The Old Religon in a New World

The "denomination" in America is neither a "church" nor a "sect." Rather, it is a singular product of an environment defined by great space, an absence of formal church-state ties, and competition among many ecclesiastical bodies.

-Mark Noll

I recently finished Mark A. Noll's The Old Religion in a New World. This was a shorter abridgement of his textbook, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, written for a European (German) audience, and reworked for English speaking readers. It is a study of the rise of denominationalism in North America, with a look at movements (especially revivalism) and major figures from Jonathan Edwards to Joseph Smith, George Whitefield to Billy Sunday.

Noll attributed the American contribution to Christian history to the break from European conservativism, with its hereditary caste system and strong church-state connections. The other three contributors were space, race, and plurality. By far the most influential was space. The frontier, with an infinite wilderness, allowed for both break-away groups (Hutchinson, Williams), evangelistic churches with European roots (Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians), and later indigenous bodies (Campbellites, Mormons, Pentecostals), to form their own congregations. If they were faced with government interference (as in early Boston) or persecution (as was true of the Mormons in Illinois), there was always more room to find a place of rest.

The state followed this impulse for religious freedom in the Declaration’s statements about divine rights, and the Constitution’s First Amendment. Christianity in America was a new thing, with a new mind-set. The faith was, to be redundant, Americanized. And, even after the settlement of the country, this same sense of freedom and never-ending expansion is locked into the American religious psyche.

So, on a personal note: reading Noll’s book was a great review of the past. I could have wished for more interaction and even interpretation by the author, instead of the repetition of facts and numbers-- subjectivity would have been more fun than historical objectivity. I never felt bored reading this account, but I did find myself tired--worn out by the sheer volume of groups, sub-groups, splinters, imports from the old world, view-points, new indigenous movements, sects, theologies, revivals, renewals, para-church organizations, social movements, political entanglements, ethnic groups, and in some cases, just plain weirdness, all as a result of an incredible freedom never before experienced by a religious faith.

Noll pointed out that even the most stable and ancient churches are effected by Americanization. The Roman church has bent over backwards to prove that it is a patriotic member of the greater culture. It has insisted that the papacy binds the conscience of the believer in spiritual and ecclesiastical matters only; that it has no authority in political or civic issues. And we all know how seriously American Catholics take the Vatican's stance on birth control and other moral issues. Noll also predicted that, with its great influx of disenchanted evangelicals, Orthodoxy will follow the same cultural path over time.

Let me mention at least four drawbacks of the Americanization of Christianity:

1) It is almost impossible for the church to speak prophetically to the state or the general culture. This is both because it cannot agree on the prophetic word, and because the culture perceives the church as broken and inconsistent. A classic example was the defense of both abolition and slavery by Christians prior to the Civil War, using texts from the same Bible. Non-Christians witnessed literal bloodshed among members of the same faith. This attitude among unbelievers has not really changed.

2) There is no theological maturity or standard. One can join the Roman Church, a Protestant body, or the Fire Baptized Apostolic Church of God of Prophecy of the Two Seeds of Abraham. Freedom means that any Tom, Dick, or Harriett can open a storefront and proclaim whatever. Freedom remains, and mediocrity increases.

3) The Quest for the True Church is near to impossible. What new Christian can objectively find the most mature, biblical, traditional, in-step, relevant, loving, nearest-to-the-heart-of-God, Christ-centered fellowship in a potpourri of over 600 denominations, including at least 10 major varieties of Protestants (with sub-divisions), and approximately 8 Orthodox communions (most of them ethnic)?

4) Church discipline and commitment to a religious community will always be shallow, except in groups that have established closed geographic boundaries (such as the Amish in Pennsylvania). The same freedom that allowed Roger Williams to leave the Puritan experiment in Massachusetts allows me to move to the church down the street if my present church demands moral or theological accountability. It is easy to hide behind the trees in the garden and never deal with my nakedness.

These drawbacks are the fruit of freedom, and I am not sure that the antidote is old world structure or tyranny. While the price of (political) freedom is eternal vigilance, the price of religious freedom may be eternal trivialization. Or perhaps there is another, healthier, way to look at the American religious experiment.

There is a parallel between what happened in the Christian communities along the eastern coast of North America and the Big Bang. All the potential of future religious development was pressurized in those communities, and after a few preliminary probes, it erupted across a continent in a display of galaxies, nebulae, stars, planets, hot fires and cooling metals--all originating from the same source. The explosion was fed over time by waves of immigrants fleeing poverty, political oppression, and in many cases, religious persecution.

Or to put it in terms of the faith: how could the truth of God’s coming among men, his word and story, his passion, new life, and presence in his people, be contained in one set of perceptions, without exploding and re-expressing itself in myriads of ways? I cannot help but think that all the variety points to something too glorious to contain, and the multiplicity began with a single Source. An amazing story can only be told through time in hundreds of different ways.

One must settle on his own planet without forgetting that he belongs to the whole cosmos.

Chesterton on Dickens

The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing, the primary fact. It is our arms and legs, our pots and pans, that are undefinable. The undefinable is the indisputable. The man next door is undefinable, because he is too actual to be defined. And there are some spiritual things that have the same fierce and practical proximity; some to whom God is too actual to be defined.

-GK Chesterton

Just finished GK Chesterton's biography of Charles Dickens. It was a joy to read, mainly because of Chesterton's humor and style. Chesterton asserted that the greatest thing revealed by Dickens' characters is Dickens. Likewise, the greatest thing revealed in Chesterton’s biography of Dickens is Chesterton. I’ll end with some of his quotes. But first, Dickens.

According to Chesterton, Dickens was at heart a child of the (French) Revolution, and a true democrat, believing not in the equality of faceless masses, but in the intrinsic worth of every human being—combining, in fact, the brotherhood espoused by the Revolution with the Christian concept of the distinctive and expansive value of the individual.

Dickens was attacked by literary critics for his response to criticism (an interesting circle). He often rebutted with an involved defense of himself that aggravated more than soothed. America never forgave him his open hostility to American copyright laws, which he believed were robbing him of income. After all, Americans came out in droves during his tour of the country to worship his popularity, not to be slighted by him. Chesterton reminds us that Dickens never let anything go that seemed remotely like injustice, especially injustice to himself.

More importantly, Dickens was criticized for creating novels with fascinating characters within weak plots. It is certainly true that his early works (Pickwick Papers, the Christmas tales) used plot as a way to move their characters from one episode to another, while later works (David Copperfield, Bleak House) show a more mature balance of character and plot. But the criticism misses the point. We today don’t remember much about his plots, but we do remember his characters. Dickens is his characters. They are optimistic, find joy in the midst of suffering, and we never want them to die. Chesterton points out that at the end of every novel, we assume that the main characters, even Sydney Carton, live forever. That's because they get inside us.

Tragedy (as an art form) reveals that all men are alike. Even though loss and grief are borne individually, they are unwelcome reminders that we share the common experiences of our humanity. But Dickens was a humorist, and humor has the opposite effect. Men strike us as funny because they are different. And Dickens was fascinated with the differences between men. But this fascination was not condescension or arrogance. It was a robust and exhilarating joy in who individual men and women simply are.

Humanity for Dickens meant one character at a time, and he created dozens of them. They simply emerged out of his head, and had he lived indefinitely he would populated a whole planet with unique human beings. Dickens’ characters soaked into his readers and occupied their psyches. Chesterton points out that social reformers had only slight impact in Dickens’ time. It was the revelation of the poor as real individuals instead of a faceless class that brought social change in England. His characters helped change a culture because they lived in the hearts of the culture. This is the greatest justification of Dickens' work.

Now to Chesterton: Charles Dickens contains vintage Chesterton passages. Here is one describing the power of democracy in the early 19th Century, before humanism was infected with Darwinism and began its downhill slide into the survival of the fittest and social engineering:

"The spirit of the early (19th) century produced great men because it believed that men were great. It made strong men by encouraging weak men. Its education, its public habits, its rhetoric, were all addressed towards encouraging the greatness in everybody. And by encouraging the greatness in everybody, it naturally encouraged superlative greatness in some. Superiority came out of the high rapture of equality. It is precisely in this sort of passionate unconsciousess and bewildering community of thought that men do become more than themselves. No man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature, but a man may add many cubits to his stature by not taking thought. The best men of the Revolution were simply common men at their best."

High praise for a period of history from a man who saw the late Middle Ages as the apex of human achievement. Let me close with a quote from the last page of the book. It is impossible to read this without seeing Chesterton's influence on CS Lewis:

"But we have a long way to travel before we get back to what Dickens meant: and the passage is along a rambling English road, a twisting road such as Mr. Pickwick traveled. But this at least is part of what he meant; that comradeship and serious joy are not interludes in our travel; but that rather our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy; which through God shall endure forever. The inn does not point to the road; the road points to the inn. And all roads point at last to an ultimate inn, where we shall meet Dickens and all his characters: and when we drink again it shall be from the great flagons in the tavern at the end of the world."

Heaven as an English tavern. Wonderful. We will lift our flagons and proclaim in unison, "God Bless Us, Every One!"

Book Review: Calvin and CS Lewis

Yet if he should encounter one

Of the hive’s enquiry squad

Whose work it is to find out God

And the nature of time and space,

He would put him on to the case. -Frost: “Departmental”

I just finished reading Jordan Ferrier's Calvin and CS Lewis: Solving the Riddle of the Reformation, an attempt to save Protestant theology from what the author perceives as the coercive views of John Calvin and his Reformed descendants, by a solid dose of what he calls “classical theism,” based heavily on the thought of CS Lewis.

This is an eye-opening book title for any Christian my age who cut his teeth on Lewis and the Inklings in the 1960’s and 70’s, and discovered Luther and Calvin in the throes of a later mid-life crisis. Many such Christians have by now amalgamated the two into an older man’s version of the teenager’s “whatever...,” having found more imminent concerns than predestination, such as prevailing sin and diverticulitis.

I was put off by a couple of things when I began to read Calvin and CS Lewis. One was that I have not been able to find out anything about the author. This may be owing to the fact that I read it on Kindle, and did not have access to the blurbs and biographical data that are found on the back page of most books. I also reacted to the claim to “solve the riddle of the Reformation.” Protestants have been wrinkling their foreheads and debating with some heat the mysteries of God’s sovereignty and goodness for the last 500 years, and I would personally grieve the loss of fuel for endless late night dorm room sessions over pizza (or in the 19th Century, good cigars).

Ferrier rightly avers that Calvinism is a tight theological system that will collapse if its presuppositions can be disproved. Calvin’s major premise, according to Ferrier, is that God’s sovereignty must be defended at all costs, and that God’s other attributes are in submission to it. God must be free to be sovereign, and any other sovereign, including the free will of man, is a threat to God’s freedom to be God. Lewis’ response is his classic insistence that God does good because it is good (God is “bound” to the good). This position (according to Ferrier) is anathema to Calvin, because it makes God subject to something (goodness) that is outside himself. Lewis’ response is that all goodness comes from God, and man can know good through the creation and through natural revelation, and therefore there is no real conflict between God’s goodness and his sovereignty.

Another of Calvin’s basic presuppositions is the “T” in TULIP, total depravity. I’ve always taken that term in a quantitative, not a qualitative, sense. We are not as bad as we possibly can be, but every facet of our humanity is marred and warped by “badness.” That does not mean that we are incapable on knowing or practicing the good. We simply cannot think or act perfectly. That is total depravity according to Doughty. Total depravity according to Calvin via Ferrier takes a whole new twist. According to Ferrier’s interpretation, Calvin taught that (1) whatever God does is good. (2) To deny God’s sovereignty is to deny the good. (3) Man in his denial of God’s sovereignty is incapable of knowing good or evil, because he denies good’s source (sovereignty). So therefore, (4) to disagree with Calvin’s doctrine of God’s sovereignty is proof of one’s total depravity. I find it hard to believe that Calvin in his most vitriolic mood could be that egotistical. (Pizza, anyone?) Disclaimer to Ferrier: This is my perception solely. Chalk it up to reading late at night in weak light.

Lewis, according to Ferrier (and I agree with his representation of Lewis), tried to avoid Arminianism and synergism on one hand, and what he viewed as the “coercive” (irresistible) grace taught by Calvin. Lewis came as close to Calvin as he could without relinquishing the human freedom to choose. He preferred to use the term “persuasive grace.” Lewis described his own conversion as being pursued by God, to the point that he was afraid to be alone because the Presence would come upon him. He knew with perfect certainty what he would choose before the moment of choice came, and yet knew he was poised on the razor edge of two futures. He stated that for a few moments he knew there was no real distinction between necessity and freedom. Anybody recognize how close that is to John Calvin, by a hair’s breadth? (Pizza anyone, and a good cigar?)

Theologians have often made a distinction between the essential and economic attributes of God: those that are essential belong to the Trinity as it exists in itself, and those that are economic are attributes of God in relation to the creation. Love, for instance, is an essential attribute, while mercy is an economic extension of love to creatures. Ferrier does make an interesting observation at this point. Goodness is an essential attribute of God, while sovereignty only exists if there is something over which to exercise it (and therefore is an economic attribute). Ferrier hints that goodness may be the essential cause that expresses itself through sovereignty. That is a reversal of Calvin’s (supposed) position. I can’t take that any further, but it’s worth some future contemplation. Here endeth the review. * * * * * * * * * * *

Here beginneth some personal comments. I like John Calvin. Most of his readers will insist that he gets bad press. The man suffered from physical ailments, and still preached and wrote voluminously. There is deep humility and brokenness in him when he speaks of the grace and mercy of God in Christ. I will admit that he gets a little riled about the Roman hierarchy, whom he affectionately refers to as “swine who spew venom from swollen cheeks,” or the mass, in which the “priest chirps and mutters, while the people look on in dumb amazement.” One must remind himself that the man was a product of his age. His Institutes are divided into sections that are easily read in one sitting, and can be read devotionally, if you dare. I remember reading an old Puritan who said he never went to bed without consuming “a morsel of Calvin.” He is worth it. Remember you have to wade through some brush to get to a picnic.

And who of my generation can deny the influence of CS Lewis? I studied English Literature under Clyde Kilby, who knew Lewis personally. I always felt one removed from him, sort of like having a cousin who once touched Elvis’ elbow. What Calvin did for me theologically, Lewis did aesthetically. He brought the world of pagan myth under Christ’s dominion and helped me to understand that truth is truth wherever it appears. He also taught me the importance of story as a means of comprehending life and reality. I can’t imagine a generation of Christians who haven’t fed at his table.

Whatever their differences, I have internalized both these men, contradictions and all, and so far I have not imploded. They are pieces of my life. Lastly, as to the whole free will-election issue, who on earth even wants to try and resolve it? I would like to suggest another starting point than our usual fascination with what God can and cannot do. Most debate on the subject ends up with questions like, “Can God make something so powerful that even he cannot move it?” Lewis’ response to the question would be, “Nonsense is always nonsense.” I am not sure that beginning with abstractions about the attributes of God is helpful. Somehow the debate carries us further away from God than drawing us closer to him. At some point the discussion morphs from a pursuit of truth to the need to be right (a manifestation of depravity, by the way).

Someone I read, I think Luther, said that instead of beginning a discussion of these things with what we barely know (God, and the nature of time and space), we should begin with what we do know, which is Christ. He is the clearest revelation of the nature of God that we have. (One might say that deep questions about God have their beginning in soteriology.) And not only with Christ, but a personal, even subjective, understanding of Christ. The first question is not about the essential and economic attributes of God; the first question is, “What has Christ done for me?” Let’s look at that for a moment.

Christ became incarnate. He became incarnate for me. What does it say about my predicament that God went to all the trouble of taking on human flesh? This is going far beyond sending me a message telling me to change my behavior. Believe me, I know the difference between an e-mail from my manager and a personal visit to my office. The visit means serious business. So the incarnation says something to me about depravity that is far deeper than a need for simple reform.

Christ left us his teachings in the Gospels. But he is not merely a new Moses, with a new set of precepts for living. The teachings of Jesus are, in fact, alarming. Lust equals adultery. Anger equals murder. Unless you do it to one of the least of these, my brethren.... The teachings of Jesus offer little comfort. They tear away human pride and leave us exposed. Again, what does that

tell me about myself?

Christ suffered and died, and rose again, on my behalf. What does that say about me? My need must at least be commensurate with the solution. That means that I must die (or am already dead), and must be resurrected. There is nothing in me that can produce either. With that in mind, at the point of conversion, who takes the initiative? Confronted with my need, do I long to be coerced? (Oh, yes!) Or am I under the influence of a persistent persuasion that waits til I am at the point of no return? Ultimately, like Lewis, I can find no distinction in my own experience between coercion and persuasion, between necessity and freedom.

I will leave the topic here on this fine edge, where all the theology ever written is condensed into inapproachable light.

Blessing, y’all.

The Garden and Fallen Culture

Some thoughts on Genesis, the garden, and fallen culture, not thought through, but "wondering" me: Adam was given a mandate to "replenish the earth and subdue it." The context of this mandate was the garden, which was to be "dressed" and "kept" (served and protected). There is a beautiful fragility to this. The mandate meant dominion, not domination. Adam was to extend the boundaries of the garden over the whole earth. That means that, while science and technology would certainly have increased in an unfallen race, the mission which they served was primarily (for want of a better word) agricultural.

This garden theme reoccurs in Ezekiel, whose eschatological new temple sends forth a river whose banks are lined with trees whose leaves are for healing. The same image reoccurs in Revelation. Jesus spent his final hours praying in a garden, and was buried in one. When he emerged in resurrection glory as the second Adam, it is no accident that he was mistaken for a gardener (we are his "field," his "vineyard").

It was a bit of a shock to discover that, after the fall, the development of what we would call culture or civilization was accomplished by the Cainites, who created a civilization based on human effort and hubris ("and Cain went out from the presence of the Lord"). This is not to say that the dominion mandate was abrogated, but it was certainly marred. Domination was the rule, not dominion. The godly seed (the ante and post-diluvian patriarchs) were hidden and protected by God within the greater culture, like fifth columnists. They contained the seed that would bring forth Israel, and eventually, Christ.(This “secret” working of God through history is another “wondering.”)

Genesis 4:20-22 describes the emergence of the Cainite civilization. Jabal was the father of “such as dwell in tents and have cattle;” Jubal was the “father of all such and handle the harp and organ;” Tubal-cain was “an instructer... in brass and iron.” Animal husbandry, the arts, and industry. Notice the absence of farming and agriculture.

Of course there were farmers and crops at the time. What is interesting is the biblical emphasis. Civilization as it is described in Genesis required gathering together, the formation of cities, and the evolution of a governing oligarchy (domination). The Adamic garden mandate, on the other hand, required scattering

(a foreshadowing of the Great Commission).

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. But there is this association of gentle care of the earth with the Sethite (Judeo-Christian) line, and hard industry, smoke, and close quarters with the Cainite. I recognize that agriculture is a symbol for other realities (our hearts, the church). But there is a greater earthiness to the eschaton than our vision of little wings and clouds will allow. I remember back in Church of the Comforter days one of our members describing our work in the New Creation as freeing the earth from the tons of asphalt and power lines that bind her, and recreating her as a garden. At the time I thought he was indulging in some hippie fantasy. Now I’m not so sure. Certainly the New Jerusalem is pictured as a city (a very symbolic city), but (also certainly) there is work to be done outside her walls.

Enlightening the Eyes

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
-Psalm 19:8b

From the root tsa-wah, "commandment" carries the common meaning of orders from a superior to a servant. But it has other nuances. It overlaps with "instruction," in the student-teacher relationship. Jesus often referred to the body of teaching that he passed on to his disciples as "my commandments." In the Old Testament it sometimes referred to a literal set of instructions given with a commandment: Moses was told to construct the tabernacle and given a set of plans. Likewise Noah had a blueprint of the ark along with the command to build it. In other words, God provides what we need to fulfill what he requires.

The commandments of God are “pure” (ba-rar), a word most commentators associate with the purity of ore or metal. In that sense it can mean “unalloyed,” and carries with it the secondary meaning “bright” or “shiny.” In other words, the commandments of God are not deceitful, nor designed to mislead or trick us. They are straightforward, backed up with whatever instructions we need, and can be trusted to bring us life.

These pure commandments are said to “enlighten the eyes” to make the eyes bright, and a source of light themselves. Jesus recapitulates this idea in Matthew 6:22: The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. We tend to read this text negatively: Beware of what you see, lest it sully your heart and spread evil in the inner man. True enough. But the point of the text in Psalm 19 is that the commandments of the Lord fill our eyes with a light that spreads to our whole being. It is not an injunction to look away, but to behold a pure beauty that transforms.

At this point it is good to remember that Christ is the “fulfillment of the Law to all who believe.” We are admonished in Scripture to look to Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith.” John tells us that when we see him at the eschaton that we will become like him, “for we will see him as he is.” It is the opaque beatific vision (that will only be complete at his coming) that transforms us. Any attempt in the New Covenant age to fulfill the commandments in our own strength is to look inward, not outward.

My pastor made an alarming observation a few weeks ago. He was analyzing the evangelical obsession with “total surrender,” the endless altar calls to give all to God, the striving to “yield our all.” He stated that we simply can’t. It is a hopeless quest. No man can in himself give himself wholly to God. The very quest takes our eyes off the only One who totally surrendered himself to God on our behalf. It is reliance upon his work and his love for us that “enlightens” our eyes, and floods our hearts, not with our striving, but with his presence, and with his surrender.

The Precepts of the Lord

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
-Psalm 19: 8a

My word study book tells me that the Hebrew word for "precepts" (piqudi) is one of the most difficult words relating to the commandments to translate. Its root meaning is to "supervise" or "oversee." Precepts, therefore, are guidelines or responsibilities given by an authority figure to a subordinate, and it can also mean the subsequent visitation and inspection of the subordinate by his superior. The inspection can be both benevolent or harsh, merciful or wrathful, depending on the subordinate's faithfulness to his responsibilities. One cannot help but think of a drill sergeant, and shudder.

But we are delivered from the drill sergeant image by the next word. God's precepts are said to be "straight" (yashar--also translated "upright" or "blameless"). The root meaning is to clear a pathway (or road) of obstacles so that travel is as easy as possible. While it is often used to mean the preparation of our hearts for God's visitation, the opposite is also true. Proverbs 3: 5-6 comes to mind:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean to your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths."

In this sense, God Himself prepares us for his visitation, which becomes a joy rather than an object of dread. The Overseer takes upon himself the task that we in our weakness cannot complete. One thinks of Augustine's prayer, "Grant what Thou commandest, and then command what Thou wilt." St. John, in a New Testament context, reminds us that the love of God so transforms us that "his commandments are not burdensome," and that we "overcome the world" because Christ has removed the obstacles between us and the Father.

Because God visits to us, removing all obstacles as He comes, we no longer dread the visitation, but long for it. Therefore the Psalmist ends this line with "rejoicing the heart." We joy in His finished work, and rest, because we "were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls."

More on Decadence

For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end--it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.
-Habakkuk 2:3

I recently saw a segment of a TV show in which a character who was running for office was practicing a speech. It went something like this: "We must press on to the fulfillment of the American dream by recapturing our core values and making sure that all Americans are free from want in their quest for that dream.” When asked what that meant, he replied, “Who cares? It keeps me from having to deal with sticky issues that might cost me the election.”

This is a parody of what we all know: political language is becoming increasingly decadent, meaning that familiar words have strong emotional, but weak intellectual, content. I wrote about this in more detail in my 2008 blogs. Those dealt with Rosenstock’s analysis of what is necessary for cultural revolutions (good or bad) to occur: decadence of language, followed by a search for an articulate word, followed by the bringing forward of a lost word into the future. We are in a period of decadence in America, in the culture, but also in the church. Both are looking for an articulate word.

I know I’ve beaten this decadence/articulation horse to death. Two things have revived it in me. One is, of course, the fact that this is an election year. I am so cynical that I don’t want to hear the debates. Is there a real native son out there who isn’t mouthing the old mantras? I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that way.

The other reason I can’t leave this horse alone is a well done ad by the Orthodox Church that has been popping up on Facebook. It reminded me of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s explanation of why he won so many battles: “Get there fustest with the mostest.” Orthodoxy is telling us that whatever doctrine or experience we may have, it has beat us to it. They are the fustest with the mostest. I have no bone to pick with Orthodoxy. I like to think that my life as a Christian has been enriched by exposure to it. What I do roll my eyes over is another call to the True Church. Rome has been doing the same thing in its ads lately, though they are aimed more at lapsed Catholics than at converts. Salt Lake too is in the ad business.

All this proves that we are in a decadent period that is experiencing the loss of articulation, and we are trying to fill the void with what is at hand. The word, which is old and new at the same time, has not come forth yet, that is, the word that takes the church beyond her divisions and pre-conceptions. All this foment is proof of its absence. Our assumption is that we have it hidden somewhere and have some control over it. It certainly will come, because the word is the Word, but it will come in its own time and on its own terms. Prayer may be more useful now than a quest.