Labor Day

On Labor Day, I return to Gene Edward Veith's post about "vocation" (the link to his blog post no longer works):

.... The word is simply the Latinate term for “calling.” Perhaps the best summation of the concept is in 1 Corinthians 7:17: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.”

God “assigns” different kinds and places of service for each Christian and then “calls” each Christian to that assignment. The Reformation theologians fleshed out this concept with other biblical teachings about God’s workings in society and the Christian’s life in the world (e.g., Ephesians 5:6, Romans 12:13).

The great theologian of vocation was Martin Luther, who developed the teaching in his battles with monasticism—the view that the spiritual life requires withdrawal from secular life—and in defining “the priesthood of all believers.”

For Luther, vocation, like justification, is ultimately God’s work. God gives us our daily bread through the vocations of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. God creates new human beings through the vocations of fathers and mothers. God protects us through lawful magistrates.

Vocation is, first of all, about how God works through human beings. In His providential care and governing of His creation, God chooses to distribute His gifts by means of ordinary people exercising their talents, which themselves are gifts of God.

Thus, God heals by means of doctors, nurses, and other medical vocations. He makes our lives easier by means of inventors, scientists, and engineers. He creates beauty by means of artists, authors, and musicians. He gives us clothing, shelter, and other things we need by means of factory workers, construction contractors, and others who work with their hands. He cleans up after us by means of janitors and garbage collectors.

God thus looms behind everyone who provides us with the goods or services that we need. In one of Luther’s many memorable lines, God milks the cows through the hands of the milkmaid. This means that all work and all workers deserve honor. Whereas the world might look down on milkmaids and garbage collectors, they actually bear the sacred presence of God, who works in and through them.

God created us to be dependent on others—meat processors, manufacturers, journalists, lawyers, bankers, teachers, parents—and, through them, we are ultimately dependent upon God Himself.

Just as God is working through the vocation of others to bless us, He is working through us to bless others. In our vocations, we work side-by-side with God, as it were, taking part in His ceaseless creative activity and laboring with Him as He providentially cares for His creation. ....

"Miserable offenders"

In "Confessing Sin, Then and Now," an Anglican pastor dislikes some modern liturgical innovations. I think he's right. The "updates" are unnecessary, and the changes inferior.  On the "Confession of Sin":

For the General Confession of Sins at Morning and Evening Prayer [BCP, 1662], we are given this prayer:

Almighty and most merciful Father, We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done, And there is no health in us: But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders; Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults, Restore thou them that are penitent, According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord: And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

This is an all-time classic, and parts of it are now being used by other denominations besides Anglicans. It is both theologically well-rounded and liturgically sonorous. .... At Morning and Evening Prayer, the 1979 BCP has this confession of sins:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy holy laws, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, spare thou those who confess their faults, restore thou those who are penitent, according to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord; and grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

The language here is largely unchanged. It’s got “thy” and “thou.” There’s even still the potentially tongue-tying alliteration of “spare thou those.” None of that was a problem. But what’s different? There’s nothing added. But there is something missing.

Miserable Offenders. That’s been cut. The older BCPs read, “Have mercy upon us miserable offenders.” Now it’s just “have mercy upon us.” We can only presume that the 1979 American liturgists read C.S. Lewis’ essay on this line and chose to do the opposite of what he recommended. Fearful of misunderstanding or perhaps simply because they no longer felt quite so miserable, that line had to go. It was a tragedy then, and it’s a tragedy that has stuck with Anglicans, even of the more conservative variety.

Another cut is the removal of the line “there is no health in us.” Lurking behind this is surely the same sort of combination of confusion about the meaning of the words and possibly also a disbelief in the full reality of sin. There’s gotta be “some health” in us, right? A full humiliation and abasement is simply off-putting to the modern American mindset. .... (more, and some of the other modifications are worse)

Steven Wedgeworth, "Confessing Sin, Then and Now," Mere Orthodoxy, June 17, 2026.

Are you religious?

In an interesting essay reviewing a book about the role of "religion" in government, a few paragraphs explaining the original understanding of the word:

The English term “religion,” or the Latin religio, originally derives from the Latin verb religare, or “to bind again” (as in “ligation”). The noun religio, in the classical sense, was not conceived as a specific set of beliefs or propositional truth-claims among others. Rather, it was a sort of virtue or characteristic: one who is “religious” has the property of holding fast, or fidelity. That is why the term “religious life,” in the Middle Ages, was not a descriptor of one’s personal theological conviction. Rather, it referred to those who had bound themselves to a particular monastic or lay rule of life. In other words, almost everyone was Christian, but the phrase “the religious” referred to those who’d adopted a particular set of intense devotional practices.

On this older paradigm, individuals exemplifying the virtue of religio were those capable of seeing God as “what He is, namely the summit of all goodness, the truth of things, the light by which the mind operates” and so choosing to “sedulously revere Him in act, in goodness, in truthfulness of speech, in clarity of mind, in love,” as Wilfred Cantwell Smith notes. On this view, crucially, religion was not something other than natural; rather, it was a particular disposition toward the apex or limit condition of reality itself. “Since philosophia is the love and pursuit of truth and wisdom, and since truth and wisdom are, precisely, God, it follows that true philosophia and true religio are identical.” ....

“Religion” is not some zone of private belief or set of axiomatic commitments; rather, theology is the love and knowledge of God that orients the Christian way of life. It cannot be privatized, interiorized, or ever depoliticized. ....

John Ehrett, "The Problem with 'Religion'," Mere Orthodoxy, May 19, 2026.

An Evangelical?

I usually describe my theological position as "orthodox" rather than evangelical partly because of the political associations the latter now has. Evangelical was a category of Christian theology, not a political label. Orthodox (lower case "o") to me means being able to honestly and sincerely say the Apostles Creed without crossing my fingers, but, if the description below is the understanding of evangelical, I am one. From "The Real Difference Between Evangelicals and Liberal Protestants":

Some historians have wrongly suggested that evangelicals should be defined by their political or cultural orientation. Other historians (myself included) have used the Bebbington quadrilateral to define evangelicals. As David Bebbington has argued for the past 35 years, evangelicals are Protestant Christians who believe in the supreme authority of the Bible, salvation through the atoning work of Jesus on the cross, the necessity of a born-again conversion, and a Christian life that is characterized by activism, including evangelism. Those four points have characterized evangelicals in both Britain and America for the past 300 years, Bebbington argues.

I agree with the Bebbington quadrilateral, but I think there may be a simpler way to explain evangelical belief to those who find evangelicalism puzzling.

Here’s my definition: Evangelicals are Protestant Christians who believe that the fundamental human problem is individual sin and the fundamental human need is individual justification or reconciliation with God.

So, the test of whether a Protestant Christian is an evangelical is to ask whether they agree with these two statements:

1. The primary human problem is individual sin.
2. The greatest need that each person has is to be saved from sin through faith in Christ.

If a Protestant Christian agrees with those two statements, they’re probably an evangelical. If they disagree, they may be a mainline or liberal Protestant or some other variety of Christian, but they are not likely to fit into evangelicalism, even if they might use the term “evangelical” to describe themselves. (more, including his definition of liberal Protestantism)

Daniel K. Williams, "The Real Difference Between Evangelicals and Liberal Protestants," The Dispatch, March 15, 2026.

Blessed are the dead...

When my father died, I asked the pastor to use scriptures that remind us of the hope we have. They are scriptures used for the funeral of a believer in the Book of Common Prayer.

I AM the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.

I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?

One thing have I desired of the Lord, which I will require; even that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, and to visit his temple.

Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Jesus said, Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord: even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours.

Finally and ultimately

Re-posted.

Modern Heresies is a book I found in the Milton College Library. I was an undergraduate, and my work-study job was shelving books, ensuring that they were in the proper Dewey order. I tended to browse a lot, and that's how I came across this one. I soon ordered a copy for myself. It was for me an early introduction to the idea of heresy. (If reprinted, it should be re-titled Perennial Heresies.) This is from Chapter Three, "The Personal God":

.... A friend of mine has characterized most preaching which he hears as consisting of "if-only" sermons: "If only people would obey the Sermon on the Mount, the world would be ever so much better." The image of God that such sermons project is of a Divine floor-pacer, wringing his hands over the mess men are getting into and wishing desperately he could think of something to do about it. How often one hears in sermons phrases like this : "God is trying to do so and so"; "God hopes we will hear and obey him." Some of this language is inevitable as the language of analogy, but we ought to be quite sure we see how very misleading it can be. God isn't really "trying" to do anything; he is doing it. God doesn't "hope" for anything; he is quite aware that his will is done perfectly both in earth and in heaven. The danger of talking about a limited God who is trying things out and hoping things will work out well is that one can put no confidence or trust in such a God. For if a limited and finite God is really our image of the Divine, then he may very well fail. Perhaps our experience with democracy has misled us into thinking that God is not so much the eternal King of creation as just a candidate seeking that office (and the preachers are his precinct workers, out drumming up votes). But what if he isn't elected?

Orthodoxy's answer to this heresy has always been the assertion that God can do anything he wants, but what he wants is to create free beings able to respond to him wholeheartedly and trustingly. Omnipotence is not the ability to do anything; it is the ability to achieve one's purpose. .... God's omnipotence is proved by the freedom with which he allows man to run the world as he wants. If he were interfering all the time, shrilly insisting that men hew to the line and seizing them by the scruff of the neck if they did not, one would conclude that he was a very nervous and uncertain Deity, indeed. God's omnipotence lies in his capacity to make all things work together for good, finally and ultimately. Perhaps the most powerful evidence for this is the story of the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

John M Krumm, Modern Heresies (1961), pp. 48-49.

The indispensable virtue

Re-posted from a few years ago. From "Quiet Hope: A New Year’s Resolution.":

.... What Leon Kass calls the “higher cynicism” has left many adrift, without recourse to the traditions of wisdom that might provide direction and guidance for life. ....

Despair is the unforgivable sin, for the despairing conclude that God will not or cannot act, that the universe is fundamentally unfriendly and inhospitable to the true, good, and beautiful, and that humanity has lost the imago Dei. To judge in this way is to deny the goodness of the world and its Creator and sustainer, and that is the sin of all sins. ....

...[T]he most indispensable virtue is hope, which is not optimism or a vague sentiment, but a disposition that all will turn out well in the end. ...I would add that this disposition is convinced that God does not fail to keep his promises. Kass insists, wisely, that hope is not hope for change, but rather an affirmation of permanence, of the permanent possibility of a meaningful life in a hospitable and meaningful universe. ....

My resolution for 2020 is to learn a quiet hope. It would do me well. ....

A good resolution for 2026, too, and every other year.

Quiet Hope: A New Year’s Resolution - Public Discourse

If we don't believe, what is it we disbelieve?

From Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged":

.... What think ye of Christ? Before we adopt any of the unofficial solutions (some of which are indeed excessively dull)—before we dismiss Christ as a myth, an idealist, a demagogue, a liar or a lunatic—it will do no harm to find out what the creeds really say about Him. What does the Church think of Christ?

The Church's answer is categorical and uncompromising, and it is this: That Jesus Bar-Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God "by Whom all things were made." His body and brain were those of a common man; His personality was the personality of God, so far as that personality could be expressed in human terms. He was not a kind of dæmon or fairy pretending to be human; He was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be "like God"—He was God.

Now, this is not just a pious commonplace; it is not commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worth while. ....

Now, nobody is compelled to believe a single word of this remarkable story. God (says the Church) has created us perfectly free to disbelieve in Him as much as we choose. If we do disbelieve, then He and we must take the consequences in a world ruled by cause and effect. The Church says further, that man did, in fact, disbelieve, and that God did, in fact, take the consequences. All the same, if we are going to disbelieve a thing, it seems on the whole to be desirable that we should first find out what, exactly, we are disbelieving. Very well, then: "The right Faith is, that we believe that Jesus Christ is God and Man. Perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Who although He be God and Man, yet is He not two, but one Christ." There is the essential doctrine, of which the whole elaborate structure of Christian faith and morals is only the logical consequence. ....

Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged," Creed or Chaos? 1938.

"Christian Zionism"

I have several good friends who are, or at least once were, Dispensationalists in their theological framework. I'm not and, consequently, not a "Christian Zionist." But I am a Christian and a strong supporter of the American alliance with Israel. The Christian theologian who wrote "Is ‘Christian Zionism’ Really Heretical?" doesn't believe it is heresy, but also doesn't think that the question is relevant to whether Christians ought to support Israel. The issue arose because of a recent interview Tucker Carlson did with an anti-Semite during which Carlson made the assertion that support for Israel was heretical. That controversy led to, among other things, dissension within the erstwhile conservative Heritage Foundation, during which a young female staffer said, "...Gen Z has an increased unfavorable view of Israel, and it’s not because millions of Americans are antisemitic. It’s because we are Catholic and Orthodox and believe that Christian Zionism is a modern heresy."

.... This undoubtedly sincere statement raises a number of worthy and important questions that are, sadly, wrapped up in an obvious and distracting fallacy. The young woman’s generation has increasing antipathy to Israel, she says, because “Christian Zionism is a modern heresy.” But what has Israel to do with a modern Christian heresy? Has the state of Israel ever embraced or promoted or associated itself with Christian Zionism, other than to accept enthusiastic support wherever it can be found, particularly when in short supply? ....

The staffer’s complaint, then, is that if some segment of people support Israel for the wrong reasons, Israel is thereby unworthy of support. This embarrassing non sequitur does not speak well of the generation for whom she claimed to speak. People support right and good things for wrong and bad reasons all the time, and the wrong and bad reasons do not transform the right and good thing suddenly into wrong and bad. Her logic is so transparently poor that less charitable readers might view this public objection to “Christian Zionism” as a red herring to distract from what actually is just antisemitism. Alas, as much as one might wish that this uncharitable reading did not have good support, it is exactly what the likes of Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are doing when they rail against “Christian Zionists.” The epithet is a cloaking device for conspiratorial hatred of Jews. ....

...Christianity does maintain that national Israel’s covenant purposes and function have been put out of gear, retired, made obsolete in terms of redemptive-historical significance, but this is not what is often derided as “replacement” theology. Properly understood, it is fulfillment theology. [N.T.] Wright, again: “[T]o distinguish between a signpost and the building to which it points is not to say anything derogatory about the signpost." Much less is it to say anything derogatory about Jewish people. That anyone would abuse these doctrines in service of antisemitism is an affront to the Christian gospel, which, Christians believe, is for Jews and Gentiles alike. ....

If a Christian comes to understand and believe that the state of Israel no longer has redemptive-historical significance, the question is then disentangled from needless and distorting religious baggage and put squarely back into its proper domain. Nobody asks the religious rationale for why we should be allies with Canada. That is a matter of international relations, not biblical exegesis. What is its form of government? Do its citizens enjoy civil liberties and the rule of law? Do they share our moral values? Believe in human dignity? Is there freedom of speech, religion, press, and association? These are the relevant considerations—and the Jewish people and their state would be only too happy to be judged by them instead of the double standards to which they’ve become sadly accustomed. Like the Heritage staffer, I am a Christian, a theologian even, and I agree that Christian Zionism in the form of Dispensational theology is a terrible reason to support Israel. Unlike her and her Gen Z compatriots, I can spot a non sequitur and therefore I can also see the many good reasons to support Israel. (more)

Brian G. Mattson, "Is ‘Christian Zionism’ Really Heretical?" The Dispatch, Nov. 23, 2025.

"Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”

From "Athanasius against the world." Well worth reading (but it may be behind a paywall):

Seventeen hundred years ago, in a.d. 325, the Roman Emperor Constantine invited all the bishops of the world to assemble at Nicaea, in modern-day Turkey. The Council of Nicaea rejected the heresy of Arius, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. It composed a creed that (with some additions) is recited around the world today. It also set in motion a wrestling match of church and state engaging each other in the halls of history down through the generations.

A popular notion of that history laments “the Constantinian Church.” By this account, the church lost its integrity in consorting with the emperor. It joined the establishment and ever since has tended to align with hierarchies of secular power.

Of course, there’s a measure of truth in this paradigm. Constantine played a large role at Nicaea, and the church has often suffered through entanglement with regimes. But the larger story of Nicaea presents a much different balance of facts. For 50 years after the council, the Roman State supported the Arian heretics and oppressed the orthodox faith. A few courageous bishops resisted, and the laity stood firm. That is the story of Saint Athanasius and the fight for the Nicene Creed. ....

Arius first announced his heresy around the year 318. He reasoned that the biblical concept “Son,” “begotten of the Father,” implies a beginning. Therefore, the Son is not eternal as God the Father is eternal. He was created out of nothing, different in nature from God, as we are. ....

Constantine utterly misunderstood the significance of the issue. Arius’s opponents perceived it clearly. If Christ is not God, the Good News loses force. Our redemption depends on God’s entry into the world and His self-sacrifice. If Christ were merely a creature adopted by the Father, or a demiurge projected into the world, Christianity would fade away among all the Gnostic and Neoplatonic sects of the Hellenistic era. .... (more)

John D. Hagen Jr., "Athanasius against the world," National Review, Sept. 18, 2025.

"Christian nationalism"

Mark Tooley on "Douglas Wilson’s America." The subtitle is "His work to create a confessionally Christian state is the wrong antidote to what he seeks to cure." From that post:

...[T]he chief challenge to Christianity in America, and perhaps even to the broader unity of our democracy and civil society, is the stunning decline in religious affiliation. Only several decades ago, 90 percent of Americans identified as Christian, and now just about 60 percent do. Nearly 30 percent identify with no religion. Americans are not bewitched by Hindu statues or other religions; they are less interested in institutional religion. The fault can lie only with America’s Christian churches, which no longer command transgenerational loyalty. Yet few postliberals, religious or not, talk about the imperative of reviving churches and their affiliated institutions in America, absent which there can be no “Christian America.” Many postliberals celebrate Hungary under Viktor Orbán, who stresses his nation’s Christian identity. Recent data shows that church attendance in Massachusetts is 50 percent higher than in “Christian” Hungary, where the regime, despite its rhetoric and state-controlled media, has not increased religious observance. No government can.

Christianity can survive and thrive in America, as everywhere else, only through evangelism—making new converts—and discipling—strengthening its adherents in the faith. An agenda of state promotion of Christianity may rhetorically scratch itching ears eager to attack liberalism and its principles of religious freedom and legal equality for all. But it almost certainly will have no effect on rejuvenating Christian influence. At least Wilson, unlike most of the rhetoricians and social influencers touting Christian nationalism of some sort, is a pastor who plants churches and builds Christian institutions. Many of his ideas are offensive, unhelpful, or implausible. The company he keeps and the followers he attracts are often disturbing. .... (more)

Mark Tooley, "Douglas Wilson’s America," The Dispatch, August 17, 2025.

"Nondenominational"

I find it annoying when local churches indulge in cute "branding." The first time I recall feeling that way was when a church that had been known by its location and denomination became the "High Point" church. It is particularly annoying when a church actually conforms to a particular doctrinal tradition but conceals the affiliation. I liked this defense of clear denomination:

Nondenominational churches are the single fastest-growing Christian affiliation in the U.S. I regularly talk to believers who tell me their church isn’t a part of any denomination. Often, that comes with a hint of smugness, as if they are the ones truly being faithful to Scripture while the rest of us are in bondage to the traditions of man. ....

No individual or church simply “believes what the Bible says.” Every one of us engages in an act of interpretation when we read Scripture. We are shaped by our fallibility and sin, and limitedness. We are also shaped by the community of people around us. We learn to read Scripture from influential pastors, seminary professors, or that guy we had in a college Bible study. They learned from others as well, and those people together form a tradition that inevitably affects how we understand the Bible.

The broad traditions within Christianity exist because there are questions that are key to our life together as Christians which we disagree about. ....

Nondenominational churches inevitably have conclusions on these topics that place them in certain theological traditions. Indeed, it is a running joke in some circles that when a church says they are nondenominational, they’re really saying they’re either Baptist or charismatic and just trying to hide it. Such churches aren’t more theologically inclusive; they’re just less clear about their convictions. They are the neighbor who always votes Republican (or Democrat) and gives to Republican causes and has Republican yard signs but insists that they’re an open-minded independent. What’s worse, by pretending they don’t have convictions and “just teach the Bible,” they encourage a kind of arrogance that assumes they and they only have opinions of equal authority with God’s Word.

I think a much healthier approach is clarity with charity. We should be clear about our convictions and the broad theological categories they land us in. I’m happy to use terms like “Reformed” or “Presbyterian” to describe my theological opinions, not because I’m celebrating some man-made tradition but because I think the Bible teaches stuff that puts me in that camp. You might disagree, and that’s fine. Being up front about our differences allows us to recognize where we are united and have friendly and clarifying debates about the jumping-off points. Transparency makes room for grace; obfuscation inhibits it. .... (more)

Eric Tonjes, "Why Denominations Are Good, Actually," Mere Orthodoxy, July 9, 2025.

Agree when you can. Disagree when you must.

I am a believer in "honest ecumenism," that is, ecumenism that does not ignore or minimize the real doctrinal differences that do exist, but does focus on real areas of agreement. I've been encouraged by what I've read about Leo XIV. He seems committed to orthodoxy and seems to lack many of his predecessor's more annoying traits. Protestants and Catholics share much in common, but some differences ought not be ignored. Several years ago, Kevin DeYoung explained "8 Key Differences Between Catholics and Protestants."  He began:

Ask a serious Protestant today what is the biggest threat to orthodox Christianity, and he might mention cultural hostilities, the sexual revolution, or nominalism in our churches. But if you would have asked a Protestant the same question a hundred years ago, he would have almost certainly mentioned the Roman Catholic Church. Until fairly recently, Protestants and Catholics in this country were, if not enemies, then certainly players on opposing teams.

Today, much of that animosity has melted away. And to a large extent, the thaw between Protestants and Catholics has been a good thing. Sincere Protestants and Catholics often find themselves to be co-belligerents, defending the unborn, upholding traditional marriage, and standing up for religious liberty. And in an age that discounts doctrine, evangelical Protestants often share more in common theologically with a devout Roman Catholic steeped in historic orthodoxy than they do with liberal members of their own denominations. I personally have benefited over the years from Catholic authors like G.K. Chesterton, Richard John Neuhaus, and Robert George.

And yet, theological differences between Protestants and Catholics are still wide and in places very deep. It’s important to be conversant with some of the main issues that legitimately divide us, lest we think all the theological hills have been laid low and all the dogmatic valleys made into a plain. .... (more, with the differences)

Kevin DeYoung, "8 Key Differences Between Catholics and Protestants," Clearly Reformed, September 12, 2017.

Integral to humanity

From a review of Alister McGrath's Why We Believe:

His latest book, Why We Believe, provides McGrath with another opportunity to defend belief in the face of those who deride it as at best irrational and weird and at worst, dangerous. It coincides with the 1,700th anniversary of the Christian Nicene Creed, first adopted by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, and still used today as a profession of faith by those with official positions in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran Churches.

But as McGrath rightly says of a creed – a word taken from the Latin credo, “I believe” – it might be a description of what a Christian believes, but it’s a limited statement. To truly understand belief, he argues, we need to see it lived. As he reminds his readers, CS Lewis, one of the 20th century’s most high-profile atheists-turned-Christians, as well as the creator of Narnia, understood that “the Christian narrative is primary; Christian creeds are secondary… creeds cannot convey either [Christianity’s] imaginative appeal or its subjective impact.”

McGrath’s basic premise is that belief, rather than being outmoded and unscientific superstition, is integral to being human. In a rewriting of Descartes’s cogito ergo sum, he argues that homo sapiens needs to make sense of life, not merely survive it. As the novelist Jeanette Winterson would put it, we are meaning-seeking creatures. Beliefs, whether humanist, or Christian, or that of another religion, shape the way we understand and experience the world.

The most interesting issue about faith and its understanding of human nature, after all, is how it keeps bubbling up, not only in people’s everyday lives but in public discourse. While humanists, as McGrath points out, believe in the inherent goodness of people, a Christian such as Miss Marple understands the simultaneous capacity for its opposite. Only this autumn, forensic psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead reached for Christian theology in her Reith Lectures to help explain evil. It was, she argued, an absence of good, and its antidote to evil was therefore to practise goodness – in other words, the development of virtue that theologians and philosophers from Aquinas onwards have been advocating.

McGrath uses this book to take on Dawkins et al once more: he complains that the New Atheists “degraded and rationalised faith”, and treated it as though it were “simply a form of data”. But he also gives an account of belief’s many facets, from the search for a big picture to the difference it makes to navigating a difficult world. He perceptively comments on how suffering, once seen as a connection between Christians and Christ, is now often perceived as a problem by Christian thinkers drawn into trying to rationalise pain. .... (more)

Catherine Pepinster, "Atheists, you don’t even understand what ‘belief’ is," The Telegraph, Jan. 9, 2025.

The rightful king has landed...

C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation:

• 
  …the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left. (God in the Dock)
• The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. (Miracles)
• In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down;…down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature he has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. (Miracles)
• The Incarnation…illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die, and which at one stroke covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected. (Miracles)
• But supposing God became man—suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person—then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God…. But we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man, That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all. (Mere Christianity)
• Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” (Mere Christianity)

"Our list of allies grows thin"

First Things is a magazine that has always had Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish contributors. Carl Trueman, a Protestant, is one of them. He was recently asked why he isn't a Catholic. Part of his answer:

Many issues are important in my commitment to Reformed Protestantism: authority, salvation, the nature of the ministry, and the significance of sacraments are just a few of the more obvious. And while I am open to the criticism that Protestantism hasn’t given Mary her due, I believe the Catholic Church has given her a significance that is well beyond anything the Bible would countenance. But above all, at the current moment, Catholicism doesn’t appeal to me because of the man at the top: Pope Francis. In my answer, I did try to be respectful of my audience, but I could not help but observe that the present pope seems to be nothing more than a liberal Protestant in a white papal robe. ....

J. Gresham Machen, the Presbyterian controversialist who came to prominence in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, argued that confessional Protestantism and Roman Catholicism were separated from liberal Christianity by, among other things, their commitment to supernaturalism. (Both agreed that the tomb was really empty on the third day.) In other words, the former were species of Christianity while the latter was a completely different religion. ....

Confessional, orthodox Protestants should take no satisfaction in Rome’s increasing resemblance to the old enemy of liberal Protestantism. Rome still has the money and institutional weight to make a difference in these great struggles over what it means to be human. If Rome equivocates and falls on these issues, the world will become colder and harsher for all of us. To quote Elrond, our list of allies grows thin. And Pope Francis is not reversing that process. (more)

Carl Trueman, "Why I Am Not Catholic," First Things, Dec. 12, 204.

Marcionism

An ancient heresy returns again in support of political bigotry. From The Free Press:

.... Like a boil on the backside of the body politic, there has been an ugly irruption of Jew-hating foolishness over casting in the upcoming Netflix film Mary, about the life of Jesus’s mother. People are outraged—outraged!—that director D.J. Caruso cast an Israeli Jew, Noa Cohen, to play the title character. ....

...[E]very Christian knows from the Bible that Mary was a Jewish maiden visited by the Archangel Gabriel, who told her that, though a virgin, she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear Israel’s long-awaited messiah.

“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord,” she replied. “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:38)

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a recitation of the long lineage of Jesus, to demonstrate that the Nazarene son of Mary descended from both Abraham and King David. This is not coincidence: It is necessary to establish Jesus’s messianic credentials according to the Hebrew Bible.

Of course Jews don’t accept this, but believe that the messiah is still to come. The point is simply that it is impossible to extricate Jesus and his mother from Judaism. ....

To deny the Jewishness of Jesus is not only to negate the clear and unambiguous testimony of Scripture but to render as nonsense the entire salvation narrative.

Indeed, as Jesus himself told the Samaritan woman, God sent salvation to all of humanity through the Jewish people. No Jews, no Jesus. Though from the Christian perspective, Jews today reject the divinity of Jesus, as did their ancestors—while from the Jewish perspective they have merely remained true to their covenant with God—followers of Jesus cannot reject the Jews without being guilty of a serious, even fatal, heresy.

That heresy is a very old one, and it is called Marcionism. Marcion was a wealthy second-century Christian who, under the influence of Gnosticism, taught that the God of the New Testament was not the God of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew god was, according to Marcion, a god of wrath; the Christian god was a god of love. These are two distinct deities, he said, and the Christian god is sovereign. ....

Marcionism was strongly condemned by the Church fathers, who defended the legitimacy and necessity of the Hebrew scriptures. In Marcionism, Christianity replaces Judaism; in Christian orthodoxy, Christianity fulfills Judaism. “Don’t misunderstand why I have come—it isn’t to cancel the laws of Moses and the warnings of the prophets,” said Jesus (Matthew 5:17). “No, I came to fulfill them and to make them all come true.” ....

...[W]hat all authoritative Christian traditions share is an irrevocable, undeniable testimony that God chose the Jewish people to make Himself known to all of humanity, and that without Hebrew Scripture and tradition, the Christian faith would make no sense at all. .... (more)

Rod Dreher, "On Mary and the Mob," The Free Press, Dec. 1, 2024.

Nicaea

Philip Jenkins, always worth reading, on "The Nicene Myth," in which he argues that the Council of Nicaea wasn't the inflection point that many historical accounts suggest. Here he describes the council, but the essay is much longer (do read it all, if you have the time):

The story of Nicaea is quickly told. In 312, Constantine consolidated power in the Roman Empire and granted toleration to Christianity the following year. He accepted some leading Christians as his advisors on religious matters and felt the need to demonstrate his leadership of the larger church when it fell into crisis or division.

Such a situation developed in Alexandria, where the presbyter Arius argued that Christ the Son was not fully equal to God the Father. Because the Father was unique in being unbegotten, he must be different from the Son, who was begotten in time, and through whom the Father created the world: “There was a time when He [the Son] was not.” Just how directly these ideas stemmed from any one individual such as Arius is much disputed, but it is rhetorically useful to label any given teaching as the quirky sentiments of one lone individual, rather than a broad intellectual current. It should be noted, though, that Arius was actually not departing too far from views held by eminently respectable earlier thinkers.

Even so, as the Alexandrian church debated the issue, it was Arius personally who attracted the stigma for venturing on dangerous ground, and he was condemned. To resolve the spreading controversy, Constantine summoned a great council from the whole world, the oikou mene, which thus became the church’s first “ecumenical” council.

Between 250 and 300 bishops gathered at Nicaea, representing a minority of the 1,800 or so who then held that office; only five came from the Western church. Tensions ran high during the month or so of debate, and legend holds that Arius was publicly slapped by Bishop Nicholas of Myra—the historical original of Santa Claus. Ultimately, Arius was condemned, with only two bishops prepared to speak up for him. Christ’s full equality with the Father was proclaimed in a new creed, which declared him to be of the same substance, homoousion.

With their mission duly accomplished, the Fathers dispersed to their homes, and every one, we assume, lived orthodox-ly ever after.

That history seems straightforward, and far too much so for many tastes. Through the centuries, Nicaea has become a potent symbol of whatever later believers wished to find: it offers a splendid hook on which to hang whatever trends or facts need to be stigmatized. .... (more)

Jenkins on Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code should convince readers to never rely on thrillers for historical knowledge. Jenkins also addresses, and corrects, errors from other, more serious sources.

Philip Jenkins, "The Nicene Myth," Modern Age, Nov. 18, 2024.

Boundaries

Foundations of Faith begins with a quotation often attributed to St Augustine: “In the essentials, unity, in the non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity.” He then lists the categories his professor used to classify doctrine:

• Essential Doctrine 
• Cardinal Doctrines 
• Non-Essentials
• Tertiary and Peripheral

What is essential, and what is not?

Essential Doctrines are doctrines that put you outside of the faith if you deny them. To reject these teachings means you are not a Christian, and the word “Heresy” is usually invoked for this category of error. Examples of essential doctrines are the deity of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, and believing in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. ....

Non-essential doctrines are the ones that usually distinguish denominations. The Baptists, the Presbyterians, and the Pentecostals are all brothers and sisters in Christ. Still, they hold doctrines that are significant enough to impact how they worship and, therefore, opt to attend different churches. Examples of non-essential doctrines include questions such as, “Does the gifts of tongues continue or cease after the Apostles? Predestination or libertarian free will? Baptism—infant or believers? Covenant theology or dispensational? And questions surrounding the rapture. These can significantly impact our worship, but the wrong answers to these questions rarely put us outside of the faith. .... (more)

My denomination—Seventh Day Baptist—holds that the Sabbath should be observed from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday, the Biblical Sabbath, but would categorize that belief as important and correct but "non-essential," in the sense that those who disagree with us are not heretics and thus the doctrine belongs in category three of this taxonomy.

9/24  I read today that the quotation in the first paragraph above is not from Augustine but has often been erroneously attributed to him.

Doug Eaton, "4 Categories of Doctrinal Weight in Christian Theology," Fight of Faith, August 20, 2024.

"Dust to dust"

Re-posted because it is so right:

Jonathan Aigner ponders "How To Choose Music For A Funeral." I agree with much (not all) that he writes but very much agree with the following and have made my preference clear to my pastor, relatives, and friends:

One of the things the baby boomer generation has introduced into the liturgical sphere is the “celebration of life” service. That’s quite unfortunate.

A “celebration of life” points to a dead person. A funeral points to the cross.

A “celebration of life” sidesteps grief. A funeral confronts grief head-on.

A “celebration of life” ignores resurrection. A funeral depends on resurrection.

Funerals aren’t celebrations of human life. Funerals are proclamations of another life, a life that ended in a death that ended in a life.

That is the life worth celebrating. The music you choose must point to Jesus, not to the casket. ....

Death sucks. It just sucks. And when we lose someone we love, we remember how badly it sucks. And we helplessly face the fact that we can’t do a damn thing about it.

It’s not supposed to be that way.

But Jesus lives, and so shall we.

And that makes all the difference.

How To Choose Music For A Funeral