I would like to wish everyone a happy new year.
I would like to say this prayer for each of you:
Dear Lord
Forgive us of our sins
Please give us the strength to do your will
Lord thank you for all the blessings you have bestowed on us this past year
Please help us stay the course and run the race that you want us to run
I ask your blessing for our active duty military members
I ask your blessings for our veterans
I ask that you will comfort all of the Christians who are suffering persecution
I ask all of these things is Jesus Christ's name
Amen
Again I hope you have a wonderful 2014.
God Bless,
Doug
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English - Question #9
Q. 9. What is the work of creation?
A. The work of creation is the making by God of all things from nothing, by his powerful word,[a] in the space of six days, and all very good.[b]
A. The work of creation is the making by God of all things from nothing, by his powerful word,[a] in the space of six days, and all very good.[b]
[a] Genesis 1:1
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
1 In the beginning God made of nought heaven and earth. (In the beginning God made out of nothing the heavens and the earth.)
Psalm 33:6
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
6 Heavens be made steadfast by the word of the Lord; and all the virtue of those by the spirit of his mouth. (The heavens were made by the word of the Lord; yea, all the host of them, by the breath from his mouth.)
Hebrews 11:3
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
3 By faith we understand that the worlds were made by God's word [By faith we understand the worlds to be shaped, or made, by God's word], that visible things were made of invisible things.
[b] Genesis 1:31
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
31 And God saw all (the) things which he (had) made, and they were full good (and they were very good). And the eventide and the morrowtide was made, the sixth day.
Comment on Q. 9
When God made the worlds he did not make them from himself (as religions like Hinduism teach), nor did he make them from already existing materials (for there were none), but he made them from nothing simply by willing they should be. Genesis 1:1 states the fundamental fact of creation; the following verses concentrate on God's work in making this world a fit home for man. We should remember that the bringing into existence of something and the modification of something which already exists are two quite different things. How long does it take to turn water into wine? Given creative power it can be done instantly (John 2:7-9).
'Moderate' Malaysia: Sharia police hunt down Christians who use the word Allah
More interfaith dialogue and tolerance from savages. Muslim leadership constantly beat us about the head with demands for "interfaith dialogue." They not only butcher people, they butcher language.
Imagine: devout Muslims are hunting down a Christian group for worshipping in their own mother language. The Malaysian government won't authorize the construction of churches, so Christian groups rent or convert shop lots and warehouses to use as a place of worship. This group's activity at a hotel was a private function, yet the (Muslim) morality police is going to hunt them down.
It is illegal for Christians to use the word alah for god in Malaysia.
Why Christians would want to use the word allah for god is beyond me. Allah bears no resemblance to Hashem or Jesus Christ.
"Selangor religious authorities hunt for Christians who used ‘Allah’ illegally," Malaysian Insider, December 25, 2013 (hat tip Tracy)
It might be Christmas Day cheer across the world but Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais) officials are not feeling the festive occasion as they look for a Christian group that used the word “Allah” in their worship illegally last weekend.
Malay newspapers had reported that the Christian group had allegedly used “Allah” at their Sunday function at a hotel in Klang, reigniting the battle for the word which is now before the country's apex court.
A Court of Appeal ruling decided that the home minister has the power to restrict use of the world.
The Government and religious authorities have not only gone to restrict Christians from using the word but have now started a campaign to outlaw Shia Islam in the country.
There are only some 1,500 Shias but the number cannot be independently verified.
In the latest case, deputy director of Jais Ahmad Zaki Arshad said they had yet to get proof that the Christian group had used the word “Allah” in their meeting.
"We are seeking the assistance of the hotel management to view footage of the closed-circuit television camera to check on the validity of the claim. We cannot act, based on a photograph in a newspaper," Ahmad Zaki told The Malaysian Insider.
He said the department was seeking the cooperation of the event organisers to come forward to facilitate investigation.
"A photograph is insufficient evidence to act."
Ahmad Zaki was referring to Utusan Malaysia's report on Monday which carried a photograph of the event, with the words, “International Full Gospel Fellowship: Keluarga Allah satelit Nilai dan satelit Puchong, 'Dari dalam gelap akan terbit terang’,” on a backdrop.
The department is investigating the case under a 1988 enactment which bars non-Muslims from using the word “Allah”.
The daily had reported that some 200 people had attended the gathering, organised by International Full Gospel Fellowship.
The report said those present sang songs containing the word “Allah”. Following this, two Muslim groups have called for action against a Christian group for allegedly using the word “Allah” at their function.
In their reaction, Pertubuhan Ikatan Kebajikan dan Dakwah Selangor (Ikddas) and Perkasa Selangor chapter urged Jais to investigate and act on the matter.
“From a legal perspective, it is clear the use of the word 'Allah' is prohibited to non-Muslims. If the organiser uses the sacred word in a non-Islamic function, then Jais should not hesitate to take action against them,” Ikddas president Rosdi Long told Utusan.
Selangor Perkasa chief Abu Bakar Yahya said it was inappropriate for non-Muslims to use the word, saying the Selangor sultan had issued a decree on the matter.
Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, who is also the Islamic religious head, recently called on non-Muslims in his state not to refer God as “Allah” and ordered that the word not be used in the Bible and in the Bahasa Malaysia section of Catholic weekly, Herald.
This, he said, was to avoid causing confusion among Muslims in Selangor.
On October 14, the Court of Appeal ruled to uphold the Home Ministry's ban on Herald's use of the word “Allah”. – December 25, 2013.
There are only some 1,500 Shias but the number cannot be independently verified.
In the latest case, deputy director of Jais Ahmad Zaki Arshad said they had yet to get proof that the Christian group had used the word “Allah” in their meeting.
"We are seeking the assistance of the hotel management to view footage of the closed-circuit television camera to check on the validity of the claim. We cannot act, based on a photograph in a newspaper," Ahmad Zaki told The Malaysian Insider.
He said the department was seeking the cooperation of the event organisers to come forward to facilitate investigation.
"A photograph is insufficient evidence to act."
Ahmad Zaki was referring to Utusan Malaysia's report on Monday which carried a photograph of the event, with the words, “International Full Gospel Fellowship: Keluarga Allah satelit Nilai dan satelit Puchong, 'Dari dalam gelap akan terbit terang’,” on a backdrop.
The department is investigating the case under a 1988 enactment which bars non-Muslims from using the word “Allah”.
The daily had reported that some 200 people had attended the gathering, organised by International Full Gospel Fellowship.
The report said those present sang songs containing the word “Allah”. Following this, two Muslim groups have called for action against a Christian group for allegedly using the word “Allah” at their function.
In their reaction, Pertubuhan Ikatan Kebajikan dan Dakwah Selangor (Ikddas) and Perkasa Selangor chapter urged Jais to investigate and act on the matter.
“From a legal perspective, it is clear the use of the word 'Allah' is prohibited to non-Muslims. If the organiser uses the sacred word in a non-Islamic function, then Jais should not hesitate to take action against them,” Ikddas president Rosdi Long told Utusan.
Selangor Perkasa chief Abu Bakar Yahya said it was inappropriate for non-Muslims to use the word, saying the Selangor sultan had issued a decree on the matter.
Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, who is also the Islamic religious head, recently called on non-Muslims in his state not to refer God as “Allah” and ordered that the word not be used in the Bible and in the Bahasa Malaysia section of Catholic weekly, Herald.
This, he said, was to avoid causing confusion among Muslims in Selangor.
On October 14, the Court of Appeal ruled to uphold the Home Ministry's ban on Herald's use of the word “Allah”. – December 25, 2013.
Gallup: Only 5% of Religious Americans Are Non-Christians
By Barbara Hollingsworth
CNSNews.com) – A recent Gallup poll refutes the claim made by Barack Obama on March 9, 2008 that “we are no longer a Christian nation.”
Gallup found that three quarters of all Americans - a supermajority - identify themselves as Christians, with only five percent saying they are practicing members of a non-Christian faith.
“We find, looking at our data, that America does in fact remain a predominantly Christian nation,” Dr. Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, said of the poll released on Christmas Eve.
“Now, our overall estimation of what percent of Americans identify with the Christian religion depends a little on which of our various polls we look at, but I would estimate that about three-quarters – 75, maybe up to 77 percent of Americans - identify with the Christian religion.
“About half of Americans are Protestant or some other non-Catholic Christian faith, and another 23, 24 percent are Roman Catholic. About 2 percent are Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
“Now, does that mean that a quarter of Americans identify with a non-Christian religion? Not so, because we have about 17, 18 percent of Americans who don’t identify with any religion, the so-called ‘religious nones’ as we call them.
“And so that reduces down to about only 5, or maybe 6 percent, again depending on how we do the definitions, of Americans who explicitly identify with a non-Christian faith.”
Newport added that contrary to popular belief, Americans are actually more religious now than they have been at various times in the past. Fifty-six percent told Gallup that religion is “very important in their daily lives,” up about four percentage points since the 1970s and 80s. And although weekly church attendance has declined since its peak in the 1950s, Newport added that it is “no lower now than it was in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s.”Thirty-nine percent of those polled said they attended a church service within the past seven days, compared to 41 percent in 1939 and 37 percent in 1940.
CNSNews.com) – A recent Gallup poll refutes the claim made by Barack Obama on March 9, 2008 that “we are no longer a Christian nation.”
Gallup found that three quarters of all Americans - a supermajority - identify themselves as Christians, with only five percent saying they are practicing members of a non-Christian faith.
“We find, looking at our data, that America does in fact remain a predominantly Christian nation,” Dr. Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, said of the poll released on Christmas Eve.
“Now, our overall estimation of what percent of Americans identify with the Christian religion depends a little on which of our various polls we look at, but I would estimate that about three-quarters – 75, maybe up to 77 percent of Americans - identify with the Christian religion.
“About half of Americans are Protestant or some other non-Catholic Christian faith, and another 23, 24 percent are Roman Catholic. About 2 percent are Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
“Now, does that mean that a quarter of Americans identify with a non-Christian religion? Not so, because we have about 17, 18 percent of Americans who don’t identify with any religion, the so-called ‘religious nones’ as we call them.
“And so that reduces down to about only 5, or maybe 6 percent, again depending on how we do the definitions, of Americans who explicitly identify with a non-Christian faith.”
Newport added that contrary to popular belief, Americans are actually more religious now than they have been at various times in the past. Fifty-six percent told Gallup that religion is “very important in their daily lives,” up about four percentage points since the 1970s and 80s. And although weekly church attendance has declined since its peak in the 1950s, Newport added that it is “no lower now than it was in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s.”Thirty-nine percent of those polled said they attended a church service within the past seven days, compared to 41 percent in 1939 and 37 percent in 1940.
World's Third Oldest Bible at Display in D.C.'s Smithsonian Museum
December 28, 2013|8:56 am
The world's third oldest Bible, transcribed in the late fourth or early fifth century, and an ancient parchment volume of Deuteronomy and Joshua, are on public display at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.The Codex Washingtonianus, also called the Washington Manuscript of the Gospels and The Freer Gospel and which contains the four biblical gospels, and the Old Testament gospels transcribed during the same period are on display in the Freer Gallery's Victorian Peacock Room until Feb. 16, 2014.
The two rare antique biblical manuscripts are being displayed around 100 years after they were first on view to the public in museum-founder Charles Lang Freer's Detroit home, according to a statement by the art gallery.
The Washingtonianus was written in Greek on parchment in the 4th or 5th century. Freer purchased the manuscripts in 1906 in Giza, Egypt, and later organized and underwrote significant early biblical scholarship, the gallery said.
"While researching their cultural context and physical structure, it was discovered that the Washington Codex contains a passage not found in any other biblical text – a segment at the end of the Gospel of Mark known as the Freer logion (a logion is a saying attributed to Jesus)."
A translation of the Freer logion reads: "And Christ replied to them, 'The term of years of Satan's power has been fulfilled, but other terrible things draw near.'"
"There's no religious tradition that uses it as part of Scripture," National Geographic quoted Michael Holmes, a biblical scholar at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn., as saying. "It's almost like a margin comment that somebody wrote down because they heard it and wanted to remember it, and a scribe worked it in later."
Holmes also said 90 percent of the surviving biblical manuscripts are from the tenth century or later. "So anything that comes from earlier is intrinsically valuable."
There are only two other complete texts of the Gospels that are older – from the fourth century, Craig Evans, a biblical scholar at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, was quoted as saying. The two are the Codex Vaticanus, which is at the Vatican, and the Codex Sinaiticus, most of which is at the British Library in London.
The Washingtonianus is in rarefied company, Evans said.
The Washingtonianus was transcribed by two scribes, who likely copied from fragments of several Bibles, which were perhaps remnants from an attack on a Christian church at the time, Holmes said.
Due to their extreme fragility and sensitivity to light, the manuscripts are rarely exhibited, according to the gallery.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English - Question #8
Q. 8. How does God carry out his decrees?
A. God carries out his decrees in the works of creation and providence.[a]
A. God carries out his decrees in the works of creation and providence.[a]
[a] Psalm 148:8
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
8 Fire, hail, snow, ice, spirits of tempests; that do his word. (Fire, hail, snow, ice, and the winds of the tempests; that all follow his command.)
Isaiah 40:26
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
26 Raise [up] your eyes on high, and see ye, who made these things of nought; which leadeth out in number the knighthood of them, and calleth all by name, for the multitude of his strength, and stalworthness, and might; neither one residue thing was. (Raise up your eyes on high, and see ye, who made these things out of nothing; who leadeth their host out in number, and calleth all of them by name, for the multitude of his strength, and stalwartness, and might, and not one of them is missing.)
Daniel 4:35
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
35 And all the dwellers of earth be areckoned into nought at him; for by his will he doeth, both in the hosts of heaven, and in the dwellers of earth, and none is that (may) against-standeth his hand, and saith to him, Why didest thou so? (And all the inhabitants of the earth be reckoned as nothing by him; for he doeth by his will, both to the armies of heaven, and to the inhabitants of the earth, and there is no one who can stand against his power, and can say to him, Why didest thou so?)
Acts 4:24-28
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
24 And when they heard, with one heart they raised voice to the Lord, and said, Lord, thou that madest heaven and earth, sea, and all things that be in them,
25 which saidest by the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of our father David, thy child, Why heathen men gnashed with teeth together, and the peoples thought vain things? [which by the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of our father David, thy child, saidest, Why heathen men wrathed, or beat with teeth together, and peoples thought vain things?]
26 Kings of the earth stood nigh, and princes came together into one, against the Lord, and against his Christ.
27 For verily Herod and Pontius Pilate, with heathen men, and peoples of Israel, came together in this city against thine holy child Jesus, whom thou anointedest, [For they came together verily in this city against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou anointedest, Herod and Pontius Pilate, with heathen men, and peoples of Israel,]
28 to do the things, that thine hand and thy counsel deemed to be done.
Revelation 4:11
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
11 Thou, Lord our God, art worthy to take glory, and honour, and virtue; for thou madest of nought all things, and for thy will those were [and for thy will they were], and be made of nought.
Comment on Q. 8
The universe and what occurs in it is the outworking of God's plan.
A New Catholic Heresy
By Robert
Klein Engler
On August 13, 2013 the
Guardian
reported that
astronomers had witnessed the birth of a new star. "Images of the birth of a
star around 1,400 light years away from Earth is captured by scientists at the
European Southern Observatory, (in) Chile." This is a rare event to document,
but one that astronomers suspected has occurred often in the
universe.
With the passage of same-sex marriage in Illinois, political scientists and theologians are also getting a chance to see another birth, one that is more down to earth. They can witness the emergence of a new heresy in the U.S. Catholic Church. Those professed Illinois Catholic politicians who advanced same-sex marriage in Illinois can now be seen as Babylonian Heretics.
Why would the birth of a heresy be of interest to others besides religious historians? One reason would be that the Babylonian Heresy helps explain the schizophrenic phenomenon of Catholic Democrats in Illinois. How is it one can believe in both Obama and the Trinity?
Julian Guthrie tries unsuccessfully to explain this split personality of Catholic voters in her article, "How Progressive Democrats Remain Catholic."
She answers her own question by writing, "...when I look at prominent Catholic politicians with liberal social agendas and wonder how they attend Mass on Sunday and legislate something very different on Monday, I have my answer... Catholicism, a club with magisterial rituals, good deeds, arcane teachings and more than 1 billion adherents, is far from monolithic."
She continues, "The house rules that apply are those set by believers themselves. These are the everyday Catholics who may honor their pope but disagree with papal positions...The Catholics who fill the nation's pews share something with the politicians at the podium: they believe that resistance and reverence can go together like bread and wine."
Guthrie's veiled reference to transubstantiation is not enough to explain the faith many Catholics have in the Democratic Party. To say that resistance and reverence go together is a gentle lie, a lie that relies more on a turn of phrase than a return to truth. The truth is that theology and revelation trump house rules.
The issue of being Catholic and Democrat is more serious than Guthrie imagines. "David Carlin, a veteran sociologist, philosophy professor, and author of 'The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America,' shows that his party and his religion have now taken opposite sides in the Culture War."
"Carlin's arguments challenge all religious voters to ask themselves the same question, 'Can a Catholic Be a Democrat?' Then he asks, 'How (did) the party I loved became the enemy of my religion.' Carlin claims that on issues of human life, sex, faith, morality, suffering... the modern, secularist Democratic Party has become the enemy of Catholicism; indeed, of all traditional religions."
From Carlin's perspective, Guthrie's solution to the dilemma of being both an everyday Catholic and a Democrat, is what passes for theology in California. It is the incense smoke that hides the reality of heresy. The truthful answer, the answer that blows away the smoke is a simple answer. The truth is, progressive or Democratic Catholics are heretics.
Like the birth of a far-off star, heretics in Illinois, with the passage of same-sex marriage, can now be clearly seen and given a name. What we now see in Illinois is the heresy of our age, the Babylonian Heresy.
Among other political positions, the Babylonian Heretics seek to further amnesty for illegal aliens, state-run health care, and abortion on demand. A theological error inherent in all these positions is that they turn to the state to solve problems that charity should solve, charity that begins with the individual.
The Babylonian Heresy skips over the Catholic moral principle of subsidiarity in favor of state idolatry. It is state idolatry that makes professional politicians like Gov. Pat Quinn and State Rep. Marty Moylan confuse everyday Catholics in Illinois. To use an old metaphor, because of the Babylonian Heresy, the poison of Marxism has been made sweet in Illinois.
Did Gov. Quinn and Rep. Moylan drink the polluted waters? We know Gov. Quinn and Rep. Moylan are professed Catholics. We know they had ample time and a modicum of intelligence to investigate the issue of same-sex marriage and to understand the Catholic Churches' teaching on it.
In spite of this, both men moved to further confusion and follow the teachings of the Democratic Party. Perhaps they are simply cynical politicians who are best described by Gibbon in his long history of the Roman Empire. They believe all religions are useful. They claim to be Catholic because it is useful to get the votes of Catholics.
If being cynical is not enough explanation for their behavior, then, perhaps Quinn and Moylan are like officials in the Roman Empire under Constantius or Valens. These emperors were in favor of Arianism, a heresy that almost won out against the Catholic faith.
Today, as in times past, the men who are supposed to be leaders of their community have led their community astray. It is uncertain how far the Babylonian Heresy extends among Catholics in Illinois. Because so few have called for the excommunication of Quinn and Moylan, the heresy is probably wide spread among Catholic Democrats and clergy in the Chicago area.
Why would other Catholics in Illinois, the ones Guthrie calls everyday Catholics, the ones who are not politicians, why would they prefer the Babylonian Heresy to Catholic orthodoxy? The answer is simpler. Life is easier for them as heretics.
The fabric of their life has the warp of Catholicism and the weave of the Democratic Party. It's been that way as long as they can remember. To point out heretical ideas is to show a tear in the fabric of life. To realize that Gov. Quinn and Rep, Moylan are either invincibly ignorant or are supporting a structure of evil is unsettling for many Catholics. It's best to just go along to get along.
Besides, certain ideas dominate a personality, no matter the era in which we live. Rush Limbaugh, who is reported not to be a Catholic but a Methodist, understands the Babylonian Heresy, if not in so many words. Limbaugh says that nowadays, "The liberal is a liberal first, and he's a Catholic second."
In short, the Babylonian Heresy is an easy faith where the Democratic Party will manage charity and grace. In the words of St. Paul, many prefer to wear the silk of the world instead of the armor of light.
Like the shepherds at Bethlehem 2000 years ago, in 2013 we have seen the birth of a far-off star. Furthermore, like St. Athanasius who witnessed Arianism in Alexandria, we have seen at home in Illinois the growth of the Babylonian Heresy. The closer we look, the more auspicious are the days.
With the passage of same-sex marriage in Illinois, political scientists and theologians are also getting a chance to see another birth, one that is more down to earth. They can witness the emergence of a new heresy in the U.S. Catholic Church. Those professed Illinois Catholic politicians who advanced same-sex marriage in Illinois can now be seen as Babylonian Heretics.
Why would the birth of a heresy be of interest to others besides religious historians? One reason would be that the Babylonian Heresy helps explain the schizophrenic phenomenon of Catholic Democrats in Illinois. How is it one can believe in both Obama and the Trinity?
Julian Guthrie tries unsuccessfully to explain this split personality of Catholic voters in her article, "How Progressive Democrats Remain Catholic."
She answers her own question by writing, "...when I look at prominent Catholic politicians with liberal social agendas and wonder how they attend Mass on Sunday and legislate something very different on Monday, I have my answer... Catholicism, a club with magisterial rituals, good deeds, arcane teachings and more than 1 billion adherents, is far from monolithic."
She continues, "The house rules that apply are those set by believers themselves. These are the everyday Catholics who may honor their pope but disagree with papal positions...The Catholics who fill the nation's pews share something with the politicians at the podium: they believe that resistance and reverence can go together like bread and wine."
Guthrie's veiled reference to transubstantiation is not enough to explain the faith many Catholics have in the Democratic Party. To say that resistance and reverence go together is a gentle lie, a lie that relies more on a turn of phrase than a return to truth. The truth is that theology and revelation trump house rules.
The issue of being Catholic and Democrat is more serious than Guthrie imagines. "David Carlin, a veteran sociologist, philosophy professor, and author of 'The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America,' shows that his party and his religion have now taken opposite sides in the Culture War."
"Carlin's arguments challenge all religious voters to ask themselves the same question, 'Can a Catholic Be a Democrat?' Then he asks, 'How (did) the party I loved became the enemy of my religion.' Carlin claims that on issues of human life, sex, faith, morality, suffering... the modern, secularist Democratic Party has become the enemy of Catholicism; indeed, of all traditional religions."
From Carlin's perspective, Guthrie's solution to the dilemma of being both an everyday Catholic and a Democrat, is what passes for theology in California. It is the incense smoke that hides the reality of heresy. The truthful answer, the answer that blows away the smoke is a simple answer. The truth is, progressive or Democratic Catholics are heretics.
Like the birth of a far-off star, heretics in Illinois, with the passage of same-sex marriage, can now be clearly seen and given a name. What we now see in Illinois is the heresy of our age, the Babylonian Heresy.
Among other political positions, the Babylonian Heretics seek to further amnesty for illegal aliens, state-run health care, and abortion on demand. A theological error inherent in all these positions is that they turn to the state to solve problems that charity should solve, charity that begins with the individual.
The Babylonian Heresy skips over the Catholic moral principle of subsidiarity in favor of state idolatry. It is state idolatry that makes professional politicians like Gov. Pat Quinn and State Rep. Marty Moylan confuse everyday Catholics in Illinois. To use an old metaphor, because of the Babylonian Heresy, the poison of Marxism has been made sweet in Illinois.
Did Gov. Quinn and Rep. Moylan drink the polluted waters? We know Gov. Quinn and Rep. Moylan are professed Catholics. We know they had ample time and a modicum of intelligence to investigate the issue of same-sex marriage and to understand the Catholic Churches' teaching on it.
In spite of this, both men moved to further confusion and follow the teachings of the Democratic Party. Perhaps they are simply cynical politicians who are best described by Gibbon in his long history of the Roman Empire. They believe all religions are useful. They claim to be Catholic because it is useful to get the votes of Catholics.
If being cynical is not enough explanation for their behavior, then, perhaps Quinn and Moylan are like officials in the Roman Empire under Constantius or Valens. These emperors were in favor of Arianism, a heresy that almost won out against the Catholic faith.
Today, as in times past, the men who are supposed to be leaders of their community have led their community astray. It is uncertain how far the Babylonian Heresy extends among Catholics in Illinois. Because so few have called for the excommunication of Quinn and Moylan, the heresy is probably wide spread among Catholic Democrats and clergy in the Chicago area.
Why would other Catholics in Illinois, the ones Guthrie calls everyday Catholics, the ones who are not politicians, why would they prefer the Babylonian Heresy to Catholic orthodoxy? The answer is simpler. Life is easier for them as heretics.
The fabric of their life has the warp of Catholicism and the weave of the Democratic Party. It's been that way as long as they can remember. To point out heretical ideas is to show a tear in the fabric of life. To realize that Gov. Quinn and Rep, Moylan are either invincibly ignorant or are supporting a structure of evil is unsettling for many Catholics. It's best to just go along to get along.
Besides, certain ideas dominate a personality, no matter the era in which we live. Rush Limbaugh, who is reported not to be a Catholic but a Methodist, understands the Babylonian Heresy, if not in so many words. Limbaugh says that nowadays, "The liberal is a liberal first, and he's a Catholic second."
In short, the Babylonian Heresy is an easy faith where the Democratic Party will manage charity and grace. In the words of St. Paul, many prefer to wear the silk of the world instead of the armor of light.
Like the shepherds at Bethlehem 2000 years ago, in 2013 we have seen the birth of a far-off star. Furthermore, like St. Athanasius who witnessed Arianism in Alexandria, we have seen at home in Illinois the growth of the Babylonian Heresy. The closer we look, the more auspicious are the days.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Stand To for 30 December, 2013
Veterans Push Back with Prayer
0700 at BJ’s Restaurant
Hamilton, Montana
1. Opening - Round the Table
Individual Prayers
2. Morning Psalm: 65
3. Breakfast Reading: Isaiah 43:1-13
4. Breakfast is served
5. Breakfast Discussion Topic:
Spiritual Warfare
52 Weeks to Preparedness starts next week
Holy Saturday
March for Jesus Christ April 19, 2014
6. Closing - Round the Table Individual Prayers
Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English - Question #7
Q. 7. What are the decrees of God?
A. The decrees of God are his eternal plan, according to the purpose of his will, by which, for his own glory, he has foreordained whatever comes to pass;[a] /yet in such a manner as to be in no way the author of sin./
God's plan and decision does not mean that we are puppets, for God's plan includes human freedom to act as we desire. Of course some things we do not desire left to ourselves. If such a lack of desire or ability is our own fault we are still responsible. So we are responsible to love and serve God even though through sin we cannot do so until renewed by God's Holy Spirit.
Many people only think of God when something goes wrong, and blame him for it. The catechism reminds us that God is not the author of sin, although he is so great that he can even bring good out of it (for example, the crucifixion was both a wicked act of men and the predetermined purpose of God, Acts 2:23).
A. The decrees of God are his eternal plan, according to the purpose of his will, by which, for his own glory, he has foreordained whatever comes to pass;[a] /yet in such a manner as to be in no way the author of sin./
[a] Psalm 33:11
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
11 But the counsel of the Lord dwelleth (into) without end; the thoughts of his heart dwell in generation and into generation. (But the plans of the Lord shall stand forever; the thoughts of his heart shall remain for all generations.)
Isaiah 14:24
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
24 The Lord of hosts swore, saying, Whether it shall not be so, as I guessed, and it shall befall so, as I treated in soul? (The Lord of hosts swore, saying, Shall it not be so, just as I thought, and shall it not befall, just as I said?)
Acts 2:23
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
23 ye tormented, and killed him by the hands of wicked men, by counsel determined and betaken by the fore-knowing of God. [him, the counsel determined, or ended, and by the prescience, or before-knowing, of God, betaken by the hands of wicked ye tormenting slew.]
Ephesians 1:11-12
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
11 In whom [also] we be called by lot, before-ordained by the purpose of him that worketh all things by the counsel of his will;[a]
12 that we be into the praising of his glory, we that have hoped before in Christ [which before hoped in Christ].
Footnotes:
- Ephesians 1:11 In whom also we by lot be called, before-ordained after the purpose of him that worketh all things after the counsel of his will;
Comment on Q. 7
What happens in the world is not a matter or mere chance or luck, nor is it a matter of blind fate – 'what will be will be'. The living God is the God who governs and rules. He has a perfect plan, and he makes everything fit together to fulfil this plan. God has decided everything which will happen, including the means to be used to reach particular ends. For example, to maintain life we need food; to be saved we must believe to the Lord Jesus.God's plan and decision does not mean that we are puppets, for God's plan includes human freedom to act as we desire. Of course some things we do not desire left to ourselves. If such a lack of desire or ability is our own fault we are still responsible. So we are responsible to love and serve God even though through sin we cannot do so until renewed by God's Holy Spirit.
Many people only think of God when something goes wrong, and blame him for it. The catechism reminds us that God is not the author of sin, although he is so great that he can even bring good out of it (for example, the crucifixion was both a wicked act of men and the predetermined purpose of God, Acts 2:23).
Friday, December 27, 2013
A Well-Armed Militia: It’sTime for Veterans to Take a Stand
by Montgomery J. Granger
The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, a document I swore to uphold and defend with my life, states:
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Considering the current government assault on military benefits, and considering the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack, I am wondering just how much consideration some might give to joining our all-volunteer force in the future?
I wonder too, if the Framers imagined a government “Of the People, by the people and for the People” ever reneging on the promises made to those of us who swore our lives to defend this great nation, including its supreme law? Here’s something President Abraham Lincoln said about our commitment to the veteran in his Second Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1865, with the end of the Civil War in sight:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
This is a promise, borne of a sense of duty and righteousness toward those who bore the burden of supporting this great nation with their blood, sweat and tears. This promise is the legacy of a nation born in blood and preserved in honor.
What is happening now in the great halls of our government in Washington, D.C., is a desecration of that promise. A little here, a little there; capping cost of living increases for military; eliminating this benefit for years for retirees,;reducing pension growth for disabled retirees and survivors; preventing Reservists from collecting retirement pay for decades; and reducing retiree benefits by 20 percent. It all adds up to more than $6 billion in “savings” over 10 years.
- Vietnam War veteran Fred Johnson, 73, watches people shop at a yard sale held to benefit Jerral Hancock, a 27-year-old Iraq war veteran who lost his left arm and is paralyzed from the waist down in a bomb explosion in Iraq, on Saturday, Oct. 26, 2013, in Lancaster, Calif. When the seniors in Jamie Goodreau’s high school history class learned Hancock was once stuck in his modest mobile home for months when his handicapped-accessible van broke down, they decided to build him a new house from the ground up. It would be their end-of-the-year project to honor veterans, something Goodreau’s classes have chosen to do every year for the past 15 years. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Tens of thousands of my fellow returning veterans from the Global War on Terror (still being fought world wide with U.S. troops in over 150 countries) will receive less and less of what we were promised.
Staff Sgt. Alex Jauregui, a double amputee, disabled Army veteran who lost his legs while on his fourth tour in Afghanistan, and who removed a barrier to a military monument in Washington, D.C., during the government shutdown earlier this year using his Segway, said in a “Fox News” interview that he feels “betrayed” by the vote, and that his friends who are still in the Army are considering leaving military service if the government can’t keep the promises it made.
- Photo Credti: Twitter via @andrewbcreech
I don’t own a gun, but I carried and used one in the service of my country in a combat zone. I’ll be damned if anyone tries to infringe on that right for myself or anyone else. It has crossed my mind in the past year or so, with all the writing on the wall about reduction in military benefits, that something is going to give: That something is the relationship between the soldier and the civilian leadership of this country.
I have considered purchasing a gun or two, and not just for self-protection or that of my family, but for the protection of my country and the ideals I swore, and never rescinded, to uphold upon my enlistment into the Army, and then again upon my commissioning as an officer. A well-armed militia contributes to a secure nation, and allows the many hundreds of thousands of veterans to continue to defend the Constitution, against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
That’s a serious situation for serious times. On Dec. 17, the Senate voted through a two year budget package that includes the cuts mentioned previously. The intentions of this government towards its military are clear. Trust no one, believe nothing, and only fools will join the military service. Why pledge your life, livelihood and the protection of your family should they survive you to such a noble cause if everything that was promised to you is a lie?
Our lives are the ultimate sacrifice, sacred, holy and complete. If that’s not good enough to receive basic benefits, promised upon enlistment, then the leadership of this country has surely lost its way. Like Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor, D-Day and 9/11/01; Wednesday, Dec, 17, 2013, should go down as a day of infamy: when Congress voted to renege on solemn promises to the defenders of our freedom and liberty.
We, each of us veterans, is beholden to the promise we made upon swearing in to uphold and defend the Constitution, and now we have to make good on that promise. The question is, will our representatives in Washington listen or will the well-armed militia need to be mobilized?
Lynching Free Speech
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On December 27, 2013
The end of free speech will not necessarily come when there are soldiers in the streets, secret police in the alleyways and a mustachioed man screaming at you on a television set that can’t be turned off no matter how hard you turn the knob or click the buttons.
Some of these things existed in totalitarian countries, but they were there to sweep up the hardened dissenters who refused to be silenced. The vast majority of citizens did not have bugged phones or men in trench-coats following them around.
That was what their friends and neighbors were for.
The first line of offense by a totalitarian society against freedom of speech is crowdsourced to the people in the streets. No secret police force is large enough to spy on everyone all the time.
Nor does it need to. That is what informers are for.
Some of the informers are committed fanatics. Others do whatever they are told. And the worst do it for the pleasure of destroying someone else. Whatever their varying motives, ideology or malice, such people become even more dangerous in groups where they become a morality mob.
The Two Minutes Hate in George Orwell’s 1984 is repeated on a regular basis in our society today with hysterical lynchings like those of of Justine Sacco; one of a long list of disposable victims of opportunity. The Two Minutes Hate was a Pavlovian exercise to stimulate the hate reflex. Modern counterparts like #hasjustinelandedyet with its overt malice are the genuine thing.
The process by which these ugly events happen has a good deal in common with any other form of mob violence. There are familiar elements from Shirley Jackson’s disturbing story, The Lottery. The crowd knows what is coming. It derives pleasure from a victim who does not yet know what is about to happen and eagerly anticipates the moment of shocked revelation when that will change.
“When is Justine landing?” they whisper eagerly to each other. Sadism is no good if the victim doesn’t know what is being done to her. The anticipation sharpens their appetite.
Behind it all is a moral structure. The crowd in the Two Minutes Hate does not randomly lash out. The very name with its time limit is a demonstration of civilization. For two minutes they will become hateful animals in reaction to a profound ideological offense. And then they will turn the outrage machine off.
Anyone can be a mob, but they are a morality mob. They do horrible things because the ends, such as fighting racism, justify the means. They hate for two minutes and then go back to their daily lives.
Structure maintains the illusion of morality. Like The Lottery, it has to pretend that it isn’t random so that the participants can make believe that they are doing this for some nobler reason than the primal joy of bashing another human being’s head in with a rock.
Modern social media is The Lottery. Sometimes you win the lottery and become famous. Your Twitter feed gets turned into a CBS sitcom. Other times you lose the lottery and your equally stupid tweet gets you picked to be stoned to death.
Each time you participate in the global mass of the Internet, you are pulling a ticket out of the lottery. And even if you don’t participate, a crazy lesbian waitress can tell the world that you refused to give her a tip, a former friend can make your letter go viral and what passes for reporters in the new media looking for pageviews can make you a target to fill a daily quota.
The Internet is going crazy for, the headlines on the same sites that create the frenzy say. The Internet is exploding. The Internet lashed out. The Internet lynched someone. But it’s not the Internet. It’s the cowardly individuals in the morality mob hiding behind their collective malice in a hashtag who want to hurt someone from the physical and moral safety of the mob.
The morality mob is attracted to pettiness. It rarely takes on big things because it knows its own weakness. A morality mob is a bully without the courage and it needs easy targets that it knows it can hurt.
The modern Internet morality mob began in China. “It was just the latest example of a growing phenomenon the Chinese call Internet hunting, in which morality lessons are administered by online throngs and where anonymous Web users come together to investigate others and mete out punishment for offenses real and imagined.” That is how the New York Times described it.
The phenomenon has since spread to America, but it began in a collectivist society ruled by the iron hand of the Communist Party.
Totalitarianism relies on harnessing the darker emotions in the human catalog; fear, hate and the sense of power that derives from causing harm to another beneath the mask of the self-righteous inquistioner whose moral authority allows him to both inflict and enjoy the torment.
Beneath these responses is a deeper sense of helplessness and insecurity. The anonymous mass of society has become even more chokingly cramped and anonymous on the Internet than in the biggest twentieth century cities. For some of the uglier faces in the crowd, the only way to feel real is to hurt someone. And their leftist ringleaders know exactly how the game is played.
The morality mobs on the Internet are of the left which holds the commanding heights of social morality dictating what behaviors are acceptable and which are not.
Morality mobs crowdsource the left’s values enforcement. While its activist groups concern themselves with Phil Robertson, its morality mobs band together to target ordinary people. The organized left can make examples out of famous people while the ad-hoc left can make examples out of ordinary people by making their morality mob lynchings go viral.
The left responded to criticism of its actions in the Phil Robertson case by arguing that they are not violating the First Amendment. And they aren’t. But free speech can be structurally suppressed without ever officially involving the authorities in the dirty work.
If the outcome is the end of free speech, then the details of how it got that way become academic. If instead of a top-down solution, the actual death of free speech involves a mid-level intervention by an oligarchy of media and new media outlets, activist groups and fearful businesses banding together to make free speech impossible while the authorities go on smiling and insisting that speech is still free; then the destination is the same.
Only the road we took to get there will have changed.
The First Amendment was not just a legal safeguard against government abuses, but a statement that an open society is best. The letter of the law protects the people from government intervention, but the spirit of the law is an argument for an open society in which the freedom to worship, to speak and to protest against the government make all our freedoms possible.
The left aspires to a society in which dissent is suppressed. And a society without dissent is totalitarian whether it is ruled by the hateful mob of the Two Minutes Hate or by Big Brother.
The end of free speech will not necessarily come when there are soldiers in the streets, secret police in the alleyways and a mustachioed man screaming at you on a television set that can’t be turned off no matter how hard you turn the knob or click the buttons.
Some of these things existed in totalitarian countries, but they were there to sweep up the hardened dissenters who refused to be silenced. The vast majority of citizens did not have bugged phones or men in trench-coats following them around.
That was what their friends and neighbors were for.
The first line of offense by a totalitarian society against freedom of speech is crowdsourced to the people in the streets. No secret police force is large enough to spy on everyone all the time.
Nor does it need to. That is what informers are for.
Some of the informers are committed fanatics. Others do whatever they are told. And the worst do it for the pleasure of destroying someone else. Whatever their varying motives, ideology or malice, such people become even more dangerous in groups where they become a morality mob.
The Two Minutes Hate in George Orwell’s 1984 is repeated on a regular basis in our society today with hysterical lynchings like those of of Justine Sacco; one of a long list of disposable victims of opportunity. The Two Minutes Hate was a Pavlovian exercise to stimulate the hate reflex. Modern counterparts like #hasjustinelandedyet with its overt malice are the genuine thing.
The process by which these ugly events happen has a good deal in common with any other form of mob violence. There are familiar elements from Shirley Jackson’s disturbing story, The Lottery. The crowd knows what is coming. It derives pleasure from a victim who does not yet know what is about to happen and eagerly anticipates the moment of shocked revelation when that will change.
“When is Justine landing?” they whisper eagerly to each other. Sadism is no good if the victim doesn’t know what is being done to her. The anticipation sharpens their appetite.
Behind it all is a moral structure. The crowd in the Two Minutes Hate does not randomly lash out. The very name with its time limit is a demonstration of civilization. For two minutes they will become hateful animals in reaction to a profound ideological offense. And then they will turn the outrage machine off.
Anyone can be a mob, but they are a morality mob. They do horrible things because the ends, such as fighting racism, justify the means. They hate for two minutes and then go back to their daily lives.
Structure maintains the illusion of morality. Like The Lottery, it has to pretend that it isn’t random so that the participants can make believe that they are doing this for some nobler reason than the primal joy of bashing another human being’s head in with a rock.
Modern social media is The Lottery. Sometimes you win the lottery and become famous. Your Twitter feed gets turned into a CBS sitcom. Other times you lose the lottery and your equally stupid tweet gets you picked to be stoned to death.
Each time you participate in the global mass of the Internet, you are pulling a ticket out of the lottery. And even if you don’t participate, a crazy lesbian waitress can tell the world that you refused to give her a tip, a former friend can make your letter go viral and what passes for reporters in the new media looking for pageviews can make you a target to fill a daily quota.
The Internet is going crazy for, the headlines on the same sites that create the frenzy say. The Internet is exploding. The Internet lashed out. The Internet lynched someone. But it’s not the Internet. It’s the cowardly individuals in the morality mob hiding behind their collective malice in a hashtag who want to hurt someone from the physical and moral safety of the mob.
The morality mob is attracted to pettiness. It rarely takes on big things because it knows its own weakness. A morality mob is a bully without the courage and it needs easy targets that it knows it can hurt.
The modern Internet morality mob began in China. “It was just the latest example of a growing phenomenon the Chinese call Internet hunting, in which morality lessons are administered by online throngs and where anonymous Web users come together to investigate others and mete out punishment for offenses real and imagined.” That is how the New York Times described it.
The phenomenon has since spread to America, but it began in a collectivist society ruled by the iron hand of the Communist Party.
Totalitarianism relies on harnessing the darker emotions in the human catalog; fear, hate and the sense of power that derives from causing harm to another beneath the mask of the self-righteous inquistioner whose moral authority allows him to both inflict and enjoy the torment.
Beneath these responses is a deeper sense of helplessness and insecurity. The anonymous mass of society has become even more chokingly cramped and anonymous on the Internet than in the biggest twentieth century cities. For some of the uglier faces in the crowd, the only way to feel real is to hurt someone. And their leftist ringleaders know exactly how the game is played.
The morality mobs on the Internet are of the left which holds the commanding heights of social morality dictating what behaviors are acceptable and which are not.
Morality mobs crowdsource the left’s values enforcement. While its activist groups concern themselves with Phil Robertson, its morality mobs band together to target ordinary people. The organized left can make examples out of famous people while the ad-hoc left can make examples out of ordinary people by making their morality mob lynchings go viral.
The left responded to criticism of its actions in the Phil Robertson case by arguing that they are not violating the First Amendment. And they aren’t. But free speech can be structurally suppressed without ever officially involving the authorities in the dirty work.
If the outcome is the end of free speech, then the details of how it got that way become academic. If instead of a top-down solution, the actual death of free speech involves a mid-level intervention by an oligarchy of media and new media outlets, activist groups and fearful businesses banding together to make free speech impossible while the authorities go on smiling and insisting that speech is still free; then the destination is the same.
Only the road we took to get there will have changed.
The First Amendment was not just a legal safeguard against government abuses, but a statement that an open society is best. The letter of the law protects the people from government intervention, but the spirit of the law is an argument for an open society in which the freedom to worship, to speak and to protest against the government make all our freedoms possible.
The left aspires to a society in which dissent is suppressed. And a society without dissent is totalitarian whether it is ruled by the hateful mob of the Two Minutes Hate or by Big Brother.
Environmentalism as Fundamentalism
By Dan
Dagget
Most environmentalists I know consider themselves non-religious, even anti-religious. A few subscribe to "new" religious denominations such as Unitarianism, which I have heard described as "church for atheists with children." None, as far as I know, would take kindly to being described as practitioners of fundamentalist, Bible-thumping, "ol' time religion".
Most environmentalists I know consider themselves non-religious, even anti-religious. A few subscribe to "new" religious denominations such as Unitarianism, which I have heard described as "church for atheists with children." None, as far as I know, would take kindly to being described as practitioners of fundamentalist, Bible-thumping, "ol' time religion".
The irony, here, is that contemporary environmentalism
and fundamentalist religion have so much in common.
Take the most basic assumption of contemporary environmentalist doctrine. Individual environmentalists and environmental organizations, alike hold that the one and only way to solve the problems they address is to "protect" the environment. Who they would protect it from, of course, is us, based on the further assumption that everything that goes wrong with the environment -- desertification, species extinction, invasion by non-native plants, etc. -- is the result of human misuse or overuse or just plain use of "nature" or the ecosystem, or whatever you choose to call our surroundings.
This assumption has become so all-encompassing that we now even blame ourselves for occurrences we used to call "natural" disasters.. Hurricanes are our fault (a result of Global Warming). Weather too hot -- our fault. Too cold -- ditto. There are even plenty of people who say earthquakes and tsunamis are our fault; also caused somehow by Climate Change.
Such a line of reasoning leads inevitably to the conclusion that the only way to solve any and all environmental problems is to somehow get us humans to use less, produce less, and reproduce less. So, at environmentalists' behest our government creates such things as wilderness areas and nature preserves, on the theory that nature-left-alone will heal its human-caused wounds and help sustain at least a part of the planetary life-support system. In some countries, Canada, for instance, there are areas into which humans are forbidden to even set foot. More radical environmental groups, such as Earth First! (which I played a small part in helping to form) are pushing for similar measures in the U. S.
You're not paying attention if you haven't recognized this as simply a rerun of the biblical story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.
This congruence of environmentalism and fundamentalism isn't a coincidence. It can be traced to the fact that John Muir, "the spiritual father of the environmental movement" who founded the Sierra Club, the first environmental group, was a Calvinist. Calvinists, who first coined the word "fundamentalist" to describe themselves, held that the original sin for which humans were punished by expulsion from Eden, is a defining characteristic of what it means to be "human."
As a good Calvinist/fundamentalist/environmentalist, Muir was a frothing misanthrope, referring to humans as "the Lord Man" and writing, "Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape."
So, as modern-day green fundamentalists engage in a ritual re-creation of the expulsion of "the Lord Man" from Eden, one could make the case that they are indulging in a religious exercise rather than applying a practical effort to solve environmental problems.
Using an approach derived from fundamentalist religion to deal with real world problems (and there are plenty of environmental problems that are real and serious) has a huge downside. First, it dooms us to deal with practical problems with an approach that treats them as invariably a matter of good versus evil, of "us" (the righteous Earth Savers) against "them," the heretics and devils (Global Warming Deniers, capitalists, one percenters, Republicans,...)
Because this makes those issues a matter of winning and of defeating devils rather than solving problems, we spend more time proselytizing, evangelizing, and battling in the arena of politics than we do learning to live sustainably within our surroundings. Evidence that this is the case is provided by the fact that environmentalists measure their success in terms that really have nothing to do with the ecological problems they supposedly set out to fix. Among those terms are:
To true believers that question doesn't even make sense.
Religious truth is a matter of faith. It can't be falsified by experience or fact. Can you prove via experience, facts, or science that God didn't make little green apples, that Buddha wasn't truly enlightened, or that Islam isn't the religion of peace?
In the same way, and for the same reasons, it is just as impossible to debunk the charge that we are the cause of global warming, climate change, species extinction, or whatever.
This is why using environmentalist dogma to guide the creation of legislation and regulation violates the separation of church and state. It is also why doing so can lead us to results that are just the opposite of what we intend. If environmental policies can't be proved wrong by experience, facts, or science, there is no way to prove that they don't work, even when their results are absolutely disastrous.
This fatal flaw isn't limited to environmental policies, it extends throughout liberalism. The reason it is impossible to prove (at least to liberals) that wealth redistribution doesn't solve the problem of poverty, no matter how much poverty rates increase under those policies, or that ObamaCare doesn't create the best health-care system possible, no matter how much rates increase or how many people end up without insurance as a result of those policies, is because liberalism, as well as its offspring, environmentalism, is a matter of blind faith, not reason.
Take the most basic assumption of contemporary environmentalist doctrine. Individual environmentalists and environmental organizations, alike hold that the one and only way to solve the problems they address is to "protect" the environment. Who they would protect it from, of course, is us, based on the further assumption that everything that goes wrong with the environment -- desertification, species extinction, invasion by non-native plants, etc. -- is the result of human misuse or overuse or just plain use of "nature" or the ecosystem, or whatever you choose to call our surroundings.
This assumption has become so all-encompassing that we now even blame ourselves for occurrences we used to call "natural" disasters.. Hurricanes are our fault (a result of Global Warming). Weather too hot -- our fault. Too cold -- ditto. There are even plenty of people who say earthquakes and tsunamis are our fault; also caused somehow by Climate Change.
Such a line of reasoning leads inevitably to the conclusion that the only way to solve any and all environmental problems is to somehow get us humans to use less, produce less, and reproduce less. So, at environmentalists' behest our government creates such things as wilderness areas and nature preserves, on the theory that nature-left-alone will heal its human-caused wounds and help sustain at least a part of the planetary life-support system. In some countries, Canada, for instance, there are areas into which humans are forbidden to even set foot. More radical environmental groups, such as Earth First! (which I played a small part in helping to form) are pushing for similar measures in the U. S.
You're not paying attention if you haven't recognized this as simply a rerun of the biblical story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.
This congruence of environmentalism and fundamentalism isn't a coincidence. It can be traced to the fact that John Muir, "the spiritual father of the environmental movement" who founded the Sierra Club, the first environmental group, was a Calvinist. Calvinists, who first coined the word "fundamentalist" to describe themselves, held that the original sin for which humans were punished by expulsion from Eden, is a defining characteristic of what it means to be "human."
As a good Calvinist/fundamentalist/environmentalist, Muir was a frothing misanthrope, referring to humans as "the Lord Man" and writing, "Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape."
So, as modern-day green fundamentalists engage in a ritual re-creation of the expulsion of "the Lord Man" from Eden, one could make the case that they are indulging in a religious exercise rather than applying a practical effort to solve environmental problems.
Using an approach derived from fundamentalist religion to deal with real world problems (and there are plenty of environmental problems that are real and serious) has a huge downside. First, it dooms us to deal with practical problems with an approach that treats them as invariably a matter of good versus evil, of "us" (the righteous Earth Savers) against "them," the heretics and devils (Global Warming Deniers, capitalists, one percenters, Republicans,...)
Because this makes those issues a matter of winning and of defeating devils rather than solving problems, we spend more time proselytizing, evangelizing, and battling in the arena of politics than we do learning to live sustainably within our surroundings. Evidence that this is the case is provided by the fact that environmentalists measure their success in terms that really have nothing to do with the ecological problems they supposedly set out to fix. Among those terms are:
•
the number of converts (members, supporters, and devotees) groups are able to
evangelize, and the amount of contributions they are thus able to
attract
•
the extent to which they are able to convince the rest of us to blame the
villains, demons, devils, and enemies of Nature they blame -- capitalists, free
enterprisers, private land managers, meat eaters, the 5% of the world's
population who live in the U. S. and use 25% of the world's resource,
and...
•
the extent to which they are able to inject their doctrines, prejudices, and
policies into the rules by which our society operates.
Does this approach of using religious-style rituals,
exorcisms, and crusades work to make the environment any better, healthier, more
sustaining?To true believers that question doesn't even make sense.
Religious truth is a matter of faith. It can't be falsified by experience or fact. Can you prove via experience, facts, or science that God didn't make little green apples, that Buddha wasn't truly enlightened, or that Islam isn't the religion of peace?
In the same way, and for the same reasons, it is just as impossible to debunk the charge that we are the cause of global warming, climate change, species extinction, or whatever.
This is why using environmentalist dogma to guide the creation of legislation and regulation violates the separation of church and state. It is also why doing so can lead us to results that are just the opposite of what we intend. If environmental policies can't be proved wrong by experience, facts, or science, there is no way to prove that they don't work, even when their results are absolutely disastrous.
This fatal flaw isn't limited to environmental policies, it extends throughout liberalism. The reason it is impossible to prove (at least to liberals) that wealth redistribution doesn't solve the problem of poverty, no matter how much poverty rates increase under those policies, or that ObamaCare doesn't create the best health-care system possible, no matter how much rates increase or how many people end up without insurance as a result of those policies, is because liberalism, as well as its offspring, environmentalism, is a matter of blind faith, not reason.
Americans, do not give up your God
By Stanislav Mishin
I have called you to warning on your capitalism, but you ignored me. I have called you to account about your guns, that seems to have faired a bit better. I have called you several times to account about God's wraith, but that has been wholly ignored.
Now I will give you the most blunt warning I know how to give. This is a call to arms to defend the one thing that still separates you from the Hell on Earth you are creating for yourselves and it is the one thing that you, as a wicked and decadent society, seem most Hell bent on discarding and throwing out. In a word: GOD.
Now I will give you the most blunt warning I know how to give. This is a call to arms to defend the one thing that still separates you from the Hell on Earth you are creating for yourselves and it is the one thing that you, as a wicked and decadent society, seem most Hell bent on discarding and throwing out. In a word: GOD.
Revelation 21:8 - But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
Ezekiel 16:49-50 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.50 And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw [good].
You, Americans, you have taken the Freedoms given only by God and you have used them instead to destroy God in your country. You allow the enemies of God to defile the very freedoms and culture that can be possible only under a Judeo-Christian faith. Unsatisfied with just your own lands, you now seek to push this evil upon all other men, both Greater and Lesser.
You follow the failable heart of men, hanging on to illogical feelings and ignoring the Truth and the logic of that Truth. In your efforts to please all, you only please the father of lies, as you dim and cast out the lantern of Truth.
God has been driven out of your lives for feel good "equality". Truth has been quenched in sin and self loathing. You make no distinction between Good and Evil, but place them equally and feast of equal portions. For you know what you do is wicked and evil and yet you do so anyways. Many of you, in your minds are already lost to God. You say to yourself "Considering what I have already done, God would never love me, He could never accept me, so the Hell with Him and I'll just keep living how I am living."
But it is not to Hell with God, it will be to Hell with you. First will be the Hell that you are bringing to fruition here on Earth and then it will be the Hell your souls so richly deserve by denying the Love and Forgiveness that is God. But that Forgiveness must be earned, earned by Repentance, something most of you are either to lazy or foolish enough to deny.
Oh and you hypocrites, do not write to me and tell me: but I am worthy because I do believe in God but I feel so oppressed and that is why I sit quietly while evil rides amok. You are worse then the sinners, because you are cowards, knowing better but committed to self preservation before all, willing to watch good Men sacrificed on the Alter of Satan's Lies and Sin so as not to be disturbed. You have given yourself to money and easy life, while wearing a thin veneer of Christ.
Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
You even take pride of being American, when you know that your culture is now a degradation of the human soul and body, and your freedoms are now not from One Infallible God but from a group of corrupt petty men sitting in big Romanisc temples in D.C.
For the Revolution in Russia, the overthrow of everything Saintly and Good, the murder of the Saint Martyr Tsar and his family, the mass murders that were to follow, could not have ever been possible if much of the people had not turned away from God. Many of our people, engulfed by the revisionism of the new age, turned their faces away from God, turned their faces away from the Tsar, away from Truth and followed the Devil's lies.
They followed the Siren call of the Marxists who promised a no wait, little effort Heaven on Earth, a new Utopia that that mean old Tsar and the mean old Church denied them. But what they lacked in wisdom was that the Church and Tsar were not there to create Heaven on Earth but to safe guard the people from Hell on Earth. For you see, man as a fallible creature of Sin, is incapable of creating Heaven but is very very capable of creating Hell. Throughout history, man's every attempt to create Heaven, to realize one Utopian dream or another, has lead to murder, genocide, theft, destruction and eventual collapse.
Proverbs 26:12 - Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? [there is] more hope of a fool than of him.
The last 400 years are full of this. One needs not look to deep, but at the bloody regime of evil that Cromwell unleashed. The murderous John Calvin's dictatorship of oppression and terror. The Anabaptist plague on Europe and many many more. All denied the Word of God, all turned further and further away from His Church and all gave themselves the right to create their own Truth.
So, invigorated with this new truth, a truth that had no real Truth in it, the Marxists decided to rid themselves of all their enemies, and the majority of the people followed. Even amongst the Whites who fought this evil, the Faith in God was often weak. For this reason, many convinced themselves to flee and were to afraid to die in holy battle against the Red Evil, giving themselves to the whispered evil of Satan's lies. Many of these, upon realizing the truth at last, in exile in far away lands, drank themselves into the grave or put hands upon themselves to send themselves there even faster.
So, invigorated with this new truth, a truth that had no real Truth in it, the Marxists decided to rid themselves of all their enemies, and the majority of the people followed. Even amongst the Whites who fought this evil, the Faith in God was often weak. For this reason, many convinced themselves to flee and were to afraid to die in holy battle against the Red Evil, giving themselves to the whispered evil of Satan's lies. Many of these, upon realizing the truth at last, in exile in far away lands, drank themselves into the grave or put hands upon themselves to send themselves there even faster.
Mother Russia is cast down. We have ripped away her skirts.
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, standing in the ruins of theCathedral of Christ the Savior.
Fools, who did not take the lessons of the Saints.
But without the Truth, any and all crimes, any and all lies could be used to cower the people. To weed out those who may not follow or who may not bend the knee quickly enough. And it will all begin with the children who, stripped of God, will have no foundation of morality but that which the State decides for them.
But without the Truth, any and all crimes, any and all lies could be used to cower the people. To weed out those who may not follow or who may not bend the knee quickly enough. And it will all begin with the children who, stripped of God, will have no foundation of morality but that which the State decides for them.
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. -- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Sex, the theory of a cup of water: for sex is as natural as drinking water and no one would deny a thirsty man a cup of water, was used to simultaneously recruit and destroy the family, the society as a whole. Any sex and perversions were encouraged. The word Tovarish (Comrade) was used to replace Mr. or Mrs. and itself was deneutered to make no difference between men and women, thus further destroying the family, in effect creating Parent 1 and Parent 2 instead of Father and Mother.
The Soviet code of 1920 removed any stigma and non-legality of homosexuality, pedophilia, abortion and no fault divorce. What do you really think the West just now invented all of this?
Is this different from what has already happened in the West, especially in America? Are your children not being brain washed? Are they not being set to dancing to the tune of the Devil? Are they not being nurtured against you, their parents?
Yet what have you done to fight this?
Once God is gone, the effects is a system built upon Satan's lies. When one dances with the Devil, the Devil does not change, but you do. The Abyss will swallow your souls and will morph and mutate you, like it or not, as that is what it will take to survive in the new society, a new "Utopia" built upon the Devil's lies.
And if you think that it will rot away and collapse, you are right, but it will take generations more to rid this cancer of the Devil in the body of society.
I give you this final warning, a call to arms to fight for God in society, to retain your faith, because while your nation will ever be a competitor to Russia, it is much much easier to co-exist when both nations have strong faiths in God. It is not possible to do so peacefully when one is the Whore of Babylon and pushes the lies of Satan on every land, including my own.
And so, dear reader, I shall leave you with these thoughts to ponder and may God stir you to actual action and may you retain a Christian nation, under that same said God.
The Soviet code of 1920 removed any stigma and non-legality of homosexuality, pedophilia, abortion and no fault divorce. What do you really think the West just now invented all of this?
Is this different from what has already happened in the West, especially in America? Are your children not being brain washed? Are they not being set to dancing to the tune of the Devil? Are they not being nurtured against you, their parents?
Yet what have you done to fight this?
Once God is gone, the effects is a system built upon Satan's lies. When one dances with the Devil, the Devil does not change, but you do. The Abyss will swallow your souls and will morph and mutate you, like it or not, as that is what it will take to survive in the new society, a new "Utopia" built upon the Devil's lies.
And if you think that it will rot away and collapse, you are right, but it will take generations more to rid this cancer of the Devil in the body of society.
I give you this final warning, a call to arms to fight for God in society, to retain your faith, because while your nation will ever be a competitor to Russia, it is much much easier to co-exist when both nations have strong faiths in God. It is not possible to do so peacefully when one is the Whore of Babylon and pushes the lies of Satan on every land, including my own.
And so, dear reader, I shall leave you with these thoughts to ponder and may God stir you to actual action and may you retain a Christian nation, under that same said God.
Proverbs 29:23 - A man's pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the humble in spirit.
Isaiah 5:15 - And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled:
Romans 12:3 - For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think [of himself] more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
Stanislav Mishin
The article originally appears on the author's blog Mat Rodina and was reprinted with author's kind permission
Дмитрий Судаков
America's total anti-Christian descent
By Stanislav Mishin
America has long been on the road of godless material marxism, but this year a new offensive and killing blow was struck.
Everyone knows now about the insanity of the American Black Friday consumption orgy, where tens of millions of Americans turn into something equivalent to hunger maddened Somali refugees as they bash out doors, bash out windows and on occasion bash out each other, to get their hands on "super" deals for material goods, goods most of them can not afford and can not pay back credit on. But like all such orgies, the baby comes a bit later, in the form of a payment bill.
However, at least up to that point, most Americans still had a rational, family oriented holiday in the form of Thanksgiving. But no more.
From this year and I am sure going forward forever, the doors of the stores open on the actual holiday. Some as early as 1800, which means, right in the middle of the big dinner. Americans must now decide what is more important to them: God (when they rarely remember Him), family or a super new pair of Nike shoes named after some prima dona basket ball player.
Well we all know how that choice will go. Million of Americans instantly made the decision to chuck God and Family right out the dumpster with the cold turkey and to fight their fellow gluttons for some new clink to show off to their equally, soulless, Christless zombie neighbors.
A zombie is a most accurate description: a mindless, soulless consumption machine and this day of Thanksgiving, has shown us what the Protestant Economy leads everyone to: a zombie state, a damned on earth mentality of Marxist Materialism.
And as if starving and fighting for survival, brawls and stabbings have broken out all over the US in various stores and megastores. The body count was already starting role in, even during the middle of the night. If this is what debtor broke, but still fed, America is like, while the lights are still on and the food, even if bought on government food allocation cards, is like, what will happen when/if the lights go out and the shipments stop?
And what of those few store managers who refused to force their employees to work on the actual holiday? Several load firings have ensued....not that the masses care, they got their clunk...how about you?
Stanislav Mishin
The article has been reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina
Дмитрий Судаков
Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English - Question #6
Q. 6 How many persons are there in the Godhead?
A. There are three persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit;[a] and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.[b]
A. There are three persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit;[a] and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.[b]
[a] Matthew 3:16-17
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
16 And when Jesus was baptized, at once he went up from the water [Forsooth Jesus christened ascended up anon from the water]; and lo! heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down as a dove, and coming on him [and coming upon him];
17 and lo! a voice from heaven, saying, This is my loved Son [and lo! a voice from heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son], in which I have well pleased to me.
Matthew 28:19
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
19 Therefore go ye, and teach all folks, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;
2 Corinthians 13:14
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
14 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity of God, and the communing of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.
1 Peter 1:2
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
2 by the before-knowing of God, the Father, in hallowing of Spirit, by obedience, and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied to you. [after the prescience of God, the Father, into hallowing of the Spirit, into obedience, and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you be multiplied.]
[b] Psalm 45:6
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
6 God, thy seat is into the world of world; the rod of thy realm is a rod of right ruling, or of equity. (Like God, thy throne shall last forever; and the sceptre of thy kingdom is a sceptre of justice, yea, of equity and fairness.)
John 1:1
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
1 In the beginning was the word, and the word was at God, and God was the word. [In the beginning was the word, that is, God's Son, and the word was at God, and God was the word.]
John 17:5
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
5 And now, Father, clarify thou me at thyself, with the clearness that I had at thee, before the world was made.
Acts 5:3-4
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
3 And Peter said to him, Ananias, why hath Satan tempted thine heart, that thou lie to the Holy Ghost [Forsooth Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan tempted thine heart, thee to lie to the Holy Ghost], and to defraud of the price of the field?
4 Whether it unsold was not thine; and when it was sold, it was in thy power? Why hast thou put this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied to men, but to God.
Romans 9:5
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
5 whose be the fathers, and of which is Christ after the flesh[a], that is God above all things, blessed into worlds. Amen.
Footnotes:
- Romans 9:5 and of whom is Christ after the flesh
Colossians 2:9
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
9 For in him dwelleth body-like all the fullness of the Godhead.
Jude 1:24-25
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
24 But to him that is mighty to keep you without sin, and to ordain before the sight of his glory you unwemmed in full out joy,
25 in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God alone our Saviour, by Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, and magnifying, empire, and power, before all worlds, and now, and into all worlds of worlds. Amen.
Comment on Q. 6
This answer states briefly what is called the doctrine of the Trinity. 'Trinity' is not a word found in the Bible, but it is a kind of shorthand in order to describe what the Bible teaches about the Divine nature. There is only one God, but God exists in three persons who live in intimate relationship one to the other. We use the word persons, not because it is adequate, but because the Bible speaks of the relationship of the three in a manner similar to that which we know between human persons.
The Trinity means that God is not lonely, but has a fullness of life and fellowship in himself. When Jesus said, 'The Father is greater than I' (John 14:28), he was referring to his position as the Servant of the Lord who had come into this world for our salvation, and not to his own essential equality with the Father (as in John 10:30). The subject of the Trinity is a great mystery, as we would expect, and there is no adequate illustration of it. God is unique!
Three errors could be mentioned. The first (modalism) teaches that God is but one person, who has played different roles at different times, calling himself successively, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But the Three persons are shown as together at the same time, Matthew 3:16-17. The second error (arianism), found especially in sects such as 'Jehovah's Witnesses', also teaches God is but one person and that Jesus is a created being, and the Holy Spirit merely a name for the power of God. A third error is polytheism (belief in many gods), which is a perversion of the truth of the richness of God's life. It is found in forms ranging from Mormonism to Hinduism.
The Trinity means that God is not lonely, but has a fullness of life and fellowship in himself. When Jesus said, 'The Father is greater than I' (John 14:28), he was referring to his position as the Servant of the Lord who had come into this world for our salvation, and not to his own essential equality with the Father (as in John 10:30). The subject of the Trinity is a great mystery, as we would expect, and there is no adequate illustration of it. God is unique!
Three errors could be mentioned. The first (modalism) teaches that God is but one person, who has played different roles at different times, calling himself successively, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But the Three persons are shown as together at the same time, Matthew 3:16-17. The second error (arianism), found especially in sects such as 'Jehovah's Witnesses', also teaches God is but one person and that Jesus is a created being, and the Holy Spirit merely a name for the power of God. A third error is polytheism (belief in many gods), which is a perversion of the truth of the richness of God's life. It is found in forms ranging from Mormonism to Hinduism.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English - Question #5
Q. 5 Are there more Gods than one?
A. There is only one God,[a] the living and true God.[b]
A. There is only one God,[a] the living and true God.[b]
[a] Deuteronomy 6:4
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
4 Thou Israel, hear, thy Lord God is one God. (Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God.)
Isaiah 44:6
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
6 The Lord, King of Israel, and again-buyer thereof, the Lord of hosts saith these things, I am the first, and I am the last, and without me is no God. (The Lord, the King of Israel, and its Redeemer, the Lord of hosts saith these things, I am the first, and I am the last, and there is no God besides me.)
Isaiah 45:21-22
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
21 Tell ye, and come ye, and take ye counsel together. Who made this heard from the beginning? from that time I before-said it. Whether I am not the Lord, and no God is further without me? [a] God rightful and saving is none, besides me. (Tell ye, and come ye, and take ye counsel together. Who made this heard from the beginning, or from long ago? yea, from the time that I foretold it. Am I not the Lord? and furthermore, there is no God besides me; yea, there is no rightful, or just, God, or one who saveth, besides me.)
22 All the coasts of (the) earth, be ye converted to me, and ye shall be safe; for I am the Lord, and none other there is. (Turn ye to me, and be ye saved, ye peoples from all the ends of the earth; for I am the Lord, and there is no other.)
1 Corinthians 8:4-6
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
4 But of meats that be offered to idols, we know, that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no God but one.
5 For though there be some that be said gods [For why though there be that be said gods], either in heaven, either in earth, as there be many gods, and many lords;
6 nevertheless to us is one God, the Father, of whom be all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom be all things, and we by him.
[b] Jeremiah 10:10
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
10 Forsooth the Lord is very God; he is God living, and a king everlasting; the earth shall be moved together of his indignation, and heathen men shall not (be able to) suffer the menacing of him. (For the Lord is the true God; he is the living God, and the everlasting King; the earth shall be altogether shaken by his indignation, and the heathen shall not be able to suffer his threats.)
John 17:3
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
3 And this is everlasting life, that they know thee very God alone [that they know thee alone very God], and whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ.
1 Thessalonians 1:9
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
9 For they show of you, what manner entry we had to you, and how ye be converted to God from maumets [and how ye be converted to God from simulacra], to serve to the living God and very;
1 John 5:20
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
20 And we know, that the Son of God came in flesh, and gave to us wit, that we know him very God, and be in the very Son [Jesus] of him [and be in the very Son Jesus of him]. This is very God, and everlasting life.
Comment on Q. 5
God is called the living God because he has life in himself and is able to give life and help to others. He is the true God because he really is, whereas other gods exist only in the minds of those who worship them. In Deuteronomy 6:4 God is described by a Hebrew word which means a united one not an only one, and so is perfectly consistent with the truth of personal distinctions within the Divine nature (see Q. 6).
7 Councils: The First Council of Constantinople
by Tim Challies
Last week I began a new series of articles on the seven ecumenical councils of the early church. These councils commenced with the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and concluded with the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. Between these two events were five more, each of which attempted to understand and establish a unified Christian theology.
In this series we will take a look at each of the seven councils. For each one we will consider the setting and purpose, the major characters, the nature of the conflict, and then the results and lasting significance. We continue today with the First Council of Constantinople.
The council was convened to try to unite a church that remained divided over the issue of Christ’s nature and his relationship with the Father. Though the First Council of Nicaea had already attempted to reach consensus, Arianism and other heterodox understandings remained a battleground in every region of the empire.
Meletius, bishop of Antioch served as the first president of the council, but died shortly after it began.
Gregory of Nazianzus was elected bishop of Constantinople at the start of the council and, after the death of Meletius, took over as president. However, shortly thereafter, the legality of his election was challenged based on a canon from the Council of Nicaea that bishops cannot be transferred from see to see (Gregory had previously been bishop in Sasima). This dispute prompted Gregory to resign from the bishopric and presidency.
Nectarius was a civil official who was quickly baptized so he could take over as bishop of Constantinople and president of the council when Gregory stepped down.
The Conflict
The main business of the council was to reestablish the doctrine that had been set forth in the Nicene Creed. They did this by writing a new creed to remove some of the language of the Nicene Creed that had proven controversial and problematic. They also adding further clarification at other points where doctrine had developed a little further, or where orthodoxy was being challenged.
One specific area where doctrine had developed was in regard to the Holy Spirit. The council attributed four things to the Holy Spirit:
Last week I began a new series of articles on the seven ecumenical councils of the early church. These councils commenced with the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and concluded with the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. Between these two events were five more, each of which attempted to understand and establish a unified Christian theology.
In this series we will take a look at each of the seven councils. For each one we will consider the setting and purpose, the major characters, the nature of the conflict, and then the results and lasting significance. We continue today with the First Council of Constantinople.
Setting & Purpose
The First Council of Constantinople was held in Constantinople, modern day Istanbul, Turkey. It was convened by Theodosius I who at that time was Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. The council met from May to July, 381.The council was convened to try to unite a church that remained divided over the issue of Christ’s nature and his relationship with the Father. Though the First Council of Nicaea had already attempted to reach consensus, Arianism and other heterodox understandings remained a battleground in every region of the empire.
Major Characters
There were 150 Eastern bishops present at the council and among them were a handful of notable characters.Meletius, bishop of Antioch served as the first president of the council, but died shortly after it began.
Gregory of Nazianzus was elected bishop of Constantinople at the start of the council and, after the death of Meletius, took over as president. However, shortly thereafter, the legality of his election was challenged based on a canon from the Council of Nicaea that bishops cannot be transferred from see to see (Gregory had previously been bishop in Sasima). This dispute prompted Gregory to resign from the bishopric and presidency.
Nectarius was a civil official who was quickly baptized so he could take over as bishop of Constantinople and president of the council when Gregory stepped down.
The Conflict
The main business of the council was to reestablish the doctrine that had been set forth in the Nicene Creed. They did this by writing a new creed to remove some of the language of the Nicene Creed that had proven controversial and problematic. They also adding further clarification at other points where doctrine had developed a little further, or where orthodoxy was being challenged.
One specific area where doctrine had developed was in regard to the Holy Spirit. The council attributed four things to the Holy Spirit:
- a divine title, ‘Lord,’
- divine functions of giving life which He possesses by nature and of inspiring the prophets,
- an origin from the Father not by creation but by procession,
- supreme worship equal to that rendered to Father and to Son” (from Leo Donal Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils).
The Result
The foremost result of the Council was the Creed of Constantinople. It was very similar to the Nicene Creed, but it removed the anathema against Arianism.We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (aeons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; from thence he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets. In one holy catholic and apostolic Church; we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.Apart from reaffirming the faith of Nicaea, the council also approved several other items. Most noticeable was the canon asserting that “The Bishop of Constantinople shall have primacy of honor after the Bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is the new Rome.” In the time between Nicaea and Constantinople, Constantine had rebuilt and dedicated Constantinople as the new capital of the Roman empire. Assuming such authority for the bishop of Constantinople was a threat to Rome and the power of her bishop. It was considered a serious affront because there was no spiritual significance to Constantinople (whereas Rome’s bishopric claimed to have succeeded from Peter). This seemingly small change would cause all manner of grief in the centuries to come.
Lasting Significance
The council was significant, but many councils would remain before there would be that unified Christian doctrine.
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