logos redux

“I am convinced that most of the young men are taught against too narrow a backdrop, and [are still fighting the old battles of the Reformation]. But in reality this is no longer where we are, either in theory or in practice. Actually the battle is being fought against the backdrop of all the religions of the world which have apostatized from the true religion since the foundation of the world…”

Francis Schaeffer, letter dated sometime 1956-1958

“I want you and all your subjects to be baptized. If you refuse, I will have you killed on the spot. And I swear that I will ravage every island with fire and steel.”

Calvin on Psalm Singing:

The psalms could incite us to raise our hearts to God and to move us with such ardor that we exalt through praises the glory of his name . . . . And truly, we know through experience that song has great force and vigor to move and enflame hearts to invoke and to praise God with a more lively and ardent zeal.

And a description of worship under Calvin’s leadership:

Finally, after these acts of adoration, these prayers said kneeling, this quickening instruction, the worship culminates in the supreme ceremony of holy communion. Calvin has been very greatly misunderstood. For him the complete act of Christian worship is that at which the Lord’s Supper is celebrated, and the complete Sunday morning office is that which includes the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Have men said that this worship, the true Calvinian cult, was in its nature poor and cold? Those who were present at it have told us that often they could not keep back tears of emotion and joy. Singings and prayers, adoration and edification, confession and forgiveness of sins, acts ritualistic and spontaneous—all the essential elements of worship were there; and what is not less important, they were combined into an organism that though very simple, was yet both supple and strong.

Further, in the same way that the church has wrestled with its understanding of Christ and the Scripture through creeds, commentaries, systematic theologies, and the like, so also the church has developed ways to do its worship. These include structural forms, written prayers, hymns, rules for preaching, the church year, the lectionary, and numerous symbolic ceremonies. Interestingly, in the early church these resources were being developed at the same time that creedal statements were coming into being. Yet, we evangelicals who affirm the Nicene and Chalcedon creeds and boast that we remain faithful to their intent are profoundly neglectful of the liturgical forms and theological perception of worship shaped by some of the same Church Fathers. Specifically we need to recognize that those who have gone before us, those who have wrestled the meaning and interpretation of the faith in creeds and liturgy, were women and men of faith. To accept the creeds, on the one hand, and reject the liturgies by inattention that often expresses itself in disdain, on the other, is contradictory and unwise. For orthodoxy was primarily given shape in the liturgy, and the creeds were originally part of the larger liturgical witness. We recognize that the early church was unusually gifted with the spiritual leadership of Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, and Augustine. Yet we neglect to study the worship of the church which reflects their faithfulness to Christ and the orthodox tradition.

Robert Webber, “An Evangelical and Catholic Methodology”

By the 1780’s to 1790’s, just before the First Great Awakening, it is estimated that only about 5% of Americans were churchgoers. That can’t be linked only to frontier atmospheres where there weren’t churches. A lot more than 5% of the population was located in urban or semi-urban east coast regions.

Christians in late antiquity lived in a cultural universe richly populated with invisible realities–a world in which symbol and ritual were not the counterfeit of reality but rather the privileged means to access reality. It is often stated that this worldview rested upon a Platonic theory of knowledge and being. This is true, but it is also somewhat like saying that contemporary individuals are Freudians when they employ concepts like “superego” or “unconscious motivation.” Such an attitude toward the world is not so much orthodox Freudianism as part of the cultural air one breathes.

John F. Baldovin, “The Empire Baptized” in The Oxford History of Christian Worship, pg 90

“In Torgau a wretched little woman once came to me and said, ‘Ah, dear Doctor, I have an idea that I’m lost and can’t be saved because I can’t believe.’ Then I replied, ‘Do you believe, dear lady, that what you pray in the Creed is true?’ She answered with clasped hands, ‘Oh, yes, I believe it; it’s most certainly true!’ I replied, ‘Then go in God’s name, dear lady. You believe more and better than I do.’ It’s the devil who puts such ideas into people’s heads and says, ‘Ah, you must believe better. You must believe more. Your faith is not very strong and is insufficient.’ In this way he drives them to despair. We are so constructed by nature that we desire to have a conscious faith. We’d like to grasp it with our hands and shove it into our bosom, but this doesn’t happen in this life.”

Martin Luther, Table Talk, p. 453

I was preparing a Sunday School lesson for middle schoolerses on the sacraments using the confessions. In the process I read through the Belgic Confession on these topics again. I’m having a hard time seeing how the Belgic Confession doesn’t formally obligate the practice of giving communion to all who are baptized. Check out these selections (my italics hit the points that really make the argument):

On Baptism

So ministers, as far as their work is concerned, give us the sacrament and what is visible, but our Lord gives what the sacrament signifies– namely the invisible gifts and graces; washing, purifying, and cleansing our souls of all filth and unrighteousness; renewing our hearts and filling them with all comfort; giving us true assurance of his fatherly goodness; clothing us with the “new man” and stripping off the “old,” with all its works.

For this reason we believe that anyone who aspires to reach eternal life ought to be baptized only once without ever repeating it– for we cannot be born twice. Yet this baptism is profitable not only when the water is on us and when we receive it but throughout our entire lives.

We believe our children ought to be baptized and sealed with the sign of the covenant, as little children were circumcised in Israel on the basis of the same promises made to our children.

And truly, Christ has shed his blood no less for washing the little children of believers than he did for adults.

Therefore they ought to receive the sign and sacrament of what Christ has done for them, just as the Lord commanded in the law that by offering a lamb for them the sacrament of the suffering and death of Christ would be granted them shortly after their birth. This was the sacrament of Jesus Christ.

We believe and confess that our Savior Jesus Christ has ordained and instituted the sacrament of the Holy Supper to nourish and sustain those who are already born again and ingrafted into his family: his church.

Now those who are born again have two lives in them. The one is physical and temporal– they have it from the moment of their first birth, and it is common to all. The other is spiritual and heavenly, and is given them in their second birth;

Unless we are to assume that the authors were using the term “born” (with reference to being spiritually born) in multiple ways without indicating such it seems clear that all who are born again (i.e. all who are baptized, since the reason for not being baptized multiple times is that you can only be born once and such happens in baptism) ought to partake in the meal Christ instituted. I know this isn’t the common practice of the Dutch Reformed but I wonder how they get around the logic.

Russian professor Igor Panarin has a strange mixture of historical/economic credentials and Nostradamus-like date forecasting, but he is an interesting read, if nothing else. Panarin predicts the outbreak of a U.S. civil war in fall 2009, extending into spring 2010, at which point the U.S. will supposedly break apart and be taken over by other world powers, including China, Russia, and Canada.

“[Panarin] predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union.”

Andrew Osborn, “As if Things Weren’t Bad Enough.”

On that last statement, I say: One can only hope.

Earlier I rebutted the silly notion that the game of “Telephone” accurately represents what happens when historical events are passed on via oral tradition. Now I will briefly address the question of whether the game represents what happens when documents are copied over and over again in a long written tradition. I will specifically use the example of the Bible, since this is the particular document I have heard to be attacked in this way. But I think the principle is sound for any ancient document, depending of course upon the varying circumstances of its particular transmission history.

Is it possible that the Bible, copied over and over again during the course of two millennia, has suffered from inevitable distortion, like the message in the game of “Telephone”? Is that how history works?

Let’s think about what would have to happen in order for the “Telephone” comparison to be accurate. First, as previously noted, the message in the game of “Telephone” is allowed to be passed on by only one person at a time. This would mean that the Bible would be allowed to have only one copy in existence at all times. As soon as you successfully make a copy of the book, you would have to burn the old copy. Only one source of information is allowed. Continue Reading…