Disjectamembra will no longer be updated, and will go away pretty soon. But I’m still in the blogging business, and I’ll be just as disjected over there as I have been here.

The best example is of course Ivan Karamazov. Dostoyevsky lets this devil’s advocate speak his piece, and he lets him speak it dramatically, at length, unforgettably. It takes the acid of an Ivan to eat away the socialism and anarchism that characters like Rakitin keep building up. These are forces (they go by other names, but in his corresponence D. himself calls them by these) which Dostoyevsky could tell were waiting just over Russia’s horizon. Will people be good after getting rid of God? Yes of course, say the Rakitins. No chance, not a single chance, warns Ivan.

The problem, and the truly remarkable thing about this novel which just won’t stay read, is that Ivan’s acid is a universal solvent. Dosteyevsky brings in Ivan to destroy the socialist dream, but Ivan does it with an icy blast of nihilism. Who can put that Genie back in the bottle? Who can respond to Ivan’s arguments about morals and the immortal soul, and who can speak a word after listening to his horrific account of the sufferings of children? Don’t come to Ivan with your suffering God named Jesus; Ivan has already composed a Grand Inquisitor story that will induce vertigo.

Dostoyevsky stacks the deck against the forces of good in this novel, and refuses to make it easy. The central theme of redemption is introduced by a madman in a flashback: Zosima’s older brother, who blasphemes against God until he has a breakdown during Lent, begins in his illness to beg forgiveness from the birds and to say that we all live in paradise if we would only see it. Zosima himself is supposed to live a life or perhaps die a death that will overcome the forces unleashed by Ivan. Alyosha’s final speech by the rock is so short and thin that more than one reader has accidentally finished the novel without noticing it.

I can never quite tell if Ivan has been successfully refuted by the novel’s end, even though I know Dostoyevsky intended for that to be accomplished. The greatness and wildness of the book is that Dostoyevsky did not let himself put in easily defeated enemies for his heroes to triumph over in a flourish of edification. He put the real bad stuff in here, and bid the reader beware.

He is also probably the person who took an ancient tradition of Christian spirituality and boiled it down to three unforgettable words in an irreversible order: fact, faith, feeling. One of the chapters in his book The Secret of Guidance is called “Fact! Faith! Feeling!” complete with the exclamation points. It may seem like a long way from the Carmelite John of the Cross, with his counsel on the dark night of the soul, and the advice of Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright with his Four Spiritual Laws admonition to keep first things first, fact before faith before feelings. But go back a hundred years and spend a little time with F. B. Meyer, and you begin to see how they are connected.
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But perhaps it is unfair to say that gesture is everything. The bold color choices are equally remarkable. Starting with yellow paper, this artist chose two colors (only two! such discipline when confronted with an entire marker set!) from the fruit sherbet sector of the palette, and combined them in a tonal feast that makes the viewer’s teeth ache just to look at.

I could say more, but it would be best to let titans like Chesterton and McIntyre fight this one out for themselves, allowing you the reader to decide. Chesterton’s widely-quoted remark was made in his book Alarms and Discursions, in the chapter called “Cheese.” Here is the context:
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After all, the objection goes, isn’t it a narrow view of the Christian faith that thinks it can be transferred from person to person in mere words and a single prayer? (hey, this stuff writes itself!) Isn’t that an overly-intellectualized, rationalistic way of picturing salvation? Doesn’t “witnessing to people” presuppose an atomistic, individualistic (insert other -istics here for fun) version of cheap grace easy believism, tailor made for a consumerist culture, privatized (it’s really hard to stop this stuff once you let it start flowing!) and divorced from structural evils? Isn’t it an unbiblical reduction of the gospel (can’t… stop… critizing… evangelism… postevangelical… spirit… got control…. kryptonite poisoning… weak as baby…) to present it as a message about a change that takes place in an individual soul rather than as the epochal victory of God (bonus points for false dichotomy!) that transforms all things? Don’t all current methods of evangelism encourage an “US” versus “THEM” mentality and lead to triumphalism and religious imperialism? Huh? Don’t they? Huh?
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There is, however, one powerful Christian interpretation of the book of Esther produced in the the twentieth century. The author is Bible teacher W. Ian Thomas, in his 1967 book If I Perish, I Perish: The Christian Life as Seen in Esther. It is an unashamedly allegorical interpretation, for which Thomas gives a brief justification in the first chapter: “…allthough there is in my mind absolutely no doubt as to the historical accuracy or divine authorship of the Book of Esther, I shall be using the story as an allegory to clarify and illustrate spiritual truths soundly established and substantiated elsewhere in the Bible, and all of which must be entirely compatible with the total revelation given to us by the Holy Spirit in the whole of the Scriptures.”

I recommend the book because Thomas’ simple and direct writing style is something I find constantly cheering. Also, Ian Thomas is a treasure, and this book presents his characteristic teaching on the Christian life exceptionally well –it’s a well-balanced variety of Keswick holiness teaching.

But here is the allegorical core of the book: The kingdom of Ahasuerus is you. Its 127 provinces are your body in its extension, and the city of Susa is the control center. King Ahasuerus on the throne is your soul in command of all you are, and Queen Esther is your human spirit. Stay with me here. Haman the Agagite (descendent of Amalek with whom God has sworn to be at war from generation to generation) is what the New Testament calls the flesh, that carnal “perverted principle which perpetuates in man Satan’s proud hostility and enmity against God.” Mordecai is the Person of the Holy Spirit.
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An insight on the role of the Trinity in evangelism, from John Teter’s book Get the Word Out. Teter devotes the final three chapters to showing that “God is not distant in any dimension of our evangelism experience. He goes before us, he is behind us and he is even inside of us. We are offered endless intimacy and resources as we get the Word out –with God, never apart from him. We are not alone.” This is a great encouragement in a general way, but Teter unpacks it using categories from the gospel of John, arranged in trinitarian form: The Father sends witnesses, the Spirit fills them, and the Son follows the witnesses.

The Father sends, that’s abundantly clear from John’s gospel. And the Spirit fills, or as Teter says (quoting Darrell Johnson), “the Spirit of God comes into us to fill us with his passion to see the Father and the Son glorified.”

But the Son follows? You might expect to hear that we follow the Son, and look for a biblical theology of discipleship here. But Teter is not just plugging in whatever’s available, he’s actually trying to put the gospel of John’s theology of witness into operation. And as he listens to the gospel of John, Teter finds an intriguing pattern. Here’s what he finds in the gospel of John; see if you think it’s really there or if he’s hallucinating.
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But conspicuously absent from the cat’s eyes is that trademark pointy-iris cats-eye effect, which might suggest that this image represents a night-time encounter taking place in such darkness that the cat’s eyes are open to maximum width. Perhaps the mouse (lacking such powerful night vision) doesn’t even know the cat is there. The mouse’s beady little eyes are not even worth representing.

But the cat knows the mouse is there. Two giant circles, big as his head, loop out from his eyes and show that a powerful visual or visionary experience is taking place. What will happen in the next instant? Only the cat knows, and he’s smiling but not telling. The initiative is all on his side. On the mouse’s side is nothing but cheese.

Worshipers at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Jesus is traditionally believed to be buried. But a new documentary says he might have been buried elsewhere.

Believed to be buried? If this were USA Today, they’d probably have a survey nearby, “Where do YOU think Jesus is buried?”

Trying to Google this story, I accidentally hit a 1997 story in which they made the same mistake.

Bless their hearts, the NYT puts out a lot of words, so if they blow it every decade or so on the central truth of Christianity, we should cut them some slack. No doubt they’ve also managed to report the resurrection a few times in the intervening ten years. “The press just doesn’t get religion,” somebody once said, and if you’d like to see more than just wisecracks on the subject, the crew over at the Get Religion blog does a professional job of analyzing the religion beat in a truly helpful way.

So even though this particular “bones of Jesus” thing will likely be over before it’s started because it overreaches so desperately on such a slender evidential basis, it’s nice to have truth claims taken so seriously. There are always wooly-minded folks out there who are capable of believing Christianity is true even with a permanently dead Savior. Yes, you read that right: some people have faith in a dead man to save them. You either have to be very dumb or very smart for that to make sense to you; those of us somewhere in the middle recognize it as nonsense.

As an example of a very smart person who talked himself into this, take the German theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965), who spent much of his life teaching in America.
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I’m. Hiding. Something.

Yep.

And get this: Not only did I find a grave that said Jesús, but I looked around at some other graves nearby, and I found a José and lots of Marias. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, how much proof do you people need? It is so clearly the grave of Jesus that I don’t care what anybody says.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an archaeologist. I’m also not a theologist, a dig-up-stuffologist, a scholarologist or even a symbologist. I’m just a humble movieologist and the KING OF THE WORLD!!!

And by the by, this is absolutely not a publicity stunt. Ab-so-lute-ly.

Paul begins by praising God for the gift of the gospel, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ,” and then he takes a deep breath and starts counting out those blessings, one after another, in a 202-word avalanche of praise without pause or punctuation from verses 3-14. Paul speaks here from the fullness of his heart as well as the keenness of his insight. The theme of “blessing” overwhelms him, and pushes him to compose a correspondingly overwhelming sentence. It runs from heaven to earth, taking sudden turns and detours as it doubles and triples back on itself, oscillating between God and man, and circling its subject to view it from every angle. For all this wildness, the blessing has also a stateliness and coherence which reflects the wisdom which it praises. No translation or paraphrase can capture it all definitively, but here is one of the possibilities:

God chose us in Christ
before the ground of the world was laid
to be holy and blameless before him;
In his love he determined us in advance
for adoption into sonship through Jesus Christ
through the good pleasure of his will
to the praise of his glorious grace
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WE MUST GET THIS FACT IN FRONT OF OUR FACES AND HOLD IT IN FRONT OF OUR FACES !!!

What’s the difference between “note and remember” and the type of, erm, facial proximity with dwell time advocated here in the muscular teutonic phrasing? “Noting and remembering” sounds like something angels and reasonable people do, but “getting something in front of your face and keeping it in front of your face” is more along the lines of human nature as we all live in it every day. William Wilberforce (1759-1833) says something truly wise about this in his Practical View.

“The state of man is such, that his feelings are not the obedient servants of his reason, prompt at once to follow his dictates, as to their direction, and their measure.” That is, even when we know intellectually what’s good and bad, our emotions don’t attach to the right things.
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the implantation of a vigorous and active principle; it is seated in the heart, where its authority is recognized as supreme, whence by degrees it expels whatever is opposed to it, and where it gradually brings all the affections and desires under its complete control and regulation.

That makes it sound like a dangerous force from which one ought to keep some critical distance. Christianity like this, in the estimate of all the worldly wisemen, is to be handled with care: “It’s a good thing in moderation, but don’t get too involved in it.” Wilberforce begs to differ. In the first place, a “vigorous and active princple” implanted in the heart is not something you ask for a little bit of, and what would “moderation” even mean when we’re talking about loving God? But in the second place, a little bit of Christianity is a recipe for a permanently grumpy semi-Christian, who can’t enjoy heaven or earth. It’s not the totally sold-out saints who mope through life disappointed with everything, but the ones who are hedging their bets and keeping a few options open. Wilberforce says:

“Drink deep…or taste not,” is a direction full as applicable to Religion, if we would find it a source of pleasure, as it is to knowledge. A little Religion is, it must be confessed, apt to make men gloomy, as a little knowledge to render them vain: hence the unjust imputation often brought upon Religion by those whose degree of Religion is just sufficeint, by condemning their course of conduct, to render them uneasy; enough merely to impair the sweetness of the pleasures of sin, and not enough to compensate for the relinquishment of them by its own peculiar comforts. Thus these men bring up, as it were, an ill report of the land of promise, which, in truth, abounds with whatever, in our journey through life, can best refresh and strengthen us.

Bad spies! No promised land for you! Caleb never bored us with cliches about moderation…

Add to these smooth lines the optical magic of a propeller in motion (how DO you draw that?), and it’s no surprise that a young artist would become fixated on capturing the visual phenomenon of airplanes.

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It was originally published as a chapter in Dr. Doctrine’s Christian Comix, issue 2 (InterVarsity Press, 1998). This was a way-ahead-of-its-time set of comic books that took on serious theological topics in a cartoon format. It was so far ahead of its time that the citizens of earth-present did not purchase many copies, apparently thinking it was intended for citizens of earth-future. Big ideas in little cartoons, reverent theology and irreverent fun, etc.

But if your idea of a good time is to hear a talking sheep interview the church fathers, then here’s something you don’t want to miss. John of Damascus’ On the Divine Images with a cartoon sheep.

(The Dr. Doctrine character, by the way, is qualified to do the interview. In addition to his doctorate, he holds a B.A.A.A. and Master of Ovinity degree.)

Wilberforce is justly famous as a man of action, and his legislative victories in the cause of justice are the thing we should never forget about him. If he had just done the things he did in the british Parlaiment, that would be enough. But he was also a good enough communicator that he managed to capture his life-message in words as well as deed. His excellent book has this (not) catchy title: A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. Published in 1797, it is a classic statement of evangelical Christianity. Wilberforce’s Practical View is especially eloquent about how real Christian faith moves the heart and motivates social action.

But his opening gambit in the book is to lambast the lukewarm Christians of his day for not knowing their doctrine, and in particular for neglecting to cultivate proper theologies of Christ and the Holy Spirit. If the nominal Christians of Britain are ignoring gross institutional wickedness like race-based chattel slavery, it is because their hearts are cold; and their hearts are cold because their heads are empty. What Dr. Wilberforce prescribes is a big dose of “the peculiar doctrines of Christianity:” not morality or piety in general, but the core doctrines which we only know from special divine revelation in Scripture.
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Get the Word Out is insightful and informative, but also probably 40% motivational, which I’m discovering is about the right proportion for books about evangelism. Most Christians don’t need amazing new ideas about evangelism; they need encouragement to try it and to keep at it. This book is not just a pep rally — it’s got strategic recommendations (small-group evangelistic Bible studies), sobering advice (”It is not a good investment for witnesses to spend countless hours building trust, serving and teaching the Word to people who have no desire to change.”), and theology aplenty (”Witness is a gift of grace from God for the disciple…”). But if you’re out of pep and need to rally, just admit that a book of strong encouragement is the thing to read.

Where Get the Word Out breaks some new ground, however, is in Teter’s decision to develop the whole project as an interaction with the gospel of John. Teter’s central ideas are all straight from the theology of witness in John, and every major point he makes is drawn back to a story from that gospel. That makes Get the Word Out a kind of sermonic commentary on the Johannine theology of witness, and puts readers into direct contact with God’s word over and over.
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It’s a big sacrifice, but I think I will learn a lot from this voluntary abstention.

Could somebody please e-mail me when it’s time to start up again? That would be a big help.