So central was this emphasis on the Messiahship of Jesus that within a few years ‘Christ’ (the Greek for Messiah) had ceased to designate Jesus’s function and had come to be a sort of surname. Now all this was peculiarly offensive to the Jew. It was not easy to think of a carpenter-teacher as the summit of Israel’s development. It was not easy to think of someone so recent as embodying a wisdom greater than that of Moses long ago. It was not easy to believe that an unordained rabbi who often came into conflict with the official exponents of the Torah could be the divinely authenticated teacher of Israel. This was why in his lifetime so few of the religious leaders had any faith in him. But, after his execution, it was not merely difficult, it was preposterous to think of him as Messiah. By definition the Messiah was a deliverer, a conqueror….sinners would be expelled, pride rebuked, and Israel’s glory enhanced. But the political side of the Messiah’s work was primary. So long as God’s Holy Land languished under the domination of a foreign yoke, God himself was affronted every day. Deliverance must include political independence. And this Jesus manifestly failed to bring. His death upon the cross marked him out as a blatant failure, so far as any claim to Messiahship was concerned. So far from conquering, he was conquered. Why follow such a man?

Worse still, this worship of a crucified Messiah was distinctly blasphemous. the Old Testament made it perfectly plain that anyone hanged on a stake was resting under the curse of God. How could God’s Chosen One possibly have been exposed in the place of cursing? We know this constituted an almost insuperable problem to the Jew. Time and again in the Acts, and again in the letters of both Paul and Peter it is referred to: with good reason. Both of them had found the doctrine of a crucified Messiah a tremendous stumbling-block, until they came to understand its depth of meaning. The problem persisted for most Jews….

It would not have been so bad if Christians had contented themselves with asserting that Jesus was the Messiah. But they went much further. The earliest baptismal confession that we can trace is the short assertion that ‘Jesus is Lord’. It must be remembered that ‘Lord’ was the particular name for God in the Old Testament: in the LXX it translates Adonai. There could be no mistake about the matter….Is it any wonder that the Jews thought Christians were preaching a second God? How could they, in their pure monotheism, have any truck with such a blasphemy?

Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church, p. 33-35.

Related posts:

1. Confessing This Jesus-Christ-Come-In-Flesh Jesus
2. The Fellowship: With the Church, with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ
3. Psalm 114:1-2: Jesus Christ, the Sanctuary and Dominion of God

The advantages for the Christian mission of having a common language can hardly be overestimated. It did away with the necessity for missionary language schools. Missionaries using it would incur none of the odium that English-speaking missionaries might find in some of the underdeveloped countries; for Greek; the language of a captive people, could not be associated with imperialism. Moreover, it was a sensitive, adaptable language, ideally suited for the propagation of a theological message, because for centuries it had been used to express the reflections of some of the world’s greatest thinkers, and thus had a ready-made philosophical and theological vocabulary. The lack of this specialist vocabulary in Latin led to difficulties some 250 years later, when Latin replaced Greek as the common language of the Western Empire. (p. 18)

Related posts:

1. Ransomed from every language
2. A more Orthodox Christianity?
3. Jesus Christ, Stumbling Block to the Jew

Like every Chinese child, Li Hanwei spent her schooldays memorising thousands of the intricate characters that make up the Chinese writing system.

Yet aged just 21 and now a university student in Hong Kong, Li already finds that when she picks up a pen to write, the characters for words as simple as “embarrassed” have slipped from her mind.

“I can remember the shape, but I can’t remember the strokes that you need to write it,” she says. “It’s a bit of a problem.”

Surveys indicate the phenomenon, dubbed “character amnesia”, is widespread across China, causing young Chinese to fear for the future of their ancient writing system.

Young Japanese people also report the problem, which is caused by the constant use of computers and mobile phones with alphabet-based input systems.

There is even a Chinese word for it: “tibiwangzi”, or “take pen, forget character”.

More than just the ability to write out thoughts, China is very proud of the written form of their ancient language. Many of the museums I visited had examples of calligraphy, which is a big deal for them as a form of art.

What hope does a culture have if its children can no longer write?

Related posts:

1. Calvinism in China
2. Pray for China
3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Croslow’s interest in Catholicism began over six years ago when he was a sophomore in high school. At the time, Croslow’s Midwestern evangelical church experienced a crisis that is all too common among evangelical churches: what he describes as “a crisis of spiritual authority.” As a result of experiencing disappointment in his pastor, Croslow began to question everything he had learned from him. This questioning led him to study the historical origins of scripture and then of the Christian church itself. Eventually he concluded that Catholicism in its current form is the closest iteration of the early church fathers’ intentions. He asks, “If Saint Augustine showed up today, could we seriously think that he’d attend a Southern Baptist church in Houston?” The answer, to Croslow, is a resounding “No.”

Croslow’s belief that the Catholic Church most accurately reflects the intentions of the early church fathers is echoed throughout the movement as other evangelicals seek a church whose roots run deeper than the Reformation. Further, due to the number of non-denominational churches that have proliferated since the Jesus Movement, many evangelicals’ knowledge of their history runs only as far back as the 1970s. These are the young believers who are attracted to a Church that sees itself as the direct descendent of the religion founded by Saint Peter and the apostles.

I sympathize with many of the concerns of these newly minted Catholics about the state of non-denominational evangelicalism; however, I wonder whether they have considered another option: becoming more Protestant (that is, Protestant like the first Protestants) instead of more Catholic.

Protestants do see Scripture as the criteria against which all theological opinions should be judged–whether opinions of mine, Calvin’s, or Augustine’s. Protestants do not, however, believe that Augustine’s are to be read with skepticism and defensiveness just because he was born after Paul, but before the Reformation.

In fact, Protestants love reading Augustine, along with the rest of the Church Fathers. Why? Because the theology of the Church Fathers is Christian Theology, and it belongs just as much to Protestants as it does to Catholics. Protestant theology finds solid continuity with the Church Fathers–and the best Protestant theology seeks to show better continuity with the Church Fathers on certain points than Catholic dogma.

Moreover, Protestants do not distrust liturgy, especially ancient liturgy developed by some of the first Christians. I had a Wesleyan-Anglican professor in seminary who would often ask, “Which part of liturgy don’t you like–the Scripture or the prayer?” I loved that guy, incidentally.

It seems to me that the converts cited in this article are finding evangelicalism weighed in the balances and found wanting not so much because evangelicalism is too Protestant, but because it is not sufficiently Protestant.

HT: Justin Taylor

Related posts:

1. Modern Apostles
2. When in Rome…
3. Ransomed from every language, Part 2

Interestingly, a new photograph has surfaced which captures the same man from a different angle:

You can see the man in the top left of the photograph, between the two trees. This is a pretty cool photograph, especially given the iconic stature that the original picture gained.

Read the story here.

Related posts:

1. My next computer programming assignment…
2. Birmingham vs. B’ham
3. Lifesavers are candies; Lightsabers are swords on steroids

On the one hand, Miller credits the absence of an official state church with the “competition” among the different denominations to gain for themselves their share of the population. On the other hand, Miller argues that the revivals and interdenominational associations for the propagation of Christianity (through supporting missions, printing Bibles, publishing tracts, etc…) led to a unity that transcended that “competition.”

This situation had two major effects. First, some of the suspicion between traditions fell away as members of different denominations began to work with one another toward the total Christianization of America. So, rather than seeing one’s own denomination as the only true believers, Christians began to look differently at their divisions:

From Bangor, Maine, Enoch Pond pleaded that without the associations, our efforts “must be sectional, insulated, feeble, and ineffectual.” Meanwhile, the associations seemed to prosper, providing occasion for much oratory about the glories of co-operation which still haunt the American Protestant imagination. Our Bible societies, declared George Cookman in 1828, are a line of forts along the enemy’s frontiers; our Sabbath schools are military academies for young cadets, our tract societies are shot-houses for the manufacture of ammunition. Our Methodists are cavalry, Presbyterians are infantry, and the Dutch Reformed are heavy artillery. That the associations and churches never quite got themselves arrayed in so beautiful a military formation does not alter the fact that in the effort to combine them a vision of the American community took shape. (48)

The second effect, though, is a general degradation of the unique attributes and contributions of each of these traditions. Miller writes,

For the truth is that while the religious leaders were ostensibly talking about harmony among the churches, they were actually charting the way toward a homogeneous America. (48)

By laboring at a “lowest common denominator” level, both the good and the bad aspects of different traditions disappeared, leaving a generic kind of Christian who pursued a generic kind of Christianity.

The problem with this, according to Mark Noll in his excellent book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (which I recently finished), is that most of these Christians limited themselves to working toward the conversion of America through revivals — they did not, therefore, give all that much thought or energy toward creating a thoroughly Christian society, where the gospel permeated the pursuit and development of science, politics, philosophy, economics, etc…

Unfortunately, that only left a bunch of Christians without much idea of how to live as Christians — except, of course, that they were supposed to seek to convert more people to Christianity.

Related posts:

1. Letter to the Editor
2. Wisdom Literature
3. Calvinism in China

One of the most interesting emphases of the book of Lloyd-Jones’s burden to preach toward and pray for genuine revival in Britain. He was not interested in revivalism, which requires only the right manipulation of human elements, but in revival, which only God can grant. Quoting the book Revival, Murray gives us Lloyd-Jones’s own definition:

The essence of a revival is that the Holy Spirit comes down upon a number of people together, upon a whole church, upon a number of churches, districts, or perhaps a whole country. It is, if you like, a visitation of the Holy Spirit, or another term has often been used is this–an outpouring of the Holy Spirit…When God acts in revival everybody present feels and knows that God is there. Of course, we believe this. We believe this by faith. Yes, but we should know it. We should be conscious of His nearness. And that is what revival does for us. (p. 380-81)

I could say many things about this thought, but I will limit myself to only one point. Reading Kuyper has brought about an awakening of the belief that politics matter, and that Christians (especially Calvinistic Christians) should engage in politics with a view toward subduing the earth to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, no amount of political (or scientific, or commercial, or familial etc…) change can transform this world, but only the Spirit of God, applying the righteousness of Jesus Christ to his people through faith.

The best work we Christians can do to improve America’s economy, or to defend ourselves from terrorism, or to end the holocaust of abortion in this country is to pray for true revival–that is, for a visitation from the Holy Spirit.

Related posts:

1. Resurrection Day
2. A Better Country
3. On the Efficacy of the Sacraments

Reagan contended for the liberty of all people because he believed passionately in the wisdom of individual men and women to run their own lives, free of any government coercion. For a radio address given on December 22, 1976, for example, he wrote the following in praise of the high productivity of Americans:

All of this is because our system frees the individual genius of man. Released him to fly as high & as far as his own talent & energy would take him. We allocate resources not by govt. decision but by the mil’s. of decisions customers make when they go into the mkt. place to buy. If something seems too high priced we buy something else. Thus resources are steered toward those things the people want most at the price they are willing to pay. It may not be a perfect system but it’s better than any other that’s ever been tried. (Reagan: In His Own Hand, ed. Kron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson [New York: The Free Press, 2001], 13)

To this day, I find Reagan’s arguments for small government and free market capitalism persuasive, but I have realized a major flaw here: Reagan puts too much faith in the goodness and wisdom of individual men and women.

For this reason, I find the rationale of Abraham Kuyper (a 19th century Dutch Calvinist) much more persuasive. Kuyper argues for limited government control and for the freedom of the market on the basis of a distrust of people, not a trust in “the individual genius of man.” I just read his Lectures on Calvinism, and I found his overall perspective thrilling, especially his chapter on “Calvinism and Politics.”

Kuyper articulates a Calvinism that sees different “spheres of sovereignty” in life, where God has ordained different institutions to exercise dominion over the earth, per the creation mandate, and a just society would recognize all these different spheres.

So, for example, a family would have no authority over punishing criminals (which would be in the dominion of the State), but neither would the state have any authority in raising children (a function of the family). The point is that, while there is a very necessary and proper place for government (one which we may not as Christians ignore), the State is unjust if it goes beyond those bounds. In fact, Kuyper suggests that such a State would not only be unjust, but that it would be evil, lusting after power that God has not granted to it.

Kuyper names four spheres whose authority the government may not trespass: “1. In the social sphere, by personal superiority. 2. In the corporate sphere of universities, guilds, associations, etc. 3. In the domestic sphere of the family and of married life, and 4. In communal autonomy” (Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953], 96).

He writes:

Bound by its own mandate, therefore, the government may neither ignore nor modify nor disrupt the divine mandate under which these social spheres stand. The sovereignty, by the grace of God, of the government is here set aside and limited, for God’s sake, by another sovereignty, which is equally divine in origin. Neither the life of science nor of art, nor of agriculture, nor of industry, nor of commerce, nor of navigation, nor of the family, nor of human relationship may be coerced to suit itself to the grace of the government. The State may never become an octopus, which stifles the whole of life. It must occupy its own place, on its own root, among all the other trees of the forest, and thus it has to honor and maintain every form of life which grows independently in its own sacred autonomy. (Kuyper, Lectures, p. 96-97, emphasis added.)

All of this accomplishes three things:

1. It gives me a theological, rather than a self-centered, basis for conservative politics.
2. It makes me wonder whether I am justified in saying that the exponentially expanding role of the government under President Obama (although other Democrats and Republicans are highly complicit in this) is immoral and idolatrous, ignoring the proper sphere for which God ordained government. (I am about 85% comfortable with such a bold statement.)
3. It makes me want to join the Constitution Party.

Related posts:

1. Justifying War
2. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Revival
3. Different Regiments of the Same Army

But I’m still a little offended at the absolute lack of professionalism and class displayed by Kirk Herbstreit in this.

Related posts:

1. Football
2. Football Threat Level: Red (Severe)
3. Addiction

Student: I grew up as a Mennonite, which means that your people used to burn my people.

Professor: Well, only for political reasons; it would be inappropriate to burn people for religious reasons.

Student: Yeah, but you used to drown us for religious reasons!

He actually didn’t say the last part, but he said later that he wanted to. It’s fun to go to an interdenominational seminary.

Related posts:

1. Letters from the Underground
2. The Pastorate and PhD Studies
3. Resurrection Day