Evangelicals & Catholics Together

The late Chuck Colson and the late John Richard Neuhaus were very good friends.  Chuck Colson had been President's Nixon's attorney in the midst of Watergate, and went to prison because of some of his activities.  Around that time, he converted to Christianity (described in his book, Born Again), and later became a leading evangelical through his efforts in Prison Fellowship.

John Richard Neuhaus was a leading Lutheran minister who wrote a prominent book, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (1984). On September 8, 1990, John Richard Neuhaus was received into the Catholic Church, and a year later he was ordained a priest.  His decision threw his friend into perplexion. For a time, I confess, I was vexed over his decision. It took months for me to realize that he was the same man who was a brother to me as a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor. In fact, in some ways I learned to admire him all the more, because he had the courage to do something he believed in deeply, though it might cost him dearly in terms of support and relationships.  http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/januaryweb-only/103-51.0.html?start=2

In an article Colson wrote in 2009, he gave the lion's share of credit to the formation of the project, which became known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together, to Fr. John Richard Neuhaus, who had just passed away. By 1994, they, and other leading Evangelical and Catholic scholars, had not only formed this project, they issued its first statement, Evangelicals & Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium.

This statement built upon some of the earlier discussions between Pope John Paul II and Billy Graham.  The statement emphasized a unity between Catholics and Evangelicls, which, though imperfect, centered upon many essential agreed upon truths - and yet did not deny at the same time (in truth) some important disagreements between Evangelicals and Catholics. Still, it asserted, not all differences are authentic disagreements, nor need all disagreements divide. Differences and disagreements must be tested in disciplined and sustained conversation. Thus began an ongoing series of "disciplined and sustained conversation" that resulted in several statements by the ECT project, which I plan to review in this blog. (I have a Facebook Group dedicated to this purpose, http://www.facebook.com/groups/206783002679350/; If you want to join that Group, let me know.)

On a personal note, this effort is very important to me, because I was raised a Catholic, left that faith tradition in my early teens, and became a born-again Evangelical in my late teens.  I have lately been reconnecting with my Catholicism while retaining my Evangelicalism.  The efforts by Evangelicals and Catholics Together speaks to me on a deeply personal level.

Robert's Reasoning on Obamacare

Chief Justice John Roberts

Many still ask today, How did Chief Justice Roberts (plus 4) find the Obamacare mandate was actually a tax (and not a penalty)? Roberts cities Justices Story and Holmes - if a statute has two different interpretations, the Court must adopt the one that avoids unconstitutionality. He notes that the only consequence of not obeying the mandate is making an additional payment to the IRS when paying taxes. So in effect, the mandate is a tax hike on those not carrying health insurance. Robert says the law is not concerned whether this is a natural reading of the statute, only a "fairly possible" one.  It's a fair possible reading because:

• It looks like a tax because it is only imposed on those who make enough to be required to file taxes.

• The amount to be paid is determined by factors such as taxable income, number of dependents, and joint filing status - basically tax factors.

• The mandate is in the Internal Revenue Code.

• It's enforced by the IRS, which must assess and collect it "in the same manner as taxes."

• It generates revenues for the government.
(These were arguments previously made to say it was a tax when it was considered.) 

Roberts acknowledges Congress labelled this a penalty, and not a tax. He notes the Court has not always followed the label Congress gives an Act. So it did not consider the "Child Labor Tax" to fall with the Taxing Power. He cites a series of Supreme Court cases where Congressional Acts were treated as a tax, though they were variously called a license, a surcharge, and even a penalty. They all used a "functional approach" rather than following the label.

Roberts notes additional factors that indicates a tax, not a penalty:

• By statute, the amount due can never be more than the price of insurance.
• The mandate does not require intent questions like a penalty usually does.
• Though its IRS enforced, it does not allow criminal enforcement like a penalty usually does.
• If someone chooses to pay the penalty rather than comply, they have completely complied with the law, quite unlike a penalty.
  
  (I only summarized part of the full opinion - link below -  from Section III B - starting on page 31.)

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/NEWS/scotus_opinion_on_ACA_from_msnbc.com.pdf

Simply Jesus

I finished reading Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters by N.T. Wright.  In Simply Jesus, Wright presents Jesus not so simply.  Wright, a scholar, loves to present Jesus in the historical context he came into.  So he details for us the history of Israel up to that moment as well as the history of Rome in Palestine. He combines this with the desire of God, as expressed by Jesus, to bring his Kingdom, the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven, down to earth, to "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  He uses the analogy of the perfect storm to describe what happened when Jesus appeared in the midst of all this.  He writes his aim is to answer the question put to Jesus in  Jesus Christ Superstar, in the song, Superstar, "who are you - what did you sacrifice?"

N.T. Wright (Tom Wright)

N.T. Wright (often called Tom Wright) fills both roles as a theologian and as a pastor, somewhat rare, so his writing feels approachable.  An Anglican, he served as the Bishop of Durham from 2003 to 2010.  As an Anglican, he richly draws from church tradition.  A prolific writer, he has a wide audience, including a large following of evangelicals because he represents more conservative views than other scholars.  He is associated with Open Evangelicals, a school of thought in England which combines a traditional evangelical emphasis with a more inclusive approach towards culture and other theological points of view than taken by other evangelicals.

However, many evangelicals view him as highly controversial, mainly because of his association a group of scholars known as the "New Perspective on Paul," which includes E.P. Sanders and James D.G. Dunn (though in 2003, Wright put some distance between himself and them). Basically, these scholars want to reinterpret the way we understand Paul's writings.  In the most controversial aspect, they challenge the Reformation understanding of the doctrine of justification by faith, central to Protestant and Evangelical thought.  In 2009, Christianity Today ran a table to help understand the difference between Wright's view on justification and a more traditional evangelical view. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/special/justification_june09.pdf  I need to study this issue more myself before reaching any conclusions about it.  However, it does not make me feel completely at ease in reading Wright's writings.  I tend to approach it cautiously, even while I try to keep an open mind.

So I enjoyed most of Simply Jesus, though I felt somewhat like I was on watch duty.  He spoke of a "high-pressure system of conservative Christianity," which simply focuses on the salvation Jesus brings and tend to ignore what it means to bring the Kingdom of God on the earth.  While I have seen some conservative Christians with this focus, I have also read many other conservative orthodox Christians write about both salvation and the bringing forth of the Kingdom of God - who talk about the need to bring ethics and justice into everyday life.  To be fair, he also criticized the modernist view which tends to deny the miraculous.  However, as much as I appreciated many points in the book, I didn't feel it presented a new vision - something I hadn't seen in other writings, though Wright's manner of presentation and style of writing is compelling (even if he perhaps overused his analogy of the perfect storm).  Overall, it's an important book by an important author, written in a compelling manner, so I would recommend reading it.

The Confessions - Book XII

In Book XII, Augustine shifts focus from time to the creation itself. He carefully reviews the opening chapters of Genesis, and the many interpretations of it. For the most part, Augustine keeps an open mind to the many possibilities that many commentators derive from interpreting the verses describing the creation. He repeats one interpretation after another, and usually finds that each interpretation is possible. Augustine dismisses those who remain fixated upon one interpretation of the creation verses, when many are possible, though he finds a few are incompatible with Scripture.

He rejects that the Scripture teaches that God did not create everything. He equally rejects that God did not create everything out of nothing (in other words, out of pre-existing matter or energy) - that God created everything out of something that already existed. Augustine fully embraces creation ex-nihilio (Latin for out of nothing).

However, what really fascinates Augustine, is what follows in verse 2, which the King James Version translates from the Hebrew as the earth was without form, and void. For Augustine, this was the basic stuff God initially made, and which he then made everything else from - so that everything in the rest of the Genesis account is derived from this stuff.

Unfortunately, Augustine here spends a lot of time on the phrase "the heaven of heavens," which appears in some older translations in some passages in the Old Testament. However, the phrase is not an accurate translation of the original Hebrew phrase, and should not be accorded great weight. Augustine views this as a sort of perfection similar to the perfection Plato spoke about in forms. Most of Historic Christianity has not followed his thoughts on this, though it has followed him on other aspects of Genesis.

The main thought in Historic Christianity, which followed much of Augustinian thought about the Genesis account, though not all its nuances, is that God created everything out of nothing. However, Augustine wrote this part of his Confessions around A.D. 398. At this stage, he limited his discussion of Genesis to rejecting certain views he held before he became a Christian, and to consider several valid interpretations. Later in life, Augustine returned to more fully consider Genesis in a commentary he wrote on the 1st three chapters of Genesis, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (literal meaning the intent of the author), which he wrote between 401 and 415, comprised of 12 books (usually published today in 2 volumes). I don't have the time to summarize his extensive treatment here. However, clearly Augustine considered the creation account in Genesis critically important, briefly deals with it in his Confessions, and returns to deal with much more extensively later in his life.

On to Book XIII

Back to Book XI

Love Wins

I finished reading Love Wins (March 15, 2011) by Rob Bell. Until September of 2011, Rob Bell served as the pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church, a church he founded in Grandville, Michigan, just outside of Grand Rapids, which had grown to a 10,000 member church. He wrote several books before Love Wins, the first named Velvet Elvis in 2005. Time Magazine recently named him in their 2011 100 list as among the most influential persons in the world.

Though I think this book is important, and should be read, I didn't like it. For one thing,

I

don't like it

when people

write

like this.

Bell employs this device throughout this book to emphasize his points. It may seem trite, but it annoys me, and I think there are better ways to emphasize a point.

Another reason I didn't like it is throughout the book, and especially in the first chapter, he likes to pose many questions, one right after another in a series, sometimes 7 or more in a row. Now I like questions. But these are gotcha-like questions, and the author is clearly not interested in an answer (even if he could hear you), nor is he interested in carefully providing a careful consideration of the question, with possible answers, as it seems to me a writer should. Instead, the purpose seems to be to make you feel dumb for whatever position you might have held.

Many Christians are upset with the book, because they say he supports universalism (the belief that all will be saved). In an interview with Martin Bashir, Rob Bell said he doesn't, though he didn't make that clear in the book where he addresses the subject many times. It seems to me that if an author addresses a subject in a book as a major topic, and he disavows a position, he should state it clearly in that book, and not leave others guessing.

Mark Galli, the Senior Editor of Christianity Today, in his lengthy review of this book states, After reading the book, it's hard for me to believe that Bell doesn't espouse universalism, but to be fair, he never formally affirms such belief. I agree.

Bell fairly points out that universalism finds a tradition within Christianity. What he fails to state is that it is a tiny minority position - most traditions in Christianity reject it, and many have outright condemned it. It might be interesting if his book undertook a serious study of this position in church history. Instead, he doesn't seriously engage in the arguments against universalism, and glibly asserts that if all are not saved, that means God doesn't get his way, an assertion those opposed to universalism do not agree with, and have answered on numerous occasion before. However, the book raises an important issue within Christianity. At least Rob Bell is trying to discuss it in a relevant manner for our generation. I just wish Rob Bell had done a better job of addressing it, and I hope someone else will address this issue in a manner that is relevant to our generation.

The Confessions - Book XI

Augustine moves from exploring memory (in Book X) to exploring time by asking something most of us never consider - what is time? Augustine wants to explore this in part to answer some silly questions and objections that had been raised, such as - did God just do nothing before he created the world? Did God change his mind when he decided to create the world? - and other such questions (and challenges).

Augustine begins by admitting that questions about time involve difficult matters, and he prays to God for help. Part of the problem is God, who is eternal, exists outside of time - while we exist in time. So for us, it's difficult to understand existence where everything past, present, and future, exists now and always.

Another problem involves the existence of time. Augustine points out the future does not exist, we only anticipate it's coming. The past equally does not exist, we only have a memory (which he explored in Book X) of it. Only the present seems to exist, but it very quickly passes from future to past. Oddly, when we measure time, we measure something that does not exist - we only measure the time it takes for the future, which does not exist, to move to the past, which does not exist. While we think we might be measuring the present, in fact, we can't truly measure the present. Yet, while time may only exist in our mind, we cannot exist, or even think, without it, and so, we live with it because we must.

For Augustine, time is intimately connected with God, since God created time along with the universe - so that a contemplation of time should bring us to praising God - to be in awe and wonder of Him and His creation. For Augustine, the words "In the beginning . . . " in Genesis should be viewed as being for our benefit, since we are in time, and in a spritual sense (following Ambrose) as God being the source of our being, as well as the First Cause of everything. So for us, who are in time, the creation occurred at a point of time before everything else. For God, who is eternal, the creation occurred in eternity, even though, in part, God stepped into time, so to speak for our benefit, so that, from our perspective, the creation occurred in the beginning. Though Augustine finds this reasonable, he readily admits the mystery this involves which goes beyond our complete understanding.

On to Book XII

Back to Book X.

The Great Divorce

A friend and I recently discussed universalism in Christian history. He suggested I read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, which addressed the topic. I just finished it.  Lewis meant to contrast this work to that of William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which Blake told of a union of the two.

In this fantasy, the no-name narrator awakes in a bleak, lonely city. He eventually discovers it's hell. Though anyone can wish anything into existence, they keep wishing new houses further and further apart from each other because they can't stand each other.

He finds a bus stop, and gets in line. He discovers the bus takes you to the beautiful foothills of heaven (on sort of a holiday). There the passengers can move on to the high country of heaven (in which case hell becomes purgatory for them).
After they roam around some, shining ones come to meet them and urge them on to the high country. Each shining one is someone they knew in their past life who has chosen to come down from the high country to urge the passengers to repent and move up. The narrator gets to observe these interactions.

Usually, the passengers have clung to something they refuse to let go of which would enable them to move up. The interactions provide the most fascinating aspect of the book. Through the narrator, you hear just about all the excuses and justifications for sin and self-absorption that basically exists. Sadly, most of the passengers can't wait to get back to the bus and return to the bleak city (hell).

The shining one guide for the narrator, who explains what is going on, turns out to be George MacDonald (a 19th Cent. fiction author, poet, and Christian minister) whom Lewis considered his imagination mentor.  MacDonald promoted the possibility of universalism (God's love will save everyone). The book in part seems to be a way for Lewis to reconcile himself with some of MacDonald's views.

Many of the issues of heaven and hell, salvation, predestination and election take a different perspective as the guide attempts to put them in the perspective of eternity instead of our linear way of looking at time. In any event, the guide conveys the notion that those in the bleak town have chosen to live there, and will not likely want to give it up.

In the end, the narrator wakes up and realizes it was all a dream which reinforces what Lewis said in his preface that all this was a fantasy - a means of exploring these issues (not a theological essay - which some seem to confuse it with - Lewis always renounced any claims to being a theologian.)

The Silence

I watched "The Silence," (Tystnaden in Sweedish) a film by Ingman Bergman from 1963. It's the third film in what is known as Bergman's "Silence of God" trilogy, "Through a Glass Darkly," (1962) and "Winter Light" (1962). I haven't yet watched the first two films, but I understand that what is implied there is made very clear by the third film, there is no God in the world, and thus only silence remains from the cold, bleak universe.

The story focuses on two sisters, Ester (played by Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (played by Gunnel Lindblom). Ester represents the intellectual (who is dying), and Anna represents the sensual. Yet both are bereft and without hope in their own ways, and both resent each other.

It's unclear where they are, but wherever it is, it is bleak, cold, dark, and all out war is about to break out, though they stay in a largely vacant hotel, where the only other guests seems to be a troupe of performing dwarfs, who are much more alive than the two sisters, though the dwarfs are despised in the social order and only tolerated at the theater.

Anna's very young son, Johan (about 9), serves as the only connection between the two sisters, the dwarfs, and the rest of the oblique, yet plush, hotel. (The camera angles there give a sense of alienation.) He is the only basis for an irrational hope in an irrational world.

It's quite clear that in a silent, godless universe, there's no basis for morality, and many in a 1963 were shocked by some of what goes on in the film. There's also no love, only sex, except for love for Johan, who provides the only real connection left between the two sisters, again providing the irrational hope in an irrational world.

Most find the film deeply disturbing, which is exactly what Bergman hoped to convey, and mainly why it is considered a great film. Bergman wants to disturb complacency with a realistic view of a nihilistic universe. However, in providing a sympathetic, curious, and mostly innocent child, Bergman points to an existentialist hope for meaning, hope, and love, though it is in the area of non-reason. Bergman's later works expanded on this existentialist hope.

(I previously posted on another Bergman film, "Hour of the Wolf.")

The Confessions - Book X

Book X marks a major division in the Confessions, since Austine ends his autobiography in Book IX. Augustine begins a journey into the mind and the soul.

He journeys into the mind by exploring memory. Augustine wonders how the memory holds so much, and can recall things and events not before us with such vividness at times that we can almost feel, touch, smell, hear, and even see it. Augustine cannot grasp the vastness of this storehouse, which means his mind cannot fully know itself, and "I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am."

Augustine goes on to examine the different kinds of memories, how they were formed from our senses, and ponders how our mind knows the external world through our senses, and then process those experiences and stores them in our memory. Part of this goes into epistemology - that part of philosophy that explores the basis for knowledge (how we know we know). Augustine wonders how we know about things we forgot about, as well as how we recognize things we haven't yet experiened. This delves into a-priori knowledge (knowledge before experience). Most importantly, Augustine explores how we know or recognize God before or without sensory experience.

It's questions and explorations like this that makes Augustine so read by so many, Christians and non-Christians alike.

From here, Augustine goes on to relate his search for God, and an examination of himself before God, a journey into his soul. He carefully considers what John broadly describes as the three main sins that encompases everything in the world, "the lust of the flesh. and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (KJV - see other translations for alternative )." As Augustine carefully examines each area in his life, he confesses he is full of sin, especially in the pride of life, since he often seeks the praises of others, and places that above seeking the approval of God.

Augustine concludes that he can find no safe place for his soul except in God.

Onto Book XI

Back to Book IX

The Shack

A friend recommended The Shack to me, not because he agreed with it, but because he found it thought provoking. I had heard about it from others, and some of what I heard was a bit discomforting, though they often highly praised it. I decided to read it for myself, especially upon hearing it had sold somewhere between 10 and 15 million copies.

William Paul Young (who goes by Paul) wrote The Shack, his first published book, as a fiction. However, those who told me something about it tended to treat it as something between a theological work or a true story. Though the sales figures show many love this book, many have attacked it as heretical, again treating it as a theological work rather than as a fiction.

Paul grew up as a missionary kid in West Papua New Guinea. There he suffered sexual abuse at school by members of the New Guinea tribe they lived among. His father verbally abused him, and he was emotionally distant from both his parents. Throughout his life, close friends and relatives died unexpectedly, often young. He later cheated on his wife, Kim. To remedy the adultery, Kim said he had to face every awful thing in his life.

Young initially wrote The Shack for his six children as a way to explain his understanding about God and how God helped heal his inner hurts. He gave some extra copies to friends who urged him to get it published. Two friends, Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings, both writers, collaborated with him to rewrite the book. They sent it to many publishers who all rejected it, so they formed a new company, Windblown Media, and self-published it.

In the story, Mack, the central character, goes, at God's invitation, back to the place of his deepest hurt, the shack where a serial child killer murdered his 6 year old daughter, Missy. When he arrives, he finds that God the Father appears to him as an African-American woman (Papa), God the Son appears to him as a Middle Eastern man (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit appears to him as an Asian woman (Sarayu). Papa clarifies he chose this appearance for now to get beyond Mack's stereotypical pictures of him (he later takes the appearance of a man). They spend a weekend (or do they?) in discussion with Mack, sometimes all together - and sometimes one on one, sometimes in the Shack and sometimes outside near the Shack (one evening, Mack lays with Jesus on a dock staring up at the stars talking away). During that time, they explain to Mack who they are, what they want, but most importantly, they help Mack with the hurt and anger about Missy's murder, especially with his anger at God about it.

In a fiction, you can explore what ifs - it doesn't have to be true. You can explore something like, "what if the Trinity appeared to me in a shack - how would they appear to me?" You can explore different theological positions - they don't have to be true. You can even advance a message (usually called a theme in literature). However, good fiction usually advances the theme by relating the actions of characters rather than primarily by dialogue. And good fiction usually avoids making a character into a mere mouthpiece for the author.

A problem I have with The Shack is that the Trinity seems to mostly become a mouthpiece for expressing Paul Young's theology. While I thought some of it was spot on (especially about God's love and His desire to heal us), other aspects unabashedly contradict answers to the same questions orthodox Christianity carefully developed from Scripture to the same questions over two millennia. This is likely why Young has come under fire from many Christians. At the same time, many love his book, since many identify with the hurt place he is writing from, and the way he portrays God responding to that hurt.

Young expresses a definite theology. He attended Canadian Bible College and graduated from Warner Pacific College with a degree in religion. He attended (but did not complete) seminary, and pastored a church for a time. His favorite author is Jacque Ellul, who was heavily influenced by Karl Barth - a prominent neo-orthodox theologian. He made it clear in interviews that he has given up on the church, his seminary training, and what he would view as traditional Christianity. Most disturbing, Young often had the Trinity put the views they expressed above what the Scripture said.

Yet in many ways, I enjoyed reading The Shack, even if I didn't always agree with the theological views Young expressed through his Trinity characters. Because the book reflected the very real process Paul went through to seek healing from all his hurts, and because he initially wrote to communicate this to his children, there are many parts of the book that come across as deeply personal and very touching.