Author: D. G. Hart

From DGH on Christ's Temptation Submitted on 2014/10/27 at 4:45 am

Published on by D. G. Hart57 Comments

Mark, Mark, Mark,

Yet another post about Jesus as the “best believer who ever lived.” Why? You write:

The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness furnishes us with clear evidence that the life he lived he lived by faith in God. He trusted in the God who was able to help him in his time of need (Heb. 2:13). Jesus had to live the life of faith in order to bestow upon us the gift of faith. As the second Adam, Jesus rectified Adam’s first sin. And what was Adam’s first sin? Unbelief, not pride.

Are you suggesting again that Jesus is like us and a model for how we live a life of faith?

What seems odd is that when you describe Jesus in ways that we might describe a regular believer you sound like Roman Catholics in the way that they describe (and revere) Mary as “the Greatest of Saints”:

Catholic belief is that all of us, Mary included, need a Redeemer because of our fallen nature and that no one can attain Heaven without His Blood. We are saved from our fallen nature by His grace alone through faith that worketh in charity. Mary, though, because God knew how she would use the free will He gave to her, was saved, by His grace, from having a fallen nature at the moment of her conception. She was redeemed from her mother’s womb, an act planned from Genesis 3 so that she could act as the New Eve and so that Christ could be born of vessel even more pure than the Ark of the Covenant. Christ would not have been born from that which is impure! God knew of Mary’s will to serve even before she was conceived. He knew she would say yes to Him, and He saved her at her first moment.

I sure hope you don’t go overboard on Jesus as the model for our faith. If you keep our sinfulness in mind, you should be A-okay.

Can We Reach Them (and Can We Afford To)?

Published on by D. G. Hart33 Comments

Are sounds of doubt and uncertainty beginning to echo out of the Big Apple?

First, Tim Keller writes a book notice on Matthew Bowman’s The Urban Pulpit: New York City and the Fate of Liberal Evangelicalism. Although he sounds confident that New York City now has churches who teach “historic orthodox doctrine” and are “also intellectually robust and socially engaged,” he also seems worried.

There are at least 100 churches that we can discern that have been begun over the last 20 years in center city New York (and some older churches renewed) that are closer to the older kind of Christianity that used to flourish here. However, we too face the issue of a culture that is not interested in what we have to say. How do we reach them?

Add to that the recent reflections of an Englishman, Andrew Wilson, about Christianity and the churches in New York and you begin to wonder if all the money spent on Redeemer PCA is going to amount to much (aside from pastoral celebrity):

One of the pastors at Redeemer Presbyterian Church was interviewed on his/their ways of doing youth ministry. His first comment was that, because it is hard to believe in New York City – only around 3% of Manhattan is made up of evangelical Christians, although it is closer to 8-9% in the other boroughs – they affirm doubt. They acknowledge the force of objections to Christianity, and encourage people simply for being in the city and remaining Christian, because they recognise how hard it is. . . .

although the Christian world has mostly heard of Tim Keller and Redeemer, they are tiny in the city. (One of their assistant pastors said that Dimas Salaberrios, an Ethiopian pastor from the Bronx who spoke at the conference, is more well known in the city itself than Keller, even though most Christians outside the city have never heard of him.) A church of six thousand in eight million is a drop in the ocean. But another pastor mentioned the disproportionate influence they have had, simply by demystifying and detoxifying the city for evangelicals. “If they weren’t there, we could never do what we’re doing,” he said. . . .

New York seems both incredibly exciting and incredibly difficult as a place to live, and to plant and lead churches. The energy, creativity and diversity of the city are unparalleled, but the city is less Christian than the rest of the nation (in contrast to London, which is more Christian than the rest of the UK), and the pressures on price and space are even more intense in Manhattan than they are in other global cities. The fact that Manhattan is a separate island makes a big difference here: in London, you can lead a church in the West End, live in Brixton and have your offices in Fulham – and some previous contributors to this blog do – but in New York the equivalent is virtually impossible, because it would mean living, working and leading on three different islands. I’ve just mentioned the six-person family in a two-bedroom flat, and church premises are just as extortionate: many churches share their buildings with (at least) one other congregation, and the one recent building purchase I heard about cost $50 million. (By way of comparison, Kings Church London just opened their newly refurbished building in Lee, which used to be a school, and it cost them around £6 million.) All of which makes church planting here spiritually demanding, financially challenging and emotionally draining, but also exhilarating and rewarding.

If these comments reflect a trend, then they may signal that if you can affirm doubts about Christianity to show you are not a Stepford Christian, you are also allowed to have second thoughts about TKNY and Redeemer PCA.

Don't Stop, Believin'

Published on by D. G. Hart908 Comments

I wonder if Jason and the Callers were aware of statistics like these when they aligned with a communion they thought to be the arbiter of Christian truth:

One-third of divorced and remarried Catholics who have not had their first marriage annulled receive Communion, even if they have not sought the permission of their priest.

Catholics in Britain and Ireland in such circumstances were almost twice as likely to receive Communion without having sought permission as US Catholics (29 per cent vs 17 per cent). . . .

Practising Catholics said the chief threats to marriage and family life were: artificial contraception; gay marriage and adoption; pressure caused by long working hours, money worries and unemployment; and the proliferation of pornography.

Almost three-quarters of practising Catholics welcomed the presence of lay people at the Synod, with one-quarter saying they wished more had been invited to attend and to be involved in decision-making.

Twenty per cent of Mass-going women and 15 per cent of Mass-going men said they sometimes felt the Church was too focused on the family to the point where they sometimes felt alienated.

Eighty-nine per cent of practising Catholics said a child ideally needed a mother and a father, while 11 per cent said a parent’s gender was less important than his or her commitment to the child.

About half of respondents said there was a danger the synod would be dominated by Western concerns rather than those affecting Catholics in the developing world.

Some 83 per cent of practising Catholics said they regularly pray with their children, or did when they were younger, and 78 per cent said they often talk to them about faith, or did when they were younger.

Of the clergy who took part, more than a third said the ban on artificial contraception could be ignored in good conscience and that cohabitation could be an acceptable stage en route to marriage.

To put this data which is skewed toward people who read The Tablet and use its website, consider the results of a Pew survey from last year:

How do U.S. Catholics view same-sex marriage?

As of 2012, about half of U.S. Catholics support same-sex marriage. This level of support has increased over the past decade, rising from 40% in favor in 2001.

How do U.S. Catholics view abortion?

Half of U.S. Catholics overall (51%) say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 44% say it should be illegal in all or most cases. Among white Catholics, 54% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. By contrast, among Hispanic Catholics, 53% say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. In the general public, 54% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 39% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.

How do U.S. Catholics view contraception?

Just 15% of U.S. Catholics say that using contraceptives is morally wrong. Greater percentages say contraception is either morally acceptable (41%) or not a moral issue (36%). Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week are more evenly split. About three-in-ten say using contraceptives is morally wrong (27%). Similar percentages say it is morally acceptable (33%) or not a moral issue (30%).

Maybe if you are comparing yourself to the Protestant mainline, or to the Church of England, you take some encouragement from these numbers. But if you’re the Yankees or Steelers of the ecclesiastical world and rooting for a winner is what you signed up for when you crossed the Tiber, what happens when your ecclesiastical players keep coming up short in the fantasy church league?

For this reason, as much attention as people have given to the gathering of bishops in Rome over the last two weeks, not enough has been directed at how a church with so much authority, universal jurisdiction, apostolic succession, and charism — so many trophies — has been so ineffective in shepherding its flock.

I for one cannot understand how Roman Catholicism’s defenders (whether liberal or conservative) can continue to claim superiority. For instance, from the left, Michael Sean Winters consoles himself that Rome is not the Episcopal Church (which is sort of like the Phillies’ fans saying their team is not the Cubs):

A friend forwarded me a tweet from, of all people, Mia Farrow. It read: “Disappointed Catholics – imagine no Cardinals, Popes or bankers. All welcome, gay marriage, women and married priests – the Episcopal church.” Now, I do not mean to suggest that Ms. Farrow speaks for informed Episcopalianism. But, the obvious rejoinder is “No apostolic succession, no Real Presence, no ministry of unity in the Petrine office – some deal. And hurry, before they close up shop and turn off the lights.” And, the fact is that you know and I know Catholics who think as Ms. Farrow does. Their agenda has trumped everything and that is the problem. Ideology gets in the way of the unity of faith to which Pope Francis is calling us. It is this prior commitment to a desired outcome, ideologically defined, that keeps the Holy Spirit from our counsels and charity from our discussions. In short, ideology can frustrate genuine progress.

So apostolic succession is the rejoinder to those for whom it doesn’t matter (remember “pray, pay and obey”?), or even to bishops who don’t invoke their episcopal power? Again to use the Phillies’ analogy, so the Phillies were awful this year but darn, weren’t they good in 2008 — you know, once a world champion always a world champion. Tell that to the Red Sox. But if you want to keep insisting that the Phillies invented baseball, okay, but I’m not sure what kind of conversations about baseball are really possible if you’re going to take that line even though your bishops conceded fifty years ago that other teams helped contribute to baseball.

Then from the right we have the example of David Mills who compares (admirably I should say because I’d much rather interact with a conservative Roman Catholic who tells me I am wrong) Roman Catholicism to the best house in the neighborhood:

In the preface to Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis described the Church as a house with various rooms occupied by different traditions, including Catholicism. It’s not that good an image, even from his point of view, but it does give us one way of understanding our relation to our Protestant friends. Lewis would not have accepted this reimagining of his metaphor, but Catholics, who know that the Church isn’t merely one denomination among others, will know that the Catholic Church is the house, and the rooms are occupied by the various rites within the Church. To enter the house, one must be a member of the family. Friends may set up homes in the yard. They are within the pale, the relation the Church calls “real but imperfect communion.”

The Church will share as much as she can with her separated brethren. The family living in the house and the friends living in the yard may spend a lot of time together, and greatly enjoy each other’s company, but at the end of the day they each go back to their own homes. Some living in the yard resent never being let into the house, even for a family meal. It seems unkind and irrational. They’re happy to have Catholics in their homes and cannot understand why Catholics will not let them in theirs.

The homes they set up in the yard will keep them relatively warm and dry, if they build well, as some do, though not all. Life in the yard is much better than life on the street. Yet, however pleasant the families’ lives in the yard, they would be much happier and healthier and more productive if they got to live in the house itself. They are not homeless, which is a good thing, but they’re not really at home either.

. . . Outside it they do not experience the blessings only found on the inside. The positive reason is that it is a wonderful house. It is a great place to live. It is the best place to live. The kitchen is stocked with food, and the living room filled with comfortable furniture. The bathrooms have hot showers and working toilets, and the bedrooms are good. It is cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It has interesting architectural features and curious nooks and crannies. It is full of art, books, and music. It is where your family lives.

The Church is where the faith is found in its fullness, its plenitude, its abundance. I know this from my own experience of being outside the Church and then being on the inside. For over twenty years I was an Episcopalian of the sort called Anglo-Catholic, an active one who volunteered in various conservative organizations and taught at the Episcopal Church’s most conservative seminary. I lived in a rather nice house in the yard, one that from the outside looked very much like the Catholic house: much smaller, of course, but more tastefully designed and aesthetically pleasing, and sitting closer to the Catholic house than many of the others. But in the yard nevertheless, as conveyed by the joke, which even Episcopalians would make, that their religious body was “Catholic lite.”

But isn’t this house, as the recent synod and polls suggest, a little drafty, in need of a new roof, with a septic system in disrepair, and an owner who doesn’t want to do any work on repairing the house because he think he owns the whole neighborhood (maybe like the one the Addams Family occupied)? When will this beautiful house get the maintenance it needs? Or when will the residents of the house actually listen to what the real estate agents are saying (some of whom teach classes in the house’s universities) that the house no longer matters since it’s more fun to hang out with the homeless?

And then comes the offhand comment about the synod that you just can’t believe someone said, in this case another fellow whom I admire, Peter Lawler:

Someone was wondering whether it was my “Pope Francis” moment in which I was subtly repudiating Catholic teaching on the purposes of sex and marriage. Well, I don’t think our pope is actually doing that, although I will say he’s filled the air with mixed messages. But maybe he’s right in some way such that, although the truth doesn’t change, recent developments might suggest that the gift of talking about it lovingly and effectively is in short supply. I certainly don’t claim to have that gift.

I don’t like to have to make this connection, but Roman Catholic marriage practices that led the bishops to Rome to think about what to do occurred on the watch of one of the church’s most beloved popes, John Paul II. Not only was he revered by many (maybe not the progressives), but he also offered one of the most philosophically rich accounts of sex, the body, and marriage that Roman Catholics have ever seen. And for all this you get a group of followers who are indistinguishable from the rest of their American mainline Protestant neighbors on gay marriage?

I know that since all priests still have to take the anti-modernist oath, lots of Roman Catholics think that modernism can’t happen there. But here they need to remember that Protestant modernism arose among Presbyterians at the same time that ministers subscribed the Westminster Standards.

I get it. Roman Catholic modernism doesn’t smell (and we haven’t even begun to talk about Richard McBrien).

How Are You Going to Get them to Read John Mbiti once They've Read Ben Carson?

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

Ever since Philip Jenkins’ (at least) The Next Christendom, people have found it fashionable to assert that the churches in the Southern Hemisphere are leaving the Christian West in the dust (of death?). The odd thing about this logic is that it missed how much Southern or Global Christianity had learned (for good or ill) from the Christian West, first through colonial churches and then through pietistically inspired non-denominational missionaries. Indeed, the West has been dominating the world for almost 500 years. Not saying that’s a great thing or a wretched development. It simply is what it is.

And now comes some evidence of the West’s dominance even in Global Christianity:

Now, a new study, polling more than 8,000 Christians in four languages across three countries, has found that African Christians aren’t reading African Christians, either.

In the Africa Leadership Study, a quarter of Central Africans, a third of Angolans, and half of Kenyans named a preacher or pastor as their favorite author. Majorities in Angola and Kenya named authors whose writings were explicitly Christian. High percentages also named African writers.

However, “overlap between the two was low, with relatively few respondents identifying favorite authors [who] were both African and Christian,” said Robert Priest, a professor of international studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, who presented the findings to the American Society of Missiology.

The lack of prominent indigenous authors was also evidenced by the library holdings of five major Christian higher education institutions in Kenya, where only one African Christian (John Mbiti) ranked among the top 15 authors with the largest presence on the shelves. Kenyan Christian bookstores had a significantly different top 15, but only one African author (Dag Heward-Mills) cracked their lists. Other commercial booksellers and street vendors didn’t have any African Christian authors among their top 15.

Turns out that once you link the world politically and economically (not to mention linguistically and educationally), the Christian voices with the loudest mouths tend to dominate. (Odd though how the bishops with global jurisdiction aren’t on those lists.)

What's to Abhor?

Published on by D. G. Hart63 Comments

One of the arresting vows that church members take in Presbyterian circles is this:

Do you confess that because of your sinfulness you abhor and humble yourself before God, that you repent of your sin, and that you trust for salvation not in yourself but in Jesus Christ alone?

Important to consider is that this is something someone who has already converted or been baptized and reared in the church is supposed to answer in the affirmative. That means that someone who is already regenerate and progressing in sanctification is supposed to affirm. After all, we don’t go straight from the conversion experience to a gathering of the congregation to receive members.

Why is it then that someone who is holy and sanctified, since these are parts of the gospel as some tell us, would abhor himself (notice too that we require the fairer sex also to abhor herself)? And why is it that we need to understand, as the gospel networkers are encouraging us to learn, that growth in holiness does not lead to spiritual pride?

We deny that assurance gained through growth in godliness amounts to a performance-based religion or necessitates an unwholesome spiritual pride. . . .

We deny that rejoicing in victories over sin amounts to spiritual pride or performance religion, although Christians may and sometimes do sin in this way.

This makes me wonder if our membership vows need to be revised. Should we add a membership vow that asks, “do you rejoice now and will you continue to do so in your victories over sin?” Or is the posture of abhorrence much more fitting for those who join the body of Christ?

Now if you believe Jesus is in some sense (hear that republicationists) like us, then you may not care for the language of abhorrence. Then again, if you affirm what Machen explained about the uniqueness of Christ, disgust with yourself may not be so bad:

Certainly Jesus had a religion of His own; His prayer was real prayer, His faith was real religious faith. His relation to His heavenly Father was not merely that of a child to a father; it was that of a man to his God. Certainly Jesus had a religion; without it His humanity would indeed have been but incomplete. Without doubt Jesus had a religion; the fact is of the utmost importance. But it is equally important to observe that that religion which Jesus had was not Christianity. Christianity is a way of getting rid of sin, and Jesus was without sin. His religion was a religion of Paradise, not a religion of sinful humanity. It was a religion to which we may perhaps in some sort attain in heaven, when the process of our purification is complete (though even then the memory of redemption will never leave us); but certainly it is not a religion with which we can begin. The religion of Jesus was a religion of untroubled sonship; Christianity is a religion of the attainment of sonship by the redeeming work of Christ. (Christianity and Liberalism, 92)

Women Grow Up

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

The flower fades.

The photographs that comprise the New York Times’ story about a photographer, Nicholas Nixon, who as taken shots of his wife and her three sisters every year for four decades are truly remarkable (thanks to our domestic correspondent). It is the photographic version of the Up Series.

Throughout this series, we watch these women age, undergoing life’s most humbling experience. While many of us can, when pressed, name things we are grateful to Time for bestowing upon us, the lines bracketing our mouths and the loosening of our skin are not among them. So while a part of the spirit sinks at the slow appearance of these women’s jowls, another part is lifted: They are not undone by it. We detect more sorrow, perhaps, in the eyes, more weight in the once-fresh brows. But the more we study the images, the more we see that aging does not define these women. Even as the images tell us, in no uncertain terms, that this is what it looks like to grow old, this is the irrefutable truth, we also learn: This is what endurance looks like.

For those of us who are beginning to know what it means to take the over in the over-under of middle age, to avoid the sense of decline that these photos capture is difficult. (And they may sober those who are still comfortable taking the under of middle age — be careful what’s coming.)

The images are also a reminder of the increasing dependence that comes with age:

It is the endurance of sisterhood in particular. Nixon, who grew up a single child, says he has always been particularly intrigued by the sisterly unit, and it shows in these images. With each passing year, the sisters seem to present more of a united front. Earlier assertions of their individuality — the arms folded across the chest, the standing apart — give way to a literal leaning on one another, as if independence is no longer such a concern. We see what goes on between the sisters in their bodies, particularly their limbs. A hand clasps a sister’s waist, arms embrace arms or are slung in casual solidarity over a shoulder. A palm steadies another’s neck, reassuring. The cumulative effect is dizzying and powerful. When 36 prints were exhibited in a gallery in Granada, Spain, viewers openly wept.

Hard not to.

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Woman Up

Published on by D. G. Hart30 Comments

While love was hoping all things, the BBs have piled on the situation in Houston in a way that raises a number of interesting questions about persecution. Tim Bayly himself insists that the difficulties contemporary Christians confront increasingly resembles what Chicken Little faced:

. . . the persecution suffered by Christians in this country is powerful, silencing the witness and confession of the Gospel everywhere and constantly. To act as if we don’t see or care about this low-grade persecution because it hasn’t yet come for us and our job and children, or because it hasn’t yet come to our city or school system, or because our mayor is not a lesbian who is subpoenaing the sermons of the churches in our city, is to refuse to read our times as closely and well as we read the clouds. It is to sleep when we should be preparing our children to stand against social pressures, stigmas, and loss of income so in the not-very-distant future they will be able to stand against imprisonment and execution.

Sure, it sounds histrionic to speak of the iron fist of diversity, inclusivity, and pluralism as a real threat to the civil liberties of Christians today. Unless, of course, one has studied the growth of the persecution and martyrdom suffered by our brothers and sisters in Christ under the iron fist of that same diversity, inclusivity, and pluralism enforced across the ancient Roman Empire.

As an American who still thinks that the point of the United States had to do with opposition to centralized and consolidated government, I can sympathize with small-government types who object to the politics of Houston. But as a Christian, I have trouble thinking that this qualifies as persecution or that we should oppose it. After all, the New Testament is replete with calls to Christians to bear their cross:

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. (1 Pet 4:1-3 ESV)

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Cor 4:7-12 ESV)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt 5:3-12 ESV)

This doesn’t mean that Christians should be masochists who look for ways to experience pain or that we should somehow lose a capacity to distinguish quiet and peaceful lives from one characterized by affliction. But it does suggest that persecution is not something about which we should bitch. It goes with the turf and may actually be evidence (pay attention Obedience Boys) of a lively faith.

At the same time, does a subpoena rise to the level of persecution? Consider a piece by Ross Douthat some time back:

If the federal government suddenly closed all religious schools in the United States, banned homeschooling, and instituted an anti-religious curriculum in public schools, I would absolutely call it persecution. But a step like denying religious colleges access to public dollars would not rise to the same level. It would certainly create hardship and disruption, and weaken institutional religion in significant ways. But it would leave the basic liberty to educate one’s children in one’s own faith intact, and I cannot see the warrant for claiming that a given faith is “persecuted” by the government’s decision to withhold a subsidy. Again: Disadvantaged, yes; persecuted, no.

Likewise, if the government suddenly required businesses to fire Christians, or instituted a policy of discrimination that prevented them from being hired, that would clearly be a form of persecution. But having the rules of a few professions suddenly pose new ethical dilemmas for religious believers is the kind of thing that can happen in any time and place. It’s a challenge, a hardship, a form of pressure … but it’s not really persecution as I think most people understand the term.

And to Dreher’s point that this definition would imply that there haven’t been that many cases of sustained persecution in the United States — well, I suppose I think that’s right. I wouldn’t use “persecution” to describe the rules that kept Jews out of Ivy League schools and country clubs, for instance, or the experience of atheist parents before the Supreme Court rolled back school prayer, or the hostility and scrutiny that Muslims sometimes face in the post-9/11 U.S.A. Or to use my own faith to bring the distinction to a finer point: In the 19th century, the Ursuline convent riots were a case of actual anti-Catholic persecution; the climate of anti-Catholicism that produced the Blaine amendments was not. This isn’t to minimize the anti-Catholicism of the 1870s and 1880s; it’s just to say that not every form of hostility deserves the same label as the work of a Diocletian or a Nero.

And using the “persecution” label too promiscuously, I think, carries three risks beyond intellectual inaccuracy. First, as Dreher sort of concedes, it doesn’t do enough to acknowledge the vast gulf separating the situation of Western Christians and the incredible heroism of our co-believers overseas, who face eliminative violence on an increasingly-dramatic scale. Second, as I tried to suggest in the column, it doesn’t do enough to acknowledge the gulf separating the situation of Western Christians and the situation of gays and lesbians, past and present, facing persecution at the hands of religiously-motivated actors. And finally, it doesn’t actually prepare conservative believers for a future as a (hopefully creative) religious minority, because it conditions them/us to constantly expect some kind of grand tribulation that probably won’t actually emerge.

Could it be then that by invoking the language of persecution Christians are simply showing their desire to get in the line of victims? After all, this is the recent and easy way to achieve status in the United States, namely, to show that you are the object of oppression (even to the point of having your feelings hurt). But that was hardly the attitude that characterized the early Christian martyrs who knew a thing or two about persecution. Here the BBs may want to take a page — of all things — from a woman named Perpetua:

But the mob asked that their bodies be brought out into the open that their eyes might be the guilty witnesses of the sword that pierced their flesh. And so the martyrs got up and went to the spot of their own accord as the people wanted them to, and kissing one another they sealed their martyrdom with the ritual kiss of peace. The others took the sword in silence and without moving, especially Saturus, who being the first to climb the stairway was the first to die. For once again he was waiting for Perpetual Perpetua, however, had yet to taste more pain. She screamed as she was struck on the bone; then she took the trembling hand of the young gladiator and guided it to her throat. It was as though so great a woman, feared as she was by the unclean spirit, could not be dispatched unless she herself were willing.

Ah, most valiant and blessed martyrs! Truly are you called and chosen for the glory of Christ Jesus our Lord! And any man who exalts, honours, and worships his glory should read for the consolation of the Church these new deeds of heroism which are no less significant than the tales of old. For these new manifestations of virtue will bear witness to one and the same Spirit who still operates, and to God the Father almighty, to his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom is splendour and immeasurable power for all the ages. Amen.

There is persecution and then there is persecution (thanks to our mid-West correspondent).

The Protestant Dilemma Writ Catholic

Published on by D. G. Hart89 Comments

Devin Rose thinks he found all the dilemmas that haunt Protestants (and that led him to Rome). But has he along with Jason and the Callers really escaped the thicket of difficulties.

On the one hand, having a written basis for determining church teaching really comes in handy (as opposed to the slippery way that oral tradition or papal whim might operate. According to Gerhard Cardinal Mueller:

Not even an ecumenical council can change the doctrine of the Church, because her Founder, Jesus Christ, entrusted the faithful preservation of his teachings and doctrine to the apostles and their successors. The Gospel of Matthew says: “Go and teach all people everything that I commanded you” (cf. Mt 28:19–20), which is nothing if not a definition of the “deposit of the faith” (depositum fidei) that the Church has received and cannot change. Therefore the doctrine of the Church will never be the sum total of a few theories worked out by a handful of theologians, however ingenious they may be, but rather the profession of our faith in revelation, nothing more and nothing less than the Word of God entrusted to the heart—the interiority—and the lips—the proclamation—of his Church.

We have an elaborate, structured doctrine about marriage, all of it based on the words of Jesus himself, which must be presented in its entirety. We encounter it in the Gospels and in other places in the New Testament, especially in the words of Saint Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians and in Romans.

On the other hand, the dilemma for all Christians is whether they will submit to religious authority. This includes Roman Catholics and Protestants:

The hallmark Protestant idea of priesthood of all believers allows the individual — whose relationship with God is unmediated — to determine his or her fitness to receive the sacrament. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, retains a few layers of priestly and catechetical scrutiny.

Last week at the synod, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois of Paris worried that couples “do not believe that the use of contraceptive methods is a sin and therefore they tend not to speak of them in confession and so they receive Communion untroubled.” Perhaps because married women might think it inappropriate to be questioned about contraception by a cadre of celibate men.

Either way, confessors tend not to press the issue, and no one pulls married couples out of the Communion line. Few believe a solid majority of Catholic women or their husbands will burn in hell for using artificial contraceptives.

In the case of cohabitating couples, there is little the Church can do. Marriage preparation classes acknowledge its sinfulness, but priests and bishops cannot afford to turn away half of what is already a declining number of couples seeking marriage in the Church. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops advises that priests can point couples toward a holier union by “supporting the couple’s plans for the future rather than chastising them for the past.”

Yet even for Catholics whose relationships put them in a perpetual state of mortal sin, individual conscience and church authority are often in fierce tension. In practice, LGBT Catholics often rely on their own consciences in determining whether they will go forward for Communion. In some locales, it is common enough for partnered gays and lesbians to receive Communion that it only makes news when they are turned away.

Meanwhile, Bryan Cross and company have yet to recognize a dilemma that cost a night’s sleep.

Mark Driscoll is to Ray Rice . . .

Published on by D. G. Hart38 Comments

what Tim Keller is to Roger Goodell.

At least that’s how TKNY’s quotation in the New York Times story about Driscoll occurred to me:

A front-page story in The New York Times on August 23 had suggested that Driscoll’s empire was “imploding.”

“He was really important—in the Internet age, Mark Driscoll definitely built up the evangelical movement enormously,” Timothy Keller, the senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, told the Times. “But the brashness and the arrogance and the rudeness in personal relationships—which he himself has confessed repeatedly—was obvious to many from the earliest days, and he has definitely now disillusioned quite a lot of people.”

So like the NFL with Ray Rice, the gospel allies knew about Driscoll’s antics well before his pseudonymous comments went public. I know I have blogged about this before, but where was Kathy Keller with her b-s detector on this one? Why didn’t the most gospelly guys in the room warn the rest of the Christian world about Driscoll’s problems?

Maybe they need to take a page out of their savior’s playbook and call people (especially religious leaders) “fool” or “hypocrite” once in a while. If they want to start with me, their move.

Why Don't Hard Questions Occur to Christians?

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

So if you were a historic Southern Baptist institution located in one of the former border states — think Kentucky — where would you want to start a branch campus? Dunbar, Wisconsin? You betcha.

The town was founded in 1888 during a period of thriving logging industry in the Wisconsin northern woods. At that time the railroad was the main means of transporting logs from Dunbar to the southern part of the state and Illinois. Before the town was officially founded there was a restaurant where a cook with the surname Dunbar worked. Whenever the railroad stopped at that part of the area they brought food and supplies for the restaurant. The railroad workers said they were bringing things “to Dunbar” the cook. Eventually when the town was founded it was after the cook’s surname.

And this is the place where Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is going to branch out.

I don’t get it.

Northland International University, an evangelical Christian school located in Dunbar, Wisconsin, will become the first campus outside of Louisville for Boyce College, Southern’s undergraduate school. The action is effective Aug. 1, 2015.

“The fact that there will be a Boyce College and Southern Seminary campus located in Wisconsin on a campus of this stature is an enormous step forward for Southern Baptists,” said Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. “I can only imagine what the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention would think to know that the reach of the SBC and its mother seminary is now of this magnitude in the upper Midwest.”

Daniel Patz, president of Northland since 2013, attended the meeting and told trustees, “This is a gift from Northland to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. But really, I feel almost, even more so, it is gift to us in order for this legacy and this mission to continue; it is the greatest mission in the world, to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth.”

Paul Patz, the grandfather of Daniel Patz, founded Northland in 1958 as a camp and expanded it in 1976 to become Northland Baptist Bible Institute. One year later, Northland became an undergraduate college, adding a graduate program in 1988. Throughout its history, the school has continued to operate Northland Camp & Conference Center, which hosts camps, Bible conferences, and other ministry events. Northland has produced nearly 2,900 alumni serving in ministry across the world.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not insinuating that something shady is at play here. In this economy, any gift that an institution receives is a blessing. But when you think about the pattern of branch campuses that Reformed Theological Seminary established, first Orlando, then Charlotte, then Atlanta, then Washington, then Houston, then New York, then planet earth — I’m not sure this is the order or if these are the real campuses, but you get the point — you’re not thinking Dunbar, Wisconsin or Hillsdale, Michigan.

In which case, someone needs to ask why Dunbar? Why a place roughly twenty-five miles from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? Why not Green Bay?

More important, why isn’t anyone scratching their heads?