Author: Roger Pearse

Reading George Barna, “Revolution”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A friend handed me a copy of this book, which basically suggests that Christians need not belong to a local church, and that to do so is empowering.  There is a review of it all here. 

I’m committed to read all the way through it, but I have some questions after only 30 pages.

To me, it smells of brimstone.  Let me explain.

One of the things that I am forced to do when browsing online is to see atheist literature, and I always notice their flaws.  These items always rely on tricking the reader, combined with flattering him for his knowingness in “seeing through” that which he does not wish to believe anyway.  After a while, you learn to spot the points at which the writer switches the meaning of a word, or deliberately confuses two things together.  So I tend to read all books with an eye for these tricks.

Few are aware that the devil puts out books from time to time, which are supposedly designed to help Christians but in reality are designed to deconvert them.  The authors, indeed, may not be aware of what they are doing, or may have no such intention.  That isn’t the point. 

I have a feeling that putting out these books is a standard Satanic ploy.   But I haven’t researched it enough to know. Here are a few ideas, off the top of my head.

Tertullian ca. 215 AD references a similar idea in the opening words of “Adversus Praxean”.

Manifold are the ways in which the devil has sought to undermine the truth.  He is now trying to crush it, by pretending to defend it.

Some will remember John Robinson’s “Honest to God” from the 1960’s, in the middle of the permissive revolution, which apparently convinced many that abandoning Christianity was the right thing to do, and that they should go off and indulge in the vices being promoted in that period. 

Others may remember Dave Tomlinson’s “The post-evangelical”.  Now I don’t know what effect that had in general, but I do remember a girl who was tottering in her faith being recommended it, and losing her faith and her morals immediately afterwards, and indeed worse followed.  She at least thought that the book helped her along the road to ruin.

Knowing that such things exist, and that the devil really does want Christians not to go to church, I have a feeling that “Revolution” may well be one of these nasty items. 

You see, I notice that the first 30 pages consist almost entirely of flattery of the reader.  There were a number of points at which he attributes specifically to his “revolutionaries”, for no apparent reason, things which are generally true of all Christians, as if to suggest that not going to church is the only way to Salvation.  He doesn’t actually say that; but the reader is led  to believe it.  God doesn’t use these techniques, but Satan does.

Now I have no idea how much “tricky” literature most of us get to read, but I thought that I would put people on their guard.  I’m not writing the book off; but something is not right here.  We’ll see what the remainder of the book looks like.

UPDATE: Well, I’ve read the rest of it.  And … it doesn’t contain an argument.  It really does not.  Instead it relies on the methods of persuasion familiar to us from advertising: show us something, use loaded language to suggest sub-rationally that it must be good, bark a bit at the “fuddy-duddies” who try to resist, and adopt a tone of piety.  The purpose, remember, is to say that not bothering with church is a good thing, or at least an indifferent thing; but he doesn’t actually say so directly.

I’m a simple soul.  If someone wants to persuade me of something, I want to see his argument, laid out fair and square with no weasel-words or loaded language, and the evidence for it.  Then I can evaluate his case.  When an author doesn’t do this, I get mighty suspicious.

The proposition of the book seems to be that (a) millions of US Christians are abandoning the churches, (b) they call themselves — or he calls them (he is vague on this) — revolutionaries (no loaded language, then), (c) abandoning the local church is a good thing (nowhere stated, contradicted at least once, but inferred throughout), (d) if you abandon the church you will be moving positively forward with God (despite bit tacked on the front portraying, as an alternative, a backslider), and (e) if you try to resist, you must be deficient or angry or threatened (recognise the ad hominem argument in this, and the attempt at emotional manipulation of a reluctant reader who senses something is wrong but not what). 

The reader is led to suppose — it isn’t stated — that this is all happening, therefore it must be good.  I’m sure we all recognise the classic fallacy of “this happens=this is right”.  Quite a lot of things happen, in the way of trends, which are disastrously wrong.  I admit to utter disinterest as to whether “millions” (who counted them? did they fill in a form?) of Americans are all now Barna-ian “Revolutionaries” (do they all get vetted for quality?  By whom?), or indeed whether they all dance the hokey-cokey.  In matters to do with God, I want to know whether something is right, not whether it is popular.  And this question is simply not addressed.

Throughout the book plays fast and loose with the reader, by talking about things that every Christian should expect, as if they are only things that people who don’t go to church can experience.  This is very naughty. 

It’s filled with great quantities of irrelevant material.  I want to see the argument; I want to see the evidence.  Instead I find things like chapter 5 (Spiritual transitions in the making) which has no apparent relevance to the question at all.  Likewise the material in chapter 6 (God is active today) is true, whether or not going to a local church is a good idea, a bad idea, or the kernel idea for a mini-series on NBC about mud-wrestling.  In other words, it’s irrelevant to the thesis being advanced.

One element of Chapter 6 amused me, cynic that I am.  Barna suggests starting on p.53 that “mini-movements” are important, and show how obsolete the church is getting.  But … they’re so important that he only describes them in one sentence on p.54!  I was left wondering what he was on about.  Clearly they are NOT important to him!  If he was enthusiastic about them, he’d have said more.  Based on number of words devoted to each, this said to me that it is getting rid of the local church that matters, not whatever these mini-movements might be.

Let’s step back a bit.  It is absolutely right to notice that some committed Christians get bored with their local churches, and tend to stop going.  Many of them remain fervently committed to Christ.  It would be a very good thing to find some way to linking these up in such a way that they can get fellowship in whatever ways work for them.  Local churches certainly can be awful places.  We can all agree on this.

But … Barna’s book goes a very long way beyond this.  A reasonable reader will suppose that the local church is actually a barrier to spiritual development.  The book seems designed to inculcate this message.  The object is to get Christians to think that they are moving forward with God, simply by sitting at home on Sunday morning (for no concrete proposals are offered for anything else).  And that is not merely nonsense — it seems pretty clear whose agenda that statement serves.  It isn’t God’s, of that we may be sure.

I find myself rather angry, in truth.  This is not an honest book, in my opinion.  It’s a piece of contrived poison.  How on earth did a Christian publisher put this out?  Have they no duty to their readers? 

I fear that George Barna has unwittingly acted as an agent for Hell here.  If so, of course, he needs our prayers.

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A bibliography of scholarship on Gregory of Nyssa

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent has drawn my attention to a treasure online: a site maintained by Matthieu Cassin, which consists of a bibliography of articles about Gregory of Nyssa, in reverse date order.

What makes this special is that some of the articles are linked.  This includes translations of texts by the man himself:

M. Cassin, « Grégoire de Nysse, Sur la divinité du Fils et de l’Esprit et sur Abraham », Conférence 29, 2009, p. 581-611.

and this interesting article, which also discusses the titles and chapter divisions of Gregory’s work against Eunomius.  Whether the chapter divisions are authorial in late antique texts is a discussion which remains to be clarified, but the paper contributes to it.

M. Cassin, « Text and context : the importance of scholarly reading. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium », dans S. Douglass, M. Ludlow (éd.), Reading the Church Fathers, Londres, 2011, p. 109-131 et 161-165.

There are other treasures too:

P. Géhin, « Fragments patristiques syriaques des Nouvelles découvertes du Sinaï », Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 6, 2009, p. 67-93.

P. Géhin, « Manuscrits sinaïtiques dispersés II : les fragments théologiques syriaques de Milan (Chabot 34-57) », Oriens christianus 91, 2007, p. 1-24.

although some of the links are just to pay-journals, unfortunately, or to Google books.

There are further interesting items linked from his CV, among them:

A. Binggeli, M. Cassin, « Recenser la tradition manuscrite des textes grecs : du Greek Index Project à Pinakes », dans La descrizione dei manoscritti : esperienze a confronto, éd. E. Crisci, M. Maniaci, P. Orsini, (Studi e ricerche del Dipartimento di filologia e storia 1), Cassino, 2010, p. 91-106.

Impressive!

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40 days of prayer – an online Lent meditation

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I came across a blog run by Community Church Derby — about which I know nothing — here.  The blog is a set of daily thoughts on Psalm 23, for Lent. 

The item for Sunday 18th March struck me particularly:

Sunday 18th March ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and staff they comfort me.’

God, our Shepherd, wants to guide us. The question is will we allow him to guide us? Will we allow him to be our compass, our reference point in life? Christianity is not a system of beliefs that we choose to sign up to the try our best to live up to, it’s a call to a radical new way of life which involves making a daily decision to allow God, our Shepherd to lead us and give our life direction, meaning and purpose.

The Sheep: Pray for someone you know who is self-employed and for those who work mostly alone during the day, maybe in the home. Pray against feelings of loneliness and that they would know God’s presence with them in the hours of work.

There are a lot of lonely people out there, you know.  There are a lot of people also, whose work prevents them from really meeting people, even if they sit in an office.  I’ve encountered a number of these over the last couple of months, and I have been struck by how alone most people are. 

Giving our life meaning, seeking every day God’s will in our decisions … what does this mean, in practice?  Or do we just drift on, doing what we always do, and asking for His help only in crises?  The answer, surely, will differ for each of us.  We can, at least, all ask God how He wants us to play this.

Note that the church in question uses “radical” in its proper sense, of returning to the root (radix) of Christian teaching in the New Testament.

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What do you do, when swindled by a “Christian company”?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting ethical question reached me today, and although it has never happened to me — mostly because I don’t do much business with Christian businesses, I suspect, it raises all sorts of issues.

Someone purchased a subscription for a service from a Christian company back in February. But he finds, now the first month’s materials have been delivered, that they aren’t fit for purpose, because of a condition unmentioned in the advertising. Basically he’s lost his money, and what they are sending him, although perhaps useful to someone else, is no use to him.

He could perhaps go to the credit card company, and ask for redress.  He could also go to the Advertising Standards Authority and complain that he wasn’t told.  (The ASA is the body that recently decided that mainstream Christian group Healing on the Streets were not allowed to say on their website that God can heal, by the way).  In short he could bring the Christian company before the authorities.  If he was dealing with someone like Amazon, he would do just that.

But should he do this for a business which provides Christian services for Christians?  What about 1 Corinthians 6:7:

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?

ἤδη μὲν οὖν ὅλως ἥττημα ὑμῖν ἐστιν ὅτι κρίματα ἔχετε μεθ’ ἑαυτῶν. διὰ τί οὐχὶ μᾶλλον ἀδικεῖσθε; διὰ τί οὐχὶ μᾶλλον ἀποστερεῖσθε;

Perhaps so.  Perhaps the best thing to do is ask politely for a refund; and to bear the loss patiently if necessary; and to hand the company over to God and think no more about it.  The sum is large, but bearable.

Or does this verse refer to circumstances rather different than those envisaged here; more to disputes between individuals rather than modern  business methods?  Or is there some other reason not to take this view?

Note that possibly there are extenuating circumstances also that have not reached me.  But  imagine that there are not, just for the sake of argument; and that the Christian company has got greedy.

What do you think?

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Saudi mufti calls for all churches to be destroyed — UK media suppresses story

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I wouldn’t bother with this story, except that the UK media seem to have received a 3-line whip, directing silence about it.  ArabianBusiness.com reports (four days ago!):

Destroy all churches in Gulf, says Saudi Grand Mufti

The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia has said it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region,” following Kuwait’s moves to ban their construction.

Speaking to a delegation in Kuwait, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, stressed that since the tiny Gulf state was a part of the Arabian Peninsula, it was necessary to destroy all of the churches in the country, Arabic media have reported.

Fox News reported the story from the Washington Times, and commented:

If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. Pundits would lambaste the church, the White House would rush out a statement of deep concern, and rioters in the Middle East would kill each other in their grief. But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening.

On March 12, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.” The ruling came in response to a query from a Kuwaiti delegation over proposed legislation to prevent construction of churches in the emirate.

The mufti based his decision on a story that on his deathbed, Muhammad declared, “There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula.” This passage has long been used to justify intolerance in the kingdom. Churches have always been banned in Saudi Arabia, and until recently Jews were not even allowed in the country. Those wishing to worship in the manner of their choosing must do so hidden away in private, and even then the morality police have been known to show up unexpectedly and halt proceedings. 

This is not a small-time radical imam trying to stir up his followers with fiery hate speech. This was a considered, deliberate and specific ruling from one of the most important leaders in the Muslim world. It does not just create a religious obligation for those over whom the mufti has direct authority; it is also a signal to others in the Muslim world that destroying churches is not only permitted but mandatory.

There’s nothing novel in the demand, in truth.  This is how Islam is, as a look at the dismal stories in the History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria reveals.  Usually the method is to forbid repairs, which, over time, amounts to the same thing; but direct demolition or theft of the premises is also fairly common.  How else, indeed, did Hagia Sophia come to be a mosque?  How much longer we may be allowed to say this, however, I do not know.

But the real issue for me is the media silence.  Fox News make precisely the right point.  For instance, I can see no sign that the BBC have reported this.  This happened a week ago.  And I didn’t know until, by accident, I saw the story on Facebook.

We cannot trust the mass media.  Incidents like this, where a story with all sorts of important implications go unreported, should act as a wake-up call.  Our mass media are in the hands of a tiny minority of people whose values are not our own. 

It isn’t that the stories they run are untrue — although the framing of the story is often dishonest or polemical.  It is the selection and the editing that ensures that only stories that reflect one particular political agenda and narrative can even be reported.  Dr Goebbels did it first (and isn’t it curious that, in all my 40 years of watching TV, I have yet to see a documentary on the media methods of the good doctor?)

And that should worry us all.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m in Chester at the moment, on personal business. 

Chester, I know, is a Roman city.  The street plan shows as much — it is, indeed, extraordinarily Roman, considering that nearly 2,000 years have passed.  Sadly I have been unable to devote any time to seeing antiquities, despite staying in the Crowne Plaza hotel pretty much in the city centre.  I did get to walk on the medieval circuit of the walls this afternoon, going down to the River Dee.

I’ve seen a few Roman column bases scattered around.  All of this material is of a reddish stone, which also appears in the medieval cathedral.  I presume, therefore, that this is local stone, and that in turn means that the Roman columns were manufactured by local artisans.

Chester is quite an attractive city, although quite small.  If you’re in the area, do visit it!

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Why copyright does NOT mean money for those who create original material

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Quite by accident, I came across an interesting article which throws new light on why copyright is not quite what it is generally supposed to be.

Copyright is not a moral axiom.  There is no teaching in the bible that states it, nor is it self-evident.

The idea behind it is that people should be able to profit from their intellectual or artistic labours.  An example of the problem caused by the lack of copyright is the edition of Chrysostom researched and published by Sir Henry Saville in the 17th century.  It’s an excellent text, but Saville lost quite a bit of money on it because someone bought copies of the volumes as they appeared, shipped them to Holland, copied them, added a Latin translation, and sold the result for his own profit.  This was perfectly legal, and, had Sir Henry not been a rich man, might have prevented the rest of the edition appearing.  A copyright law would have given Sir Henry redress to stop the rival publication.

When the “creative industries” (as they like to call themselves) are lobbying for yet more extensions to copyright, they invariably hold up the right of the artist, the creative person, to be protected.  Yet we all know that the copyright is always sold to someone else, and that, in reality, it is the rights of the middleman, the publisher, the record company, that are at stake.

At the moment, out of the sales of CD’s, only 13% “belongs” to the band.  63% is kept by the record company, and the remaining 24% goes to the distributor.  But the band has yet more costs to pay from “its” 13%; some 28% goes on managers and lawyers and so on.  The remainder is divided among the musicians.

Now that doesn’t sound too bad.  But … when does that 13% start getting paid?  Does the copyright provision actually mean that the artist gets his share?  Well, no it doesn’t.  Because the record company demands that the band repay advances and the like out of that 13%.

So, back to our original example of the average musician only earning $23.40 for every $1,000 sold. That money has to go back towards “recouping” the advance, even though the label is still straight up cashing 63% of every sale, which does not go towards making up the advance.

The math here gets ridiculous pretty quickly when you start to think about it. These record label deals are basically out and out scams. In a traditional loan, you invest the money and pay back out of your proceeds.

But a record label deal is nothing like that at all. They make you a “loan” and then take the first 63% of any dollar you make, get to automatically increase the size of the “loan” by simply adding in all sorts of crazy expenses (did the exec bring in pizza at the recording session? that gets added on), and then tries to get the loan repaid out of what meager pittance they’ve left for you.

Oh, and after all of that, the record label still owns the copyrights. That’s one of the most lopsided business deals ever.

So think of that the next time the RIAA or some major record label exec (or politician) suggests that protecting the record labels is somehow in the musicians’ best interests.

The situation in publishing is no better.  No normal author gets paid very much for the content.

So … could someone explain again, honestly, just why copyright is in the public interest? 

OK … I still do believe that Sir Henry Saville should have some redress.  But I suggest that we’re quite a long way away from that common sense problem, and getting further away with each tweak to the law.

If only our politicians didn’t take bribes from industries so readily!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My days have been busy with personal business, but I did manage to get back to OCR’ing Theodoret’s Commentary on Romans. 

It’s rather anaemic, tho.  I reached the portion where Paul advises submission to worldly authorities this evening.  Now the pressure on Christians to conform to whatever anti-Christian demand gay lobbyists dream up is reaching fever pitch here, so it would be very interesting to hear an early Christian exegesis of this passage.  But Theodoret simply ignores the issue of what it  means to submit to an anti-Christian power.  Is there an extant patristic exegesis worth reading on this passage, I wonder?

A couple of kind people have purchased CDROM’s of the Additional Fathers collection, which helps replenish the translation fund.  It’s quite flat now, after the Origen purchases.  But I can top it up once I go back to work.

And back to work I jolly must go; a week on Monday, no less.  I’d appreciate prayer for this, as I know not the person for whom I shall be working, nor what the role involves, nor what sort of conditions. 

I’m considering rather seriously whether the Lord is asking me to look at a change of direction, and indeed possibly a change of town.  But I’ll post on this separately, if I consider it right, and interesting to others.  I’ve worked in more or less the same way for the last 15 years, and it’s been very isolating, I now realise.  The Lord has been busy in my life — with a baseball bat — and I have a sense that I am at a cross-roads, in several senses. 

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So, farewell, O dead tree Encyclopedia Britannica

Posted on by Roger Pearse

News today that Encyclopedia Britannica has decided not to print any more editions of its encyclopedia.  Sales of the paper version have been “negligible” for years, and 85% of the income comes from the online version.  I would imagine these sales are licenses to libraries and the like.  There is, apparently, some gloating from some anonymous erk in Wikipedia — the ‘encyclopedia’ that any teenager can edit (and especially Randy in Boise).

It’s a key moment, isn’t it?  The paper encyclopedia is now definitely dead.  That is, the major reference source until 1995 is now history. 

Any reference source in paper form is now obsolete.  Any source that is not read from end to end, but instead is accessed in bits and pieces, is now on borrowed time.  There are any number of such handbooks — we might think of the Clavis Patrum Graecorum.  They’re all dead meat, and just waiting to be collected.  They cannot, commercially, exist on paper any more.

It’s a brave new world.

Mind you, I do wish someone would sue the hell out of Wikipedia and force it to institute some proper controls and regulation of trolls.  It can’t grow much beyond its current status as “collection of hearsay”, until this is addressed.

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International Congress on Patristics Studies, Argentina, 8-10th August

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email draws my attention to a conference on Patristics studies in Argentina on 8-10th August.  This is a little far for me, but details can be found here.

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