Adam and the Magi

Last updated on: January 2, 2022 at 6:18 pm By Gene Veith

Happy Epiphany, the day in the church year that commemorates the coming of the Wise Men to the baby Jesus! This day, January 6, has been called “the Christmas of the Gentiles” and is a major celebration in some countries. (Among other things, it is the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas, so it’s when the Christmas decorations are taken down.)

The word is both a theological and a literary term meaning revelation, manifestation, or recognition. The season of Epiphany follows on subsequent Sundays with other “epiphanies” of Jesus; that is, times when He was revealed and recognized as the Son of God: His baptism; His first miracle at the wedding of Cana; then other events in the life of Christ; culminating in the Transfiguration. The Epiphany season leads right up to Lent.

Read what Luther has to say about Epiphany from a sermon I blogged about a few years ago, which includes reflections on the Bible story, the necessity of the Word of God, and vocation.

The text about the visitation of the Wise Men, Matthew 2:1-12, is very rich, as Luther shows. I am still learning from it. Last Sunday, Pastor Moerbe pointed out a curious fact. When the Magi came in search of the newly born King of the Jews whose star they had seen in the East, they went to King Herod, who sensibly consulted the “chief priests and scribes,” who sensibly consulted the Bible. And those Bible scholars of the day found the correct answer:

Assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:

“‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’” (Matthew 2:4-6)

The Magi followed this Scriptural truth and found the Christ child. Herod even followed this Scriptural truth, though in wickedness, sending his troops to murder all Bethlehem children under two years old. The one group mentioned in the account that did not go to Bethlehem to seek the promised Messiah was the Bible scholars! The chief priests and scribes knew with great accuracy what the Bible taught, and yet they did not seek Christ, whether in hostility or in worship, and so their scriptural knowledge was in vain.

I also benefited from a post at Anxious Bench by Baylor historian Philip Jenkins. He wrote about a series of legends that grew up around the Magi. He alerted me to a 4th or 5th century text from the Syriac-speaking Eastern church called The Book of the Cave of Treasures. It says that Adam, after his Fall, brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the mountain of Paradise and hid them in what would be called “The Cave of Treasures.” Before his death, Adam instructed his son Seth to see that the treasures would be offerings to God, when He comes into the world to die and rise again “for all children of Adam.” Thousands of years later, this is what the Magi did, giving Adam’s treasure as an offering to the incarnate God.

The Book of the Cave of Treasures also says that Adam was buried beneath a mountain outside what would become the city of Jerusalem. A tree would grow from that grave and be made into a cross. The mountain would be called Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, and the skull beneath its surface was Adam’s.

And when the Wood [the cross] was fixed upon it, and Christ was smitten with the spear, and blood and water flowed down from His side, they ran down into the mouth of Adam, and they became a baptism to him, and he was baptized.

The point of The Book of the Cave of Treasures is not to recount what actually happened, as if it were a historical text. Rather, it is an imaginative meditation on the meaning of Christ’s coming to redeem all of us fallen children of Adam. It shows the connections between the Fall and the Redemption, Christmas and Easter, Adam and Jesus.

The book may not be true in its facts, but it is true in its meaning: We offer to Jesus all of our human treasures. The human race is baptized in Jesus’s blood. This is the significance of Epiphany.

Image: “Adoration of the Magi,” by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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The Book of Concord App from Flame & Lex Lutheran

Last updated on: January 2, 2022 at 4:38 pm By Gene Veith

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I’ve blogged about Flame, a.k.a. Marcus Gray, the rapper who became a Lutheran, to the point of getting an M.A. in theology from Concordia Seminary.

I came across something by him in which he tells us a little more about himself including his “passion for vocation,” introduces us to some more African-American tech-savvy Lutherans with a zeal for evangelism, and announces his latest project: A Book of Concord app.

From Lutheran Forum:

In all of my years of theological training I had never come across The Book of Concord. I was immersed in the world of Calvinism and the Protestant Reformation—movements which claim Luther as their own—and yet I heard nothing about the confessional documents he wrote or guided into being. There is high regard for Martin Luther in Calvinistic circles, yet the important differences between Lutheran theology and Calvinism are kept at bay—intentionally so, it seems. Through a series of events, I ended up at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and discovered the hidden treasure of the Lutheran confessions. My life has not been the same since. The Book of Concord has expanded my joy in the faith, further grounded my assurance in salvation, and stimulated my passion for vocation.

This passion for vocation is what led me to develop a Book of Concord app. As I began to navigate my way through Lutheran circles, I eventually discovered The Wittenberg Project Youtube channel. The Wittenberg Project was founded by Tyree Toney—known popularly online as “Lex Lutheran”—and includes a collection of gentlemen from the African diaspora, including Alfredo Bullen of Panama (also known as “Athanasius”), who have found their theological home in Lutheranism. Our camaraderie around the confessions nurtured us in the faith and inspired us to bring what we had come to cherish to a digital format. We wanted to see an app for the Book of Concord that was accessible to the public so that others may be blessed as we have been blessed. I now contend that if you value theology, the simplicity of God’s word structured in an organized way, and own any type of systematic theology book, you also must own a Book of Concord—despite, or in spite, of your denominational heritage. It’s that important.

It’s exciting and inspiring for me to learn about this movement of young black Christians who want to get the word out about Lutheranism. Take a look at The Wittenberg Project channel on Youtube. Note what Tyree Toney, a.k.a. “Lex Lutheran,” and the others have to say. and be sure to read the comments to see how their message is resonating with the audience. I knew the LCMS has a genuine presence in the black community–I’ve met some wonderful black pastors in the LCMS and worshipped in some wonderful predominantly black congregations–and I’m glad to see this kind of confessional vitality combined with a zeal to reach others.

As for the Book of Concord App, it’s entitled Evangelical Catholic–an old descriptive term for what Lutheranism is about, the centrality of the Gospel and the Bible (like other “evangelicals”) integrated with the sacraments and historic Christianity (like other “catholics”)–and is available for $1.99 at the App store for both iPhones and Android phones. Go here for a preview.

The App has the classic Book of Concord text (from the English translation in the multi-language Triglotta) and, in addition, it has evangelistic and apologetic tools: A section on Luther’s explanations of what faith is; a rebuttal of Calvinism, drawing on the Book of Concord; and a list of resources on Lutheranism, not only books but online sites. It also includes Biblical references to back up the articles of the creeds, a useful addition in trying to persuade “non-creedal” Christians that the creeds are true.

Get the App for your phone! This is a project worth supporting and using!

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Revising the First and Second Amendments

Last updated on: January 1, 2022 at 8:20 pm By Gene Veith

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One of the predictions I was going to make for 2022 was that, given various frustrations from both the left and the right about liberal democracy and the progressives’ discrediting of the American Founders, we would start to see proposals to completely rewrite the Constitution or to replace it completely.

Well, this has already happened in 2021. See my July post Proposing a New Constitution. And the new ideas and the proposals keep coming.

As part of a series from the Boston Globe entitled Editing the Constitution containing many other suggested changes, Mary Anne Franks, law professor at the University of Miami, is proposing a rewrite of the first and second amendments to the Bill of Rights. In her article entitled Redo the First Two Amendments, she says that since speech and guns are such contentious issues today, we need to “edit’ the Constitution so as to make the current guarantees less individualistic and less flawed in their conceptualization of what rights are.

Her suggestions are very telling about how progressive scholars are thinking about liberty and about human rights. To clarify the contrast between the language of the Bill of Rights and the alternative language she is advocating, I will first give the Amendments as they are now, followed by Prof. Franks’ new version.

Article I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Compare that with the proposed new version:

Every person has the right to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and petition of the government for redress of grievances, consistent with the rights of others to the same and subject to responsibility for abuses. All conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.

Both the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion shall be respected by the government. The government may not single out any religion for interference or endorsement, nor may it force any person to accept or adhere to any religious belief or practice.

The original is succinct and objective. “Congress shall make no law” respecting or prohibiting or abridging a series of specific actions or endeavors. The new version is subjective, focusing on “expression.” More to the point, it leaves out completely “freedom of the press,” apparently under the assumption that what gets published, either in newspapers or books, is personal “expression,” rather than efforts to find and record truth.

Even more to the point, notice how these rights and freedoms are open to restriction. Every person has the right to freedom of expression, etc., “subject to responsibility for abuses.” Questions on the matter will be adjudicated by the government: “All conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.” Notice the invocation of a higher principle that will trump these rights: “the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.” As someone has noted, for progressives, the Equal Rights Amendment has a higher priority that the Bill of Rights, a notion enshrined in this revision.

But this is nothing compared to what Prof. Franks does with the Second Amendment:

Article II. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

All people have the right to bodily autonomy consistent with the right of other people to the same, including the right to defend themselves against unlawful force and the right of self-determination in reproductive matters. The government shall take reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of the public as a whole.

She does away with the right to keep and bear firearms, turning it into a more generic right to self-defense. I suppose the implements that may be used to defend oneself must likewise be adjudicated. But she defines self-defense in terms of “the right to bodily autonomy.” From there, she creates a constitutional right to abortion!

Revising the Second Amendment so that it no longer protects gun rights but instead protects abortion rights is outrageous on the face of it. But the mindset behind doing so is extraordinarily revealing. Abortion is understood as an act of self-defense. In this way of thinking, a woman must have the right to defend herself with deadly force against the baby she is pregnant with.

Evidently, the baby has no “right to bodily autonomy” that might be balanced against “the right of other people to the same.” “The government shall take reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of the public as a whole,” but not to individuals, and certainly not to individual children.

The Bill of Rights rests on a specific set of assumptions, which are set forth in another founding document:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–

Once these truths are no longer self-evident, when rights are not grounded in creation and endowed by the Creator, they are no longer “unalienable”–that is, incapable of being taken away–becoming instead benefits granted by governments, and ultimately destructive of life, liberty, and happiness.

HT: Paul Veith

Image: Bill Of Rights by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free.org via the Blue Diamond Gallery

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Religion in 2021

Last updated on: December 27, 2021 at 3:12 pm By Gene Veith

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The Year of Our Lord 2021 was a telling time for religion.

The Bible was used by both sides of the COVID wars. According to the online Bible study resource BibleGateway, the verse that saw the biggest jump in users looking it up was Leviticus 13:45-46:

Anyone with such a defiling disease must wear torn clothes, let their hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of their face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ As long as they have the disease they remain unclean. They must live alone; they must live outside the camp. (NIV)

From the Levitical laws about leprosy, people concluded, “See! Wearing masks to prevent infection is Biblical! So is social distancing! So is quarantining!” (See the other translations.)

Then again, the search term that saw the biggest jump of 2021 was “sorcery.” This is because the Greek word for that forbidden practice in Galatians 5:20 and Revelation 18:23 is pharmakeia, which is also the source of our words for “pharmacy,” “pharmaceuticals,” and thus “Big Pharma.” Sorcerers used potions, which included drugs and herbal medicine, so the word got transferred to modern medicines. In 2021, some Christians used the prohibition against pharmakeia, as in sorcery, as a prohibition against pharmaceuticals, as in vaccines.

Both of these COVID readings would seem to reflect the attempt to use the Bible to justify one’s own positions. That is, trying to find Bible verses that can prove that I am right. As opposed to the proper use of the Bible, to show just how wrong I am, convicting me of my sinful and lost condition, and then bringing me to the good news of God’s grace and forgiveness in Christ. We are all sinful and unclean from the leprosy of sin, but Christ heals lepers like us by having mercy on us and bringing us to faith (See Luke 17:11-19).

And we are unable to avoid the “works of the flesh”–“sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Gal 19-21)–just by refusing to get a vaccine. The flesh must be crucified with Christ: “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:24).

But such conflation of the sacred with the secular characterized much of the way religion was perceived in 2021, both by its critics and its practitioners.

The Religion News Association, comprised of the nation’s reporters who cover religion, named President Joe Biden as “the religion newsmaker of the year,” both for his overt Catholicism and his rejection of Catholic teaching about abortion. The top story was that “Religion features prominently during the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump insurrectionists. Some voice Christian prayers, while others display Christian or pagan symbols and slogans inside and outside the Capitol.”

But was there really a substantive connection between religion and the January 6 Capitol riots? Notice how even in a story slamming Christians with guilt by association, there is the obligatory interfaith ecumenism: Christians prayers and symbols are complemented with “pagan symbols and slogans.” I haven’t seen any articles on how pagans were complicit in electing Donald Trump and in staging an insurrection to keep him in office, but that story begs to be written. That both pagans and Christians were on the same side suggests that the riots were not a religious exercise, much less an evangelical venture, since Christianity and paganism don’t mix. (See the entry before “sorcery” in the list of “works of the flesh,” above.)

See the rest of the top 10 religion stories of the year, which mostly focuses on politics, COVID controversies, and scandals. Another retrospective, presenting more of a viewpoint from inside the church, comes from Collen Hansen of the Gospel Coalition, My Top 10 Theology Stories of 2021. The list has some of the same entries as the Religious News Association list. For example, Hansen too rates the Capitol riots as the number one story, but as an example of the curious theological development of Christian nationalism. He also has things to say about the scandals and other divisions splitting Baptists and other evangelicals. I appreciated his observation that debates within these circles have led to a rediscovery of the church fathers in evangelicalism (a healthy development, in my opinion) and to his thoughts about how some “trend-setting pastors” are embracing the metaverse as a way to do church (an unhealthy development, in my opinion).

The big religious developments of 2021, though, are not what makes the news or defines institutional trends. Rather, they have to do with what is unseen–faith wrought by the Holy Spirit in an infant who is baptized; receiving Christ’s body and blood; loving and serving one’s neighbor in vocation; and other mighty realities that evade quantification. “We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Photo: D.C. Capitol Storming by TapTheForwardAssist, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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No, Luther Isn’t to Blame for Subjectivism

Last updated on: December 11, 2021 at 4:25 pm By Gene Veith

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Another non-Lutheran fan of Luther vs. conservatives who blame him for modern subjectivism. . . .

A Reformed theologian defends Luther in mostly-Catholic First Things. It’s a post by Carl Trueman–not such a surprise, since he is an accomplished Luther scholar–entitled Blame It on Luther?

He is discussing an article by Casey Chalk entitled The Autonomous Self is a Coercive God at the conservative site Public Discourse. Prof. Trueman agrees with his main point:

Yet I dissent from Chalk’s genealogy of modernity. He goes on to argue that this notion of the autonomous, emotivist self can be traced to Martin Luther. In part this is because Chalk depends upon Jacques Maritain’s Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau for his reading of Luther. Luther is simply not the great apostle of subjectivism that Maritain claims he is. It may well be that subjectivism is where the Protestant Reformation led, but it was certainly neither Luther’s intention nor his own stated position. The debate with Zwingli over the reality of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is the most obvious example of his concern for objective truth detached from the individual’s own beliefs, though one might also point to his notion of conscience as formed by the Word of God in the context of the Christian life, not as some principle of autonomous personal judgment. Whether Luther’s positions on these issues proved stable in the long run is a matter for debate. The point is that he was wrestling with how to balance objective truth and personal commitment (an issue found throughout the New Testament). He was not arguing for human beings as isolated, atomized human beings.

Indeed. Chalk says this (my bolds):

Luther expounds a theology that seeks to assure the Christian of the certainty of his salvation, based on the former Augustinian monk’s interpretation of several key Pauline passages. For this, Luther necessarily must shift the locus of metaphysical certitude in one’s spiritual well-being away from external, objective criteria like the sacraments toward subjective ones, namely, the autonomous self reading the Bible.

Does any Lutheran–that is, someone who is part of a church body in which Luther’s theology is regularly taught and lived through–believe this, or even recognize it as coming from their church? That we should look for our spiritual well-being “away from external, objective criteria like the sacraments toward subjective ones”? Isn’t it rather the opposite? Aren’t we always being told not to focus on our subjective feelings and to look instead at “objective criteria like the sacraments” for the assurance of our salvation? Have you ever heard the recommendation of “the autonomous self reading the Bible”? We read the Bible–with the help of our pastors, the Book of Concord, and the glosses of the Lutheran Study Bible and such like looking over our shoulders–not autonomously, as in we can interpret it any way we want, but as one of those “objective criteria” that we can hold on to, over against our selves.

The thing is, this kind of utter ignorance about Luther and the penchant for blaming him for subjectivism and for all the other pathologies of modernity can be found over and over again, especially in conservative cultural critiques. That is to say, in conservative cultural critiques written by Roman Catholics, particularly the “integralists,” who call for a return to the temporal authority of the papacy over secular politics and who are playing a prominent role in the new varieties of conservativism that are critical of liberty, free-market, and Constitutional conservatism.

I understand why they would need to discredit Luther, who strenuously attacked the Pope’s claim to temporal authority–arguing that secular rulers themselves have an authority from God, by virtue of their vocation, and that the Church is not about worldly power but about the Kingdom of Heaven–but they shouldn’t make him a straw man for what they don’t like about radical Protestants, whom Luther opposed with all his might, let alone “subjectivism” or “modernity” or “the autonomous self.”

Prof. Trueman goes on to show that the mindset that Chalk and Mauritain complain about has roots in the Middle Ages and the Medieval church long before Luther. The fact is, Prof. Trueman has written an excellent book on the actual history of the autonomous self, which needs to be read by anyone interested in the matter, whether Catholic or Protestant, liberal or conservative, or whatever kind of conservative you are: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution.

Illustration: Altarpiece, St. Mary’s church, Wittenberg, by Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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Giving Thanks and Saying Grace

Last updated on: November 23, 2021 at 11:56 am By Gene Veith

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Today is Thanksgiving, a day, by definition, to give thanks. And our exercise of gratitude centers around an abundant and delicious meal.

We give thanks before this meal, as many of us do before every meal. In fact, 50% of Americans “say grace” of some kind before meals, which is a larger percentage than go to church.

That’s a factoid from an article on the phenomenon by Emily Heil of the Washington Post entitled Saying grace: How a moment of thanks, religious or not, adds meaning to our meals.

She quotes people who used to not bother but then started the custom, in both cases cited through the influence of one of their children. Said a 38-year-old father:

“It’s just been lovely. I really dig the way it creates a structure. . . .Everyone has to get to the table and be together and not be distracted. We focus on where we are. . . .It creates a grounding feeling – a moment of stillness. . . .I feel like our dinners at home are much better now – like, ‘Now we are together, and this is what we’re doing.'”

She also quotes experts on the value of this practice. For example,

To [Kenneth] Minkema at the Yale Divinity School, grace serves several purposes. Reciting the same words together or participating in a regular ritual creates a feeling of connection with those around us, he says. “It serves to strengthen and confirm the bond of family or community,” he says. “It helps to acknowledge that we are one.” And across religions, it is also an acknowledgment of the source of the food before you. “There is the creator/God but also other people, the earth, and the moral responsibilities that go along with that,” he says. “It also has a way of pulling you inward and reminding you of those responsibilities.”

Thus, saying grace is a liturgy, which turns the family into a congregation.

Furthermore, giving thanks at meals has to do with that favorite theme of this blog, vocation. According to that important but oft-neglected Christian doctrine, God gives His gifts by means of human beings. He gives us our food by means of farmers, harvesters, truck drivers, warehouse workers, grocery store stockers, our own jobs that enable us to buy our food, and, to use a phrase that often crops up in mealtime prayers, “the hands that prepared it.” So in thanking God, we are expressing gratitude for everyone who works together for our sustenance and acknowledging God’s providence in and through them all.

The article goes on to survey the different forms that “saying grace” takes–traditional Christian prayers, informal spontaneous prayers, the practices of other religions, and secularized versions, such as the company holding hands and each saying for what and to whom they are grateful, with no reference to God at all.

I was gratified to see that the Lutheran common table prayer–“Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest/And let thy gifts to us be blest”–made the article, as something a non-Lutheran evangelical family has started to say. When I became a Lutheran, I considered that prayer to be a nursery-rhyming children’s kind of prayer, and a poor substitute for a personal spontaneous prayer (that is, the so-called ex corde prayer).

But now I appreciate that simple prayer. It opens with the penultimate verse of the Bible (Revelations 22:20), invokes Christ’s presence with us (a very Lutheran emphasis that also speaks of vocation in the family), acknowledges that the things we eat are Christ’s “gifts,” and asks for a blessing on the meal. That is a dense lot of profound praying in that little rhyme.

What we usually do is for one person, usually me, to pray ex corde for specific petitions and thanksgivings, and then all join together in the “Come, Lord Jesus.”

Actually, the old practice–still held to by a number of people I know–is to pray twice for your meal. The first time to bless the food. And the second time to give thanks for what you have eaten.

This is enshrined in the prayers that Luther gives in the Catechism, which I recommend highly, especially for special occasions like Thanksgiving:

Asking a Blessing

The children and members of the household shall go to the table reverently, fold their hands, and say:

The eyes of all look to You, [O LORD,] and You give them their food at the proper time. You open Your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. (Ps. 145: 15–16)

Then shall be said the Lord’s Prayer and the following:

Lord God, heavenly Father, bless us and these Your gifts which we receive from Your bountiful goodness, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Returning Thanks

Also, after eating, they shall, in like manner, reverently and with folded hands say:

Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good. His love endures forever. [He] gives food to every creature. He provides food for the cattle and for the young ravens when they call. His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor His delight in the legs of a man; the LORD delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love. (Ps. 136:1, 25; 147:9–11)

Then shall be said the Lord’s Prayer and the following:

We thank You, Lord God, heavenly Father, for all Your benefits, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen.

Illustration: A Family Saying Grace before a Meal by Anthuenis Claeissens (c.1536–1613), via Art UK, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Creative Commons-NC-ND License.

[Note the expression of the children in this painting, yearning for the invention of the “kids’ table.”]

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