Blog - Page 300 of 318 - John H Armstrong

A Catholic-Protestant Wedding?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:33-05:00April 25th, 2006|Categories: Roman Catholicism|

During my formative childhood years, as a conservative Protestant evangelical, I was taught that a Catholic-Protestant marriage was actually an “interfaith” wedding and thus it should never happen. I was taught that both sides would compromise their faith in such an arrangement and the results would almost never be good. On our side, we simply did not see Catholics as Christians so this was an “unequal yoke” in our circles. (Pre-Vatican II many Catholics did not see us as Christians either! We were outside the church, thus outside salvation.)

My mother once dated a Catholic boy (she was a Baptist) for a short time. She regularly told her sons why she could never marry him, thus they broke up in due time. She sometimes reminded me, “You could have had a Catholic father.” This was meant to make me thankful that I had been spared the terrible fate of having a Catholic father since this would have confused and harmed me spiritually. (I wasn’t sure what to make of my Episcopal neighbor but I was assured he was at least a Protestant!)

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An Important Reformed Distinctive

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:33-05:00April 24th, 2006|Categories: Reformed Christianity|

Reformed Christianity, in its richest and fullest expression, strongly emphasizes the biblical covenants. Surely this is one of the great distinctives of the tradition. This emphasis has sometimes been taken to conclusions that do not sound much like biblical teaching. They sound to me, to be honest, more like systematic theological categories created in the heat and smoke of polarizing battle. But, and this is very an important but, the tradition keeps alive this covenantal emphasis, which I believe is very important.

One aspect of the covenantal idea, often overlooked even in Reformed circles, is the communal nature of covenantal language and faith. We are meant to experience the covenant and we are meant to experience it in community. We are baptized into a covenantal community on the basis of the promises of that covenant, thus when the covenantal idea first appears in the Old Testament it directly shapes Israel as a people around the cultus and the commandments of Yahweh.

Historically the Reformed confessions, and the Reformed churches of those confessions, have understood this covenantal doctrine to include personal […]

Listening to Jesus in the Gospels

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:33-05:00April 22nd, 2006|Categories: Hermeneutics|

Did Jesus walk on a hard-to-see patch of ice, in the Sea of Galilee, instead of on the water, as the biblical text reports? This new suggestion that he walked on ice, from Doron Nof, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, must be the ten thousandth such idea put forward since the Enlightenment. Nof says, “I am not trying to provide any information that has to do with theology here.” Really? Come on professor Nof. You are suggesting that the narrative can be read (interpreted) in a different way, which all scholars clearly agree to be the case. But you are also drawing a conclusion about the narrative that seeks to remove the notion of the “miraculous” for reasons that only you probably know. And we are not supposed to believe that this has anything to do with theology. Be serious. The best response to Nof’s theory was offered by biblical scholar Darrell Bock, who dismissed it by saying, “I’m cold to the theory.” So am I.

Worse than Nof’s thesis, in very different and sad way, is the reaction […]

Seminary President Urges Renewal

By John Armstrong|2006-04-13T08:55:28-05:00April 13th, 2006|Categories: Renewal|

Seminary presidents are generally wonderful Christian leaders. They are usually ministers, with a great deal of local church experience, who believe in the mission of their school and genuinely desire to equip good people to better serve the church. The problem comes when the president seeks to change a school that is in the grip of institutional paralysis, firmly set in long term ideological concrete. The job is often lonely and difficult. I was approached a few years ago about considering the presidency of a seminary. After I got over the shock (I was not qualified in my judgment) I quickly realized that the job was way beyond me and my abilities. My admiration for seminary presidents, ever since, is even higher as a result of this experience.

Dr. Nick Carter, the president of Andover-Newton Theological School (related to the extremely liberal United Church of Christ) apparently understands this challenge well. In a speech given shortly after his inauguration, Carter said:

The churches and denominations are crying out for new leadership. The assumptions of the past are no longer relevant; the […]

Marriage, Parenting and the Words We Use

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:33-05:00April 11th, 2006|Categories: Marriage & Family|

Everyone who is not comatose knows a huge debate is unfolding in this country about the legal basis, and definition, of marriage. Is marriage between one man and one woman, or simply a relationship between two consenting adults (e.g., same-sex marriage), or perhaps more than two adults (polygamy is making a legal comeback, no joke)? The Washington State Supreme Court, in November 2005, ruled in favor of de facto parenthood, another new word and concept to be watched. This concept is a growing popular option for courts, in about out ten states, to decide the visitation rights and legal relationships between children and adults who are not biologically related and not legally married. The particular case in Washington involved two lesbians who had ended a relationship and then a debate began about their respective rights to the child that one of the women had conceived through artificial insemination more than six years ago. Her partner assisted in the process and thus she now claims parental rights to the child they were rearing together.

Judges now award legal status to an adult who […]

Ideas and Conservativism

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:34-05:00April 8th, 2006|Categories: Culture|

Richard Weaver, a prominent American social and political philosopher, noted several decades ago that “ideas have consequences” (Ideas Have Consequences, University of Chicago, 1984). A socialist by training Weaver eventually concluded that socialists were really “dry, insistent people of shallow objectives.” He opposed what he saw as the bankruptcy of the mass mind, ancient Gnosticism, and socialism. In the end he saw clearly that these were all supported by very bad ideas. Weaver argued that the world was both intelligible and free and the errors that plagued us could be solved by reversing the tragedies of unintelligent choice. For this reason my own political views are framed by constant vigilance against various bad ideas that I believe to are completely destructive to our way of life.

Cultural capital is inherited from others. Our cultural bank account is being drained by some very bad ideas, even from sincere Christians. This is why I argue that we should support those institutions that guarantee our liberty and security. These include institutions like the church, the family and our schools. It also includes the free-market, which […]

Reflections on a College Forum on Homosexuality

By John Armstrong|2006-04-04T19:52:56-05:00April 4th, 2006|Categories: Homosexuality|

Last evening I sought to represent the consistent moral position of the Christian tradition regarding the immorality of homosexual practice. The context was a student forum at William Woods College in Fulton, Missouri. William Woods is a Disciples of Christ college begun prior to the Civil War. Though there is an orthodox witness to the gospel on this campus William Woods is not a place where Christian values are dominant in any meaningful sense. The event at which I spoke came about because several Christians on campus desired to have a civil public discussion about this polarizing issue. The chaplain is a friend and a solid Christian minister with a growing witness for the gospel.

The minister who represented the position that the church should accept homosexual practice between consenting adults was the pastor of a local mainline church. He was a gracious, civil and able man. He treated me with dignity and respect. There were no sparks and no unkind words spoken. But we profoundly disagreed about the answer to central question of the night: “Does biblical Christian morality affirm the […]

Let the Season Begin!

By John Armstrong|2006-04-03T11:32:16-05:00April 3rd, 2006|Categories: Baseball|

Many of my friends know that baseball is my game! I always get a surge of hope each April when I hear an umpire yell, “Play Ball.” For those of you who just don’t get it I can only say “You are missing one of America’s greatest gifts to human pleasure and summer relaxation.” Steroid controversies aside this game will go on and it will only improve when the “lords of the game” clean up a few things. The present controversies themselves make for interest in their own way.

To prepare for the new season I completed a fine 385-page book last evening, Scout’s Honor: The Bravest Way to Build a Winning Team, by Bill Shanks. Shanks tells the inside story of how the Atlanta Braves have built a farm system that stocks them with the largest supply of young pitchers in the game. They then use this overabundance of talent to develop new stars and to trade young pitchers for other players they need.

If you know anything about modern baseball you know that there are two distinctly different […]

Why I Am a Classical Liberal

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:34-05:00April 1st, 2006|Categories: Politics|

Social and political theory is widely and, quite often, grossly misunderstood. What we call conservatism today, at least in several very important ways, was once called federalism, or classical liberalism. A central idea of this federalism was that the state should be built from below, not from above. Numerous orthodox Christian thinkers, both Catholic and Protestant, have explained and defended classical liberalism over the course of the past two or three centuries. Acton Institute’s marvelous Web site regularly demonstrates this via its wonderful home page located at www.acton.org. (I borrow several of the quotes I use below from this source.)

It is in this sense that Pope Benedict XVI is also a classical liberal, as was the Dutch giant Abraham Kuyper, when it comes to the philosophy of the state (See also my March 31 blog on Deus Caritas Est).

One of the leading twentieth-century Protestant defenders of classical liberalism was Emil Brunner (1889–1966), the Swiss Reformed theologian. Drawn to religious socialism as a young man, Emil Brunner had a profound change of mind after seeing […]

You Can't Trust the Government to Solve the Poverty Problem

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:34-05:00March 31st, 2006|Categories: Poverty|

If you wish to get a heated discussion going among serious Christians suggest that it is our divinely given responsibility to care for the poor. Then suggest that we ought to do something, anything is better than nothing, in the name of Christ to direclty alleviate hunger and to address poverty with real Christian solutions. Few will disagree with you a this point and all will agree that something ought to be done. But no two people are likely to come up the same solution for the problem at the end of the day. Conservatives will appeal to private charity as the best approach to the problem and liberals will suggest that government must get even more involved. And both will appeal to the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, the kingdom sayings of Jesus, and the need to demonstrate that the gospel we preach must show itself in tangible ways that really care for people in both body and soul.

Father Robert Sirico, president of Acton Institute, recently suggested in an editorial (Acton Notes, March 2006) that appeared originally in the […]