The baleful influence of Norman Vincent Peale and Paula White on the thinking of the president of the United States is in evidence almost everyday

The Strait of Hormuz is open.

Iran is in submission.

He calleth those things which be not as though they were, as if he were God.

 

Pope Leo XIV's encyclical is sadly political not theological, apologizing for slavery without mentioning Pope Leo X's role in the transatlantic slave trade

 

Not all the Leos were lions, I guess.

On the problem of Just War, the author comes close to concluding that this pope is guilty of immanentizing the eschaton, which is about right. 

The more I watch this new pope the more I sense that he's not filling the big shoes any more than the previous guy did.

The story of our times. 

 

Contra Pope Leo in “Magnifica Humanitas,” Just War Theory Is Not Outdated

... Fully aside from its length—245 paragraphs and 42,300 words—one is justified in questioning the overall coherence of the document. ... he injects other topics that appear unrelated. Among these are ... the Church’s past complicity in slavery and slave trade (no. 176).

In a footnote, Leo identifies four papal bulls from the years 1435, 1442, 1452 and 1455 that are said to have expressly “relativized” the “problematic incompatibility of slavery with the Christian conscience” (n. 174). Not included in this list is one of his earlier namesakes, Pope Leo X, who in 1514 renewed the authority of earlier papal bulls that had granted Portuguese authorities the right to subjugate non-Christians and reduce them to slaves. This, in turn, would help lay the foundation for the transatlantic slave trade.

As it concerns the Church’s formal complicity regarding slavery, in the encyclical Leo confesses, “I sincerely ask for pardon” (no. 176). But if such confession, repentance, and need for pardon were a true and heavy burden that the Vatican actually carries, it would then seem appropriate that, at minimum, an entire encyclical in fact be devoted solely to the excruciating problem of the Church’s complicity in such evil. Perhaps such will be forthcoming. ...

 

Jesus expected his disciples to imitate him in the sense of itinerant preaching and being vilified for it just like him, not sitting around living a holy life in isolation

And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. ... But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?

-- Matthew 10:7, 23ff. 

The Sure Physician

 One that's sick o' th' gout, had rather

Groan so in perplexity, than be cur'd

By the sure physician death.

 

-- William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act 5, Scene 4 

Yesterday's astrologers looked to the heavens for signs of good or ill fortune, today's fortune tellers just read the charts of the S&P 500

 

 The stock market just did something eerily similar to the dot-com bubble top in 2000

... On Friday, just 20 of the index members hit a record. Of those 20, just seven were not directly related to artificial intelligence. Michael Hartnett at Bank of America pointed out in a note to end last week that it was just 20 stocks that hit new highs at the very top of the internet bubble in March 2000. While the widely followed strategist said the “speculative price action” is likely not over yet, this occurrence is the latest sign that it is nearing. ...

Advance-decline lines, which show the number of stocks rising compared with the number falling, have exhibited a similar trend, surging at the end of March and then falling back in a bearish sign since the middle of April. ...

"Poor breadth is often a sign of underlying stock market vulnerability,” BCA strategists led by Arthur Budaghyan said in a May 20 report. ...

Elections have consequences

 Fools into the notion fall,

That vice or virtue there is none at all:

Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain,

'Tis to mistake them costs the time and pain.

 

-- Alexander Pope 

No, the story of the Good Samaritan is not meant to bless taking the gospel into the way of the Gentiles

 

 

 

 

 

For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

-- Mark 3:35 

Jesus thought the Torah was good for eternal life, but Christianity Today doesn't want to mention it

 

What Do Christians Do with the Law of Moses?

Brad East, Christianity Today:

... if what you want is the eternal life manifested in the resurrection of Jesus, then fix your eyes on him. Whatever else the Torah is good for, it can’t give you that. What then is the Torah good for? ...

 

 

What did Jesus do with the Law of Moses?

 

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.  

 

-- Luke 10:25ff.   

The welfare of us all

 The welfare of us all

Hangs on the cutting short that fraudful man.

 

-- William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 2, Act 3, Scene 1  

All's not fair in love and war

 Why should you, whose mother-wits

Are furnish'd with all perquisites,

B' allow'd to put all tricks upon

Our cully sex, and we use none?

 

-- Samuel Butler, Hudibras 

The hero is not without honor save in his own house

 Three duels he fought, thrice ventur'd his life;

Went home, and was cudgell'd again by his wife.

 

-- Jonathan Swift 

When you surround yourself with toadies and sycophants

 Some valuing those of their own side, or mind,

Still make themselves the measure of mankind:

Fondly we think we honour merit then,

When we but praise ourselves in other men.

 

-- Alexander Pope 

The Trump type has been known for centuries

  It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.

 -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Trump Doesn't Care If He Wrecks Global Economy

Alex Shephard, The New Republic

 

Time sanctifies everything, including monarchy

 

 Kings titles commonly begin by force,

Which time wears off and mellows into right.

 

-- John Dryden 

There is safety in solitude

School of the Vestals, a painting by Hector Leroux, 1880

 How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

 

-- Alexander Pope 

Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, the American who dismantled the misuse of Romans 13 and made disobedience to ungodly rule the Christian's very duty

 

This essay is a wrecking ball in its own right. 

Before the Revolution, There Was a Revelation

 ... The man historians call the “morning gun of the Revolution” was not a soldier or a statesman. He was Jonathan Mayhew, a 29-year-old Congregationalist minister in Boston whose 1750 Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission dismantled Romans 13 — long wielded by the Crown as a theological cudgel against resistance — line by methodical line. He demonstrated that the Bible places a clear duty upon Christians to resist tyrannical rulers. This sermon became the source of the declaration that “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” — a phrase Jefferson later proposed for the seal of the United States. John Adams called it “the morning gun of the Revolution” and remembered it “was read by everybody.” ...

 

 

The Jesus of history proclaimed final judgment on the Israel of his generation, the Christ of faith offers mercy interminably into the future to all generations

 

 That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.

-- Matthew 23:35f.

That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.

-- Luke 11:50f. 

For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.

-- Luke 1:48ff.   

The Late Great Planet Earth in the news

 The Apocalypse Goes Mainstream

... What surprised me was how much of this came not from pastors, but from pop prophecy texts. The most recent example being the “Left Behind” books. Kids went to ordinary evangelical churches and then read these highly literalized, fictionalized telling of end times prophecy. In the case of the Weaver family on Ruby Ridge, it was reading Hal Lindsey’s, “The Late Great Planet Earth.” ...

 

 

 

What the Christ of faith can do in every generation

 

 He from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,

And sets the passions on the side of truth;

Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,

And pours each human virtue in the heart.

-- Alexander Pope 

A professor of "worship studies" reckons that God's glory is disclosed through humility and suffering

 

The Glory of God Revealed: Living the Resurrection

... many early Christian thinkers offered a striking insight: the glory of God is seen most clearly in His act of rescuing those in need. ... The glory of God, therefore, is not merely something to be observed, but something encountered in His gracious movement toward humanity. It is revealed in His willingness to enter the depths of human brokenness, to meet us in our need, and to act decisively for our salvation. In this light, glory is not diminished by humility or suffering but is disclosed through them. The God who is truly glorious is the God who comes near, who restores, and who redeems. In short, the God who is truly glorious is the God who rescues. ...

I don't mean to pick on this guy. What he writes sounds completely plain vanilla unobjectionable to the average Christian mind, which unfortunately is full of gooey sentimentality and dull humanitarianism. Except for the fact that none of those early Christian thinkers he speaks of, whoever they may be, are in the New Testament. You will be hard pressed to find lines there which endorse a preoccupation with glory disclosed through humility and suffering.

On the contrary, the New Testament evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the view that God's inestimable glory is robust, and still to be revealed in the future at Jesus' second coming, an acknowledgement that the crucifixion and resurrection most certainly did not constitute a convincing revelation of God's glory. If it had been otherwise, preaching the Gospel would not have been promoted everywhere by the New Testament because it would not have been necessary. The glory of God would have been self evident. The book itself would not have been necessary, because the revelation of the glory of God would have meant the end of the world.

The New Testament remains pregnant with unrealized eschatological expectation, in which the revelation of the glory of God is an explicitly future apocalyptic goal, because obviously the promised glory failed to be revealed the first time around for "all flesh" to see.

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

-- Isaiah 40:3ff.

If the New Testament thought that God's glory had been disclosed through the humility and suffering of Jesus and actually had replaced Isaiah's, and John the Baptist's, vision, it ought to have said so. It is only its unworthy heirs who have done so.

The New Testament certainly does insist that God accomplished something through Jesus' suffering, but all flesh seeing the glory of God is not one of them. Only a select few "beheld his glory" (John 1:14). "Read my book" (John 20:31).

The revelation of the glory of God is yet future, and the not-yet is by no means comparable to it.

 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed [ἀποκαλυφθῆναι] in us.

-- Romans 8:18

But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed [ἀποκαλύψει], ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.

-- I Peter 4:13

The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed [ἀποκαλύπτεσθαι]: 

-- I Peter 5:1

For who hopes for what he sees?

-- Romans 8:24 

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

-- Romans 5:1f.