Glorious Feast!

Today the church exhorts us to join in a great paradox of feasting even in the midst of our Lenten fasting since today is the feast of the Annunciation. Today is the day that we celebrate and remember that glorious day when the Angel Gabriel came to the Virgin and proclaimed:

Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you...Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of the his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end....The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God....For nothing will be impossible with God. (Luke 1:30-33,35,37 NRSV)

Today is the day when we can see the full spectrum of our salvation. We look ahead to Good Friday when we remember our Lord's death, and we even glance beyond Good Friday longingly looking toward Easter Sunday, the feast of feasts, when we celebrate our Lords glorious resurrection. We look ahead like this today as we think of the angel's visitation to the Virgin. We recognize today, maybe more fully than at any other point, that our Lord came as a child to die and rise again for us and for our salvation.

The Lord and maker of the heavens, he who is uncontainable humbled himself so much that he allowed himself to take on flesh and to be contained in a womb. He who knows the expanse of the universe and who spoke to the darkness at creation is the same incarnate word that came and took on flesh as a fetus (if such an impersonal word can be used). We celebrate this day the incorporeal Son, the second person of the Trinity, taking on flesh so that humanity may be united to God. We rejoice in the fact that Christ our God took on every part of what it means to be human and yet was without sin. Our Lord took upon himself not only our flesh, but also our will - assuming everything that is intrinsic to us, for as St. Basil states: "that which was not assumed cannot be redeemed."

Today we also remember Mary's response to the Angel: "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1:38). We remember that her response was a free choice and that it was not forced upon her. In this same way we remember that we are called to emulate her and to respond to God daily with the same words. Theotokos, the God-bearer, that is the title given to Mary by the early church, not as a sign of her exultation but to proclaim the mystery we celebrate today that God himself, in the person of the Son chose to be born. The uncreated one who is without beginning chose to unite himself to humanity so thoroughly that we can say with confidence that Mary bore God in her womb. To say this statement is hard and absurd is true, and yet it is also beautiful in the truth it proclaims. Christ is the fullness of God, and yet also the fullness of humanity and today we proclaim his love. We can see this love clearly as we remember his incarnation and look toward the cross and resurrection.

Glory to God in the Highest! Our redemption is at hand, for Christ our God is conceived in the womb of the virgin so that he may cleanse us from our sin.


Sadly this holy-day is forgotten in most of Protestantism probably due to a number of reasons, chief of which may be (and I'm just offering a hypothesis here) connected to the staunch rejection of anything having to do with the Virgin Mary at the time of Luther's reformation. I believe it would do us well to remember this day with our Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters. I believe this feast helps us to think more accurately about the incarnation of our Lord. It helps us to avoid the heresy of adoptionism and some gnostic tendencies that run deep in some of our traditions.

So let us today join with our Catholic and Orthodox friends and boldly sing the praises of God. For today we can see both the incarnation and the crucifixion/resurrection clearly. Let us praise God for his redemption of humanity for today we celebrate the coming of grace as the Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin!

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!

The one where I write about a lot of different things

This one might be a long one as I've been intending to post on some of these topics since before Christmas. I'll try to section off the topics so you can easily scroll ahead if you find one of the topics to be boring, but then again chances are you might find all of these topics, if not the whole blog in general, to be rather boring. Nevertheless here it goes.


********Happy Birthday Jesus***********

I think I alluded to this in my last post. While I was home the kids in my parent's church gave a little Christmas program during the Sunday service. The program focused on the fact that Jesus was celebrating a birthday and thus they should give him appropriate gifts (the eventual conclusion being that we must give him our hearts). As I sat there I began to think about how insufficient the commonplace "happy birthday Jesus" emphasis that we give our children is.

Maybe we think that we're helping our kids understand Christmas by telling them that it is Jesus' birthday, for it is, in fact, the day that we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. But I'm wondering if this isn't yet another example of the protestant problem. Meaning that in an effort to contextualize and to make the message of the faith easy to understand we end up settling for a lesser faith and selling short ourselves and the eventual converts into the faith.

Granted young children can't understand phrases like incarnation, hypostasis, and perichoresis, but do we still not have a duty to teach our children the true faith even if it means they ask questions and don't understand it all at first? Maybe the issue now is that this cycle of "settling" has gone on so long that most Protestant Christians don't know what the faith is anyways? But I digress. How much do we need to dumb down the faith for kids? I would argue that while we may not use the same terminology we still need to teach the essential concepts and, as I see it, "happy birthday Jesus" falls short on so many levels.

So why is "happy birthday Jesus" insufficient? It seems to me that it downplays the significance of the birth of Christ. While it is, and always will be, important to emphasize that Jesus was born in the same way as we were born the sole emphasis of his birth downplays his divinity. The reason that Christ's birth is so important is not merely because he was born, but because God himself chose to take on flesh through the womb of a virgin and to be born and live among us. I've not heard "happy birthday Jesus" teaching to children that emphasizes the fact that God came down and dwelt among us. I've also not heard this teaching mention that Christ was born of the Holy Spirit as well as the Virgin Mary. How great is this opportunity to make a Trinitarian teaching point to children and yet we sell out in favor of birthday cake and parties for our kids.

This emphasis also seem problematic in that we fail to appropriately distinguish between the celebration of Jesus' birthday and our birthday. Thus we teach a low Christology that implicitly places Jesus on our level. This means, as mentioned above, that we deemphasize the divinity and thus we celebrate Jesus' birth because he is a good man whom we strive to be like. If he is merely a good man then nothing distinguishes him from the likes of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and the rest of the social advocates around the world. This is nothing more than old-fashioned liberal theology and should be eradicated from our places of worship.

Time also seems to play an important part in this discussion. If we focus on using the "happy birthday Jesus" paradigm for teaching our kids while Christmas is important we also neglect to teach them about the eternality of Christ. Yes he was born in time about 2,000 years ago. However, he is eternally begotten of the Father. It would be disastrous for us to leave our kids thinking that Jesus came to be 2,000 years ago and that's it. We must teach our kids that while Christ was born in time on earth there was never a moment that he did not exist. This is something that I didn't learn until college and we are perpetuating these low Christologies in part by teaching our kids that we celebrate Christmas because it's Jesus' birthday and then we stop.

We may indeed be able to use birthday language to help our kids grasp the concept of Christmas, but we must only do so if we can use it to discuss the context of the Holy Incarnation. Yes, we likely will not use the word incarnation as kids don't understand it, but we have to convey the concept. Wait, why should we not use the word incarnation? Kids learn vocabulary by hearing it and asking questions concerning the meaning of words. Why should the building blocks of our Children's vocabulary not be words and concepts like incarnation? What could be more important? Granted this may turn them into nerds, but not necessarily and who cares. Too dumb down the faith for kids and to merely talk about Christmas in terms of birthday is insufficient and is embedding in our kids a weak Christology that has hurt the Church and will undoubtedly hurt the Church in the long run.



********Virtual Eucharist***********

I read the following announcement on our Asbury email forum thingy before Christmas and am just getting to posting about it:

On January 2, 2008 we will gather at 11am in the Distance Learning Room (BC 157) and in Florida in Room FL208 for a celebration of the the classic Wesley Covenant Renewal Service. Dr. Kalas will be leading the Covenant Renewal and a leader from the Florida campus will be celebrating the Lord's Supper. The service should take no longer than 45 minutes. Please mark your calendars and plan to be present if you are on campus.

Just so you all know the context of the email I have left the content intact, minus the greeting and salutation, though I have bolded the section that I would like to address.

As soon as I read this email I started wondering exactly how this co-celebration of the Eucharist would work. If it is being celebrated by a leader from the Florida Campus while in the telelink room I can only assume that this leader will be in Florida. This new age of technology surely raises some interesting pragmatic questions.

As my friend Chuck pointed out when I emailed him and a few others about this issue if one holds a memorialist view of the Eucharist there really is no issue at hand. He's right, if one holds this view of the Eucharist then of course one could remember Christ through telelink and everyone should be fine with this. Though I don't want this to become a post defending my Eucharistic views I think this view of the Eucharist is the least biblical, historical, and thus desirable of all the views. Theoretically the seminary should not be endorsing this view as it is a seminary in the broader Wesleyan tradition and it is evident that John Wesley and early Methodists did not hold nor teach this view.

I suppose that one probably wouldn't have that much of a problem with this practice of telelink Eucharist if they held to a consubstantiatory view either (I think this was also suggested by Chuck, but maybe Tony). I guess the logic here would be that the Holy Spirit surrounds the elements and the Holy Spirit can move upon the elements and the communicants through video conferencing just as well as if the person praying over the elements and saying the words of institution is present.

I personally hold to a more transubstantiatory view and logically object to this practice. The issue I want to raise though is that this practice should be raising questions amongst the seminary community and is an undesirable practice even if one holds a consubstantiatory view.

This practice raises many questions. If this is a valid way to take the Eucharist then what is the need for ordination. I may be mistaken but it seems to me that one of the main purposes of ordination is to assure that the person celebrating the sacraments, liturgy, and preaching to the people is inline with the faith of the Church. If one can preach, celebrate the sacraments and liturgy over video conference then why ordain anyone? For that matter, why let anyone preach other than major denominational figures? For Catholics, why wouldn't the Pope just video tape his liturgy and then show it to all the Catholic churches in the world? This seems like it would work given the underlying presuppositions that allow this virtual Eucharist to take place. We have to admit that there is something important about the physical presence of a minister representing Christ to the people. We have to recognize the importance of the physical.

It seems to me that this practice is building upon and helping to foster the ever-present dualistic tendencies that exists all over western Christendom. I won't go so far as to call this practice gnostic (though I really want to) but I do think it is highly dualistic and implicitly asserting that the physical does not matter. If it doesn't then why do we take Eucharist anyways? Oh wait, I know!!

If we assert that the physical doesn't matter, as this practice seems to imply, then we take the Eucharist because it helps us to feel like a "community." This service is merely using (and I would argue abusing the Eucharist) to generate some generic sense of community between the campuses. Yes, the Eucharist is a unifying act, but it unifies us to God and thus as a result unifies us to others.

We are unified to Christians around the world not because we have the exact same person say the words of institution over the bread and wine and not because someone says the words via a video conference over everyone's bread and wine, no we are united with other believers because God unites us. We worship the same God and we celebrate the same supper, even if miles, oceans, or languages separate us. We don't need someone to institute the Lord's supper over a video-link in order to be unified.

The problems with this practice are many. It promotes a hyper-dualism that shouldn't be present in Christianity. It also operates on a faulty view of how exactly the Eucharist is a unifying act. It also is problematic because it raises the all-pervasive view of community above correct Eucharistic celebration. I still think there may be more at stake with this practice, but I'm not completely sure how to articulate it.



********Book Review: Whose Bible is it? by Jaroslav Pelikan***********

I've been finished with Jaroslav Pelikan's book; Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages, for some time now. I think I finished it mid-semester in the fall but haven't got around to posting about it until now.

In true Pelikan fashion Dr. Pelikan does a wonderfully thorough job of presenting exactly what the subtitle suggests "a history of the scriptures through the ages." Pelikan's style is very accessible since he uses very little jargon and he articulates clearly and concisely his ideas.

This book is a wonderful book and would serve well for any class that focuses on the introduction to scriptures. It would also be perfect for any person who wants to learn how we have the scriptures as we know them. Pelikan begins his discussion with the oral tradition of the Hebrew scriptures and then progresses linearly through history discussing the development of the Septuagint, the Talmud, the formation of the New Testament, the development of the canon, the scribal tradition, the development of the printed scriptures, the rise of textual criticism, and then concludes with a brief discussion of the far-reachingness of the scriptures and then worldview therein.

While this sounds like a lot of material Pelikan's book is a short 274 pages (including endnotes and appendices) and tackles these discussions without getting bogged down by needless rabbit trails.

I think Pelikan's book is a must-read for any beginning religious studies student and would be a helpful read for the inquisitive lay person. Though I thought the book seemed to drag a little bit after Pelikan began discussing the era of the printing press, I think this is largely due to the fact that I'm not as interested in the latter development of editions, translations, and textual variants of the Scriptures as I am in how the canon came to be and how we have received the text from our spiritual forefathers and mothers.

Though my copy of this book is filled with underlined text, circled phrases, and comments in the margins, I'm not sure if I can find a great quote to place in this blog. The book is filled with great insight, scholarly precision, and wonderful references to ad quotes from the Fathers of the faith.

One thing you may want to know before you read the book is something that I didn't find out until I was almost finished. Though Pelikan doesn't place a notation after quotes they are still referenced in back. I find this a little archaic and frustrating but it really is the only complaint I can lay against this book.



********Book Review: On Pascha by Melito of Sardis***********

I finished this book near the beginning of the summer and since I am writing the mother of all blog posts I thought I would write a short review in this post. In case you haven't noticed this post is the catch all for all that's fallen by the wayside over the past year or so.

Melito of Sardis' (ca. 190AD even though the wikipedia page says 180AD) treatise On Pascha is very short (about 30 pages of text in this edition) but it packed with rich theology but is easy enough to read that it can be used devotionally as a meditative aid. The introduction by Alistair Stewart-Sykes is a bit heavier and while it helps one to understand the occasion for and the issues surrounding Melito's writing it isn't as necessary as some introductions given the accessibility of Melito. The footnotes are also very explanatory for those who may not be familiar with some of the phrasing that Melito uses.

For those of you who don't know what Pascha is, it is, in brief, what the earlier fathers and the Eastern Church refers to as Easter. The term comes from the Greek word for suffering and is more consistent with the Jewish feast of Passover. This treatise by Melito is basically a wonderful recounting of Easter. Melito's treatise constantly links Christ as the Lamb back to the Old Testament sacrificial lamb of Passover. Melito beautifully draws out the Old Testament images as the type of which Christ was the fulfillment. I would suggest this as a wonderful Easter meditation for anyone. Here are a few of my favorite sections:

And today those things of value (the OT sacrifices) are worthless, since the things of true worth have been revealed.

For then the (the OT) the slaughter of the sheep was of value,
now it is worthless because of the Lord's life.
The death of the sheep was of value,
now it is worthless because of the Lord's salvation.
The blood of the sheep was of value,
now it is worthless because of the Lord's Spirit...
The Jerusalem below was of value,
now it is worthless because of the heavenly Jerusalem.
One the narrow inheritance was of value,
now it is worthless because of the breadth of grace.
For it is not on one place, nor in a narrow plot, that the glory of God is established,
but on all the ends of the earth.
For his grace has been poured out
and the almighty God has made his dwelling there.
Through Christ Our Lord,
to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. (44-45)


O mystifying murder! O mystifying injustice!
The master is obscured by his body exposed,
and is not held worthy of a veil to shield him from view.
For this reason the great lights turned away,
and the day was turned to darkness;
to hid the one denuded on the tree,
obscuring not the body of the Lord but human eyes.

For when the people did not tremble, the earth shook.
When the people did not fear, the heavens were afraid.
When the people did not rend their garments, the angel rent his own.
When the people did not lament, the Lord thundered from heaven,
and the most high gave voice. (97-98)


This (Jesus) is the Pascha of our salvation:
this is the one who in many people endured many things.
This is the one who was murdered in Abel,
tied up in Isaac,
exiled in Jacob,
sold in Joseph,
exposed in Moses,
slaughtered in the lamb,
hunted down in David,
dishonored in the prophets.

This is the one made flesh in a virgin,
who was hanged on a tree,
who was buried in the earth,
who was raised from the dad,
who was exalted to the heights of heaven.

This is the lamb slain,
this is the speechless lamb,
this is the one born of Mary the fair ewe,
this is the one taken from the flock,
and led to slaughter.
Who was sacrificed in the evening, and buried at night;
who was not broken on the tree,
who was not undone in the earth,
who rose form the dead and resurrected humankind from the grave below.

This is the one who has been murdered.
And where murdered?
In the middle of Jerusalem.
By Whom? By Israel.
Why? Because he healed their lame,
and cleansed their lepers,
and enlightened their blind,
and raised up their dead;
and therefore he died...

What a strange injustice have you done, O Israel?
You have dishonored the one who honored you,
you have disgraced the one who glorified you,
you have denied the one who owned you,
you have ignored the one who made you known,
you have murdered the one who gave you life. (69-73)


He it is who made the heaven and the earth,
and formed humanity in the beginning,
who was proclaimed through the law and the prophets,
who took flesh from a virgin,
who was hung on a tree,
who was buried in earth,
who was raised from the dead,
and ascended to the heights of heaven,
who sits at the right hand of the father,
who has the power to save all things,
through whom the father acted from the beginning and for ever.

This is the alpha and omega,
this is the beginning and the end,
the ineffable beginning and the incomprehensible end.
This is the Christ,
this is the King,
this is Jesus,
this is the commander,
this is the Lord,
this is he who rose from the dead,
this is he who sits at the right hand of the Father,
he bears the Father and is borne by him.
To him be the glory and the might for ever.
Amen. (104-105)

********************************

So there you have it. I know it's long and it probably bores most, if not all of you, but I think that catches up on most of what I've been thinking/reading as of late.

I start my last semester at Asbury in February and am stoked about being done. Although I am a little unsure of what I will do when I graduate. I'm taking three classes and am particularly excited about one of them. I am taking:

John Wesley's Theology for Today
Old Testament Theology

and the one that still has to be approved but that I'm really excited about is

Independent Study in historical and theological development of Eastern Christian thought.


I am currently working on finishing three books:

St. John of Damascus: Three Treatises On the Divine Images
St. Symeon the New Theologian: On the Mystical Life: Vol 1. The Church and the Last Things
St. Symeon the New Theologian: On the Mystical Life: Vol 2. On Virtue and the Christian Life

I'm also reading: Rob Bell: Velvet Elvis, but I must confess that I'm only reading Bell because I'm not a big fan and think that I should read more of his works in order to help refute the Rob Bell personality cult that exists at Asbury.

I'm hoping to finish the main three books before February, and while it should be doable I also am lazy and am watching way more movies than I should during this break.



Blessings to you all,

- Ben

Rejoice!

I find that with all the holiday-ness and end of the school year stuff surrounding Christmas I have trouble rejoicing in Christmas the same way I do Easter. While for Christians, Easter is the chiefest of holy days Christmas is still a day to rejoice in, for Truly God is incarnate and our salvation is now at hand in the form of a babe!

I picked up a book while I was at the monastery and though I am not a big fan of extensive mariology I read something that helps me to put Christmas into perspective and brings tears to my eyes and makes my heart want to leap out of my chest for joy.

Building on the Angels proclamation for Mary to "rejoice" (Lk. 1.28), the beginning of the akathist to the Theotokos reads:

An Angel, and the chiefest among them, was sent from heaven to cry: Rejoice! to the Mother of God. And beholding Thee, O Lord, taking bodily form, he stood in awe, and with his bodiless voice he cried aloud to her such things as these:

Rejoice though through whome joy shall shine forth. Rejoice, thou through whome the curse shall be blotted out.

Rejoice though the Restoration of fallen Adam. Rejoice, thou the Redemption of the tears of Eve.

Rejoice, Height hard to climb for human thought. Rejoice, Depth hard to explore, even for the eyes of Angels.

Rejoice, for thou are the Throne of the King. Rejoice, for thou sustainest the Sustainer of all.

Rejoice, Star that causest the Sun to appear. Rejoice, Womb of the divine Incarnation

Rejoice, thou through whome creation is renewed. Rejoice, thou through whome the Creator becometh a babe.

Rejoice, thou Bride unwedded.

I know a lot of that language may make some of you uncomfortable (to be honest it does that to me a little as well). But how glorious is this incarnation!! God has taken flesh, but not merely flesh, but has become a babe! This is not merely Jesus' birthday that we celebrate (more on this later) but the incarnation of our God! Jesus Christ, God of God, Light of Light, the begotten of the Father before all ages has condescended and become human. The eternally begotten one of the Father is now brought forth through the womb of a young girl in order to die and rise again so that humans can becomes friends of God.

With the incarnation of our God the beginning of the end has come for sin and death. The curse of sin is being tread under foot by an infant yet unable to walk. God has taken flesh and the tears of Eve are wiped away and the groans of creation are subsided. Glory to Jesus Christ!!

Let us praise God that a young girl when confronted with the proclamation from an Angel said: "He am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word," for it was through her womb that the creator of all things took on flesh and was born in order to redeem us all from the curse of sin and death.

Glory to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit!! Let the joy of Christmas ring not merely because we get to see family and friends, but because our God took flesh and was born this day! Let the tears of Eve be blotted out this day, for today our Savior and our God - Jesus Christ - is born!! Hallelujah! Glory to God in the highest!!

May you all have a joyous Christmas!!

- Ben

Does anyone care about Christian orthodoxy anymore?!

I should be reading for class right now so I'll try to make this quick. As a few of you probably know, I have spent my last few semesters here working on a couple devotional readers for the seminary for use during the seasons of Lent and KingdomTide (a season created in the 60s or 70s during the season commonly called Pentecost or proper time). I recently finished the Lent/EasterTide reader for 2008, of which I was responsible for all of Lent and Easter Sunday. The EasterTide section was taken by a student down at the Florida campus. In case you're wondering a typical day in the reader would consists of the following:

Opening Prayer - from the Book of Common Prayer, a Psalm or a Saint.
Gospel Reading - We segmented out the Gospel of John for each day on this one.
Historical Reading - A reading form a major figure in Church history. I use mostly cannonized saints (east and west) and John and Charles Wesley.
Prayer of Response - from the Book of Common Prayer, a Psalm, a Saint, or often I will write this to bring more cohesion to the above elements.

Some days will also include an OT reading, or be missing either an historical reading or prayer of response, but you get the idea. The woman with whom I am working at the Florida campus also uses roughly the same format, though I've noticed she likes to bring cohesion by writing more of her own material other than prayers.

Now to the issue that leads to my thoughts:

At the end of the reader we usually write short biographies to help the readership know more about the figures we use. As I was compiling the biographies I noticed that she used two sources that seemed suspect to me: "The Nestorian Liturgy" and Origen.

I took contention to these to figures because both Nestorius and Origen were condemned by the Church (back when it was unified) as heretics. I debated on whether or not to say anything because there is some debate whether Origen actually was a heretic (he was condmned posthumously) and it is popular to quote him. I was going to let Origen slide but I could not remain silent about including part of a heretical liturgy for our campus community to read devotionally. Nestorius (and thus the Nestorians) held that Jesus existed in two persons: Jesus the Son of God and Jesus the man. This means that it was not Jesus the Son of God who died on the cross, but that it was just the man that suffered.

Nestorianism is problematic because, as I believe it was St. Athanasias (though I could be wrong) said, "that which has not been assumed cannot be redeemed." In other words only God could free us from our Sin and thus Jesus Christ who was indeed fully man must be fully God in order for their to be any merit in his death and resurrection. I am aware that this is a truncated argument, but it will have to suffice.

After an exchange of emails she said that she was aware that these men were heretics but that they were condemned under "shady" circumstances and that we can still learn from them because they got "sidetracked." I'd be willing to allow her argument that his condemnation was "shady" to hold a little weight as Origen was dead when this happened, but not Nestorius. And she is dead wrong that Nestorius "got sidetracked" he was confronted by the Church and he refused to deviate his teaching. Nestorius' view strikes at the heart of the incarnation and devalues the entire Christ event. This is not a little slip up, this is huge!

To be fair the readings she included were not in and of themselves heretical. In fact, the small phrases she used were very orthodox, but that is not the point. While it may be important to read these things and talk about them in the classroom to help firm up our foundation on orthodox Christian teaching I do not agree that even the seemingly orthodox statements of heretics should become devotional material. I know that I am dangerously close to separating that which feeds the spirit from that which feeds the soul (something I don't like to do), but we cannot just openly endorse heretics.

I am also confused as to how one can be "open to exploration [of heretics] (as long as it is not teaching heretical stances)." We cannot think that one's heretical beliefs can be fully separate from the rest of one's beliefs. I argue that it is impossible to dichotomize a major belief unit from the rest of one's beliefs. How can one speak praise to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (which is what her Nestorian quote consisted of) while holding that the Son - Jesus Christ is two persons. To whom are you giving praise? The Son that is born of Mary and thus fully human or the Son that is only fully God and thus did not really die and rise for our transgressions?

I'm not intending to get on her case, but I do see this as problematic and didn't know how else to discuss it. She means very well, but in my opinion this is a major issue. I think the part that bothers me the most though is the reaction to many of those whom I've shared this with. People just don't care. I know that I'm a church history nerd and I know that I am very excitable when it comes to the doctrines of the faith, but am I really barking up the wrong tree here?

Why are these heresies that strike right at the heart of our faith suddenly open for discussion? Why is it ok to exalt these heretics to such high levels? Do we not care about the Faith?

We fight long and hard about moral issues, but yet we are not willing to fight for the substance of the Faith? The early church fathers saw little to no distinction between right belief and right practice. It is right belief in who Christ is that as Paul teaches is the basis for our right belief. Maybe, just maybe if we worried a little bit about what our faith is saying we would begin to put together correct Christian morality.

Maybe for us (though I think it's a long shot) we need to worry about other things more than doctrine. But even if that is so what kind of faith will we have to pass on to the next generation? If we continue to ignore the substance of faith and allow heretics to pass as Saints we will have no substance to pass on to our children and to their children. I don't believe it's an accident that the earliest Christian hymns and creeds embedded in the New Testament are very doctrinal and Christ focused - the doctrines of right faith are the soil out of which right morality grows.

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not arguing for immoral behavior. I am just wondering why no one cares about the substance of the faith.

Frankly it just makes me sad.

The issue with the reader is just symptom of what is going on in the Church. We must read heretics as heretics and saints as saints. Heretics have no place in our devotional life and must be read cautiously. We can examine them to help inform as to how we got where we are, but we cannot just flippantly include them in communal devotional reading. Especially reading that as my friend Anna pointed out is inherently not conversational with the work or others. In my opinion the inclusion of a figure in the reader implies their endorsement for those who don't have the time or desire to read a lot of these figures. These quotes may get used in sermons, bible studies, and youth group lessons. These quotes may get googled and used within the context of the whole. My biggest fear with the quote form the Nestorian liturgy is that some student hoping to do a nice 'emergent' liturgical service will Google the liturgy and unknowingly have his or her parishioners partake in a heretical liturgy. For what we practice will slowly become embedded in us and become part of our belief system. This is one of the reasons why we must continue to celebrate the creeds in our services. But that's another post for another time.

As always I'd appreciate your thoughts on this matter even if you disagree with me, as I'm sure many of you will given the reaction I've gotten so far from some friends.

Misappropriating the Incarnation?

I'm not really in the mood to blog right now, so this post (as have so many others) may be lacking in coherence and a well formulated argument, but I will post it nevertheless because it helps me to process things verbally (or in this case through typing).

We recently had Kingdom Conference on campus which is basically the Seminary's attempt at a four day mission conference nestled in the "church season" they like to call KingdomTide. (We'll avoid my soapbox diatribe against KingdomTide for now).

The topic of this conference was rethinking short-term missions and how we can do them well. I think this is a very important topic because so often short-term mission trips turn into vacations with just enough 'ministry' to ease the guilt of taking a vacation. We also want to avoid what my friend Eric Iverson from Youthworks calls "pimping poor people," or in some cases 'pimping the nationals' we go to work with. We want to make sure we do some good and we want to make sure that we are not only sticking a band-aid on the infection, but that we're treating the cause as well. We want to make lasting changes and almost work ourselves and our missionary friends out of a job. I'm not sure if I explained that well, but either way it's more of an aside and not the topic I wanted to discuss. (Don't you just love my flow of consciousness writing style?)

Given the topic we had a speaker in chapel that lectured on improving short-term missions. Our speaker was Dr. Miriam Adeney, a professor at Seattle Pacific, who was a fairly good speaker. I liked most of her points but during one of her lectures she said something that I remember thinking was a very poor analogy at best. In her effort to emphasize making long-term connections through short-term missions she said "What if Jesus had dropped in on earth for only two weeks?" This seemed to me to be an odd analogy and I remember taking some issue with it when she said it. I didn't really get too worked up over her comment until I saw it listed as the "Heard Around Campus" quote of the week from last week. I guess it seems that someone (and since they put it in there, I'm assuming multiple someones) thought that it was a very profound statement.

While it is a good point in that Jesus didn't just "drop in" and we should cherish that because the incarnation is absolutely essential to our salvation and for knowing the mind and the heart of God. It seems to me that she is just citing an extreme case to make a small point about missions. Maybe this is just a type of logical fallacy (and as I type this I think it is, but I can't remember it) or maybe this could be a form of Godwin's Law. To be sure, I have been guilty of such errors (regrettably too often in conversation) but this analogy just seems wrong to me and I'm having trouble articulating it. Maybe I'm not making sense but it just seems to me that placing relationship building in short-term missions (or in any sense) on the same level with the Holy Incarnation is just too extreme of an analogy. It bothers me even more that students (or at least one student) thinks this to be worthy of the quote of the week. Doesn't it bother anyone else that we just use the incarnation as a means to justify almost anything. The incarnation is one of the most glorious things and we treat it as though it were just an example that we should draw from when we want to make our argument fool-proof.

I'm not saying that I disagree with Dr. Adeney's points, I'm just disagree with her argument style/example. Maybe I wouldn't be so quick to point this out if I didn't think that we deified community here at Asbury. Maybe you're thinking that that last statement may indeed be the exact same fallacy that I'm arguing against, but I don't think it is, because I've heard some discussions (many of which come out of the chapel office) that make it seem (and I really think it is the case) that the seminary is more concerned with making sure our students value community than it is that they value and rightly think on the incarnation, the Trinity, or a plethora of other essential doctrines of the Church.

Maybe I'm making a bid deal out of nothing, but maybe these comments by Dr. Adeney and their glorification by the student(s) is just the tip of a bigger problem that is well entrenched in Western Christendom.


- Ben

Christ Our God?!?

Over the past few weeks there has been one phrase from church that has been constantly on my mind - the phrase "Christ our God." This phrase is repeated numerous times during the Divine Liturgy and is very clear in it's meaning - namely that Christ is our God and we worship him.

For some reason over the past few weeks this phrase has stuck out to me more than usual and thus I have been forced to wrestle with it's profundity and simplicity. I have been forced to realize what it means to truly say that Christ is our God. To say that in a seemingly nonsensical sense that we worship a man, but not just a man, we worship a person who is both fully God and fully man.

God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.

- Athanasian Creed

This truth is something I will die for and yet it is something that although I try, I cannot fully understand and so I am forced to stand in the paradox of confident humility.

While this is indeed is a good meditation, it was not where I had planned to go with this post, so let me get back on track.

As I have thought and have been forced to meditate on this phrase I have been equally dismayed by it's absence from Protestant services. I think I first noticed this because when I first started to think on this phrase I felt slightly uncomfortable and began to analyze why. I then realized that I don't usually hear the phrase Christ our God in worship. As I thought I realized that while I may have conversations about Christ's divinity and would defend it in a theological debate any day, I never have really experienced protestant worship that verbalized Christ as God and the object of worship in a doxological sense.

Now, I realize that I am opening up myself for a great critique here as I'm sure one could find a few counterexamples and will believe that to suffice for a refutation of my assertion, but I disagree. Think about our worship services, for you Asburians think about our Chapel services (which, though they should be the exception are likely to fail even more than our churches) when was the last time that the service was thoroughly Trinitarian? When was the last time that a service was Christo-centric in the sense that it drew your worship toward Christ and caused you to bless, worship and affirm Christ as both God and man? Are our services Trinitarian - rarely. Are they Christo-centric - mostly, but this Christo-centrism seems to be a thin veil in front of bland and vague affirmations about God, rather than a specificity that is uniquely Christian and prayerfully meditative of Christ as the object of our worship - the fully divine, fully human , God-man.

Now, I am not fully opposed to songs of worship that are very concerned with the intimacy to be had between the Christian and Christ (love songs with Jesus, if you will), but these are not a proper starting place. We must start with the foundational faith and then allow room for mystical expression and intimate experiences.

We must do a better job at teaching our people the faith and for most this will not effectively happen in the classroom or the pulpit, but my making these truths essential parts or our worship both in song and prayer. If we continue on the path of only emphasizing the essential truths of the faith in classrooms and teaching them only to pastors then the faith will cease to be passed down to the coming generations.

The early fathers closely linked godliness with correct theology and action. We wonder why our people don't live righteously- could it not be that it is because they are not grounded in the Truth?

Short thoughts on Christmas music

I know the time has passed when this post would be appropriate but I'm going to write some short thoughts anyway... it is my blog after all.

In the days following Christmas I listened to the standard Christmas songs and as I listened I began to think that many of them are border-line heretical. This caused me to wonder if it was just me seeing heresy in everything (which some would say I do) or if they are genuinely quasi-heretical. I've continued to reflect on this and came to the conclusion that my descriptor of "many" might be a little bit of an over generalization. I haven't taken the time to sit down and analyze a great deal of them so I feel that 'many' is too strong of a word, but I do believe there are some songs that are seemingly heretical as well as, so I would argue, our larger conceptions of Christmas.

Let me explain.

Christmas is about the incarnation - God becoming human in the truest sense of humanity yet without sin. It is about Jesus Christ being truly human and truly God; 100% of both at the same time. Many of the heresies throughout Church history have been condemned because of errant thinking on the incarnation. Many of these heretics erred by over-emphasizing Christ's humanity at the expense of his divinity and it seems that an equal number of heretics erred by over-emphasizing his divinity at the expense of his humanity.

In protestant theology we seem to see both of these errant trends come to the surface. The arch-liberals deny the divinity of Christ while it seems (and here lies the point of the post) that many of the more conservative Protestants deny Christ's humanity (or at least minimize it) to emphasize his Divinity.

For example let us look at the song "Away in a Manger." I choose this song for a few reasons: 1) It supports my point - it's good to pick an example that supports your argument (or so I've been told). 2) It seems to me that although this isn't a song of vast theological content it encapsulates the themes of contemporary Christmas theology. 3) It's the only one that I can remember the words to off hand.

Now to the "heresy:" I don't think this is a horribly blatant heretical treatise against Christ's full humanity but I do think that traces of heresy are evident. Think with me how the infant Messiah is portrayed in this song (remember that this seems to be an archetype for most of our Christmas thinking). Jesus is viewed as peaceful and serene little child that doesn't cry, fuss or cause his parents any loss of sleep. Oh that cute little baby Jesus "no crying he makes." I am willing to grant that maybe Jesus was one of the babies that don't seem to cry at all when they are younger, but (and I am, for sure, no expert in babydom) isn't that the exception more than the rule. Isn't the rule for babies that they cry, they keep their parents up and they fuss. Maybe I'm grasping at strings for an example from a song but I think the assertions that baby Jesus never cried, never fussed, and never acted like a NORMAL BABY are all too prominent in our little Christian Christmas subculture.

I think it's good that we're saying Jesus was set apart from birth. Yes he was different, yes he was the fullness of God even while he was an infant, (emptied himself of "all but love" saith Wesley) but the nuance of our assertions of his divinity seem to make his humanity minuscule... is this not the beginning of heresy? It seems that we have characterized this first Christmas night into an image barren of any true humanity. Mary and Joseph are content and happy giving birth in a stable, and Jesus is cute, adorable, and doesn't act like any other baby.

I'm not trying to be a downer on Christmas but it just seems that the way we tend to think about and portray the first Christmas minimizes the humanity of it all. Our Christmas songs, our nativity scenes, and all the other trappings of the holiday seem to make Christmas more a time of myth and fantasy rather than the in-breaking of the divine into the real world.

Yes Jesus was a baby, one may argue that all babies are cute and thus was Jesus, one may also argue that Jesus was one of those peaceful babies, but to characterize Jesus' infancy so that resembles nothing like real infancy borders on heresy. This does not mean that I am willing to assert that Jesus sinned as a child or anything of the like. I am merely trying to assert that he was indeed FULLY HUMAN and FULLY GOD. He was incarnate without sin and suffered and died for us and for our salvation. Maybe our Christmas songs are fine, maybe they don't say anything heretical enough for us to kick them out of our hymnals, but this is not just a passing matter. We must strive to think rightly about the incarnation and the divine Godhead. For it is our thinking of this that shapes all of our other thoughts. Our moral lives, our social lives and the rest will be shaped by what we think of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Our obedience to the Holy Scriptures is directly corollary to our view of the God who speaks in and through those scriptures. This is why this isn't just a passing issue.

Christmas is over, but let us think hard next year (and at all times) about incarnation. Maybe we just need to readjust the lens through which we sing the Christmas songs, maybe we need to get rid of them, maybe we need a solution that is more outside of the box, who knows. All I know is that thinking correctly about the incarnation is paramount!!

Saints and the Prosperity Gospel

I just got back from attending St. Athanasias Orthodox Church today and while I was there I had a few thoughts that I thought I'd write about. Yes, I haven't been as committed to posting as I should be, I do have some thoughts that I've been meaning to post, but they'll have to wait for now. On to the issue at hand.

After the first hour or so of the liturgy the Priest (who is married, by the way) gave the sermon from the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. As he spoke about this he talked about joy in giving and blessing, specifically stating that he is not proclaiming to us some health and prosperity/name it claim it gospel. A little while later the priest mentioned something about a saint and my friend Nathaniel leaned over to me and told me about a saint of the Orthodox Church that lived in Siberia, who would go walk through the towns and as he saw beggars in need he would give his shoes and coat to the beggars and walk back to his home without shoes and a coat (remember Siberia is mostly cold, very cold).

With that as the foundation let me share my thoughts. I have lamented the lack of recognition of Church history and lack of saints in the Protestant Church for some while now. I'm not necessarily arguing that we need to pray to saints, but our neglect of those who have gone before us in the Protestant tradition is absolutly dreadful, if not in fact sinful (and I do believe one could make a case for that). We as protestants like to recognize a select few (like an occasional missionary or Billy Graham) but primarily they are individuals who lived in relatively recently (or are still alive) and will soon be forgotten. Most of protestantism today barely knows who Wesley, Asbury, Calvin etc are, let alone Ignatius, Irenaus, Athanasias, etc are. We tend to exalt those in the Protestant tradition who do great things, rather than those who live lives of sainthood.

As I was thinking about all this I began to wonder what would have happened if the Protestant Church had maintained the use of saints? Could the prosperity gospel exist? It seems to me that I have to allow that it could exist; but that it would be considerably hard for it to exist in as wide spread state as it does. Why is this you may ask. Well it seems to me that only those who live saintly lives are canonized as saints. I don't know of any saints who are lifted up because of the life of affluence they lived. Saints are canonized because they model Christ's teachings, they give completely of themselves, they are an example to all believers. With a strong tradition of recognizing this life of sacrifice in men and women throughout church history, I would say that it would be hard for a teaching that proclaims something completely contrary to this (and Christ's teachings) to take root and become widespread.

The problem with the protestant church is that people who live these lives of sacrifice often fall through the cracks. We don't remember them becuase we view them as insignificant in our individualized self/purpose driven world. We don't look at ourselves as living in a tradition that starts at creation, proceeds through the Old Testament, to the New, through the church of the ages and finally to us. This is who we are and it is good to remember those who came before us (cf: Hebrews 11).

We also have a skewed view of the incarnation. We have allowed dualism to tarnish our worldview. We view the incarnation as a past event. As John Madden would say: "Boom!" it happened. We tend to view life as something that means little except for a time where we made decisions that affect where we go in the end. We don't view all of life as a being an incarnation of Christ to the world. I get so frustrated every time I see the stupid (and dare I say heretical) bumper sticker: "I'm not a physical being having a spiritual experience, I"m a spiritual being having a physical experience." It is this garbage theology that has allowed the Protestant Church to neglect the poor, to abuse the helpless and live in some bastardized state between orthodoxy and gnosticism. We think that we only need to worship God with our minds and our hearts, how much more should we engage all that God gave us, our mind, heart, and body (including all the sense)!

All that to say that we should be lifting up examples of men and women who have gone before us in the faith and have lived lives that are true incarnations of Christ. They teach us that it's not enough to think right, but to act and live right as well. Live and act, not in my own personal/individualistic sphere, but with in a community, within the whole world.

Why should we not celebrate the saints of the Church? Why should we not have aids to remember them and allow our hearts to be drawn closer to the Trinity through the example of their lives? Should we not allow their example to point us toward Christ and to the life that he commanded and lived himself?

To get back to the point, it seems to me that this strong emphasis would have helped the Protestant Church to see the health and wealth/prosperity gospel for what it truly is, namely a heresy that is not in line with what the church has believed and taught throughout the ages. That's what we are, we are bearers of the faith that has been handed to us. How dare we think that this is something new we are a part of! How dare we believe that we're starting something original! As A. W. Tozer says: "if the reader should discover here anythign really new he is conscience bound to reject it, for whatever in religion is new is by the same token false." (Pursuit of God, xiii). Or as C. S. Lewis (held as a 'saint' by some protestants) states: "if any parts of the book are 'original', in the sense of being novel...they are so against my will...I have tried to assume nothing that is not professed by all baptised and communicating Christians" (The Problem of Pain, xii)

I guess my ranting has started again and my point is now lost in the plethora of words. To summarize, it seems to me that if we, as protestants, hadn't rejected all church history prior to the reformation, and had continued to hold up examples of those who lived incarnationally in line with the words of Jesus, we would be having less of a problem now with false doctrines such as the prosperity gospel and the like. We desperately need to recapture our roots (not of protestantism, but of Christianity) and learn from our Orthodox and Catholic brothers and sisters. We dont' have to assimilate everthing they do (although it would be great to see the church whole again) but we do have to accept them as sharing our baptism in the name of the Trinity, and thus they are by nature Christians - our brothers and sisters.