All the world deludes itself with the charm, Happy New Year

 The commands which our religion hath imposed on its followers are not like the absurd ceremonies of pagan idolatry, that might look like incantations and magick, but had no tendency to make mankind the happier.

-- Richard Bentley 

 

LOL, Calvinist John Piper says you are free to obey The Emperor and get vaccinated

And you thought "freedom is slavery" was an Orwellian idea. The inspiration is thoroughly Christian, and "The question is", said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master, that's all".

 

The apostle Peter said,

This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as slaves of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (1 Peter 2:15–17)

“Live as people who are free.”

Peter had just said, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to the emperor as supreme, or to governors” (1 Peter 2:13). So how can you “be subject” and “be free” at the same time?

Peter’s answer is that Christians are “slaves of God.” In other words, when you submit to a “human institution” (1 Peter 2:13), you don’t do it as the slave of that institution. You do it in freedom, because you are slaves of God, not man. God owns his people — by creation and redemption. ...

When we submit, we do so for the Lord’s sake. Because he said to. God’s ownership of his people strips every decisive entitlement from human authority. It turns every act of human compliance into worship. When we submit, we do so for the glory of our one Owner and Master. Life is radically Godward.

More.

 

Every act of compliance is worship, eh?

In the 3rd century many Christians found one act of compliance utterly beyond the pale. They refused to comply with an edict of Decius requiring everyone to perform a sacrifice to the gods in the presence of a Roman magistrate, which was deemed sufficient to demonstrate one's loyalty to the empire.

Some Christians at the time thought such sacrifices to be idolatrous. Many were killed for refusing to offer them.

Many people today, and not just Christians, think that the vaccines can cause harm, to their children and/or to themselves, and refuse to take them or allow them. Some people are losing their jobs as a result.

Many wonder what happened to the ideas we grew up with, that in America health decisions are between the individual and her doctor and are no one else's business, especially not the government's business. Many today wonder what happened to the "first, do no harm" line in the Hippocratic oath.

Circumstances likewise changed a great deal between the composition of I Peter and the 3rd century. There was no formal empire-wide persecution of Christians before the Decian edict of 250 AD. In the absence of official edicts requiring apostasy, obeying the law was not at issue and was promoted in the interests of evangelism and comity, especially in the 1st century.

Similarly Paul in I Corinthians 8 knew that eating meat offered to idols was nothing because no other gods actually exist, but that weak minds found it offensive, for which reason he said that one should not eat meat offered to idols to protect their feelings.

This advice had unintended consequences. The weak minds proliferated, to the point that by the 3rd century the Christians were literally a people living apart from the wider Roman society, attracting suspicion and ultimately the ire of the authorities for failing to behave like Romans. Rod Dreher fans should take note. His prescription in The Benedict Option might be more cause than effect of the troubles he believes are coming, and may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

Today vaccine compliance earns you a proof of vaccination card. With it you can go about the normal business of living, including going to work. In the 3rd century, sacrifice earned you a libellus, a proof of sacrifice card. With it you could escape execution.

You would expect that in a liberal society, a free society such as that bequeathed to us by the Protestant founders of America who inherited the ideas of Paulinism, the, if you will, weak-minded anti-vaxxers among us would be cut the same slack Paul cut those who were superstitious about idol meat.

But we don't live in that world any longer. We live in an absurd world where the vaccinated, the protected, promote fear of the unvaccinated, which is superstition. It's getting to be more and more like the 3rd century world of suspicion and compulsion.

John Piper has as little to say to the one as to the other. But the 3rd century speaks volumes.

 

 

Frequent or daily reception of the Eucharist is a complete novelty

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As with priestly celibacy from 1139, the Immaculate Conception of Mary from 1854, papal infallibility from 1870, the Assumption of Mary from 1950, frequent reception of the Eucharist is a complete novelty.

Lutheran practice among conservative German-Americans in the United States in the early 20th Century was quarterly, and you had to register in advance AND meet with the pastor beforehand as if going to confession.  

The Roman Catholic Decree on Frequent & Daily Reception of Holy Communion dates merely from 1905.

It was designed to address a recent perceived historical development of religious decline, not some defect or missing element of revealed religion. The Eucharist was being ginned up to gin up flagging faith. And perhaps the decree's most ridiculous claim is that "Give us this day our daily bread" from the Lord's Prayer refers to daily reception of the Eucharist, when everything we know about early Christian practice is that the Eucharist was celebrated when Christians gathered together, at most on the first day of the week, not "often" but "as oft", i.e. "when":

Moreover, we are bidden in the Lord's Prayer to ask for "our daily bread" by which words, the holy Fathers of the Church all but unanimously teach, must be understood not so much that material bread which is the support of the body as the Eucharistic bread which ought to be our daily food. 

What's more, the Catholic conception from 1905 is completely upside down. The point of the Eucharist isn't that it is "pleasing to God", as if human beings do something, but rather that God does something. In the Eucharist, God serves up salvation, as in "Divine Service" or Gottesdienst.

Needless to say, none of this bears any relation to the historical Jesus, who to begin with never imagined a church would come into being, let alone where sacraments would be offered. The history of the church is a farce wherein the players have majored in the minors, or shall we say, in mere trifles and extra-curricular activities which are completely beside the point and often amount to nothing but superstition and idolatry.

. . . so that this practice, so salutary and so pleasing to God, not only might suffer no decrease among the faithful, but rather that it increase and everywhere be promoted, especially in these days when religion and the Catholic faith are attacked on all sides, and the true love of God and piety are so frequently lacking. ...

6. But since it is plain that by the frequent or daily reception of the Holy Eucharist union with Christ is strengthened, the spiritual life more abundantly sustained, the soul more richly endowed with virtues, and the pledge of everlasting happiness more securely bestowed on the recipient, therefore, parish priests, confessors and preachers, according to the approved teaching of the Roman Catechism should exhort the faithful frequently and with great zeal to this devout and salutary practice.

It's a red letter Sunday when you read that Rod Dreher, author of the "most important religious book of the decade", agrees that the Eucharist is pagan cannibalism

He forgets it's also idolatry, but hey, take what you can get, right?

Pachamama call your office.

Critic of the alt-right Matthew Rose is mistaken: Race was a category to the historical Jesus

Matthew Rose, here in First Things:

The alt-right seeks an account of what we are meant to be and serve as a people, invoking race as an emergency replacement for our fraying civic bonds. It is not alone; identity politics on the left is a response to the same erosion of belonging. But race is a modern category, and lacks theological roots. Nation, however, is biblical. In the Book of Acts, St. Paul tells his Gentile listeners, “God has made all the nations [ethnos].” The Bible speaks often of God’s creation, judgment, and redemption of the nations. In Christ there is no Gentile or Jew, yet God calls us into his life not only as individuals but as members of communities for which we are responsible. ... Young men . . . need an account of nationhood that teaches them about their past, without making them fear the future; an account of civic life that opens them to transcendence, rather than closing them to their neighbors.

It was the Pauline synthesis which made the risen Christ the proponent of a universal religion, one which goes into all the world making disciples. The historical Jesus, however, viewed those outside the house of Israel as dogs, and himself as sent only to the lost among his own kind. To imply that that made Jesus somehow closed to transcendence certainly ought to give his worshippers pause, but it shows just how thoroughgoing has been the victory of Paul over Jesus that the horizontal is so matter-of-factly valued as if it were the vertical. This is, in fact, a kind of idolatry.

The alt-right's opposition to Christianity is really opposition to this Paulinist revolution, without which Christianity would no doubt have ceased to exist. But the alt-right understands it as little as Christians understand that they are children of this lesser god.

Meanwhile, the failure of Jesus' coming Kingdom of God is a cautionary tale of humanity's inate capacity for self-deception which could instruct his followers and opponents alike but, because it hasn't so far, probably never will.

North America will be glaciated again, or worse, before that ever happens.

    

Racism angers Jesus Racist, Ethnic Nationalist God-King of the Jews?

Ideologue Russell Moore thinks so, puttin' on his blinders, in WaPo predictably:

"[T]he picture we get of Jesus in the Gospels is how relatively calm he is. ... Jesus spoke gently with those on the outside of the people of God. ... The religious leaders and those keeping the worship of God from the nations had something in common: Both were seeking to keep people away from the kingdom of God, people they didn’t feel were worthy of it. ... [E]thnic nationalism is not just a deviant social movement. It is the same old idolatry of the flesh, the human being seeking to deify his own flesh and blood as God." 

If only it were that simple.

These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

-- Matthew 10:5ff.

But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

-- Matthew 15:24

Don't give what is sacred to dogs. Don't throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you.

-- Matthew 7:6

But he answered and said [to the woman of Canaan], It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

-- Matthew 15:26

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them . . ..

-- Matthew 6:7f.

The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

-- John 10:33

Subordinationism of one kind or another is inevitable, as illustrated by William Lane Craig

Here, where the full humanity of Jesus is denied because it is subordinate to the one divine person:

[T]here is no human person named “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus is a divine person, and medieval theologians were careful never to refer to Jesus as a human person.

 

Oops:

Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know.  

-- Acts 2:22

 

 

 

 

And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.

 

-- Luke 24:19

More Than Half Of All Christians Have Their Wafer Worship, But 1.57 Billion Muslims Worship A Rock 5x/day

And must visit it and circumambulate it 7x at least once in their lifetimes.

Idolatry is a global phenomenon.

"The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything."

-- Acts 17:24f.

Roman Catholic Wafer Worship: And You Thought Idolatry Was Dead

Not only do Catholics worship a man as a god, they worship a wafer and keep vigil over it in various places all over the world.

And you thought circumambulation of a meteorite marked only others as so 7th century, so primitive.

Videos here and here.

Christmas is Vanity: Had St. Paul Known of Christmas, Would He Have Approved?

"[H]ow can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain."

-- Gal. 4:9 ff.

"One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike."

-- Rom. 14:5

"Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ."

-- Col. 2:16 f.

That said, and quite apart from the well-known atheist war on Christmas, there is now some competition, or is it help?, from a small band of Christian extremists in Arkansas who think we're all guilty of idolatry in celebrating it.

Video here. 

Choices, Not Inevitabilities

Fornication

Idolatry

Adultery

Effeminacy

Homosexuality

Thievery

Greed

Drunkenness

Badmouthing

Swindling

1 Corinthians 6:9f.

New York 'Conservatives' Help Pass Gay Marriage

From The UK Daily Mail here:

The Catholic Bishops of New York said the [new] law alters 'radically and forever humanity's historic understanding of marriage'.

'We always treat our homosexual brothers and sisters with respect, dignity and love,' the bishops said Friday.

That's the problem, isn't it? The West has become soft, effeminate, and maleable because of a distorted reductionism of its message to 'love.'

What's next? Respect, dignity and love for the practitioners of idolatry and witchcraft?

Why any self-respecting man would go to such a church is beyond me. That, of course, assumes there are any left.