How Evangelicals trivialize the resurrection as present day love, consolation and social action

Zack Hunt, here:

[W]e can begin to see [the resurrection's] transforming power in how we respond to the tragedies in our own lives, how we love and console one another, how we work together to keep evil from ruling tomorrow, and how we come together to alleviate the daily suffering that is all around us.

Apart from its orientation, this is really little different than the historic catholic approach, in which the supposed "already" of the kingdom of God is manifest sacramentally, primarily through the Eucharist. It makes little difference, however, how the divine is immanentized. Either way it is immanentized by human agency through temporal means.

Neither conceptualization pays the proper respect due to the singular character of the resurrection as an idea, as a metaphysical phenomenon, if that oxymoron be allowed. The born again Christian protests that Jesus changed his life even though there is plenty of evidence to the contrary available to outsiders looking in, while the sacramentalist protests that he literally eats the body and blood of the Lord, purchased though it may be from a church supply house. The cemeteries are no respecters of these persons, and are as full of such people as of any other.

The thinking person must reject these expressions of human enthusiasm, for that is what they are, pale reflections of the "real" thing. The real thing was not under human control, was not susceptible of human interference and manipulation. To insist otherwise is to misunderstand the claim made by the resurrection.

If God ever transformed us, there wouldn't be any doubt about it. In truth that remains "not yet" for the Christian. Only the resurrection of Jesus can seem to lay claim to express such an "already" about which there is no doubt.

And yet there is doubt, as there is belief.

The problem of the resurrection of Jesus is not just a problem for the history of apocalyptic, with which the resurrection represents a radical break. The question also remains whether God really acted in human history in such a way, or did human hope once again overstep its bounds, as it is perennially wont to do, in claiming the apotheosis of a man? If we in our own day can insist on our own participation in the divinity to some extent on the very thinnest of evidence, the likelihood of the early Christians having committed this ancient sin is high.

The latter question is not new by any means. Jews, but also Muslims, have asked it, or rather charged it, for centuries. The great success of the West has much to do with the fact, from their point of view, that Christianity is a form of human hubris, a blasphemy. It is hard to imagine the world as it is today without it, or that it would have become the way it is without it, and the prospect of actually losing what we have achieved in the West by abandoning this plastic way we look at human nature to some extent stands in the way of our thinking about this important question on a Tuesday.

A lousy Tuesday.

And ye are witnesses of these things, says the risen Christ

Despite the confidence put in eyewitness testimony, it is wrong up to a third of the time, and of wrongful convictions for certain violent crimes, some 75% have turned out to be based on eyewitness testimony.

Ultra-religious Protestants predominate among those suffering manic episodes known as Jerusalem Syndrome Type III

Snake-handling faith healers, Stone Creek, VA August 1944

From the story here:

These are just a few examples of what has come to be known as the Jerusalem Syndrome: a well-documented phenomenon where foreign visitors suffer psychotic delusions that they are figures from the Bible or harbingers of the End of Days.

Israel’s health ministry records around 50 cases a year where a tourist’s delusions are so strong that police or mental health professionals are forced to intervene. Many more incidents go undocumented on the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City. ...

The most contentious point of debate among scholars of Jerusalem Syndrome is what one group of doctors has called Type III cases: people with no history of mental illness who become overwhelmed by the city’s religiosity and temporarily lose their minds. ...

They record 42 cases of people who arrived in Jerusalem as regular tourists, suffered severe psychotic episodes while there, and then recovered completely after leaving the city. Of the 42 individuals, 40 were from what doctors described as “ultra-religious” Protestant families.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own life?

Caiaphas continued as high priest until deposed by Vitellius, Roman governor of Syria, in 36

Kayafa ossuary

And Jesus said, "I am; and you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven."

-- Mark 14:62

Vitellius was there [at Jerusalem] magnificently received, and released the inhabitants of Jerusalem from all the taxes upon the fruits that were bought and sold, and gave them leave to have the care of the high priest’s vestments, with all their ornaments, and to have them under the custody of the priests in the temple, which power they used to have formerly, although at this time they were laid up in the tower of Antonia, the citadel so called ... Vitellius put those garments into our own power, as in the days of our forefathers, and ordered the captain of the guard not to trouble himself to inquire where they were laid, or when they were to be used; and this he did as an act of kindness, to oblige the nation to him. Besides which, he also deprived Joseph, who was also called Caiaphas, of the high priesthood, and appointed Jonathan, the son of Ananus, the former high priest, to succeed him.

-- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XVIII.

And there shall be no more eating

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

-- Revelation 21:4

Here's a little "Two Corinthians" for Ted Cruz

Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

-- 2 Corinthians 6:14

Mormon Glenn Beck doubles down, lectures Christians that real Christians cannot vote for Trump

Quoted here:

“No Christian, no real Christian – I don’t mean a judgmental Christian, I mean somebody who is living their faith – no real Christian says, ‘I want that guy, that guy is for me,’” he said during a broadcast of his radio show. "Nobody, nobody.”

Obviously, at length driving the Mormons west to the Great Salt Lake was still a sea too short.

The coming crack-up of Ted Cruz

 

Camille Paglia, here:

Cruz seems consumed by a vainglorious conviction of his own destiny, tied to an apocalyptic view of history. He reminds me of glad-handing televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, who were loved and trusted by so many but whose careers ended in disgrace.

Mormon Glenn Beck attacks evangelicals for not voting for Ted Cruz

"Sheesh, I can't wait til this is over and I can throw Beck under the bus"

Beck quoted here:

"But all throughout the South the Evangelicals are not listening to their God."

When you take communion with LCMS Lutherans, 44% of them believe homosexuality should be accepted

68% believe there is more than one true interpretation of the religion.

51% believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

39% do not believe in verbal inspiration of Scripture.

Survey says, here.

No one blamed Dylann Roof's race-war shooting on the "moderate" Christianity of ELCA-style Lutheranism?

So says an ELCA vicar from New York here:

Not pretending also means being honest about what is happening inside our churches. When Dylann Roof, a member of an ELCA congregation, murdered nine people at a historically black church last year, there were no talking heads asking moderate Christians to condemn the shooting, no protestors denouncing Christianity as anti-American. Not pretending means more than speaking out against the unfair treatment of others. It means holding ourselves to account, even when no one else will. It means not just speaking out against injustice in the world but also being honest about the racism and xenophobia in our own congregations. It means acknowledging that the brokenness of the world includes the church.

---------------------------------

How can anyone expect ELCA Lutherans to be honest about racism in their congregations when they can't even be honest about what kind of Christians they are?

Moderates?

They are liberals, and have been forever.

Why is it that liberals can't call themselves what they are?

The honesty ought to start there . . . good luck with that.

There was no TIME for a devout and holy life

 

 

 

 

 

And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.

 

-- Luke 14:17

John Kasich's religion is inspired by Dallas Willard's ideas of discipleship and realized eschatology

Noted here:

Kasich cites the late University of Southern California philosophy professor Dallas Willard as one of his theological inspirations—an unusual choice because Willard was not always accepted by the Christian establishment. His teaching that the Kingdom of God is available here and now—“eternity is already in session,” he was known to say—follows a school of thought known as spiritual formation, or the idea that with discipline and spiritual development, ordinary Christians can grow to become more like Jesus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Much of Dallas Willard's writing assumes that personal transformation of the disciple was the object of discipleship as taught by Jesus because the expectation of the kingdom's imminent coming is not granted. Jesus' expectation of the in-breaking of the kingdom, of course, means that any concern with spiritual formation is a distraction. The call to discipleship instead is in reality a call to escape the judgment that is coming perilously soon. Discipleship is actually a form of radical repentance, a turning away from a world about to be cleansed by fire, analogous to embarking Noah's Ark.

Accordingly Willard actually trivializes the teaching of Jesus, an example being the teaching on personal poverty, which in Willard's description and understanding of discipleship is ridiculed even though it is the very first thing embraced by the disciples of the historical Jesus. Instead Willard offers a list of spiritual practices, which are not meant to be exhaustive, which includes the practice of  "frugality" as one example of what it means to follow Jesus.

You know, as in "Be frugal with what ye have and give alms" (Luke 12:33).

Ted Cruz' constituency: In 2011 American Christians who said they were Christian first were 46%

Pew reported here:

Asked to choose, nearly half of Muslims in the U.S. (49%) say they think of themselves first as a Muslim, 26% say they think of themselves first as an American, and 18% say they are both. Among U.S. Christians, 46% say they identify as Christian first, while the same number identify as American first.

Ted Cruz, quoted here in January 2016:

In the interview, [former Senate Majority Leader Bob] Dole also said he questioned Cruz’s “allegiance” to the Republican Party.

“I’m a Christian first, American second, conservative third and Republican fourth,” said Cruz, who is currently a distant second place, behind Trump, for the GOP nomination in several national polls. “I’ll tell ya, there are a whole lot of people in this country that feel exactly the same way.”

Kelleigh Nelson of Rocky Top Freedom Campaign explains how Ted Cruz' dominionist theology is like Islam

From her conclusion here:

The doctrine of Dominionism is heretical according to God’s Word. Like Islam, they want a theocracy, based on their form of theonomy, with stoning still in practice. Surely we all know folks who have led lives that were unchristian, only to later come to realize the error of their ways. Repentance and salvation can come any time up to your very last breath, and it is faith alone that saves. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9 We are all sinners, just saved by grace. ... With Dominionist theology, there is no grace, and the opportunity to change would be cut short with their punishment. When Ted Cruz said as a teenager that he wanted to rule the world, people found it humorous and the silly statements of youth. But, his form of aberrant doctrine truly believes he should rule the world.

Moscow Idaho's Doug Wilson: An entry point to the fever swamp behind Ted Cruz

Who believes (here) that the point of the gospel of Christ is at the very least alleviation of poverty through free-market economics:

Does the gospel of Christ, in setting men free, bring in free markets or not? I would be happy to take the affirmative.

Ted Cruz is a Christian ideologue who wants to immanentize the eschaton through what might as well be Sharia Law

From John Fea, here:

According to his father and Huch, Ted Cruz is anointed by God to help Christians in their effort to “go to the marketplace and occupy the land … and take dominion” over it.  This “end-time transfer of wealth” will relieve Christians of all financial woes, allowing true believers to ascend to a position of political and cultural power in which they can build a Christian civilization. When this Christian nation is in place (or back in place), Jesus will return.

... Cruz’s approach to politics is inseparable from this theology. His goal is to lead a Christian occupation of the culture and then wait for the Second Coming of Christ.

Well, I guess if I were really a Pentecostal and not a Southern Baptist . . .

. . . I wouldn't tithe to my Baptist church, either.

See, everything can be explained.

Ted Cruz: Phony baloney plastic banana good time holy roller

Read all about it here in the East Orlando Post.

Ted Cruz' lunatic dad believes in the "end times transfer of wealth" to Christians, that we're in them and that Ted will lead the way

Here.

The cost of discipleship: Her whole life

 ὅλον τὸν βίον αὐτῆς

"her whole life"

For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. 

 

-- Mark 12:44 

Compare Luke 14.33:

 

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.  

A dick joke only Marco Rubio's Jesus would be proud of

Rubio, quoted here:

In an interview after the GOP debate in Michigan, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly questioned Rubio about the vicious personal attacks that have emerged between the two candidates. During the debate, Rubio called for his rivals to focus on policy, but the Florida senator tangled in several spats with Trump. Rubio slammed the front-runner's candidacy as a scam and tied him to his controversial Trump University, which faces a class-action lawsuit alleging fraud. “If I don’t do it, it’ll be because I don’t want to do anything, for example, that Jesus wouldn’t be proud of, to be honest with you,” Rubio said. “Or that my kids would look at and say, ‘I don’t want you to keep doing that.’”

Fellow church member of Ted Cruz says she didn't vote for him because he practises (Christian) identity politics

"They love to pray that they may be seen of men"

Just now on the Laura Ingraham Show.

The woman said she doesn't have to vote for anybody just because he claims to be Christian, which in her opinion is what Ted Cruz expects.

The stupid statement of the day comes from the solitary Joel Miller

 

 

Here:

The early Church flourished without any political power.

The early church was a political power.

The statement is breathtakingly oblivious to the irreducible political nature of man, most memorably articulated in antiquity by Aristotle, reinterpreted in St. Paul's notion of the one body of Christ and its many members, and most famously embraced by the Christian theologian Aquinas. You have to be a dumb animal, eating the grass of the field, not to grasp the self-evident fact that the early church itself constituted a (rival) political force which took over the Roman Empire from within because it became socially dominant.

From Aristotle, Politics 1, 1253a:

From these things therefore it is clear that the city-state is a natural growth, and that man is by nature a political animal, and a man that is by nature and not merely by fortune citiless is either low in the scale of humanity or above it (like the “clanless, lawless, hearthless” man reviled by Homer, for one by nature unsocial is also ‘a lover of war') inasmuch as he is solitary, like an isolated piece at draughts. And why man is a political animal in a greater measure than any bee or any gregarious animal is clear. For nature, as we declare, does nothing without purpose; and man alone of the animals possesses speech. The mere voice, it is true, can indicate pain and pleasure, and therefore is possessed by the other animals as well (for their nature has been developed so far as to have sensations of what is painful and pleasant and to indicate those sensations to one another), but speech is designed to indicate the advantageous and the harmful, and therefore also the right and the wrong; for it is the special property of man in distinction from the other animals that he alone has perception of good and bad and right and wrong and the other moral qualities, and it is partnership in these things that makes a household and a city-state.

Thus also the city-state is prior in nature to the household and to each of us individually. For the whole must necessarily be prior to the part; since when the whole body is destroyed, foot or hand will not exist except in an equivocal sense, like the sense in which one speaks of a hand sculptured in stone as a hand; because a hand in those circumstances will be a hand spoiled, and all things are defined by their function and capacity, so that when they are no longer such as to perform their function they must not be said to be the same things, but to bear their names in an equivocal sense. It is clear therefore that the state is also prior by nature to the individual; for if each individual when separate is not self-sufficient, he must be related to the whole state as other parts are to their whole, while a man who is incapable of entering into partnership, or who is so self-sufficing that he has no need to do so, is no part of a state, so that he must be either a lower animal or a god.

Therefore the impulse to form a partnership of this kind is present in all men by nature; but the man who first united people in such a partnership was the greatest of benefactors. For as man is the best of the animals when perfected, so he is the worst of all when sundered from law and justice. For unrighteousness is most pernicious when possessed of weapons, and man is born possessing weapons for the use of wisdom and virtue, which it is possible to employ entirely for the opposite ends. Hence when devoid of virtue man is the most unholy and savage of animals, and the worst in regard to sexual indulgence and gluttony. Justice on the other hand is an element of the state; for judicial procedure, which means the decision of what is just, is the regulation of the political partnership.

Depart from your cell, Joel, and join the human race.

Marco Rubio has changed his religion three times

Baptized and raised Catholic in Florida.

Converted to Mormonism while in elementary school in Utah.

Went back to Florida and to Catholicism.

Now attends a Baptist church!

Detailed here.

John Shelby Spong's mother helps explain the obsessions of the man

From an interview here:

I happen to know the Bible pretty deeply and I didn’t reject the Bible when I rejected its literal frame of reference. I happen to be a believing, practicing Christian. I don’t go to church on Sunday mornings for show. I go because I want to be there and I need to worship. It’s not an option for me to sleep in on Sunday. My faith is deeper than that. I do not eat a meal that I don’t stop and say grace beforehand because that’s how I acknowledge the presence of God in my life at a regular time. I try to live a life of absolute commitment. I claim my Christian identity publicly.

This puts me at odds with my colleagues in the Jesus Seminar who are so scholarly but they are not devoted. They really think the church is a sick institution and they don’t want to be part of it. I think the church is the only place we’ve got, but we’ve got to transform and redeem it. If the church is not going to be the place where people encounter God and Christ I don’t see any other place in our society to do so. I work to transform the church. I don’t work to get rid of the church. I work to transform the meaning of what it means to be a Christian, not to get rid of that meaning. ...

I wrote a book once about reclaiming the Bible for a nonreligious world. I really want to take it back from those people who I think are ruining it. I don’t dislike those people. My mother was a fundamentalist. She had not finished the 9th grade. She knew no other way to approach the biblical story.

Spong was more inclined to wear membership in the Jesus Seminar as a badge of honor as recently as 2012, here:

In the 1990’s, Robert Funk invited me to become a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar. I was the first Fellow not to be a professional academic. ... While being a successful author and possessing a number of honorary doctorates, I did not have an earned PhD, which was normally regarded as a pre-requisite for becoming a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar. Nonetheless, the Seminar honored me by accepting me to its membership.  I have loved my association with them over the years.  I have participated in their debates and deliberations.  I have been invited to address some of their largest gatherings, including the 2004 event called “The Jesus Seminar at Times Square.”  The Seminar has adopted some of the perspectives that I have offered and they have under-girded my career with their incisive scholarship.  I have previously been recognized by them in several ways.  I was chosen for membership in the “David Friedrich Strauss Society of Biblical Scholars,” a society named for an early 19th century German New Testament scholar, who first brought the findings of the academy to the attention of the people of Europe.  Later I was given the “John A. T. Robinson Award” for “Courage and Integrity in Theology.”

I was deeply touched by each of these honors.  To close the gap between the academy and the people in the pews has been both the goal of the Seminar and the primary ambition of my career.  The Jesus Seminar has been a major force in enabling me to fulfill that vocation.  I have many friends today among the Fellows of the Seminar and I believe they have a new respect for the willingness of the clergy and lay people that I represent to be engaged in biblical scholarship. 

Scott Redd of Reformed Theological Seminary doesn't take Jesus' teaching about the cost of discipleship seriously

Here:

If, as the Apostle Paul says, we become new creations in Christ, then we should expect to find our wealth being directed toward ends that are more and more commensurate with our new creation. ... [W]ell-meaning believers often voice romanticized opinions about poverty and the impoverished, pointing out biblical passages that speak of the dangers of wealth while ignoring passages that speak of the wealth’s many blessings. ... Christians need to counsel, conspire, and collaborate with one another about how their mutual faith and love of God can find expression in the way they manage their wealth.

Yeah, it's right there in Luke 14:33, where it says "No one can be my disciple who doesn't manage all their wealth more and more commensurate with the new creation".

Pope Francis: Gay priests? Who am I to judge? Donald Trump? Not a Christian.

Kerry Dougherty, here:

"So it’s OK for the pope to judge an American politician but not gay priests?"

Ted Cruz' messiah complex is showing: Who does he think he is, Jesus Christ?

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

-- Hebrews 13:8

Pope Francis declares he's not a Christian: Vatican walls are not in the Gospel

Quoted here:

"A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian," Francis said. "This is not in the Gospel."

Rod Dreher: The bad news is Donald Trump is religious and social conservatives' only choice in this election

From Rod Dreher, here:

[Trump] has said publicly that he will make protecting religious liberty a priority. Does he mean it? I have no idea, and you don’t either. He is no religious conservative. But he is a populist who doesn’t care what the donor class thinks, because he is not indebted to them. It is reasonable to think that religious liberty stands a better chance with Trump in the White House than any other Republican. Mind you, that’s the soft bigotry of low expectations, but that just goes to show you how weak the position of us religious and social conservatives has become within the Republican Party. ...

For people in our socioeconomic demographic, greater immigration meant more and better restaurants, and better lawn and garden care.

Our kids weren’t having their schools overrun by children who couldn’t speak the language; they went to private school, or to public schools in parts of town immigrants couldn’t afford. 

We weren’t having the hospitals we used overrun by illegal immigrants needing care; we didn’t have to use the public hospital.

Our neighborhoods weren’t changing in front of our eyes. And so on.

The immigration issue was a chance for us to show our compassion — sometimes our explicitly Christian compassion — without it costing us anything tangible. The kind of white people my class looked down on and thought of as racist rabble were the kind of white people who had to bear a lot of the brunt of our politics and what we called compassion. ... [T]hey are not wrong to judge that many in our class looks [sic] down on them, and doesn’t [sic] share their interests. The kinds of social things they might like to conserve don’t really matter to people of my class. We can’t see it, we never could see it, and some of us are still bound and determined not to see it, until they make us see it.

A scholar of the prosperity gospel pinpoints the false message of libertarianism at the heart of it

Here:

The prosperity gospel has taken a religion based on the contemplation of a dying man and stripped it of its call to surrender all. Perhaps worse, it has replaced Christian faith with the most painful forms of certainty. The movement has perfected a rarefied form of America’s addiction to self-rule, which denies much of our humanity: our fragile bodies, our finitude, our need to stare down our deaths (at least once in a while) and be filled with dread and wonder. At some point, we must say to ourselves, I’m going to need to let go.

Perfect freedom eludes us

From Carol Zaleski on Samuel Johnson, here, who with fine turns of phrase has captured the humanity and wisdom of the man who navigated the divide between pre-modern and modern man more heroically than any English writer before or since:

'No writer has more convincingly described the failure to “scheme life,” the near futility of hygienic self-improvement. Not piety alone, but piety weathered by illness, disfigurement, financial worries, marital difficulties, overwork, and hereditary melancholy (to the point that he feared madness), as well as his bungled attempts at self-discipline, made Johnson skeptical of the Enlightenment ideal of autonomy. He was a kind and courageous man (notwithstanding his well-known combativeness in debate), full of charity, whose setbacks inoculated him against spiritual pride.'

Yeah, so how did Luke know what was said "between themselves"?

And when [Paul] had thus spoken, the king rose up, and the governor, and Bernice, and they that sat with them: And when they were gone aside, they talked between themselves, saying, This man doeth nothing worthy of death or of bonds. Then said Agrippa unto Festus, This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar.

-- Acts 26:30ff.

Ash Wednesday, when the hypocrites disfigure their faces to be seen of men

Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.

-- Matthew 6:16ff.

Calling J. Gresham Machen a forgotten libertarian is as unhelpful as calling Jesus a socialist

In a short essay entitled "Rendering Unto Caesar: Was Jesus a Socialist?" which the author rather embarrassingly calls "epic", Lawrence W. Reed never quite gets it that the idea of socialism is a phenomenon of the modern age which didn't present itself to the minds of pre-modern men and that those like Gorbachev who paste the term on figures of the past are doing more to obscure their thoughts than to elucidate them. Regrettably Reed goes on to commit the same error himself.

Socialism is an intellectual category which only lately in history arose in reaction to the appearance of industrial capitalism in the Enlightenment West. To paint Jesus with the hues of this corner of time completely ignores his own time and its conditions in which as a prophet he preached the imminent coming of the kingdom of God in unique historical circumstances. But it will hardly do to also make Jesus a defender of capitalism, which couldn't be more anachronistic. A good student of Jesus' teaching would not miss, as Reed does, that personal poverty and distribution of assets to the poor was a condition of discipleship according to the Synoptic tradition. Jesus believed this precisely because it represented repentance to him, without which one would not survive the end of the world and God's judgment which were fast and certainly approaching.

Of course this underscores a major difference with St. Paul, whose thought was a preoccupation of the New Testament scholar John Gresham Machen, the subject of the recent essay by Reed entitled "God’s Forgotten Libertarian". If repentance required various acts of renunciation of the world to Jesus, to Paul it above all required belief in the lordship of Christ, whom Paul believed was still soon to return in judgment.

The irony of Reed's title is that like socialism, libertarianism is also a late product of the modern age, precisely from the clutches of which Machen sought his whole life to rescue thinking about Paul, especially in The Origins of Paul's Religion (1921).

It's difficult to imagine a better way to misrepresent Machen.

And Paul.

Libertarian Christianity would have been an utter contradiction in terms to the apostle to the Gentiles for the simple reason that there could never be any notion of personal autonomy in Christianity, as if one could give oneself one's own law to live by apart from the law of Christ, or could live in blissful isolation without being a member of the body of Christ or without a duty to the rest of humankind, or could actually own oneself. These are all core notions of libertarian individualism which are at war with basic Pauline ideas:

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.

 

-- 1 Corinthians 6:19f.

Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought with a price . . ..

 

-- 1 Corinthians 7:22f.

Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth.

 

-- 1 Corinthians 10:24

Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.

 

-- 1 Corinthians 10:33

[Charity] . . . seeketh not her own . . ..

 

--1 Corinthians 13:5

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?

 

-- 2 Corinthians 13:5

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

 

-- Galatians 2:20

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

 

-- Galatians 6:2

So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

 

-- Romans 12:5

Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.

 

-- Philippians 2:4

Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

 

-- Philippians 4:11f.

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves . . ..

 

-- 2 Timothy 3:1ff.


Christianity may have become many things, but what it most certainly is not in its origins is a materialist philosophy. Those who say otherwise like Reed unfortunately know not whereof they speak. 

Bernie Sanders, candidate for the Nones

WaPo quotes him here:

“I am not actively involved with organized religion,” Sanders said in a recent interview.

That's rich: Charisma News thinks disgraced Jim Bakker is trustworthy but Donald Trump isn't

Charisma News op-ed wants you to doubt Trump's trustworthiness

Sidebar features convicted fraudster Jim Bakker twice!

Thousands of supporters lost million$ in his scheme 

Here.

Still-shot from a Christian horror flick

Ken Copeland of blab it, grab it infamy and that nincompoop of a pope, Francis

Police close Santeria store in Compton, CA after finding 9 human skulls in pots

Omi Relekun is located at 1514 N. Long Beach Blvd. Compton CA

All religions are the same, right?

From the story, here:

'Nine human skulls and other possible human and animal bones were found in a Los Angeles County store that sells Santeria products on Friday. Los Angeles County sheriff's Capt Steve Katz says deputies responded to the Compton business Friday after a woman complained of animal cruelty. When investigators arrived, Katz says they found a skull inside a pot. He says the coroner's office collected the skull and eight other pots that may also contain skulls.'

Is Ted Cruz a phony baloney plastic banana Christian because he didn't TITHE?

Some people think so, evidently, as reported here:

'According to personal tax returns released during his 2012 Senate bid, Cruz contributed less than 1% of his income to charity between 2006 and 2010 — a far cry from the 10% most evangelical leaders believe the Bible demands. ... “He was never particularly religious as far as I knew,” said one aide who worked for him in the Texas solicitor general’s office. “I’m not even sure he went to church.”'

One Corinthians, two Corinthians, three Corinthians, four!

Five Corinthians, six Corinthians, seven Corinthians, more!

And pretty soon we'll have enough for a synagogue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anglican Communion excludes the tiny homosexual-inclusive USA Episcopal Church for three years

It's about time:

"The decision in England will have little impact on Episcopalians in the pews, who have grown increasingly liberal after the 2003 consecration of the openly gay priest Gene Robinson as the bishop of New Hampshire. That action prompted dozens of U.S. churches to break off and declare their allegiance to conservative rival groups. ... The constituent churches, which preside over a membership of about 85 million, are self-governing. ... Like other mainline denominations, the Episcopal Church, home to U.S. presidents and the nation’s elite, has struggled to fill its pews in recent years. It has lost more than 20 percent of its members since it consecrated Robinson, and new statistics suggest that membership continues to fall, dropping 2.7 percent from 2013 to about 1.8 million U.S. members in 2014."

Read more at the link.

Liberal wet dream: Mary of Magdala the wealthy (prostitute) who bankrolled the ministry of Jesus

Repeated here:

"Was it mere chance that Mary Magdalene lived there? Or might something have been afoot in Magdala that helped turn her into one of Jesus’s most devoted acolytes—a woman who funds his work out of her own wealth and follows him all the way to the cross, and the tomb, in Jerusalem, even as other disciples abandon him?"

To wit: it's easy to preach to others to sell everything you own and give to the poor when you have a sugar momma in your corner.

Actually the evidence is that many women followed him and put their possessions, whatever they were, at his disposal in obedience to his teaching. There is no prejudice in the term "substance" as if it described great wealth, average wealth, or poverty.

"And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, And Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others [females], which ministered unto him of their substance."

-- Luke 8:1ff.

Vatican panders to the followers of a popular deceased pervert

Reported here:

"In an unprecedented display of praise for a pop figure, Vatican Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi tweeted encomium to David Bowie in honor of his passing, offering a final blessing for the rock star with lyrics from one of his most famous songs."

Stephen Prothero doesn't know the meaning of pluralism, but teaches at a "university"

Here in The Wall Street Journal of all places:

"No doubt Christians should strive to understand the Islamic faith fully, and vice versa. But pretend pluralism, feigning that all or most religious traditions hinge on the same truth, is no solution for the squabble at Wheaton or anywhere else."

Religious pluralism has nothing to do with hinging "on the same truth", but rather with competing religions coexisting in a society, as in a pluralistic society where competing ideas coexist, such as for example at a university, where the main idea is that a whole universe of competing ideas is supposed to be available to the student.

Presumably Boston University pays its professors to understand the meaning of that word, evocative as it is of the very mission of universities, but in this case it may wish to ask for its money back before the students do.

A place where 132 million are born per year, and 56 million die

What does it mean that a sixth ice age will probably wipe out all memory of Christian civilization?

Mark Tooley insists history has a meaning, here:

"Christianity by its nature must allow that God has and will continue to govern human events after Bible times and before the end times."

And what is the Christian meaning of the previous ice age cyclicality?

Atheist George Will baldly lies about the Christian origins of the English common law

Here, in the formerly conservative National Review:

'Morality evolves: Religious and other moral instructors base their moral codes on the way people who are considered moral behave, people who are deemed moral because they exemplify rules conducive to human flourishing. Legal systems evolve: The common-law basis of the system under which Americans live had no inspired law-giver; it emerged from centuries of the Anglosphere’s trial and error.'

F. N. Lee explains here, at considerably more length than I dare quote.

From the opening:

'In 1892, the famous German Church Historian Rev. Professor Dr. J. H. Kurtz called King Alfred the greatest and noblest of all the monarchs England has ever had. King Alfred ruled from 871 to 901 A.D. He applied all the energy of his mind to the difficult problems of government; to the emancipation of his Christian country by driving out the Pagan Danish invaders and robbers; and then to improving the internal condition of the land.

'Alfred is perhaps best of all remembered for his famous Law Code. According to the celebrated former British Statesman and Historian Sir Winston Churchill, the roots of King Alfred's Book of Laws or Dooms (alias his "Deemings") came forth from the (as then already long-established) laws of Kent, Mercia and Wessex. All these attempted to blend the Mosaic Code with the Christian principles of Celto-Brythonic Law and old Germanic customs.

'Churchill adds that the laws of Alfred, continually amplified by his successors, grew into that body of Customary Law which was administered [as the ‘Common Law’] by the Shire and the Hundred Courts. Cf. Exodus 18:21f. That, under the name of the ‘Laws of St. Edward’ [the ‘Confessor’] — as the A.D. 1042f last Anglo-Saxon Christian King of England — the Norman kings undertook to respect, after their 1066f invasion and conquest of England and hegemony over Britain. Out of that, with much dexterity by feudal lawyers, the Common Law emerged (which was re-confirmed by Magna Carta in 1215).'

Dear ISIS,