The Case for the Other Floridian

With DeSantis out of the race and Nikki Haley offering her candidacy as a gift to comedians, only one candidate is left. He is far from ideal, but he is the other Floridian the country needs.

In my latest substack, I make a case for the Donald as the synergist the Republican Party must have to defeat Kamala Harris or her clone, Joe Biden, in the coming elections.

I also offer some notes from David Bahnsen’s upcoming book soon to be published on Work and the Meaning of Life. This is already becoming one of my favorite books of the year. I wish I had read it before I wrote my chapter on labor and leisure in my dissertation.

Friendship in the Twitter Age

The implication that I need to break off friendships and relationships with people of different Christian political and theological traditions is absurd. While I will have continual public and private disagreements with them, I will also remember that 99% of pugilism on social media NEVER translates to pugilism face-to-face.

A quick story to make the point.

In my doctoral study days, I sat in a class at RTS with several pastors, some of whom were well-published and recognized in the Reformed tradition. We had to post our names in front of our seats. While this was several years past the Federal Vision controversy, some people still talked as if it were 2002 perpetually. The pastors in that class knew who I was and were even privately sympathetic to the objectivity of the covenant.

As everyone was walking into class, a particular figure who had been renowned for his opposition to Federal Vision, even becoming a sort of itinerant traveler to Presbyterian courts across the country functioning as a prosecutor of all things FV– which he believed was polluting NAPARC congregations–sat down across from me.

Once he glanced at my name and I took a peek at his, it was apparent we had heard of each other. He had read some of my articles and was keenly aware of my affiliations and associations. I had read plenty of him to determine that certain human beings don’t deserve my attention, and he was a frontrunner for that title.

I watched his demeanor closely during class. The class was an overview of Puritan practices. At one time, a poem from a great Puritan was read, and he was emotionally moved. Despite his effort to condemn virtually all my friends, he was humanized in my eyes.

When the lunch break came, I immediately went towards him. I shook his hands, and my first words to him were: “How about lunch tomorrow after class?” It’s as if we both knew instantly it needed to happen.

I don’t need to go into details, but our lunch was extraordinary. We asked each other forgiveness for things that were said behind the scenes and even publicly in writing. He had already been going through some transitions in his thinking and realized that much of his disdain for the FV/CREC was eating him up inside and damaging his soul.

Ever since, we have exchanged thoughts and notes and read each other’s doctoral thesis, and have had meals together here in Pensacola when he visited.

The idea that relational lines are set on social media and that friendships must be ruined makes no sense. There is a clear reason the Apostle John writes that he prefers to see you face-to-face than write in ink. He knew that warnings are received more persuasively through fleshly interactions.

Remember these things.

My New Book is Available for Pre-Order

I am really delighted to announce that my new book is ready for pre-order: https://nogginnose.com/war-of-the-priesthood/

I have attempted to produce a work that is accessible but yet meaty enough to draw you to the text. The goal is to provide something for a Bible/book study that would engage our minds and call us to be ready for action. This overview of the Armor of God will offer a fresh perspective on a familiar passage of Scripture.

With new books, you only have a limited time where interest exists, so please bear with me as I make the rounds in the days ahead to publicize this little gem.

I am also profoundly grateful to those who endorsed and readied the book for publication. Writing a book, at least for me, is a community project.

“Be prepared for a substantive paradigm shift. In this book, Uri Brito offers a sound Biblical interpretation of an all-too-commonly misunderstood and misapplied truth. In the process, he serves up a practical, inspiring, and refreshing vision of the calling of every gospel believer.” – George Grant

What Does It Mean to Discern the Body?

The Church constitutes the body of Christ. When you come to worship, in one way or another, you are connected to the people of God. The Apostle Paul stresses this element in I Corinthians 10. He exhorts us to discern the body of Christ when we come to the Lord’s Table. But, for Paul, this is not a call to intellectually grasp the fullness of the physical body of Christ or develop a precise atonement theology that harmonizes with the writings of the Patristics and Reformers.

Instead, Paul’s entire context has been to unify the Church in Corinth (chpts.11-14), which has been plagued with ethical corruption.

Paul says that these divisions between rich and poor, slave and free, male and female, are contrary to the unifying purposes of God in the world. God sent his Son to reconcile the world unto himself and unite his people to this covenant blessing.

And this leads to Paul’s reference.

Discerning the body means understanding the nature of the Church, and the nature of the Church is to be united together to worship the crucified and risen Messiah. In other words, Paul is not addressing the intellectual inability of a person, but he is directing his warning to the one who is bitter with his brother, to the one who is sowing discord within the church, and to the one who fails to strive for unity.

The Lord’s Table is a reconciliatory table, and all those who live in the nature of that unity, baptized into the Triune Name, are welcome to take and eat and drink, for we are eating and drinking the manna from heaven and the wine of salvation.

C.S. Lewis’ Reading Advice

Woman Reading (ca. 1880–1881) painting

C.S. Lewis’ Introduction to “On the Incarnation” by Saint Athanasius is a lovely and fatherly overview of Christian reading habits. He warns against reading only modern books in favor of a first-hand account from the lips of Augustine or Calvin himself, for instance. He notes that modern portrayals of ancient authors give the false impression that reading current books satisfies the nature of ancient literature. Thus, he warns against the dangers of an “exclusive contemporary diet” (10). He sets the good rule of reading “at least one old book for every three new ones (10).

Notes on Karl Barth

I have resumed my reading of Tietz’s biography of Karl Barth, which is considered the definitive work of the Swiss theologian. Tietz notes that Barth had a distaste for the German-ethno-nationalism formed in the 1920’s. He was outraged by them (113). However, his criticisms were tamed by his deep love for being around the German people and exploring the beauty of Germany.

Tietz observes that Barth underwent a vast transition in his thinking when working on a second edition of his Commentary to the Romans. He was deeply struck by Franz Overbeck’s analysis of the vast difference between speech about God and man. Barth viewed Overbeck’s daunting critique of Christendom as a requirement for his seminary students. God was “wholly other” and, as such, must be kept distinct from any human speech since no speech can speak accurately about the transcendent God.

He further notes that the kingdom of God does not pertain to earthly things but is a “NO to the world” (122). There are overt platonic movements in Barth’s perspective wherein he attempts to dichotomize God from the world, usurping a healthy theology of the imago Deo (112-125).

How to Prepare Institutions for Future Crisis

Every institution will go through difficulties sooner or later. Building structures for handling these problems is helpful at this stage, and they would not be limited to but at least must include:

a) Forming strong bonds among leaders. Invest in them with encouragement and lots of good food and drink. Most institutions are not broken from the bottom but from the top.

b) Emphasize unity with fervency. Make it central to the church’s life, but don’t water down unity to a bare minimum. Build unity on the essentials primarily and the distinctives of the flock secondarily.

c) Locate the strong men in the church and give them assignments that will equip them for future diaconal or eldership calling. Preparing future officers is an absolute necessity for bringing coherence to the life of the body.

d) Meet with those wishing to make tertiary issues into primary, even if you find those issues appealing. Do not allow them to build a following that exalts the odd. Warn them of the social and ecclesial consequences of fracturing the body. These individuals need to be shepherded into catholicity, not away from it.

e) Sing together a lot. At church. At home. At gatherings. A church that sings together stays together. Every institution needs its songs of lament in times of trial. We sing them now in times of peace to be tuned for times of grief and division.

Hallmark Logorrea and Lesbianism

Hallmark movies used to be the exclusive domain of tasteless and self-defeating relational polemics or artistic sentimental drivel as the cool kids would say. But thanks to the times, now it is more than that: a starless display of sexualized logorrhea:

“Hallmark Channel is making a little bit of Christmas history with its first holiday movie centered on a lesbian romance. On the heels of last year’s The Holiday Sitter, the network’s first gay romantic comedy, Friends & Family Christmas hopes to keep the LGBTQ streak going.” https://www.tvguide.com/…/hallmark-lesbian-christmas…/

The idea, of course, is to normalize the gay agenda within a genre that could be easily described as the gayest. Not only will audiences find themselves exposed to an array of worthless dialogues befitting the vocabulary of thuggish elves, but now they will have the added layer of lesbian interactions openly mocking biblical ethics.

As one of the actresses so eloquently put it:

“I hope that there will always be queer Christmas movies every year — at least one but maybe, like, three — and see different people in these roles.”

Like yeah. Like for realz. Like, no!

We will need to do more than simply shout “Merry Christmas” these coming twelve days but also make it abundantly clear that these attempts at synchronizing the festivity of the Incarnate Son of God with unnatural unions (Rom. 1:27) have nothing in common.

This is merely a pagan approach to make evangelicals already sympathetic to these lame-worthy causes even more compelled to give the L a chance. But these will not do.

So, in the masculine, traditional spirit, here are ten great Christmas classics to stir your heart to genuine Trinitarian jolliness. Most of these are available on YouTube for free:

a) A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

b) It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

c) Miracle On 34th Street (1947 & 1994)

d) Die Hard (1988) *NOT FOR KIDS*

e) White Christmas (1954)

f) Klaus (2019)

g) A Christmas Carol (1951)

h) Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966 & 2000)

i) Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

j) Holiday Inn (1942)

I’d love to hear some other suggestions.

Intellectual Submission in Seminary

One of the most fruitful benefits of seminary education was the ability to sit at the feet of academically gifted men and experience a few years of intellectual submission.

When I entered RTS, I had completed a degree in pastoral theology. I had a certain air of superiority over others who did not receive theological education in college or university. But after three months, I quickly realized that sitting in a room with John Frame, Richard Pratt and Simon Kistemaker was to sit in a room where my only solution was to listen, and my duty was to engage quietly. We were all equal as students because none of us had the enormity of these men’s biblical, theological, and systematic knowledge.

While formal training is not absolutely necessary to produce longevity and faithfulness among pastors, it offers intellectual humility. It prepares men to assume their jobs not as the smartest ones in the room but as those upon whom God has called to communicate truth with a gentle and contrite heart.

The best pastoral training is the one that puts you under others before you embrace the great responsibility of leading those under your care.