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The Moral Christian

Throughout most of human history the principle that
all human beings are morally equal is largely unique to the Jewish and Christian
(esp Lutheran) traditions. This blog, "The Moral Christian", explores the clash
between those whose lives are ordered according to the transcendent teachings of
God as expressed in the Hebrew scriptures and Christian Gospels and those for
whom no transcendent moral authority
exists.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Interesting
Summary of the ETS

I'm not sure what to make of this
claim...

All three (along with most Paul
scholars) recognize that Paul repeatedly emphasizes that we will be judged for
our works, but that our justification rests solely on faith in Christ and his
work.

This is part of a summary of N.T. Wright's
presentation delivered on the 3rd day of the meeting of the Evangelical
Theological Society. The writer is Gary Manning, professor of New
Testament and the author of one of my favorite (and one of the most
illuminating) blogs, the  The Eutychus blog. The three
scholars to which Mr. Manning refers are N.T. Wright and two respondents,
Tom Schreiner and Frank Thielman. Here are the questions that I have concerning
this statement:

First, what are we to understand when the
theological consensus referred to in this statement turns on the concept
that "Judged for our works" and  "justification rests solely
on faith in Christ and his work" are two different concepts -- i.e.,
justification and judgment?

Do I
understand this correctly to be a reference to the ideas advanced by the New
Perspective On Paul -- Especially N.T. Wright's view that our
entery into covenantal membership is through justification by faith alone, but
once members, we are obligated to bend to God's will in order to maintain
membership (judgment)?

Second, the latter clause, "justification rests
solely on faith in Christ and his work", gives rise to the much
debated  pistis
christou controversy.  I was puzzled by this phrasing. Puzzling
because the phrase "...and his work"
suggests that this is a nod to the "faith OF Christ", i.e., something that
Christ does.

I take no position here, but look for
clarification.

Posted by Michael at 11/27/2010
07:08:00 AM 0
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Sunday, November 14, 2010

Spirituality

In Saturday's men's Bible study we
beat the dead-horse of spirituality -- to no avail. It was a good discussion,
however, as everybody contributed. Much work yet needs to be done if only
because we need to reflect more deeply on how the substance of spirituality
supports and sustains the higher capitals of relationship, physical,
intellectual, and financial. As we discovered, we do not yet understand, much
less agree on how this is to be understood.

However, I want to direct you to
David Mills' article, Spirituality
Without Spirits in which Mr. Mills deconstructs the claim of being "spiritual but not religious". He sets the
stage thus:

So we find Lady Gaga, the
pornographic songstress, telling a reporter for The
Times that she has a
new spirituality just before taking her out for a night at a Berlin sex club. Asked by
the reporter, "You were raised a Catholic — so when you say 'God,' do you mean
the Catholic God, or a different, perhaps more spiritual sense of God?", she
responded, "More spiritual. . . . There's really no religion that doesn't hate
or condemn a certain kind of people, and I totally believe in all love and
forgiveness, and excluding no one."

I don't think Ms. Gaga or anyone
else who talks like this has really thought it through. That God who forgives
everyone and excludes no one doesn't object to debauches in Berlin sex clubs -- a
point in His favor  from [Lady Gaga's] point of view. But then He doesn't
object to murderers and torturers and corrupt bankers either. A point in His
favor from no one's point of view.

It's a somewhat long article, and if
you are not inclined to clink the link above, here is his conclusion – take it
to heart

The man wasting away from pancreatic
cancer will get no help nor comfort from the "spiritual," which will seem a lot
less friendly and comforting when he feels pain morphine won't suppress. He has
no one to beg for help, no one to ask for comfort, no one to be with him, no one
to meet when he crosses from this world to the next. [Such a man] wants what
religion promises.

And he is right to do so. The dying man is the true
man, in the sense of being the one who reveals to us what we essentially are. We
are on our death bed from the day we are born. To paraphrase Pascal, dying men
want not the God of spirituality, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob.

Posted by Michael at 11/14/2010
05:23:00 PM 0
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Jeff
Jacoby - Created by God to be Good

"If there is no
God, all is permitted"

-- Dostoevsky,
The Brothers Karamazov

This season's re-emergence of the secular scolds is upon
us. Remember last year's theme -- "Why
believe in god? Just be good for goodness' sake"? This year the theme
is "No god? No problem!" Reacting
to these themes, Jeff Jacoby reminds us that, in the absence of a moral
authority higher than man's, there can be no distinction between good and evil.
As Mr. Jacoby puts
it…

There is no way to prove that murder
is wrong if there is no Creator who decrees "Thou shalt not murder.'' It
certainly cannot be proved wrong by reason alone. One might reason instead — as
Lenin and Stalin and Mao reasoned — that there is nothing wrong with murdering
human beings by the millions if doing so advances the Marxist cause. Or one
might reason from observing nature that the way of the world is for the strong
to devour the weak — or that natural selection favors the survival of the
fittest by any means necessary, including the killing of the less
fit.

Indeed! Jacoby further reminds us that it was
…

… obvious in classical antiquity
that sickly babies should be killed. "We drown even children who at birth are
weakly and abnormal,'' wrote the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger 2,000
years ago, stressing that "it is not anger but reason'' that justifies the
murder of handicapped children.

Bertrand Russell, arguably the most prominent atheist
philosopher of the twentieth century, probably expressed the dilemma of the
secular moralists best when he wrote,

"I cannot see how to refute the
arguments for the subjectivity of ethical values, but I find myself incapable of
believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don't like
it."

Many of us labor under the
perception that great evil has been done in the name of religion. On the
political left, this usually means Christianity. We must acknowledge this
perception as a truth. But the larger truth is that these evil deeds were done
in violation of God's will, not in its service. The left, by contrast, never
acknowledge the other side of the coin, namely that the evil done by Lenin,
Stalin, and Mao was in service of their will.

Posted by Michael at 11/14/2010
05:23:00 PM 0
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Sunday, November 07, 2010

What
to do if someone sins against you

The most excellent Mark D. Roberts
has an
answer.

Posted by Michael at 11/07/2010
07:22:00 AM 0
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Friday, November 05, 2010

The
Freedom of My Chains

Looking back and
longing for the freedom of my chains, and lying in your loving arms
again

-- Tom
Jans

After having just read a review
of Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom
by David Skeel, Law Professor and unashamed Evangelical Christian, a couple of
paragraphs just won't leave me alone. Here's what Mr. Skeel writes in his
review:

For Franzen's characters, escape
from a relationship invariably brings its own unfreedom, accompanied by its own
unhappiness. The disillusionment usually involves sex, but my favorite
illustration comes in a minor scene involving Walter's visit with a brother who
was dashing and disdainful of Walter in his youth, but has had three wives and
is now nearly destitute. When the brother tells Walter that he stays out of
his kids' lives because he's only capable of caring for himself, Walter says,
"You're a free man."

How sad to be free of one's children. What are we to
make of a man (or a society) that sees its children as burdens to bear – chains
that bind one to someone other than self? Walter is surely right to call his
brother free, but at what cost? Mr. Skeel then makes the right comparison to the
teachings of St. Paul:

Paul too teaches that the "freedom"
we're tempted to imagine is illusory. Those who reject the Gospel may be
free from its strictures, he says, but they are slaves to sin. The Gospel
offers us freedom from sin, but requires a commitment to Christ. The Bible
offers a very different conclusion than Franzen's characters, of course: while
the wages of sin is death, Paul says at the end of Romans 6, "the free gift of
Christ is eternal life."

We tend to forget that license is
not freedom. To commit yourselves to, and honor, Christ means that by
restricting oneself to goodness is to free oneself from the habits of sin – that
is, the soft-silk of desires that surely entrap the soul as surely as a fly in
the widow's web.

Posted by Michael at 11/05/2010
10:24:00 PM 0
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Friday, October 15, 2010

Shmuley
Boteach on the Sin of Homosexuality

Shmuley Boteach is a well-known
Orthodox Rabbi and has been long known for his advocacy of the importance of
Jewish Values. In an
essay in today's Wall Street Journal, Rabbi Boteach draws an
interesting distinction, vis, homosexual acts. He
writes:

Homosexuality is a religious, not a
moral, sin. A moral sin involves injury to an innocent party. Who is harmed when
two unattached, consenting adults are in a relationship? Homosexuality is akin
to the prohibition against lighting fire on the Sabbath or eating bread during
Passover; there is nothing immoral about it, but it violates the divine
will.(My underline)

I am in complete agreement with
respect to Rabbi Boteach's advice to those who are unable to resist their
homosexual impulses. To this end, he advises gay couples that of the 613
commandments in the Hebrew Bible, homosexual couples are in violation of only
two – committing homosexual acts and not having children. Thus, he writes,
…

…when Jewish gay couples tell me
they have never been attracted to members of the opposite sex and are
desperately alone, I tell them, "You have 611 commandments left. That should
keep you busy. Now, go create a kosher home. Turn off the TV on the Sabbath and
share your meals with many guests. Pray to God three times a day for you are his
beloved children. He desires you and seeks you out."

This is wonderful advice and I could
not have expressed it better. However, I do not agree that a sin against one's
fellow man is immoral while a sin against God is not. But, my view of the
Rabbi's categorization of sin is not important. What is important is his advice
on how to treat others who are burdened with sinful
desires…

… and who among us is not so
burdened?

Posted by Michael at 10/15/2010
08:10:00 AM 1
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Friday, August 27, 2010

The
Small god of Modern Evangelicalism

Daniel Jepsen has guest
post at the always worthwhile Internet
Monk blog. His thesis is that contemporary evangelicalism has
unknowingly and probably innocently, substantially diminished our Creator and
Lord. Reread the title of this post – Mr. Jepson would call your attention to
the third word, 'god'. Note that the word is not capitalized. To this he says,
"I don't think the god I am
talked (sic) about deserves to be capitalized. For I am not talking about the
God of the scriptures, but the god that is worshipped in much of modern American
evangelicalism."

Mr. Jepson speaks powerfully when he
observes that …

…we see increasingly that not only
do many of the leaders have a small god, but so do the people in their churches.
These are people who view god as some sort of personal life-enhancement, not the
author and judge of their life. They obey his commands selectively, and feel
free to ignore or re-interpret those that might cause too much change, or that
conflict too fiercely with the spirit of the age. They view his church not as
something they are deeply privileged to be a part of, but something they consume
like any other form of entertainment, and that had better keep the goods
coming.

Please see if you can find the time
to read and reflect on Mr. Jepson's thoughts. Even if you do not agree with his
argument, you will enrich your own understanding of God by addressing his
criticisms of contemporary evangelicalism.

And, if you have the time, you might
read one of my earlier posts entitled The
Coming Evangelical Collapse in which my criticism is of a kind
with Mr. Jepson's. Like Jepson, I noted that

…young evangelicals, by and large, know next to
nothing about the obligations demanded of us by God. [Evangelicals confuse
their]  desire to do good with actually
doing
good. Such reasoning is part and parcel of today's evangelicals - most of
whom are wonderful, kind people but whose love for the
LORD is based on His love for them. This is the therapeutic church that
will stand only so long as another, better therapy does not come along. So far,
secular humanism is winning the therapeutic wars. Secular humanism and hedonism
will always win over and against transcendent beliefs and self-sacrifice so long
as the argument is "what makes you feel
good"

Posted by Michael at 8/27/2010
09:37:00 PM 0
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2010
(33)

▼
November
(5)

Interesting
Summary of the ETS

Spirituality

Jeff
Jacoby - Created by God to be Good

What
to do if someone sins against you

The
Freedom of My Chains

►  October
(1)

Shmuley
Boteach on the Sin of Homosexuality

►  August
(9)

The
Small god of Modern Evangelicalism

Can
Liturgy Free Us?

The
Meaning of Mel Gibson

Hooray!

Justice
vs. [Christian] Charity

C.S.
Lewis - Faith vs Feelings

Hypocrisy
Correctly Understood

The
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT)...

Beth
Moore and a Correctly Ordered Faith

►  July
(1)

Iranian
Justice -- A Teaching Moment

►  May
(3)

The
Dalai Lama is a Moral Imbecile

Be
Sure To Kill The Correct Baby

The
LORD Works in Not So Mysterious Ways...

►  April
(8)

Reggie
White -- Footbal player, child of God

This
Seems Like a Good Bet

Trust
In The LORD

Michael
Spencer, 1956-2010

Charity
by Proxy

This
is almost too much to bear...

On
Assessing Lutheran Discussions of Law

Severing
Biology from Parenthood...

►  January
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Confession
and Absolution

Christian
- Jewish Relations

Secret
Jesus Bible Codes - Oh My

The
Feminization of America

Anonymous
Prayer for Haitians

Haiti
and the problem of Theodicy

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(49)

►  December
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Avatar

Thou
Shalt Not Steal

O'
Holy Night - Josh Grobin

►  November
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Is
God Disappointed in Christians?

The
New Perspective on St. Paul

Thanksgiving
- A Time for Praise?

Pastoral
Care of the Dying

The
Koran: Why Retaliation Works

What
next? Sinners in Church

Carl
E. Braaten's Response to Bishop Chilstrom

►  October
(3)

Heresy?
You Decide

On
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The
Way Forward

►  September
(4)

The
Passing of the Lutheran Tradition

Sola
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Marriage,
Morality, and Culture

Bishop
R. Walker Nickless on Government Health Car...

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About Me

Michael

I am married and blessed with 3 wonderful [adult]
children and 5 grandchildren. Over the course of my lifetime I have been a
Cowboy (really!), a combat helicopter pilot (AH-1G Cobra gunship) and Prisoner
of War in Vietnam, and a Software Architect, among other occupations. I can
read, write, and speak Norwegian and am studying Biblical Hebrew. I am a
lifelong Lutheran although as Lutheranism has drifted toward liberal
Protestantism, I might be better characterized as an evangelical
Catholic.
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