So the family binge-watched Firefly/Serenity this Christmas break (and yes, I know). Nathan Fillion and Joss Whedon at their best. A very smart show, a very thoughtful show, and as a result a necessarily dark show. There are too many obscure historical parallels to use to explain why the show had to be so dark. You can think of it as survival on the outskirts of civilization when you realize that the central government doesn't have your best interests in mind. It's not pleasant. What makes the show so meaningful is the contrast it paints between the state of civilization and state of humanity localized in the crew of Serenity. A captain's fierce loyalty to his crew, a husband/wife's love for one another, a brother's devotion to his sister. You take those relationships and put them in any number of barely-civilized situations and you get this show. Am I appalled at the theology of the show? Of course. But I don't watch television shows for theology.
Twelve years after the show was cancelled, it actually has a stronger and more vibrant following than when it ran (I guess that makes sense or else it would have been a stupid decision to cancel it); there aren't too many shows that can say that (one website only put Arrested Development, Freaks and Geeks, and Firefly in this category). I've read myriads of reasons why the show was cancelled and more than a few reasons why we should be glad it was (go out on top - don't drag us through seasons 7 and 8 of X-Files again). I have no doubt that it would have a place if it were released today - there are so many channels needing programming - and costs of special effects have come way down. But there are a number of reasons why it had to come out when it did for it to work. The cast was affordable because they were still mostly young. Joss Whedon was affordable because he wasn't appreciated enough yet. The money went into sets and locations (which can't be fixed by special effects on a network scale). And there was nothing on television like it. I wonder if it would be lost in the crowd and weeded out by it's too-large budget, like so many sci-fi shows before and after. Think about it - how many otherworldly fantasy/sci-fi shows "make it"? X-Files was basically set on modern-day earth, so it's in a different category. Doctor Who has the backing of the BBC. Frankly, the longevity of Star Trek TNG is somewhat baffling when you take all of that into account. To illustrate my point, consider these shows that got cancelled pretty early on (I hadn't watched most of them, but they sound interesting):
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In our Bible study this morning, we started 1 Thessalonians, and we read through some very familiar passages. I realized that I have only gone through this letter in personal devotional reading and never in a "formal" setting (not sure how that happened), so I have always read it in the NIV: We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. But this morning I happened to have my NAS with me: We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father, knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you; for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. Always reading the NIV, I had no trouble viewing the phrase following "power" as an appositive; in other words, reading it as "with power, namely the Holy Spirit and the deep conviction thereby produced." That's certainly how the NLT interprets it: For when we brought you the Good News, it was not only with words but also with power, for the Holy Spirit gave you full assurance that what we said was true. This post is a result of two "coincidences": I recently read the end of Hebrews, and Brain Games last night was about why humans are superstitious. First, note this passage. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Don’t be led astray by various kinds of strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be established by grace and not by foods, since those involved in them have not benefited. We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle do not have a right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the most holy place by the high priest as a sin offering are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the gate, so that He might sanctify the people by His own blood. Let us then go to Him outside the camp, bearing His disgrace. For we do not have an enduring city here; instead, we seek the one to come. -- Hebrews 13:8-14 In addition to being profound on so many levels, the author of Hebrews has something very pointed to say to all of us who have brought in superstitions into our religions.
Holy Trips to Holy Relics at Holy Sites One of my favorite resources is Adolf Harnack's History of Dogma. Yes, he has an ax to grind, but his insights are still mostly brilliant. In particular to this blog post, he traced how the Constantinian church assimilated a number of pagan practices in order to assimilate the pagans who practiced them. Over time, those practices became Roman Catholic tradition. For our purposes, the emphasis is on holy relics and holy sites. {Important aside: the word "holy" properly means "set apart"; in this context, however, "holy" seems to mean nothing more than "connected with a person who is connected with God." Note the difference.} First, to be safe, some definitions specific to the context of the mythos surrounding the holy grail. The word "holy" properly means "set apart"; in this context, however, "holy" seems to mean nothing more than "connected with a person who is connected with God." A "relic" is a physical remain of a holy person, an object touched by said holy person, or a place where that person did something important. Relics are housed in "reliquaries" and the physical site where they are kept is considered holy as well. The journey one takes to visit one of these holy sites to see a relic is called a "pilgrimage." All relics are assumed to have miraculous powers by virtue of their connection with said holy person who, according to Roman Catholic theology, could give us access to the grace and power of God. In other words, a relic is a conduit to God, much like a sacrament. All good? Anyway, let's be generous and say that the basis for their/our fascination with relics comes from the New Testament. In Matthew 9:20-22, we read the story of a woman who touched the hem of Jesus' cloak and was healed of her bleeding (even though Jesus said that her faith, not His garment, made her well). In Acts 5:16, it is said that people lined the streets with the sick and lame hoping that Peter's shadow would fall on them (the assumption is that they were healed, although the text doesn't actually say that). The idea is, for example, that if Jesus' garment still existed today, it would still have the power to heal, even though Jesus no longer wears it. The power resides in the object itself (where we get the idea of residual). Barna just released the results of a survey related to church architecture / worship space and millennials (18-29). This is the "prize demographic" for church leaders, so much money has been spent on programs and appearances designed to appeal to this group. The Barna Group worked with focus groups in Atlanta and Chicago as well as online surveys, and what they found was interesting. If you are one who follows trends in church matters, it's not surprising. However, it did help me see the cognitive dissonance among my younger peers that has been elusive. No survey is perfect. The fine print puts the margin of error at +/-5.2%. Plus, there's no guarantee that the millennials in your area are anything like those surveyed (even within margin of error). But hopefully you find this interesting - I struggled with how I would interpret these results (you can read how Barna's researchers interpreted it on their site). Frankly, none of them appeal to me. I get that #1 is too large, too much like a concert venue. I get that #3 and #4 are too small and too huh? #2, the most popular, isn't too big or too small, but it's also neither very traditional nor modern. I don't know what to do with it. My guess is that it's more about size than anything. These results make more sense. There's a strong awareness that young people don't want to worship in an auditorium or a gymnasium or a wedding chapel. They want a sacred space with clear Christian imagery. The appeal of #3 is clearly associated with the turn to a more Catholic iconography among the marginally churched (I don't want to call that trend "superstition" because it is such a pejorative term, but note that the more churched millennials are less likely to want to see Jesus still hanging on the cross).
William Perkins (1558-1602) was an important Puritan preacher and theologian. To make a very long story short, Puritans were heavily influenced by Calvinist theology, although they went beyond Calvin in several ways. In particular, Puritans took the doctrine of limited atonement and predestination to its natural conclusion: double predestination. Not only did God predestine some to be eternally saved, but that meant He predestined everyone else to be eternally damned. The other doctrine you will find in this chart is supralapsarianism ("before the fall"): God decreed who would be sent to heaven or hell before Adam was even created or committed the first sin.
{Aside: this is counter to the other view, infralapsarianism/sublapsarianism, which says that after Adam committed the first sin, God decreed that He would save some of those fallen and leave the rest to suffer their just condemnation.} In other words, before you were born (actually, before God created the universe), He had already determined whether you would go to heaven or hell. For obvious reasons, this created a great deal of angst among Puritan church members. There was nothing they could do to affect their eternal destination, and because it was God's choice alone there was also no way to know what God had chosen for you! This is a pastoral counseling nightmare. Anyway, because this theology was so frightening to common church members, pastors like William Perkins created elaborate charts describing the process of salvation so that concerned church members could find themselves on it, and that's what you have below. About the chart. I traced this from the standard Perkins chart to make it easier to read (which it's still not easy enough to read). The colors are my own, added so I could explain the groupings of things. *At least, not in the way people seem to want to use the term (including some Southern Baptists). I regularly hear people call the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) a "denomination", including its "denominational leaders" (tongue-in-cheek), moreso at the local and state levels. Depending on how they are using the term, they might be right. If you just want to pull out the dictionary definition, denomination, n. 1. a name or designation, esp. one for a class of things then yes, you could call the Southern Baptist Convention a denomination. Likewise, if you are using the classic Weber church/sect typology (some interpreting it as "church" being an all-encompassing social monolith, "denomination" being a set of competing church-institutions on good terms with society, "sect" being more of a protest movement and less organized, and "cult" being more centered around an individual), you could also call the Southern Baptist Convention a denomination, though I think that would overplaying the intent of the classification and overselling the organization of the SBC (I still think we would be termed a "sect" even under that system as compared with denominations).
In my opinion, the real issue the relationship between a local church and a denomination. If we simply say that denominations are associations of local churches, then fine. But that's not the way I hear people use the term. Rather, I hear people speak of a church as a local chapter of a denomination, like a franchise or a chain. Do you see the difference? Our two options: A denomination is an association of local churches (fine) -OR- a church is a local chapter of a denomination (ergh). If you are using the term in the latter way, and I think many people are without necessarily realizing it, then you are using it inappropriately with Southern Baptists. A World of Chains and Franchises It's not hard to understand why people would use the term in this way. The truly independent store or restaurant doesn't have the influence it once did. Either it has been marginalized by a competing franchise (cf. Walmart) or it has been so successful that it has decided to reproduce itself (cf. McDonalds). Most of us live and operate in a culture dominated by a "parent company" in our workplace, where we eat, or where we shop. It's natural for us to think in these terms. In the case of a chain, a parent company assumes the risk of creating stores at new locations, staffing those stores, and maintaining central management for each store. In the case of a chain, a parent company offers a business model for purchase by individual investors who assume the risk of new locations and pay some sort of franchise fee. In the case of a chain, the parent company maintains "quality control" authority. In the case of a franchise, the parent company has "sold" that authority to the local franchise owner. Frankly, quite a few denominations operate according to the chain or franchise model, though they may have been doing it long before there were business chains or franchises. {Brief historical aside: both the chain and the franchise models started in the mid 1800s partly through observing the success of denominations in the United States. Over time, denominations have modified their practices to emulate the success of certain chains and franchises. There's nothing wrong with that. They're simply finding answers to questions the Bible doesn't address. My concern is that they perhaps shouldn't have been asking some of those questions to begin with, but more on that later.} One of the most interesting outcomes of this little analysis of two paragraphs written in the late 1640s is how wide-ranging the implications are. Let's start with its three basic assertions:
Profession of Faith Puritanism took a rather oblique stance on salvation. Puritans (and by this I mean the self-identifying Calvinistic party that arose out of the larger movement to purify the Church of England) inherited just enough of Calvin's church/state covenant theology to assume that their church communities would have Christians and nonchristians alike. Throw in enough predestinarianism and they didn't know (or really care) who was who. Because it was God's choice alone who would be saved, all one could do in this life was look for evidence of it. Hence the Puritan approach was to baptize everyone into the church community (preferably as a baby) and let the chips fall where they may. But to give some sort of hope to the community members, Puritans created a very elaborate step-by-step salvation experience (Perkins' "Golden Chain" anyone?) that people could place themselves on. At the end of this set of experiences was repentance/salvation, and if one didn't make it all the way to the end of the chain, he or she was predestined to be damned. I suppose this means I'll have to do a blog entry on the Golden Chain some day. Anyway, Baptists saw through all of that. They never desired to play the role of God in determining salvation because they knew the heart was beyond their vision. They absolutely cared about behavior (moreso as a witness to the lordship of Christ but also as a view to the fruit of salvation); surviving meeting minutes are filled with exercises of church discipline. But their emphasis on proper baptism, proper submission within a church structure, and so on was not about the Puritan test for salvation. It was about proper church order. It was about a church being right with God through its individual members being right with God. Believe it or not, this was a scandalous position to take in that day. {If anyone without a Baptist history background actually reads this blog, I know I need to validate that statement. Take a look at the First London Confession [1644], Article XXXIII for the easiest summary. You can also see Cox, Knollys, and Kiffin, A Declaration Concerning The Publike Dispute, particulary page 20. Kiffin said, "and that being thus baptized upon profession of Faith, they are then added to the Church, 2 Act. 41. and being added to the Church, wee conceive our selves bound to watch over one another, and in case of sinne, to deale faithfully one with another" (A Briefe Remonstrance, 13). They understood that a profession of faith did not mean one had saving faith; one could not verbalize his way into the kingdom of heaven. But they also understood that everyone stood on his own before God in judgment, so they would accept a profession on its face.} We've been looking at a fascinating letter published by John Tombes in answer to a question about baptism. Once Tombes had begun questioning the validity of infant baptism, Westminster and its polemicists blacklisted him and pumped him with the "swarme of sectaries" and in particular the Baptists. Tombes, for his part, took the time to learn the Baptist position, published where he agreed and disagreed, and asked Baptist leaders to clarify some of their wording. The most basic question, and the one that caused the greatest contention with the established church, was the "who" and "why" of baptism. This was the answer Tombes received: That which we require and without which we will not baptize any is a persons manifestation of himself to be a believer in Jesus Christ, and to desire baptisme according to the revealed will of Christ, and in obedience thereunto, we do not baptize any into this or that particular congregation: but only into that one body in general spoken of 1 Cor. 12. 13. As touching joining in communion, we in this case require no more, then a manifest readinesse to hold communion with all the Churches of Christ in the things of Christ, and accordingly to shew a real willingnesse to have communion with any particular Church of Christ according as the hand of God shall give opportunity, and true seasonablenesse of and for the same. Thus we judge and practise accordingly. Benjamen Cox. There are two issues in particular that need to be understood. Early Baptists did not baptize into church membership. But they weren't in complete agreement about this. This matter caused confusion among the early Baptists and still causes confusion today. A lot of Baptist church members today believe that baptism is the act of becoming a church member, in other words that people are baptized "into" church membership. Some Baptist church constitutions actually have it worded this way. (By the way, if you are not a Baptist, you might not have experience with Baptist church autonomy. We believe that Baptist churches have the right to determine this for themselves. I'm just saying the historic position leans a different direction.) I think the confusion is as much cultural as anything (pre- and post-Baptist communities), and that makes it doubly difficult to sort through the disagreements. James Pendleton, in his once very influential Baptist Church Manual, said of candidates for church membership, they are by vote of the church recognized, as candidates for baptism, with the understanding that when baptized they will be entitled to all the rights and privileges of membership. This has been interpreted to mean that baptism is the act of joining the church. But that's not what he said. What he said actually lines up quite well with the beliefs of the early English Baptists. In the next section, we'll look at some specific statements made by the leaders in question, then we'll come full circle and tie everything together at the end. But first, one more point of clarification. "All the Churches of Christ" might not mean what you think it means. Note the definition of a church in the First London Confession: a company of visible Saints, called & separated from the world, by the word and Spirit of God, to the visible profession of the faith of the Gospel, being baptized into that faith, and joyned to the Lord, and each other, by mutuall agreement, in the practical injoyment of the Ordinances, commanded by Christ their head and King. (Article XXXIII) There are some excellent, excellent resources out there on anger. In the context of the Sermon on the Mount, we talked about anger this week. A lot of people, including Christians, have "anger issues." They have to learn "anger management." They are taught to understand their anger. I thought this little explanation of anger progression was fantastic in its simplicity. Anger is a reaction to hurt (or any kind, and it doesn't have to be to you for you to hurt). Anger simply happens. The choice comes after the anger:
That is a very easy to follow downward progression that makes a lot of sense. The longer it takes for intervention, the closer one comes to acting on his anger. But as far as Jesus is concerned, the sin occurs long before anger becomes manifest. You have heard that it was said to our ancestors, Do not murder, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. - Matthew 5:21-22 Using the convention above that anger is simply a reaction to hurt, if we apply that to Jesus' words, the sin occurs when we direct our anger at our brother. Our choice is to make our anger personal, and that is when we start the downward spiral. Anyway, I greatly appreciate that explanation of anger. The problem is - it doesn't really help me. What do I *do* to make that progression not the dominant narrative of my life and reactions? The answer is astonishingly simple, and the upward progression is just as straightforward. If resentment for my hurt is the choice that leads me down the slippery slope, what is my alternative?
Our Sunday School lesson this week includes the difficult words of Hebrews 6:4-8: For it is impossible to renew to repentance those who were once enlightened, who tasted the heavenly gift, became companions with the Holy Spirit, tasted God’s good word and the powers of the coming age, and who have fallen away, because to their own hard they are recrucifying the Son of God and holding Him up to contempt. For ground that has drunk the rain that has often fallen on it and that produces vegetation useful to those it is cultivated for receives a blessing from God. But if it produces thorns and thistles, it is worthless and about to be cursed, and will be burned at the end. As is normal for me, let me give you everything I know about these words and then allow you to draw your own conclusions. At quick glance, we would probably say this: the author is speaking about someone
John 10:27-29: My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish—ever! No one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. We know that the Bible does not contradict itself, and the Bible certainly teaches that our salvation is secure, so what do we do with Hebrews 6? Let's walk a little more slowly and carefully through the text and see what we might learn.
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AuthorIf I ever say something in here that doesn't make sense, please ask me to clarify. It always makes sense in my head, but that doesn't necessary mean anything to you . . . Categories
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