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DANG!.  I dropped my cell phone somewhere.  I keep calling it, hoping someone will answer ...

Silly item: my letter to the SI.com Tennis Mailbag was used in the column this week.  It seems to help if you provide an opening for the host to demonstrate his wit ...

The Augsburg Confession was an early Reformation document (1530) that staked out the theological position and practice of the churches in Germany that were following Luther.  It is still a fundamental confessional document in Lutheran churches.  Eventually (let the Presbyterian understand) even John Calvin signed a version of it.  The Roman Catholics of the day, however, did not approve.

In more recent years, however, there has been some Lutheran-Roman dialog, along with a hint from the Catholic side that the RC's could "... recognize the Augsburg Confession as Catholic."  Richard John Neuhaus, the Lutheran-turned-Catholic who edits the First Things journal, described those hopes in a 1980 journal article (written when he was still a Lutheran).  Yoiks!  If the Catholics withdraw all objection to the Augsburg, well, would the Reformation have accomplished it's goal?

So?  What's in the Augsburg?  Is it somehow both Reformed and Catholic?  Could a Calvinist subscribe (remembering that Calvin did)?

And here we come to one of the sticking points of the whole matter.  For argument's sake, let's say that the Augsburg Confession had enough fundamental Biblical orthodoxy to make it worthwhile, while leaving enough secondary matters unspecified so that it could accommodate both a conservative Presbyterian and an evangelical Catholic (but not a theological liberal).  Imagine a Biblically faithful confession that both guys could adopt, as far as it goes.  

Would they?

I expect that most conservative American Protestants would be horrified at the very idea.  Because the mindset seems to be that in order to admit fellowship, I not only must I agree on all things essential (the core confession of some document like the Augsburg), I cannot endure disagreement on anything of second-order importance.  So if I'm a Baptist, I cannot endure fellowship with any Presbyterian, for I cannot allow him to baptize his baby.  Or if I'm a Pentecostal, I cannot endure fellowship with any Baptist who does not agree with the modern practice of the charismatic gifts.  Or if I'm a Presbyterian, I cannot endure fellowship with any Lutheran who does not say that Christ is only spiritually, yet truly, but not carnally present in the supper.

Heck, most Presbyterians wouldn't be able to get past the Augsburg's terminology: it calls the Lord's Supper "the Mass" among other things.  Stop.  End.  We're leaving.  No more.  Don't even bother telling me what they mean by the word.  I will *never* ... 

Spam.

One of the streams of spam that comes to me is invited because I have the email address "webmaster@ ..."  So every morning at work I sit down to my computer, open my email program, and watch as hundreds of emails fill my inbox -- most of them pure garbage.  In addition, my email address on this blog page is in a form that can be "harvested" by webbots, so "ghormley@ ..." also exists in a number of spammer databases.

This morning, after being on vacation for nearly a week, I have weeded out my inbox and notice that my Deleted Items folder now has over one thousand, two hundred items.

This is really a wicked business.  Do these people have no conscience?  They are not only nuisances, but many also deliberately and falsely disguise themselves in order to entrap the unwary.  I mean it's one thing when the subject of the message says "Are You Lonely or Horney" or "Buy a Rolex."  But others come with subjects like "UPS Delivery Confirmation" and spoof the Sender address so it looks legitimate. 

Well.  Much has been written on the evils of spam.  Sometimes my irritation and annoyance flowers into a visceral kind of hate, and I believe myself capable of terrible deeds.  It's kind of like there's this guy, and he owes me a hundred denarii, and I want to squeeze his throat and keep pounding on him till he pays.

The thin and flimsy character of my sanctification is also quickly revealed by adverse traveling circumstances.  You can read daughter Anne's account of our trip and imagine the worst of me.

One of the most remarkable things about our age is the extremely fractured church.  My loyal readers will recognize this as a familiar theme to which I return with some regularity.  I think my position is that we live in an age of great confusion in the church, and that our divisions severely hamper the church in its work and witness.  For instance, I could go on and on about our public voice: the church has no public voice because it has thousands of public voices.  There is also the matter of discipline.  The church has no ability to apply or enforce discipline, because the sinner can always say "so what?" and pick any other church in town that suits him.

It is also my position that Jesus will not forever leave his church on earth so divided, and that we should be working towards something that could fairly be described as "one holy catholic and apostolic church."  (Notice how that very phrase elicits an involuntary theological gag reflex in many of us who live so comfortably in schismville.)  I keep watching for the way ahead.  How in the world will our Lord ever bring the churches back together?  

A couple of items on this topic catch my eye:

S. M. Hutchins over at the Touchstone blog talks about their project for "mere" Christianity.  He hints at some ways of tolerating differences while keeping a tight grip on the common faith that I like.

And then there is this item in the World Magazine blog, which includes the remark, "... or as Voltaire put it, with one Church you have tyranny, with two civil war, but with a hundred peace."  That seems to be an accurate, if cynical, historical observation.   And so I wonder if God will have us sit in our peaceful corners as naughty children until we are ready to play nicely, and come together without tyrannies or wars.  The project remains: if we live in the same house how do we tolerate differences, and, who gets to say when a difference becomes one that puts someone out.  

The answer is left as an exercise for the reader.

Why network news evokes my contempt: LINK

My new bumper sticker:

One place in Matthew's gospel I would really like a "for example" is in the sermon on the mount when Jesus says, "Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you."

Uh, okay.

Now, by pigs and dogs do you mean those outside the church, as in unclean domestic animals that picture the gentiles? (the Syro-Phonecian dogs under the table that get the crumbs ... ooops, waitasec ...)

And by "what is holy" // "pearls" do you mean things set aside as offerings, or things used in the holy place / tabernacle, not feeding the unclean animals with the consecrated "food" of the church? or ...

My problem is, this verse is often taken in the sense of relieving Christians of the responsibility to "waste their time" with difficult non-Christians: pagan pigdogs who scoff at Christ and have no interest in the gospel.  So is this a ministry strategy, namely, spend your time and effort with those who are responsive and don't waste your time banging your head against brick ministry walls? 

Does it mean I don't have to bother with my obnoxious neighbor?  

Or is this like the twelve shaking the dust off their shoes when the village does not receive their message?

I could do with some f'rinstances.  My eighth grade English teacher said her mother urged her to quit teaching at Irving Junior High School because she was just casting her pearls before swine.  I have been troubled (oink, oink) ever since.

I wonder if this word informed J. K. Rowling's character name Lucius Malfoy. (from word of the day at dictionary.com)

Word of the Day for Tuesday November 16, 2004

louche \LOOSH\, adjective:
Of questionable taste or morality; disreputable or indecent; dubious; shady.

You've got to keep yourself free of any suggestion of louche behavior.
--Anthony West
...
_________________________________________________________

Louche is from French louche, "shady, suspicious," from Old French losche, "squint-eyed," from Latin luscus, "one-eyed."

A delightful irony observed by S.M. Hutchens in the Touchstone Blog:

Father Reardon and I, reflecting recently on some of the mysteries of life, found we had independently observed the irony of the moderate feminists who, hyphenating the family name in defiance of the old male dominion, merely add the father's name to the husband's.

A wonderful concert last night.

Program included Mozart Regina coeli K 127.  You can listen to a bit of the Gloria from a mass by Rheinberger here.  

Makes me want to get a really neat church building with a wonderful choir and do splendific music.  (Why do the rotting liberal churches get all the good music?)

Purity of Essence
James Earl Jones writes a Doctor Strangelove retrospective in today's OpinionJournal.com.

Three reasons to move to Saint Louis and get to work.  (I wish Lincoln had opportunities like this.)  (Well, actually it sort of did, and we took it.)

When it snows ...

I'm still a big Simon and Garfunkle fan.  Cain't hep it.  That was the music when I had hair.  Now I hear a song by the Kings of Convenience that sounds like a lost Simon and Garfunkle piece.  Listen to the clip from Homesick on this page:

Homesick
Every day there's a boy in the mirror asking me, "what are you doing here?"

Wow.  The rest of the songs are not quite as evocative.

Busy Friday-Saturday going to Presbytery, finishing sermon, and working on the AFC room.  Also had a long Session meeting Sunday afternoon.

So Sunday night when I finally got home, we watched movies.  Shrek 2.  and also The Hudsucker Proxy.  Shrek is nothing but fun and very clever.  The scenes without Donkey are necessary, I suppose.

The Hudsucker Proxy is ten years old, now, and I had not seen it before.  It's a Coen Brothers effort that ranks below O Brother and Fargo, and is a better movie in many ways than Raising Arizona, but I like it less.  Tim Robbins is good, but I could feel him trying to be funny when he was doing the physical comedy stuff.  Jerry Lewis, for example could have carried the water cooler bottle across the room and made you believe every step, whereas for Robbins, it was a comic exercise.  Same goes for Jennifer Jason Leigh as the tough talking reporter.  She really had the part down, but it seemed like an effort instead of the gut-honest kind of thing Katherine Hepburn or Rosalind Russell would do.  Still,  I really enjoyed the Brazil-noir look and feel of the whole thing. 

Peter Leithart has a swell article on the sin that just doesn't care:

Sloth, or Whatever

(Or in other words, "Kids! What's the matter with kids today?")

Sermon Notes 2 Thess 2: 13-17

There's usually an odd turn in every text that doesn't quite read like you would expect.  Such places deserve extra thought:

2 Thes. 2:13 God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.
We don't usually think of sanctification as the instrument of our salvation.  Rather, we think of sanctification as the result of our salvation: first we're saved, then we're sanctified.  But it is striking that Paul here puts them in the "wrong" order.  The salvation in view is our final salvation, and the sanctification in view is the observable fruit and proof of our perseverence.  In that sense, our sanctification is the path we follow to our final salvation.

When I have a turn preaching at Zion like this, it is typically part of an ongoing series, and I pretty much take whichever passage is next on the list.  Usually that's not a problem, but as I study it, this passage seems to depend very heavily on "last week's" passage.  The final salvation in view is contrasted with the final condemnation of the lawless; those who follow the man of lawlessness and perish, refusing to believe the truth (v10) provide the contrast for those who believe the truth and are saved.    Those who take pleasure in unrighteousness (v12) are contrasted with those who are established in every good work and word (v17).  

I won't be able to preach 13-17 apart from 9-16.

And I'm still not satisfied with my outline.  These things have to be supplied to the church office for printing and inclusion in the bulletin.  I suppose trying to come up with a clear outline forces me to think about the text and makes me realize just how poor my grasp is.  But it sure feels like this shouldn't be as difficult as I find it to be.

Who is more generous and compassionate: Democrats or Republicans?  There is a perception that Republicans are all about holding on to their money and are cold-hearted towards the poor and disadvantaged.  Well, Patrick Reardon, over on the Touchstone blog observes that it's the red states that are generous, while the blue states have more Scrooges:

 GENEROUS DEMOCRATS?

A friend reminds me that this is logical hooey that will evoke snorts of contempt from every serious social scientist, but it still feels right.

Arafat: I'm not dead yet.
I'm feeling better.
I think I'll go for a walk.

Hark!  What's that lovely sound?

It's the absence of Kerry.  How sweet.

Time to Renew

In this week's edition of World Wide Words we are delighted to see a subscription renewal notice from the editor of the New England Magazine in 1834:

"If you have been our reader from the commencement of the Magazine, let not our three-year-old acquaintance be now broken off. Bear with us, we pray you, for another term, and our intercourse may grow into a familiarity, that may at length ripen into an affection, which the destruction of existence only shall terminate. If the birth of our connexion be of more recent date, its continuance has been too brief to enable you to decide on its utility - a reason fair, why you should accompany us on another stage of our journey."

Fain, had I the funds, I would draft a checque forthwith.

I took home one of the retired computers from work and finally got a "study computer" up and running on the sleeping porch.  (And promptly stripped and junked Kate's old AU computer -- good riddance).  That should free up the Juno computer for email.  And I got a small desk for the corner of our bedroom so I have an actual place to sit and write checks and stuff.  Went through piles of old stuff and threw out things.  My side of the room is much less the eyesore now.  I know how my mother felt when she said "after I pay the bills and balance the checkbook, it's like going to confession!"

Verily, a load is removed.

Is it gloating?  That would be yet another sin to confess.  But maybe it's really just pleasure and relief.  I hope the disappointed Democrats really take this advice to heart:

Dear Democrats,

While you think about how to do better next time, please stay true to your core values and feelings. Don't restrain your anger; part of your problem in this election was that you didn't put it out there enough. If other Americans understood how truly mad you are it would make more of an impression.

You need to try harder to make them see that you're smarter and better than your opponents. Unleash your indignation and express your outrage and they will start to get your superiority to the religious fanatics, racists and homophobes who oppose you. You've got to make the point over and over that these people are intolerant stupid hicks while you are smart, good and wise.

Face it, you're just not getting your message across. You run mild, polite candidates who can't or won't let it all hang out. If everyone understood, really understood, your anger, intelligence and moral superiority, well, things would have turned out differently.

(submitted to opinionjournal.com by reader Rob Steele.)

Happy Birthday: my dad turned 86 yesterday.

:

In his office at home, dad has a bulletin board full of pictures:

Reading from left to right, that's his mother (my Grandmother Nell Botkin Ghormley), his father (my grandfather Ray Ghormley), his aunt (Ethel Botkin), I don't know the girl in the second row -- could it be a young Nell?, and then two pictures of his older brother (my uncle Robert Ghormley), who was a Navy machinist in the Pacific in WW2.

If Kerry becomes president:

- J.K. Rowling won't finish the Harry Potter Series
- If she does, Harry won't have to die
- They will confiscate my Tolkein books
- We'll be stuck forever without wine for communion
- My wife won't smile at me
- Pizza will be illegal
- Taste of China will take Almond Chicken off the menu
- My shoulder will blow out and I'll never play Tennis again
- There will be even more Reality TV 
- I'll start watching it
- Live concerts will be banned
- BibleWorks will quit working on my computer
- Our dog Linus will not be glad to see me come home
- People I respect will say nice things about Michael Moore
- Jesus will give up on his church

Somebody has a serious Lego hobby.  She built an entire church in her living room.  See the whole thing (... probably more than you really ought to ...) here.

Peter Leithart has an interesting idea: all storytelling is grounded in the Trinity.  Read Trinity and Story.

Another Trinitarian theory of storytelling (and all human creativity) comes from Dorothy Sayers' The Mind of the Maker.  Any student who is interested in creative arts should take a look at it.  (Did I lend somebody my copy?  Where is it?  I was looking for it one day and couldn't find it...)

I took another run at reconstituting Kate's old AU computer.  I'm trying to install Windows 98 and I get as far as the screen that asks me to show it the existing Windows product that this is an upgrade from.  I can't show it my old W95 CD, because the computer can't see the CD-ROM drive because Windows isn't installed, and I can't install Windows until the computer can see the CD-ROM drive.  I did find an old 3.5-inch floppy of Windows 3.1, and the W98 install process was happy with that, but it also wanted the second W3.1 disk, and I have no idea where that is.  I actually found a complete set of W3.1 disks on 5.25-inch floppies, but I can't hook up any of my old 5.25-inch drives because the cable from the motherboard has the wrong kind of connector.  I hunted through the box-o'-parts and found two adapters but both are backwards to what I need.

My enthusiasm for this project flags.

ALSO ONLINE...
The New Pantagruel
Covenant Renewal
Theologia
First Things
Touchstone
Biblical Horizons
Credenda-Agenda
CRTA
larknews.com
Townhall.com
OpinionJournal.com

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