Entries Tagged 'Theology' ↓

According to Christianity Today the past year’s top ten religious stories were as follows: [Click the link if you want details about what these stories are about.]

1. Taliban takes Korean short-term mission team hostage, killing two.

2. Atheism tops the bestseller charts.

3. Presidential campaigns start early, with some faith surprises.

4. Ruth Graham dies.

5. Anglican Communion fractures over Scripture, homosexuality.

6. Three Christians tortured and killed in eastern Turkey.

7. Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy die. l

8. Francis Beckwith, head of the Evangelical Theological Society, becomes a Catholic.

9. Campaign to oust Richard Cizik, the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, for his global warming activism fails.

10. Supreme Court upholds 2003 federal partial-birth abortion ban.

This list strikes me as rather parochial, emphasizing inside the Bible-beltway stories rather than events of genuine spiritual importance. That the Church is still producing martyrs, though, is of great significance. The pro-life victory is important, as is the global reaction against Western theological liberalism.

Would you put other events of the past year in this list? What can we conclude about the state of American and world Christianity if these are top stories?

[This entry, from 2005, got a lot of people riled up who did not get what I was doing.]

I love everything about Christmas, including its commercialization. First of all, it is very appropriate for non-Christians and secularists to observe this holiday. “At the name of Jesus, every knee should bow. . .and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10-11). This will happen at Judgment, but it happens too in a lesser way at Christmastime.

The practically-universal holiday and its observances are signs of Christ’s Lordship, even among those who reject Him. (This is why eliminating the “name” of Christ imbedded in the word “Christmas” really is important for non-believers, though their efforts are ultimately futile.) All of their celebrating, gift-giving, family times, and warm and fuzzy feelings are tributes to Jesus, whether they like it or not. And such honor is fitting for the One through whom all things were made and the redeemer of the world.

But hasn’t Christmas become too materialistic? Shouldn’t we make it more spiritual? NO. This is the last of our worries today, when the hyper-spiritualism of the Gnostics has permeated our culture and our religious life. The Incarnation, which we celebrate at Christmas, is precisely about the MATERIAL realm.

In Christ, God has become FLESH. He is not an inner feeling, much less a vacuous deity without form or substance, as our Gnostic culture prefers. He has become material. And we are too, so that our bodies (contra the Feminists) and what we do in our bodies (contra the Gnostic immoralists) are very important. In our current moral and theological climate, we desperately need to recapture the Biblical mindsets concerning the material realm, including the Creation, the Body, the Incarnation, the Sacraments, the Resurrection of the Body.

But Christmas is not just a family holiday, as so many people are making it. No, it isn’t. But in a curiously neglected prophecy–indeed in the last verse of the Old Testament, transitioning into the New–we learn that a sign of Christ’s advent, referring apparently to John the Baptist, is the coming of a prophet who “will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:6). So in our divorce-plagued culture, a time when this happens does indeed honor and point to Christ.

But isn’t there too much emphasis on presents? NO. A gift is a sign of the Gospel. Jesus is a gift. Salvation is a gift. The Word and the Sacraments convey God’s gifts of grace. In this selfish, me-centered world, giving gifts and (perhaps more importantly) receiving gifts can create a mindset necessary in understanding the Christian message.So Christians should be glad to see the secular world all decked out and celebrating the birth of Christ. Christ is not just for Christians. He is for the whole world, even for those who do not know Him and who are honoring Him against their intention and against their will. And it is a proof of His lordship that practically the whole world sets aside a day to be happy and giving in His name.

[An old WORLD column]

Santa Claus had his origins in St. Nicholas, the fourth-century bishop of Myra in present-day Turkey. Known for his generosity and his love of children, Nicholas is said to have saved a poor family’s daughters from slavery by tossing into their window enough gold for a rich dowry, a present that landed in some shoes or, in some accounts, stockings that were hung up to dry. Thus arose the custom of hanging up stockings for St. Nicholas to fill. And somehow he transmogrified into Santa Claus, who has become for many people the secular Christmas alternative to Jesus Christ.

But there is more to the story of Nicholas of Myra. He was also a delegate to the Council of Nicea in a.d. 325, which battled the heretics who denied the deity of Christ. He was thus one of the authors of the Nicene Creed, which affirms that Jesus Christ is both true God and true man. And unlike his later manifestation, Nicholas was particularly zealous in standing up for Christ.

During the Council of Nicea, jolly old St. Nicholas got so fed up with Arius, who taught that Jesus was just a man, that he walked up and slapped him! That unbishoplike behavior got him in trouble. The council almost stripped him of his office, but Nicholas said he was sorry, so he was forgiven.

The point is, the original Santa Claus was someone who flew off the handle when he heard someone minimizing Christ. Perhaps we can battle our culture’s increasingly Christ-less Christmas by enlisting Santa in his original cause. The poor girls’ stockings have become part of our Christmas imagery. So should the St. Nicholas slap.

Not a violent hit of the kind that got the good bishop in trouble, just a gentle, admonitory tap on the cheek. This should be reserved not for out-and-out nonbelievers, but for heretics (that is, people in the church who deny its teachings), Christians who forget about Jesus, and people who try to take Christ out of Christmas.

This will take a little tweaking of the mythology. Santa and his elves live at the North Pole where they compile a list of who is naughty, who is nice, and who is Nicean. On Christmas Eve, flying reindeer pull his sleigh full of gifts. And after he comes down the chimney, he will steal into the rooms of people dreaming of sugarplums who think they can do without Christ and slap them awake.

And we’ll need new songs and TV specials (”Santa Claus Is Coming to Slap,” “Deck the Apollinarian with Bats of Holly,” “Frosty the Gnostic,” “How the Arian Stole Christmas,” “Rudolph the Red Knows Jesus”).

Department store Santas should ask the children on their laps if they have been good, what they want for Christmas, and whether they understand the Two Natures of Christ. The Santas should also roam the shopping aisles, and if they hear any clerks wish their customers a mere “Happy Holiday,” give them a slap.

This addition to his job description will keep Santa busy. Teachers who forbid the singing of religious Christmas carols—SLAP! Office managers who erect Holiday Trees—SLAP! Judges who outlaw manger displays—SLAP! People who give The Da Vinci Code as a Christmas present—SLAP! Ministers who cancel Sunday church services that fall on Christmas day—SLAP! SLAP!

Perhaps Santa Claus in his original role as a theological enforcer may not go over very well in our contemporary culture. People may then try to take both Christ and Santa Claus out of Christmas. And with that economic heresy, the retailers would start to do the slapping.

[From an old WORLD column]

According to conventional wisdom, Christmas had its origin in a pagan winter solstice festival, which the church co-opted to promote the new religion. In doing so, many of the old pagan customs crept into the Christian celebration. But this view is apparently a historical myth—like the stories of a church council debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or that medieval folks believed the earth is flat—often repeated, even in classrooms, but not true.

William J. Tighe, a history professor at Muhlenberg College, gives a different account in his article “Calculating Christmas,” published in the December 2003 Touchstone Magazine. He points out that the ancient Roman religions had no winter solstice festival.

True, the Emperor Aurelian, in the five short years of his reign, tried to start one, “The Birth of the Unconquered Sun,” on Dec. 25, 274. This festival, marking the time of year when the length of daylight began to increase, was designed to breathe new life into a declining paganism. But Aurelian’s new festival was instituted after Christians had already been associating that day with the birth of Christ. According to Mr. Tighe, the Birth of the Unconquered Sun “was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians.” Christians were not imitating the pagans. The pagans were imitating the Christians.

The early church tried to ascertain the actual time of Christ’s birth. It was all tied up with the second-century controversies over setting the date of Easter, the commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection. That date should have been an easy one. Though Easter is also charged with having its origins in pagan equinox festivals, we know from Scripture that Christ’s death was at the time of the Jewish Passover. That time of year is known with precision.

But differences in the Jewish, Greek, and Latin calendars and the inconsistency between lunar and solar date-keeping caused intense debate over when to observe Easter. Another question was whether to fix one date for the Feast of the Resurrection no matter what day it fell on or to ensure that it always fell on Sunday, “the first day of the week,” as in the Gospels.

This discussion also had a bearing on fixing the day of Christ’s birth. Mr. Tighe, drawing on the in-depth research of Thomas J. Talley’s The Origins of the Liturgical Year, cites the ancient Jewish belief (not supported in Scripture) that God appointed for the great prophets an “integral age,” meaning that they died on the same day as either their birth or their conception.

Jesus was certainly considered a great prophet, so those church fathers who wanted a Christmas holiday reasoned that He must have been either born or conceived on the same date as the first Easter. There are hints that some Christians originally celebrated the birth of Christ in March or April. But then a consensus arose to celebrate Christ’s conception on March 25, as the Feast of the Annunciation, marking when the angel first appeared to Mary.
Note the pro-life point: According to both the ancient Jews and the early Christians, life begins at conception. So if Christ was conceived on March 25, nine months later, he would have been born on Dec. 25.

This celebrates Christ’s birth in the darkest time of the year. The Celtic and Germanic tribes, who would be evangelized later, did mark this time in their “Yule” festivals, a frightening season when only the light from the Yule log kept the darkness at bay. Christianity swallowed up that season of depression with the opposite message of joy: “The light [Jesus] shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Regardless of whether this was Christ’s actual birthday, the symbolism works. And Christ’s birth is inextricably linked to His resurrection.

UPDATE:

In response to my column on the evidence that December 25 was not set aside as Christ’s birthday because of some pagan holiday, but for good reason, alert WORLD reader Rev. Gary Hinman sent me this article on yet another line of evidence. The calculations are based on the course of Temple duties for the clan of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. The months are laid out with precision in the Gospel of Luke, including when his wife Elisabeth visited her relative Mary, and the unborn John leapt in the womb as he came into the presence of the unborn Jesus. Counting out the months leads us somewhere after the middle of December as the time of Jesus’ birth. The article also makes an argument from when lambs are born, requiring shepherds to be out in the fields watching their flocks. But the argument from Zacharias’ temple duties is even stronger than mine, since it comes straight from the Bible.

I found the article online. It was written by John Stormer, author of the Cold War classic “None Dare Call It Treason,” who later became a Christian and a Baptist pastor.

“Lambs are born at the Christmas Season” _Is there evidence that Jesus was born at Christmas??
by John Stormer

For too many years, pastors and teachers have said, “Of course we don’t know when Christ was actually born- but the time of year is not really important.” Jehovah’s Witnesses and others have taught that Christmas was “invented” in the fourth or fifth centuries. The supposed goal was giving a “Christian” facade or influence to the wild pagan or Satanic holiday observances during the winter solstice (the shortest days of the year).

What’s the real story? Is there any real evidence that Jesus Christ _was born at Christmas? A careful examination of a number of seemingly _unrelated Bible passages gives clear indication that the Lord Jesus was _indeed born at Christmas time. Such study will give new emphasis to what _Christ came to do. It will also provide a much deeper appreciation of all _that is hidden in the Word of God which can be discovered by those who _prayerfully search the scriptures.
Every word in the Bible is there because God put it there. He has a _purpose for every one of His words. Therefore, seemingly casual listing of _periods of time, genealogical references, etc. have significance which can be _discovered through prayerful study.

In Luke Chapter 1, the Bible records seemingly unimportant details _about what a priest named Zacharias was doing when an angel announced to him _that he and his wife were to have a child. The child was to be John the _Baptist who would prepare the way for the Messiah, Jesus Christ. The Bible _further records that the Lord Jesus was conceived in the sixth month after _John the Baptist was conceived. Therefore, if the time of the conception of _John the Baptist could be determined, the birth date of the Lord Jesus could _be calculated.
The scriptures say (relevant passages are underlined): “There was in _the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of _the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name _was Elisabeth.

And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest’s office _before God in the order of his course… ” Luke 1:5,8 _At this point Zacharias demonstrated his amazing faithfulness to his _duties as a priest. Even though he had been given the wonderful news by the _angel that he and Elisabeth would have a son, Zacharias stayed in the temple _until the days of his course were completed.

“And it came to pass, that, as soon as the days of his ministration _were accomplished, he departed to his own house. And after those days his _wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid herself five months…” Luke 1:23-24 _The passage then describes how an angel came to Mary to announce that _she was to be the virgin mother of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus. The _scripture says: _”And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a _city of Galilee, named Nazareth. To a virgin espoused to a man whose name _was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary…” Luke _1:26-27 _And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with _haste, into a city of Judah; and entered into the house of Zacharias, and _saluted Elisabeth.” Luke 1:39-40

Contained within these quoted passages are scriptures which point to _the exact time when Jesus was born. (Remember that God puts every word and _every detail into the Bible exactly as He wants it and for a purpose.) The _underlined words are the key.

In Luke 1:5 and Luke 1:8, we are told that Zacharias was a priest of _the course of Abia and that he fulfilled his priestly duties in the order of _his course. To understand the importance of the course of Abia and its _bearing on the date of John the Baptist’s conception, it is necessary to turn _to 1Chronicles 24:1-10. This passage describes how a thousand years before _Christ, King David established the courses for priestly service in the coming _temple. Twenty-four courses were established and numbered by drawing lots - _twelve courses for sanctuary service and twelve for the government of the _house of God.

Members of each course would serve during a month starting with the _Hebrew month of Nisan. (Because of the way the Hebrew calendar fluctuates, _the month Nisan can start anytime between early March and early April.) The _sons of Abijah (the Old Testament spelling for Abia) were in the eighth _course. Priests of Abia like Zacharias would, therefore, have each _ministered for some days during the eighth month which in some years because _of the fluctuation in the Hebrew calendar started as early as the fifth day _of our month of October. Zacharias would have returned home when his days of _service were accomplished and John the Baptist could have been conceived _sometime between October 15 and the end of the month.

After conception the scripture says that Elisabeth hid herself for _five months. Then in the sixth month of her pregnancy (which, based on the _above calculation, would have started about March 15 and continued until _April 15) the angel announced to the Virgin Mary that the Lord Jesus would _be conceived in her womb by the Holy Ghost. If this took place on or about _April 1 a “normal” gestation period of 270 days would have then had the Lord _Jesus due on or about December 25. How about that!

There are other scriptural and natural indicators that confirm that _the Lord was born at Christmas time. IN the account of His birth in Luke _2:8, we read: _”And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, _keeping watch over their flock by night.”
My son-in-law, who has a degree in agriculture, after hearing the _above presentation, told me, “Certainly, the Lord Jesus was born at _Christmas. The only time shepherds spend the night in the fields with their _sheep is during the time when the lambs are born. The ewes become _’attractive’ to the rams in the month after June 21, the longest day of the _year. The normal gestation period is five months so the ewes start lambing _about mid-December.” He added: Isn’t it natural that the Lamb of God who _takes away the sin of the world would be born when all the other lambs are _born?

This “coincidence” was too amazing for me to accept until I checked _it out. A former teacher from the school where I am the administrator is _married to a Montana sheep rancher. She confirmed what I had been told. She _said, “Oh, yes! None of the men who have flocks are in church for weeks at _Christmas. They have to be in the fields day and night to clean up and care _for the lambs as soon as they are born or many would perish in the cold.” _Isn’t that neat? God’s Lamb, who was to die for the sins of the world, was _born when all the other little lambs are born. Because He came and died the _centuries old practice of sacrificing lambs for sin could end.

There is another neat confirmation that God had His Son born at _Christmas. The days at the end of December are the shortest (and therefore _the darkest days) of the year. Jesus Christ said, “I am the light of the _world.” So at the time of the year when the darkness is greatest, God the _Father sent God the Son to be the Light of the world.

The Lord Jesus Christ came to earth, lived a sinless life and was _therefore qualified to pay the penalty for the sins of all mankind (which is _death). He paid it all- but all do not benefit from the wondrous gift God _bestowed on mankind at Christmas.

“He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as _received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them _that believe on his name.” John 1:11-12

John Stormer, Pastor Emeritus _Heritage Baptist Church, Florissant, MO _from the PCC Update, Winter 1996 (The ABeka magazine) _(PCC - Pensacola Christian College)

[This entry from 2006, which continues the case that Christmas did NOT derive from a pagan holiday, reminds us that those of us from European, yea, Germanic stock, had pagan ancestors who were brought to faith by missionaries.]

Thanks to reader SSchaper–also to commenter Puzzled– for alerting me to an account of the origin of the Christmas tree that goes way, way back to the missionary who first evangelized the German tribes. who That was St. Boniface. His apologetic technique to get through to the barbarians was to cut down the Sacred Oak of Thor. To the Germans’ amazement, Boniface did not get hammered. This convinced many of them that Boniface had the true God after all.

According to this story, after cutting down the Sacred Oak, Boniface saw an evergreen tree nearby, which he used as an object lesson to teach about the everlasting life through Christ, who died on a tree: According to tradition, when he chopped down the pagan Thor’s Oak at Geismar, Boniface claimed a tiny fir tree growing in its roots as the new Christian symbol. He told the heathen tribes: - “This humble tree’s wood is used to build your homes: let Christ be at the centre of your households. - Its leaves remain evergreen in the darkest days: let Christ be your constant light. - Its boughs reach out to embrace and its top points to heaven: let Christ be your comfort and your guide.” So the fir tree became a sign of Christ amongst the German peoples, and eventually it became a world-wide symbol of Christmas.

One of my students wrote a paper about the Church fathers and how they appropriated Greco-Roman education. They were extremely careful about distinguishing between the true God and the pagan gods. Those who believe these guys would conflate Christianity and paganism just have never read the original sources.

[Another great Luther quote on Christmas, posted in 2005]

The God in the Manger
A major hat-tip to What You Do Do Quickly for this heart-touching Christmas meditation from Martin Luther:

if you will have joy, bend yourself down to this place. There you will find that boy given for you who is your Creator lying in a manger. I will stay with that boy as he sucks, is washed, and dies…. There is no joy but in this boy. Take him away and you face the Majesty which terrifies…

I know of no God but this one in the manger…That person lying in the manger is both man and God essentially, not seperated one from the other but as born of a virgin. If you separate them, the joy is gone. O Thou boy, lying in the manger, thou art truly God who hast created me, and thou wilt not be wrathful with me because thou comest to me in this loving way- more loving cannot be imagined.”

The British press is reporting that the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said in an interview that the nativity story is just a a legend.

What he really said is that the Wise Men weren’t kings, that they didn’t show up with the shepherds, and that there probably wasn’t snow, since we don’t know that Jesus was really born on December 25. He was casting doubt on the conventional Christmas card scene, which is nothing new or faith-threatening to well-instructed Christians. Unfortunately, today’s Brits are not, on the whole, so well-instructed. (The Archbishop did say that there is “no evidence” the Magi existed, taking the usual Higher Critical approach to Scripture. Normally, if a written document attested to something, that WOULD be considered evidence, but the Bible, for some reason, is not allowed to count.)

But here is my real problem with the Archbishop:

Later on in the show, the Archbishop was challenged by fellow guest Ricky Gervais, the comedian, about the credibility of the Christmas story.

Gervais told Dr Williams he was concerned about “brainwashing” of children who are sent to faith schools at an early age, comparing teaching that God exists to belief in Father Christmas.

Dr Williams said faith schools expose children to the full range of human experience and values and he did not believe they indoctrinated people.

This doctor of theology, this head of the state church addressing his national flock, went along even with a comedian who equated belief in God with a belief in Santa Claus. The Archbishop had an opportunity and a forum to witness to the Christian faith, a chance to explain the doctrine of the Incarnation–which I suspect many Brits have never heard of–but he totally wimped out.

Anglicans of the world: Your problem is not that you have homosexual bishops. It is that you have bishops who deny the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and even sometimes the existence of God. You have bishops who are Druids and syncretists. You have bishops who want to conform to the world rather than teaching God’s Word. (I’m not saying the Archbishop of Canterbury is completely this way, though he is a Druid and is way too concerned about being accepted by Ricky Gervais.) It isn’t so much that Anglicans need heterosexual bishops; first of all, they need Christian bishops.

I got to attend vespers at my wife’s school yesterday, a service held at the end of every school day. There is something powerfully moving about hearing little kid voices singing serious hymns (which they learn by heart) and chanting the liturgy. And the children did so with such gusto and loudness!

My theory is that the cutesy-wootsey approach to children’s songs and worship appeals mainly to parents and grandparents (OK! I admit it! I am both of those things and a sucker for cutesy-wootsey!). But that children appreciate being able, through good teaching, to take part in what adults do. I also worry that in our attempts to make their experience with worship and Bible study completely “kid friendly” and in our trying usually in vain to attract adolescents with what I have elsewhere termed stupid youth group tricks, that we are reinforcing the deadly tendency of young adults rejecting their church background as “childish” once they leave home. Better, in my opinion–and less condescending–to introduce them to a spiritual life bigger than themselves that they can grow into.

Mike Huckabee is getting hammered, ridiculed, and condemned for asking a reporter if Mormons really believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers. But, according to the official Latter-Day Saints website, Mormons DO believe that. Read it yourself here. A sampling:

On first hearing, the doctrine that Lucifer and our Lord, Jesus Christ, are brothers may seem surprising to some—especially to those unacquainted with latter-day revelations. But both the scriptures and the prophets affirm that Jesus Christ and Lucifer are indeed offspring of our Heavenly Father and, therefore, spirit brothers.

See, Mormons believe that God has a body (”of flesh and bones“) and sexually engenders us all with his wife, our “Heavenly Mother.” She gives birth to us all as spirit children,” who pre-exist until we are born into this world. Furthermore, a man who has reached the highest level of salvation (the Celestial Kingdom) and who has that special marriage ceremony in a Temple will, upon death, become the god of his own universe. He and his wife will then populate that universe with spirit children of their own. Our God, therefore, is a perfected human being who got his universe. As a Mormon slogan puts it, “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may be.”

(The links are to official Mormon sites. For more on the Heavenly Mother, which officials try to play down though the teaching is in official documents and Mormon piety, see this and this. I don’t want to mischaracterize the religion. If I have any of this wrong, please correct me.)

I will hand this to the Mormons: They have succeeded in filling in the gaps of our knowledge with a vision of the afterlife that is very appealing: getting to be a god; sexual relations for all eternity; the ultimate fantasies of sex and power. This, by the way, underlies the Mormons’ famed “family values.” The Mormon religion involves the apotheosis of family, turning family into a religion, or, a Christian might say, turning family into an idol.

But it sounds like Mormonism is just a few modernizing revelations away from being the ultimate postmodernist religion: a Heavenly Mother for the feminists; self-deification; a universe of your own.

I once reviewed for WORLD a whole slew of “Christian” videos for children and found that very few of them had any true Christian elements. They were mostly just moralism, with little mention of Christ and the Gospel. This is also true of much SUNDAY SCHOOL curriculum, especially the “generic” variety designed to be used by all denominations and thus intentionally void of theological or spiritual content.

According to this story in USA Today, no less, this is even the case with children’s Bible story books! It quotes Ted Olsen, editor of “Christianity Today,” on the difficulty he has in finding books about Jesus for his son Leif:

“Most Bible stories are told like Aesop’s fables, refitted to a moral lesson that is almost always, ‘Obey! Obey your parents! Obey God! Oh, look how good Noah is — he obeyed God!’ ” Olsen says.

“Sure, we want Leif to understand obedience, repentance and forgiveness. But we’re more concerned that he get to know Jesus is the grand arc of the Bible story. We’re like a lot of young parents who don’t want to be talked down to. We’re not afraid of encountering theology. We want to be intellectually and spiritually engaged when we read to Leif.”

I was so proud, just coming back from a board meeting of Concordia Publishing House, to see that company lifted up as an exception, with stirring quotations from publisher Paul McCain (see his Cyberbrethren site on my blog roll):

“The more seriously a church body regards the Bible, the more seriously they will present it, in a child-friendly way, but not water the content. We don’t throw the King James Bible at them, but we don’t turn it into Mother Goose, either. We don’t avoid the s-word, for sin; the G-word, for God; or the J-word, for Jesus,” McCain says.

Concordia has compilations such as A Child’s Garden of Bible Stories that have sold steadily since 1948 and a 40-year-old series of 105 pamphlets known as the Arch books. They feature scores of stories, from the Nativity to obscure stories such as Zerubbabel Rebuilds the Temple, from Ezra 3:6.

“I grew up on these books,” says McCain, 45. “We update the illustrations regularly, but we’re much less prone to waffle with the culture. We don’t make the Bible what it’s not. But the booklets are a neat way to inculcate Bible literacy.”

CPH has a huge list of children’s books, including God Made It For You by Charles Lehmann and What Happened to “Merry Christmas”? by Robert Baker, both readers and commenters on this blog. And the brand new Growing In Christ Sunday School curriculum is beautifully Christ-centered all the way through.

What other resources for children would you recommend that parents either consider or stay away from?

UPDATE: See this for an account of Paul McCain’s interview with the reporter and how she liked one particular Arch book, saying, “I notice that no matter what Bible story you are telling you always end up coming back to talk about Jesus!”

Continuing the Lutheran identity discussion. . . .I want to draw your attention to Kevin N’s comments on the ‘Not For Lutherans Anymore” post. He tells about growing up in a liberal ELCA church that was all confused about the gospel. He heard and grasped what it meant that Christ died for his sins through a Campus Crusade witness in college. He went through the “are you a Lutheran or are you a Christian” phase, but now has come up to appreciate Lutheranism again, though he is a member of an Evangelical Free church. He is seeing that Lutheran theology can resolve controversies between Calvinists and Arminians–for example, on the doctrine of predestination–that are afflicting his denomination. At the same time, he sees certain gaps that the Lutheran confessions do not really address. I’ll let him tell it:

I am now in the Evangelical Free Church, and am happy with where I am at. Over the past seven years or so I have had a growing appreciation for Lutheran theology (I suppose I am 90% Lutheran in my thinking), and can see that Lutherans could make a valuable contribution in the overall discussions that go on in evangelicalism, but they are either silent or ignored. For example, in my denomination, 80% of pastors are Calvinist and 20% are Arminian, but few of either are even aware of the distinct Lutheran approach to issues such as predestination. I also believe that Lutheran Christians have a better sense of heritage and history than do most of us evangelicals.

I do see great value in the Lutheran confessions, but also believe they don’t sufficiently address issues such as evangelism, missions, or eschatology.

To non-Lutherans, I ask, what elements of Lutheran theology could you take profitably into your own church or personal beliefs, without becoming whole-hog Lutheran? Or, to all, do you think Lutheran teachings are so interlocked with each other that a person has to go all the way to Wittenberg? And, to Lutherans, I ask what you think about Kevin’s contention that our confessions do not sufficiently cover evangelism, missions, and eschatology? No one ever said that our confessions address EVERYTHING of importance that might come up, though it is possible to extrapolate applications, as we did with the doctrine of Scripture. Are there things Lutherans learn from evangelicals (keeping in mind that Lutherans were the first to go by that Gospel-centered name)?

P.S.: I also hope somebody can rise to Kevin’s challenge of identifying the titles of my books that have been translated into Romanian, since I don’t know myself!