Rosaria Champagne Butterfield has caused a buzz with orthodox reformed Christians with her recently published conversion testimony.  She was a radical feminist lesbian, an English professor at Syracuse University, until a pastor with the local Reformed Presbyterian church started asking her questions about her beliefs. This began a process that resulted in a total transformation, which she chronicles in “The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.”

This is a short, but powerful book. There is too much here for a single blog post, so I want to divide my comments into three sections:

1. Her Christian conversion,
2. Her post-conversion life, and
3. Her, perhaps inadvertent, insights into the current state of “the academy” (i.e., the secular progressive way of thinking common on college campuses today.)

For those who don’t care for reading, Carmen Fowler, of the Layman Online has posted several videos of Dr. Butterfield describing her conversion here.

The Conversion

Rosaria Champagne was a very successful professor of English at Syracuse University. She had “come out” as a lesbian at age 28 and at age 36 was “one of the few tenured women at a large research university, a rising administrator, and a community activist.” She says, “By all standards, I had made it.” But, she writes –

“In the normal course of life questions emerged that exceeded my secular feminist worldview. Those questions sat quietly in the crevices of my mind until I met a most unlikely friend: a Christian pastor.”

This pastor, Ken Smith of the local Reformed Presbyterian Church, was prompted to contact her by an article she had written criticizing the Promise Keepers “for their gender politics.” This article was only part of a larger attack she was developing on Christianity and the “religious right.”

Pastor Smith’s letter was not hostile but questioning and Butterfield (nee Champagne) was intrigued enough to contact him. This led to a budding friendship and exchange of views. This exchange was not a debate, but each explained to the other why they believed what they did. This was new to Butterfield. She expected more hostility and damnation, but the absence of that allowed her to ask herself questions about God and faith. She writes: “If what this guy said was true, then everything I believed – ever jot and tittle – was false!” She adds: “This seemed so naïve and preposterous. I was a product of a postmodern education. There are no truths, only truth claims.” But she was intellectually honest enough to put that to the test.

She continued to meet with the pastor and met more Christians in the process. “With these Christians in my life, certain aspects of my life had started to lose the sharp edges that it had before. With these Christians in my life, my life became a little kinder and a little safer.”

Others tried to reassure her. A Methodist minister told her, “… since God made me a lesbian, I gave God honor by living an honorable lesbian life…. But I had been reading and rereading scripture, and there are no such marks of postmodern ‘both/and’ in the Bible.”

But another friend, a transgendered man who lived as a woman, revealed that he had been a Presbyterian minister for 15 years and had no doubt that “Jesus is a risen and living Lord… during that time I prayed that the Lord would heal me. He didn’t, but maybe he’ll heal you. I’ll pray for you.”

As she struggled with all this, she writes  –

“… I prayed, and asked God if the Gospel message was for someone like me, too. I viscerally felt the living presence of God as I prayed. Jesus seemed present and alive. I knew that I was not alone in my room. I prayed that if Jesus was truly a real and risen God, that he would change my heart. And if he was real and if I was his, I prayed that he would give me the strength of mind to follow him and the character to become a godly woman.”

Finally, God’s call was irresistible. She writes –

“God sent me to a Reformed and Presbyterian conservative church to repent, heal, learn and thrive. The pastor there did not farm me out to a para-church ministry “specializing” in “gay people.” He and the session knew that the church is competent to counsel…. I needed (and need) faithful shepherding, not the glitz and glamor that has captured the soul of modern evangelical culture. I had to lean and lean hard on the full weight of scripture, on the fullness of the word of God, and I’m grateful that when I heard the Lord’s call on my life, and I wanted to hedge my bets, keep my girlfriend and add a little God to my life, I had a pastor and friends in the Lord who asked nothing less of me than that I die to myself.”

Her struggle was nowhere near over. She was a prominent member and leader of the gay community. She was a well-respected (and well-paid) radical feminist professor under contract. She had obligations to fulfill. She had to give all that up. She felt like she was betraying people she loved – and they felt betrayed and told her so. At the time, she had nowhere to go, no job and few friends outside of a small church. Even in the church, she felt like an outsider, a novelty. She was used to wearing jeans and a butch haircut and felt out of place with the more traditional women of the church.

Ultimately she felt she had no choice but to “come out” again, but this time as a Christian. She did this at a talk she was already scheduled to give to all the incoming graduate students at the University –

“When the graduate school invited me, I was a lesbian postmodernist. When I delivered the lecture six months later, I was a fledgling follower of Jesus Christ.”

She includes the full lecture in the book. This was a bold and courageous move on her part. Some of it is cringe-inducing, like when she goes on a rant about the Religious Right supporting “capitalist consumerism and conservative political agendas,” (What? The religious left doesn’t support leftist political agendas? She should check with the PCUSA on that). But other parts are great, such as –

“This all brought me to the awesome realization that our living God is in all our life, and that my ‘success’ as a professor was his blessing on me, not my deserved and earned accolade.”

Overall, I’m not sure I would have had the courage to make such a declaration in such a setting.

What to make of all this?

First, that a wishy-washy, milquetoast version of Christianity would not have made an impression on her. She encountered a faithful, demanding church — anything less would have been dismissed. This is something “progressive” Christians seem to miss –- people have fine instincts for hypocrisy and insincerity. They can tell a con job, and Butterfield is not afraid to identify such phonies. She takes herself very seriously, (maybe too seriously, but I will get into that in the third segment) so she expects a religion that takes itself seriously.

Even more important is her story of how Pastor Ken Smith and the elders first approached her with respect and, yes, love. We cannot have it drummed into our heads often enough that we are all sinners, without exception. Next time I will get into Butterfield’s description of how homosexuality is by no means the worst sin, and in fact is mostly a symptom of the much greater sin of pride. She is absolutely right here. We may find unrepentant sinners unpleasant, but they are also lost. What kind of Christians are we if we shun the lost sheep? Aren’t these exactly the people Jesus commands us to reach out to? Not suggests, but commands.

Next time we’ll look at the wonderful and faithful life in Christ Rosaria Butterfield has built.

The current issue of Modern Reformation, the monthly magazine of the White Horse Inn, includes some astonishing information.

One article is by Dr. John Bombaro,  senior priest at Grace Lutheran Church in San Diego and professor at the University of San Diego who conducted a survey of over 500 students at the school. All were baptized Christians and 88% had a Bible app on their smart phones or computers. He found –

• Only 19% could rightly order Abraham, the prophets, Christ’s death, and Pentecost.
• Only 12% could sequence Moses in Egypt, Isaac’s birth, Saul’s death, and Judah’s exile.
• More than two-thirds could not identify Matthew as an apostle.
• 96% could not find Paul’s travels in Acts.
• Only 10% knew that the Christmas story was in Matthew or that the Passover story was in Exodus.

Obviously, these people had never read the Bible. Sure they had an app on their smart phone, so they can look up a pithy quote when they need one. But they have no idea of Scripture as one long coherent story of a people struggling to find their way. They don’t understand that the human race hasn’t changed a whit in 3,500 years. We wrestle today with the exact same temptations, limitations, and sins as our ancestors did.

And the answer today is exactly the same as it has always been – from Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. “ to Luke 10:27 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

This Biblical illiteracy is a huge problem. Almost all of the people I come across who reject Christianity don’t know the slightest thing about it. This especially includes people who were raised Christian but never learned more than the dumbed-down childish tales they were taught in Sunday school.

Nothing new about this, either. Augustine was repelled by the absurd notion that God looks like man, since he was told that man was created in God’s image. (See my earlier post) He mocked any religion that would be founded on such a simplistic idea. But when he finally looked more deeply and discovered that isn’t at all what Christians believe, he felt like a fool himself.

Many people who grew up in the church have similar ideas. They were taught nonsense as children and they bitterly resent being played for fools. Plus, they witnessed a whole lot of “holier than thou” attitudes by members of their churches and, like only children can do, they easily saw through the hypocrisy.

Are we really doing our kids any favors by turning scripture into pabulum? By making it all about tales of adventure (Samson and Delilah, Jonah and the whale) rather than explaining how God’s love redeems human weakness?

But it isn’t just about school children. Very often atheists understand more about Christianity than professed Christians. Some time ago I wrote about a dialogue between famed atheist Christopher Hitchens and a (Unitarian) minister.  She told him in her most ingratiating manner –

“I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?”

And Hitchens replied—

“I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

When I was a young man living in Maine, a Congregational pastor told me that if I smiled when the sun came up in the morning, I was a Christian! Really? I thought to myself if that is all you believe, why bother even having a religion? How is Christianity any different than paganism?

It is small wonder that so many of our young people are shunning church affiliation even while they believe in God and feel spiritual themselves. Because the churches have failed to teach them the Word, they are left to their own devices and their own feelings to make sense of it all and to fill the void in their souls.

This is tragic. They are repeating what hundreds of generations before them have done, even while the answers to their questions sit right before them between the pages of a book. Like me, Christ will eventually guide them to the right path. But, also like me, they may regret the years they are wasting.

There is nothing quite as sad as watching Christians rolled over by a juggernaut of secular political activists. As a rule the Christians are never really quite prepared for it. Christians try so hard to be nice people.  They are kind, considerate, soft-spoken. They worship on Sundays, volunteer at some charity during the week, attend a Bible study group Tuesday evenings. They never litter. They are courteous to other drivers. They say please and thank you. They are grounded in some truths, like the importance of family and being reliable workers.

Secular activists are nothing like this. Activists want to win at all costs. Winning isn’t the main thing, it is the only thing. Even winning isn’t enough. They want to permanently destroy any opposition. Thoroughly crush them so they will never again dare oppose the agenda. They will use any tools at their disposal – mockery, ridicule, lies, threats, even violence when they must.

Think I’m overstating the case? Visit the comments page of any Washington Post or Politico article having anything at all to do with religion and politics. I guarantee you will be appalled at the viciousness on display, not by just one or two oddballs, but by dozens and dozens. Consider the behavior of the Occupy Wall Street mob and how few progressive political leaders even criticized it.

What’s a Christian to do? We might start by actually listening to the Lord. He told the disciples in Matthew 10:16-18

“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles.”

Jesus did not want us to just be doormats to be trod upon, He wanted us to be as “wise as serpents” in our dealings with the World. We lost that ability when we placed more value on being likeable than on being faithful witnesses. We Christians have come to care more about what the World thinks of us than what Jesus thinks of us.

The latest iteration of this is the current (one-sided) debate over same sex marriage. We are being stampeded into approving something that violates many millennia of human experience as well as the explicit word of God.

We are told that the trends are decisively moving in one direction, so resistance is not only futile, but foolish. This despite the fact that until this past November traditional marriage has won every time, without exception, it has been voted on, and the handful of states that approved it in November were all squeakers that rode on Obama’s coattails.

We are told that the youth are in favor of it, never mind that youth always changes its mind as it grows up. If 20-year olds ran the world, it wouldn’t survive a generation.

We are told that we are bigots to oppose it, even though in California, for example, it was blacks and Latinos that were most in favor of traditional marriage.

We are told that we should mind our own business, that what a homosexual couple does should be of no concern to us, that it should have no effect on our own marriages, so why should we care.

This last is the biggest lie of all, and it is one that is exceedingly hard to counter, at least in a made-for-TV sound bite. And this is indeed the essential issue.

In fact, the actions of one segment of society does have an effect on the whole society. Society is changed, either for better or worse.

The “sexual liberation” movement of the 1960s and 1970s has had a profound effect on the entire United States and everybody in it. The arguments for it at the time were very similar to what we are hearing today:

• Almost everybody screws around, so it is hypocritical to pretend otherwise;
• It is better to be honest about these behaviors rather than hiding them in the shadows;
• We shouldn’t be tied down to old-fashioned prudish morality;
• It is unhealthy to repress your basic instincts;
• Today with birth control sex is safe;
• If you don’t want to do it, that’s your choice, but why should your morality stop me from doing what I want to do?

These arguments were hard to answer, other than to say that sanctions against pre-marital sex were no whim. They came about over many thousands of years of human experience — they are locked into our genetic intelligence. Very little good will come of loosening our standards of sexual behavior.

It’s not that social disapproval will stop it from happening, but that such clear disapproval will discourage it and give a safe haven from peer pressure for those who prefer to avoid the behavior.

After half-a-century of this experiment in sexual liberation, what do we find? Despite the availability of birth control we perform well over a million abortions every year  and 40% of all children are born out-of-wedlock.   We also have the highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases in the world, with 20 million new infections every year.

We are systematically destroying two-parent families. Boys are being raised without fathers as role models, so they attach to gangs. Girls are taught to dress like hookers. College students no longer go on dates, they have meaningless sexual hook-ups  instead. To become a celebrity, release a videotape of yourself having sex. Our society is drenched in sex, a hollow, empty kind of sex that fulfills no one.

The argument that sexual promiscuity would have no effect on anyone who isn’t promiscuous was absurd. In fact it may be destroying this society. The jury is still out on that.

This was purposeful. It was part of a long campaign to use sex to destroy the family and Christianity. In his 1982 book, “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism” (which I will review here in the future), Michael Novak quotes Joseph Sobran as writing –

“It is no accident… that Socialism and Sex (or ‘free love’) came together as ‘advanced’ ideas.  Russian dissident Igor Shafarevich… explains that the Socialist project of homogenizing society demands that the family be vitiated or destroyed. This can be accomplished in good measure by profaning conjugal love and breaking monogamy’s link between Sex and loyalty.”

Novak goes on to describe a Carter-era “White House Conference on Families.” Carter intended it as a recognition of the contribution of the family to American society, but by the time his underlings were done with it, it became just the opposite. His staff referred to the traditional family as the “nostalgic family” as if it were already obsolete, only fondly remembered from the past. More contemporary, they thought, were unmarried couples living together, homosexual couples, clusters of friends sharing a home. In their view, these all were “families” worthy of celebration. Yet at the time, the Census bureau reported there were 101 million husbands and wives in the U.S. and only 2.3 million unmarried men and women living together. Carter’s people were wishing the traditional family was gone and working to make it seem so.

Still, why should Christians worry about what the secular society does? Because the whole charade is aimed like a dagger at your ability to practice your understanding of Scripture.

Canada has had same sex marriage for ten years, and it has radically transformed the entire society according to Bradley Miler of the Witherspoon Institute.  He writes –

“What transpired was the adoption of a new orthodoxy: that same-sex relationships are, in every way, the equivalent of traditional marriage, and that same-sex marriage must therefore be treated identically to traditional marriage in law and public life.”

Anyone who expresses reservations about all that is labeled a bigot and a hater, even guilty of committing “hate crimes.” The Knights of Columbus was fined for refusing to rent their facilities for same sex wedding receptions. People who voice dissent are being investigated by human rights tribunals, and in some cases, “ordered to pay fines, make apologies, and undertake never to speak publicly on such matters again.” This includes members of the clergy speaking from the pulpit

Keep in mind that all this turmoil is over a tiny number of people. There are 21,000 married same sex couples in Canada out of a total of 6.9 million married couples – they make up 3 tenths of one percent of the total.

The First Amendment may – may – protect Christians in the United States, unless the Supreme Court invokes the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to extend federal protection to same sex couples. Dan McLaughlin has written an extensive essay on this and many other problems associated with this issue.

Such a scenario could very well happen and it would place Christians in a very difficult bind. But maybe that is where Christ wants us to be. Erick Erickson writes  that, “We’ve turned the American ideal of liberty into an idol we worship.” He reminds us that, “The world is not on its way to Christ. The world hates Christ. The world will not allow a compromise between Christians and the world.” The United States is no less “of the world” than any other country.

This challenge will not be easy. In all my years of political activism, only once have I encountered eye-popping, spittle-spewing venom. That was when our church was debating the ordination of homosexuals. Suddenly a couple got up red in the face, screamed that we were all a bunch of homophobes, and stormed out of the meeting.

Christians can expect much more of this as we go along. But there are voices of leadership out there we can look to for guidance. USAToday  offered profiles of some, including the Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone and Rev William Owens, president of the Coalition of African American Pastors.

There is nothing new about any of this. When the Apostle Paul took the Gospel to the ancient Greek cities of Corinth and Ephesus he was confronted with well-established cults including the temples of Apollo and Aphrodite, where prostitution was considered a holy rite and “acting like a Corinthian” was a euphemism for sexual promiscuity.

He was not intimidated. He had more important work to do.

No other words in Christianity leave me in such wonder and awe.

This is not to pass over what man did to the Son of God on the cross. God himself walked among us for a few years and we – not the Jews, not the Romans – all of us, killed him and denied him. We would do it again today. We habitually brutalize those who refuse to conform to our society, whatever the standards of that society might be at the moment.

The Disciples were crushed. They had such hope that Jesus would rescue them. How could this happen? How could they have been so wrong? What will they do now?

This is all pretty familiar to us. We often see how quickly the mob switches from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify!”  We have seen our moral leaders and political leaders imprisoned and gunned down in the streets. We know despair. We know hopelessness.

What is completely foreign, unexpected, baffling beyond description is the Resurrection. Imagine if Martin Luther King, Jr. got up from his grave and met with his followers, ate with them, gave them final instructions, and then ascended into Heaven. Imagine if he was not a ghost or a spirit, but every bit as much a man as he ever was. Imagine if he showed you the bullet wound. Of course, Dr. King could not do this. Only one person who ever existed could do it.

There are no words for this. All I can do is drop to my knees in awe and praise the Lord for allowing me to know of this. What a blessing!

Have a joyful Easter!

——-

BTW, Ben Domenech of The Transom posted this wonderful quote from Richard John Neuhaus the other day –

“And yet forgiveness costs. Forgiveness is not forgetfulness; not counting their trespasses is not a kindly accountant winking at what is wrong; it is not a benign cooking of the books. In the world, in our own lives, something has gone dreadfully wrong, and it must be set right. Recall when you were a little child and somebody—maybe you—did something very bad. Maybe a lie was told, or some money was stolen, or the cookie jar lies shattered on the kitchen floor. The bad thing has been found out, and now something must happen, something must be done about it. The fear of punishment is terrible, but not as terrible as the thought that nothing will happen, that bad things don’t matter. If bad things don’t matter, then good things don’t matter, and then nothing matters, and the meaning of everything lies shattered like the cookie jar on the kitchen floor.”

First, let me congratulate the Roman Catholic Church on its new Pope Francis. From what I have read he is an excellent choice for this time in the Church’s history. I have been praying that God would lead the Cardinals to choose someone who will faithfully hew to Scripture in his theology and focus the Church on Jesus’ Great Commission. That seems to be what has happened here.

As interesting, it seems to me that Benedict’s resignation and Francis’ humility suggests the Church may be moving away from doctrines such as papal infallibility. Time will tell.

——

Dr. Ben Carson got a lot of attention after his homily at the National Prayer Breakfast the other day.

Some people were outraged that he would say things contrary to President Obama’s agenda while the President was sitting there.  That seems silly to me. Since when should a president be exempt from hearing contrary points of view? Dr. Carson’s remarks were mostly taken from his new book, “America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great.” Between that and the fact that Carson has spoken at the Prayer Breakfast before, I’m sure the organizers knew exactly what they were getting.

But Carson’s remarks were hardly attacking the President, nor were they insulting to him. That’s not what Carson does.  Instead, he is a very gentle soul with a profound belief in God and a deep confidence that God is active in the affairs of men. This confidence is born out of his life’s experience, which is chronicled in his biography, “Gifted Hands” and a movie by the same name in which Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Dr. Carson.

I cannot recommend the movie highly enough. It is the story of a boy who grew up in the slums of Detroit and Boston, a lousy student, and strong candidate for a life of crime and prison. But God worked through his illiterate mother to turn his life to one of service. He became a renowned pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore. God is at work in every stage of his journey – and he knows it.

His book is similar. His testimony is not partisan, but it is deeply principled, identifying how God was at work in the American experience, mostly because the Founders asked for His assistance. He writes –

“We have been favored by God because we have acknowledged him, but as the forces of political correctness attempt to push God out of our lives, we must have the courage to resist them. That does not mean that we should retaliate or manifest the same intolerance they have shown. It does mean. However, that we should stand up and be counted.”

Most of the book is a pretty elementary civics lesson, but it also includes quite a few examples and quotes I was not familiar with, especially about the contributions to science and technology of African Americans over the years. He is also very fond of Ben Franklin and disputes the idea that Franklin was irreligious. He includes a very fine quote from Franklin when the Constitutional Convention was on the verge of floundering. Part of it reads –

“We had been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it.’  I firmly believe this and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel: we shall be divided by our partial local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves have become a reproach and byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.

“I therefore beg leave to move – that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings upon our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service.”

Overall the book is a very fine reminder of what has made America succeed and how that success might be as ruined as every other successful society in world history has done – too much dependency and not enough initiative, too much arrogance and not enough humility, too much favoritism and not enough impartiality, too much blaming others and not enough taking responsibility.

Many people have been so impressed by Carson that they want him to run for president. This is a terrible idea. The one thing Carson is decidedly not is a politician. Elsewhere on the NCPA Blog I will be discussing the one section of the book where he makes policy recommendations (health reform). They are not well thought through.

We do not need another politician. What we could use, however, is a moral leader of the stature of Billy Graham or Martin Luther King, Jr. I think Dr. Carson might fill that need, reminding us of eternal truths that are written in Scripture and reflected, however imperfectly, in our Declaration and our Constitution.

Things you might have missed in the past week or so –

• The National Council of Churches has shut down its New York headquarters and moved in to a much smaller office in Washington. Apparently DC is the locus of all things spiritual these days – at least in the minds of the mainline churches. Here.
• Hollywood’s rendition of Johnny Cash removed his deep commitment to Jesus. Here.
• The theme of the Ligonier Ministries (R.C. Sproul’s outfit) annual conference this year was “No Compromise, No Surrender.” Videos of the sessions are available here.
• A friend passed on this useful timeline of the life of the Apostle Paul. Here.
• Robert Sloan, president of the Houston Baptist University, writes this short anecdote about “God, Morality and Whittaker Chambers.” Here.
• Wendell Berry is “evolving” on gay marriage, which has stirred up some consternation in Christian circles. See video here and some related articles here and here.

 

One of the greatest things about the Christian tradition is the wealth of rich commentary spanning two millennia. I recently reviewed Ross Douthat’s “Bad Religion,” published just last year, then I excerpted parts of Luther’s “Table Talk,” written around 1540. Now I have finished reading “The Confessions of St. Augustine,” written around 400.  I can sit here at my desk and absorb what the greatest minds of mankind have had to say about the greatest mystery, gift, and blessing mankind has ever received. I only wish I had started this quest 40 years ago, because I will never be able to do more than scratch the surface.

And it is all consistent, emphasizing our sin and God’s grace delivered through His Son, Jesus Christ. Granted the church has taken many wrong turns over these years, but it seems the Word keeps bringing us back to the Cross and the Resurrection.

Augustine is just amazing, although the edition I had left a lot to be desired. It is a Signet book, first published in 2001 with a forward and afterward by Martin Marty and reprinted in 2009 with an additional forward by Elizabeth Block. These commentaries almost made me put the book down. I understand Martin Marty is a renowned Lutheran theologian, but in this material he seems almost apologetic for encouraging modern readers to look at someone as old fashioned as Augustine. And Elizabeth Block is even worse – pompous and self-absorbed spending more time on her own quest to have a baby than on Augustine.

But once I got through all this tedium and started reading Augustine himself, I was enchanted. First, the whole thing is written as a love letter to God. Obviously, God already knows everything Augustine has gone through, but Augustine wants to show God (and the reader) that he knows it too. Far from being old-fashioned, he is thoroughly modern. His concerns and experiences for 1,600 years ago are just like ours today. Humans haven’t changed a bit over all this time.

He grew up in a family with a devout and doting mother and a distant and indifferent father. As a kid, he got in trouble for playing ball games instead of studying. He preferred learning about the adventures of ancient heroes to learning math tables or foreign languages. Looking back, he is puzzled by that since he had no difficulty learning his native language (Latin). He writes, “It is clear enough from this that free curiosity is a more powerful aid to the learning of languages than a forced discipline,” an insight the marketers of Rosetta Stone would certainly agree with today.

Like boys of today, Augustine reveled in being naughty, of doing things he knew were bad. His example is of stealing pears from a grove of pear trees and destroying them.  Is this so different from boys who throw a rock through a window just to see it break, or my own grandson who for a while liked to ring doorbells of elderly neighbors and run away, just to annoy them?

Then he writes about “… that sixteenth year of my flesh when the madness of lust… held complete sway over me and to this madness I surrendered myself entirely.” Sound familiar? Like many of us he is subject to peer pressure –

“… among people of my own age I was ashamed to be more modest than they were. I heard them boasting of their acts of vice (and the worse they were, the more they boasted), and so I enjoyed the pleasure not only of the act but also of the praise one got for having committed it.

“I, to avoid censure, made myself more vicious than I was, and when in fact, I had not committed a sin that would put me on a level with the worst sinners, I used to pretend that I had committed it, so that I might not be despised for my greater degree of innocence or thought less of for a comparative chastity.”

Teenagers today are subject to the exact same things, boasting about their exploits even if they have to make some of it up.

As Augustine grew, he began to wrestle with the “great issues” of the time. Like many adolescents of our time (and adults whose Christian education stopped during adolescence) he rejected Christianity because he had a childish image of what was being taught.  He thought the idea that man was created in the image of God meant that Christians saw God as “bounded by the shape of a human body.” Eventually he discovered that Christians don’t see it that way at all. He writes many years later –

“ … with a kind of pleasant shame I blushed to think how for all these years I had been barking not against the Catholic faith but against figments of carnal imaginations. And indeed I had been rash and impious; for I had spoken in condemnation of things which I ought to have taken the trouble to find out about.”

Similarly, he saw inconsistencies in the behavior that is allowed in the Bible and thought these inconsistencies discredited the Word of God. Looking back, he wrote that he now sees there were no inconsistencies –

“… the customs of different times and places are formed as is right for those times and places, while the law (of God) is the same always and everywhere, not one thing in one place and one in another.”

“What has been laid down as a general rule, either by custom or law, in any city or nation must not be violated simply for the lawless pleasure of anyone, whether citizen or foreigner…. But when God commands that something should be done which is against the customs or institutions of any people, it must be done, even if it has never been done there before.”

One of the things that most surprised me about Augustine is his fine scientific mind and spirit of inquiry. He was attracted to the Manichees in his 20s, but even then he was repelled by their ignorance and disregard of established science, such as the ability to predict solar eclipses. He scorns the Manichees for their ignorance, but also the scientists for their pride –

“They can see an eclipse of the sun long before it happens, but cannot see their own eclipse when it is actually taking place. For they do not approach the matter in a religious spirit and ask what is the source of the intelligence which they use to inquire into all this….

“Much of what they say about what is created is true; but they do not seek religiously for the truth which is the maker of creation, and therefore do not find Him… instead they become vain in their imaginations and consider themselves to be wise; they attribute to themselves what is (God’s).”

These debates continue to this day, with (some) scientists believing they can unlock all the mysteries of creation with no help from God.

But Augustine’s scientific mindset really shines through in lengthy meditations on memory (19 pages in my edition) and time (24 pages). These are fearless and thorough examinations worthy of a Stephen Hawking. Importantly, Augustine established the idea that space and time are creations of God, and that therefore God is outside of both. God is eternal and unchangeable. These ideas, too, are completely modern.

But far and away, the most important testimony (to me) of Augustine’s writing here is that God reached out to him, not the other way around. Augustine did everything he could to avoid it. Yes, he was searching for truth and meaning as anyone with intellectual curiosity must, but the Lord kept smacking him upside the head until he finally paid attention. That, and the forgiving grace of God, which Augustine experienced personally are the big takeaways and something with which I am very familiar some 1,600 years later.

I recently read a fascinating book by Eben Alexander, MD, called “Proof of Heaven.”

The book is about Dr. Alexander’s near-death experience when he was stricken with a virulent form of bacterial meningitis.  He mixes three different stories into the book.

The first is an autobiography. Alexander is a very accomplished neurosurgeon, a father, and an adopted son who struggles to find his birth parents. He also has a passion for sky-diving, and is a nominal Christian, attending church on Christmas and Easter, but like many scientists he doesn’t have much patience for the spiritual. This is the least important part of the book.

Far more interesting is the medical mystery of what happened to him. He suddenly came down with a virulent form of bacterial meningitis that put him in a coma for seven days. The physicians who treated him could not figure out where this came from. In the medical literature they couldn’t find a single case of an adult contracting this kind of meningitis without first having neurosurgery. As his coma continued the prognosis became dire. The physicians expected him to die or, if he recovered, to live in a permanent vegetative state.

Since this is Alexander’s specialty, he has a lot to say about it. He says his neocortex was shut down completely during this coma, which makes his experience all the more amazing. He should have had no consciousness whatsoever on any level. I asked a neurosurgeon friend about this case (a man who is a devout Catholic), and he tells me it is flatly impossible – period.

After seven days of coma, he woke up. It took a while for him to get his brain reoriented, but he suffered no permanent damage of any kind and is now as lucid and functioning as ever.

But the real heart of this book is what happened to him internally during that seven-day coma. Curiously, he says it started raining the day he went into a coma and stopped the day he came out, which is very unusual where he lives in Virginia in November.

He says he went to heaven during that time. I won’t try to describe it here, other than to say it was very much like what other people have experienced, either in revelation or in near-death experiences. It was not just a disembodied spiritual experience. There were waterfalls and flowering trees and children playing. But there were also angels flying and the presence of God everywhere. Colors and sounds were all far richer than we have here. But the overwhelming sensation was love, pure, unconditional, and total.  He writes—

“Love is, without a doubt the basis of everything. Not some kind of abstract, hard-to-fathom kind of love, but the day-to-day kind of love that everyone knows – the kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse and our children, or even our animals. In its purest and most powerful form, this love is not jealous or selfish, but unconditional….” (p 71)

Yet Alexander acknowledges evil as well. He says –

 “Evil was necessary because without it free will was impossible, and without free will there could be no growth – no forward movement, no chance for us to become what God longed for us to be.” (P.48)

So what do I make of this? First, Alexander is missing a fourth aspect to the experience – theology. And here he gets very close to what Ross Douthat warned us about in “Bad Religion” – a kind of feel-good heresy. And sure enough one of the first places Alexander appeared was on the Oprah Winfrey show.

He mentions Jesus only twice in the entire book, once when relating the near-death experience of another man who claims to have seen Jesus, and again when he visits an Episcopal church after his experience. The stained glass windows and music evoke his experience. But this is the shortest chapter of the entire book, and he never considers that Christians have known about the wonders of Heaven for two thousand years. Much of Jesus’ teachings were to tell us what the Kingdom of God is like.  Nothing in Dr. Alexander’s experience contradicts what we already know.

But he feels no need to reconcile his experience with the Word of God. Instead he labors mightily to reconcile it with what he knows well – the medical/scientific world from which he comes.  He includes a fascinating chapter on this, including brief descriptions of quantum mechanics, current thinking about consciousness, and the realization that we are able to perceive only a tiny fraction of our universe, the rest (96%) being attributed to dark matter and dark energy of which we have no understanding.  Uniting all this, he argues, is a consciousness that is independent of our physical brains.

This resonates with what I have been thinking for a long time – the trouble with the scientific/atheistic understanding is a childish conceit that what we can perceive with our senses is all that exists. But that is clearly not true. My dog can hear and smell things that are far beyond my abilities. I will never understand what it is like to be a dog, to have the abilities of a dog. If that is true of common dogs and men, how much more is out there that we cannot detect in our current bodies?

Many people are likely to dismiss Alexander as a fraud or a heretic. I don’t think he’s a fraud. I think he is relating his experience as faithfully as he can – no doubt at great cost to his reputation as a neuroscientist. What happened to him may be, as my neurosurgeon friend said, “flatly impossible.”  But isn’t that the definition of a miracle? Do we believe miracles no longer happen? I don’t.

As for heresy, yes that is a danger, but I think the worry is simply that he is unschooled in theology. If he digs into theology as deeply as he does science, he may discover how his experience simply confirms what Christians already know – that God loves us so much that He himself became a man to teach us about His Kingdom.

 

Some people in this country never miss an opportunity to disparage and diminish Christianity. Even a presidential inauguration is fair game.

You may have heard that a Georgia pastor was dis-invited to offer a prayer at the event. The Reverend Louie Giglio is widely known for his work against human trafficking and sexual slavery. But he also has rather conventional orthodox views of homosexuality and gave a sermon to that effect some twenty years ago.  That was enough to get him bumped, according to Ben Domenech in Real Clear Politics.

The article quotes Kirsten Powers, a usually liberal political commentator, as saying –

“Hey McCarthyite left: Are you going to object to Muslims who oppose homosexuality too? Didn’t seem to be problem with ‘ground zero mosque’… For the record, I don’t agree with a lot of what Giglio said, but his sermon was basic orthodox Christianity. Who is banned next? The pope?”

Indeed, but more fundamentally we are seeing how corrupting political power can be. The exact same people who were demanding tolerance for “alternative life styles” some years ago, have absolutely no tolerance for traditional views now that they believe they are in the political driver’s seat.

We saw the same thing in the good ol’ PCUSA. People who once insisted on “respecting diversity” when they were in the minority started demanding unity of thought once they won on the issue of homosexual ordination. Calls for unity used to be seen as oppressing minority views – until the minority became a majority. Now the message is “shut up and accept that you lost.”

All of this may be racked up to political hypocrisy, but there is more.

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell thinks the Bible should be banned from being used for the oath of office at the inauguration. http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/11/lawrence-odonnell-get-rid-of-bible-on-inauguration-day-video/ Actually, he has a point, though he doesn’t know it. Jesus admonished us not to take oaths but just to say ‘Yes” or “No’ – and mean it. He said –

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ anything more than this comes from evil. (Matthew 5: 33-37)

But O’Donnell says no one really believes the Bible, so why should it be used? Alas, again he has a point, but his real intent is to banish Christianity from “the public square.” He is part of the “separation of church and state” movement that believes faith and government have no business being mixed.

But this was never an accurate description of the Constitution. Yes, Jefferson used the expression in a letter to the Danbury Baptists, but that was simply a letter and Jefferson was not involved in writing the Constitution.  It has (or should have) absolutely no precedential weight. Madison, who was deeply involved in the writing of the Constitution and this amendment, used the expression, “separation of the church from the state.” He was speaking of the institutional church and the institutional state, not of religion generally, and certainly not of religious expression or feelings.

In fact, the Constitution has an absolute ban on any governmental suppression of “the free exercise” of religion. Madison said, “all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.” That means that anyone may express themselves on religious matters at any time in any capacity, including their civil capacity (say, as lawmaker, teacher, or civil servant). See Wikipedia for a longer discussion.

Whether Christians should swear an oath, or whether people really believe what the Bible says, is no business of Mr. O’Donnell. That is between the individual and his God.

At last some people are beginning to push back against the growing efforts to suppress religious expression. A high school science teacher in New York was ordered to remove any signs of religious expression from her classroom, including a quote from Ronald Reagan. This despite the school district encouraging teachers to personalize their classrooms with meaningful decorations. The American Freedom Law Center has taken her case and has filed suit against the district for suppressing her religious expression.

By the way, the Reagan quote she was ordered to remove says –

“Without God there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience . . . without God there is a coarsening of the society; without God democracy will not and cannot long endure . . . If ever we forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under.”

Our society may indeed banish religion if it chooses to. Many other nations have. But these countries have done so to their regret. The Founders didn’t insist on our being a nation under God for the benefit of God or of Christians. God will do just fine no matter what we do, and Christians have been persecuted many times before. Adversity tends to bring out the best in believers. No, we are a Nation Under God for the benefit of the nation as a whole, both believers and non-believers. We have all prospered only because of the moral foundation Christianity has provided our society. Without that foundation, we will all perish.

 

“Luther’s Works,” Volume 54, Table Talk, edited and translated by Theodore G Tappert, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1967.

A friend loaned me “Table Talk,” which is a compilation of notes various students of Luther’s made from the conversations around his dinner table at Wittenberg. It’s a fascinating look into a man in his unguarded moments. They reveal him to be incredibly well informed, consistent, and often profane. He deals with politics, theology, and ordinary life. These quotes also reveal how little we have changed in 500 years.

These are my favorite quotes from the book, with a comment or two of my own.

About Augustine and Justification

No. 85             Early November, 1531

“It was Augustine’s view that the law, fulfilled by the powers of reason, does not justify, even as works of the moral law do not justify the heathen, but that if the Holy Spirit assists, the works of the law do justify. The question is not whether the law or the works of reason justify, but whether the law, kept with the Spirit’s help, justifies.

“I reply by saying No. Even if in the power of the Holy Spirit a man were to keep the law completely, he ought nevertheless to pray for divine mercy, for God has ordained that man should be saved not by the law but by Christ. Works never give us a peaceful heart. Christ would never have been sad in spirit unless he had been pressed hard by the law, to which he subjected himself for our sake.”

The conflict between the law and grace is a theme Luther comes back to repeatedly; the key to his understanding of scripture and the essential difference between him and the Roman Church. It is easy for us all to fall back into thinking we must somehow earn our salvation. Luther insists that we are saved by grace alone. See also No. 1353 below.

Man’s Arrogance and Self-Assurance

No. 87             Early November, 1531

“It’s remarkable that men should be so arrogant and secure when there are so many, indeed countless, evidences around us to suggest that we ought to be humble. The hour of our death is uncertain. The grain on which we live is not in our hands. Neither the sun nor the air, on which our life depends, lies in our power, and we have no control over our sleeping and waking. I shall say nothing of spiritual things, such as the private and public sins which press upon us. Yet our hearts are hard as steel and pay no attention to such evidence.”

Have we become any more humble since then? I don’t think so. Today some of us think we can control the climate and the tides.

Judgment Concerning Peter Lombard

No. 192           Between February and March, 1532

“These are said to be the sons of nuns: Peter Lombard, the greatest theologian; Gratian, the greatest canon lawyer; and Comestor, the greatest historian of his times (all lived in the early 12^th Century),. Peter Lombard was adequate as a theologian; none has been his equal. He read Hilary, Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, and also all the councils. He was a great man. If he had by chance come upon the Bible, he would no doubt have been the greatest.

Ouch! This is what is known as a rapier wit. Luther must have been a formidable debater.

Administration of the Lord’s Supper to Convicts

No. 325           Sumer or Fall, 1532

When a certain Bohemian said that the sacrament ought not to be given to those who have been convicted of a public crime and have been condemned in a public trial because there is danger that they might not believe, Luther responded, “This doesn’t concern the one who administers. His only concern should be that he offer the true Word and the true sacrament. I don’t worry about whether he (the communicant) has true faith. I give the sacrament on account of the confession, which I have heard, the condition of his heart be what it may. I wager a thousand souls that the absolution and the sacrament are right. I must believe him when he says he is penitent. If he deceives me, he deceives himself. Nevertheless, the sacrament is true and the absolution is true. It is as if I were to give somebody ten pieces of gold, and he took them to be only ten coppers. The gold is right in front of his eyes. If he doesn’t know what he is taking, the fault is his and the loss is his.”

Hmmm. There are those who say Communion should be withheld from Nancy Pelosi and other politicians for their support of abortion. Luther seems to be saying that is between her and God, the pastor cannot judge what is in her heart.

Christ Taught Only in a Corner of Judea

No. 504           Spring, 1533

“The authority of Christ when he taught wasn’t so great as ours is today. He himself said, ‘Greater works than these will you do’ (John 14:12). He is the grain of mustard seed, but we are the bushes (Matt 13:31, 32). Accordingly he said ‘They were unwilling to bear me, although I taught in a corner, but you must bear me throughout all the world.’ To preach Christ is to offend the flesh, but to preach the flesh is to offend Christ.”

Too many of us still worry about offending “the flesh,” and we tone down the message so no one could ever possibly be offended. Is that what Jesus had in mind?

We Trust Men More Than We Trust Christ

No. 1353        Between January 8 and March 23, 2532

“The principal lesson of theology is that Christ can be known. Here the teacher shouldn’t be ashamed of learning from his student, nor the student of learning from his teacher. Christ is friendlier than we are. If I can be good to a friend, how much mire will Christ be good to us! When Satan leads me to the law I am damned, but if I can take hold of the promise, I am free. Peter said ‘Grow in the knowledge of Christ’ (II Peter 3:18) This isn’t a knowledge of the law, of dialectical skill, or of some other art, but it’s the knowledge that Christ is the most just and the most merciful One, in whom alone we dwell. Satan clouds this basic knowledge in our hearts in a remarkable way and causes us to trust an earthly friend more than Christ.”

Throughout the book, Luther sees Satan as a real living force who is constantly is trying to trick us into error. See also No 1379 below.

An Estimate of Pope Clement VII

No. 1359        Between January 8 and March 23, 1532

“The present Pope Clement is the wealthiest of all men and yet the most unhappy. He’s a thorough scoundrel. He has plotted many wicked things. So he said that before he’d stop (persecuting us Lutherans) he’s rather put the Turks on our necks. He’ll do it, too. Pray diligently, therefore, and remember this when I’m dead.”

I am not including most of Luther’s comments about the pope. It is hard for modern readers not to wince at the harshness of his condemnation. But we are accustomed to thinking of the Pope as a kindly old gentleman – sort of like a Santa Claus without the beard. But at the time, the Pope was probably the most powerful man on earth, controlling even kings and emperors, orchestrating wars, and killing off opponents. Luther’s resistance was incredibly courageous and probably made possible only because of the distraction of the wars against the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, which was at the gates of Vienna. See also 2962b below.

Death is Caused by Satan, Not by God

No. 1379          Between January 8 and March 23, 1532

“The devil slays us all, for the Scripture says that he causes death and is the author of death (John 8:44). Satan put God’s Son to death.”

The doctor’s (Luther) wife said, “Oh, no, my dear Doctor! I don’t believe it.”

Then the doctor said, “Who would love our Lord God if he himself had a mind to kill us? He will not be a murderer because he commanded, ‘You shall not kill’ (Exod. 20:13)…. Everything that God makes he creates for life. He created things that they might be, and he called into being things that didn’t exist, as if they did (Rom 4:17). This means that life belongs to God’s purpose. But death has been introduced into the world through the devil’s envy, and on this account the devil is called the author of death. For what else does Satan do than seduce from true religion, provoke sedition, cause wars, pestilence, etc. and bring about every evil?”

This is an important answer to the people who wonder how a loving God could allow atrocities like the Newtown, CT shooting. God is love and God is life. Hatred and death belong to Satan.

Each Age Has Its Own Peculiar Temptation

No. 1601        Between May 27 and 31, 1532

“Young fellows are tempted by girls, men who are thirty years old are tempted by gold, when they are forty years old they are tempted by honor and glory, and those who are sixty years old say to themselves, ‘What a pious man I have become!’ ”

Yikes! People don’t change, do they? This is my favorite passage because it describes me to a tee.

Luther’s Career Was Not Planned by Him

No. 1650        Between June 12 and July 12, 1532

“God knows, I never thought of going as far as I did. I intended only to attack indulgences. If anybody had said to me when I was at the Diet of Worms, ‘In a few years you’ll have a wife and your own household,’ I wouldn’t have believed it.”

This is another theme Luther returns to repeatedly. He had no idea what a whirlwind he was reaping when he started.

The Place of Reason in Christian Life

No. 2938b      Between January 26 and 29, 1533

Dr. Luther was asked whether, since it is necessary to exclude reason from articles of faith, reason has any value at all for Christians. He replied, “Prior to faith and a knowledge of God, reason is darkness, but in believers it’s an excellent instrument. Just as all gifts and instruments are evil in godless men, so they are good in believers. Faith is now furthered by reason, speech, and eloquence, whereas these were only impediments prior to faith. Enlightened reason, taken captive by faith, receives life from faith, for it is slain and given life again. As our body will rise (from the dead) glorified, so our reason is different in believers than it was before, for it doesn’t fight against faith but promotes it. Our speech, which used to be godless and blasphemous, now preaches, praises God, and gives him thanks. Thus my speech is different from what it once was; now it’s enlightened. So iron which glows from fire is different from iron that doesn’t glow. This is regeneration through the Word and occurs while the person and the members remain the same.

Interesting that this was written one hundred years before The Enlightenment, almost as if he was anticipating it.

The Pope and the Ecclesiological Problem

No. 2962b      Between February 9 and 15, 1533

“The issue in the controversy over the papacy is that the pope boasts that he’s the head of the church and condemns all who don’t live under his power, for he says that although Christ is the (spiritual) head of the church, there must nevertheless also be a bodily head on earth. (I would gladly have conceded this to the pope if he had only taught the gospel.) In addition, he claims for himself the authority over the church and the Scriptures. No one may expound the Scriptures except the pope alone, who does it as he pleases. He boasts that he is lord over the church, and the church in turn is mistress over the Scriptures, and so everybody must submit to him. This was intolerable to me and provoked me to write against the papacy. Our opponents still admit today that our teaching’s true, but they defend themselves by saying that it’s not yet approved by the pope.”

This was not a new concern at the time, and it has never been fully resolved. This month in Modern Reformation Michael Horton quotes Pope Gregory from the sixth century – “He expressed offense at being addressed by a bishop as ‘universal pope’: ‘a word of proud address that I have forbidden…. None of my predecessors ever wished to use this profane word (universal)…. But I say it confidently, because whoever calls himself ‘universal bishop or wishes to be so called, is in his self-exaltation Antichrist’s precursor, for in his swaggering he sets himself before the rest.’”

Legal Problems Pertaining to Marriage

No. 3267        Summer, 1532

“The pastor in Zwickau wrote me (about) marriage cases. I’ll give him something to remember me by for implicating me in such matters that belong to the government! These are external things that are concerned with dowries and inheritances. What do they have to do with us? We advise people only in matters of conscience, and now the government wants to impose these other matters on us. What’s more, when our counsels and opinions displease them they don’t want to carry them out, no matter how good they may be. We’re shepherds of consciences, not of bodies and bodily matters. Nobody ought to subject himself to the burden of others; they’ll take care of them all right without us.”

So, how would Luther feel about the current issue of gay marriage? See also No. 4716 below.

A Story Serves as Parable of the World

No. 3645        Between November 1 and December 21, 1537

“A man once rented an ass to ride on. The owner of the ass went on foot next to the rider. When it got to hot for the rider of the ass, he asked the owner to ride so that he might walk in the shade alongside. The owner of the ass was unwilling to do this because he had rented the ass to him for riding and not the ass’s shadow. For the latter he would have to pay extra.

“This is a picture of the world, which doesn’t give anything for nothing, not even a shadow.”

Again, Luther had quite a sense of humor.

The Diets Prescribed by Physicians

No. 3801        April 2, 1538

On April 2 he (Martin Luther) sat at home and mentioned the rigid diet he had been prescribed by physicians as a consequence of which many men are debilitated. “It’s true (he said) that a good diet is the best medicine when it suits the individual, but to live medically is to live wretchedly.” Then he related some examples of deceased persons who starved themselves to death on the advice of their physicians. “I eat what I like and will die when God wills it. ‘The times fade away, and we grow old with the silent years.” (a quote from Ovid)  When I now think of my contemporaries who are fifty years old, oh, how few they are. About every thirty years a new generation arises. We all belong in the ground, there’s no way around it.”

I like Martin Luther a lot. See also No. 4647 below.

The Quibbling of Sophists to Be Avoided

No. 4128        November 17, 1538

“The world must be considered carefully (Martin Luther said). It’s governed by opinions, and therefore it’s ruled by sophistical hypocrisy and tyranny. True religion is compelled to serve them as a maidservant.  One must therefore be careful and beware of sophistry. Which consists not only of equivocation in words but flourishes under all circumstance, so that in religion it possesses a magnificent pretense under the guise of Holy Scripture. There’s more harm in sophistry than any man can perceive; our nature, which is prone to lying, can’t see the evil in sophistry at all. Plato offers a remarkable description of sophistry: People who can twist everything, repudiate the opinions of others, and draw conclusions on both sides after tha manner of Carneades are not to be praised. These are sly tricks. It’s the glory of a good character (on the other hand) to seek the truth and to rejoice on guilelessness.”

Sophistry is another plague in our time. It is good to know there is nothing new about it.

The Duty of Husband and Wife

No. 4408        March 17, 1539

He (Martin Luther) spoke of the estate of marriage in which each person must do his duty: “The husband should earn and the wife save. Accordingly the wife can make her husband rich but the husband can’t make his wife rich, for a penny saved is better than a penny earned. So thrift is the best income. Deservedly I am in the list of the poor, for I keep too many servants.”

This was written two hundred years before Ben Franklin appropriated “a penny saved is a penny earned.”

Luther Does Not Wish to Live Much Longer

No. 4647        June 11, 1539

On June 11 he (Martin Luther) went to Lichtenberg and had supper with the margrave’s wife in the evening. She addressed him in a very friendly way, wished him a long life, and expressed the hope that he could live another forty years. He replied, “God forbid! Even if God were to offer me paradise in order that I might last another forty years in this life, I wouldn’t want it. I’d rather hire a hangman to knock my head off. That’s how bad the world is now. It’s full of nothing but devils, so that one can’t wish anything better than a blessed end and to get away. Nor do I bother with physicians. I won’t embitter my life, which may last a half year, but in God’s name I’ll eat whatever tastes good to me.”

Luther was only 56 when he said this and he lived for another seven years.

Do Marriage Cases Belong in the Church?

No. 4716        July 23, 1539

We asked him what pastors should do in marriage cases, whether we can in good conscience stay away from these troublesome things.  He replied, “It is my advice that we should by no means take this yoke upon ourselves. First, we have enough work in our proper office. Second, marriage is outside the church, is a civil matter, and therefore should belong to the government. Third, these cases have no limits, extend to the height, the breadth, and the depth, and produce many things that bring disgrace to the gospel.”

Again, it is interesting that marriage at the time was seen as something outside the church.

How to Preach in Three Brief Steps

No. 5171b      Between August 7 and 21, 1540

Conrad Cordatus said to Dr. Martin Luther, “Reverend Father, teach me in a brief way how to preach.”

Luther responded briefly, “First, you must learn to go up to the pulpit. Second, you should know that you should stay there for a time. Third you must learn to get down again.”

He added nothing in addition to these words, and as a result Cordatus was quite angry. Yet at length it occurred to him that the doctor had hit the mark very well. Anybody who keeps this order will be a good preacher. First, he must learn to go up to the pulpit, that is, he should have a regular and a divine call. Second, he must stay there for a time, that is, he should have the pure and genuine doctrine. Third, he must also learn how to get down again, that is, he should preach not more than an hour (which didn’t please Pomeranus).

Cordatus didn’t get the joke. He asked for a brief lesson, so Luther gave him a brief lesson.