"Notice God, don't notice me."

Worship is adoration and praise. It is not sitting back to be entertained. A worship leader should be as transparent as possible, allowing the worshipper to attend to God, not the performance. Brian Doerksen, in an interview at Christianity Today:

When I first felt called to do this more than 20 years ago, I wanted to perform music on big stages. But God quickly called me to be all about worship, which is really, "Notice God, don't notice me." ....

The negative reason [for his new album] would be simply my deep concern about some of what is going on in the modern worship explosion—the shallowness, the man-centeredness, the banality. I wanted to do something that was about God and his core attributes. A song like "Holy God" is a God song, not a song about our feelings toward God. ....

Think About God | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Blogs: What are they good for?

Ross Douthat asks the question, and his short answer is:

[I]f blogs are a big, big part of the future of web journalism, is this good news or bad? I'd say it's good news for punditry, and bad news for other, deeper forms of writing. [read more]

Ross Douthat

Honorable mention!

One Eternal Day received an "honorable mention" at the Evangelical Outpost's list of Christian blogs. Thanks!

Update 7:52 PM: I'm no longer "honorable mention," I am now #75!

the evangelical outpost: The EO 100

"Do unto others...."

In The Political Teachings of Jesus, Tod Lindberg describes what Jesus says about how people should treat one another. The implications of his teaching favor political freedom and democracy, it would seem. Christopher Levenick reviews the book this morning:

.... Mr. Lindberg believes that Jesus' teachings deserve our attention whether or not they have the force of divine law. They offer, he says, a "coherent account of how to live in the world." More important, they propose a "revolution in the idea of freedom," a revolution that gradually came to shape the mind-set that continues to define modern politics and social relations.

The revolutionary idea finds its most powerful expression in the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The familiarity and brevity of the Golden Rule sometimes obscure its radical implications. Unlike the Ten Commandments or various secular codes, it does not list a series of prohibited acts. Instead, it provides a way to think about how to behave toward one's fellow man.

The Golden Rule is implicitly egalitarian: If we are obliged to treat others as we wish to be treated, we must regard them as basically like ourselves and equally deserving of fair dealing. All politics thus proceed from the assumption of the dignity of all persons; within this social framework there is no greater transgression than abusing one's power over someone else.

By this standard, social and political relations are more than a zero-sum game wherein one person's gain comes at another's loss. The Golden Rule proposes that, to the contrary, by identifying ourselves with one another, we arrive at moral virtue and mutual betterment. We become, as Mr. Lindberg writes, "a community of goodwill."

To be sure, the Golden Rule was not without precedent. Similar formulations can be found, among other places, in the Mahabharata, the ancient Indian epic, and Confucius's Analects. The rule in each of these texts, though, is stated negatively: In essence, do not do unto others what one would not like done to oneself. Jesus' positive wording, Mr. Lindberg says, allows for a greater "range of possibility for mutually beneficial interaction." Jesus does not merely forbid injustice; he proposes a principle applicable to our every act and constrained only by the limits of our imagination.

Lamb of God, Social Philosopher - WSJ.com

"Which God alone sees clearly"

The recent statement by the Vatican about the relationship of Roman Catholicism with Orthodoxy and Protestantism raises, once again, fundamental questions about the nature of the Church. Catholicism insists, as it always has, that the human institution headed by the Pope also wields divine authority and that its legitimacy is due to the place given by Our Lord to St. Peter, and through those men he ordained, and so on. And that because of that succession the sacraments are uniquely efficacious through the Roman church [in fact the statement's definition of "Church" is particularly related to the proper delivery of the sacraments]. A few Protestant denominations laid claim to that source of authority too, although the main current of Protestant thought, holding that Scripture is the supreme authority, argued that error, especially on justification, discredited the Catholic claim. The clarity of the Catholic reiteration of their position is beneficial because any true ecumenism must be based on honesty, not fudging. There is, though, another understanding of the meaning of "the Church" which is not based on institutions. S.M. Hutchens:

What makes me a Protestant is that there is a place to stand here where it is not required that I identify any particular communion as the one, true Church. I was not raised in that part of Protestantism, but in a part where...Catholics were not Christians...unless they...tended toward...belief in justification by faith alone and a personal conversion experience as its sacrament. ...[T]he Catholic might be a Christian, but could only be to the degree that he was a Protestant, and Catholicism could only be true to the extent (very dubious) that it was tributary to us.

But there were places to stand within Protestantism that did not require this, where the Church was perceived as C. S. Lewis perceived it (a perception, I must insist, not by any means peculiar to him), as a single thing that transcends the impossibility of church division—a creation of the Holy Spirit that was like him in both its reality and its invisibility—that one could perceive, “hearing the sound thereof,” but could not grasp fully in any ecclesial office or institution, no matter how excellent its constitution. It has seemed to me good to give up a kind of belonging that is offered by divided churches that are secure in their identities for an undivided church that I can (very imperfectly) perceive touching all of them—but which God and God alone sees clearly, just as I see Christ touching those who profess him, while only God can see our hearts and perfectly know our ends. This seems to me to do full justice to both the logic of identity—only this way can one reasonably perceive the Church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic—and the reality that comes down to the judgment of Christ, to individuals as to whether he knows them or not, and to churches, with respect to their final end on his lampstand.

Mere Comments: Notes on "Questions on the Doctrine of the Church"

Atheism

In The Wall Street Journal, Peter Berkowitz on Christopher Hitchens.

Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today, the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America. At the same time, by treating all religion as one great evil pathology, today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to America's destruction.

Like philosophy, religion, rightly understood, has a beginning in wonder. The most wonderful of creatures are human beings themselves. Of all the Bible's sublime and sustaining teachings, none is more so than the teaching that explains that humanity is set apart because all human beings - woman as well as man the Bible emphasizes - are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).

That a teaching is sublime and sustaining does not make it true. But that, along with its service in laying the moral foundations in the Western world for the belief in the dignity of all men and women - a belief that our new new atheists take for granted and for which they provide no compelling alternative foundation - is reason enough to give the variety of religions a fair hearing. And it is reason enough to respect believers as decent human beings struggling to make sense of a mysterious world.

OpinionJournal - The New New Atheists

Death of the muggle God?

Does Harry Potter live in a world without God? Terry Mattingly reacts to a Time magazine essay.

Death of the muggle God? » GetReligion

Anti-Catholic bigotry

Catholic/Protestant ecumenism is usually thought of as a phenomenon of the old mainline Protestant churches, but Robert George points out that liberal Protestants have ignored recent anti-Catholic bigotry. He also draws a connection between such bigotry today and the writings of Americans United's Paul Blanchard.

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » The Neo-Blanshardites vs. the Evangelicals

Christianity Today: Justification by faith

A Christianity Today editorial argues that:

Justification by faith, which gives us assurance of our standing before God, is not just a pastoral doctrine. It goes to the very core of our theological tradition.

Virtue That Counts | Christianity Today

"Dedicated to the proposition...."

Andrew Ferguson is the author of a recent book on Lincoln and what Lincoln means to Americans: Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America. Ferguson was recently interviewed on the subject by The Hoover Institution's Peter Robinson. It is an interesting interview with someone who obviously knows a great deal about our greatest President. It is generally understood now that Lincoln was not a Christian in any conventional sense, but he believed firmly in Providence, and that the survival of the idea that "all men are created equal" might well be determined by the outcome of the Civil War. The interview takes about half an hour.

Christianity and Politics

At Right Reason Jeremy Pierce is planning a series of posts about Christianity and politics. He describes his intention below. It should be interesting.

I'd like to use this opportunity to explore Augustine's views on how Christians should relate politically to a religiously pluralist society. I think he has a lot to offer to those current debates, and his views line up nicely with my own in several ways. I don't expect just to present Augustine's views, however. I expect this to be as much about how I see myself as an evangelical and how I relate to the pluralist society we live in, including how religious views can affect both political discourse and ground my support for particular policies.

Right Reason: Introduction: Christianity and Politics

Packer on Prayer

Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds has found seven sermons by J.I. Packer on prayer. Here is the direct link.

Between Two Worlds: Packer on Praying

Inerrancy

At his site, Reasonable Faith, William Lane Craig responds to an issue or an inquiry each week. Recently the question asked was about the authority of Scripture, given its apparent errors and inconsistencies. Craig responded with a definition and explanation of what biblical "inerrancy" means. But he also points out that the truth of the gospel doesn't rise or fall depending on that doctrine. Portions of his answer:

...[T]he late Kenneth Kantzer, Dean of the seminary I attended, argued for inerrancy by means of the following two syllogisms:

1. Whatever God teaches is true.
2. Historical, prophetic, and other evidences show that Jesus is God.
3. Therefore, whatever Jesus teaches is true.
4. Whatever Jesus teaches is true.
5. Jesus taught that the Scriptures are the inspired, inerrant Word of God.
6. Therefore, the Scriptures are the inspired, inerrant Word of God.

The claim here is that we have good reasons to think that the Bible, despite its difficulties, is the inerrant Word of God and therefore we should accept it as such. As Friedrich Schleiermacher once put it, “We do not believe in Christ because we believe in the Bible; we believe in the Bible because we believe in Christ.” ....

Now the question raised by your letter is what our reaction should be if we become convinced that there really is an error in the Bible. Won’t such a conclusion have a kind of reverse effect along our chain of deductive reasoning, leading us to deny Jesus’ resurrection and deity? This was apparently the conclusion of Bart Ehrman, who says he lost his faith in Christ because he discovered one minor error in the Gospels.

Such a conclusion is unnecessary for two reasons. First, we may need instead to revise our understanding of what constitutes an error. Nobody thinks that when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds (Mark 4.31) this is an error, even though there are smaller seeds than mustard seeds. Why? Because Jesus is not teaching botany; he is trying to teach a lesson about the Kingdom of God, and the illustration is incidental to this lesson. Defenders of inerrancy claim that the Bible is authoritative and inerrant in all that it teaches or all that it means to affirm. This raises the huge question as to what the authors of Scripture intend to affirm or teach. Questions of genre will have a significant bearing on our answer to that question. Poetry obviously is not intended to be taken literally, for example. But then what about the Gospels? What is their genre? Scholars have come to see that the genre to which the Gospels most closely conform is ancient biography. This is important for our question because ancient biography does not have the intention of providing a chronological account of the hero’s life from the cradle to the grave. Rather ancient biography relates anecdotes that serve to illustrate the hero’s character qualities. What one might consider an error in a modern biography need not at all count as an error in an ancient biography. To illustrate, at one time in my Christian life I believed that Jesus actually cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem twice, once near the beginning of his ministry as John relates, and once near the end of his life, as we read in the Synoptic Gospels. But an understanding of the Gospels as ancient biographies relieves us of such a supposition, for an ancient biographer can relate incidents in a non-chronological way. Only an unsympathetic (and uncomprehending) reader would take John’s moving the Temple cleansing to earlier in Jesus’ life as an error on John’s part. ....

So if we are confronted with what appears to be an error in Scripture, we should first ask whether we’re not imposing on Scripture a standard of inerrancy which is foreign to the genre of the writing and the intent of its author. ....

Evangelicals sometimes give lip service to the claim that the Gospels are historically reliable, even when examined by the canons of ordinary historical research; but I wonder if they really believe this. It really is true that a solid, persuasive case for Jesus’ resurrection can be made without any assumption of the Gospels’ inerrancy.

By contrast, the case for Jesus’ belief that the Old Testament Scriptures are inerrant is much weaker. I think there’s no doubt that (5) is the premise that would have to go if biblical inerrancy were to be abandoned. We should have to re-think our doctrine of inspiration in that case, but we needn’t give up belief in God or in Jesus, as Bart Ehrman did. Ehrman had, it seems to me, a flawed theological system of beliefs as a Christian. It seems that at the center of his web of theological beliefs was biblical inerrancy, and everything else, like the beliefs in the deity of Christ and in his resurrection, depended on that. Once the center was gone, the whole web soon collapsed. But when you think about it, such a structure is deeply flawed. At the center of our web of beliefs ought to be some core belief like the belief that God exists, with the deity and resurrection of Christ somewhere near the center. The doctrine of inspiration of Scripture will be somewhere further out and inerrancy even farther toward the periphery as a corollary of inspiration. If inerrancy goes, the web will feel the reverberations of that loss, as we adjust our doctrine of inspiration accordingly, but the web will not collapse because belief in God and Christ and his resurrection and so on don’t depend upon the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

Reasonable Faith: What Price Biblical Errancy

Salvation is by faith

Jonathan Morris, a Catholic priest, confirms that the secular press doesn't "get it" when it comes to understanding what Christians are talking about. We Protestants understand the church universal (the "catholic" church) rather differently than Roman Catholic teaching does. There are important differences that should not be minimized. The statement by the Vatican ensures that they will not be, and ecumenism must always be based on honesty. Nevertheless, the differences shouldn't be exaggerated, either. The Pope is Catholic. Catholics may not believe that we are part of the "One Church" but they don't believe that, therefore, we are not Christians or that, because we aren't Catholic, we are going to Hell.

The headlines I have seen in the mainstream media confirm most journalists are not theologians, and in this case didn’t bother to consult experts of sound, Catholic theology regarding what the debate is all about. Without a proper context, we read that the Pope says some non-Catholic Christian communities are not churches “in the proper sense of the word” — meaning, they are not part of the one Church Jesus established while on Earth — and think he is trying to say if a person’s name and address is not registered in the local Catholic parish, he or she is not going to heaven. The Pope doesn’t mean that. I’ll say it again; the Pope is not saying only registered, baptized Catholics can be saved, and any journalists or critic who says otherwise, has officially missed the point.

Speaking of salvation, from the sight of things as I see it, it is quite possible that many present day non-Catholic Christians who are fervent believers in, and practitioners of, the teachings of Jesus will get to heaven before the throngs of wishy-washy, nominal Catholics who only show up to the church doors for infant baptism, the taking of marriage vows, and their own funeral. Of course, I don’t know who will be on the other side of the pearly gates, but I believe, with the Pope, that there is more to the challenge of personal justification and salvation than calling oneself a Catholic — or a Christian, for that matter. God works everywhere and in mysterious ways, and if we respond generously to him in as much as he reveals himself to us, I believe his grace will be sufficient. In this most recent document, the Pope puts this principle like this:

“It is possible, according to Catholic doctrine, to affirm correctly that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them…”

The Pope, along with all Christians, believes salvation comes from belief in and acceptance of Jesus Christ as one’s personal Lord and Savior, as the only mediator between God and man. The Bible says as much.

FOXNews.com - Document Released By Pope Stirs Catholic Controversy - FOX Fan

Moral action is freely chosen action

John Stossel interviewed Michael Moore for an upcoming 20/20 on ABC. Stossel is one of the few identifiable libertarians in the major media. Moore, of course, has just released his newest "documentary" Sicko. Stossel wrote about the interview, believing it provides an insight into Moore's ideology. This portion of the Stossel column begins with a quotation from Moore:

"I gotta believe that, even though I know you're very much for the individual determining his own destiny, you also have a heart."

Notice his smuggled premise in the words "even though." In Moore's mind, someone who favors individual freedom doesn't care about his fellow human beings. If I have a heart, it's in spite of my belief in freedom and autonomy for everyone. ....

Moore thinks respecting others' freedom means refusing to help the less fortunate. But where's the connection? All it means is that the libertarian refuses to sanction the use of physical force (which is what government is) to help others. Peaceful methods - like voluntary charity - are the only morally consistent methods. I give about a quarter of my income to charities because I've seen that private charity helps the needy far better than government does.

Moore followed up with a religious lesson.

"What the nuns told me is true: We will be judged by how we treat the least among us. And that in order to be accepted into heaven, we're gonna be asked a series of questions. When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was homeless, did you give me shelter? And when I was sick, did you take care of me?"

I'm not a theologian, but I do know that when people are ordered by the government to be charitable, it's not virtuous; it's compelled. Why would anyone get into heaven because he pays taxes under threat of imprisonment? Moral action is freely chosen action.

I was reminded of this book about charity, a review of which made this observation:

In Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism (Basic Books), Arthur C. Brooks finds that religious conservatives are far more charitable than secular liberals, and that those who support the idea that government should redistribute income are among the least likely to dig into their own wallets to help others....

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Freedom and Benevolence Go Together

Church leadership

Alex Chediak offers a couple of interesting resources about church leadership: a booklet by Mark Dever, describing the roles of deacons and elders in the context of congregational polity [available here as a pdf], and a short paper he wrote about "biblical eldership" [pdf].

Alex Chediak Blog: Free Resource on Church Leadership - Mark Dever

What religion am I?

A good friend has directed me to this quiz at the Beliefnet site:

Even if YOU don't know what faith you are, Belief-O-Matic" knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Matic" will tell you what religion (if any) you practice...or ought to consider practicing.

Warning: Belief-O-Matic" assumes no legal liability for the ultimate fate of your soul. (the quiz)

My results (the first 10 out of 27):

1. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (100%)
2. Orthodox Quaker (98%)
3. Eastern Orthodox (94%)
4. Roman Catholic (94%)
5. Seventh-day Adventist (90%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (77%)
7. Islam (63%)
8. Orthodox Judaism (63%)
9. Bahá'í Faith (57%)
10. Liberal Quakers (55%)

I fit more or less into number 1, but not 100% into the group within which I received 100% Although initially surprised by number 2, the definition of "Orthodox Quaker" was reasonably reassuring. Otherwise it was about what I would have expected.

Beliefnet: Belief-O-Matic, What Religion Am I Quiz

No cause for offense

A Presbyterian reacts to the Vatican's statement today about the relationship between Roman Catholicism and other Christians:

Today’s Vatican document is intended to clarify, especially for Catholics, the truth claim that continues to be made by Catholicism: that it constitutes the most faithful existing realization of what Christ intended when he founded a Church. This means, according to Catholic doctrine, that Protestant churches are not really the Church. Today’s Vatican document says: “These Communities [i.e., Protestant churches] do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called ‘Churches’ in the proper sense.” This is the Vatican’s answer to the question, “Why be Catholic?”: In short, because Catholicism is more faithful to what Christ intended. Some will, no doubt, portray this as an arrogant statement, and one that represents a backtracking from ecumenism and Christian unity. But all it is, really, is a making explicit of what Catholicism really teaches. The cause of truth is not served by a failure to be honest on the part of Catholics—any more than on the part of, say, Landmark Baptists, who hold a similar belief that their denomination is the only one that technically qualifies as a “church.” Say what you believe—and then people of good will will try to sort it all out for themselves. And, as far as ecumenism is concerned, even today’s document makes clear that “there are ‘numerous elements of sanctification and of truth’ which are found outside [the Catholic Church’s] structure.” The Protestant churches “are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation. In fact the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation.” As a Presbyterian who grew up Catholic, I view today’s Vatican statement as fundamentally an assertion that Protestants aren’t Catholics. Fair enough, and no cause for offense.

The Corner: Do Protestants Have Churches?

Justification or Acceptance?

Cranach comments on a recent lecture:

Dissident ELCA theologian Karl Donfried notes that there are now two different theologies in contemporary Christianity: a theology of redemption, about how Christ saves sinners, and a "theology of inclusion," about the need for the church to accept people as they are. Justification as the chief article of the church is being replaced by Acceptance, as the doctrine that trumps all others.

Karl Donfried's speech can be found here.

Today's two theologies

"The Long Sneer"

Ross Douthat, himself no "great admirer" of Russell Kirk, eviscerates Alan Wolfe's "hatchet job" on Kirk in the The New Republic. An excerpt, beginning with a quotation from Wolfe:

.. when it comes to Judaism, Kirk has some exceedingly odd ideas. Without the legacy of ancient Israel, he wrote in a book published in 1974, "the American moral order could not have come into existence at all." But we should not conclude from Kirk's comment that he believes Judaism to have made an important contribution to American life. Quite the contrary: following Voegelin, Kirk believes that Judaism's role in history was simply to prepare the way for Christianity. The idea of a Chosen People, Kirk writes, was a necessary prelude to a time in which "God becomes known successively as Creator, as Lord and Judge of history, and as Redeemer." In this role the Jews were not alone; Platonism is another ancient religion that anticipated the coming of Jesus. "Neither the leap of Israel nor the leap of Hellas brought full knowledge of the transcendent order; it required the fusing of Jewish and Greek genius in Christianity for a leap still higher."

Dear me, what an "exceedingly odd idea," this notion that Judaism might have been a precursor to a fuller revelation of God's purposes. Why, it's almost as if Kirk were ... were ... a Christian.

Except that it is one of Wolfe's most telling points against Kirk that he supposedly wasn't a Christian, that he wasn't intellectually gutsy enough to actually pick a specific faith and stick with it:

With four religions unable to be called upon to gird the social order, one might think that Kirk's next step would be to identify the one that, to him, is best suited for the task. But this Kirk never does. He defends religion, but not any particular religion. One looks in vain for apologetics in Kirk's work, for some serious theological demonstration that the ideas associated with a particular tradition, because they are true, are the best ideas for holding society together. Lacking any such thing, Kirk's call for a "sacred patrimony" amounts to little more than Dwight Eisenhower's injunction on the importance of believing in something, whatever that something happens to be. It is really an uplifting form of philosophical indifference ... Against this vapidity, give me Father Neuhaus anytime: when he defends the need for religion in the public square, you are not left in doubt about which religion it is.

Various people have pointed out that Kirk did, in fact, choose a religion, converting to Roman Catholicism in 1964. To which Wolfe has retorted, in a reply to his critics:

I was not interested in, and did not talk about, Kirk's private faith; my point ... was that Kirk's refusal to identify one religion as the public faith whose principles were meant to guide our collective morality reflected a failure to think through his remarkably banal ideas about the importance of religion for the social order ... it was actually out of respect for Kirk's privacy that I did not discuss his personal religious preferences; I do not believe it is my business to talk about people's confessional beliefs.

How noble and high-minded! But this is all rubbish: Kirk does defend a particular religion tradition; he just doesn't defend a particular confession within that tradition. Like many modern conservatives, he suggests that the Western social order is founded on a common Judeo-Christian religious inheritance (a "Mere Judeo-Christianity," if you will) that undergirds our social order, a point of view that he shares, not incidentally, with none other than Richard John Neuhaus, who is despised by many right-wing Catholics precisely for his ecumenism. Perhaps this common tradition is just a figment of Kirk's and Neuhaus' and many other people's imagination; perhaps the contradictions between Judaism and Christianity, or between Catholicism and Protestantism, are too great to provide a common foundation for a social order; perhaps there is simply no middle ground between a purely secular society and a society grounded in, say, Catholic social teaching and nothing else. I think the experience of the United States suggests otherwise, but again, if Alan Wolfe wants to have that argument, by all means. Again, he doesn't; he just wants to sneer. [more]

Ross Douthat: The Long Sneer