A Severe Mercy

From Christianity Today [via Between Two Worlds] comes news of another C.S. Lewis-related film project:

Blogger, script consultant, and now, Hollywood screenwriter. That's the latest addition to the resume of Barbara Nicolosi, formerly the head of Christian screenwriting workshop Act One, whose latest task is to adapt A Severe Mercy to the big screen.

The book, written by Sheldon Vanauken, chronicles the journey through faith and marriage that he undertook with his wife—and with a little help from one C. S. Lewis. Indeed, Nicolosi promises a "cameo appearance" by Lewis, who also appears in the book in the form of several letters.

Source: News: Reel News | Christianity Today Movies

"Irreverence and opposition to transcendence..."

Gene Edward Veith [Cranach] adds his observations to the discussion about why some evangelicals are attracted to Roman Catholicism. Among them was this:

...most converts from evangelicalism to Catholicism are trying to flee the megachurch. A suggestion to evangelicals who do not want to lose some of their more thoughtful members to Rome: do something about your worship.

Ministers are trying to attract the greatest number, but they perhaps do not realize just how ANNOYING and EMBARRASSING many of their devout members find contemporary worship styles to be. They cannot STAND all of that pop music, the multi-media screen they have to look up to as if in worship, the whole atmosphere of irreverence and opposition to transcendence that pervades what passes for worship today in virtually all Protestant denominations. I'm sure preachers can continue to pack their megachurches with this approach, but it risks driving many of their members to Rome.

I realize that theological considerations prevent various denominations from adopting the historic liturgy, but they can bring back their own traditional worship. A traditional Baptist service has more dignity and a traditional Pentecostal service has more transcendence than the contemporary worship styles that ALL Protestants have run to. ....

Source: Top Evangelical goes over to Rome

"Why?"

Melinda, at Stand to Reason, discusses the inconsistency that many people exhibit when discussing abortion. Her comments are a reaction to Chris Wallace's interview with Rudy Giuliani.

.... Most Americans aren't comfortable with legal abortion in all nine months of pregnancy for any reason. Many Americans have the public/personal distinction Rudy does. .... I have no idea what Wallace's views on abortion are, but he knew the question to ask. Why?

Why are you personally against abortion? .... Why? Why ....

By pressing that question we encourage the person to get to the heart of the matter: the status of the unborn. ....

Pressing the question, gently but persistently, can help someone clarify what they really believe about the unborn. It's a rare person who could acknowledge that the unborn is an innocent baby yet believe the law should allow it to be killed.

If the unborn isn't human, then no justification for abortion is necessary and there's no reason to be personally against it. If the unborn is human, then no justification for abortion is adequate and it's not possible to live with the private/public distinction.

Source: Stand to Reason Blog: Why?

"Is Christianity good for the world?"

At Christianity Today's website:

Theologian Douglas Wilson and atheist Christopher Hitchens, authors whose books are already part of a larger debate on whether religion is pernicious, agreed to discuss their views on whether Christianity itself has benefited the world. ....

The exchange.

[Note: the pictures are from Douglas Wilson's website - Wilson's pose modeled on Hitchens']

Source: Is Christianity Good for the World?" | Christianity Today

C.S. Lewis: From theism to Christianity

Trinity, Fountain of Salvation

Fred Sanders explains that "the Trinity is not a hard doctrine God tossed into his revelation just to make things harder. The Trinity is the fountain of salvation."

Salvation happens when God is himself for us. The one God opens up the divine life and makes available, through mercy, the fellowship of love which is the dynamic of God’s own life. The Father sends the Son and the Spirit to make fallen humans into created, adopted sons and Spirit-bearers.

Link to Trinity, Fountain of Salvation | Scriptorium Daily

What attracts some Evangelicals to Catholicism?

Sam Storms suggests some of the reasons.

Link to Enjoying God Ministries

Holiness

At Christianity Today, Joel Scandrett writes about what it means for a Christian to be "holy." It is about behavior, but behavior follows from something else that is far more crucial. Excerpts:

...[B]iblical terms translated "holy" or "holiness" (qadosh, hagios) carry a strong secondary connotation of moral purity. But moral purity is not, first and foremost, what Scripture is talking about. Instead, the most basic meaning of the words is to be "set apart" or "dedicated" to God—to belong to God. "I will be your God, and you will be my people," says Yahweh (Lev. 26:12; Heb. 8:10). Thus, prior to any consideration of morality, biblical holiness describes a unique relationship that God has established and desires with his people. This relationship has moral ramifications, but it precedes moral behavior. Before we are ever called to be good, we are called to be holy. Unless we rightly understand and affirm the primacy of this relationship, we fall into the inevitable trap of reducing holiness to mere morality.

....[T]hose who have responded in faith to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ have been united with Christ. To be a Christian means far more than merely to believe in God—as if the Christian faith were reducible to a system of beliefs—it means to be united with Jesus in and through the Holy Spirit. "I have been crucified with Christ," says Paul, "and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). Elsewhere, Paul tells us that our lives are "hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3) and that we have been "seated with [God] in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6). Passages like these convey the mysterious, yet utterly real fact that, by virtue of our union with Jesus, we participate in the life of God: He dwells in us, and we dwell in him. As such, we can say that in Christ, God's holiness is our holiness. In Christ, we are already holy. ....

As we seek to understand the implications of God's call to holiness for our lives, we must maintain the priority of our union with Christ. "We love because he first loved us," John tells us (1 John 4:19). .... Our response to God's initiative is grounded and established in the perfect holiness that is already ours in Jesus Christ. Anything short of this understanding will collapse back into the notion that holiness is our doing, rather than God's. But when this priority is maintained, it provides an unshakeable foundation upon which our faltering attempts to lead holy lives may be rooted and established.

Still, as we maintain the priority of our union with God in Christ, we must also acknowledge that we are not yet holy. For our holy relationship with God in Christ requires of us—or better yet, enables in us—a response. "I urge you," says Paul, "to live a life worthy of the calling you have received" (Eph. 4:1); and, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God" (Rom. 12:1); and finally, "Continue to work out your salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Phil. 2:12-13).

Such passages make clear that there is no place for cheap grace in the economy of God. Rather, the purpose of God's saving work in Christ is to free us to live out the holiness we already enjoy in him. [more]

Source: Holy to the Core | Christianity Today

Catholics, Protestants, and the Scriptures

At First Things, Richard John Neuhaus, formerly a Lutheran, now a Roman Catholic priest, writes about one of the most important issues raised in the discussion of Francis Beckwith's return to Catholicism. The issue is about authority - "the relationship between Scripture and the interpretive tradition of the Church." Excerpts:

These are questions addressed in the statement of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, “Your Word Is Truth.” In that statement, it is underscored that sola scriptura does not mean nuda scriptura—Scripture divorced from the living community of faith by which it was produced and is interpreted under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised to the Church. ...

We can be sure that neither in their living voice nor in their letters did the apostles preach sola scriptura as ETS understands that phrase, since their preaching long precedes the formation and canonization of what we call the New Testament. (St. Athanasius in his Festal Letter of A.D. 367 was the first to name the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as canonical.) The Church is not a community constituted by a book called the Bible. The Church is the extension through time of the People of Israel living in fidelity to God’s revelation of himself in Jesus the Christ under the direction of the apostolic authority that he established. That is the community that, guided by the Holy Spirit, both produced and holds itself accountable to the inspired Scriptures of Old and New Testaments. To put it differently, the question is not Scripture and tradition. The Scriptures are that part of the tradition that the Church recognizes as uniquely authoritative.

For most Protestants the issue would be whether the Catholic church has, in fact, properly held "itself accountable to the inspired Scriptures of Old and New Testaments." Neuhaus writes that the discussion of these issues "is a very lively—sometimes nasty but potentially salutary—debate ...." May the benefits of the debate outweigh the hazards.

Source: First Things: Stirring the potpourri

Reality bites

The abortion debate has entered a new stage with ultrasound imagery forcing those who might wish otherwise to face the facts. Cranach:

Slate has published a piece by William Saletan in which he, though pro-abortion, faces up to some telling truths:

Pro-lifers are often caricatured as stupid creationists who just want to put women back in their place. Science and free inquiry are supposed to help them get over their "love affair with the fetus." But science hasn't cooperated. Ultrasound has exposed the life in the womb to those of us who didn't want to see what abortion kills. The fetus is squirming, and so are we.

Source: Cranach: Squirming fetus; squirming pro-abort

Books

John Piper lists, and comments on, the books that have influenced him most.

Link to Books That Have Influenced Me Most :: Desiring God

Francis Beckwith

Francis Beckwith has, upon his conversion to Roman Catholicism, resigned as President of the Evangelical Theological Society. His decision has caused consternation in some quarters, elation among Catholics, and a great deal of discussion. He has explained his decision at a blog to which he contributes and in an interview with Christianity Today. Michael Spencer at InternetMonk.com offers his thoughts, among which is the following:

I am surprised at how many people seem to believe that Roman Catholics are not Apostle’s Creed Christians. A disturbing percentage of the anti-Catholic rhetoric the Beckwith reversion has inspired is half-baked, bone-headed anti-Catholicism. On the level of the Trinity, evangelicals and Roman Catholics ought to be one in spirit and confession. Our differences are crucial, but they are not the same differences we have with Muslims or even Jews.

As a post-evangelical, I have a deep gratitude for what the RCC preserves and defends that is vital to my own faith journey. At the same time, my issues with Roman Catholicism are simple: Scripture and tradition are not equal. There is no infallibility in the human element of the church. The mediation of Christ is singular, perfect, unique, complete and effectual. Assurance is the birthright of the children of God and is mediated by the Spirit through the Word. The assertions of a church made apart from scripture can never be bound to the conscience as if they were scripture. ....

Yet with these substantial disagreements, I recognize what is present: the great Creeds, the shared ancient heritage of the early church, the shared faith confessed by the early church, the shared experience of the Trinity, the shared sense of the priority of faith, the shared emphasis on the obedience of faith and the shared call to be the people of God formed and sustained by Christ. And much more.

Beckwith and other converts to the RCC are brothers and sisters in the faith and testimony of Jesus. As we believe in and upon Jesus, we are both included in those purchased by Christ. It is particularly sad that this would ever be at issue on either side of the Reformation divide. May Protestants and Catholics know one another’s faith well enough that whatever tears we shed or mutual recognitions we share, we know what is truth and what is bigotry. ....

Source: internetmonk.com » Thoughts on Beckwith

An eye for an eye

The Wittenberg Door discusses what "turn the other cheek" doesn't mean.

Link to The Wittenberg Door: Eye for an Eye

Summer movies and post-modernism

John Mark Reynolds believes that the popular summer films demonstrate that post-modernism doesn't affect popular culture at all:

Summer blockbusters show that the importance of post-modernism to the next generation is as much overrated as the first Matrix film.

In fact, I have come to disbelieve in popular postmodernism entirely.

Post-modernism does not exist as a powerful, popular cultural force.

There I said it . . . and however overstated it may be I think it closer to the truth than the opposite. This is despite worried or breathless (or both) people wanting to destroy it or marry it or turn it into a late night television show.

Apologetics may be ga-ga about refuting it . . . but the fact that theaters are still packing them in for plots drawn straight out of the non-ironic parts of the 1960’s suggests that Stan Lee may be more influential in this generation than Derrida.

People still like heroes, happy endings, and good guys defeating bad guys. The pirates aren’t . . . the bad guys are obvious . . . and unlikely events still show up to save the day. We are positively (he says with glee!) Medieval! ....

Source: Scriptorium Daily: On Comic Book Movies: What Spiderman, Pirates, and Other Summer Films Are Saying

Eugenics

There are many things wrong with abortion, not least of which is the tendency to eliminate classes of inconvenient people. The Nazis gassed the handicapped and mentally ill. We kill them before they are born. The New York Times today:

About 90 percent of pregnant women who are given a Down syndrome diagnosis have chosen to have an abortion.

As genetic testing becomes more sophisticated, what other classes of people will be attacked? Dean Barnett's experience is instructive:

As most of the readers of this site know, I have the genetic lung disease Cystic Fibrosis. When I was born in 1967, the life expectancy for a bouncing baby boy with CF was eight years. Thanks to much better medical treatment, the average life expectancy for a baby born with CF today is in the mid-30’s. Nevertheless, CF remains a killer, and at best a terrible and painful burden for the parents of a CF patient.

When I was a teenager, the people running the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation came up with a “cure” for CF that could have only risen from the moral muck of the 1960’s and 70’s. They would breed the disease out of existence. Some time around 1980, the Foundation funded the search for and the eventual discovery of a pre-natal test for the disease. The plan was that parents who had a baby/fetus with CF would of course choose an abortion. Since children with CF would no longer be born, the disease would no longer exist. It would be “cured.” Sort of.

I knew most of the people who were then on the CF board; one of them was my father who I of course love dearly. He, too, thought this was a good idea. At some point my older brother pressed him if this meant he and my mother would have aborted me had they known I would have CF. My father reassured him that it wouldn’t have been a big deal, since I would have been reincarnated in the next baby they conceived. Except I would be better. I wouldn’t have that damn disease anymore.

I didn’t buy this logic. (Neither did my brother.) Even as a teenager, I didn’t like the idea that the next me would be aborted. With more skin in the game than the typical adolescent, I became one of the youngest and most ardent pro-life advocates in a liberal town that was lost in the moral confusion of the era. .... (more)

Prenatal Test Puts Down Syndrome in Hard Focus - New York Times, Hugh Hewett: Pro Life in a Brave New World

The end of the World as we know it?

Der Spiegel questions the hysteria about global warming and suggests that it betokens an ignorance of history:

During the so-called Medieval Warm Period between about 900 and 1300 A.D., for example, the Vikings raised livestock on Greenland and sailed to North America. New cities were built all across Europe, and the continent's population grew from 30 million to 80 million.

The consequences of the colder temperatures that plunged civilization into the so-called Little Ice Age for several centuries after 1300 were devastating. Summers were rainy, winters cold, and in many places temperatures were too low for grain crops to mature. Famines and epidemics raged, and average life expectancy dropped by 10 years. In Germany, thousands of villages were abandoned and entire stretches of land depopulated.

The shock produced by the cold was as deep-seated it was long-lasting. When temperatures plunged unexpectedly once again in the 1960s, many meteorologists were quick to warn people about the coming of a new ice age - supposedly triggered by man-made air pollution. Hardly anyone at the time believed a warming trend could pose a threat.

It was not until the rise of the environmental movement in the 1980s that everything suddenly changed. From then on it was almost a foregone conclusion that global warming could only be perceived as a disaster for the earth's climate. .... What was conveniently ignored, however, is that humanity has been reshaping the planet for a very long time, first by clearing forests and plowing fields, and later by building roads, cities and factories.

In the age of climate change, it has become a popular social pastime to scour the weather forecast for omens of doom. Has it ever been as hot in April as it is this year? Is this lack of rain normal? Could all this mean that the end is nigh? .... [more]

Source: Global Warming: Not the End of the World as We Know It - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Preaching

John Piper's blog links to a site where Martyn Lloyd-Jones's sermons are posted, and he comments:

There is very little great preaching today. Most of us are too bent on being good communicators to be good preachers. We are too clever and too funny. ....

What a gift, therefore, that The Martyn Lloyd-Jones Recording Trust puts a free audio of one of MLJ’s sermons up for us to hear every week. ....

When J. I. Packer first heard Lloyd-Jones he said that he had "never heard such preaching." It came to him "with the force of electric shock, bringing to at least one of his listeners more of a sense of God than any other man" he had known.

Source: Lloyd-Jones: A Preacher's Preacher :: Desiring God

Liberal Protestantism

Albert Mohler links to an article in the New York Times about the Riverside Church search for a new pastor. The search won't be easy and that fact is partly related to the decline of liberal Protestantism. From the NYT article:

Since being founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1930, Riverside has often and justifiably been likened to the Vatican for America’s mainstream Protestants, the theologically and politically liberal segment of the faith. The church’s first minister, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and successors like William Sloane Coffin, used Riverside as a national pulpit from which to preach social justice, civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War, among other causes.

Yet now, as Riverside prepares to search for a new senior minister for only the sixth time in its history, mainstream Protestants are struggling to reverse a decades-long pattern of losing numbers, vitality and influence to their evangelical Protestant competitors. Between 1990 and 2000 alone, mainstream denominations like the Episcopal, Presbyterian and United Methodist Churches and the United Church of Christ lost 5 percent to 15 percent of their members, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. Riverside is interdenominational but is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Baptist Church. ....

“Riverside’s next minister needs to make a coherent case for liberal Protestantism, and that’s been missing for a long time,” said Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Barnard College and an ordained Episcopal minister. “You need someone who has solid theological understanding and can articulate it speaking to a popular audience.

“The standard conservative criticism,” Professor Ballmer said, “is that the mainline Protestants lost their theological moorings, that they got too far out ahead of the people in the pews. But I think the larger issue is that they were not communicating to the masses.”

Source: Riverside Takes On the Task of Rebuilding a Church - New York Times

I'm back

During the past week my brother and I traveled to western New York to attend the sessions of the Seventh Day Baptist Allegheny Association in Little Genesee. I was invited to present my views about SDB membership in the Baptist Joint Committee. I had two opportunities to speak. First, on Sabbath afternoon, I was given half an hour to present the anti-BJC position and Pastor Ken Chroniger of the Alfred Station SDB church spoke in favor of continued affiliation. Then on Sunday morning the executive director of the BJC, Brent Walker [by telephone], and I responded to questions for about an hour.

It was an interesting experience and I was also able to see and talk to many good friends and a few relatives. The trip out and back was enjoyable, too.

I expect now to resume posting on a fairly regular basis.

Church planting

Mark Driscoll prepared the video below for a church planting conference held recently. The video was well received by those present, but was not distributed to the attendees as had been planned. That is a pity. It is a very frank and straightforward presentation.

Source:The Banned Church Planting Video | TheResurgence