Bully's Blog

from Manifesto on Psalms and Hymns

by Douglas Wilson (Introduction to the Cantus Christi Hymnal)

 

A common practice in our day is for Christians to speak of the “culture wars.” By this they usually mean the political and cultural skirmishes between leftist secular thinking and the more moderate and traditional thinking of believers. But the problem is that the phrase “culture wars” is a particularly inept way to refer to this problem. Continue reading

or The Holy Voodoo Doll

The Lord’s plan from the beginning has been to take each man through three stages of development before transfiguration. The first is to give him access to the Tree of Life (bread) and test his obedience as a priest. Adam failed this test. The second is to give him access to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (wine) and test his wisdom as a king. Solomon failed this test. The third is to give him access to and membership of God’s council of elders as a decision maker, one whose words in and of themselves change history. This is testing as a Prophet, one who has been willing to be broken bread and poured out wine, and whose final years are spent giving wise words to the next generation.[1] The Old Covenant prophets passed this test.

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From Peter Leithart today:

“With what disgust, contempt, and hatred Christ must look upon every second of our lives, the reviewing of which must be a long torture for us, were such a judgment in our future!”

These are the words of a Presbyterian minister, writing in a prominent evangelical magazine. He’s trying to refute the belief that we’ll be judged according to works at the last day. He’s wrong on that point.  Continue reading

“And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley; Half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south.”  Zechariah 14:4

Surprising as His ways are, the Lord always follows procedure. Like Ahasuerus in the book of Esther, anything that is done is done by decree. Although, in the case of Ahasuerus, he needed to consult his elders, whereas God only consults his maturing elders (like Abraham and David–and now the church) to bring us to greater maturity.

A decree is written in the Most Holy, the king’s garden court (head). The elders in the Holy Place respond with liturgy (body). And then they ride out into the world on the swiftest horses to incite a Holy War that divides the world to bring about a New Creation.

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Some more thoughts on “bearing the marks” of Jesus as mentioned here.

Communion in the liturgy corresponds to Atonement. The saints carry the creation before the throne of God as mediators (Tabernacles). Then, after the doxology, we ride out into the world as “chariots” carrying the decree from the emperor (notice this pattern in Revelation 18-19).

So, if we follow the biblical pattern for liturgy, we are re-enacting every week what Christ accomplished in the AD30-70 “wilderness to Canaan” period. This is exactly where Israel failed in the book of Judges. It was a Levitical failure. God raised up judges to preserve His people from total destruction, but it began with the priesthood losing the plot as mediators, a failure of both judgment (manward and worship (Godward).

A pinch of bread and a thimble of cordial while breast-beating in silence is a Levitical failure. Communion is a celebration. The time for breast-beating is the confession at the beginning of the service. You wash before you come to the table.

: ( Confession - Christ crucified – Passover – Red Sea (we are “passed over”) Judgment

: ) Communion - boasting in Christ crucified – Atonement – Jordan (we “pass through”) Worship

At Communion, the “stigmata” of Christ are rewritten in us as living epistles, tablets of flesh, an invitation to Tabernacles. The pattern is renewed in the mediators, and we ride into the world with a renewed Covenant in a new week, as the Word to the world.

Well, that’s the plan. In the west, we seem to be at the mercy of the Philistines. This liturgical pattern often has children at this last step as the horses and chariots. It concerns the next generation. (Elisha’s bears appear at this step to deal with the “children” of Jezebel!) After Communion, we are the renewed children of the Table, offspring of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

Present Your Bodies as Spiritual Worship

Over the years we have emphasized the importance of ritual. Rituals are significant in the Bible, and they ought to be significant to us. We have also emphasized the importance of worshipping God with our bodies and not just with our minds. We have sought to resist the temptation that many Reformed Christians deal with, which is the idea that God gave us bodies as carrying cases to get our brains to church.

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