First, the House of Bishops of Rupert's Land.

In the course of our prayers for General Synod in Winnipeg in June 2007, the Bishops of the Province of Rupert's Land wish to draw the wider Church's attention to two concerns regarding the resolutions which the Council of General Synod (CoGS) is forwarding to General Synod about the blessing of same-sex unions.

Our first concern is with Resolution #3-"that the blessing of same-sex unions is consistent with the core doctrine of the Anglican Church of Canada", and thus consistent with Christian core doctrine. In the two months remaining before June, we do not believe that it is possible for members of General Synod-or the broader Church-to undertake the required education and discussion to be in a position to determine whether the blessing of same-sex unions is scripturally sound and theologically consistent with core doctrine.
. . .
Our second concern is that the set of resolutions which CoGS has drafted does not squarely address the effect of passing those resolutions on our membership in the Anglican Communion.
. . .

Read the whole thing here. (Rupert's Land comprises Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik, and the far-western slice of Ontario.  See map here.)

Second, twenty-five academic theologians and scholars serving the ACC in various capacities.

We are disturbed by the proposed motions coming out of the Council of General Synod's March meeting. We believe that these motions do not reflect the implications of the St Michael Report, and that even to treat them as legitimate options is to neglect the kind of discussion the Report encourages and our Church deserves. In particular, we affirm the following:

1. Sexual ethics is a doctrinally serious matter.
. . .
2. That the way this matter is treated is ecclesiologically significant.
. . .
3. That there has been no sustained debate on this matter in the Church.
. . .
4. 'Core doctrine' is problematic.
. . .

Read the whole thing here.

I am pleased to mention that the list of signatories includes three faculty members of my alma mater Regent College: Bruce Hindmarsh, Don Lewis, and James Packer.

Previous related post: Council of General Synod tries to pull a fast one

Calvin had a much more pervasive influence on Protestantism than did Luther or any other Reformation leader.  As Harold O. J. Brown has said, “Without Luther, Protestantism could hardly have begun; without Calvin, it could hardly have survived.”

He emerged as a religious leader while still in his 20s, and he was recognised even during his own lifetime as a pre-eminent theologian.  Like Luther, he was Augustinian in theology; both men placed utmost importance on God’s sovereignty and the doctrines of grace and election.

Not only was he the great systematiser of Protestant Reformed theology, Calvin has also had a major impact on the development of Western thought in general.  His ideas on aesthetics, science, history, and civil society have been immensely influential in the post-Reformation West and remain so today.  He must be regarded as one of the formative influences in the development of Western culture and civilisation.

A prayer of John Calvin:

Grant, almighty God, that as we do not at this day look for a redeemer to deliver us from temporal miseries, but only carry on a warfare under the banner of the Cross until he appear to us from heaven to gather us into his blessed kingdom — O grant that we may patiently bear all evils and all troubles, and as Christ once for all poured forth the blood of the new and eternal covenant, and gave us also a sign of it in the Holy Supper, may we, confiding in so sacred a seal, never doubt that he will always be propitious to us, and render manifest to us the fruit of this reconciliation, when, after having supported us for a season under the burden of those miseries by which we are now oppressed, you gather us into that blessed and perfect glory which has been procured for us by the blood of Christ our Lord, and which is daily set before us in his Gospel, and laid up for us in heaven, until we at length shall enjoy it through Christ our only Lord. Amen.

Previous related posts:

• What if St Augustine appeared on Oprah?
• Clarifying free will

Hold dominion over my heart, O Lord:
Keep it as your inheritance.
Make your dwelling in me,
Along with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Widen in me the cords of your tabernacle,
Even the operations of your Most Holy Spirit.
For you are my God, and I will praise you,
together with the Eternal Father,
And our quickening Spirit,
Now, henceforth and forever.
Amen.

St John of Damascus (c. 675 – c. 749),
Monk, theologian, Doctor of the Church

Also known as John Damascene, St John was a Greek theologian and the last of the great Eastern fathers.  Born into a wealthy Christian family in Damascus about a generation after the armies of Islam had conquered the area, he lived his entire life under Muslim rule.  He inherited his father’s positions as chief financial officer for the caliphs of Damascus and chief representative of Christians in the city.  In 716, however, he left (or was compelled to leave) the court and became a monk at Mar Saba, a monastery in the hills near Jerusalem, where he was later ordained a priest.  Most of the rest of his life was spent writing hymns and theological treatises.

The Iconoclastic Controversy was raging around the time St John entered Mar Saba.  The earliest of his theological works was a series of three "Apologetic Treatises against those who decry the Holy Images”, written in response to an edict issued by the Byzantine emperor forbidding veneration of images or their exhibition in public places.  An online article in Christian History & Biography summarises John’s defence of images:

From his distant post in the Holy Land, John challenged this policy [iconoclasm] in three works. He argued that icons should not be worshiped, but they could be venerated. (The distinction is crucial: a Western parallel might be the way a favorite Bible is read, cherished, and treated with honor—but certainly not worshiped.)

John explained it like this: "Often, doubtless, when we have not the Lord's passion in mind and see the image of Christ's crucifixion, his saving passion is brought back to remembrance, and we fall down and worship not the material but that which is imaged: just as we do not worship the material of which the Gospels are made, nor the material of the Cross, but that which these typify."

Second, John drew support from the writings of the early fathers like Basil the Great, who wrote, "The honor paid to an icon is transferred to its prototype." That is, the actual icon was but a point of departure for the expressed devotion; the recipient was in the unseen world.

Third, John claimed that, with the birth of the Son of God in the flesh, the depiction of Christ in paint and wood demonstrated faith in the Incarnation. Since the unseen God had become visible, there was no blasphemy in painting visible representations of Jesus or other historical figures. To paint an icon of him was, in fact, a profession of faith, deniable only by a heretic!

"I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter," he wrote. "I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God."

After prolonged controversy, political intrigue, and bloodshed, the Second Council of Nicaea decided the issue in 787.  John’s position was accepted: iconoclasm was condemned and a statement produced which justified icons by reference to the tradition of the church and quotations from the Fathers.

The most important of John’s theological works is The Fount of Wisdom, the last part of which, Exposition of the Catholic Faith, was immensely influential in both the East and the West.  A work of research and synthesis rather than original thought, it collected views of the Greek Fathers and presented them in a systematic and logical manner.  It was a compendium of respected theological understandings.  After being translated into Latin in the 12th century as De Fide Orthodoxa, it was cited by authoritative medieval theologians Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas.  The De Fide was thus a valuable source in the formulation of Western medieval theology.

Among St John’s hymns is one that is frequently sung at Easter, “The Day of Resurrection”.

The day of resurrection! Earth, tell it out abroad;
The Passover of gladness, the Passover of God.
From death to life eternal, from earth unto the sky,
Our Christ hath brought us over, with hymns of victory.

Our hearts be pure from evil, that we may see aright
The Lord in rays eternal of resurrection light;
And listening to His accents, may hear, so calm and plain,
His own “All hail!” and, hearing, may raise the victor strain.

Now let the heavens be joyful! Let earth the song begin!
Let the round world keep triumph, and all that is therein!
Let all things seen and unseen their notes in gladness blend,
For Christ the Lord hath risen, our joy that hath no end.

St John of Damascus is sometimes regarded as the last of the Church Fathers.  He was declared a “Doctor of the Church” in 1890 by Pope Leo XIII.

A portal to the writings of St John of Damascus is found here.

There are differences of opinion regarding important dates in St John’s life.  Several online sources say he entered Mar Saba in 726 or later but, according to the three books I have at hand, that happened in 716.  This post is based on the latter:

• J. D. Douglas, gen. ed. New International Dictionary of the Christian Church (Zondervan, 1978).
• David Farmer, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 5th ed. (Oxford UP, 2004).
• Bert Ghezzi, Voices of the Saints (Doubleday, 2000).

Source of icon: Anno Domini: Jesus Through the Centuries, an online exhibition from Virtual Museum Canada; Theme 7: Jesus, the True Image; Jesus, the Image of God in John of Damascus.

Source of prayer: Praying With the Saints, by Woodeene Koenig-Bricker.

Another new book by Bishop Tom? To say he is prolific is an understatement. He writes more than many people, including me, can read. I wish I could arrange to be in the DC area to see this talk in person. I'm sure it will be enlightening and profitable.

For more information, visit Daniel Stoddart's blog. Daniel is fortunate enough to live near DC, and he's planning to attend.

People have tried to box me into a corner by setting up an either-or proposition–it's either evolution or intelligent design–that I don't accept. Evolution, intelligent design, and Christian teaching on creation are not all on the same level. For me, the whole question of intelligent design is primarily a question of reason. The argument that the whole complexity of life can be explained as mere random process is unreasonable in my opinion. No person who experiences such complexity would say that it created itself. That's the point. The second step is to ask–OK, which intelligence [created this]? As a believer, I naturally think it is the intelligence of the Creator. And 90 percent of humanity thinks that too.

Why do you say this is a question of reason and not of belief?

For 30 years, I've heard from the pope, from Professor [Joseph] Ratzinger [Benedict's name before he assumed the papacy] that the church has the task in these times of defending reason. It must defend reason against a reductionism that in the end, ideologically speaking, is a kind of materialism.

For the Cardinal, the key issue in the evolution debate is materialism–the belief that matter is all that exists. That is a question for philosophy, not science.

A closer look at Cardinal Schönborn's views is posted here. The English text of his third catechetical lecture on Creation and Evolution is posted here. Check out the Schönborn Sightings blog.

via Ignatius Insight Scoop.

The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery.

If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was his saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners from the wrath of God.
. . .
This was not true of Muhammad. And Muslims do not believe it is true of Jesus. Most Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim writes, "Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of crucifixion." Another adds, "We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do. . . . We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the cross." An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid the "ignominy" of the cross.

How should Christians react when our Lord and Saviour is mocked?

On the one hand, we are grieved and angered. On the other hand, we identify with Christ, and embrace his suffering, and rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did his work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise.

via Mere Comments.

Vatican restates support for theory of evolution

Friday, January 20, 2006 Page A14

Paris — The Roman Catholic Church has restated its support for evolution with an article praising a U.S. court decision that rejects the "intelligent-design" theory as non-scientific.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said yesterday that teaching intelligent design, which argues that life is so complex that it needed a supernatural creator, alongside Darwin's theory of evolution would only cause confusion.

The ID movement sometimes presents Catholicism, the world's largest Christian denomination, as an ally in its campaign. While the church is socially conservative, it has a long theological tradition that rejects fundamentalist creationism. Reuters

L'Osservatore Romano is published in the Vatican, but not everything printed in the newspaper is an official statement by the Vatican. The Globe's headline and opening sentence are, therefore, seriously misleading, at best. In fact, the newspaper reported the views of Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna in Italy, who is not reported as holding any official position in the Roman Catholic Church. So, he's just speaking for himself.

The Globe's implicit equation between intelligent design theory and "fundamentalist creationism" shows that Reuters, the news agency credited as the source, hasn't a clue what it's talking about here. Here, I think, is a key portion of the Catholic News Service summary of the original article:

The article said that, unfortunately, what has helped fuel the intelligent design debate is a tendency among some Darwinian scientists to view evolution in absolute and ideological terms, as if everything — including first causes — can be attributed to chance.

That is putting it mildly. The unscientific statements of atheistic evolutionary scientists have done immense damage to the public view of evolution. (I've discussed this in blog posts here and here and here.) If these learned scientists would only stop making the ridiculous claim that evolution undermines or destroys theistic faith, then evolution would enjoy a more favourable public reception as a scientific theory.

Schonborn Sightings blogged the story in L'Osservatore Romano and reports that the views expressed there "seem to be in harmony with the position staked-out by Cardinal Schonborn's writings". More on Cardinal Schonborn's views is posted here.

via Ignatius Insight Scoop.

via Prydain.

Dr Barr criticised Cardinal Schönborn’s New York Times article:

By saying that "neo-Darwinism" is "synonymous" with "‘evolution’ as used by mainstream biologists", Schönborn indicates that he means the term as commonly understood among scientists. As so understood, neo-Darwinism is based on the idea that the mainspring of evolution is natural selection acting on random genetic variation. Elsewhere in his article, however, the cardinal gives another definition: "evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense [is] an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection." This is the central misstep of Cardinal Schönborn’s article. He has slipped into the definition of a scientific theory, neo-Darwinism, the words "unplanned" and "unguided", which are fraught with theological meaning.

This appears to be partly an issue of semantics. Cardinal Schönborn distinguished "evolution" from "neo-Darwinism". The former is a scientific theory that studies development of life forms and postulates a mechanism for such development. The latter the Cardinal defines as an ideological philosophy claiming that the development of life is an unguided, unplanned process. Defined thusly, the Catholic Church sees no conflict between evolution and Christian faith. Neo-Darwinism, however, is not compatible with the faith of the church.

Against neo-Darwinism, Cardinal Schönborn insists that evolution is clearly teleological in nature:

The variation that actually occurred in the history of life was exactly the sort needed to bring about the complete set of plants and animals that exist today. In particular, it was exactly the variation needed to give rise to an upward sweep of evolution resulting in human beings. If that is not a powerful and relevant correlation, then I don’t know what could count as evidence against actual randomness in the mind of an observer.

Some may object: This is a pure tautology, not scientific knowledge. I have assumed the conclusion, “rigged the game,” and so forth. But that is not true. I have simply related two indisputable facts: Evolution happened (or so we will presume, for purposes of this analysis), and our present biosphere is the result. The two sets of facts correlate perfectly. Facts are not tautologies simply because they are indisputably true.

More fundamentally, Cardinal Schönborn does not agree with Dr Barr that his use of the words "unplanned" and "unguided" is fraught with "theological meaning".

Does his [Barr’s] use of that term [theology] mean that we can only know that teleology is real in the world of living beings by reference to revealed truth? Does it mean that unaided human reason cannot grasp the evident order, purpose, and intelligence manifested so clearly in the world of living beings?

Citing Romans 1:19-20, Cardinal Schönborn insists that the human mind’s ability to apprehend order and design in nature precedes faith. Human reason "can grasp the reality of design without the aid of faith". This is the basis for the Cardinal’s claim in his New York Times article: "Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science."

Common experience, coming as it does before both science and theology, is sufficient to confirm natural order and design. Neo-Darwinism certainly contradicts Christian faith; but even before that, it contradicts good sense.

Read the whole thing.

via Ignatius Insight Scoop.

Near the beginning of his First Things essay, Cardinal Schönborn cites an example of an evolutionary scientist importing metaphysical assertions into a discussion of evolution. He quotes Will Provine, who teaches evolutionary biology at Cornell University:

Modern science directly implies that the world is organized strictly in accordance with deterministic principles or chance. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature. There are no gods and no designing forces rationally detectable.

For more examples, posted at this blog, click here and here.

Intelligent design apologists have on occasion cited Romans 1:19-20 in support of the proposition that science precedes faith. For example, Phillip E. Johnson in the January 1993 issue of First Things:

If God stayed in the realm beyond the reach of scientific investigation, and allowed an apparently blind materialistic process to do all the work of creation, then it would have to be said that God furnished us with a world of excuses for unbelief and idolatry.

That article is, unfortunately, not available online, but Howard J. Van Till’s response in the June/July 1993 First Things is posted, along with Phillip E. Johnson’s rejoinder, here. Van Till rejects Johnson’s inference from Romans 1:

One cannot help but wonder concerning the sorry plight of all those poor folks who, "ever since the creation of the world" and before the advent of modern biological science, were deprived of this essential evidence.

I posted a blog entry on Stephen Barr’s article, but it did not directly touch on his differences with Cardinal Schönborn. The Schönborn Site provides up-to-date information on the Cardinal and his activities. One of the pages at this site is a blog called Schönborn Sightings. Cardinal Schönborn has begun a series of Catechetical Lectures at St Stephan’s Cathedral, Vienna, on creation and evolution. English translations of the first two lectures are posted here and here.

Some argue that God lacks a sense of humor, but for those with eyes to see, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Consider: The most influential biblical scholar in American evangelical circles today is a bishop in the Church of England who regularly inveighs against U.S. "imperialism". For a comparable improbability, imagine a renaissance of the Democratic Party led by a devout Mormon from Texas.

This scholar contends that the leaders of the Protestant Reformation–Martin Luther especially–misread St. Paul on the subject of justification by faith. A self-described Reformed theologian, he proposes nothing less than a reformation of the Reformation, 500 years on–and he does so by appealing to the Reformers' own motto, sola scriptura, "going back to scripture over against all human tradition."

Here's another Protestant theologian who thinks that not everything Luther said was right–and, moreover, that Luther has sometimes been misinterpreted.