From time to time I have become notorious among my friends for subscribing to a belief in moral progress, the notion that humanity, as a species, has been slowly improving over time. When I make these claims I tend to face howls of protest and a long list of modern sins: The Holocaust, WWI, WW2, Rwanda. I've stuck to my guns (pun?) in these debates and have defended the notion of moral progress from time to time on this blog.

I think there are a couple of reasons why my friends object to the notion of moral progress. First, they are rightly outraged at modern holocausts and genocides. And to call these things "progress" seems obscene. Second, from a moral pedagogical perspective, preaching progress might take the heat off us, morally speaking. The fear is that if we embrace a notion of progress we will begin to rest on our laurels.

But, as I think everyone can see, these objections are really non sequiters. They don't really answer the question about if, in fact, we have made moral progress.

I got to thinking about moral progress again this week. First, I watched this TED Talk by Steven Pinker On The Myth of Violence. In the talk Pinker marshals (pun?) much of the evidence I've used in my own conversations with friends:


And I also came across this essay (H/T Daily Dish) by the philosopher Jonathan Rée. Rée begins his essay on moral progress this way:

One of the most intriguing questions about morality, it seems to me, is what happens when it changes. What happens, for example, when the subordination of women to men, or their exclusion from higher education or the professions, ceases to seem innocuous or natural, and starts to be regarded as a grotesque abuse? Or when corporal punishment goes out of style, and homosexuality comes to be tolerated or even respected, or when cruelty to animals arouses indignation rather than indifference, and recklessness with natural resources becomes a badge not of magnificence but of monstrous irresponsibility?

There is of course room for disagreement about such alterations of moral opinion. But no one could maintain that they are devoid of discussible intellectual content. No one would claim that – like, say, changing fashions in moustaches or skirt-lengths – they simply reflect the unaccountable gyrations of taste. Indeed it seems probable that moral change, over the long term, involves something like an expansion of horizons, a process of learning, or even – to use a dated word – something you might call progress.

It seems timely, therefore, to turn back to Immanuel Kant’s celebrated treatment of the question “whether the human race is continually improving”. Writing in the 1790s, Kant argued that the “moral tendency” of humanity was, like human knowledge as a whole, destined to carry on getting better till there was no room for further improvement: humanity was imbued, he thought, with a transcendental impulse to refine and clarify its moral opinions as time goes by, or to grow in moral intelligence.

Kant’s faith in moral progress was popular in the nineteenth century (think of Auguste Comte’s Positivism and various branches of Hegelianism), but it is not likely to be promoted with much conviction any more. If you were to show any signs of moral optimism today you would be mocked as the dupe of political boosterism or moral grade-inflation, and friends would try to re-educate you with a catalogue of ferocious wars, futile revolutions and murderous regimes, topped off with some sad sagacity about the destructiveness and deceitfulness of human nature. The old proverb about pride applies to moral optimism as well, or so you would be told: hope comes before a fall.

But pessimists too can be guilty of narcissistic bad faith. If you want to be admired for moral perspicacity, all you need do is cultivate a habit of indignation and dismay: if you can see vice where others find nothing but virtue, or degeneracy where they see improvement, or corruption where they see probity, you can become a Person of Principle at no cost to yourself, while everyone else will look like a tiresome Trimmer, an exasperating Polyanna or an impermeable Pangloss. “Men are fond of murmuring,” as Voltaire once put it; “there is a pleasure in complaining,” he said, and “we delight in viewing only evil and exaggerating it.”

As a matter of fact, moral optimism is not as dead as you might think: it often floats to the surface of contemporary common sense without occasioning much comment. When people want to protest at contemporary horrors – torture, say, or forced marriage, human trafficking, or racial violence – they are likely to condemn them as “Victorian”, “medieval”, “primitive” or “antiquated”, while expressing astonishment that they should still be countenanced in the twenty-first century. The notion that the epochs of past time can function as terms of moral opprobrium, or that the present date constitutes some kind of moral standard, testifies to a stubborn faith in something like Kant’s doctrine of progress.

I was reading an interesting article at Slate by Steven Weiss entitled The Ghosts of Purim Past: The holiday's violent beginnings—and what they mean for the Jewish future.

I knew nothing about the Jewish holiday of Purim, or why it might have violent undercurrents. Here's what I've learned by researching online.

Purim is a Jewish holiday that is celebrated on Adar 14 (Hebrew calendar). The secular day for the celebration, in 2010, will be February 28.

Purim commemorates and celebrates the events of the book of Esther: The deliverance of the Jewish people in the Persian Empire from Haman's plot to kill them. You'll recall that Esther and Mordecai are the heroes of this story. According to Wikipedia the celebration of Purim involves "public recitation of the Book of Esther (keriat ha-megilla), giving mutual gifts of food and drink (mishloach manot), giving charity to the poor (mattanot la-evyonim), and a celebratory meal (se'udat Purim); other customs include drinking wine, wearing of masks and costumes, and public celebration."

In his article about Purim Weiss opens up with a theological concern:

Much like Halloween, the Jewish holiday of Purim carries a veneer of boisterous and innocuous fun overlaid on some ghoulish history. Of all the "they tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat" holidays in the Jewish calendar, Purim has been the most responsible for shaping the Jewish view of other nations—and the theology behind that worldview has rung many alarm bells over the potential for Jewish violence.

Why are their violent, xenophobic worries about Purim? It goes back to events in the Old Testament. During the Exodus the Amalekites attacked Israel when Israel was at its weakest. Because of this, God (or the nation of Israel, depending upon who you think is speaking at this point in the Old Testament) will not forgive the Amalekites and commands the nation of Israel to "blot out the memory" of Amalek. See Deuteronomy 25:17-19:

Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. When the LORD your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!

This lust for revenge carries over into the book of Samuel and is the motive behind one of the most horrific commands in the bible:

Samuel said to Saul, "I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'"

Okay, so what do the Amalekites have to do with the book of Esther? According to Weiss:

Amalek yet lives, according to the Talmud's claim that Amalek's King Agag conceived a child while imprisoned during a reprieve from execution at the hands of Saul. Purim became the next major confrontation with Amalek, as the antagonist of the Book of Esther, Haman, is called an "Agagite," and commentaries declared Haman the true heir of the legacy of Agag and thus Amalek.

Eventually, the rabbis began to interpret "Amalek" allegorically. Amalek became a symbol for any enemy of Israel. Consequently, the celebration of Purim has an undercurrent of anger about Israel's enemies. Historically, Purim celebrations involved the burning of Haman's effigy, much to the anxiety of the surrounding Christian population. And just like conservative Republicans tend to use the Old Testament to guide foreign policy so does Israel. Last year an Israeli political advisor was asked to evaluate the nation of Iran. His response: "Think Amalek."

So there is a lot of aggressive nationalism associated with Purim. Curiously, however, despite the gas the holiday could throw on the flames of Jewish fear and anger, there has been been, historically speaking, few incidents of Jewish violence associated with the holiday. In his article Weiss tries to understand why this might be the case. He comes up with three reasons:

First, rarely have the Jews been in power. Although diaspora Jews could vent some anger during Purim they really couldn't do anything about it.

A second reason is that the Jews are Pharisees. Weiss elaborates:

Another reason why Jews don't kill various Amalek-identified groups en masse is that Jews are Pharisees. Yes, the commandment to kill Amalek is real, but most Jewish legal minds have asserted that it's only considered operative when Jews are living under a monarch as part of a messianic era. That might seem an extreme technicality, but it's sustained a mostly peaceful Jewish outlook for millennia.

But the real reason, suggests Weiss, for the peacefulness of Jews during Purim might be a bit more parochial and interesting:

Perhaps the historical lack of violence can also be attributed to one of Purim's most famous traditions: getting drunk. The Talmud instructs Jews to drink on Purim until they cannot differentiate between the statements "wicked is Haman" and "blessed is Mordecai," the Book of Esther's Jewish protagonist. As countless slurred sermons have reminded us, little separates good from evil, and any one of us can easily fail.

Ah, the salvific effects of getting drunk. Note to any Jewish readers: Could I be invited to your Purim celebration? I'm free on the 28th.

Surf on over to Slate to read Weiss's article. As you can tell, it's very interesting.

"Awe is a way of being in rapport with the mystery of all reality. The awe that we sense or ought to sense when standing in the presence of a human being is a moment of intuition for the likeness of God which is concealed in his or her essence. Not only persons; even inanimate things stand in a relation to the Creator. The secret of every being is the divine care and concern that are invested in it. Something sacred is at stake in every event."
--Abraham Joshua Heschel

Apparently, there is a bit of a stink brewing about the Canadian woman's hockey team. After they beat the United States for the gold they went back out on the ice, after the building cleared, to smoke some cigars and drink some Canadian beer and champagne. Some are calling this classless.

Here's my take: What's the big deal? You win the gold and want to go back out and celebrate on your home ice, taking in the view of the stadium. And you relax, enjoy the moment, smoke some cigars and drink a beer. Seems like a perfectly normal way to celebrate. No fans were around. Nor was the other team.

So, congratulations, ladies. Enjoy your moment.

As a part of Lent my church is offering a variety of classes to facilitate self-examination and self-assessment. As a part of that effort I'm teaching a four week class on Gregg Ten Elshof's book I Told Me So: Self-deception and the Christian Life.

This week we began the class by looking at some biblical warnings concerning self-deception:

Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

Obadiah 1:3
The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, 'Who can bring me down to the ground?'

Galatians 6:3
If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

In the past, warnings regarding self-deception were common. However, Ten Elshof argues that self-deception has seemed to fade from our view, particularly in Christian communities. Christians worry about a great many vices but we rarely warn against self-deception.

Which is odd because we know self-deception is everywhere. Ten Elshof cites studies that show how 94% of us think we do a "better than average job" in our places of work or how 100% of us think that we are "better than average" in getting along well with others. Clearly there is some self-deception at work in all this. Think about the people you will encounter today at work. All of these people think they are "better than average" in getting along with their coworkers! Obviously, some of these people are seriously deluded! But I, of course, actually do get along really well with others...

So self-deception is everywhere and it affects our ability to be honest with ourselves. But we have trouble following the advice of the ancients. We have trouble admitting we might be self-deceived. Why is that?

Ten Elshof argues that when vices get promoted in severity we have a more difficult time admitting that we engage in such practices. The more severe the vice the greater the social and emotional cost to recognize its effect upon us. Ten Elshof has us consider the case of racism:

Now a remarkable thing happens when a vice gets a promotion, when it is perceived as having greater negative moral weight than it once had. Consider racism. Many of us, myself included, have a hard time these days admitting that we correlate the significance of a person's existence with the color of his or her skin. This hasn't always been so. There have been times and places--in fact, there are places now--where people would have no trouble at all recognizing they correlate the significance of a person's existence with the color of his of her skin. They may or may not use the word, but they have no trouble with the idea that they are, themselves, racist.

In the recent history of developed western society, though, racism earned a well-deserved promotion in the ordering of vices. This is all to the good. But with that promotion came an increased emotional cost in the recognition, "I am a racist." If racism is worse than we thought, then it's harder than it used to be to admit to yourself that you're a racist. And it is at this point that life offers us the self-deception deal. You can experience the satisfaction that rightly belongs to the person who steers clear of the vice of racism if you can but convince yourself that you're not a racist. Unsurprisingly, a great many people take the deal.

To illustrate this, Ten Elshof has us consider a fictional (but all too real) example:

Consider a person with racist beliefs. Lucille is a dear Christian woman in her eighties. Suppose Lucille is answering a series of True/False questions and comes upon the following:

True or false: People of all ethnicities are equally valuable, equally loved by God, and equally to be respected.

Lucille would circle "true" without hesitation. It would strike her as a truism--something you'd have to be a moral wretch to disagree with. Of course she believes this! Were you to seriously raise this question in conversation, she might well be offended by the mere suggestion that it should be treated as an open question. But you need spend only half a day with Lucille to see that she believes no such thing. Her language and behavior exhibit a clear and habitual disdain for African-Americans in her context. She does not believe them to be equally valuable, equally loved by God, and equally to be respected. It's not quite that she's being hypocritical or dishonest. She sincerely thinks that she believes this. But she doesn't.

These observations are, I think, extraordinarily important. Self-deception of this sort is rampant within the Christian community. And it's not that people are being hypocritical (although many are). People really do believe they aren't afflicted by a variety of vices, racism included.

But, as we have noted, it is very hard to admit these things about ourselves. Why? It goes back to the promotion of vices. The more severe the vice the greater the cost in its recognition. Ten Elshof argues that self-deception has increased in severity in a way similar to racism. How did this happen? Ten Elshof argues that we moderns have become increasingly concerned with issues of authenticity or "being real." This shift, he argues, was largely due the rise of existentialism. We have traded in being good for being authentic. And with that shift the sin of self-deception got a promotion. In a culture of authenticity being self-deluded or self-deceived is now one of the greatest sins we can commit. Thus, we just can't admit to ourselves that we might be self-deceived. Ten Elshof on this point:

...beginning with Kierkegaard, the existentialists (including Sartre, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others) elevated authenticity to a place of primary importance in their understanding of the virtues. Due to the writings of the existentialists and other cultural trends, the "Good Person" was increasingly understood to be the "Authentic Person." Being true to oneself became a--or, in some cases, the--chief good. Self-deception, then, was given a promotion in the ranking of vices. What was once a derivative vice--one whose primary importance was found in its ability to facilitate other, more serious, vices--became itself the most egregious of all sins.

And in the face of this pressure to be "authentic" and "real" we simply cannot admit we are self-deceived and self-deluded. Despite massive and catastrophic evidence to the contrary.

One of the best things I've seen on the Internet in some time is a comment by "Dan" to a post by Bo Sanders who was responding to a post by Tony Jones on what is known as the Ordo Salutis, the Way (Order/Steps/Stages) of Salvation. A traditional rendering of the Ordo Salutis is a follows:

1.Foreknowledge
2.Predestination
3.Calling
4.Faith
5.Repentance
6.Justification
7.Regeneration
8.Adoption
9.Perseverance
10.Mortification
11.Sanctification
12.Glorification

Thinking through this Order "Dan" gave the following illustration on Bo's blog:

I decided that my wife and I should have a romantic Valentine’s Day. We’ve been married for almost 22 years and I have gotten really good at romancing her. I know exactly what to do to put her in the mood to be intimate with me (foreknowledge).

So I planned a ridiculously romantic evening – leaving nothing to chance – every last detail (predestination).

I called my wife from work and told her we would meet at our favorite restaurant (calling).

I waited at the restaurant trusting that she would show up as promised (faith).

It took me a few minutes but I altered my disposition from get stuff done, work guy to slow down, be attentive, romantic guy (repentance).

My wife acknowledged my attention and sent me signals all evening that she approved of how I was treating her (justification).

My wife decided to skip dessert because she had made up her mind that she was ready to make love to me, she had been romanced sufficiently (regeneration).

My wife began to adopt a very provocative posture toward me and flirted with me the whole way home (adoption).

The drive home took forever, this woman wanted me, we couldn’t get home quick enough (perseverance).

Wouldn’t you know it, we got a flat tire on the freeway. I changed the tire in record time but I scraped my knuckled on the asphalt as I was lifting the tire off the rim and I got oil on my best suit (mortification).

I was sure the sex would make the bloody knuckles and the dry cleaning bill all worth while. My wife told me how wonderful I was and that she would rather be with me than any other man on the planet (sanctification).

When we got home things started off wonderfully (glorification), but my recurring problem with ED made it necessary to hope that the future would bring the satisfaction we were unable to obtain that evening (after all we are evangelicals and our glorification is already but not yet).

Funny thing is, my wife showed up the next day at work and we did it in the broom closet.

Funny how relationships never go as planned. The good ones anyway.

Fantastic! Funny and deep (as I interpret the conclusion).

My particular tradition, the Churches of Christ, is deeply committed to an Ordo Salutis, what we call "The Steps of Salvation." These were, as I remember them from my childhood:

1. Hear
2. Believe
3. Repent
4. Confess
5. Be Baptized

What struck me in looking over the Ordo Salutis in the Churches of Christ, in comparison to the classic Ordo, is how anthropocentric the Ordo is within the Churches of Christ. Everything centers and hinges upon the human agent. In my opinion, this distorted focus has done enormous damage to the Church of Christ tradition, theologically speaking.

Be sure to read the comments to the Freakonomics post on faking religious belief. Working on a college campus, where Christianity has a certain social and dating cachet, this comment from "Matt" jumped out at me:

Must be something about Texas. The faking is especially prominent in the dating scene here. A girl I know started going to church to meet guys, and I asked her how it went. She said, “They were all there for the wrong reason, too.”

A few posts ago I wrote about Nature vs. Nurture issues regarding homosexuality. My point was that we cannot simply ask if homosexuality is "genetic" or not. Nature and nurture interact in complex ways. Well, a recent article in Time sent to me Andrea, my graduate assistant, thickens this plot quite a bit.

The article is about epigenetics and this research appears to be revolutionizing genetic science by highlighting how environmental factors can affect the expression of genes during development.

It has long been scientific dogma that the phenotype cannot change the genotype. As John Cloud writes:

[W]e have had a long-standing deal with biology: whatever choices we make during our lives might ruin our short-term memory or make us fat or hasten death, but they won't change our genes — our actual DNA. Which meant that when we had kids of our own, the genetic slate would be wiped clean.

However, evidence has accumulated that suggests that environmental factors do affect the expression of genes. Consider the research of Lars Olov Bygren who examined the links between generational famine and life expectancy in Norrbotten, the isolated northernmost country in Sweden:

Norrbotten is so isolated that in the 19th century, if the harvest was bad, people starved. The starving years were all the crueler for their unpredictability. For instance, 1800, 1812, 1821, 1836 and 1856 were years of total crop failure and extreme suffering. But in 1801, 1822, 1828, 1844 and 1863, the land spilled forth such abundance that the same people who had gone hungry in previous winters were able to gorge themselves for months.

In the 1980s, Dr. Lars Olov Bygren, a preventive-health specialist who is now at the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, began to wonder what long-term effects the feast and famine years might have had on children growing up in Norrbotten in the 19th century — and not just on them but on their kids and grandkids as well...

Bygren's research showed that in Overkalix, boys who enjoyed those rare overabundant winters — kids who went from normal eating to gluttony in a single season — produced sons and grandsons who lived shorter lives...Later papers using different Norrbotten cohorts also found significant drops in life span and discovered that they applied along the female line as well, meaning that the daughters and granddaughters of girls who had gone from normal to gluttonous diets also lived shorter lives. To put it simply, the data suggested that a single winter of overeating as a youngster could initiate a biological chain of events that would lead one's grandchildren to die decades earlier than their peers did. How could this be possible?

The answer seems to come from epigenes. Epigenes are cellular material that sit atop the genome and affect how the genes switch on or off during development. Apparently, while environment cannot affect the actual DNA it can affect the epigenes which, in turn, affect how the genes are expressed. Think of our DNA as the keys on a piano. They are fixed. The epigenes are like the piano music. They can play Mozart or Jazz. The basic notes are the same but the music can be very different.

And what is very important to note, if you read Cloud's article to the end, is that many of these epigenetic changes don't just affect you. They affect your children. Your choices often have generational consequences modifying the bodies and minds of your children and grandchildren.

My friend Bill sent me a link to this interesting post at the Freakonomics blog. A reader of the blog writes in to explain how they fake being Christians in Texas so their children can get "play dates" with other kids and for other social reasons:

We are agnostics living deep in the heart of Texas and our family fakes Christianity for social reasons. It’s not so much for the sake of my husband or myself but for our young children. We found by experience that if we were truthful about not being regular church attenders, the play dates suddenly ended. Thus started the faking of the religious funk.

It seemed silly but it’s all very serious business down here. We don’t go to church or teach or children one belief is “right” over another. We expose them to every kind of belief and trust that they will one day settle in to their very own spirituality. However, for the sake of friends and neighbors, we pretend we are Christians. We try not to lie but rather not to disclose unnecessary information. As the children are getting older, this isn’t so easy for them and an outing is probably eminent.

Before going on to Part 5 of The Deliverance of God I thought I would try to give you the "big picture" of Romans 1-4. That is, how does the rhetorical reading work if you read Romans 1-4 straight through?

What follows is the entire text of Romans 1-4. Most of the text is from the New Revised Standard Version. However, when Douglas Campbell provided his own translation in The Deliverance of God I use his wording over the NRSV. I also tried to consistently follow Campbell's understanding of critical phrases or words. For example, "faith in Christ" is translated as the "faithfulness of Christ." As a single word "faith" is rendered as "trust" or "faithfulness." The words "justification" and the "righteousness of God" are translated as "liberation" or "deliverance." The reasons behind these choices are argued for in The Deliverance of God and I refer you to the book for details. Beyond translation I've also added extensive "Reader Notes" so that you can track the rhetorical give and take going on in Romans 1-4.

My hope is, if you read this through, that you'll walk away with a clearer sense of how Campbell thinks Romans 1-4 should be read. This reading is, as you will see, something completely different when compared to the conventional reading.

The Setting of the Letter to the Romans

Paul is planning to travel to Rome. However, he fears that Jewish-Christian missionaries will reach the city first preaching a gospel that Paul considers to be no gospel at all. Consider Paul's final warning to the Romans in the letter:

I urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned; avoid them. For such people do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded.

The core of this false gospel is that, in the words of Acts 15.1,"unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." More specifically, these Jewish-Christian teachers preach Torah obedience to Gentile Christian converts. Although these Jewish-Christian teachers preach "Christ crucified" they have failed, according to Paul, to recognize the apocalyptic and cosmic implications of the Risen Lord. These Jewish-Christian teachers likely believe that the death of Jesus functioned as a "more perfect sacrifice" which decisively ended the era of cultic sacrifice within Judaism (cf. the book of Hebrews). Thus, while this "gospel" proclaims "Christ crucified" it is not thoroughgoingly Christological. According to the Jewish-Christian teachers Torah obedience (moral performance) is what saves you.

For Paul, the gospel of the Jewish-Christian teachers is not Christian enough. Christ merely ends cultic animal sacrifice at the Temple which, admittedly, does allow Judaism to be proclaimed to the Gentiles as the cultic life of Israel is no longer tethered to Jerusalem. But this narrow focus on the cultic aspects of Jesus' death fails to understand the liberative and pneumatological implications of Easter Sunday. By focusing narrowly on the death of Jesus the Jewish-Christian teachers have missed what, for Paul, sits at the core of the Christ-event: The ontological deliverance witnessed in the resurrection. For Paul, Torah obedience cannot save us if we are disconnected from the animating life of the Holy Spirit and remain ontological captives to the Powers of Sin and Death. Thus, Paul comes preaching a fully Christian gospel, one that proclaims the deliverance of God. The death and resurrection of Christ did not merely end temple sacrifice (although it did that), it made us a New Creation. Our ontological status has been fundamentally altered. Paul's gospel is the proclamation of this good news.

The Rhetorical Reading of Romans 1-4

The Opening of the Letter

Paul opens his letter keen to highlight how the resurrection is critical to his gospel, particularly in its pneumological implications (the power of the Holy Spirit). This is the feature of the Christ-event notably absent from the gospel of the Jewish-Christian missionaries.

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,

To all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world. For God, whom I serve with my spirit by announcing the gospel of his Son, is my witness that without ceasing I remember you always in my prayers, asking that by God's will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you. For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you--or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as I have among the rest of the Gentiles. I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish--hence my eagerness to proclaim the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

A Prelude of Paul's Gospel

After his opening remarks Paul offers a prelude to his gospel. Paul again highlights the Christological, martyrological, and resurrection themes through a reference to Habakkuk 2.4. Specifically, the "faithfulness" of Christ ("the righteousness one") is vindicated at the resurrection: This righteous one, because of his faithfulness, will live. In this Christ "reveals" the "righteousness of God."

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who trusts, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the deliverance of God is revealed through [Christ's] faithfulness for [our] faithfulness; as it is written, "The one who is righteous, through faithfulness, will live."

The Teacher Presents His Gospel

Paul now switches to an ancient rhetorical form known as a speech-in-character where Paul allows his opponent to "speak." Paul uses this technique in many of his letters (cf. I Cor. 1.12). In the letter to the Romans Paul allows a Jewish-Christian "Teacher" to present the opening salvo of his gospel to the pagans. Much of this speech leans heavily upon the Wisdom of Solomon, a piece of Jewish moral propaganda that decries the depravity of the pagans. The Roman Christians listening to the letter would have known that a speech-in-character had begun at this point due to a sudden shift in the literary style. Recall, Paul warns at the end of the letter to beware of "smooth talk." The Teacher's speech is filled with wordplay and alliteration, very different from how Paul typically communicated. It is a nice example of smooth talking:

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God's decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die--yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them."

Paul's Diatribe Against the Teacher

The Teacher's smooth talking opening salvo is completed and the rhetorical flourishes that set this speech apart from the surrounding text now stop. Paul's voice, thus, reemerges to turn upon the Teacher. Argumentatively, Paul will show that the Teacher is morally culpable in light of the very criterion (soteriological desert) the Teacher has just applied to the pagans. Paul's argument has three moves which culminate in a Scriptural broadside. The crux of Paul's argument is this. The Teacher believes that Torah obedience is the path to salvation (a righteousness that is based upon works). Without the law, the Teacher believes, we will fall into pagan depravity (see his opening speech on this score). Thus, the Jews, who have the law, are morally and eschatologically privileged relative to the pagans. That is, the Torah lifts the Jews, morally speaking, above the pagans and this superior moral performance gives the Jews an advantage before a God of retributive justice at the final Judgment. Consequently, it makes sense that if the pagans want to enjoy a similar happy fate at the Judgment they need to obey the Torah. This is the Teacher's "good news." However, Paul is about to argue that the Teacher is fundamentally mistaken on this score. The Jews have followed the Torah but they are, morally speaking, no better than the Gentiles. Thus, when they stand before a God of retributive justice at the Judgment they will enjoy no advantage. All stand condemned before this God under this soteriology (a righteousness of moral desert). It is important to note in all this that Paul is showing the internal inconsistencies within the Teacher's gospel. The God of retributive justice and the soteriology of desert are the gospel of the Teacher. Paul here adopts those propositions only to show that they lead to a dead end: Universal condemnation.

Move 1 Against the Teacher: Paul universalizes the Teacher's principle of desert, applying it to both Jews and Gentiles:

Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. [Teacher] you say, "We know that God's judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth." Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. For he will repay according to each one's deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.

Move 2 Against the Teacher: The principle of desert, when applied universally, negates the soteriological "advantage" of the Jews over the Gentiles:

There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. God is not impressed by appearances.

All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who [will be] righteous in God's sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified--[for] [w]hen Gentiles, who do not possess the law, "do" instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves; [t]hey show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them--on the day when God will judge the secret thoughts of all (according to my gospel, through Jesus Christ!).

But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast of your relation to God and know his will and determine what is best because you are instructed in the law, and if you are sure that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you, then, that teach others, will you not teach yourself ? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You that forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You that abhor idols, do you rob temples? You that boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? For, as it is written, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."

Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law; but if you break the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. So, if those who are uncircumcised keep the requirements of the law, will not their uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then those who are physically uncircumcised but keep the law will condemn you that have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart--it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God.

Move 3 Against the Teacher: Paul then asks the Teacher to apply the principle of desert to himself:

Paul: What [then] is advantage of the Jew? Or what benefit of circumcision?
Teacher: Much in many respects! First, it is not that they have been entrusted with the very utterances of God?!
[Paul has gotten the Teacher to admit that being a Jew is an ethical and eschatological advantage. Paul then proceeds to question the soteriological principle of desert--the core of the Teacher's gospel--in light of this advantage. In short, if God honors this Jewish advantage isn't God being unfair to the Gentiles? That is, doesn't the principle of desert demand a level playing field?]
Paul: So what?! If some were untrustworthy, will not their untrustworthiness nullify the trust of God?
Teacher: Absolutely not! Let God be true though every person is false, just as it is written "...so that you might be judged righteous in your words, and blameless when you are judged."
Paul: But if our inequality highlights God's equality, what then shall we say? Is it not unjust of God to pour out wrath on us? (I am of course speaking from a human perspective.)
Teacher: Absolutely not! Indeed, how will God judge the world (if that is the case)?
Paul: But if by means of my falsehood the truthfulness of God overflows to God's glory, why then am I still condemned as a sinner?--and even as we are slandered, and as some report us as saying, should we not do evil so that good can came!?
Teacher: ...Whose judgment is positively deserved!
Paul: What shall we say, then? Are we advantaged?
[Paul forces the Teacher to face the fact that if God judges us with a criterion of desert then there can be no advantage to being a Jew. Desert, the criterion used by the Teacher to condemn the Gentiles, erases the Jewish advantage. By definition. Thus, the Teacher must admit...]
Teacher (admitting defeat): Not in every respect.
[Thus, the Teacher has contradicted himself. He started this exchange by insisting that there was an advantage to being a Jew. And now, playing by his own rules (i.e., insisting on a criterion of desert), he must admit he was wrong.]

At this point in the argument Paul has performed a kind of a reductio ad absurdum, a demonstration that the Teacher's gospel leads to a contradiction (i.e., you can't claim Jewish advantage and preach a soteriology of desert). To finish off this assault upon the Teacher Paul fires a volley of Scripture to show, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Jews have no ethical or eschatological (i.e., final Judgment) advantages over Gentiles:

[Moreover] we have [together, by reading Scripture] charged all publicly, both Jews and Greeks, of being under the power of sin, as it is written:

"There is no one who is righteous, not even one;
there is no one who has understanding,
there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned aside, together they have become worthless;
there is no one who shows kindness,
there is not even one."
"Their throats are opened graves;
they use their tongues to deceive."
"The venom of vipers is under their lips."
"Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
"Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery are in their paths,
and the way of peace they have not known."
"There is no fear of God before their eyes."

Paul Anticipates the Presentation of His Gospel

Having reduced the Teacher to absurdity, Paul now anticipates the presentation of his own gospel in Romans 5-8. This is a gospel that proclaims the "righteousness of God." For Paul the righteousness of God is God's liberative act in Christ which rescues a helpless and powerless humanity. In short, the "righteousness of God" proclaims "the deliverance of God" through the work of the faithful Christ. Thus, the language of faith, justification, righteousness, and redemption are interpreted in Christologicial and liberative terms.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For "no human being will be liberated in his sight" by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

But now, apart from law, the deliverance of God has been revealed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the deliverance of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who trust in God. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; but they are now liberated by his grace as a gift, through the release that is in Christ Jesus, whom God intended to be an atonement by means of Christ's faithfulness, by means of his blood. God did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine mercy he released us from the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous because he liberates the faithful Jesus.

The Teacher Returns

Having listened to, rhetorically speaking, Paul's gospel of "faith," the Teacher's voice reemerges with some criticisms. Is Paul really eliminating a works-based righteousness? The source of Jewish moral pride ("boasting") in relation to the pagans? Yes, Paul is rejecting this works-based righteousness. The Teacher goes on to suggest that Paul, by proclaiming this gospel of faith, is dismissing the Torah and the promises made to Abraham to whom the promises were made via the covenant of circumcision.

Teacher: Then what becomes of boasting?
Paul: It is excluded.
Teacher: Through what sort of Torah--a teaching of works of law?!
Paul: No, but by the Torah of faith. For we hold that a person is liberated by faithfulness, apart from works of law.
Teacher: Or is not God the God of the Jews only?!
Paul: Is he not also the God of the pagan nations?
Teacher: Yes, he is also God of the pagan nations.
Paul: If God does in fact delivers the pagans "through faithfulness," [i.e., through Christ] then he is indeed the God of the pagan nations as well as the God of the Jews.
Teacher: Do we then overthrow the Torah by this faith?
Paul: By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the Torah.
Teacher: What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh?

The Faithfulness of Abraham

The Teacher has brought up the story of Abraham to refute Paul's gospel of faith. Were not the promises given to Abraham marked by the covenant of circumcision? How, then, can Paul dismiss circumcision? Paul takes up this challenge and shows his exegetical skill. Paul shows how Abraham is actually a witness for Paul's gospel of faith. The Teacher is embarrassed once again. Even Abraham has turned against him.

The Teacher raised questions above about works, merit-based "boasting," and the law. Paul shows that Abraham had nothing to boast about. Abraham simply trusted in God's promise:

For if Abraham was liberated by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? "Abraham trusted God, and it was credited to him with righteousness." Now to one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who liberates the ungodly, such trust is credited with righteousness. So also David speaks of the blessedness of those to whom God credits as liberated apart from works:

"Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered;
blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not credit sin."

The Teacher also asked questions about the superiority of the Jews over the Gentiles. Aren't Jews privileged by God in salvation history? Paul uses Abraham to show him to be the father of the "circumcised" and "uncircumcised":

Is this blessedness, then, pronounced only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised? We say, "Faithfulness was credited to Abraham with righteousness." How then was it credited to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the deliverance that he had through trust while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who trust without being circumcised and who thus have deliverance credited to them, and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised who are not only circumcised but who also follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised.

Finally, the Teacher asked above if "faith" is nullifying the Torah. Paul shows in the story of Abraham that faith cannot make the promises made to Abraham "void":

For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the liberation of trust. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, trust is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. For this reason it depends on trust, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the trust of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us).

Having used Abraham to refute the objections of the Teacher Paul goes on to frame Abraham's faith Christologically. Abraham's faithfulness is but a shadow or prefiguring of the faithfulness of Christ who was vindicated at the resurrection. Specifically, the promise of Isaac--the son brought to life from the deadness of Sarah's womb--is the image of the Christ: the son raised to life on Easter Sunday. Once again Paul highlights the liberative themes of the resurrection.

As it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations." In the presence of the God in whom he trusted, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Hoping against hope, he trusted that he would become "the father of many nations," according to what was said, "So numerous shall your descendants be." He trust did not weaken when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faithfulness "was credited to him with righteousness." Now the words, "it was credited to him," were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be credited to us who trust in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our deliverance.

What we find in this reading is that there is no hint of a wrathful, retributive or perfectionistic God in Paul's gospel. These are aspects found only within the Teacher's gospel, the gospel Paul is rejecting point by point. In contrast to the Teacher, Paul is declaring the deliverance of God revealed by the faithfulness of the Christ. This deliverance frees us from the ontological bondage of Sin and Death. Humanity is now called to trust in the faithfulness of the Christ who secured our freedom.

He makes grass grow for the cattle,
and plants for man to cultivate—
bringing forth food from the earth:

wine that gladdens the heart of man,
oil to make his face shine,
and bread that sustains his heart.
(Psalm 104.14-16)

An interesting article in Slate by Mike Steinberger entitled The Great California Wine Mystery: Why superstar West Coast vintners don't (or won't) put out inexpensive bottles.

The article wonders why elite vintners in California, whose bottles sell for hundreds of dollars, can't (or won't) put out good bottles of wine in the $15-20 range. And I asked, "Yeah, why don't they?"

As Steinberger points out, this is particularly puzzling as many reputable European vintners do produce excellent and affordable wines:

In Europe, some of the most celebrated vintners put out modestly priced wines alongside their loftier offerings. Jean-Louis Chave's Hermitage (red or white—take your pick) sells for hundreds of dollars a bottle, but he also makes a delicious Côtes-du-Rhône that retails for about $18. Erni Loosen has an excellent $10 riesling. Aubert de Villaine, Christian Moueix, Dominique Lafon, and Alvaro Palacios all produce wines that are within reach of the budget-conscious. Nor is this trend confined to the Old World; David Powell, one of Australia's finest, puts out a quartet of sub-$20 wines. But among California's superstar vintners, there is almost no one making wine for the masses.

Given our new budget consciousness in a difficult economy you would think a quality budget wine would make sense:

What makes this topic especially salient now is that California wines priced above $20 have effectively become display items—they are still on the shelves, but not many people are buying them. Americans haven't stopped drinking wine as a result of the Great Recession, but they have scaled back what they are willing to pay; $15 is the new $30. It thus seems the ideal moment for an acclaimed California winemaker to emulate the likes of Chave and Loosen (or Draper, for that matter) and to come out with a stellar bargain wine.

Steinberger goes looking for answers. One of the reasons he discovers has to do with the economies of acreage:

Krankl suggested that one reason the Europeans are better at value wines is that they are often working in vineyards that have been family owned for generations and that were paid down long ago. By contrast, many of the better vineyards in California were developed or acquired fairly recently, and land is expensive. According to Krankl, an acre of prime vineyard on the Central Coast is a minimum $25,000 these days and more likely closer to $50,000. When you factor in planting, farming, and labor costs, the road to profitability gets even longer. A $20-or-under wine would really only be economically feasible, Krankl said, if it could be made in large volumes, which goes some way to explaining why this segment of the U.S. market is dominated by corporations like Gallo, and why boutique wineries such as Sine Qua Non direct their efforts elsewhere.

And there are other reasons as well. Check out the article for more.

I realize a post about wine doesn't fit Lent, but some people do need wine for Passover observances (Jewish and Christian). See here for a nice guide for Picking the Perfect Passover Wine.

1. Annihilationism does squarely face the problem of God's loving justice in the traditional doctrine of hell: The monstrous notion that God will inflict extreme conscious pain upon the "lost" for all eternity.

2. However, annihilationism is, at root, an ad hoc doctrinal patch. That is, annihilationism leaves a deeply problematic soteriological system firmly in place.

3. For example, annihilationism fails to positively address the issue of moral luck, that our moral and religious lives at the point of death are a highly contingent and largely out of our control.

4. Annihilationism also fails to address the problem of horrendous evil. Denying life and resurrection to the "lost" annihilationists admit that, for billions of men, women and children across history, the final experience on earth, often while crying out to God, is one of terror, pain and god-forsakenness. For the Jews who stared up at the shower heads in Auschwitz as Zyklon B poured forth, this would be, according to annihilationists, the final moment of their biography with God. Praise be to God?

5. In short, annihilationists replace a God of horror with a God of cold cruel indifference. They trade God's sins of commission for sins of omission.

6. Annihilationists fail to understand God's covenant relationship with his creation. The soteriology of the annihilationist is the thin notion of "going to heaven." Thus, annihilationists fail to understand the cosmic ambitions of God's love. How "all things" were created by the Word (John 1.3) and how the Word will bring "all things" back into into harmony and peace (Col. 1.20).

7. Annihilationists fail to understand Christ's victory over the power of Sin and Death. The annihilationist admits that the vast majority of humankind will die in sin and death, never to live again. Death and sin retain their sting. This is God's Victory? To save a few from the wreckage of death in a tiny lifeboat of grace while His Creation fades away into silence, sadness or horror? No! This is not good news! Nor is this the God of Jesus Christ our Lord! Sin and death were defeated on Easter Sunday. As the Scripture declares (1 Cor. 15.25,28)

For Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death...When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

This post might be too personal or specific given your particular church tradition. I'm writing it mainly to try to sort out some of my feelings about Lent in my particular church setting.

I have a mixed religious history. I was raised in (and remain a part of) the Churches of Christ. This tradition is a low-church, non-liturgical, Protestant tradition. We do not, historically speaking, follow the liturgical calender. Thus, we don't celebrate Lent, Easter or Advent. We do celebrate these holidays--mainly Easter and Christmas--the way most people do in the world. We just don't recognize them in worship. In fact, sermons on Easter or Christmas might actually be an attack on religious observances of these "holy" days. The refrain you often hear in the Churches of Christ is "We don't celebrate Easter and Christmas on a particular day. We celebrate these events everyday."

On the other hand, I attended Catholic private schools from 6th grade through High School. Consequently, I attended a lot of Mass when the student body celebrated holy days. At the time I didn't enjoy this. I was, after all, a religious outsider observing (and judging) the proceedings. But liturgy affects you. Even if you are resisting it. And Lent was a particularly profound experience. Every Friday of Lent we would go to Mass and observe the Stations of the Cross, the Way of Sorrow:

1. Jesus is condemned to death
2. Jesus is given his cross
3. Jesus falls the first time
4. Jesus meets His Mother
5. Simon of Cyrene carries the cross
6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
7. Jesus falls the second time
8. Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem
9. Jesus falls the third time
10. Jesus is stripped of His garments
11. Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross
12. Jesus dies on the cross
13. Jesus' body is removed from the cross (Deposition or Lamentation)
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb and covered in incense.

These weekly observances resonated with the melancholic, pensive part of my soul. I've always had an inner sadness about life despite my upbeat temperament. And every week of Lent you left the church on this depressive note: Jesus is dead and lying in the tomb. Needless to say, by the time Easter arrived you are ready for some good news.

I didn't know how the Stations had affected me until I left for college. Suddenly that spring Easter Sunday was upon me and I felt, deep in my bones, this feeling like "Hey! It can't be Easter! I'm not ready!" It was the first time I "got" the power of liturgy. The way it shaped you, even as you resisted it.

So I lived this mixed life. Low-church and high-church. Pushing against Lent and embracing Lent.

Which brings me to today.

My church, the Highland Church of Christ, is a far cry from my upbringing in a more "traditional" Church of Christ. Highland, in light our our church tradition, is considered "liberal." One mark of that "liberality" is Highland's ecumenism, its thoughtful engagement and embrace of other Christian traditions. Highland's DNA is Church of Christ, but its ecumenical spirit has lead us to embrace a variety of liturgical practices. For example, we recite the Lord's Prayer every Sunday and we overtly embrace the celebration of the Advent and Lenten seasons. But by "celebration" I really mean a general recognition that we are moving through a holy season along with other churches, most outside our tradition. In short, this is less an observance than a recognition that Lent or Advent is going on "out there" in the liturgical world. For example, while we alert the church that "Today is the first Sunday of Advent" and Christmas trees are now in the assembly I wouldn't say Highland "observes" Advent. We recognize Advent more than observe it.

This brings me to Lent, Ash Wednesday in particular.

As a part of this liturgical recognition Highland uses our normal Wednesday evening bible study (one of the Church of Christ's own "liturgical" practices) to observe/recognize Ash Wednesday. During this service members can receive ashes on their foreheads as is done in Catholic Ash Wednesday services. So after church you have this odd sight of Church of Christ members leaving services with ashes on their heads. My mixed religious history has come back with a vengeance.

Anyway, Andrea, my graduate assistant, asked me the other day what I thought about all this. Did I like how Highland observes Ash Wednesday and uses ashes? My response was that I have mixed feelings about it all. And here, as best I can tell, is why I feel ambivalence about Lent.

I think my mixed religious history is both helping me and hurting me in all this. On the helping side, as I've noted, my experiences with Lent in the Catholic church profoundly affected me. Again, I miss the Stations of the Cross. So anything that helps me prepare for Easter is welcomed by me.

But on the other hand my experiences with the Catholic church causes me to back away from this nod within my church toward the liturgical tradition.

Why?

First, it seems to me that we are only "celebrating" Lent because of a lucky convergence. Ash Wednesday occurs, well, on a Wednesday, the day the Church of Christ meets for a mid-week bible study. So our Ash Wednesday is capitalizing upon this happy convergence between our tradition and the liturgical calender. This, it might seem, is a good thing. But I just can't shake the feeling that it's all too contingent and coincidental. That is, if Ash Wednesday were, let's say, really an Ash Thursday my church wouldn't gather to observe the start of Lent. Just like we don't gather to celebrate Good Friday. So it feels to me like we are "noticing" the start of Lent rather than observing it.

Second, the imposition of ashes is optional. You aren't expected to do it. Which makes sense. This isn't a ritual from within our own tradition. It's a ritual that is coming in from the "outside" as it were. So not everyone feels comfortable with it. So some opt in and others opt out.

And it's this voluntarism--opting in or opting out--that makes me ambivalent. The observance of Ash Wednesday at my church is an optional deal. And this, as I experience it, exacerbates one of the problems of contemporary Christianity: Its individualized nature. Ash Wednesday at my church isn't communal. It's an add-on feature. Which strikes the wrong note for me. What ends up happening in my church is that some individuals or small groups celebrate Lent and others don't. For example, some people or groups give up something for Lent like the Catholics do. Others don't. And it's this lack of being on the same page, a very different vibe than the one I experienced in the Catholic church, which leaves me cold. Of course, I could celebrate Lent. But I hate the fact that this is something that I, as an individual, choose to do (i.e., opting in). It's just the completely wrong vibe. I hate that autonomous choices sit at the center of the practice. I'm not celebrating Lent with my church.

Please note, this isn't a judgment in any way. Nor is it a recommendation for our church to jettison these practices. Again, I embrace them. But I also feel weird about them.

As I said, I'm ambivalent about Lent.

I want to introduce you to a new blog out there: The Alienist's Blog.

"Alienist," if you didn't know, is an archaic name (brought back into modern consciousnesses by the novel The Alienist by Caleb Carr) for psychiatrist. And this particular psychiatrist is my colleague Dr. John Casada at ACU. Not only is John a psychiatrist he also holds a PhD in neuroscience. Just yesterday, when I walked into the office, I found a group of students huddled around a table where John was pointing out and discussing the features of some brain specimens.

"Are those real brains?" I asked.

"Yes," John replied.

So I pulled out my iPhone and videoed John and the students a bit. I'd never seen a real brain specimen before. Such are the joys and surprises when you work with an alienist. You walk in to work to find someone holding a brain.

I think you'll really enjoy John's blog and mind. His interests are wide and his psychiatric, psychodynamic and neuroscientific perspectives are rich. Here's how John describes his blog:

The purpose of this blog is to discuss mental health issues. The title reflects my tendency to value the old wisdom that grew out of art, myth, and spirituality as well as the newer wisdom generated by modern philosophy and science.

I just read an interesting article by Nik Ansell (dated April 20, 2009) at The Other Journal entitled Hell: The Nemesis of Hope?

The conclusions of the article are broadly in sync with my own views on hell. Of particular interest to me was the discussion of annihilationism. During my college years, when the traditional doctrine of hell became untenable for me, I briefly flirted with annihilationism after a bible professor handed me, in my hour of crisis, Edward Fudge's book The Fire that Consumes.

Annihilationism has much to recommend itself. The notion that the "lost" are either destroyed or denied immortality/resurrection (the view called "conditional immortality" where the "lost" just die with no hope for a future resurrection) seemed, for a time, to get me around some of the most difficult problems I was having with the traditional view of hell. But at the end of the day I rejected annihilationism for my current universalist position, largely for the reasons Ansell describes in his article:

Both positions [regarding hell, traditional and annihilationist], I suggest, must be rejected for at least two reasons, both of which call out for the development of a new theology in which Hell is no longer the nemesis of hope.

Firstly, both views allow evil to have the last word. As annihilationists have been quick to realize, the hell of traditional orthodoxy cannot do justice to the vision of Habakkuk 2:14 in which “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” or to the New Testament expression of this hope found in the promise that God will become “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). The traditional claim that the eternal suffering of the impenitent serves to glorify God by revealing his justice reduces the revelation of God’s glory to the restoration of God’s honor, thus separating the glory of God from the glorification of creation. Justice conceived as retribution closes down redemption and blocks the dawn of the age to come. In traditional eschatology, sinners no longer have the power to sin after the final judgment, yet they remain sinners. If they are to be everlastingly punished for the sins of the past, and for their impenitent condition, how is evil not still present in the world?

Although the annihilationist attempt to find eschatological resolution beyond the confines of traditional orthodoxy is certainly justified, their own position has serious problems of its own. It is worth reminding ourselves, especially in this age of ecological violence and crisis, that the annihilation and destruction of God’s good creation is precisely the aim and goal of evil, not evidence of its defeat. The destruction, including the self-destruction, of those made in God’s image represents a victory for the forces of darkness. In the transformation of everlasting punishment into final judgment, evil still has the last word.

A picture sent to me from Mel, a friend from church:



No explanations in church? Why or why not?

I, personally, think the sign is suggesting that Christians are often too quick in offering easy explanations to difficult questions. More often than not silence, solidarity, and lament are the best and only human responses the church should offer. Christians talk way too much.

From our good friend George, surf on over to this very interesting article on Hitler's chronic gastrointestinal ailments and how the treatments of a quack doctor might have contributed to Hitler losing control of the war effort. Some snippets from the article over at The Smart Set blog:

Guests at the Berghof, Hitler’s private chalet in the Bavarian Alps, must have endured some unpleasant odors in the otherwise healthful mountain air.

It may sound like a Woody Allen scenario, but medical historians are unanimous that Adolf was the victim of uncontrollable flatulence. Spasmodic stomach cramps, constipation and diarrhea, possibly the result of nervous tension, had been Hitler’s curse since childhood and only grew more severe as he aged. As a stressed-out dictator, the agonizing digestive attacks would occur after most meals: Albert Speer recalled that the Führer, ashen-faced, would leap up from the dinner table and disappear to his room...

Hitler’s stomach problems may even have played their part in his losing the war, thanks to this shadowy figure of Dr. Morell, an incompetent quack who took over Hitler’s medical care in 1937...For example, to combat recurrences of the volcanic stomach problems, Morell plied him with a remedy called “Dr. Köster’s Anti-gas pills,” which contained significant amounts of strychnine – and Hitler often took as many as 16 of the little black pills a day. The sallow skin, glaucous eyes and attention lapses noted by observers later in the war are consistent with strychnine poisoning; another ingredient in the pills, antropine, causes mood wings from euphoria to violent anger. Even more peculiar were the injections of amphetamines that Morell administered every morning before breakfast from 1941, which may have exacerbated the erratic behavior, inflexibility, paranoia and indecision that Hitler began to display increasingly as the war ground on.

Things that make you go, "Hmmmmm..."

Does Ash Wednesday seem early this year to you? Does to me.

This made me think of a post I wrote two years ago about the dating of Easter (which affects when Lent begins). So here is a repost for your start-of-Lent edification and amusement:

All during Lent the Christian blogs have been posting about Easter and Passion related themes. For my Lenten reflection I'd like to participate, but in my own way. I want to reflect on how to be a good Christian you need to be a great astronomer.

This topic came to mind as this week my sons, nephews and I did a little backyard astronomy with my 4.5 inch Dobsonian telescope (a wee thing, but good for backyard fun). We were looking at the full moon. It dawned on me, as we were looking at the moon, that this particular full moon was the Paschal Moon, the moon we use to select the date of Easter.

Easter, we all know, is a moveable feast. Notoriously so. What holiday makes you ask "When is _____ this year?" as much as Easter? But it's even worse than that. The dating of Easter is one of the great church controversies dividing the Western and Eastern churches.

Today, we date Easter this way in the West: Easter shall be the first Sunday after the first full moon (the Paschal moon we were looking at) after the spring equinox.

(Two notes: First, the equinox here is the Northern spring equinox, for the Southern hemisphere it is the autumn equinox. Second, the phrase "full moon" is vague. A "full" moon is relative to your position on earth. But this rule is close enough for our purposes. My point: See how good at astronomy you have to be to get Easter right?)

This year the Paschal Moon came just one day after the spring equinox which was also early this year (due to the leap year). This is why Easter is so very early this year. The last time Easter was this early was in 1913. And it won't be this early again in our lifetimes.

So you get my point: You have to be a pretty good astronomer to get Easter right. You need to be able to note the equinox (i.e., the point where the sun is at one of two opposite points on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator and ecliptic intersect), the full moon, and manage the calendar (those leap years and such). The math behind all this is called computus and it requires, as best as I can tell, an advanced degree in mathematics and planetary astronomy.

The ancient Easter controversies have to do with the calendars. Here's an abstract of that story.

The events surrounding the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus occurred during the Jewish Passover celebrations. Obviously, this association is of great theological import. So the early church was keen to keep a close association between Easter and Passover. But the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar, fixing the celebration on the 15th day of the month of Nisan. This places Passover in the spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Thus, Easter is always in the spring.

However, after Constantine, as Christianity came to be centered on Rome, the Roman solar calendar came to dominate the celebrations of the church. It was unwieldy to manage a lunar calendar for religious feasts (e.g., Passover and Easter) and a solar calendar for civic functions. Plus, the 15th of Nisan doesn't always fall on the same day of the week. This complicated things for the church who wanted to associate the first day of the week, Sunday, with Easter. I mean, wouldn't it be odd to celebrate Easter on, let's say, a Wednesday?

So the early church made a compromise. It switched to a solar calendar but kept Easter in the spring. This allowed Easter to remain, seasonally speaking (i.e., Springtime), associated with Passover (and still, vestigially, following the phases of the moon). It also allowed Easter to occur on a Sunday. Problem solved!

Well, not so fast. This early solution was based on the Julian calendar. Julius Caesar introduced this calendar to Rome after seeing the advantages of the Egyptian solar year. I guess we have Cleopatra to thank for this.

(Side history: Most ancient societies used the moon as a clock. The moon's regular phases make it ideal for this purpose. The trouble is, a lunar year doesn't sync well with the solar year, and it's the sun that's in charge of agricultural events. The Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to break free of the moon and go with the sun, a much more difficult astronomical task. Most scholars think that the Egyptians were able to break with the moon because their lives were governed by another non-moon time-keeping device: The floods of the Nile.)

The Julian calendar gives us a year of 365 days. Which is remarkably close to the actual solar year. But the match is not exact. A solar year is closer to 365 and 1/4th days long. So with the Julian calendar you are drifting against the solar year by 1/4 day each year. This drift is not much to notice on a year to year basis but over a century your calendar is drifting about 25 days, almost a full month. Eventually, if you date Easter by the Julian calendar Easter ends up being in the dead of winter. And Santa starts showing up in Hawaiian shirts.

Now this Julian drift can and was dealt with by adding in days here and there to catch the calendar up with the sun. But these were regional and post hoc measures. This calendar thing just had to get fixed once and for all. And only precise astronomy--nailing the exact length of the solar year---could help. Eventually, all the frustrations and science fell into the lap of Pope Gregory XIII who, in 1582, created the Gregorian calendar. It is the Gregorian calendar that gives us the leap years which correct every four years for the 1/4 day drift (but again, it is much more complicated than this as a solar year isn't exactly 365 1/4th days. See how good at astronomy you have to be to to get Easter right?). The Gregorian calendar now governs most of the world. Problem solved!

Well, not exactly. The Eastern Orthodox church didn't go along with the Gregorian calendar reforms. They stayed with the Julian calendar. Consequently, to this day, there are two Easters in Christendom, each celebrated on different days.

So, when exactly is Easter? Well, you could track with Passover. But if you do so you might not be celebrating Easter on a Sunday. Or, you could track with the Julian calendar like the Orthodox. The trouble with this is that you'll be basing Easter on a calendar taken from ancient pagan Egypt and celebrating a Christian holy day on a day of the week that carries a pagan name: The Sun's Day. The Gregorian calendar fares no better.

So when is Easter? Hard to say. But I do know this. You'd have to be very, very good at astronomy to know.