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Hello Everyone:

In December, my family and I travelled to Springfield, MO, to celebrate my Grandmother’s 90th birthday. While we were there, we also met my three siblings for the first time, and spent a little time exploring St. Louis.

One of the most exciting parts of the trip for me that didn’t involve family was visiting the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. This Basillica has the largest collection of mosaic art in the world, and these mosaics are on the walls and ceiling. It is probably the most beautiful building I have ever visited.

Right now I am at work, it is 2:40 in the morning. I am covering another Sergeant position, because my employer just fired someone for misconduct. I get off at 4am, and have to be back on-duty at 8:30am. I’ve been working graveyard for several weeks, and have been working all three shifts in one week. At times like this, I find myself wishing I could be at the Basilica for a couple of hours of quiet prayer, alone. Alas, I cannot.

Below are some photos for your viewing pleasure.

-Clarke

Hello all:

In my last post in this series, I spent a few moments criticizing our hermeneutical lenses of Command, Example and Necessary Inference. In this post, I want to focus on the theological system that we use in examining scripture and salvation history as a whole.

The magisterium, and to some extent, the Restoration Movement in general, holds to a three part, or Tripartite, Dispensationalism. This is ironic because we in Churches of Christ enjoy criticizing “dispensationalists” all the time, especially when it comes to talking about eschatology. I think that this is in part because we do not recognize that we are, in fact, dispensationalists ourselves, though of a different strain than the dispensational pre-millenialists we so often spar with.

Dispensationalism generally serves to separate periods of time into categories, and these categories describe how God dealt with his people during those times. For a full treatment of Dispensationalism in general, you can check out the Wikipedia Article on Dispensationalism.

Tripartite Dispensationalism divides the history of redemption into three parts: The Patriarchal Dispensation, the Jewish Dispensation, and the Christian Dispensation. We see a difference in how God dealt with the patriarchs versus the Nation of Israel, and we see a difference in how God dealt with Israel versus the Church. This is biblical fact. The problem comes when we see no connection between the differences, or dispensations, and declare that nothing God has said or done during the prior dispensations, nor anything that occurred in the prior dispensations, applies to us today.

This idea of disconnected dispensational time periods is most clearly seen in our view of the Old Testament as a whole. The magisterium holds that nothing in the Old Testament applies to us, because the Old Testament describes the Jewish and Patriarchal dispensations. For example, then, according to the Magisterium, the fact that we can read about Instrumental Music being used in the Old Testament to worship God does not mean that we can use it today.

A more obvious problem comes though, when we study the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, and the teachings of Jesus. Tripartite Dispensationalism claims that the Christian Dispensation started at Pentecost. What does this mean, then? It means that Jesus’ teachings are lumped in with the Old Testament, were only for first century Jews, and that his teachings have no bearing on our conduct and lives as Christians.

It is absurd for us to think that God came down as a man into time, lived life as a human for 33 years, then died on a cross for us, but to also think that God doesn’t want us to take note of how he lived his life on Earth, or what he taught his disciples during that time. Such a claim makes a mockery out of Jesus’ life; a pure, holy, undefiled, perfect life, that he gave up in order to give us eternal life.

Furthermore, such a view of the Old Testament is in sharp contrast with Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16-17: All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. Here, Paul is refering to the Jewish scriptures, not the “Christian” scriptures which haven’t yet been compiled into the Bible at the time of his writings.

Our Tripartite Dispensationalism is more damaging than pre-millenial dispensationalism. The premillenialists don’t deny the Old Testament its significance. We must find a more biblical way of talking and thinking about the History of Salvation. Removing our anti Old Testament bias isn’t enough; we must jettison our Tripartite Dispensationlism and adopt a biblical view. What that view might entail will be the subject of a future post.

-Clarke

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Thank you to Bobby Valentine for writing about the Old Testament and our Tripartite Dispensationalism, I was looking for sources and he provided a great one at just the right time.

Hello:

In my last post we talked about the existence of a Magisterium in Churches of Christ. In this post we’ll examine one of the main holdings of the Magisterium: The Hermeneutic of Command, Example, and Necessary Inference.

Direct Command, Approved Apostolic Example, and Necessary Inference, or CENI as many call it, has become “our” way of reading the bible. It was taught—and still is in a few—of our colleges for many years. It is the lens through which most of our members read the bible.

This teaching states that we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out the direct commands given to us by God, his son, and his apostles, and follow those commands. Then we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out the examples provided by the apostles, and follow those examples; and finally, again we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out those inferences that are necessary to be followed.

While CENI is the hermeneutical process, there is also a set of assumptions that sit behind CENI. Those assumptions include:

That the New Testament has been handed down as new law to replace the old law.

That the new law is basically a pattern that describes the worship of the church and what a person must do to be saved.

That God expects us to figure out the biblical worship pattern, and to adhere to it.

That lack of adherence to the biblical worship pattern is sinful.

That the sin of not following the biblical worship pattern is not covered by God’s grace and puts eternal salvation in jeopardy.

While I could attack each of these at length, I will at this point just state that there is no biblical evidence that backs up the hermeneutical assumptions of CENI.

As far as the method, it is flawed in many ways. Commands are usually easy to determine.

Examples, though, are far harder. Who approves the examples? What happens when we disagree on which example is approved? A common example that Pentecostal churches follow is the washing of feet. We reject this example out of hand. Is it wrong to wash feet? Is it wrong to not wash feet?

Necessary inferences are even harder. Who says the inference is necessary? Inferences depend totally on human logic. Being a fallen human myself, I don’t know that I want to trust my salvation to how great a job I do at deducting logic problems correctly.

I’m not going to spend a bunch of time attacking CENI. Many others have done so, with great success. Brother (and bishop!)Alan Rouse has a great series on the topic if you wish to read further. What I will say is this: CENI is a snag, sitting silently on the woods, waiting to make a widow out of some unsuspecting churchgoer in our fellowships.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Allister McGrath claims that the central idea around the Reformation was that each man is entitled to read and interpret scripture for himself. This idea then explains the myraid of denominations that have formed over the last five hundred or so years since Luther nailed his theses to the door of his local parish.

This idea of each man interpreting scripture for himself was vigerously oppossed by the Roman Catholic Church, which claimed (as still does claim) that only the Magisterium of the Church, entrusted to Supreme Pontiff and his bishops, had the right to interpret Scripture.

Of course, this caused a major problem.

The Church of Christ, whether it will admit it or not, claims to have a magisterium on scripture. Only the church, through its bishops (journals, college presidents, prominent ministers), has the right to interpret scripture. Anyone who comes to a different understanding of scripture than the one advanced by the magisterium is in error, either intentionally or negligently.

This causes a major problem.

This is especially a huge problem when you determine that something in the magisterium is wrong. If one teaching is incorrect, what keeps all the others from being so? My good friend Mark has stated to me several times that everything that our fellowship has stood for has been debunked. While I don’t know that everything has been, I must state that I believe enough of it has that the magisterium has collapsed in the eyes of thosands of members of Churches of Christ, including myself.

And this causes a major problem.

What do you do when everything that you accepted as concrete suddenly vanishes before you?

For some, it means dumping Christianity altogether.

For others, it means joining another denomination; many are fleeing to The Anglican Communion faster than you can blink an eye.

For still others, it means looking around and trying to salvage what you can, and to attempt to find as much truth as you can. This is where I have been, and it is a scary ride. I have searched scripture, tradition, and history… a very “non sola scriptura” mix. Some of my thoughts and musings have been far from Orthodox from a reformed point of view. For now, though, I think I might finally be back in a normal spot. We’ll see.

In my next post we’ll look at the Magisterium in more detail.

-Clarke