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Category Archives: The Sacred

Copts Have New Pope. In Other News, German Catholics Looking Forward to 2017 Like a Colonoscopy.

04 Nov

The late Pope Shenouda III

The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria is the largest group of Christians in the Middle East. It traces its history back 1,900 years but broke with the larger catholic church in the fifth century over a christological dispute (the Copts believe Christ has one nature, not two — the Logos incarnate).

In March, their pope, Shenouda III, died, age 88. A successor has finally been named, by a blindfolded 12-year-old picking a name out of a bowl.

Stop it.

[The candidates'] names were written on pieces of paper and put in crystal balls sealed with wax on the church altar.

A blindfolded boy — one of 12 shortlisted children — then drew out the name of Bishop Tawadros, who until now was an aide to the acting leader, Bishop Pachomius.

Bishop Pachomius then took the ballot from the boy’s hand and showed it to all those gathered in the cathedral.

Strict measures were in place to make sure there was no foul play during the televised ceremony: the three pieces of paper with candidates’ names were all the same size and tied the same way.

Copts say this process ensures the selection is in God’s hands.

Now, as we remember, boys and girls, Judas’s successor, Matthias, was selected by casting lots. (And those first-cenury lots weighed a ton. Some of them had townhouses and sunken pools. What’s also interesting, but not to me, is that poor Matthias, new member of the 12, was never heard from again. If Judas was the Pete Best of the bunch, I guess Matthias was Brian Epstein. Which would make Paul Yoko. OK, I’ve run this metaphor off the rails.)

I don’t see why picking names out of a bowl is any less pious or prophetic or even prudent than the way Rome does it. Just think of some of the losers who have worn the triple tiara. And certainly it would serve as a major improvement over the way mainline Protestant denominations select their leaders. In fact, a 12-year-old blindfolded boy would himself prove a better leader than TEC’s —

But I digress.

Given the seriousness of the oppression facing Coptic Christians in Egypt now, I have no desire to snark on their process. So let’s hear it for Pope Tawadros. I do not envy him his position or responsibilities.

IN OTHER NEWS: German Catholics aren’t quite sure if they’re ready to party on October 31, 2017, what with all those Lutherans in the house. And you know how they get.

The Protestants have invited the Catholics to join in, a gesture in harmony with the good relations the two halves of German Christianity enjoy and the closeness many believers feel across the denominational divide.

But even after five centuries, being asked to commemorate a divorce that split western Christianity and led to many bloody religious wars is still hard for some Catholics to swallow.

Oh, boo frickin’ hoo. We promise not to bring up Jan Hus or the Inquisition or the Vassy and St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacres and you promise not to bring up the Bourbon-Habsburg rivalry.

Commemorative church services, concerts and conferences leading up to 2017 are already underway around Germany. There are also cultural events, such as a show of 800 plastic statues of Luther that filled the main square in Wittenberg in 2010.

This mix of religious, cultural and commercial activities led Feige to ask what the Catholics were being invited to join.

“Many initiatives and plans may well be justified, but it’s not always easy to find out what 2017 will be all about,” [Catholic bishop Gerhard Feige] wrote in what he called his “Ten Catholic Theses”.

OK, here’s the rule: no one is allowed to publish anything with the word “theses” in it between now and ever. Got that? Get your own iconic bullet list.

“It would be very helpful if both denominations could come to a common understanding of what happened,” [Bishop Feige] said, suggesting they could find some way to “cleanse their memories”.

Margot Kaessmann, a former Lutheran bishop who heads the preparations for the 2017 events, has said she wants Catholics to join in but turned down a Vatican suggestion both sides work out a common admission of guilt for the separation.

This is getting wacky. er. A “former Lutheran bishop”? Did she get a better gig? Is she on Survivor or something? I thought that was Lisa Whelchel.

Oh good grief, it’s five years out and already everyone’s getting on my nerves. And don’t think I don’t know it’s intentional.

 
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Posted by on November 4, 2012 in Religious Kitsch and Other Regifting Ideas, The Sacred, This Is Why I Never Win Anything, To the Catacombs!

 

Luther vs. the Proto-Pentecostals

19 Oct

In the November issue of First Things, sociologist Peter Berger (A Rumor of Angels, The Heretical Imperative) looks at the Pentecostal movement through Lutheran eyes, especially the former’s emphasis on healing and the miraculous:

I am a friendly observer of the Pentecostal phenomenon. Of course I respect Pentecostals as fellow believers, but I also value their contribution to what David Martin has called “betterment” in the lives of people. But I am convinced that interfaith dialogue, while acknowledging areas of agreement, must also be frank in stating disagreements. In other words, it is as important to say no as to say yes. I will now say no to the Pentecostal project of placing supernatural charismata at the center of the Christian faith. This in no way diminishes my appreciation of what Pentecostalism has to offer otherwise to the Christian community and to society at large.

In formulating my friendly dissent, I will (inevitably, I guess) use certain Lutheran categories. I think, though, that others, at least this side of radical Calvinism, can translate these categories into terms of their own traditions. It so happens that Lutheranism has a long history with proto-Pentecostals. Luther himself had serious disagreements with the “spiritualists” (Schwärmer) of his time, who evinced many of the characteristics associated with Pentecostalism. While Luther was hiding from the imperial ban in the Wartburg, some preachers from the town of Zwickau came to Wittenberg, where they agitated for a more spiritual form of the burgeoning Protestant movement. They were inspired by the teachings of Thomas Müntzer, who was a pastor in Zwickau for a while and later became much more radical theologically and politically; he became involved in the Peasants’ Revolt and was executed in the course of its suppression. Luther’s colleagues begged him to return to Wittenberg to deal with the agitation. He did, despite danger to himself, and preached a series of sermons against the “Zwickau prophets.”

Thus official Lutheranism positioned itself in an anti-Pentecostal stance from early on….

[I]t is the Lutheran view of the Eucharist that provides a useful clue to the problem of “spirituality,” from the ecstasies of Zwickau to those of Pentecostalism today. The surprise comes from the fact that this particular view came, not from the contestation with the Schwärmer of the sixteenth century, but from a different contestation. The clue may be found in one phrase in Article 10 of the “Augsburg Confession,” the document that the Protestant party submitted to the Imperial Diet of 1530 and that has become the founding statement of Lutheran theology. The phrase refers to the presence of Christ in the Eucharist: Christ is present in, with, and under the elements of bread and wine.

The contestation here was not between Luther and Thomas Müntzer, but with both the Catholic Church and the early version of the Swiss Reformation represented by Zwingli. The Lutherans tried to position themselves between Rome and Zurich. On the one hand, there was what was popularly called “the miracle of the Mass,” celebrated at the altar by the priest empowered to do this by virtue of his ordination, signaled by the ringing of the little bell at the precise moment when the “transubstantiation” was supposed to occur. (I am not concerned here with the question of whether this miraculous understanding accurately reflected official Catholic doctrine, then or now.) On the other hand, there was the Swiss view that the Eucharist was a simple memorial, literally following Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, “Do this in remembrance of me.” (I am also not concerned here with the fact that a more complex understanding of the Eucharist developed later in the Calvinist phase of the Swiss Reformation.) The polemical intent of the phrase is clear. Christ is present in, with, and under the elements of bread and wine: What occurs here is neither transubstantiation nor a simple memorial—that is, neither a miracle nor a mundane event. …

The Lutheran understanding of the Eucharist implies a view of creation itself being a sacrament. All of nature, the world as perceived in ordinary experience and in empirical science, is sacramental—in the words of the Book of Common Prayer, displays “outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace.” In one of my earlier ventures into unauthorized theologizing, I adumbrated this proposition by the phrase “signals of transcendence”: God, as it were, hides in the universe, but here and there we can find signs of his presence. In their understanding of the Eucharist, Lutherans used the phrase finitum capax infiniti—“the finite can contain the infinite.” The finite, perishable elements of bread and wine can, invisibly, contain the infinite, eternal presence of the risen Christ. But so can the finite, perishable reality of the empirical universe. George Forell, one of the best American interpreters of the Reformation, opined that the phrase finitum capax infiniti expressed the very core of Lutheran faith.

I think that the Lutheran view of creation is expressed most powerfully not in dogmatic statements but in hymnody. …

You would do well to read the whole thing. And by “do well,” I mean drop everything you’re doing and read it now. You’ll need a subscription to either the print or the Web edition of the journal, which you already have, correct? Yes? If not, you can purchase one here.

I’ll wait.

 
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Posted by on October 19, 2012 in The Sacred, Wittenberg

 

Everything Is Illuminated in 13th-Century Italian Bible

07 Sep

The detail is gorgeous.

The  J. Paul Getty Museum has added a prized, 750-year-old Bible from Italy to its noted collection of illuminated medieval manuscripts, and the museum says it will go on display Dec. 13 as a highlight of the upcoming exhibition, “Gothic Grandeur: Manuscript Illumination 1250-1350.”

The Getty’s announcement says that the so-called Abbey Bible, named for a former British owner, was created in the mid-1200s for a Dominican monastery. According to museum officials, it  “is one of the earliest and finest” illuminated Bibles to have emerged from Bologna in northern Italy, “one of the major centers” where scribes turned Latin scripture into art.

As an aesthetic achievement, it is priceless. That level of craftsmanship is as dead as Charlemagne. But isn’t odd that that was what Bibles were often reduced to: objects d’art?

Now there certainly were profound biblical exegetes in this period, Thomas Aquinas being foremost among them. And Scripture was of course read in Mass. But one wonders whether the embellishment of the books themselves were a reflection of their rarity and the unique status they enjoyed — or whether it was an attempt to evoke some kind of quasi-mystical experience simply my exposing the spectator to its beauty, as if by extension it would evoke the beauty of transcendence and thereby serve some higher spiritual purpose for those who could not read?

I also wonder whether it was an attempt to objectify the Word itself for fear that its power would prove unpredictable and uncontrollable were it not framed in amber as some kind of cultural artifact.

These are not mutually exclusive options, of course.

 
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Posted by on September 7, 2011 in Decline of the West of What's East, The Sacred

 

I Give My Pastor a 4 for Cleanliness but Only a 2 for Godliness

07 Aug

So Joel Miller has linked to this post on Huffpo about a website in Germany that allows you to Rate Your Priest, even Rate the Pope. I say, why should Catholics have all the fun?

I mean, we rate doctors, we rate professors (Hey, Steve Barr! Take it easy on your students! They gave you a 3.7 on the “Easiness” scale!). We even rate movies (which is outrageous). So why not clergy? I mean, let’s be brutally frank: some of these guys (and gals) should probably be doing something else for a living, like working as prison guards or cable installers or tax collectors.

Yes, yes, I know, it’s a thankless job. Miserable pay for everyone except the celebrity preachers and bishops in the Episcopal Church. You have to be part psychiatrist, part marriage counselor, part life coach, part theologian — and even be able to deliver a decent sermon. You have to watch over budgets and mediate squabbles between factions and tamp down gossip and rumors and repair leaky roofs and visit the sick and the disgusting. Who would want this job? And now we’re going to subject these poor, exhausted shepherds of already-ungrateful flocks to something as jejune as an online rating system? Of course! Or else, what’s a laptop for?

You want the cure of our souls? You want our tithes and offerings? You want our trust, not only with our deepest and darkest thoughts, feelings, and felonies, but also with our children? You want us to put our spiritual direction, which also entails our emotional and psychological health, in your somewhat capable hands?

Then be prepared to get rated. Welcome to the Age of the InterWeb, where no synaptic discharge goes unbroadcast.

So, scale of 1-5, in which 5 means Truly Blessed, and 1 means Shoot Me Now.

Categories that should absolutely be included:

• Height. The pastor should be tall enough to be seen above the lectern. This is crucial. Disembodied voices bouncing around a church freak people out.

• Reasonable accessibility. Your pastor shouldn’t have to take every damn call or come running every time someone has an anxiety attack or a question about Romans 9, but you shouldn’t have to pass through a TSA pat-down and an entourage of minions, mini-bureaucrats, and sycophants to get some face time, which should be negotiated to take place within one calendar year.

• Reasonable familiarity with Christianity. Which rules out almost every single face you see on television. If the pastor’s sermons sound like he’s hawking a six-CD series on how tithing got him his big car, get some torches with other villagers and make your presence known.

• Personal spirituality. If your pastor is a drunk, a cheat, an adulterer, a liar, a pervert, a megalomaniac, or a triangulator, he should run for Congress. But get him out of the pulpit. He doesn’t have to be St. Francis of Assisi or John Wesley, but he should not compare unfavorably to John Wayne Gacy either. Clergy should be models of something more than Armani’s latest.

• Testicles. For some, this should only apply figuratively, like he or she should have the balls to preach on the fiery torments of hell, the flames of which are lapping at the feet of even the little children in the pews as they stare blankly into their iPod Touches. For others, this should also apply literally, as in, the pastor should be a guy at the very least. For others still, the pastor should be a manly man tough-guy type, who is as likely to punch a homeless guy or feel up your girlfriend as he is to pray for the lost and dying. (See, Driscoll, Mark*.) Fight among yourselves.

• Ability and desire to fairly maintain the traditions of the denomination. Lutherans are not Baptists. Catholics are not evangelicals. Methodists are not Presbyterians. Presbyterians are not Anglicans. No one is an Episcopalian. Your pastor should have done some reading up on the church he is a member of: its history, theology, liturgical tradition (if there is one), confessions of faith, history of schisms, sacramental theology (if there is one), etc. If he doesn’t like being an orthodox Presbyterian or Lutheran or Anglican or Catholic, then he should go buy a tambourine already and be done with it. And he should stop trying to please everyone by forging some in-between weasel service that I promise you will end up pleasing no one. Hold fast to the traditions that have been delivered to you! Now, if PowerPoint presentations or guitar Masses or solos from the deacon’s daughter or liturgical dance or puppet shows to engage the kids are what the congregation really wants, he should throw them the hell out and start fresh with new converts.

Nota Bene: Rate Your Professor includes a Hotness scale. I think this may be pushing the envelope right into the gutter and asking for all kinds of trouble when it comes to clergy, especially if your denomination ordains women (or even if it doesn’t; especially if it doesn’t), so I’d let that one alone.

Now, with that said, turnabout is fair play. Clergy should be able to rate congregants. By name. Employing such categories as Weekly Attendance, Weekly Giving, Willingness to Volunteer, Tendency to Sow Dissension/Factions, Makes It All About Him/Her, Attentiveness to Teaching/Preaching, Spiritual Maturity, Whiny Sissy Bitchy Complainer Baby, Should Never Have Been Allowed to Reproduce, etc. Up-to-date ratings should be downloaded weekly from a PC in the pastor’s study and displayed on a 55-inch flat-screen wall-mounted monitor in the narthex.

Welcome to the 21st century! Where all of life is there for you to evaluate on a scale of 1-5. What could be easier? Or more democratic? Or more scientific? Or pathetic?

*In the immortal words of Don Rickles, I kid because I love.

 
2 Comments

Posted by on August 7, 2011 in Step Away From the Computer, The Sacred

 

A Strange Controversy: On Rob Bell and the Universalism Business

09 Mar

From one of my favorites — Jacques Ellul, anarchist, genius, Christian:

I believe that all people are included in the grace of God. I believe that all the theologies that have made a large place for damnation and hell are unfaithful to a theology of grace. For if there is predestination to perdition, there is no salvation by grace. Salvation by grace is granted precisely to those who without grace would have been lost. Jesus did not come to seek the righteous and the saints, but sinners. He came to seek those who in strict justice ought to have been condemned. A theology of grace implies universal salvation. What could grace mean if it were granted only to some sinners and not to others according to an arbitrary decree that is totally contrary to the nature of our God? If grace is granted according to the greater or lesser number of sins, it is no longer grace–it is just the opposite because of this accountancy. Paul is the very one who reminds us that the enormity of the sin is no obstacle to grace: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom. 5:20). This is the key statement. The greater the sin, the more God’s love reveals itself to be far beyond any judgment or evaluation of ours. This grace covers all things. It is thus effectively universal.

*****

We read constantly that God does not reject forever. He “will not keep his anger forever” (Ps. 103:9; Jer. 3:5, 12; Mic. 7:18). On the other hand, his mercy endures forever (Ps. 106:1; 118:1; 136:1; etc.). These two great theological proclamations rule out the idea of a God who damns, for that would mean that he keeps his anger forever.

Frankly, I couldn’t pick Rob Bell out of a lineup, and can’t really get all that exercised over what he believes or teaches on this subject. And for the record, I am not a universalist. First of all, some kind of postmortem punishment is clearly taught in Scripture (although the duration of the punishment is a matter of interpretation — a fire may continue to burn after something has been purged of its alloys or sufficiently cooked). And second, I appreciate symmetry: this life is filled with misery — why wouldn’t the next one be too? As Ellul adds:

God being who he is, hell is impossible. It is an impossibility. Nevertheless, you Christians must realize that nothing is impossible for God. Hence the possibility remains that he might decide for this punishment and penalty. You must retain, though not as a dominating factor, a fear that God will make possible that which according to his revelation is impossible.

WARNING: This is going to be a long post. And if doctrinal hair-splitting makes you throw up a little in your mouth, then flee. Flee now. I’ll have more fun silly stuff soon. Also, I’m really thinking out loud here and not looking to get into yet another knock-down, drag-out fight on predestination. Been there, done that — both here at Strange Herring and at the Evangel blog. I ask these questions in all sincerity, because I have wrestled with these issues more than is probably healthy for any one soul. So with that in mind, here goes:

Why are so many of the Reformed heavy hitters so upset with Bell and this new book of his, which supposedly defends universalism. I mean, what do they care? So what if it’s false teaching — the elect cannot be deceived, correct?

In short, what the hell does hell have to do with anything in the Reformed construal of salvation? Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on March 9, 2011 in I Know You Think I Don't Know What You're Really Saying, Strange Controversy, The Sacred

 

Frog Worshiped as a God. Not Much More You Can Say After That.

08 Jun

frog_manBefore you judge: The frog changes color. A lot.

Hundreds of curious followers flock to Reji Kumar’s home every day to pray and ask for miracles.

Now one of the country’s top zoologists plans to study the rainbow frog. But Reji, 35, who keeps the creature in a glass bottle after finding it while out watering plants, is afraid it might CROAK first.

He said: “My one problem is that this frog does not appear to eat. I keep trying to feed it but it doesn’t eat anything. I don’t know what else to give it.”

The frog was a dazzling WHITE colour when Reji, from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, first spotted it.

Then it changed to YELLOW and had gone GREY by the time he got it home.

Lift worker Reji added: “By night the frog was dark yellow, and then it became transparent so you could see its internal organs.

“It seemed like a miracle to me that this frog had so many different coats. So now people come to see him and pray to him.”

But there’s always some smart aleck determined to destroy people’s faith.

Professor Oommen V. Oommen from India’s Kerala University, said it was not uncommon for animals to change colour.

He explained: “Frogs do change colour to scare away predators.”

Oh fine. The guy couldn’t even come up with two different names, yet he knows what’s what with supernatural frogs …

 
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Posted by on June 8, 2009 in I Want One, It's Like a Miracle, The Profane, The Sacred

 

Barbarians Really Grate

13 May

barbariansThe homepage of FIRSTTHINGS.com features an early look at an essay by editor Joseph Bottum on the Obama/Notre Dame controversy, scheduled to appear in the June/July issue of FIRST THINGS.

This may seem to be of only tangential interest to non-Catholics, but I would argue that what is at play here is an issue with supra-Catholic implications that should engage all Christians, one that is also not unrelated to a subject Mollie Hemingway addressed in Get Religion recently. (And while I’m on the subject, congratulations to Mollie and Mark on the birth of their lovely daughter Linden Katherine.)

The time is coming when Christians of all stripes must consider what it means to be a nation within a nation, alien residents, not in a secular culture but in a culture actively hostile to its most deeply cherished beliefs and values. The time is coming when Christians are going to have to come to terms with being an alternative culture within the larger one. And that is going to mean giving greater attention to their schools and hospitals.

When a Catholic college of Notre Dame’s reputation thinks so little of its public witness as to invite a man — yes, even the president of the United States — who has demonstrated himself to be hostile to the life issues, which are at the core of not only Catholic social teaching but its dogmatic understanding of what it means to be made in the image of God, then where is the faithful Catholic to go to escape the culture of death?

When a pregnant woman learns her baby has Down’s syndrome, as related in Mollie’s posting, and the very professionals in whose hands she has entrusted that baby’s well-being actively wish the baby dead and provide only minimal care, where is she to turn? (And what if Catholic hospitals are forced to close because they refuse to offer services inimical to their beliefs about the sanctity of human life?)

For too long Christians assumed that this was a Christian nation, filled with likeminded people who would, despite Hollywood and the mainstream media and a few academics on the margins, would ultimately see their values prevail, due to the much advertised American exceptionalism. Time to reconsider. Time to stop being so complacent. The barbarians are not at the gate — they’re in the house. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on May 13, 2009 in A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Baste, The Sacred

 
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