A fond remembrance. . .

The Rev. Charles Evanson was installed as Pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church on Rudisill in Ft. Wayne in 1975 --  where he would serve for 25 years.  He was ordained into the Office of the Holy Ministry in 1964 but not until after serving for two years as an ordained deacon under the Rev. Berthold Von Schenk.  He also became a field work supervisor in 1976 when the Seminary formerly of Springfield, IL, returned to its roots in Ft. Wayne.  While Ft. Wayne was not sure it wanted the Seminary since it had come at the cost of Concordia Senior College, Pastor Evanson was more than welcoming.  He became a mentor to me and to countless others across the years.  I was among those who were his first field workers and he was instrumental in my life as a pastor in so many ways that it is impossible to overstate his influence upon me.

I had actually been at Redeemer before he was installed there.  It was a tough time.  Their larger than life Pastor Herb Lindemann had taken a call.  He had been a very big presence in the liturgical movement among Lutherans.  The associate had left under less than happy circumstances.  The congregation was not even sure about calling Pastor Evanson.  But they did.  I well recall his installation.  The Rev. Adalbert Raphael Alexander Kretzmann, then pastor of St. Luke's, Chicago, read the Gospel.  He cast an imposing shadow over the day but it belonged to a quieter and yet no less profound Charles Evanson.  Soon began regular conversations, visits, and tabletalk -- mostly on Saturday mornings.  Behind a puff of pipe smoke and in a small study too crammed with books, Evanson held forth on the pastoral task -- complete with the history and pastoral theology to match.  But if I was going to serve at Redeemer, I also had to be under orders.

I was ordained a deacon with Gary Frank and Marvin Hinkle and served at Redeemer as liturgical deacon, visitor to the sick and shut-in, sometime catechist, occasional organist, and temporary custodian for most of the six years I was at the Senior College and Seminary.  Gary long ago swam the Bosporus and then the Tiber.  Marv served at historic Zion, Friedheim and elsewhere in Indiana before moving back to the area.  I was on Long Island, between Albany and NYC, and then here in Clarksville.  It is now 50 years since that Sunday near Thanksgiving when hands were laid, prayers were prayed, promises were made, and a stole was laid.  I cannot say what a privilege it was to serve under the good Father.  Oddly enough, I ended up for nearly 13 years just down the road from Fr. Von Schenk's farm and summer home and the mission he began in Oak Hill.  What a circle!  Anyway, I found the photo, my wife cleaned it up, and I offer it to you as a record of a wonderful day that began a privileged life.

 

Tired old arguments continue. . .

Everyone knows the ongoing debate about the order in which the Gospels were written, the theories about common source material, and the actual dates of their composition.  Spoiler alert.  I will not solve the problem here.  Suffice it to note that modern times have undone the historic narrative about the order and somewhat about the dates.  They have some evidence, to be sure, but they also are guessing and in their postulating have decided that those closer to the time know less than they do.  That is my point.

Modern Biblical scholarship believes that the Gospel of Mark was the first written Gospel and probably dates that work somewhere within a twenty year period from 50-70 AD.  Until more modern times, nearly everyone thought that the order of the gospels in the canon was actually their order of composition.  In particular, the Early Church Fathers are nearly unanimous in their thought that the Gospel of Matthew was the first gospel to be written and the sequence of gospels in the New Testament is the result of this thinking -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Today, about the only agreement you can find with earlier fathers and modern scholars is that the Gospel of John was the last to be written.

Third century scholar Origen said in his Commentary on Matthew 1:

Concerning the four Gospels which alone are uncontroverted in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the Gospel according to Matthew, who was at one time a publican and afterwards an Apostle of Jesus Christ, was written first and that he composed it in the Hebrew tongue and published it for the converts from Judaism. 

Note that already in the 3rd century, tradition had wrestled with and come to unanimity on both the question of the order in which the gospels were written and which were canonical.  To those who would insist this question of order or canonicity is simply unknown or uncertain, here is the thinking of a person of some repute about what was known and accepted long before the Church actually bothered to write out a list or modern scholarship presumed to know better. 

Later than Origen, in the 4th century, St. Augustine himself put together a harmony of the gospels in which he states unequivocally: 

Now, those four evangelists whose names have gained the most remarkable circulation over the whole world, and whose number has been fixed as four — it may be for the simple reason that there are four divisions of that world through the universal length of which they, by their number as by a kind of mystical sign, indicated the advancing extension of the Church of Christ — are believed to have written in the order which follows: first Matthew, then Mark, thirdly Luke, lastly John.

In addition, Origen also wrote of the authorship -- something of which modern scholarship insists is unknown and even, perhaps, the result of various scribes and traditions as compilation, of sorts.

The second written was that according to Mark, who wrote it according to the instruction of Peter, who, in his General Epistle, acknowledged him as a son, saying, 'The church that is in Babylon, elect together with you, salutes you and so does Mark my son.' And third, was that according to Luke, the Gospel commended by Paul, which he composed for the converts from the Gentiles. Last of all, that according to John. 

While some might question if it all matters, the importance here is confidence in the source material for who Jesus is and what He has accomplished for us and our salvation.  The matter of the canon and the gospels and their composition date and authorship bear to this essential point.  Can we have confidence that what we are reading today is the Gospel.  Where modern scholarship puts a question mark and some insist that nothing is so until the almighty Church says it is, it is clear that the early fathers believed and so proclaimed this Gospel of Jesus Christ based upon the historic record of the Scriptures well known to them and well defined (except for a very few books or sections of books in the New Testament) and that they reflected the earliest consensus and tradition on the matter.

The witness to the canon is clear even though you would be hard pressed to find a definitive statement that this is the canon and no other.  So Clement of Rome mentions at least eight New Testament books (95 AD), the martyr Polycarp, a disciple of John the apostle, 15 books (108 AD), Ignatius of Antioch 7books (115 AD), Irenaeus 21 books (185 AD), and Hippolytus 22 books (170-235?AD).  So the New Testament books around which the most doubt was placed early on were Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, and 3 John -- and this more for lack of mention than for dismissal from the witnesses of the earliest period.  Thus it is certain that, concerning the vast majority of the 27 books of the New Testament, no shadow of doubt existed concerning their character as tradition and this certainly includes the Gospels.  

In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius of Caesarea chronicles the witness of earlier writers concerning the limits of the canon. In summary (Book III, chap. 25), he divides the books into three classes: (a) twenty-two are almost universally acknowledged to be canonical, namely the four Gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul (including Hebrews), I John, I Peter, and even Revelation (though Eusebius comments further on Revelation); (b) five are quite widely accepted, though disputed by some (though it would seem all were accepted by Eusebius himself) namely, James, Jude, II Peter (earlier regarded by Eusebius as spurious), II and III John; and (c) five are clearly spurious, namely the Acts of Paul, Hermas, Apocalypse of Peter, Barnabas, and the Didache.  Eusebius comments about Revelation: “To these perhaps the Revelation of John should be added, as some reject it while others count it among the accepted books.” As any idiot can see, this is virtually the canon as we know today.  For what it is worth, following Eusebius (after 325 AD) the differences in the canon are very slight indeed.

This history supports the apostolic tradition received by the Church -- proclaimed with clarity and certainty as its Canon -- until a quantitative list appeared by the end of the fourth century.  Modern scholarship begins with a question mark where the Church must put an exclamation point.  The history may not be as neat and tidy as we would want it to be but to suggest doubt and uncertainty where the record says confidence and authority is to betray not only the Scriptures but the Christ whom those Scriptures proclaim.  Why we would doubt or distance ourselves from this early witness to the truth and reliability of the gospels in particular and the whole of the New Testament is and remains a mystery to me.

Grok says not so fast. . .

  

For a very long time the issue of errors in the Bible has dogged Christianity and created a problem for those who hold a high view of the Scriptures.  Curiously enough, the Grok IV artificial intelligence from Elon Musk's company, has found evidence to give weight to the truthfulness of the Bible and the veracity of its stories from the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of the New Testament.  Far from simply reporting differences within the text, the Grok review found profound uniformity and the difference of details adding weight to the claim of truthfulness.  Furthermore, the Grok review found striking commonality across the books and across the fullness of its time of writing to give support to the claims of Scripture.  Nobody would ever suggest that a review by AI will settle the argument but it does help us too see that what is being claimed for the Bible is inherent within the text and reasonable -- just as reasonable if not more so than the doubts lent to the Scriptures.  This is not going to silence the Bible critics nor will it satisfy the Bible's supporters but perhaps it will remind us that our claims are not on the edge.  The internal consistency of the Scriptures is not an accident nor even a human scheme but evidence of something wider and deeper.  Listen for yourself and tell me what you think.

London Bridge is down. . .

Words that once gave the coded announcement of the death of the Queen have become the words which acknowledge the death of what was once greatness in Britain.  I for one am sad for it.  In many respects, the death of the Queen has either hastened it all or made it more obvious.  I am not sure which.  On the one hand are the images of Britain that we tend to see.  It is an increasingly secularized state in which the state church is largely a shell of its former self and in which agnostic and atheist seem to be able to live together with believers because they both value tradition and ceremony.  The Brits have always done an exceptionally good job of that.  But the ceremonies done so well cover the lost of much of what was once underneath it all.  Resolve and faith were hallmarks of British life and were put to the test during WWII and this small island nation seemed uniquely poised to flaunt the Nazi onslaught when other nations fell swiftly and easily under its grip.

The King is perhaps well meaning but chafed under the long life of his mother and the denial of the crown until age and disease have made him seem not simply late to the party but less than ready for prime time.  Perhaps I read too much into the tabloid stories and The Crown.  I hope so.  But the grand universities of this great empire are just as much bastions of wokism and liberalism as they are here.  The government too wedded to DEI causes over the old virtues that once held this diverse empire together.  The nation too comfortable with government money and more proud of the National Health Service than just about anything else.  Is that all there is?  This is a hard thing for an anglophile like me to ask but it must be.  Has Britain become a mere caricature of its once robust self?

It was painful to watch as the monarchy and government pandered to President Trump as if the nation of Elizabeth II and Churchill had become a mere lapdog to whoever happened to be in the White House at the moment.  A strong and profound alliance requires more than a mere echo of one opinion but a strong conversation.  Europe long ago lost its voice and identity over a Common Market, common currency, and common commitment to progressive democratic socialism.  It would seem that across the Channel things are not far behind.  The reality is that the Christian history of Britain, like that of the continent, has become a footnote and legacy -- something you prefer not to mention except in small print and something you spend half your time repenting of in order to prove you are on the right side of culture's drift. The vibrant voice of Europe and England is more Islam than Christianity and the dominant issues are more about taking care of people so they do not have to than the strong virtues of honesty, integrity, faith, and service.

This is a lament because as Europe has gone and England is headed, Canada is soon to follow.  Though Canada remains divided between its east and west, the liberal causes are there enshrined into law and not open to change.  We will be there soon unless we learn that conservatism implies that there is something to conserve and something worth conserving.  Our children are learning well their values from media and liberal educational policies and institutions.  Yes, we have alternatives and there is an actual resurgence among young men wishing to be men of virtue again but these are small numbers in comparison to those who have drunk the poison of liberalism and progressivism.  We must not simply pass on the faith to our children but also pass on virtue and honest reason unclouded by ideology and falsehood.  We must do more than merely give our children a good home but nurture their minds and their hearts in this home within the truth of God's Word and what is goodness.  We must teach them to resist and respond to the confused voices of academia who mouth the mantras of liberalism without either understanding what they are saying or seeing where it is headed.  London Bridge may be down but perhaps the George Washington is as well and countless others are falling.  Our future does not lie in the triumph of desire and individual autonomy but in truth that is also a scandal and service that gives more than it expects in return.  With the faith, we must teach our people well or Africa may be alone in resisting the  reinvention of self, marriage, and family as well as who Jesus is and what He has accomplished and what we should look like in Him. 

Pope said it - must be true. . .

After years of equivocating and spreading a fog over the clarity of Scripture and tradition from Pope Francis, we have this from Pope Leo:

“I do understand that this is a very hot-button topic and that some people will make demands to say, “we want the recognition of gay marriage,” for example, or “we want recognition of people who are trans,” to say this is officially recognized and approved by the church. The individuals will be accepted and received. Any priest who has ever heard confessions will have heard confessions from all kinds of people with all kinds of issues, all kinds of states of life and choices that are made. I think that the Church’s teaching will continue as it is, and that’s what I have to say about that for right now. I think it’s very important. Families need to be supported, what they call the traditional family. The family is father, mother, and children. I think that the role of the family in society, which has at times suffered in recent decades, once again has to be recognized, strengthened.”

Of course, it really does not matter what the Pope thinks.  It matters what Scripture says and the Church has confessed faithfully in response to that Word of God through the ages -- at least until things began to change and some Christians began to believe that it did matter what they thought and it mattered more than what Scripture says.  In any case, we ought to be grateful that this Pope at least has noticed what has been happening and says [traditional] families need to be supported and that the family is father, mother, and children.  It has been a while since the Vatican spoke so clearly.

We are not beholden to Rome but it helps when Rome speaks in faithfulness to Scripture and supports the rest of us who confess what God has said, His order in creation and the blessing of marriage and family.  In our times, this has been a truth confessed by fewer and fewer churches and rather ambiguously by others trying not to offend the culture.  The family is in trouble and the source of that trouble is often from voices within the churches who listen more to the pulse of the world and the press of media than to the clear and blunt teaching of Scripture.  I wish it were merely the government or society pressing against the faithful but the reality is that without Rome's clear confession we are tenuous minority.  Everyone else seems to have decided that doing what feels right in your own eyes is not a recipe for sin but for the ultimate human achievement and fulfillment.  

So, while I will not rest in my own encouragement to the faithful to hear God's Word and keep it with regard to marriage, children, and family, it does help when a voice from Rome admits that the family has suffered.  If the same Pope admits that the family has suffered in part by the failures of Francis, I will be even more encouraged.  For now, these are good words.  He has not exactly appointed the most faithful folk to positions in the Vatican to carry out these words so, like everything, we must wait and see how this pans out.

On another note, the same Pope in the same interview (how odd is it that Popes are interviewed like political or media figures!) that homosexuality, the role of women (aka ordination), family, and the Latin Mass are "hot button" issues or charged or divisive.  Well, sure, they are emotionally charged even if they will not change to approve same sex couples or the ordination of women (deacons or priests).  Of course, the traditional family (in the face of our want to change that definition) and reverent worship should not be emotionally charged but our culture has made them so.  But divisive does not mean that they need to be changed.  Truth is divisive.  I think Jesus said that.  It is the stumbling stone.  He is divisive -- setting family member against family member.  He is a scandal -- unless He is diluted or softened to make Him say and do nothing at all.  We have to remember that.  You can talk about some of these things all day long and it will not make these doctrines and issues less divisive or charged.  Sin has made the things of God a conflicted problem for us.  Redemption and faith are the only way out of it.  In the world but not of it.