Calvin tells us not to waste time on philosophical theology:
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”…the definition of Christian wisdom [is] to know what is good or expedient, not to torture the mind with empty subtleties and speculations. For the Lord does not want His believers to employ themselves fruitlessly in learning what is of no profit.
“From this you may gather what you should think of the Sorbonnist theology, to which you may devote your whole life without gaining any more edification in the hope of a heavenly life or more spiritual advantage than from the demonstrations of Euclid.
“Even if it had taught nothing false, it well deserves to be detested in that it is a pernicious profanation of spiritual doctrine. For ‘Scripture is useful’, as Paul says (2Timothy 3:16), but there you will find nothing but cold chop-logic.”
Greek of Acts 24:14, λατρεύω τῷ πατρῴῳ θεῷ Root of Greek πατρῴῳ is πατήρ (pater), father.
NLT: “the God of my ancestors” NIV: “the God of our ancestors”
CSB: “the God of my ancestors”
NET: “the God of our ancestors”
NASB95: “I do serve the God of our fathers,” but adds footnote, “Literally: the ancestral God”
LSB: “I do serve the God of our fathers” but adds footnote, “Literally: the ancestral God”
Two things:
First, pastors don’t warn their sheep God’s word “father” has been deleted hundreds of times in modern Bibles. Pastors today think neutered thoughts and want their Bible neutered. We’ve left father behind. Except maybe Apostles Creed?
Second, supposedly conservative translations NASB95 and LSB both tell readers the literal meaning is “ancestors.” On multiple levels this is perverse.
Realize PresTrump’s words and actions re Greenland and Venezuela will embolden China. Were I Christian Taiwanese, I’d be resigned to Chinese rule and religious persecution.
Likely PresTrump would be inclined to cede Taiwan to China Monroe Doctrine.
PresTrump chose Rodríguez to lead Venezuela and it’s reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn’s proposal decades ago that, following the inevitable end to Communist rule, Russia needed a transition period in governance. Start w/few leaders central and unified. Stabilize things before moving in decentralized, democratic direction.
Some responded to Solzhenitsyn, calling him a closet monarchist. No. Just a judicious realist.
From New Geneva Academy preaching class last night:
We have to reckon with the imperfection of every saint in this world and with the imperfection that attaches to the most highly developed Christian society. There is still sin, oftentimes grievous sin; and therefore we find inconsistency and contradiction in the holiest of men and in the most sanctified society.
…there is so much sin and inconsistency in the behaviour of believers at their best
Repeatedly, PresTrump just does what others knew needed to be done, but were afraid. You think he’s wrong abt Greenland? Read this.
BTW, although written re Greenland, think abt this in connection with China/Taipei and Russia/Ukraine:
“The U.S. bought Louisiana not out of generosity, but to deny France control of the Mississippi. It backed Panama’s break from Colombia to secure a canal it deemed vital. It purchased Alaska to keep Russia away from its doorstep. Britain took Gibraltar for the same reason: Position beats principle when survival is involved. States talk reverently about borders, right up until borders threaten them. When security tightens, ideals are revised.” https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5681672-greenland-power-politics-realism/
**NOTE: This post is not to say PresTrump and Sec. Noem were wise to label Ms. Rich “domestic terrorist.” They were not. More on this in next “Out of Our Minds” podcast.**
Burial—not cremation—is the “sacred and inviolable custom” of Christians.
Calvin:
"For why the sacred and inviolable custom of burying, but that it might be the earnest of a new life? Nor can it be said that it had its origin in error, for the solemnity of burial always prevailed among the holy patriarchs, and God was pleased that the same custom should continue among the Gentiles, in order that the image of the resurrection thus presented might shake off their torpor. (Institutes, IV.iiv.5)
Here’s why some think Venezuela decreases risk of China invading Taiwan. But note part abt US underestimating Russia’s threat. Key point dealing w/communism—esp Russia & China. To them life’s cheap. No hesitation sacrificing millions & no accountability of leaders 4 doing so (read “Carnage and Culture”). What the Chinese learned from America's raid on Venezuela
This diagnosis and condemnation of man’s proud rejection of God’s righteousness should be preached and preached today.
For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. (Romans 10:3)
That Adam’s labour consisted in dressing the garden and keeping it informs us that it was highly worthy of man’s dignity as created after the divine image to be employed in so mundane a task. This is eloquent warning against the impiety of despising and judging unworthy of our dignity the tasks which we call menial. And one cannot but suspect that the widespread tendency to take flight from agricultural and related pursuits springs from an underestimate of the dignity of manual toil and oftentimes reflects an unwholesome ambition which is the fruit of impiety. There is warrant for the judgment that economics, culture, morality, and piety have suffered grave havoc by failure to appreciate the nobility of manual labour.
Multitudes of men and women, if they had thought in terms of this principle and had been taught in the home, in the church, and in the school to think in these terms, would have been saved from the catastrophe of economic, moral, and religious ruin because they would have been preserved from the vain ambition of pursuing vocations for which they were not equipped and which, on sober and enlightened reflection, they would not have sought.
It is a fallacy to think, and it is one that has greatly impoverished the life of society, that culture cannot exist and flourish among manual toilers. It may well be that it actually does not exist and flourish among such. But, if so, it is because our thinking and our social structure have been to such an extent based upon and oriented to this false and pernicious premiss. And this premiss has embroiled us in a vortex from which only revolution in thought and practice will deliver us. Culture on a high level has been developed and can be developed concurrently with, and to a considerable extent through the instrumentality of, tasks which are not professional such as those of the farmer, the artisan, the tradesman, and the labourer. (John Murray, “Principles of Conduct”)
NOTE: In 18th century, Warfield makes similar comments on how the slavery of the South led to men despising anyone who was a manual laborer.
This is something I have to remember constantly. Along with Luther’s ‘the angels sing when a man changes a diaper.’ I so quickly follow my ego rather than my responsibility.
Harold Senkbeil helps us understand something of the nobility of manual labor in his account of growing up on a Minnesota farm.
Anthony Esolen does a good job illustrating the importance of manual labor–that is the labor of men–in his book No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men. At one point he talks about the construction of the Croton Aqueduct in NY, sharing excerpts from an article written by a Charles Barnard in 1889 that chronicled the construction. You can read that article here. It was the need for water in NYC that moved the ‘city fathers’ to call for such an enormous and dangerous task.
Barnard does not tell us whether any men died in the making of this wonder, or whether anyone lost a limb in an explosion or to the recalcitrance of a machine. But he does give us a firsthand account of what some of the work was like. He went down into the depths himself to see it. His entry, at a place under repairs and by a ladder wet with clay, “was rather depressing.” As he and his guides went on, “the spot of sunlight behind us faded away to only a yellow star that at last went out.” Sometimes by the light of their lamps they caught a glow, a strange white mark on the walls, “where the engineers or the inspectors had measured the work or left traces for future measurements or inspections.” Mostly they heard only the rushing of the stream at their feet, but “then might come a distant sound, or rather reverberation, like the ghost of a thunder peal,” and they could not be sure from which direction the sound came. “The lines of brick stretch on and on,” he says, “in uniform, unbroken precision.” It must be so, if the water is going to flow right. “The sloping floor never changes its exact angle, the walls are ever exactly in line, and high above the head is the arched roof. It is the perfection of mechanical work stretching ever onward through darkness.”
… We can hardly understand such work now, and not just because it is gruelingly physical. It demands a constant self-denial, a self-effacement. It says to the men what the battle says to a soldier: “You are not the central thing. This work is. Do it.”
People say that the Bible is a boring book…but they don’t say that about Shakespeare, because the people who teach Shakespeare are zealous for Shakespeare.
The first plank of any nationalism deserving the name “Christian” must be preaching, first to Christians but also unbelievers, obedience to God’s Creation Command, “Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.” The second plank must be “Thou shalt not kill.”
