the falsest of dichotomies

Every now and again, I'll read something that at least seems to hint at some kind of divide between the God of the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament.

To my experience, it's rarely plainly stated in such terms. The language is usually more weaselly. It might, for example, involve statement about how Jesus is the true revelation of God, and how we have to interpret the Bible, especially the Old Testament, through Jesus.

Of course, that does make sense. But then, the Jesus they try to set up turns out to be not much like the Jesus found in the New Testament.

For example, I've come on a few who try to question the existence of Hell using such an argument. Apparent, the fact the Jesus spoke of Hell as a very real place doesn't factor into their interpretations.

This kind of thing is often used by those who are theologically liberal.

For example, they will attempt to put a kind of separation between the God of the Old Testament, who often told people to go to war and told Israel to conquer to the Promised Land, and Jesus in the New Testament, who told people to love their enemies, bless those who curse you, and so on. They try to portray Jesus as being in favor of their pet forms of nonviolent resistance.

But the truth is this--Jesus never disapproved of anything the Father said or did in the Old Testament, and the Father never disapproved of anything the Son said or did in the New Testament. As Jesus Himself plainly stated, "I an the Father are One", and "Before Abraham was, I am". To put it another way, the God who told Yeshua (Joshua) to cross the Jordon and conquer the Promised Land is the same Yeshua (Jesus) who told us to love our enemies. There are not cross-purposes, there is no split between the two, there is not disagreement in the Godhead. Jesus did not attempts some kind Occupy Heaven stunt.

The same Jesus who spoke about loving enemies also told his disciples to sell a cloak to buy a sword. The same Jesus who spoke about loving enemies was the one who called His enemies hypocrites, blind guides, and said their father was the devil. Start getting your mind around these apparent (though not real) contradictions before trying to make the Godhead a family squabble.

ched myers and twisting peter's statement

At the structural center of Marks story is Jesus famous double question to his disciples, upon which all Christian theology turns:

"Who do the people say that I am?...
Who do you say I am?" (8:27, 29a)

Here Mark boldly transforms teh foundational declaration of Hebrew faith--"God said to Moses, 'I am who I am!" (Exod. 3:14)--into a query. Significantly, Peter sees in this remarkable solicitation a happy occasion for confessional orthodoxy: "You are the Christ!" (8:29b). Yet Jesus responds to Peter as if he were merely another demon attempting to "name" him--he silences him (8:30; cf. 1:25, 3:12, 9:25).

This precipitates what I have called the "confessional crisis" in Mark (8:31-33). Jesus repudiates Messianic triumphalism by invoking the political vocation of the Human One; Peter attempts in turn to repudiate such a "negating" theology. Jesus then utterly problematizes the matter by aligning the Petrine confession (which was, let us not forget, the creed of the churches to which Mark wrote, aand which still read him today) with Satan! The struggle conclude with Jesus' invitation to his disciples to a practice of the cross (8:34ff). Mark thus displaces Peter's confession with Jesus' quandary about losing life in order to save it.
Ched Myers, in his entry """I Will Ask You A Question": Interrogatory Theology", in the book "Theology Without Foundation", edited by Hauerwas, Murphy, and Nation, pp. 100-101

It seems like a theme is starting to pop up here, dealing with some rather bizarre scriptural twistings. I don't know if I can say that the above is among the most bizarre, as the so-called apostles and prophets are among those who regularly go to some strange places, but it may be among the most distasteful.

First, the passage in question.

Mark 8
27And Jesus went forth, and his disciples, into the villages of Caesarea
Philippi: and on the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Who do
men say that I am? 28And they told him, saying, John the Baptist; and
others, Elijah; but others, One of the prophets. 29And he asked them, But
who say ye that I am? Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the
Christ. 30And he charged them that they should tell no man of him. 31And
he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and
be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be
killed, and after three days rise again. 32And he spake the saying openly.
And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. 33But he turning about, and
seeing his disciples, rebuked Peter, and saith, Get thee behind me, Satan;
for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men. 34And he
called unto him the multitude with his disciples, and said unto them, If any
man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and
follow me. 35For whosoever would save his life shall lose it; and
whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s shall save it.
36For what doth it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his
life? 37For what should a man give in exchange for his life? 38For
whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and
sinful generation, the Son of man also shall be ashamed of him, when he
cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

First, Myers tries to say the Jesus silenced Peter as He silences the demons in other passages. But is that so? Emphases mine.

Mark 1
40And there cometh to him a leper, beseeching him, and kneeling down to
him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. 41And
being moved with compassion, he stretched forth his hand, and touched
him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou made clean. 42And straightway the
leprosy departed from him, and he was made clean. 43And he strictly
charged him, and straightway sent him out, 44and saith unto him, See thou
say nothing to any man: but go show thyself to the priest, and offer for
thy cleansing the things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto
them. 45But he went out, and began to publish it much, and to spread
abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into a
city, but was without in desert places: and they came to him from every
quarter.

Mark 8
31And again he went out from the borders of Tyre, and came through
Sidon unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the borders of
Decapolis. 32And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an
impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to lay his hand upon him.
33And he took him aside from the multitude privately, and put his fingers
into his ears, and he spat, and touched his tongue; 34and looking up to
heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.
35And his ears were opened, and the bond of his tongue was loosed, and
he spake plain. 36And he charged them that they should tell no man: but
the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it.
37And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all
things well; he maketh even the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.

Mark 9
1And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There are some here of
them that stand by, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the
kingdom of God come with power. 2And after six days Jesus taketh with
him Peter, and James, and John, and bringeth them up into a high mountain
apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them; 3and his
garments became glistering, exceeding white, so as no fuller on earth can
whiten them. 4And there appeared unto them Elijah with Moses: and they
were talking with Jesus. 5And Peter answereth and saith to Jesus, Rabbi, it
is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee,
and one for Moses, and one for Elijah. 6For he knew not what to answer;
for they became sore afraid. 7And there came a cloud overshadowing them:
and there came a voice out of the cloud, This is my beloved Son: hear ye
him. 8And suddenly looking round about, they saw no one any more, save
Jesus only with themselves. 9And as they were coming down from the
mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they
had seen, save when the Son of man should have risen again from the dead.
10And they kept the saying, questioning among themselves what the rising
again from the dead should mean.

From these passages, we can see that Jesus did not tell only demons to be silent about who He is or things He had done or shown to them. Jesus telling the disciples to not say anything about Him being the Christ at that time does not mean He was equating Peter's statement with something said by demons; iu fact, I think Myers is falling into blasphemy when he says that.

Also, the incident is mentioned in other Gospels. In Matthew, for example, it does like this:

Matthew 16
13Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his
disciples, saying, Who do men say that the Son of man is? 14And they
said, Some say John the Baptist; some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one
of the prophets. 15He saith unto them, But who say ye that I am? 16And
Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God. 17And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon
Bar-jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my
Father who is in heaven. 18And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not
prevail against it. 19I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of
heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 20Then
charged he the disciples that they should tell no man that he was the
Christ.21From that time began Jesus to show unto his disciples, that he must go
unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and
scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up. 22And Peter took
him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall
never be unto thee. 23But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind
me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto me: for thou mindest not the
things of God, but the things of men.

Interesting that this pasage contains all the elements Myers appeals to, but has other things that perhaps Myers wouldn't like; for example, rather than Jesus repudiating Peter's statement that He is the Christ, Jesus says that he is blessed for making it, that the Father is the one who has shown that to him.

A far cry from Myers' attempts to make Peter's statement the problem, isn't it?

Myers' statement that Jesus tried to align Peter's statement with Satan is simply blasphemy. Peter's statement that Jesus is the Christ was revealed to him by God, yet Myers' says it is aligned with Satan. Would it not be logical, then, that it is Myers who is speaking the words of Satan here, since they contradict Jesus' own statement that Peter's insight was given to him by God?

peter rollins and the brave little traitor

By and large, most of the stories Rollins writes in his clever little book have an element of the disturbing in them, like creepy little kids in horror movies. I don't know if "The Mission of Judas" is necessarily the most disturbing, but, really, given that name and the contents, it's definitely up there. This story and commentary can be found on pp. 100-103.

So, as the title says, this story is about Judas. He's having a bit of a nap, and having a dream. He's dreaming that he's going to betray Jesus, Jesus is going to die, and he himself is going to commit suicide over what he has done. But he also sees Christ's resurrection and ascension, how Jesus' message would somehow bring down Rome and change the lives of many people. Judas awakens, recalls Jesus' words about His death, as recorded in John 12:23-25, and realizes what he is suppose to do, what he is destined to do. He's suppose to betray Jesus, and insure that the things in his vision happen.

As Rollins himself explains his commentary...

Here we are led to conceive of Judas as one of the most courageous figures in the Bible, as one who betrayed Christ, not because of a love for money or because he had been overpowered by some demonic influence, but rather because he knew what would result from that betrayal.

By understanding the complexity of the betrayal, we are led to consider whether certain acts that might appear to be fundamentally against God could actually be gestures of fidelity to God.

So, let's take this way of thinking to other areas, shall we? Join me, please, if you have the stomach for it. Because you may need to breathe into a bag before this is over.

Let's image it's the 1940s, Europe. Imagine there's a man who really loves the Jewish people. He loves them so much, that he works tirelessly to hand individuals and families of Jewish people over to Nazi Gestapo goons. He helps to herd them into overcrowded train cars, watches as they are hered naked into gas chambers, then listens as the gas is put into the chambers and the people die horribly. He feels bad, of course, but he knows that only in doing this can a greater good be accomplished.

Now, let's imagine some parents, who have several children. They love their children, so in order to make sure the children have a bright future and are good people, they withhold food from their children to the point of starvation, keep them chained to radiators, routinely abuse them physically and mentally, sell their children so others can do very bad things to them, and pretty much do all the things good parents don't do to their children. But they know that, if they do these horrible things to their children, one will become a doctor who cures cancer, one will become an astronaut who leads the first manned expedition to Mars, one will become a Senator. Of course, one deals with psychological problems from the abuse well into adulthood, and another becomes a homeless guy who drowns himself in alcohol and drugs and dies namelessly in an alley, but that's just the price that must be paid for so much good.

I hope you've enjoyed those two scenarios as little as I have. And don't feel ashamed if you did have to breath into a bag.

But I hope, as well, that these scenarios have shown the completely evil premise behind Rollins' evil little story.

Judas was no hero. He was not courageous. He was a traitor. He got greedy, and there was a dark spiritual influence on him too, and he betrayed our Lord into the hands of those who killed Him. It is irresponsible, nay even evil, for Rollins to try to make Judas into a hero.

But is it not telling the Rollins tries to make a traitor into a hero? Is it not revealing that Rollins tries to say that Judas' betrayal was some kind of an act of fidelity to God? Such a thing seems to say more about Rollins than about anyone else--the desire to make the traitor into the hero, the desire to make an act of betrayal an act of faith, the want and even need to make a greedy and demonic act into one of staggering bravery.

Perhaps Rollins is less interested in justifying Judas than in justifying himself.

the imagined gospel

Nadia Bolz-Weber preaches the Gospel

This theooze forum entry begins with the claim that the speaker was preaching the gospel. Here's the kinds of things that person apparently transcribed.

"Once upon a time, the God of the Universe was basically fed up with being on the receiving end of all our human projections, tired of being nothing more to us than what we thought God should be: angry, show-offy, defensive, insecure, in short, the vengeance-seeking tyrant we would be if we were God. So, at that time, over 2,000 years ago, God’s Loving Desire to really be Known overflowed the heavens and was made manifest in the rapidly dividing cells within the womb of an insignificant peasant girl named Mary. And when the time came for her to give birth to God, there was no room in our expectations – no room in any impressive or spiffy or safe place.

Nice that it starts with the standard fairy-tale phrase. Would we be safe in thinking that Bolz-Weber is using that phrase to indicate that she questions the reality of the incarnation?

I don't think we can doubt she thinks something similar of the Old Testament. All it is, from this quote, is "our human projections". That nasty of god of Abraham, David, and Elijah, going around telling his people to fight and conquer, defend themselves, sacrifice a bunch of cute little animals, and so jealous he just won't allow his people to worship a golden calf or any other idol.

A while ago, I noticed that an emergent writer posited what I labeled The Incompetent God--while God wanted people to be nice little flower-power pacifists, he had to continually have them conquer and go to war. I've come to notice that, in one form or another, 'the incompetent god' is a common theme among emergents. Here, this emergent speakers uses it in a PR sense--God just didn't know how to manage his image, letting poor little people make him out to be all wrath and ire and angry.

Yet, is it not ironic, that at the very time the speaker goes on about man projecting on God, this speaker herself is doing the exact thing she accusing them of doing?

So this God was born in straw and dirt. He grew up, this Jesus of Nazareth, left his home, and found some, let’s be honest, rather unimpressive characters to follow him. Fishermen, Tax collectors, prostitutes, homeless women with no teeth, people from Commerce City, Ann Coulter and Charlie Sheen. If you think I’m kidding… read it for yourselves. These people were questionable. So, with his little band of misfits Jesus went about the countryside turning water to wine, eating with all the wrong people, angering the religious establishment and insisting that in him the kingdom of God had come near, that through him the world according to God was coming right to us. He touched the unclean and used spit and dirt to heal the blind and said crazy destabilizing things like the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and sell all you have and give it to the poor.

Well, that's interesting. Nice little spins on the reality. A little bit of truth mixed in with fabrications, not unlike the serpent when he tempted the woman in Eden.

No doubt, one can see a surface relationship to what she's saying Jesus said and did, and what is in the biblical accounts of Him. Yet, getting past the surface, how much of her Jesus is like the biblical Jesus?

Perhaps the one that is most missing is any sense of context to Jesus' actions. For example, he made water into wine at a wedding in which the wine had run out, which from what I understand would have been a bit of a problem for some people invovled in it. We get no hint that Jesus performed this miracle willy-nilly. Jesus ate with sinners, but is there any hint that Jesus was a partaker in their sins, or that He did it to validate their sins? Jesus touched a leper, and did so to heal him.

To one man, Jesus said to give away all he had. He seemed quite pleased enough when Zaccheaus gave only half. And He seemed to not at all hold it against Lazarus and his sisters that they had their own home, one large enough to allow Him and His disciples to stay in. And the statement about first being last was made in the context of the parable of the workers, where the landowner paid all who worked for him that same wage, no matter how long they worked that day. Another time, it is used in the context of those who have given up much to follow Him.

And the thing that really cooked people’s noodles wasn’t the question “is Jesus like God” it was “what if God is like Jesus”. What if God is not who we thought? What if the most reliable way to know God is not through religion, not through a sin and punishment program, but through a person. What if the most reliable way to know God is to look at how God chose to reveal God’s self in Jesus?"

Perhaps one can show me in the Bible, please, where anyone got "really cooked" by that question she says they got cooked by?

This is, simply, the tired old canard that Jesus was somehow different from God. No lie would be bigger. Jesus was not some radical departure from the God of the prophets, His message was not in contradiction to the God of the Scriptures that the people had at that time. He read from one of those prophets when He began His ministry, He quoted those Scriptures to the devil when He was tempted, He said that those Scriptures spoke of Him, He affirmed those Scriptures and God at every turn. He did not play this game that Bolz-Weber is doing, putting down the God of the Old Testament to create a jesus of her own making.

To separate Jesus from the context of the Old Testament is to create a jesus of one's own making, which Bolz-Weber does. We cannot understand Jesus' sacrifice apart from sin and redemption. The jesus of Bolz-Weber and other emergents is simply a propoganda tool.

Because that changes everything. If what we see in Jesus is God’s own self, revealed, then what we are dealing with here is a God who is ridiculously indiscriminate about choosing friends. A God who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business anymore. A God who would not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him, but went to the depths of Hell rather than be apart even from his betrayers. A God unafraid to get his hands dirty for the ones he loves. This, this is the God who rises to new life with dirt still under his nails.

Ok, did God not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him? When Jesus cried out over Jerusalem, saying how He wanted to gather them to Him but they would not allow it, then saying that bad things were coming to them, was He not condemning them for their rejection of Him?

Would God rather die than be in the sin accounting business? In Jesus, God offers us forgiveness of sin, through His death and by His blood, but as was also said, those who do not believe are condemned already.

God has shown us His love, in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. But this is no a license to continue in sin, as Bolz-Weber does in her sexual choices, nor does it mean that all are forgiven willy-nilly. It is through repentence and faith in the crucified and risen Christ, a Christ literally crucified and risn and not some kind of fictional redefinition of those things, that we find forgiveness of sin.

Bolz-Weber did not preach the gospel, contrary to what this writer claimed. She preached propoganda.

twisting

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calling evil 'good'

Fighting for the soul of evangelicalism

Gen 1:31. – God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

God establishes a basis for reality that includes everything. And it’s all good. There is no exception. It even includes the serpent and the tree. That declaration is not dependent upon humanity interactivity or circumstance. God doesn’t wait until we show up and then judge after we act. God judges before. So to operate counter to this original judgment is the true basis for understanding both original sin, and the problem God is solving in the story.

So, one would rightly be left wondering "What the heck?"

For one thing, can we take a statement about how God saw things before the Fall and the entrance and effects of sin, and extrapolate that out to how things are now? When God first made the world, yes, it was good and very good. Can anyone say that it is now?

For example, in the account of Noah, we have this.

Genesis 6
5 The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

So, a bit of time after the Creation, we have the Fall, and then after that we have God saying that He was going to wipe out humans except for Noah and his family. Something had changed, and pretty drastically, too.

But, as well, there is the statement in the EV article that the serpent was something good. Given how the account speaks of this serpent, it was something different from snakes in general, but rather somehow an appearance of Satan. As such, then, to speak of it in the same was the created world, to claim that it was good as regular snakes or fish or humans were good, is not feasible.

In the context of the Genesis 1 account, we know that God is speaking of the Creation of what we know as the physical or material universe--planets, stars, the Earth and moon and sun, and all the things God made to inhabit our world. To take a statement about this Creation, and to say that thus everything that has happened is good, that even the serpent or Satan are good, is to go too far.

But I'm not really surprised that an attempt should be made to make the serpent something good. Look at the recent entries to the Emergent Village blog, and you'll see what I mean--one writer has said that he would rewrite the book of Hosea so that God is the prostitute, while the church is asleep because it believes the myth of God's faithfulness. Another has compared the righteous judgments of God to the actions of an abusive mother. Given how much they hate (I do not use that word lightly, and I mean it very strongly) the God of the Bible, is it any wonder that they should, even in a small way, try to make a good the thing the God of the Bible is opposed to?

is it wrong to hope he gets audited?

My Letter to the IRS: ‘I Reserve the Right Not to Kill’

Shane Claiborne is not paying his taxes, well, not all of them. Yep, while we conservatives have to pay for the liberal's nanny state, abortion, perverted art, and a failed public education system, not to mention continue to hear the liberal's demands to increase taxes even more, they seem to think they reserve the right to NOT pay for what they disagree with.

For this reason, I am enclosing a check for $227.11, which is, according to the form, 70 percent of what I owe. The remaining $97.33 represents 30 percent of my tax payment, the amount that would go toward military spending. I will donate this remaining 30 percent to a recognized U.S. nonprofit organization working to bring peace and reconciliation. My faith also compels me to submit to the governing authorities, which is why I am writing you respectfully and transparently here. I am glad to discuss this further if you have any questions.

Hey, Claiborne, I got a solution for you...EMIGRATE!!! Leave the country you hate so much, that does so many things you despise and can't support. I'm sure there's someplace out there that would more than welcome you.

defending the bad

It's rather amusing, in a sad sort of way, to read Caputo's extreme waffling in his book, What Would Jesus Deconstruct, when it comes to abortion.

Abortion is always a bad and difficult choice,but making a bad choice is better than making a worse one, and sometimes making a bad choice is better than being forbidden to choose at all.
p 113

Yeah. If I may sum up his position in a typical postmodern way, "Abortion is bad, therefore we must defend it".

But nothing is simple, nothing is just black and white, no one can ever say, "Thou shalt not kill," which is also a crucial idea of deconstruction, which I am reading as the hermeneutics of the kingdom of God.
p 113

Funny, but someone did dare to say "Thou shalt not kill". It was God. You know, that thing called The Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt not kill" is one of those ten.

To employ a bit of logic, if deconstruction means no one can say "Thou shalt not kill", and God has said that, then perhaps deconstruction is not really about the kingdom of God.

imagination gone wild

When we got to the front of the autograph line, we claimed our own place in the pastoral guild and commented that we believed the kind of serious wonder Price advocates is a skill that all Bible readers should hone.
Conder and Rhodes, Free For All, p 233

The co-authors were at a book store, attending a reading. The author doing the reading was Reynolds Price, who seems to be a quite proficient author. The book of his that he was reading from was "A Serious Way of Wondering". Here is a bit of what the "Free For All" co-authors wrote about Price's book.

At the center of the book are several brief stories Price imaginatively crafts, focusing on Jesus' response to three profoundly contemporary ethical dilemmas: meeting a gay man, encountering Judas Iscariot in the act of suicide, and a conversation with a woman caught in a sexual liaison with a man who is not her estranged husband. A scandalous trilogy to say the least.
pp 232-233

So, it got me curious about what Price was writing. But how? Sorry, but I don't like spending hard-earned funds on books I'm sure will not be worth the funds involved. Getting them from used book stores is another thing, but frankly, I regret paying full price for emergent nonsense like McLaren's "A New Kind of Christianity". I have better things to waste my money on.

Enter the library. No, really, go right on in.

Anyway, I found out that a library in a nearby city had a copy of that book, so I made a brief trip to that city, for that and other reasons, found it, and read through those three stories.

I find it odd that Conder and Rhodes mention Judas only in regards to one of the stories, because he is the focus of two of them. In the first story, Judas is a young man not yet twenty years old, and he's a gay man whose main desire was to have a sexual relationship with Jesus. The resurrected Christ visits Judas first, as he's hiding in a cave working up to hanging himself. This Judas betrayed Jesus because he loved Him, and Jesus seemed quite fine with his love and desires, even saying to Judas that he'll not go to hell for what he's done.

In the second story, one independent of the first, Judas is preparing to hang himself. Jesus comes along, makes a bit of an effort to try to talk him out of it, but in the end helps him tie the rope and climb the tree so he can hang himself.

The third is based on the account of the woman caught in adultery, who is spared by Jesus and told to not do it again. Price gives this woman, unnamed in the Bible, the name of Rahab. He puts her in a bad, abusive marriage, and seems to hint that adultery may not have been all that wrong.

So, is this one thing Conder and Rhodes mean by "the kind of serious wonding...is a skill all Bible readers should hone"? Make some kind of bizarre story, only marginally related to the biblical account, and then use it to say that good is evil and evil good?

One fo the remarkable aspects of the evening, however, was simply the author's repeated acknowledgement that his imaginative musings were forbidden by the church and established Christianity.
p 233

Really? Wow, I wonder why.

I don't know what else he's written in his "imaginative musings", but if these short musings are a example of what he's doing, then I'm not at all surprised that they have been forbidden, and good for the churches that have done so. And it's rather pathetic that he has to try to play the "poor poor presecuted me" act because of his "imaginative musings".

the church is too safe?

Convinced that the world is a threat to our lives and existence, Christians have become overwhelmed by our own culture of fear. Who could forget the tragic events that took place at New Life Church in Colorado Springs on December 9, 2007, when a young gunman opened fire on church members after Sunday morning worship? We both (the authors) remember watchin the news coverage after the event and feeling compassion for the families that lost loves ones as well as the traumatized church community. It was a truly terrifying and horrible event.

But what also struck us as odd and problematic was the tremendous amount of praise showered upon the security officer who supposedly fired upon and killed the young gunman. (It was later discovered that this young man had actually killed himself, a possibility not even mentioned in the fanfare.) We must admit that it left us with a bitterly confused taste in our mouths, wondering what message it sent for Christians to employ security guards at our churches and for us to so publicly laud the killing of a threat to our people. We were left wondering whether we have not let on infatuation with security take control of us, having turned us into a people of fear. Protect our schools, protect our families, protect our churches , protect our investments and our national interests. But in this search for security where has our mission gone? With all this emphasis on protection what exactly are we giving? Is it any wonder that the world finds our message to be so selfish, so hateful, so ugly?
Condor and Rhodes, Free For All, p 215

Hello. My name is Phyll Douglas Anthony McBrian, and as a self-appointed spokesperson for the emergent church, or whatever we are calling ourselves nowadays (as if it mattered), I have decided that I simply must address this heinous thing in the church that my fellow emergents Condor and Rhodes have touched upon.

The church is too safe.

I remember, years ago, I was attending a particular church. I wanderd by the nursery area, and do you know what I found there? I found toys that were considered appropriate for children of that age, rubber duckies and blocks, not a single choking hazard at all. To my dismay, I learned that there would be "adult supervision", intended to keep the children safe. And to my horror, I learned that they were going to give them a snack. It's not that a few cookies were so bad, but that they were going to make the kids wash their hands before eating. With soap!!

And this church was filled with other horrible examples of their mad addiction to security. They had stairs, and those stairs had handrails, so people could more safely go up and down them. I even saw an elevator for those with wheelchairs or other handicaps that would make make it unsafe for them to use the stairs. And on the outside there was a wheelchair ramp! With rails!!

And I saw horrible impliments of safety, like fire alarms and fire extinguishers, and emergency exits. There was even a first-aid kit or two about.

And, finally, I bet that if I had accessed their computers, I would have found security software on it--anti-virus, anti-malware, all kinds of anti-hacker things.

I bet they even had insurance. The pastor and others probably had health assurance. Their cars probably had car insurance.

Could you believe it? What a bunch of selfish, hateful, and ugly people!! How dare they try to protect themselves, the old people visiting, the children in their nursery! What kind of message is that sending? How dare they fear that their children might choke on a toy not appropriate for their age! How dare they fear fire so badly that they have alarms and extinguishers! How dare they fear hackers to such an extend that they put protective software on their computers!

I never returned to the church of those safety-idolators.

i already gave, i was taxed

Indeed, I could imagine that if the New Testament is our literal guide, then the standad tax rate for Christians should be set at 100%
John Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct, p 93

That is an interesting claim. His support for it?

The early Christians lived in common and distributed to one another according to their needs; in fact, one of the first disputes to break out in the church was whether this distribution was truly equal (Acts 6:1).

And Acts 6:1 says...

Now in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution.

An interesting claim. I would certainly like to see how that equates into Christians needing to be subjected to a 100% tax rate.

I've heard that claim about the early church before, or something similar. For my part, I have to question if what the early church practices were so much like the communism people like Caputo seem to want.

For example, here are Acts 2: 46-47

So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.

And also Acts 4:32-35

Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. Nor was there anyone among them who lacked, for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things they sold, and laid them at the apostle's' feet, and they distributed to each as anyone had need.

Again, fascinating. At the risk of being contrary, I think it would be safe to say that this must mean that not all homeowners sold the homes they were living in--it hardly seems to be smart to help others by making ones so destitute that one must then become a part of the supported. Though the idea that it may have been an extra home or excess land is interesting.

But one things is pretty clear--this is something the people were doing themselves, of their own accord. It was not coerced by the church, as the account of Peter's confronting Ananias and Sapphire shows. It was their own money, they could have done with it as they wished, their sin was not in keeping back a part of it, but in lying about it.

Nor was it normative. People may make much of Jesus telling a rich young ruler to sell all he had, but so far as I can remember, that was the only person to whom Jesus said that. He seemed quite pleased enough that the tax collector Zacheaus gave half (I can well image a Caputo smirking that it was 'only' half), and seems to have not held it against Lazarus and his sisters that they had their own house, but rather accepted their hospitality in allowing Him and his disciples to sometimes stay there (which likely meant it was a pretty large house, since it could hold so many guests).

This is telling, for Caputo writes things like this...

I may be forgiven (I depend a lot on the Christian virtue) if I have concluded that the private-charity argument is a cynical cover for greed, which has a way of working thigns out so that I get to keep as much money as I can for myself and let the poorest of the poor go to the devil.
p 93

What is telling is that, after saying that, he looks to the early church for support for his positions. But the early church was practicing private charity, not tax and redistribute. They certainly weren't being funded by the government of Rome or of Israel, and not by the Jewish religious authorities (unless those were themselves private individuals giving to the church, which ones like Nicodemus may well have done). It was members, be they individuals or families or maybe some small group or two of them, who of their own accord (with the leading of the Spirit, perhaps) sold their own things and gave the proceeds to the church (not sold their own things and then waited for the various governments to tax them) so that those the church set in place to provide those in need may do so, not let far-off government bureaucrats decide issues of welfare.

no hypocracy at all

It is hypocritical to oppose abortion while simultaneously opposing the vast support system such a ban would require. That would include full and free prenatal care of poor and uninsured pregnant women, of unemployed and unwed mothers, so that they might care for their uninsured children. It would further include a comprehensive system of government-supported adoption agencies in order to place newborn children in welcoming families when the birth mothers are unable or unwilling to cae for their children. It would include a comprehensive system of day care that would support working unwed mothers who wish to keep their children and a dramatic increase in suport for the public schools in the poorest neighborhoods that these children will attend, instead of letting these children fall off the radar as soon as they are born. All that would require funding, which means taxes, which conflicts with the greed of the Right, religious and secular. Beyond that, the working families into which children are born need to be protected by fair labor laws, living wages, medical and vacation benefits, and good pension funds. The latter in turn need to be protected from corporate criminals who run companies into the ground while giving themselves extravagant salaries and severance packages and letting the hardworking employees wo lose their jobs and their pensions end up paying for the criminal's misdeeds.
John Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct, p 114

Well, I guess that's pretty clear--in Caputo's view, unless you're a big-government let-the-government-control-everything kind of person, a cradle-to-grave-government-support sort, then, well, you've no business opposing abortion.

Funny, isn't it, though, that it's exactly those kinds of people that want to keep abortion safe, legal, and common.

Well, there goes personal responsibility. If a woman decides to not have her unborn child murdered, well, it's up to everyone else to make sure her life is cushy. Fund her and her child, fund the family, make sure the public dole is open to her. More than just a mere hand up, we're talking hand outs, in fact hands to carry so that said mother and child should not have to do much of anything. In fact, his rhetoric seems to hint that he not only wants those things for mothers with children they chose not to abort, but for all families.

One wonders how families survived before the modern big-government state. Such a heinous, difficult life, it must have been. Couples needed to actually be married to each other, and single parenthood was frowned upon. Fathers actually needed to work to provide for the woman they've married and any children they were to have, and not have to rely on the government dole to give the mother money so he can live a care-free life and have children by other women without societal consequence. Mother's actually had to take care of the children themselves, without having to rely on government-provided child care or government-funded public schools to schlop them off on so they can sit around all day and watch soaps. Children had parents they could actually respect, and even fear when need be, parents who could show them things like dignity and self-respect, and not have societal leaches who can't even escape a hurricane even when given a few day's warning, who have not done a thing in their lives, and who live only for the arrival of the next monthly government check.

I remember reading "The Tragedy of American Compassion", and seeing how they did things way back when, when private organizations provided care for the needy and not the government. Most of them were firm in making sure that the people they were to help were people worth helping, or were willing to behave themselves, which at time meant they weren't drunkards, weren't criminals, and weren't sexually active outside of marriage, but who were in their dire situations through no fault of their own. Even if one wants to say that it was a far from perfect arrangement, it does seem to have bene a better one than what we have now.

Because what we have now is what Caputo prescribes, to a large degree, and the results are ugly. Welfare mothers, who have more and more kids so they can get more and more money from the government; deadbeat fathers, who see no reason to take back the responsibility the government has taken off their shoulders; children for whom the command to honor father and mother must be an especially difficult command, because those two people (assuming they even know who father may be) are simply not people worthy of honor, and who are simply not taught how to live and provide for themselves.

Caputo tries to make one of his patented cheap shots at the Right, and as may be expected, it is a lie. The Right is not greedy for wanting lower taxes, or for expecting people, even pregnant women, to be responsible beings. We know there are people who truly need help, or are willing to do better, and we are very willing to help them. We are rather less inclined to help those who insist on messing up their own lives, continue to act in those ways, and want only that others should provide for them while they make their lives more and more a living example of self-destruction.

There is no hypocracy in saying abortion should be made illegal while not supporting the government nanny state.

sojo's patriots

My father was in the military. My brother was in the reserves. I've known other people who have been in those and other branches of service. I've known ministers and others who have served their country in that way and others, and not necessarily just those in the US. As someone who was at one time in missions, I've known people from other countries who were in their home country's military.

That isn't even mentioning those like ministers and missionaries who have been concerned for the spiritual state of a country, their own or a foreign one.

So, when a writer for Sojo writes this...

You, my countrymen and women, are true patriots.

...who do you think she considers to be "true patriots"?

This morning I learned about a website and a letter signed by more than 3 dozen millionaires (folks who have earned over $1 million in a year either now or in the past) asking the President to allow tax cuts for people making over $1 million to expire at the end of the year. They don’t need it, they don’t want it, they know that they won’t create jobs with it, and they know it will blow a whole in the deficit a mile wide. They are asking the President to let them pay their fair share.

Yep, the real patriots in the mind of this Sojo writer is the rich guy or gal who, instead of taking responsibility for the money they earned to make sure it is used wisely and as they see fit, wants the government to tax it from them.

Actually, I may be all for this, with one stipulations--that only those who sign this letter (which, strangely, is not linked to by the writer, though she does say it's on the internet) are the only ones subjected to the taxation. Why should the person willing to take responsibility be penalized because a bunch of others want to let the almighty gubment do it?

And what will happen now that I am bringing this up? I will be accused of class warfare.

Umm...if you're engaging in class warfare, then why should you be surprised when you're accused of it?

taking more, in the name of religion

Laws may or may not be just in fact, and they may very well start out just and become unjust when the circumstances change but the laws do not. Thes there might once have been circumstances in which the personal right to bear arms was justified, although one would expect a Christian to have a very delicate conscience about such things; but to support such laws today, when the dangers to life and limb from the proliferation of such weapons is as plain as the nose on your face, defied comprehension, especially for Christians.
John Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct, pp 63-64

Could you imagine, for example, a similar argument concerning any other of rights or freedoms of the United States? Let's say that, for example, one thinks that the "proliferation" of free speech--all those books of so many and varied opinions, liberal tv editorial shows and conservative talk radio, not the mention the chaotic riot of the internet--is simply too dangerous, and that it is the Christian duty of all good Christians to stop supporting the laws of free speech, and that it defies comprehension that any Christian should not be in support of some form of restriction of free speech.

You can pick any other right or freedom, and plug it in--freedom of the press, freedom of religion, right to life. It really doesn't matter, but in doing so, one can see two very real facts.

One--Such restrictions are not only ridiculous, but dangerous. And this idea of Caputo's, that Christians should not supports the right of regular people to keep and bear arms, is similar. Such a stand would not make us safer, but would simply put us more in jeopardy--from criminals who will not obey such laws, from those who have the 'privilege' to handle such weapons, mostly from the rulers who can restrict such freedoms as they will.

Second--Such things are already taking place, or have been attempted, or the ideas put forth. Consider, for example, the right to life. One does not need to dig far into history to see how there have been people who have found all kinds of reasons to try to deny that right to certain kinds of people--the sick, those with mental or physical defects, those of other races. Nazism comes readily to mind, but so does eugenics, not to mention abortion.

Or consider the freedom of speech, then look at this quote from an essay called Repressive Tolerance by one Herbert Marcuse...

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left...

The whole post-fascist period is one of clear and present danger. Consequently, true pacification requires the withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage of communication in word, print, and picture. Such extreme suspension of the right of free speech and free assembly is indeed justified only if the whole of society is in extreme danger. I maintain that our society is in such an emergency situation, and that it has become the normal state of affairs.

Given this situation, I suggested in 'Repressive Tolerance' the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right, thus counteracting the pervasive inequality of freedom (unequal opportunity of access to the means of democratic persuasion) and strengthening the oppressed against the oppressed.

...and now, bear in mind some of the things that have been done in the past and are even now being tried, to try to silence some people--things like the Fairness Act, or hate speech laws, or political correctness.

These examples are a few of many, concerning those and other rights and freedoms.

Almost all of these attempts to restrict freedoms comes from the left, or those how only pretend to be on the right but are really a part of the political left. Is it any wonder, then, that Caputo, who is on the political and religious left, should say that a further restriction, the disarming of the populace, should to him be considered not only a good thing, but something that he thinks is a Christian's responsibility to support.

Well, Mr. Caputo, should you ever descend from on high to read this, I will only say that I do not agree with you. While I have very rarely used a firearm myself, I support the rights of those who have them and use them--to hunt, to practice, to defend themselves, their loved ones, their property. You say that the 'proliferation' of such weapons makes them too dangerous, and likely you mean things like gun violence in the mean streets of the big cities, most of that likely coming from criminals who would not be much effected by such restrictions anyway. What are laws to the lawless but mere obstacles to be worked around?

un-Taylor-ing Chesterton

This is Christ for this age but also a Christ for all ages. Images of Jesus are historical and contextual, as are recitations of the gospel. Things are added and subtracted; there are differences in focues and emphasis. My opening quote from Chesterton is of help here. Chesterton wrote at a time when atheism was a sigificant and growing alternative to faith. The rise of scientific-rationalism, including new theories such as Darwin's evolutionary model, were undermining the already embattled Christian faith that Chesterton held. The gift Chesterton offers is the power of a new perspective. Rather than address issues of sin, salvation, and redemption, he appeals directly to the "atheistic" potential in the Jesus story, the singular moment in the Passion where a conversatio about atheism and God is a viable one. This is what I mean when I say that we must once again encode the message of Jesus.

In the present situation it seems that some are willing to change, rearrange, and rethink form, but there is little attention to changeof content in the presentation of the Christian message in teh postsecular. My sense is that it is the message, the very content, that which we present as being representative of Christian faith that is the one thing that needs to be revisited and re-encoded...But in some sense, as long as Christianity remains a vapor trail fo modern and premodern concepts about how the relation between the human and teh divine is achieved, Christian thinking will not contribute much to the matters at hand....The message needs to speak to our time, not times past. Chesterton made room for atheists at the foot of the cross, not by denying other realities of the story, but by isolating the very point of connection by which the potential for engagement might be effected.

Barry Taylor, Entertainment Theology, pp 209-210

And his quote of Chesterton's.

When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the very cry from the cross: the cry which confesses the God has forsaken God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a gof from all the gods of the world...they will not find another god who has himself been in revolt...They will find...only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.
from Orthodoxy

As someone who has read a bit of Chesterton, and learned more than a bit from him, I rather immediately smelled (in a metaphorical sense) that something was wrong here. I recognized that quote, though it took me a bit to find in the text file of Orthodoxy that I have (courtesy of the Gutenberg Project), but I finally did. One note--since I am using a text file for the reference, I can't give you a page number, but I can say that the quote is in chapter VIII called The Romance of Orthodoxy.

Lastly, this truth is yet again true in the case of the common modern attempts to diminish or to explain away the divinity of Christ. The thing may be true or not; that I shall deal with before I end. But if the divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary. That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point--and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech,) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

A couple of times in that paragraph, Chesterton admits that he is dealing with a difficult subject, and one time admits to thinking that he what he's writing may be taken wrong. I think Taylor is taking him wrong, whether by accident or not, I'll not venture to say my suspicions, except that some of his claims show a staggering ignorance of the book.

When, for example, Taylor says "Rather than address issues of sin, salvation, and redemption...", making it sound like Chesterton does no such thing, he only leads me to believe that he has never read Orthodoxy. If he had, he would likely have read things like this.

But I think this book may well start where our argument started-- in the neighbourhood of the mad-house. Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin--a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.
Chapter II

And concerning the idea that Christianity needs to keep up with the times, well, consider these.

An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century. If a man believes in unalterable natural law, he cannot believe in any miracle in any age. If a man believes in a will behind law, he can believe in any miracle in any age. Suppose, for the sake of argument, we are concerned with a case of thaumaturgic healing. A materialist of the twelfth century could not believe it any more than a materialist of the twentieth century. But a Christian Scientist of the twentieth century can believe it as much as a Christian of the twelfth century. It is simply a matter of a man's theory of things. Therefore in dealing with any historical answer, the point is not whether it was given in our time, but whether it was given in answer to our question. And the more I thought about when and how Christianity had come into the world, the more I felt that it had actually come to answer this question.
Chapter V

I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to the effect that such and such a creed cannot be believed in our age. Of course, anything can be believed in any age. But, oddly enough, there really is a sense in which a creed, if it is believed at all, can be believed more fixedly in a complex society than in a simple one. If a man finds Christianity true in Birmingham, he has actually clearer reasons for faith than if he had found it true in Mercia. For the more complicated seems the coincidence, the less it can be a coincidence. If snowflakes fell in the shape, say, of the heart of Midlothian, it might be an accident. But if snowflakes fell in the exact shape of the maze at Hampton Court, I think one might call it a miracle. It is exactly as of such a miracle that I have since come to feel of the philosophy of Christianity. The complication of our modern world proves the truth of the creed more perfectly than any of the plain problems of the ages of faith. It was in Notting Hill and Battersea that I began to see that Christianity was true. This is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details which so much distresses those who admire Christianity without believing in it.
Chapter VI

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom--that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.
Chapter VI

I could go on; indeed, I consider much of Chesterton's writings to have in some sense refuted much of the egotistical nonsense of postmodernism long before posmodernism was born. I think I'll leave it for now, though, with this last quote.

Religious authority has often, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as every legal system (and especially our present one) has been callous and full of a cruel apathy. It is rational to attack the police; nay, it is glorious. But the modern critics of religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard of burglars. For there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier. And against it something certainly must be reared as a barrier, if our race is to avoid ruin.

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all."

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own: and already Mr. H.G.Wells has raised its ruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece of scepticism called "Doubts of the Instrument." In this he questions the brain itself, and endeavours to remove all reality from all his own assertions, past, present, and to come. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems in religion were originally ranked and ruled. The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first.
Chapter III (aptly named The Suicide of Thought)

If, as Taylor claims, Chesterton was trying to make "... room for atheists at the foot of the cross", he was not doing so in order that the atheist should remain an atheist; rather, Orthodoxy was to a large degree an account of his own move from atheism to Christianity, and he spends quite a few of his very long paragraphs showing the contradictions of the things atheists say against Christianity. He certainly wasn't interested in pretending that the atheist could remain an atheist and be a Christian, which seems to be quite the fashion today.