Nothing interesting today or tomorrow, just computer training on what seems to be a very fancy new records system.
Yesterday I visited a couple of churches, and realized again that I have an unfortunate knack for picking the unpopular/losing side of just about any controversy, religious or historical (Richard III was a hero, Lincoln was a villain, the Monophysites are not heretics, and neither is Douglas Wilson). In spite of that, people were very friendly, and I think for the first time in my life I might be able to go to a church whose doctrine I almost totally agree with, which is also in my neighborhood.
Whenever I’m not at the hospital, that is. They’ve fixed my call schedule such that I have one Sunday free for the entire month of July. Not what I was planning on. I’m considering asking for Saturday call instead, but Saturday call is really awful. You end up working straight through the weekend, since you’re postcall and thus in the hospital on Sunday, so even though you might be able to get to church, you don’t get a real day off at all. Going to church is good, but Saturday call messes your sense of time up so badly, I don’t know if it would be worth it. We’ll see. Maybe August will be better. Even more likely, the chiefs wouldn’t even care what I said.
In spite of that, I’m kind of glad to be on call July 1. Since I seem to be a doctor (I keep telling myself that, and have almost worked up enough nerve to introduce myself to a real patient that way), I might as well jump in the deep end and get going. . .
June 26, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Sorry to hear you think Richard III was a hero. No king of England was a hero, though Richard may have had his strong points. Alfred had a few also. Would have to hear more what think about the Monophysites to completely agree on that but Nestorius was not the heretic he was painted to be. But you nailed Lincoln and Wilson.
Glad to hear about your church find. I always found that Sunday worship stabilized the otherwise unsettled week, but if Saturday call keeps you from participating, you are probably best without it.
June 27, 2007 at 5:59 pm
What’s your grudge against England? I love their kings, although the only ones I would call heroes would be Richard the Lionhearted (in the military sense), Richard III, and William III (surely you like him?). Richard III was much maligned by Holinshed, More, and Shakespeare; he didn’t murder anyone, he married his wife Anne after a most romantic courtship, after his brother kidnapped her to try to keep her inheritance, and he had firm legal grounds for taking the throne after his brother Edward IV died. He didn’t kill the Princes in the Tower, the usurping Henry VII probably did.
Nestorius? Hang on! I did not mean to exonerate him. Like my Monophysite ancestors, I abominate that heresy. 🙂 But the Monophysites, you see, never taught that Christ’s divinity swallowed up his humanity; that was Eutyches, whom they condemned along with the rest of the Church. The Monophysites (Copts, Ethiopians, Armenians, Syrians, and Indians) taught that Christ’s wholly human and wholly divine natures were so inextricably united at his incarnation that thereafter they are best described as the “one nature of the Incarnate God.” The risks of attempting to maintain a distinction between them, as the Council of Chalcedon did, can be seen in my sister’s class, where a Baptist professor explained that Christ’s human nature alone was tempted, and his human nature alone died at Calvary. Now what good does that do anybody? Anselm long ago demonstrated the necessity of the divine nature being involved in the work of redemption.
Anyway. Love to hear more from you. 🙂
June 28, 2007 at 10:24 am
Regarding the English, I am of Welsh descent, so view them as usurpers, sociohistorically. But I kid. Richard III is much maligned, wrongly I would agree. And he may possibly be the one English monarch to have been faithful to his wife. The other two you mention were not, almost without doubt. And there is question whether they even preferred women. William of Orange was certainly preferable to the Roman Catholic rulers of his day, and I am not his Judge. And assessing the character of these men at this historical distance is very difficult. At best we can judge some of their more certified deeds.
Same with Nestorius. I brought him into it because of the vehemence with which my tradition condemns him. But Dr. Young, a servant scholar not to be trifled with, has convinced me that perhaps we are mistaken. His book on the Church of the East and the early missions to China include a few chapters on Nestorius.http://www.aina.org/books/bftc/bftc.htm
I realize that siding with Young’s version of Nestorius puts me at odds with you on the Monophysites, but I would rather say that we are all trying to protect different aspects of a truth so deep and complex that we can not grasp or express it without doing injustice to other aspects. That has been a very difficult position for me to grow into. As an adolescent, I was very dogmatic about the natures and person of Christ. The English translations of the Chalcedon terms are inconsistent but worse, the Greek terms are also inconsistent with each other and with the Latin transliterations. Young’s explanation of the Syriac terms makes more sense.
But beyond the limitations of languages, there is an incomplete understanding of the Trinity. Some small progress is being made in that now.
Worst of all, I believe, is our difficulty in understanding personhood and individuality, or more precisely, in thinking of Jesus and the Paraclete as real people. But maybe I only speak for myself.
One might think that the WWJD would support the contrary. Rather, that still treats him as a concept. I hear some now speak in the sense of Revelation:e.g. “Jesus does not like it when you mess with his bride.” That recognizes him as a person.
But do you really think it is acceptable to think of God being tempted (contrary to James 1:13) or God dying, or even God being born (to use Nestorius’ concern).?
But I don’t want to tangle with you over this. I could tie a square knot in my tennis shoes with one hand during med school, but can’t seem to ever get them right on the tomato stakes now.
June 28, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Oh, Wales. As much as I like English history, I have got to admit that their treatment of smaller nations was pretty horrible right down the line. They really never got a handle on their imperialistic land-grabbing instincts until the last couple decades. Their treatment of the Welsh, Irish, and Scots was despicable. Even G. A. Henty had to take the Scottish side of those wars.
I like William III, I really don’t want to hear any homosexual stories about him. And anyway, modern historians like to make out that just about every prominent man for the last 3000 years did that, which is statistically incredible.
I’ll admit that the truth is too deep for our words to do justice to it as far as Christ’s nature(s); but even as I acquire a little maturity, I feel very strongly that the Monophysites were unjustly convicted of heresy, since one look at the climactic portion of their liturgy directly contradicts the charges of Chalcedon (the priest, in the Confession, right before communion, says, “I believe and confess, to the very last breath, that this [the bread and wine] is the lifegiving body that our Savior took from the Virgin Mary; he made it one with his divinity, without changing, without mingling, without confusion; he gave it up on the cross for us all. . .”).
It’s mindblowing to say that God was tempted, or died, or was born; but if you try to deny it, you really will find yourself in the Nestorian error (at least as traditionally understood, whether you want to say that Nestorius actually said it or not 🙂 ), denying the true divinity of Christ throughout his incarnation. Who was born, if not God? This is why Mary is the Theotokos, the God-bearer, because the child she carried and gave birth to was God. If in Jesus’ temptation or any other part of his earthly life you can distinguish between what his human and his divine natures did, then you’re undermining the uniqueness and perfection and necessity of his incarnation. If God didn’t die, then why did Jesus become a man? Are you familiar with Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo (Why God became a man)? He demonstrates there that a perfect man alone would not be able to atone for the sins of other men, and that God alone would not be able to be a representative (or federal) head for men. Only the incarnate God could save us, as his humanity gave him the right to be our Redeemer, and his divinity made it possible for him to pay the infinite price of our sins against the infinite God. If only a man died at Calvary, he did nothing for us. Enoch’s death would have done as much good.
(James 1:13, yes, but this isn’t the only Bible verse which requires some faith to square with the orthodox interpretation of other verses.)