The Ark, the Ethiopians, and the Monophysites

I just read an article from WND again and it goes into more elaborate explanation and actually talks about some "experts" in the field. It's worth a read. You can find it here.

Honestly I feel like I'm one of those trashy newspapers you see at the grocery store check-out because I keep posting all of this. In fact, until it hits real news I think I'm gonna lay off of it. It's great and interesting, but when this last article started quoting bible prophecy "experts" from TBN and the like I decided that I'm not going to pass anything else along.

However, I should address the questions I raised about the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. One of my good Orthodox friends pointed me a page I missed on the Ethiopian Church website. In these pages (here and here) it explains how and why the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is not in communion with either the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church. I would suggest reading both the articles, but the first is much more explanatory.

To give you a quick summary (for those of you who don't want to read the articles) the Ethiopians are non-Chalcedonian in their creedal heritage. What this means is that while all of Christianity embraces the 7 major ecumenical councils the Ethiopian Orthodox do not embrace the council of Chalcedon.

The council of Chalcedon (451 and the 4th council) declared that Christ had two distinct natures (Divine and Human) united in one person (hypostasis). Traditionally the Ethiopians would be referred to as monophysites which were condemned as heretics at the council. The monophysites taught that Christ had only one nature (divine and human combined together like a milkshake) and one person. If you read the article you will realize that the Ethiopians really don't like to be called monophysites and prefer the term "miaphysite." While their description is much closer to the orthodox Christian description given at the council and they are correct in rejecting monophysite teaching they are still, as a result of this disagreement still not in full communion with the Christian churches that hold to the 7 ecumenical councils.

I hope that brief description helps and doesn't confuse anyone. This discussion is heavy and sometimes I confuse myself. So if any of you all are more educated in this than I am please feel free to provide input.

All that to say that the Ethiopians are not in communion with the Orthodox and the Catholics and as such it is a huge step that the Ethiopian patriarch is talking to Rome and is willing to show the pope what the Ethiopians believe to be the true Ark of the Covenant.

Eccumenical Awesomeness!!!

His Eminence Bartholomew, ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, delivered the linked address to the synod of Catholic bishops at the Sistine Chapel on October 18, 2008. I love how the Catholics and Orthodox continue to dialogue about unification. Remember that they have been separated from each other since 1054 AD. (Some scholars debate the dating of this schism but we'll allow it to stand since it is fairly accepted.) This is very significant since it is, as Bishop Bartholomew states, "the first time in history that an Ecumenical Patriarch is offered the opportunity to address a Synod of the Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, and thus be part of the life of this sister Church at such a high level."

It warms my heart that these two churches continue to seek unification after so many years and so many divergent issues. Let us continue to pray that one day all of the Christians may be unified under one banner.

Read the address here.

Thanks for Greg Sigountos who passed it along to me.


Some of my favorite quotes from the address:

We regard this as a manifestation of the work of the Holy Spirit leading our Churches to a closer and deeper relationship with each other, an important step towards the restoration of our full communion.

Mission and evangelization remain a permanent duty of the Church at all times and places; indeed they form part of the Church’s nature, since she is called “Apostolic” both in the sense of her faithfulness to the original teaching of the Apostles and in that of proclaiming the Word of God in every cultural context every time. The Church needs, therefore, to rediscover the Word of God in every generation and make it head with a renewed vigour and persuation also in our contemporary world, which deep in its heart thirsts for God’s message of peace, hope and charity.

This duty of evangelization would have been, of course, greatly enhanced and strengthened, if all Christians were in a position to perform it with one voice and as a fully united Church. In his prayer to the Father little before His passion our Lord has made it clear that the unity of the Church is unbreakably related with her mission “so that the world may believe” (John 17, 21)

For “hearing, beholding and handling the Word of life” (1 Jn 1.1) are not first and foremost our entitlement or birthright as human beings; they are our privilege and gift as children of the living God. The Christian Church is, above all, a scriptural Church. Although methods of interpretation may have varied from Church Father to Church Father, from “school” to “school,” and from East to West, nevertheless, Scripture was always received as a living reality and not a dead book.

In the context of a living faith, then, Scripture is the living testimony of a lived history about the relationship of a living God with a living people. The Word, “who spoke through the prophets” (Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed), spoke in order to be heard and take effect. It is primarily an oral and direct communication intended for human beneficiaries. The scriptural text is, therefore, derivative and secondary; the scriptural text always serves the spoken word. It is not conveyed mechanically, but communicated from generation to generation as a living word.

The entire world is a prologue to the Gospel of John. And when the Church fails to recognize the broader, cosmic dimensions of God’s Word, narrowing its concerns to purely spiritual matters, then it neglects its mission to implore God for the transformation – always and everywhere, “in all places of His dominion” – of the whole polluted cosmos.

Within the life of the Church, the unfathomable self-emptying (kénosis) and generous sharing (koinonía) of the divine Logos is reflected in the lives of the saints as the tangible experience and human expression of God’s Word in our community.

And within the communion of saints, each of us is called to “become like fire” (Sayings of the Desert Fathers), to touch the world with the mystical force of God’s Word, so that – as the extended Body of Christ – the world, too, might say: “Someone touched me!” (cf. Mt 9.20) Evil is only eradicated by holiness, not by harshness. And holiness introduces into society a seed that heals and transforms. Imbued with the life of the sacraments and the purity of prayer, we are able to enter the innermost mystery of God’s Word.

When the world does not share the joy of Christ’s Resurrection, this is an indictment of our own integrity and commitment to the living Word of God.

As we struggle – in ourselves and in our world – to recognize the power of the Cross, we begin to appreciate how every act of justice, every spark of beauty, every word of truth can gradually wear away the crust of evil. However, beyond our own frail efforts, we have the assurance of the Spirit, who “helps us in our weakness” (Rom. 8.26) and stands beside us as advocate and “comforter” (Jn 14-6), penetrating all things and “transforming us – as St. Symeon the New Theologian says – into everything that the Word of God says about the heavenly kingdom: pearl, grain of mustard seed, leaven, water, fire, bread, life and mystical wedding chamber.” Such is the power and grace of the Holy Spirit...

Glory to God! Amen.

More thoughts on the Celebration of All Saints Day

As I continued to think about my previous post on All Saints Day and why I think Protestants need to celebrate it, I started thinking through possible resistance to this idea that I assume many low-church/fundamentalist Protestants would have. What I'm speaking about is not those who are merely ignorant of the Christian practice of All Saints Day, but those who would oppose it as irreligious, unchristian, Catholic, or for various other reasons.

One thought in particular that I had in regard to this and the current political fervor surrounding almost everyone right now was that many of these same Protestants who object to celebrating All Saints Day are some of the very same Christians who will be the first to remember the fallen who gave their lives for this country on Memorial Day and Independence Day.

On Memorial Day and Independence Day many Americans will proudly remember the long heritage of this Country. They will tell stories of the fallen who have show themselves to be heroic in face of the enemy. These same fallen men and women will be celebrated because it is on their dream and dedication that America now stands. In essence these two American holidays (holy days) are nothing more than despiritualized political versions of All Saints Day for our nation-state.

So to those Christians who strongly object to celebrating All Saints Day and yet proudly celebrate Memorial Day and Independence day I ask you where your citizenship lies. Are we Christians and then Americans or are we Americans and then Christians? How dare we celebrate the heritage of this nation and celebrate the lives and deaths of the fallen for this country and yet neglect heritage of the Church and those who have been killed for Christ by the governments of this world. How dare we seek to follow the example of those who fell for this country and yet allow the example of the Martyrs to be void from our churches? In my opinion it is indefensible for us to claim citizenship in heaven and yet act as though we are Americans first and Christians second.

Before I get labeled Anti-American let me say that I'm not arguing that we shouldn't celebrate Memorial Day and Independence Day as Christians, but I am arguing that those who call themselves Christians and chose to celebrate these holidays while refusing to celebrate All Saints Day show by their actions that they consider themselves citizens of the world first and citizens of heaven second.

To those who proclaim Christ while refusing to remember his Church, his martyrs, and the saints before us and yet celebrate this nation's heritage I challenge you to start celebrating the heritage of your true home (the people of God) or cease celebrating the rising of this nation. There is no other Christian option.

Nations and political causes rise and fall but those who lived and died for Christ will reign with him in glory forever.

Let us take joy in the fact that we are Americans, but let us never forget that we are Christians first and everything is secondary to that. So celebrate and remember those fallen for our country if you feel so compelled, but as a Christian remember St. Stephen the first martyr, remember Sts. Peter and Paul who were killed by the Romans . Think also of those Christians who were imprisoned in the Gulag during the Soviet regime in Russia or those who die as I type in China at the hand of the Communists or the Philippines at the hand of militant Muslims. Follow Christ as Polycarp and Ignatius of Antioch followed him even to their deaths and allow Maximus the Confessor who had his tongue cut out and his right hand cut off for confessing the truth of Christ to be your role model. Remember them and the cloud of witnesses that surround them for it is their blood that is the seed of the Church by the power of the good and live-giving Holy Spirit!

On Tradition

As you should know by now I'm a huge baseball fan and as such I found myself spending my Sunday afternoon watching the Pirates vs. Reds game on tv and watching the Orioles game via mlb.com gamecast. During the telecast on FSN one of the announcers began to discuss baseball tradition and the important role it plays in helping teams and the game. The announcer also made the point that it is becoming necessary for the teams to bring in the players of older championship teams (i.e. the '79 Pirates) to help create some sense of belonging and connectedness to the organization with the younger players.

As I thought about this it seemed like a good idea to me, I long for the winning ways of the older Oriole teams, the days of the Oriole Way with Weaver, Palmer, Powell, the days of legend that I don't remember but that I've heard about time and time again. I also thought about football, of course I would love the Vikings to rise again and become the Purple People Eaters of yore.

It seems to me that Sports fans constantly talk about and long for tradition lived out in their teams. It seems that this desire is part of the torture of having a team relocate from one city to another. If a team moves then in a sense the tradition dies, the character seems to be ontologically changed and thus it just isn't the same. Think about when the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens. Why did they change their name? In part is was because the city filed a suit against the NFL to retain the name and the records. Thus when a new team came back into Cleveland the name and records were in place and the tradition of the Browns could pick right back up where is left off with the dog-pound intact and everything.

It seems that it's not just sports fans that long for tradition either. Towns and communities seek to keep various traditions alive, our nation has traditions like the 4th of July and all the local customs that are entailed with that. Tradition is everywhere and is commonly held as a good thing to sustain within our culture, but the question I must as is, "Why is the church an anomaly to this?"

You may have though that this post was going to just be about baseball and football but really the aforementioned baseball commentator started getting me thinking about why if society (via sports and other things) values tradition so much then why does so much of the American church seek to rid itself of any sort of Christian tradition?

Why over the past 20+ years has American Christianity (especially Protestant Christianity) pushed to rid itself of the life-giving traditions of the Church? Why have we stopped following the Christian calendar? Why have we stopped fasting? Why have we left the songs of the faith and tried to push all forms of tradition out of our churches?

Granted the Emergent movement is trying to remedy this, but the problem with them is that they see tradition as merely something ascetic and enjoyable rather than an authoritative life practice. The problem with the Emergents is that they can embrace the traditions but they appropriate them in such a matter that they continue in their heresies and blasphemies just like the Nestorians and Arians of old.

I have heard the Jaroslav Pelikan once said that "traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, tradition is the living faith of the dead." I would add to that that the true faith of the Church is found in her traditions as they live and breathe among us. In fact our Holy Scriptures are very much a product of the tradition of the faith and we have them in part because holy men and women saw fit to preserve these letters and gospels and pass them on as authoritative texts.

Yes, there is a danger that the life-giving traditions can become dry and stale examples of nothing more than traditionalism, but it is our job to remember these things, to live them and to allow them to be authoritative to us so that we may be able to live in the heritage of the Christian faith.

Just as the FNS announcer saw it as a good thing for the Pirates and Reds to bring in their "cloud of witnesses" to attest to the younger generations the heritage of their organization so we must never forget our ways and embrace the traditions of the faith or else we risk forgetting the faith altogether. Why evangelicals see it as necessary to abandon tradition in hope of winning converts is beyond me. We do these hypothetical converts a disservice when we initiate them into a tradition-less faith that is devoid of the truth and the power of the gospel. Obviously we want to remove hindrances but in order to be of any salvific good we must live and breath the language of faith and then explain that language of faith with peace, patience and love to those who see the fullness of truth that is found in Christianity.

Glorious Feastday!!

In case you were wondering I didn't miss Easter. My church follows a different calendar than most in the west and so our Easter will take place in a little over a month. Today is, however, a very important holy-day no matter which calendar you use.

Today is March 25, and it is on this day that we remember that the angel visited Mary and announced to her that she would bear with child, to which she replied "may it be to me as you have said." Today is the Feast of Annunciation.

Today is the day that we realized that in 9 months we will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ our God. And so we realize that Jesus, even in the fetal stages was God of God, light of light, begotten and not made, of one essence with the Father. We remember that the divine Word himself took the initiative to bring redemption to humanity because of his great love for us. Today the church feast teaches us that our God did not just take on flesh at birth or later in life at baptism as the heretical adoptionists assert, but that he indeed was united in one person from the very conception - when Mary the Mother of God said "yes" to God.

This is such a beautiful and amazing realization. Our God who cannot be contained was contained in a womb. Today the Son of God becomes the Son of a virgin. Today the creator of all makes his throne in the womb of his creation in order to redeem creation.

Glory to God in the Highest!

I wonder if so much of the "christian" pro-choice people would have been silenced long ago if the protestant church had continued to celebrate this feast. For Christ has taken flesh in the form of an unborn babe with all the risk and possible complications that are entailed therein.

Today is truly a glorious feastday! Glory to God!

On the Untenable Nature of Calvinist/Predestinarian Theology

As I've mentioned before I'm taking an independent study in the historical and theological development of Eastern Christianity. I find that as I read through books like Jaroslav Pelikan's The Spirit of Eastern Christendom that I am learning not merely about Eastern Christian thought and theology, but that I am finding a much deeper grounding in the holy orthodox doctrines of the entire Church.

In my recent reading I came across a deep discussion by Pelikan concerning the council of Chalcedon and the discussion regarding the dual natures of Christ. Without getting into the depth of this issue and trying to articulate the issues concerning hypostatis, ousia, and the like, I'll try to cover the highlights in a more understandable way.

Coming out of the third ecumenical council held in Constantinople (680-681AD) the Christian Church reaffirmed that Christ was/is a unified being in his divinity and humanity and thus had two natures as the council at Chalcedon had decreed (451AD), and also that he did indeed have TWO wills. One can easily assess this by glancing through scripture at the passages where Jesus says he is here to do not his will but his Father's will, those where he acts out of divine foreknowledge, and various other passages.

If we hold this creedal assertion to be revealed dogma to the church, which we should, it raises some interesting questions. While Protestants may balk at the idea of asserting this creed as authoritative, it should be recognized that not until very recent times did any Christian anywhere question the authority of the creeds. Even Luther, Calvin, and Wesley, fully embraced them. Historically adherence to the 7 ecumenical creeds, of which Nicea (325AD) was the first, was one of the primary, if not the primary, markers to determine if one was in line with the teaching of the Church. These creeds were not viewed as new doctrinal assertions, but rather recapitulations of what the Holy Scriptures, the Apostles and the earliest Fathers had always taught though not necessarily in clarity for which the times called.

So if we hold to this creedal assertion of Christ having both a divine and a human will we can make some interesting observations - one of which I find to be very problematic for those who would like to hold a Calvinistic/predestinarian point of view. It would be interesting to see how Calvin himself treated this creed.

As the Fathers clarified the doctrine of the two wills of Christ (technically: dyotheletism) and thus ruled the notion that Christ has one will (technically: monotheletism) as heresy, the idea of free will rose near the forefront of the discussion. As a document from that time, entitled The Doctrine of the Fathers states: "his power to make choices shared in our being"

Thus part of the ontology of Christ's human will was the freedom of choice. As Maximus the Confessor, a deep defender of dyotheletism, states:

He was endowed not only with a will in accordance with his being god and homoousios [of the same substance] with the Father, but also [with a will] in accordance with his being man and homoousios with us.

Pelikan, in an attempt at clarity states that for the Fathers who finalized the creed at Constantinople

Every rational soul had to possess a decision-making capacity that was free of coercion. Even an unsympathetic interpreter of this Christology is obliged to admit that 'there is noticeable in dyotheletism [the doctrine of two wills]....a reaction against the overriding power of the divine nature in favor of a true and free humanity in Christ.' The freedom of the human will of Christ was not to be overwhelmed by his divinity, so that even such a patristic notion as "the deified will" was not permitted to obliterate this freedom.

If this is the way of Christ our God, even in his deified human will, then how can we begin to assert that our wills are coerced and ultimately predestined? The more I read church history the more I see that the predesitnary strain of theology is very small until it explodes with Calvin and Zwingly. I find this particular theology to be untenable and in light of this Holy orthodox doctrine of the church I find it nigh heretical. I am not willing to assert that it is indeed heretical, but I would really like to know how a good Calvinist theologian deals with this creedal doctrine of the Church, without merely dismissing the creed itself. I find the dismissing of the creed to not be a Christian option.

I'm sure more thoughts will come as I continue to dig deeper into the Faith and particularly the development of Eastern Christian thought. The reading for this independent study is absolutely amazing even though it makes my head want to explode because of its depth. I find it shameful that it took great initiative on my part and a very gracious professor for me to learn in depth these doctrines of the Church and their life-giving power.

Blessings to you all,


- Ben

Great Minds Think Alike

Apparently I'm not the only one with thoughts along the line of my last post. Check out my friend Isaac's blog post (here). He takes a slightly different approach in that he's more calm and probably nicer about it, but either way here is a slightly different perspective on the same issue.

And I don't think he read my post before he wrote his.

Enjoy.

- Ben

Why I don't Like Protestant Worship Music

I'm trying to catch up on some reading for classes so I can't write a long post, but I wanted to jot down this thought before I got distracted.

For my independent study I've been reading the second volume of Jaroslav Pelikan's wonderful church history set entitled The Rise of Eastern Christendom. Since Pelikan's work chronicles the history of theology and thoughts I am finding that it's a moderately heavy read, especially given that even at seminary many of these historical concepts have not been taught to me.

Today I was reading about the Nestorian, Jacobite, and Monophysite heresies and on the hypostatis of Christ. Since Pelikan quotes from so many primary sources (something that is often missing in many church histories) I found myself getting a little confused concerning the hypostasis of Christ and what orthodox doctrine taught. Instead of turning to wikipedia or another source that would of taken a lot more time to find some resolution I remembered that there is an ancient hymn of pascha that briefly discusses the hypostasis of Christ. Since I had my ipod on me I decided to turn to the music of the church to teach me the orthodox way and bring about clarity of thought.

Granted the hymn isn't a treatise, but I wasn't looking for a treatise, I was merely looking for a quick answer as to how many hypostates Christ has. This is when I realized that I was able to articulate one of the many reasons I don't like Protestant worship music - namely, that I don't like to guess and check when it comes to the doctrine conveyed within my church music.

Due to the plethora of music in protestantism and the constant desire to update the music I find that one cannot trust the theology that is conveyed in much of it. In strict juxtaposition to this is the music that is sung at the Orthodox church I currently attend. When I hear the hymns of the Orthodox church I am sure that what is being taught is theologically in-line with the 7 ecumenical creeds of the church. I don't have to guess if I'm being taught something heretical because the songs have been tried by church and found fitting to be used in the worship of the Holy Trinity.

Sure, there may be some great assets to protestant music, but as a whole it is theologically vapid and emotive to a fault. While it is always good to asses and think about what is being sung in worship, I think that having to constantly analyze and wonder if the music is teaching correct doctrine is counterproductive to the church service. The music of the church should be filled with dogmatically correct theology and should be able to be used as a basis for the lay person to refute or accept notions of the divine. One can very easily argue that our theology in protestantism is weak because we do not sing it and we do not sing it because it is weak. This cycle is a disastrous one that is hurting the church and leading people into ignorance of the divine. How can we, expect to truly become partakers of the Divine essence (2Pet 1.4) if we do not even know God as he has revealed himself to us?

I fear I'm approaching a tangent so I will conclude now. If the reason I set out to articulate wasn't clear above let me sum up. Part of my aversion to Protestant worship music is that it has no substance and that which it tries to pass as substance is often near heretical if not blatantly so. The songs of the church should be those which have been tried by years of reflection and should be able to be used as concise creedal statements of belief that will plant the deep truths of the faith into the hearts of clergy and lay persons alike.


May the faith grow deep within you all

- Ben

Shared Experiences

Much of what is below is still a work in progress (especially given I just started thinking about this about 3 minutes ago) but I wanted to throw it out there before I forgot it (as I usually do).

I was just youtube-ing at work since the student center is completely empty and I have another hour and a half to work, and I came across a sweet video via my friend Tegan's blog. I promptly sent the link to my sister with whom I was IM-ing to pass the time.

After a period of no response from my sister (not an unusual thing) I asked if she watched it yet? She replied that she hadn't and thus I exhorted her to watch "now." I told her it was great and gave her a few reasons to watch it. After prodding her to watched it I began thinking about the youtube phenomenon and blogging and things of that nature.

I began to wonder how much of this is more the desire for shared experience than actually just the dissemination of cool videos and ideas. I'm sure it's a bit of both, but it seems that one of the driving forces behind youtube and really all the internet fads is shared experience.

As I think about this I wonder if this is need or craving for shared experience has helped to feed into the various popular Christian movements over the past few years. Think about the Emergents. What do they emphasize? They build upon a need for experience and collective-ness at the expense of Christian orthodoxy, even to the point of holding heretical views and ignoring essential Christian tenets. I personally am absolutely dismayed that the emergent movement continues to thrive. This is a cancer growing through protestantism that is causing us to forsake the Christian faith all for some sort of collective experience and liberal idealism. In my mind many of the emergents are no better than the heretics of old such as Arius, Nestorius, Montanus, etc.

I also wonder if desire for shared experience helps to contribute to the Rob Bell craze. While I'm still working on reading through some of this guy's books, I do have to say that I'm not a big fan. His nooma videos are junk and I think they are mostly fueled by this desire for a shared experience or a desire to be 'timely' (see my post: Current? and yes I do realize that I'm being a bit contradictory by posting these thoughts so quickly)

The students here crave Bell and the Emergents. They get all starry-eyed when someone mentions their names and quickly bristle when someone like me says that they're not that great and may indeed hold heretical beliefs (emergents). I find it disturbing that students champion these people and drink the proverbial Kool-Aid so quickly. Why must our shared experience be found in the latest fad and not the timeless beliefs of classic Christian orthodoxy? Why do we champion these new thinkers for innovative ecclesiologies when they lack the substance of the faith and are doing nothing more than leading people down the path to hell with their watered down theology and absence of anything genuine?

If these men and women teach something contradictory to classic Christian Orthodoxy and they cease to become "nice" and "slightly misguided" people that we should learn from and they become impious God-haters (to use some of the phrasing for those anathematized at the ecumenical councils).

Just so I don't get misunderstood and get a ton of backlash let me be clear: I am not calling Rob Bell a heretic. I am also not calling ALL of the Emergents heretics. I have, however, had a conversation with one high-profile Emergent leader in which he claimed the Trinity was just Greek philosophical ideals and not really Christian and thus not a necessary or even important doctrine. I also think that Emergent theology down plays Christian orthodoxy to a dangerous extreme and thus runs fearfully close to falling into heresy (like the aforementioned leader).

My concern is that Asbury Seminary students and undoubtedly students, ministers, and lay people across the country and buying into these faulty paradigms because they desire a shared experience. This is absurd. The shared experience should be the Holy doctrines of the Church which help us to partake of the divine essence of God as St. Peter says. I am absolutely disgusted with the hero worship the students around this campus give to folks like Rob Bell and the emergents.

While the same charge of hero worship could be thrown at me and the way I read the saints of the church, I will just say that my hero's have lasted the test of time, and were actually building up and codifying Christian orthodoxy not ignoring it and leading people astray.

- Ben

One for the Road

I don't' know when I'll get the chance to post again and since it's 1:20am and I leave for the airport at 3:45am I thought that I would write a post instead of getting some sleep. As is usually the case with my longer posts, you'll have to forgive a lack of structure as I just string together a bunch of things I've been thinking about lately.

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Today in church we sang a hymn that said "As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." That is really apropos of nothing, except for the fact that it was really cool. I may have been going somewhere with that, but I'm not sure now so we'll move on.

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A while ago I attended a training seminar for my summer job and they constantly emphasized that they do what they do because they "love the church." While I support their foundation of love for the church (because I do love the church) it started me thinking about what it means to really be the church. This is an issue I've been wrestling with for a while. I think I started to think about this during my time at Houghton and then it really started to take off since I started going to St. Athanasius. I know that many of my Orthodox friends will have ready answers for these questions as their tradition has a well developed ecclesiology, but I'm sure I'm not the only protestant who lays awake at night and thinks these thoughts (don't laugh because I really do lay awake and think stuff like this).

So here are some of the thoughts I jotted down while in my seminar.

1. Is the church primarily institutional?
   
   
2. If the church is institutional is that institution contingent on a constant line of Apostolic Authority (i.e. The apostle Peter lays hands on Jim, who lays hand on Bob, who lays hands on Jeffy, etc.) or is it primarily tied to the apostolic tradition and teaching?
   
   
3. How big of a role to authority play into where the church is? If Apostolic succession and authority are necessary for one to be in the church then are all of us in the west outside of the church because of the rebellious act of inserting the Filioque ('and the Son') clause into the Nicene Creed?
   
   
4. To be part of the visible church does one need to celebrate the sacraments? If so then are we forced to eliminate the Salvation Army and other non-sacramental groups from "church" status?
   
   
5. Does one need to affirm all 7 ecumenical councils to be part of the church? If so what about the groups that are ignorant of the councils or don't accept one or more of them, but are still orthodox in their teaching?
   
   
6. Is the church primarily visible or invisible? If it is invisible then what is the point of visible sign acts like the Eucharist and baptism?
   
   
7. Does one need to be baptized in order to be accepted into the church? (Necessary for salvation? - Talk amongst yourselves).
   
   
8. If we assert that celebrating the sacraments are a necessary action for the visible church (and I think they are) does authority then also become essential? (cf. St. Ignatius of Antioch [ca. 150AD] - "Do nothing without the Bishop")
   
   
9. If the sacraments are given to the visible church can they be celebrated and acted outside of the church? (i.e. can they be separated from the Liturgical and Authoritative acts of the Church proper?)
   
   
10. What doctrines are essential for one to be the church? Is Trinity (I think yes)? What view on predestination or other disputed theological matters?
    
    
11. If correct doctrine is essential then is correct action essential? Can action and doctrine (orthopraxy and orthodoxy) even be separated? (I doubt they really can.)

One may ask how we can truly love the church if we have so many "if" statements. I content that even if we're not sure (as I'm still working through this) we can still love the church by loving the people of God, or rather, loving those who call upon God in Trinity and profess to be the "church."

So there are some thoughts on the church. I hope this doesn't cause anyone to have an ecclesiological crisis but these are some things to think on for sure. I'm sure we could even add more to the list, but we'll let that simmer for a while.

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Laying aside my questioning I will not turn to some asserting. But first...a back-story.

When I went home for my Grandpa's funeral a few weeks back I was outside with my 10 yr. old cousin and we were talking away. He asked me if I was seriously going to be a Catholic priest like I had told him I was a day or two prior (I like to mess with him like that). I told him no, but asked him why he cared. Oh and I should note that he's a fairly smart 10 yr. old. He proceeded to tell me that all the problems with the Catholic church and how they didn't believe like "we" (i.e. protestants) believed and thus they probably weren't Christians.

Now, I don't want to pick on my little cousin, because he is after all only 10 and that's not really a fair fight (he'd probably own men). But I am fairly certain that these thoughts didn't originate within himself. In fact, to be honest, I had many of the same thoughts in myself before I went to Houghton.

I tried to tell him that Catholics really don't believe some of the things that he claimed, but the big question that came to my mind is why protestants have such a beef with Catholics. I'm sure they'd have beef with Orthodox too, if they actually knew what they were. As I thought about this I came to a few conclusions. I think that many of the protestants who rail against catholics have had very minimal interaction with catholics, catholic services, and catholic writings. I also think that protestants have unfairly characterized catholics. I believe this characterization stems from not knowing what they believe, but also from being intimidated by the authority structure that is in place within Catholicism. I am willing to contend (and to be fair I would need to do much more research) that much of the negative reaction to Catholics by protestants is not really concerning beliefs (because most protestants don't really know what Catholics believe) but because they don't understand authority and have been taught that to have any priest other than oneself is of the devil.

I say this because one of the most common critiques of Catholicism that I hear is against confession. I am absolutely befuddled by the number of protestants who will go to their small group meetings and share that they are struggling with "sin A, B or C" and ask for prayer to help them, and then turn around and condemn Catholics for seeing a priest and confessing to him. What an absurd hypocrisy.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that much of protestantism has a sever problem with submitting to authority. It's sort of appropriate considering we still define ourselves as "protest-ant" (i.e. one's who are protesting against something - namely authority). Yes, authority can be taken too far. Yes, there have been some bad Popes, Bishops, and Priests. But there have also been some very godly and saintly Popes, Bishops, and Priests. In fact, one of the most saintly men that I have ever had the chance to meet was Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa. Fr. Cantalamessa visited Asbury in the fall and is the preacher to the Papal Household. Yes, that means he preaches to the Pope. Granted my interaction was limited, but I could tell from my limited interaction that this was a Saintly man who loved and served the Lord with great zeal. It was my delight to receive a blessing from him before he left.

So all that to say that I hope my cousin and most of protestantism will come around and appreciate the good that Catholicism (and Orthodoxy) has to offer. I think that this move has begun, but let us hope that it continues as good dialogue with Christian traditions and doesn't move into dialogue with non-Christian religions such as Mormonism and Jehovah Witnesses.

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Book Review:

I finished St. Cyril of Jerusalem's Lectures on the Christian Sacraments a few weeks ago and it was great. The lectures are relatively short and one could easily read them all in one setting. Cyril writes his lectures around 348AD and so these lectures are a great insight into early sacramental thought. Cyril writes on beginning Catechism, The Eucharist, Baptism, and Holy Unction (not in that order).

There were so many good things allow me to just quote a few passages:

Speaking to catechumens concerning preparation for Baptism:

And what Solomon spoke of others will suit you also; for he said, There is a time to bear and a time to die; but to you, on the contrary, the time to die is also the time to be born; and one and the same season brings about both of these, and your birth went hand in hand with your death.
O strange and inconceivable thing! We did not really die, we were not really buried, we were not really crucified and raised again, but our imitation was but in a figure, while our salvation is in reality.

Concerning the Eucharist:

Since then He Himself has declared and said of the Bread, 'This is My Body,' who shall dare to doubt any longer? And since He has affirmed and said, 'This is My Blood,' who shall ever hesitate, saying, that it is not His blood?
He once turned water into wine, in Cana of Galilee, at His own will, and is it incredible that He should have turned wine into blood?...
Therefore with fullest assurance let us partake as of the Body and the Blood of Christ: for in the figure of Bread is given to thee His Body, and in the figure of Win His Blood; that thou by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, mightest be made of the same body and the same blood with Him. For thus we come to bear Christ in us, because His Body and Blood are diffused through our members, thus it is that, according to the blessed Peter, 'we become partakers of the divine nature.'...
Contemplate therefore the Bread and Wine not as bare elements, for they are, according to the Lord's declaration, the Body and the Blood of Christ; for though sense suggests this to thee, let faith stablish thee. Judge not the matter from taste, but from faith be fully assured without misgiving, that though has been vouchsafed the Body and Blood of Christ.

I'm not sure what else to say concerning the book, except that it is a good read and sheds some very good light on early liturgical practice and belief in the early church in Jerusalem.

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St. Cyril serves as a nice transition into the next (and likely the last) topic: the Eucharist.

Since my senior and maybe junior year at Houghton I have been rethinking and reforming my sacramentology. Much of this formation has occurred in my view of the Eucharist since it is one of the most important things the church does. Since Houghton my view of the Eucharist moved from a strictly Zwinglian/memorialist view of Communion that holds that it is just a time where I remember Christ, to a more Lutheran/Methodist view of 'real presence' meaning that God is truly present in Spirit and imparts some sort of grace during the act.

I have continued to think on this over the past year and have pursued the issue in my research into early Church history. Although I am not sure if I am 100% committed, I do believe that I am leaning toward a sacramentology that posits not only real presence, but also real Body and real Blood. You may be asking why I believe I am coming to this conclusion. Here are a few reasons:

• As Luther wrote on the table when arguing with Zwingly: "hoc est corpus meum" or "It is my body." Jesus Christ said in the Gospel accounts that it was his body. While this could be metaphoric it seems to me that the evidence points that it is not.
• The evidence in the earlier sources suggests a very high eucharistic view and probably that of literal body and blood. We saw above that this view is fully articulated in St. Cyril in 348AD, but I believe we can see traces of this in St. Ignatius, and other second century saints.
• There is no biblical argument against it.
• There is no reason why we should not accept it. A paradigm that rejects the transformation of bread and wine into body and blood is likely entrenched in modernism and in the enlightenment emphasis on the scientific method. This worldview leaves no room for miracles and thus one might as well reject the resurrection if one rejects the miracle that is the transformation of the elements in the Eucharist.
• The emphasis in the earliest liturgies is that the Holy Spirit is the agent of change within the elements. This places the emphasis off of humans and back onto the gracious action of God for his people.
• Receiving grace in the eucharist is not juridical grace (i.e. salvific) but rather the grace of God's presence. A view that posits all grace as juridical is highly Anselmic and is not founded in the biblical worldview of grace.
• Even though it doesn't taste like it, as St. Cyril says, we must believe in faith. To help address this 'problem' one of my Orthodox friends says that it is more of a revealing than a changing. That is: Is it still bread - Yes. Is it still Wine - Yes. Is it real body - Yes. Is it real blood - Yes. It seems that this view posits that it is body and bread, and blood and wine all at the same time.

The reasons given above are why I am very close to believing that it is literal body and literal blood. I say 'very close' because it is a big move to change a whole paradigm and changing my mind to this is quite a task.


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Today was Pentecost Sunday. How many of your churches celebrated that instead of memorial day? Probably not many. That makes me sad. Just FYI.

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Well I think that is it. I can't think of anything else to write. I am leaving for Minnesota tomorrow to work for Youthworks for the summer. I will be living in Duluth, Minnesota and will return back to KY on August 17th. I will try to blog throughout the summer, but I'm not sure how much time I'll have. If you need to get a hold of me just call my cell (if you have it) or post a comment and I'll get it when I check my email.

Concerning the reading list: Kung, Dostoyevsky, JND Kelly, and Witherington aren't going to make the flight because the first three are too big and the last one is low on the priority list. Maybe I'll get at these during the time between the end of youthworks and the beginning of school.


Blessings to you all in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!,


Ben

In Response

This post is more a response to the comments that were posted concerning the post entitled "Is it really too much to ask?!"

First let me say that I'm not saying that the Church has never had problems until now, and I'm not saying that all churches are bad. My point is not that I haven't found a church to suit me, rather the point is a lament for the state of the church, especially the western church.

The church has had its problems, and I suspect will continue to have problems, but I also feel that a strong case can be made that Christianity in North America is at one of the lowest points in all of Church history. I lament this fact, I lament the easy Christianity and pseudo-psycho-babble-pop Christianity that I see all over the place. I hear sermons on how to have less stress, or how to be successful in life. I see churches teaching doctrines that involve merely being happy and being driven by the purpose of self-fulfillment. Can you seriously tell me that this is Christianity? Can you say that this is the powerful word of the Lord? Does this in any way resemble the Kingdom of God that Jesus spent his whole ministry teaching about? By no means does this in any way, shape, or form look like, true Christianity.

This is my lament. I ache over the fact that the church is in such a sour state that it is neither cool nor hot. The gospel much of the church is preaching is like what Tozer says - if it were medicine it would be too weak to cure anyone and if it were poison it would be too weak to kill anyone. (paraphrase)

What shall we as members of the body of Christ do about this betrayal of Kingdom ethics and values.

To address the critique raised by Sam - "maybe we should just trust that Christ will redeem his bride as is written, no? And that...The battle has already been won, by Christ."

Although the point is a decent one, that he caps off with a call to just living in mercy. This seems to be too far of an apathetic stance. Can we just sit by and watch the church self-destruct? Can we sit there while heresy and false teaching spread like cancer through the whole body of Christ? Granted it is true that the true church will not fall, but how can we say we love the church and do nothing when she is in no way a resemblance of who she is called to be?

I pray often for the purity of the Church, I pray that the chaff that fills the buildings every Sunday will be made pure first and foremost, but if not then be cleansed away. I pray for persecution to come upon the western church. Not because I'm some sadist who loves to see people injured and dead, but because I firmly believe that if you are not willing at a moment's notice to give your life and sacrifice everything for the sake of Jesus Christ, then you have no business calling yourself a Christian and claiming to be the church.

But we must not only pray for the purity of the Church, we must use the gifts that God has given us. We cannot sit idly by and credit our apathy with the fact that Christ will prevail and all will be right in the end. Christ will prevail indeed! Praise the Lord! But until then he has charged us, the body of Christ, to use our gifts to edify one another and build up the church in his image. We must always fight for the purity of the people of God. We must use our gifts of encouragement, healing, prophecy, tongues, etc. For the edification of the body. It is when we do that and stop living in this bismal state of the church that we will truly be on fire for God. And as Wesley said, when one man is ignited aflame for the Lord hundreds more [unbelievers] will come just to see him burn. (paraphrase) Then our witness will be pure. Then we will live in love, and mercy, and compassion.

The call is to the Church now! Prepare ye the way of the Lord! We cannot avoid our call to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and to shout at the top of our lungs, REPENT! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand!!

That is our call, that is why I lament over the church. I love the church and I see her potential. Yes, she has always had her problems, she will continue to struggle because she is made up of humans, but with the Spirit filling her, she can be pure and spotless and ready for the coming of the Bridegroom!

Just one final disclaimer, I don't' speak these words because I'm one of those crazy kooks who thinks that the coming will be within the next 15 years when Russia invades Israel. I say this because this has always been the message of the Church. Just as her hearts cry must always be: MARANATHA - COME LORD JESUS!!

Is it really to much to ask?!

I just got back from yet another failure at finding a church. I think I'm beginning to lose hope. Since I've moved here to Wilmore I've visited 14 different churches, and some of them more than once. That's right, I have been in Wimore for 19 Sundays and have visited 14 different churches and have yet to find one that is good (yes, I know good is really arbitrary).

You may be thinking that I'm just too picky, or that I'm just buying into the consumeristic notion of "church shopping," but I feel it's more than that. I feel that it's something deeper.

All I'm really asking for is a Church that shifts the focus from us to God, a church that calls its congregants into a deep and loving relationship with God. I'm looking for a church that isn't married to American consumerism or Republican politics. I'm asking for a church that preaches the hard prophetic word of the Lord in a loving way, one that doesn't water down the message of the cross and the cost of discipleship in order to be "seeker friendly." I long to find a church that truly meets with God instead of meeting with each other in a valiant grasp to look religious and fulfill some preconceived notion of what it means to be a Christian. It would be great if I found a church where the gifts of the Spirit were actually used and not just talked about, where women were actually encouraged to be in ministry and not just theologized about being in ministry.

I've come to the conclusion that a church like this doesn't exist. I've known that for a while, but seriously, I would settle for any small combination. I really just want a place where I can serve God and others, where people are actually passionate about God and interested in knowing him more intimately every day. I don't care about worship styles, I don't care about size (although I bet my changes are better with a small church), I really don't care what denomination, I just want a place to encounter God with fellow believers who are seeking God.

Maybe I can't gauge a church on a one Sunday visit; maybe I need constantly remember that John Stott is right when he says "Every church in every place at every time is in need of reform and renewal. But we need to beware lest we despise the church of God and are blind to his work in history."

Do I hate the church? No! May God forbid it! Although, I use to hate the church, I hated the church for 2 or 3 years, from a senior in High School to a sophomore at Houghton. Then I read Stott's quote while leading a Lifeline group. I don't hate the church, on the contrary; I love the Church. I love the Church more than you could ever believe. That's why my heart breaks every week. Every week when I hear pastors speak mere fluff, wasting away their precious minutes to convey a life-changing truth from God. It breaks when I hear congregations sing half-heartedly about "how good Jesus makes me feel," when I take communion with believers that have no concept of the grace given during the Holy Eucharist. I want to scream and shout, I want to weep and wail. Every week I feel like I'm going to die, I feel like I want to die. I feel like the Church is dead and there is no hope for it. I think it's for this reason that I burn with anxiousness to get out of seminary and to go minister. The church is dying, or maybe it's already dead... can anyone save it? I realize I can't do it in and of my own desire and ambition. I realize that it is by the grace and power of the Most High that the church must be resurrected out of its ashes like the phoenix of lore.

I'm beginning to think that maybe the best thing right now is for me to finish the training that God has set before me and then I will be better equipped to tackle the small portion of the monumentous task that God will give me. Yes, I'll do what I can now, but maybe training is essential. But what if I miss the fight? I feel like an anxious soldier waiting for his chance to see some action. What if the fight is over by the time I get out of here in 3 or 4 years? The sad part is that I doubt it will be over. The church is in trouble and unless the hand of God reaches and raises up his bride form the muck and the mire, she will continue to wallow in it for a long number of years.

I'm not saying that I've made my decision to stay in seminary, nor am I saying that I've given up fighting until I'm out. I'm just saying that we have an uphill battle and it will take much work, prayer, and probably a good old fashioned persecution to bring the Church back to be the pure bride that she once was.

Until that day, it seems that my only solace can be found in the words of Thomas Oden, from his book The Living God. Oden says: "Even when preachers are heretics, as long as they celebrate Holy Communion in due order, the liturgy is not invalidated, and the rite itself performs the ironic task of contradicting what has been badly taught."

I hope and pray that he is right, because right now there is a lot of bad teaching from pastors, worship leaders, and other ministers, and it is by the grace of God that the church still stands in even a vague shadow of her former glory.

Postmodernism

Let me preface this post by saying that I'm a bit tired so I apologize in advance for any points that seem to be unusually unclear or nonsensical.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about postmodernism and the Church's response to it. Some of this thinking has come from classroom readings, some from dialogues with friends and some from my own experience in a postmodern "intentional community."

Thinking back to my Houghton days, oh so long ago, I remember how I was all about postmodernity and the "emergent" movement. I was so excited for this new paradigm in which to minister. A paradigm which seemed to throw off the shackles of modernity; especially the scientific method and the need for empiracle proof of all things, and seemed to embrace experience, narrative, and people.

I was all for this new paradigm for the majority of senior year and did not become wary of it until Doug Pagit came along and told us about his emergent church: Solomon's Porch in Minnesota. His lack of concern for orthodoxy bothered me, along with the lack of spiritual depth with which this emergent leader spoke. I am not trying to criticize him personally, but I observed this in his lecture and my subsequent conversations with him. My main concern with this was that he was one of the key leaders of a movement and seemed to lack deep spiritual passion - usually a bad combination.

Although this was a red flag, I still was a fan of postmodern christianity represented by authors like Pagit, and McClaren, and what is becoming countless other authors. This changed, however, when I came to Asbury.

At Asbury one can hardly hear students and some faculty talke for long without hearing phrases like: "our story", "our narrative", "emergent", "community", and other words and phrases that are hot phrases in the postmodern christian dialect. (To be sure, the context these phrases were spoken in ways often spiritually deep and packed with meaning.) Added to this I started to attend "Communality" an emergent-like intentional community in Lexington that had a very postmodern vibe. With the combination of these two factors and some readings in one of my classes, I began to have a new perspective on postmodernism and Christianity. I guess one could say that I was simply getting burnt out on the phrasology, but I would argue that I was begining to see a broader picture than what I had seen before.

I began to wonder why I was becoming dissillusioned with this Christian embrace of postmodernism. I wondered if it was the apparent lack of spiritual power that I observed in Communality and Pagit. I didn't think this was it because at the seminary there was incredible depth. I wondered if I was just sick of hearing the word story and narrative. Maybe, but it seemed to be larger than just annoyance. I wondered if I was just merely too far entrenched in modernism that it hurt to break out. I didn't think that was it either. I kept asking these sorts of questions trying to pinpoint what I disliked about it and then the other day I seemed to realize my problem with it.

It's trendy.

I think that we as Christians are making way too big a deal out of postmodernity. We're racking our brains trying to discifer the global culture, the way the world is taking shape. We're trying to be relevant by accentuating community, story, and other postmodern things, when really we're just hopping on the newest Christian fad.

I'm not saying that postmodernity doesn't exist, I'm not saying we should stop trying to understand culture, but I'm asking "why do we care so much?" Why are we so busy trying to understand what the world is thinking. It's as if we need to figure it out because we have a way to project the gospel to the whole world at once and it needs to be relevant to all. I am convinced this deep need to understand the entire culture is nothing but an immediate product of our mass targeted Christianity (church growth movement) which is deeply rooted in modernism. We're becoming obsessed with community and story because it is the next gimmick we can use to sucker mass groups of people into the Kingdom (or what we narrowlly view the Kingdom as being - i.e. the local church). The Kingdom always grows one individual at a time (though it does not emphasize THE individual in all things) and it is always working by the power of the Spirit.

Yes, community and story are genuinly important to some (and rightly so), but to talk about them all the time seems like a mere gimmick. To value community is not to continuously talk about it, rather it is to live within it and structure one's life within community and to value story is the same.

We've missed the mark. We constantly focus on global contextualization when really that's not the issue. The real issue is local contextualization. Why do we care what the whole world thinks and how society is moving. To be concerned with that seems to me to be an excuse for us to become blind to what our neighbor thinks and how she or he is moving in life. We constantly seek to look on large scales, when the real ministry of the Kingdom is done on small scale. In the case of the Kingdom of God, bigger is not better!! - Well at least not until the parousia.

The book of Acts shows us the movement of the Kingdom from Jerusalem outward. It starts small, with a rag tag group of Spirit filled disciples and grows into a large Spirit filled movement that encompasses much of what was then the known world, including Rome. While we may not have the same scenario here, we do have something analogous. We are constantly looking at Rome and beyond and trying to figure out how to reach it, but we haven't even concerned ourselves with Jerusalem, let alone forged a path to Rome.

We need to stop talking and start living. We need to stop theorizing about what the world is thinking and start dealing with the thoughts of those around us. We need to throw our hands in the air and say "who cares about postmodernism." We need to realize that the only ones talking about it are philosophers and Chrsitians (not that the two groups are mutually exclusive) and realize that the average person on the street, doesn't need postmodern Chrstians, they need real Spirit-filled Christians to help them in their needieness - both spiritual and physical.

So who does care? Not I.

Community, Hosts, Guests, Strangers, and the Marginalized

The above title seems to be the best description of the thoughts that have been running through my mind since yesterday and that came to some sort of explainable and understandable pinnacle today. For the sake of simplicity I should probably start at the beginning, although even the order of events is a bit convoluted.

In chapel yesterday and today (which was again awesome!) we (the new students) were repeatedly told that we are no longer considered guests, but friends who are part of the Asbury community and even hosts in community. Although that is the reality anytime anyone moves to a community, (especially a new academic institution) it is seldom acted out or even said. Often "freshmen" or incoming students are unintentionally (or possibly intentionally) alienated until they prove themselves worthy to be a functioning part of the community. I found this exhortation to be incredibly touching. The request that a few of the new students serve as communion stewards for the first community Eucharist celebration to be held when the returning students arrive was also very moving, it truly shows to me that we are functioning members of the community, we are part of the formation that goes on in this place. We are truly no longer guests but comprise an essential part of the community. What an awesome revelation!

However awesome that revelation may be, the true epiphany connected with this happened later in the day (actually later than the second thing I will write about, but while we're here I might as well discuss this).

The epiphany is this: It is a shame that we in the church do not take this same stance. When a new people come to faith, we make them prove themselves before we really welcome them into the community. We make them prove that they are good enough, clean enough, respected enough in the world, rich enough or any number of other things before we accept them as hosts in the story that we live in. I'm not saying that we don't need to make sure our ministers are trained and godly before we thrust them in ministry (the church has always done that) but to make people prove themselves before we allow them to enter into the Church (in the purest sense of the word) is ridiculous and down right sinful! There should not be this trial period where we place the world's values of acceptance over Christ's values. Christ's values of acceptance should be the only values the Church holds. We need to stop living with this prideful, sinful, filthy, judgmental way of thinking and accept new converts as "one of us." Yes they may struggle, yes they have learning to do, but so do we all, including the ministers and the elder members of our churches. We need to stop requiring people to be "good enough" before they are part of us. If you think about it honestly, not a single freaking one of us is good enough. It is by grace and grace alone that we have been saved. Yes we are part of the kingdom and we should and better act like it, but placing these ungodly value systems on people before we accept them is not acting like who we are called to be.


The second thought from today occurred during an orientation session with Dr. Joel Green. He started his session by reading 1 Peter 1:1-2, which reads:

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood: May grace and peace be yours in abundance. (NRSV)

Dr. Green briefly exegeted this passage, mainly verse 1, stating that there was a fundamental translation error in the NRSV. He stated that it should not be read as being written to those who are part of the "exiles of the dispersion", rather it should be read as to who Peter wrote it. You see, according to Dr. Green, those were the recipeients of the letter, but Peter was chiefly writing to the WHOLE Church, including us. We know this because, 1) one of the places in the geography list didn't even exist, and 2) it is not "exiles in the dispersion...Who are chosen" but rather a unique word that is hard to translate in English because it is two words mushed together meaning "the marginalized (exiled) chosen ones." Peter isn't saying: "I'm writing to so and so," on the contrary he is writing to all Christians because by our very nature WE ARE THE MARGINALIZED CHOSEN ONES. That is our identity, that is who we are! So often we want to remember that we are chosen, but along with our chosen-ness we have to rememer that we are by nature marginalized, exiled, and dispersed from the world. We don't belong here. We don't live by the worlds standards because we are different, our identity has changed, we are no longer the "Simons" of the world, we are now the "Peters" upon whom Christ shall build his church (Mark 8).

We are forever a blood covered people, a people who don't belong. We do live as aliens because the nature of our salvation takes us out of the world and into Christ. This is our sanctification, this is our calling, this is our life and our identity. We are the Community of faith that stretches back to the Apostles, the Prophets, to Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. We are hosts in this community, and yet visitors and marginalized from the world. We live as aliens who don't belong and who should be set apart for holiness. The question is, why don't we act like it? That is the apostolic exhortation that we find throughout scripture: "You're a sanctified people, you are in Christ, now start acting like it!" Paul, Peter, John, not to mention Jesus, they all call us to live beyond ourselves, to die to who we are so that we would be truly sanctified, and act like the true people of God.

I fear the problem is that the church has forgotten this. A large majority of the church has forgotten that we don't belong. We've set ungodly social standards and require others to fit those molds, we neglect those who are marginalized by society because we aren't. I am very scared that many "Christians" will hear Jesus say those most dreaded words: "depart from me for I never knew you." Maybe you think that I am going too far? Maybe my standard is to harsh? I don't believe so. Yes, I don't live up to it yet, but I'm striving. We must be holy! Holiness for the people of God is not merely personal holiness, but also social holiness. If you don't think I'm speaking truth then read the words of the prophets and the words of Jesus. Holiness is always a personal and corporate entity. Just as we cannot neglect personal holiness (as some of our liberal friends have) we cannot ignore social holiness (as most of conservative "Christianity" has). John Wesley recognized this when he said something to the affect of "there is no salvation without social holiness."

Western Christianity needs to put down weak and unformational books like the Purpose Driven Life, the Prayer of Jabez, Your Best Life Now, Left Behind and many others and pick up the freaking Bible! True biblical Christianity is dying in the west. Our churches do not teach the FULL Gospel of Jesus Christ. We neglect the poor, the needy, and the downtrodden and justify living in our plush American homes. We even neglect personal holiness, we neglect teaching about true love, we neglect teaching about obedience to the cross, dying to self and being willing to die at any minute. Bigger churches keep getting bigger, not because we are seeing multitudes lead to the Lord as in the book of Acts, but because they teach a weak gospel. They teach a gospel that looks nothing like the gospel of Jesus Christ. Their gospel is one that is easy to follow, it allows minimal sacrifice and no discomfort at all, except getting up to go to 1 hour of "church as week."

Churches like Lakewood with John Osteen, Saddelback with Rich Warren, Willow Creek with Bill Hybels and Eastern Hills Wesleyan with Karl Eastlack are not churches, they are not part of Christianity, no they are a cult! They teach a false teaching that is destroying the gospel of Christ. People are not being brought into the Kingdom of God, the very thing that Jesus spent most of his ministry teaching about, no, they are being brought into that church and that church alone, that is a sign of a cult.

Don't for a second think that I'm just against big churches, although I do have that bias, little churches too have just as many problems and propagate false teaching. But some and I think many small churches are small because they are faithful to the teachings of Jesus. The true teachings of Jesus are hard, they are foolishness to the world and contrary to everything our culture stands for. We must grab ahold of Jesus teachings and not let go. We must remember that we are by nature a marginalized people, we don't fit in with the world and to allow the world to set our lines for success is wrong and sinful.

I know that most of you who will read this feel the same way as I do, and for that I apologize for my soapbox, but I am so sick of complacent western "Christianity" I feel like I could scream. For those of you who may read this and don't agree with me and feel I've gone to far by naming names, books, and churches among other things; I say that I'm sorry if I've offended you , but I feel that I've spoken truth. Maybe I should have been easier on some of the churches, but I wasn't.

My prayer for all of you this day is that you may live as hosts in the community of God, serving and loving his people. That you would love the marginalized by the world, and remember that you are marginalized by the world because of the cross you carry. Peace be with you as you carry that cross, may the weight of it continue to spur you on toward holiness both personal and social. Remember only the holy are truly happy.

Blessings my friends!