The film The Ten Commandments starring Charleton Heston called this The Light of Eternal Mind

 

Did he speak as a man? He is not flesh, but spirit, the light of Eternal Mind. And I know that his light is in every man.

 

John M. Grondelski, here from "Why so much ado about the Ten Commandments?":

Paul is undeterred, arguing that what Israel received in divine revelation, everyman receives in “the law written on men’s hearts” (Rom 2:15). It is a law every man is aware he has at one time violated. He is aware because every man has the experience of obligation (“I ought to do X,” “I ought not to do Y”) yet he also experiences his betrayal of obligation (“I did what I ought not to have done,” “I did not do what I should have”). As these experiences are the lot of everyman (i.e., every man experiences guilt), one can only explain it as man is accountable to a law of which he is not the author. As the young Karol Wojtyła argued in his analysis of the human experience of obligation, man is not the author of that law because, if he was, he could dispense himself. He could waive the duty. But he finds he cannot. The persistence of that sense of guilt indicates that what he violated was more than just his own, self-imposed expectations.

That law “written on the heart” is natural law, the universal human awareness that “I ought to do good and avoid evil.” But that awareness is not limited to just that very abstract principle. It does not take a refined moral genius to conclude that “evil” acts include things like killing, lying, being unfaithful (or wanting to if I could get away with it), and stealing (or wanting to, if I could pull it off). The natural awareness of the status, role, and work of parents leads without too much mental strain to the conclusion that mothers and fathers should be honored. You’ve basically got the second tablet of the Ten Commandments—Commandments IV-X—right there.

Annual synod of The Christian Reformed Church in North America decides churches which disagree that LGBTQ+ relationships are sinful must either repent, disaffiliate, or face removal

 

 Churches prepare to leave CRC following LGBTQ+ decision :

Synod delegate Trish Borgdorff told News 8 there are 28 affirming churches in the denomination, including Eastern Avenue CRC in Grand Rapids, where she is an elder. She expects many of those churches will make the decision to disaffiliate.

The denomination still has just over 1000 congregations even as membership has declined, and is known for its Calvin College, University, and Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI.

As of 2012 total membership was nearly 300,000 but has declined to just under 230,000 today, according to the current denominational website. 

The comparatively more liberal Reformed Church in America had just over 215,000 members as of 2015 but has fallen to about 86,000 as of the end of 2023, and is still falling in 2024. But maybe they'll pick up a few now from the CRC.

The RCA is known for its Hope College and Western Theological Seminary in Holland, MI. The denomination has long been divided by social issues including the role of women and homosexuality.

 

Peter Hitchens: What to teach our children?

 

The question of grace before or after meals faded from my life for many atheist and secular years until my wife (raised as an atheist by a Communist father and radical mother) and I were confronted with the problem of what to teach our children. A series of revolutions had come crashing through our lives, previously filled only with ambition, long days of hard work, wanderings in foreign countries and too much wine. At some point in all this, I and then my wife found an insatiable need for what I would now call the authority of God. We weren’t going to face this business alone.

Anyone with any sort of upbringing presumably experiences this moral need in their lives if they become parents.

Birth itself is like a painful war, ending in victory. But your victory has given you a new and demanding kingdom to govern. What powers do you now have? What are the limits on them? To whom are you accountable, and what is good? You are no longer responsible only to yourselves and each other for how you behave. You are observed, and will be remembered after you are dead, in your private moments. You have to stop doing some things, hide some things and start doing others. I will not go into details, but one of the things we felt a strong need to do, quite soon, was to say grace before eating. We groped for what to say.

More.

Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah joins Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory who named Joe Biden a cafeteria Catholic on Easter Sunday

 

Cardinal Wilton Gregory

Cardinal Robert Sarah

Cardinal Robert Sarah, who formerly served as the Catholic Church’s Prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, gave a lecture titled “The Catholic Church’s Enduring Answer to the Practical Atheism of Our Age” at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., last week. During his remarks, Sarah echoed the analysis of Cardinal Wilton Gregory of the Archdiocese of Washington by describing Biden as a “self-identified Catholic president” who amounts to a “cafeteria Catholic.”

Sarah, a Guinean prelate who has emerged as one of the more outspoken conservative voices within Catholic Church leadership, suggested that the phenomenon of “cafeteria Catholics” extends beyond the president and applies to many other “Catholic public officials.”

More.

Know thy nullity

 

 

 Thou art not thyself,
For thou exists on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust.     

-- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 3, scene 1

When Pope Francis complains "In Vaticano c’è aria di frociaggine", he means the Vatican is still the hotbed of homosexual sin The Pillar said it was in 2018

"the nuns bring forth pretty little monks"

 

The Renaissance Vatican infamous for papal concubinage seems a golden age compared to this:

Analysis of commercially available signal data obtained by The Pillar, which was legally obtained and whose authenticity The Pillar has confirmed, shows that during a period of 26 weeks in 2018, at least 32 mobile devices emitted serially occurring hookup or dating app data signals from secured areas and buildings of the Vatican ordinarily inaccessible to tourists and pilgrims.

At least 16 mobile devices emitted signals from the hookup app Grindr on at least four days between March to October 2018 within the non-public areas of the Vatican City State, while 16 other devices showed use of other location-based hookup or dating apps, both heterosexual and homosexual, on four or more days in the same time period.

The data set assessed by The Pillar is commercially available and contains location and usage information which users consent to be collected and commercialized as a condition of using the app.

Extensive location-based hookup or dating app usage is evident within the walls of Vatican City, in restricted areas of St. Peter’s Basilica, inside Vatican City government and Holy See’s administration buildings including those used by the Vatican’s diplomatic staff, in residential buildings, and in the Vatican Gardens, both during daytime hours and overnight.  

More.

Looks like the Vatican's "Italian is the pope's second language" excuse isn't going to fly lol

 

Pope Francis has reportedly once again used the Italian word for “faggotry” when addressing a private meeting, a move likely to cause headaches for the Vatican press office and a case of whiplash for gay Catholic advocates who have long considered the pontiff an advocate.

The Italian news service ANSA reported that on Tuesday, during a meeting with priests in the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome, Francis said “In Vaticano c’è aria di frociaggine” – meaning “In the Vatican, there is an air of faggotry.”

The meeting was considered private, and the pope did add that gay men can be “good boys,” but that they shouldn’t be let into seminaries.

During a May 20 closed-door meeting with Italian bishops, Francis reportedly used the same term, and said gay men shouldn’t be let in the priesthood.

More.

Pope Francis clearly believes in a little bit of depravity in each person, just not in total human depravity lol

 

Norah O'Donnell: When you look at the world what gives you hope?

Pope Francis (In Spanish/English translation): Everything. You see tragedies, but you also see so many beautiful things. You see heroic mothers, heroic men, men who have hopes and dreams, women who look to the future. That gives me a lot of hope. People want to live. People forge ahead. And people are fundamentally good. We are all fundamentally good. Yes, there are some rogues and sinners, but the heart itself is good. 

More.

 

Your average American Catholic, however, has faith in a caricature of Jesus of their own making, as gooey and sentimental as any Protestant's, as Samantha Stephenson demonstrates here. Their common Jesus never called anyone to repent, never said few would be saved, never warned of impending wrath.

Between the errors of total depravity and fundamental human goodness lies the correct view, mixed human nature. Like the scholastics of a by-gone era, however, the pope splits hairs in the wrong direction from this, landing on the side of human nature being more of a good mixture than the not totally bad mixture emphasized by Paul:

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.  I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

-- Romans 7:14ff.

For his part Martin Luther, against the Reformed proponents of total depravity, affirmed that the Christian is simul justus et peccator, at the same time just and sinner, because of Christ.

The view was also Shakespeare's:

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues.

Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them

 

The ever fanciful Doug Wilson would turn America into John Calvin's Geneva: No Michael Servetus would be safe

 

. . . people who embraced “some total loopy-heresy” would be barred from holding public office.

“This is a Christian republic, and … you’re not singing off the same sheet of music that we are,” he told RNS at the time. “So, no, you can’t be the mayor.”

Story here.

Jesus' trial: Why Luke omits "Ye shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven"

 

Luke omits Jesus' prediction at his trial that his Jewish judges would see the Son of Man coming in the clouds. Luke also omits that they would see him seated at the right hand.

 

These predictions are made at Jesus' trial as found in Mark and in Matthew but not in Luke:

 

And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.  

-- Mark 14:62

 

Jesus said to him, "You have said it yourself. But I tell you, from now on [ἀπ᾽ ἄρτι] you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power and coming on the clouds of heaven." 

-- Matthew 26:64

 

But from now on [ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν] the Son of man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God.

-- Luke 22:69

 

Of course, some commentators get around the omissions by positing that Luke simply used a different, independent source from Mark and Matthew at this point, but that simply leaves us with two competing versions of what Jesus said.

Luke, however, is not unaware of the main idea and has Jesus say it elsewhere, and therefore it is not necessary to posit a different source but that he has simply made a different editorial decision about where and when to put it. To Luke it doesn't belong at the trial.

Like Mark 13:26 and Matthew 24:30, who thus have the conception uttered twice by Jesus, Luke reserves it to his version of the Little Apocalypse about the end of the world, where "they" refers to humanity in general:

 

And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.  

-- Luke 21:27

 

This makes more sense to Luke, and removes what looks like a difficulty for him if Matthew and Mark are insisting what they appear to be insisting.

 

For Luke the kingdom is already here because Jesus is present and working (Luke 17:20f.), but it will never really be "at hand" as it is in Matthew (3:2; 4:17; 10:7) and Mark (1:15) until a little later, when the trees shoot forth in the summer (Luke 21:30f.).  For Luke's apocalyptic Jesus, the appearance of such leaves is analogous to the emergence of the signs of the end of the world in sun, moon, and stars: chaos on land and sea and the powers of heaven rocked (Luke 21:25f.).

 

In Luke's hands Jesus now states perfunctorily at his trial that the Son of Man will sit at God's right hand, dropping the coming on the clouds and the prediction that his Jewish judges will see that or the enthronement. For good reason. Presumably he knows that Annas and Caiaphas died in the 40s and lived to see nothing, and Luke as he is writing has not witnessed the fulfillment of such predictions either.

 

It is little appreciated how Luke's editorial activity in the trial scene is connected to his larger theological project.

 

It is designed to agree with Luke's understanding of Jesus exalted at God's right hand in Acts, continuing his presence on earth by directing the missionary activities of the church through the Spirit, especially those of Paul among the Gentiles. 

 

Jesus' Jewish judges are now completely beside the point. God has bypassed them, just has Paul and Barnabas shook off the dust from their own feet against the Jews at Pisidian Antioch and turned to the Gentiles instead (Acts 13).

 

For Luke, the judgment of the Jews is postponed temporarily until the still imminent but delayed end of the world, when Jesus will then bring vengeance upon Judea (Luke 21:22, 31).

 

God's focus is turning elsewhere in the meantime. Jesus' objective is no longer his immediate return for the judgment of Israel, but rather a  near-term future of reigning at the right hand of power in order that the whole world might repent and be saved (Acts 2:39; John 3:17; Romans 4:16; 16:26; I Corinthians 9:22; I Timothy 2:4; Titus 2:11; II Peter 3:9).

 

Luke clearly thinks Mark and Matthew have the trial details wrong, just as they have wrong the reason for Jesus' trial (Jesus' call to discipleship required radical poverty, a direct threat to the revenue of the Jewish temple, and so to the Roman treasury). Jesus is no longer returning immediately to turn the tables on his Jewish judges, to become the judge instead of the judged. He is remaining at God's right hand to do something else: extend God's offer of mercy to all of mankind.

 

Consequently the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven for Luke is now a matter of a future second coming, conforming to a more or less structured apocalyptic narrative, unfolding at an undetermined but still imminent point in the near future, in agreement with the apocalyptic parallel narratives of both Mark and Matthew.

 

And then (καὶ τότε) shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

-- Luke 21:27

 

And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. 

-- Mark 13:26

 

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 

-- Matthew 24:30

 

The imminently coming eschatological Son of Man without signs still front and center in Jesus' mind at his trial according to Mark and Matthew has been relegated to a future second coming narrative of his followers creation.

 

It is easier to explain the development of the Little Apocalypses of the gospels as derivative from an original, simple, and straightforward eschatological belief than it is the other way around. The former was developed in an elaborate manner to explain the failure of the latter.   

 

Those narratives notably all have Jesus condescend to address an apocalyptic timetable which was anathema to the original eschatological message, supplying a second coming replete with signs in the heavens above and the earth below which indicate that the ensuing end of the world can indeed be said to be observable to a certain extent, despite the fact that Jesus had in no uncertain terms eschewed any such observable signs, most notably in Mark 8:12:

 

 There shall no sign be given unto this generation.

 

Luke is not unaware of this tradition, either:

 

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you [plural Pharisees].

-- Luke 17:20f.

 

The kingdom was already there among them, in the person of Jesus, and they had already missed it. It did not need Jesus to die and rise to be present. There would be no apocalyptic signs. It had already come as a surprise without them. Repent and follow him or perish!

 

But as both Luke and Matthew hedge Mark on Jesus' trial statements (Matthew followed by Luke already extenuate by adding "from now on", see above), they both hedge Mark about the signs as well, supplementing Mark 8:12 in their parallels with "no sign but the sign of the prophet Jonah" who was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, about whom Mark knows . . .  nothing (Matthew 12:39; 16:4; Luke 11:29f.).

It is clear what is going on here.

 

Matthew and Luke reinterpret what is ostensibly the earliest tradition from the point of view of the resurrection wherever they can, freely tampering, dare we say it, with the word of God (II Corinthians 4:2) just as much as Mark had done (for example, by making Jesus' predict his rising on the third day in Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; 14:28). They are, all of them, to one degree or another, with one degree of success or another, the new scribes of the kingdom of heaven (conveniently provided for by the kingdom-as-net story in Matthew 13:52 to justify their activity) who bring out of their treasure things new and old, discarding the bad and keeping the good.

The death of Jesus required as much. This bad thing that happened to Jesus had to be explained. They thought he would bring the kingdom and he did not.

 

In the case of the NT apocalyptic narratives, which portray Jesus willingly and volubly engaging in talk of signs of the end of the world with the disciples,  Jesus' future return as the Son of Man is now predicated on the gospel first being published among all the nations (Mark 13:10), until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled (Luke 21:24), so that all nations hear and come to hate the elect, original disciples (Matthew 24:9, 14). At which point all the tribes of the earth shall mourn when they see the Son of Man return in the clouds of heaven because judgment is finally nigh. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations while there is still time (Matthew 28:19f.).

 

In this the gospels overwhelmingly evidence the new point of view of the church, especially championed by Luke in Acts, which ends with Paul's arrival in Rome, the center of the world (The epistles still teem with apocalyptic expectation because with that achievement, it's mission accomplished).

Gone is the high dudgeon of the Jesus who said only an "evil generation" seeks after a sign (Matthew 12:39; Matthew 16:4; Luke 11:29).

 

All of it flies in the face of Jesus' command to go not into the way of the Gentiles (Matthew 10:5f.), and of a host of other awkward eruptions of the original, simple eschatology in the halfway houses of the evangelists:

 

that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel (Matthew 15:24),

 

that his followers would judge the twelve tribes of Israel, not Gentiles (Matthew 19:28; Luke 22:30),

 

that those followers will not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come (Matthew 10:23),

 

that the kingdom is at hand (Matthew 3:2; Matthew 4:17; Matthew 10:7; Matthew 26:18, 45; Mark 1:15; Luke 10:9, 11), 

 

that the kingdom is already present in exorcisms (Matthew 12:28; Luke 11:20),

 

that the Son of Man would come in his kingdom before the deaths of some of the disciples (Matthew 16:28; Mark 9:1; Luke 9:27; John 21:23),

 

that the kingdom is already in their midst but is unobserved (Luke 17:20-21),

 

and that there was a general buzz of expectation around Jesus that the kingdom was coming immediately in Jerusalem for some reason (Luke 19:11), an expectation most especially embraced by Jesus' own disciples even until the very last when Jesus ascended into heaven (Acts 1:6).

 

But the resurrection? They were supposedly blind to the very idea of it to the end and beyond. The resurrection "they yet believed not . . ." (Luke 24:41)! But a kingdom restored to Israel, that they most certainly did believe to the end and beyond, but wrongly!

 

Where oh where did they get that idea, if not from Jesus? The historical Jesus preached the imminently coming kingdom, an idea they did have, not the resurrection, an idea they did not.

 

The apocalyptic narratives are a mixture of the complicated, rationalized new and the simple, enthusiastic old. They contain at the same time 1) a thought out timetable with signs for the end of the world which was anathema to Jesus and 2) a memory of the unpredictable in-breaking of the kingdom which has no timetable, the message he actually preached.

 

It was the latter which otherwise and everywhere occasioned all this urgency and expectation swirling about Jesus in the first place.

 

His simple conception of the unpredictable end of the world, without apocalyptic adornment, is best remembered only by Matthew:

 

Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.  He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

 

-- Matthew 13:36ff.

 

Mark and Matthew tell us that Jesus believed this even to his fateful end:

 

"Ye shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven".