The soft captivity of love

When love's well tim'd, 'tis not a fault to love;

The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise,

Sink in the soft captivity together.

-- Joseph Addison

America's religious grifters, but I repeat myself, asked for bailouts ... and boy did they get 'em

Televangelists, Dallas megachurch that hosted Pence approved for millions in pandemic aid:

"the First Baptist Church of Dallas ...

"It was among the tens of thousands of religious organizations that received a total of $7.3 billion in pandemic aid from the Small Business Administration.

"The list of religious organizations approved for about 88,400 small business loans also included Joyce Meyer Ministries Inc, a Missouri church which in 2007-2011 was investigated by the Senate over its finances. That church was approved for $5 million to $10 million - the largest sum an individual entity could apply for. ...

"Oklahoma-based Life.Church Operations LLC ...

"the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino, California ...

"Willow Creek Community Church Inc. in Illinois ..."

Of course, there's gotta be a verse for that, right?

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations. 

-- Luke 16:9

Love is master

Love never fails to master what he finds;

the fool enlightens, and the wise he blinds.

-- John Dryden

Thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited

 

 

 

 

The Caribbees were wont to geld their children,

on purpose to fat and eat them.

-- John Locke

The funny thing about Acts 1 is how there are about 120 "disciples" of Jesus after the "ascension", but only 2 are candidates to replace Judas because only they were witnesses to the baptism of John and to the resurrection

And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,)

-- Acts 1:15

Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, Beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection. And they appointed two, Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias.

-- Acts 1:21ff.

Yet Paul claims Jesus was seen resurrected by more than 500 "brethren":

After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.

-- I Corinthians 15:6f.

By the time of Acts 1, the twelve disciples of Jesus have become the (almost) twelve apostles, and the not quite disciple followers of Jesus have now been promoted as it were to full disciples.

But Acts poses far fewer "disciples", now more broadly conceived, than Paul's even more broadly conceived "brethren", who were witnesses to the resurrection.

The key to apostleship according to Acts is NOT simply the terminus ad quem of Paul (And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time -- I Corinthians 15:8), but the terminus a quo involving the ministry of the Baptist AND the terminus ad quem of the resurrection.

This is why Paul's apostleship was considered illegitimate during his lifetime. He was part of the more expansive group associated with the 500, not with the more restrictive group associated with the 120.

The deal breaker was the missing link to John the Baptist.

Him he knew not.

Paul's insistence on the "apostleship" as a gift of the Spirit (I Corinthians 12:28) is an expansive interpretation based on his own ecstatic conversion experience, which in the final analysis is the basis for his gospel and his claim to be an apostle. Everything about it hangs on his claim to have experienced "seeing" the Lord, simply the "back end" of the deal. It has absolutely nothing to do with seeing the historical Jesus from the time of Jesus' baptism at the hands of the Baptist right on through all the events to the end and witnessing his actual resurrection. Which, in fact, he utterly eschews.

Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord?

-- I Corinthians 9:1

Paul an apostle--not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead. But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

-- Galatians 1:1, 11f.

Christianity as we know it today is based entirely on this, and it is sinking sand.

The solid earth in fleeting air

Thou all things hast of nothing made,

That hang'st the solid earth in fleeting air,

Vein'd with clear springs, which ambient seas repair.

-- George Sandys (1578-1644)

After which ensues the Plague of Women Voters, founded in 1920, which rushes in to try to fill the void left by the men

And then there is the plague of leadership

'Tis the time's plague, when madmen lead the blind.

-- William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4, Scene 1

Bad company ruins good morals, arguably the greatest plague of life

Good or bad company is the greatest blessing or greatest plague of life.

-- Roger L'Estrange

A darling can be a plague

Sometimes my plague, sometimes my darling,

Kissing today, to-morrow snarling.

-- Matthew Prior

Timothy Dalrymple of Christianity Today calls on Christians to pay reparations to black people

Here.

It's absurd on its face, and for many reasons, the most interesting to me being the way Dalrymple falls into the trap of depersonalizing Jesus' call to individual repentance and restitution and mistaking it for a social program. 

This is the magazine, remember, which opposed the dropping of THE BOMB to end WWII.

You remember Tim, by the way. He thinks Mormons, who still give safe harbor to polygamists, excel at family values.

He's also been rather too curious about competitors' web traffic statistics. You might say he's seemed a little too interested in that, jealous even.

And now it's time for Christians, who've done nothing wrong, to pay black people, who were never wronged.

Tim doesn't tell you that Black Lives Matter wants more than reparations. It wants redistribution of wealth.

Maybe that doesn't bother Tim. Maybe he thinks that's what Jesus wanted. If he does he should come right out and say that Jesus was a communist.

I'm sure evangelicals everywhere would find that quite interesting.

At any rate, the Tim Dalrymples of the world are clueless. They sell this as if the mayhem will stop if we make just one more gesture, when what's needed is a firm, loud shout of NO!

Reparations won't stop the mayhem. They will only encourage more.

It's editorials like this which further cement my decision long ago to leave the fever swamp American Christianity has become.

Whatever I've become, at least I'm not nuts. 

 

Poor shrunken things, full of melancholy

If there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy.

-- Francis Bacon

Paul retains the basic end of the world message of Matthew's Jesus in the phrase "before the time"

It's just that there's been a slight shift forward in time to πρὸ καιροῦ, so that, unfortunately, Paul now ends up in agreement with the devils of Matthew 8 that their torment began before it should have, because the coming of the end of the world was then and still is "not yet" but is even now still farther into the future.

Paul's apocalyptic eschatology is thus an attenuated version of Jesus' belief in the imminent final judgment.

Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

-- I Corinthians 4:5 

You don't believe Jesus came to bring the end of the world and the final judgment? Neither did the devils.

They said he came πρὸ καιροῦ:

And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?

-- Matthew 8:28f.

In this culture of death, we sat still for 3,302 abortions every day for 20 years, so the libertarian shoulder-shrug over SARS-CoV-2 isn't surprising

The Germans acquiesced to a murderous Hitler, the Russians to a murderous Stalin, the Chinese to a murderous Mao, the Americans to The Murderous Individual.

Fame is a thing beyond us

What's fame? a fancy'd life in others' breath,

a thing beyond us, ev'n before our death:

Just what you hear, you have.

-- Alexander Pope

Monastic rules, the second law of thermodynamics, and post-modernism

Homer, Martin Luther, and the wisdom of beer

Just kidding.

Ariel Sabar strikes again in a good, long read about a con allegedly perpetrated by an academic and other shady characters against the Green family of Hobby Lobby fame and their Museum of the Bible

A Biblical Mystery at Oxford:

'In June 2019, Michael Holmes, who replaced Pattengale as the director of the scholars initiative, flew to London to meet with leaders of the Egypt Exploration Society, who remained skeptical that Obbink, whatever his other shortcomings, might have sold Oxyrhynchus papyri.

'Over lunch at a private club, Holmes pulled out a purchase agreement between Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and Dirk Obbink. Co-signed by the Oxford professor on February 4, 2013, it showed that Obbink had sold the company not just the Mark papyrus, but also fragments of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. In the contract, Obbink describes the manuscripts as his personal property, vows to “ship/hand carry” them from “Oxford Ancient,” and dates all four to a historically unprecedented “circa 100 AD,” making each a one-of-a-kind worth millions.

'When EES officials saw the contract, Holmes told me, “any uncertainties they had evaporated very quickly.” They banned Obbink from the collection.'

 

His prattling tongue

His tongue, his prattling tongue,

had chang'd him quite

To sooty blackness, from the purest white.

-- Joseph Addison

And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity ... it defileth the whole body ... it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

-- James 3:6, 8 

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. 

-- Matthew 5:37