Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
Origin of the Species – 1.
September 4th, 2010 | 
Author: HOW WE GOT OUT OF THE MESS — ONCE!
Are you one of those people who think America is about to collapse?
If so, let me tell you the sign you need to see to indicate the end is near.
There are many commentators who tell us that the USA is no longer a great nation, that financial irresponsibility has driven the value of the dollar down, inflation is rampant, and only the right presidential candidate will solve the problem.
If you’re like me, you’ve heard these challenging commentaries and predictions for many years. The present financial issues with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are an indicator, they say, that the end is nigh.
There are, of course, some parallels with the Roman Empire. It, too, collapsed from within. Excessive taxation, debased currency, and a social welfare system gone astray.
But there is one particular aspect of the fall of Rome that is not present in the USA or any other western nation –at least, not yet, anyway. It is this.
Origin of the Species – 2.
If the Roman Empire Collapsed Internally, What Brought About the Demise of Christendom?
The Medieval period in Europe, for all its faults, was a system of low taxes, local self-government, and a period of economic expansion.
This is in contrast to the Roman Empire which it replaced. it is also in stark contrast to those non-European nations that had not embraced Christianity.
We, however, no longer live in the medieval world. Instead, we live at the end of a period that has seen the rise of the nation-state that has effectively replaced localized self-government.
This change to the medieval world could only take place when three steps were completed:
1. The kings/rulers got control of the courts.
2. The kings/rulers got control of taxes (and money)
3. People were willing to abandon loyalty to family and church in favor of the state.
Culture Wars of the “Dark Ages”
The “Golden Age” of Applied Christianity
The victors write the history books, it is claimed.
Yet history is being rewritten in our own age by a new breed of scholars who are telling us a different story about the “Dark Ages.” In this case, it is not only a different story, it is a better story.
With the rise of the Enlightenment and its rampant anti-Christianity came a view of the past called the “Dark Ages”. It referred to the period after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and covered the next few hundred years; for some people, the “Dark Ages” remained until the humanistic Renaissance appeared. Why? Enlightenment thought was so critical of Christianity it could not face the facts. The facts being that the Bible and Christianity were the cultural reference points that replaced pagan Rome.
Imagine this. You are the last Roman Emperor. Your area of jurisdiction is dissipating in front of you. You have insufficient money to wage war, even defensive war. The tax demands you have inherited have created such hostility among the citizens, they don’t care any longer. Anything is better than this.
Among this mess was a veritable army of Christian monks and citizens who had answers. In fact, your predecessor, Constantine, not only permitted Christianity to exist, but helped established the local priests and monks as a surrogate source of justice. The Roman courts were too expensive for justice, whereas the local church was not only a cheap alternative, it had some better answers to the problems of life. So magnificent was the result of their Christian answers, that one historian noted: “[T]he early Middle Ages represented the age par excellence of ‘applied Christianity’.” (Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, 2nd ed., Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003, p. 25, emphasis in original).
Tags: A Culture of Despair
If a Thief Hands You Stolen Money, What Should You Do?
Returning to Australia for my son’s wedding, it did not take long to be reminded of many of the issues that dropped out of sight while living in America.
At the top of the list is the Australian concept of socialism. Socialism is the idea that the government takes control of all resources within the nation and allocates them in some fashion. Frederick Hayek drew the distinction between communism and socialism when he observed that in communism, the government owns everything and allocates according to government plan. Under socialism, ownership remains in the hands of individuals, but the government determines the allocation of the privately-held resources. The Australian government pretends it is neither socialistic nor communistic. But as Ludwig von Mises argued so clearly, the middle-of-the-road policy is the road to full socialism. You cannot control part of the economy without controlling all of it.
The key issue here is one of ownership and the meaning of the idea of ownership. “Thou shalt not steal” establishes the right of private ownership, ownership being the right of dispossession. This is the key. If you cannot dispose the things you own in the manner in which you would like, you don’t own the thing. Whoever controls the dispossession is the real owner, even though there may be official papers giving title to the individual.
In the modern world, it is taxation, perhaps more than anything else, that determines the biblical framework of ownership. The government not only takes for itself the right to tax, but it also allocates to itself the right to determine how much tax it might be entitled to. This is important because it raises the question of property ownership in money. It doesn’t exist any more. But it did exist at one time, when the Bible provided the prevailing philosophy.
Why Christians Are Not Winning The Culture War
When you speak of Christian culture, what do you mean? What do you understand by the idea of Christian culture?
There is a tendency by many to think of Christian culture in terms of things: movies, art, music, business, money, economy, property rights, and so forth.
In the past, however, when Christianity did influence the culture, it had an advantage. The key elements of Christianity were constantly a reminder to the people, not just through the implementation of music, art, literature, and law, but through a series of events that spread throughout the calendar year.
I’m referring to the Christian calendar. This created what Robert Webber calls “Christian-year spirituality”. According to Webber,
Through Christian-year spirituality we are enabled to experience the biblical mandate of conforming to Christ. The Christian year orders our formation with Christ incarnate in his ministry, death, burial, resurrection, and coming again through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost. In Christian-year spirituality we are spiritually formed by recalling and entering into his great saving events (Ancient-Future Time, p. 22).
I know many of you personally on this e-zine list. I know your religious background, and the journey we share to understand our faith.
So when was the last time you had a Christian-year calendar that recalled the major events of God’s saving work through Christ, and participation in that and his future as King of kings, and Lord of lords?
The Gospel of Love
“All You Need is Love, Love, Love.” - The Beatles, 1967
The Romantic movement, following on the heels of the Enlightenment, brought a revitalized message about love. There’s not enough of it.
And Romantic art of all kinds – poetry, music, painting, etc. – indicates that the lack of love is the significant problem in the world. If only this girl or that man would love me, all my problems would go away. Romanticism in this vein, however, is even more likely to have the three-way love affair, with adultery mixed in the midst of it. There was a reason composer Richard Wagner used Tristan and Isolde as a key part of his operatic works with music designed to undermine Christian culture, for the story is a key representative of Romanticism. Hollywood, in our generation, perpetuates this belief about love.
Enter our churches and you hear the gospel of love. “Honk if you love Jesus” was an old bumper sticker. Music, now the controlling influence in the contemporary church, is the music of the Romantic era. The use of melody and harmony are governed by the rules of the post-Baroque period, and when played on guitar and drums, the rhythm is highlighted and it becomes the dominant aspect of the contemporary worship service.
Now listen to the sermon that follows this kind of music.
The Search For Certainty – 1.
How Big Is Your Faith?
In 1980 a book appeared that addressed a problem of mathematics: the quest for certainty. The author, Morris Kline, entitled his book, Mathematics: the Loss of Certainty.
In it he outlines how the philosophy and use of mathematics went beyond its capabilities. Newton, for example, in his science abandoned physical explanation of phenomena, and instead employed mathematical concepts. “Newton’s crowning work presented mankind with a set of only mathematically expressible physical principles. . . . The Newtonian scheme was decisive in convincing the world that nature is mathematically designed and that the true laws of nature are mathematical” (p. 57).
Anyone who thinks that nature can only be explained mathematically soon finds themselves with some unanswered questions. And it is easy to see how this kind of rationalism has contributed to a lack of faith in the world in which we live.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Search For Certainty – 2.
DO YOU THINK LIKE A HEBREW?
The first part of commentary raised questions about the biblical manuscripts and the way we view them. We must have, it seems, a “scientific” approach to textual purity in order to be secure that we actually have the Word of God. Yet the more we search for certainty, the more elusive it seems.
Dr. Marvin R. Wilson makes this interesting contrast between Hebrew and our modern thought patterns.
The biblical authors never argue the existence of God; they only assume it. God is not understood philosophically, but functionally. He acts. The Hebrews primarily thought of him pictorially, in terms of personality and activity, not in terms of pure being or in any static sense. That is, to express the divine attribute of love, the Hebrews would normally think in terms of a “loving God” (i.e., a God who loves), rather than “God is love.” Certainly, therefore, the Hebrew mind-set of Bible times would find little or no interest in many of the issues the Church has debated over the centuries. These issues include theoretical arguments for the existence of God, the nature of the Godhead, free will and predestination, the specifics of the life to come, and the precise way in which the divine and human mesh in the inspiration of Scripture.
The Hebrew knew he did not know all the answers. His position was “under the sun” (Eccl. 8:17), so his words were few (5:2). He refused to oversystematize or force harmonization on the enigmas of God’s truth or puzzles of the universe. He realized that no one could straighten what God has made crooked (7:13). All things, therefore, did not need to be fully rational. The Hebrew mind was willing to accept the truths taught on both sizes of the paradox; it recognized that mystery and apparent contradictions are often signs of the divine. Stated succinctly, the Hebrews knew the wisdom of learning to trust in matters that they could not fully understand.
In an attempt to formulate the idea of inspiration to preserve an infallible Bible, Christians may have gone just a little overboard by operating on non-Hebraic assumptions. The influence of Greek thought in our culture is pervasive, and helps explain many of the issues that have driven Christendom underground and almost caused its complete demise.
If you’re really interested in finding out more, read Wilson’s essay, “The Contour of Hebrew Thought.” It should be compulsory reading for all seminary students and serious Christians. You will find it here: The Contour of Hebrew Thought
The Search For Certainty – 3.
FAITH OR LOGIC? WHICH IS IT?
In the quest for certainty, some biblical scholars are willing to give up all logic to prove a point.
At the heart of the certainty debate is this issue. It’s syllogistic in form, two premises followed by a conclusion.
Premise 1: God gave his Word through inspired writers who wrote down what God intended for them to write down. These are the original manuscripts of the Bible, of which we have none.
Premise 2: In order for us to have God’s word today, the words in the original manuscripts must be preserved by God so that they still exist.
Conclusion: ?
Read the rest of this entry »
What Evangelists Need to Learn From the Kitchen
If you leave out an important ingredient, your best cooking efforts are doomed.
This article was written while I was in Nova Scotia and had just returned from having supper with a local family.
This part of the world, Clare County, has several municipalities that are Old French culture and language. The schools in these municipalities hold their classes in the old Acadian language, while the municipalities either side are English. In the seventeenth century, the French living in the valley of Nova Scotia were forcibly relocated by the British. Some found their way to the western shores of Nova Scotia while others were settled in Louisiana. The Cajuns and the Acadians are linked culturally — and share an understandable attitude towards the British. In Nova Scotia, the Acadians have been promised an apology from the monarch of England, but it is yet to arrive.
This caused me to reflect on the turmoil of Europe at the time of their dislocation. The Acadians, French in origin, tried to remain neutral in the struggles between Britain and France. They were not permitted to do this. Read the rest of this entry »