Deus Misereatur

In dealing with friends who have crossed the Tiber or gone to Constantinople, I have thought long, hard and prayerfully. I appreciate the grief many feel about the fragmentation of 'Christianity', especially the North American version, that seems to have unsettled my friends and caused them to search for answers. It's true, that for all of our Protestant rhetoric, there is no real, stable authority that keeps us glued together. It is almost as in the days of the Judges when "there was no king in Israel," and "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 17.6). We have been infected with the parasites of self-authentication and self-authority. Therefore every time you turn around a new preacher/teacher pops up onto the scene with some new fangled interpretation of Scripture that contradicts what has been normally held to, and leads off a whole passel of people after his/her new-found light. It's shameful. Having a standard, unchangeable int...

We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ’s Cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place; Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me; As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face, May the Last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.                            John Donne, "Hymn to God my God". Donne was playing out a complementary set of themes which can be heard in some ancient Church pastors/theologians. (1) The fall at the tree of the knowledge of good & evil, & our rescue at the cross (a tree of shame turned into the tree of life by Christ’s death and vindicating resurrection), and (2) Adam’s disobedience undone by Christ’s obedience (2 Adams). For example, St. Irenaeus (late 2nd Century) explains the relationship this way: “And not by the aforesaid things alone has the Lord manifested Himself, but [He has done this] also by means of His passion....

“[...] arguments about Scripture achieve nothing but a stomach-ache or a headache” (Tertullian 42; paragraph 16), so quips Tertullian in his Prescriptions Against Heretics . And in the next paragraph he states, “True, you will lose nothing in the dispute but your voice; and you will get nothing from their blasphemy but bile” (42; Paragraph 17). Then, in exasperation, he states “It follows that we must not appeal to Scripture and we must not contend on ground where victory is impossible or uncertain enough” (42-3; Paragraph 19). For anyone who has ever entered into dogmatic debates with those who are on the fringe of Christianity (for example The Way International , Jehovah’s Witnesses et al) will understand Tertullian’s frustrations. Is it possible that what Tertullian was pointing at with these statements, and what he seems to have meant by them, might be helpful in the 21 st Century post-Christian circumstance? To begin, it appears that Tertullian was fighting hard against an obst...

Recently I heard an assertion I have heard once before, that John Calvin had never been ordained. I pondered this possibility and wondered if it was true. And if it was true, how could Calvin have been consistent with his doctrines of ordination, & the ministry of the Word and Sacraments? Therefore, I embarked on a bit of a cyber-excursion, and found a few items worth pondering, and reasoning with. “After some hesitation, Calvin agreed and took the office in Geneva of “reader” (lector) of Holy Scripture. Calvin began his activity with lectures on the letters of Paul. He also participated in the Lausanne Disputation in October, 1536, between reform theologians and those faithful to Rome. The latter must have felt defeated when Calvin, quoting patristic texts from memory, refuted the allegation that the “evangelicals” disregarded the teaching of the church fathers about the Last Supper. [...] On the other hand, Calvin was able to see that the sacrament of ordination – especially ...

The Asian Assembly of God theologian, Simon Chan, has written an excellent book, "Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community". Early on as he writes about the importance of Ecclesiology, he comments on Cyprian's dictum: "He who has not the Church as his mother, has not God for his father." Chan states: "We are not saved as individuals first & then incoporated into the church; rather, to be a Christian is to be incorporated into the church by baptism & nourished with the spiritual food of the body & blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Failure to understand this fact has led to a reduction of the church's role to a largely sociological one of a service provider catering to individual believers' spiritual needs" (24). This reductionistic trend is one that Philip Lee, in Against the Protestant Gnostics , pictured when he described the modern Protestant congregation as 'the church of & for the individual.' Le...

Scottish theologian, T.F. Torrance, wrote: "Arians operated with the principle that what they could not humanly conceive could not be. That is to say, they equated the limits of their understanding with the limits of reality, and thereby laid down conditions for their understanding of God and their interpretation of divine revelation. It became increasingly evident to the Nicene theologians, however, that all such ways of thought shattered themselves upon the transcendent Lordship of the Holy Spirit which means that God can be known only through and out of himself" (The Trinitarian Faith, 207). It seems to me that this is part of our struggle today: God as I understand him/her/it from within myself, my comprehension, my experience; contrasted with God as he reveals himself, known only through and out of himself : "No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared him" (John 1.18). The question is how...