Losing Old Church Buildings

I’m hearing that the court case against the Virginia CANA churches may not go well. Truro, Falls Church and others may be forced to leave their historic buildings. I’ve never been a fan of the “defend the property” strategy, but this is still very sad news. Turning these buildings over to heretics is akin to the North African Church falling to Islam a long time ago.

With that said, it occurred to me today that one reason that it is such a blow to lose these venerable buildings is because there is so little chance of replacing them in our lifetime. Our theology of architecture is so impoverished, and the buildings that we typically build as Protestant churches are generally so awful, that losing these old buildings is a great tragedy.

Most new church buildings are ephemeral, not durable. They are ugly, functional, “multi-purpose” facilities where people worship in the gym. There is generally no art, no stained glass windows and nothing that would really differentiate these buildings from the prison-like school buildings that we build today. On the other hand, places like Truro have a simple elegance and exude a sense of tranquility and “churchiness” that is lacking in most modern Protestant facilities. It seems that Catholics have kept their senses and are producing some great buildings even today. I live down the street from one and I’ve seen many others, such as the gorgeous Holy Apostles in Meridian, Idaho.

So if we are going to continue to think that buildings don’t matter or that we need to build the cheapest, ugliest thing we can get away with and call it good, then losing the old places like Truro (and the many, many United Methodist parishes in Virginia that are gorgeous and given over to heresy) is a very sad event indeed.

The Omniscient Biblical Narrator

I was recently looking over some of what Meir Sternberg wrote about the omniscient narrator in the Bible. Today I read the account of Ahab and Naboth in I Kings 21 and it brought Sternberg to mind again. The narrator of the account has access to Ahab’s conversation with Naboth, Jezebel’s conversation with Ahab, Jezebel’s letters to the elders and nobles of the city, and Elijah’s condemnation of Ahab. How can this be? We are never told of course.

The omniscient viewpoint is often used by the writers of the Bible and we often think nothing of it as we read. Perhaps later writers had access to sources around Ahab, or perhaps God simply revealed all of it to Elijah or a scribe of Elijah’s. Who knows? The Bible is very quiet about its method of composition and we can’t really peer behind the scenes with any confidence.

I Have to Believe It’s Getting Better

David Field provides some heartening evidence in this paper about how the world is improving for the Church:

Evangelical defeatism is a failure of historical perspective. After all, the statistics are out there. It took 1400 years for 1% of the world’s population to become Christians and then another 360 years for that to double to 2%. Another 170 years saw that grow from 2% to 4% and then, between 1960 and 1990 the proportion of the world’s population made up of Bible-believing Christians rose from 4% to 8%. Now, in 2007, one third of the world’s population confesses that Jesus is Lord and 11% of the world’s population are “evangelical” Christians. The evangelical church is growing twice as fast as Islam and three times as fast as the world’s population. South America is turning Protestant faster than Continental Europe did in the sixteenth century. South Koreans reckon that they can evangelize the whole of North Korea within five years once that country opens up. And then there’s the Chinese church consisting of tens of millions of Christians who have learned to pray, who have confidence in Scripture, who know about spiritual warfare, have been schooled in suffering and are qualified to rule. One day in the next century that Church – tens of millions of Christians trained to die – will be released into global mission and our prayers for the fall of Islam will be answered.

Amen! It is good to see evidence of postmillenial optimism. We walk by faith, not by sight.

More on Antinomianism

Andrew Sandlin wrote a good post this week on the same subject that I keep seeing – Christians who use grace as a cover for antinomianism. Sandlin says:

We ourselves are required to rebuke evil and have no company with it (Eph. 5:11–13).

What many of today’s grace-talking non-judgmentalists actually want is a grandfatherly God who overlooks their rebellion and favors them despite their gross, unrepentant sin.  They want to fornicate, despise God’s church and its ordinances, observe pornography, abuse prescription (and illegal) drugs, profane God’s name, revel in lewdness, spurn the godly counsel of parents and pastors and teachers, eschew hard work, and otherwise lust to be accepted by an apostate, pagan culture — all while assuming the pious protection of God’s grace.

Calvin to Cranmer on Church Unity

Thomas Cranmer desired a general council of the Protestant churches to unite them in confession and form a western, Protestant Church. Oh that it would have happened! God in his providence did not see fit for that to occur. But here is Calvin’s response to Cranmer on the subject:

I know moreover, that your purpose is not confined to England alone; but, at the same moment, you consult the benefit of all the world. The generous disposition and uncommon piety of his Majesty, the king, are justly to be admired, as he is please to favor this holy purpose of holding such a council, and offers a place for its session in his kingdom. I wish it might be effected, that learned and stable men, from the principal churches, might assemble in some place, and, after discussing with care each article of faith, deliver to posterity, from their general opinion of them all, the clear doctrines of the Scriptures. It is to be numbered among the evils of our day, that the churches are so divided one from another, that there is scarcely any friendly intercourse strengthened between us; much less does that holy communion of the members of Christ flourish, which all profess with the mouth, but few sincerely regard in the heart. But if the principal teachers conduct themselves more coldly than they ought, it is principally the fault of the princes who, involved in their secular concerns, neglect the prosperity and purity of the church; or each one, contented with his own security, is indifferent to the welfare of others. Thus it comes to pass, that the members being divided, the body of the church lies disabled.
Respecting myself, if it should appear that I could render any service, I should with pleasure cross ten seas, if necessary, to accomplish that object. Even if the benefit of the kingdom of England only was to be consulted, it would furnish a reason sufficiently powerful with me. But as in the council proposed, the object is to obtain the firm and united agreement of learned men to the sound rule of Scripture, by which churches now divided may be united with each other, I think it would be a crime in me to spare any labor or trouble to effect it. But I expect my slender ability to accomplish this will furnish me with sufficient excuse. If I aid that object by my prayers, which will be undertaken by others, I shall discharge my part of the business. Melancthon is so far from me, that our letters cannot be exchanged in a short time. Bullinger has perhaps answered you before this. I wish my ability was equal to the ardency of my desires. But what I at first declined, as unable to accomplish, I perceive the very necessity of the business now compels me to attempt. I not only exhort you, but I conjure you, to proceed, until something shall be effected, if not every thing you could wish.

Perhaps we will see more unity built from the confusion of our day, although it now seems doubtful.

Engraven on Brass

Anyone familiar with the story of the Book of Mormon will know the phrase, “plates of brass.” These plates are one of many sets of plates that we read of in the book. We encounter them early on, in I Nephi 3.3:

For behold, Laban hath the record of the Jews and also a genealogy of thy forefathers, and they are engraven upon plates of brass.

I came upon one possible inspiration for this idea last night as I read I Kings in the King James Version. In the section describing the building of Solomon’s Temple, I read:

And every base had four brazen wheels, and plates of brass…and also upon the mouth of it were gratings with their borders…For on the plates of the ledges thereof, and on the borders thereof, he graved cherubims, lions, and palm trees…
[I Kings 7]

Now the plates mentioned in Kings are of a very different nature than those in the BOM, but the phraseology is the same, and could easily be the kernel of an idea: the Jews worked in brass, brass would endure unlike scrolls and could preserve an ancient record. Also, the well-known interest of Masons in Hiram of Tyre and Joseph Smith’s interest in temples suggest that he would know this passage of Scripture with some familiarity.

Evolution and Space Policy

For a long time I have believed that one of the motivating forces behind our space program is to attempt to prove Darwinism by seeing it on other planets. This article confirms it to me.

Based on the geology of Mars’s northern plains, the new study suggests that bodies of water formed as groundwater slowly seeped through cracks in the crust. This process would have made oceans and lakes quickly—within just a few years—but also could have sustained the bodies of water over millennia.

However, even when Mars was supposedly wet, the planet likely didn’t have a very thick atmosphere. Many scientists therefore think that if life as we know it evolved on Mars, the best places to look for it would be where liquid water would have been protected from extreme temperature changes and damaging ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

The Dictatorship of Moral Relativism

My favorite author and painter, Michael O’Brien, writes of his trip to Poland:

In a meeting with a very highly placed journalist and ministry official, I was told by her that freedom of the press in Poland has shrunk drastically in a very short time, since all secular media is now heavily influenced by vested interests and a resurgent secret police, many of whom are old Communists/new Eurocrats. Only Radio Maria and smaller Catholic journals continue to report the objective truth in the country, and thus the mainstream press continues a constant barrage of propaganda against both the Church and Catholic media. This was a shocking statement, but it was repeated by responsible observers of the situation many times during my travels. The dictatorship of moral relativism (as Pope Benedict calls it) has many faces, but its most deceptive mask is that of the “enlightened” liberalism. Beneath such liberalism there is an agenda that is very much allied with the culture of death, with power and with private wealth. In North America and most other Western nations the same dynamic is a work in various guises.

I like how he points out the links between enlightened liberalism, private wealth, power and the culture of death.

Respect for the Dead

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a masterful document – I wish we Anglicans had something like it. Due to my Mom’s death, I read what it says about the treatment of the dead:

The dying should be given attention and care to help them live their last moments in dignity and peace. They will be helped by the prayer of their relatives, who must see to it that the sick receive at the proper time the sacraments that prepare them to meet the living God.
The bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurrection. The burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy; it honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit.
Autopsies can be morally permitted for legal inquests or scientific research. The free gift of organs after death is legitimate and can be meritorious.
The Church permits cremation, provided that it does not demonstrate a denial of faith in the resurrection of the body.

I love how the Catechism deals with just about everything you can think of in life. I don’t like autopsies, giving organs or cremation, but the Catholic approach does seem sensible to me. And it must be comforting to know that there are answers to these things rather than simply making up an answer.

Outside the Catechism, canon law states:

ECCLESIASTICAL FUNERALS (Cann. 1176 – 1185)
§3. The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the deceased be observed; nevertheless, the Church does not prohibit cremation unless it was chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine.

Charismata III from St. Vincent Ferrer

St. Vincent Ferrer
Famous Dominican missionary, born at Valencia, 23 January, 1350; died at Vannes, Brittany, 5 April, 1419.

“…It would be difficult to understand how he could make himself understood by the many nationalities he evangelized, as he could speak only Limousin, the language of Valencia. Many of his biographers hold that he was endowed with the gift of tongues, an opinion supported by Nicholas Clemangis, a doctor of the University of Paris, who had heard him preach.”

Before the end of the year 1392, St. Vincent being forty-two years old, set out from Avignon towards Valencia. He preached in every town with wonderful efficacy; and the people having heard him in one place followed him in crowds to others. Public usurers, blasphemers, debauched women, and other hardened sinners everywhere were induced by his discourses to embrace a life of penance. He converted a great number of Jews and Mohammedans, heretics and schismatics. He visited every province of Spain in this manner, except Provence and Dauphine. He went thence into Italy, preaching on the coasts of Genoa, in Lombardy, Piedmont, and Savoy, as he did in part of Germany, about the Upper Rhine and through Flanders. Numerous wars and the unhappy great schism in the Church had been productive of a multitude of disorders in Christendom; gross ignorance and a shocking corruption of manners prevailed in many places, whereby the teaching of this zealous apostle, who, like another Boanerges, preached in a voice of thunder, became not only useful but even absolutely necessary, to assist the weak and alarm the sinner. The ordinary subjects of his sermons were sin, death, God’s judgments, hell, and eternity. He delivered his discourses with so much energy that he filled the most insensible with terror. A great number of his sermons have come down to us, some in Latin and many in the vernacular. By them one seizes the man and the saint to the life. They are masterpieces of naturalness, intelligence, picturesqueness and, at moments, poetry. In their kind there is nothing better. And they all develop one same theme.

Charismata II

From this general period on, records indicate that the most likely center of activity of tongues-speech is the monastic movement. Antony, founder of anchor-itic monasticism in Egypt, was involved with healings, extraordinary perceptions and exorcisms. Pachomius, who in the meantime established coenobitic monasticism in the southern provinces of Egypt, was reported to have prophesied and to have exercised xenolalia. Jerome relates the account of a monk, Hilarion, using xenolalia in a battle with a demon-possessed man.’

In Palladius’ Lausiac History 17 the story is told of Macarius of Egypt who received “the gift of fighting spirits and of prophecy.” Also the church historian Sozomen (EH 3:14) writes that Macarius was endowed with divine knowledge, wrought extraordinary works and miraculous cures, and restored a dead man to life. The work entitled Fifty Homilies of Macarius of Egypt was most probably not authored by Macarius but by someone unknown to us. Speaking of his own day the writer (Homily 36:1) specifies tongues as one of the gifts of the Spirit and tells (Homily 29:1) about some who possessed gifts of the Spirit but failed because they fell short of love. Isidore supported (Ep. 2:246; PCC 78:685) the exercise of spiritual gifts in the Christian community. Palladius’ Lausiac History 1:1–5 relates ecstatic experiences of Isidore and adds numerous accounts of the presence of the charismata among the monks up to his own day. Palladius tells about the problem with demons (18:6), about the gift of healing (12:1), the gift of knowledge (38:10), the gift of prophecy (17:2), and of visions (32:1).

Harold Hunter JETS 23:2

Charismata

Writing in the Journal of Evangelical Theology 23:2 Harold Hunter says:

The Cappadocian fathers, all of whom had been monks, uniformly spoke of the contemporary exercise of charismata and perhaps also tongues-speech. In his Shorter Rules 278, answering the question of how a man’s spirit prays while his understanding remains without fruit, Basil states that “this was said concerning those that utter their prayers in a tongue unknown to the hearers.” Gregory Nazianzen talked (Oration 32; PCC 36:185; Oration on Pentecost 41:12; On the Holy Spirit 5:12:30) about the charismata and perhaps tongues-speech as still present in his day. Likewise Gregory of Nyssa spoke frequently of the charismata.
The reaction of Epiphanius to the Montanists and Alogi was that the church should maintain the veritable charismata (PCC 41:856). Using present tenses, Epiphanius says of the work of the Holy Spirit: “To this one is given wisdom by the Spirit, to another tongues and to another power and to another doctrine.” When enumerating the attributes of the Holy Spirit, Didymus the Blind says that the Holy Spirit is “a fountain of exhaustless charismata.”

Books on Death

Since my Mom died, the subject of death interests me in more than an academic fashion. I have pulled out some books on death, grief and the afterlife that I plan to read or skim in order to solidify in my mind what is going on. One thing that is key to remember in this situation is that my Mom is now experiencing life after death but that it isn’t the goal or the end of the story. The final act is what N.T. Wright calls life after life after death – the resurrection of the dead. That can get lost in all our talk about heaven. Our future isn’t a disembodied state in the clouds. It’s in our body, perfected and raised, in a new heavens and new earth. Mom was buried (as I believe all bodies still are) with her feet facing east. Why? Because Jesus comes from the east and when we are raised, the presumption is that we will face his glorious appearance.

So, the books I am looking at so far are:

1. C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

2. N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God

3. Philippe Aries, The Hour of Our Death

If I can, I’ll share some things I find interesting out of reading these texts. Hopefully they will help me deal with my Mom’s death. As great as the Christian hope is during the death of a loved one, the inability to communicate with that person over the gulf of death is (I think) one of the cruelest parts about death. I am thankful for the example of Jesus, who wept at the death of Lazarus, and for the fact that the Bible calls death an enemy, although a defeated one. We don’t have to be pie in the sky, happy at the time of death. I’m not in favor of trying to “celebrate” at death. I want a grim funeral with the 1928 Book of Common Prayer liturgy when I die. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Yes, we have hope. Yes, the future will be glorious. But yes, the pain is real and the loneliness in the midst of a world that keeps turning and doesn’t care that you are here today and gone tomorrow is real. It all has to be worked through somehow.

Thoughts on Death

One thing that strikes me in thinking about death is that when someone dies, their way of ordering the world is gone. There is something about the things that they touched, wrote, painted and so on that we are inclined to preserve. I was looking at some cards from my Mom that were fairly insignificant, but now they mean a lot to me because that’s her writing on the paper. Her thoughts are expressed and they are now inaccessible to me going forward.

What I mean by ordering the world is the way that we keep our things. Mom placed articles and books in certain places in her house. Everything in the house was a certain way. Clothes were here, pictures there. Boxes were put in this closet, the old high chair in that one, etc. You might cut your grass and trim your hedge a certain way. These are very tedious and in some sense, minor details, but as soon as you die or are struck ill, they begin to evaporate and vanish from the world as if you had never been. This is probably one reason behind why some people keep rooms exactly as the deceased left them and refuse to alter them. Altering the room would break apart some of the last remaining traces of the dead person’s affect on the world. Taking this further, it is easy to see some of the motivations behind preserving the relics of saints in the form of pieces of clothing, bone, teeth, hair and so on. I’m certainly not agreeing with that practice, just seeing a possible origin for it.

As soon as you die, the way you kept your house and trimmed your hedge begins to fade. Someone else may be left living in it and decide to change things to the way they want it. Or it might be sold to someone entirely different and all traces of you living there will be gone. For those in nursing homes this uncaring process starts earlier. The world does not care about you or I and it will keep right on turning without us.

But traces of us (and our ancestors) linger on if our own children do things the way we did them. Perhaps they organize their things in similar ways to us, make the same recipes or like the same authors. A hundred little things pass from generation to generation, most of them unconscious and hidden in plain sight.

The urge to preserve something of who we were is a primary motivation for writers of history and seekers of glory who want to emblazon their memory onto the wax of history. Unfortunately for many of them, the vast bulk of people couldn’t care less for what happened five days ago, much less five centuries or millenia ago. Anna Comnena admirably summarizes the urge of the historian to preserve:

The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration; as the playwright says, it ‘brings to light that which was unseen and shrouds from us that which was manifest’. Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against this stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion.

I think this is also the motivation of the family historian, researching genealogy. It is often a lonely task and you wonder why you are doing it. But that is why: to try to preserve some slim reed of what was against the overwhelming tide of time which sweeps on ahead.

The ultimate hope for the Christian is that these small things which make up the essence of who we are will be continued in the future age. Perhaps when we are resurrected our way of doing things, perfected and renewed, will be carried on in the new heavens and new earth. When I walk into wherever my resurrected Mom “lives” – if such a concept makes sense then [and I think it will] – it will be recognizably her space as her way of doing things will be obvious to me. At least, that’s my theory.

The Nicodemus Objection

Over on Facebook, Pastor Rick wrote:

…if there was continuity in the constituting [of] God’s covenant people, Jesus would never have told Nicodemus that he must be born again. How dare Jesus be so pietistic as to tell a respected “covenant” member that he needs to be born again.

He echoes a question I once asked: why would Jesus tell Nicodemus that he must be born again if he was already in the covenant by circumcision?

Someone pointed out to me that “…Jesus is not talking about individual regeneration in John 3. Rather, he is talking about the need for a new Israel, a new humanity. Nicodemus needs to follow Jesus into the new world through death and resurrection. Being baptized will unite him with the disciples of Jesus, with those who are following Jesus into a new world.”

James Jordan puts it this way:

Nicodemus is brilliant. He says to Jesus, “You jest, surely. How many times have we been born again? the Flood, Sinai, Elijah, Cyrus. But it has never taken. You would have to back into mother’s womb and start over.”

“Yep,” says Jesus. “And watch me do it.”

Sure enough, Nicodemus is there when Jesus is buried back into mother’s womb. I’m certain Nicodemus knew Jesus would rise again, born anew from the soil. Maybe the disciples had doubts, but Nicodemus knew.

In union with Jesus’ resurrection we are all born anew from mother’s womb.

He also points out that John describes the tomb as a virgin:

19.41 Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.

(Genesis 24.16 The young woman was very attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known.)

Put this together with Luke’s record of Jesus vs. Sadducees on resurrection where he says that one becomes a son of God by being a son of the resurrection, and Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 about the “birth pangs” of death being unable to stop Jesus, the use of Psalm 2 (“today I have begotten you”) in the preaching of the resurrection of Jesus in Acts, the title “firstborn of the death,” Romans all over the place….