Medieval Church - Wisdom: Cost of Discipleship, Again

Does the American church today show its glorious wisdom at the front door, in the portal of the church? Are martyrs, bloody swords, and suffering servants of God our Sunday morning greeters? Hardly.

Rather, oftentimes we are greeted by Goliath-sized TV monitors, touch screen lobby digital directories, and “Information Centers”. Technology is a gift from God, but technology be damned if it veils any of the central truths of the Christian life; particularly, the cost of discipleship.

Medieval Church - Wisdom: Cost of Discipleship

“In the Middle Ages, the church showed its glorious wisdom by placing statues of the martyrs at the front door, in the portal of the church. Thus the faithful were welcomed into the church with scenes of decapitation, bloody swords, and suffering servants of God. The church, up front, at the first, portrayed the cost of discipleship.”

Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life by William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas

Proverbs 2:1: Receiving Words

A thought regarding Proverbs 2:1: “My son, if thou wilt receive my words…”

Words are important, especially from a father to a son. With words a father can encourage his son to heed the father’s words, as we see Solomon doing when he urges his son to hear his instruction, as well as not forsaking the law of his mother (Pro 1:8). A good father will speak to his son, giving him instruction and steering him towards wisdom. Speaking, however, is tricky. Words easily fall to the ground.

A wise son will not let the words of his father fall. He will receive them, accepting them as a gift. Sound counsel, the wise words of a loving father, these can be given to sons as gifts. And we should be intentional about giving these gifts to our sons.

A grateful son will receive the words of his father. The son will take the father at his word (A son will learn how to do this because he has seen his father take the Lord at His word). Wise counsel, the words given as gifts from a father to a son, will provide rest for the son. And sons need rest to avoid becoming exasperated (Col 3:21).

What this does not mean is that fathers can simply communicate with words alone. They are required to act. For instance, men are told “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly” (Mic 6:8). However, a spoken word functions somewhat differently than an action, and Solomon’s highlights this by denoting the importance of a son’s reception of his father’s words.

Music: Blues

Job 30:26-31: “When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness. My bowels boiled, and rested not: the days of affliction prevented me. I went mourning without the sun: I stood up, and I cried in the congregation. I am a brother to dragons, and a companion of owls. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat. My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the voice of them that weep."

Prayer: Salvation

“Christians are those who ask to be saved. When we pray to God to save us, we are not asking for some changed self-understanding, some new way of feeling about ourselves, something to put zest in our lives. Salvation in Christ is being adopted (baptism), made members of a people, Israel, and the church. We really believe that if we were not part of this people we would not be saved.”

“So when the church has opinions about how you spend your money, how you have sex, how you vote, this is salvation. You are not simply being saved from personal greed or licentiousness, you are thereby being made a member of God’s people.”

Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life by William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas

Thomas Merton: Saint

“What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?”
The explanation I gave was lame enough, and expressed my confusion, and betrayed how little I had really thought about it at all.
Lax did not accept it.
“What you should say”—he told me—“what you should say is that you want to be a saint.”
A saint! The thought struck me as a little weird. I said:
“How do you expect me to become a saint?”
“By wanting to,” said Lax, simply.

The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

CSR: Indian Studies

Christian Scholar’s Review has published a review-essay (Conflicting Views from the Banks of the Little Bighorn: A Modest Proposal for a Christian Approach to Indian Studies) I co-authored with Dr. Todd C. Ream. A table of contents is available at http://www.csreview.org.

OT: Psalm 2: Honour the Son

Psalm 2
“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”

Calvin says, “Let this, therefore, be held as a settled point, that all who do not submit themselves to the authority of Christ make war against God.” Calvin’s comment is correct and his logic draws heavily from Saint John: “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.”

Christian Living: Evangelical Patience

Commenting on Modern Man's obsession with progress, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy writing in 1938 said, "When we act too early we are not ourselves; our intellect, our will, our efforts, are in advance of our true being, and they may easily forfeit - by their restlessness - our own secret destiny."

Stories

A good-story addresses the backwardness in the universe, particularly in humankind, and that is why there are more than a few bad stories.

Four Years Ago

When I was a twenty-one year old collegiate
I learned a prayer for the first time from a classmate,
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The two of us and our friend with the shaved head
Seeking forgiveness of sin and the Kingdom -
Everywhere, at all times, and by any Universal means.

Theology of Lordship: Servant-Thinking - Grace

Servant-thinking is humble, acknowledging that God is sufficient. Servant-thinkers will look for His grace in their weaknesses; they do so because they think Theocentrically. Biblical, that.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Corinthians 12:9

Reformed Theology: Sanctification

“Both Lutherans and Calvinists answered the question ‘What must I do to be saved?’ by saying that Spirit-worked repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His substitutionary work of atonement are necessary. But Lutherans had a tendency to remain focused on the doctrine of justification, whereas Calvinists, without minimizing justification, pressed more than Lutherans toward sanctification, which asks, ‘Having been justified by God’s grace, how shall I live to the glory of God?’” (Joel R. Beeke, Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism, p. 11).

Theology of Lordship: Servant-Thinking, Again

A servant-thinker is one who “adopts God’s world as his own.”[1] Therefore, “the believer [servant-thinker] . . . is affirming creation as it really is; he is accepting creation as the world that God made, and he is accepting the responsibility to live in that world as it really is.”[2]

[1] John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, p. 28.
[2] Ibid., p. 28.

Theology of Lordship: Servant-Thinking

“To be a creature is to be limited in thought and knowledge, as in all other aspects of life. We are limited by our Creator, our Lord. We have a beginning in time, but He does not. We are controlled by Him and subject to His authority; we are the objects of ultimate covenant blessing or cursing, and so the nature of our thought should reflect our status as servants. Our thinking should be ‘servant-thinking’” (John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, p. 21).

Reformed Theology: Concerned with character of Creator-creature relationship

“In His relation to us, God has only rights and powers; He binds Himself to duties sovereignly and graciously only by way of covenant. In covenant, He assumes the duties and responsibilities of being a God unto us, but that does not detract from His being the first cause and the last end of all things. The universe is ruled not by chance or fate, but by the complete, sovereign rule of God. We exist for one purpose: to give Him glory. We have only duties to God, no rights. Any attempt to challenge this truth is doomed. Romans 9:20b asks, “Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast though made me thus?” God enacts His laws for every part of our lives and demands unconditional obedience. We are called to serve Him with body and soul, in worship and daily work, every second of every day.

To be Reformed, then, is to be concerned with the complete character of the Creator-creature relationship. It is to view all of life coram Deo, that is, lived before the face of God (Joel R. Beeke, Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism, p. 41).”

Israel: Enemies of Israel

Israel was led out Egypt/slavery and the Lord promised to fight for them against their enemies (Deut. 20:4). This is always true, even when Israel becomes its own enemy. The Lord will fight against Israel when she is an enemy of Israel/enemy of the descendents of Abraham/promise. This happens when Israel becomes wicked and does not follow the Lord’s commandments. The Lord will fight against wicked Israel because she has become a type of Egypt, and she too will receive the plagues/curses of Egypt (Deut. 28:58-61).

The Lord will diminish the numbers of wicked Israel (“And ye [Israel] shall be left few in number,” Deut. 28:62), therefore, ensuring that obedient Israel will always remain “too mighty”; obedient Israel will remain numerous, like the stars – she remains that way because she serves the Lord who led her out of Egypt, the Lord who goes with her, the Lord who fights against her enemies.

Israel: Too Mighty

Deu 23:3 "No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever,
Deu 23:4 because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you.
Deu 23:5 But the LORD your God would not listen to Balaam; instead the LORD your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the LORD your God loved you.

In Numbers 22:6 we learn that Balak sends for Balaam to come and curse Israel because “they are too mighty.” But Israel is “too mighty” in several senses:

1) Israel is “too mighty” because they are too numerous (causing fear in Moabites, Numbers 22:3)
2) Israel is “too mighty” because they are the descendants of Abraham, the descendants of promise (“shall surely become a great and mighty nation,” Genesis 18:18)
3) Israel is “too mighty” because the Lord does not listen to the wicked (the enemies of the descendants of Abraham/promise)
4) Israel is “too mighty” because they serve the Lord (whose lordship extends over blessings and curses); the Lord, who for the descendants of Abraham/promise, turns the curses of their enemies into blessings

Narnia: Farewell to Shadowlands

“I see,” [Lucy] said at last, thoughtfully. “I see now. This garden is like the stable. It is far bigger inside than it was outside.”

“Of course, Daughter of Eve,” said the Faun. “The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.”

Lucy looked hard at the garden and saw that it was not really a garden but a whole world, with its own rivers and woods and sea and mountains. But they were not strange: she knew them all.

“I see,” she said. “This is still Narnia, and more real and more beautiful than the Narnia down below, just as it was more real and more beautiful than the Narnia outside the stable door! I see . . . world within world, Narnia within Narnia. . . .”

“Yes,” said Mr. Tumnus, “like an onion: except that as you continue to go in and in, each circle is larger than the last” (C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, pp. 206-207).

City of God: Peace and Community

But who is the city of God? Wilken answers, “Augustine never defines this city outright, but it is closely identified with the church . . . . Wherever the church is, he [Augustine] says, there will be ‘God’s beloved City.’ The City of God is more than the church because it includes the angels and the saints who have gone before, but there can be no talk of the city of God without the church.”

Wilken goes on to say, “Augustine’s controlling metaphor for the new life that God creates is not, for example, being born again, but becoming part of a city and entering into its communal life. When the Scriptures speak of peace they do not have in mind simply a relation between an individual believer and God; in the Bible peace is a gift that human beings share in communion with God. . . . Christianity is inescapably social.”

Later, quoting the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin: “The significance of Christian thought for the Western political tradition lies not so much in what it had to say about the political order, but primarily in what it had to say about the religious order. The attempt of Christians to understand their own group life provided a new and sorely needed source of ideas for Western political thought. Christianity succeeded where Hellenistic and late classical philosophies had failed, because it put forward a new and powerful idea of community which recalled man [and women] to a life of meaningful participation.”