February 2009 Archives

Dies Irae is one of my favorite Latin hymns. The notes are simpler than many I have heard, but beautiful. The words are very moving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlr90NLDp-0

Many are familiar with Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, which were his public protest against the sale of indulgences by Dominican John Tetzel to fund the building of St. Peter's Cathedral. However, Tetzel was only an employee of Albert, Archbishop of Mainz. Albert had issued a document of instructions regarding indulgences, which makes for very interesting reading.

I have an abbreviated English translation in the book "Documents of the Christian Church (2nd Ed., Oxford University Press) pages 184-185. I was hoping to provide an URL to a full English translation of the Instructio Summaria, along with the Latin text, from an official historical or university database, but found this was not as easy as I imagined. But here is a link to one webpage that is hosting an English translation:

http://biblelight.net/instruc.htm

I wish to draw a few conclusions regarding (Roman) Catholic teaching on Eschatology, based on the "Catechism of the Catholic Church: With Modifications from the Editio Typica" (Doubleday). This English translation is copyrighted 1997, but based on a Latin work copyrighted 1994.

Doubtlessly there is Catholic literature that covers eschatological subjects in much greater detail. However, I should think there are not many that would be more authoritative, as Pope John Paul II called it "A sure norm for teaching the Faith."

The following excerpts are taken from Part One, Article 7, pages 191-194:

THE KINGDOM IS MANIFESTED THROUGH THE CHURCH

As Lord, Christ is also head of the Church, which is his Body. Taken up to heaven and glorified after he had thus fully accomplish his mission, Christ dwells on earth in his Church. . . ."Already the final age of the world is with us, and the renewal of the world is irrevocably under way; it is even now anticipated in a certain real way, for the Church on earth is endowed already with a sanctity that is real but imperfect." Christ's kingdom already manifests its presence through the miraculous signs that attend its proclamation by the Church. (191-192)

THE KINGDOM WILL BE FULFILLED WHEN CHRIST RETURNS TO EARTH

Though already present in his Church, Christ's reign is nevertheless yet to be fulfilled "with power and great glory" by the king's return to earth. . . . Until everything is subject to him, "until there be realized new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells, the pilgrim Church, in her sacraments and institutions, which belong to this present age, carries the mark of this world which will pass. . . Before his Ascension Christ affirmed that the hour had not yet come for the glorious establishment of the messianic kingdom awaited by Israel which, according to the prophets, was to bring all men the definitive order of justice, love, and peace. (192-193)

THE CHURCH WILL EXPERIENCE THE PERSECUTION OF THE ANTICHRIST

Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh. (193-194)

MILLENARIANISM IS HERESY

The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that mesianic hope which can only be realized beyond history though the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism. (194)

THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST WILL NOT BE FULFILLED UNTIL ISRAEL REPENTS

The glorious Messiah's coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by "all Israel," for "a hardening has come upon part of Israel" in their "unbelief" toward Jesus. St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost: "Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.". . . . The "full inclusion" of the Jews in the Messiah's salvation, in the wake of "the full number of the Gentiles," will enable the People of God to achieve "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ," in which "God may be all in all." (193)

Lewis Sperry Chafer wrote the following, regarding Christ as prophet, in Vol. 4 of his "Systematic Theology" (pages 299-300, Dallas Seminary Press):

Because of its repetition in quotations given in subsequent Scriptures, the one exalted passage regarding Christ as Prophet must be the one found in Deuteronomy 18:15, 18-19, which reads: "The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken. . . . I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him." It is to this expectation that Philip refers, as the following is recorded in John 1:45: "Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Peter quotes this prophecy in his second recorded sermon (Acts 3:22-23), and Stephen declares in his last address before his martyrdom, "This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear" (Acts 7:37). In like manner it is equally clear that Christ assumed the mediatorial relationship which belongs to a prophet. He spoke for Another rather than from Himself. It is written, "Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me" (John 7:16); "For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak" (12:49-50); "He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me" (14:24); "For I have given them the words which thou gavest me" (17:8).

In summary: The words of both Jesus and those who followed him indicate that he was assuming that mediatorial position of Prophet described in Deuteronomy 18. This claim on the part of Jesus was not one of little significance: for in claiming this mediatorial position, he was effectively claiming that any teaching which he brought was, in fact, a message from God himself, and carried with it that level of divine authority.

Professor Werner Gitt of Germany is an expert in the field of information science. On pages 85 and 86 of his book "In the Beginning was Information" (CLV) he argues that although information requires a material medium, it is nevertheless distinct from matter:

Theorem 24: Information requires a material medium for storage.

If one writes some information with chalk on a blackboard, the chalk is the material carrier. If it is wiped off, the total quantity of chalk is still there, but the information has vanished. In this case the chalk was a suitable material medium, but the essential aspect was the actual arrangement of the particles of the chalk. And this arrangement was definitely not random, it had a mental origin. The same information that was written on the blackboard, could also have been written on a magnetic diskette. Certain tracks of the diskette then became magnetised, and also in this case there is a carrier for the information as stated by Theorem 24. The quantity of material involved is appreciably less than for the chalk and blackboard, but the amount of material is not crucial. Moreover, the information is independent of the chemical composition of the storage medium. If large neon letter signs are used for displaying the same information, then the amount of material required, is increased by several orders of magnitude.

So his basic argument here is that, because the same information can be stored on different physical mediums, with differing quantities of material and chemical composition, it follows that information is distinct from the matter in which it is stored.

This point is significant, not only for information theory, but also for philosophy. For it indicates that there is something (information) which is essentially distinct from matter. This disagrees with philosophical materialism, which holds that matter is the only thing which can be shown to exist.

The nature of the human will, and more especially the influences on it, are subjects which have spawned a great deal of debate throughout the history of Christian theology. Consequently, I will be keeping an eye out for various definitions of the concept of human will.

Following is Jonathan Edward's definition, as provided on pages 4 and 5 of "The Works of Jonathan Edwards", Vol. 1 (Hendrickson Publishers), within the specific work "A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will..." (the full title is rather long):

I observe, that the Will (without any metaphysical refining) is, That by which the mind chooses any thing. The faculty of the Will, is that power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing: an act of the Will is the same as an act of choosing or choice.

If any think it is a more perfect definition of the Will, to say, that it is that by which the soul either chooses or refuses; I am content with it: though I think it enough to say, It is that by which the soul chooses: for in every act of Will whatsoever, the mind chooses one thing rather than another; it chooses something rather than the contrary, or rather than the want or non-existence of that thing. So in every act of refusal, the mind chooses the absence of the thing refused; the positive and the negative are set before the mind for its choice, and it chooses the negative; and the mind's making its choice in that case is properly the act of the Will: the Will's determining between the two, is a voluntary determination; but that is the same thing as making a choice. So that by whatever names we call the act of the Will, choosing, refusing, approving, disapproving, liking, disliking, embracing, rejecting, determining, directing, commanding, forbidding, inclining, or being averse, being pleased or displeased with; all may be reduced to this of choosing. For the soul to act voluntarily, is evermore to act electively.

In summary, Edwards defines the will as some thing "by which the mind chooses any thing". This definition is straightforward, and natural. However, by itself it seems incomplete, as the are a number of things alleged to fulfill such a role for the human mind: for example, the materialist might consider chemical reactions to be the mechanism which drives the choices of the human mind, while a dualist might point to some kind of spiritual substance which is ultimately not coerced by material events.

However, it should be noted that this is only the beginning of Edwards' long discussion on the subject of human will. And so concerned students have ample material for clarifying Edwards' definition.

The book "The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation" (HarperCollins Publishers, 1st Ed.) describes the practical construction of a scroll from the Dead Sea collection, on page 8:

What, exactly, are the Dead Sea Scrolls? The object themselves are documents written with a carbon-based ink usually on animal skins, although some are inscribed on papyrus. The scrolls were written right to left using no punctuation except for an occasional paragraph indentation--no periods, commas, quotation marks, or any of the other reader helps to which we are so accustomed. Indeed, in some cases there are not even spaces between words: the letters simply run together in a continuous stream. The codex, the early form of the book with pages bound on one side, had not yet been invented, so the "pages," or columns, were written consecutively on the scroll. To read them one slowly unrolled the scroll, and then, to be polite, rewrapped it, like rewinding a modern videotape. Not a few of the scrolls testify that the ancients failed to rewind as often as we do. The scrolls are written in several languages and half a dozen scripts, and though all are religious texts, within that category their contents are amazingly varied.

James Oliver Buswell, Jr. understood time to be an abstract concept similar to the laws of mathematics and logic. On this premise he argues that time does not have a beginning or end (or more accurately, that it is illogical to propose the question). Here is an extended quote from page 47 of his book, "A Christian View of Being and Knowing" (Zondervan):

Time therefore should be defined as the mere abstract possibility of relationships in durational sequence. The question then, "What would come after the hypothetical end of time?" or the question, "What was before the beginning of time?" would be like the question, "What would happen if the multiplication tables should fail?" or, "What was true before the laws of logic were enacted?" Simply, it is always true that two plus two equals four, that two contradictory propositions cannot both be true, and similarly, it is always abstractly possible that events in durational sequence may occur. When finite units are created, propositions are made, and events occur, then these abstract truths are applied to concrete particulars. It thus appears that the definition of time as an abstraction, the mere abstract possibility of relationships in durational sequence, serves as an adequate description of what we mean when we say that beings and events are in time.