Karl Barth on the Miracle and Mystery of Christmas

Here's an excellent short essay by Karl Barth on the significance of the incarnation of our Lord which we celebrate at Christmas.  This article is part of a longer book called Dogmatics in Outline which is a brief exposition of the Apostle's Creed. If you've never read Barth before, this is a great introduction since this essay is less than 10 pages long and captures his high Christology and tremendous capability as a theologian and historian.  Love him or hate him - I will always have a soft spot for Barth!

Click Here:  The Miracle and Mystery of Christmas

St. Augustine's Confessions - Mystical Vision at Ostia (Book IX)

Book IX of the Confessions reveals a side of Augustine that makes many Reformed Protestants like myself feel somewhat uncomfortable.  If anything, this book will help correct any misconceptions that we might have that Augustine is simply a carbon copy of John Calvin living at the turn of the fifth-century.  We must not forget that Augustine was a Roman Catholic Bishop and theologian, and in many ways both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are indebted to St. Augustine's theological legacy in different ways.  Protestants tend to gravitate toward his soteriology which emphasized human depravity and our desperate need for divine grace.  Roman Catholics, by contrast tend to gravitate toward Augustine's ecclesiology and piety.  There are three aspects to this particular chapter that will raise some Protestant eyebrows (although certain brands of Charismatics might be pleasantly surprised).  First, Augustine reveals his very definite impulse toward monasticism (he was in fact the founder of a monastic order).  Second, he reveals his Neo-Platonic mysticism which remained an integral part of his experience as a Christian.  Third, Augustine reveals his approval of the cult of the martyrs (veneration of relics) which became a major aspect of medieval Roman Catholic piety.

Following his conversion in Milan narrated in Book VIII, Augustine quit his job as a professor of Rhetoric and retired with a group of friends to a country estate in Cassiciacum, where they remained from July 386 AD to his baptism the following Easter.  During this time, Augustine wrote a number of philosophical works which were based on dialogues he had with his friends.  Here we see the beginning of Augustine's attraction to the monastic life which was only interrupted by his call to become a Presbyter (much to his own dismay!) 

We glean some additional insight in this chapter into Augustine's personal life as he shares about Adeodatus, "my natural son begotten in sin." (IX.vi)  Adeodatus, who was born to Augustine out of wedlock by his concubine of fifteen years, was apparently an extremely intelligent boy:  "He was about fifteen years old, and his intelligence surpassed that of many serious and well-educated men...His intelligence left me awestruck." (IX.vi)  The apple didn't fall far from the tree!  Unfortunately Adeodatus did not survive adolescence, but died as a baptized believer.  The narration about Adeodatus here is very interesting - Augustine speaks of him almost as though he were a peer rather than his son.  Perhaps this is due to the fact that they were baptized together by Bishop Ambrose in Milan.

Shortly after his baptism, Augustine recounts a story in which Ambrose receives a divine vision telling him where two martyrs were buried.  The bodies were located, and transported to Ambrose's basillica where a number of miracles occurred when people came in contact with the bier in which the bones were being stored.  According to Augustine's testimony, a blind man was healed and several demon possesed people were exorcised.  Augustine's strong belief in the power of relics becomes even more apparent in the last book of the City of God, where he tells a number of miracles which supposedly occurred in Hippo at the shrine of St. Stephen. 

Much of the rest of this Book is taken up with events leading up to the death of Augustine's mother Monica which includes a powerful tribute in which Augustine praises his mother's virtue as the Christian wife of a non-believer who won both her pagan husband and her wayward son to Christ through persistent prayer and witness.  Shortly before her death, Augustine and Monica shared a mystical experience at Ostia which is recounted in detail in this book using language that is distictly influenced by the Enneads of Plotinus:  "Our minds were lifted up by an ardent affection towards eternal being itself.  Step by step we climbed beyond all corporeal objects and the heaven itself, where sun, moon, and stars shed light on the earth.  We ascended even further by internal reflection and dialogue and wonder at your works, and we entered into our own minds.  We moved up beyond them so as to attain to the region of inexhaustible abundance where you feed Israel eternally with truth for food." (IX.x)  What Augustine is describing here is direct, unmediated  communication with God.  Neo-Platonists held that such extatic union with ultimate Being could be attained by certain enlightened philosophers who were able to transcend the physical bodies and the constraints of the material world which was held to be evil.  Augustine himself claimed to have had one such experience as a Neo-Platonist prior to his conversion to Chrsitianity, which he describes in Book VII.  Prior to his conversion, Augustine held that his mystical experience with absolute Being left him morally unchanged in spite of its power.  He compared this earlier mystical experience to Moses looking to the promised land from a distance without actually getting to enter in:  "It is one thing from a wooded summit to catch a glimpse of the homeland of peace and not to find the way to it, but vainly to attempt the journey along an impracticable route surrounded by the ambushes and assaults of fugitive deserters with their chief." (VII.xxi)  By contrast, the mystical experience he shared with his mother at Ostia was powerful enough to free Monica from the remaining constraints she had to the corporeal world.  No longer was she concerned about where she would be buried or with whom.  Soon after this experience, Monica died and Augustine mourned her death.

Puritan Pastoral Theology 101 (Part 2)

Perhaps little has done more to hinder the credibility of Christianity in the West over the past few decades than the scandalous behavior of church leaders, pastors and priests who have betrayed the public trust and brought shame upon the Lord Jesus Christ.  Although the massive Roman Catholic sex scandal and subsequent cover-up by church officials has captured most of the media attention in recent years, many examples of sexual sin and financial indescretion have come to light in Evangelical circles to our own shame.  Public scandal and media attention, however, is only the tip of the iceberg.  I remember reading an article in Leadership Journal several years ago that gave truly shocking statistics on how many active pastors are addicted to pornography or have crossed a sexual or emotional boundary of some kind in their ministry with one of their parishoners.  Pastors are clearly not exempt from sexual sin and financial scandal, but the consequences of sin in the life of the pastor can be absolutely devestating on a number of levels.

It is to this very important subject, that Richard Baxter devotes his attention in the next section of the Reformed Pastor:  "Take heed to yourselves, for you have a depraved nature, and sinful inclinations, as well as others.  If innocent Adam had need of heed, and lost himself and us for want of it, how much more need have such as we!  Sin dwelleth in us, when we have preached ever so much against it; and one degree prepareth the heart for another, and one sin inclineth the mind to more."  (73)  Baxter warns us that Satan takes particular pleasure in attacking the officers in God's army so that he might scatter the entire battalion:  "Take heed to yourselves, because the tempter will more ply you with his temptations than other men...He beareth the greatest malice to those that are engaged to do him the greatest mischief.  As he hateth Christ more than any of us, because he is the General of the field, teh Captain of our salvation, and doth more than all the world besides against his kingdom; so doth he hate the leaders that are under him, more than the common soldiers:  he knows what a rout he may make among them, if the leaders fall before their eyes...Take heed, therefore, brethren, for the enemy hath a special eye upon you."  (74)

Sin that causes leaders to fall into disgraceful scandals is particuarly dangerous for pastors for a number of reasons which Baxter highlights.  First, the pastor is a role model for the flock and is under close observation for better or for worse: "The eclipses of the sun by day are seldom without witnesses.  As you take yourselves for the lights of the churches, you may expect that men's eyes will be upon you.  If other men may sin without observation, so cannot you.  And you should thankfully consider how great a mercy this is, that you have so many eyes to watch over you, and so many ready to tell you of your faults; and thus have greater helps than others, at least for restraining you from sin." (75-76) 

Second, a pastor who knows God's Word does not sin in ignorance and thus heaps judgment upon his own head:  "You are more likely than others to sin against knowledge becasue you have more than they; at least you sin against more light light, or means of knowledge." (76) 

Third, hypocrisy in a pastor brings public disgrace on Christ in a greater measure than sin among the laity:  "O what a heinous thing is it in us, to study how to disgrace sin to the utmost, and make it as odious in the eyes of our people as we can, and when we have done, to live in it, and secretly cherish that which we publically disgrace!  What vile hypocrisy is it to make it our daily work to cry it down, and yet to keep to it;  to call it publically all naught, and privately to make it our bed-fellow and companion; to bind heavy burdens on others and not to touch them ourselves with a finger!" (76-77)

Fourth, public disgrace among Christian pastors brings disgrace on all Christians generally and attacks the credibility of the Church's witness for Christ in the world:  "Would it not wound you to the heart to hear the name and truth of God reproached for your sakes;  to see men point to you, and say, 'There goes a covetous priest, a secret tippler, a scandalous man; these are they that preach for strictness, while they themselves can live as loose as others; they condemn us by their sermons, and condemn themselves by their lives; nothwithstanding all their talk, they are as bad as we.'  O brethren, could your hearts endure to hear men cast the dung of your iniquities in the face of the holy God, and in the face of the gospel, and of all that desire to fear the Lord?  Would it not bread your hearts to think tthat all the godly Christians about you should suffer reproach for your misdoings?" (79)

Baxter points out the wickedness and deception that lurks within the human heart - even in the heart of many pastors who preach every sunday but are not truly born again by the Spirit of God:  "I know indeed, that a wicked man may be more willing of the reformation of others than of his own, and hence may show a kind of earnestness in dissuading them from their evil ways; becasue he can preach against sin at an easier rate than he can forsake it, and another man's reformation may consist with his own enjoyment of his lusts." (83)

These are very heavy words to read, but words that all of us in public, gospel ministry must take very seriously.  To whom much is given much will be required!