Days go by and still I think of you.

Most Bible quotes are KJV or ESV.

 
They Beat Me to the Punch

But a new impetus to question old assumptions was given a few years ago by the work of Kenneth Bailey, not a professional New Testament scholar, but a person who had had opportunity to experience a still-living tradition of community storytelling in the Middle East and recognized its relevance to the conundrum of Matthew, Mark and Luke. In such a community, the storyteller would be bound to reproduce the essentials of the narrative, and at crucial points the exact wording, but would also be expected to bring something of his own style and recollection to give new life to the recital. Was not this very like the phenomenon we see in the Gospels, which are similarly almost identical at many points, but diverge in many others? May not the different versions have originated in different performances of the narrative? It is a possibility that has been taken seriously by some of the scholarly guild, even though, if correct, it must surely call into question many of the assumed achievements of generations of previous researchers.

More.

I say they beat me to the punch because I had a similar insight based on my own experience. I once worked as a tour guide; there were several of us, and if someone wrote down each of our presentations, they would have related to each other much as the Synoptics do.
posted by Aaron at 12:01 PM

 
Andrew Sullivan is the Perfect Liberal

In his review of Dinesh D'Souza's book he's having his usual hysterical fit about "Christianists", which isn't really worth commenting on. What makes him the perfect liberal is one throwaway sentence:

Never mind that the Islamic tradition helped to pioneer the figurative reading of biblical texts.

The Epistle of Barnabas? Origen? How about Pardes? Never heard of them, apparently.

Like all liberals talking about religion, he sticks his nose in the air and, in the most snooty tone he can muster, "reminds" us fundamentalists of something he just pulled out of his ass, congratulating his ignorant self of his superior education.
posted by Aaron at 1:20 PM

 
Notes on the Mormon Heresy

After the evening service last Sunday, the subject of my blog came up, and I mentioned that I'd almost revived it to reply to a Mormon I'd read attacking the Trinity. I said I'd actually post it. Predictably, I've put it off, but I finally tracked down the site and here's the reply. (I flatter myself that I might have readers who weren't there and don't already know this.)

The Mormon in question is one Kevin Graham, and his article is The Trinity or Godhead?. Some justification for paying attention to this is in order, since it appears on Anglefire (said the guy on Blogspot) and shows absolutely no understanding of what Trinitarians actually believe. It goes wrong in an illuminating way, that helps show where the whole Mormon mindset fails. Certainly the people at FAIRLDS thought it was at least a reasonably decent defense of what they believe, since they linked it.

He goes wrong right off the bat:

Having been created at the Council of Nicea in the form of the Athanasian creed 325 A.D. it states: "We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity..."

The Athanasian Creed wasn't written at the Council of Nicea, the Nicene Creed was.

We cannot understand God, our Eternal Father, unless we embrace his words in the scriptures. No other source, including the debated concepts of the Council of Nicea, are adequate.

This is a very un-Mormon thing to say. Shouldn't he be talking about living prophets instead?

Now the most significant difference between the Mormon "Godhead" and the Evangelical "Trinity", lies within the idea that the three divisions are actually of one substance. In other words, according to the creedal Trinity, Christ is actually the Father in "essence", and the Father is the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost is the Son since none of them can be considered separate in any other way than "persons" and they are supposed to be "one substance.". There really is no way around this fact, which is explicitly dictated in the Nicene creed. Of course Mormons believe in a "Godhead", which unlike the Trinity, is a term found in the Bible.

He then quotes several verses which, in the King James, include the word "Godhead", as if redefining "Godhead" as a term for three divine being and then noticing that the word you hijacked from the Bible appears in the Bible proves anything. Then he lamely backs off: "However, simple terminology does not mean a concept is biblical." Here's his concept, in his own words: "The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are Three Separate Beings". Let's apply that concept to the Biblical use -- one of the uses he quoted but perhaps failed to ponder -- and see what we get.

For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. (Colossians 2:9)

So if "Godhead" means three separate divine beings, this verse would mean that three beings dwell in one being who is one of the three beings. That would be hopelessly recursive and illogical. Not that I deny the mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity (which is not recursive), about which I'll have more to say later.

But on to his misunderstanding of the Trinity. He says that the Trinity means believing the Father is the Son is the Holy Spirit, and proceeds to use the same proof-texts we use to refute Oneness Pentecostals. He even uses that old anti-Modalist chestnut, the absurdity of Jesus praying to Himself. No wonder he thinks the Trinitarian Christians he meets really agree with him, since when he asks them to define "Trinity" they answer with Trinitarian rather than Modalist doctrine. Arius also accused Trinitarians of Modalism for insisting on the unity of the Father and the Son. Arius "demoted" the Son, while Mormons still call Him God, yet deny an substantial unity or mutual indwelling. All they leave for union between the Persons is a watery "unified in purpose, faith, dedication, and action"; i.e., they agree with each other. But three human beings who agree with each other are still three humans, so three divine beings are three gods, however much they agree. This is Tritheism. Now Mormons will object to being called Tritheists, but shrinking back from a necessary inference will not make it any less necessary.

Whenever anyone argues against their "one in purpose" theory, they always quote John 17:21:

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

He rather proudly comments:

Here we find that Christ is praying for his disciples to be one even as the Godhead is one. This utterly refutes the Trinitarian "Oneness" doctrine. He even said that they may be one in us. One, meaning unified in purpose, faith, dedication, and action. Christ was not praying that they would become one physically into some physical Trinitarian blob of sorts. Indeed it is for this reason that the Trinity isn't a word chosen to describe the three in the Bible. Instead the term "Godhead" is used, which distinguishes individuality and functions.

What I find interesting in the above is his total failure to grasp the meaning of "thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee". He goes on about unified purpose as if he hadn't just read that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father. It simply doesn't register. I don't think the Mormon mindset has any room for a selfhood different from the mundane selves we experience ourselves as now. That's why any serious doctrine of Divine unity is heard as Modalistic: if all selves are monads that can never truly contact each other, then God must be one monadic self or three monadic selves, but certainly not one Being in three Persons, which is simply impossible to state in terms of unsharable selves.

This also relates to the Mormon idea of "exaltation", being promoted to godhood. Our author has an article on that, too. It's a perfect piece of illogic. He vehemently denies that Mormons believe humans can become just like God, then quotes Church Fathers and even passages of Scripture to back up the belief he just denied having. But for someone with his mindset that belief must appear eminently Biblical -- without any real concept of union with Christ, 2 Peter 1:4 can only possibly mean the monadic self's promotion to the same cosmic status as God. What is missing from their thinking here is simply that union with Christ is the basic fact of the Christian's life. None of the promises can be understood outside of it. That's what Peter and the Fathers and C.S. Lewis were all talking about: our selves are joined to the Divine self of Jesus, and this begins reorienting everything about us until finally we are glorified. I would add that because we are creatures and sinners we are unable to join ourselves to God. Only God can do that. Which is to say, only the Holy Spirit can join us to Christ.

Here's another argument related to union with Christ. He is a "priest forever after the order of Melchezedek". According to Mormons themselves becoming Mormon will not get you the priesthood after the order of Melchezedek, since they have a whole ceremony and theology about males (and only males) receiving it later. But the Bible knows nothing of a partial union with Christ; a union which excludes His priesthood is no union at all. Therefore they are not united to Him and are still in their sins.
posted by Aaron at 7:01 PM

 
You Learn Something New Every Day

For some reason, people object when you refer to the ham as "a chunk of pig".
posted by Aaron at 3:20 PM

 
Authority

"You have broken faith and married foreign women, and so increased the guilt of Israel. Now then make confession to the LORD, the God of your fathers and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives." --Ezra the scribe

Over at Blog and Mablog Doug Wilson has posted a series (here, here, here, and here) which has gotten a lot of response from Catholics, who always bring the conversation around to that favorite issue of Catholic apologetics, authority.

The question is asked, how is it we can declare that which binds the conscience? One commenter asked why he should submit to the prohibition on images in worship if he thinks the Bible requires them and that commandment was changed after the Incarnation (actually images -- of cherubim -- were required before the Incarnation). Another points out that Wilson's denomination requires adherence to the Nicene Creed for membership, and suggests that in this it is either submitting itself to the authority that issued it, which he identifies as the Magisterium, and has no sound reason not to go all the way and enter the RCC, or else is setting itself up as an authority binding on all Christendom and must show why it should be obeyed.

Now let me ask a question: why was Ezra's demand that the men of Israel abandon their wives and children unless they were Israelites binding? What gave Ezra that authority?

Note that the book does not say:

When Ezra was with those who returned from exile by the river Jordan he saw the Heavens opened and saw visions of God and there were living creatures with four faces... and God spoke unto Ezra, saying, "Prophecy to the children of Israel, 'Thus saith the Lord, "Separate yourselves..."'"

Ezra was inspired when he wrote his book, but was not a prophet in the old sense. Instead of bringing a new word from the Lord, he cites Deuteronomy. (You can just imagine what some of our contemporaries would say to that. "Do you also support slavery? Stoning of non-virginal brides and naughty children? And what about Ruth?") The book also does not claim Ezra stood in a succession of Torah experts who had an authoritative oral teaching that began with Moses and continued with his own students and their students, etc. The Rabbis later claimed that on his (and their own) behalf, but his book claims no kind of authoritative status for Ezra over what an ordinary person has. Yet here he is breaking up families.

Here is what the book does claim for Ezra: "He was a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses". "Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach His statutes and rules in Israel".

I don't disagree with Wilson's latest on the priesthood of the believer but I don't think it answers the Catholic question. If they're scandalized by disagreement among Protestants, how will "all baptized believers" fare? (Especially considering that for Wilson that includes Catholics, since he accepts all Trinitarian paedobaptisms.) Their issue is where believers can get authoritative answers. The want somebody alive now. Other than Jesus, that is, since He's currently not commenting on our hermeneutical difficulties. He did comment on them during His ministry, though. He rebuked the Sadducees for not knowing that "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" meant there would be a resurrection. Talk about things hard to be understood! The Catholics are right that a living voice carries a huge advantage, namely that it can tell you when you've gotten it wrong. But you're still expected to get it right without an infallible living voice to correct you.

So after all that, just who is authoritative? The Prophets and Apostles, Jesus Christ Himself being chief, whether orally or by writing.
posted by Aaron at 10:56 PM

 
A Truth

"Refusing to forgive is like taking rat poison and hoping the rat dies." --Eve Tushnet
posted by Aaron at 10:55 PM

 
And That Includes You

There's this dive bar down the road from where I live called Fritz's Corner. I saw a real estate sign out front there today. That makes me sad. Some developer will tear down the most famous place in (or rather just outside of) my hometown and put in a Burger King or something.

Maybe Scott Lucas will buy it.
posted by Aaron at 9:27 PM

 
Brief Interruption of the Silence

I brought Live at Stubb's to work with me today. A coworker said, "Matisyahu! I'm a big fan of theirs! Do you know if they're really Amish, or is that just a gimmick?"
posted by Aaron at 5:55 PM

 
This is Funny

A hilarious blonde joke.
posted by Aaron at 12:12 AM

 
Fluff

So it's been over a month...

Here's proof I'm not a heretic.

You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451. Chalcedon compliant 75% Apollanarian 67% Adoptionist 42% Nestorianism 42% Monophysitism 25% Pelagianism 25% Donatism 17% Socinianism 0% Monarchianism 0% Arianism 0% Docetism 0% Gnosticism 0% Albigensianism 0% Modalism 0% Are you a heretic? created with QuizFarm.com

posted by Aaron at 4:01 PM

 
Love /= Niceness

By way of Pyromaniac's reminder that Mormons aren't Christian, and that it does matter, here's a short thread which illustrates exactly what's wrong with the modern feel-good idea of love. Marla Swoffer rightly said that Mormonism has a false Jesus and is a heresy. So a commenter said she was spewing "ugliness and hate and judgment (sic)", and another called her post "judgemental and unkind".

Love seeks the other's good. The problem here is mistaking a person's true good with their transitory feelings of happiness. It's unloving to tell someone they believe in damnable heresy because they might feel bad. And what if they really do believe in damnable heresy? If your doctor knew you had cancer, should he keep it to himself so you can keep your blissful ignorence intact?

Incidentally, Mormons of all people have no business complaining when other people criticize their religion. Now Jews have room to complain. They'd be wrong for the reason I just explained, but they have room to say it since they make you go to them first. But Mormons send out their young men for two years for the specific purpose of telling everyone else that their religions aren't good enough and they need to join Mormonism. And when somebody says, "No, your religion isn't good enough and you need to convert to mine," suddenly that's judgemental and unkind and hateful. So stop doing it, hypocrites!
posted by Aaron at 2:59 PM

 
Regime Change

The history of the West after the height of ecclesiastical power in the Middle Ages recapitulates the procession of Plato's regimes

The Just Regime -- Philosophical men and very devout men are alike in the crucial respect: they're concerned to know the true nature of reality and order their own and, under certain circumstances, other's lives in accordance with it. Now not everyone who's religious in some sense is devout in the sense I mean; mainstream Greek paganism simply performed ancestral rites. The devotion I mean is never simply ancestral, even if your parents did in fact teach it to you, any more than there's such a thing as an ancestrally philosophical man. Contemplation of the true reality implies the rejection of the merely ancestral or conventional to find out what might be before or above it, and therefore conventional society finds it threatening. Not for nothing does Jewish legend say Abraham's father was an idol-maker.

But nothing guarantees they'll get it right, and, as you would expect from a Protestant, I'm no more a partisan of the Medieval hierarchy than I am of Plato's own philosopher-kings. (Much better a poet-king, like David.) Interestingly, they share a rejection of normal sexuality and marriage for the contemplative class, and in Plato's case perhaps for everyone.

The Timocratic Regime -- After the aristocracy finally succeeded in usurping the Church as the central organizing principle of society, that principle was a martial elite who lived off the exploitation of tracts farmed by serfs/helots, and who observed a strong code of honor among themselves.

The Oligarchic Regime -- The oligarchic man is concerned mainly with money-making. In other words, the bourgeois.

The Democratic Regime -- The difference between an oligarchic and a democratic regime, in the narrow matter of how offices are filled, is much smaller than between any other two kinds of regime. As in both ancient Athens and America, it's a simple matter of removing the property requirements. But everything changes and public life becomes accessible and free to everyone (at least from the perspective of other regimes, but never absolutely everyone, even in modern America), along with much else.

Plato considered democacy, in one sense, the second-lowest form. But it has a crucial advantage over all the others except the just: it has philosophers. Philosophy takes a different form, though: in Plato's just regime the promising young men of philosophical temperament must first prove himself by a rigorous multidecade apprenticeship before finally getting to philosophy in their middle age, but in democratic Athens they just hung out with Socrates. Now all types of regimes have Christians in them. But apart from the first kind, none gives us as much freedom as democracy, and the first kind may or may not give us any freedom. The most dangerous to us are devout men who lack zeal according to knowledge.

In most respects, I think the Lutheran and Anglican branches of the Reformation supported the timocratic ambitions of the rulers. But the Calvinist and Radical Reformations were in a sense a combination of the first regime with democracy. They crucially resembled (and resemble) democacy in making the devout life fully (and not, as in Medieval Catholicism, partially at best) available for everyone, as primitive Christianity did. That's why the Reformers demanded, and got, universal literacy. The Puritans used to sing Psalms while they were working in the fields or their workshops.

(Incidentally, I think modern churches should bring back Psalm-singing.)

The Tyrannical Regime -- The change to democracy is ambiguous, being both an ascent and a descent, but the change to tyranny is simply a descent, and that to the lowest form of all. A tyrannical man doesn't need power, he just needs to be enslaved by his basest passions. A tyranny happens when a person like that gets power, and warps the character of the people to be more like that. How else do you get children to betray their parents?

Most of the West reached the tyrannic stage in the early 20th century and has not, as far as the character of the people goes, gotten much better since. A democratic political structure was reimposed, and is still to an extent preserved artificially, by American power. America is still democratic. But why? From a purely political perspective, we can call in some help from Aristotle. From a Platonic perspective we started as an oligarchic regime and became democratic, but from an Aristotelian perspective we started as a polity (i.e., republic) and stayed that way. But republics can also become tyrannies. Rome did. So what else is there? America retained more of Christianity. Democracy and especially liberal democracy are characterized by enlarged freedom; therefore they relax restraints on the passions, which sets the preconditions for the tyrannical regime. Liberal democracy, in order to long endure, depends on the presence of something nonliberal and nondemocratic, and furthermore nonrational.
posted by Aaron at 12:00 AM

 
Party Like It's My Birthday

I've decided to try to introduce a new word. Skube, a synonym for crap.

You have to use it, I'm the birthday boy.
posted by Aaron at 9:33 PM

 
Notice

I've changed the settings to allow for moderated comments. That means you can now post comments, but I need to approve them before they appear. I'd just ask my hordes of fanatical admirers not to innundate me with hundreds of comments telling me how much you love me -- however strong the temptation might be.

Currently on: "The creature in the sky got sucked in a hole. Now there's a hole in the sky". 5, 6, and 7.
posted by Aaron at 1:30 PM

 
Congratulations to the Visitor from Irving, Texas

You were visitor number 15,000.
posted by Aaron at 12:17 AM

 
Fluff

Maroon 5 Shares Your Taste in Music

See their whole playlist here (iTunes required)

Ironically, I can't stand Maroon 5.

On Average, You Would Sell Out For

$1,084,347

Your Career Type: Artistic

You are expressive, original, and independent. Your talents lie in your artistic abilities: creative writing, drama, crafts, music, or art. You would make an excellent: Actor - Art Teacher - Book Editor Clothes Designer - Comedian - Composer Dancer - DJ - Graphic Designer Illustrator - Musician - Sculptor The worst career options for your are conventional careers, like bank teller or secretary.

Your Ideal Relationship is Marriage

You've dated enough to know what you want. And that's marriage - with the right person. You're serious about settling down some time soon. Even if you haven't met the person you want to get hitched to!

Your Band Name is:

The Republican Pit Bulls

Your Monster Profile

Undead Ogre You Feast On: Fried Chicken You Lurk Around In: Sewers You Especially Like to Torment: Hipsters

You Should Get a PhD in Liberal Arts (like political science, literature, or philosophy)

You're a great thinker and a true philosopher. You'd make a talented professor or writer.

posted by Aaron at 4:44 PM

 
Google Search

Someone got to my site with the following search:

"defending public intoxication cases"

I fear the Googler Googled due to a practical necessity.
posted by Aaron at 10:32 PM

 
...and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

That's Luke 6:16b. I find that fascinating. Judas hadn't betrayed Jesus, and wasn't planning on betraying Jesus, but the book was written after all the events, and Judas is introduced to us as the traitor. There was a Judas who wasn't a traitor, but we never meet him. "His righteous deeds will be forgotten." It's interesting how we always view things in retrospect by reference to what came later, not how they were at the time. I'm sure if you were at a wedding, and you knew that one spouse would cheat and it would end in a bitter divorce, or if you didn't just hope but knew for sure they would grow old together happy, or if you knew one would be dying young, everything would look very different depending on what it was you knew.

Not sure if I'm going anywhere with this.
posted by Aaron at 11:38 PM

 
There's Tears in Their Beers in Texas

Last year -- the Red Sox.

This year -- the White Sox.

Next year -- the Cubs.

The year after that --


posted by Aaron at 5:27 PM

 
Check These Out

I've let a small backlog of blogs I've meant to link to build up.

Most importantly, my pastor Matt Henry is now blogging at A Blog, Blogs, and Half a Blog. He's already put some great content up. But that's the worst blog name ever. Who came up with that?

Also the fascinating Medicine Box, and the Calvinist Gadfly.

And now, after all that bloggy goodness, something slightly creepy.
posted by Aaron at 4:03 PM