Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Braai Day


I have a new personal hero.

Driving home Monday, tears literally came to my eyes as I listened to an All Things Considered (NPR) story about Jan Scannell, who is on a one-man crusade to unite South Africa around the wonder of grilling over hardwood while drinking beer. No country this side of glory can compare to these United States, but I'm almost ready to emigrate just so I can regularly partake of boerewors.

Grilled sausages: that which truly unites all humanity.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Mud


Mrs. Curmudgeon and I just saw Mud, a coming-of-age drama set in Arkansas. The story centers on a 14 year-old boy and his best friends. They're excellently played by relative unknowns, but the supporting cast is stellar, including Michael Shannon, Reese Witherspoon, legendary-playwright-and-actor Sam Shepard, and the unfortunately-underrated-because-he-can't-keep-his-shirt-on Matthew McConaughey.

The poster is guilty of some hyperbole when it describes the film as an "American classic." (Jacob Lofland, who plays Neckbone [admittedly, that's a classic name], bears some resemblance to the River Phoenix of now-classic Stand by Me fame.) However, it does something which I can't recall any other film ever doing: its central drama is the romantic yearning of the adolescent American male. With all their raging hormones, most forget that boys can be just as romantically inclined as girls. Thankfully, Mud doesn't take the cynical route: the film not only portrays Ellis' longing, it moves him through disillusionment to that longing's recovery and continuation.

Perhaps not a new American classic, but for that portrayal a movie well worth watching.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Patrick Henry’s Very Modern Proposal


Over at the First Things website, James R. Rogers provides a fascinating analysis of a legislative battle in Virginia in the 1780s, when Patrick Henry introduced a bill which would impose a tax which would go to support pastors, the maintenance of Church buildings, and a system of public schools. Those in the Christian home schooling movement who have apotheositized Patrick Henry would do well to consider his arguments alongside those of his successful opponents, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and ask who best understood the proper relationship of the state to the Church.

Oh, and as a proud graduate of a Virginia public high school and university: sic semper tyrannis!

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Is Darryl Hart serious?


Darryl G. Hart is a Church and American religious historian (yes, those are two distinct categories), and a ruling elder in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I've read several of his books and attended some of his lectures, mostly of a historical and sociological bent, and am rather appreciative of his lonely quest to ground Christian identity in the marks of the visible Church rather than the ineffable experiences in which most American baptists and evangelicals try to root their assurance of salvation. As sympathetic readers of this blog know, it's a quixotic endeavor, and in much of his scholarly work I find Hart a supportive voice in the campaign to restore the visible Church to her God-ordained primacy.

However.

Some years ago now, I heard an interview in which a political thinker of some note (no, I can't remember who it was) was asked what he thought of something Ann Coulter had recently said. After a moment of sincere hesitation, he responded to the effect that he considered Ann Coulter a performance artist, not a political analyst; and since he didn't think she believed what she said, he didn't feel any obligation to refect on her words either. I think much the same thing when I read Darryl Hart on the relationship of Church and state or of Christian to these United States. There's a serious philosophy in there, but he demands a consistency and purity which seems to me utterly disconnected from the world in which we live.

While I am accordingly dubious of much which appears on his blog, this month I was driven to jaw-dropping astonishment by his review of Richard Gamble's In Search of the City on the Hill, which appears in the current Ordained Servant. I haven't read Gamble's book, which explores the ways in which a metaphor Jesus deployed in the Sermon on the Mount to describe his disciples and the Church was appropriated into American political rhetoric. An interesting topic, that, and perhaps Gamble succeeds in even-handedness and nuance. Hart does not. His stance becomes a self-defeating posture in the final paragraph of his review (commas supplied by my compulsion to line-edit):
Far too often Christians in the United States have let partisan politics obscure their higher commitment to Scripture. That is why evangelical Protestants, for instance, overwhelmingly supported Republican candidates who, despite the misuse of biblical language, appeared to be defending traditional American ideals. Of course, as Gamble shows, those ideals were not Jesus’s or Winthrop’s. But patriotism proved to be a more forceful influence than Scripture’s own teaching.
Re-read that paragraph if you like (I certainly have), or go read it in its original context. Hart seems to suggest that evangelicals who vote for candidates who defend traditional American ideals are somehow betraying Scriptural ideals. Wait: really? Writing as someone who chooses to vote for fringe candidates rather than compromise my (admittedly idiosyncratic and unspeakably lofty) principles, I nonetheless understand why other Christians make a different choice. If one believes the best way forward is to participate in the system as it currently operates, perhaps in the hope of gradual reformation towards more genuinely constitutional principles, that's a legitimate choice which, in itself, doesn't compromise one's allegiance to Christ's Lordship (at least so far as I can tell). Given that prior choice, why wouldn't a Christian vote for candidates who appear to defend traditional American values, not to mention what was once the consensus moral position in our national culture?

With (I am given to understand) Richard Gamble, Hart appears shocked, shocked, that 20th century politicians would appropriate a Biblical metaphor and Christians not rise up in furious umbrage. Now, I hate to point this out to historians, but America is an English-speaking country, and the two greatest influences on all educated discourse amongst English-speaking peoples are Shakespeare and the King James Bible. As a high-Church presbyterian, I believe only the Church is the city on the hill in the way Jesus meant that metaphor. As an American devoted to the propositions on which this nation was founded, I in all sincerity believe these United States are also a city on a hill and a light to the nations, but in a way quite different from the way in which the Church is. If I can believe both of those things, then a man of Hart's learning and education ought at least to understand that such a reconciliation of beliefs is possible, and that one can think of America as a city on a hill without being a blinkered idiot who has abandoned all commitment to Biblical principle in the public sphere.

Darryl Hart has some interesting points to make about the way Christians conceive of their role in the political arena. Perhaps if he presented them with more nuance and seriousness, those points would be taken seriously.

Monday, August 19, 2013

A differentiated unity


To the extent Cornelius Van Til is known, it is for his work in Christian apologetics, where he is perhaps the greatest architect of presuppositional argumentation. However, the scope of his work was far broader, giving John M. Frame good grounds to consider him the greatest theologian since John Calvin. Some of his most interesting thinking was on the doctrine of the Trinity. (Lane Tipton, pride of Westminster Theological Seminary in California's Class of 1999, has done some admirable work on Van Til in this area.) 

Van Til argued that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the sole means by which to resolve the philosopher's inability to reconcile the one and the many. In the midst of an otherwise middling "God of the Philosophers" in the June/July 2007 issue of First Things, Wolfhart Pannenberg has a paragraph which I think Van Til might have liked. (Emphases are original.)
...The Christian insistence is that God as such is to be understood as a differentiated unity. An undifferentiated unity means unity opposed to the many. Unity that is opposed to the many presupposes and therefore is conditioned by that opposition. Precisely because that is a conditioned unity, it cannot be the absolute unity that is before and above the many. Only
the triune God, as differentiated unity, is absolutely and unconditionally the one God. It follows that true monotheism is trinitarian.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

The end is literally nigh



The illiterates have won the figurative battle over "literally," according to cnn.com. In a victory for the "dictionary-as-linguistic-anthropology-as-opposed-to-a-tool-for-pedants" school, several major dictionaries now offer (what is, in effect) "figuratively" as a definition for "literally."

Congratulations, barbarian hordes. You win this round. But you're not getting my snarky superiority complex until you pry it from my cold dead fingers.

(Don't give up the fight: get the t-shirt to the right [and which represents all that is right, incidentally], here.)

Friday, August 9, 2013

College Waitlist Pride


I thought these t-shirts from shirtwoot were mildly amusing, in an ironic kind of way, until I scrolled all the way down the page and saw this:

Which is just awesome.

I do have a birthday coming up, you know...

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Just pay for it, already


They say information wants to be free, but what they mean is people don't like paying for content on the internet. Nonetheless, content producers and providers have to make a living somehow, and sometimes the good stuff isn't free. That's the case with the August/September issue of First Things. As always, a half-dozen or so articles are available online for no charge, but what I'd like to recommend requires purchasing a copy. Since, however, the Kindle version of the "print edition" is only $1.99, cost really is no excuse.

R.R. Reno's "The War on the Weak" compellingly argues that the libertarian moral anti-nomianism promoted by today's upper classes and cultural elites have the effect of destroying necessary social institutions (such as marriage and family) in the lower classes, which in turn subjugates them to unending poverty. Mary Eberstadt's "Revolving Revolutions" provides a helpful dose of optimism in light of our national establishment's deliberate plunge into moral turpitude, arguing that the tide can turn, has turned previously in our history, and may be helped to turn by the faithful. In "No Enduring City," David Bentley Hart explores the collapse of Christendom with lines of reasoning which will be familiar to students of OPC history and readers of the most recent OPC denominational historians. Lastly, Jean Bethke Elshtain's lecture "On Loyalty" provokes thought and reflection on an overlooked but essential element of every aspect of the Christian life.

Truth is, information doesn't want anything other than to be read. Do so.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Is Conversion a “Train Wreck”?


“How do I tell you abut my conversion to Christianity without making it sound like an alien abduction or a train wreck? Truth be told, it felt like a little of both.” Rosaria Butterfield returns to the train wreck metaphor several times in The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (which I review here), and she justifies it with ample evidence. Her encounter with the Gospel turned everything upside-down and inside-out, so much so that her current life bears almost no resemblance to her life before Christ.

In my own ministry, however, I have witnessed the exact opposite. I have known people whose lives were chaotic and miserable, and conversion introduced them into a process of increasing orderliness and peace. When the Gospel requires converts to take up a new life and leave everything behind, some people are very glad to do so.

For people like Butterfield once was, sin “works;” that is, their particular sins give order and structure to their lives which enable them to succeed in the world, just as Butterfield’s pride and self-centeredness/exaltation drove her to success in academia. For others, sin leaves them a dysfunctional mess, unable to survive in the world. (This is the overall portrait of the fool’s life painted by the Proverbs.)

I’m not arguing with Rosaria Butterfield so much as supplementing her insights. Yes, conversion really can wreck a person’s life. But when a person is already a wreck, conversion can be the first real opportunity to build a life.


Monday, August 5, 2013

The day of God


In 2 Peter 3:12, Peter refers to the moment of eschatological judgment as "the day of God," which is a tad unusual since it is usually called in Scripture "the day of the Lord." This is because it will be marked by the return of Christ the Lord in glory, and will be the occasion on which he judges the quick living and the dead. In the New Testament, "God" most often refers to the Father, and "the Lord" to the Son; "the day of the Lord" belongs to the Son and thus is the eschatological Lord's Day.

Although Calvin doesn't give the reference, I think he explains the anomalous term rightly when he says Peter is thinking of 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 and the fact that the Son, when he has won the final victory over all his enemies, will "deliver the kingdom to God the Father" (1 Cor 15:24). In other words, what begins as the day of the Lord will conclude as the day of God.


Thursday, August 1, 2013

The end just got a little more nigh


Centuries from now when our descendants are living in caves, hiding from the robot overlords ruling the dystopian landscape, they will know the moment humanity became too weak and flabby to defend itself arrived with the "S'more to Love STL-400 4-S'more Maker." Designed for those who find it too complicated to toast a marshmellow on a stick, then insert it between two graham crackers and a piece of milk chocolate (if you're not too ashamed to identify yourselves).

On an optimistic note for mankind, this probably ended up on the tools.woot.com overstock site because potential buyers recognized that a s'more is built around a toasted marshmellow, NOT TOASTED GRAHAM CRACKERS.

At least when our children's children are huddled in those caves, they'll have flickering fires over which to roast the few marshmellows we leave behind.