By Farther Steps

Reformed and Reforming, semper reformanda to Christ's glory.

Archive for October, 2005

Christianized Family Fun!

While we may lament that the Billy Graham iPod is not a reality, we are not without hope. My kids love Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) on the XBox. Personally, I’m all for it. They play video games and get exercise. What’s not to love?

Well, its all that darned secular music! I mean we’ve done all this work creating a cleaned up subculture mirroring the dominate culture, we need to put it to work. We need to clean that up so our children can safely hop up and down on a pad to the beat.

We evangelicals don’t like to work real hard at discernment, we’d rather pay someone else to do it for us. And so I present to you Dance Praise from Digital Praise.

The lyrics are “wholesome” though perhaps theologically vacuous. Maybe even wrong. Who knows? Who cares? We got a sanitized DDR and we’re happy about it!

So, come on, offer God your praise to up-tempo Christian pop music while jumping on a plastic pad connected to your computer!

But wait! There’s more! Digital Praise (“Glorifying God Through Interactive Media”) is giving a special offer to church youth groups and homeschool families. You can get two pads and have head-to-head worship-downs!

Harriet Miers Splits

WASHINGTON, D.C. (OIC News) – Embattled Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers withdrew from the confirmation process. “No, I don’t want to be just friends” Ms. Miers said slamming the Congressional screen door behind her as she stormed off the porch at the Capital building. She avoided questions and cameras as she entered her rusted 1993 Dodge Omni and sped down the gravel driveway.

President Bush, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “I really hoped this would work out for them. I don’t think there is any getting back together now.” Vice President Cheney dabbed a tear from the President’s eye, “She’s tough,” he said, “she’ll bounce back.”

In related news, the collective sigh of relief from across the nation created a large low pressure zone that has since spawned tropical storm Gamma which is now the threatening eastern seaboard.

More Baptist Covenant Theology

I was pointed to this link which contains the audio from the Southern Baptist Founders Conference Southwest 2005. I thought Fred Malone’s talk “The Hermeneutics of Baptist Covenant Theology” was really excellent. It is a bit antagonistic towards paedobaptistic Covenant Theology (Malone used to be a presbyterian) but other than that I though he made an excellent case. Worth listening to.

Star Wars Prophet

This cartoon was originally published on July 15, 1983. Notice that Lucas says that the prequels should begin in ’98, Berke Breathed only missed it by one year! Not bad. Click on the picture to see the rest of the cartoon. Luke Binkleywalker is not happy about having to wait that long. Imagine how he would have felt had Lucas also told him about Jar Jar and the whining Anakin!

Zonderhill Publication Announcement

Hardcover: 116 pages
Publisher: Zonderhill (October 20, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 031027519
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: .8 pounds.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Oct. 20, 2005 – Zonderhill Publishers announced today the release of St. Esophigus’ classic work, “The Purpose Motivated Staying Alive During a Plague.” This wonderful devotional work from a little known saint from Christianity’s past was recently discovered in a cave in Turkey. Scholars have painstakingly restored and translated it into modern, gender-neutral language. Not a medical work, this is about the God-given desire to survive. St. Esophigus’ work is said to have saved thousands of lives in the 4th century during a devastating plague in the city of Gullibulus. St. Esophigus, through this Christ-centered work reminded the survivors of God’s purpose waiting to be fulfilled in their lives.

St. Esophigus of Thorax

St. Esophigus of Thorax (365-401 AD) was the father of mime and liturgical drama. It is said that he followed St. John Chrysostom around and “warmed up” the worshipers with a skit or mime before Chrysostom preached.

St. Esophigus was the first mime to paint his face white. No one knows why he did it and many historians suggest that the churches he performed in didn’t have a clue who he was or what he was supposed to be doing.

The church in Thebes took him out and stoned him. Well, “stoned” was too strong a term. They drug him out of the church and one five-year old threw a rock at him while he was doing the “trapped in a glass box” thing. St. Esophigus immediately improvised his liberation from the box and fled while the crowd ignored him.

His only extant epistle, Propositum Prodigo Ecclesia (“Purpose Motivated Church”), was, by all accounts, a very popular encyclical in the churches of North Africa though Esophigus made very few visits there. According to other writings of that time, it appears that the popularity of Propositum faded after a few years and so Esophigus wrote a series: Propositum Prodigo Vita (“Purpose Motivated Life”), Propositum Prodigo Venum (“Purpose Motivated Sales”), and Propositum Prodigo Vivo Vixi Victum Pestilencia (“Purpose Motivated Staying Alive During a Plague”). Unfortunately we don’t have any copies of these epistles nor are they cited in other works.

St. Esophigus died suddenly and tragically when Chrysostom one day preached from Ezekiel and Esophigus laid on his left side outside the church as a sermon illustration. This went on for a few weeks. Chrysostom moved on after a few days and the church mostly ignored Esophigus who was eventually run over by an ox cart, the driver claimed he hadn’t seen him lying there. After that it became a tradition to take a large step over the threshold when leaving a church in Asia Minor, as if stepping over Esophigus.

In the Eastern Church Esophigus is the patron saint of performance art. In the Roman Catholic Church he is the patron saint of wealthy Christians. He was recently named the patron saint of Rwanda. His feast day is the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Sinclair Ferguson and the NPP

I’ve seen this on a few other blogs but I thought that since I had recently posted on the NPP I should link to it and comment on it also.

Ferguson lectured on the New Perspective on Paul (16.6MB mp3) back in August. He said that due to problems at the airport he didn’t get in the day before in order to get some sleep and was therefore tired. He didn’t sound it. His comments are excellent and cogent. He does such a good job explaining the NPP that he made it sound like he believed it. Then he goes on to critique it and you realize he doesn’t.

When he is explaining the allure of the NPP one of the attractions he mentions is that many are weary of the evangelical focus on self to the exclusion of a sense of community. At one point (29:37) he says:

And then finally, one might say, against the background of our post-modern world, the New Perspective on Paul, with some of its emphasis is seen to be a marvelous liberation from the individualism that not only grips the society in which we live but also has invaded the church. To be truthful, it has sometimes seemed to me that the place in which the impact of Friedrich Schleiermacher is most evident in the world today is in the evangelical church; with our massive focus on the individual and our almost despising of the community. Seventeenth century evangelical theologians would preach sermons with titles like “Public Worship to be Preferred Before Private.” That would almost be regarded as a heresy in modern evangelicalism. Because the really important thing is my faith, what I do, my reading of the Bible, my prayer.

One of the things that the New Perspective on Paul, particularly with its appreciation of the notion of the old covenant community and the whole question of boundary markers, has strongly emphasized is the importance of the community over the importance of the individual. To that extent I think it might well be said by exponents of the New Perspective on Paul that by and large the Reformed churches have become individualistic and baptistic in their view of the nature of the Christian life.

At first I bristled at this. “Obviously they’re dealing with a caricature of what it means to be baptistic,” I thought. But as I reflected on it, I think I came to see his point. “Baptistic” has a pretty broad meaning. My understanding of a baptisic church is merely my understanding. Looking more broadly, you do see many Baptist churches where the emphasis is very much on the individual. The sermons are all about you. The worship service is designed so that you like it. The atmosphere is casual so that you are comfortable. It is all about your faith and your conversion. I don’t want to name (church or individual) names; just turn on Christian radio during “ministry” time when the preachers are on. You’ll get a healthy dose of it right away. When that’s done the inane music that grows in that kind of soil comes on.

Where it is unfair is to pin it exclusively on the Baptists. It is as if the Reformed churches were all tight and proper till the Baptists came along. Such is not the case. The Presbyterians were as much involved in Revivalism and Fundamentalism as were the Baptists. Where paedobaptists want to draw that line is that Baptists focus on the faith of the individual as a prerequisite for at least the sacrament of baptism whereas paedobaptists recognize a sense of community and that is why a child born in that community is baptized. And to that extent I would tend to agree with the critique, we baptistic types have done a pretty poor job of defining a doctrine of covenant children. They are our kids, we lug them to church, we put them in Children’s Church and Sunday School, they are expected to sing with us, we teach them to pray before meals and bed, and we tell them that Jesus loves them. At the same time we deny that they are candidates for baptism and say that they are not saved till they profess faith. (Really, this isn’t as schizophrenic as it sounds. Some/many will continually preach the gospel to their children in many ways calling them to that faith.)

I’m beginning to wander here. Again, the critique is good but I don’t think it can be laid only on the baptisic evangelicals. This is something to pay attention to within the NPP and the Federal Vision. While I believe both movements err and go too far, they are calling us to reevaluate our sense of community within the church, both paedo- and credobaptists. That is not a bad thing to do.