Leddihn & McAtee on the Impact of Religion

“Of all the ‘external’ elements shaping the character of individuals as well as of groups religion is, perhaps, the strongest. This should not surprise us, because every higher religion offers us an almost complete picture of a meaningful universe; it points out a destination and a way. It is, therefore, self-evident that different religions involve different ways of life: they will influence our temperaments.We should never underestimate the effect of such other factors as geography, meteorology, biology, nourishment, history, sociology; yet the great changes resulting from the conversion of large groups cannot leave us unimpressed. Even after a short time, entirely new behavior patterns emerge. One has only to compare the inhabitants of Catholic and of Protestant islands in the Hebrides in order to appreciate the importance of the religious factor; or to compare villages belonging to these two different religious communities in central Germany, in Hungary, in the Netherlands, Latvia or Switzerland. An invisible line divides the cultural patterns of these communities, even thought they speak the same language and obey the same laws.”

Liberty or Equality — pg. 179
Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

1.) Don’t miss that we are talking here of “external” elements. Religion is external inasmuch as it is that which is from outside of us (from above) that forms the man and/or people. It is an outside element that adjusts our most inward dispositions. It is an outside element that shapes both the individual and the the institutions and social order that ends up contributing in shaping us.

There are internal elements as well that have need to be considered. For example, who God has made us to be in our generations — our very DNA — is a great factor to be considered in this matter of the factors that shape character. Religion, as an external element, never works to shape the character of individuals or people groups apart from whom God has made them to be in their very corporeality.

To insist that religion is that alone which forms a man or people group would be fall into the error of Gnosticism.  To insist that heredity alone forms a man or people group would be to fall into the errors of materialism. To insist that man can be only understood in terms of his environment would be the error of Skinnerian Behaviorism.

2.) For those with eyes to see, all of life is a carefully choreographed religious dance. From our habits, to our social order, to our Institutions, to our inventions, to our calendars, to our shopping malls, to our entertainments, to our art, to our science, to our fashions, everything is screaming our religion and so our Theology. Our everyday life is ablaze with theological meaning and significance. This is so true that we can paraphrase Lenin by saying, “culture is but a mere continuation of religion.” For those with eyes to see looking at a culture and a social order is to look upon religion in action.

3.) The great lie of Modernity and Anabaptist and R2K theology  is that religion can be cordoned off and isolated to some private realm. One can insist on this aberration all they like but the passion of the insistence does not make it so. The great error of all Enlightenment project thinking is that reality can be compartmentalized into air-tight compartments that have little or no relation to one another. This lack of systemic thinking has been the genesis for the elimination of Biblical Christianity and the rise of Humanism.

4.) Note that not even a shared language and shared laws can strip the impact of different religions upon the same people. We see this in spades today. Cultural Marxist Americans from the same families are radically different from Biblical Christians from the same families. Even family members who differ in their Christianities, let’s say Pentecostal vs. Roman Catholic vs. Reformed,  are going to be very different in the way that people who hold to those different faiths lean into life, in the their disposition and attitudes, in the way they lean into life.  The more exacting each is, in regard to their faith, the more sharp the contrasts.

Sermon Notes — John 6:1-21

Introduction

The Importance of Gathered Worship

As we enter into worship again we are reminded that the Church has always held this “time of gathered worship” to be “sacred” or a uniquely “set apart” time. It is as if we have stepped out of one reckoning of Time that is itself, by God’s sanctification of it, “Holy” into another reckoning of Time that is doubly sanctified by God as “Holy of Holies.” Apart from this Holy of Holy time of worship other time cannot find its own proper set apartness. In entering into Worship we have thus entered into a different kind of time. Oh, to be sure, the second and minute hand on the clock moves in the same way, and the cares and concerns of that other time are still with us, but in this sacred worship time we are reoriented ourselves to the things that matter most. In this Time meaning for all other time finds its meaning and so we find our meaning. The sacredness of Worship time is not found in the Minister — except as he serves as God’s spokesman, nor in the Church pews or building itself but the sacredness of Worship time is found in the fact that the Sovereign of the Universe has gathered His people to meet with them during this time around Word and Sacrament.

We might likewise speak of the sacredness of this space. All space is Holy as set apart unto God but this space at this time we might carefully and judiciously speak of as Holy of Holy space. Made sacred by the fact that God has condescended to meet with us in this space at this time via Word and Sacrament. It is not the building itself nor the sanctuary itself that makes the space sacred as if the building and sanctuary in and of themselves carried this quality but the building and sanctuary have sacredness to them as the place where God meets with man around God’s appointed means of Grace.

This idea then is extended to the Church calendar. We are a unique people who, because of our being named and owned by Christ are oriented to the world differently. We find that different orientation contained in the way we mark time. As we come week by week we are reminded that it is because we belong to the God of the Bible and His Christ we think differently even about the way we mark or time. Our Church calendar reminds us we are to relate to time and seasons as a uniquely Christian people. The Church calendar  lifts us out of the naked presentism that this present wicked age would press upon our minds, thus insisting that the “now” is all there is, and reminds us again that we are a people, who, because of our connection to our Christian past and our Christian Fathers, are future oriented. The Church calendar reminds us that in belonging to God and His Christ we belong to a people who though being dead still speak.

Thus Worship is set apart time in set apart space reorienting us to the past, present and future in such a way that we can spend all our time as living in the presence of God, to God’s glory.

None of this is magic or superstition. It is God who is doing all the doing not us.

I.) Miraculous Feedings as OT Anticipation

Well, as we come to the text this week

As we consider the text this week we once again come up against the idea of Miracle. The Scripture’s concept of “miracle” we note again is characterized by those happenings not explicable by solely natural processes and so can be thought of only as being done by the finger of God. In John’s Gospel particularly Miracles are seen as sign gifts providing some revelation of who the Lord Christ is as very God of very God.

We should note here, briefly, that because miracles are so carefully defined in Scripture we should be careful in using that word to describe events today. In the proliferation of the usage of the word “miracle” miracles become less and less miraculous. It is like our usage of the word “awesome.” If everything is “awesome” then awesome loses its punch.

So we come to John’s text and we note at the outset that John himself gives us the theme or purpose of this passage at the end of the first miracle recorded here,

John 6:14 — “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!”

Obviously, the purpose of the miracle here confirms Christ as the greater Prophet that God promised would one day come. Way back in Dt. 18 God had said to Israel,

Dt. 18:15 — “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—

And earlier then that this great Prophet had been spoken of,

Gen. 49:10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
    nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him;[a]
    and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

In the Miracles here in John 6 , Jesus is giving His credentials as that Prophet that is a greater Prophet then Moses … indeed a Prophet who is very God of very God yet remaining very Man of very man.

The Miracle here preformed by our Lord Christ has Old Testament legs and so is just the kind of Miracle that the people might expect that one greater than Moses is in their midst. That is to say that the record of Scripture as it pertains to God’s prophet feeding God’s people suggest to us that the promised King who would bring in His Kingdom would be someone who supernaturally feeds His people.

In the creation account we find God creating a world where God tells His people how He has provided food for them,

Genesis 1:29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.

So from the beginning we see God as the God who provides His people food to eat.

This theme is articulated in Psalm 145

The eyes of all look to you,
    and you give them their food in due season.
16 You open your hand;
    you satisfy the desire of every living thing.

This theme crops up  in the age of the Prophets where the two greatest Prophets of that age demonstrate their role as “men of God” by feeding God’s people miraculously.

Elijah and the Widow from Zarephath

I Kings 17:11 And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” 12 And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” 13 And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. 14 For thus says theLord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’”15 And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. 16 The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.

Elisha & the 100 men

II Kings 4

42 A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. And Elisha said, “Give to the men, that they may eat.” 43 But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred men?” So he repeated, “Give them to the men, that they may eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’”44 So he set it before them. And they ate and had some left, according to the word of the Lord.

But the account that this feeding here is likely hearkening back to in the clearest manner is How God fed His people under the leadership of the Great Moses.

Notice how the text starts,

After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias.

God providentially ordains events so that there is a kind of recapitulation going on here. This idea of recapitulation, you will recall, is the idea that an OT story is being told again in some way but only with time with the Lord Christ as He who is the fulfillment of all that was anticipatory or shadowed in the Old covenant.

II.) The Lord Christ As the Greater Moses

This real historical event is happening in such a way that a previous historical event is paralleled.  This is set in a kind of wilderness area just as Moses was with the children of Israel in the Wilderness when they were hungry. There is language of Jesus going up a Mountain which draws our memories back to Moses’ Mountain ascent to be in God’s presence. As Moses will announce God’s intent to feed His people with the Bread of Heaven, the Lord Christ feeds the people with supernaturally multiplied bread and fish. The Lord Christ is the greater and long anticipated prophet that Moses spoke of.

There is an interesting contrast here though.

Like Moses, Jesus does feed the multitude in the wilderness. Moses asked God, “Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they come weeping to me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat!’” (Numbers 11:13).  Jesus asks a similar question of Philip (5) thus joining the two accounts more firmly together,

“Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”

but the difference between the two questions is found in the fact that while Moses needed God to provide Jesus already knew that He, as God, would provide (vs. 6)

“he himself knew what he was going to do”

Now combine all this that John tell us that all this is happening in the context of Passover soon to be celebrated and the idea that Jesus is a greater Moses is being screamed at us from the text.

So there is recapitulation all over this text. We have mentioned some of those points. Others would include how the supernatural feeding and the salvation from the threats of the sea are combined together. This parallels the Exodus account of being delivered from the Sea and the manna being provided in the wilderness. In both accounts instructions are given to gather up the remains (6:12, Ex. 16:19). In both story accounts you have complaining from people (cmp. vs. 41 w/ Ex. 16:2)

III.) Excursus … Miracles associated w/ Food and Drink
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As an aside here isn’t it fascinating to note all the Miracles that are associated with food and drink? The first Miracle was in Cana of Galilee at a Marriage feast where water was turned into the finest of wines. Feeding of the 5000. Feeding of the 4000. Cursing of the Fig tree because it did not provide food.
Then there is the establishment of the Eucharist in the context of the eating and drinking of the Passover. The promise of Christ to the Disciples, “But I say to you, I will not drink from now on of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom,” reminds us that there will be this table fellowship in Heaven. Finally, in Revelation, the promises to those who overcome are to eat the tree of life (2:7), to enjoy the hidden manna (2:17), and to dine with the Lord (3:20). All of this is suggestive of a sermon that could stand by itself.

IV.) Christ; The Bread Come Down From Heaven — Cross speak

We would not have done this text justice though if we were to have stopped here. The fact that the Lord Christ is a greater Moses is only penultimate to the thrust of the Miracle. As we learn later in this chapter the ultimate purpose of the Miracle is to point to Christ as He who is the Bread from Heaven. The Lord Christ is the bread of God who comes down from heaven and gives His life for the World (John 6:33).

This passage reminds us again that there is no life apart from Christ who was broken by God on the Cross as God’s Bread for God’s people. Those who refuse this bread of heaven remain dead from their spiritual malnutrition. Christ was broken that we might be made whole and there is no wholeness for those who remain apart from Christ crucified, risen and ascended.

Again we are reminded that there is no life outside of Christ. All adherents of other religions must repent before Christ and His work on the Cross. If men remain outside of Christ they remain outside of God’s favor. Because we are pro-Christ we are anti all other religions and proclaim that they are death. Because we are pro-rege we must tell adherents, out of a compassionate love for them, that they are dead men walking apart from Christ.

Conclusion

Re-cap

Redemptive History
Brief refutation — Higher Critical methodology
Harmony of Scriptures — Read Scripture as one book

Thumbnail Sketch of James K. A. Smith’s “Desiring the Kingdom”

Finished James K. A. Smith’s “Desiring the Kingdom; Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation.” There are some quality ideas in the book about the way pagan culture works in us to shape us via its liturgies. I was glad for this reminder of the necessity to be epistemologically self conscious about what is seeking to form me. There are also some excellent reflections on what happens in our Church liturgies from the opening of God’s Greeting to the closing of the Benediction.  So good are these insights that I can recommend this book just for that chapter.

However, having said that Smith’s idea that the social imaginary has priority over a Christian worldview is not convincing. In this argumentation Smith is tipping his postmodern hand over and over again as seen in the advocacy of narrative over discourse, and the use of a host of what might be characterized as false dichotomies; orthopraxy precedes orthodoxy, instinct trumps rationality, animal desire precedes human reflection, heart informs mind, liturgy shapes worldveiw, habit creates thinking about habit, social imaginary over worldview thinking, and pre-cognitive over cognitive.

The idea that a sanctified imagination is to be prioritized and preferred above sanctified rational thought begs any number of questions. For example, Smith insists that liturgy trumps worldview and yet our Churches are Liturgy thick with little to show in terms of Christ formation. Smith might well counter that we have to re-think our Liturgy and that might well be true but how do we re-think our liturgy without using a worldview to correct a weak liturgy?

Smith’s insistence that the heart (desire) takes precedence over the mind (rational) is thin at best and dangerous at worst. The very idea that the heart and mind are to be dichotomized like this is the work of some kind of dualistic fever. When it comes to the use of the word “heart” in Scripture a survey reveals, when taken in context, that approximately 8 out of 10 verses in Scripture that what is being spoken of is a person’s mind. 1 out of 10 verses relate the heart to volition. Another 1 of 10 verses have the heart standing for the emotions. This indicates that in its overwhelming usage in Scripture heart and mind are synonymous. Smith makes too much capital out of the difference between head and heart. 

Having said that Smith does lay his finger on the pulse of a real problem in the Church in the West today and that is the fact that so many of our children in both our Churches and our Church colleges end up having a Christianity that is only marginally different then the paganism all around them. Somewhere, Christian worldview training isn’t enough. Now, for my money I would say that is due to the fact that we are allowing the culture to interpret us as opposed to or interpreting the culture. Our Christian worldview training is failing because, at the end of the day it is not getting to the essence of thinking God’s thoughts after him. Smith realizes this and is to be lauded for that realization however, I am not convinced that his solution of a consecrated imagination as shaped and formed by worship habits is the answer. In fact, I’m convinced it is not the answer. Indeed, the answer that Smith offers up sounds to much like the idea that the Worship service is to be used as a vehicle of manipulation to form people quite without their being aware of how they are being formed. I fear there is more of Edward Bernays in Smith’s theories then there are Jesus Christ.

At the end of the book Smith changes focus to the Christian University and as he explains his vision I think what Smith wants to build is a Christian commune as a University. He prescribes potentials courses which would reduce the amount of academic work in favor of “learning to read a stranger in a coffee shop,” or to be involved in matters that are directly related to “issues of poverty.” Given the disappearance of the Christian mind in the West today this idea strikes me as potentially disastrous if it was to be followed.

Smith’s book has much to recommend it and I think it is well worth a read but at the end of the day his worldview about social imaginary is not a worldview that I can regard as wholesome.

HOOVER CHRONICLES FDR’S FAILURES WHICH BROUGHT US TO WAR (IX)

The tenth loss of statesmanship was the refusal to accept the proposals which his (FDR) Ambassador informed him came from the Emperor of Japan for a three months’ stand still agreement in November, 1941. Our military officials strongly urged it on Roosevelt. Japan was then alarmed that Russia might defeat her ally, Hitler. Ninety days’ delay would have taken all the starch out of Japan and kept war out of the Pacific. As the Stimson (Sec’y of State) diary disclosed, Roosevelt and his officials were searching for a method to stimulate an overt act from the Japanese. Then Hull issued his foolish ultimatum and we were defeated at Pearl Harbor.

The train of losses and this Japanese victory in the Japanese occupation of all South Asia were incalculable. Further, with the loss of sea control, Hitler and Togo were able to destroy our shipping in sight of our own shores.

The eleventh gigantic error in Roosevelt’s statesmanship was demand for “Unconditional Surrender” at Casablanca in January, 1943, where without our military, or even Churchill’s advice, he was seeking a headline. It played into the hands of every enemy militarist and propagandist; it prolonged the war with Germany, Japan, and Italy. And in the end major concessions in surrender were given to both Japan and Italy. It held out no hope of peace to the Germans if they got rid of the Nazis. The war to the bitter end left no semblance of a structure in Germany upon which to build again.

President Herbert Hoover
Freedom Betrayed; Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War
and Its Aftermath — pg. 879-880

Thumbnail Sketch on Devlin’s “Sexual Utopia in Power”

I Finished, F. Roger Devlin’s “Sexual Utopia in Power; The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization,” late last night.
 
Devlin, not a Christian, gives a book that amounts to an apologetic for men in the ongoing war between the sexes. Devlin takes note of the decline in marriage as well as the decline in the success of marriage in the West and lays the responsibility for that clearly at the foot of Feminism and its destructive ideology.
 
Devlin insists that the old bromides of generations past of women’s role in marriage, of stereotypes of women as naturally inclined to monogamy, of the sanctity of marriage held by women, of women needing protection, have all been exploded with Feminism and the old answers to cure these problems from conservatives no longer are valid and likewise are part of the problem.
 
Devlin offers a rousing approach to these problems inasmuch as he insists that women have to have a mirror held before them for their contribution to the current conflict of interests that exists between men and women. Devlin holds feminist women responsible for the shambles in which our marriage culture currently finds itself.
 
Along the way Devlin takes on the Divorce culture in the West and demonstrates that it exists as a money making enterprise for those cottage industries of the State that have sprang up around divorce and so now support divorce. Devlin rightly notes the absolute carnage that “Family courts” create. He notes the impossible demands that Judges and social workers make upon men who are ground up by these courts.
 
Along the way Devlin notes the tools used by Feminism to support the Monstrous regime of women in which we currently live. Devlin insists that matters like “date rape,” and “sexual harassment” are largely contrived crimes created in order to support doctrinaire feminism.
 
Devlin insists that women must be forced to live with the consequences of their choices, explaining that as matters stand now the irresponsibility of women is subsidized and winked at by our current feminist system. Devlin says that men who refuse to marry are merely playing the cards dealt them in terms of the feminist zeitgeist. Why should men marry when the norm in our culture is for men to be abused by women shaped by feminism? Devlin also intimates that no man who is a man will put up with this feminist behavior as coming from a wife or girlfriend.
 
Devlin freely admits at the beginning of this book that he is not interested in considering men’s problems in the current situation. He contends that there are plenty of others sources out there if people are interested in looking into that. Devlin insists that he is doing something that men refuse to do out of their inbred sense to “protect the woman” and that he is turning a light on how the women we are protecting are feminist hags that wish to destroy men.
 
One of Devlin’s better insights in my estimation is his noting how the failures of Feminism guarantee the success of feminism as each failure is explained by feminists as resulting because we are not feminist enough. Consequently, oddly enough, the more that Feminism fails, the more it succeeds.
 
Devlin sees this crisis as the death of the West unless something is done quickly to correct this state of affairs.