Theology Central
Theology Central exists as a place of conversation and information for faculty and friends of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Posts include seminary news, information, and opinion pieces about ministry, theology, and scholarship.Bard Replaced by Lesbian Activist
Students at Penn have taken down a portrait of William Shakespeare and replaced it with a portrait of Audre Lorde. According to the Poetry Foundation, Lorde characterizes herself as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” who has devoted her life “and her creative talent to confronting and addressing the injustices of racism, sexism, and homophobia.” Her work was denounced as obscene by Senator Jesse Helm. Read the report at The Daily Pennsylvanian.
This Week’s Nick
Kevin Bauder writes about “Hearing the Message.”
Aunt Hazel’s Pancake Breakfast
Every fall semester during finals week the Central Seminary faculty cooks breakfast for the students. The event is named for a former dean’s Aunt Hazel, who contributed an original recipe for banana pancakes. Buttermilk pancakes are also available, as are eggs and sausages. This long-standing seminary tradition expresses the gratitude of the faculty for the hard work that our students do to prepare themselves for the Lord’s work.
Russell Moore on the Religious Right
First Things reprints the text of Moore’s 2016 Erasmus Lecture, “Can the Religious Right Be Saved?” Here is part of his answer, a part that says he really has no answer. Whenever an evangelical starts talking about “cultural renewal,” we are in trouble. If you doubt it, just look at the culture of American evangelicalism. That’s what they want to renew the culture TO.
The religious right can be saved, but not by tinkering around the edges. Religious conservatives will need a robust religion and a sense of what is, in fact, to be conserved. This will mean abandoning an idea of a “moral majority” or a “silent majority” within the nation, even when we find ourselves winning an election or a court case. We will need to build collaborative majorities, often issue by issue. It will mean institutions that have the vision, and the financial resources, to play a long game of cultural renewal, rather than allowing themselves to be driven by the populist passions of the moment. More than that, it will mean a religious conservatism that sees the Church as more important than the state, the conscience as more important than the culture, and one that knows the difference between the temporal and the eternal. We will make mistakes. We will need course corrections. We must remind ourselves that we are not inquisitors but missionaries, that we can be Americans best when we are not Americans first.
What Saint Nicholas Really Looked Like
Using advanced facial reconstruction technology, British researchers have produced what they claim is the most accurate depiction ever of the face of Saint Nicholas of Myra (Santa Claus). Or so the BBC reports.
Conservatism and Ideology
Many people–including many conservatives–think of conservatism as an ideology. They would be surprised to learn that thoughtful conservatives reject ideology of every sort. They insist that their position is not an ideology, but an attitude. Read more from Gerhart Niemeyer in “Russell Kirk and Ideology.”
Conservatism cannot be shrunk to the principle that everything in human life should be reduced to the economics of the marketplace, an idea which in its poverty is first cousin to Marx’s historical materialism. Nor can we do better by linking conservatism to John Stuart Mill’s individualistic society, which may be compared to an ocean of atomized islands having no communication with one another. Nor can we fall back on Locke’s human rights, the condition on which each isolated person enters human community by the gate of quid pro quo. These and other similar worldviews have nothing to say to the reality of living human beings with body and soul, mind and spirit. They have oozed from a consciousness deliberately separated from living reality, which has sweated abstract realities out of itself. This is the ideological mind building thought systems around utopian fantasies with which to manipulate human beings into false hopes.
The Artistic Theologian
The Artistic Theologian is a peer-reviewed journal of ministry and worship arts. It is published by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Back issues are available for download in PDF and Logos formats. The Artistic Theologian is edited by Scott Aniol and will be of special interest to conservative Christians.
How to Tie a Full Windsor
A gentleman needs to be able to tie his own necktie. In fact, a gentleman should master at least three necktie knots–which he uses will depend upon the tie, the outfit he’s wearing it with, and the occasion he’s wearing it for. The most basic knot is the full Windsor. Here’s a tutorial from The Art of Manliness.
Tozer’s Favorite Hymn Writers
Ah, the roster of the sweet singers. There is Isaac Watts, the little man that nobody would marry because he was so homely, but he wrote hymns, and what hymns he did write. Meditating on an Isaac Watts hymn will take you further into the presence of God than any song sung today.
Also, there was Nicolaus Zinzendorf, an accountant and wealthy businessman, who was marvelously converted in the Moravian church. He became the leader in the church, and under his ministry came a great revival. Some of his hymns were “Jesus, the Lord, Our Righteousness”; “O Come, Thou Stricken Lamb of God”; “Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness”; and “Jesus, Still Lead On.” Ah, and what hymns.
Then there were men like Charles Wesley, Isaac Newton, William Cowper (“ There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood”), James Montgomery, Bernard of Cluny, and Bernard of Clairvaux. Then there was Paul Gerhardt, Tersteegen, Kelly, Anderson, and Toplady. The list goes on and on of the sweet singers of God.
Tozer, A.W. Delighting in God (Kindle Locations 526-533). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Ohio Gun Fight
According to the Columbus Dispatch, the Ohio Legislature wants to open up the possibility of faculty and students legally carrying their concealed handguns on college and university campuses. Predictably, university professors are in hysterics. They have sent a resolution to the legislature stating that, “The free and open exchange of ideas is a fundamental component of the mission of public higher education in the State of Ohio and such exchanges are facilitated by environments that are violence‐free/safe spaces,” and insisting that, “An understanding that individuals engaged in these exchanges could legally possess handguns would significantly and negatively impact the dynamic of those discussions and the value of higher education.”
In other words, if somebody in the room might have a gun, we couldn’t talk freely. Evidently, the effete educators of Ohio have never observed a political conversation at a shooting range. If they had, they would have encountered a more free exchange of ideas than most of them are willing to allow in their classrooms–and all without fear of intimidation.
By outlawing concealed handguns on campuses, Ohio has made its colleges and universities “soft targets.” A fanatic with a car and knife can terrorize an entire campus, as one just did at Ohio State. Knife attacks have also occurred at Ithaca College, Emerson College, Peru State College in Nebraska, Rutgers University, and the University of California (Merced).
When will someone stop the knife violence?
Meanwhile, the Ohio Legislature is on the right track.
Kind of Cool
Google Earth shows timelapse photography of different locations over several decades.
Communion on the Moon?
It’s been tried. Badly, if one holds a New Testament view of the ordinance.
Gift Book Suggestions for Conservatives
Jed Donahue provides a list at The Imaginative Conservative.
Local Church Membership
Is church membership necessary? What does church membership mean? What obligations does it entail? Michael Riley answers these questions in “The Necessity of Church Membership” at Diakrisis.
Membership is important because church discipline is designed by God as a way for you to grow spiritually. As we have already seen, discipline only makes sense if membership exists. Your theology might be deeply opposed our church’s, and your decisions might violate our church covenant at every point, and yet I won’t be coming to your house to ask you about it—if you are not a member of our church. And while you might think that it would be better not to have that kind of accountability, the Bible says otherwise.
Feminism and Maleness
S. M. Hutchinson asks whether feminists are man-haters in his brief essay, “A Short Course on Feminism.”
[E]ven if someone feels no ill-will toward men in general, but supports programs that proscribe maleness in accordance with a formula that makes them “equal” to women despite their manifest differences, this denies their being as male and prohibits them from exercising it. What better practical example might there be of hatred, especially interesting among those who invariably find it among people who refuse to accept sexual deviation as personal identity?
Well, that’ll be controversial.
Paul Helm on the Imago and Trinity
In the latest Helm’s Deep – Modern Trinitarian fads vs. Augustine, Calvin
The Trinity is used in another way as a ‘model’ of being human. Moderns have postulated what have always seemed to me to be extravagant ideas about the imago as relations between Individuals in union, mirroring the mutual indwelling of the three persons of the Godhead. A trinity-like community with others, being as the Lord of creation is tri-personal. It seems to have been forgotten that the three trinitarian persons are one substance, God himself.
To avoid this then maybe they veer towards another modern fad, understanding the Trinity as social, as three persons sharing one divine nature, three individuals of one unique kind. But (again) the trinitarian persons are persons of the numerically one God, not members of a trio of divine persons each in some sense generically divine. In any case there is a distinction between thinking of human nature as having a Trinitarian structure, which was Augustine’s view; and it consisting in one human being as having a perichoretic relationship with others.
Ben Witherington on Going It Alone
His essay is “The Narcissism of ‘Solitary Religion.’” Here’s part of what he says:
There is, I suppose, a sort of paradox here, but it is a very natural one. Faith is something that no one else can do for you. It must be your own faith, or it isn’t faith at all in the proper sense. You can no more have faith by proxy than you can be born by proxy. You can take a degree in absentia, but you cannot take part in faith that way. But when you are born you are normally born into a family. It is like that with faith. The faith is your own, but it immediately admits you to the household of faith. So the Church is not patting itself on the back, or trying to keep itself going, when it says to anyone who professes faith in Christ: you must be a member of a Church and take advantage of the fellowship and the means of grace that the Church affords.
Kids Still Prefer Paper Books to E-Books
Kate Stolzfus at Education Week asks, “Do ‘Digital Natives’ Prefer Paper Books to E-Books?” Part of her answer:
Indeed, the ability to “toggle” between print and digital for different types of information consumption might be a key aspect of effective literacy today.
Tozer on the Regulative Principle (And He Wasn’t Even Reformed)
Moses was instructed to make sure that the tabernacle was “according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount” (Hebrews 8: 5). Moses did not have the authority to improve upon God’s design. The pattern God gave Moses was not a suggestion, and then Moses could take artistic license, as we say.The tabernacle, in order to be approved by God, had to be according to the pattern shown to Moses.
The pattern was a revelation to Moses, and Moses was faithful to that pattern.
This is where we need to get back to in the church. We need to understand what the pattern is, and that God has given us a pattern. Everything we do must be in complete harmony with that pattern. To improve upon the pattern, to compromise the pattern, is to incur God’s displeasure.
Tozer, A.W. Delighting in God (Kindle Locations 449-454). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Annunciation by Rilke
Translated by Anna Staples
This poem is a translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Verkündigung,” from the Book of Images.
Playful and poignant, the poem envisions the confusion of the angel Gabriel in the presence of Mary, as he forgets his message and is overwhelmed with the immediacy of Mary herself.
You’re not more near to God than we.
To Him all things are far.
And yet your hands — how wondrously
Grown full of grace they are.
Such hands by woman never grew
So ripe, so fulsomely.
I am the day, I am the dew:
You are the tree.
I’m weary now (such leagues I’ve come!),
Forgive me, I’ve forgot
What he who sat within the sun
Told me to speak about:
He said to say to you who sense —
But space unsettles me.
Look: I am the Beginning, hence —
You are the tree.
I lifted up my wings abroad,
And spanned a mighty space;
And now my garments overflow
Your little dwelling-place.
And still you sit here so forlorn,
And hardly look at me.
I’m merely wind among the thorns:
You are the tree.
All angels are as shy as this,
And let each other be.
And yet I’ve never felt before
Desire so mightily.
Perhaps—perhaps It has occurred,
What you have dreamed and guessed.
All Hail, for now my soul beholds
How ripe you are at last!
You are a high and mighty Door
And soon will open wide.
You are the Wood, the sweetest ear
To which I sing; and yet I fear
My songs are lost inside.
And so I’ve come. A thousand dreams
Are now fulfilled through me.
God looked at me, the lightning flashed —
You are the Tree.
Questions:
- Contrast the theological particulars of this poem with its sensibility. Which is more powerful?
- Who is the Tree? Why is this an appropriate image?
APPLICATION & AID