Category — History

Read this fabulous book over the weekend. It was edited by the president of my alma mater, Joseph Pipa, and contains papers by many of my professors, including Dr. Morton Smith. It is a scholarly, warm-hearted, and rounded treatment. The history of the issue within American Presbyterian circles, the Westminster divines’ take on things, the frame-work hypothesis, discourse analysis, and the future of ecclesiastic discussion are each presented and addressed. Men from all sides of the issue are given a chance to speak for themselves. Dr. Smith’s appeal for open discussion is powerful, Hall’s chapter on the Westminster divines is conclusive, and the chapter on the James Woodrow case is fascinating. A great read.

The conclusion? The naive reading of Genesis one is the correct reading. My eight year old daughter knew that, but it is nice to have the confirmation.

And the second commandment of the Teaching; You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, Exodus 20:13-14 you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, Exodus 20:15 you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten. You shall not covet the things of your neighbour, Exodus 20:17 you shall not forswear yourself, Matthew 5:34 you shall not bear false witness, Exodus 20:16 you shall not speak evil, you shall bear no grudge. You shall not be double-minded nor double-tongued; for to be double-tongued is a snare of death. Your speech shall not be false, nor empty, but fulfilled by deed. You shall not be covetous, nor rapacious, nor a hypocrite, nor evil disposed, nor haughty. You shall not take evil counsel against your neighbour. You shall not hate any man; but some you shall reprove, and concerning some you shall pray, and some you shall love more than your own life.
— Didache, Chapter 2

I love how direct and unqualified this is. Lord, make me more naive, as a child. Make me shrewd and innocent, make me tremble and rejoice. I hate this body of death. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Maranatha…

One of the reasons for the Reformation, one that does not get the press it deserves, is the break with a ground-motive that was and is at odds with the Biblical motive of Creation-Fall-Redemption. The reigning spiritual structure of the years preceding the Reformation was expressed in the writings of Thomas Aquinas — the Nature-Grace synthesis, the child of the marriage between Hellenic and Biblical notions. The creeping specter of the synthesizing attitude is still around today. It means the end of Protestantism if it continues.

It is a fascinating fact of church history that the Eastern branch of the church has avoided this particular pitfall that has infected the Western. The Eastern theologians have put a bar at the door of Being and said, “None shall enter”. Their apophatic methodology has saved them from much of the Hellenic mistakes found in the West. This has laid them open, perhaps mistakenly, to the charge of mysticism, but the West’s rationalism has been and continues to be it’s Achilles heel — “You shall be like God” is a temptation that comes in all sorts of forms.

Semper reformanda.

The sorrows of those who have bartered for another god will be multiplied;
I shall not pour out their drink offerings of blood,
Nor will I take their names upon my lips.

The LORD is the portion of my inheritance and my cup;
You support my lot.
The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.
— Psalm 16:4-6

The bourgeoisie versus the aristocrats or the shop window and the sitting-room versus the throne room.

“Nenikekas Galilaie”. — Julian the Apostate

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. — 2 Peter 2:1

“Furthermore, they have even sent for men who come from afar, to whom a messenger was sent; and lo, they came—for whom you bathed, painted your eyes and decorated yourselves with ornaments; and you sat on a splendid couch with a table arranged before it on which you had set My incense and My oil. The sound of a carefree multitude was with her; and drunkards were brought from the wilderness with men of the common sort. And they put bracelets on the hands of the women and beautiful crowns on their heads”.
— Ezekiel 21:40-42

Outsiders with new ideas are brought in, Holy things are treated as common and the common are given authority.

The pomo rejects the meaning in the text, because they reject authorial intent. The Christian accepts the meaning in the text, and sometimes in spite of authorial intent.

“…let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master; and while he recognizes and acknowledges the truth, even in their religious literature, let him reject the figments of superstition, and let him grieve over and avoid men who, when they knew God, glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things”.
- Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book II

Came across a book entitled “The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written” by Martin Seymour-Smith. Like Mortimer Adler, he has created a list. Unlike Adler, he bases it on the general cultural influence of a book. Adler aimed at creating a prophylactic against illiteracy in the West. “Greatness” was an a priori assumption on Adler’s part, an “ought” built into his worldview. Seymour-Smith takes the after-the-fact route. There is over-lap between the two lists, but Seymour-Smith includes books that were actually read by people, not just what should be read.

He includes a number of mediaeval and 20th century books that Adler does not, such as Maimonides, Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Chomsky’s “Syntactic Structures” and Von Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”. Arguably, these books have had a deep influence on the West.

As a student of Western History and Worldview, I am thinking that Seymour-Smith may be on the right track. Dismissing the empirical reality of what shaped the West for an ideal of what should have can lead to all sorts of distortions and misunderstanding. Tone-deafness is a hallmark of some parts of Christendom.

I appreciate Adler’s work, agree with his pedagogical ideal, and have benefited greatly from following his plan — back in ‘96 I began to work through his list, and finished the better part of it. But, Seymour-Smith’s approach could help to fill in the blanks of the reality of the West and its trajectory.

“We will begin with the creation of the world and with God its maker, for the first fact you must grasp is this: the renewal of the creation has been wrought by the self-same Word who made it in the beginning…

In order to affect this re-creation, however, He had first to do away with death and corruption. Therefore He assumed a human body, in order that in it death might once for all be destroyed, and that men might be renewed according to the image”.
— Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 1:1, 3:13

“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day”.
— 2 Corinthians 4:16

What is apparent is that God does not simply erase us and start over, but remakes what is essentially new through the fall into something old again. God is a revivalist.

“Of the music of the universe, some is characteristic of the elements, some of the planets, some of the season: of the elements in their mass, number, and volume; of the planets in their situation, motion, and nature; of the season in days (in the alternation of day and night), in months (in the waxing and waning of the moons), and in years (in the succession of spring, summer, autumn, and winter).”
— Hugh of St. Victor