Irenaeus on the Antichrist

Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in the second century, said in his book, Against Heresies (Book 5, ch. 30), that he thought one of the most likely interpretations of 666 was ΛΑΤΕΙΝΟΣ, or Lateinos, for the Latins were presently ruling and were the fourth and last kingdom foreseen by Daniel. But he went on to say that no one could be sure until the kingdom was divided into ten. So he expected the Roman empire, then reigning, to be divided into ten, and soon thereafter would the antichrist be revealed.

That’s a tidbit picked up by reading L. E. Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers–a great work which shows that Seventh-day Adventists did not create their prophetic interpretations from scratch.  Froom notes that Hippolytus liked Irenaeus’ solution, and was agreed that Scripture pointed to the Latins. Hippolytus identified the Babylonian harlot as Rome, as did Victorinus, Jerome, Tichonius (a Donatist, saw it specifically as the Roman church and bishops), and Augustine (thought he would sit in the church); Spiritual Franciscans began applying it to the papacy, including Joachim of Fiore and Pierre Jean d’Olivi; so did the Waldenses.

Hurricane Gustav

Leading Democrats say Hurricane Gustav shows “God’s on our side.” Michael Moore says the hurricane is “proof there is a god in heaven.” And they think this is funny, that a (largely Democratic) region of the country will suffer yet again? Who is out of touch? Well, to start, Roy Nagin, who says this “mother of all storms” is 900 miles wide. Nonetheless, he’s the official who will bear the brunt of the responsibility for protecting his own city, while his fellow Democrats crack jokes at New Orleans’ expense.

Comparing Church Discipline

In the midst of a discussion about Truthful Evangelism at the Spectrum webpage, Dave Larson asked that I sketch some comparisons between Catholic and Adventist teachings on church discipline, specifically, the ultimate discipline that Catholics call excommunication and Adventists refer to as “removal from church membership.” Here’s a revised version of what I had sketched there, which benefits from some comments I received from two friends who are canon lawyers; one for a major archdiocese, and the other a respected professor of canon law.

The starting point for any Christian discussion on discipline must begin with the words of Jesus in Matthew 18:15-17:

If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

Over the centuries, Christians have interpreted this in many different ways. In early centuries, someone who sinned would be kept at the door of the church, and public penance might last many years. A strict form of church discipline was restored by the Reformed tradition, and considered a “mark of the Church” (see the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism); Among Anabaptists, “the ban” was listed as an article of faith alongside baptism and the Lord’s Supper (see the Schleitheim Confession). For some, such as the Amish, it may include shunning, avoiding contact with the person.

The current Seventh-day Adventist practice is described in the 2005 edition of the Church Manual (pp. 194ff). The section on Administering Discipline begins (p. 194) with this introduction:

If a member falls into sin, sincere efforts must be made for reclamation. “If the erring one repents and submits to Christ’s discipline, he is to be given another trial. And even if he does not repent, even if he stands outside the church, God’s servants still have a work to do for him. They are to seek earnestly to win him to repentance. And, however aggravated may have been his offense, if he yields to the striving of the Holy Spirit and, by confessing and forsaking his sin, gives evidence of repentance, he is to be forgiven and welcomed to the fold again. His brethren are to encourage him in the right way, treating him as they would wish to be treated were they in his place, considering themselves lest they also be tempted.”–Testimonies, vol. 7, p. 263.

The term “disfellowship,” once used, has been replaced by the term, “removal from church membership.” I’d be interested in knowing more about the reasons for the change in terminology. Someone is to be removed from membership as a last resort, “only after the instruction given in this chapter has been followed, and after all possible efforts have been made to win and restore him/her to right paths.” Restoration is the goal, not punishment. If a lesser means can be used, such as “censure” (which deprives a member of public office or a stated period of time), so much the better.

The manual lays out some specific reasons for which a member shall be subject to discipline, including “denial of faith in the fundamentals of the gospel and in the cardinal doctrines of the church or teaching doctrines contrary to the same,” “violation of the law of God,” including idolatry, murder, theft, profanity, gambling, Sabbath breaking, falsehood, sexual misconduct of various kinds, remarriage of a divorced person (except for the innocent partner of an adulterer), physical violence, fraud, “disorderly conduct which brings reproach upon the church,” “adhering to or taking part in a divisive or disloyal movement or organization,” “persistent refusal to recognize properly constituted church authority or to submit to the order and discipline of the church,” and use, manufacture, or sale of alcoholic beverages, tobacco, and narcotics or other drugs. Not that these are, for the most part, moral issues; a minority deal with attitudes and actions toward church authority.

The manual goes to great lengths to insist upon due process. Discipline must be done in a timely manner; caution must be followed; ministers and churches cannot set up tests of fellowship beyond what the denomination has done. Only a majority vote of members at a duly called business meeting can remove someone from membership, and only after the church board has reviewed the case. Neither the church board, the pastor, nor any other church official has the power to remove someone. The member has a right to be heard in their own defense and, consequently, must have due notice so that they can prepare. You can’t be removed for nonattendance or for financial reasons.

Once the action has been taken, the church must notify the former member in writing, and deliver the notification in person.

Those disciplined by the church, whether through censure (which has a time limit attached to it) or removal from membership, cannot vote or hold office, but “He/She is not deprived … of the privilege of sharing the blessings of Sabbath School, church worship, or the ordinances of the Lord’s house.” This is important. The purpose of discipline is winning the person back, and you don’t want to cut that person off from fellowship, hearing the word, or even from communion at the Lord’s table. Adventists have open communion, and practice it consistently with non-members and former members.

Reinstating a member who has been removed preferably happens in the same church from which they had been removed. Reinstatement may happen “when confession of wrongs committed is made, evidence is given of real repentance and amendment of life, and it is clear that the member will fully submit to church order and discipline.” “Readmission to church membership is normally preceded by rebaptism.”

Should the local church refuse to readmit the member, they have a right to appeal to the church for a hearing. If the church refuses, they can appeal to the conference.

Current Catholic norms are contained in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. It makes for difficult reading for the non-specialist, because it is a complex law code modeled on Roman law. The Catholic discipline of canon law has all the attending accouterments of civil law, including law schools, law degrees, lawyers, judges, and courts. The average priest has had only a couple of courses in the subject (St. Mary’s Seminary in Houston requires three 2-hour courses; I took one of the three, and picked up much of the rest through reading on my own, workshops for priests and lay ministers, and working for the Catholic church for about fourteen years).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes,

1463 Certain particularly grave sins incur excommunication, the most severe ecclesiastical penalty, which impedes the reception of the sacraments and the exercise of certain ecclesiastical acts, and for which absolution consequently cannot be granted, according to canon law, except by the Pope, the bishop of the place or priests authorized by them.

A friend who is an internationally respected canon lawyer said,

Historically there have been different understandings of what patterns of thought and behavior so impair the Church’s spiritual integrity as to require an ecclesiastical penalty, i.e., the deprivation of some spiritual or temporal good within the Church’s control.

Excommunication, like suspension or interdict, is a censure (canon 1312), a medicinal penalty intended to get the individual to change behavior.

Excommunication forbids one to have an active part in the Mass or other ceremony of public worship, to administer or receive the sacraments, to exercise any ecclesiastical office or, in certain instances, receive church benefits from it. Excommunicated persons, however, remain members of the Church , unless the offenses of their nature exclude such membership (e.g., heresy schism, or apostasy).

The relevant canons start with can. 1312. Note first the different terminology. Where “censure” for Adventists is a preliminary step to removal from membership, “censure” in the Catholic church is a category of which “excommunication” is one particular form.

Here’s a clear and interesting difference–whereas an Adventist, removed from church membership, can still receive communion, an excommunicated Catholic is not removed from membership (except as already noted), but can’t receive communion (or be confirmed, be married, be ordained, etc.).

Can. 1341 notes that excommunication is not imposed by either a pastor or a parish council (which in Catholic understanding is not a governing board but an advisory board); rather, the only person who can excommunicate someone is the ordinary–that is, the bishop. Concern is expressed for both due process and pastoral sensitivity. A period of time is to be given for “fraternal rebuke and correction,” and the ordinary should use “a judicial or administrative process.” But “just causes” (1342) can preclude this, and it is possible (though rare) for a bishop to by pass these procedures and impose a penalty by “extrajudicial decree.” As an example of this, I’d point to an excommunication decree issued by Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln in 1996 against members of certain organizations; see link below).

A bishop has a great deal of leeway, and can modify or suspend any penalty (1344), especially if there are extenuating circumstances (1345).

Can. 1347 specifies that the person must be warned in advance. And yet there are different kinds of excommunication; while some are declared, some actions can incur excommunication latae sententiae (that is, it happens automatically just by virtue of the fact that you did the act for which this was the penalty).

The reasons a person could be excommunicated are spelled out in can. 1364ff.

“An apostate from the faith, a heretic, or a schismatic” is excommunicated latae sententiae. As is someone who throws away the Eucharist or uses it profanely, as is someone who uses physical force against the pope.

A parent can be excommunicated if they let their child be baptized or educated in another faith (other legislation, including the Ecumenical Directory, understands that in a mixed marriage the non-Catholic parent may also have an obligation to raise the children in their faith, and so is going to be lenient on the Catholic parent in such a situation).

Can. 1372 says someone is to to be excommunicated if they appeal a pope’s decision to an ecumenical council–going over his head, as it were (Luther did this in 1518 and 1520, and this was one of the reasons why church leaders began to press for his excommunication, even apart from his teaching).

Can. 1378 says a priest is excommunicated latae sententiae if, in confession, he absolves someone with whom he had sex.

Can. 1397 notes “a person who commits a homicide or who kidnaps, detains, mutilates, or gravely wounds a person by force or fraud is to be punished with the privations and prohibitions mentioned in ⇒ can. 1336 according to the gravity of the delict.” Interestingly, excommunication is not an option for these cases. Abortion is the one exception, as is immediately noted in can. 1398: “A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication.”

Penalties are remitted at various levels, depending upon the offense; for some, it’s enough to go to confession; for others, the person seeking to have the penalty lifted must write to the bishop; for still others, he must appeal to the Vatican (1354 ff). Some of those cases that are reserved by the Vatican include desecration of the Eucharist, violence against the pope, and “absolution (by a priest) of a partner in a sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue” (i.e., sexual immorality).

Whereas for Adventists rebaptism is the normal path of restoration, this is never an option for Catholics, because baptism is considered an unrepeatable sacrament.

Some final points of summary.

Note that no Adventist penalty can deprive the person of Communion, whereas deprivation of the sacraments is the essential penalty (whether excommunication or interdict) that is imposed by the Catholic church. And while Adventists “remove from membership,” the Catholic Church does not.

Note that Adventist penalties require due process involving not merely the pastor, but the church board, and then a public business meeting, where the person has the right to be heard in their defense. While also stressing due process under normal circumstances, Catholic canon law nonetheless provides for occasions in which, for a just cause, penalties can be automatically incurred or imposed by the bishop by extrajudicial decree.

Moral failures, important in the Adventist understanding and practice, seem to be trivial concerns for Catholic canon law to Protestant eyes. Murder and violence will get someone removed from membership in an Adventist church, but they would not get someone excommunicated from the Catholic church (unless the victim was the pope). My friend noted above that these are certainly seen as serious sins by the Catholic Church, but the weight of canon law “is concerned primarily with church-related offenses.” This emphasis in the law may explain why no priests have been excommunicated for sexual abuse of children–something that most lay Catholics and non-Catholics cannot comprehend.

Adventists will restore anyone at the local level; while a priest can remit most penalties for Catholics, some are reserved to the pope.

Adventist procedures cover a few pages–Catholic laws, dozens and dozens of pages. Adventists don’t need canon lawyers trained in the intricacy of church laws like Catholics do. Adventists have no standing tribunals. Catholic canon law constitutes one of the major cultural differences between the Catholic system and all Protestant churches. The complex discipline of moral theology is related to it–the priest in confession is, in a sense, a judge, and the casuistic traditions of moral theology are intended to assist him in judging cases. This can also help to explain the requisite understanding of philosophy prior to the study of theology–Aristotelianism and other Greek philosophies undergird Catholic moral theology.

Excommunication is imposed rarely by the Catholic Church. I never heard of it being done a single time in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston during my nine years as a departmental director. When it does happen anywhere in the US or the world, in generally makes headlines, as in the following notable cases:

The Vatican recently said some women who attempted ordination are automatically excommunicated.

In 1996, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln excommunicated members of his diocese who might be members of Planned Parenthood, Society of St. Pius X, Hemlock Society, St. Michael the Archangel Chapel, Freemasons, Job’s Daughters, DeMolay, Eastern Star, Rainbow Girls and Catholics for a Free Choice. While other bishops around the country may have rolled their eyes, and while this affected only the members of his diocese, and no Catholics outside of Lincoln, the Vatican upheld his action. This is a good example of an extrajudicial decree, as well of both the independence and the authority of each bishop as Vicar of Christ for his local church.

Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis excommunicated some church board members for defying the bishop; incoming board members have been threatened with excommunication by his successor. Not only did the Vatican confirm his excommunication–he was made Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura–the head of the Vatican’s appellate tribunal.

Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre were excommunicated for ordaining bishops without authorization by the Vatican.

I want to return to the matter of the failure of the Catholic Church to excommunicate priests who have sexually abused minors. As noted above, this is something that angers and troubles many Catholics. Why are Rainbow Girls excommunicated while no priest who molests children is?

To get a sense of Catholic anger on the laxity shown toward clerical crime, read Jason Berry, Lead Us Not into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children, Jason Berry and Gerald Renner, Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II, and Leon J. Podles, Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church. One of the points that Podles makes is that the clergy just don’t get it. They don’t understand the anger of the laity. They don’t understand that righteous anger is morally obligatory in such cases. Lee would like, just once, to hear a priest or bishop express some genuine anger at the abuse that was done first by priests and then by bishops and other chancery officials who protected those priests. They would like a sense that justice has been done. The failure to excommunicate the perpetrators is one further suggestion that the system understands neither the seriousness of their crimes nor the anger of the laity.

Superstition

Steve Ray was caught promoting superstition on the Catholic Answers radio program: wearing a rosary “around your neck keeps the Devil away – it keeps the evil powers away, because they hate the rosary and they hate the crucifix.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church rightly condemns superstition, defining it thus:

2111 Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.

Attributing magical powers to wearing a rosary around the neck is indeed superstition. As is making 9 copies of a letter to St. Jude and leaving them around the church (or 9 x 9) for 9 days. As is burying St. Joseph upside down in your yard (facing away from your house, of course) in hopes of selling your house. As is tossing St. Benedict medals over the fence of the house you hope to buy. As is burying St. Benedict medals in your foundation of your house to keep the devil away. Etc., etc.

Mithun’s First Day of Law School

My friend Mithun, a graduate of Rice University, is now at Harvard Law School, and writes about his first day here.

Day two, in which we are introduced to the expression, “holy pickled mango chutney.”

Indentifying the Antichrist

The historic Protestant position is that the antichrist prophesied in Scripture is not a ruler at the end of time (contrary to futurism, such as current dispensationalism), nor a figure of the distant past (as in the preterist system, favored by Catholics such as Scott Hahn and most liberal scholars), but is instead a power in history, namely, the papacy.

Consider, for example, the reasons given by two denominations who maintain this view, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. For an historic Presbyterian perspective, see the writings of J. A. Wylie. They tend to focus on papal power, claims, and persecution through the centuries.

Another way Protestants have identified the papacy as the antichrist is by interpretation of Daniel and Revelation. It is important to note, however, that Protestants did not originate this. The first to identify the little horn of Daniel 7 with the papacy was the 13th century Archbishop of Salzburg, Erberhard II (see LeRoy Froom, Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1, pp. 796ff). Hans Urs von Balthasar has surveyed how Catholic interpreters through the patristic and medieval period, including Dante, identified the Babylonian harlot with the papacy (see also my review, here).

Von Balthasar’s introduction to his subject is instructive:

When Luther dares to equate the Roman Church with the whore of Babylon, it strikes us as the height of blasphemy. But he was not the first to coin the phrase. Similar things can be found in Wycliffe and Hus, and their language was not a complete innovation but the violent simplification and coarsening of a very old theologoumenon. This in turn has its origins in the Old Testament, in the words of judgment spoken by God, the betrayed Husband, against the archwhore Jerusalem, and in the New Testament’s application of these texts, which are so fundamental to the old (p. 193).

The image of God’s people as unfaithful goes back to the Old Testament. This is the tradition upon which the New Testament draws. The patristic, medieval, and Reformation interpreters stand in a long line of continuity. This is not an interpretation that should embarrass those Protestants who uphold it today–rather, it should inspire us to maintain our own faithfulness to Christ, lest we, too, be exposed as faithless.

Let us sketch briefly some of the key Scriptural texts that identify this power.

We start with Daniel 7. Daniel sees a vision of four beasts: 1) a lion with wings, 2) a bear, raised up on one side, 3) a leopard-like beast with four heads and four wings, 4) a great and terrible beast with ten horns, out of which comes a little horn, with eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great things. After this parade comes the judgment, and then the kingdom is given to the Son of man. The beasts are identified as four kingdoms; the fourth shall be different from the rest, and shall devour the earth; ten kings shall arise from it; another king shall arise from their midst, “and he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time. But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion.”

How are we to understand this? Let’s turn back first to Daniel 2. There Nebuchadnezzar sees the image of a man, with head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron mixed with clay; the base will be struck by a stone cut out without hands, and will become a great mountain filling the earth. Daniel interprets it for him; Nebuchadnezzar and his kingdom are represented by the head of gold; he shall be followed by another kingdom, inferior to his; this will be followed by a third kingdom, and a fourth. The fourth will be “strong as iron,” and will break in pieces and subdue all things. And the kingdom shall be divided, and like iron and clay, they will not mix. And then God will set up his kingdom.

Two visions, each showing the outline of human history from Nebuchadnezzar’s day to the kingdom of God. If the first is Babylon (represented also by the lion), what are the others?

Daniel 8 and 9 fill us in. Babylon has fallen to the Medes and the Persians. Daniel sees a vision of a ram with two horns, one higher than the other, and the ram was pushing to the west. Then he saw a goat coming from the west, and it raced forward; it had a single large horn. The goat hit the ram and broke his horns. The goat then “waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.”

And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceedingly great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land. And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them. Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. An an host was given him against the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression, and it cast down the truth to the ground; and it practised, and prospered.

But judgment comes.

Who are these beasts? They are identified in 8:20. The ram represents the Medes and the Persians; the goat, Greece. The great horn is the first king; four kingdoms shall arise from it, but without his power. Alexander the Great led Greece to victory against the Medes and Persians; he died young, and his empire was divided four ways.

Let’s compare. During Persian times, Daniel sees a Persian ram followed by Greek goat, which is broken up four ways, giving way to a nasty horn power, then the judgment. In Babylonian times Daniel sees a Babylonian head is followed by a silver chest and a bronze belly and iron legs–then the kingdom of God. Also in Babylonian times, Daniel sees a lion followed by a bear, followed by a four-headed leopard, then a great and terrible beast like iron, with a little horn–then judgment, and the kingdom of God.

The gold head, identified clearly as Babylon, is parallel to the lion. The silver chest which followed Babylon would be the Medes and Persians, already identified as the two horned ram, and would parallel the bear raised up on one side. The Greek goat with four horns would parallel the four-headed leopard and the bronze belly. What then is the next power? It would be represented by iron legs, beast compared to iron, and a horn that tramples heaven.

What followed Greece? Rome. Now some would say that the horn in Daniel 8 is Antiochus IV Epiphanes. But he was ruler of one of the divisions represented by the four horns. And he didn’t come “in the latter time of their kingdom,” but in the middle. And everything he tried to do ultimately failed. He was thrown out of Israel after a short time. And he didn’t stand up against the Prince of Princes. And his reign was not followed by judgment.

What else of this Roman power? He’ll divide into ten toes that won’t reunite. He’ll divide into ten horns. But a power arises in their midst, different from them, that will exercise divine authority, will think to change times and laws, will persecute the saints. The time of his power is numbered–1260 days. Writing in the early days of Roman power, Irenaeus of Lyons, in his book, Against Heresies (Book 5, ch. 30), was sure that Rome was symbolized by the beastly power. Because of this, he thought one of the most likely interpretations of the beast’s humber, 666, was ΛΑΤΕΙΝΟΣ, or Lateinos. But he went on to say that no one could be sure of the precise identification until the kingdom was divided into ten as Daniel and John had predicted.

We see a different image of this persecuting power in Revelation 17. Here we have a woman, a harlot, sitting atop a scarlet beast, full of names of blasphemy, with seven heads and ten horns. The woman is Babylon, and she’s drunk with the blood of the saints. The beast is a lot like that Roman beast of Daniel. The angel tells John its seven heads are seven mountains. What power was persecuting the church in John’s time? Rome, of course. It is a city on seven hills. And, like ancient Babylon, a power that had destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. But what of the woman on the beast? She’s a harlot. Now, a woman usually represents God’s faithful people–but God’s people have been known to turn aside. Hosea is to marry a harlot, because Israel, found in the desert as a faithful young girl, had become a harlot. In Revelation, a chaste woman goes into the wilderness; when we next see a woman, she’s a harlot on the Roman beast. The unfaithful bride become a persecuting harlot drunk with blood astride the Roman beast? Unthinkable! But that’s the image John gives us. But God will have the last word, and judgment will come, and God’s kingdom will be set up, and a faithful bride will be given in marriage.

Catholic apologists will say, “But the pope is on the Vatican hill, which wasn’t one of the seven hills of Rome.” Is the Pope Bishop of Vaticanus? Is he Bishop of Trastevere? Is he Bishop of Gianicolo? No, he’s Bishop of Rome, and his cathedral is the Basilica of St. John Lateran, within ancient Rome, given to the Bishop of Rome by Emperor Constantine. His cathedral is in the city of which he is bishop.

Some say the antichrist comes only at the end. But John saw the spirit of antichrist already at work in his day (1 John chs. 2 & 4; 2 John 1). This is a lying power that will speak blasphemy, will not speak truthfully about Christ’s humanity, and will have restrictions on food and marriage.

Scripture says when this power will have sway–after the Roman power is divided in two (legs) and then into ten (toes and horns), and three of those horns are uprooted. The political power of the papacy was confirmed by the Eastern Emperor, Justinian, in 538, after supplanting three Arian kingdoms that had stood in the way. These are additional clues, as is the length of time for which it will persecute: 1260 days, or 42 months, or 3 1/2 years. In prophecy, a day represents a year, so this gives a timespan of 1260 years.

These are the clues Scripture has given us. These are the raw data from which the interpreters I mentioned above began their work. They looked at human history and found a power that claimed divine prerogatives and titles, that used the power of the state to enforce its decrees for 1260 years, that turned the teachings of the Prince of Peace upside down, and in his name justified crusades and pogroms and the horrific torture and execution of its enemies; a power that regarded itself as superior to the state, that made emperors stand in the snow, that even in our own day has sought to protect priests guilty of the most vile crimes from secular and churchly punishment; a power that suppressed Biblical teachings and required obedience to man-made dogmas, that replaced the sacrifice of Christ with the sacrifice of the mass, and the good news of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ with indulgences and satisfactions.

There’s more–but they weren’t just pulling data out of the air; they weren’t just speaking on the basis of bigotry. They saw their day in the light of Biblical prophecy, prophecy that had accurately portrayed human history from the days of Babylon to their day. It had said when the Messiah would come–70 weeks, or 490 years after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem–and this was fulfilled exactly. This helped them to trust Scripture to point the way for us accurately.

And that’s what it comes down to–believing Scripture, or disbelieving it. A Catholic blog linked to this post and, in the comments, someone noted an article I had once written disagreeing with what I now propose (and they found it on the internet archive). But if they care to note, at the heart of that article was just this distrust of Scripture. I had accepted the claim of liberal critics that Daniel was written at the time of Antiochus and did not, and could not, predict the future. I sought to defend Catholicism by undermining Scripture. That’s never a safe route for an apologist who claims the name of Christian.

If you’d like to go further in studying the Scriptures I mention, and their historical fulfillment, you may start here.

“Vested in Secrecy”

Terry Mattingly on secrecy and the Catholic bishops.

“Running out of money and members and meaning”

Joseph Bottom reflects on The Death of Protestant America in First Things. Forty years ago the Protestant Mainline included half of all Americans; today, that’s dropped to a mere 8%.

More Police Brutality in Denver

In this video, a policeman slams a young woman with a baton, knocking her to the ground. When she recovers, and is standing talking to reporters, the cop reaches into the circle of reporter and grabs her away.

Sr. Helen Prejean @ Denver

Helen Prejean went a bit too far for the Democratic crowd in Denver.

A murder victim’s family said she went way too far in her book, Dead Man Walking.

Denver Police and the First Amendment

Police in Denver arrested an ABC news producer who was on a public sidewalk with a camera crew. Police have refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges.

Video taken at the scene shows a man, wearing the uniform of a Boulder County sheriff, ordering Eslocker off the sidewalk in front of the hotel, to the side of the entrance.

The sheriff’s officer is seen telling Eslocker the sidewalk is owned by the hotel. Later he is seen pushing Eslocker off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, forcing him to the other side of the street.

It was two hours later when Denver police arrived to place Eslocker under arrest, apparently based on a complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel, a central location for Democratic officials.

Update: There’s now video of the arrest. In one shot, a burly cop shoves him into the street, into traffic, bullying him. In the next, they push around the cameras, shove him around, and manhandle him. This is America. This is uncalled for. But unfortunately, we’re seeing this again, and again, and again. Police departments around the country have no respect for the Constitution, the rights of men, or men themselves.

Misunderstanding Genesis

Brian Bull, Fritz Guy, & Ervin Taylor, editors. Understanding Genesis: Contemporary Adventist Perspectives. Riverside, CA: Adventist Today Foundation, 2006.

This is a volume that seems to be addressed to Seventh-day Adventists who believe evolutionary theory and who want some reassurance that that’s OK. Process theology and the historical-critical method are lifted up as possible refuges for the disillusioned. They are thrown out to the reader, or assumed by the writers, who make no attempt to persuade the reader of the validity or truthfulness of these positions. Though titled, “contemporary Adventist perspectives,” they include no theologians or scientists who accept the Biblical record, nor do they engage their arguments. If mentioned at all, they’re dismissed with a wave of the hand in footnotes.

The Introduction gives some unusual definitions. Reason is said to be “the method by which we understand God” (vi). That may be true for the Enlightenment and Modernism, but for historic Christianity? What of revelation? What of faith? The historic understanding of the relationship is that expressed by Anselm: fides quaerens intellectum. We start with God’s self revelation, which is grasped by faith. This communication is intelligible and reasonable, and the faithful theologian seeks to better understand it.

The Introduction also offers an idiosyncratic understanding of science as “the way that God works in the world” (vi). This is a strange way to speak. Science isn’t about how God works—it’s about how we work. It is a method by which we seek to investigate and understand the natural world. It is the coupling of observation and reason.

Richard Rice’s essay, “Creation, Evolution, and Evil,” surveys what a few liberal theologians think, with emphasis on process theology. This is interesting, as far as it goes, but Rice doesn’t address whether their arguments are true. They may be “serious Christians” (18), but do they have authority? Should we accept their statements simply because they say so, or because they provide an easy out? I’m disappointed that Rice nowhere lets us know what he himself thinks. Is he unsure? Is he just offering these as possible paths to consider? Why does he not evaluate them against Scripture?

As an answer to the complaint that evolution assumes millions of years of animal suffering and death before human sin, Rice makes an artificial distinction between “pain” and “suffering,” suggesting that animals have “pain” but not “suffering” (p. 12). This is not persuasive, and contrary to human experience.

Rice fails to grapple with the problem posed by John Baldwin, et al., that Scripture says the world was created complete and good, and that pain, suffering, and death are a consequence of man’s fall. If this is not so, then it must affect our understanding of the atonement and man’s final destiny. Neither Rice nor Fritz Guy, capable systematicians, offers a response.

Rice cites authors who present God as “noninterventionist”—as “loving” and “persuading” the world into existence. But if God does not intervene, why bother to speak of “theistic evolution”? Christians who have accepted evolution in the past have said it was guided by God. That option is dismissed as a “God of the gaps” by both scientists and theologians today. Evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins and Catholic thinkers such as Vatican astronomer George Coyne see little difference between God intervening to direct evolution and Creationism. They argue that an essential element of evolution is its contingency; it is unguided, it is random, it proceeds on the basis of natural selection. This is why they are adamantly opposed to any talk of intelligent design. But if you are going to hold to any form of Biblical theology, you have to believe that miracles exist; God intervenes in many ways, from Creation to Redemption. If you do not believe in God’s intervention, what hope can you have for the eradication of sin and suffering and the restoration of all things in the earth made new? What hope can there be in the Second Coming of Christ? Rice does not deal with these questions.

There are additional problems with process theology (15), which Rice doesn’t adequately address. It must hold to the eternality of the world, in flat contradiction to the Biblical affirmation that God created all things. A Christian doctrine of creation must affirm that all things owe their origin to God. That’s the minimum. A picture of a “God” who is a helpless bystander loving a pre-existing world that he can’t touch may satisfy some philosophers, but not the Christian who confesses, “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”

Brian Bull (“Why Are Science and Religion Still Fighting?”) speaks of theologians “vilifying science.” This is incorrect. Theologians do not object to science, which is a method of theory and investigation; rather, they may take exception to the interpretations of scientists and their claim to truth. Truth is the issue. That’s why it is incorrect as well to speak of the discussion between religion and science as a matter of “value judgments” (whether something is “good” or “bad” or “stupid”). The question is which speaks truthfully about human origins and destiny. Both sides agree with this. Evolutionists do not say the Bible is “bad”—they say it is factually wrong.

Dalton Baldwin, in “Creation and Time: A Biblical Reflection,” asserts that if science and Scripture disagree, we must reinterpret Scripture (35). He does this by uncritically accepting the claims of the documentary hypothesis (45ff) following “most biblical scholars” (37). He misinterprets poetical passages in Job and Psalms that speak of God’s ongoing creative activity (37ff), as if this is contrary to a completed creation as in Genesis. Part of the Christian doctrine of Creation is Providence, which is God’s continuing action to uphold what he has created. There is no foothold here for evolution’s understanding of the origin of species.

Because of his prior acceptance of historical-critical assumptions, Dalton Baldwin dismisses the days of creation and genealogical data as “symbolic” (41ff). Contrast his cavalier treatment of these issues with the careful treatment of this question by Old Testament scholar Gerhard F. Hasel in “The ‘Days’ of Creation in Genesis 1” (in John Baldwin, Creation, Catastrophe & Calvary), as well as Randall W. Younker’s argument on behalf of the unity of the first two chapters of Genesis ( “Genesis 2: A Second Creation Account?” in Baldwin, CCC).

Dalton Baldwin’s acceptance of the historical-critical method not only eliminates the factualness of the Genesis account, but also allows him to separate the Sabbath from Creation (p. 47). Why then keep it, if it is not a perduring ordinance rooted in Creation?

Ivan T. Blazen, “Theological Considerations of Genesis 1:1-2:3,” argues that Genesis 1 is “theology” not “science”; it is a “religious statement,” or a “statement of faith” (70-71). He ignores the fact that it also is a statement of revelation. It is not just man speculating in wonder, but transmitting what God has revealed; it is regarded as such in the New Testament (as when Jesus roots his teachings on marriage in Adam’s union with Eve).

Fritz Guy, “The Purpose and Function of Scripture,” argues that Scripture’s purpose is to tell us about God: what he is, does and wants. The answers, Guy says, are that God is love, God comes to us, and God wants us to trust him. He rejects the idea that Scripture can give us any information about the world; in fact, this is “actually refuted by Scriptural evidence” (86-87). This latter premise is based on his uncritical acceptance of the documentary hypothesis (91ff).

But you cannot separate what Scripture says about the world from what it says about the God who created it. If we can accept that the Bible is accurate in saying that God is love, how can we reject the Biblical teaching that God’s love means that he created a world free of sin, suffering, and death? How can we embrace a worldview that assumes that death and suffering are “normal,” and predated human sin by billions of years? If we can accept that the Bible is accurate in saying that God comes to us, how can we embrace evolution which rejects divine involvement in favor of contingency? If death predated sin, how can believe that he did come as man, and died for our sins? If uniformitarianism is correct, how can we trust Christ’s promise of his second coming when sin will be eradicated, death destroyed, and the world made new?

Richard Bottomley, “The Clocks in the Rocks,” dismisses John Baldwin, et al., as holding to “pathological theology” (p. 110, footnote 5) in linking creation and redemption. He can’t imagine that what we believe about creation could impact what we believe about sin, redemption or eschatology (111). But theology is systematic; truths do relate to one another, and if you modify one point, other aspects will be affected.

Ervin Taylor, “Time for Mankind,” dismisses Adventist theologians and scientists who accept Creation as “fundamentalist/conservative Adventist scholars” (pp. 127, 142, 144)—a footnote tells us he has John Baldwin, Richard Davidson, Sam Pipim, and F. M. Hasel in mind. He ignores the issue of “death before sin” as an “alleged” problem (p. 127). He misapplies the concept of “present truth” (p. 144), suggesting it allows for the overturning of key concepts of Christian theology.

Warren H. Johns, in “Theology and Geology of the Flood,” argues that the flood was limited and all animals were not on it. By contrast, see Richard M. Davidson (“Biblical Evidence for the Universality of the Genesis Flood” in Baldwin, CCC).

Lawrence T. Geraty furthers this part of the conversation with “Archaeology of the Flood”; he, too, uncritically accepts the documentary hypothesis (173ff) as the foundation for his interpretation.

This book stands in stark contrast to John Baldwin’s volume, Creation, Catastrophe, & Calvary: Why a Global Flood Is Vital to the Doctrine of the Atonement (Review and Herald, 2000). Where that volume shows the interconnectedness of Christian teaching, this seeks to pull out selective points. Where Baldwin shows connection with Revelation 14, the Sabbath, the Sanctuary, and Calvary, this volume suggests evolution makes no difference. Where Baldwin confirms faith in Scripture, this volume can only confirm doubt. And it does so by isolating itself; instead of promoting conversation with the tradition, it dismisses that tradition and those who accept it and then finds itself reaching out for whatever support it can find, including process theology and the historical-critical method.

A final note: if you order the book from AToday’s Amazon.com shop, be prepared to way a long time. They didn’t put it in the mail until ten days after I placed the order. It arrived nearly ten days after that. I inquired about the delay, and got no responses to my e-mails (sent via Amazon and directly to AToday).

The Shakers

The Christian Century has an interesting article about the last Shakers, at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine. Among those interviewed, Br. Arnold Hadd, whom we met when we visited there this summer.

Arnold Hadd is the last Shaker man on Earth. And you can find him and three “sisters” in the dwindling faith group living on the hilly farmland near Sabbathday Lake, southwest of Lewiston, Maine.

A polite man, Hadd is simple in his speech, still utilizing the traditional yay and nay in place of the common yes and no. Yet when the discussion turns to the Shakers’ perceived legacy as craftspeople, his mannerisms change.

“In the vernacular, it pisses me off,” he said. “Everybody comes here thinking we’re a guild of furniture makers, which is about as far away from the truth as it can be.”

2YRS + $5K = 1 :-)

Today was the day! My daughter got her braces off!

Need a great orthodontist in Houston? Go to Dr. David Wadler, RocknSmile.com!

It’s a Small World …

It’s my son’s first day of classes at Southwestern Adventist University, and his math professor turns out to be George Parry, my wife’s math teacher back at Riverview Memorial School in Norridgewock, Maine.

The Democrats and Religion

The Democratic party is giving all its activities in Denver a religious veneer.

Meanwhile, Archbishop Charles Chaput catechizes the Catholics of Denver (and elsewhere) on the errors of Nancy Pelosi, who had this to say on this week’s “Meet the Press“:

I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time.  And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition.  And Senator–St. Augustine said at three months.  We don’t know. …

MR. BROKAW:  The Catholic Church at the moment feels very strongly that it … begins at the point of conception.

REP. PELOSI:  I understand.  And this is like maybe 50 years or something like that.

Chaput responds:

Since Speaker Pelosi has, in her words, studied the issue “for a long time,” she must know very well one of the premier works on the subject, Jesuit John Connery’s Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective (Loyola, 1977). Here’s how Connery concludes his study:

“The Christian tradition from the earliest days reveals a firm antiabortion attitude . . . The condemnation of abortion did not depend on and was not limited in any way by theories regarding the time of fetal animation. Even during the many centuries when Church penal and penitential practice was based on the theory of delayed animation, the condemnation of abortion was never affected by it. Whatever one would want to hold about the time of animation, or when the fetus became a human being in the strict sense of the term, abortion from the time of conception was considered wrong, and the time of animation was never looked on as a moral dividing line between permissible and impermissible abortion.”

Then he quotes “the great Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer”:

Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.

The Weber Thesis Confirmed

Fr. Philip is in Rome; his blood pressure is rising, and he can’t get his medication. It was mailed to him some time ago, but the university canceled mail delivery for a couple of weeks while the gatekeeper was on vacation. Now that it has resumed, a piece or two will be delivered each day until the mountain of mail has been delivered. His fellow friars (who didn’t tell him the mail delivery would stop) are aghast that he would even think of going to the post office himself to get it.

Ryan Bell on Evangelism

From Ryan Bell: Missional Church: Recovering Evangelism as Authentic, Credible Witness.

Barna on Morality

Barna says Young Adults and Liberals Struggle with Morality.

Antinomianism in Contemporary Lutheranism

Paul McCain (LCMS) writes about the problem of antinomianism in contemporary Lutheranism.

Truthful Evangelism

Loren Seibold has a good post at Spectrum on some apparently unethical practices of an Adventist evangelist in ND. Some nastiness gets into the comment boxes, however, from folks who seem unable to separate the medium from the message.

We need to do public evangelism, but we need to be upfront from the start. And that holds true for any denomination. If we believe what we’re saying, we won’t play any games. We aren’t selling used cars or brushes or home cleaning supplies–we’re sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, and the truth of his word.

Now, does this mean we put the most controversial teachings up front? No. We start where we have common ground. With other Christians, our witness is going to start with Jesus Christ, and our common hope. With non-Christians, the human longing for relationships that last, for meaning, for spirituality.

Context is everything, as Catholic evangelist Isaac Hecker came to realize in the 19th century, when he tried for the first time to present Catholic teachings to a general American audience. See my article, The History of the Parish Mission.

Update: Some good discussion of this at SDA2RC.

Crossing Paths with History

Here’s a picture of the old school in Northfield, Vermont. We were living in Northfield when my son started preschool and my daughter was born. The preschool was at first located in Roxbury, but they moved it to the historic old school his second year; he attended here for a couple of months before we moved to Watertown, NY. I’m reading Gilbert Valentine’s biography of W. W. Prescott, Adventist theologian and educator, who started out his educational career as principal and high school teacher at this school when it was new.

End of an Era

My last (empty) jar of Postum is now in the trash. Now I’m working on some “Kaffree Roma.”

Dinoland

While Andrew was talking to potential campus employers, I took a side trip over to Glen Rose, TX, famous for its many dinosaur footprints in the limestone of the Paluxy River. I waded in the river at Dinosaur Valley State Park, viewing some of the exposed footprints. I drove by Dinosaur World, which looked tacky on the outside; I now wish I had gone.

I did go to Carl Baugh’s Creation Evidence Museum–I’m glad it only cost $2. Not many display cases. Not much explanation of what you’re seeing–unless you watch the 45 minute video (I started nodding off after 20 minutes). He’s got quite a number of “human footprints” allegedly dug up in various places, but they all look phony to me (e.g.; another).

College Freshmen

From Beloit College, their Mindset List for the Class of 2012.

I’m back (11:15 p.m. on Thursday) from dropping off my son. Yesterday was settling into the dorm; today was registration. Classes start on Tuesday.

Catholic Charities and Gay Adoptions in San Francisco

California Catholic Daily has the latest.

Changes in US Catholic Catechism Re: Judaism

The USCCB is making some changes to the U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults in the section on the relationship between Catholics and Jews (HT Carl Olson).

After mail balloting, the final vote of 231-14, with one abstention, was announced Aug. 5 in a letter to bishops from Msgr. David Malloy, USCCB general secretary.

The change, which must be confirmed by the Vatican Congregation for Clergy, would remove from the catechism a sentence that reads: “Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them.”

Replacing it would be this sentence: “To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his word, ‘belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ’” (Rom 9:4-5; cf. CCC, No. 839).

“Talking points” distributed to the bishops along with Msgr. Malloy’s letter said the proposed revision “is not a change in the church’s teaching.”

“Catholics understand that all previous covenants that God made with the Jewish people have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ through the new covenant established through his sacrificial death on the cross,” the talking points say.

“The prior version of the text,” they continue, “might be understood to imply that one of the former covenants imparts salvation without the mediation of Christ, whom Christians believe to be the universal savior of all people.”

Robert Sungenis is celebrating.

Franklin Graham Disses “Billy” Movie

Franklin Graham has issued a statement about “Billy: The Early Years.”

Family Milestones

My son goes to college tomorrow.

My daughter gets her braces off next week (after 2 years and $5275!).

The Shroud of Turin

History and science (more) say it’s a painting, a forgery created in the 14th century, when conniving clergy conspired to wrest coins from the hands of credulous commoners. Now, some “true believers” still try to tell us it’s a miracle.

Even apart from science and history, the purported shroud is not what Scripture describes: strips of linen (and here) and a separate face cloth.