PCUSA evangelicals do Advent, but I think very few PCAs do.

What? No way. I’ll agree that there are more anti-Advent churches in the PCA, but it wouldn’t surprise me if over half the churches acknowledged advent in some way. Every PCA church I have ever attended has “done” the advent season.

OK. PCA members. Let’s hear from you. Does your church acknowledge Advent in some way? Elaborate how if possible. And if you don’t, I’d like to hear that too.

I suppose one might think that my blog is going to produce a bias report. But surely one of my mimetic rivals (unless I’m the mimetic rival) can ask the same question and link here in the track back so we can get a better sampling…

By the way, I’d really like to simply report what is or is not done, rather than argue about it. Lets use other posts for that debate.

By the way again, this is another reason we need a Reformed press! It would be good to have the resources to do some real research on what is being done and reporting on it. I suspect, for example, that the percentage of PCA churches that recognize Advent approaches 100, but that some congregation in a different state might think that no more than a couple of “odd” churches in a few presbyteries do so.

I may be mistaken, but despite our geographical mobility and the internet, I question whether many in the PCA have any idea what their denomination really looks like, especially north of the Mason-Dixon line.

PostScript: Browse beginning here.

If you are a member of an organization that had many parties and conflicts that suddenly all become calm as everyone pursues a singular crusade, you need to read this book:

The more unbearable their personal scandals become, the more the desire to extinguish them in some huge scandal seizes the scandalized. This phenomenon can be seen quite clearly in political passions or in the frenzy of scandal that now possesses our “globalized” world. When a really seductive scandal comes near, the scandalized are irresistibly tempted to “profit” from it and to gravitate towards it. The condensation of all the separated scandals into a single scandal is the paroxysm of a process that begins with mimetic desire and its rivalries. These rivalries, as they multiply, create a mimetic crisis, the war of all against all. The resulting violence of all against all would finally annihilate the community if it were not transformed, in the end, into a war of all against one, thanks to which the unity of the community is reestablished.

The book could be subtitled, Why Americans need regional football teams and why N. T. Wright is far more important to those who disagree with him within NAPARC than to those who appreciate him.

Montrose by C. V. Wedgwood is quite concise, yet it tells the story well. I found her tale much easier to follow than John Buchan’s earlier work. The use of illustrations was helpful–illuminating without being overpowering.

James Graham, Marquis of Montrose was a true Presbyterian martyr, far superior to the Kirk that excommunicated him and the kings he served–who ultimately betrayed him. He sided with the National Covenant and with the Kirk until he realized that some were using the King’s bad policy as an excuse for personal ambition and unlawful rebellion. He fought for the royalist cause out of simple principle. It’s hard to describe the effect this book has on the reader, except that I keep feeling like there’s a W. W. J. G. D? bracelet fastened on my wrist.

Graham’s treatment by the Presbyterian ministers in power in his day was quite shocking. It is amazing to read about how both the civil and ecclesiastical courts were used to manipulate and eliminate people who bucked the status quo and offended the powerful. It also turns one stomach to read how often ministers of the Kirk overturned their military leaders agreements to make terms with the defeated and insist on bloody extermination of the vanquished “to purge the land of blood-guiltiness.”

(This won’t mean much to most readers, but I was surpised how “miscreant” came up in the book as a term used to describe Montrose by his Kirk enemies as a traiter.)

The entire book is moving, but naturally Montrose’s via delarosa is the worst. Aside from the fact he was so ill-used by his own king, and so horribly treated as a captured prisoner, he had to endure the fulminations of minister’s of the Gospel as they berated him before their congregations in order to frighten potential royalists and bolster their faithful. He was deliberately paraded on tour in the most humilating manner in order to provide such opportunities before arriving in Edinburgh to be hanged like a common criminal.

On the Sabbath the whole cavalcade halted at Keith. Montrose, bound and guarded, was set before a crowded congregation to hear the minister preach on the fate of Agag, king of the Amalekites, whom the ferocious prophet Samuel commanded to be hewn to pieces. He listened with patience to the torrent of abuse and then, in a momentary paulse, interjected the words, “Rail on , Rabshakeh.” Everyone in that Bible-bred audience knew that Rabshakeh was the false priest who tried to seduce the people of Judah from their true allegiance (p. 146).

To the very end Montrose kept the faith. His enemy, Argyll, could not look him in the face even when he was victorious and Montrose a bound prisoner. After he died by hanging a general purge followed with the guillotine (or “the maiden” as it was called) until “the people of Edinburgh began to talk of blood sacrifices and refer to the scaffold as the altar of Argyll” (p. 156).

It is amazing that Montrose’s family came out as well as they did. His eldest son died, probably due to the exhaustion of staying on the move with his father’s army. His wife died in a way lost to history. His younger children were made wards of the state that was at war with their father. They were allowed to see him one last time as he was being paraded on a pony, feverish and bound. But they eventually did better thanks to the Cromwellians. Say what you will about these anti-royalist independents, they were superior in spirit to the Scot junto, recognizing quality even on the other side of the battle lines. General Monck, who was the military occupier of Scotland, protected the two boys. When their other brother returned to take part in an unsuccessful royalist “rebellion,” Monck gave him generous terms and allowed him to keep a part of his estate.

This is hard to read because it ends so badly and you know that it will end that way from the moment you start reading. But Montrose’s character is inspiring, making the reader want to face adversity and painful trials with the same faith and steadfastness. I highly recommend it.

Let us finally consider how naive it is altogether to say: “Man ought to be such and such!” Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play and change of forms—and some wretched loafer of a moralist comments: “No! Man ought to be different” … He even knows what man should be like, this wretched bigot and prig: he paints himself on the wall and comments, “Ecce homo!” … But even when the moralist addresses himself only to the single human being and says to him, “You ought to be such and such!” he does not cease to make himself ridiculous. The single human being is a piece of fatum from the front and from the rear, one law more, one necessity more for all that is yet to come and to be. To say to him, “Change yourself!” is to demand that everything be changed, even retroactively … And indeed there have been consistent moralists who wanted man to be different, that is, virtuous—they wanted him remade in their own image, as a prig: to that end, they negated the world! No small madness! No modest kind of immodesty! … Morality, insofar as it condemns for its own sake, and not out of regard for the concerns, considerations, and contrivances of life, is a specific error with which one ought to have no pity—an idiosyncrasy of degenerates which has caused immeasurable harm!— We others, we immoralists, have, conversely, made room in our hearts for every kind of understanding, comprehending, and approving. We do not easily negate; we make it a point of honor to be affirmers. More and more, our eyes have opened to that economy which needs and knows how to utilize everything that the holy witlessness of the priest, the diseased reason in the priest, rejects—that economy in the law of life which finds an advantage even in the disgusting species of the prigs, the priests, the virtuous. What advantage?— But we ourselves, we immoralists, are the answer …

Strange, these are the words of an anti-Christian. But with marketing and other media pressure, I wonder if we shouldn’t find these words apply to the other side of the fence. While we are born and grow in many ways, those most prone to be pressured are subject to forces as powerful as any moralist could wish for–in many cases pressured into a mold requiring augmentation.  The figure painted on the wall that Nietszche mentions turns out to be a charicatured female.

So what about the moralists? Us Christians? It would seem a good idea to use our moralism to combat this image tyranny. But do we? Why, no. We find just the opposite. The ubiquitous pressure to be young and beautiful is not enough. We must add guilt and condemnation to the shame already in play in order to make women conform to our desires. At least, we need to use them to compensate for any temptation a woman might feel to let her guard down on the assumption that she married a faithful husband.

Wonderful. A religious crusade for a Tab commercial. Is the T on the bottle supposed to represent the new way us men bear the cross?

Alvin Plantinga’s God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God is a great book. It basically argues that arguments for skepticism regarding God work equally well against the existence of other minds, or against the objectivity of the “external” world.

But even though it is a good book, I’m thinking right now that the comparison itself brings with it a warning against philosophical apologetics. The reason I see a warning is because I belive the following:

When embroiled in “philosophical” discussion, it becomes all too easy to actually create real doubts about our knowledge of the reality of other minds or of the “external” world.

Now, if you disagree with that statement, then never mind anything I’m about to say. But that is what I think. While Thomas Reid was quite astute in observing that philophical arguments against skepticism are never more powerful than one’s previous confidence in one’s “common sense” notion that there are indeed other minds and/or an external world, in philosophical classrooms, this all recedes. The very discussion promotes skepticism in the participants.

So, frankly, while Plantinga’s argument is excellent, it also serves to explain why atheologians might be more credible than one would expect. The very nature of the discussion promotes skepticism. No one normally doubts the reality of other minds or that the chair in a room is still there when they leave it, or that a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it makes a disturbance in the air. But, in philosophical discussion, this is all up for grabs.

Which brings me to another point. Imagine that I tell you I am married to my wife and you refuse to believe me because you believe that females are mythological constructs invented to satisfy certain psychological needs. So we get into a philosphical argument about whether the idea of “females” is ultimately an illusion. But winning that argument is not really proof that my wife exists, nor does it involve any of the real reasons I believe that she exists or trust her as my beloved. No, those reasons are all historical. I met Jennifer. We interacted. We got married on a certain day at a certain time.

And what about “God”? Are we arguing for the existence of a classification that could, in theory, include Zeus, Allah, as well as YHWH? Or are we arguing for a specific person or persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Is this god known primarily by philosophical necessity or has he met us quite powerfully in history? Is arguing for the existence of God ever really supposed to resemble arguing for the existence of other minds?

I had read a boatload of Van Til, but nothing entranced me with apologetics (and theology) like N. T. Wright. And I think this is the reason why. We are arguing, from beginning to end, about someone who met us in Bethlehem, Calvary, and the Mount of Olives, not about whether or not space is an illusion.

John Armstrong’s blog is full of good profound stuff, but I cannot help but link the joke post. The bumper sticker cracked me up!

Remember how upset Evangelicals got at Clinton when he chose to call his plan “a new covenant”? How on earth did this not provoke a reaction?:

Tomorrow is September the 12th. A milestone is passed, and a mission goes on. Be confident. Our country is strong. And our cause is even larger than our country. Ours is the cause of human dignity; freedom guided by conscience and guarded by peace. This ideal of America is the hope of all mankind. That hope drew millions to this harbor. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it.

The messianic nation-state at its finest.

Hat Tip: Sam in the 04 November, 2006 12:57 comment

Today I’m thankful for over-the-counter muscle relaxors.  If it wasn’t already a holiday, I would still make it a yearly celebration for the family.

For those who want more (and much better) stuff on how shoddily “anti-Americanism” is targeted by scholars, Joel Garver, makes some trenchant comments. His conclusion is also incisive (see the original for links):

Grudem and Burk can hardly be unaware that a younger generation of evangelicals doesn’t necessarily (and certainly does not monolithically) embrace the kind of right-wing politics characteristic of an older generation of evangelical leaders. Is the point of these papers to defend a crumbling conservativism against a variety of newer evangelical politics?

And, if so, what does that tell us about the ways in which conservative evangelicalism has enmeshed itself with the success and fortunes of a particular sort of American political identity and, in doing so, has muted the church’s prophetic stance? Moreover, doesn’t the evidence embodied in Grudem and Burk’s papers tend to validate the very criticism that many younger evangelicals have voiced?

Note to self: Some time blog about ways in which I am happy that the younger generation is not continuing in the ways of Grudem and Burk and other ways in which I wish they could make a further break.

Another blogger, Ochuck, writes of Burk’s critique of the claim that Paul derived his rhetoric from the Gentile world. Like me, he points out that this is not the issue:

The problem with this is that Wright agrees. The paper Burk primarily interacts with to represent Wright explicitly affirms Paul as a Jewish thinker. Instead of reading Roman imperial-cult vocabulary onto Paul, Wright sees it as intended by Paul from Old Testament writings

Ochuck goes on to site evidence in Wright and then make a positive case from Scripture (which looks like it came directly from Wright). Definitely worth reading.

Superblogger Adrian Warnock also expresses surprise about Grudem’s Bush push:

What is interesting to me as a Brit is that I could never imagine a leading Christian in the UK endorsing a politician this robustly. And yet you are the ones who separate church and state – not us. I can’t make up my mind who got it right, but perhaps a nation where church leaders are allowed to publicly speak about their political views is more mature than one where church bishops still sit in the House of Lords, but Christians in the public eye are, in some unwritten rule they all obey, not allowed to express an opinion.

I’m kind of surprised that Warnock would describe the American scene of political partisanship as “more mature.”

Other responsed to Grudem can be found at the Boar’s Head Tavern and The World of Sven.

It is pretty hard to sleep when relaxation requires a contraption of pillows to keep you seated on the sofa and an ice pack.  And it is hard to sleep when someone you love is constantly needing to tweak the contraption.  So last night Jennifer and I mostly didn’t.

I’m off to take the children to stay with friends and then back to take Jennifer to the chiropractor and then back to drop her off and then off to get the kids.