Coffee Heresies

This made me laugh: Ben Witherington posted a list comparing type of coffee drinks to historical heresies in Christian Theology.  From Orthodoxy on Coffee:

Your local coffeehouse may be a hotbed of heresy. Check the following list and see how yours measures up.

Decaf is Docetic because it only appears to be coffee.
Instant is Apollinarian because it’s had its soul removed and replaced.
Frappuccinos are essentially a form of Monophysitism, having their coffee nature swallowed up in milkshake.
Chicory is Arian, not truly coffee at all but a separate creation.
Irish coffee is Nestorian, being two natures conjoined solely by good will.
Nitro coffee (coffee + Red Bull) is Montanist, having a form of godliness but denying its power.
Affogato is Adoptionist, being merely topped with espresso.
The Café Bombón is Sabellian, appearing at some points to be foam, at others coffee and at others sweetened condensed milk.
The Caffè Americano is a form of Unitarian Universalism, being so watered down so as not even to qualify as coffee.
The Café miel violates Canon 57 of the Council in Trullo, “for it is not right to offer honey and milk” in one’s coffee.
The Cafe Mocha (espresso + steamed milk + chocolate) is syncretic and polytheist, for it presumes to adulterate coffee with another nation’s gods.
The Doppio (espresso + espresso) is Monothelite, permitting only one will to dominate.
WHAT IS AN EGGNOG LATTE I DON’T EVEN.
Half-Caf is another form of Adoptionism, being a hybrid of disparate natures.
The Pharisäer (drip coffee + 2 shots rum + whipped cream) is nothing but sheer Antinomianism.
The Red Eye (drip coffee + 1 shot espresso) is Ebionite, for it would swallow up pure faith in the Law.
A rigorist exclusivism for Fair Trade Coffee is a form of Donatism, insisting that only sinless hands may produce a true beverage.
“Coffee is bad for you”: The watchwords of the Iconoclast.
The fellow who just keeps adding sugar to his over-roasted Pike’s Peak is surely a Pelagian.

Here endeth the caffeination. Ite, caffe est.

If you don't recognize most of the heresies go study some historical theology. If you don't recognize the names of the drinks, go study your coffees!

Appreciating O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi

I've always loved O. Henry's story "The Gift of the Magi" since I first read it in school.
Ben Witherington has written an interesting appreciation of this classic story.

The story is at once a beautiful romantic story about true self-sacrificial love, and also a Christmas story, which talks about gift giving, in the tradition of the Magi. If you would like to read the precis of the story you can find it at this link which you can cut and paste into your browser. http://www.online-literature.com/o_henry/1014/.

What I like best about this Christmas story is not merely that it is free from the materialism and narcissism that so plagues the Christmas season of our era but also that it reminds us of a simpler time in our country where there could be an innocence and self-sacrificial quality to a romantic story without it being a fairy tale. Indeed, I could tell you a story very much like it from my own family. In the meantime, if you are looking for a Christmas story to read your children, forget about Grinches that steal Christmas or Scrooges that sour it, and go for this one which shows how to keep Christmas....or give it away.

An Arminian Appreciation of John Calvin

A lot of stuff is being written (good and bad) about reformer John Calvin this year on the 500th anniversary of his birth. Some interesting tidbits in Ben Witherington's article at Christianity Today on John Calvin as Man of the Bible:

"John Calvin was one of the truly great Christian exegetes and, indeed, systematic theologians of all time—never mind that I disagree with a great deal of what he has to say about God, his sovereignty, the nature of his grace, and election, predestination, and human freedom.

...he is to be respected for understanding that biblical theology can only be done on the basis of a detailed and comprehensive exegesis of all the relevant material. This is precisely what I have tried to do in my career. I needed to follow Calvin's lead and begin by researching and writing commentaries on the entire New Testament corpus. Exegesis is the basis for all good biblical theology, and the latter should not be attempted without first doing the former."

This is a nice appreciation coming from a respected theologian who is not a Calvinist. Dr. Witherington is the Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary- a Wesleyan school - and a self proclaimed Arminian in his theology.

"I have fond memories of working carefully through Calvin's Institutes for the first time, and being especially surprised by and taken with his profound theology of the Holy Spirit. I remember reading in Gordon-Conwell's newspaper a rather interesting historical curio from a letter of Calvin about how one morning he woke up and found himself speaking in lingua barbaria. The article went on to speculate that Calvin may have spoken in tongues!"

Okay, that's a new one on me. Who'd a thunk it!

"All in all, Calvin lived out Bengel's maxim: Apply the whole of the text (of the Bible) to yourself. And apply the whole of yourself to the text. It's a motto by which any Christian should be proud to live."

Agreed: that's a good motto for any believer. Think I'll adopt it as mine.

Monk Wars

From Kelly Randolph at Ecclesiophilist comes this simultaneously humorous and depressing report. From the Ecclesiastical Wierdness Files

In what has to be one of the strangest stories of the day, rival monks had a brawl at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, revered as the site of Jesus' crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. The fight broke out between Armenian (not arminian) monks and Greek Orthodox monks when the Armenian clergymen marched in an annual procession commemorating the 4th-century discovery of the cross believed to have been used to crucify Jesus. The Greek Orthodox monks said the Armenian monks had no right to march through the church, so they blocked the group from marching. Israeli police rushed in to break up the fight.

OK, let me get this straight. Two groups of guys who supposedly revere Jesus Christ decided to beat each other up on the very site where Jesus is reported to have died for our sins and rose from the dead. And this fight broke out while one of the groups was celebrating the discovery of the cross that was used to crucify Jesus.

Silliness tends to break out when so-called Christians have more reverence for religious relics, holy sites, and ecclesiastical authority than they do for Jesus or the things He taught. Lest we think that this kind of nonsense only takes place among the Catholic groups, we need to remind ourselves that many a Baptist business meeting has broken out into verbal brawling over things as trivial as colors of carpet and who is going to be in charge of the potluck this month.

There are certainly times when Christians differ over substantial issues. Sometimes these disagreements are hotly debated. This is appropriate when gospel issues are on the table. But more often than not, Christians fight over things that have little biblical significance. Such arguments are driven more by personalities and power-grabs than by a passion for Christ's kingdom.

Sadly, the outcome of these brawls has devastating consequences for the testimony of the church in the world. The irony of clergymen fighting in the very place they celebrate as the empty tomb of the resurrection is not lost on a watching world. Let's not waste our energy fighting about silly, trivial things. We have real enemies to fight. Not least is the enemy of pride and self-importance which prods us to raise ourselves and our cause above everyone else.

The story was also covered by Ben Witherington, who commented:

It may be hoped that the parties involved in this disgrace will repent, and then apologize to each other. In the meantime the Jesus who died on the cross on this very spot shakes his head and says--- "I died for this? I died so my followers could behave like this?" I think not.

So lets review: 1) the Muslims opened and shut the doors of this church yesterday; 2) the Israeli Jewish police came and stopped a fracass in the foyer of this church; and what did the Christians do while Jews and Muslims were watching--- 3) THEY PUNCHED EACH OTHERS LIGHTS OUT!!!

Father, forgive us, we do not know what we do.

Ben's Hermeneutics Primer

Ben Witherington is writing some good stuff on Hermeneutics, the science of Biblical interpretation. See HERMENEUTICS—WHAT IS IT, AND WHY DO BIBLE READERS NEED IT? He says things like "what it meant is what it means," "context is king," and "genre matters." Good stuff and worth reading.