Awesome weather

Last night was truly awesome. First my husband and I sat on the front porch watching sheet lightning in the distance which went on for over an hour. We never have that kind of lightning in Sacramento. The weather news at eleven stated that there were almost 4000 lightning strikes in the valley during that time.

Then sometime after midnight when I was very asleep my daughter Jenny called to say that there was a terrific storm right over us. (We have this deal about alerting each other to unusual weather but its meant for snow which we never see.) There was lightning every second with thunder that rolled without stopping. You have to live in Sacramento to know that just doesn’t happen here. Later, sometime around three or four, more lightning and crashing thunder. What a wonderful night only now I am very sleepy.

Knowledge about God

"Reformed teaching is the renewal of the prophetic-apostolic knowledge of God as knowledge of the one and only God. Beside and apart from God there is indeed His creation but no other God. No one and nothing is the Lord in the sense in which He is the Lord. God is not alone, but God alone is God.

Therefore this knowledge signifies further the relativising of all human ideologies, mythologies, philosophies and religions. Whatever their validity within the created world may be, their objects can certainly not be understood as gods. In the last resort they cannot be considered worthy of belief and proper reverence cannot be paid to them."

This is a quote from Barth in his book The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the Reformation: Recalling the Scottish Confession of 1560. It is actually Barth's Gifford lectures given at the University of Aberdeen in 1937. Barth insisted his lectures, which were suppose to be about natural theology, were an example of what natural theology was not. In other words he was lecturing on revealed theology.

I often think the above quote about Reformed teaching should always follow the quote, "Reformed and always reforming." That is, Reformation teaching about God should always be returning to knowledge of God given in the prophetic and apostolc word.

In the devotional I use, The St. James Daily Devotional Guide, the author, Patrick Henry Reardon, wrote about the teaching of Jesus to his disciples during the forty days after the resurrection. He wrote:

"... the Church's proper interpretation of Holy Scripture down through the centuries is rooted in what the Lord Himself taught her during the forty days spoken of in Acts 1:3. The correct--that is to say, the orthodox--understanding of the Bible is based on what the Church learned directly from the risen Christ. Her interpretation of Holy Scripture is in separable from the hearing of the Lord's voice (John 20:16), the handling of His flesh (Luke 24:39-40; 1 John 1:1), the touching of His wounds (John 20:27). The Church's experience of the risen Christ is the source of all correct understanding of Holy Scripture."

And so the Church's knowledge of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is known because of Jesus Christ the living Word and the written Word of God.

A verse & song for the weekend

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (1 Peter 1:3-5)

For the weekend here is a beautiful old hymn of the Church, "My Hope is Built On Nothing Less." It was written by Edward Mote around 1836. It seems appropriate considering all that is happening around us. The song here is sung by Deborah Liv Johnson.

Eye problems, Karl Barth, and the proclamation of God's revelation

John Shuck has placed an interesting posting on his blog entitled, Religion without Revelation. That would of course catch my eye since I consider that the only true religion is that revealed through Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father. And Jesus Christ is revealed in the Bible, the word of God, which is the written revelation of God.

Another thing that caught my eye was the quote by Karl Barth I found in John’s posting. My respect for Karl Barth is tremendous as anyone who reads my blog knows. So I took the time to read the posting and then to look up Barth’s quote in his Church Dogmatics.

Now since I am forbidden to write comments on John’s blog I thought perhaps a posting of my own would suffice.

John writes about the historical/critical study of texts and how devastating that is to those who hold that the Bible is God’s revelation. Forgetting that Scripture is both the written words of men and the Holy Spirit inspired words of God, John believes that historical criticism destroys the God part. But instead Scripture is rather like the Lutheran view of communion. That is, as the bread & wine holds the actual body and blood of Christ, the Word of God contains what is both the humanity of its authors, (their personality, culture and knowledge) and yet all is the Word of God.

But the subject that most intrigued me was John’s use of Barth and the quote he took from an article “The Relationship of Biblical Studies to the History of Religions School, with Reference to the Scientific Study of Religion” by Gerd Luedemann. The Barth quote is:

“[The Church] will at least require of its servants, even if there are some who personally cannot understand this ordinance, that they treat their private road as a private road and do not make it an object of their proclamation, that if they personally cannot affirm it and so (unfortunately) withhold it from their congregations, they must at least pay the dogma the respect of keeping silence about it.”

John seems to believe that Barth, when writing this quote, which is in reference to the virgin birth, was advocating keeping silent on doctrines that could no longer be believed because of the work of historical criticism. He writes that Barth knew of this problem. John explains the problem with a question: “The effects of the historical-method on religious texts are far-reaching. Is it even meaningful to speak of "God" with any sense of realism when "God" becomes a literary character in a human drama?”

But a little addition of Barth’s words from his text is helpful. (I will divide up his paragraph for easier reading since they are always long.)

“In this connection we may reply briefly to the question of popular theology, whether in order to believe in a really Christian way ‘one’ would have to believe fully in the Virgin birth. We must answer that there is certainly nothing to prevent anyone, without affirming the doctrine of the Virgin birth, from recognizing the mystery of the person of Jesus Christ or from believing in a perfectly Christian way. It is within God’s counsel and will to make this possible, just as it cannot be at all impossible for Him to bring anyone to the knowledge of Himself even beyond the sphere of the Church visible to us.

But this does not imply that the Church is at liberty to convert the doctrine of the Virgin birth into an option for specially strong or for specially weak souls. The Church knew well what it was doing when it posted this doctrine on guard, as it were, at the door of the mystery of Christmas.

It can never be in favour of anyone thinking he can hurry past the guard. It will remind him that he is walking along a private road at his own cost and risk. It will warn him against doing so.

It will proclaim as a Church ordinance that to affirm the doctrine of the Virgin birth is a part of real Christian faith. It will at least require of its servants, even if there are some who personally cannot understand this ordinance, that they treat their private road as a private road and do not make it an object of their proclamation, that if they personally cannot affirm it and so (unfortunately) withhold it from their congregations, they must at least pay the dogma the respect of keeping silence about it.” (This is the Bromiley and Torrance translation.)

I believe that one of the great sins of leadership in the Church today is that too many elders, pastors and professors are making their own roads the main part of their proclamation. May God have mercy on their flocks and students.

Saving the San Francisco Bay: again

In December of 2008 I posted Be Thou My Vision, High King of Heaven and the San Francisco Bay. Part of that blog posting was about my friend Miles Saunders and the project he is working on called “Saving the Bay.”
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Miles is a producer and writer. At that time I highlighted a trailer for the series which will be on PBS. I just received an e-mail with a link to “a revised trailer with a promo clip from Robert Redford and a near final version of the open to Saving the Bay.” He adds, “We’re scheduled to run on KQED San Francisco with two hours on October 8 (8pm to 10pm) and two hours on October 15 (8pm to 10pm)."

Here is the newly revised trailer:


Be sure and watch for this when it is scheduled on your PBS.

Deontology, homosexuality and the Word's of God

Aric Clark and I have had several discussions about a philosophical view or school, as he puts it, of ethics referred to as “Deontology.” That is, ethics understood as acts based on a moral law which must be followed regardless of the consequences. As the Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, “a deontological theory of ethics is one which holds that at least some acts are morally obligatory regardless of their consequences for human weal or woe.”

Aric first wrote on this subject on his blog. You can begin here with his posting about homosexuality not being a sin. He goes on with his philosophical views from there. He also commented on my blog posting, A Warning. You will have to scroll down to read his comment and my answer.

Aric next wrote me a letter and suggested I might want to continue the discussion. However after reading through again and thinking about it I believe most of my answer still stands. Here are the parts from the letter that I am the most concerned with. (Aric has put my thoughts from my answer in italics.)

Letter
"And the most important thought here is the Word of God. We do not obey the Word of God simply because it is a moral command or even because we believe the Bible has authority, but because God’s words have authority. And the Bible is God’s word to us."

It doesn't matter exactly where you place the authority. It still comes down to authority/command/obedience. It is still deontological ethics. And belief absolutely comes into it at every stage. We believe there is a God. We believe God speaks to us. We believe the mechanism of that speech is the Bible.

"But the truth is that it is not compassionate to break the words of God and encourage others to keep habitually sinning."

Notice the rules language here. The problem from your perspective is that people are "breaking the words (rules)" which get their authority from God. You don't say so, but given the context, I'm willing to wager by "sinning" you mean - not following God's commands. This is deontological thinking through and through.

"I believe we all must be molded by God’s word."

In other words, we all must obey God's rules. Deontology.You might feel like this is a lot of semantics, but what I am after is a clear understanding between us of the type of thinking behind our arguments. Too often in polarized subjects like this we argue past one another comparing apples and oranges. If we can agree that the way you and I are coming to our conclusions are specific (very different) modes of thought, we can begin to compare those modalities and see why we differ in this regard. Most likely it will end with neither of us being persuaded of anything, but at least we might understand one another better.

I will also be direct and say that I think that the quality of moral reasoning behind conservative beliefs about homosexuality is in general, very poor. Biblical hermeneutics? Strong. But when it comes to the moral argument, "why is homosexuality evil?" conservatives tend to have very poor answers: "because the bible says so" or "because it is unnatural". These answers are examples of deontological ethics. Worse, they are examples of unreflective deontological ethics. At least Kant was thorough and intentional about his moral reasoning, even if he ultimately came up with an unworkable methodology.

Finally, I will ask a couple preemptive questions. Assuming that you acknowledge that your moral judgment on this issue is a form of deontological ethics, and assuming you likewise acknowledge that you take circumstances and consequences into account when making moral decisions in many areas of your life (for example: deciding how to discipline or reward your children in order to raise healthy human beings).... then we see that you use different moral reasoning methodologies selectively. How do you determine what mode of reasoning you will use for a given moral question? How did you decide that homosexuality called for a deontological approach? In an ideal world would all moral behavior come down to obedience to divine commands? In which case, why hasn't God given us commands sufficient to cover every situation in life?
End

These are my words to Aric. First off I apologize for not posting the whole letter. It is too long. And it is mainly the last part that I have an objection to.

I came to my faith in Jesus Christ not only by use of reason but because the Holy Spirit opened my heart to God’s word. Some people came to their conversion in a slow process as they grew up in a Christian home. It is almost a natural process and they are often unaware of the change. But for me, and many others, it was different. I read the Bible often as a child, I prayed, but I did not know what it meant to belong to Jesus Christ, to be redeemed. When I became a Christian it was an all at once experience albeit an experience tied deeply to the word of God. Because of the immediate event I became aware of my sudden need to constantly read the Scriptures, and I found them opening to me in a new way. (Although I was only fifteen I was very aware of this change.)

I bring this up because I want to point out that this is more than a cold agreement or disagreement with a moral law. I love philosophy and would love to somehow come at this with you from a philosophical position but I cannot. The way you have put your terms means that you are insisting, as a Christian, that God’s authority is just one of several choices. I as a Christian do not believe I can even begin to argue with you from that point of view.

I obey God’s word because I love Jesus Christ. He is after all my Lord. Once he is Lord—reason is important—after all it was Anselm who wrote, "Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this, too, I believe, that, unless I first believe, I shall not understand." But when you simply use God’s word as an example of a supposed moral authority I will not enter into the debate. Because, first must come the debate about God’s word and his authority.

Bagpipes

The other night as I was listening to various recordings of Celtic music on U-Tube I started listening to different bagpipe videos. I remembered a wonderful and revealing quote by C.S. Lewis. In one of his academic books, An Experiment in Criticism, he writes about the emotions aroused by music. Picture by Stephen Larson

What Lewis is trying to show is that to be a good critic one must go beyond both the emotions and what he calls the social or organic aspects of the music. That is there is something there that is beyond wanting to join in or feeling the emotion of the melody.

However, Lewis admits that when it comes to bagpipes he also was caught within the seductive sounds. He writes:

"As regards one instrument (the bagpipes) I am still in this condition. I can't tell one piece from another, nor a good piper from a bad. It is all just 'pipes', all equally intoxicating, heartrending, orgiastic."




Since I feel the same way, if I have picked badly or you just don't like bagpipes just ignore this video I have picked and go do something else.