Secular Humanism and Neuro-Nonsense

The other day while driving I picked up an AM radio station out of Toronto and heard an interview with an expert on neurogenerosity - which apparently has been a subject of discussion for the better part of a decade. I wasn't sure at first whether to take it seriously.

An Picture of an Underground Sect in the Open, but on the Back-street

Earlier this summer I was in a large city and honed in on an Uzbek restaurant. There were others in town but this one caught my eye because it was literally in a non-descript store-front, in a run-down neighbourhood - a section of ghetto. It was in a dilapidated strip mall alongside a dollar store and some other businesses - but it had no sign, nothing to indicate it was a restaurant.

Kuyper and Schilder on Eschatology and Culture

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/beginning-at-the-end-of-all-things/

The theology and thought of Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) is riddled with contradictions. On the one hand contemporary Dominionists wishing to posit a monistic view of society will quote Kuyper's famous dictum : 'There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!'

It's a pretty bold statement suggesting the boundaries of the Kingdom are all encompassing and there can be no room for dissent.

Memory and The Ister

From time to time I will watch (usually in segments) the 2004 film The Ister, which is a three-hour fascinating re-telling and interpretation of Heidegger's talks on the Hölderlin (1770-1843) poem which was written sometime in the early 19th century.

A Popular but Contrived Celtic Heritage

A Calvinist blogger (from the South) posted about wanting to understand his Celtic roots and then listed some books being read to that end.

What is Good Art? Dominionist Aesthetics versus the Detachment-Discernment Ethos of New Testament Pilgrim Christianity (II)

Rather than reduce art to the Hellenistic categories of the good, true, and beautiful our understanding needs to be both wide and nuanced.

Poisoning the Minds of Children

Various news stories continue to emerge suggesting that kids lack self-control when it comes to social media and viewing videos, especially on platforms like TikTok. Experts speaks of an obsessive behaviour that needs to be curbed.

Inbox: The Church as Institution vs. Sect (II)

The non-sacral sect model views culture as something that is at best inevitably corrupt (and thus to some degree a thing indifferent), and at worst a subversive danger to the Kingdom. This must be juxtaposed with the sacral-institutional model that views culture as something to be mastered, shaped, and controlled. When I say 'indifferent', this is not to suggest that it can be used expansively or with abandon. On the contrary our interactions with it must be marked by caution and even cynicism - and yet without fear. Such wisdom and occasionalism prove difficult and thus many have (in the spirit of the Pharisees) erected the Legalist Wall as a means of protection - a move that is ultimately corrosive in that in addition to being unbiblical it has the tendency to shut down the spiritual faculties of discernment instead relying on a kind of checklist spirituality wed to a (fundamentally flawed) cultural narrative.

Musing on The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance and Forty Years that Shook the World (II)

All things considered, I don't disagree with Wyman's general narrative regarding the rise of the modern West and how it surpassed previous super-power states and cultures like that of the Ottoman Empire.

But rather than celebrate Capitalism and the way it has reshaped the world, I would offer some different narratives to consider.

Antithesis and Small Town Church Dynamics

I live in a very rural area and while some small-town churches can be warm and friendly others can seem cold and unreceptive.

Gothardism Under the Microscope and a Christian Parent's Response (II)

Were the Beall's disturbed by watching their little five year old disappear into the bowels of a big institutional facility? They should be. It isn't natural. It's actually highly disturbing and historically anomalous but people have been conditioned to think it's normal. As a Christian not only is it an abdication of parental duty and calling, it is just plain crazy to hand over your precious and innocent covenanted child to authorities that are going to spend all day, five days a week, for at least a dozen years – during your child's most formative period in life, attempting to undermine all the most fundamental things you believe in.

Sundry Thoughts and Reflections on the Queen's Death (II)

It goes without saying that the death of Elizabeth II is a cultural milestone. It's unsettling for many as one of the foundational pillars of British society has been removed. The monarchy continues but because of the length of her reign and the stability it brought during the tumultuous cultural upheaval of the post-war period – the stability is associated less with the monarchy as a whole but is instead associated specifically with her person. And now she's gone.

Inbox: The Glory of the Nations in Revelation 21 and the Question of Eschatological Continuity (II)

*updated 9 April 2022

Even the Old Testament casts doubt on the continuity reading of Revelation 21. Ecclesiastes, a book that is so problematic for modern Evangelicalism and Dominionism has its message spun. The end result of their exegetical machinations is that the world is not given to vanity and corruption even though Paul forcefully and explicitly reiterates this point in Romans 8 and elsewhere argues that this world in its state of curse is subject to temporality. This is in contrast with the eternal (and thus ultimately true) nature of the eschatological Kingdom. That which is temporal is impermanent. This is not Gnosticism opposing matter or the material world or suggesting that it is illusion. It's a state of existence resulting from the Fall of Man and the curse God has placed on the world – not matter as matter, but this world which includes its fallen matter subject to decay and death, a matter sundered from its spiritual moorings as it were.

A Broken Ecclesiology

https://churchleaders.com/news/396413-reports-of-an-unsettling-trend-of-pastors-leaving-the-ministry.html

The broken ecclesiology that dominates the Evangelical scene is bearing a rotten harvest. Cultural attitudes and tensions, false expectations, and alternatives born of the technological age have created conditions in which men are leaving Church leadership for other 'ministries'. In some cases we must say good riddance but few seem willing or able to address the real reasons for this trend and identify the nature of the problem. It starts with an unbiblical ecclesiology – especially in the Evangelical and New Calvinist spheres.

The Shadow State is Alive and Well

https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-inside-militarys-secret-undercover-army-1591881

The stage for all of this was set in the aftermath of 9/11 and increasingly as people no longer consider the surrendering of their privacy and data to be anything controversial, and as generations of lock-step, wave the flag, support the troops, my country right or wrong nationalism has come to dominate – this story isn't even controversial.

Evangelicalism and A Hidden Life (2019)

The title of the movie is taken from George Elliot. In Middlemarch she writes:

"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

Though Evans (Elliot) was an infidel, the quote as it stands is true and worthy of reflection. We might modify it a bit and rather than think in terms of the 'growing good of the world', instead we can ponder the testimony that will be revealed in heaven itself. Hebrews 11 tells us that the 'winners' in terms of the Kingdom are those who wandered about destitute, living in caves and other lonely places, suffering torture and even death. In the world's eyes they were losers but as Christians we don't see these things or reckon them as the world does.

Postscript: An Aesthetic both Transient and Transcendent

Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XXII/Final)

We ought to understand that technology and art are not easily separated and both are to some extent inseparable from questions of epistemology and morality. Additionally, if we grasp that socially conservative attitudes toward the arts and culture (while inconsistent) cannot be divorced from their larger cultural narratives surrounding epistemology and previous generational progress and values, it behooves us (lest we be swept away by these powerful cultural forces and heavily promoted arguments) to apply the otherworldly and non-conformist ethos of the First Reformation to the present day. Our culture is in crisis and thus to many, the arguments made by conservatives seem very persuasive and grounding but from a New Testament perspective they are flawed at almost every level.

An otherworldly and non-conformist ethos leads us to a cultural posture and interaction that embraces neither the Classic nor the Enlightened. In fact in many ways we are better able to resonate with the postmodern critique and even the cynical. We benefit from critiques that expose the world system's inherent flaws and contradictions, that reveal it to be an idolatrous fraud and resting on transient and degenerating foundations – as Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 7.29-31 and Romans 8.19-23. This should not upset us but rather drives us all the more toward the inescapable choice between dependence upon revelation and the hope it grants or a collapse into nihilism.

Postscript: Magisterial Protestantism's Cultural Legacy and Aesthetic Schizophrenia

Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XXI)

This topic may seem off-base or represent a strange sidetrack and it must be admitted not all will be interested in this discussion or even be able to follow it. Nevertheless these are issues of practical importance, all the more given the way in which such questions (presented within the framework of a holistic system) permeate Evangelical discussions and dominate airwaves, pulpits, and an endless stream of books and cultural commentaries.

A Final Appeal: The First Reformation Applied to the Contemporary Context (Part 2)

Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XVIII)

While our Biblicist theology is necessarily high and has high regard for revealed mysteries and supernatural efficacious elements and means – our ecclesiology is about as low as it gets – but this in no way implies casualness or irreverence.

A Final Appeal: The First Reformation Applied to the Contemporary Context (Part 1)

Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XVII)

The time is now.

These essays have attempted to survey Church history and re-cast it in a narrative frame at odds with the often tight, packaged, and frankly sometimes disingenuous renderings provided by denominational partisans and the advocates of Christendom – or the fiction that is often referred to as Judeo-Christian civilisation. This revisiting and questioning of common Protestant and Evangelical narratives of Church History is essential if one is to understand and navigate the present context.