The Writer and the Christian

The desire to discover Jesus’ wife is actually a normal state of mind. The question comes quickly. If in Genesis it says that mankind’s normal situation was to leave mom and dad to cleave with a marriage partner and become one flesh, then why did not the epitome of human life, Christ, not get married? I thought that was the norm. Wouldn’t the greatest human of all time get married?

The answer is that He did get married - just not to who you might think. Christ is the head of the Church, which is His bride. Through the incarnation of Christ, we become of one flesh with Him - all things mentioned in Genesis. Jesus came to earth to marry the Church and make her one flesh with him. He came to earth with intentions, as they say. Had he married just one person on the earth, that person would have been one flesh with Him and He would have been unable to marry the church. He would have betrayed His love and bride, the church. And Christ did not sin.

The error of The DaVinci Code and all of its gnostic ilk is not its desire to figure out who Jesus married. They’re just not looking in the right direction. They’re looking around, and they should be looking up, to see the church, the New heavenly Jerusalem descending to the earth.

This grates against the writer’s grain. See, one of the things you’ve got to have if you’re going to make it very far as a writer is the belief that your work deserves to be read and enjoyed by people. This doesn’t mean believing your work is the best thing since Jane Austen (though many times this is what it translates into for some), but it does mean believing your work deserves to sit on a bookshelf in Borders next to well-known established authors. And so many writers feel that their is should be the universal ought – that the way they write is the way you should write too (and him, and her, that the chick by the door, and the dude in the cowboy hat at the minibar, and . . .). It’s just the nature of the game and the name of the beast. We are all going to try and tell you that all those other guys out there are just whohuffing through the wrong hole, but we—ahh, we—we know what we’re talking about. “Stick with us, kid, and we’ll lead you straight.”

This caution includes this caution, and I’m not warning you because I want to appear humble. I’m warning you because writing cannot be taught from a book. If you cracked this one hoping that after reading that last, crisp insight you could truck off and powerdrive your way through The Next Great American Novel, you might as well set it back on the shelf and burn the money you were going to spend on it. That’s the grand secret – I can’t teach you how to write a great book. What I can do is show you how to avoid stepping in the catbox on your way. In fantasy terms, I can’t finish the writing quest for you. But I can tell you not to go beyond the edges of the map – for there be monsters, drooling and eying you for a main course.

To continue my comments on the whole global warming scam, though from a slightly different direction, I have noticed that this year has been no friend to the global wailers bemoaning the dire pollution of the planet and how the world was going to spiral into its doom-via-oven any second now.

As with every apocalyptic cultus, scientific or not, the followers notice a problem, project this into the future, and then proceed to light their hair on fire and run screaming in tight circles waving their arms franticly as they sell their homes and congregate on a mountain to watch the inevitable fireworks. The current presidential frontrunners (McCain, Obama, and the Hilarybot) have staked a lot of time, energy, and support on being right about global warming and the Kyoto Protocol. Al Gore has staked the future of his reputation on this issue. Many scientists have staked their careers on this issue. That dude who said people who disbelieve in man-caused global warming are traitors staked a bunch of chips on that particular hand.

Well, it turns out poker may not be their game.

In August of 2007, it was found that less than half of all published scientists believe in the global warming theory.

“Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category  (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis.  This is no “consensus.”

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of  consensus here.  Not only does it not require supporting that man is the “primary” cause of warming, but it doesn’t require any belief or support for “catastrophic” global warming.  In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.”

Then, later, in September of 2007, 500 major-league scientists published a major refutation of global warming arguments.

Then, in February of this year, it was found that nearly all of the lost ice caps had returned:

Satellite data shows that concerns over the levels of sea ice may have been premature. It was feared that the polar caps were vanishing because of the effects of global warming. But figures from the respected US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that almost all the “lost” ice has come back. Ice levels which had shrunk from 13million sq km in January 2007 to just four million in October, are almost back to their original levels. Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than is usual for the time of year.

Wow. The problems just keep mounting. But then, as if all this weren’t enough to raise eyebrows in curiosity, last week four different scientific thinktanks in charge of analyzing the global temperatures announced that the earth has cooled enough to completely wipe out a century’s worth of warming.

All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. … The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Ouch. Were this a boxing ring, I suspect the global wailers would have been delivered a knock-out blow, and one that landed before Al Gore’s global warming speaking tour has ended. Climate can be snarky sometimes.

So: to all you folks who staked a claim or a few million clams on this gut-buster of a hoax, especially to Al Gore and all of the professional scientists yelping to the nearest camera, there is a special place fraudsters and failures go, right next to the guy who thinks aliens built the pyramids, the fake-moon-landing guys, and the fellows from the flat earth society.

Welcome to intellectual Siberia.

All writing how-to’s should be read with at least one grain of salt. Why? They are written by writers, and that is very much like the blind leading the blind into the pit. Not because writers don’t know what they’re doing, but in very many cases because they do know what they’re doing – for themselves. Writing is a very curious occupation, one which requires a hefty amount of personalization. You gotta discover what works for you.

Leithart suggests in Deep Comedy that because the ancient world viewed all theology and metaphysics as inherently tragic and degenerative, tragedy became a kind of glory for them. “European antiquity . . . was characterized by an ethos of ‘glorious sadness.’” (p. 45)

This was an interesting suggestion not partially because it suggests that through heroic defiance of death, the great pagan heroes defeated death by defying its evil nature, and rather leap into its arms in an act of glorified bravado. This, I think, was fallen man’s attempt to do justice to their knowledge that death is an enemy. It cannot seemingly be defeated, and so they remove the sting and fear of it by a last heroic gesture, one last act of defiance before being swallowed whole.

When there is no hope, the only hope is glorifying hopelessness.

As Leithart suggests at the end of the book, the understanding of deep comedy undercuts the whole idea of deep tragedy.

“There are still sad stories, but Christians cannot believe the world is not a sad story without abandoning their fundamental convictions about the triune God and the incarnation of the Son,” (p. 149).

Death is no longer glorious, it is an enemy constantly hunting us down. And because that idea of glory in death has been overcome, tragedy is all the more tragic.

“If the world is not a sad story, then the sad stories remain altogether sad because they need not be sad,” (p. 149).

The promise that all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well promises that the world will not end badly. Evil is only a temporal problem; but this makes evil all the more heartbreaking - it did not need to be a tragedy. If tragedy is avoidable, then whenever it occurs, we weep all the harder. I would suggest, however, that this sadness is merely a tough joy to the Christian who understands the deep comedic nature of reality. This person understands TOlkien’s phrase Euchatastrophe.

Yet there is hope:

All shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, p. 59.

Been reading Peter Leithart’s Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, and Hope in Western Literature, for which much rejoicing. The book is absolutely fantastic, and it blew my mind in a number of passages. His suggestion that the statue in Daniel 7 which moves from gold to silver to bronze to iron to iron and clay is a total subversion of the ancient world’s belief in the five ages of tarnishing (the world moves from gold to silver to bronze to an age of heroes to the age of iron, from a golden age to a tarnished age at the end) was breathtaking, and makes sense within James Jordan’s commentary on the passage in The Handwriting on the Wall:

 Some commentators say that the progression from gold to iron indicates a decline. Actually, though, the silver Persian empire was larger and more powerful than the Babylonian. The bronze Greek empire, though it split up almost immediately, was even larger and brought about a profound cultural change in its entire area, creating the culture we call Hellenistic. Finally, the iron Roman empire was greater still, and far more powerful and long lasting. (See below on the identities of these empires.) From gold to iron is a progression in strength and toughness (p. 177).

This passage obviously ends with the rock crushing down the four elemental kingdoms and grows to replace them, suggesting a comic end (comic in this context being happy).

Anywho. Neat. I’ma gonna have some other comments tomorrow as well.

I’ve always been a fan of U2. But I’d never imagine I’d be saying that their album Joshua Tree is quite possibly the greatest collection of songs I think I’ve ever heard. That’s my thought, and Rolling Stone said the same thing.

Nothing terribly profound today, except maybe: listen to U2. Not that I’m a particularly profound person. As Rev. Wilson says, things come to me in the shower for pete’s sake. I may title my autobiography I Am No Profundus. When I get around to writing it. You know, when I have some stuff to put in it.

I’ve been on a global warming binge lately. With every presidential candidate, on either side of the divide, committed to passing Kyoto in the good ol’ U.S. of A., and wishing to be an informed citizen, I have read everything I can get my hands on about the topic of global warming.

I present to you now the culmination of my research.

Warming, Where Art Thou?

1. The world is getting warmer. This much everybody agrees on. In the last 100 years, the world climate has increased in temperature by approx. 0.17 of a degree C every decade. This means global temperature increase in the future is 1.7 degrees by 2100 A.D.

2. This expectation is being found to be unrealistic. More realistic reports conclude that the temp. increase by 2100 will be far milder than that. In May of 2006, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a report on global temperatures, comparing the temp. of the earth’s surface with the atmosphere, and found that Global average temp. increased
- 0.12 C per decade from 1958 to 1979,
- 0.11 C per decade in the tropics from 1958 to 1979
- 0.16 C per decade since 1979,
- 0.13 C per decade since 1979.

As a result, one of the leading scientists on the report concluded that the earth is not at all heating up rapidly (1).

3. There is no such thing as a “global average temperature,” (GAT). To get a GAT, you would have to measure the global mean surface temperature, which nobody can measure because it would require taking the temperature of every square inch of the planet all at the same time. This is not possible. We get our surface temperature measured in specific spots - wherever there happens to be a weather measuring station built. This cannot give us a reasonable “global” average of anything, only of the spots we’ve measured.

4. If the number of measuring stations drop, our calculations get all fuddily. It is interesting that a large number of measuring stations (about 6,000) were closed down right before the “global warming” was detected. Thousands of these stations were in the Soviet Union, and between 1989 and 1992 the Union shut down all of their measuring stations, most of which were in Siberia. Many of the other stations shut down were in cold regions. Looking at those statistics, we find that when all 6,000 stations shut down in the cold regions, we had an immediate global temp. spiked upwards by approx. 2.5 degrees. Any “global warming” calculation must take this into account.

5. Most of the temp. increase has been during the nighttime and winter season, when tilted toward the northern hemisphere. In fact, night and winter warming are twice that of summer and daylight warming. This means warmer nights and winters, increasing growing seasons and crop yield. This translates into more plants and therefore more CO2 released into the atmosphere.

6. The contribution of man made greenhouse gases to temperature increase is hardly proven. Take the major three greenhouse gases. 95% of Nitrus Oxcide is naturally produced - not man-produced. 82 % of methane in the atmosphere is naturally produced. And 97% of CO2 is naturally produced. All of human civilization produces about 3% of the carbon dioxide let into the atmosphere.

7. Of the three percent of CO2 produced, combustion emissions, that is, from cars and factories, only accounts for two-thirds of that three percent.

8. “The greenhouse effect must play some role. But those who are absolutely certain that the rise in temperatures is due solely to carbon dioxide have no scientific justification. It’s pure guesswork,” Henrik Svensmark, director, Centre for Sun-Climate Research, Danish National Space Center, Copenhagen Post, Oct. 4th, 2006.

9. “Global” warming isn’t global. The entirety of the Southern Hemisphere of our planet has been at a temperature lock since the 1970s. 0.05 degrees warmer and unchanged. If this rate continues as it does, it will have increased by a whole degree in the Souther Hemisphere by 2179 A.D. It is, of course, possible that the entire natural order of the southern hemisphere has been bribed by evil oil companies.

10. This means that while the average (measured) global temperature is increasing by itsy eeks and inches, it is not getting hotter everywhere. Trends are showing cooling down south of the equator.

11. Both the North and South Hemisphere have the same level of CO2, our theoretical blame for temperature increase globally. The UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, reported in 2001 that CO2 levels in both hemispheres have risen from 330 ppms (parts per million) to 360 ppms since 1970. So, if CO2 is to blame, why is it getting hotter northerly, but remaining constant southerly, with equal CO2?

12. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has temp. records from 1985 to the present, there was a warming trend from 1895 to about 1940. The greatest rise in temperature was between 1910 and 1935 (before the significant usage of fossil fuels).

13. From 1940 to about 1975 the U.S. cooled off, a period which also happens to be the period of greatest growth in the usage of fossil fuels. Again, if CO2 were to blame for the warming trend, we should really see warming and not cooling during this period of heaviest usage.

14. From 1975 to 1998 we find more of what we should see if man was causing global warming. From 75 to 98, the earth warmed up. Coincidentally, however, the sun also spiked in this period and began producing more energy itself, which we must take into account and not simply dismiss.

15. From 1998, we begin to see the earth cooling slightly, despite the heavy fossil fuel usage by China and India in this period.

16. The rate of temp. increase between 1910 to 1935, when we were only using limited fossil fuels (which produce CO2, recall) is far higher than the rate of the warming trend between 1975 and 1998, even though the world was using far more fossil fuel during this time. (2)

17. Polar bears are not suffering for the areas of warming in the arctic, but are actually thriving. They are not starving, nor turning cannibal for lack of food. In fact, the bears are doing better in the warming areas of the arctic than the areas where the arctic is getting colder. (3) Dr. Mitchell Taylor, the leading Canadian polar bear biologist, even said, “They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,” (4), and notes that 11 of the 13 populations of polar bears are actually growing.

18. Sea levels are absolutely fine, well within normal 300-year oscillations, and showing almost no rise in the last decade, according to the world’s acknowledged leading expert in oceanic studies. (5)

19. The UN’s IPCC report on global warming predicts 14 to 45 <i>centi</i>meters of additional water from melted ice caps by 2100 A.D., not Al Gore’s or <i>The Day After Tomorrow</i>’s twenty foot swells.

20. Most of the ice on the caps are already in the water. Whether the ice is solid or melted, the water displacement is the same, just like if you drop an ice cube in a cup, the water would rise because of the displaced mass of the ice cube. But between the first moment of displacement, and when the ice cube is totally melted, there is no rise because the displacement has already occurred. Only ice on the land would displace the oceans, and once we remember the north pole is nothing but floating ice (no land under there), and most of the ice at the south pole is over water as well, we find the problem really does go away.

21. Antarctica is not warming (since 1903 it’s temperature has risen by less than a degree).

22. In 2006, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published a paper co-written by leading international climatologists which concluded that there is absolutely no connection between greenhouse gases and hurricane behavior and that future changes in hurricane intensity will be small and mostly due to natural variability.

References

1. Ron Bailey, http://www.reason.com/rb/rb092206.shtml

2. For info on points 12-16, check out http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html

3. See Patrick J. Michaels, Meltdown (Cato Institute, 2004), pp. 95-96.

4. “Last Stand of our Wild Polar Bears,” Toronto Star, May 1st, 2006.

5. See N.A. Morner, “Estimating Future Sea Level Changes from Past Records,” Global and Planetary Change, 40: 2003, pp. 49-54.

Right now there is a large struggle taking place in the PCA over two separate movements. The first is known as the Federal Vision, and a statement signed by all the major folks of the Federal Vision can be found here. This statement defines the movement of the Federal Vision. All points of controversy outside of this statement are to be taken as with specific people rather than with the movement as a whole. The second is the New Perspective on Paul, which means mostly N.T. Wright. This post has to do with Federal Vision stuff.

I thought I would present some of my random thoughts on the subject and ask some of my speciality: pointed questions.

“This lucid and highly readable study provides valuable instruction on what it means to live in covenant with God. God’s covenant is the only way of life that fully honors both the absolute sovereignty of his saving grace and the full, uninhibited activity of his people. … should benefit anyone concerned about biblical growth in Christian life and witness.” - Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.

Oh, good! That sounds like a great book! What is it? Norman Shepherd’s Call of Grace.  In which he argues for the same things he’s always argued for. There is no merit in Scripture. The law wasn’t about merit or earning or justification by works. It was about grace. The law/gospel distinction is bad and unbiblical. This book was published in 2000. It was okay then. We know, because one of the best theologians I have read approved of the book for “anyone concerned about biblical growth in Christian life and witness.” But now, in 2007, because of the Federal Vision controversy, the book is anathama. Why? The book didn’t change. But the views expressed in Call of Grace are now part of a controversy, and not only that, but these views are aligned with the wrong side of the controversy.

“By all appearances, the sheep are hungry for the Bread of Life - give in Word and Sacrament. … [this book] gives us fresh reason to ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’.” - Michael Horton

Oh, good, we might think. A new book by Daniel Fuller, or perhaps the latest tome by Joe Morecraft III. Nope, it’s Peter Leithart’s Blessed Are the Hungry, a book also put out in 2000. Leithart is one of those fellas Horton is now anathamatizing - and over things Leithary talked about in this book.

“The best and most comprehensive treatment of the Reformed doctrine of the Lord’s Supper I have ever seen . . . a genuine ‘must read’ book.” - R.C. Sproul

“I know of no other book that combines solid research, pastoral concern, polemical edge, and attention to oft-forgotten biblical passages with such skill. Any informed decision on the Supper will need to include a careful reading of this volume.” - Michael Horton

What book is it? Why, its Keith Mathison’s Given For You, a comprehensive look at how the Reformed faith has drifted from the high view of the Lord’s Supper. This book was published in 2002, the same year the Federal Vision chaos started. Now, why, if these two men oppose the high view of the Supper when Doug Wilson or Peter Leithart talk about it, do they praise Mathison up to Zion about it when he says the very same thing. The supper is efficacious and actually confers grace. Christ is present during the supper, and the bread and wine are Christ’s body and blood. When Doug says it, no, it can’t be true. When Mathison says it, yeah, sure, why not. Is it really the theology that’s the problem, or the people saying it?

“An excellent, concise presentation of the essence of the Reformed faith . . . . a much needed wake-up call to the church.” - R. C. Sproul

“[The book’s] organization  . . . its clarity, and its fidelity to the basics of the Reformed faith are excellent, and I can readily imagine its becoming a standard text.” - E. Calvin Beisner

“The writing is splendid . . . I would recommend it.” - John Frame

Wow. High praise for a book on theology. Who wrote it? Douglas Wilson, Douglas Jones, and David Hagopian. It’s their Back to Basics: Rediscovering the Richness of the Reformed Faith, published in 1996. None of these men’s views on what is in this most neglected of the FV texts. E. Calvin Beisner and Sproul are two of the most ferocious attackers of Wilson and the Federal Vision; yet their views on this book (the five points, the covenant, the church, and the Christian life) have not really changed at all. So why the problem now? These men have been preaching the same thing for years. James Jordan has been writing the same things since the early 1980s.

Perhaps it is not the theology that is the problem?

“Cosmic justice is not simply a higher degree of traditional justice, it is a fundamentally different concept. Traditionally justice or injustice is characteristic of a process. A defendant in a criminal case would be said to have received justice if the trial were conducted as it should be, under fair rules and with the judge and jury being impartial. After such a trial, it could be said that “justice was done” - regardless of whether the outcome was an acquittal or an execution.” - Thomas Sowell, The Quest For Cosmic Justice, p. 8-9.