For Those Who Appreciate Pomp and Symbolism

If Christian culture is to be renewed, habits are more vital than revivals, rituals more edifying than spiritual highs, the creed more penetrating than theological insight, and the celebration of saints' days more uplifting than the observance of Mother's Day. There is great wisdom in the maligned phrase ex opere operato, the effect is in the doing. Intention is like a reed blowing in the wind. It is the doing that counts, and if we do something for God, in the doing God does something for us.

The poet Dana Gioia, the current director of the National Endowment for the Arts, puts it nicely in the poem "Autumn Inaugural":

There will always be those who reject ceremony, who claim that resolution requires no fanfare, those who demand the spirit stay fixed like a desert saint, fed only on faith, to worship in no temple but the weather.

Gioia acknowledges the point:

Symbols betray us.They are always more or less than what is really meant.

Then:

But shall there be no processions by torchlight because we are weak? Praise to the rituals that celebrate change, old robes worn for new beginnings, solemn protocol where the mutable soul, surrounded by ancient experience, grows young in the imagination's white dress. Because it is not the rituals we honor but our trust in what they signify, these rites that honor us as witnesses--whether to watch lovers swear loyalty in a careless world or a newborn washed with water and oil.

If Christ is culture, let the sidewalks be lit with fire on Easter Eve, let traffic stop for a column of Christians waving palm branches on a spring morning, let streets be blocked off as the faithful gather for a Corpus Christi procession. Then will others know that there is another city in their midst, another commonwealth, one that has its face, like the faces of angels, turned toward the face of God.

Robert Louis Wilken, First Things, April 2004.

The Contemporary Pulpit: Midrash at its Best! 

Instead of all the commotion some are causing in reformed-evangelical circles about the use of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism sources and whether or not they are helpful to current Christian discussions, one might begin by thanking these Jewish exegetes and preachers for the helpful framework and tradjectories they provided us with.  Can anyone truly admit that contemporary Christian preaching is anything other than midrash?  Richard N. Longenecker says that midrash is

"...exegesis which, going more deeply than the more literal sense, attempts to penetrate into the spirit of the Scriptures, to examine the text from all sides, and thereby to derive interpretations which are not immediately obvious." 

and

"Midrashic interpretation, in effect, ostensibly takes its point of departure from the biblical text itself (though psychologically it may be motivated by other factors) and seeks to explicate the hidden meanings contained by means of agreed on hermeneutical rules in order to contemporize the revelation of God for the people of God."  

Sound familiar?  We are post-modern midrashic preachers of Chirst!  

Motley Crue

A lot could be said about this photo, but at the very least, "This is some Motley Crue!" But a Motley Crue that lacks Vince, Tommy, and the "other" Crue members of course.



Left to "Wright:" Justin "Midrash Le Yustin" Dombrowski, Professor Stephen "NPP" Taylor, Matty B. (that's me), Jerry "Big Daddy" Fourroux.

Epistemology: Van Til and Wright

This is my third reading of N.T. Wright's New Testament and the People of God. And with this pass I am struck--once again--by the similarities between Van Til and Wright. (1) Both authors argue that there is no such thing as a "brute fact" or "mere history," to use Wright's term; (2) both authors sternly critique the Enlightenment project and reveal its presuppositions and subsequent failures; (3) both authors argue for a way of doing theology and history that, at bottom, is circular (a very "post-modern" way of thinking); and (4) both authors recognize that all "knowing" involves circularity (there's just no ifs, ands, or buts about it!).

So what's all the commotion about? Oh, I get it: Wright is an Anglican and not a Presbyterian. And furthermore, he didn't teach at Westminster Theological Seminary. Therefore, he couldn't be saying anything we could embrace.

N.T. Wright Summerfest

For those of you who are interested (and for those of you who are not), I will be spending my summer rereading the first two volumes of N.T. Wright's series Christian Origins and the Question of God along with rereading The Climax of the Covenant, while beginning to sink my teeth into The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of the aforementioned series. Moreover, I will work my way through Romans with the aid of Wright, Cranfield, Dunn and Luther (to throw in an "Old Perspective" reading).