Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near. (The Revelation to John 1:3)
For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. (2 Corinthians 13:8)
We pine for a plurality of theories and desire they together give us the sum total of truth! We make the Bible an adult toy for our own pleasure, denying that the end therein brings the climatic optimum for sin. Roland Barthes told us, “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author to give writing its future.”[i] This cannot be undone, nor can the consequences of this be contained. Who will stop writing? The pen is mightier than the sword, we say. Joining us, others say, the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr. Who then among us burns with a Fahrenheit 451-plus fever high enough to lead us, and be the first to put away ink and pen? The “Destruktion” of deconstruction defies our deadened will lording over our dull reason. We chart history as a churning sea, a single text upon which floats and drifts the debris of meaning we collect as rhetoric. We pronounce logic a product of convenience. We tell the truth in the present tense of passing interest. Whereas the Word of Righteousness is for the mature, who have their powers of spiritual discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil; we have turned the art of reading into an exercise for increasing our miraculous powers of imagination for the changing of all things except ourselves. We remain the same yesterday and today and forever, and for every yawning moment ever. In the name of ending violence we virtuosi of vitteas (cubed) track down to make inquiry of, violate and lynch a text heard harboring heresies of heteronomous authority. We rip off of it what we say are irreconcilably undecidable differences that we declare are woven into the fabric of the text’s rhetorical garb. We descend without end into a never before gleaned array of forbidden or hypocritical hidden meanings, pronouncing Milton burned with lust for Satan and the Marquis de Sade wrote to the glory of God, giving even God a new name, the name, “I am not.” We have become loud-mouthed boasters, swaggering braggarts with tongues of brawn who seek in secret to enfeeble our listeners so to make the case in public that we alone are strong. High flown and over blown, our great words grant nothing, acknowledge nothing, mean nothing, except we alone deserve to be heard.
As the children of God born of God wanting to get beyond this, to use our right to read for building up and not tearing down, we must listen to the speech of the Word of God (Hebrews 4:12-13). Yet we lack both the consciousness and the canon to conjure the collective will to do so. Those among us who pray to Mary nonetheless do not know how, with wonder, to ponder the things of the Lord in their heart. Those among us who know Jesus loves us because the Bible tells us so cannot, like Mary His disciple, sit at His feet to listen to the Lord’s word. We know the Logos through theories, which have replaced the Scriptures as the authority, source and content of our rule of faith. We weave our webs like spiders, which cannot clothe or house us, nor can they capture the truth for which we hunger. Still, we spin and spin. We read theories about texts written about theories of truth to write theories about how to read and write about the truth. Our texts have taken on a life of their own; they conspire against us, bearing witness to our betrayal of attention. Entertainment once meant the provision for the support of persons in service, now it is a means by which we amuse ourselves or occupy our interests, without risking serious consequences.[ii] No matter our intent we have embarked upon a treasonous route. We are stirring up resistance to unreserved allegiance owed to our sovereign Lord. By way of our plurality of theories about the Truth, about the Logos, about our God and Savior Jesus Christ, we have delivered the dangerous Biblical world of life over to our imagination (instead of imaging ourselves into it), turning it into a harmless parlor game. We parse God to be a rule that operates as a parameter in a narcissist Christianity of our own making. We cannot help ourselves; we are compulsive-obsessive over our suspicion of theories, yet we depend upon theories in our incessant creating and criticizing of theories. There is no philosophy, no social science, no literary leading out or cultural studies, no humanities; and therefore, no Biblical understanding or edification: there is only the one discussion about theory, which of course means theories and theories about theories, each an advocacy rite initiating the catechist into an esoteric, ceremonial means to analyze, judge, skepticate[iii] and correct the words we hear. The experts at this craft adeptly practice a bricolage kind of improvisation; committing the text to a heterogeneous repertoire ransacked from the latest flotsam put on display in the waiting rooms attached to those concierge cosmetic-surgeons that boast the best genealogies of knowledge and things. “The current sophisticated critic would be unlikely to pick one master to illuminate the work at hand – he would mix and match as the occasion required. But to enact a reading means to submit one text to the terms of another; to allow one text to interrogate another – then often to try, sentence, and summarily execute it.”[iv] No legation or speculation settles down long enough for us to stand upon it with confidence as our firm foundation (Seal? Stand? Foundation? Firm? God?). Even the pope has awakened to realize that with the whole world, he too has become protestant! With or without the triple tiara, we cannot see theory outside of Heidegger’s gaze. “Metaphysics cannot be overcome but only verwunden – accepted, distorted, and continued in ironic directions that are known to be provisional.”[v] Never has the hand of the world delved this deeply into the wound in Jesus’ side. Mentality has replaced faith. In ways with which we are not fully aware we have traded doctrine for theory in our quest for assurance and rest. All of us suffer this switch, although, in our attempts to define what theory is, we are forced to accept that “there is no real consensus as to its content or even meaning.”[vi] So we have regressed, now we are unable to even ask, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
Literacy, the Bible interpreted into the familial languages of the world and the Universal Charter of Human Rights make everybody a protestant now. Amphibolics all. We cannot stop. We don’t know how. “Within the logic of the secular protestantism of which pluralism is the product, the interpretive authority once ascribed to the hieratic author has devolved upon the individual reader.”[vii] There is no end in sight to the growth in the holdings that fill the library of works written by the priesthood of believers! The beloved’s prophecy is being fulfilled. Never mind the many other things which Jesus did and the many other signs which He performed in the presence of the disciples. The few that have been written that we might have life by believing in His name suffice for inciting us to devote ourselves to filling up the world with our books! “In a society whose chief, perhaps only, shared assumption is that a plurality of assumptions, cultural and educational, must be tolerated, it is inevitable that means replace ends, which are seen as all relative anyway. Technique becomes the measure of all things, including reading, which is now reified into ’schools’ of interpretation — feminist, marxist, structuralist, [critical realist] etc. — ‘approaches’ or ‘methodologies’ that seek to justify, indeed ‘authorize’, their own special interests by interpreting the texts they take up in the only terms that command anything like wide cultural prestige, the specialist jargons of the presumed technical expertise.”[viii] These specialists kid themselves if they think we will listen to them. Who are these alien sojourners with their strange ways of speaking, why should they act as judges over us? “Why should we place our trust in the certainty of metaphysical evidence rather than in the interpretation of the divine Word, given by the community of believers and freely by each individual believer, which changes in accordance with the becoming of history?”[ix] So this is our “new problem,” which is really “an old one in disguise, namely that of the communal faith required to maintain any dogmatism.”[x] From whence continues orthodoxy of any stripe – vox ex cathedra of the Magisterium, decree enforced by an ad hoc goyish politicus consensus or the confession of the soul’s conscience to another before God?
Each saint endures the agony of being justified by faith alone in Christ suspended between a dictatorial ruler over Christian truth and demotic participation in its unending reexamination. This is the case whether we are clergy of whatever body or a man or woman pronounced by them as laicized. Democratic doctrinalists want the fellowship of journeymen-and-woman in the faith to facilitate our imbibing the abiding standard of teaching through discussion. They want us to learn from them how we can come to reach agreement by way of questioning and examining everything orthodox, as if nothing is sure or secure unless confessed to be open to ongoing change. Come together missional Christians, join hands and enter into the growing, generative friendship circle that generates things “like books, events, websites, blogs and cohorts.”[xi] Be part of our summoning Jesus “(much like Barney, who grows from a stuffed animal into a man-sized dinosaur when summoned by his young friends).”[xii] Our philo-erotic prowess both entertains and instructs, thus, “We expect our friendship to generate new ideas, connections, opportunities, and works of beauty.”[xiii] Evoke with us, our charms call us forth, letting us become one through evolutionary emergence. What we create with confidence we hold fast to until we change ourselves again, “Because we firmly hold that living in reconciled friendship trumps traditional orthodoxies – indeed, orthodoxy requires reconciliation as a prerequisite.”[xiv] Help us foster “church innovation and growth through strategies, programs, tools and resources that are consistent with our far-reaching mission: to identify, connect and help high-capacity leaders multiply their impact”[xv] for the kinetic purpose of “converting the latent energy in American Christianity into active energy.”[xvi]
As friends living beyond Bonhoeffer’s temptation of cheap grace “as a doctrine, a principle, a system,” we live in the trampoline fun world of cheap obedience. We make little of revealed Law, and less of divine holiness. We learn our lessons for doing kingdom work from Locke or Burke or Marx, or Rawls or Alinsky, or whoever is next packaged for us. We follow in the way of a Barney-Jesus, who “teaches fairly innocuous but positive values.” Barney-Jesus “expresses unconditional love and support for [H]is child friends, and teaches social skills and nonviolence.”[xvii] “We don’t really think about what [Christ Jesus, the apostles and prophets] are going to like and dislike….It’s really about empowering the child.”[xviii] Barney-Jesus brings a “group of equals” together for “the common purpose of learning and having fun.” In this way He teaches His “community values” to the children so they may “evolve into their empowered future.”[xix] The Barney-Jesus is raised out of the surrounding medium of North American disposable income and casual decadence inflated by a college education. The children of the chaotic Christianity of post-modernity, with its metropolitan chic, ever metastasizing doctrinal flexibility, have a close affinity with “the free-market capitalists and pagan spiritualist, who promote a more evolutionary relationship to magic, value, and nature.”[xx] They distinguish themselves by how they choose to circulate their techniques, merely advertising and soliciting members into their fraternity by working a different set of magazines on the rack of life. They are comfortable joining a “community, a movement of people who have been living, exploring, discussing, sharing, and experiencing new understandings of Christian faith.”[xxi] What manner of facilitating friends should characterize Barney-Jesus leaders? People of high capacity who demonstrate a superior ability, aptitude or power to do something…What? They must be able to introduce something new to bring about change in the way we follow Jesus…How? They must have the power to produce change in our lives or to move our feelings so we might be more open to change…to what end? That they might be able to identify, explore and develop new areas of innovation and share these results with others because as “innovation spreads, the Church better fulfills its mission to serve, to love and to expand the Kingdom of God.”[xxii]
Some of us join in the jumping and singing and holding of hands to form the Barney-Jesus circle of friendship with an old-fashioned sense of dread over if this way of life transforms the soul crucified with Christ unto godliness. Knowing that discipline “is the moral education obtained by the enforcement of obedience through supervision and control,” [xxiii] we want to be taught and chastened by someone with authority over us to whom we ought to submit. We want to be set free from the powers that conspire to hold us captive to any kind of hegemonic essentialism apart from that which lets us become slaves of righteousness.
But too, in this we do not want to go too far. All auctoritas in service to one potestas makes us nervous.[xxiv] Our conscience is uneasy about entering into what the nineteenth-century apologist for the Roman Catholic Church, William G. Ward, called the “magic circle” of authority in which a person replaces personal responsibility with submitting to the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. “Within the magic circle which it (the Magisterium) protects, we are saved from the pain of doubt, from the necessity of disputation, and are called upon but to learn and to believe.”[xxv] Ward warned safety “against the evil influences of surrounding free thought” could be gained only in “intellectual captivity,” by taking refuge in the “one solid and inexpugnable fortress of truth,” which is “the Catholic Church built on the Rock of Peter.”[xxvi] To flourish we must free ourselves of a free intellect. “Independence of intellect just like independence of will is not man’s healthy state but his disease and calamity. Not in intellectual independence but in intellectual captivity is true intellectual liberty and perfection.”[xxvii] God help us (and He does), we desire nothing else than to subject ourselves to apostolic authority with its power to destroy all speculation and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. We want nothing more than our every thought being taken captive to the obedience of Christ. We yearn to complete our obedience so that all disobedience may be properly punished in an orderly manner, in accordance with the testimony of Jesus, which is the Spirit of prophecy.
In the sight of God however, remembering the stricter judgment to which .~ am subject, .~ deny that it is the task of the teaching office (Magisterium) of the Roman Catholic Church or of any other particular religious body to “preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error.”[xxviii] .~ reject that when “the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine for belief as being divinely revealed, and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions must be adhered to with the obedience of faith,”[xxix] because this “infallibility extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself.”[xxx] .~ refuse trying to learn what is pleasing to my Lord by confessing, “Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”[xxxi] With God as my witness, .~ renounce the claim that the “task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him.”[xxxii] .~ refuse to “receive with docility” the insistence that the “Church’s Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes truths contained in divine Revelation or having a necessary connection with them, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith.”[xxxiii] To those who can do this, may there be peace between us in spite of my dissent. It is not my duty to observe the teaching office of the Roman Catholic Church in matters of doctrine and discipline with docility in charity. Nor do .~ acknowledge that the power of this teaching body or any other extends over the precepts of natural law as if even in this vast sphere my obedience of faith is necessary for salvation. To do so would require me to enter the magic circle with William G. Ward, to join him in saying, “We therefore see over how large a field of secular science the church’s authority extends. She has the power…of infallibly pronouncing propositions to be erroneous if they tend by legitimate consequence to a denial of any religious doctrine which she teaches. But secular science contains a vast number of such propositions…therefore [over all of them], the church has power to pronounce an infallible judgment.”[xxxiv] .~ recoil from this step back from literacy. It would be the beginning of the end of reading, the return of the hieratic author and make – if allowed at all – writing for the rest of us unnecessary.
Volkes Stimme, Gottes Stimme. The Holy Spirit nourishes us with sound doctrine miraculously arrived at through the fallibilities of consensus in dialectic with an equally fallible heteronomous authority (whether the Magisterium of Roman Catholicism or a surrogate). The Lord of Liberty performs this miracle to discriminate between the indwelt and outsiders and thus turns the compass for drawing the arc of the circle of fellowship that we should be eager to maintain in the bond of peace. As busy as we are finding, forming, and reaching our own reputations, intentions and judgments, how do we have time to select a chosen opinion between teaching that promotes the healthy growth and governance of the church and destructive opinions caused by false teachers, who eagerly seek us because they want to shut us out in order that we may seek them? Given our personal engagement in the Gospel along with those who suffer owing to their defense and confirmation of it, we know we should conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the Gospel by having nothing to do with those who desire nothing more than to disturb us and distort the Gospel. But how do we determine this? We want to be mature in our faith. We want to be teachers. We want to align ourselves with those who never deliberately deny revealed truth or accept error to be true. We want to be sheep led to slaughter and not followers of ravenous wolves. We want to answer Jesus by saying, “Yes, we can read.” We want to be able to confidently declare how the text reads to us. We want to be able to examine Scripture to determine the things we ought to believe and to be equipped for every good work. But Lord how can we understand what we are reading? How could we unless someone guides us? Lord, we do not know who to invite to come up and sit with us, who can, beginning with the Scripture, preach Jesus to us.
A metaphor instigates us into seeking to replace it with another metaphor. A metaphor convinces us to stand up against an opposing metaphor. Metaphor, metaphor nothing more. A metaphor motivates and animates us to resist and replace another metaphor, nothing more, and nothing more. Trading time for territory, we withdraw back into the womb of mystery — and this all in the name of theory! “The very ambition of theory to oversee — the root meaning of the term — the operations of readers and texts with technical rigour would issue, if fulfilled, in a metadiscourse coherent perhaps in itself but for all practical and public purposes unintelligible and without influence within the wider culture. Within Anglo-American culture, just such a destiny has already overtaken philosophy, the discipline with which many theorists now seek closer ties. The dream of systematic transcendence would thus beget its own trivialization.”[xxxv] Spendthrifts that we are, we squander the scarce resources of the church – time, wealth and skills of life – we beget authors instead of entrusting the things we have heard to faithful listeners. We achieve a mediocre equivalence: the making of trivia synonymous with relevance, forgetting “the fact that the church is a living unity that forms institutions, groups and mentalities – often of completely opposing kinds! – without however, being identical with any of them.”[xxxvi] How hard it is for us to understand that “the church is, prior to any qualities of a social group or of social cooperation, not only a unity, but too a unique phenomenon.”[xxxvii] By faith alone in Christ we submit to the teaching of the Scriptures that delivers the entreaty we are to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which we have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. We have come to the Celtic crossroad. The best we can do today is wave banners over our heads that bear images of the Bible, beneath which we try together to decipher the Scriptures, struggling as hard as we may to remain literate until, exhausted, we cannot write another word, devoting ourselves instead in times of truce and in times of war to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching; being sober in all things, doing the work of evangelists, fulfilling our ministries.
Postscript
For the Sake of the Gospel, the Good of the Church and to the Glory of God,
.~ Condemn the Orthodox Church’s Condemnation of my evangelical Faith
by mike mcduffee
. ~ trust that as God continues to bestow His merciful favor upon me . ~ shall remain by cleansed conscience, Biblical conviction and public confession an evangelical Christian. Let me clarify what that means by directing my statement of faith to a specific truth claim the Orthodox Church makes. .~ reject the assertion that to live in Christ outside the Orthodox Church means to live beyond the scope of the Holy Spirit’s reach of power to enable me to “live according to the commandments of the Beatitudes.”[xxxviii] .~ believe God extends His grace to my evangelical brothers and sisters in Christ outside the Orthodox Church sufficient for them to live the fullness of the Christian life, and that therefore, the grace to do so is not exclusively concealed within the Orthodox Church. . ~ do not believe that God has designated the Holy Orthodox Church to be the sole repository of the divinely revealed Truth in all its fullness and fidelity to apostolic Tradition. .~ have personally and conscientiously denounced this ungrounded exclusive claim imposed upon me and my brothers and sisters in Christ in the past, I do so now, and, .~ trust the Lord will give me the strength to continue to do so in the future, both in private and in public. My evangelical confession of faith in Christ is not based upon any teaching that .~ have been born into, raised under or inherited, as if it is a delinquent norm of a deficient culture. . ~ heard the Gospel preached from the Bible in the language of my home and heart. God kindly allowed me to repent of my sin unto trusting in Jesus for the salvation of my soul, which He bought with my Savior’s blood. . ~ now live for Him who is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for us.
Because . ~ trust Jesus to keep me from being carried away by varied and strange teachings; and because . ~ confess it is good for my heart to be strengthened by grace, .~ cannot in good conscience believe, teach or bear witness to the claim that water baptism administered by the Orthodox Church – or any other church – is the “way in which a person is actually united to Christ.”[xxxix] Therefore, .~ cannot hold to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience such that . ~ should confess to another, “The experience of salvation is initiated in the waters of baptism.”[xl] Hearing the word of the Gospel and believing, and believing my heart has been cleansed by faith, .~ believe God knows the heart and has given me the Holy Spirit, who dwells in me. Therefore, before God, the church and the world, .~ reject the claim that the love .~ may live by faith in the Son of God strengthened by evangelical instruction grounded in the Scriptures makes me a son of damnation.
In accordance with my reading of the Holy Scriptures before God my Savior, . ~ consciously and persistently hold fast to this evangelical confession of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. About the matter of salvation, .~ rest in Christ with all peace and joy, believing in both the perspicuity of the Scriptures and the sanctifying power of God. With my conscience so governed while in submission to the evangelical elders that oversee the local assembly of saints among whom .~ am counted, . ~ am convinced my position is not one of error, nor is it an ignorant opinion. Rather, my faith in Christ is apprehended by reason and conscience as God has given me my allotment of faith. May He be merciful to me and allow me to grow in grace and godliness. .~ am convinced .~ have no need to either convert from or repent of this evangelical confession of faith in Christ that leads to the fullness of salvation, which is in Him and with it eternal glory. .~ judge it to be loveless and arrogant to pronounce that my evangelical confession of faith so held demonstrates my opposition to the truth, making me blind and leading me to commit spiritual suicide, and this because .~ like myself to the devil, “who believes in God and dreads Him, yet hates, blasphemes, and opposes Him.”[xli] May the Lord have mercy on those who condemn me. By God’s kindness as God grants, upon their repentance unto revealing their earnestness for apostolic ministry in His sight, might we build up one another to better maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
With or without this reconciliation, which is good for the church and gives glory to God, .~ look to my Lord, Founder and Perfecter of our faith, with eyes of faith to persevere by God’s grace in our faith of equal standing with the apostles, which, according to the Scriptures, was once for all delivered to the saints; rejoicing over the wonderful truth that the divine power of God and of Jesus our Lord has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them we may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
Notes
[i] Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image-Music-Text, tr. by Stephen Heath (N.Y.: Hill and Wang, 1977), p. 148.
[ii] http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50076197?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=entertainment&first=1&max_to_show=10.
[iii] To be skeptical. On faith .~ preempt the proper way of introducing the word skepticate, .~ realize it should first be spoken in hope that it be picked up for further circulation, but the end is near.
[iv] Mark Edmundson, “Against Readings,” The Chronicle Review (April 24, 2009), p. B8. Professor Edmundson voices a beautiful call to befriend the text .~ read by “framing a reading that the author would approve,” treating the author’s words “with care and caution and with due respect” unto the end “to develop a vision of what the world is and how to live that rises from the author’s work and that, ultimately, the author, were he present in the room, would endorse (B9).” Sympathetically he references Susan Sontag: “In a once-famous essay, ‘Against Interpretation,’ Susan Sontag denounced interpretation and called for an ‘erotics of art’. She wanted immersion in the text, pleasure, the drowning of self-consciousness. She sought ecstatic immediacy (B10).” For which .~ will be judged, .~ believe this erotic art of befriending the Bible suffices as the cognate partner to the prayer, “.~ pray Thee, if .~ have found favor in Thy sight, let me know Thy ways, that .~ may know Thee, so that .~ may find favor in Thy sight.” Again however, to the matter at hand, Professor Edmundson can do no more than begin his muse by wishing “that for one year, two, three, or five, we would give up readings (B7).”
[v] Quoted by Gianni Vattimo, After Christianity, tr. by Luca D’Isanto (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 119.
[vi] David Macey, “Theory,” Dictionary of Critical Theory (London, England: Penquin Books, 2001), p. 379.
[vii] Howard Felperin, Beyond Deconstruction, the Uses and Abuses of Literary Theory (Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 202.
[viii] Howard Felperin, Beyond Deconstruction, p. 203.
[ix] Gianni Vattimo, After Christianity, p. 121.
[x] Howard Felperin, Beyond Deconstruction, p. 207.
[xi] Emergent Village, A Node in the Web of the Emerging Church, “About Emergent Village,” read from http://www.emergentvillage.com/about/., on 4/15/08.
[xii] Douglas Rushkoff, Playing the Future, How Kids’ Culture Can Teach Us to Thrive in an Age of Chaos (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1996), p. 76.
[xiii] Emergent Village, A Node in the Web of the Emerging Church, “About Emergent Village,” read from http://www.emergentvillage.com/about/., on 4/15/08.
[xiv] Emergent Village, A Node in the Web of the Emerging Church, “About Emergent Village,” read from http://www.emergentvillage.com/about/., on 4/15/08.
[xv] Leadership Network, “Our Mission,” read from http://www.leadnet.org/about_OurMission.asp., 5/27/09.
[xvi] ACTIVEenergy.net, “The Official Website of Bob Buford,” founder of Leadership Network, read from http://www.activeenergy.net/templates/cusactiveenergy/details.asp?id=29646&PID=207602.
[xvii] Douglas Rushkoff, Playing the Future, How Kids’ Culture Can Teach Us to Thrive in an Age of Chaos (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1996), pp. 116-117. Rushkoff applies these descriptors to Barney, the PBS TV purple dinosaur who plays with children.
[xviii] Douglas Rushkoff, Playing the Future, p. 117. Rushkoff quotes Barney creator Sheryl Leach.
[xix] Douglas Rushkoff, Playing the Future, p. 118.
[xx] Douglas Rushkoff, Playing the Future, p. 116.
[xxi] Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2005), p. 014.
[xxii] “Our Mission,” Leadership Network, http://www.leadnet.org/about_OurMission.asp. In the same way that Communists love the Revolution and not Marx.
[xxiii] V. R. Edman, “Discipline,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. by Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1984), p. 320.
[xxiv] .~ use these terms conceding the following definitions: “Potestas carries nuances of ‘power’ in the sense of jurisdictional authority or efficacious ability to perform a function, carry out an office, make a decision, etc. Auctoritas refers to the authority of counsel, wisdom, learning, advice, influence, support, etc.” See James T. Bretzke, S.J., Consecrated Phrases, A Latin Theological Dictionary (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1998, 2003), p. 108.
[xxv] Quoted in Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster, 1976), p. 380.
[xxvi] William G. Ward, “Essay on the Church’s Doctrinal Authority,” quoted by Wilfrid Philip Ward in William George Ward and the Catholic Revival (Macmillan, 1893), p. 132.
[xxvii]Willliam G. Ward, quoted by Wilfrid Philip Ward in William George Ward and the Catholic Revival, p. 133.
[xxviii] Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1994), p. 235.
[xxix] Catechism of the Catholic Church, pp. 235-236.
[xxx] Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 27.
[xxxi] Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 26.
[xxxii] Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 30.
[xxxiii] Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 27.
[xxxiv] Quoted in Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster, 1976), p. 380.
[xxxv] Howard Felperin, Beyond Deconstruction, the Uses and Abuses of Literary Theory (Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 2.
[xxxvi] Wolfgang Ullman, “Eine ökumenische Soziologie der Kirche, Zum Neudruck von Rosenstock-Wittig, Das Alter der Kirche, Bd. I-III, 1927-1928,” neu Herausgegeben von Fritz Herrenbrück und Michael Gormann-Thelen, Band III (Münster: Verlag Münster, 1998), p. 355.
[xxxvii] Ibid.
[xxxviii] Archimandite (Metropolitan) Philaret (d. 1985), from Orthodox Life, vol. 34, no. 6 (Nov-Dec, 1984), pp. 33-36, read from http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/metphil_heterdox.aspx.
[xxxix] “The Orthodox Church,” distributed by the Holy Trinity Orthodox Mission, 466 Foothill Blvd, Box 397, La Canada, Canada, 91011, read from http://www.orthodox.cn/catechesis/amileant/catechism_en.htm.
[xl] Ibid.
[xli] Philaret, Orthodox Life
