"The Lutherans teach and believe, that we are saved by faith alone, without any regard to works. They maintain this doctrine as firmly as though works were not at all necessary; yea, that faith is of such a nature that no work can be suffered or allowed beside it."
The rest of Menno Simons' treatise is well worth reading (http://www.mennosimons.net/ft024-lutheranbelief.html).
It would appear that the reverand Menno is not overly keen on properly understanding Lutheran doctrine. Had he spent a few more pious and devoted hours in the Apology for Augsburg, Smalcald Articles.... perhaps Luther's treatise on Christian Liberty, he would have ommitted the false accusation that the Lutherans have no time for good works. But as this quotation seems to imply, Menno would have it that the Lutherans add good works to their doctrine of justification. And not only is such an addition a severe categorical error, it is also heresy. Rightly then did the Augsburg confession denounce the Anabaptists as pious frauds.
I am a Mennonite myself, born of pure blood Mennonite parents into a Mennonite Brethren community. But all of this is absolute rubbish compared to the ineffable gospel of God's powerful and rich grace. I am convinced that Luther and Melanchton grasped this gospel in ways that precious few have, and so if anyone has an issue with these two fellas, they have an issue with me.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
An Important Question.
Is it possible to do good "Barthian" theology without all of the Barth-esque language? I've been reading over my own posts (which can only be classified as a failed attempt at theology) and have to admit that I'm rather disgusted at the type of words I use and the way I formulate sentences. Barthian sentences make me want to vomit. And they are everywhere! Just throw in the word witness for every blog post you write, for every wretched theological essay you draft and your in on the Barthianism. Here are some good blog titles that should release the bile in your liver:
"Apocalyptic Christology: the New Testament as witness in a post-fundamentalist world."
"Christ as authentic man: the pedagogy of the apostolic witness."
"Creation as Act: Re-mythologising the factum in the Old Testament witness."
Puke puke puke!!!!
Just when I think I've vomited enough as I read this glowing garbage, I find more vomit to spew out. This is nonsense! It needs to stop!
"Apocalyptic Christology: the New Testament as witness in a post-fundamentalist world."
"Christ as authentic man: the pedagogy of the apostolic witness."
"Creation as Act: Re-mythologising the factum in the Old Testament witness."
Puke puke puke!!!!
Just when I think I've vomited enough as I read this glowing garbage, I find more vomit to spew out. This is nonsense! It needs to stop!
Thank you Hillsong.
At that time Jesus said," I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure." - Mt 11:25
I didn't select this precious little scripture passage in order to demean the Hillsong Worship artists. Not at all. Yesterday as my mother flipped on their worship music as we drove out for a bite to eat, it struck me almost immediately how profound and beautiful their music is. I was practically caught up into the heavens as I listened to the intimate prayers and declarations of the gospel woven into these simple songs. These people love Jesus. These people have beheld his beauty and his glory in the sanctuary. I was so inspired and encouraged by their intimate love and reverance for the Lord Most High that I could not help but feel refreshed in my faith. And yet if I were to interview any one of these artists, they probably wouldn't be able to tell me squat about Chalcedonian theology or the modicum of epistemology in the revelation of God.
I didn't select this precious little scripture passage in order to demean the Hillsong Worship artists. Not at all. Yesterday as my mother flipped on their worship music as we drove out for a bite to eat, it struck me almost immediately how profound and beautiful their music is. I was practically caught up into the heavens as I listened to the intimate prayers and declarations of the gospel woven into these simple songs. These people love Jesus. These people have beheld his beauty and his glory in the sanctuary. I was so inspired and encouraged by their intimate love and reverance for the Lord Most High that I could not help but feel refreshed in my faith. And yet if I were to interview any one of these artists, they probably wouldn't be able to tell me squat about Chalcedonian theology or the modicum of epistemology in the revelation of God.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Old Testament Theology- Methodology?
I've been working my way through the prolegomena of an Old Testament theology from an evangelical scholar. He devotes about twenty pages to surveying the various methods that have been proposed in the past two hundred years on the aforementioned subject. While reading this I realized that precious few scholars (and evangelicals are not excluded here) have taken seriously the analogia fidei as the principle rule for all Old Testament exegesis. In other words, there are few who believe that the Old Testament records serve as a legitimate witness to Jesus of Nazareth and the gospel of his kingdom...at least in a manner that can be treated in scholarship.
How pitiful!
Attempting to go beyond Jesus the Son of God in order to establish a doctrine of God (yes, even Israel's God) is not just a methodological error...it's blasphemy. Paul (speaking by the very Spirit) says that the eternal God has given a commandment: that the prophetic writings reveal and make known the mystery of Jesus Christ (Romans 16:25-26). We go to the Old Testament because it reveals and makes known our Lord Jesus....no other god.
How pitiful!
Attempting to go beyond Jesus the Son of God in order to establish a doctrine of God (yes, even Israel's God) is not just a methodological error...it's blasphemy. Paul (speaking by the very Spirit) says that the eternal God has given a commandment: that the prophetic writings reveal and make known the mystery of Jesus Christ (Romans 16:25-26). We go to the Old Testament because it reveals and makes known our Lord Jesus....no other god.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Theses on the subject of sacred scripture.
1. It must be maintained, contrary to all modern sophists who pose as theologians of the Word, that the chief article pertaining to sacred scripture is its authorship by the Holy Spirit; proceeding from the Father and the Son.
2. That man has had a part to play in this authorship is accidental and, in the face of the Majesty of the Eternal One, of infinitely less importance.
3. It follows that questions of the author's (in this case most always accredited to sinful man) intent, purpose, interpretation, motive, Sitz im Leben, historical context and so on do not constitute the substance of exegesis, but normatively hinder its manifestation.
4. They strive against God who maintain that the prophetic oracles received in the church as sacred scripture came about as a result of man's interpretation.
5. Yet those who seek to convey an empirically verifiable origin of scripture in the divine will confuse a fastly dating epistemology with the knowledge of the truth as God sees it.
6. Rightly then did Karl Barth insist that the doctrine of scripture as the Word of God be apprehended and proclaimed by faith alone, in which alone the gospel is apprehended and man is able to please and find God.
7. Yet the substance of scripture cannot be understood as a being-in-becoming only, as if the Word of God (in any form) is enslaved to the temporal sphere for its existence as such.
8. The apostolic witness only recognizes the eternality of God's Word according to 1 Peter 1:23-25.
9. The sacred scriptures are not bound by high-sounding rules of context, which the sophists (without the apostolic example) arrogantly appeal to when exegeting a verse.
10. Their appeals limit the verse to the phenomenologies of other works of literature in the history of man, and the Word is never limited.
11. Yet neither can a verse be declared without context in the same wanton manner, as if the mind's willy-nilly selection of a decree from the Eternal God is a sure way to end an argument.
12. All exegesis and scholarship is conducted by men who are dead in their transgressions and sins, completely void of any knowledge of the truth and liable to judgment and destruction. Rightly then does the scripture in Ecclesiastes attribute vanity to the pursuit of wisdom.
13. If every word of the scripture is not first and foremost understood as a witness to Jesus Christ, it must be asked whether the scriptures have even been remotely understood at all.
2. That man has had a part to play in this authorship is accidental and, in the face of the Majesty of the Eternal One, of infinitely less importance.
3. It follows that questions of the author's (in this case most always accredited to sinful man) intent, purpose, interpretation, motive, Sitz im Leben, historical context and so on do not constitute the substance of exegesis, but normatively hinder its manifestation.
4. They strive against God who maintain that the prophetic oracles received in the church as sacred scripture came about as a result of man's interpretation.
5. Yet those who seek to convey an empirically verifiable origin of scripture in the divine will confuse a fastly dating epistemology with the knowledge of the truth as God sees it.
6. Rightly then did Karl Barth insist that the doctrine of scripture as the Word of God be apprehended and proclaimed by faith alone, in which alone the gospel is apprehended and man is able to please and find God.
7. Yet the substance of scripture cannot be understood as a being-in-becoming only, as if the Word of God (in any form) is enslaved to the temporal sphere for its existence as such.
8. The apostolic witness only recognizes the eternality of God's Word according to 1 Peter 1:23-25.
9. The sacred scriptures are not bound by high-sounding rules of context, which the sophists (without the apostolic example) arrogantly appeal to when exegeting a verse.
10. Their appeals limit the verse to the phenomenologies of other works of literature in the history of man, and the Word is never limited.
11. Yet neither can a verse be declared without context in the same wanton manner, as if the mind's willy-nilly selection of a decree from the Eternal God is a sure way to end an argument.
12. All exegesis and scholarship is conducted by men who are dead in their transgressions and sins, completely void of any knowledge of the truth and liable to judgment and destruction. Rightly then does the scripture in Ecclesiastes attribute vanity to the pursuit of wisdom.
13. If every word of the scripture is not first and foremost understood as a witness to Jesus Christ, it must be asked whether the scriptures have even been remotely understood at all.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Twilight and Jesus Christ
"Don't you know me, Phillip, even after I have been among you such a long time?" -John 14:9
Ever wonder why our culture pees its pants in excitement every time another installment from the Twilight saga comes out? It isn't too difficult to figure out. There is something incredibly beautiful about a saga which presents a mystical realm in our midst; bumping shoulders with us...perhaps even longing for us. The realism of the atheistic intelligentsia may have persuaded us to accept our situation without making recourse to the supernatural, but atheism and realism are aesthetically bankrupt concepts. We believe them to be true, but we do not wish they were so. Thus the vampiric phenomenon lives on in its mystical charm and subtle dread...all of us secretly wishing that the universe was a little more deadly.
Human beings long for these things, and God has hidden them from us. We have completely passed by the time of his visitation as if it were a mere story; too good to be true but not realistic. But I put to the world that things are not as they necessarily appear. Edward Cullen managed to hide his identity in an unsuspecting town of realists, and we the audience have the priviledge of looking omnisciently into his life, silently approving of his beautiful yet haphazard self-revelation to the human Bella Swan. How could it be that this tired old world is any different? It isn't.
In the shadows of subjectivity, far away from the grasp of scientific knowledge, Jesus walks among us today. Most laugh and-to their own misfortune- call it a myth. But to the blessed few who bump shoulders with the God-man who passed through the sieve of history as if he were mere man, refusing to settle for history but demanding to know who he is....for those blessed few a world far more beautiful than any saga written by the hands of man opens up.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Striving for New Thoughts about Masturbation
"Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Mt 28:20a.
"Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disorded action. "The deliberate use of the Sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." -Article 2352 of the Catechism of the Catholic church.
The subject of masturbation is a frustrating one. Frustrating due to its immanent possibility as habit in the life of all youth, frustrating due to its complete silence in all scriptural testimony, its harsh censure without clear reason in Magisterial policy, its smooth and psuedo-philosophical rejection in Protestant ministries, and its frightening approval from Liberal cronies and amoral doctors. The Christian world has an ethic without reason conerning masturbation and the secular world has no ethic at all. Both positions-in my view- are entirely unhelpful and profoundly irritating. Even more irritating is my complete inability to make any positive contribution to this sexual dilemma.
I doubt that it will do any good to "pray through" the issue, as if one can expect a further objective revelation from God that can be added to his Word. I have tried to do this before. I usually end up getting an experience of complete peace which is later followed by an experience of resurging censure from my conscience. Both are anthropological residue and have no necessary link to the Holy Spirit (especially since both contradict each other!). Attempts to deduce a general sexual ethic from scripture that one can extrapolate from and interpose have usually failed. The fact that masturbation is "self-oriented" is quite a foolish argument. So is going to sleep. So is making a pot of coffee or reading a paperback novel. So is going for a run or making a tasty-as opposed to bland- breakfast. There are far too many things in this world whose ontological value by divine writ are for our enjoyment.
Appeals to the sin of lust are unhelpful. With discipline and resolve of mind the sexuality (whether in intercourse or in self-stimulation) can be cultivated without fantasy or controversial thoughts of the other. It is possible, available and common to express the sexuality without making any recourse at all to any entity.
"Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disorded action. "The deliberate use of the Sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." -Article 2352 of the Catechism of the Catholic church.
The subject of masturbation is a frustrating one. Frustrating due to its immanent possibility as habit in the life of all youth, frustrating due to its complete silence in all scriptural testimony, its harsh censure without clear reason in Magisterial policy, its smooth and psuedo-philosophical rejection in Protestant ministries, and its frightening approval from Liberal cronies and amoral doctors. The Christian world has an ethic without reason conerning masturbation and the secular world has no ethic at all. Both positions-in my view- are entirely unhelpful and profoundly irritating. Even more irritating is my complete inability to make any positive contribution to this sexual dilemma.
I doubt that it will do any good to "pray through" the issue, as if one can expect a further objective revelation from God that can be added to his Word. I have tried to do this before. I usually end up getting an experience of complete peace which is later followed by an experience of resurging censure from my conscience. Both are anthropological residue and have no necessary link to the Holy Spirit (especially since both contradict each other!). Attempts to deduce a general sexual ethic from scripture that one can extrapolate from and interpose have usually failed. The fact that masturbation is "self-oriented" is quite a foolish argument. So is going to sleep. So is making a pot of coffee or reading a paperback novel. So is going for a run or making a tasty-as opposed to bland- breakfast. There are far too many things in this world whose ontological value by divine writ are for our enjoyment.
Appeals to the sin of lust are unhelpful. With discipline and resolve of mind the sexuality (whether in intercourse or in self-stimulation) can be cultivated without fantasy or controversial thoughts of the other. It is possible, available and common to express the sexuality without making any recourse at all to any entity.
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