Discuss Theology

Michael Barone in Real Clear Politics:

It comes down to this: A substantial part of the Democratic Party, some of its politicians and many of its loudest supporters do not want America to succeed in Iraq. So vitriolic and all-consuming is their hatred for George W. Bush that they skip right over the worthy goals we have been, with some considerable success, seeking there — a democratic government, with guaranteed liberties for all, a vibrant free economy, respect for women — and call this a war for oil, or for Halliburton.Successes are discounted, setbacks are trumpeted, the level of American casualties is treated as if it were comparable to those in Vietnam or World War II. Allegations of American misdeeds are repeated over and over; the work of reconstruction and aid of American military personnel and civilians is ignored.

In all this they have been aided and abetted by large elements of the press. ***

All of this does not go unnoticed by America’s voters. The persistence of violence in Iraq has done grave damage to George W. Bush’s job rating, and polls show that his fellow Republicans are in trouble. Yet when people actually vote, those numbers don’t seem to translate into gains for the Democrats. In 2004, John Kerry got 44 percent of the votes in the 50th district of California. In the April 2006 special primary, Democrat Francine Busby got 44 percent of the votes there. In the runoff last week, she got 45 percent and lost to Republican Brian Bilbray.

The angry Democratic left and its aiders and abettors in the press seem to have succeeded in souring public opinion, but they haven’t succeeded in producing victory margins for the Democrats. Maybe they’re doing just the opposite.

Via Power Line News.

• Robert Longman manages the number 1 web site on Google about the Trinity.  Here is his biographical statement.  It is utterly amazing to me that he is where he is in the rankings and not some more erudite, educated person or educator.  The address iss: www.spirithome.com
• I was given Christian baptism as an infant in the Episcopal (US branch of Anglican) Church, studied at various churches’ Vacation Bible Schools and youth classes, with a lot of my own studying, eventually moving toward Lutheran beliefs.
• I am a confirmed, communing, and contributing lay member of the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America), the mainline-ish branch of US Lutheranism. I have a job in municipal planning and graduate degrees in that line of work. I have no official standing, ordination, or seminary training of any kind. (Nothing against seminaries. I love being a student; there’s always something new to learn. I’ve just never studied at a seminary, and never needed to.)
• Spirithome speaks a lot about matters of concern to all sorts of Christians, including Pentecostalists and Charismatics. I’m not a charismatic, by most definitions; there are doctrinal differences, and concerns about many of their practices. Yet, all Christians can learn a lot from them about living the faith-life today. So, Spirithome’s in dialogue with the pentecostalist tradition, as with all other traditions, as true equals in the fellowship of the one Body.
• I’m also a 18-year veteran of non-commercial radio, at WUSB 90.1 FM in Stony Brook NY USA. I’m heard alternating Sundays, 12:30-2:30pm New York City time, at 90.1 FM on Long Island and coastal Connecticut, and on wusb.fm RealAudio live Webcast.
• I am no spirituality expert in any way. My prayer life is vigorous but spotty. I sometimes leave the site alone for days so I can wallow in my own problems. I struggle against pretending to be a know-it-all, and against turning my works for the faith into an ego thing. I am just a writer and a Christian, leaning mostly on the wisdom of others for what I write here. Please keep me, the site, and the site’s users in prayer.

Bok published, Our Underachieving Colleges in December of 2005.  He wrote, approvingly,  about Oberlin College accepting women in 1837.  He also mentioned that, “College presidents initially disagreed on whether women should go to college at all.”[p.212] Harvard President, Derek Bok not a complementarian

I thought it would be good to post a Catholic link for the Trinity. This is one area that Protestants and Catholics have agreed on through the years. Wherever we can agree, I think we should celebrate it.New Advent: The Blessed Trinity

Ecumenicism and the Trinity,Trinitarian theology

Time Backtracking On Haditha

Sweetness & Light, which has been all over the Haditha story, notes that Time Magazine has been discreetly backing off its Haditha coverage with a series of corrections. Time has an enormous amount of prestige invested in its Haditha “scoop.” It turns out, though, that the magazine was apparently intentionally deceitful about the source of the videotape that got the whole story rolling. And it has also developed that a photograph that Time described as “one of the most damning pieces of evidence investigators have in their possession” is only the subject of rumor, and may not even exist.

As a story about the Marines, the jury is out on Haditha. As a story about journalism, it’s starting to look bad for Time. Based on recent history, I suppose that means the magazine is likely to get a Pulitzer. [I got this from Power Line.]
Via InstaPundit and Power Line News.

R.W. Southern writes in Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages about an Augustinian group known as the “Order of the Trinitarians”.  He states that these Augustinians who were among the least well known of many of the Augustinian orders, “It was reported about 1240 that there were 600 houses of this branch of the Augustinian order in France, Lombardy, and Spain.  These were tiny communities each with three clerks, three laymen, and a superior.  Their purpose was to relieve the poor and to redeem prisoners captured by the Muslims”[p.249].  They did not last through the 1400′s.  It seems to me that the contemporary worldwide order of the Trinitarians [that is present day Christians of whatever stripe] are the contemporary answer to Islam as well. An Historic, Trinitarian Response to Islam, Trinitarian Theology

The Greco/Roman religions of the first century held women to be the mediatrices between humanity and the gods or goddesses.  In 1 Timothy 2:1-15, Paul responded that there was “one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”.  this whole passage speaks of a local problem and not something to which we would look for eternal guidance on the place of women in church leadership or not. 1 Timothy 2:1-15, Female mediatrices and Paul’s response, complementarian

“Paul, too, believed himself to have a special unique role within the overall purposes of Israel’s God, the world’s climax – that had been done in the death and resurrection of the Messiah – but rather to perform the next unique task within an implicit apocalyptic timetable, namely to call the nations, urgently, to loyal submission to the one who had now been enthroned as Lord of the world. Paul believed that it was his task to call into being, by proclamation Jesus as Lord, the worldwide community in which ethnic divisions would be abolished and a new family created as a new creation had been launched and would one day come to full flower”. N.T. Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, pg 157.

This is a follow-up to my previous post. Like Paul, and his missionary calling, our task is also to call the nations to loyal submission to the Messiah. We do this by going and proclaiming. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Trinitarian baptism), teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age”.

Christianity is not a ghetto religion. We are not allowed to stay in our comfortable religious ghettos, but are order out into the world (this does not mean you need to cross the ocean). We are also called to make disciples of the nations (this is not an individual salvation kind of deal, but rather we are to disciple whole cultures…this my friend will take some work to accomplish). We are to make members, through baptism, into the Trinitarian fellowship (The Holy Catholic Church). And finally, we are to follow Jesus, and His ways, through this new age into the future history of the new age.

Steve

#2 most wanted terrorist Jamal Abu Samhadana: Killed by Israeli airstrike today

Bam. Plus: 17 other raids.

Will the Dems call them “stunts,” too? Wash Times:

Some Democrats, breaking ranks from their leadership, today said the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq was a stunt to divert attention from an unpopular and hopeless war. “This is just to cover Bush’s [rear] so he doesn’t have to answer” for Iraqi civilians being killed by the U.S. military and his own sagging poll numbers, said Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat.

Church history students will not be kind to us relative to our weak statement of Trinitarian theology. Church History and Contemporary theology