Month: November 2005

Blog-friend Chris Tessone, formerly of Progressive Protestant, has a new blog Even the Devils Believe. Looks like his life has taken some interesting theological turns since last we heard from him. Welcome back, Chris!

I was at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature for work last week (which was conveniently held here in Philly) and, as is my way, I scoured the book exhibit where most publishers were offering discounts on their wares.

One item I picked up from Augsburg Fortress was William Russell’s little book Praying for Reform. It features selections from three of Luther’s important works on prayer, The Personal Prayer Book of 1522, the Booklet for Laity and Children, published in 1525, and the treatise A Simple Way to Pray (for a Good Friend) from 1535.

The first two works are “proto”-catechisms which represent Luther’s attempt at reforming the standard medieval catechism. Catechisms typically included a discussion of the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments, but what was new about Luther’s catechisms, according to Russell’s introduction, was that he rearranged the order to reflect the theology of the Reformation.

According to Russell, in the medieval catechetical tradition, the Creed came first, followed by the discussion of the Ten Commandments. However, Luther saw this as reflecting the erroneous medieval theology of grace, the idea being that first you get “grace” (the Creed) which acts as a sort of power that enables you to fulfill the law (the Ten Commandments).

The significance of Luther reversing the order (which was preserved in his later Small and Large catechisms) was that he thought we needed first to go to the law to be made aware of our sinfulness, and then to Christ who promises us salvation apart from works of the law. In other words, the purpose of grace is not to enable us to fulfill the law, as though we could then achieve salvation by grace-powered works, but to save us apart from any merit of our own (and good works would follow). Luther’s conviction was that the Christian’s prayer life should follow this changed understanding of grace.

A Simple Way to Pray demonstrates Luther’s emphasis on meditating on the word as the basis for fruitful prayer, reminding me of Bonhoeffer’s dictum that “the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.” Writing to his barber Peter, Luther discusses how he himself prays and commends it to his friend. He says that he will begin by saying “quietly to myself and word-for-word the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and, if I have time, some words of Christ or of Paul, or some psalms, just as a child might do.”

Using the word as a flint to “kindle the heart” Luther recommends weaving the words into a “four-strand garland”:

• Teaching – what do I learn from this portion of Scripture?
• Thanksgiving – thanking God for what he has done for us in these words
• Confession – admitting that we have fallen short, especially in not believing this teaching and living by it
• Petition – asking for God’s help to grow in grace and obedience

For example, here’s Luther’s treatment of the First Commandment:

That is, I think of each commandment as, first, instruction, which is really what it is intended to be, and consider what the Lord God demands of me so earnestly. Second, I turn it into a thanksgiving; third, a confession; and fourth, a prayer. I do so in thoughts or words such as these:

“I am the Lord your God, etc. You shall have no other gods before me,” etc. Here I earnestly consider that God expects and teaches me to trust him sincerely in all things and that it is his most earnest purpose to be my God. I must think of him in this way at the risk of losing eternal salvation. My heart must not build upon anything else or trust in any other thing, be it wealth, prestige, wisdom, might, piety, or anything else.

Second, I give thanks for his infinite compassion by which he has come to me in such a fatherly way and, unasked, unbidden, and unmerited, has offered to be my God, to care for me, and to be my comfort, guardian, help, and strength in every time of need. We poor mortals have sought so many gods and would have to seek them still if he did not enable us to hear him openly tell us in our own language that he intends to be our God. How could we ever-in all eternity-thank him enough!

Third, I confess and acknowledge my great sin and ingratitude for having so shamefully despised such sublime teachings and such a precious gift throughout my whole life, and for having fearfully provoked his wrath by countless acts of idolatry. I repent of these and ask for his grace.

Fourth, I pray and say: “O my God and Lord, help me by thy grace to learn and understand thy commandments more fully every day and to live by them in sincere confidence. Preserve my heart so that I shall never again become forgetful and ungrateful, that I may never seek after other gods or other consolation on earth or in any creature, but cling truly and solely to thee, my only God. Amen, dear Lord God and Father. Amen.”

Luther says that this simple exercise can be used when contemplating the Ten Commandments, the Creed, or virtually any portion of Scripture. He also suggest meditation on the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, using them as a guide, and expanding on them and making the prayers our own.

The “method” Luther proposes here seems to have some affinity with the monastic tradition of lectio divina – meditating on a porition of Scripture, finding God’s word for me in it, and responding in prayer. But at the time it may have been a reaction to the perception that many of the Christian laity’s devotions consisted of “vain repetition” of set formulaic prayers (he is careful to mention to Peter that he doesn’t intend for him to repeat Luther word for word but to make the prayers his own).

In any event, you can see here the importance reforming prayer had for Luther as a key element to reforming the life of the church. This makes sense if the life of prayer is how Christians are formed in their understanding of the life of faith (consider the bitter debates about revising the Book of Common Prayer). It also makes you wonder if our churches could profitably spend more time nourishing and instructing their members in the life of prayer, especially when you consider some of the other things we spend an inordinate amount of time and resources on.

The apostle and brother of Simon Peter is traditionally remembered today. According to John’s gospel Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist before leaving to follow Jesus. Tradition has him going to preach the gospel in Scythia (near the intersection of modern-day Mongolia, China, and Russia), Epirus (in the southwest Balkans), and Achaia (a narrow strip of territory in Greece), among other places.

It’s also reported that Andrew was martyred by being hung on the “x” shaped cross, which, of course came to be known as the St. Andrew’s cross that we see on the Scottish national flag (he’s the patron saint of Scotland) as well as the Confederate battle flag.

Here’s historian Peter Williams’ account of how Andrew came to be associated with Scotland:

There are two reasons why Andrew was adopted as the patron saint of Scotland. One is that, in AD 345, when the Emperor, Constantine the Great, decided to translate Andrew’s bones from Patras to Constantinople, St. Regulus (or St. Rule), a Greek monk, was instructed by an angel to take a large number of these relics to a place in the far northwest. He was told to stop at a site on the Fife coast of Scotland, where he founded the settlement of St. Andrew. The other explanation is that the seventh century Bishop of Hexham, St. Wilfrid (some sources give Acca as the bishop) brought back some of the saint’s relics from a trip to Rome and they landed in the hands of the Scots King, Angus MacFergus, who installed them at St. Andrew’s to enhance the prestige of the new bishopric.One legend concerning St. Andrew is that when the Pictish King Angus, faced with a large invading army, prayed for divine guidance, a saltire (the diagonal cross) appeared in the shape of a white cloud against the blue sky. Angus won a decisive victory and decreed that Andrew would be the patron saint of his country. It was not until after Robert Bruce’s victory at the Battle of Bannockburn (1314) however, that the Declaration of Arbroath named St. Andrew the patron saint of Scotland forever and the Saltire became the national flag in 1385.

Advent is fundamentally about the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity coming to be with us here, concretely, in the world. Here’s a couple of good posts on the significance of the fact that God comes to us as a human being:

Confessing Evangelical: “Away with abstraction! The gospel is about concrete things: not an abstract God, but a God who lies in a manger, walks around a particular country at a particular time, dies on a cross, rises on the third day, ascends to heaven forty days later and will return in glory at a particular time.”

Millinerd: “…the fact remains that just as one cannot be more radically humanist that by worshipping the God who became human, so one cannot be more pro-body than by worshipping the God who took one on permanently.”

Nice slideshow at Slate arguing that Fra Angelico was a pivotal figure between stylized medieval art and the more naturalisitic individualized style of the Renaissance. Worth clicking over just to see the paintings.

Advent is the season when we await the Lord’s coming. The coming of the babe in the manger, his coming into our lives at every moment, especially through his word and sacrament, and his coming at the end of the age with the saints and angels in glory. In that spirit, Advent may be a good time for us to commit (or re-commit!) ourselves to spiritual disciplines that can create a space where we can wait upon the Lord.

The obvious ones are prayer, fasting, scripture reading and almsgiving, and of course regular attendance at worship and reception of the sacrament. I have used (sporadically) a version of the Daily Office published by a group of Anglican Franciscans whose cycle of daily prayer changes depending on the season (most versions of the office follow a similar pattern). The canticles, collects, scripture readings, etc. are chosen to reflect the themes of the season.

Learning some of the church’s great Advent hymns might also be a good idea. This year I’m hoping to spend some time dipping into the poetry of George Herbert. Some people suggest keeping an Advent wreath in the home, or the always-popular Advent calendar.

As a season of patient waiting and expectation Advent seems like the ideal counterweight to the frenzy of consumerism and anxiety that so many people in the prosperous west experience as the “holiday season.”

Thanks to Siel (the “green LA girl”) for stopping by and offering some informative links on the fair trade coffee issue. I found this overview (PDF) from Oxfam particularly helpful.

Commenters raised some good points. First, even if “in the long run” fair trade doesn’t raise prices for farmers, it’s offering concrete help to people now. Secondly, fair trade co-ops offer farmers ways to circumvent middlemen and exporters, helping to break the virtual monopoly enjoyed by a handful of companies, as well as giving them access to market information and credit at non-extortionate rates.

Movie reviews from Slate, The Onion, and The NY Times.

Christianity Today interviews Reese Witherspoon, Joaquin Phoenix and director James Mangold.

Official site for the movie.

MORE: Frederica Mathewes-Green and Steve Beard at National Review Online.

Rep. John Murtha, a hawkish conservative Democrat has called for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq following the vote on the constitution next month. Murtha represents Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district in the southwestern part of the state, and as someone who grew up not far from there, I can assure you that this is a bastion of socially conservative, blue-collar, pro-military “values voters” (think “Reagan Democrats”). If the Bush administration’s Iraq policy is losing these folks, it’s not clear who’s going to support it (apart from a handful of pundits and bloggers).

As the Inquirer puts it:

Murtha’s 30-year voting record matches his lunch-pail constituency: He supported the Reagan administration’s Central America policy, opposed gun controls, and favored display of the Ten Commandments.

And Murtha is no flaky fringe figure, but a well-respected military expert and ex-Marine who served in Vietnam.

In staking out such a strong stance, the steel-country centrist from Western Pennsylvania gave Democrats a sober, pro-military voice to argue the case against the war. Murtha sided with his party’s liberal wing, not with Democrats who want a phased pullout or want Bush to set a departure timetable.

You can read the text of Rep. Murtha’s speech on the war here.

Church-related organizations like Lutheran World Relief have really jumped on the “fair trade coffee” bandwagon. I sometimes, but not always, buy fair trade coffee and have never been able to make up my mind whether it actually does any good.

This article (via Byzantine Calvinist) argues that it doesn’t:

In fact, in this type of low-entry barrier market, a program like fair trade coffee can’t effectively raise the well-being of third world coffee growers by paying them more. Doing so would raise the returns to coffee production relative to other activities and would induce more farmers to produce coffee. This would expand the supply until the price farmers receive dropped back to the subsistence level. The only way to prevent that from happening is to prevent farmers around the world from entering the market or producing more, or to limit who receives fair-trade prices. These tactics, by arbitrarily selecting beneficiaries, really would be unjust.

Who’s right here? And how does the average consumer tell? And do our individual purchasing decisions make a difference, or is that just moral narcissism?