Exiles Longing for Our Native Land

Every scheme to establish human happiness founders on the rocks of our self-destructive nature and of this world as it is is not being the world for which we were made. On his "Writer's Almanac" yesterday, Friday, May 1, Garrison Keillor (surprisingly to me) read a poem by Anne Porter that powerfully expresses our exile's longing for our native land, a theme that C. S. Lewis developed in his essay, "Weight of Glory."

The address for Anne Porter's "Music" on "Writer's Almanac" is http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/05/01. Or ctrl-click here Anne Porter

for access to two of her poems and references to two others.

The poem is published as "Music" by Anne Porter from Living Things: Collected Poems. © Steerforth Press, 2006.

Truth Project: Rousseau's Revolution Redux

In my last blog, my unstated point was that Catholics had remained intellectually engaged with the problems of culture and society when American Fundamentalists and Evangelicals retreated to build a subculture disengaged from law, government, education and art. In so doing, we disregarded God's creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (with people) and to subdue it. The strong Christian foundations of American society and government and the social and religious conservatism of the American Revolution made this luxury possible for a long time, but the secularists and skeptics (such as Thomas Payne) were there from the beginning and their hostility to God and to Christianity eventually bore bitter fruit.

By contrast, Catholics were a somewhat despised minority in America and a target of the French style revolutionary thought that swept away the monarchies of continental Europe during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Therefore, they recognized the threat of the Revolution both to Catholicism and to the traditional structures of civil society. Their critique of the social effects of the Revolution was cogent, but their sometimes reactionary support of monarchy and the privileged position of the Roman church under it was flawed. In America, however, a Catholic thinker, Orestes Bronson, seems to have recognized the benefits of the ordered liberty experienced here and, I think, developed a Catholic political theory consonant with it. At any rate, American Catholicism adapted to American political freedoms and the result is that Evangelical Christians and many conservative Catholics stand shoulder to shoulder in defending them.

Another life experience that relates to the continuing Revolution recognized by the Truth Project was my time with Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF) in Berkeley. This countercultural Christian ministry was founded by two former Campus Crusade for Christ workers, Professor Jack Sparks and Pat Matriciano, in the late 60s in Berkeley. Some of the Christians in CWLF, such as I, had a traditional church background, but others came to Christ straight out of the Counter Culture with its sex, drugs, rock music, Eastern religion and Revolution. Most of these Christians soon shed their sexual immorality, drugs and Eastern religion, but the rock music and revolutionary politics were more enduring, especially, the politics.

The two ministries growing directly out of CWLF that still exist illustrate the division in its ranks: Right On!, (then a newspaper, now a journal) and Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP [an apologetics ministry]). Right On!, in view of the real injustices abroad in the world, tends to side with the revolutionaries, as exemplified by Barack Obama, the latter, with the traditional American political virtues as exemplified by Ron Paul.

For my part, the anti-Christian essence of the Revolution, makes the practical matter of choosing which side I come down in the context of American politics easy. I'll admit that if I were a Native American living in El Salvador, Guatemala, or Columbia (where their majority status makes them a threat to the white ruling class), I might see things differently. But one thing Jesus was not, was a violent revolutionary. Neither were the early Christians who triumphed through Roman persecution by faithfulness, flight and martyrdom.

Truth Project: So What?

By now I think that I've seen enough of the Truth Project to get the big picture and so have you if you think about it. Del Tackett raises a profound subject and cites Scripture to show how the Triune God of the Bible relates to that matter. The primary goal is to glorify God by showing that while he utterly transcends the material universe, he is present and active (in the fullness of his being) at every point within it. The secondary goal is to show that Christian faith relates to every area of life and to provide some guidance in how we should live in God's creation while not being part of the passing world system.

Focus on the Family and Del are well aware that some of their interpretations about origins and about the social and political implications will be controversial among their Evangelical Christian viewers. They (and Pastor Mark) view this as a good thing; we ought to be aware of our differences and be willing to discuss them without condemning those with whom we differ over issues that have not been settled by the ancient councils and creeds as heresies (e.g., the age of the earth, the best form of government). No doubt there is a correct answer to some of these issues, but we may have to await the return of our Lord for certainty about them.

Last night I realized that because I did my graduate work in Political Philosophy and Literature at a Catholic University, I have a perspective on the Truth Project that perhaps few Evangelicals share. Did you notice, for example, that as an authority on the economics of poverty, Del cites a Catholic scholar? And did you ever wonder why, when Bush wanted to please his conservative Evangelical base, he was able to nominate two Roman Catholic judges with the academic and intellectual credentials to overcome the opposition of the Democrats in the Senate and the elites who love the "Living Constitution" instead of the document as written and intended? And why the Evangelicals welcomed Catholics John Roberts and Samuel Alito with open arms?

The answers go back, in part, to the retreat of conservative Evangelicals from engagement with the intellectual, political, social and artistic spheres of American life in the wake of their rejection by the mainline denominations. Indeed, as I understand it, J. Gresham Machen was, in effect, excommunicated from the Presbyterian Church for his outspoken opposition to Modernism (Liberalism) at Princeton. Many of the "Fundamentalists," as those who maintained the essentials of the faith such as the deity of Jesus, his Virgin Birth and his bloody atonement were called, accepted the Dispensationalist theology that emerged early in the 19th Century with its portrayal of Christians as always and only a beleaguered minority on the periphery of society.

Their theme song was, "This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through" and this truth was taken to mean that Christians had no cultural mandate to fulfill as a godly leaven in every legitimate aspect of society. Evangelism and Christian ministry was the way to really serve God and the concept of farming or business or even education as a calling or vocation from God as Luther had seen it waned. Without realizing it, Fundamentalists and the Evangelicals who emerged as a distinct group after WWII, were living on social and political capital borrowed from the Christians among the founders and the frontier evangelists of the 18th and early 19th Centuries. Only when the anti-Christian agenda of the secularist elites became law through critical Supreme Court decisions in the 1940s through the 1970s did Fundamentalists and Evangelicals wake up to the reality that their retreat from a holistic living out of the gospel was having dire spiritual consequences. Only with the earth shaking consequences of the Roe v. Wade decision's disregard of the biblical view of the sacredness of human life, did Fundamentalists and Evangelicals begin to awaken to what was happening.

More later. Gotta gather and stack the wood before my neighbor rebukes me more firmly.

Blessed be The Tie that Binds

I just finished reading Second Corinthians and was struck by the use of a certain word in verses 9 and 11 of Chapter 13:

Your restoration is what we pray for. . . . Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you (ESV).

In Koine Greek, the verb form is katartizo, which in various translations is "be perfect" (KJV), be made perfect" (NIV), "aim for perfection" (NEB), "be made complete" (NKJV), "mend your ways" (RSV, JB), and "aim for restoration" (ESV).

The context of the letter is a Corinthian church that has been riven by divisions over the personalities of leaders, damaged by tolerance of egregious sin and guilty of disorder in the observance of the Lord's table. Indeed, a few verses before these Paul exhorts, "examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves" (v. 5a).

Given this situation, the translations "mend your ways" and "aim for restoration" seem better than, for example, "be made perfect." Katartizo has a wide range of meaning, but one of the first we see in the New Testament is at Jesus' calling of James and John to be disciples while they were "mending" their nets in the boat with their father Zebedee.

In verse 11 itself, the use of katartizo is followed by a series of exhortations to "comfort one another, agree with one another," and to "live in peace." The emphasis of these is on the loving unity that should reign in the body of Christ for "the God of love and peace " to be "with you." This happy state is followed by the command to "Greet one another with a holy kiss."

Given this emphasis on loving unity, I would use yet another signification of katartizo here, that of being knitted together or united completely (Perschebacher, The New Analytical Greek Lexicon). This is not a very novel insight since a similar passage in 1 Corinthians 1:10 is rendered in the NIV: "I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought."

The passage from chapter13 made me think of that phrase from Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line": "I keep the ends out for the ties that bind." The singer makes an effort to keep his heart strings open to his absent lover in anticipation of their hearts being woven together when they are back together. I am thinking about how all this might be applied to our focus groups. It seems to me that it points in the direction of doing things together beyond our weekly meetings.

Any ideas about this out there?

The French Revolution Lives On!

The anti-clericalism of the French Revolution forced Catholic thinkers to recognize the distinction between state and society. The very existence of society as a complex entity of various social groups independent of the state and its government was called in question by the radical revolutions beginning with the French and continuing through the Bolshevik and subsequent revolutions including the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Cuban and the Cambodian. The revolutionary regimes claimed the right to suppress or control all of the groups that make up a flourishing society including church, family, labor unions, academic faculties, athletic organizations, charitable organizations, simply everything.

In response to this, according to Russell Hittinger, Catholic thinkers saw from Genesis that God had created different kinds of entities. The purely physical powers and objects, animals with a kind of organic unity of each individual and then, marriage, a society of more than one person with a unity and structure of relationships suitable for its membership of husband, wife and children. Other groups within society had their chosen goals but constituted something similar in that they were a unity of persons seeking common goals and were natural to human societies.

As Hittinger puts it, the Catholics looked with favor on all such groups with legitimate purposes and saw them in a hierarchy in which the church was the highest in that its goal of relating to God was the highest purpose, followed by the state, whose goals are temporal but important and then society with its pluriform associations of family and other groups. These thinkers defended the legitimacy of society as against the state, which had no basis for suppressing or controlling its entities in pursuit of their legitimate goals.

Because of the anti-clericalism of the revolutions that swept Europe after 1789 and on into the 20th Century, Catholic thinkers opposed the revolution, often in the name of monarchy, the main political force available to oppose it. Because the American Revolution did not overturn church and society on the model of the French, Americans were slow to recognize the problem of utopian revolutions bent on perfecting human society and human beings, whatever the human cost. But Catholic thinkers did see that they were defending society in its multiform variety when they opposed these revolutions.

Abraham Kuyper's concept of sphere sovereignty, it seems to me, recognizes the same reality that society consists of many legitimate human institutions besides the government that are directly ordained by God and thus have a sphere of action independent of control by the state. I think that sphere sovereignty clarifies the reality without imposing a hierarchy. What the Catholics have seen best is that the revolutionary spirit abroad in the world is bent on totalitarian control of society in order to accomplish its goal of perfecting humanity and creating the earthly paradise. The state must be sovereign over all. Rousseau's idea of a General Will determined by a majority vote has been used to promote totalitarian democracy, but this bears no relationship to the popular sovereignty of the American Republic of our Founders.

Marxism-Leninism was explicit about its goals. But I believe that the spirit of the revolution animates the secular intelligentsia throughout Europe and America. Although Soviet Communism was turned back, the revolutionary spirit has triumphed in Europe and that is why the European Union is unwilling even to acknowledge its Chrsitian heritage. This is what the Culture War is about in America: the revolution. I believe that Del Tackett and the Truth Project get it. But it's not obvious to most Americans and so Christians are bound to differ about issues ranging from gun control to early childhood education.

Education, secularization and gun control are key areas where state control must be advanced in order to bring about the revolution by peaceful means. Christians should be wise in advancing Christian initiatives in education and in resisting secularization and gun control. Hate crimes laws are the leading edge of suppression of religious speech at the moment. But education is the key to long-term success. And well over 90% of American children are in government schools. That is the biggest practical problem.

Of course, the underlying problem is our failure to be the church. That is why I believe--contrary to current appearances perhaps--that our focus groups are the most important thing we are doing. This is where the church will come alive when God visits us.

The Paradox of God's Sovereignty, Man's Freedom

I thought Ravi Zacharias's response at a university forum to a questioner who posed God's sovereignty as a direct contradiction of man's "free will" was brilliant. His brief response was that neither God's sovereignty nor man's freedom is absolute in this relationship.

Since Ravi didn't have time to make a complete response, I'll try to duplicate it in part and fill in the blanks in the argument from my perspective. To begin with, human beings are limited by their creaturely natures: genetics, parents, the laws of nature and many other things. Therefore, human choices are not entirely free, but are limited by God who has ordained all these things. Nevertheless, Adam at least was free to make the most significant choice of whether or not to obey God, to choose good or evil.

God, by contrast, is inherently completely free, but he freely chose to limit himself by making Adam a moral being with freedom to choose obedience and life or disobedience and death. Thus, God did not choose to impose his prescriptive will of obedience but chose to permit Adam's forseen disobedience.

At this point it should be clear that the contradiction is only apparent, a paradox, not a true contradiction. God freely limits his prescriptive will and man exercises his freedom to choose good or to choose evil. Adam, in fact, chose evil and thereby died spiritually, thus losing the ability to choose the good. Right here is where the real controversy begins. I'm not sure where Ravi goes with it, but I'll take this up again soon, D.V.

Doubting Darwinism Dangerous

NPR's February 15 feature on Evangelical biology students in Kansas being taught to reconcile Darwinism with their Christian faith glossed over the depth of the difficulty. For these students believe—with some reason—that to get a Phd. in biology they must accept humanity’s not being a special creation of God as a fact as well established as Copernicus’s realization that earth is not the center of the solar system. And, indeed, as your intro indicated, this is what is believed by most academics in biology.

But the revolution of the earth about the sun can be confirmed by direct observations in the present and macroevolution, by contrast, cannot (because of its long time frame). Perhaps the science friendly way to deal with the continuing controversy over evolution is to acknowledge that now, as always since 1859, significant numbers of competent biologists hold that natural selection is a mechanism inadequate to explain the diversity of life.

Instead of allowing further debate and observations, however, those in control of the biological sciences establishment prefer to suppress dissent in defense of the reigning neo-Darwinian paradigm. And I think this intolerance has been well documented in Ben Stein’s documentary on the ID controversy, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.