Mark Horne

Yesterday was the feast day of St. Cecilia, the virgin and martyr who died at the hands of the Romans 1,800 years ago. For the crime of being a Christian, she was beheaded, and has been venerated as the patron saint of music by both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches ever since.

Unfortunately in America, this feast in honor of an ancient martyr who gave her life as a witness to God was mostly ignored in favor of the quasi-religious holiday created by politicians known as “Thanksgiving.” During this holiday, people mostly watch football and stuff their faces with turkey while possibly taking a minute to pay lip service to the bland little American god that is more of a political prop than a deity.

Read the rest at The Anti-Independence Day.  Note I think the veneration of martyrs is forbidden by Scripture as recognized by Protestants.  But memorial feast are just fine and Cecilia vastly preferable. Hopefully more Protestants will awaken to the idolatry of Statism soon.

Today, in the U.S., there are more than 1.2 million nonprofit organizations. In dollar terms alone, the nonprofit sector annually generates more than $670 billion, or nine percent of the U.S. Gross National Product. More than twelve million Americans are employed by nonprofits. Because the sector is so large and diverse in mission, scope and ability, but also has such an impact on the life of the nation, there are always going to be concerns about its performance, governance, influence, intentions and fiscal responsibility. That’s normal. Even our founding fathers were wary of the phenomenal growth of the citizens associations that were emerging in the new republic. George Washington was among those who feared that nongovernmental organizations would become too powerful, stating, in his 1796 farewell address to Congress that “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men” could use these associations to “subvert the power of the people.”

Happily, though, George Washington’s fears have not proved out. With a few notable exceptions, nonprofit organizations, including foundations, have gone about their work with integrity, honesty, balanced judgment and an overriding concern for doing the right thing and for being scrupulously ethical in all their dealings with the public, the media, the government and with each other.

via The 2002-2003 annual report of the Carnegie Corporation, p. 31 (PDF). Emphasis is mine. I’m impressed they acknowledge Washington’s observation.  Hide in plain sight and all that. I’m guessing the notable exceptions are the Cato Institute and Ron Paul’s campaign.

The evidence of scientific dishonesty supplied by these communications is so copious it’s hard to know where to begin an attempt to describe them. Many of the e-mails brazenly discuss the manipulation of scientific data either to provide the appearance of greater support for global warming science or to undermine the claims of skeptics. For example, CRU scholar Timothy J. Osborn explicitly describes how data can be reconfigured so that evidence of an apparent cooling period disappears. His colleague Tom Wigley discusses recasting the data on sea-surface temperatures so that the results seem considerably warmer but also scientifically plausible. The director of CRU, Phil Jones, brags about his use of eminent climatologist Michael Mann’s “Nature trick” which deliberately confuses scientific data to “hide the decline” in current temperatures.

Other e-mails openly encourage the suppression of data that could prove difficult to repudiate. Michael Mann provides strategic advice on how to deal with a journal, Geophysical Research Letters, that seems to be open to publishing views that dissent from climate orthodoxy. In an e-mail to Phil Jones, Mann also expresses his desire to “contain” the very inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period, so important in overthrowing Mann’s classic “Hockey Stick” model of anthropogenic warming, even though he admits they don’t have an appropriate model to do that legitimately.

Public spokesmen for the global warming agenda constantly claim a near-universal consensus within the scientific community supporting their position, but these private exchanges often reveal serious personal reservations regarding what they really know and how confident they are in the statistical models they rely upon. In an e-mail to several prominent climate scientists (including Mann and Jones), Kevin E. Trenberth, one of the leading contributors to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, offers this confession: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.” In another e-mail, Trenberth admits climatologists have a limited understanding of where our energy ultimately goes, what the effects of cloud formation might have on the entire issue, and expresses doubts about the efficacy of geoengineering to provide any substantive relief, again saying that the gaps in the scientific knowledge amount to “a travesty.” All of this a far cry from the strident claims about unimpeachable evidence and demonstrable theory that usually emanates from these quarters.

Perhaps the most damning e-mails concern CRU deputy director Keith Briffa’s analysis of the diameter of tree rings in Yamal, Siberia. That research is a major evidentiary pillar in support of twentieth-century global warming and it helped resurrect Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick” graph of global warming. The scientist largely responsible for challenging Mann’s work, Steve McIntyre, turned his attention to Briffa’s resurrection of it and accused him of cherry-picking samples that would confirm his politically desirable hypothesis.

The response to McIntyre’s work revealed in the CRU e-mails shows a breathtaking pattern of ideological rigidity and academic fraudulence that is simultaneously egregious and casually self-satisfied. First, it becomes clear that the global warming crowd, in particular Mann and Osborn, are quick to dismiss McIntyre’s work as “not legitimate science” even before reviewing his studies. Their initial reflex is not to scrutinize McIntyre’s analysis or to reconsider their own entrenched positions but rather to respond with a kind of angry, territorial protectiveness. Then they collectively identify someone who could, in fact, “shed light on McIntyre’s criticisms of Yamal” but choose not to contact him because he “can be rather a loose cannon.” Another scientist who might have helped clarify the Yamal situation is dismissed by Mann for being “not as predictable as we’d like.” Unquestioning loyalty to a political platform is understood to be the precondition of scientific authenticity.

Even worse, in response to the charge that Briffa’s work is difficult to verify because he withholds key data from the published study, Tom Wigley actually issues a justification of the practice:

And the issue of withholding data is still a hot potato, one that affects both you [Phil Jones] and Keith [Briffa] (and Mann). Yes, there are reasons — but many good scientists appear to be unsympathetic to these. The trouble here is that withholding data looks like hiding something, and hiding means (in some eyes) that it is bogus science that is being hidden.

Wigley provides no discussion at all regarding what would count as an appropriate reason for concealing data, or what benefit this could bring to the scientific community at large. One is left to wonder if the justification for hiding information is political rather than scientific. Mann seems unconcerned that any of these issues will resonate with a friendly media: “Fortunately,” he wrote to a New York Times reporter, “the prestige press doesn’t fall for this sort of stuff, right?”

Read the whole inconvenient truth at The New Atlantis » The Climate E-mails and the Politics of Science.

Looking at this question and the discussion, I find it interesting that no one points out that Paul explicitly teaches that the work of Christ on the cross was to unite Jew and Gentile and reconcile to God as one, and that the new thing about the Gospel declaration is that there is one commonwealth or Church an no longer any Jew/Gentile distinction.

Thus:

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles— assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.

Thus reads Ephesians 2 and 3.  But there is more.  Just as in Romans 3.29, Paul argues from monotheism (”Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also”), so in Ephesians 3 Paul goes on to glory in monotheism especially recalling the language of God’s call on Abraham.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named…

Compare to Genesis 12.1-3

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Of course, none of this is to deny that boasting in works is abhorrent; and Wright certainly ever makes such a denial.  As I wrote here:

there is plenty of reason why Paul would teach the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith alone in the context of arguing against nationalistic-covenant pride. For example:

Hear, O Israel! You are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, “Who can stand before the sons of Anak?” Know therefore today that it is the LORD your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that you may drive them out and destroy them quickly, just as the LORD has spoken to you. Do not say in your heart when the LORD your God has driven them out before you, “Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,” but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people (Deuteronomy 9.1-6).

Now here we have a statement that condemns self-righteous nationalistic pride and applies (and has been applied by Reformed preachers for centuries) to all forms of self-righteousness. Thus (1) the Bible does condemn merit theology in this passage and many others whether or not it was a widespread phenomenon that Paul had to deal with; and (2) Paul might well have found reason to mention the theology of grace found in passages like Deuteronomy 9.1-6 even if there were no merit legalists to refute.

Or to look at this another way, there are lots of passages that support the theology of grace of the Reformation in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. For example:

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1.26-31)Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that in us you might learn not to exceed what is written, in order that no one of you might become arrogant in behalf of one against the other. For who regards you as superior? And what do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? (4.6-7)

You know that when you were Gentiles, you were led astray to the dumb idols, however you were led. Therefore I make known to you, that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is accursed”; and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit (12.2-3).

Now, one can simply read through this letter to see that some in the Corinthian Church believed they were especially spiritual and above the “weak” around them. Paul rebukes their boasting and emphasizes Christ crucified, just as he does in Galatians (c.f. First Corinthians 1.17, 23; 2.2; Galatians 2.20; 3.1; 5.24; 6.14). Furthermore, in both cases he appeals to their baptismal identity to deny the divisions they are maintaining (c.f. First Corinthians 12.12-13; Galatians 3.26-29). Yet, despite these striking similarities, no one has ever found it necessary to actually hypothesize a form of merit legalism behind the boasting of the Corinthian elite–even though Paul’s critique can be, and often is, used as a refutation of merit legalism.

So in the case of First Corinthians, Reformed pastors don’t seem to need merit legalists to exist as Paul’s opponents in order to derive and defend the doctrines of grace against more recent merit theologies. Why could not the same hold, in principle, for Galatians or Romans?

(read the rest)

For further reading on Ephesians 3, see my sermon.  Also, here’s my Quickie intro to NPP.

An additional post has appeared.

When people engaged in slander and libel know what they are doing, then to salve their own consciences and put up a fig leaf between themselves and Jesus, they try to ascribe the confusion they are causing to their victims. One favorite saying is to say that analyzing FV is like “trying to nail jello to the wall.” Other than their own will to crucify, no truth is in this description, but rather quite the opposite.

There is a reason all the forums for passing sentence have been quite distant from any forum where the accused are permitted to speak in their own defense.

Jesus says, “And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.”

Please read the following two sentences:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

You have now read what is commonly known as “The Great Commission,” which Matthew records a Jesus’ command and promise to his disciples (translated from the Greek manuscripts in the English Standard Version).

Please read this and contemplate the implications, because some people evidently never have.

And then go read the Manhattan Declaration and, if you are a disciple of Jesus, consider signing it.

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes – from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Read the rest at: Press Kit – Manhattan Declaration Newsroom – DeMossNews.com.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it. – H.L. Mencken

This is also an important key to understanding church history.  The Papal party claimed they were protecting the Church from the heresy of Luther when in fact they were pushing forward their own agenda and power.

Van Til (who was probably right or closer to the truth on the issue) was obviously engaged in a personal power play against Gordon Clark (of whom I am no fan) when he made a court case out of his epistemological disagreements.  This was a chance to make the OPC a Van-Til-only club.

And the lies spread about the so-called “Federal Vision” are no different.

Not really.  Trying to outwit enemies and those who would rather trust them than think for themselves is too time consuming.  But if you want to revisit the issue, a pastor with more patience than I possess posted 13 interactions in July 2009.  He doesn’t say anything that is not obvious to anyone who cared to look at the issues without having already condemned the innocent.  But since that is a rare attitude, his work is valuable.

Also, he’s recently posted two more in the series here and here.

As I mentioned here, I’m reading Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751 (Puffin Classics). And I am loving it.  I have even put off spending time researching the politics of the day in Scotland that you really need to know to figure out what is going on.  Maybe I’ll re-read it after I do that.

But I really just want to post this statement.  The story is told in first person and sometimes puts me in mind of some private-eye crime-thrillers I have loved (or Frank Miller’s Dark Knight or Batman: Year One; which was the original reason I ever read Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett).  I won’t spoil it by giving context

I’ve seen wicked men and fools, a great may of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.

By the way, remember that horrible cartoon “version” of Treasure Island?  Well, Joss Whedon’s verse would be a perfect–perfect!–setting for a scifi version of Kidnapped.

Speaking of which, let’s post another quotation I’ve been obsessing over lately.

Sure as I know anything, I know this – they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.

Usual (not sure what you allow yourself to watch/read) disclaimers for my endorsements, by the way.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

via Passage: Eph 1.15-23 (ESV Bible Online).

When we’re underpaid, or in the midst of a horrible crises with our spouses, or subject to taskmasters at home or at school, or sick, or tired, or beaten down by something else, it is really hard to believe the Gospel–that God has raised us up in Jesus and that we rule the universe at God’s right hand–that we’ve been exalted above “above all rule and authority and power and dominion” because we are the fullness of him who fills all things and under whose feet all things have been subdued.

Paul expects that to be a problem.  He thinks that he needs to pray regularly that you really believe what you have and what has happened in history.  This is a pretty generic letter revealing, I think, Paul’s standard prayer concern.

So if you’re struggling with the discrepancy, know that the Spirit is working.  But if you’re not, you need to ask if your expectations are low.  Claiming the world has been made new, and that it is now ruled by the exalted Human, is supposed to make us wonder about the discrepancy between what we see and what the Gospel tells us.  Paul said he never stopped praying that believers would be given better “eyes” to see the truth.

So, because I obviously have a deep need to procrastinate (I don’t even know what I’m procrastinating about, but I must be procrastination.  That is the only possible explanation), I meandsurfed over here and am now quite horrified at how much confusion can be mixed up on one place.

Of course, there is a lot to agree with too, but that only makes the essay all the more confusing.  His comment on Romans 8.3 that jumped out at me:

The phrase “for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” I interpret as being made a sin offering and made satisfaction for sin.

So basically when a passage support substitutionary atonement, we re-write the passage.  Here is Romans 8.3 in the ESV and notice the portion I highlight:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,

And here it is in the NASB, notice again what I highlight.

For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh

Our Roman Catholic champion had read somewhere that something in Romans 8.3 meant that Jesus was made as a sin offering.  Since he already “knew” that sacrifices were not about substitutionary atonement (if he had inserted “only,” “merely,” and maybe even “mainly” he would have been more correct but he would have lost his polemic), he felt he could simply take the entire passage and summarily draft it to his side.

But the two words “concerning sin,” which scholars believe are shorthand for “as a sin offering” (thus the NASB) are not the only two words in the passage.  In the judicial execution of Jesus God passed judicial condemnation on sin.  This should have been an opportunity for our friend to reconsider his position, but that wasn’t the point of the essay.

Which brings us to what is included about Romans 3.24-25:

and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

The writer deal with this passage as best he can, and truly does a better than with Romans 8.3.  He never mentions this passage.  He never mentions the word “propitiation” in an essay that is supposed to refute the substitutionary atonement.

God has wrath on sin.  His righteousness is in question because of his forbearance of sins that have been committed and that he has passed over (Exodus 12?).  What happened to vindicate God’s righteousness in not punishing these sins?  It was that Jesus was displayed publicly as a propitiation, an appeasement of God’s wrath.

As the (aptly named) N. T. Wright has written in defending the use of the word “propitiation” in English translations in Romans 4:

The idea of punishment as part of atonement is itself deeply controversial; horrified rejection of the mere suggestion has led on the part of some to an unwillingness to discern any reference to Isaiah 40-55 in Paul. But it is exactly that idea that Paul states, clearly and unambiguously, in Romans 8:3, when he says that God ‘condemned sin in the flesh’—i.e. the flesh of Jesus. Dealing with wrath or punishment is propitiation; with sin, expiation. You propitiate a person who is angry, you expiate a sin, crime (N. T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 475-476).

In fact, I’ll end this post with another quotation from one of Wright’s popular works, and ask readers whether something simple and straightforward is suffering unnecessary complications in order to be made problematic.

It was, first and foremost, a Passover meal. Luke has told us all along that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to “accomplish his Exodus” (9.31). he has come to do for Israel and the whole world what God did through Moses and Aaron in the first Exodus. When the powers of evil that were enslaving God’s people were at their worst, God acted to judge Egypt and save Israel. And the sign and means of both judgment and rescue was the Passover: the angel of death struck down the firstborn of all Egypt, but spared Israel as the firstborn of God, “passing over” their houses because of the blood of the lamb on the doorposts (Exodus 12). Now the judgment that had hung over Israel and Jerusalem, the judgment Jesus had spoken of so often, was to be meted out; and Jesus would deliver his people by taking its force upon himself. His own death would enable his people to escape…Luke describe the event in such a way that we can hardly miss the point. Barabbas is guilty of some of the crimes of which Jesus, though innocent, is charged: stirring up the people, leading a rebellion… Jesus ends up dying the death appropriate for the violent rebel. He predicted he would be “reckoned with the lawless” (22.37), and it has happened all too soon… [T]his is in fact the climax of the whole gospel. This is the point for which Luke has been preparing us all along. All sinners, all rebels, all the human race are invited to see themselves in the figure of Barabbas; and, as we do so, we discover in this story that Jesus comes to take our place, under condemnation for sins and wickedness great and small. In the strange justice of God, which overrules the unjust “justice” of Rome and every human system, God’s mercy reaches out where human mercy could not, not only sharing, but in this case substituting for, the sinner’s fate (Luke22.1-3; 23.13-26; Luke for Everyone, 262, 279, 280; emphasis added).

If this be blasphemy, make the most of it.  Athanasius was accused of entangling God’s nature in human muck.  Fearing to allow the Son of God to join us under the wrath of God strikes me as the same false fastidiousness about keeping God pure and undefiled.  He never sinned but he never worried about getting dirty, and he’s not flattered when we take it upon ourselves to try to clean him up.

I’d rather worship than cringe.

If it [WWII] had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring should have been seized and used against Sauron; he should not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dur would not have been destroyed but occupied.  Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth.  In that conflict, both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.

So were the Hobbits becoming identified with others in Tolkien’s mind at this point?  Did Chalmers Johnson read Tolkien?

“I first went to greet Hrothgar in his ring-hall, where Healfdene’s kinsman promptly assigned me a seat by his son and heir once my purpose was made plain to him. The company was joyous; never in my life have I heard under heaven’s vault such merriment of men over mead in the hall! The noble queen, the pledge of peace between nations, cheered the young clansmen by giving golden clasps to various ones before she sought her seat. Hrothgar’s daughter betimes carried the ale-cup to the princes in turn—I heard these hall-companions say when she offered carvings of gold to the warriors that her name was Freawaru. The gold-adorned maiden is pledged to the merry son of Froda. This seems sagacious to the keeper of the kingdom, that friend of the Scyldings: he deems it wise to wed the woman and ward off a massive blood-feud. But seldom does the slaughtering spear sleep for long, even though the bride is fair!

“The Heathobard lord will not well like it when he and all his liegemen see a Danish thane in that stalwart crowd accompany the lady in their hall, and upon him the ancient heirlooms gleam; hard and ring-covered, they are Heathobard’s treasure—weapons that they once wielded well until they lost loyal liegemen and their own lives in the game of battle. Then, while drinking ale, some old spear-fighter will gaze upon this heirloom and think of spear-brought death—he is somber and his heart is heavy—and he tries the temper and prods the soul of the young hero, awakening war-hate with words like these:

“ ‘Can’t you, my comrade, recognize that sword which your father carried in his final battle while wearing his helmet, when the Danes killed him, and the stout Scyldings took the field after the carnage and Withergild’s death? Now, the son of one of those murdering Danes, proud of the loot, walks into our hall and boasts of the slaughter; he’s wearing the treasure which you by right ought to own!’

“So he urges and goads him at every turn with galling words until the time comes that Freawaru’s thane must sleep in his blood, losing his life to sword-bite for his father’s deed. But the liegeman flies away, alive, to the land he knows. And thus the princes’ oaths on both sides would be broken when Ingeld’s breast swells with war-hatred, and the love for his wife grows cooler after those billows of care. So I do not highly esteem the Heathobard’s loyalty, nor do I deem their alliance with the Danes sincere or their friendship firm.

via Beowulf Text – Chapter XVIII.

So I’ve been listening to Seamus’ translation of Beowulf in audio (except I fell asleep last night and missed the beginning of the conflict with the Mother) and heard this aside (?) this morning.

It makes sense to deal with the social divisions of tribe and clan by intermarriage.  It even seems nice to see women as ambassadors of  peace, though Beowulf’s doubts that they are really enough make me worry.

Of course, ultimately it did work.  Virtually all Western Europe and more became one extended family of rulers.  But that explains the myth of the peasant wife for the king.  The ruled feel like they need to find a way to make peace with the tribe of rulers.  The locals feel that they are being snubbed for the sake of some foreign princess somewhere.

And, if a ruler does not really love his people, then a family spat with an in-law isn’t really going to be any more peaceful than a blood feud.  Unless he leads his men, he is more or less playing chess with their lives.

Not sure where this was going.  I just did not expect to encounter this in Beowulf and it has my mind buzzing a bit.

POSTSCRIPT: I said it “seems nice to see woman as ambassadors of peace.” Of course, the idea of daughters being pawns in realpolitik doesn’t seem nice at all.  I meant to mention that possibility and register my disgust.  Now I have.

It has occurred to me that this post is not as clear as it could be.

By “support” I’m referring to cheerful promotion, to advocating a candidate as on “our side” etc.

File this under Another Problem With Democracy.  Everyone says that we’re supposed to be realistic.  We’re supposed to not be perfectionists.  Blah, blah, blah.  One might think that such exhortations mean that we are supposed to keep our heads about us and, well, be realistic and not be perfectionists.  I’m sure many do mean that.

But for some it seems to mean the opposite and worse.  It means that we should take a look at a list of realistic candidates, without demanding perfection…. and then jump head-first into the fantasy world in which this candidate, chosen so realistically, is now the perfect messiah, the Good Guy, the Champion of Right.

I have to confess that I really liked the ant-Bush attitude that in the first few years of this century because I thought it would end this sort of thing.  I thought people’s anger at the Bush regime was a cynicism and opposition to politics.  But it wasn’t.  Demonizing Bush was simply an urge to find a fresh, young, god to control The Machinery Of Heaven.  And even now, when we have even less excuse for our war than before, and even more fiscal insanity (exponentially more) than before, Obama continues to be worshiped and professing Christians decorate the bodies of their young children with his beautific face on their clothing.

Gag.

It is all pagan worship and it is all headed toward human sacrifice.  The first sacrifice is one’s own brain, and the rest follows naturally and more literally.

I never thought I would say this so soon, but Bush’s sins aren’t an excuse anymore.

Anyway, saying I can’t “support” someone doesn’t mean that he or she isn’t worth voting for.  It just means there is not much to get excited about.  Which, in our modern political context, virtually makes you part of the opposition.

It seems to me that there is a model of reality prevalent in the way we think  The model involves minds controlling mechanisms that happen to be bodies.  One’s mind is the person sitting at the computer controlling the shooter in the video game with a mouse aiming a gun and fingers on w, a, s, d to control movement.  One’s mind is the person holding the controller flying the radio controlled plane.

I remember movies in biology class in which the brain was illustrated as a cartoon man in a lab coat watching on a screen what the eyes of the body can see and receiving messages from the other receptors (senses).  We’re all little people driving robots according to this model.

And language is explained in a similar model.  There is a chart of equations somewhere which has certain sounds lined up with certain meaning so that the brain is constantly looking at the chart to match the perceptions with meanings.

In how many ways has this baseless model for human nature contaminated Christian teaching?

Sacraments come to mind.  The role of ceremonies for good or ill more generally would also be affected.  The importance of community, the Church, and the role of human relationships.  For on this model the primary reality is complete isolation.

One of the people, perhaps the most important person, who has begun to make me begin to see this is Dr. Peter Leithart.  Perhaps the best place to see him tackle the problem most directly is in his little book, Against Christianity, but I started back with his The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church, which is very good despite being dated.  The Baptized Body is also quite relevant.  There are many other books he has written that are also very valuable.  I’m sorry to say I haven’t been able to keep up with all of them.

Of course, quite appropriately, Peter (sorry, I can’t continue to refer to him by his last name) is not just about ideas.  His writings encompass literature, exegesis, Bible commentaries, and also fiction.  Anyone who knows him and his family knows they have a great teacher, even if he was to never speak, as to what it means to be a godly husband or father.

Dr. Leithart is a great gift to the Church.  I’m thankful I have had the privilege of encountering him.  Just felt I should mention that right now.  May God never forget him.

Back to work.

(And, yeah, this post did kind of change directions.  Sorry.)

POSTSCRIPT: Many of Peter’s books are free online

So I’m reading Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751 (Puffin Classics). And it occurs to me that Robert Louis Stevenson knew what he was doing naming the ship Covenant–the ship where David thought he was invited by a friend.  There are all sorts of ways a crew can kidnap you.  I’m thinking that Stevenson may have given the idea to John Buchan.

This is all over the blogosphere already.  I didn’t bother to track down the original source.

By Dewie Whetsell, Alaskan Fisherman. (As posted in comments on Greta’s article referencing the MOVEON ad about Sarah Palin) :

The last 45 of my 66 years I’ve spent in a commercial fishing town in Alaska. I understand Alaska politics but never understood national politics well until this last year. Here’s the breaking point: Neither side of the Palin controversy gets it…It’s not about persona, style, rhetoric, it’s about doing things. Even Palin supporters never mention the things that I’m about to mention here.

1- Democrats forget when Palin was the Darling of the Democrats, because as soon as Palin took the Governor’s office away from a fellow Republican and tough SOB, Frank Murkowski, she tore into the Republican’s “Corrupt Bastards Club” (CBC) and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits. The Democrats reacted by skipping around the yard, throwing confetti and singing “la la la la” (well, you know how they are). Name another governor in this country that has ever done anything similar. But while you’re thinking, I’ll continue.

2- Now with the CBC gone, there were fewer Alaskan politicians to protect the huge, giant oil companies here. So, she constructed and enacted a new system of splitting the oil profits called “ACES”. Exxon (the biggest corporation in the world) protested and Sarah told them “don’t let the door hit you in the stern on your way out.” They stayed, and Alaska residents went from being merely wealthy to being filthy rich. Of course the other huge international oil companies meekly fell in line. Again, give me the name of any other governor in the country that has done anything similar.

3- The other thing she did when she walked into the governor’s office is she got the list of State requests for federal funding for projects, known as “pork”. She went through the list, took 85% of them and placed them in the “when-hell-freezes-over” stack. She let locals know that if we need something built, we’ll pay for it ourselves. Maybe she figured she could use the money she got from selling the previous governor’s jet because it was extravagant. Maybe she could use the money she saved by dismissing the governor’s cook (remarking that she could cook for her own family), giving back the State vehicle issued to her, maintaining that she already had a car, and dismissing her State provided security force (never mentioning—I imagine—that she’s packing heat herself). I’m still waiting to hear the names of those other governors.

4- Now, even with her much-ridiculed “gosh and golly” mannerism, she also managed to put together a totally new approach to getting a natural gas pipeline built which will be the biggest private construction project in the history of North America. No one else could do it although they tried. If that doesn’t impress you, then you’re trying too hard to be unimpressed while watching her do things like this while baking up a batch of brownies with her other hand.

5- For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a place called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn’t start drilling. In truth they were holding it like an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. This summer, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out. They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. Alaska won again.

6- President Obama wants the nation to be on 25% renewable resources for electricity by 2025. Sarah went to the legislature and submitted her plan for Alaska to be at 50% renewables by 2025. We are already at 25%. I can give you more specifics about things done, as opposed to style and persona . Everybody wants to be cool, sound cool, look cool. But that’s just a cover-up. I’m still waiting to hear from liberals the names of other governors who can match what mine has done in two and a half years. I won’t be holding my breath.

By the way, she was content to to return to AK after the national election and go to work, but the haters wouldn’t let her. Now these adolescent screechers are obviously not scuba divers. And no one ever told them what happens when you continually jab and pester a barracuda. Without warning, it will spin around and tear your face off. Shoulda known better.

I think all this is probably true and is objectively impressive.  I get tired of people not admitting what prodigies the Palins are.  That said, I’ve come to doubt how much she would do for the pro-life cause and have reached the point where I can’t hope anymore that she will outgrow her jingoistic warmongering. (Of course, rejecting the jingoism doesn’t mean a person isn’t committed to international murder; witness Obama).

Would she be the preferable option to vote for if I bother to go to the voting booth?  Sure.  But I’m tired of having to support people just because it makes sense, in an insane hostage situation, to vote for them.  I’ve outgrown my Stockholm syndrome.

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to what is false
and does not swear deceitfully.
He will receive blessing from the Lord
and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek the face of the God of Jacob.

via Passage: Psalm 24 (ESV Bible Online).

One way you can see that there is a problem in how Evangelicals read the Bible is that they will, first, think “righteous from the God of his salvation,” must refer to imputed righteousness, second, notice that this righteousness seems to be a response to moral uprightness, third, then either consider alternative interpretations of “righteousness,” or else find a way to reverse the seeming cause and effect order of the passage.

But here the NIV is more helpful on verse 5:  “He will receive… vindication from God his Savior.”  The word “righteousness” does not have to necessarily have anything to directly to do with some kind of reckoned moral perfection.  In this case, the point is that those who belong to the Lord will be vindicated or declared in the right.  This is not a declaration that one is sinless.  It assumes God has in some way dealt with sin and the question is, for whom has he done so?

The answer primarily are those that have faith in him.  They don’t turn to idols! (v. 4).  Of course, the idea that trust in God is somehow opposed or different from a life of obedience is simply unknown to the Bible (because, if for no other reason, it is logically incoherent).  Someone who trusts in the true God, will sin, but his life will not be indistinguishable from unbelievers.  Those who refuse idols will also keep their hands clean and their hearts pure.  The first commandment, after all, command faith and trust in the LORD alone.  That is the obedience of faith.

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

via The Law, by Frederic Bastiat.

[Note: Bastiat is obviously writing a generic secular book.  That itself deserves some discussion but I'm going to overlook the issue in this post.  I often write the same way.  I think such things are allowable, but I probably have not dealt as seriously as I should with the dangers inherent in doing so.  Still, I won't be dealing with the problem in this post]

After Adam and Eve, no human being on earth has ever come into being with these gifts that Bastiat lists: other than a very fragile hold on life.  They don’t even have language, which means their mental faculties could mostly be wasted unless they receive the essential gift that God gives us: other people.

Parents and relationships are bound up in every human’s origin.  In fact, one originally has no real liberty.  How in God’s name could Bastiat miss this in listing “gifts from God” that “precede all human legislation and are superior to it”?

Bastiat’s anti-statism and economics are often brilliant.  But this book is atrocious.  It is written for some other order of beings rather than for human beings.

The state is a false family.  The state inherently wants to prevent citizens from growing into a maturity, so it is a perverse family.  The state wants to sever love so that all social needs are met through payment and bureacracy rather than through real social relationships.

You don’t need this bizarre fiction about life, liberty, and property in order to critique the state.  Why is Bastiat resorting to it?