So what about it? I was raised on the Westminster Catechism, of which this is the first tenet, and the grandeur of the conception still appeals to me.
And I was convinced by Christopher Lasch's The True and Only Heaven, that the line running from Edwards through Emerson to Niebuhr and M.L.King is an authentic American moral tradition, and that Emerson particularly is a thinker of great subtlety and power.
I somehow doubt that ogged will be consoled by this.
4 -- for a moment I thought you were accusing our host of plagiarism...
This brings to mind Numbers 31:34.
These may be fighting words but I blame a lot of why this country is being driven into the ground on the fact that our government is being run by people who believe salvation comes through grace instead of works.
7: Amen, sister.
And drawing on that, a fundamental disagreement over what is most important -- acting in this world, or focusing inward on Jesus -- prevents a lot of Americans from giving enough of a damn to do anything about it.
Thanks, Ned.
The grim thing is, despite my "hope against hope," I agree with you Becks.
I somehow doubt that ogged will be consoled by this.
I'm totally clueless. This doesn't work as consolation for what, exactly?
7: Not a Christian, nor any sort of theist, so this isn't my argument, but I agree completely. "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." JAMES 2:26.
FAITH ITSELF IS THE GIFT OF GOD; AND GOOD WORKS WILL NOT BE WANTING IN THOSE WHO BELIEVE.
And lest men should arrogate to themselves the merit of their own faith at least, not understanding that this too is the gift of God, this same apostle, who says in another place that he had "obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful,"(7) here also adds: "and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast."(1) And test it should be thought that good works will be wanting in those who believe, he adds further: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."(2) We shall be made truly free, then, when God fashions us, that is, forms and creases us anew, not as men--for He has done that already--but as good men, which His grace is now doing, that we may be a new creation in Christ Jesus, according as it is said: "Create in me a clean heart, O God."(3) For God had already created his heart, so far as the physical structure of the human heart is concerned; but the psalmist prays for the renewal of the life which was still lingering in his heart.
7: You're completely wrong. Works over grace, my ass.
FL: Not that you're worrying me or anything, but does this biblical turn suggest that you've sworn off the cock jokes? Because that would be tragic.
Yeah, works over grace? Why even have a God if you're not going to have a thorny metaphysical problem?
But I think the resolution of 7 with 13 and 15 is James 2:26. Someone who purports to themself to have faith but doesn't act in accordance has something flawed in their faith.
Becks, does your pastor hold up snakes in the middle of the service, or is it simply the more orthodox upside down cross nailed to the back of the apse?
dude, you can't nail something to the back of an apse. An apse doesn't have a back.
Why even have a God if you're not going to have a thorny metaphysical problem?
To smite thine enemies. Duh.
14 -- Seems to me FL's present turn is not so much Biblical as Talmudic. Non?
I thought the apse was the part of the chuch behind pastor as he faced the congregation. I even tried to look it up. What's the part I'm talking about called? And what's an "apse," then?
I see a clear line from thinking that belief in God is more important than trying to do God's will on Earth and embodying those values as an example to others to thinking that belief in the supremacy of American democracy is more important than trying to live by democratic ideals and trying to embody the values you purport to want to spread through the world.
And I'm leaving for the airport soon so I don't even have to back this up. Neener neener.
To 7 - No fight, but a different view. This Administration has shown (and the poll numbers indicate that people are catching on) that they almost never practice what they preach. In fact, they seem best at arrogance, deceit, and cynical manipulation. I'm sure some of them think "We're saved by grace, so what we're doing has to be right," but it seems that's code for "We know all the answers, so we can do what we want to do." But that's where they're screwing up under their own alleged belief system. The point (and it's thorny, and people have argued about it for a long time) is that under that belief system, people have to be humble enough to acknowledge that they just don't know all the answers, that they can't save themselves by themselves, and that they are often way wrong in what they do. And the Administration just refuses to be held to that standard.
Any more tips on smooching?
That's in the Ask The Mineshaft thread. I'm opining on whether it's all right to have sex with someone who's kind of drunk.
21: The chancel, though the chancel and the nave (where the congregation sits) are not architecturally distinct in a strict sense except in historic designs. And maybe retro designs.
The apse is the interior of a dome or the rounded, rising alcove above the chancel.
The works/faith thing fascinates me too. The focus on original sin in the faith argument, it seems to me, has the merit of commanding humility, and the truth of recognizing that to a great degree being "good" or "bad" depends on factors outside one's control: opportunity, social approval, social support. All, in a sense, manifestations of "god" inasmuch as "god" is an expression of the goodness, luck, and magnanimity of humanity as a whole.
On the other hand, the obvious problem with the "faith" argument is its invitation to despair and its pessimism about the possibilities of individual agency and will. I'm with LB: I prefer the "works" emphasis, at least inasmuch as the passage she quotes from James points out that faith in the absence of a conscious, active desire to do good is the most pathetic form of cynicsm: a death of the soul, indeed.
I think it's important to think of god as a group phenomenon, as something more than simply personal, something more than simply one's own relationship to goodness and power. To avoid hubris and to remember the importance of listening to others, rather than forcing one's view of the "good" upon them. One needs to *do* good, but one also needs "faith" in the will-to-goodness of everyone else, and the humility that comes with knowing that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and actions that seem good within one's limited knowledge of the world, but may have catastrophic consequences.
I can't believe I'm discussing faith on Unfogged, of all places.
Hey, we're a full service blog. Politics, smut, serious discussion of gender relations, philosophy, theology, and bickering: whatever the customer wants.
Very nice, B. Or should I say "Amen?"
Emerson's restatements of Puritanism are best found in "Compensation" and "Fate."
28:
And our reactions to those topics are more closely related to one another than one might think. Unfogged is wonderful.
God fashions us, that is, forms and creases us anew
ye shall not be saved unless ye be dry-cleaned at the dry-cleaners of the lamb, yea, and pressed in the trouser-press of the lamb.
I react to the passage in the post like I react to most Biblical passages: "What the fuck are they talking about?"
Unfogged is wonderful.
Bob Dole agrees.
Unfogged is wonderful.
I strongly prefer Labs' formulation, and I'd like to know just why the use of the proper name rubs me the wrong way. I don't think the Bobdolian analysis is quite right. Maybe the use of the name puts one in a external relation to the thing named, whereas "this" suggests a mode of being-in-comments? I don't know.
Pardon me. THIS BLOG IS WONDERFUL
Pardon me.
I'm sorry about that—I didn't mean to come off so critically. I was just wondering aloud.
Wondering why your phraseology sucks!
I hope this is the right thread for reasoned discourse.
What is the periodicity of a southern American Apostropher?
Re 7 and 24:
I am not sure this administration believe in TULIP. If so, they would have been more apologetic and more forthcoming about their wrongdoings. Who can judge that one is saved and other is not? If by grace, only God, if by good works, this world should be a better place.
Is anyone proclaiming to be a prophet here? FL?
First time we've had a bullfrog posting here. And what does TULIP mean?
In case it wasn't clear, I was serious in 37, except where I wasn't.
RE 7
Kerry made the same point in one of the 2004 debates. Contrary to this article , it didn't piss that many protestants off and may have helped him with catholics.
Sorry -
TULIP is calvinism:
Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irrestible grace
Preserverence of the saints
Of course; I didn't recognise it because of the order. My dad used to recite those in a sonorous voice, obviously facetiously, always ending with "Total Depravity" about D under the bass clef.
B, why are you sticking up for the feminization of American culture?
Always had my problems with that book; interesting, but I don't buy it. Is her other book, about NYC in the 20s, good?
Shh with the sweet reason, I was trying to pick a fight.
I love both those books, though I can never tell if I believe either of them. I do cotton to her general point in the former that Puritanism provides the most intellectually coherent expression of Protestantism in America and that, whatever later forms of Protestantism offer you, it isn't intellectual coherence. (Like you, I deeply admire Emerson, though I have flashes of irritation with his aphorisms, which have been too often used to facilitate bad behavior.) (FWIW, I have always felt more at home as a Protestant than a Christian. This is worth more than a parenthesis, probably.)
In the NYC book, she has wonderful and I think intuitively plausible things to say about the swirling currents of 1920s culture in Manhattan, and about the role of race in it. Vive the 1916 zoning ordinance! But also, you know, what the heck does it actually mean to say that there's an "obvious manic-depressive pattern in American culture"?
Re 44: What a friggin' loser! I mean Kerry, not Joe O. Why was Kerry even talking about that stuff? He should have been sinking the Swifties. No wonder he lost. Oh wait I voted for him.
I thought it was Augustine. Who was not, technically, a Calvinist.
So if one is saved by grace, how does that establish that one is saved by faith?
Dear wiseacres and other heathens: the elect (on whom grace has been bestowed) have an apprehension of faith unavailable to the preterite.
The grace which is in the hearts of the saints, is of the same nature with the divine holiness.... But the Spirit of God never influences the minds of natural men after this manner. Though he may influence them in many ways, yet he never, in any of his influences, communicates himself to them in his own proper nature.
So only through grace can you experience faith.
48: Because I'm an emasculating bitch, duh. Actually, is that a good book? It looks surprisingly interesting, given its title.
54: Being saved by faith can be extended to being saved by grace, depending on how committed one is to the idea of human abjection in the face of god, because it is only by God's grace that one has faith in the first place. Didn't you ever read The Scarlet Letter?
But, in fact, one is not saved by faith. Faith is a corollary of being saved by grace.
Actually, is that a good book? It looks surprisingly interesting, given its title.
See 50. Also, remember, this book was the occasion of a slightly, let's be kind and say "dated", as well as heated, exchange over the duties of feminist scholars. Or, maybe you're too young to remember.
58: That's what I was saying.
59: Not too young, but in fact I have read very little feminist scholarship.
Doesn't faith in grace determine whether you receive grace?
By which I mean, "scholarship that is about feminism specifically," as opposed to "scholarship that is inherently feminist in nature," which I have read a fair bit of. Even written some myself.
But, in fact, one is not saved by faith. Faith is a corollary of being saved by grace.
Nobody's arguing with you, ben(on preview, I see B is arguing with you; B, you're going to be exiled to Rhode Island)—not Augustine, in the quoted portion, nor the Puritans. Augustine quotes Paul: by grace are you saved through faith; faith is the agency of salvation, not the cause.
As for the Puritans, faith was only a step on the road to conversion; they had a whole process. Also, attainment of faith was never certain.
By grace, through faith -- saving grace never occurs apart from faith.
(Should've read slolernr's post more closely before posting.)
(Should've read B's post more closely before posting; B, I think you escape Rhode Island.)
I'm not arguing with Ben, either. I'm pointing out that the question he is asking is meaningless.
Well I'm arguing with someone, by god!
Jesus Saves, but Yzerman Puts In The Rebound.
B, if you're interested, here is the article critiquing Douglas's feminism on behalf of a different feminism.
I'd argue with you, Ben, but I'm afraid I couldn't be any less interested in the topic.
Apo, the topic is interested in you.
Maybe I'm about to get heretical here, but our faith shouldn't be able to determine anything about whether God decides to bestow grace, should it?
Maybe I'm about to get heretical here
Reckon you got there a while back.
Apo, the topic is interested in you.
Well, let me state emphatically, then, that the topic does not have my consent, no matter how drunk I get.
(Hey, did you get my email?)
our faith shouldn't be able to determine anything about whether God decides to bestow grace, should it?
No, and if you're a proper Protestant it doesn't.
the topic does not have my consent, no matter how drunk I get.
Aw, drunk conversions are the best conversions.
What, after all, is the point of sacramental wine?
What, after all, is the point of sacramental wine?
Savings!
Don't forget the sacramental E-Z Glide.
What about sacramental wine? I have a vague understanding that it's fortified a bit so it won't spoil as quickly as..er...regular wine. True? And the Ice Storm was an awesome movie. Ang Lee has viking...oops, wrong thread.
a vague understanding that it's fortified a bit
If you're raised Baptist, the sacramental wine is actually sacramental grape juice fortified (if at all) with vitamin C. So not only must one make the blood->wine mental leap, but a further blood->wine->Welch's one.
Thus is faith irrevocably lost.
Baptist's celebrate communion? I thought they did not.
Obviously. I have what seems to me like a clear memory of my devoutly Baptist friend telling me, when we were in ninth grade, that Christians did not celebrate communion -- it was a Catholic ritual.
87 -- I put that in special for you.
Everyone go back and read the law firm and/or Supreme Court Justice raps/ rhyming poems in this thread (except mine, which is bad).
Well, the Baptists were once the libertarians of the Protestant world, with every congregation making its own determination of how they would worship, interpret the Bible, etc. So it's entirely possible that a church calling itself Baptist might jettison communion for fear of catching Catholic cooties.
However, every Baptist church I attended had a communion ritual, so I would reckon that those who don't are a pretty small minority.
88: While Baptists take Communion, they do not subscribe to the doctrine of transubstantiation -- that the bread and wine are actually the body and blood of Christ. It's a commemorative ritual, rather than the Catholic sacrament. (Calvinists take an intermediate position, consubstantiation, but I'm not sure of the details. And come to think of it, I'm not sure if Baptists are part of the Calvinist tradition -- I don't think they are, but I'm not certain they aren't.)
92: Oh, that is probably what my friend was telling me then, and I muddled it up in my memory. I'm pretty sure his Baptist church was pretty mainline Baptist, whatever that means -- it was the largest Baptist church in Modesto.
Actually, TMK, of all the emails I received and should have read, I don't see yours. Try again?
Everybody knows that real communion wine is actually water in little paper cups, "drunk in memory of his blood."
A River Runs Through It mentions the old slur that Methodists are Baptists who can read. Just thought I would add to the Unfogged Ecumenical Movement.
My mother (who was raised Methodist) jokingly refers to Methodists as "God's luke-warm people."
What about sacramental wine?
That stuff's okay, but it's only a short drive west to Napa—might as well make the trip.
Denominations were once much more important than they are now. In the Canada of my parent's childhood, Baptist-Presbyterian would have been an intermarriage.
I grew up internalizing a kind of family tree of denominations, sort of for a players/scorecard kind of knowledge. But there is so much cross-pollination of ideas and styles now that these distinctions have lost most of their meaning.
Wikipaedia suggests that there is some Calvinism in the history of Baptist churches. It's not super-clear on this point though.
97 is clever. People aren't taking 90 seriously enough.
Bunyan was a Baptist. Would it kill ya to read Pilgrim's Progress?
Would it kill ya to read Pilgrim's Progress?
Does "bored to death" actually happen? Because maybe.
All you really need is Huck Finn's capsule review, which was something like "It's about a man who leaves his family. It didn't say why."
I think among younger Baptists (who make up a large percentage of my extended family), communion is back—they don't call it consubstantiation, but communion appears to be a highly spiritual, transforming thing with no officially recognized basis. My brother, my cousins, they're all into that on youth retreats and the like.
2, 4, 6, 8, time to transubstantiate!
First you get down on your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect and
-- Genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.
Tom Lehrer, "Vatican Rag"
Everyone go back and read the law firm and/or Supreme Court Justice raps
Um, why?
Does your family view you as the lost sheep, 'Smasher?
Just do it , okay?
It brings back painful memories.
Now I can't get the Whiffenpoof Song out of my head. Thanks, apo.
A high point in the history of the Unfoggosphere.
I've never heard the Whiffenpoof Song.
Count yourself lucky -- it incorporates sheep noises.
So is this just a gag, where FL tries to see how many comments he can get on a straightforward cut-and-paste post?
it incorporates sheep noises.
And where is John Emerson, anyway?
This whole damn thread has had me thinking of "Sheep" by Pink Floyd. Which I guess is marginally better than thinking about Bing Crosby but still.
Hey speaking of earworms, everybody check out my latest post in which I inaugurate a meme, and see if you want to play.
Not really, apo—I'm consubstantiating right now!
Oh and also this whole damn thread has had me thinking of "Petition the Lord with Prayer" (if that's the title of the thing) by the Doors.
63: That list seems to be missing some of the more obvious signs. Like touching of the hands, shoulders, elbows, etc. Or more dramatically.
So the cutting and pasting wasn't so straightforward?
re 120: "mostly," eh? The Lord works in mysterious ways, Monsieur Labs.
The trick is to figure out what vanishingly small portion of the post FL sincerely endorses, and through it bring him into the light of grace. Or burn him as a heretic, whichever.
106: Some of them are quite good, I'd forgotten about them, and using myself as an example I assumed that others had forgottrn about them (plus not everyone was around for them), and would enjoy reading them. Also, because I haven't forgotten who was in the Hollies and who was in the Byrds.
I take this--"And before this redemption is wrought in a man, when he is not yet free to do what is right, how can he talk of the freedom of his will and his good works"--as a direct response to ogged's "One post can't hurt, right?"
Hence my comment in 3, Standpipe.
(While I understand about the redaction, FL, I hope the comb's teeth aren't too fine.)
w/d, you really are taking a stroll down memory lane.
[do you have an email address you let people know?]
Hah! I just saw 120. Now I want my five quid.
Baptists are somewhat Calvinist. The "most" Calvinist denominations would be either the Presbyterians or else anything with "Reformed" in their name (usually preceded by some type of nationality). The United Church of Christ, which is the union of American Congregational churches with an American branch of one of the German (Reformed) state churches, is officially Calvinist, but their heart doesn't seem to be in it.
The only people who care about Calvinism appear to be the Wesleyans (Nazarenes, etc.), who are still engaged in the mortal battle once joined in the 1700s.
Luther is much more interesting to read than Calvin is, though I'm not sure how anyone ever manage to pull together a church based on Luther, perhaps the most inconsistent theologian in the history of theology.
So who consubstantiates and who is just engaging in a memorial ritual? And what is consubstantiation anyway?
Yes. I'm only very weakly protective of my IRL name, though slightly more so than Hilzoy, who I would think has more reason to be than I do (by which I mean she says things which she should be proud to have attributed to her name, but people who know her name actually know something).
their heart doesn't seem to be in it
Hey watch it Mister, that is the church of my parents (and in which my sister is an ordained minister) you're speaking of.
Who steals my name steals trash!
I think you escape Rhode Island.
Impossible. As the URI kids used to cut up their car stickers to read, "Rhode Island is the Universe". Besides, who would want to? Roger Williams is funkay.
Wait, wait! I'm going to guess this one!
Consubstantiaion is the belief that the body of Christ is not somehow contained in the hostie but rather sort of materializes (through God's grace) at the same time that you eat the hostie.
Have I got that anywhere near right? And I think it's only Lutherans who hold onto this one.
Transubstantiation: the (apparent) bread and wine are no longer (in their essence) bread and wine, but instead the Body and Blood of Christ
Consubstantiation: Christ is really present, but alongside the bread and wine that remain bread and wine
Memorial: All you have is bread and wine. Christ is not present in any special way that he is not "always" present.
Catholics transubstantiate; Lutherans consubstantiate. I'm not sure what others do, and they themselves might not be sure what they're doing, either (i.e., may not have an official formula -- a lot of the official denominational beliefs are very vague, in order to make room for people).
"Consubstantiaion" should be "Consubstantiation," and nobody believes that the hostie "contains" Christ, exactly. I'm standing by the last clause of that sentence, though.
I'm standing by the last clause of that sentence, though.
Wikipaedia thinks that "Consubstantiation is commonly—though erroneously—associated with the teachings of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon. Lutheran teachings reject any attempt to explain philosophically the means by which Christ is present in the Eucharist."
A fun prank back in the day was to squirt Christ with iodine and watch him turn black.
I was taught meaning for consubstantiation and transubstantiation in my secular public high school, in order to better understand some of motivations behind, e.g. the Thirty Years War. Our teacher thought we should understand some of the doctrinal differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. I believe we learned con- as "People who believe in this believe that Christ participates [that's the key word I remember from how I was taught] in the wine and the wafer."
Jesus was already black, cracker.
I knew you'd find a way to get interested in the topic.
I note that the McKinney thread ended with a discussion of the Judas Gospel. Seems like a spiritual/theological trend (if one disregards the drunken mating/how to start necking/John McCain threads).
The big question is, what kind of unfoggageddon will it be if this post garners more comments than ogged's slight return?
70: Thank you for the link.
Sacramental wine is so that it's easier to seduce drunken altar boys. Everyone knows that.
ogged's slight return?
Persian Chile (Slight Return)
Bitch -- exactly, and that's why Vatican II is destroying the church from within. Back in the good old days, only the priest, who could handle it, had communion wine. Nowadays, the kids are liquored up and looking to score. See what happens when you open up to modernity?
Plus all those damn nuns hanging around helping with the mass. Nothing's less sexy than a nun. And the appalling guitar music....
I remember reading somewhere about an older woman of seventy or so who objected to all the modernizations and Protestantlike touches of contemporary Catholicism. Someone turned to her to shake her hand and say "Peace be with you" and she kept her hand to herself and said, "I'm sorry, I don't do that shit."
LOL. I like the hand-shaking part. Not such a fan of those freaks who insist on holding hands during the Lord's Prayer, though.
Nothing's less sexy than a nun.
That's just crazy talk.
153: Part of me was hoping that you would answer that with a link.
The other part of me was really afraid that you might answer that with a link.
"Or she knew him, that second I say, and was but creature of her creature, vergine madre figlia di tuo figlio, or she knew him not and then stands she in the one denial or ignorancy with Peter Piscator who lives in the house that Jack built and with Joseph the Joiner patron of the happy demise of all unhappy marriages, parceque M. Léo Taxil nous a dit que qui l'avait mise dans cette fichue position c'était le sacré pigeon, ventre de Dieu! Entweder transsubstantiality oder consubstantiality but in no case subsubstantiality." ...Ulysses, Oxen, Stephen preaching to the interns. At one I time I understood a little of this, at least as a dirty blasphemous joke, and as a little something more. The last line is not nonsense.
I admire a novelist who's not afraid to require knowledge of three languages other than English to understand a single sentence.
147 -- sacramental E-Z Glide is useful in that regard too.
154 -- try Googling for "Hentai Tentacle Nun Porn" and see whatcha come up with.
WHEREBY IS DECLARED, THAT WHOSOEVER IS DESIROUS TO REPREHEND SINNE IN OTHER MEN, SHOULD FIRST EXAMINE HIMSELFE, THAT HE BE NOT GUILTIE OF THE SAME CRIME
Madame Usimbalda, Lady Abbesse of a Monastery of Nuns in Lombardie, arising hastily in the night time without a Candle, to take one of her Daughter Nunnes in bed with a yong Gentleman, whereof she was enviously accused, by certaine of her other Sisters: The Abbesse her selfe (being at the same time in bed with a Priest) imagining to have put on her head her plaited vayle, put on the Priests breeches. Which when the poore Nunne perceyved; by causing the Abbesse to see her owne error, she got her selfe to be absolved, and had the freer liberty afterward, to be more familiar with her frend, then formerly she had bin.
Sort of relatedly, does anyone else think it's hilarious that Matthew Yglesias and Steve Sailer read each other's blogs?
Part of me was hoping that you would answer that with a link.
I've seen it up close. The picture doesn't begin to do it justice.
Yeah, I've been in Rome a couple of times, never for very long, and have no idea how I managed to miss it.