Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Another Ride Video

 From the 4th of July, my "weekend ride" over to the coast, down to Leucadia, and then back north, around our northernmost lagoon, called Buena Vista, and then on to home.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

 Hymns and the Nicene Creed (Or Jack Chick comes to Islam)

As the Anglican world continues to fragment and continue its death spiral, there is no lack of pundits to provide us with their perspective on this demise.  Most are merely parrots of one another, and most, again, are probably not worth reading.  Along the way, I've had the pleasure to read a blog by someone who, I think, gets it better than most.  Now, in the interest of full disclosure, he's an old friend, so its not like I'm being entirely objective.

9.West has focused his blog, by and large, on the music, and more specifically, on the lyrics.  I'll get to why that means he "gets it" in a minute.  His latest installment addresses some observations he made while visiting a recent escapee from the ECUSA here in San Diego.  I hesitate to say which one, because while I think I recall, I can't be sure.  9.West has taken to identifying two groups, the Schism I group, and the Schism II group (technically they should be Schism II and III, but the Schism I group, the REC, is oft forgotten about in the current Anglican Wars).  He notes that, at least with this Schism II group, that they have not yet critically analyzed the more recent "innovations" of the ECUSA, vis the 1982 hymnal.

The reason I think he "gets" it, is that the hymns of the Church are far more important than is commonly appreciated.  How many people can recite the preamble to the Constitution today, unless they happen to sing it as well?  My guess is not many.  I, however, grew up on the "hymns" of Schoolhouse Rock, and thus can sing about conjunctions, and 9, the magic number, all day long.  Those hymns taught me much.

That is the way that it has always been in the Church.  Much care needs to be taken with the hymns, because they, along with the prayers of the various liturgies, serve as the primary instructional methods of the Church.  Just because a theologian of some sort has written a song, does not qualify it for addition to the list of hymns.  It must actually reflect the teaching of the Church.  Rewriting hymns, for any reason, is a risky undertaking.

9.West compares hymns to the Nicene Creed.  Where I think he may be a bit off, is in the assumption that the Nicene Creed established doctrine.  It is a common mistake, especially amongst protestants.  I was somewhat amused by this site, which 9.West had sent me, with a Greek Muslim who apparently is under the same impression (and also the impression that Constantine the Pagan introduced paganism to the Church, which is so absurd as to be not worth the time to respond to, as it is much like the ridiculous teachings of Jack Chick).  Although the medieval West, under Rome's influence, took to establishing new doctrines with their councils.  The first 7 councils of the undivided Church were much more interested in setting boundaries around existing doctrines.  That is, in defining what had been passed down, then defining what could not be accepted within those boundaries.  This is a far different thing.

So, the Nicene Creed, the hymns and prayers, and even the Scripture itself, servers to codify what had been passed down from Christ to his Apostle's to the Church.  Nothing new is to be invented here, at all.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Hobbies

 As would be a surprise to no one, I have a new hobby these days, which is cycling.  I like to visit online fora, I know the jargon, and I love to tinker with my trike, etc.  Most of all, I really enjoy riding (1,100 miles and counting).  If I had to stop riding, I would be really depressed.  I'd probably gain the weight back that I've lost.

However, my inability to cycle anymore would likely have little impact on my salvation.  Although everything in life has the ability to impact one's salvation, this probably is not a significant contributor.  At any rate, I say that because I had occasion to day to ponder Christianity and hobbies.  Perhaps this applies to no one but me, which would be good (except for me), but I suspect it does not.  It seems that its far too easy to treat Christianity as a hobby.  Especially for those of us in the blogosphere, or those of us with sufficiently large ego's to consider ourselves Christian apologists of sorts.

What I mean by this is the tendency to treat Christianity as a hobby.  If you're Orthodox, that might mean collecting lots of neat icons and vigil lamps.  Maybe a censer, which gets lit periodically.  You also need lots of cool service books, and plenty of theology books.  I can spend hours discussing the right way to set up icon corners, and which icons I don't have, but I would like.  I can spend even more hours discussing finer points of doctrine and apologetics.  Much like I can do with cycling.  The question I have to ask is if I can spend hours in prayer and fasting.  Can I spend hours in service to my fellow man without a lot of back patting - as opposed to thinking that I'm really cool if I spend 5 minutes helping somebody else.  I'm sure other religious groups have similar sorts of hobbyist trappings (like my evangelical friend who keeps a bible prominently displayed on his dashboard.  I've never figured out why, but given his driving style, maybe its not bad to have one there for his passengers).

I'm not denigrating theology, or icons, or incense.  Far from it.  I find them very helpful in focusing my nous on God.  However, I far too often turn them into hobbyist items.  If, at the end of the day, I've spent an hour or two pondering doctrinal topics, but continue in the same old sins, of what has it availed me?

Monday, July 07, 2008

Hitting the Reset Button

A number of years ago, I was working on a program with an upper division computer engineering major to create 3D representations of molecules and cause them to rotate on screen.  By today's standards, probably a project in a lower division CS class.  Back then, we were doing it in 6809 Assembly language, and it was quite a project.  Jerry, the engineer, was doing all of the heavy lifting with calculating the positions of points on the plane as a function of their location in the 3D space.  My job, as the owner of the computer in question, was to write the graphics handlers so that we could get the drawings to appear with little or no flicker, and fast.  We ultimately succeeded.  It was, if I may be so bold, quite an impressive piece of software.

Along the way, however, I had finished keying in some code that Jerry had sent me over the summer and had saved it on the cassette drive (we had just graduated from punch cards in those days).  I ran the program and the computer just froze - locked up the computer entirely.  The only solution was to hit the reset button, reload the program, and run it again.  It would begin, and progress would be made, but ultimately the whole system would just hang again.  Ultimately, Jerry and I had to read through the program in great detail in order to identify the underlying problem.  We found the error (a bit of failure to communicate clearly between programmers), and realized that no matter what, the program was always doomed to hang.  That is, until we rewrote some fundamental pieces of the code.

Okay, so what does this have to do with Anglicanism?  I've been reading some bits at various blogs about the recent GAFCON in Israel.  The outcome is, in my opinion, tantamount to hitting the Anglican reset button.  They have basically decided that the 39 articles will be the foundation of the new Anglicanism.  Much as it was the foundation of the old Anglicanism.  As noted by some bloggers, though, the 39 articles are really a fudge - an attempt to create a hybrid between Catholicism and Protestantism.  Perhaps its not fair, but it brings to mind the mule.  A useful enough animal, but not capable of procreation.  Not a perfect analogy.  This new Anglicanism will reproduced for a little while, until the program hangs again, and people start searching for the reset button.

The 39 articles attempt to be both Catholic and Reformed.  Along the way, people have had to struggle with that combination.  For the most part, people were content to mostly be Reformed.  That is, until the 19th Century, when Cardinal Newman et al., arrived on the scene.  Cardinal Newman found himself needing to write a tract to defend his belief in things with a distinctly Roman Catholic flavor with the 39 articles.  The result was spin worthy of many modern politicians.  To be honest, the outcome was that Anglicanism was then able to fully except multiple groups of people with distinctly opposed views.  It was only the clever use of semantics which could hold it all together.  Once Pandora's box was opened, should we have been surprised when the modernists arrived on the scene, merely seeking to spin the 39 articles, the Nicene Creed, and Scripture, to fit their beliefs?  I think not.

So now, with GAFCON, we're seeing the reset button hit.  But things have accelerated.  The AngloCatholics are still in the game.  In order for them to accept the 39, they have to already buy in to Newman.  So the box remains open.  We this already in that the subject of women's ordination had been a problem since the emergence of the Global South in the U.S.  While by itself it may not seem like a huge issue, it speaks volumes about the manner in which the Church handles Scripture and Tradition. Right now, there is, at best, sort of a moratorium.  How long, though, before we land back in 1976, and a group of women are ordained by a bishop who feels that the moratorium is utterly wrong?  After that, how long until the divinity of Christ, or the reality of his resurrection are questioned?  Then the program hangs again.

No, the solution is to stop hitting the reset button.  Look at what is fundamentally wrong in the code.  Then fix that problem.  The solution does not involve 39 articles, nor protestantism, nor even Roman Catholicism.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Southern California Recumbent Rally

 A bit delayed, as I've been working on the video.  The weekend of June 20th, I went up to Van Nuys for the Southern California Recumbent Rally, as I mentioned here.  So, I was able to edit 3.5 hours of video down to 10 minutes to meet YouTube standards.  Hope you enjoy, I may do some other versions as I'm not completely satisfied with it: