Month: April 2009

Why Blogging Beats Youtube

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

So I receive my daily email from the History News Network which includes a report about a panel at the Organization of American Historians annual meeting on the state of the history of American conservatism.  Research and personal interests, not to mention the entertainment supplied by liberal academics having to talk about conservatives, prompt me to click on the link.  And what do I find?  More links, but not to papers or synopses of papers, but to videos of the panelists. 

Now, I know ingratitude is unbecoming in Christians and annoying in others, but I have to admit that I was not in the best of humor having to watch three roughly 10-minute videos of the presentations.  (The fourth was deleted from Youtube before I could get to it, suggesting authors were not consulted before the videos went on line.)  Sure, it was better than not being there, or having to wait for the papers to show up in print. 

But I’d much rather have had the papers.  I could have skimmed them in about as much time as it took to watch one of the videos, and then filed them away with their footnotes for help at another point.   This offers further evidence that for learning, old technologies are superior to new ones.  I mean, would you rather watch an author read a book or simply read (or skim) it for yourself?

Neo-Conn-versation vs. Paleo-Conn-versation

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

The legacy of Harvie Conn, home and foreign missionary for the OPC, and longtime member of the WTS faculty, is less contested than it should be. A blog, though dormant of late, has been dedicated to preserving Harvie’s insights about contextualization and globalization. One former WTS Old Testament professor has also recently been posting a series of Conn quotations on mission and theology that were somehow the inspiration for appropriating Ancient Near Eastern Studies in OT interpretation (imagine how a paper on missions would go over at the Society of Biblical Literature).

Despite these progressive appropriations of Conn, another side of the man exists, the one that informed his efforts first as a home missionary for the OPC in Stratford, New Jersey. The following quotations come from “Where is Everybody Sunday Night?” Presbyterian Guardian (March 15, 1959).

One of the thorns in the flesh that plagues every home missionary is the Sunday evening service. From what I’ve heard, it also gives many a sleepless night to other pastors as well. Actually, the Sunday evening service isn’t the problem. The problem is: where are the people at the Sunday evening hour set for meeting in God’s house? Why do people make a habit out of not coming? . . . .

Remember the blessedness of being in God’s house on all His day. Look at what the man with the withered hand would have missed if he had skipped church the time Jesus was there to heal him. Anticipate the added blessing of the evening hour. Ask yourself if you are hungering and thirsting for truth. If you are, why aren’t you present also Sunday night to be filled? Or maybe your appetite isn’t what it ought to be, but it will increase if you go where the food is being served! Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man. It is for our use and blessing.

Makes me wonder if I could take theological progressivism better from someone who kept the entire Lord’s Day holy.

The Great Debate: Psalms vs. Hymns II

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

(From the NTJ, Jan. 1997)

From: Glenn Morangie
To: T. Glen Livet
Date: 9/3/96 11:10am
Subject: Psalmody -Reply

Glen,
Thanks for the response. This is surely better, but I am still uneasy about the compositions of men. Which means I think the inspired words of God are a pretty good way of singing praise to him. Is there any better?

Now of course, versifications are not inspired, which might be an argument for chanting psalms or any other hymn that is part of the canon, like the Magnificat, Nunc Dimitis, i.e. those NT hymns Calvin included in worship. But neither are translations of the Bible inspired and we don’t seem to object to their use in public worship. We wouldn’t read Chuck Colson’s thoughts about Eph. 1 instead of reading the Word. We probably wouldn’t read Colson at all. And in my book, his writings are no better or worse than Isaac Watts’.

In sum, I find it a very different thing to sing the composition of an author who has sat down and composed five verses based on a passage of Scripture or a particular doctrine, than to sing words that closely parallel the words of Scripture and use them as forms of prayer and praise. And this, I believe fits with Terry Johnson’s argument in his new book. If the Reformed tradition has made the Word central to worship, why not make it central to our singing as well?

So I guess I am not an exclusive psalmodist and, therefore, able to take the Lord’s Supper at your church (since I am not advancing sin). But I think exclusive psalmodists’ instincts to be on the whole admirable.

And what do you do with our standards? Don’t they need to be revised and don’t we need to say that the early Reformers were wrong and show why?

Unpersuadedly yours,
Glenn

____________

From: T. Glen Livet
To: Glenn Morangie
Date: 9/3/96 1:36pm
Subject: Psalmody -Reply

Glenn,
Our Reformed worship is not in fact centered on the Word. Reformed worship is dialogical; God speaks to us and we speak to him. In Word and Sacrament, God speaks to us; in prayer and praise, we speak to him. Thus, the rules governing the singing of praise are essentially the same as those governing prayer; the words should be faithful to the scriptures, according with biblical truth (including emphasizing what scripture emphasizes), but they need not be restricted to inspired words. For instance, how could we ever pray for Mrs. Jones, dying of cancer, using the language of scripture?

Indeed, as regards the sermon, the matter becomes even more pointed, doesn’t it? In preaching, God speaks to his people. Yet, we do not limit the sermon to a reading of canonical scripture, but we entrust this grave responsibility to men who are orthodox and of good judgment. If we entrust uninspired men to speak God’s Word to us, we can as easily trust uninspired men to speak our words to God.

I agree with you that the instincts of the exclusive psalmist position are largely admirable, especially in light of the poor quality of much hymnody. On the other hand, an instinct that denigrates praise being offered explicitly to the Second Person of the Trinity is not entirely noble.

Glen

Seeking a Better Country

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Seeking a Better Country is a readable and lively survey of American Presbyterianism since its founding in 1706. Its aim is not to celebrate but to understand how Presbyterians formed one of the largest and most influential denominations in the United States, and those historical developments that led to their decline.

Can This Co-Editorial Relationship be Saved?

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

The editors of the NTJ are big baseball fans.  They also root for teams that are rivals and whose fans generally hate each other.  For that reason it is profitable and even Christian to feel the love that National Review Online has assembled before the animosity of MLB’s season begins.  “For the Love of the Game” includes a brief tribute from one adoring fan to the Major League’s thirty franchises.  (BTW, the Mets bleep.)

It Can't Happen Here

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

About twenty years ago, when George Marsden came out with his history of Fuller Seminary, Reforming Fundamentalism (1987), faculty, administrators, and board members at Westminster Seminary invited the author to talk to them about what the history of FTS might teach them. The general verdict of many who participated in that seminar with Marsden was that Fuller’s break with its founding faculty’s mission – especially on the doctrine of inerrancy – could not happen at WTS.

Sure, Fuller like Westminster had tried to replicate Old Princeton’s commitments to historic Protestantism and first-rate scholarship. But FTS received the Princeton tradition more awkwardly than WTS. Even if Westminster, like Fuller, was a parachurch institution and so free from the oversight of a governing church, WTS was so closely tied to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church – all its faculty were OP ministers – that Westminster is still often confused as the seminary of the OPC. In addition, WTS tried to perpetuate Old Princeton’s pursuit of polemical theology as part of its mission to maintain and defend the Reformed faith; Fuller by contrast hoped to achieve a kinder, gentler Old Princeton as part of its effort to wean fundamentalism from meanness. (Fuller’s kindness would eventually take the form of concluding that Machen too was mean and his polemics unnecessary.) Furthermore, Westminster’s faculty subscribed the Westminster Standards in their entirety – maybe the name was important, ya think? Fuller could only embrace a modified Calvinism through its own statement of faith. These differences led to the supposition that FTS could not happen to WTS.

(Not so fast, pilgrm.  To read the entire essay, you need to subscribe to the NTJ.  You don’t have to smoke to get it.)

Would A Reformed-World-and-Life View Be More Effective?

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Jeremy Beer has many good points to make about Newt Gingrich’s conversion to the Roman Catholic Church. Among them is the following, that has surprising resonance with a two-kingdoms theology (why wouldn’t it? All Western Christians of merit are deep-down Augustinian):

It is unwarranted in the first place to think that serious, practicing Catholics will automatically agree on matters of social, economic, and political philosophy and policy. To state the thesis in a more moderate form, it is unwarranted to believe that they would agree if they were all pious enough or smart enough or understood the faith enough. That’s not how it works. The church doesn’t declaim authoritatively on anything that isn’t a matter of faith or morals because it can’t. Outside the quite small realm of faith and morals, there’s ample room for disagreement and debate even among Catholics of good will and well-formed consciences. (I am not claiming to be a Catholic of good will, and certainly not one with a well-formed conscience; I’m just laying out the theory here, as well as I understand it.)

But let me come to the interesting and in some ways opposite point. Gingrich is the latest in a steadily lengthening string of high-profile converts to Rome among political conservatives and neoconservatives. In the last few years, that list includes Sam Brownback and Robert Novak and Robert Bork and Larry Kudlow and a number of others.

Now, reflect, and let me know if I’m wrong. Did any of these men (or any other high-profile politician/journalist/muckety-muck convert not listed here) change his public opinions about any idea, policy, or other matter of public significance after his conversion?