A warning to Christian Carnivalers. I kind of
like Frank Sinatra’s I Did
It My Way. Please understand if I choose to editorialize. It’s a sign of
interest on my part, and is intended to encourage others to click through to
your post(s).
For many Christians, the Lenten Fast began on
Clean Monday, two days ago. God forgives and I forgive, forgive me also. For others, today, Ash Wednesday, begins the season of
Lent.
A lot of Christians deem this an appropriate
season for self-examination but also, for cultivating spiritual and
intellectual disciplines for the purpose of taking on the mind of Christ. In a
series, Tom Gilson builds on the insights of the great evangelical reformer and
politician William
Wilberforce (1759-1833); the latest installment: Ten
Resources For Thinking Christianly.
Jeremy Pierce of Parablemania is
not impressed by the suggestion that the magnificent dress of the priests
of Aaron is a precedent for magnificent holy vestments today. In Jeremy’s
mind, the (entirely predictable) worship attire of a Rick Warren is just as
acceptable as the (entirely predictable) worship attire of a Tom Wright.
It is hard to argue with this in the abstract.
In practice of course, Warren could not get away with dressing like Wright or Wright
like Warren. They belong to different orders, as it were, within the Christian
family. It might be considered a strength and a sign of catholicity if, within
one and the same body, some elements dressed in accordance with standards of
priestly magnificence; others, in accordance with the austere standards of John
the Baptist; others still, in accordance with the ordinary standards of decorum
and modesty (these constantly change) of a particular time and place.
I can’t quite tell if Jeremy means to argue
against de facto and de jure standards of dress on the part of subsets of worshippers
beyond those dictated by conventional modesty. That might be a problem, in the
sense of going against the grain of much of the practice of some of God’s
witnesses in the Bible first of all, and in history since. It’s not surprising
really that “head coverings for women” were a point of contention in Corinth, but have been a non-issue in some other contexts. As Paul says, “Judge for yourselves!” and “Hasn’t it always been done this way?” Perhaps Jeremy just wants to say
that Franciscans may dress and otherwise behave according to whatever gospel
precedents they wish, so long as the rules of that order or another order are
not universalized for the entire body.
Ridge Burns of Ridge’s
Blog notes how little
decisions we make can take on a huge importance. Henry
Neufeld of the Participatory Bible
Study blog notes how easy it is for us to look down on rituals and ceremonies
and good works. In the course of teaching for the season of Lent, he lifts up
the possibility of sacrificing
for joy. Jody Neufeld of Jody’s
Devotionals blogs very movingly on the birthday of her son who while still
a very young man died of cancer. The post is an ode to prayer, a powerful one at
that. J. Timothy King over at J. Timothy
King’s Blog explains why he is a Christian and a novelist, but not a
Christian novelist. Great
stuff.
Rey at The
Bible Archive seeks to describe the
unfolding of God’s covenant with Abraham through the Old Testament. Claudia
Pate of Life, Love, and the
Pursuit of Happiness notes how David runs
quickly to the battle line in 1 Samuel 17 and how this is worth modeling in
the Christian life. William Meisheid of Beyond the
Rim posts an inspirational
video. The question in the hymn, “God, are my hands clean?”, goes back to
Psalm 24. Right worship (orthodoxy) and right ethics (orthopraxis) are
inextricably bound together in the psalm. Christianity anchors itself in this
conviction, or it loses it way.
Matt Flanagan of MandM is
thinking about inerrancy (here and here).
Matt writes exceptionally well. He makes one good point after another. Still, I
think the two poles he posits, Verbal Plenary Inspiration (VPI) and Didactic
Plenary Inspiration (DPI), represent a false dichotomy. I hold to both: VPI “that
each and every word used in the Bible is exactly the word that God wanted used,”
and DPI “the question to be asked with respect to a Biblical text is “what was
it intended to teach?”; “the particular message that God wants to convey gets
across.” I also hold that God superintended the transmission (SPI) of the text
such that it was, over time, faithfully edited and translated, and is, for all
intensive purposes, just as inerrant in the Septuagint as it is in the MT; in
the Textus Receptus as in Nestle-Aland; in the NIV as in the KJV. Finally, I
hold that the correct conveyance of the message that God wants to gets across depends
on the present work of the Holy Spirit (HSPI). Any other position, in my view,
has too dim a view of God’s providence. Since Matt likes to refer to the “originals”
which we do not have, and applies the language of inerrancy to them alone, I am
left to assume, which is absurd, that he considers the NIV or KJV Bible (or
whatever) read and preached on in church on a given Sunday to be an errant
text. Matt: you have just been hazed by a biblical blogger. Please consider it
a token of respect.
NCSue of In Him We Live and Move and Have Our
Being notes how self-proclaimed freedom fighters often seem intent on
taking away freedom
from others. It raises an interesting problem: is it possible to safeguard
the freedom of the relatively defenseless without limiting and in severe
cases taking away the freedom of predators? I think not.
If that is the case, the real question, as
often, is more basic: what is right, and what is wrong. For example, is the
abortion of a three-month or six-month old unborn child a predatory act on a
defenseless life? Truth be told, I can think of many other uncomfortable
questions of this kind, questions which nonetheless need to be considered by
people who wish to be responsible moral agents.
Barry Wallace of Who am I? writes about the
call to discipleship, a great topic for the season of Lent.
A very slick site, inspiks, includes a post about the color yellow and Jesus (go here). WWJS? Fadi tells us why
he thinks that Jesus is OK with his liking the color yellow. I guess I’m not
completely surprised that a male needs a bit of reassurance if he likes the
color yellow. As for me, I need a bit of reassurance that inspiks is a bona
fide blog. It looks more like a commercial site masquerading as a blog. But I
like its use of color!
Anthony Delgado of E Inquisitive is tiptoeing through the
tulip of Calvinism - and the flowerless alternative thereto, Arminianism. In
this
post, he says, “Give me a P!” [Perseverance], but also, “Take away a U!”
(Unconditional Election). What’s that spell?
I’m not sure it spells anything quite yet. Literally
and figuratively, I think Anthony needs to add a vowel or two. I wonder whether
he has watched The Truman Show. I love that film, a long meditation on
Psalm 139. Since the film highlights the sense in which freedom is a core constituent of love and, at the same time, the sense in which love is an act of (ultimately
irrational, or non-rational, yet extremely goal-oriented) unconditional election, I still want to say “Give
me a U!” All of the letters in TULIP preach well enough, but I admit some of
them are often preached very poorly.
Thanks again for hosting!
To clarify my position, I'm not saying that there are no good reasons to favor dressing like Tom Wright, Rick Warren, or for that matter the jacket-and-tie approach I'm more used to. There may well be good reasons to favor a certain approach. I just don't think those are strong moral reasons in any immediate way. I think Rick Warren dresses in a way that looks pretty silly to me, but it's more appropriate on some level for the group he works with than Wright's robes. But the same is true on some level of Wright with those he mostly works with and Tim Keller or John Piper with the people they work mostly with.
I'm responding to the claim that the priestly garments in tabernacle and temple worship in Israel give us good principles to see certain ways of dressing in our day as more holy and more gloriously and thus morally better for wearing by those who have a professional role in preaching the gospel and leading congregations in corporate worship. I'm denying that claim. It doesn't mean I don't think there are principles that go beyond mere modesty.
(On the head covering issue, though, I tend to favor the view that we're not dealing with a cultural symbol more like wedding rings today, which culturally indicate commitment and faithfulness to a spouse, which I don't see as much about what you wear as about cultural ways of expressing spiritual truths).
Posted by: Jeremy Pierce | February 17, 2010 at 10:34 AM
I'm happy to help out, Jeremy. A nice variety of posts were submitted.
Posted by: JohnFH | February 17, 2010 at 01:15 PM
good post, keep up the good blogging.
Posted by: whereswaldo | February 17, 2010 at 02:19 PM
Groovy!
Posted by: David Ker | February 18, 2010 at 11:26 AM
Thanks for including inspiks in this great carnival roundup of articles, I love your editorial approach of your presentation. I smiled when you said...
"I need a bit of reassurance that inspiks is a bona fide blog. It looks more like a commercial site masquerading as a blog. But I like its use of color!"
Let me reassure you that we are a "bonafide blog" giving 110% of our talents to God, as a graphic designer, I take your comment as a great compliment, thank God for the invention of Wordpress we are able to blog on such a professional and awesome platform and spread the the Good News to all :)
Blessing in Christ
Posted by: loswl | February 18, 2010 at 04:02 PM
Thanks for the interesting and new way of setting the carnival out - very cool!
Posted by: Madeleine | February 21, 2010 at 04:40 PM
Just spotted that your first link to Matt from MandM's study on inerrancy is incorrect (the first "here" in the brackets)
You have:
http://www.mandm.org.nz/2010/01/sunday-study-inerrancy-and-biblical-authority
You should have:
http://www.mandm.org.nz/2010/01/sunday-study-inerrancy-and-biblical-authority.html
Posted by: Madeleine | February 21, 2010 at 04:52 PM
Thanks, Madeleine. I've fixed the link. You two are a dynamic duo! Thanks for the thoughtful blogging.
Posted by: JohnFH | February 21, 2010 at 07:05 PM