Dr. Platypus

Walter Russell Mead explains why:

To mistake an ideology or a social model for the transcendent and always surprising (and irritating!) Kingdom of God is, technically speaking, the sin of idolatry.  It is to worship the work of our own hands.  What makes it worse is that to some degree in the mainline churches we have replaced faith in the scripturally based and historically rooted doctrines and values of the Christian heritage with faith in progressive social thought….

I want to be clear here.  Liberal mainline Protestantism is not just a ghastly mistake and a return to literalism and fundamentalism is not the way out of the current impasse. The great historical riches and insights of the mainline denominations are more important than ever today.  The liberal, questing spirit that refuses to take ancient truths for granted and that challenges historic orthodoxies in the light of lived experience has a vital and necessary place in the life of the church.  It’s important that the mainline churches halt their disintegration and decline and regain the strength to play their role in the American religious system.  I am not writing all these terrible things about bishops because I want them to fail.  God has work for the mainline church to do, and God’s work in the world will suffer if we fail.

But the Blue Beast cannot save American society and it cannot save the mainline church.  Until we come to terms with these truths and start living them we can neither help ourselves nor do much to help anybody else.

(And in case you were wondering, conservative politics isn’t the gospel, either.)

(H/T: JesusCreed)

Why do so many people who have an unwavering faith in the Bible do such stupid things with it? That’s not quite the way David Ker puts the question, but he is struggling with how to teach people to do better. His thoughts are worth a read. He begins,

This is my fourth year teaching exegesis to Mozambican Bible college students. I walk a fine line between getting the students to interpret the Scriptures properly on one hand and to not apply it incorrectly on the other. It is a given among my students that the Bible is God’s Word. It is inspired. All of it is profitable. Every passage and verse has wisdom and application for us today. But this high regard for the Bible frequently leads to nonsense and often downright heresy. That’s because, simply put, not everything in the Bible is applicable to us today.

He makes some interesting suggestions about improving the soundness of one’s exegesis, which will no doubt be more compelling for people of some theological persuasions than for others.

Greg Boyd: “I Told Mennonites to ‘Go to Hell’ (and they liked it!).”

My kind of preacher.

Women should be silent in the churches. for they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1 Cor 14:34-35)

According to a study now available at Evangelical Textual Criticism, Paul did not write those words. They were added some time later by a different hand.

The theory that these words are a scribal interpolation into the Pauline text is one of four possible interpretations of these verses. The second is that these words are genuinely from Paul, but they are a quotation of of his opponents (since when does Paul appeal to what “the law also says”?). Beginning verse 36, “Or did the word of God originate with you?” Paul challenges this argument. (That first Greek particle can also be translated as an expression of surprise introducing Paul’s counter argument. The Amplified Bible actually takes this approach and translates [paraphrasing from memory], “What? did the word of God originate with you?”)

A third possibility is that these are Paul’s words, but they are written with reference not to women preaching or speaking at all, but with unruly speech—such as might have been expected in a cultural milieu where half of the congregation (the men) had been socialized about acceptable behavior in the city assembly or listening to a teacher at the gymnasium but the other half (the women) had previously been banned from these venues. Thus, in order to participate in Christian worship, the women now needed a “crash course” in the proper etiquette for a public speech or debate.

Finally, it could be that Paul intended by these words to forbid any sound coming out of any woman’s mouth at any time during Christian worship. How a woman is supposed to “pray” or “prophesy” in the Christian assembly under those restrictions (1 Cor 11:5, 13) is a mystery to me.

Interesting insight from Ken Shenck about the nature of biblical prophecy—and a lot of what passes these days for “speaking prophetically.”

There is a psychological dynamic among much of American Christianity that pushes us to want to “call sin sin,” to “call out the sinner,” to “speak truth to power.” But my observation is that much of this dynamic is a pronouncement of judgment, much like Jonah at Ninevah. In other words, it is not proclamation for change. It is just enjoyable venting….

But truly Christian prophecy is prophecy for change and is as different from this sort of child-level telling off as what God had in mind for Nineveh differed from what Jonah had in mind. God will one day pronounce a summative judgment on all flesh, a final verdict. But especially for Arminians, almost all prophecy on this side of eternity must at least be hopeful formative prophecy, prophecy that longs for change in those to whom we speak.

This is definitely going into my introductory lecture on the prophetic tradition this spring.

A lot of church members need to read these words from John Hobbins, and some need to stick them on their refrigerator:

But are we doing enough as a church to reach out to the community and to meet the needs of our membership? Am I doing enough as a pastor? No, I am not.

In particular, I am sure that there are unmet pastoral needs that I don’t know about. Even when I do know about them, they are often beyond my ability to meet unless I am asked to do so. I can’t step into family crises unless asked. When a life change is proving to be a challenge, a health crisis or the loss of a loved one, from the outside, I cannot always figure out when the right time to visit is, or whether a visit is desired.

I have tried reading people’s minds before, but I am not that good at it. I greatly appreciate the fact that I am able to visit the entire membership thanks to the persistent invitational calling of x and y. This project has been going on for 12 months, and as long as y and x are up to making the arrangements, I will continue to make the rounds. I also depend on people like a, b, and c who let me know when they think someone who has not asked for a visit secretly hopes for one.

Speaking for myself, I secretly hope that my doctor will start making house calls, like doctors used to do. Furthermore, I want him to call me and make the arrangements, without a request on my part. I don’t want to call him.

But it’s not going to happen.

Do read it all, and then forward it to whoever puts together your church’s newsletter.

By far the most interesting thing I’ve seen written about Anglicanorum Coetibus, the Vatican’s Apostolic Constitution establishing a structure for welcoming disenfranchised Anglo-Catholics while allowing them to preserve some of their specifically Anglican traditions, is Dan Martins’ post, “Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth.”

I clearly do not have a dog in this “fight,” but I also long for greater visible unity within the church, and think Fr. Martins may be right that the Pope’s move may actually not have been bold enough.

More people need to know the story of Clarence Jordan, a genuine Baptist saint:

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary had hosted many people before Clarence and would host many after him but Clarence Jordan was something different. In 1938, Clarence had just received his Ph.D. in New Testament and felt equipped to do whatever it was that God was calling him to. The challenge, of course, is that what had seemed so clear for so many years was suddenly cloudier. This further calling had descended upon Clarence as he studied the scripture and would not let him go. He was challenged by what he read and translated and would not allow himself to rationalize away its scandal and strength. Clarence was challenged and rebuked by the stories he enveloped himself in and found his increasing discomfort with the status quo a powerful witness to the possibility of redemption.

Ben Witherington has written a concise summary and refutation of the most prevalent arguments against women in ministry.

As I have learned over many years…. the problem in the church is not strong and gifted women.  We need all those we can get, and were it not for them, many churches would have closed long ago. I remember so vividly meeting the babooshkas—the grandmothers in the Moscow Baptist Church, who had stopped Stalin from closing the church by standing in the door and not letting his troops enter and close it down.  Thank God for strong, gifted women in the church.   No, the problem in the church is not strong women, but rather weak men who feel threatened by strong women, and have tried various means, even by dubious exegesis to prohibit them from exercising their gifts and graces in  the church.

Witherington is a biblical scholar, and his arguments are based on careful exegesis of biblical texts. Anyone who would appeal to church tradition to override reasonable interpretations of what the Bible teaches will presumably be impervious to his arguments. More’s the pity.

Thanks to Jim West for this one (although I’m not sure which one is his wife).

When I was a pastor, I always asked Connie’s permission before featuring her or her family in any sermon illustrations. Usually she was cool with it, but the one or two times she exercised her veto power probably strengthened our marriage.