The past understood at last

I've come across Charles Finney before.

It was in the heyday of Last Days Ministry, run by the singer Keith Green.

Finney was the inspiration for many of the pamphlets that LDM distributed and for much of what KG sang and said.

The moral of that experience is don't go to singers for theology!

Except for an early period at a Presbyterian church (that seemed more Barthian than Knoxian, come to think of it), my younger years, up to about 26 or so, were spent in a denomination heavily influenced by Finney's crackpot rhetoric (it wasn't theology).

Thus the emotionalism, the shallow sermons on too many occasions, the hokey 'entertainment' that some 'praise' services descended into, and the intellectual emptiness that came my way. When I got to know some Anglicans, I found out about...theology! Proper!

No wonder my 'witnessing' attempts turned to porridge upon commencement. I had nothing to say because I was given nothing. It took years to undo that stifling of the Spirit.

Horton reveals all in this enlightening essay. It explains the shallow emotionalism, the playing the last verse of a hymn (often 'Just as I am') five or six times to pressure people to 'come forward' to signify their 'decision' to follow Christ. This stratagem was often a failure. More so when the preacher told us that he really felt the Spirit moving in the place calling people to him. Clearly, it was not the Spirit of God he sensed, but his own delusion, because no one 'accepted'.

So, he had nothing to say, I had nothing to say, the people I spoke to heard nothing. No wonder they were not compelled. Not even interested, because there was nothing interesting in Finneyism. None of the intellectual riches of the faith, none of the greatness of the knowledge of God came through.

As I've written before. I left high school having been exposed to some of the world's greatest minds. At the same time, my church life had equipped me with nothing but how to play mini-golf.

Genocide is immoral?

Doodling around the Internet I came across this article in The Guardian (that one-eyed leftist rag should get alarm bells sounding straight away) by Richard Dawkins (Dick, as I call him) "Why I refuse to debate with William Lane Craig". And it's not because he has two surnames!

Dick's chief reason appears to be because of Craig's apparent endorsement of genocide in Deuteronomy 20:13-15.

I've only got two comments.

1) Dick thinks that material is the entirety of reality and that it operates with pitiless indifference to human interests or moral considerations. Thus 'genocide' is neither good nor bad, but just is.

2) If genocide, however, has good reason: such as the tribes in Canaan being worse human rights abusers than even Isis, taking delight in incinerating their live babies, for instance, then it must be a moral good!

3) And this comment for free: If God wants to judge people for resolutely foul behavior that is entrenched in every aspect of a culture, then maybe that's a good idea.

So, all I can say to Dick is what's your solution for human horror games? Blind pitiless indifference?

Why did you kill all those people

In an old taped lecture by Dr, Dr, Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith (yep, three doctorates) he got to a discussion of 'theistic-evolution'. He recounted this report:

A British clergyman spoke to one of the Nuremberg war criminals before his execution, about his crimes and did he wish to take this last opportunity to repent before God.

He replied with a 'no'. And why should he, he said. He was only doing God's work as the church had told him, evolution and all its death of the weak was God's means of creating. He was only weeding out the weak and felt no guilt at all.

The Four Horsemen

No, not the ones of Revelation, nor the four musketeers, nor the four fool atheists of modern times (Dawkins, Hitchins, Dennet, Harris).

No, its the four horsemen of philosophy-fiction. You've heard of most of them.

Karl Marx
Adolph Hitler
Charles Darwin
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

There are a couple of close contenders: Freud and Jung spring to mind; but there are a million hangers-on. Just too many to name. But the fault lies at the feet of the four above.

Here's why:

Karl Marx - invented the non-invention of economic materialism, absorbed the passingly interesting idealism of Hegel reduced all human history and relations to one thing: production. Paved the way for the modern version of oligarchic power and exploitation of the governed.

Adolph Hitler - also influenced by Hegel. Probably. Some sort of idealist determinist. Liked murdering people, but a dab hand at designing uniforms.

Charles Darwin - another type of materialist, invented his Victorian gross-morphology fantasy and expected it to mean something in the non-material world of our minds. Nevertheless, wrote 'The Descent of Man'.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - merely a class 1 philosophy-fiction writer...according to Peter Medawar. He also inaugurated the genre of theology-fiction, based on the prior fantasy of Mr Darwin and his 'could have might have' stories.

The Case for Christ

It's nice to have some mnemonics to keep in mind to be able to give a reason for the hope we have (1 Peter 3:15).

You might remember the 5 Cs.

Here are the four (or five) Es, care of Lee Strobel, the author of The Case for Christ:

E - execution: Yeshua was dead as a result of the execution: there's virtually no dispute that he was dead after the crucifixion. For this, we have a large number of early contemporary accounts of this. Josephus, Tacitus, Serapian, Lucian, the Talmud

E - early: the earliest report we have access to is dated from probably 3 months after the resurrection in an early creed

E - empty: we have an empty tomb, recognized by Yeshua's enemies as resulting from grave robbery (the modern trope that crucifixion victims were not buried is false).

E - eyewitnesses: in more than a dozen instances to over 515 people in total recorded in over 9 ancient sources within and external to the New Testament*. Unlike mass hysteria events, the events were all different, and mostly in prosaic everyday circumstances.

(E) - experience: of the apostles post-resurrection: changed from a band of frightened demoralized failures to determined risk-takers who led difficult lives of deprivation and suffering to proclaim Yeshua's resurrection from the dead to their own deaths. They had encountered the resurrected Yeshua and were confident to put their lives on the line for their experience.

*Many non-scholars reject the NT as an ancient source. But remember, the NT is a collection of ancient texts. It was not composed as a propaganda piece, but represents a compilation of individual texts separately composed within about 60 years of the crucifixion for various readerships across the ancient world. Don't confuse a method of binding for an intentional composition.

Calvinism is like socialism

I was looking at the Koorong Books catalogue again today. Koorong is Australia's major Christian resource retailer. Now owned by the Bible Society, but used to be owned by Paul Boots. It started out of his parents' garage, I understand, in one of the Koorong Aves.

It then moved to a joined up pair of shops in Ryedale Rd West Ryde. I remember helping empty shipping containers of books when they arrived from the USA on a semi-trailer. Now that's the way to move books!

I think those shops used to be used by the 'House of the New World' a hip Christian mission for youth work. One of my High School teachers had been involved with it and I visited there a few times in the early to mid seventies. Happily I decided not to follow either Alinsky's hate or Hirt's delusional aspects (see the picture).

John Hirt, founded House of the New World

I was young, I was in my Calvinist phase. Happily Koorong is no longer a branch office of The Banner of Truth (I visited the HQ in Scotland many years ago...when I was coming out of Calvinism), but the range has other down-sides in my estimation. Too much empty fashionable books, not enough popular hard-thought works.

One thing Calvinism did was it got me into reading serious tomes about theology and faith. I read a ton of them. I even had Calvin's commentary -- the full set -- and used it to prepare Bible studies.

Calvinism in a way is like socialism. It's a something for the headstrong young, but good to grow out of.

I was a socialist too when young. Uni indoctrinates one into its attractive but superfical beneficence. But I went further. I joined Action for World Development, an organisation with some links to the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, but more links, I think to 'liberation' theologians. It was to the left of Che Gauvara. I met some great people in that group, and some wild ones. I experienced my first house party with co-ed dorms! That was...a little confronting!

I sought books at the Sydney Black Rose bookshop. I read Bakunin, Murray Bookchin and Ursuala LeGuin (her book set on an anarchist planet) and a few other anarchists. I subscribed to the New Internationalist, I read The Guardian.

Then I woke up, and afterwards awoke from Calvinism too.

I had also realised the New Internationalist was a people-hating marxist rag, I realised the only thing going for The Guardian was its tissue paper stock, and that now because it was easy to dispose of: like toilet paper is.


I recently picked up my old Bible marked up with Calvinist prooftexts, but started to read it en genre: that is, like history, poetry, letters, mission accounts (the gospels). I no longer could read the Bible in the arid stoicist style of Calvinists.


Finally, I was full of regret: all the time I'd wasted reading too much Calvinism and too much socialism! Oh that I had read Mises instead of Bookchin. Friedman instead of Bakunin.

But...all under the bridge now.

Apostles' Creed thoughts

The Apostles' Creed is possibly the best recognised concise statement of Christian belief.

I first learnt this version while at CEBS in the mid 1960s:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead and buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty;
From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit;
the holy catholic church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. [Amen]

Although as I was writing this, I almost said to myself at line 13 "From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead" so perhaps the Book of Common Prayer version was the first I learnt. However, the one above is my favourite, but the more modern version at line 8 is probably 'more better':
"He descended to the dead". "hell" is possibly defensible from some scripture, but that Jesus said to the penitent thief would be in paradise with him 'today' (Luke 23:43) suggests otherwise.

I also wonder if we might insert a new line after 9, being:
"and was seen by many."

This makes sure we understand that Yeshua's resurrected self was witnessed in our historical time-space and he was in fellowship with his disciples. I would also use 'universal' instead of 'catholic' to avoid modern confusion with the denomination. Nevertheless, I love the pace and cadence of the Australian Anglican Prayer Book version and so would vary it thus:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead and buried.
He descended to the dead.
The third day he rose again from the dead
and was seen by many.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit;
the holy universal church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Christianity and its flaws?

Moral revolutionaries

Al Mohler writes in a recent article: that the 'moral revolutionaries' have 'won', and they demand absolute surrender.

Of course! The 'moral revolutionaries' are not revolutionaries, but represent a reversion to pre-Christian practices. The recent decades in the USA (Mohler's home) have been marked by the fruits of previous generations of evangelisitic work, producing a culture that is marked to some extent by the fruit of the spirit; but also tainted, as all cultures must be, by the mark of the devil.

Sans continued evangelistic effort and moral reflection (the fruits of the Spirit), the second order results of Christian influence will naturally wane, and do so quickly. This should be no surprise.

What will also happen is those doctrines of government, public order and social behaviour that have been influcence by Christianity will also wane.

I see that the actual tolerance, libery, and presumption of innocence that Christian cultures have produced in the (Anglo) West over centuries will transform into an amoral tyranny more characteristic of Ancient Rome than anything we know today.
Beware.

In the old days

We may sometimes think that medieval times were full of piety and godliness...even if society did not always act congruently with such preoccupations. But no:

Why science?

From Rodney Stark's How the West Won:

...most religious outside the Judeo-Christian tradition do not posit a creation at all. The universe is said to be eternal, without begging or purpose; never having been created, it has no Creator. From this view , the universe is  a supreme mystery, inconsistent, unpredictable, and (perhaps) arbitrary. for those holding this view, the only paths to wisdom are meditation or inspiration--there being nothing to reason about. But if the universe was created in accord with rational rules by a perfect, rational creator, then it ought to yield its secrets to reason and observation.

Drifting off

I went to a meeting at work today, and thought that as the meeting (one of the meetings that we like to call 'workshops', entirely unrelated to light engineering, too) was unlikely to require much writing of me, I would just take my Ipad.

Well, as it happened the first event of the meeting was to fill in name and e-mail address on a piece of paper that was circulated. Darn. I didn't even have a pen and had to borrow one. Slight amusement to lender.

But the trouble with an Ipad is that during dull bits, one is tempted to browse the web. I did. I thought to look up Puritan names. As I was so doing, I heard the chairman (I'm not into this 'chair' bit) ask if I could speak to a point just raised. Happily she clarified just a little and I was able to handle the topic. Close one!

(This is a post about the Puritan names, just in case you are wondering).

Incidentally, the author of the Puritan names list blogs here and has more on Puritan names.

No sign of Christianity

One Stephen Morgan wrote linking various bad people with Christianity. A number of letters rebutted his assertion. He then batted it back, completely failing to understand Christianity's self definition as discipleship of Christ. This writer then caught him out:

In the circumstances, it was probably a better letter than the one I submitted:

"Stephen Morgan still misses the point. ETA, KKK and Hitler are not 'terrible representatives of Christianity'. They are not representatives at all.

Just because they operated in nations where a lot of people were or are Christian is of no import. Christianity is not a cultural posture, it is the religion of devotion to Jesus being the Son of God and creator.

Did Hitler read the Bible and pray daily? Did he seek a life of humble love of others? Did he repent of the wrong he did and thought? Did he attend his local church and seek to be instructed by the minister and his fellow believers? I think not. Thus he was not a Christian and in no way a representative of Christianity. The very thought is repugnant and insulting to Christians."

Crusades

Some of the views we hear today about the Crusades is that they were predatory exploitation adventures purely against Islam with a view to (modern) colonialism.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Rodney Stark's book God's Battalions gives a deeply researched rebuttal to the tendentious journalistic view that we have portrayed for us today: the Crusaders went at great personal cost to prevent the domination of the 'Holy Land' by Muslims who raided and destroyed Christian settlements and preyed on pilgrims.

That got me onto the Crusades, and I've pulled a book from my shelves that I bought in 1982: Memoirs of the Crusades by Villehardouin and De Joinville. They are contemporary accounts of a later crusade, the fourth, I think. Should be good.

But what about the 'Holy Land'? At first I thought that the particulars of place and its history are spiritually irrelevant. But then not so. Christianity is almost unique (well, actually unique, setting aside the assertions of the pagans) in being able to attach events of spiritual significance to time, place, and real people; retaining the connections we thus have with God's acts and the world we are in is significant.