to hear my word. [44] You are of your father the devil, and your
will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the
beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no
truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he
is a liar and the father of lies. [45] But because I tell the truth, you
do not believe me. [46] Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell
the truth, why do you not believe me? [47] Whoever is of God hears the
words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of
God.

These Jews claimed to worship God - Jesus told them they were of the
devil. They may have lived very pious daily lives, it did not matter

A great sermon from Brook Thelander, rector at Epworth Chapel on the Green:

An Appeal for Christian Unity

I went back in time many years this week and thought about how and when I first became a believer.  I was just ready to enter high school.
Thinking back on it now, I realize that once I became a Christian and placed my faith in Jesus, I was taught in subtle (and not so subtle!) ways to be wary of other Christians.  There were numerous other churches in the small Midwestern farm town where I grew up, and I was taught (directly and indirectly) to be suspicious of Christians in all of them.
For instance, we had to be careful of the Pentecostals and Charismatics, because they spoke in tongues, wore their religion on their sleeve, went off the deep end about divine healing, and embraced a “name it and claim it” Christianity.
We had to be on guard against the Baptists, because they believed in eternal security, that one could not lose one’s salvation, and because they believed that Christians could not help but to sin in thought, word, and deed every day.
We had to watch out for the United Methodists, because they had grown cold and were in danger of apostasy and leaving the true faith.  (I used to hear a great deal that John Wesley would turn over in his grave because of the developments in the Methodist church.)
We had to steer clear of Lutherans, because they believed in justification, but had little use for sanctification.
We were on guard against the Roman Catholics, because their faith was too ritualistic, and after they went to church and confessed to the priest and performed their ritual they went out during the week and lived like the devil anyway.
From the time I became a Christian, I was taught in subtle and not so subtle ways that other Christians were my enemies.  Perhaps your experience was similar.
So I have come to a conclusion.  (A conclusion is a place where you get tired of thinking!)  I have concluded that a great “culture of isolationism” has been perpetrated on the Church, and this culture of isolationism has been perpetuated for centuries by Christians (like us) who have been well-intentioned but misinformed, and a little bit insecure.  For we have been taught  to see each other as the enemy, when in reality we are family.
Let’s look at Paul’s discussion of how we become God’s children.  Paul reminds his readers that we become God’s children through entering a relationship with Jesus Christ, not through obeying the Law given to Moses.  The Law is good and served a good purpose, namely, to show us that only through faith in Christ can we be saved.
Paul then says that in our baptism we are united with Christ and made like him.  The old life of sin is put to death and drowned in the baptismal waters.  We are crucified with Christ.  Nevertheless we live, yet not us, but Christ lives within us.
But something else is also occurring.  Baptism is not merely a death to sin and the grace to lead a new life in Christ.  Baptism makes us members of a whole new created “entity,” and binds us to a single identity.  Paul says it like this:  “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female.  For you are all Christians—you are one in Christ Jesus.”
The NEB translates this phrase, “you are one person” in Christ, emphasizing the collective whole of the Church.
And Paul says that in this new collective entity which is the body of Christ, there is no longer any place for the traditional distinctions that divide us, whether they be cultural, linguistic, religious, or gender.
Imagine how radical this must have sounded to Jewish male Christians, who prayed in their liturgy and gave thanks to God that they were not born Gentiles or women!  Imagine how this must have sounded to some who were wealthy and privileged, and who believed that their wealth made them superior to others.  Imagine how this must have sounded to men who treated women like property rather than life partners.
Paul says that in our baptism we become part of a “new humanity,” where the dividing walls that we grow accustomed to or even applaud are no longer real.  And this term “Christian” now becomes our social and cultural identity.
I have thought a lot about Paul’s statement in verse 28 this week, and I’ve been thinking, “What would the truth of this verse look like wearing street clothes?”  Here’s what I’ve come up with.  I thought first of Wesley’s sermons, “Catholic Spirit,” and “A Caution Against Bigotry.”  In those sermons Wesley makes it clear that we don’t need to seek some kind of “forced uniformity” among Christians in doctrine and worship.  But what we do need to do is to weaken and reverse this “culture of isolationism” which has infected the Church for centuries.  And how do we do this?  Well, for starters, we can choose not to “unchristianize” other believers who are different from us.  We can recognize them as family members whom we need to know better and not enemies against whom we need to fight.
I wonder what would have happened, and how I might have been different, if when I became a new Christian the people responsible for nurturing me in my faith would have sat me down and said:  “Brook, you’ve just been adopted into a big, wonderful family.  In your journey you’re going to meet some family members who are vastly different from you.  They will live and express their faith somewhat differently (from how) you do.  Some beliefs that they hold dear, you may not.  And some beliefs that you hold dear, they may not.  But remember this, Brook.  They are your family.  And in those times when you don’t understand why you are so different, don’t try to kick them out of the family.  Instead, ask God to help you to get to know them better.”
Brothers and sisters of Epworth, if Paul’s words in verse 28 are true, then this vicious cycle of viewing other Christians as our enemies must stop.  By God’s grace it must stop.  The question for us is:  how will it stop?
It will stop when Christians, one believer at a time, affirm that in their baptism they are baptized into Christ and made Christians—not Lutherans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Pentecostals, Baptists, Quakers or Adventists. It will stop when we decide that it is our love for Christ, our faith in him (though lived and expressed differently) that makes us one body.  Ultimately it will stop, I believe, when Christians come together as one at the Lord’s Table.
As you come to the Lord’s Table this morning, I remind you that you are coming to the place where the truth of Paul’s words is embodied in its fullness.  As we leave this table today, may this truth so possess us that we take it with us when we go.
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Hopefully I can spend some more time on this in the future by digging deeper. I have in mind to revisit the subject and also some other LDS theology on the sacraments and particular topics within the Book of Mormon. But one last helpful e-mail from an LDS member on the subject of images:

(incidentally, she is describing CTR - ‘choose the right’ - an LDS slogan akin to WWJD. It goes on bracelets and stuff like that - Joel)

Bingo.  The perfect example of a left-brain conceptual-analytical icon, an icon
suitable for scientists and military men – a formula, an acronym.

CTR: choose the right.  If you want to encourage left-brain oriented people to
be righteous (or righteousness-oriented people to be left-brained), give them
not a metaphor but a slogan, not a face but a digital code, not a concrete
object to be kissed and bathed with tears, but a mental abstraction.

The CTR icon would be right at home within certain religious traditions that
forbid the artistic representation of physical reality, particularly of the
human form, and allow only geometric design and calligraphy.  But that is a
case of theology dictating practice.  Mormons’ fondness for the CTR icon is a
case of practice dictating theology.

This can happen because there is as yet no systematic theology in Mormonism, it
being an emergent faith.

I don’t know what your background is, Mr. Wilhelm, but if you are seeking to
understand LDS theology as theology by an appeal to its practical aesthetics or
poietics or aesthesics, you’ll find yourself in a muddle.  I think, as I stated
earlier, that there is little correlation.  We are looking at incidental
cultural phenomena here.

But if you are seeking to understand the incidental culture, I can see why you
would be interested to know about statues – if Mormonism is, culturally
speaking (leaving theology out of it for now), hyper-rationalist and
anti-physical, how in the world can it accommodate the use of statues?

My take on it is that statues function in Mormonism as monuments to historical
events and/or as PR-type statements to the outside world, rather than as
gateways to transcendence as in many other traditions.  There is no devotional
art as yet in the usual sense, and certainly no liturgical art, and the word
transcendence is a foreign one.

The angel Moroni statue on the top of the temple seems to say, “We are the
Mormons, here to proclaim something to the world.”  It also stands as an
historical marker – the opening of the ‘Dispensation of the Fulness of Times,’
evinced by Moroni’s visit to Joseph Smith, is central to Mormon corporate
identity.

The Thorvaldsen Christus has become very popular since the Church has begun
using it to alter its corporate image – “We are the Mormons, and we are too
Christian.”  Though there is no official rule against the private use of icons
or the hanging of extra-Mormon religious images in private homes, there is
among Mormons a huge historically-driven fear of “outside influence” and of
“false doctrine,” as well as a strong historically-driven tendency to model
home organization after ecclesiastical organization, such that most Mormons
wait until an artwork has been “approved” by the “authorities,” as witnessed by
its appearance in official Church publications.

This tendency to codify and standardize is also seen in the repetition of images
– I’m thinking at the moment of Minerva Teichert’s Esther, which has been copied
in every medium from wood carving to embroidery, and the ubiquitous Friberg
Lehite images which have even made their way into cartoons.

In the end I think Mormon images have functioned more as logos than as icons in
the usual sense.

In reading about Jezebel and Jehu, I came across this from Calvin:

In short, the reformation under Jehu was like that under Henry King of England; who, when he saw that he could not otherwise shake off the yoke of the Roman Antichrist than by some disguise, pretended great zeal for a time: he afterwards raged cruelly against all the godly, and duplicated the tyranny of the Roman Pontiff: and such was Jehu.

When we consider what was done by Henry, it was indeed an heroic valor to deliver his kingdom from the hardest of tyrannies: but yet, with regard to him, he was certainly worse than all the other vassals of the Roman Antichrist; for they who continue under that bondage, retain at least some kind of religion; but he was restrained by no shame from men, and proved himself wholly void of ever fear towards God. He was a beastly man; and such was Jehu.

(Commentaries on Hosea)

Here is a short piece on my company from NPR that was recorded at the Paris Air Show this week.

A great plan for church growth!

How cool is this site? - and it comes from a Reformed guy.

The blog of an ex-PCA guy turned Catholic.

This fellow appears to live in the Old Dominion and to be a solid Christian. If only he were Anglican!

I used to get this guy’s magazine and I wondered what ever happened to him. Now I know that he blogs. Cool.

Can I be electric too?

Our church website went from featuring the Newsboys to my wife in song - a move up in my opinion, but don’t tell my kids I think so. So check it out:

http://www.mycelebrationchurch.net/index.shtml 

This was noted elsewhere, but it is so cool that I have to pass it on. It is Calvin on 2 Peter 1:4

For we must consider from whence it is that God raises us up to such a height of honor. We know how abject is the condition of our nature; that God, then, should make himself ours, so that all his things should in a manner become our things, the greatness of his grace cannot be sufficiently conceived by our minds. Therefore this consideration alone ought to be abundantly sufficient to make us to renounce the world and to carry us aloft to heaven. Let us then mark, that the end of the gospel is, to render us eventually conformable to God, and, if we may so speak, to deify us.

I went up to a graveyard on Summerduck road on Sunday. It’s a place I drive by quite a bit that has very interesting headstones. It got me to thinking: wouldn’t it be cool if churches these days bought enough land to contain graveyards again? I can’t think of a single new church that would ever do such a thing. Maybe there is a Catholic church out there that is doing it, but I haven’t heard of it. I think it would be a great practice for churches to start thinking about this practice again and buying up land for the dead.

Our society in general hates death and tries to keep it out of sight and out of mind. Abortion occurs out of sight so that the horror of it is hidden. I for one, as a child of God would love to be buried near a church. Hopefully when I rise from the dead my first sight will be of that same church. So think about it. Maybe mention it to your pastor and see the crazy looks you get.

In America, we had the Nazis and the Japanese to fight, before that I suppose it was the slaveholders vs. the abolitionists, and Whigs vs. Democrats, etc. After WW II ended, we moved on to Communism. The entire nation, and much of the church, defined itself by being anti-communist. There was an evil enemy our there that we had to destroy. And communism was evil and did need to be opposed. But the wall fell, it came crashing down. For the period of the 90’s, we cast around not knowing how to define ourselves as a country. The left feared militias, the right feared Clinton, thinking he was going to put people in concentration camps or some absurd thing.

Then 9/11 came and gave us our new enemy. For Christians, it is true that Islam has been a vicious opponent from its inception. But America latched on to having a new enemy. Defense spending started skyrocketing again, and the right quickly churned out reams and reams of literature about this new threat that came out of nowhere and now demanded military and political exertions of power in places we had never heard of (and oh yes, lots of money).

Much of the church is the same way. It exists in a constant act of opposition, not against the world, the flesh, and the devil, but against other branches of the same tree. You might see this manifest itself in statements that say “Catholics believe this but we believe that.” Who cares what Catholics believe? Why do you have to always define yourself against what they believe? Are there only two options?

An extreme example of this in America is the very small world of Reformed theology. We in the Reformed camp like to think that we are the center of the universe intellectually, but really that’s not the case. And in terms of numbers globally and in America, the Reformed slice of the Christian pie is very small. That won’t matter to any of these folks though. “Wide is the gate…” and other such verses will be used by them to justify their insignificance.

But even in this small slice of the world, there is an overwhelming need for enemies. Can you imagine a century of Reformed thinkers who simply build the kingdom and elucidate a positive theology? No, we must always be defining ourselves against enemies. If it’s not theonomy it’s six day creation or Van Til or the emergent church or charismatics or something. There just has to be an enemy all the time to generate newsletters, blogs, books, and hate. It’s nice to have a mission, and since by and large the Reformed aren’t known as the world’s evangelists, the mission is often theological battle, followed by church court cases. The Federal Vision is a perfect case in point. Most people have no idea what the term even means, and then they conflate it with the New Perspective and Norman Shepherd - how this happens I really don’t know. Perhaps they are intellectually lazy and so can’t figure out that the three have nothing to do with each other, or perhaps they think it is all part of some evil paradigm to destroy ‘the gospel.’ But the Federal Vision is the whipping boy of the moment for brave keyboard theologians, tapping away at all hours to defend the 123 Reformed denominations (as measured on 6/16/2007) from the perils that are inside the gates. These fearless defenders are bravely sending out fresh blasts into cyberspace, standing in the shoes of Calvin and Edwards to smite the modern day Papists, er, FV-ists. Perhaps they author things like, “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Rule of the Federal Vision” or “The Death of Death in the Death of the Death of the Federal Vision” - good titles like that. They have the enemy firmly in their sites and they are going to stop at nothing to defeat them.

But there is one problem - what do you do when the controversy ends? How do you find another enemy? What will whip people up into reading your journal, your magazine, your blog, or listening to your radio program? Well, I’m sure we will have that answer soon. Let us all watch together as a new enemy will rise up. It should happen in the next year or two.

Some recent terms used to find this blog:

quotes, Charles Simeon
traditional protestantism
“federal vision” and “minich”
living text blog
suburbs criticism
reading plutarch
charles simeon quotes
list of theonomists
Foucault modern societies