This is from an ex-Episcopalian and it is amazing. He makes the point that women in preistly orders is pretty much a done deal for the Episcopal church. That acceptance of homosexuality is a foregone conclusion. So when R. Andrew Newman saw a woman appointed to head the ECUSA he didn’t bat an eye.

Till she opened her mouth and said:

Colossians calls Jesus the firstborn of all creation, the firstborn from the dead. That sweaty, bloody, tear-stained labor of the cross bears new life. Our mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation – and you and I are His children.

Newman rightly responded “Our mother Jesus?”

Here’s the Right Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori’s entire message.

Wow.

Philemon is a short book in the New Testament and it is one that I think many preachers and teachers are unsure what to do with. It is a personal letter from St. Paul to a man named Philemon who lived (presumably) in Ephesis. Paul writes to address a personal issue with a run away slave who has come to faith. So does the book endorese slavery? Is it about freedom? I was once taught about fellowship from the book of Philemon.

Those themes are in there, but I don’t think it is what the book is about. I think it is about reconciliation. That is, after all, why Paul is writing to Philemon. Onesimus was a slave in Philemon’s home and had run away. Onesimus apparently met up with Paul, presumably in Rome during his imprisonment, and had been converted to Christ by him. Paul then sends him back to his former master with the letter that we have in the New Testament. Paul wants the two to be reconciled as now brothers in Christ.

God’s speech-act in Philemon was that the church is to be involved in reconciliation. This wasn’t a private action between Philemon and Onesimus, it was a corporate act that involved the body of Christ.This is where the speech-act part comes in. Kevin Vanhoozer, in his book Is There Meaning in the Text?, promotes the concept of a speech-act. The concept is a bit trickey to get a hold of but I think it is helpful. We focus a lot in Biblical studies on what God has said in the Bible. But beyond that, Vanhoozer asks what God accomplished in speaking. Look at it this way, if I yell “Watch out!” when someone is crossing the road, you could parse and analyze the words. “Watch” could be a timepiece but it is probably an imperative verb in this sentence and is commanding that someone look, observe, be aware. “Out” is the object of the verb. Be looking not inward but outward. Okay, the sentence means to be aware of one’s surroundings. That is what I said but why did I say it? What did I hope to accomplish in saying it when I did? Well, in this case, i was warning someone about an oncoming truck that was about to hit them. My speech-act was to make someone aware of the danger they were in. That is not just what I spoke, but why I spoke.

Read On…

First off, you need to know that I know and love many members of the Southern Baptist Conference. The Founders are some of my theological heros. The following is offered with a bit of good-natured needling and a hint of disbelief.

Added: Steve McCoy, a real life pastor of an SBC church who attended the conference, has some good comments on this resolution.

At their recent national conference, the Southern Baptist Conference passed a resolution on alcohol use in America. It reads, in part:

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, June 13-14, 2006, express our total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing, and consuming of alcoholic beverages; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge that no one be elected to serve as a trustee or member of any entity or committee of the Southern Baptist Convention that is a user of alcoholic beverages.

RESOLVED, That we urge Southern Baptists to take an active role in supporting legislation that is intended to curb alcohol use in our communities and nation;

“Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we prohibit and abolish women? The sun, moon, and stars have been worshiped. Shall we pluck them out of the sky?” – Martin Luther Fair enough. I guess. But in so doing, they have just made it so that Jesus could not serve as a trustee or member of any entity or committee of the SBC. He drank alcohol after all (Luke 7:34). Further, they support legislation to curb his first miracle (John 2:1-11).

It is true that alcohol abuse exists in our nation. I do not agree with this resolution though. God gave us wine to make our hearts glad (Psa 104:15). We need to help people who have a problem, but this is a wrong-headed approach.

Two quotes come to mind:

“Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we prohibit and abolish women? The sun, moon, and stars have been worshipped. Shall we pluck them out of the sky?” – Martin Luther

Don’t teach me about moderation and liberty,
I prefer a shot of grape juice.
Don’t teach me about loving my enemies.
Don’t teach me how to listen to the Spirit,
Just give me a new law

I don’t wanna know if the answers aren’t easy
So just bring it down from the mountain to me

I want a new law
I want a new law
Gimme that new law – Derek Webb, A New Law.

Wayne Grudem. John Piper. CJ Mahany. Three men I richly respect and have learned a lot from. They have a few things in common. They are all Baptistic. They are all Reformed. They are all charismatic to some degree. Their formulation of the charismatic gifts are pretty much the same and are based mostly on Grudem’s work. I’ve heard both Piper and Mahany agree with Grudem.

Grudem’s position is that the prophets and prophecy we see in the Old Testament, the “Thus Sayeth the Lord” sort of thing, was fulfilled in the Apostles’ writing of the New Testament. Prophecy in the New Covenant is different. Now, because the Holy Spirit indwells covenant members, prophecy is more common (cf Acts 2:15-21, Joel 2:28-32) but of a different sort. Now, according to Grudem, prophecy is fallible because it is given to sinful men and women who may misunderstand or distort. It is not the authorative, “thus sayeth the Lord” but “I think the Lord is saying…”

At first, I reacted against it. This didn’t sound like prophecy. What makes us think that prophecy could be fallible? Well, the proof text offered is 1Th 5:20-21. Paul commands that prophecy be tested and that which is good is to be retained. I remember John Piper saying that this didn’t sound like something that Paul would command of the Old Testament Scriptures. In other words, if NC prophecy was the same as OC prophecy, he reasoned, then Paul wouldn’t have commanded it be tested like this. Well, this got me. I didn’t know how to answer it so I just kind of swallowed the pill without water. That is to say, it kind of stuck in my throat but it was in there.

This morning, I read something that rather undid that argument for me. I opened to Deuteronomy 13 and read, “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder…” Here was a command to test prophets in the Old Covenant. Paul was not saying anything new, he was simply repeating the commandment to test prophets.

This seems to take some of the wind out of the Grudem sails on that particular verse. True, Paul wouldn’t command the Old Testament be tested like that, but he would command testing of contemporary (to him) prophecy. Surely Moses wasn’t commanding that the books he’d written up to that point be tested and only the good retained. Neither was Paul.

But it doesn’t necessarily empty the wind from sails entirely. The very fact that the command to test prophecy is retained in the New Testament canon rather than being passed along either verbally, on in a non-inspired letter. The fact that the command is in an inspired letter and is retained for all the church means something for us. The question is what we are supposed to do with it. It doesn’t support Grudem’s concept of New Covenant prophecy like I originally thought it did. That doesn’t establish continuing prophecy, but it doesn’t deny it either.

So the issue remains: how do prophecy and sola scriptura relate? I mean, if “The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience” (1689 LBC 1.1) then what are we to do with prophecy today? The cessationalist position is that prophecy must have ended at the closing of the Biblical canon. God spoke through his word and when he was done speaking the canon was closed and revelation has ended. While this makes sense, is there any hint in the Bible that such would be so? The prooftexts offered in the past have been pretty weak in my opinion.

On the other hand, how do we as evangelical Protestants hold to the sufficiency of Scripture deal with the concept of ongoing prophecy? Ah, I continue to wrestle with this issue and remain non-normative on the Charismatic gifts. That means that I’m open to the possibility but cautious to the point of suspicion on their appearance. Perhaps in that I am exercising Paul’s admonition as he intended it.

Before Newton, it was believed that it was God who moved cannon balls and held things to the ground. Then Newton discovered gravity. Too often, we religate God to the parts of science that we can’t explain and the problem is that that area keeps shrinking.

I think a better way to think about God’s work in creation is not in the “how” as it is in the subtle details. A long time ago I was introduced to the Chaos Theory. The idea is that in systems which appear to be chaotic, there is an underlying order. Take a look at the link and you’ll see what I mean.

When I got into upper level maths I was constantly amazed at how complex mathmatical equations could collapse into rather clear and orderly equations. I considered it to be finding God’s fingerprints on creation. He is a God of order, not chaos and so we see that expressed in his creation. I recently came across a video and some images that show more of this kind of thing.

First, the video. You might want to turn down the sound as this is a bit loud and pretty annoying, but you need to hear it to understand the video. It appears to be a black piece of plastic on top of a speaker. Rice is poured on the plastic and the tone is dial up slowly. The rice orders itself as the tone changes.

Second, the images. It is a simple photo study of smoke and a vortex. The order is beauitiful and subtle.

It is 6/6/06. The remake of “The Omen” debuts today to some bad reviews. You know, Hollywood’s antichrist is never as frightening as the real one(s). Anyway, I just wanted to announce some things that have NOT happened today:

• The Rapture has not occurred as pre-tribulational, pre-millennial believers have noticed. Not that they expected it today, it’s just that they expect it any day.
• Christ has not returned as amillennial believers have noticed.
• The antichrist was not born today. “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.” (1Jn 2:18, ESV)
• God has not started heeding our calendar. Just because we call today 6/6/06 does not mean that God recognizes our method of counting days. Indeed, He established a method that we no longer follow! It was the calendar outlined in the Law.
• Hitler was not resurrected. No kidding, really. It didn’t happen.

I might just have some Underwood Deviled Ham for lunch today with some deviled eggs. Follow that up with some devil’s food cake as a snack. Making me hungry.