All Saints Day

Hello, fellow saint.  It is by God's grace and Jesus merit, not our own, that He has included His children by faith in the eternal cloud of saints, the church universal and eternal.  The last clause of the Nicene Creed:

We believe also in only One, Universal, Apostolic, and [Holy] Church; in one baptism in repentance, for the remission, and forgiveness of sins; and in the resurrection of the dead, in the everlasting judgement of souls and bodies, and the Kingdom of Heaven and in the everlasting life.

I'm reminded today of C.S. Lewis' observation for a slightly different purpose recognizing the eternal aspect of our existence we usually forget about day to day:

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat, the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

And here is one of my favorite hymns: 

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For the Apostles’ glorious company,
Who bearing forth the Cross o’er land and sea,
Shook all the mighty world, we sing to Thee:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For the Evangelists, by whose blest word,
Like fourfold streams, the garden of the Lord,
Is fair and fruitful, be Thy Name adored.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For Martyrs, who with rapture kindled eye,
Saw the bright crown descending from the sky,
And seeing, grasped it, Thee we glorify.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Comments

[BillyHW]

Three Cheers for Pope St. Boniface the IV who instituted this wonderful holiday in AD 609!

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02660c.htm

Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!

Happy All Saints Day everyone.

:)

[Marty]

Way to get the point, Billy. Remind me to whoop it up for Ronald Reagan next MLK day since he was the one to sign that holiday into law. Wouldn't want to get distracted by that civil rights icon...

[Chris]

"For Martyrs, who with raptured kindled eye".

WOW!!! That phrase jumps off of the page for me. What an amazing word picture.

[RonH]

...their Fortress and their Might
...their Captain in the well fought fight
...Thy soldiers
...Fight
...win
...the victor’s crown
...strife is fierce
...warfare long
...triumph song
...faithful warriors

The scary thing is these words are not just metaphor.

http://tinyurl.com/9uavh7

RonH

[WisdomLover]

RonH -

Wow! That's truly a shocking clip! There are actually Christians who believe that their religion is true? That's just the most chilling thing I've ever heard. And not only do they believe that their religion is true. They actually take seriously that commandment that they call the Great Commission:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19)

What are these freakish cultists called again? Baptists? Just the name sends shivers down my spine. To think it could happen right here in America (well actually in Iraq).

[Ryan]

RonH,

There's nothing odd in those clips. You do the same thing by posting to this site, namely, try to convince Christians that what you believe is true. We all have that obligation. Thank you for caring enough about us to share with us what you believe the truth to be. But don't pretend to be all surprised and shocked as if you don't do the same thing.

[RonH]

WL and Ryan,

What scares (but doesn't surprise or shock) me is not that people believe their religion or that they try to persuade others to provided they are representing themselves only and doing so on their own time and on their own nickel.

What scares me is how these people draft the USA and its military into the project apparently without any compunction whatsoever. (Oh, and I guess the songs kind of scare me too on account of their power to brainwash.)

WL, can you clarify: Suppose a Christian were reluctant to do this. To make it concrete, suppose he was reluctant to appear in a the uniform of a general of the US Army and attribute religious purpose to the US presence in Iraq. Could he still be one of those Christians who 'believe that their religion is true'?

RonH

[RonH]

Oops. Italics intended only from 'persuade' to the end of first paragraph.

RonH

[WisdomLover]

"What scares me is how these people draft the USA and its military into the project apparently without any compunction whatsoever."

Even the video does not make this claim. That is the product of your own fertile imagination. What the video says is that they have come to Iraq with the permission of the U.S. government 'disguised' as humanitarians.

Did you know that groups just like these Baptists are doing the same thing right here in America? Disguised as humanitarians these radical cultists run soup kitchens on the skid rows of American cities. But then they attempt to indoctrinate the people they're feeding with their cultist teachings, like John 3:16. And they do it all with the permission of the United States Government! We might as well be living in Salem at the time of the Witch Trials!

The video also notes that there is a large private, non-profit organization, the Voice of the Martyrs, that is involved in bringing Christianity into Iraq. I agree with you, they really should do this on their own time and on their own nickel...

Oh, wait.

"Suppose [a Christian] was reluctant to appear in a the uniform of a general of the US Army and attribute religious purpose to the US presence in Iraq. Could he still be one of those Christians who 'believe that their religion is true'?"

There are many vocations that a Christian can have. Missionary and soldier are two of them. So are doctor, school teacher, politician, aeronautical engineer and garbage collector. What people are driven to do, and what they are reluctant to do is often the guidance of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

William Boykin, in particular, is performing his Christian vocation as a soldier. As an American citizen, he also has these little rights called freedom of religion and freedom of expression. Which is why Boykin felt confident to demand an investigation of his words, and no disciplinary action followed (though the panel did find that he had committed a few minor infractions, like forgetting to declare the reimbursement of travel expenses for one of his trips, that are seldom punished).

George Bush, by the way, is Methodist, not any kind of Baptist. But the purveyors of that ridiculous piece of yellow journalism couldn't be bothered to get that right. That, after all, would not square with their attack on the weird and frightening cult (pretty much just like the radical Islamists who brought down the twin towers) of....Baptists.

[Mike Westfall]

Baptists, Feh!

[Nathaniel]

Mike,

The John 3:16 conference represents a small number of Baptists out of the larger group known as the SBC. Furthermore, the SBC has two schools that are largely Reformed in their Soteriology (SBTS and SEBTS). Calvinism is actually on the rise in the SBC. Outside the SBC, there are many Baptists that are Reformed in their Soteriology (John Piper, John MacArthur, etc).

I'm sure you didn't mean to generalize, but I just wanted to clarify your article.

[Amy]

I love it how the announcer is talking about radicals and holy wars while in the background we're seeing people giving gifts to children. And the idea that Voice of the Martyrs (an organization that gives aid to Christians suffering persecution, providing them with Bibles, etc.) is politically motivated is laughable.

What scares me, Ron, is that you see any merit in this ridiculous propaganda and would characterize missionaries as perpetrating violent warfare. You actually said those words weren't a metaphor. I would laugh at the whole video if I didn't know a reasonable person found it compelling. Now I'm beyond disturbed.

[Mike Westfall]

Hey Nathaniel, I'm hoping that article I linked to is satire. If it's not, then Double Feh!

[WisdomLover]

I'm not a huge fan of Baptist theology. So I agree with your "Feh!" Mike. But you must agree that likening Baptists to Al-Qaeda (as RonH's clip does) is just über-silly.

[Tom]

The scary thing is these words are not just metaphor.

RonH,

Do you plan on admitting how absurdly wrong your original claim was? How you came to that conclusion based upon a hymn text from the 1860s and a video portraying Christian missionaries in Iraq is simply stunning.

Would you not agree that it was a huge leap of logic?

[RonH]

http://tinyurl.com/p7b9os
RonH

[WisdomLover]

So, RonH, your response to your first ludicrous (and BTW off-topic) posting is to provide yet more clips, from Al-Jazeera this time, and an article by ABC reporter, Jake Tapper, that really, proves nothing.

Well, OK, the article might prove something: the opposite of your earlier point.

The Bibles in question in both video clips were ultimately confiscated and destroyed by the U.S. Military. Thus the title of Tapper's article is "Bibles Destroyed in Afghanistan... By U.S. Military" (see how that works?). So there is no indication, then, that the U.S. Military has been drafted into some kind of proselytizing venture. Quite the opposite. And as was repeated many times in both clips, General Order #1 is not to proselytize.

But what about the individual soldiers. Did their Christian faith prompt them to cross a line that should not be crossed? We can't rule that out. Christians can err and commit sins like other human beings. So they are not immune to crossing lines. But in this case they clearly did not, because, need I point this out, the Bibles were confiscated and destroyed.

There was only one soldier who even had the opportunity to cross the line before the Bibles were confiscated by the U.S. Military and destroyed. The completely bald soldier in the second video, Sgt. Jon Watt, was suggesting that they give the Bibles as gifts. It was his church who, on their own nickel, provided the Bibles (which were later confiscated and destroyed). He was the one who brought the Bibles (doomed to be confiscated and destroyed by the U.S. military) to the meeting we see on the video. He even said that prior to the meeting we saw he had handed some Bibles out. But it was always to people who expressed a desire to have one. That bears no resemblance to proselytizing, so he did not cross a line either.

No doubt the reason that the remaining Bibles were all confiscated and destroyed was because the military could not be sure that all the other soldiers would be as circumspect as Sgt. Watt had been.

As for the rest of the Al Jazeera videos, what they show is exactly what?

I think there are two additional propositions worth any notice at all.

1. According to the Al-Jazeera reporter, many soldiers are also conservative Evangelical Christians.

As a side-point, I'm pretty sure that the Al-Jazeera reporter has no idea what those words mean. He is simply uttering code words for "stupid, inbred, hayseed, bible-thumping, fundamentalist, fanatics". (Hey, at least they're not...Baptists.)

But on the point, should we make a law against religious people serving? Should we have only Atheist soldiers? Is that where this is headed?

2. If the mere existence of these knuckle-draggers weren't enough, the Al-Jazeera reporter informs us that they actually have Bible studies and worship services while deployed. During some of these services, the Great Commission is discussed and promoted. (In new breaking news, some other services discussed Baptism, raising the ugly specter of Baptists in our U.S. Military)

No doubt the Al-Jazeera reporter believes that Congress should make a law to prevent this exercise of religion. Do you see a problem with this?

So what exactly is your point, RonH?

[Tom]

RonH,

One more time:

Do you plan on admitting how absurdly wrong your original claim was (and now how absurdly wrong your additional link is)?

How you came to your conclusion that the words of the hymn are actually being taken literally somewhere out there by linking to 2 videos portraying Christian missionaries and most recently a military chaplain is simply stunning.

Do you really not see it or are you just not willing to admit that you're wrong? No more links, please. It's just making it worse.

[Dozie]

"We believe also in only One, Universal, Apostolic, and [Holy] Church; in one baptism in repentance, for the remission, and forgiveness of sins; and in the resurrection of the dead, in the everlasting judgement of souls and bodies, and the Kingdom of Heaven and in the everlasting life".

Did you make this up or got it from somewhere? Is this simply Protestantism at its worst? What is presented here makes nonsense of the holy creed and shows it is not part of your belief system.

[RonH]

WL,

Sorry about the delay. Work is overwhelming me right now.

My point is, as I said, the military imagery in the hymn scares me. And the problem is not with the hymn itself. I think the writer had a spiritual enemy in mind. Fine. I get it.

No it's a couple of misinterpretations that scare me.

One is that some singers of the hymn seem to think of Christian soldiers marching off to war instead of as to war. I heard a Christian fighter pilot say he told his chaplain he had doubts about the morality of the second Iraq war. The chaplain told him he was on the side of God.

The other misinterpretation that scares me is that our credibility with Iraq's is injured by all proselytizers military and civilian: those who would put up a government hostile to us can point to proselytizers and say we went there not to replace Saddam, which was popular, but to replace Mohammed and steal oil. This weakens our supports' position. We can't afford that.

As for the journalism: I'm just as skeptical of journalism as I am of religion. "Yellow" characterizes the first one pretty well. I cringed. I'm skeptical of the second one too but not more because it was from Al-Jazeera and not enough to repeat the name 5 times. (I expected the genetic fallacy.)

The thing to focus on is not what reporters say but what people tell them.

RonH

[WisdomLover]

"My point is, as I said, the military imagery in the hymn scares me."

Actually. I don't think you ever said this until your last post. I believe that your words were "The scary thing is these words are not just metaphor." To me this indicates that you think that the words of "For all the Saints" don't just use military imagery, but are military words.

Perhaps this ties in with what we might call the First Frightening Misinterpretation (though, in light of your initial response we should call it the Frighteningly Correct Interpretation).

The problem here is that soldiers might look at the war they are engaged in and think of themselves as being on the side of God and His angels. Your evidence for this possibility is an anecdote that couldn't be much weaker if you claimed to get it from your sister-in-law's cousin's nephew's best friend.

Even so, I grant the possibility, and even likelihood, of your claim. It is quite likely that many individual's who put their lives on the line and are called upon to take the lives of other human beings may desire to see the sanction of heaven in their actions. I'm not sure how frightening this is. It seems very natural and human to me.

Even in Atheist societies, military men would probably like to believe that they are risking their all in order to kill other men for the sake of something bigger than themselves and bigger than their victims. This might get expressed in terms of that moral monstrosity known as "The People". But I don't see anything particularly frightening in that either.

This is a very rich topic that I could go on about at length, but instead, I turn to you Second Frightening Misinterpretation.

The problem here is that our interpretation of songs like "For All the Saints" is that we are doing proselytizing in Iraq, and that is somehow bad. (BTW, the second set of videos you linked were about our troops in Afghanistan, not Iraq).

Notice first, that there is no evidence of the U.S. military or any other branch of the U.S. government doing proselytizing in Iraq or in Afghanistan. As far as I can tell, there's a lot of evidence to the contrary.

So that leaves 'civilian' proselytizing. Or as I like to call it: Mission Work. What's your suggestion here. Should Congress make a law to forbid the exercise of the 'Great Commission' aspects of Christianity? Should Missionaries be banned?

It seems to me that that is the frightening possibility. I'd adapt Niemöller's well-known verse as "First they came for the Missionaries...", but that would be overwrought.

Finally, I'll add that, as a skeptic of journalism, you seem to like to refer to the work of journalists. Especially bad ones. (Jake Tapper is probably the only good one in the bunch of journalists involved in the links you sent out).

BTW-Al-Jazeera is an organization that has repeatedly demonstrated that it is not to be relied upon in the analysis of the news (just to be fair, so is Reuters). It is not a genetic fallacy to highlight this fact when we are being asked to rely on their analysis of the news.

[WisdomLover]

Dozie-

Can you please explain (a) What is distinctively Protestant about Melinda's rendition of Third Article (which, BTW, probably came directly out of her Hymnal...I doubt she made it up) and (b) How it reflects the worst of Protestantism?

[Tom]

RonH,

First you said:
The scary thing is these words are not just metaphor.

Note carefully your own words. Now you say:
My point is, as I said, the military imagery in the hymn scares me.

See?

[Dozie]

"I doubt she made it up) and (b) How it reflects the worst of Protestantism?"

It is a nonsensical rendition of the creed. It simply makes no sense and perhaps, reflects the worst of Protestantism.

[WisdomLover]

OK Dozie-

So I guess you have no answers to my questions.

Your claim that it is a nonsensical rendition of the creed is absurd. Your claim that it makes no sense is absurd.

I haven't yet seen your argument for what makes it uniquely Protestant, let alone how it can reflect the worst of Protestantism.

Of course, there's an excellent reason that you can't tell me what's so Protestant about this version. It isn't Protestant. This is the version used by the Armenian Apostolic Church. This is a denomination of the Oriental (not Eastern) Orthodox Church.

I'm not sure why Melinda decided to use this version of the creed. It would not have been my first choice. If I were talking about the second article it wouldn't be my twentieth choice. But it can hardly be called the worst of Protestantism.