The Audio Stylings of Chris Levens
"I'm a Gangster"

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Another Problem with Church Authority for Conservative Presbyterians

If God gave his people shepards who interpret His revelation, then conservative Presbyterians are in double trouble. First off, God's sanctioned interpreters anathematized us at the Council of Trent -- after all, we gave the bird to God's authoritative interpretive body at the time. I've brought this up before, but my next point gets a little more interesting.

The OPC and the PCA gave the bird to God's sanctioned interpreter of His Word when they split from the Liberal Presbyterian churches. If the Church has the authority to normatively interpret God's Word, then the conservative minorities had no right to split off. They thought they knew better than God's sanctioned authority, and that is not good submission.

A good Presbyterian will say, "but the Liberal church denied God's Word, thumbed its nose at traditional orthodoxy, and believed other bad things."

That's fine, a Presbyterian can say that, but they must recognise that at that point they are undermining church authority -- they are saying that the minority, or the individual, has the ability to judge the collective Church's interpretation.

When a minority splits from the mainline church, it forfeits any claim of authority.
 9:36 AM   •  5 satisfied customers!!  

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Councils and Continuing Revelation

Inspired by JJS's recent spat of posts on Sola Scriptura, I wanted to raise a section of the issue to my devoted throng of readers (yes, all four of you) to see whatchy'all think.

The debate is about the universially binding authority of post-apostolic church councils: are all church councils universally binding, are only some of them universally binding, are any of them universally binding?

My opinion has a cessationist flavor to it: post-apostolic councils do not have universally binding authority in the same way that post-apostolic church officers do not have universal binding authority. The reason neither post-apostolic church councils, nor post-apostolic pastors, elders, prophets, apostles or whatevers don't have universally binding authority is because the revelatory gifts have ceased.

Allowing the decrees of councils to have universally binding authority is tantamount to claiming that revelation has not ceased. Rather than new prophets or apostles telling us God's nonnegotiable, universally binding truth, we have councils who deliver to the people of God new things that everyone has to believe -- in effect, they are bringing new revelation to the people.

It seems that councils play a role in orthodox circles that prophets play in other Christian subdivisions: Islam, Mormonism, SDA, Pentecostals, etc. All these subdivisions, including the Orthodox, have some sort of secondary standard (councils, prophets, apostles) that have universally binding authority: their word is basically the word of God, even if they say otherwise (derivative, secondary, subordinate).

One counterargument might say something like, "the authority of councils is derivative." I think such an argument doesn't answer the question -- it addresses how the religious authority determined the new content being delivered to the world. But the real question isn't how the council determined its content; the question is: do councils have universally binding authority?

I would say no, they don't. The apostolic church had universally binding authority in a unique way, and that universally binding authority ceased when that special dispensation ended. In our post-apostolic era of history, we are without any religious authority that is universally binding because the age of new revelation has ceased.

This line of thinking would not consider Acts 15 normative for post-apostolic councils in the same way as Paul's instructions about using the special revelatory gifts isn't normative for post-apostolic believers.

So, how does this opinion fly with you'alls?
 2:32 PM   •  15 satisfied customers!!  

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(mis)Representing the Theoretical Left

I want to talk more about the misrepresentation of the Left again. This time, though, I want to touch on what might be called the Theoretical Left. The Theoretical Left has many faces: Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Marxism, Postmarxism, Postcolonialism, Feminism, Thirdwave Feminism, Queer Studies, Deconstruction, Relativism*, Existentialism, Pragmatism, Multiculturalism, etc**.

Before I actually read and spoke with people who would probably be characterized as the Theoretical Left, I did my fair share of reading about these moral bad guys. Usually, I consulted Christian sources, or at least the Theoretical Conservative camp, for information about them. The representation I gathered from these sources, and believed for many years, was that the result of such theoretical liberality was a sort of moral antinomianism: anything goes; do what makes you feel good; there are no absolutes; man is the measure of all things; etc.

These (mis)representations of the Theoretical Left were convincing, and I believed them. It wasn't until I actually tried to understand these theoretical outlaws in their own words that the ubiquity of Conservative, both Christian and non-, representations of them became disillusioningly*** obvious.

The more I interacted with the Theoretical Left, the more I realized that they are passionately driven by a desire to right wrongs, for justice, for peace, for universal human rights, and for a whole host of moral motivations. In fact, for many on the Theoretical Left, their project is to improve our understanding of the world in hopes of avoiding the escalation of disaster and suffering we are creating.

Whether you agree or disagree with their attempts to make the world a better place is one issue -- one I won't try to convince you of here. What I do want to make clear is that whatever you think about the various theories of the Left, it would be the continuation of an error to think that they desire a world devoid of morality, where everyone does as they please because all actions are equally amoral.

*Relativism is a funny thing to include in the Theoretical Left because it is more fitting in the Neo-Con camp. But for some reason, the Right insists that the Left is Relativistic. In all my interaction with the Theoretical Left, I've yet to come across anything that resembles the dreaded "Relativism" the Right likes to scare us with all the time.
For example, when I took my first undergrad Intro to Contemporary Theory class, I was all prepared to argue with the Prof about Derrida and Deconstruction. I threw out the old, "but if you say there are no absolutes, isn't that an absolute statement, thus defeating yourself," to which he replied by saying Deconstruction isn't Relativism, which is theoretically simplistic, self-defeating, and wrong. At that point, I retraced my theoretical steps and realized that I was superimposing an understanding about Deconstruction over the actual theory, thus creating a roadblock to actually understanding what Derrida and others were saying. From then on, I was forced to interact with the theory on its own because I couldn't trust the misrepresentations I had steeped myself in.
To this day, it twists my panties when I hear those old, tired, untruths pronounced so confidently by leaders and laypeople alike.

**I purposefully left out another theoretical bogey man: Nihilism. For a long time now I've wanted to write a post about Nietzsche and Nihilism as the extreme end of the Theoretical Right, even though the Right usually refers to him as characteristic of the Left. Based upon what I've read and spoken with professors and what not about Nietzsche, he exhibits the principles of the far-Right (Capitalism) in its most barbaric and merciless form. I'll save my argument for another post -- which may never come because I've become way too lazy to write thoughtful posts these days.

***Disillusion is not a bad thing -- in fact, it is a good thing. It is the escape from believing and trusting in illusions. I'm all for that.
 9:52 PM   •  7 satisfied customers!!  

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The Left the Right Doesn't Want you to Know About

It isn't that the Right purposefully distorts the Left (maybe they do, but I'm trying to be charitable) -- I think the Right is genuinely ignorant of the Left. Most Neo-Cons I know think the Democratic party is of the Left, many think it is pretty extreme Left too. In reality, the Democratic party is pretty centrist, and they only appear to be of the Left when the real Left is completely unknown.

Man, that was a long introduction.

So, I'm reading Eric Hobsbawm's "The Age of Extremes," a history of the 20th century. Hobsbawm is a Marxist historian. As will shock most people whose only interaction with Marxism is the caricatures of it in Western culture and ideology, Hobsbawm's book might be shocking in its critiques of Stalin, Mao and other forms of authoritarian communism.

One interesting thing about Marxism is its critique of the moral hazards of Capitalism. Going back to Marx, one of his insights into the danger of Capitalism (but also, for Marx, one of the necessary steps toward the escatologial communist utopia) is the way that the Market destroys traditional structures of society: family, religion, authority, morality, community.

Following this standard Marxist line of thought, Hobsbawm links the moral confusion associated with "the right to choose" abortion and the free market. When markets control social structures, it reduces people to individuals -- the more free the market, the more radically individualistic the culture. With this general understanding of market societies, Hobsbawm writes, "The pervasive influence of neo-classical economics, which in secular Western societies increasingly took the place of theology, and the influence of the ultra-individualist American jurisprudence, encouraged [the rhetoric of unlimited "right to choose" of the individual women." He then quotes M. Thatcher, who says, "There is no society, only individuals."

Let's not concern ourselves here with the accuracy of Hobsbawm's point. Instead, what I want to draw attention to is the Left's critique of freedom of choice as a result of Capitalism. In all my years as a Righty, I never, never, heard anyone tell me about the Left that thinks individualism is a bad thing and that abortion is a bad thing that results from the individualist tendencies of free market economics.
 8:41 AM   •  5 satisfied customers!!  

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The Good Old Days

Ever hear people talk about the moral decay in our modern society?
Ever hear people talk about the way the Church has lost its way?

Pictures like this remind me that the Good Old Days wern't all that good.


 8:16 PM   •  10 satisfied customers!!  

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Christians & Blackwater

Ya'll know about Blackwater, right? They are one of the many Mercenary groups Neo-Cons employ as they try to privatize the military.

I was watching this video, don't ask me why, about this automatic shotgun Blackwater developed.



I don't know about you, but people who are in love with the military and guns freak me out a bit. Anyway, as I was watching this I was struck once again with the weird romance between Conservative Christianity and Warfare.

The Blackwater company has ties to Conservative Christian groups. Its founder, Eric Prince, was an intern for G.H.W. Bush, but didn't like him because he was too liberal. Prince's father co-founded the Family Research Council with James Dobson. Eric is a big doner to the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Calvin College, and Christian Freedom International.

The association of E. Prince with the Conservative Christian cause leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Prince seems to be a modern Christian warlord. The development and legitimization of private military groups with advanced weaponry and permission to act outside of any law (if you follow the scandals about Blackwater, you know what I'm talking about) is terrifying. Private military contractors are stateless armies -- isn't that what makes terrorists bad? -- that can kill with alarming efficiency, and they do it while making a profit. And a portion of that profit, praise the Lord, funds conservative Christian causes.

Is it just me, or is there something very twisted about all this? Who are these people that love Jesus and love shooting guns at people? They remind me of a friend of mine, a Baptist, very conservative both theologically and politically, who wanted to join the army after 9/11 so that, as he said, "I can spread the word before I spread some lead." He was talking about going to Iraq where they need both the Gospel and more bullets flying around.

You shall know them by their fruits -- a condemnation of mainstream conservative Christianity? Not sure how to answer that, but Jesus's words haunt me every time I smell this crap.
 11:10 AM   •  3 satisfied customers!!  

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On Being Popular

You've heard me talk about Edward Said before. You've heard me talk about Antonio Gramsci before. But I don't think you've heard me talk about Raymond Williams before. I've been reading a litte more Williams lately and I thought it was about time I gave him props.

"On Being Popular, huh?" -- just give me a second, I'll get there.

Those three guys, (Said, Gramsci and Williams) have probably had the largest influence upon my theoretical opinions as of late. What I like about these guys is they are able to steer clear of the deterministic forms of dialectical materialism, yet they perform vigorous and exciting materialist readings of cultural products.

"deterministic dialectical materialism?" -- yeah, I know, what's with the jargon. I'd both to clarify, but that would distract me from touching on the popular stuff, so forgive the theoretical shorthand.

And so, one thing that I dig about Williams is his perspective toward people. The progressive solutions he offers are always grounded in mass solidarity. Williams, as well as Said and Gramsci (in their own way), emphasizes the need for people to recognize their common interests. To achieve this, counter hegemonical art must be popular art -- it must somehow enable alienated individuals (individuals who have been taught by the market to think and act as an individualist) to see what they already share -- to see those things they share that have somehow been hiding from them.

One thing I like about this is its view of art: it is populist, not elitist; art is not refined, not understood only by the trained, but art is common, and offers something for everyone; counter hegemonical art is oppositional to systems of domination and cherishes the inseparability of goodness and beauty.

Now, don't confuse what I'm saying with something Said, Gramsci or Williams say in their books. If you think I'm misreading them, that's fine -- maybe I am. But what their writings do to me is increase my appreciation for pop-art's counter hegemonical function -- that good art does not create loners, rebels, anti-socials, individualists, but good art is popular, increasing connections of co-operation between people everywhere.
 11:41 PM   •  7 satisfied customers!!