But is it possible?

Second, we continue to act in alarge-scale way as if the encyclopedic inquiry is a live option. “Even now the organized institutions of the academic curriculum and the ways in which both enquiry and teaching are conducted in and through those institutions are structured to a significant degree as if we did believe much of what the major contributors to the Ninth Edition believed.” Institutions and curriculum, of course, are not the same thing as the publication outlets for scholarly world—journals, monograph series, and the like—but in fact these outlets often simply reflect the assumptions of the larger university’s structure. How we train is how we publish. “We often still behave as if there is . . . some underlying agreement about the academic project of just the kind in which those contributors believed.” Knowledge, Maclntyre implies, is socialized in a way that contradicts what we now know about knowledge; it is time to recognize the contradiction. “The ghosts of the Ninth Edition haunt the contemporary academy. They need to be exorcised” (171).—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 179 ((quotations from Alasdair MacIntyre's 1988 Gifford Lectures)

Judging the past by the … present of course!

Where the encyclopedists looked to the past, they assumed that all thinkers offered accounts “of the rational status of one and the same timeless subject matter” (28). The measuring of these accounts as better and worse depended upon the perception of progress toward the encyclopedists’ conception of truth—which is to say that the past was judged in light of the present, conceived as the acme of intellectual progress.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 177 (quotation from Alasdair MacIntyre's 1988 Gifford Lectures)

O for a heart to praise my God

500 C. M.
A perfect heart the Redeemer’s throne.

O FOR a heart to praise my God,
   A heart from sin set free ;—
   A heart that always feels thy blood,
   So freely spilt for me :—

2 A heart resign’d, submissive, meek,
   My great Redeemer’s throne;
   Where only Christ is heard to speak,—
   Where Jesus reigns alone.

3 O for a lowly, contrite heart,
   Believing, true, and clean;
   Which neither life nor death can part
   From Him that dwells within:—

4 A heart in every thought renew‘d.
   And full of love divine;
   Perfect, and right, and pure, and good,
   A copy, Lord, of thine.

5 Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart;
   Come quickly from above;
   Write thy new name upon my heart.—
   Thy new, best name of Love
                        Charles Wesley
                        Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

May it be so!

Early persecution

Historians know that official persecution of Christians did not happen until the reign of Decius in AD 251. But focusing on official, legally sanctioned violence can obscure what on any reading is an obvious fact: on a local level and/or ad hoc basis persecution was a part of Christian life from at least the middle of the first century. And from the beginning of the second century—thirty years or so before Justin’s death—the name “Christian” had already become an important political marker. With the clarity of hindsight, the attention given to the name is unsurprising: persecution of Christians qua Christians depends upon the ability to see them as a community, or at least as a particular kind of thing, a way of naming a category or group such that it made sense to try them as Christianoi, Christians.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 163

A true philosopher?

On the one hand, Justin clearly seeks to create a sense of deep continuity with the pagan tradition and to use this continuity for his own rhetorical advantage in communicating what Christianity actually is. He uses the familiar tropes ofthe philosopher such as the cloak and the movement through various philosophies to draw his readers in by means of something they already understand. This communicative strategy culminates in Justin’s audacious claim that in becoming a Christian, he has become a true philosopher.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 158

Why study theology?

There are different ways that one can come at Old Testament theology, but my concern is that too often we separate theology from worship. If the goal of theology is the knowledge of the true God, the end result of that experience ought to be adoration and praise and prayer.—Dennis Kinlaw, Lectures in Old Testament Theology, 13

<idle musing>
I was interacting via text message yesterday with someone about some theology, and this quotation came to mind. I had Kinlaw for Old Testament theology (among other classes with him) in the summer of 1983. He would say things like this all the time. His stated goal was that every pastor would be a theologian and every theologian would be a soul-winner.

He modeled that in his teaching. I took every class he offered in those two semesters when he taught at Asbury Seminary after resigning from the presidency of Asbury College. A few of us even coralled him into teaching an independent study of Aramaic one semester and Syriac the next.
</idle musing>

Love divine, all loves excelling

498 9th P. M. 87, 87, 87, 87.
The new creation

1 Love divine, all loves excelling,
   joy of heav’n, to earth come down,
   fix in us thy humble dwelling,
   all thy faithful mercies crown.
   Jesus, thou art all compassion,
   pure, unbounded love thou art.
   Visit us with thy salvation;
   enter ev'ry trembling heart.

2 Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit
   into ev’ry troubled breast.
   Let us all in thee inherit,
   let us find the promised rest.
   Take away the love of sinning;
   Alpha and Omega be.
   End of faith, as its beginning,
   set our hearts at liberty.

3 Come, Almighty, to deliver,
   let us all thy life receive.
   Suddenly return, and never,
   nevermore thy temples leave.
   Thee we would be always blessing,
   serve thee as thy hosts above,
   pray, and praise thee without ceasing,
   glory in thy perfect love.

4 Finish, then, thy new creation;
   true and spotless let us be.
   Let us see thy great salvation
   perfectly restored in thee.
   Changed from glory into glory,
   till in heav’n we take our place,
   till we cast our crowns before thee,
   lost in wonder, love and praise.
                        Charles Wesley
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
One of the best hymns ever written, in my opinion. And a lot of others seem to agree—according to hymnary.org it's in 1808 hymnals! That's a lot of hymnals! And, as far as I can tell, that's just the English ones; it's been translated into other languages, too.
</idle musing>

But without faith, if's just nonsense

Were Justin to have worried that he missed the chance to hear the prophets, the old man would have assuaged his worry immediately: “Their writings are still extant," he tells Justin. And “whoever reads them will profit greatly in his knowledge of the beginning and end, provided that he has believed in them” (Dial. 7.2, emphasis added). With this last phrase, the old man complicates the kind of reading Justin must do if he is to know the truth of which the prophets speak. While the prophets did provide a particular kind of testimony to the truth of their words—the events of which they foretold are happening even now, says the old man, and they performed miracles—more fundamentally their reliability is “beyond proof” (Dial. 7.2). The reader must not look to the prophets to provide knockdown arguments to win his trust, the old man implies, but must instead trust them ahead of time, as it were, have a basic faith in their reception and communication of the truth. Only in this way will Justin understand the writings. “Above all,” says the Christian to Justin, teaching him how to read, “beseech God to open to you the gates of light, for no one can perceive or understand these truths unless he has been enlightened by God and his Christ” (Dial. 7.3).—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 157

<idle musing>
Indeed! And nothing has changed in the last two thousand years. We still need to come in faith in order to understand. If not, then it all appears as foolishness, just as it did back in the first and second centuries.
</idle musing>

It's in the living

By philosophy, however, Justin does not mean what most moderns mean—an analytical discipline that applies solely to the intellect, a kind of rigorous exercising of pure reason. Justin doubtless places heavy emphasis upon philosophical reasoning, but for him reasoning philosophically means living in a certain way of life. Philosophy for Justin, as it was for Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus, is practice, an intellectually dense form of living whose justification is its ability to lead people to new life.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 155

Lead me forth!

496 L. M.
The land of rest.

THY loving Spirit, Lord, alone,
   Can lead me forth, and make me free;
   The bondage break in which I groan,
   And set my heart at liberty.

2 Now let thy Spirit bring me in,
   And give thy servant to possess
   The land of rest from inbred sin,—
   The land of perfect holiness.

3 Lord, I believe thy power the same;
   The same thy truth and grace endure;
   And in thy blessed hands I am,
   And trust thee for it perfect cure.

4 Come, Saviour, come, and make me whole;
   Entirely all my sins remove;
   To perfect health restore my soul,—
   To perfect holiness and love.
                        Charles Wesley
                        Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

Irreducibly complex

Like Paul’s, Justin’s language about God exhibits irreducibly complex patterns. God is the Father of all, the Logos who is Jesus Christ, and the prophetic Spirit all at once, and yet these three are not simply different words for saying the same thing, interchangeable without loss or remainder. The Unbegotten is not the Begotten; the Spirit is different still. But to speak of the God who creates and sustains the world (Dial. 29.3), watches over it in justice (2 Apol. 12.6), establishes a covenant with the Jewish people (Dial. 11.1), guides them through prophetic prediction (Dial. 7.1), acts dramatically in the first advent of Christ Jesus (Dial. 14.8), and will again in the second, is to speak of one and only one God. Again like St. Paul, the primary impetus for the complexity in Justin's theological grammar is Jesus Christ himself.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 149

Sure, they might exist, but so what?

Justin’s view of God … requires a rejection of the theological legitimacy of the polytheism in which he was born and reared and which formed the fabric of Greco-Roman life. He does not deny the existence of the beings with which such polytheisrn was intertwined, but he most emphatically denies that they are God and, hence, denies the legitimacy of their worship.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 146

Tozer for a Tuesday

G. Campbell Morgan once said, "We ought never in our gospel preaching to offer men peace. We ought never in our gospel preaching to offer men repose from their conscience. We ought never to offer them anything short of life.” I wholeheartedly agree. We should never divorce any gift we offer to men from the Giver.—A.W. Tozer, Living as a Christian, 94

The divine rest

484 C. M.
The believer’s rest.

LORD, I believe a rest remains
   To all thy people known;
   A rest where pure enjoyment reigns,
   And thou art loved alone:

2 A rest where all our soul’s desire
   Is fix’d on things above;
   Where fear, and sin, and grief expire,
   Cast out by perfect love.

3 O that I now the rest might know,
   Believe, and enter in:
   Now, Saviour, now the power bestow,
   And let me cease from sin.

4 Remove this hardness from my heart;
   This unbelief remove :
   To me the rest of faith impart,—
   The Sabbath of thy love.
                        Charles Wesley
                        Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
This marvelous hymn is based on the rest mentioned in Hebrews 3 and 4, which is intended to be experienced in this life, not just in the coming one. That was the driving force behind the Methodist Revival—heart holiness, a rest in the finished work of God. It wasn't a legalistic set of rules to follow—no whitewashed tomb for the Wesley brothers, they had already tried that—but a heart washed clean and made anew by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Coupled with that was their belief that a person should feel/experience the witness of the Spirit that they were a child of God. They were sure (as am I) that you cannot encounter the living God and not come away knowing it and having been changed.

Hmynary.org adds a fifth verse that is also worthwhile:

5 I would be Thine, Thou know'st I would,
And have Thee all my own;
Thee, O my all-sufficient Good!
I want, and Thee alone.

</idle musing>

Justin Martyr's turn

Because Justin is trying to cover so many bases, his way of speaking about God is culturally complex. He reaches both for Moses and for Plato; he champions continuity with the Jewish God while distinguishing the Christian view from the Stoic; he affirms the existence of other so-called gods but reduces them to God’s creatures gone wrong, and so forth.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 145

Yes, there is a hierarchical order, but…

Familial language, however, does not preclude hierarchical order, as if calling each other “brother” automatically distributed theological insight and practical wisdom in an equal measure to all. Luke’s sort ofhierarchy is not the kind that so worries postmoderns of various stripes but the kind that is inevitably a necessary part of any communal organization. Even the Quakers have leaders. The more difficult issue is that systematizing Luke’s structure of authority has proved notoriously difficult for modern scholars of his work. To be sure, there are the twelve (with Matthias for Judas), Peter, James, Paul, Stephen, elders, deacons, and so on. But beyond the most obvious observations, arranging these various people and offices into clear tiers has simply not been possible. Still, what is obvious from Acts is Luke's conviction that the new society cannot flourish without orders of authority that guarantee both the movement’s continuity with the earthly Jesus and the pattern of life that is its ethic.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 139

<idle musing>
Perhaps because it is intended to be difficult? The point, after all, is to advance the kingdom of God, not the hierarchy of leaders. Christ is the leader, the ruler, the potentate, the king. The rest are simply to advance his will. After all, isn't he the one who said that the first would be last? Didn't he also say that the one who would be a leader must be the servant?

That kinda turns all the human hierarchies on their heads.

Just an
</idle musing>

I know that my Redeemer live, and ever prays for me

483 C.M.
The good pleasure of his will.

I KNOW that my Redeemer lives,
   And ever prays for me:
   A token of his love he gives,—
   A pledge of liberty.

2 I find him lifting up my head;
   He brings salvation near;
   His presence makes me free indeed,
   And he will soon appear.

3 He wills that I should holy he!
   What can withstand his will?
   The counsel of his grace in me
   He surely shall fulfil.

4 Jesus, I hang upon thy Word ;
   I steadfastly believe
   Thou wilt return, and claim me, Lord,
   And to thyself receive.

5 When God is mine, and I am his,
   Of paradise possess’d,
   I taste unutterabie bliss,
   And everlasting rest.
                        Charles Wesley
                        Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

O how shall a sinner perform?

455 10th P. M. 8 lines 8s
Thy vows are upon me, O God.

O HOW shall a sinner perform
   The vows he hath vow’d to the Lord?
   A sinful and impotent worm,
   How can I be true to my word?
   I tremble at what I have done:
   O send me thy help from above:
   The power of thy Spirit make known
   The virtue of Jesus’s love.

2 My solemn engagements are vain;
   My promises empty as air;
   My vows, I shall break them again,
   And plunge in eternal despair:
   Unless my omnipotent God
   The sense of his goodness impart,
   And shed, by his Spirit, abroad
   The love of himself in my heart.
                        Charles Wesley
                        Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

Nope, not stasis!

If you continuously show that the Christians are disruptive, aren’t the Athenian prosecutors basically right to try Paul? Wouldn’t the Philippians or the Ephesian Demetrius have correctly discerned that the economic unfolding of Christian practice is a threat to religiously based economic or political order? Wouldn’t the Romans be right to judge Christians seditious, guilty of the crime of riot-causing revolt—the dreaded stasis, the punishment for which is death? Wherever they go, the Christians upset normal cultural patterns, which in turn leads to disorder. What more in the way of evidence is needed?

You are very close to the truth, Luke might reply, but, alas, sit on the wrong side of it. The Christians do in fact bring the possibility of disorder, but such disorder is not the same thing as stasis. In fact, Paul was accused of this very crime—and declared innocent.

The second feature of Luke’s view of church is thus his negation of a particular way of interpreting the cultural disorder brought by Christianity’s arrival. Over the course of a long stretch of the end of Acts (24:1—26:32), Luke tells of Paul's trial for stasis. This trial is the narrative culmination of a long series of occasions when the Christians have been brought before local authorities and accused of disruption. In this particular case, Paul’s opponents have a good argument, at least prima facie. Paul has incited a riotous crowd in the capital of Judea—in Roman eyes, one of the more incendiary provinces of the ancient world—and drawn the attention of the local tribune Claudius Lysias (Acts 21:27-23:35). Upon learning that Paul is a Roman citizen and dealing with a plot to take his life, Lysias does the most politically careful thing he can and sends Paul under protective escort to Judea’s governor in Caesarea for trial.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 137

<idle musing>
And again, he is found innocent. Yes, Paul and the Christian message bring disruption to the local order, but that disruption is a good disruption, not stasis. The same arguments are brought against the early Christians repeatedly. Tertullian, around 200, has to defend the Christians against the same charges. He doesn't deny that the Christian message is disruptive—it plainly is—but instead argues that Christians make the best citizens because they pray for the empire and don't cause stasis.

Would that the same were true of Christians today!
</idle musing>