Greetings!
Peace, mercy, and grace be with you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
May God bless you and be merciful to you on this Tax Day.
Sunday, April 14, 2024
The Voice 14.15: Introducing Revelation | Revelation 1:1-21
Thus begins a series on the book everyone says they want to study or are terrified out of their minds about the prospect of opening: Revelation. We try to chart a middle way between being completely afraid of it, focused more on what it isn’t rather than what it is, and being those people who are convinced they understand exactly what Revelation is.
Revelation 1:1-21 provides many keys. It’s an apokalupsis, a revealing or unveiling. John saw seven lampstands, but they meant seven churches: John no doubt saw the things he reported in his vision, but the things he saw represent other things. Jesus, the Son of God, is presented as the Son of Man in the guise of the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7:1-14: Revelation features a lot of imagery from the Hebrew Scriptures, but is grounded in the realities of life in the late first century CE in the Roman Empire.
Revelation can very much be seen as the Bible’s “final exam” of sorts, featuring the imagery and core theological meaning of all which came before it. And it is designed to encourage, not terrify.
The Letter of James | James 2:8-13
James 2:10-11 has a great and important de-contextualized message for modern Westerners (and perhaps others) who have a view of judgment more akin to the Egyptian Book of the Dead than anything resembling what is found in the New Testament. Once we’ve transgressed once, we’re transgressors. We’re sinners. We depend on God’s mercy.
Yet in context the message is no less compelling: we easily forgive ourselves and overlook how we might show prejudice, especially when it correlates with societal norms and standards. But God does not think of it so flippantly. It is a serious sin, especially when done within the assembly of the Lord’s people.
We also need to be careful about the “judgy judgy.” We can tell ourselves all day long we need to be zealous for the truth, but do you know who is also zealous to accuse the people of God? Satan, the Adversary and Accuser. As we have judged others, so we also will be judged. If we expect God’s mercy (possibly read hesed, covenant loyalty) to triumph for us, then we need to demonstrate how said mercy has triumphed in our association with others.
Lesson: Clothed With Christ | Galatians 3:1-29 | Paul’s Letter to the Galatians
Outline | Podcast | Conversation
There’s a lot going on in Galatians 3:1-29. Paul’s first (and IMO best) argument regarding receiving the Spirit by faith in Christ and His faithfulness and not by the works of the Law; Abraham’s justification by faith; the paidagogos illustration, envisioning the Law of Moses like a guardian overseeing children until their time of maturity; being clothed with Christ in baptism; oneness in Christ.
It all flows, but we’re still working out all of the implications of it. Or, perhaps more accurately, living in the tension between how we would have liked for Paul to work out those implications versus how he actually worked them out.
One of the great sights in Edinburgh is St. Giles' Cathedral, pretty much the Scottish national cathedral. The stained glass portraits are well crafted and beautiful. Here is a triptych of Jesus’ miracles: I’d hazard healing a man born lame, turning water to wine, and raising Jairus’ daughter.
On the Internets
Christianity Was Always For the Poor | David Bentley Hart
What?!? A Jacobin link?!? Those are commie reds!
Yes, they are, but David Bentley Hart (DBH) is a compelling theologian. His prose is often derogatory and his attitude often insufferable. Yet he remains a genius whose ideas demand a reckoning.
If we are serious about the restoration of apostolic Christianity, and not merely the outward form of ecclesial organization and internal conduct, we need to seriously grapple with how Jesus and the Apostles considered and treated the poor and matters of wealth.
Book Reviews
It’s not really a newsflash: our atomized society has led to significant increases in loneliness.
In The Loneliness Epidemic: Why So Many of Us Feel Alone and How Leaders Can Respond (affiliate link; galley received as part of early review program), Susan Mettes explores research from Barna about various groups and loneliness, explains the results, and considers what might be able to be done about it.
The author began with loneliness in America and defining loneliness, reminding everyone some solitude is good and healthy, but in our society a good number of people feel very much isolated and alone. She compares and contrasts the stereotypes about loneliness with what survey results show in terms of age, romance, insecurity, social media, faith, and privacy: the oldest prove more lonely than might have been imagined, as well as many within romantic relationships and even those who go to church, although churchgoing in general was associated with lower levels of loneliness.
She then considers what people can do in order to avoid or mitigate loneliness, and it involves finding one’s community into which one belongs, being close to a few but not necessarily many people, establishing healthy and appropriate expectations with oneself and one’s relationships, and encourages people in breaking out of a loneliness cycle.
The author also well noted how loneliness is not inherently a problem to solve; as Jesus left the crowds at times to go and pray to His Father alone, so we all could use a little time to ourselves. Yet, as with all things, a bit too much alone time, and social isolation, can prove extremely challenging and difficult for people to navigate, and the evidence for this is all around us.
Man was not made to be alone; our emphasis on (philosophical) liberalism and the elevation and exaltation of the individual inherent therein has, by necessity, loosened and frayed communal bonds, and we are being powerfully reminded how humans are indeed social creatures. Hopefully, at some point, our society in general will turn back toward community; until then, as Christians we do well to foster community among the people of God and make good on our professed association as brothers and sisters in Christ.
If there were a book version of a scholastic WrestleMania, this book might be it.
Cathars in Question (affiliate link; galley received as part of early review program), the fourth volume in the Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages series, represents a series of essays associated with a 2013 conference on the Cathars.
The traditional story has been that the Cathars were the western Mediterreanean flowering of Bogomil-influenced dualist theology which developed in the twelfth century and flourished in the thirteenth century until violently suppressed by the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade. “Cathar” meant “the pure,” and they were also known as the Albigensians.
The way the editor introduces Cathars in Question would lead a person to believe the entire existence and concept of the “Cathars” is under significant argument and dispute, and the various scholars who wrote essays are the main disputants between the “traditionalists” who affirm all of the above and the “skeptics”. Yet the penultimate essay, written by one of the said “skeptics,” does the best job of laying out the land and the nature of the dispute: the existence of the Cathars as a coherent group with some kind of ecclesiastical infrastructure, a dualist theology, and significant influence in the Languedoc of France and parts of northern Italy by the middle of the thirteenth century is not under question. What is under dispute is whether the evidence is sufficient to say such was true of the “good men” and others written about in the twelfth century, or whether the inquisitors were making more of something than actually existed. In this “skeptical” view, there might be some dissenters, but the issues of dissent were as political as they might be religious, a southern French extension of the spiritual vs. secular power struggles of the High Middle Ages.
As a generally disinterested outsider, it was interesting to consider the various arguments and how they were argued, although I would have definitely appreciated the insights from the penultimate essay far earlier. Admittedly I did set forth something like the traditional story in the Historical Overview of A Study of Denominations, and apparently was a bit too early in dating (no one would put them at the beginning of the twelfth century, apparently), but nothing in that story is terribly different if they come a bit later.
The earliest and last essays seem to come from the main “skeptic” vs. “traditionalist” advocates; essays in-between tend to cover all sorts of other related grounds, many of them quite interesting. The essay considering Bogomil literature and the prevalence of Old Testament pseudepigraphal documents was fascinating: why, indeed, are so many of the Old Testament pseudepigraphal stories preserved in Old Slavonic, and often only in Old Slavonic? Historical discussions about what it meant to be a “good man” or “good woman” were also interesting, and how what had been a kind of term for gentry ended up getting somewhat associated with the heresy, and perhaps not for the best of reasons. It was ironic to learn how “Cathars” themselves seemed to describe each other as “good Christians,” and not as “Cathars” or as “good men/women.”
When it was all said and done, it seemed to me the “skeptics” relied more on bombastic rhetoric and substance, and their concerns overstated. “Traditionalists” may not be accurate on everything but had far more documentation and substance to underlie their claims. While perhaps what is later called “Catharism” may not be as fully developed in Languedoc, etc., in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, since all agree there is such a group with such an organization by the second half of the thirteenth century, a little bit of Occam’s razor would suggest it is not treasonous to the primary sources to infer dualist theology, Bogomil influence, and some level of ecclesiastical structure before 1250. Sure, inquisitors have their purposes and ideologies when they report on what they are up against; but assuming they have overstated their case entirely seems unwarranted. I ultimately found myself in agreement with the final essayist and his lament: it seems that research in the Waldensians was far better managed with critical insights into primary sources in ways which the “skeptics” vs. “traditionalists” polemic and argumentation has made nearly impossible for Catharism.
But, yes, in the pages of this book is a full on scholastic wrestling match. Fun times.
Thanks as always for your interest and support. Please read, share, and subscribe!
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
Ethan