Archive for the ‘Current events’ Category
Metábasis eis állo génos (3-8)
I’ve just finished Hannah Coulter and am working my way through Jayber Crow. Delightful books!
One thing among many that strikes me is the occurrence of faintly familiar names like Proudfoot and Otha. It turns out that there is a bit of Cantuckee in the Shire! From Guy Davenport:
The closest I have ever gotten to the secret and inner Tolkien was in a casual conversation on a snowy day in Shelbyville, Kentucky. I forget how in the world we came to talk of Tolkien at all, but I began plying questions as soon as I knew that I was talking to a man who had been at Oxford as a classmate of Ronald Tolkien’s. He was a history teacher, Allen Barnett. He had never read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Indeed, he was astonished and pleased to know that his friend of so many years ago had made a name for himself as a writer.
“Imagine that! You know, he used to have the most extraordinary interest in the people here in Kentucky. He could never get enough of my tales of Kentucky folk. He used to make me repeat family names like Barefoot and Boffin and Baggins and good country names like that.”
And out the window I could see tobacco barns. The charming anachronism of the hobbits’ pipes suddenly made sense in a new way. The Shire and its settled manners and shy hobbits have many antecedents in folklore and in reality—I remember the fun recently of looking out of an English bus and seeing a roadsign pointing to Butterbur. Kentucky, it seems, contributed its share.
Practically all the names of Tolkien’s hobbits are listed in my Lexington phone book, and those that aren’t can be found over in Shelbyville. Like as not, they grow and cure pipe-weed for a living. Talk with them, and their turns of phrase are pure hobbit: “I hear tell,” “right agin,” “so Mr. Frodo is his first and second cousin, once removed either way,” “this very month as is.” These are English locutions, of course, but ones that are heard oftener now in Kentucky than in England.
I despaired of trying to tell Barnett what his talk of Kentucky folk became in Tolkien’s imagination. I urged him to read The Lord of the Rings but as our paths have never crossed again, I don’t know that he did. Nor if he knew that he created by an Oxford fire and in walks along the Cherwell and Isis the Bagginses, Boffins, Tooks, Brandybucks, Grubbs, Burrowses, Goodbodies, and Proudfoots (or Proudfeet, as a branch of the family will have it) who were, we are told, the special study of Gandalf the Grey, the only wizard who was interested in their bashful and countrified ways.
I’ve struggled for awhile to understand the key differences between incrementalism and abolitionism, since I admire some men in each camp and these differences seem to be obscured in the discussion. I’ve come to conclude two key points in favor of abolitionism:
- First, positively, abolitionists rightly point out that incremental legislation gives away the farm. I think you could distill the most compelling case for abolitionism as follows: “You know, brother, I could be an incrementalist too if we knew that incremental legislation was truly passing over some babies. It would be a sad thing but not an abominable thing. We know that we are incremental in this way when we pass over New York by starting in Oklahoma. And we know that we are incremental in this way by passing over a million other partialities in the law and focusing on this one. Maybe God has even called you to address those partialities instead of abortion. But it is so important to realize that incremental abortion legislation doesn’t actually pass over the Downs syndrome babies and the pre-heartbeat babies and the IVF babies. It explicitly offers them up to slaughter and essentially encodes in the law the position that they are non-persons. That is a disastrous compromise and I can’t support it in any way, even though I still give thanks to God for a life saved.”
- Second, it is not true that the abolitionists are pursuing a Procrustean outcome that trades one partiality for another. It is not the case that abolitionism wants to automatically send every father and mother to the chair. Rather, I’ve heard the abolitionist position summarized as “we just want to recognize life as life and practice common law.” Common law makes room for degrees—or in Biblical terms, distinctions between high-handed sins and sins of inadvertency or being led astray.
A hearty amen to this: An Open Letter to Justin Trudeau and the Federal Government.
One of the exceptions I take to the Westminster Confession of Faith is its statement that we should not consider God to be the “author of sin” in WCF 3.1 and 5.4. I agree that God is not “responsible for sin” nor “accountable for sin” nor an “approver of sin” (e.g., Heb. 4:15), but I think that the common sense of author has changed today, and I believe we should be able to fruitfully speak of God as the author of all things in the same way we speak of him as ordaining “whatsoever comes to pass.”
Wayne Grudem offers the language of God as author (chapter 16 section B.6) but in recent editions he added a clarification: “the analogy of an author (= writer, creator) of a play should not lead us to say that God is the ‘author’ (= actor, doer, an older sense of ‘author’) of sin, for he never does sinful actions, nor does he ever delight in them.” I agree with Grudem’s distinction.
John Frame comments on this in The Doctrine of God (see here) and I suspect he is the reason behind Grudem’s adding the qualification above. Frame, too, cautions that there are two senses in which we might use “author,” and I agree with the distinction he makes: “One might object to this model that it makes God the ‘author’ of evil. But that objection, I think, confuses two senses of ‘author.’ As we have seen, the phrase ‘author of evil’ connotes not only causality of evil, but also blame for it. To ‘author’ evil is to do it. But in saying that God is related to the world as an author to a story, we actually provide a way of seeing that God is not to be blamed for the sin of his creatures.”
Metábasis eis állo génos (3-3)
Charlotte and Asher competed in an NCFCA tournament last week and did well. Ivy volunteered with judging. I really enjoyed witnessing so many young folks engaging in good speech and debate, and I greatly appreciate the home school speech club we’ve been able to participate in this year.
One student made the striking statement that “the good is the enemy of the best.” I’m familiar with the converse expression, but there are cases as well where this is true: we must offer our best, our first fruits, to God.
The tournament forced us to miss our church’s twelfth night feast, but we lit our own Epiphany light upon our return, combining our tree with three that we collected from the neighborhood:
Then he shall put his hand on the head of the ascension offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. (Lev. 1:4)
This leads to a profound irony:
Then they spat in His face and beat Him; and others struck Him with the palms of their hands, saying, “Prophesy to us, Christ! Who is the one who struck You?” (Matt. 26:67–68)
Therefore your sin remains. Thomas makes better use of his hands:
Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” (John 20:27)
May we be his heirs:
Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)
We set our sights too low if we merely train our daughters to “love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed” (Titus 2). We have received many blessings from the global economy, but it also represents an ever-increasing dislocation from a healthy oiko-nomos, that is, healthy household management. Our sons as well must be oriented towards their household, though they will naturally have a more outward-facing posture than their wives.
With Rosenstock-Huessy, I believe that the day of the big things—the big countries, the big economies, the big banks, the big companies, the big denominations—is coming to an end. Right now we must and do find ways to walk in this world of great giants and beasts, but we do so with a hopeful eye to the future. Our children will likely walk in a different world, and our grand-children almost certainly will. C. R. Wiley’s books Man of the House and The Household and the War for the Cosmos are both helpful introductions to thinking differently. I recall Nassim Taleb writing about Italian doctors and lawyers, how their practices tend to be much smaller and how they place a high value on individual accomplishment. I cannot find the quote but it was a compelling idea, especially in the male world.
It also strikes me that we do not see the hidden tradeoffs we have made. Aaron Renn’s reflections on “Beyond Economic Piety” underscore this well. What if we could abolish abortion in exchange for half of our GDP? Or abolish abortion in exchange for half of our pharmaceutical formulary being put out of reach of the average person? Wouldn’t you make that exchange without hesitation? We have received great wealth but at unbearable cost. Rich Lusk rightly observes that, “Of all the revolutions of the last several centuries that have rocked the world (the French Revolution, the Russian revolution, the Chinese revolution), it is the sexual revolution that has been the bloodiest of them all.” Miserere nobis.
Mark Horne recognizes the voice of Aslan:
So sometimes you know things and sometimes you really know things. I knew Jesus was YHWH but, when I came to the messages to the seven churches (Revelation 2-3), having read through the Bible from the beginning to that point, I really knew it.
His voice was unmistakable.
Mark Horne also passes along this article on what you might call a “best is the enemy of the good” strength training regimen. I appreciate the observations here; right now a one-hour workout twice a week is the best balance for me. I’m squatting twice, deadlifting twice, curling twice, pressing once, and bench pressing once. I’m never sore while I maintain this pace, though I only have to miss a single workout in order for the next one to leave me sore! I’ve also been influenced by the Barbell Medicine team to conduct my work sets around 70-80% of my estimated 1RM, rather than trying to negotiate complex patterns in an attempt to experience further progression. Maybe things will be different ten years from now, but I’m content with how things are going now.
Alan Jacobs plans to “repair something every day, even if it’s something insignificant, and even if the repair is just a bit of cleaning. I want each night to be able to say: Today, instead of acquiring something new, I took something already known to me and made it a little better.”
It is true that each little victory is hardly a victory thanks to the fact that the Overton window has moved so far. We should not even be entertaining the idea of the things that are being half-heartedly struck down.
Metábasis eis állo génos (2-42)
It seems to me that there are at least four strong lines of religious-conscience arguments against vaccination requirements that most people can embrace: my conscience simply does not allow me to participate in: (1) unethical and criminal behavior related to fetal cell use; (2) unethical and criminal approach to rapid approval of novel-experimental treatments; (3) leading to the great potential for personal debasement and self-harm; and (4) unethical and criminal mandates to participate in treatment.
The French word for doctor is medicin. The first gift of the healing arts is the Hippocratic healer himself. Let’s bring back a personal and individualized approach to medicine.
My pastor Duane Garner writes:
The Church has utterly failed to disciple this nation, and the chaos and calamity around us is the fruit of our failures. While I’m thankful for the bravery and fortitude of the airline pilots presently, that opportunity to stand strong was first presented to pastors who failed miserably. Rather than leading with a bold faith, they catechized their congregations in fear and capitulation, and we are still reaping the consequences. I’m thankful for deliverance from wherever the Lord chooses to send it, but boy did the Church drop the ball.
Reading through Leviticus this week, I’m struck by a few thoughts:
- Leviticus 24 — I’ve held in my mind the thought that bread, beer, wine used at the tabernacle were the work of Israel’s hands. But the oil and light being fruit of their labor strikes me here. We are to live lives of continual light-giving.
- Leviticus 25 — The rite of purification from death (Numbers 19) has a third day and a seventh day baptism. Back in Leviticus 19 we saw the land had three years of rest, and now there is a seventh year rest. Perhaps God is purging the land of the Canaanite death-filth. It’s also striking to me that God’s miraculous provision of manna (six days on, one day off) now continues in the fruitfulness of the land (six years on, one year of rest). As God’s people mature, his provision for them involves no less faith on their part, but more faith-filled work. Yet it is still His doing.
- Leviticus 26 — maybe we can make an argument for firstborn infant baptism here, which of course we extend to all of our children.
Numbers 10:35 is what happens when God’s people march out from his table:
So it was, whenever the ark set out, that Moses said:
“Rise up, O LORD!
Let Your enemies be scattered,
And let those who hate You flee before You.”
It’s interesting to me that, at least in the TR, Jude 1 speaks of the Father sanctifying us.
The Pugcast crew talked about pilgrimage recently. They missed a great opportunity to highlight the centrality of worship: the Lord’s weekly service is the great pilgrimage; the great fulfillment of the feasts; and the great time when the firmament does not merely grow thinnest, but we actually ascend up into it. This is all made possible because worship is in the Spirit. “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels,” &c.
I got a kick out of this XKCD. But isn’t this true of most disciplines, for example, Tolkien studies and the Bible? To be honest, until today I did not know that the cats of Queen Beruthiel were not a cursed problem anymore. But I have just now discovered the vexed problem of knowing exactly how it was significant that there were nine black cats.
Too many good tweets to share this week. Instead I’ll simply say insist that, if you are reading this, you follow Jack Posobiec, Michael O’Fallon, and Boniface Option.
Metábasis eis állo génos (2-41)
Although the general employer mandate for vaccination has yet to be issued—and to my surprise it also seems that there is not yet a Medicare requirement against hospitals?—there is an executive order pertaining to federal contractors. My employer is a federal contractor and they are taking the simplifying measure of applying this to all US workers rather than just those who work “in connection with” a contract. I was provided only 350 characters in which to express my religious accommodation:
In accordance with Title VII, I invoke religious exemption from COVID vaccination & testing. I believe unwanted intrusion or tinkering with creation is sinful & degrading, especially in case of my body which is in God’s image (Gen 1) & is his temple (1 Cor 6). I request accommodation of continuing to work from home as I have for 18 months already.
If I had more room the first thing I would have added is a link to my denomination’s religious exemption statement, followed by a citation of Leviticus 19. I found these resources from The Healthy American helpful in focusing my writing: fact sheet, pitfalls to avoid.
Of course I have more reasons than this, but not less. I sincerely believe that there are massive moral-ethical breaches, lies, wickedness, and demonic involvement in what we have experienced over the past two years, from top to bottom. Berenson calls this moment our Chernobyl. The only thing I’m unsure of is the breadth of it, not the depth of it. Thus, I note Lew Rockwell’s team on Marburg and pray they are wrong.
Reading Leviticus this week for To the Word, I am struck by the fact that cleanness is required to come to worship (who may ascend the hill of Yahweh?) but also that cleanness is one of the things that worship itself supplies. Obviously we have to modulate that through the new covenant and definitive sanctification. Perhaps we can say:
- What good is being cleansed without persevering in it? We cannot come to God without Cleansing (once for all) but we also never come to him without needing cleansing (having something fresh on our conscience).
- What good is being cleansed without knowing it? In weekly worship God means to give us the most objective experience of being assured of his love for us that we have, apart from our baptisms.
- What good is being cleansed without going up the hill of Yahweh to enjoy it? We wash our hands and hearts so that we may sit together at table with Jesus and each other.
Wilson says that you shouldn’t ignore your instinct to say second grace.
Matthew Trewhalla’s talk at the County before Country conference was especially good.
Metábasis eis állo génos (2-33)
Now is the time for states, counties, and municipalities to be enacting a great many sanctuary laws. You may have heard of this in relation to the second amendment, but we need to expand the idea to cover abortion, mask mandates, lockdowns, and vaccine mandates.
I’m in favor of the following tests for political office: (1) familiarity with the Bible, (2) familiarity with René Girard, and (3) familiarity with Edwin Friedman. I think this would solve a lot of problems.
There is one place where social distancing is against the law: the Lord’s weekly supper (Gal. 2). There is neither masked nor unmasked, vaccinated nor unvaccinated, but Christ is all and in all. Greet one another with a holy kiss. And go do likewise at your own tables and workplaces.
We saw a velvet ant on a walk yesterday; I had never seen or heard of them before. They are actually wasps, and are sometimes called “cow killers,” not because their sting is dangerous but because it is painful:
James Jordan writes about long-haul postmillenialism:
As an orthodox, Bible-believing Christian who has been a postmillennialist for nearly twenty years, I think about this when I look at the postmillennial resurgence in America today. Is it going to be a true, Biblical postmillennialism? Will it have room for Ecclesiastes? Will it have room for cross-bearing? Will it see that for us God really is incomprehensible, though not inapprehensible? Will it be clay in the Master’s hand?
I do think that some day we will be wrestling with the chains of Pleiades and the cords of Orion.
I am not necessarily hostile to all the things which I do not mention in my writing. (Conversations with René Girard, 60)
Nothing would be easier [than to put humanity back on the right path] if we wanted to do it: but we don’t want to. To understand human beings, their constant paradox, their innocence, their guilt, is to understand that we are all responsible for this state of things because, unlike Christ, we’re not ready to die. (Conversations with René Girard, 73)
Revelation is dangerous. It’s the spiritual equivalent of nuclear power.
What’s most pathetic is the insipidly modernized brand of Christianity that bows down before everything that’s most ephemeral in contemporary thought. Christians don’t see that they have at their disposal an instrument that is incomparably superior to the whole mishmash of psychoanalysis and sociology that they conscientiously feed themselves. It’s the old story of Esau sacrificing his inheritance for a plate of lentils.
All the modes of thought that once served to demolish Christianity are being discredited in turn by more “radical” versions of the same critique. There’s no need to refute modern thought because, as each new trend one-ups its predecessors, it’s liquidating itself at high speed. . . . For a long time, Christians were protected from this insane downward spiral and, when they finally dive in, you can recognize them by their naïve modernist faith. They’re always one lap behind. They always choose the ships that the rats are in the midst of abandoning.
They’re hoping to tap into the hordes of people who have deserted their churches. They don’t understand that the last thing that can attract the masses is a Christian version of the demagogic laxity in which they’re already immersed. (Conversations with René Girard, 77)
Once the Soviet state is created, the Marxists see first of all that the wealth is drying up and then that economic equality doesn’t stop the various kinds of discrimination, which are much more deeply ingrained. Then, because they’re utopians, they say: “There are traitors who are keeping the system from functioning properly”; and they look for scapegoats. In other words, the principle of discrimination is stronger than economics. It’s not enough to put people on the same social level because they’ll always find new ways of excluding one another. In the final analysis, the economic, biological, or racial criterion that is responsible for discrimination will never be found, because it’s actually spiritual. Denying the spiritual dimension of Evil is as wrong as denying the spiritual dimension of Good. (Conversations with René Girard, 82)
I think the reason we talk so much about sex is that we don’t dare talk about envy. The real repression is the repression of envy. (Conversations with René Girard, 100)
What people call the partisan spirit is nothing but choosing the same scapegoat as everybody else. (Conversations with René Girard, 133)
We have experienced various forms of totalitarianism that openly denied Christian principles. There has been the totalitarianism of the Left, which tried to outflank Christianity; and there has been totalitarianism of the Right, like Nazism, which found Christianity too soft on victims. This kind of totalitarianism is not only alive but it also has a great future. There will probably be some thinkers in the future who will reformulate this principle in a politically correct fashion, in more virulent forms, which will be more anti-Christian, albeit in an ultra-Christian caricature. When I say more Christian and more anti-Christian, I imply the future of the Amit-Christ. The Anti-Christ is nothing but that: it is the ideology that attempts to out christianize Christianity, that imitates Christianity in a spirit of rivalry. (Conversations with René Girard, 141)
Metábasis eis állo génos (2-6)
I read and greatly enjoyed Dinesen’s “Babette’s Feast.” I love the tenderness that she shows towards each of her characters. It is one of those transcendent stories that is hard to read aloud without getting misty eyed.
Ron DeSantis is on a roll:
Marxism is the opiate of the masses, fed to them by fascism. Actual fascism, mind you. But see also: Tu quoque.
God is sharpening the antithesis, testing to see whether his church and her shepherds will stand loyal to him and contra mundum. And this is in part a result of our failures to do so until now. Such times lend clarity to matters of first importance.
“And it shall come to pass at that time
That I will search Jerusalem with lamps,
And punish the men
Who are settled in complacency,
Who say in their heart,
‘The LORD will not do good,
Nor will He do evil.’
Therefore their goods shall become booty,
And their houses a desolation;
They shall build houses, but not inhabit them;
They shall plant vineyards, but not drink their wine.” (Zephaniah 1:12–13)
Such times inevitably contract our sphere of cooperation outside the church. In all times the church never cooperates or sympathizes with: serpents and demons; accusers of the bretheren; scapegoaters; Amalekites and Canaanites; worshippers of Ashtoreth and Moloch; Jezebel; and the N. I. C. E.
Praise God for faithful Lutherans who recognize the antithesis:
And don’t forget that God not only gave us the imprecatory Psalms, but he also commanded us to sing them (Eph. 5:19, Col. 3:16).
Scott: What is distinctive about the space bar?
Ivy: Oh! There are no distinctions between words without it!
Scott: Oh. That’s much better than what I was thinking: the drinks are out of this world.
It’s been a long time since I used a trackball. Sometimes I still miss my old Trackman Vista:
If you have the thing on the right, you want to get yourself the thing on the left. It’s a Lock-Jaw collar.
Metábasis eis állo génos (2-5)
Through his disobedience and discipline, Jonah became an accidental evangelist to the mariners:
Therefore they cried out to Yahweh and said, “We pray, O Yahweh, please do not let us perish for this man’s life, and do not charge us with innocent blood; for You, O Yahweh, have done as it pleased You.” So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared Yahweh exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and took vows. (Jonah 1:14–16)
Maybe God will do the same with the modern evangelical church. This past year has been the year we built our own houses and abandoned God’s:
In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of Yahweh came by Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, saying, “Thus speaks Yahweh of hosts, saying: ‘This people says, “The time has not come, the time that Yahweh’s house should be built.” ‘ ” Then the word of Yahweh came by Haggai the prophet, saying, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?” Now therefore, thus says Yahweh of hosts: “Consider your ways! “You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.” Thus says Yahweh of hosts: “Consider your ways! Go up to the mountains and bring wood and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified,” says Yahweh. “You looked for much, but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?” says Yahweh of hosts. “Because of My house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house. Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit. (Haggai 1:1–10)
We violated the fourth commandment by elevating our own hearth fires above God’s:
Now while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation. They put him under guard, because it had not been explained what should be done to him.
Then Yahweh said to Moses, “The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” So, as Yahweh commanded Moses, all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him with stones, and he died. (Exodus 31:12–17)
And yet, God will use all this for the salvation of many rather than a few:
“Indeed He says,
‘It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant
To raise up the tribes of Jacob,
And to restore the preserved ones of Israel;
I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles,
That You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.’ ”
Thus says Yahweh,
The Redeemer of Israel, their Holy One,
To Him whom man despises,
To Him whom the nation abhors,
To the Servant of rulers:
“Kings shall see and arise,
Princes also shall worship,
Because of the LORD who is faithful,
The Holy One of Israel;
And He has chosen You.” (Isaiah 49:6–7)
Pray especially for the work God is doing in China and in the Muslim world.
“Yet the number of the children of Israel
Shall be as the sand of the sea,
Which cannot be measured or numbered.
And it shall come to pass
In the place where it was said to them,
‘You are not My people,’
It shall be said to them,
‘Sons of the living God.’
Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel
Shall be gathered together,
And appoint for themselves one head;
And they shall come up out of the land,
For great will be the day of Jezreel!” (Hosea 1:10–11)
To the Word has us in the Book of the Twelve right now. One thing that has struck me repeatedly this time through the Bible is the extent of God’s dealings with kings and nations. This is not a minor theme in the Bible.
I mentioned recently that the meaning of worshipping in Spirit is to do so as the body of Jesus—the church—in his presence. I cited Revelation 1 as an example, but we see this expression in association with worship–fellowship with God as early as Genesis 3:
And they heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the spirit of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3:8, NKJV adjusted and emphasis added)
Speaking of worship, if you are in the Raleigh area, please join me for this year’s rescheduled worship and liturgy conference with Peter Leithart. As a foretaste, consider what he has to say about liturgy and joy.
Isn’t it about time that we impeached Woodrow Wilson? Although we may not be able to prevent him from voting, we need to make sure that he never holds office again.
When they were excavating around the legs of Ozymandias, archaeologists found two disposable face masks.
I learned this week that Babette’s Feast originated as an Isak Dinesen short story! I’ve ordered myself a copy, and am looking to resume our family tradition of watching the movie on super bowl Sunday this year.
Metábasis eis állo génos (2-4)
James Jordan points out that we commonly misread Matthew 28:
This is the actual command of the Great Commission: Disciple all nations. Jesus might have said, “disciple the world,” but that might have implied that nations are to disappear. He might have said, “disciple individuals” or “families,” but that might have implied that nations as such are not to be discipled. The phrase “disciple the all nations” clearly means the whole world, and embraces individuals and families as well.
This has a number of implications for us. First, we ought to have faith that this is something the church can accomplish, because all authority has been given to Jesus. Second, we ought to have faith that this is something the church will accomplish, because all authority has been given to Jesus. Third, the church is always already discipling the nations. Duane Garner observes that:
God has placed His Church in a position of leadership over the world and has ordered things in such a way that the Church is set at the vanguard of culture and society. The world sits down-stream from the Church so that whatever we pour in the water up here flows out into the world way down there, for better or for worse.
See also James Jordan’s further comments on the principle that the church is the center and ruler of the world. One of our contemporary failures has to do with narrowing our understanding of God’s work in the world from one of dominion, conquest, and redemption to focus exclusively on redemption.
You know that when the world bows in glad unison to the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, Aslan has them right where he wants them. It is a good time to pray that God will send bad dreams, and wise counselors, to people in positions of power and authority around the world.
In this week’s issue of The Theopolitan, Peter Leithart briefly reviews Kyle Pasewark’s A Theology of Power. He writes that:
Power isn’t domination but, for Luther, God’s power is His “communication of efficacy” (198). . . [God] exercises power by empowering. . . Power as “communication of efficacy” is more coherent than power as external domination or the ability to do what one wills. Power-as-domination is ultimately self-contradictory.
The primary purpose of power and authority and rule are to beget and bestow power and authority and rule. This is an apt summary of parenting, pastoring, and even rightly exercised political power:
So Judah and Israel dwelt in security,
each one beneath his vine and beneath his fig tree,
from Dan to Be’er–Sheva,
all the days of Shelomo (1 Kings 5:5, Everett Fox, Hebrew numbering, emphasis added)
Alex is thinking about the ‘rona here, but this is true at many more levels:
It seems that we may be in the process of adjusting PCR cycle counts downward. You heard it here first, folks: a joint Nobel Prize in Medicine for Biden and Fauci for extraordinary efforts to “eradicate” the ‘rona.
You should follow Jack Posobiec.
Metábasis eis állo génos (2–2)
I received Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies as a Christmas present, and finished it this week. It’s outstanding, as, of course, is Solzhenitsyn’s original essay. (How striking that he would admonish us even to “immediately walk out of a meeting, session, lecture, performance or film showing if [one] hears a speaker tell lies, or purvey ideological nonsense or shameless propaganda.”) Here are my favorite quotes from the book:
“The question is, which is going to win: fear, or courage?” [Jan Šimulčik] says. “In the beginning, it was mostly a matter of fear. But once you started experiencing freedom—and you felt it, you felt freedom through the things you did—your courage grew. We experienced all this together. We helped one another to gradually build up the courage to do bigger things, like join the Candle Demonstration.”
“With this courage also developed our sense of duty, and our need to be of service to other people,” the historian continues. “We could see the products of our work. We could hold these samizdat books in our hands, and we could see that people really read them and learned from them. We saw what we did as service to God and service to people. But it took years for us to see the fruit of our labor and to see our communities grow.” (168)
[Franišek] Mikloško’s close association with secular liberal writers and artists helped him to understand the world beyond church circles and to think critically about himself and other Christian activists. And, he says, liberal artists were able to perceive and describe the essence of communism better than Christians—a skill that helped them all survive, even thrive, under oppression. (175)
“I’ve been thinking a lot about fear, as such,” [Maria Wittner] says. “What is fear? Someone who is afraid is going to be made to do the most evil things. If someone is not afraid to say no, if your soul is free, there is nothing they can do to you.”
The old woman looks at me across her kitchen table with piercing eyes. “In the end, those who are afraid always end up worse than the courageous.” (188)
My pastor preached from Revelation 12 this week and argued that the archangel Michael is Jesus. An interesting additional proof of this is the quote from Zechariah 3:2 in Jude 9. Whom Zechariah identifies as Yahweh and the angel of Yahweh, Jude identifies as Michael, “who is like God.”
This quotation highlights another interesting bit of biblical theology. Many people, Calvin included, believe that Michael is disputing about the body of the man Moses. However, the quote from Zechariah makes clear that what was in dispute was the Old Testament church. This church was the body of Moses in the same sense that we are the body of Jesus. Some more evidence for this reading is the fact that Israel was baptized into Moses (1 Corinthians 10:2).
It is so interesting to me that one of the reasons God restrains wicked rulers is to preserve his people in faithfulness. It is true that there are such great examples of faithfulness in times of persecution, but we also pray and thank God for cutting persecution short for the sake of bruised reeds and faintly burning wicks:
Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion never shaken, settled forever.
Jerusalem, mountains around it, and the LORD is around His people now and forevermore.
For the rod of wickedness will not rest on the portion of the righteous,
so that the righteous not set their hands to wrongdoing.
Do good, O LORD, to the good and to the upright in their hearts.
And those who bend to crookedness, may the LORD take them off with the wrongdoers. Peace upon Israel! (Psalm 125, Robert Alter)
Of course, he also uses persecution to strengthen what is weak.
I’ve enjoyed our little project of chanting Psalms as a family this school year. We are now a third of the way through the Psalter! Wherever possible, we are using the Theopolis Liturgy and Psalter, which is marvelous; otherwise we are using Concordia’s ESV Psalter.
How many Christians confess this:
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:3 ESV, emphasis added)
Once again, corporate America and the media are pretty much unified in their, ah, brave stands for justice. Even the Wall Street Journal is calling for Trump to resign. What I want to know is why we are only starting to think about this now. There’s quite a few politicians, celebrities, media personalities, corporate leaders, and church leaders whose behavior over the past year year is worthy of resignation. Why, imagine: if Biden and Harris had humbled their own hearts, we might be looking forward to President Gabbard right now.
Related, Aaron Renn is beginning a series considering how and why the Republican party hates your guts.
And yet—be sure to consider also Mark Horne’s exhortation to speak cheerful words to yourself.
I love Ted Kooser’s “Splitting an order”—
I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,
maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,
no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady
by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table
and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place,
and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner,
observing his progress through glasses that moments before
he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half
onto the extra plate that he had asked the server to bring,
and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
her knife and her fork in their proper places,
then smoothes the starched white napkin over her knees
and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.
Thanks to Jon Barach for calling my attention to it.
Metábasis eis állo génos (2–1)
Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!
Although I am convinced that our governor’s executive orders of 2020 have constituted a usurpation of authority, I am grateful that for most of this time he has not bound churches:
Worship, religious, and spiritual gatherings, funeral ceremonies, wedding ceremonies, and other activities constituting the exercise of First Amendment rights are exempt from all the requirements of this Executive Order, notwithstanding any other provision of this Executive Order.
It will go well for North Carolina in the future, not at all because so many of us have slavishly obeyed these orders, but because the church’s weekly ministry on behalf of the world has been preserved:
Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: “O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O LORD, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire. For they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed. So now, O LORD our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the LORD.” (Isaiah 37:14–20, ESV)
This is not true in every place. Pray for the church around the world:
To some degree this situation is the responsibility of the church and a sifting of churches:
Lampstands are being removed where people have feared man and nature rather than God.
Some friends and reflected this week on generational and epochal shifts. As usual, I am short on footnotes, but my recollection of Eugen Rosenstock–Huessy is that he identifies a 500 year pattern cycling between tribe, kingdom, and empire; and says that we should expect the next phase of history to appear tribal. There seems to be a similar pattern in scripture’s covenant cycle as well, with roughly 4–500 years each from Noah to Abraham, Moses, David–Solomon, Cyrus, and Jesus. Daniel speaks of seventy sevens (490), and Ezekiel 4 presents us with a 500–year figure as well (390 years + 40 years + 70 years of exile). In addition, the sins of the Amorites have to ripen for 400–430 years. I’m not sure how to put this together with America’s sins, but maybe it works if we consider it Western sins—or maybe we just have more ripening to do. However, in the life of Israel, at least, child sacrifice was a late–stage judicial hardening, so it seems like our bill is coming due sooner rather than later.
Tyre received 70 years of exile for her sins as well (Isaiah 23:17). James Jordan points out from time to time that places like Gath (through Achish) and Tyre (through Hiram) submitted themselves to Yahweh’s rule in covenanting with David. This could apply to Egypt as well through Solomon. All these therefore received greater blessing and long–term future hope, but and also stricter discipline, since judgment always begins with the household of God. You see both these blessings and curses throughout the prophets.
I’m still learning to “see” corporate versus individual readings of passages. It had never occurred to me until this week that God’s generational visitation in Exodus 34 might be societal and not just individual. In the case of the Amorites (Genesis 15) God seems to be saying that a generation is about 100 years, at least at that time. That kind of makes sense when Jacob is marrying Leah and Rachel at 84 years old, but I wonder why the cycles wouldn’t accelerate later in history as generational gaps shorten.
The church is the society that, by keeping on repenting week by week, year after year, is able to experience thousands of generations of fruitfulness.
I want to learn sometime what happened in the years preceding 1917 Russia (where the rule of communism was roughly 70 years) and 1930s Germany. We have the impression that things progressed quickly there but I suspect there is more to it, including some kind of long compromise or complicity in the churches. In his recent book Live Not by Lies, Rod Dreher points to some social and cultural factors in these downfalls (pp. 30ff), although these still seem to me to be downstream from the church’s rule of the world: (1) loneliness and social atomization, (2) losing faith in hierarchies and institutions, (3) desire to transgress and destroy, (4) propaganda and the willingness to believe useful lies, (5) a mania for ideology, and (6) a society that values loyalty more than expertise.
Hear this: Jesus is king.
The reason [the church is] a third thing, a tertium quid, is because it was the first thing. (C. R. Wiley, “Ecology and the Libel of Christianity“)
From the almost–tempted–to–wear–a–mask department:
I was reminded recently of St. Anne’s Pub, who at one time carried on a ministry similar to Ken Myers’s Mars Hill Audio. Their 2005 issue “Leading our little ones to Christ” was helpful to me as part of my conversion to paedobaptism and paedocommunion. They interview Vern Poythress, whose articles on Indifferentism and Rigorism and Linking Small Children with Infants are also very helpful introductions.
Oops, it looks like my future is not so bright:
I gotta have my orange juice. 