Calvin's Big Year

Calvin is one of the truly great figures who have impacted on Western civilization, as I'm sure you'll agree. Together with Hobbes they form one of the finest teams in comic strip literature.

It may surprise you to learn, however, that there's another Calvin. This fellow single-handedly wrenched the Reformation off course, blighted the history of Christianity across more than two continents, transformed the city of Geneva into a by-word for sullen, dour self-loathing, and turned a former colleague - Michael Servetus - into toast because he couldn't divide three into one.

Without this Calvin - a man whose approach to theology can be compared to a pedantic civil engineer on steroids - there'd have been no Puritans, Presbyterians, or any of the vile brood of Anglo sects that migrated like vultures across the Atlantic to roost in the Burned Over district. Hence no flow-on: no Mormons, Adventists, Plymouth Brethren... no pre-millennial Rapturists, no Left Behind novels, no Dallas Theological Seminary, Karl Barth, Southern Baptists and - not least for readers of this blog - no Worldwide Church of God.

There'd probably still be a Missouri Synod, but no alternate reality is perfect...

But there would be economic consequences too. The Industrial Revolution minus the Calvinist Guilt Ethic would have been the Industrial Adjustment. No "dark, Satanic mills," no class struggle, no Karl Marx, no Great Depression, no Hitler, no Cold War, Ronald Reagan would have kept his day job in the movies.

Of course, other things would have happened, but the endless chain of unfortunate events that Calvin unleashed was clearly a horrible mistake in the Divine Plan of the Ages: the archangels were obviously away on a team building weekend when the perfidious Frenchman popped up, and by the time they'd recovered from their hangovers on the following Wednesday it was too late to do much about it. Gabriel suggested creating Arminians, but Arminius was a confused post-Calvinist himself, and who can blame him?

Of course, the Calvinists would say it was all predestined, but being Calvinists they would have to, wouldn't they?

I mention this because this year is the 500th anniversary of Calvin's birth. The fateful day was July 10, 1509. Mark it on your calendar and resolve to do something the old geezer would have hated: enjoy a glass of good wine, scoff down a decadent dessert, tell a humorous story, stay up till after eight o'clock (the hour the Calvinist thought-police demanded all good Genevans retire for the night), ask irritatingly sincere questions of your Presbyterian relatives about "total depravity," "double predestination" or the Westminster Confession, read an unedifying novel...

... or just settle back in a comfortable chair with a Calvin and Hobbes anthology.


PS. For a little light musical relief, click across to the Third Witness blog where there's a YouTube video called I think my wife's a Calvinist.

Wiener - Top COG

If Internet exposure is the measure of a ministry, then Ronnie Weinland can be well pleased. In the first Alexa rankings for 2009 the Witless One leads the pack, ahead of UCG's Good News. Here's the list. Numbers refer to thousands, so AW, listed as 541, has an actual ranking of 541,397. Twenty five sites made the top million on the Web. The lower the number the better the result.

(1) Ronnie Weinland's the-end.com: 84
(2) The Good News (UCG): 91
(3) Vision (Hulme): 116
(4) The Trumpet (Flurry): 120
(5) Alan Ruth's biblestudy.org: 127
(6) UCG official site: 140
(7) WCG official site: 163
(8) RCG (Pack): 165
(9) Bible Tools (Ritenbaugh): 173
(10) Bob Thiel's COGwriter: 181
(11) Tomorrow's World (LCG): 182
(12) ASK (Martin/Sielaff): 318
(13) Victor Kubik's site: 420
(14) CGG site (Ritenbaugh): 432
(15) PCG site (Flurry): 492
(16) LCG official site: 525
(17) Ambassador Watch blog: 541
(18) Beyond Today (UCG): 588
(19) Born to Win (Dart): 592
(20) PTM (Albrecht): 595
(21) Weinland's church site: 632
(22) LCG member site: 723
(23) Fred Coulter's CBCG: 855
(24) COG-Faithful Flock (Billingsley): 877
(25) World News & Prophecy (UCG): 982

CGI, ICG, The Journal, and COG7 were all outside the top million ranking.

Fred's Historical Landmark, Part 3

Actually, I don't think the possibilities in Coulter's BAR ad could be exhausted even if this series extended to the lengths of War & Peace, but there certainly would be a danger we'd all end up as bored out of our minds as if we'd had to listen to one of Fred's interminably redundant sermons, so let's try and tie up the loose ends.

(1) The book that inspired it all, Ernie Martin's Restoring the Original Bible, is online. Coulter talks up Martin's reputation:

"Before his death in January 2002, Dr. Ernest L. Martin was recognized as one of the leading scholars and authorities of the canonical study of the Bible."

In reality Martin's doctorate was an unaccredited AC one, with the same validity as Meredith's, Hoeh's or Garner Ted Armstrong's. While a much-liked figure with a strong following among disillusioned WCG members, Martin had little clout in academia.

Martin's arguments on canonical order enabled him to pull this rabbit out of the hat. Impressed?

(2) No mention in the BAR ad of Fred himself, the glorious author/scholar/translator. For all the wide-eyed BAR reader knows, this translation has been prepared by a committee of scholars instead of one guy who pastors a series of living room congregations. Why so coy?

(3) What's the issue with the Stephens Greek text? Stephens (or Stephanus), whose proper name was Robert Estienne, was a printer in Paris. Among his claims to fame was to be the first to break the Bible text into bite-sized chicken McNuggets - the verse system we use today. Stephanus collaborated on the Greek text with the gifted Catholic scholar Erasmus, an achievement which became known (misleadingly) as the Textus Receptus. Erasmus himself recognized that the manuscripts available to him were defective, but he did the best with what he had. Better manuscripts have meant better Greek texts. Fred is nearly 500 years out of date, Masoretic red herrings not withstanding.

(4) As for an inspired or original order for the New Testament, Fred is out on a limb. His arrangement can't be justified chronologically (the first off the block may well have been Paul with 1 Thessalonians), or the earliest list of canonical books (the Muratorian canon.) Fred continues to bravely defend the primacy of Matthew's gospel, but he's spitting into the wind of Markan priority. The general epistles initially appeared together, for example, because they were obviously distinct from Paul's (and others wrongly attributed to Paul.) Anything particularly original and inspired in that?

But there's a more basic point. To restore an original order requires that there be an original order to restore. Sadly for Fred, there is no evidence that the early church produced its own triple-bound codex with handcrafted lambskin cover and gold lettering, or anything remotely resembling it. It isn't till the fourth century that complete NT manuscripts turn up. That's 300 years of Christianity without a New Testament - in any order.

Of course that doesn't stop Fred from arguing long and monotonously for his arrangement. Even if he's not very convincing, it's not a big deal... unless Fred himself makes it a big deal, which he does.

(5) A final aside. Also following Doc Martin's vision is James Tabor. This is a project that possibly predates Fred's efforts, and is still a long way off seeing the light of day. Tabor's Transparent English Bible will pack a lot more credibility than Fred's, assuming it ever gets into print (a PDF sample is available here.) I'm not sure whether Tabor intends to use the same NT arrangement, but if so one can only hope that the publicity doesn't overextend into the kind of wild claims Fred obviously relishes (the name "Original Bible Project" may indicate otherwise.)

Fred's Historical Landmark, Part 2

Fred Coulter's effort at Bible translation is at the very least different from most other offerings. Fred picked up his knowledge of Greek at Ambassador College (under the "private tutelage" of Charles Dorothy), and his views on the canon - in large part - from an AC professor, the larger-than-life figure of Ernest L. Martin. In putting together his New Testament "in its original order" he follows the views of Martin in his book Restoring the Original Bible. Strangely enough, in his bibliography to the New Testament edition (2003), Fred forgets to even mention Restoring the Original Bible, though he refers to it within his lengthy introductory chapters.

Where did Fred learn Hebrew? Well, apparently he didn't. Fred can correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand he bought somebody else's revision of the KJV Old Testament, fiddled around with the text a bit, then bunged it together with his 2003 New Testament to produce a complete 66 book edition.

Around the time Fred left WCG he tried out his translation skills by producing a paraphrased Harmony of the Gospels in modern English. To be honest, it was probably a good deal better than the stilted KJV-like third edition which has replaced it.

So what do the reviewers think? The BAR ad addresses this issue:

Reviewer Dan Becker of Bible Editions and Versions (June 2005) writes of this Faithful Version of the New Testament: "It [is] an excellent translation for those desiring a literal one."

And so he did, but if memory serves me, he also compared it to a telephone directory. In fact, the review as a whole could be said to have damned with faint praise. Has anybody else - a recognized journal in the field of Biblical studies for example (or even the BAR) - positively reviewed Fred's magum opus? Apparently not.

Fred translated the NT from what he regards as the most accurate Greek text, the Stephens of - wait for it - 1550! Fred is entitled to his opinion of course, but he'd be hard pressed to find a genuine scholar to agree with him. Stephens is probably the worst choice imaginable. More on this in part 3.

Then there's the issue of original order. The Old Testament isn't an issue: Fred apparently follows the order of the Hebrew Bible as set out in Jewish translations. That's not only legitimate, but perhaps even commendable, though it's stretching credulity to make the kind of grandiose claims about it that he does. There are two ancient traditions, one of which the church adopted (following the precedent of the Septuagint), the other of which the synagogue adopted, both of which have a respectable pedigree.

But what about the claim regarding the New Testament? Here's Fred's shuffled index:

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts (no change, though there probably should be!)
James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude (Fred is kidding, right?)
Romans, 1 Cor., 2 Cor., Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thes., 2 Thes., Hebrews, 1 Tim., 2 Tim., Titus, Philemon (Fred is one of the last translators to imagine that Paul wrote Hebrews)
Revelation

With all due respect to the labors of Doc Martin, this is completely out of kilter with reality. More on this later.

A copy of the Fred Bible could set you back $150, but Fred will sell you a copy direct - a special low price for BAR readers - for $89.95 plus postage and packing.

Funnily enough, you can get the same "low" price from Amazon.

To be continued.

Fred's Historical Landmark, Part 1

I opened the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review to discover that I had missed a "historical landmark in Bible publishing."

According to a full page ad in the Jan/Feb issue, this new Bible is extraordinary and unique... "the only complete Bible ever published - with both Old and New Testaments - that accurately follows the original canonical manuscript order..."

The bold type and hyperbole may give you a clue.

"It is a widely unknown fact that the original manuscript order of both the Old and New Testament books was altered by early church fathers."

A widely unknown fact?

"[The Bible's] books were mysteriously repositioned from their original order by fourth-century "editors." '

Oh really?

If you haven't guessed it already, we're talking about the Fred Coulter Bible which Fred is pitching at the BAR readership. Fred is, in case you've just tuned in to the wacky world of COGdom, a schismatic minister of the Worldwide Church of God who left in the late seventies.

The ad - on page 5, if you want to check it out for yourself - raises a whole truckload of issues. There's the ghost of Ernest L. Martin to contend with, a parallel project by James Tabor to produce a "Transparent English" version, and an awful lot of nonsense that needs shoveling onto the nearest compost heap.

Stay tuned.

How Then Shall We Not Live - Franky Makes Good

Francis Schaeffer was a cult-like figure among Evangelicals of a past generation, building a personal empire at a place called L'Abri around a pretentious form of Calvinism. Schaeffer produced the hugely influential but deeply facile film (and associated book) How Then Shall We Live: The Decline of Western Thought and Culture - a sort of high-brow version of The Modern Romans. Growing up in his father's shadow was Franky, the son of the legend, destined to also achieve star status in the Lord's work.

"We were earnest and my parents were sincere. Dad had a vicious temper. Mom was a high powered nut. But so what. Given the range of human suffering, I had a golden childhood."

Father/son combinations litter the world of conservative Christianity, what Schaeffer himself calls "the proudly nepotistic American Protestant tradition." Billy and Franklin, Robert H. and Robert A., Francis and Franky, Joe Sr. and Joe Jr., Gerry and Stephen, Herbert and Ted. In most cases it all ends in tears.

There are parallels between Franky and GTA. Both had a wild streak, but played their role to the full despite that. Both achieved fame as celebrity evangelists. Both wrestled with their conscience. But, sadly, only one found the integrity to turn aside and do the right thing.

Franky mixed and mingled with the Evangelical nobility; James Dobson, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson and others.

"In private, they ranged from unreconstructed bigot reactionaries like Jerry Falwell, to Dr. Dobson, the most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met, to Billy Graham, a very weird man indeed who lived an oddly sheltered life in a celebrity/ministry cocoon, to Pat Robertson, who would have a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement."

Sounds as though he's describing four COG splinter leaders instead of famous preachers who lobbied in Washington and were regarded as mainstream paragons in the Bible Belt.

Franky preached to large audiences, even appearing in the pulpit of Falwell's Liberty Baptist Church.

And then he gave it all away.

Franky Schaeffer's story appears in a tell-all autobiography published last year called Crazy for God. It's a damning indictment of the evangelical industry, and anyone who hear that siren call would do well to read it. It's also a raw - and even raunchy - self portrait redeemed by its searing honesty and a warts-and-all portrait of the Christian Right.

Schaeffer remains a Christian, but he steers clear of his former affiliations and has embraced the Orthodox faith. He now calls himself just plain Frank.

And he's probably a better man for it.

2008

What a year!

Fox 25 News covered PCG and Gerry Flurry had a hernia over being compared to David Koresh. Oklahoma newspapers made a fortune out of Gerry's frantic - and wordy - attempts at damage control.

William Dankenbring had his nose put out of prophetic joint by Obama's victory, but not enough to knock him off the prediction-addiction merry-go-round (it's doubtful even the Second Coming could do that!)

Globetrotting Doomsdayer Ronald Weinland called down the Great Tribulation, but it was a "no show" - twice. Ronnie also called down divine retribution on his critics - a slow painful death - but instead it was Ron himself who was blessed with an IRS audit. Don't give up Ron, remember, in the words of P.T. Barnum, there's a sucker born every minute.

James Tabor launched the third edition of a book which promotes (among other things) a version of British Israelism: perhaps best described as "BI, but..." (the kind of BI you promote when you don't want it to be labeled as BI.)

Doc Michael Germano, Living University's tenuous link to academic credibility, threw away $250 on a John McCain political donation while at the same time Bob Thiel reassured us that LCG taught against such wicked worldliness.

Rod Meredith double-disfellowshipped Fred Coulter, setting something of a precedent as Fred has never been a member of LCG. Rod then fell victim to a stroke which saw him surrender the reigns to Richard Ames (Fred's views on the proximity of these two events is unknown.)

English academic David Barrett invited past and present members to contribute to his upcoming doctoral thesis on WCG's splinters via an online survey.

Raymond McNair, one of the WCG's foundation evangelists, passed from the scene, as did the church's most famous co-worker, chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer.

John Meakin jumped ship from David Hulme's sect to scamper onto the slippery decks of LCG. Out of the frying pan...

WCG's Canadian Board voted unanimously to repeal their Policy Governance Manual at the directive of the Pastor Generalissimo Tkach.

Gerry Flurry helped out the Iranian economy by buying up caramel onxyx to decorate his cloned auditorium in Edmond.

Paul Kroll and Dennis Pelley left the employ of WCG.

Yisrayl Hawkins announced Armageddon for June 12. While the nuclear weapons failed to appear in the skies, "Buffalo Bill" barely batted an eyelid.

David Pack and Don Billingsley remarried (not, obviously, to each other, though some might consider them ideally matched.)

Joel Meeker spat the dummy over the election of Aaron Dean to UCG's Council (Dean had earlier been subject to church discipline over a speaking engagement at a non-UCG venue), but later issued an apology for his outburst. The COE also put the final nail in the coffin over the plan to relocate to Texas.

WCG found a pig, put lipstick on it, and christened it Grace Communion Seminary.

Weinland kept his followers waiting and wondering about just who might join him as the second of the prophesied Two Witnesses. It turned out to be his doting wife Laura.

So, in the spirit of TIME magazine, can we find a Person of the Year out of that lot?

Envelope please...

"For sheer chutzpah in the face of disconfirmation, picking himself up off his bruised arse and pretending not to have made a complete pillock out of himself. For clinging to insane personal claims despite clear proof to the contrary..."

Without a doubt, AW's person of 2008 is Ronnie Weinland.

Happy New Year!

Tithe Abuse

Recently Robert Taylor, a British COG blogger with Messianic Jewish leanings, wrote:

Critics often tarnish the Armstrong movement into one sweeping broad brush, one idealistic set of doctrines, but that is far from reality, usually, this is to reinforce stereotypical beliefs of tithing and church government.

If I understand Robert correctly, he's saying critics (that'd obviously include a lot of people who visit and comment on AW) have a kind of myopia: we can't get past the bugbears of tithing and church government in order to fairly assess the other positive aspects of our former heritage.

Robert goes on: There are churches within the Armstrongite movement that do not teach tithing to its members. The Church of God in Williamstown and Bible Research are examples.

Putting aside the fallacy of "church government" for the moment, I think its fair to say that tithing is still one of the hot keys for many of us: a much-loathed expression of manipulation and abuse. We saw hard earned dollars extorted with grand claims and outright lies, and what did it bring forth? An auditorium, inflated paychecks for church leaders, a college that was sold off, and third-tithe funded ministerial home improvements. The Work collapsed; the magazine, radio and TV outreach disappeared, and membership was decimated. The lasting fruit of all that giving and sacrifice?

Not much.

The cost - not just in money (30% of gross income in some years) - but in missed opportunities, health, stress, and retirement prospects, was often horrendous.

Robert cites two micro-sects that no longer teach tithing. The Williamstown church, apparently just one small congregation in the Australian state of Victoria, and Bible Research - which is so obscure most of us hadn't heard of it before. These two tiny groups (if Bible Research is a group and not just one guy with a Word Processor) are very much the exception. On the tithing side of the divide are all the major splinters (UCG, LCG, PCG, COG-AIC), and Holy Mother Church presided over by Flip-flop Joe. ("You don't need to tithe. Hey, where's the money gone? You need to tithe!")

Tithing is in the DNA of the COGs. David Pack yells from the pulpit: "If people don't tithe, they're gone!" Of course, plenty of other churches encourage a version of the practice (almost all more benign than Herbert Armstrong's interpretation.) The real problems are inflexibility, inflated claims, irresponsible proof texting, and negligent stewardship by those holding the purse strings. Being generous with a percentage of your income is in itself no bad thing, but:

• There is no mandate for tithing - as described in the Bible - today. Ernest Martin's popular booklet made this crystal clear. Neither Christians nor Jews can tithe in the biblical sense in the absence of a priesthood or temple. Earlier examples of tithing (e.g. Abraham to Melchizedek) were clearly intended as "one-off" arrangements. Biblical tithing was based on agricultural produce (food!), not salaries (which, like the Bank of America, didn't exist in agrarian cultures.) The Catholic roots of church tithing only go back as far as Charlemagne (777 CE.) What we call tithing today in the Church of God, Adventist, Mormon, Baptist, and various non-conformist Protestant bodies, is something else - a modern tradition largely unheard of before the 1870s.

• The management of any program of giving remains with the giver. To hand over large, regular sums to any church or charity without demanding accountability is good for neither donor nor recipient. For the donor it's a cop-out, for the recipient it's a license to do whatever they want.

• If a family or individual decides to set aside a certain portion of their income for good causes, there's nothing in the Bible to say it all has to go to one organization. The initiative - and the responsibility - is in your hands. This is the whole point of the "priesthood of all believers" (which WCG now refers to as the "ministry" of all believers - which is to entirely miss the point.)

Which is to say that the Churches of God - with an occasional rare and insignificant exception at the far fringes - also miss the point.


Note: Ernie Martin's tithing booklet is available online. Also available is a long (2 hour!) presentation by Russell Earl Kelly on Google video. If you have the interest (and the patience) he makes a very solid case against tithing from a conservative Evangelical perspective.

Survey - David Barrett replies to comments

David Barrett offers these responses to comments on his survey.

Thanks for all your comments (Libro66 - I love the three hypostases!) I realised very early on that I couldn't cover all the different groups of people (I identified seven distinct groups). PhD theses have to be very tightly focussed, and if I also looked at, for example, those who had accepted the changes and stayed in WCG, and those who had not accepted the changes but tried to stay in WCG, and those who had accepted the changes but decided to join a mainstream Evangelical Church with no connection to the "Worldwide Family", and those who said "A plague on all your houses" and dropped out of Christianity completely -- although these are all equally worthy of study, including them in my study would make it too broad and unwieldy; I'd be looking in too many directions in not enough depth.

I do mention all of them, and will certainly make use of any comments you're kind enough to send me if you're in one of those four groups, but my main focus is on those who held on to the old-Worldwide beliefs, in one version or another, and what they did and where they went and why. I'm looking mainly at conflicts of authority within a sociological theoretical framework -- largely the conflicts between the authority of the Church leadership and the teachings of the Church's founder, and the continuing conflicts and schisms within the offshoot Churches. Thank you again to all who have completed the questionnaire -- or whichever parts of it are relevant to you. And yes, please do make use of the spaces to add your comments, both for specific questions and at the end.

The Survey link is http://www.quest.thenewbelievers.com. The password is the name of the city where HWA began his radio ministry on KORE, followed by the year.

Nephilim Flush but Snoopy Rocks!

No Madonnas, angels, blokes wearing towels on their heads, or tinsel... but it's gotta be my favorite Xmas carol.



Of course, if you're holed up somewhere trying to ignore the heathen festivities, you could spend the day drinking deeply from the profound well of godly wisdom... I refer to the latest issue of Prophecy Flush... no, hang on, maybe that's Flash. Whatever. There are eighty eight pages of classic Dankenbring to wallow in while the wicked world does unspeakable things with wrapping paper and turkey. Will Obama be King of the World? How about those Seventy Weeks in Daniel? Who could resist an article will the most original title: The Book of Revelation Uncloaked At Last! While you're uncloaking you also get a chance to check Flash Willie's briefs... (ah, perhaps I should rephrase that, I mean his prophecy briefs.) Weinlanders may be riveted by an article on the Trib, lunatics have their own interests catered for with another on the New Moons, and how could you pass up on those incredible letters to the editor.

But wait, there's more! William wants to send you his free book on the amazing Nephilim. It's called "Angels, Women, Sex, Giants, UFOs, Alien Abductions and the Occult: What On Earth Is Going On?"

That title about nails everything except rock 'n roll!

Let me think: Snoopy or Flash Willie? Tough choice, but I think I'll just go with the beagle.