Jolly Digest 2-2-05

Update - 9:45pm

The Christian Carnival is up . . .

Check it out at Wittenburg Gate.

Justifying Division in the Church . . .

Mark at Pseudo-Polymath challenges God bloggers to justify divisions in the church. 

My question to the God Blogosphere is the following. Of the differences we hold, why are they strong enough to keep us apart, out of communion, and in (sometimes bitter) disagreement. What are these differences? I challenge you to defend them! Tell us what differences you hold more important than what you profess each week: your belief in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. Or are the differences just political and based on historical inertia? If it is just traditions of styles of worship and praxis, why does that still hold us apart? I don't have the answers to these questions, but many out there who read this undoubtedly have thoughts on this.

I'll say more about this later, but I do have an initial knee-jerk reaction to the question.  The question itself assumes that "one holy catholic and apostolic church" shouldn't have any divisions in it, and I'm not sure that we can assume such a thing.  Certainly none of us desires division, and while it doesn't seem ideal that Paul and Barnabbas divided in Acts 15:36-41, if you look at the text closely there is no word of rebuke to either Paul or Barnabbas.  Certainly, most division in the church is needless and wrong, but it is not axiomatic that all division mitigates against the idea of there being "one holy catholic and apostolic church." 

I've got more thoughts, but I'll share them in a later post.

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I haven't posted a Jolly Digest in a few days because my writing time has been taken up with other things - like getting "My Journey Into Grace" ready for our church to print as a pamphlet.  And, I'm working on an article I plan to submit to our denominational magazine in the near future. In the meantime, there is a whole lot of good blogging going on.

Congratulations Marla . . .

The Proverbial Wife has now become the Proverbial Mother again, ongratulations to mother and child.

A good thought for blogging evangelicals . . .

I followed a link on Marla's blog to this post at Sun and Shield called "Evangelical Blogging."  Drawing on C. S. Lewis it is a post that reminds us that our best bet for influence as evangelicals won't necessarily come from writing about religious stuff.  Lewis says:

I believe that any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science may do much more by that than by any directly apologetic work. The difficulty we are up against is this. We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so; but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted. As long as that situation exists, widespread success is simply impossible. We must attack the enemy's line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians about other subjects--with their Christianity latent.

How true.  The problem with writing solely about religious stuff is that it gives the impression that Christianity is only concerned with religious stuff, and not the totality of life.  That's one disadvantage I have as a preacher.  I spend all of my life in religious settings and really don't have expertise in other matters.  But many other Christians do.  From time to time I will hear from someone who wants to join the League of Reformed Bloggers or PCABlogs who is concerned that their blog might not fit in because it doesn't deal solely with religious matters.  I always tell them that, as long as their writing is guided by a Christian worldview, any subject is worth writing about. 

On Israelis and Palestinians . . .

Mike Russell at Eternal Perspectives has done a two part post reviewing Gary Burge's book Whose Land? Whose Promise? which seeks to bring a biblical perspective to the whole Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.  The review is very thorough and will give you a fair amount of understanding about the whole conflict, even if you don't read the book.  What Burge deals with, and what Mike shows in his review, is that many evangelical leaders advocate unqualified support for the nation of Israel, but the issues involved are far from black and white.  Burge's object is to get evangelicals to re-think their blind allegiance to modern day Israel.  Mike supports Burge's book in general, but finds him to criticize Israel too heavily, without corresponding criticism of the sins of the Palestinians.  Mike eloquently summarizes it this way:

Burge preaches to Jerusalem – in the spirit of Isaiah and Jeremiah – but also needs to preach to Nineveh in the spirit of Jonah and Nahum.

As to my own two cents on this matter, I have never been one of the blind supporters of the nation  of Israel.  As a covenantalist,  I believe the church has inherited the promises  given to Abraham and I really don't see any particular prophetic significance to events happening in Israel.  According to the writer to the Hebrews, even Abraham's self conscious understanding of the land promises didn't locate the fulfillment of those promises in a piece of real estate in the middle east, but in the city that is to come. To Abraham, the one to whom the promises were given, the "promised land" was a foreign land, per Hebrews 11:8-10 (and by the way, this is not a "spiritualizing" or "allegorizing" of the promises, it is a "biblicizing" of the promises).  Besides, the modern nation of Israel is a self-consciously secular nation. Christians ought to filter their response to Israel and Palestine through the same grid they would filter their response to any other nation.  This is what it appears Burge is doing and what Mike has done in his review.  Hill Country Views has a response to these posts you might want to read as a followup.

Comments

[Ashley]

Hi Jollyblogger, I was hoping you could change our blog's display name on the "League of Reformed Bloggers" aggregator from To a Discerning Eye to The Lion Rampant (It's The Lion Rampant on the PCA blog list and we're trying to keep only one identity out in the blogosphere - thanks!) and thanks for your consistent good thoughts!

[cwv warrior]

Thanks for Marla's blog and the C.S.Lewis quote. Gotta write that down. When reading Pearcey's Total Truth, I was ultimately let down by her lack of pep talk. The idea of putting the Christian Worldview out there in various realms supports the cultural mandate to subdue the earth. It's true that because this hasn't happened, in general, not only is the church suffering from lack of relevance, but the culture is nearly beyond hope. This message to get out there in education, politics, science, arts, law, family, business ethics, etc. etc. etc. is of the utmost.

[Linda]

I agree wholehareartedly with C. S. Lewis. I really enjoyed reading The Left Behind Books. So many snobby, elitests, are in a snit about them. They are to me and (60 million) other readers an interesting and different way to look at Revelations. Regardless of what you think of the theology it is an interesting view(for Many). Before you flame me...keep in mind, (I don't really care if you believe Revelations) it is purely fiction, and rather faithful to Revelations.