Distinctive Christian Thinking

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Thinking Christianly

This current blog hasn't really been updated in a while, but I have set this new blog to post regularly beginning Monday.

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End of an Era

It's official, Greg Maddux has retired. See his news conference here.

While tossing a three-hit, 89-pitch shutout at Yankee Stadium in 1997, Greg Maddux was strolling toward the dugout when he was stopped by umpire John Hirschbeck. The mid-inning exchange puzzled then-Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone, who immediately asked, "What did he say to you?"

After replying, "He told me I'm as good as advertised," Maddux smirked and added, "Isn't that something, Leo? Not only do I have to live up to the expectations of the fans, but now I have to live up to the expectations of the umpires, too."

During a career that included 355 wins and four consecutive National League Cy Young Awards (1992-95), Maddux exceeded the expectations that have been placed on any pitcher and established himself as one of the greatest individuals to stand on a mound.

Read More.

Here is another great article with quotes Maddux, the bearded wonder himself John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Bobby Cox, and Leo Mazzone. Read it here.

Progress of Theology in America: Conclusions

Introductory Posting

Here is a brief summary of each of the writers we have looked at followed by a short conclusion that can be drawn from noticing the progression of theology in America:

John Winthrop (1588-1649), A Model of Christian Charity. The settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were in a unique covenantal relationship with God, very similar to that of ancient Israel (having fled from their oppressors, across the water, and into the land)...while there are similarities between their calling to a new land and Israel’s calling, the settlers of Massachusetts Bay were still distinct – distinctly American. They are not an extension of Israel, but a replacement of it in relationship with God.

Thomas Hooker (1586-1647), The Activity of Faith: or, Abraham’s Imitators. There are Christians deeply rooted in the church, who are unredeemed. Faith cannot be inherited from the previous generation simply by following the routines they have set forth for the society. The new generation believes that their acts are enough to warrant the favor of God. They hope in their baptisms, their church attendance, hearing the Word, or receiving the sacraments. They live in ignorance believing that these will bring salvation… utterly surprised to hear that they won’t. “A faithful man is a fruitful man.” ...believers are then called to follow in the footsteps of Abraham’s faith, not his circumcision.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), Personal Narrative. God has produced a great change at the point of conversion. The believer now has a sense of God’s glory and majesty. More and more they come to an inward sense of sweetness, seeing His glory in everything. The believer now fixes his mind God. What was so terrible before is now so sweet. As Edwards states “My experience had not the taught me, as it has done since…the bottomless depths of secret corruption and deceit there was in my heart.” This is original sin. This is the sin nature of humanity. But miraculously there comes a change from the hand of God. Now the believer has a much greater sense of God’s grace. The believer has an abhorrence of his own righteousness. The soul of the Christian receives grace from God and in turn emits the sweet aroma of the Lord. God is now seen as who He is and loved for it.

David Walker (1785-1830), Our Wretchedness in Consequence of the Preachers of the Religion of Jesus Christ. ...the pure religion that was taught by Jesus Christ is scarce to be found. God gave a dispensation of his will to Israel who proceeded to depart from faith through hypocrisy and oppression. He then gave a dispensation to the Europeans, “together with the will of Jesus.” The Europeans are now in violation for having made the African into a piece of merchandise, and even using religion to aid them in the oppressive process. The city on a hill is no longer lovely to behold, but it is now wretched and despised...Christians beat the Africans for praying to the God that created them. Destruction will come to America for breaking its covenantal relationship with God through its social injustices. “Oh Americans! Americans!! I warn you in the name of the Lord to repent and reform, or you are ruined!!!”

William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), The Essence of Christian Religion. There is one great, central truth and principle of Christianity – God purposes to perfect the human soul. God purposes the elevation of men to a diviner being. The religion of Jesus Christ is a religion suited to fulfill the wants of every human being. Man is capable of great things. No longer should he be mired under the weight of original sin as it is not befitting of the rational person.

Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875), Lectures on Revivals of Religion. Calculated planning is essential in order to influence rational people toward God. “Religion is the work of man.” ...all the religion in the world has been produced by revivals. Believers must be rationally appealed to, often in a way so outrageous as to wear them down and break through any barriers they had constructed to the gospel. “A revival of religion is not a miracle…It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means.” It is man’s job to go to work promoting religion, not just sit back and rely on God’s sovereignty.

Sarah M. Grimké (1792-1873), Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women. In looking at Genesis, man and woman were clearly created in equality. They are given dominion over the earth and over the animals, yet they are not given dominion over each other. God created us equal and created us as free agents. To God alone, and to no one else, is woman bound in subjection. “All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks and permit us to stand upright on the ground which God designed us to occupy.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), The Divinity School Address. There is much optimism about the human nature. Individuals must find the truth within themselves and not from second hand sources. Respect the perfection of this world, though not as something displaying the sovereignty of God, but rather as perfection in and of itself. Man is the greatest good. Humans should go at life alone. Love God purely, without a mediator or a veil, such as tradition or the Bible.

Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The might of truth is in the treatment of disease as well as sin. The discords of the corporeal sense must yield to the harmony of the spiritual sense. The spirit is good and real. Matter, the physical world, is spirit’s opposite. “Christian science rationally explains that all other pathological methods are the fruits of human faith in matter, - faith in the workings, not of the spirit, but of the fleshly mind which must yield to science.” Science is god.

Joseph Smith (1805-1844), King Follett Discourse. God himself was once as we are. That is the great secret. If you could see God right now, he would appear as a man. “Here is eternal life – to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you.” God is just like you and me. He is nothing extraordinary. Everyone can be god.

Horace Bushnell (1802-1876), Christian Nurture. A child is to grow up Christian and never know himself as being otherwise. ...there is a moral incongruity to say to a child that he will reject God and holy principle until he comes to a mature age. In reality, the expectation of the parent will become the expectation of the child. If the expectation is that the child will reject God, then he will. We seem to fancy that there is some moment in which the child becomes a moral agent. Perhaps character is built rather from the environment around a person rather than instilled within them by God at the point of conversion. Our character is determined by our natural environment, not by a supernatural experience.


Conclusions

Many of these writers shared, in very different ways, Winthrop’s vision of the United States as a special, city on a hill. But the injustices of American society, from slavery to the treatment of women, raised questions about that ideal and that teaching. Other questions arose leading to the denial of the Trinity, the exaltation of reason and science, and a complete departure from original sin. These writings portray a religion being very much tossed about on the waves of a cultural enlightenment and an increased optimism in the natural ability of human kind. There needs to be a return to some of the concepts present in those first writings. We are to be a city on a hill (but as believers, not as Americans). We are to be a guiding light for a confused culture around us. Rather than being washed out to sea by the waves, we should stand firm on the solid rock of Christ, the gospel, and the scriptures. We are a lighthouse, guiding people home.

Progress of Theology in America: Horace Bushnell

Introductory Posting

Horace Bushnell (1802-1876), Christian Nurture.

Bushnell, a Congregational minister in Hartford, Connecticut, tried to find creative theological alternatives to strict orthodoxy on the one hand and liberalism shading into Unitarianism on the other. He had original things to say about the nature of religious language and the work of Christ. Christian Nurture, probably his most influential book, defended the growing Sunday school movement against revivalists unfriendly to the idea of gradual growth in faith from early childhood. In his criticisms of individualism and his use of organic metaphors, Bushnell shows the influence of Romantic ideas that he, like Emerson, was getting from Europe (p. 126-127).

A child is to grow up Christian and never know himself as being otherwise. The aim should not be individualistic, that the child grows up in sin, to be converted after he comes to a mature age; but that he is to open on the world as one that is spiritually renewed, not remembering when he went through a technical experience. The argument for this is that there is no absurdity in supposing that children are to grow up in Christ. In fact, there is a moral incongruity to say to a child that he will reject God and holy principle until he comes to a mature age. In reality, the expectation of the parent will become the expectation of the child. If the expectation is that the child will reject God, then he will. “The tendency of all our modern speculations is to an extreme individualism, and we carry our doctrines of free will so far as to make little or nothing of organic laws.” We seem to ignore the organic connection to character. We seem to fancy that there is some moment in which the child becomes a moral agent. Perhaps character is built rather from the environment around a person rather than instilled within them by God at the point of conversion. This is the very idea of Christian education. It begins with nurture. The spirit of the parents shall flow into the mind of the child and beget their own good within him. All Christian parents would like to see their children grow up in piety – the better Christians they are the more they desire it. A pure, separate, individual man, living wholly within, and from himself, is a mere fiction. “All society is organic – the church, state, school, family. And there is spirit within each of these organisms, peculiar to itself, and more or less hostile, more or less favorable to religious character, and to some extent, sovereign over the individual man.” Our character is determined by our natural environment, not by a supernatural experience.

Tomorrow: Conclusions

Progress of Theology in America: Joseph Smith

Introductory Posting

Joseph Smith (1805-1844), King Follett Discourse.

Joseph Smith grew up amid the religious turmoil of upstate New York in the early nineteenth century. In the late 1820s he began to dictate a translation of a document he claimed to have discovered with angelic help, the Book of Mormon, which described the wanderings of the lost tribes of Israel and the pre-Columbian history of America. Smith soon began to attract converts, who moved first to Ohio, then to Missouri, and then to Nauvoo Illinois, where Smith was murdered by local opponents of the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." He preached this sermon at the funeral of one of his followers, King Follet, in 1844. Many of its themes are no longer emphasized by Mormons, but it shows the theologically radical ideas Smith and others on the frontier sometimes generated (p. 125).

God himself was once as we are. That is the great secret. If you could see God right now, he would appear as a man. “Here is eternal life – to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you.” Essentially you must work your way up, until you attain the resurrection of the dead under your own efforts, just as Christ did, following his father. Know also that the head of the gods called a council of gods and they prepared a plan to create the world. From this realize that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos. The elements have no beginning and no end. God is just like you and me. He is nothing extraordinary. Everyone can be god. He is human in form, ordering from something rather than creating from nothing, through the council of others. It is easy to be God. And this must be so, because as Smith states, “I know more than the world put together.”

Tomorrow: Horace Bushnell

Progress of Theology in America: Mary Baker Eddy

Introductory Posting

Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

Mary Baker grew up in a Congregationalist family in New Hampshire. She suffered chronic ill health and two unhappy marriages before she found a cure for her illness in the nascent Christian healing movement. With the support of her third husband, Asa Eddy, she organized the Christian Science Association, with its many publications and local societies. This selection comes from the preface to her best-known work, Science and Health, the first edition of which was published in 1875 (p.123).

The might of truth is in the treatment of disease as well as sin. The discords of the corporeal sense must yield to the harmony of the spiritual sense. The spirit is good and real. Matter, the physical world, is spirit’s opposite. In seeking truth, we find it in the power of demonstration. This is the demonstration of the healing of disease and sin. Christian healing is the only true way to go. It creates the most health and the best of people. Throughout the ages, sickness has not been eradicated by the doctors who have been fighting it using material remedies. The divine principle of healing is proved in the personal experience of any sincere seeker of truth. “Christian science rationally explains that all other pathological methods are the fruits of human faith in matter, - faith in the workings, not of the spirit, but of the fleshly mind which must yield to science.” Science is god. The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in it did in Jesus’ time, from the operation of divine principle. Before this divine principle, both sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear. These mighty works are not supernatural, but natural. They are the sign that God is with us, holding a divine influence over our lives.

Tomorrow: Joseph Smith

Progress of Theology in America: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Introductory Posting

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), The Divinity School Address.

Emerson resigned as minister of Second Church in Boston in 1832 and began a long career as America's most famous public lecturer. To the new "transcendentalism" he represented, with its optimism about human nature, its belief that individuals must find the truth within themselves and not at second hand, and its sense of the divinity of the human soul, even Boston Unitarianism seemed too theologically conservative. Emerson delivered this lecture at the Harvard Divinity School in 1838; he was never invited back (p. 121).

There is much optimism about the human nature. Individuals must find the truth within themselves and not from second hand sources. Observe nature. Respect the perfection of this world, though not as something displaying the sovereignty of God, but rather as perfection in and of itself. The world is not the product of manifold power, but of the will, of one mind, and that mind is everywhere. The heart gives assurances that the law is sovereign over all natures. This sentiment is divine and deifying. It makes man illimitable. It corrects the capital mistake of deriving advantages from another, by showing the fountain of all good to be himself. Man is the greatest good. Jesus Christ saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. He alone in all of history estimated the greatness of man. He saw that God incarnates Himself in man. Yet, every other recording of the events of Jesus’ life have been distorted. Today, men speak of revelation as being completed in the past, as if God were dead. Man needs to be made sensible that he is an infinite soul, always constantly drinking of God. Good seeks good, and evil seeks evil. So by their own choice souls proceed into heaven, or into hell. Humans should go at life alone. Love God purely, without a mediator or a veil, such as tradition or the Bible.

Tomorrow: Mary Baker Eddy