Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Dodging Scripture

I'm posting some comments I left at Justin Taylor's blog:

Binding the devil

Alan has posted the following challenge to amillennialism:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/02/stirring-up-amillennial-beehive.html

1) I disagree with Alan’s premise. One emblematic function of time and space is that time and space can both serve as barriers. They can separate one thing from another.

i) So, for instance, Satan is incarcerated in the abyss because physical confinement restricts his field of activity. Not that Satan is literally confined by physical barriers. Rather, that’s a way of symbolizing how God delimits what Satan is capable of doing.

A comparable example is the New Jerusalem, which is portrayed as a fortified city on a mountaintop. To some degree the imagery its background in ancient siege warfare. But here the mountain and the walls are too smooth and steep for an invading army to scale. The walls are too hard and thick to breach. And the gates are guarded by angelic sentinels. This is a supermax paradise, designed, not to keep people in, but to keep people out. Cf. R. Gundry, “The New Jerusalem: People as Place, Not Place for People,” Novum Testamentum 29/3 (Jul., 1987), 254-264

ii) But by the same token, time is also equivalent to a physical barrier. What’s past can’t hurt what's present or the future. What’s future can’t hurt what’s past or present. What’s present can’t hurt what’s past or future.

If, say, you and I are separated by a thousand-year interval, if you happen to live a thousand years before or after me, then there’s nothing you can do to harm me, or vice versa. You might as well live on the far side of the moon. Indeed, there’s a sense in which time is a more effective barrier than space. For spatial barriers can often be breached or traversed, but sufficient distance in time rather than space is insurmountable.

2) I think John is using temporal and spatial metaphors to illustrate the same principle: beyond a certain point, God’s people are immune to diabolical harm. Satan can do his worst in this life–he can kill or torture God’s people, but killing them releases them. Killing is actually an escape. Once they pass from earth to heaven, they are out of reach. God puts distance between his people and their Satanic adversary. Both spatial and temporal distance. And these are equivalent metaphors.

3) In that respect, I see Rev 20:1-3 and 4-6 as two back-to-back panels. The binding of Satan is obversant to the martyrs in heaven.

Revelation is, of course, situated in the context of persecution. The persecution of Christians by Jews and Roman officials. That doesn’t mean Revelation is describing or responding to a particular decade in 1C history. The imagery is more generic and hyperbolic than that. And that’s why it’s adaptable to analogous events throughout church history.

4) In what sense are the nations both exposed to deception and shielded from deception? I think Satan is “bound” in reference to the “full number” of the elect (6:11). They are “sealed” (chap. 7). That’s another protective metaphor.

By contrast, you have those who bear the mark of the beast, which is the diabolical counterpart (or counterfeit) to the divine sealing.

One-stop chomping

To: Evan May

From: Steve Hays

Re: For your eyes only

I’m afraid our worst nightmare is coming true. Alan Kurschner is beginning to critique the amillennial deposit of faith. We need to take immediate measures before the damage is irreparable.

Perhaps we can tell Alan that New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is prepared to offer Alan a professorship. That might lure him down from Jersey.

We can then take him to a smoke-filled sports bar in the French quarter where I’d bribe the waiter to slip a Mickey into Alan’s beer. I’ll make sure the trunk of my rental car is roomy enough to accommodate a former high school wrestler.

And I’m sure you must know of some gator-infested bayou in a remote location where the local wildlife will do the rest. One-stop shopping…or should I say, one-stop chomping?

Beekeeper accessories

Thanks to Alan's provocative post, I've incurred out-of-pocket expenses. It isn't safe for me to venture into the millennial fray before I suit up.

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I'll be sending Alan a bill.

Stirring Up the Amillennial Beehive

The debate between Premills and Amills is not whether the 1,000 years is literal. Both camps agree that at least it denotes a period of time. How long is not the issue.

The debate hinges on the terminus a quo of the binding of Satan depicted in Revelation 20:2-3

(2) And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, (3) and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while. (Rev 20:2–3 ESV)

Did the binding occur at Christ's first coming or will it occur at his second coming?

All other arguments aside, there is one particular argument that strongly demonstrates that the binding occurs at the second coming, hence premillennial. Revelation 12:9 reads:

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Rev 12:9 ESV)

Amillennialists agree that this is a problematic passage. The salient question is: How can Satan be bound in any meaningful sense of the term when he is shown in Revelation 12:9 being thrown down to earth as the deceiver of the whole world?

And yet Revelation 20:3 gives the purpose for his binding: "so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended."

So is he bound at this time "so not to deceive the nations"? Or is he unbound at this time as "the deceiver of the whole world"? Ammillennialists cannot have it both ways, which would reveal a weakness in their eschatology.

I have yet to come across a reasonable response to this argument by an Amillennial. Maybe there is one out there that I have not heard. But I put this out there for any responses. It's an honest objection by premillennialists.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Once Upon a Time

Jeremy Pierce recently did a post on the TV series Once Upon a Time:

http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archives/2012/01/once-upon-epist.html

I’d like to develop this in a different direction. I didn’t see the show when it first aired. But from what I can tell, the core of the story involves a vengeful evil queen who curses the fairy tale characters by banishing them from the enchanted forest to modern Storybrooke, Maine, and afflicting them with amnesia. The action alternates between their prelapsarian life and their postlapsarian life.

The evil queen’s chief antagonist is Rumplestiltskin. Both he and the queen wield black magic. Rumplestiltskin is a Mephistophelean character who finagles Faustian bargains with other characters. However, he’s also a tragic character who wasn’t always evil. And he’s conflicted. Because he wrote the curse which the Queen used, he himself is immune to the curse. He remembers everything. Still, he seems to be trapped in this postlapsarian world.

A challenge for the evil queen is some characters begin to remember their former life. They have flashbacks. And there’s also a book of fairly tales that tells the real story behind the illusory world of Storybrooke.

It’s nice to see Robert Carlyle in a juicy, psychologically complex role. It’s also nice to see Jennifer Morrison so spunky and ravishing after the rather demure and mousey part she had in House. But I’m afraid Snow White is a wet blanket.

However, my aim is not so much to comment on the TV show, but to consider how you could work similar elements into a parable of the Fall.

The evil queen would be the “god” (or goddess, as if were) of this world, who blinds fallen characters to reality by casting a spell (2 Cor 4:4). They’ve been banished from the Garden. They live in exile.

They’ve forgotten who they are. They’ve forgotten where they came from. They’ve forgotten their prelapsarian origins.

However, a book is discovered (i.e. the Bible) which tells the backstory. The deluded characters attack the true story and defend their spellbound illusion. Under the spell of the evil queen, they are charmed by The Origin of Species. They mistake the evolutionary fairy tale for reality while they relegate the true story to a fairy tale.

However, the Comforter has broken the spell and lifted the curse under which some characters labored. They begin to remember their true identity. They begin to remember where they came from. They begin to remember their former, prelapsarian existence. Although they remain stuck in the illusory world, they now know it’s just an illusion. They believe the book. And they share their insight with other characters.

Richard Belcher on Historic Adam

http://www.reformation21.org/articles/did-adam-and-eve-really-exist-a-review.php

Publish or perish

Is peer review a requirement of good science?

Further Thoughts On The Moral Aspect Of Near-Death Experiences

I've written about the moral dimension of near-death experiences (NDEs) in the past. I recently received the following comments in an email:

“Christ Alone” in Earliest Christianity: No Development Required

Was there ever a time in Christianity when something was believed, as Vincent of Lerins might have stated it, “always, everywhere, and by all”?

Darrell Bock, in “The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities” (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishing, ©2006), makes the following observations about Walter Bauer’s contribution to the study of the early church fathers:

Two methodological emphases of Bauer have stood the test.

1. In their desire to refute these [early heretical] views, the church fathers overstated their own case and sometimes were inaccurate about what was taking place, especially when it came to treating all heresies as coming from a singular root, whether it was back to Simon Magus or calling most of these movements Gnostic (Wisse 1971; Beyschlag 1974). Scholarly consensus exists on this point (Harrington 1980).

This observation about the fathers should not be exaggerated. A check of Irenaeus against the sources of views he challenged reveals that he described those views accurately. Many of the details of views noted in other fathers also stand corroborated. …

Nonetheless, Bauer’s questioning produced a more careful assessment of the fathers. His call to view the sources from the church fathers in light of their polemics and to listen to proponents from both sides describe and present their views was a necessary historical corrective.

2. The examination of evidence by geographical region was an important insight. Ideas move across time and space in different directions at different speeds. Sometimes they reflect a variety of cultural factors, with some of those factors being unique to a given region.

My view always has conformed with Bock’s statement here. Whether it’s Clement or Ignatius or Justin or any of the other early church fathers, yes, they provide valuable information, but no, we ought not to take everything they said as if it were gospel.

Still, there was a time, during the period of what is called “earliest Christianity”, when a Christian doctrine was genuinely “believed always, everywhere, and by all”.

In his work Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, ©2003), Larry Hurtado explores the notion that “devotion to Jesus as God” was not only characteristic “always, everywhere, and by all” of the earliest Christians. But such devotion, he said, was “noteworthy phenomenally early”, it appeared with “unparalleled intensity”, and it appeared even in the midst of an “exclusive monotheistic environment”.

In his Introduction, Hurtado writes:

The indisputable centrality of the figure of Jesus in early Christian devotion is the premise for this book, and my aim is to offer a new historical description and analysis of this remarkable phenomenon. Indeed, the key distinguishing feature of the early Christian circles was the prominent place of Jesus Christ in their religious thought and practice. There certainly were plenty of other religious groups worthy of note in the Roman period, and even some that shared a number of important features with early Christianity. … But despite the similarities with other religious movements and groups of the Roman period, all the various forms of early Christianity (whatever their relationship to what came to be known as “orthodox” or “catholic” Christianity) can be identified as such by the importance they attached to the figure of Jesus (pgs 1-2).

Roman Catholics are fond to boast that they have “the fullness of the faith”. But during the era of the Apostles, “the fullness of the faith”, the “faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people”, “the good deposit that was entrusted” to the church, consisted in precisely one thing.

Hurtado says, “For several reasons I contend that Christ-devotion is an utterly remarkable phenomenon [given its situation in the ancient Jewish and Roman worlds], and that it is also the result of a complex of historical forces and factors. Here are some major features that justify us in seeing early devotion to Jesus as remarkable":

1. It began amazingly early, and was already exhibiting signs of routinization by the time of the letters of Paul (i.e., by ca. 50 C.E.), which means that the origins of cultic veneration of Jesus have to be pushed well back into the first two decades of the Christian movement.

2. Devotion to Jesus was by no means confined to this or that conventicle but seems to have spread with impressive rapidity across the Christian movement, though there were also variations in its expression.

3. Although at a certain high level of generalization one can draw some comparisons with other Roman-era groups and movements, we have no full analogue in the Roman world, which makes the task of historical explanation particularly difficult (the more so to the degree that historical “explanation” is seen to rest upon analogy). To cite one key matter, we have no other Roman-era example of a religious movement with similar ties to the Jewish religious tradition of exclusivistic monotheism and with a devotional pattern that involved so thoroughly a second figure in addition to God.

4. Devotion to Jesus was central in early Christian groups and of enormous significance for the historical development of Christianity (pg 7).

Lord willing, I’ll explore some of the ramifications of this in future entries on “earliest Christianity”.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

An Overview Of Some Research Findings On Near-Death Exepriences

Here's a post by Nancy Evans Bush summarizing fifteen things we know about near-death experiences, especially experiences that are negative (hellish).

What are Cardinals?

In the light of the recent expansion of "the college of Cardinals", Elizabeth Lev a writer from Zenit.org has provided a brief history of the office:

"Cardinal" comes from the Latin word "cardo," meaning hinge. The term was used in the early church to describe priests who could be transferred from assignments and parishes. In a world where most priests stayed put in their parishes for life, as stability after the break-up of the Roman Empire was a priority in the church, these mobile priests were precious multi-taskers.

Theses "hinges," moveable but always anchored to the pope, began to serve as senior advisors to the papacy and gradually became the cosmopolitan group of men known as cardinals.

But Medieval Europe saw the Church increasing hemmed in by secular powers, in particular by the Holy Roman Emperor, the most powerful man in the world of that age.

The role of the Holy Roman Emperor had been established in 800 as a protector of the Church's person, property and liberties, but by the 11th century the emperor interfered regularly in Church matters, even appointing bishops, and he expected to have a role in electing the Roman Pontiff.

It should be noted that the "establishment" of "the role of the Holy Roman Emperor" was a premeditated scheme. And the pope was the schemer. But nevertheless:

The papal election was already heavily controlled by Roman nobles, who divvied up the papacy among themselves from reign to reign, interspersed with periods of antipopes and devastating infighting and extremely long election periods.

A few reform-minded Frenchmen and Germans managed to muscle into the throne of Peter and on Easter of 1059, Pope Nicholas II issued the papal bull In Nomine Domini, in the presence of 113 bishops gathered in Rome at St. John Lateran. This bull put the election of the pope into the hands of the cardinals who would be assembled in Rome, and was the equivalent to a declaration of independence.

The Church distinguishes three types of cardinals. The title of "cardinal bishops" is officially only held by six cardinals who are titulars of Rome's seven suburbicarian dioceses. They are the most senior prelates of the Church and provide immediate service to the pope. These seven dioceses, outside of Rome proper, include Ostia, Velletri, Tusculum and Palestrina -- the former strongholds of Roman nobles who once controlled the papacy. These "sees" are assigned to the longest serving and highest ranking officials, who have always been required to be bishops, whereas, historically, priests and the lowest ranks of clergy could also be elevated to the rank of the red hat.

More recently, Blessed Pope John Paul II decreed that all cardinals are required to first be bishops unless especially permitted by the pope. Two of the new cardinals, Fathers Ries and Grech were just ordained bishops, while Father Becker has obtained permission to be exempted to maintain his Jesuit promise not to strive for any dignity in the church.

This really seems funny because only the pope can name Cardinals anyway. Why bother with the extra "permission"?

The "cardinal priests" are the most numerous in the College of Cardinals. The name alludes to the original parish priests of Rome, from the earliest 25 titular churches of Rome. Even as cardinals, they did not receive episcopal ordination as there was already a bishop of Rome. They were however all ordained priests. The number soared over the centuries and now the cardinal priests are drawn from leaders of large dioceses and curial officials. Almost all the new cardinals will be cardinal priests.

"Cardinal deacons" are meant to mirror the seven deacons of the papal circle. Their task originally was to run the many Church ministries in the city, known as the diaconia. These men could be merely "tonsured," inducted into ordained ministry but not as priests. Today cardinal deacons are often those who have passed the age of 80 (the voting age in the conclave) or one who has not been ordained a bishop. Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, who was never made a bishop, was the cardinal deacon of St. Giorgio in Velabro, one of Rome's most ancient diaconia.

Pope Paul VI added a special provision for the patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches to be raised to the cardinalate with his 1965 motu proprio Ad Purpuratorum. Four bishop cardinals were named from the Coptic, Chaldean, Syrian and Maronite rites, and are ranked after the six senior suburbicarian sees.

Titular churches

The early structure of the College of Cardinals reflected the earliest Roman Church with its parishes and diaconia and major satellite dioceses. But as Europe stabilized and flourished from the Atlantic to the Baltic, the Church began to seek collaboration beyond the confines of Italy. By the 12th century, the College of Cardinals had grown to include men from all over Europe. These non-residents of Rome were given homes in the Eternal City in the form of "titular" churches, so as to hinge the most far-flung dioceses to the See of Peter. The first were the earliest basilicas of Rome but have since expanded. Now there are 150 titular churches out of Rome's more than 300.

Elizabeth Lev teaches Christian art and architecture at Duquesne University's Italian campus and University of St. Thomas' Catholic Studies program.

Living in glass houses

christthetao

Dr. Avalos: You neglect to point out that Vitz' book is a response to decades of similiar, and less nuanced, psychological critiques of theism by atheists. Nor, I think, is Vitz attempting merely to "distract attention" -- he's a psychologist, why shouldn't he study psychology? I think he's probablyy onto something, in the case of Freud -- who can hardly complain -- even if his overall claim seems only occasionally explanatory, as I admitted in my Amazon review years ago.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2012/02/is-richard-dawkins-liar-doctor-jim.html#comment-442781446

Dr. Avalos: You have this habit of replying to Christians, without putting what you're responding to in the context of attacks on them, which exhibit the faults you allege of the Christians far more strongly. We've seen this again and again. It is not what I would call the best scholarship, which sets critiques in fair context, and criticizes both sides by the same standards. It's like blaming an aged widow for hitting a man in a park with her purse, without mentioning that he was trying to mug her.

Vitz makes the reactionary and limited character of his argument clear: "There seems to be a widespread assumption, throughout much of our intellectual community, that belief in God is based on all kinds of irrational, immature needs and wishes . . . To challenge the psychology of this viewpoint is the primary concen of this book." (Faith of the Fatherless, 1999, Preface, xiv) Seems fair to me.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2012/02/is-richard-dawkins-liar-doctor-jim.html#comment-442824461

Salva veritate

I'm going to comment on this post:

http://drreluctant.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/types-or-comparisons/

Additionally, it is a reason why one ought to be cautious about embracing the notion that the NT reinterprets the OT.

Since I haven't embraced that notion; since, as a matter of fact, I've been arguing the opposite, the cautionary is a red herring. For some reason, Henebury keeps trying to shoehorn my argument into a different argument than the one I'm actually using. Perhaps he keeps reverting to the default argument because he has more experience dealing with the default argument, whereas he doesn't have ready-made rebuttals for my actual argument.

Better places to go would be Jer. 30:1-10; 31:1-14, 21-16; 32:37-41; 33:14-26. These show again that there is no typology and “territorial referents” are constant.

i) I’m citing passages that present a new Eden or new Exodus motif. For Henebury to cite other passages that may not contain that motif hardly negates my appeal. The absence of a given motif in one passage doesn't cancel out the presence of a given motif in another passage.

ii) If, on the other hand, he thinks a passage like Jer 31:1-14 also contains a new Eden motif, then that's more supporting material for my position, not his.

Steve’s “typology” of recapitulation is not there.

Where is "there"? Not there in the passages I cited or the passages he cited?

He has brought it with him.

No, that's right there in the text.

Yes, but motifs don’t equal types.

i) I never said a motif qua motif is a type. It depends on the kind of motif. I specified the kind of motif I have in mind: a new Eden or new Exodus motif.

For reasons I've give, that's a type/token relationship.

ii) However, even at the generic level, a motif is a recurring pattern, which dovetails with typology.

In the verses he cited Israel was said to be “like Eden.” (Isa. 51:3). All that was being done was that a comparison was being made. The same is true of Jer. 16. The comparison with the Exodus is one of a greater (future) migration to the promised-land.

That’s a strange criticism. In the nature of the case, a type/token or type/antitype relation is a comparative relation, involving analogy rather than identity. Tokens exemplify the type; they are not identical with the type.

Likewise, one token is not identical with another token. Rather, tokens are similar to each other inasmuch as they instantiate the same type. Repetition with variation.

Likewise, in a type/antitype relation, the type is both like and unlike the antitype, or vice versa.

In both cases, we're dealing with a relation between two or more things. In the nature of the case, you can't have a relation if it's one and the same thing–salva veritate.

I'll have more to say momentarily.

If we start seeing a “New Exodus” motif as a typological signal to deny the return of Israel to its land in fulfillment of its covenants, we are not doing it because Jeremiah instructs us to do so. No, it is because the motif is a necessary hermeneutical vehicle to arrive at the desired theology.

Which misses the point. In the new Exodus motif, the Jews return to Eretz-Israel. However, they don't return to Israel from Egypt. Rather, they return to Israel from Babylon. So there's a shift in the territorial referents.

Likewise, in the new Eden motif, the Jews return to the Eretz-Israel, except that Israel typifies Eden. That’s what makes it a homecoming. So land has already acquired an emblematic significance, where Bible writers can substitute one territorial referent for another.

So says Steve. But in the passages he quoted Eden stands for Eden in comparative illustration of the renewed land of Israel. There isn’t any need to see types and shadows.

I haven't used the term "shadow."

If I say that the smell of the American Northwest is like the smell of northern England, I don’t have anything like a type in mind. Neither do I require others to create a typological grid in which to fit my words. If an OT prophet recalls Eden or the Exodus to illustrate another work of God in the eschaton, we are not to jump to the conclusion that he is speaking typologically.

Except that, as I pointed out, it runs much deeper than similes or incidental imagery. Rather, we're dealing with one of the master plot lines of Scripture: banishment and restoration.

The original Exodus and the new Exodus are both variations on a common theme. The fundamental constant is the underlying exemplar, and not the differing ways in which that's exemplified.

The trouble with this way of speaking is that it ends up converting eschatological Israel into non-Israel, denying them the promised-land; the Jerusalem temple morphs into the church; Zadokites into Christians; the throne of David is another name for the throne of God, etc., all because types must be produced for certain theological views to be sustained. It is question-begging.

i) I'm hardly begging the question when I argue for my position.

ii) If anything, Henebury is begging the question. It only "denies them the promised-land" if he assumes the very issue in dispute.

iii) I wouldn't say the temple morphs into the church. Rather, both church and temple prefigure God's presence with his people in the world to come (Rev 21:3). God dwelling with his people is the type, of which the temple (Exod 29:44-45) and the church (2 Cor 6:16) are tokens.

If the basic plotline wasn’t similar there could not be a comparison made.

Which misses the point (see above).

This is precisely why one ought never let a type in until one knows what any passage is saying, and so whether any type has warrant. There is no such warrant in Steve’s passages from the Prophets. Types are tethered to theologies, and are therefore apt to promote Eisegesis. If one is not careful, every stubborn covenant promise will be made to bend because it has been burdened with the label “type”, ready to perform in the way described above.

i) Henebury hasn't presented a counterargument in this paragraph. Rather, he's treated the reader to a dismissive and tendentious characterization of my argument.

ii) What also comes through in his response to me is that his own position is driven by what he deems to be the unacceptable consequences of the opposing position. He begins with the (allegedly) unacceptable consequences, then works back from that starting point to devise a hermeneutical system which will avoid the unacceptable consequences. So the whole exercise is aprioristic.

Steve will strongly disagree with me, but what I see is a “theological function” borne by the motif, being read into the OT. The “theological function” is wrought from the particular interpretation of NT passages.

He's tilting at windmills. He keeps attacking an argument I never use. Does this reflect an inability to adapt to an argument he's not used to?

Since Israel does not yet bear a comparison to Eden we must look for a future fulfillment.

i) But in context, the "future fulfillment" wasn't a golden-age millennium at the end of the church age, but the postexilic period (c. 5C BC).

ii) Of course, it's quite possible to view the new Eden motif as having future counterpart (future to us), but that would commit Henebury to a typological view of land.

And it can so easily become a wax nose.

It's just a fact that theological motifs in Scripture are subject to development.

New Cardinal Dolan seen as papabile (candidate to be pope)

The Main Act of the Day

Yesterday, Benedict XVI presided over a “day of reflection and prayer” in which 133 cardinals took part, as well as the 22 new inductees in the church’s most exclusive club.

The main act of the day was a speech on the new evangelization by Dolan, who delivered a vintage performance emphasizing the need to present the Christian message in a positive light, and to avoid demonizing the secular world...

There was also more evidence of a boomlet around Dolan this morning in the Italian media. Il Messaggero’s Vatican writer, Franca Giansoldati, published a piece on the consistory under the headline, “Among the 22 new cardinals, a new papabile breaks out: the American Dolan.”

Papabile is the Italian word for a candidate to be pope.

Dolan Addresses Pre-Consistory Prayer Day

Cardinal-designate Dolan was chosen by the Pope to address the group for today's Day of Reflection and Prayer on the vigil of the consistory.

The New York archbishop recommended the following seven pointers:

1) Remembering that even those who boast of their secularism have an innate longing for the divine; the first step of evangelization must be to keep the quest for God alive

2) "Be not afraid" -- confident, without being triumphalist, since it is the power of God who sends his people to evangelize

3) Knowing that the new evangelization is not about presenting a doctrine or belief-system, but a Person, whose name is Jesus

4) Nevertheless, this Jesus is the Truth. Hence, evangelization is linked to catechesis

5) An evangelist must be a person of joy -- someone who smiles

6) The new evangelization is about love -- the love of God made concrete in service

7) Finally, martyrdom. A reminder that the Church is now peopled by those who are suffering persecution for their faith, and that these martyrs give impetus to the new evangelization

Pages

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

To: Evan May

Serious Beekeepers Need A Sting Resistant Suit!

Ventilated Mesh Beekeepers Helmet

Monday, February 20, 2012

Sunday, February 19, 2012