A Living Text

In Acts 15 the Jerusalem Council criticizes early Christians who taught with no commission from the Church: 

…we have heard that some persons from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions.

We can infer from this that to teach and preach authoritatively in those days, you needed instructions from the Church. Further, as Paul and Timothy visited churches in various cities, they “…delivered to them for observance the decisions which had been reached by the apostles and elders who were at Jerusalem.” The Church had authority, what she decided was promulgated to the churches throughout the world, with the inference that it was to be obeyed. 

These facts should have implications for the Church today. Her authority cannot be grasped by the self-appointed, and her decisions must have force on the individual, so long as they do not contradict the already revealed will of God.

Why Sacraments are not Signs

 ”Popular conceptions of “sign” and “symbol” are erroneous in a number of respects, but in this essay I discuss only one error, namely, the tendency to treat signs rationalistically, purely as a means of communicating ideas from one mind to another mind.”

“On these assumptions, sacraments do nothing but provoke pious thoughts. From a biblical perspective, then, to call sacraments “signs” brings out several different dimensions:

a) as signs, sacraments do communicate, they mean something, bring something to mind, are intended to teach;

b) but also as signs sacraments are actions performed at God’s command by the church; and

c) as signs sacraments are mighty acts of God for the redemption of His people and the world.”

Why Sacraments are not Means of Grace

 Though the phrase “means of grace” has a long history, it is unhelpful in trying to understand the sacraments with precision. “Is the claim that ‘water is a means for washing’ better than ‘water washes’?“

“Talking about the sacraments as “means” tends to mechanize them, turning the sacraments into machines that deliver grace. [...] Shortly after the apostolic period, theologians began to treat grace as a kind of “created thing,”  “force,” or “energy” communicated through the sacraments. Ultimately, this model rests on a mistaken doctrine of God, for there is no impersonal force in God, nor is there any “energy” that mediates between God and creation.”

“…we should simply say that the sacraments are among the benefits that Christ has graciously given to us. Sacraments are not means of grace, but themselves graces, gifts of a gracious God.”

Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or New-Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed; Faith is confirmed, and Grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God.  The Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.
- 39 Articles XXVI

Baptism and the “Real Me”

Leithart argues from Rom 6.3,5 and 6.11 that we are changed by baptism. He says that Catholic/Protestant disagreements on the issue assume the same “view of personal identity”. Protestants believe that the “real me” “is a soul tightly and hermetically sealed within my body” he continues “Behind both ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ views of baptism is the notion that the ‘real me,’ what makes me uniquely me, is some internal ghostly me that remains unaffected by what happens outside and is unchanged by what happens to my body.” He says both views “seek to locate some eternal, unchangeable, autonomous “me” deep within.”
He cites Scriptural evidence that the soul is right along with the body in being hungry, thirsty, etc. [Ps 107.9, I Sam 30.12, Prov 22.15, Ps 42.1, 9-10]
“There is always more to a human being than appears on the surface, but being human is always “being in the world” because it is always “being a body.” What makes me uniquely me includes what happens to my body.”

Writing in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik says of G.K. Chesterton:

In these books, Chesterton becomes a Pangloss of the parish; anything Roman is right. It is hard to credit that even a convinced Catholic can feel equally strongly about St. Francis’s intuitive mysticism and St. Thomas’s pedantic religiosity, as Chesterton seems to. His writing suffers from conversion sickness. Converts tend to see the faith they were raised in as an exasperatingly makeshift and jury-rigged system: Anglican converts of Catholicism are relived not to have to defend Henry VIII’s divorces; Jewish converts to Christianity are relieved to get out from under the weight of all those strange Levitical laws on animal hooves. The newly adopted faith, they imagine, is a shining, perfectly balanced system, an intricately worked clock where the cosmos turns to tell the time and the cuckoo comes out singing every Sunday. An outsider sees the Church as a dreamy compound of incense and impossibility, and, overglamorizing its pretensions, underrates its adaptability. A Frenchman or an Italian, even a devout one, can see the Catholic Church as a normally bureaucratic human institution, the way patriotic Americans see the post office, recognizing the frailty and even the occasional psychosis of its employees without doubting its necessity or its ability to deliver the message. Chesterton writing about the Church is like someone who has just made his first trip to the post office. Look, it delivers letters for the tiny price of a stamp! You write an address on a label, and they will send it anywhere, literally anywhere you like, across a continent and an ocean, in any weather! The fact that the post office attracts time-servers, or has produced an occasional gun massacre, is only proof of the mystical enthusiasm that the post office alone provides! Glorifying the postman beyond what the postman can bear is what you do only if you’re new to mail.

Rod Dreher (Orthodox via the Catholic Church) comments on this:

Boy, does this feel familiar to me, and I can see now (from my own experience) why converts tend to wear on cradle believers (and vice versa: little exasperates a convert more than a cradle believer’s apparent inability to get excited about the Amazing Wonderful Church). Again, I can’t discern the justice of Gopnik’s judgment re: Chesterton’s writing, because I’ve never read enough of his apologetics to know. But this feels right to me. It also gives me insight into why I don’t have and never had that convert’s glow about Orthodoxy. I didn’t believe when I left it that Catholicism was a jury-rigged makeshift system, nor did I believe that Orthodoxy was a uniquely fabulous thing. I’m glad not to have those illusions about either faith, but it does take some of the romance out of the thing.

St. Luke writes of Jesus:

He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

Thucydides uses this same word for proof:

And here is the proof. The Lacedaemonians come into Attica, not by themselves, but with their whole confederacy following; (ii.39)

The word means convincing, certain evidence.

I’ve been looking all over the net for the text of the now famous stone tablet, and I finally found it. Here it is for you in case you too have been searching:

Translation (Semitic sounds in caps and\or italics)
Column A
(Lines 1-6 are unintelligible)
7.   [... ]the sons of Israel …[...]…
8.   [...]… [...]…
9.   [... ]the word of YHW[H ...]…[...]
10. [...]… I\you asked …
11. YHWH, you ask me. Thus said the Lord of Hosts:
12. [...]… from my(?) house, Israel, and I will tell the greatness(es?) of Jerusalem.
13. [Thus] said YHWH, the Lord of Israel: Behold, all the nations are
14. … against(?)\to(?) Jerusalem and …,
15. [o]ne, two, three, fourty(?) prophets(?) and the returners(?),
16. [and] the Hasidin(?). My servant, David, asked from before Ephraim(?)
17. [to?] put the sign(?) I ask from you. Because He said, (namely,)
18. [Y]HWH of Hosts, the Lord of Israel: …
19. sanctity(?)\sanctify(?) Israel! In three days you shall know, that(?)\for(?) He said,
20. (namely,) YHWH the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of Israel: The evil broke (down)
21. before justice. Ask me and I will tell you what 22this bad 21plant is,
22. lwbnsd/r/k (=? [To me? in libation?]) you are standing, the messenger\angel. He
23. … (= will ordain you?) to Torah(?). Blessed be the Glory of YHWH the Lord, from
24. his seat. “In a little while”, qyTuT (=a brawl?\ tiny?) it is, “and I will shake the
25. … of? heaven and the earth”. Here is the Glory of YHWH the Lord of
26. Hosts, the Lord of Israel. These are the chariots, seven,
27. [un]to(?) the gate(?) of Jerusalem, and the gates of Judah, and … for the
sake of
28. … His(?) angel, Michael, and to all the others(?) ask\asked
29. …. Thus He said, YHWH the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of
30. Israel: One, two, three, four, five, six,
31. [se]ven, these(?) are(?) His(?) angel …. ‘What is it’, said the blossom(?)\diadem(?)
32. …[...]… and (the?) … (= leader?/ruler?), the second,
33. … Jerusalem…. three, in\of the greatness(es?) of
34. [...]…[...]…
35. [...]…, who saw a man … working(?) and [...]…
36. that he … [...]… from(?) Jerusalem(?)
37. … on(?) … the exile(?) of …,
38. the exile(?) of …, Lord …, and I will see
39. …[...] Jerusalem, He will say, YHWH of
40. Hosts, …
41. [...]… that will lift(?) …
42. [...]… in all the
43. [...]…
44. [...]…

In a review of several books about Theodor Adorno, Michael Rosen wrote the following:

In Adorno’s view, Nazism points towards a horrifying fact about the nature of European civilization itself. European civilization has acted as a cradle for ideals of equality and respect for humanity, ideals that have inspired great social movements as well as Europe’s most profound works of art. And yet it produced in Germany, a nation that had contributed to that culture in the highest degree, a regime in which human being treated their Jewish fellow citizens as so much disposable rubbish.

[Adorno wrote] Auschwitz has irrefutably demonstrated the failure of culture. That it could happen surrounded by the entire tradition of philosophy, art and the sciences-the mind-signifies more than just that they were not able to assert themselves and change human beings. Those very disciplines with their claim to independent validity are the home of the falsehood. All culture after Auschwitz-the radical critique of culture included -is rubbish.

Two things stand out to me: the inability of humanity to understand human nature apart from the doctrine of original sin, and the inability of culture to save man aside from the worship of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The idea of human goodness seems to span all religions and thought forms, and is inherent in modern day messianic beliefs such as that Obama will save America, or that America will save the world. Mankind is evil to its core, and apart from regeneration, is hopelessly bent on evil. But no amount of experience seems to drill this home, so the lesson has to be learned again and again. The current American mantra of “believe in yourself” is the ultimate rejection of original sin. There is nothing in yourself to believe in, cast your hopes upon the risen Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, in order for there to be any hope of progress.

Writing in 1995, James Jordan said:

Now there is a last curious fact. The Book of Acts likewise ends with this same quotation from Isaiah (Acts 28:25-28). Paul applies it to the stubborn and unbelieving Jews, and now tells them he is going to go to those very heathen that Psalms 115 and 135 were written about in the first place, and they will listen. A full circle has been made. This is the third application of these original Psalms to Israel. It has passed through Isaiah, to Jesus, to Paul. In each instance, there are some who are saved and others who are further hardened. This is now a three-fold hardening that has come upon Israel, and God is done with Israel.

Where are we in this cycle? America is surely at least two-fold hardened, and perhaps we are moving toward the third. About this I do not know. But what is clear is that, more than ever, America is Self-Intoxicated, and it is harder than ever to get any hearing for the Gospel. Any man who attempts evangelism with an Arminian theology is bound to be deeply disillusioned in the contemporary world. For men to be saved it is increasingly clear that a purely supernatural miracle is required so that the blind can see, the deaf hear, and the dumb sing for joy. And, it is clear that we are in danger of losing our Gospel privileges. In many places in the third world, the Gospel is heard with great joy. Romans 11:7-8 is very liable to become our legacy:

What then? Israel failed to obtain what it sought. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that should not see and ears that should not hear, down to this very day.”

For some time I have had a vision, which is the founding of an intentionally Anglican city or community. A place where worship and life are mixed, people live next to one another, and things like a University exist to further a Western, Protestant vision of the Christian life.

Several months ago Professor Stephen Lake contacted me because he shares a version of the same vision. This added to my excitement and we talked about next steps. From these discussions has come a new blog:

Anglican Community Project

This blog is initially being written by Professor Lake and myself, and is open to contributions from other like-minded individuals. Please check it out and contribute your thoughts. Perhaps someday it will lead to the actual creation of such a community - this is my fervent hope.