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.”

Several years ago someone wrote me and said this:

I also read the book Thirsting—- and read Becoming orthodox as well. My
personal opinion as a still Evangelical Protestant pastor is that Thirsting,
a well written book was over the top with regard to a converts tendancy
toward idealism. I would find that book as not a great place to start with
my devout protestants friends. At the same time knowing it has some
extremely valid points for seekers to consider.

I have been in deep Orthodox study for the last 3 years, attending many
orthodox services, talking with priests and Bishops and the laity and have
discovered many of the same issues that protestant churches struggle with.
It is not so much the system of either of the two paradigms but in living
out the faith on a daily basis. To live as a truly devout or pious person is
a rarity in the entire Christian world.

I have come to appreciate how similar our faith really is when it is
centered on the Holy Trinity and continual metanoia.

I would rather be exposed to a deeper faith by those who are living it out
each day then in all the books that have been written recently regarding
conversion. When somebody says come and see one really wants to see a
profound difference, true spirituality. Those who have as Saint Seraphim of
Sarov said, aquired the Holy Spirit-Inner Peace. There are so few on either
side of the schism that exemplify that today.

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.”

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.

Ex-Nazi Hermann Rauschning reports on a conversation between Hitler and Bernhard Forster, Nietzsche’s brother-in-law:

Hitler would be the first to achieve what Christianity was meant to have been, a joyous message that liberated men from the things that burdened their life. We should no longer have any fear of death, and should lose the fear of a so-called bad conscience. Hitler would restore men to the self-confident divinity with which nature had endowed them.

Dusty Sklar writes of this new religion that it was “…a mixture of paganism, Gnosticism, and magic. Its true purpose could only be revealed to the initiated, and only at the proper time, because only they would really grasp its import, and only when the way had been prepared.”

All of this is from Sklar’s book The Nazis and the Occult. 

It took me eight years of on and off reading, but today I finished reading The Institutes of the Christian Religion all 1,258 narrow-typed pages of it! I started the book years ago as a new Calvinist, eager to digest the whole thing. As I do with most books, I put it down and picked it up again over periods of time. Finally, in the past month I determined to finish the thing off and today I crossed the finish line.

The only reason I persisted in reading the work was because I started it and wanted the satisfaction of having read it cover to cover. It was exceptionally tedious in places, and I really got tired of his pejorative language over time. He constantly refers to opponents as impious, dogs, raving, mad, Sophists, and so forth. It is probably a product of the age in which he lived. I suspect that most writers of all sides spoke like that during his day, but it seems really hollow in our age.

The way that the book ended seems odd to me. He made no effort to summarize or tie things together, he just finished up his last subject, and that’s it. He intended the book for theological students as an introduction to the Bible, and it seems crazy to me in our day to think that before someone embarks on studying the Bible, they would first need to read 1,258 pages of Calvin! 

There are sections of great lucidity that shed much light on topics that are common theological flash-points, and there are other sections that are dull and dreary. I think it’s safe to say that he could never get this book published today, at least in its current form. The book is one of those valuable tools to understand, as it is one of the few really foundational texts of Western Civilization. Perhaps someday I will finish the other foundational work that I am stuck in - The City of God. I find it equally dull in many places, and have set it aside for now.

Rushdoony has an insight that I had never thought of before regarding the Ecumenical Councils:

It was this hatred of Biblical certainty that the early councils had to war against. The ecumenical councils of the early church were in their purpose and nature very different from the modern councils and ecumenical efforts of the church. First, the early councils had as their primary purpose the defense and establishment of truth, not unity. Unity had to be established on the foundation of truth, not truth as a product of unity. The councils came together for the purpose of conflict, the battle of truth against error, and any unity on other than the whole truth of Scripture was anathema. Second, the concern of the councils was primarily the faith, not the church. Institutionally, the church suffered because of the conflict, but theologically it flourished and ensured its survival and growth. The modern ecumenical movement, and modern councils, are thus in purpose and work in direct contrast to the early councils: their concern is with unity, and with the institution, not the faith primarily.

Probably not much. He attacks the idea of factions in the church being called by a leader’s name when he writes about monasticism:

And that there might be no doubt as to their separation, they have given themselves the various names of factions. They have not been ashamed to glory in that which Paul so execrates, that he is unable to express his detestation too strongly. Unless, indeed, we suppose that Christ was not divided by the Corinthians, when one teacher set himself above another; and that now no injury is done to Christ when, instead of Christians, we hear some called Benedictines, others Franciscans, others Dominicans, and so called, that while they affect to be distinguished from the common body of Christians, they proudly substitute these names for a religious profession.