Presbyteries Employing the Tarkin Doctrine

What's the Tarkin Doctrine? Unless you're a Star Wars geek, you probably don't catch the overtures. But you can make sense of it in contrast to Princess Leia's rebuff of a power-mad Imperial governor: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Certain presbyteries think that they can do whatever they want in terms of perverting the gospel (and ordaining perverts to the gospel ministry), and the Christian churches that are affiliated with them are just supposed to sit there and take it because of a spurious and pernicious property trust clause. (Apparently, it's the only enforceable section of the constitution...someone should tell the higher-ups at 100 Witherspoon that there's a whole Form of Gov't there, starting with G-6.0106b.)


What these presbyteries are going to learn is this: there are many Christians out there who cannot be bought. You can bully them all you want, and take the property they and their forebears bought with the flick of a rapacious pen. But the God and Father we serve owns the cattle on a thousand hills and has promised that when we are scorned for the sake of his Son, we're blessed.

The more you tighten...

Panzers...not pansies

The Layman reports that Bel Air Presbyterian Church failed in attaining a stay for a same-sex blessing that will occur this Sunday at neighboring Brentwood Presbyterian Church (according to the LA Times). Frankly, while I'm against the service because of how it perverts marriage (a covenant instituted by God himself), I would not have wasted my breath on asking the presbytery to interfere with the "blessing."

Instead, since an ordained Presbyterian Lesbyterian minister (Ms. Bove) is one half of the couple being blessed & recognized for her 10-year same-sex relationship, why not go ahead and ask for an enforcement of the constitutional standard in G-6.0106b? She works as a chaplain at a children's hospital, and it wouldn't be difficult for her to gain "ordination" by any number of false ecclesiastical structures - so it wouldn't even threaten her livelihood. (Compare that to the action against Kirk Johnston.) But it would do something that most folks enmeshed in the system are incapable of doing: show some backbone.

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it till someone listens: the Presbyterian Church USA is falling apart because there is no resolve to discipline her ministers. The recent lawsuits over property show that the Constitution's Form of Government only serves as a punitive instrument to enforce specious claims of provenance. The Book of Confessions and the Book of Order are flaunted on a regular basis, but don't even think of trying to snub the Board of Pensions! Every once in a while, we'll nod to our sexual standards - but even that is rare. (We seem to prefer to go after the ministers who do the service, rather than attempt to lovingly discipline and restore the unrepentant homosexual.)

What we THEY need are some pastors who can be Panzers...instead of pansies.* Unfortunately, they like to throw out the ones they can't tame or buy out.

*No insult offered to either the genus viola or the genius, Viola, who shows more resolve than most men in confronting the errors of the PCUSA.

Thoughts on my future in the PCUSA

I posted this on livejournal privately about 16 months ago. It was right before I started blogging - right before the committee that oversees my work in the PCUSA (the CPM) passed me through to candidacy. I've sat on it for a long time because the CPM did forward me through the process, and I was overcome with a sense of hopeful expectation. I'm finding that 16 months later, that hope was misplaced. I've been doing a lot of soul-searching and trying to listen for what God is telling me to do with the call to preach that he gave. It's hard because I've had to face so many of my own idols (especially idols of professionalism, entrance to the middle class, intellectualism, etc.). But in the end, I know that Christ will have a more useful instrument in his hands.

To that end, I'm posting some of my reflections. Many of these have been written over the past two years, but were held back because I didn't want to seem pessimistic (especially when there were these glimpses of hope). However, the situation has really become intolerable for me. I'm having to take my own advice. For years, I've told LGBT friends (yes...I have them) to seek a denomination where they can be faithful to what they believe they're called to do. I told them that if we stayed in the same denomination, we'd fight until there was no time left for faithfulness - and would destroy all the bonds of love that should still tether disagreeing Christians. The time has come for me to do the same thing: It's time I chose whether I wanted to spend the next thirty years fighting OR do I lay that down and go where I can minister without feeling that I'm compromised? (Quietude in the face of what's happening in the mainline simply isn't an option for my personality, and I'm not even sure it's biblically possible.)

Here's the first post, written when I was but an inquirer....

It's finally beginning to dawn on me.

I've been quite rigorous in my preparation for ordination as a Minister of Word and Sacrament (mowas) in the PC(USA). I've done reasonably well in an antagonistic seminary where I was opposed and maligned (while making no small stink of my own), I've managed superior marks on our mandated ordination exams, gone through several psychological evaluations, and passed field education requirements with lauds from both supervisors and congregants.

Nevertheless, I find my efforts at advancing to candidacy stonewalled by the committee that oversees that preparation. Musing tonight on what I might say should they again deny my request for candidacy, it finally dawned on me:

The PC(USA) has spent forty years eroding the doctrinal core (the Westminster Standards) of our unity, and dilapidating our constitutional integrity, that the only thing left to hold us together (besides the Board of Pensions) is a certain attitude or posture.

I wish that I could describe that attitude, but I do not understand it well enough to display it to my committee - much less provide an analysis of it here. There are some elements I believe I have singled out, but they are not kind and I do not think I would do well in displaying my own biases here as they touch so personally upon my own sense of call.

But one thing is certain: in the opinion of the CPM of my home presbytery, I do not have it. And no matter how sane and well-meaning I am, no matter how professionally competent I am, no matter how ardent I am in my love of Jesus Christ and the salvation he has secured for me and for all of his flock, I am not yet able to live out my call within the bounds of the PC(USA).

If any good has come out of this at all, it would be that I have greater sympathy for those who feel as though they are unfairly denied a place in the leadership of the church (esp. women in the Roman Catholic setting and LGBT persons in the protestant world). I haven't changed my mind on what the requirements of ordained ministry are...but I think I can trust their hurt a little more. Further, I think I can see how easily this hurt can overwhelm our best reflection on our particular place in the process.

I have affirmed again and again that I trust the CPM to make the right decision. It will break my heart if they believe that the best decision to be made - for the sake of the church - is to restrict my ministry within the PC(USA). They have every right to do it - and I would even maintain that they have every responsibility to do it. And it takes every ounce of Christian maturity to say that, because I fear that the answer will be "no" when I go before them this fall.

Ach! Zombies!

Over at Evangelical Outpost, they've posted an academic paper showing that vampires can't be real because they would have destroyed the human population by now. One problem - as anyone who has played Vampire: The Masquerade or read Anne Rice would know: Vampires don't have to kill the living in order to feed. Moreover, simply being bitten by a vampire isn't sufficient to turn the victim into one. Therefore, the smart vampire would feed selectively and never deplete the food supply.

Zombies, however, have no such finesse. They are a true scourge. And they hold particular horror for those of us who actually do believe that the dead have risen in the past and will rise in the future. And whose original sect was persecuted for "cannibalism" by the Romans. I'm starting to smell Jungian archetypes.... Or maybe Paul had something else in mind when he was talking to those wacky Galatians.

(post title taken from the best Simpsons Halloween segment ever!)

CPE - An Essential of the Faith

Back in November, I received a letter from the Presbytery Committee that oversees my candidacy for ordination: Complete a unit of CPE (and magically pay to feed, house, and insure your family while you're doing that instead of working) or be removed from the process.

Apparently, in Holston Presbytery, the essence of Reformed ministry is CPE and stuff like resurrection, or inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, or the Trinity are just, well, adiaphora.

God, where are You calling me to go? I'll follow...if You'll give me bread for the journey.

Philosophical New Years

Should old Aquinas be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should old Aquinas be forgot
in these days of Wittgenstein?

Can quiddity, haececity,
analogies divine,
Resolve the paradoxes of
Willard van Orman Quine?

(Okay...I meant to post this on the first. I've been busy house-hunting. Sue me.)

“If we stand up for what is right” by John Calvin

“If we stand up for what is right, we are bound to arouse the fury of many people. Many more will follow in their wake. The more we make peace, the readier the world will be to revile us. Our name will be bandied around every table and every street in town. Scurrilous things will be said about us. But there is more. St. Paul tells us that anyone desiring to live a holy life in Jesus Christ must expect persecution.

“God, it is true, will certainly give us respite from time to time, but we cannot avoid making many enemies. Satan has many allies in this world: possessed by his spirit, they cannot endure the light of the gospel or allow God to rule over them as one might rule over children. We must therefore defend the cause of the gospel and bear witness to the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ, ever if it means unremitting struggle with a large number of people, including those who pretend to be believers and who claim to be of the same religion.

“We are engaged, I repeat, in a mortal struggle with them, and even more with those who openly defy God and who would love to see the gospel vanish from the world.”

–John Calvin, Sermons on the Beatitudes, trans. by Robert White (Carlisle, PA.: Banner of Truth, 1562/2006), pp. 58-59.

From the Idiot's Mouth

"It is true of idiots, that the more absurd and foolish they are, and the more their opinions diverge from those universally held, the more likely are they to utter no word which they will wish to recall" - St. Augustine in Letter 143 to Marcellinus (A.D. 412)

Raising a Glass to the Methuen Treaty

What in the world is the Methuen Treaty, you ask? Well, if you haven't googled it, let me tell you: It was a treaty between Great Britain and Portugal. Among its lasting effects were the political solvency of Portugal's colony, Brazil. However, I have precious little interest in that. Rather, I want to get to the meat of the matter...port wine.

You see, France and England were having a tiff and so Englishmen couldn't get French wines. (Remember that England hadn't grown many wine-grapes since the end of the Medieval Warming Period which our global warbling friends refuse to acknowledge.) The Portuguese started exporting their wine to Britain. Unfortunately, it would spoil while in transit. Thus, to reduce spoilage, they began "fortifying" it with brandy and other hard liquor. The result? Port, or course!

I admit that I'm an unrepentant Anglophile, and am particularly appreciative of the little rituals that have grown up around the enjoyment of port. So enjoy a glass and join me in toasting the second day of Christmas with a nice tawny port.

Super Apostles from Breakpoint

As usual, the guys at Prison Fellowship / Breakpoint's Centurion program have hit the nail on the head. The latest article is about those who propose to "clean up" the preaching of the apostolic gospel. Removing repentance before God for your personal sin is the cornerstone of their teaching. Sometimes it comes in the form of an easy believism - no repentance necessary because you've only made "mistakes" (instead of acts of cosmic treason against God's character). Other times, it's a gospel of other people's sin - whether it's those col-darned secular humanists or those earth-hatin' capitalists.

Either way, on this feast of St. Stephen the Protomartyr, it's time that we abandoned the myth of comfortable, middle-class religiosity and accepted that the apostolic faith demands a life given over to scorn and rejection.

True Colors of the Season

The two colors most widely associated with Christmas (in the Western hemisphere, at least) are red and green. Well, as the guys at Acton keep reminding us, Green is the new RED.


Of course, there's plenty of green to be made by going Green. Al is raking it in since being run out of politics. Hey...jet fuel is expensive, gang. More than that, he needs capital for his start-up cap-n-trade system. And he has to have hush money available for when the scientists start finding serious holes in his Armageddon scenarios. (especially when it's contrary to his "established fact of man-made warming in the last century")


Look...Al is a creative guy. I'll bet that if he wasn't trying to save the world or invent the internet, he could have single-handedly scabbed the Screenwriter's Guild walk-out. But his creativity (er...divinity? PRAISE THE GORACLE!!!) needs to cool it. This global warming nonsense is going to cost developing nations their chance at making the earth a suitable habitat for mankind.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, I also hate it when corporations try to pander to Christians with crappy products. They hope that making some relationship to Christianity is going to fuel sales. Unfortunately - as is the case for the minute-ecocrusaders - Christians are in lines waiting to hand their green over for the pap as well. sigh....

Become a Latin Lover

For the past several years, I've taught or tutored homeschoolers in Latin. They always love to learn insults, come-backs, catch-phrases, and pop-culture references in Latin. It makes a memorable "sticking point" for them to mentally hang grammatical concepts. Exempli gratia: "So if I want to tell my little brother to go away, I use the singular imperative abi. But if it's all my brothers and sisters, plus my parents, a hortatory subjunctive like abeâtis might be in order?"

I'm not really all that good at Latin composition, so I rely on a string of books to help me through some populist constructions. Henry Beard's lampooning work has been reliable, and Eugene Ehlich always lends a high-brow hand-up. However, when I was in London, I came upon a title that I just knew I had to have: Amo, Amas, Amat...And All That, or How to Become a Latin Lover. Unfortunately, by the time it came to America, the subtitle had been changed to Carpe Diem: Put A Little Latin in Your Life. Boring....er, modiolus est.

No snickering about the name of the author: Harry Mount.

Prolife Prochoice Gun-toting Non-violent

Following the shootings in Colorado, the religious blogs have been ablaze. Some folks have been saying that religious organizations can't have armed guards. Others are saying that it was God's good blessing that lethal force was available to stop a murderous rampage.

I'll just admit that I'm torn on the issue. A fellow seminarian returned his concealed-carry license when he came to seminary, and I can respect that. (He didn't give up his guns, but since he couldn't have them at seminary he thought it best not to have a usable license that he wasn't going to use.) Yet I also grew up with a pistol packin' padre. (I never knew about it until we were in a very rough section of Virginia Beach, VA.)

What I think I can safely say is this: if there is any grey area that allows someone to be pro-life by conviction, but pro-choice in practice then the same license should be granted to someone who is non-violent by conviction, but pro-gun ownership.

Seminary or Cemetary

"I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures are not supreme. Every institution that does not unceasingly pursue the study of God's word becomes corrupt. Because of this we can see what kind of people they become in the universities and what they are like now. Nobody is to blame for this except the pope, the bishops, and the prelates, who are all charged with training young people. The universities only ought to turn out men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, men who can become bishops and priests, and stand in the front line against heretics, the devil, and all the world. But where do you find that? I greatly fear that the universities, unless they teach the Holy Scriptures diligently and impress them on the young students, are wide gates to hell." - Martin Luther

CPMs of the world, take note!

Merry Shucksmas

Apparently John Shuck has his panties in a wad over the House of Representatives voting to give a hat-tip to Christmas. He invokes the almighty wall of separation between church and state. Funny...from this blogpost, you'd think he didn't like walls that kept blood-thirsty religious nuts from damaging otherwise democratically run institutions.

What really gets my goat, however, is that he pretends to be taking the high-road of neutrality in church-state relations. I might be able to swallow that if he'd posted something similar when the House passed an identically worded resolution honoring Ramadan. But let's face the facts: the guy hates Christmas almost as much as he hates the virgin-born Lord of the Church.

update: I almost forgot to mention this. I admit that, as a Reformation junkie, I don't get as worked up about Christmas as I do about Easter or even every single Lord's Day. Moreover, the whole "war on Christmas" bit is overplayed by folks in my camp. Nevertheless, I find this anecdote illustrative.

I was examined for candidacy at First Elizabethton, where John serves as guru. The presbytery meeting was held in December, so the nice elder that was hosting us wished us "Happy Holidays." A moment of silence passed, after which an astute elder seated behind me shouted "And a MERRY CHRISTMAS as well!"

First Liz regularly hosts awareness events for other religious celebrations. However, I'm afraid they've forgotten (more likely forsaken) their own....

A Surprise from NPR

On Wednesday morning, NPR's writer's almanac featured this poem. I recommend visiting their page and hearing Garrison Keillor read it.

"Upon Seeing an Ultrasound Photo of an Unborn Child" by Thomas Lux, from The Drowned River. © Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990

Upon Seeing an Ultrasound Photo of an Unborn Child

Tadpole, it's not time yet to nag you
about college (though I have some thoughts
on that), baseball (ditto), or abstract
principles. Enjoy your delicious,
soupy womb-warmth, do some rolls and saults
(it'll be too crowded soon), delight in your early
dreams — which no one will attempt to analyze.
For now: may your toes blossom, your fingers
lengthen, your sexual organs grow (too soon
to tell which yet) sensitive, your teeth
form their buds in their forming jawbone, your already
booming heart expand (literally
now, metaphorically later); O your spine,
eyebrows, nape, knees, fibulae,
lungs, lips... But your soul,
dear child: I don't see it here, when
does that come in, whence? Perhaps God,
and your mother, and even I — we'll all contribute
and you'll learn yourself to coax it
from wherever: your soul, which holds your bones
together and lets you live
on earth. — Fingerling, sidecar, nubbin,
I'm waiting, it's me, Dad,
I'm out here. You already know
where Mom is. I'll see you more directly
upon arrival. You'll recognize
me — I'll be the tall-seeming, delighted
blond guy, and I'll have
your nose.

h/t to my twin

Oh, and since this is a theological blog, use this as an opportunity to think through the possibility of traducianism vs. creationism as pertains to the human soul. While you're at it, pick a fight with your pastor about how many angels can dance on the point of a needle. (My baptist friends already know the answer: Angels don't dance....or, if you've read Good Omens, pp. 256ƒ, the answer is one.)

Bumper Sticker Theology

There are some cities where people tend to wear their brain on their bumpers. Don't get me wrong, I like bumperstickers. But many fall short of the truth. That's why I want to start making some with more truthiness or, as the case may be, faithiness. Here's my first stab.

What do you think?

Certainty

Anybody else getting tired of the bloggers who like to pretend that persons with DOCTRINAL theological convictions are mouth-breathing morons? Well, rejoice...demotivational posters are coming to a blog near you.

Getting Hitched to the Greens

Churches around the country spent last Saturday doing what most Rethuglicans would like to do: hanging the Greens. I was out of town, so I didn't get to help. Nevertheless, it's well past time I joined the Green movement. Thus, I've decided to stay married.

It's not that I was thinking about getting unmarried, mind you. It's just that folks have been telling me how awful marriage is for society and and how the number one product of marriage (no, not social stability & financial freedom but children) is so bad for the environment that killing them, then sterilizing yourself is the only moral option left (VERY left).

You see, according to doctors Eunice Yu and Jianguo Liu, divorce is REALLY BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. For instance, divorced households:

• used 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water that could have been saved had household size remained the same as that of married households.
  
• spent more per person per month for electricity compared with a married household, as multiple people can be watching the same television, listening to the same radio, cooking on the same stove and or eating under the same lights.
  
• demanded 38 million extra rooms, with associated costs for heating and lighting (an increase 33 percent to 95 percent greater than in married households).

That means some $6.9 billion in extra utility costs per year, Liu calculated, plus an added $3.6 billion for water, in addition to other costs such as land use. "The research," Liu said, "shows that environmental policy is more complex than one single solution. Governments across the world may need to start factoring in divorce when examining environmental policy." (Read their article here.)

It's long been said that when the scientist reaches the top of the mountain, they'll find that the philosophers and the theologians have been there for quite some time. Thus it should be no surprise to us that God's design for family is consistent with good environmental stewardship. Christians who want to have an impact on society do their best by obeying the great commission, not by licking their fingers and seeing where the winds of change are blowing.

more research here....

Miracles not on 119 West F Street

I try to leave John Shuck alone these days (he started deleting my comments, so what's the point of seeing him outside of a PJC?). But his recent post on miracles cuts to the heart of the disagreement that I and most other orthodox Christians have with him. Strangely enough, it's not THE GAY. It's THE MIRACULOUS.

The dividing line has already been drawn - we're just rehashing it hoping to come up with a different result. Machen, in his book title Christianity and Liberalism, showed that non-supernatural / modernist Christianity (which he termed liberalism) and supernatural / fundamentalist Christianity (which he simply called Christianity) are in fact two separate religions sharing a common source and some overlapping language. Of it, he said:

There is much interlocking of the branches, but the two tendencies, Modernism and supernaturalism, or (otherwise designated) non-doctrinal religion and historic Christianity, spring from different roots. In particular, I tried to show that Christianity is not a "life," as distinguished from a doctrine, and not a life that has doctrine as its changing symbolic expression, but that--exactly the other way around--it is a life founded on a doctrine.

Trying to be "nice" about it has let the bomb get bigger before it blows up in everyone's face. It would have been better to take a different route (especially in our denomination) 80+ years ago.

If you'd like to read on the historic and philosophical arguments that support the Bible's claims of the miraculous, visit (and support) Greg Koukl's ministry at Stand to Reason. I also highly recommend the work of Gary Habermas on miracles generally and especially on the resurrection of Jesus.