2009 Biblical Horizons Conference

 

BIBLICAL HORIZONS 2009 BIBLE CONFERENCE

July 20-24

- Peter Leithart on Sex & Death in Leviticus 18 & 20. That’s right: the gross, sexy chapters. Three lectures projected. (How can you pass up attending these????)

- James B. Jordan on Learning Holy War at Sinai. Leviticus between Egypt and Canaan. Six lectures projected.

- Jeffrey Meyers on Cool Foot Luke. More amazing stuff on Luke than you can even imagine. Four lectures projected.

- Blake Purcell and Rich Bledsoe will also speak, once each at present.

- Begins Monday evening at 7:00 pm; ends Friday at 1:00 pm.

- Registration: $100 per person; $125 per family. (Sorry for the price hike, but stuff costs more than it did 20 years ago when we started.)

- Sung Vespers each evening, with “chanted” psalmody.

- Local airport is Northwest Florida Air Terminal (VPS).

- Motels: In Niceville there are three acceptable motels:

     Quality Inn (formerly Comfort Inn), price around $100/night.

     Comfort Suites (new), price around $130/night.

     Holiday Inn Express, price around $120/night.

I suggest you go to Expedia, Priceline, Hotels.com, etc. and see what you can get. If you are willing to drive 45 minutes each way, you might get a nice deal in Destin or Fort Walton Beach. If you need a roommate, let me know as soon as you can. There is also an el cheapo motel called Tisa’s Friendly Inn. If you don’t might el cheapo, phone them at 1-850-678-4164. For younger single people, it’s not all that bad, and not nearly as expensive.

Sanctus

http://biblicalhorizons.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/jordan_sanctus.pdf

 

Let’s see if this works. This should be a link to the Sanctus I put together for use at the Biblical Horizons Conferences. Some churches have been using it also. So, let’s see if this works.

Gold, Silver, & Precious Stones

[This essay was originally published in 1988. Given the situation that our new national socialists are getting the world into, I thought it might be useful to reprint it here. - JBJordan]

The Bible has quite a bit to say about gold, silver, and precious stones, and the Bible always assumes that these are items of value and to be valued by men. Yet, modern Christians sometimes feel strange about such things. After all, the Bible also speaks against placing trust in money and precious things.

My purpose in this essay is to investigate briefly the Biblical view of gold, silver, and precious stones. The Bible has a whole philosophy about these things, a philosophy that is not primarily economic but aesthetic, not oriented primarily toward scarcity but toward beauty. There is a reason for this, and it is important for a Christian view of economics, as we shall see.

Why Do Men Like Gold?

That is the question that comes before us first of all. Non-Christian “gold bug” economists really cannot give an answer to this question. They may say either of two things. They may say, “Gold is intrinsically valuable.” But that is nonsense. What is meant by “intrinsic value?” The very notion of value implies a subjective evaluation. Nothing has value in itself (except God, whom the humanist excludes from his thinking). Things are always valuable to somebody. Thus, non-Christian thinkers cannot say that gold (etc.) is intrinsically valuable.

The second answer is: “Well, for some reason most people and cultures have liked gold.” If you think about it, though, this is not an adequate answer either. It simply restates the question. (Why do men like gold? Because for some reason they do. Well, as we just asked, what is the reason?) Generally, the question is sidestepped. Lecturers on the virtues of gold say that gold is easily portable, divisible, and does not rust or tarnish. This sets it apart from other items of value. All very true, but why do men value it? Christian economists don’t always have the right answer either. Some go with the “objective” value approach, and say that gold is intrinsically valuable because God made it so. We have to say again, however, “what does this mean?” Especially from a Christian point of view, we ought not to be saying that things have value in themselves. Rather, they have value because they are valuable to someone, and for the Christian that someone is God Himself. But since this is the correct position, we must return to it after looking at one more error.

The Pastoral Function

I wrote this elsewhere and was encouraged to put it here. It is a comment on what a pastor is. Today, this is not very well understood, and God’s people suffer because of it.

There are four professions: medicine, education, law, and religion. Each of these, when done at a professional level, is marked by the wearing of a gown. A gown is a garment of leisure.

Each of these mandates that a man be paid to have leisure time. Do you want a busy M.D. looking over your general health? A busy judge deciding your case? A busy professor teaching you? A busy pastor? No, not if you’re sane. Each of these professions entails having lots of time to listen to people, and also lots of time to read and keep abreast.

That’s why real tentmaking, like Paul did, fits just fine with being a Christian minister. But a “day job” does not.

Each of these professions requires that a man have lots of time to listen to people and to reflect on what they have said. Also, each requires that a man have time to study and consult before making a life and death decision. In a sense, the academic professor is not making a life and death decision, as the judge, physician, and pastor is. Yet, he also needs time to sculpt and mold the mushy mind of his students.

This is why “parttime” pastors and ruling-elders as the same as pastors does not work and is a major problem. People instinctively know that the fulltime guy is the real pastor; unless he’s a jerk who keeps his door locked and thinks he’s a great scholar and is not available all the time to his people.

Lectures on Worship

Lectures on worship by James B. Jordan, delivered at the first meeting of the Eastern European branches of the Confederation of Reformation Churches in Budapest, are now up on line. The lectures were delivered in English without translation. You can hear them, and also lectures by Rev. Jack Phelps, Presiding Minister of the CREC, at this place:

http://www.reformalt.hu/audio

The Virgin Tomb: The Womb of the New Birth

James Jordan recently pointed out in private conversation how appropriate it is, in John’s Gospel, that Nicodemus is present both to ask Jesus about being born again, and to see Jesus re-enter the womb of the mother.

Nicodemus rhetorically asks, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”  Then he gets to witness Jesus’ answer by being present for Jesus’ burial: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid” (compare Genesis 24.16a: “The young woman was very attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known”).

New birth as metaphor for resurrection should not surprise us.  It correlates to Adam’s first birth from the earth by the Spirit (thus, Paul’s direct comparison between Adam’s creation and Christ’s resurrection).  In fact, evidence for this idea fills the New Testament (see here or here for some further evidence).

Romans 7

This is a problematic and much discussed passage. I’ve been discussing it in another forum, and have decided to move it here and present some very preliminary observations about it.

One large question is this: Who is the speaker here and what is his situation? Traditionally, the speaker is seen to be Paul and the situation is the trials of believers as they wrestle with indwelling sin. There are reasons why this traditional view has come into question, primarily that throughout this part of Romans Paul is discussing the coming of the New Creation and the end, in some sense, of the Torah-Law. That’s the point of Romans 7:1-6.

Hence, some have argued that the “I” in Romans 7:7-27 is not Paul himself but Israel, or the typical Israelite living under Torah and yearning for the New Creation. Yet, the problem with this is that the man in Romans 7 includes in his arguments that he has been raised from the Deathbody of Adam/Israel in union with Jesus Christ our Lord. He seems, thus, to be someone in the New Creation already.

My suggestion is that the man in Romans 7 is Paul Himself, but Paul putting himself in the position of Israel, and behind that, of the corporate Adam of the human race. Death entered through Adam, and humanity lived in an unresurrected Deathbody from then on. Death includes division,and Adam and Eve divided from each other right away, putting a fig-leaf barrier between themselves. God enhanced this division at Babel, and again by dividing humanity into circumcised and uncircumcised (Genesis 17). Further divisions, and symbolic forms of the Deathbody were introduced at Sinai, with priests alone allowed near to God, and various forms of symbolic uncleanness (death) linked to bodily functions (the flesh). The division within the human person is manifested here in Romans 7.

Torah-law, with its divisions and its Deathbody manifestations, arises from the original death-law, “Do not eat of the Tree of Knowledge or you will die.” The things that have to do with extending human dominion are marked with death: eating all animals, having children, glorious white skin, and rivers flowing from the center of the body (Lev. 11-15). Humanity is not resurrected, so all this glory is marked with death. This Deathbody and its problems is in view in Romans 7:13-25. The passage exists with an introduction and a three-fold argument, which cycles through four phases three times. Paul says, normatively, that he agrees with Torah (v. 16); dispositionally,that it is he himself who wishes to do Torah (v. 19), and situationally, that Jesus Christ has resurrected him from the Deathbody and its contradictions.

Good New SF

1. The current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction includes a good fantasy novella by John C. Wright, who since his conversation has been writing Christianly. This is a fine fantasy with nods to C. S. Lewis and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and probably Gene Wolfe as well. The issue is only sale only in April, so get yours now if you are interested. Also included in this issue is a reprint of Thomas Disch’s classic “The Brave Little Toaster” (made into a movie a few years ago).

 

2. Perhaps of even more interest is The Best of Gene Wolfe (Tor, 2009). Here are 464 pages of short stories and novellas by today’s greatest SF writer, a devout Christian. Included are the two stories Christians most often refer to: “Westwind” (a short homage to Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday) and “The Detective of Dreams” (a Poe-esque homage to the Greatest Storyteller of all time). Short remarks by Wolfe are found at the end of each of the 31 stories here. Some stories are charming; more are cautionary. Many require re-reading. If you need an introduction to Gene Wolfe, or if you want the best in one place, get this.

The Liturgy Trap is Back

Now available …

The Liturgy Trap
the Bible Versus Mere Tradition in Worship (3rd. Edition)

by James B. Jordan

From the Athanasius Press website:

“We hear all to often that someone has decided to leave the  Evangelical Christian faith and to join the Church of Rome, or Eastern Orthodoxy, or High Anglicanism. The lure is liturgy and tradition, and since the Evangelical and Reformed churches so often  have such poor worship, it is not hard to understand the pull exercised by those churches that have a heritage of formality, sobriety and beauty.

“This cure, however, is far worse than the disease. The answer to the weaknesses of Evangelicalism is not a turn toward the fallacies and errors of Rome, Orthodoxy and Anglo-Catholicism, but a return to Biblical patterns of worship.

“Just as there is true and false doctrine, so there are true and false worship patterns. In this book, James B. Jordan sorts out the true and the false in the area of worship practice, discussing the cult of the saints, the veneration of icons, apostolic succession, virginity and celibacy, the presence of Christ at His Supper, and the doctrine of tradition.”

The book is currently available for pre-order at 40% off the cover price. Buy it here.  Be sure to check out the other books and resources available at Athanasius Press.

The Name of Jesus

“It is an experience of our days that the spoken name of Jesus alone exercises an unforeseen power; and the effort which it cost to speak this name is perhaps connected to some faint apprehension of the power which is inherent within it. Wherever the name of Jesus Christ is spoken it is a protection and a claim.” Bonhoeffer Ethics p.57

CS Lewis wrote a lot about the devil. I don’t think it was for arbitrary reasons. In Surprise By Joy, he alludes to, but covers, certain instances in his life, probably before his conversion, where he apparently attended to demon possessed people. He lived in a time when there was still extensive and polite dabbling in the demonic via seances, oijia boards, and other parlor tricks, going on everywhere. He apparently had at least one rather extensive encounter in which he was the caretaker of some crazed person, that lasted some days and was horrific. I don’t think when he finally writes about Ransom meeting the devil in the possessed Weston in Perelandra that he is writing without some real experimental knowledge. When he says things like, “if you want to get to know the satanic powers better, you will…” he seems to be writing out of real experience with demons, perhaps not completely personal, but in what he observed in those close to him who partook in polite and parlor dabblings that led to encounters they had not counted on.

As a nation, we have long been dabbling in evil. It has been a self indulgent parlor game for us, like oijia boards and seances. Suddenly, the devils have begun answering back, and we are now finding ourselves being pulled into a malstream of chaos that we are not in control of but is now, like a giant undertow, controlling us. We have a Congress that began a number of years ago, playing self indulgent parlour games with various forms of evil who are now being pulled into currents that are greater than they are. It is being led by someone who seems to have been at that place long ago, and is quite comfortable with the maelstrom and is pushing us further and further out to sea, as fast as possible. Nobody seems able to stop him. And to date, not very many even want to. They still imagine they are in control, and will get real gain out of it for themselves.

It is a time when being “moderate,” meaning you are not very committed to anything other than being nice and sensible, is not going to do. It is now only the name of Jesus Christ that can create a space of lawfulness, and sanity. Only the name of Jesus Christ has any power over the chaos that increasingly, we are being pulled into.

This chaos is going to create its own momentum, and those who have been playing games with it for years for their own self interest are now going to discover that it is controlling them rather than the other way around.

Our only protection is going to be in the name of Jesus, Nice humanistic pluralism is threadbare and impotent.