What Would Jesus Boo?

Last week Americans were treated to an extraordinary spectacle: the Golden Rule was booed and an adulterer was cheered by a crowd likely composed of a majority of professed Evangelicals. I’m speaking here about the two Republican presidential debates in South Carolina.

When Ron Paul introduced the idea that America’s foreign policy should be based on the Golden Rule, he was nearly drowned out by boos from the crowd. They did not want to hear that the US should make it a policy to treat other nations the way we would like other nations to treat us. Yes, a Bible belt crowd actually booed the doctrine of Christ.

Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, elicited wild cheers from the crowd the next night when a reporter from CNN opened the debate by quizzing Gingrich about comments put forth by his ex-wife that he wanted an open marriage. Gingrich, who seems to have perfected the art of playing the professional indignant, deflected the question by turning the issue of his marital fidelity into a referendum on the liberal media. The crowd ate it up.

As an Evangelical I have to ask, What’s up with that? What god do these people worship? Is it the Lord Jesus Christ or Mars the Roman god of war? Is it the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, or Priapus the Greek fertility god?

For more on the SC crowds booing of the doctrine of Christ, please see this article by a professed believer.

CVMT No.3: Introduction, The Questions of Philosophy

Those coming to philosophy for the first time often find it at once interesting and frustrating. Clark likens philosophy to a puzzle that can, on the one hand, delight and amuse, and, on the other, frustrate and bewilder. Some people find it boring, thinking it has no practical value. Others find philosophy intimidating and try to ignore the subject altogether. But love it or hate it, one thing’s for certain: you cannot avoid it. The reason for this is simple, philosophy is the most basic of intellectual disciplines. It’s province is the world of men and things.

Clark provides an interesting quote from Blaise Pascal, a famous 17th century French mathematician and philosopher, in which Pascal states,

Man is but a reed, the weakest thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But though the universe should kill him, man would still be nobler than what kills him, because he knows that he dies; and the advantage that the universe has over him, the universe knows nothing of. Thus all our dignity consists in thought.

Pascal, as does Clark, distinguishes between men and things and holds than man is superior the inanimate universe. Anyone who has studied contemporary philosophy probably finds their view rather striking, inasmuch as a great deal of contemporary thought would subordinate man to nature. Several years ago there was a popular bumper sticker – popular at least in some circles – that read, “The earth does not belong to man, Man belongs to the earth.” For some people, this blatant paganism represented the very height of spirituality. Others, who were raised with some knowledge of Christianity and the Bible, perhaps found this statement absurd. But whether or not one agrees or disagrees with the notion put forth on the bumper sticker, that person must answer this question: How do you know?

Millard Fillmore II

If you’re like me, you probably haven’t spent much time thinking about Millard Fillmore, the 13th president of the United States. If for some reason Fillmore’s name does come up, a lot of us would probably react something like “That guy? What a nerd. Seriously, with a name like that, you must be joking.”

That’s what one write for Foreign Policy would have your believe as well. In his snarky hit piece on Ron Paul, Uri Friedman tries to tar Paul with the Fillmore brush. To Friedman’s credit, he does provide a rather extensive quote from Fillmore’s first state of the union address, which gives the reader ample opportunity to decide for himself just how foolish Fillmore – and by extension – Paul are. Here’s the Fillmore quote,

Among the acknowledged rights of nations is that which each possesses of establishing that form of government which it may deem most conducive to the happiness and prosperity of its own citizens, of changing that form as circumstances may require, and of managing its internal affairs according to its own will. The people of the United States claim this right for themselves, and they readily concede it to others. Hence it becomes an imperative duty not to interfere in the government or internal policy of other nations; and although we may sympathize with the unfortunate or the oppressed everywhere in their struggles for freedom, our principles forbid us from taking any part in such foreign contests. We make no wars to promote or to prevent successions to thrones, to maintain any theory of a balance of power, or to suppress the actual government which any country chooses to establish for itself. We instigate no revolutions, nor suffer any hostile military expeditions to be fitted out in the United States to invade the territory or provinces of a friendly nation. The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application. We should act toward other nations as we wish them to act toward us, and justice and conscience should form the rule of conduct between governments, instead of mere power, self interest, or the desire of aggrandizement. To maintain a strict neutrality in foreign wars, to cultivate friendly relations, to reciprocate every noble and generous act, and to perform punctually and scrupulously every treaty obligation — these are the duties which we owe to other states, and by the performance of which we best entitle ourselves to like treatment from them; or, if that, in any case, be refused, we can enforce our own rights with justice and a clear conscience. (Emphasis in the original)

Yep, that Millard Fillmore. What a dunce. He just didn’t realize the great benefits that can accrue to a nation for killing lots of people in foreign entanglements. He was so stupid he actually believed Christ’s golden rule has “a national as well as a personal and individual application.” Outrageous! Unthinkable! Clearly the man had no business in the White House, just and Ron Paul clearly has no business in the White House. As Friedman sees it, the problem with these gentlemen is that they just don’t want to kill enough people. But thankfully, Friedman is on the case to make sure we stay on the warmongering straight and narrow.

Please click here to read Friedman’s piece in full.

 

Baucham for Paul

While Texas conservatives were at war over the weekend trying to decide which Roman Catholic Republican they could back against Mitt Romney, along comes Voddie Baucham to give Ron Paul a ringing endorsement. It’s truly refreshing to read the comments of a man who is able to look past all the hype and see that Dr. Paul is far and away the best friend Evangelicals have among current presidential candidates.

Baucham writes,

Dr. Paul does not beat his Christian faith like a drum in his public/political life. Unfortunately, that is off-putting for the “Christian Right”. However, in a world full of ‘posturing’ in an effort to win over evangelicals, I find Paul’s public demeanor refreshing. And it is not as though he is a ‘closet Christian,’ either. “I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, and I endeavor every day to follow Him in all I do and in every position I advocate,” wrote Paul on his Web site.[5] I have also had the privilege of talking with both him, and one of his five children about his faith and how it influences his policy positions.

Nevertheless, the more important aspect is the fact that this Southern Baptist (raised Lutheran) is a regular church attender. What would motivate a man to attend church, but not beat a drum about it in an effort to win over evangelicals in an age when political figures play at Christianity (while living totally contradictory lives, and holding heterodox beliefs) in order to assuage the fears of the Christian Right? Having met and talked to Dr. Paul, I would say it is authenticity, and humility more than anything else. He wants “to avoid any appearance of exploiting [his faith] for political gain.”

Imagine that, a man in public life who doesn’t try to exploit his Christian faith for personal gain. How bizarre. How odd. How…dare I say, Christ like. It’s way past time Evangelicals put down their Left Behind colored glasses and got behind the one man in the race who takes his faith and the Constitution seriously.

Please click here to read the rest of Baucham’s article.

Republican Debate 01/16/12

A few brief thoughts about the Republican debate tonight:

• Bain Capital is boring. It’s the sort of “controversy” that makes me want to tune out the first time I hear it.
  
• The discussion about Social Security is a good example of what’s wrong with the political debate in this country. The candidates spent a lot of time going back and forth about what type of government plan is best. In other words, they were all about rearranging the deck chairs why the Titanic sinks. How about this guys: get the government out of the retirement business altogether.
  
• Mitt Romney showed his jackboot tendencies by supporting the National Defense Authorization Act. It is frightening to think that we now have a law that gives the federal government the power to arrest and hold indefinitely an individual on suspicion that he is a terrorist. Romney promises that he will use the law with restraint. This is unconvincing. No president, no government should have such power, and it is an outrage that a presidential candidate can advocate the use – albeit responsible use – of unconstitutional police state powers and still receive broad based public support.
  
• I’m not interested in Mitt Romney’s tax returns.
  

CVMT No.2: Introduction, The Purpose and Limits of the Book

Clark begins the introduction to A Christian View of Men and Things (CVMT) by stating,

“A stable civilization, so it is plausibly argued, always rests on a substantial unanimity of thought. But when ordinary differences of opinion multiply, widen and deepen, when educational systems have contradictory aims, when class consciousness divides the people, and when nations support irreconcilable ideals, the results are war, revolution, brutality, and chaos.” (CVMT, 15)

Hmm. Does any of this sound familiar? If you live in the United States – for that matter if you live anywhere in the western world today – you can see the very situation Clark described playing itself out in the daily headlines. In the US there are many signs of increasing political and class tension, the Occupy Wall Street movement being the most visible manifestation of this.

In the opening section of the introduction to CVMT titled “The Purpose and Limits of This Book,” Clark nicely diagnoses the reason for the mess in which we find ourselves and offers the antidote needed to correct the downward spiral. Here, Clark makes three major points,

1. During the nineteenth century in the US and Great Britain, a broadly Christian philosophy or world view was taught in the schools and universities and served as a unifying principle for society. The result was peace and prosperity in those nations.
   
2. This unifying Christian world view no longer holds sway in the educational institutions of those nations. Humanism, has taken its place and the resulted in societal breakdown.
   
3. In order to defeat the humanists and reconstruct society along Christian principles, Christians thinkers must develop a systematic Christian philosophy. The purpose of this book to lay the groundwork for such a system.
   

My late twentieth century school experience certainly could not be described as Christian in any way, and at times I have secretly found myself wishing I could have lived in an earlier era when the broadly Christian philosophy that Clark mentions held sway in the university. Of course there were problems with this broad system, and it was in part due to these problems that the system eventually collapsed. Chief among those problems was that the philosophy taught was not thoroughly reformed.

Augustine on Predestination

When reading Luther and Calvin, it’s hard to get very far without finding references to Augustine, for both authors make frequent reference to his work. Luther himself got his start as an Augustinian monk, and Augustine’s work was a major influence on Luther in bringing him to a Biblical understanding of grace and predestination.

While reading Augustine’s major work City of God, I came across the following passage in which Augustine lays out his views on grace and predestination in what must be one of the clearest statements on these issues by any theologian before the time of the Reformation. He writes,

“Now Cain was the first son born to those two parents of mankind, and he belonged to the city of man; the later son, Abel, belonged to the City of God. It is our own experience that in the individual man, to use the words of the Apostle, ‘it is not the spiritual element which comes first, but the animal; and afterwards comes the spiritual’, and so it is that everyone, since he takes his origin from a condemned stock, is inevitable evil and carnal to begin with, by derivation from Adam; but if he is reborn into Christ, and makes progress, he will afterwards be good and spiritual. The same holds true of the whole human race. When those two cities started on their course through the succession of birth and death, the first to be born was a citizen of this world, and later appeared one who was a pilgrim and stranger in the world, belonging as he did to the City of God. He was predestinated by grace, by grace a pilgrim below, and by grace a citizen above. As far as he himself is concerned he has his origin from the same lump which was condemned, as a whole lump, at the beginning. But God like a potter (the analogy introduced by the Apostle is not impertinent but very pertinent) made ‘out of the same lump one vessel destined for honour, and another for dishonour’. But the first one made was the vessel for dishonour, and afterwards came the vessel for honour. For in the individual man, as I have said, the base condition comes first, and we have to start with that; but we are not bound to stop at that, and later comes the noble state towards which we may make progress, and in which we may abide, when we have arrived at it. Hence it is not the case that every bad man will become good, but no one will be good who was not bad originally. Yet the sooner a man changes for the better the more quickly will he secure for himself the title belonging to his attainment and will hide his earlier appellation under the later name.” (Augustine, City of God, Book XV, Chapter 2, Henry Bettenson trans.)

Impressive work, that.