Hell (part IV)

One could continue to comb through the Christian scriptures to locate every instance of the mention of “hell” or a related description, and drawing up a large list, sit down to examine what the NT really says about the subject. One must be sensitive to literary styles, the use of metaphor, poetry, etc, while at the same time acknowledging when a text seems to indicate its actors truly believe the topic of their discourse has definite characteristics, really existing in some sense. So, for example, when reading the following passage:

“We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.
All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith.” (2 Thessalonians 1:3-11)

It should be obvious that hell, i,e, “punishment with eternal destruction” functions in a number of ways: 1) As a promise that wrongs will be righted, that in the end there will indeed be justice for those followers of Christ who suffer terribly at the hands of their persecutors, proving the validity of the statement “God is just.” It goes without saying that, based on this passage, God’s justice is contingent on his being able to punish those who cause such “suffering” (1:5). In other words, calling into question God’s lack of mercy or grace for the persecutors simultaneously calls into question his justice.

2) This promise of eternal punishment for the persecutors brings hope to the persecuted. It is obvious that it is here meant as an encouragement for those Christians who are suffering. It functions as a reminder of their calling from God.

3) The writer contrasts two types of judgment: a) God’s judgment in his calling, and b) God’s judgment against those who persecute his elect. It seems clear the writer believes God has chosen (judged) some to be faithful in Thessalonica, that he has chosen beforehand who will be called. For some this is offensive to our modern sensibilities (does God not love all, why not call all?), whereas for others of a more Calvinist strand it is merely an indication of God’s sovereignty (the debate is ancient, again due in large measure to scripture’s ambiguities/inconsistencies). That the Thessalonican’s perseverance is “evidence that God’s judgment is right” (he chose wisely beforehand, somewhat like when we were children and chose a soccer team from among our classmates who later proved victorious- this is precisely what is happening with Job: Satan calls into question God’s judgment that Job is righteous, the rest of the story unfolds with the vindication of Job and therefore God himself. This is why I believe the introduction with Satan is a vital part of the text), so too will his judgment righteously fall upon those who oppose his chosen, a positive and a negative judgment.

4) That hell as eternal punishment is a real possibility, that it involves both fire and absence from God, i.e. it’s not merely metaphorical but actually descriptive. The writer really believes it will “happen this way” and encourages his listeners to believe “this will happen” (1:7).

I’m sure it is possible to further examine this passage in light of other critical approaches, to further flush out the life world of his audience (sociological/anthropological), to investigate further his descriptive terminology from a historical perspective (archaeological/literary) etc.

All of this is merely the scriptural consideration. Within a certain Christian approach this is sufficient. But for a large number of Christians, tradition also plays a vital role: “What has the Church to say about this topic?” Not just the Church right here in the particularity of our little town or city, but what has the Church, that great mass of saints spanning two thousand years, those great councils, those men and women of great learning and devotion, what have they to say? Can they so easily be dismissed with the naive statement “speak where the Bible speaks, be silent where it is silent”? It should be obvious how impossible this task is, how unproductive and confusing, how divisive in the long run.

We have not yet come to the end of our explorations.

Hell (part III)

We have seen that the writer of Hebrews seems not to believe in an eternal punishment for the unrighteous, unless by “eternal” we mean no chance for reprieve, no going back, no grace. He (or she) does indeed believe that those who refuse the grace of God will one day be consumed (or eaten) by God’s fire, violently shaken, and completely annihilated: they will cease to exist, vanish. Here there is no mention of everlasting fire or a torturous existence. Here too there is no more grace beyond a certain threshold, be it in the next life, or perhaps even in this one (Esau was an interesting case in point, though I won’t be too dogmatic here).

Rather than continue by summing up a particular author, I will instead consider that other view of Hell found in the Christian NT, the one in agreement with the previously mentioned councils: eternal punishment without end.

I have already indicated that the notion of a hell began some time before the writing of the NT scriptures or the ministry of Jesus. I think perhaps the earliest one can find it in the scriptures as a whole, (and this is only the idea of hell, not a formal designation) would be the book of Daniel. This is one of our post-Persian era writings (see my post on the devil) so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising. The passage I have in mind is Daniel 12:1-2:

“At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”

Here, as one can see, there is no specific mention of hell, but the notion of “everlasting contempt” is present. It is the sapling of what would become a horrible tree. Skipping the apocryphal books of the intertestamental period, we come to the NT itself. It is John the Baptist who first speaks of Jesus separating the wheat from the chaff, the latter being burned up with “unquenchable fire.” Jesus himself does not hesitate to use the imagery of everlasting fire and punishment:

Matthew 18:8: If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.

Matthew 25: 41, 46: Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

Mark 9:48: It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where “‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’

I’ve chosen these references specifically because they seem to indicate a sense of eternal punishment. There are many more which merely mention fire or some other horrible kind of fate, but which do not specifically hold this quality of everlastingness. One counter-example from Matthew 10, which could even be construed in an annihilationist way (does the attempt to harmonize these accounts for the sake of maintaining "one Author" not do violence to the texts themselves, not to mention the dishonesty involved, no matter how well intentioned):

"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (10:28).

It should be said here that if Jesus actually said these things his words would have been unambiguous to his listeners. By this time there is already a hell tradition, and part of this tradition includes a sense of its eternity. Against modern writers who seem to want us to believe that his listeners would somehow “interpret” this differently I’m afraid that based on the overwhelming evidence they’re merely wishful thinkers (Nietzsche would refer to them as “abusers of history”).

While it is true that Jesus certainly believed in the existence of hell and its eternal nature (both its existence and, quite likely, its nature as eternal punishment), he also certainly didn’t make this the main focus of his teaching. This seems obvious even with a quick glance at the gospels. Those people who portray Christianity as a religion obsessed with hellfire are not basing their assumptions on the gospel record.

Once again we shall have to continue in another post.

Hell (part II)

In our first post concerning hell, I made the claim that Jesus was a man of his times, here in reference to apocalyptic writings popular at that time. One of these writings, and the most important for our subject, is the Ethiopic Book of Enoch. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. That the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian NT have a completely different idea of the afterlife is quite clear, especially in connection to any form of punishment after death for the unrighteous. The New Testament is indeed clear that there will be a punishment of the unrighteous, a reckoning, a righting of wrongs, and “avenging of blood.” This is entirely necessary in a place and time when whole families were persecuted for their belief. It also satisfies the sense of injustice that people have had since ancient times that the wicked should prosper while the righteous perish. This life is not the end of the story, in other words. Whether this punishment is eternal or not is a matter of which author you ask. The NT does not have a uniform voice here. The writer of Hebrews, for example, seems to indicate that this punishment is temporary, that sinners will be completely consumed by fire and destroyed:

“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” (Heb. 10:26-27).

The word translated by “consume” here means literally “to eat” often used in the most mundane passages of the NT to indicate someone eating a meal etc. Here would be a passage that annihilationists (those people who believe there is no hell, but that the unrighteous are completely destroyed) might use in their arsenal. The writer later says:

“Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done” (Heb 12: 16-17).

Here too people have found evidence that there is no second chance, that once one is lost, they are always lost. This is consistent with the declarations of the early councils that I mentioned in our first post, and it is also consistent with the first passage I quoted from chapter 10: "no sacrifice for sins is left," only fearful expectation. The councils applied this to the afterlife, but here is there not a possibility the writer even means in this life there is no grace beyond the “falling short” of God’s grace, the immoral act, the one who hates peace and holiness, even if sought with “tears?” We see here the same parallel: sin followed by a sign of regret (tears/fearful expectation), guaranteed rejection/destruction. In its context (both here and in the previous two chapters) is this not a reasonable interpretation? So for the writer of Hebrews one does not even “see the Lord” but is completely destroyed by God’s fire (perhaps God himself, see 12:29). No mention of eternal damnation to be sure, but also an interesting coupling of the usual modern response: “hell is living in the absence of God” (not “seeing the Lord”) with literally being eaten and (we must reasonably infer) completely consumed or annihilated. This same coupling can be found later in chapter 12:

“See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.” (12: 25-27)

Here we find the “removal” of the contingent, the created, that which is not the Kingdom of God (12:28), i.e. those who “turn away from him who warns us from heaven.” There is no mention of this removal involving eternal punishment, but merely a vanishing away of anything not in the Kingdom (see 11:5 where the same Greek word is used of Enoch in a seemingly positive sense, indicating the neutrality of the word: he was “taken” so that he could not be found, i.e. he vanished). Once again a possible annihilationist passage.

In our next post we will have to consider some other NT writers and their position on hell.

Hell (part I)

I have previously touched on the topic of hell. That the present aversion to any “real” hell in the next life and subsequent reinterpretation or outright dismissal is a cultural phenomenon I have already eluded to. Recently I read the blog of a Christian pastor in which he defended the view that hell is simply the self-centeredness of egotistical people, of their wallowing in raging passions and self-pity. Quoting Tim Keller he says: “Hell then is the trajectory of a soul living a self absorbed self centered life, going on and on forever.” The “fire” of hell refers to “refinement” or “purification,” while in another place burning with fire simply means never being complete, i.e. continually being broken down or destroyed, something that takes place right here without reference to a here-after.

This isn’t the first time in the history of the Church that hell has been viewed in a metaphorical sense. St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and Origen (to name a few) understood “fire” to refer to God’s wrath. “Eternal” has been understood as “definitive” or “final” rather than referring to duration per se. So our pastor is in fine company. Of course, after 553 and the Second Council of Constantinople and later the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, hell officially took on its more traditional form and was affirmed as an eternal (in the sense of duration) punishment: “If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema” (2^nd Council Const. This against good Origen).

What of the form of hell? Our good pastor was partly correct in pointing out the influence of Dante’s work on the European imagination. It was he who once wrote: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate (Abandon hope all you who enter here). But our pastor friend neglected to mention another text of great importance, the very one Dante himself relied on: the second century Apocalypse of Peter (not to be confused with the much more pleasant Gnostic version). If you’re looking to have the crap scared out of you or to be made ill this makes for an excellent read.

But where did all this arise? Even a brief look at the Hebrew scriptures (OT) will confirm the complete lack of any semblance to the Christian understanding found in the NT scriptures, even on the very lips of Jesus himself. This is where I think we must part ways with our pastor who says very little about Jesus and hell. One must never forget that Jesus was a man of his times, informed by the same apocalyptic writings that many of his contemporaries were. Of course, our pastor would assume that Jesus was “in the know” about these things and had no need to rely on such writings. Within the circular argument of faith it is almost impossible to convince people otherwise, but I might point out that Luke says even Jesus “grew in wisdom and in stature” (2:52), that he was found “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (2:46), i.e. he learned and was taught (even if, perhaps, he learned at an accelerated rate).

It is not enough to stop at the Councils or at our present cultural interpretation of hell (which is all too accommodating in any case). It is obvious too that it is not sufficient to stop at the canonical writings as there we are faced with a huge gap. We shall have to revisit this.

To Remember or Not (Letter Fragment)

You seem skeptical.. a mind of our age.. a thought without guarantee.  It's funny you mention false memory.  I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately.  For example did you know that after WWI at least 70% of returning soldiers reported having a battlefield encounter where they could see into the eyes of the enemy, a moment of contact before sticking their bayonet into them or shooting them?  But when it was empirically verified the statistics were closer to .5% actually having experienced this.  There are some interesting explanations as to how this could happen (a way to mitigate a deep anxiety etc), which I won't get into here, but it at least supports the idea that we may "remember" things that never took place.  It is possible using various techniques (some quite basic like suggestive wording etc) to help a patient "recollect" a memory that never existed, or distort an authentic memory.  Last year a psychologist in New South Wales (Australia) was prohibited from continuing his practice for this reason (among others): that he "repeated requests for his client to recall or reconstruct memories of childhood traumatic incidents" even though these incidents never took place the way the psychologist suggested.  It is a known fact that people who have been a victim of false memory suggestion often cling to these constructions even in the face of objective evidence pointing to the falseness of their recollections.  The memory takes on a vividness and clarity that few authentic memories possess.  It seems especially despicable to me that here at the hands of a person we go to in confidence for emotional aid such a great deception and sinister lie could be perpetrated.  As someone has pointed out, the person becomes quickly obsessed with the reconstructed memory (often merely the interpretation of the therapist), to the point that the true cause of the mental distress is neglected or overlooked.  It is a comfort to know that many within the healthcare field recognize and fight to overcome those within their fold who through either poor training, insufficient qualifications, the desire for power, or perhaps sheer stupidity cause further damage to the progress of some in their care.  

I think you're right to draw the conclusion that all this suggests the limitations of the human mind, that it is inherently limited, easily manipulated, even able to dupe itself.  It was Darwin who said: 

"But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?"

No doubt there is something to the idea that in our inherent "animality" we are already self-limited.  Are we monkeys dressing up in suits and taking on airs like the chimpanzee I would sometimes see on television, lounging in a sofa chair and looking every bit like George Burns?  What game are we playing with ourselves?

Josephus on Circumcision (Letter to a Colleague)

Lately I've been reading through Josephus' "The Life of Flavius Josephus" when I was reminded of something we briefly discussed: the issue of "conscience" in St. Paul. I quoted Romans 2.14-15:

"Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them."

At the time you commented something to the effect that he may not have meant what I thought he means. You may be quite right (I’ve filed it away for another day), but of interest in Josephus was the following passage:

“At this time it was that two great men, who were under the jurisdiction of the king [Agrippa] came to me out of the region of Trachonius, bringing their horses and their arms, and carrying with them their money also; and when the Jews would force them to be circumcised, if they would stay among them, I would not permit them to have any force put upon them, but said to them, "Every one ought to worship God according to his own conscience, and not to be constrained by force; and that these men, who had fled to us for protection, ought not to be so treated as to repent of their coming hither." And when I had pacified the multitude, I provided for the men that were come to us whatsoever it was they wanted, according to their usual way of living, and that in great plenty also. (23/112).” Italics mine.

Again a similar reference to conscience, here tied to what appears to be a rebuttal of forcible conversion. It is interesting to note the similarities between Paul and Josephus: both operating in a more Hellenistic environment, cosmopolitan, self-proclaimed Pharisees... One can also note that Josephus here offers a minor refutation of that aspect of Paul’s work which seemed to place circumcision among Jews in a highly prominent position (and a major refutation of those abusers of history who go beyond any ambiguity in Paul). Perhaps we see here once again a failure to appreciate the rhetorical structure of Paul’s letters and the worlds in which he lived.

I know that certain communities, like Qumran for example, could be quite strict about membership, but if Josephus is any indication, Jewish sentiments regarding circumcision and conversion during this time were not quite as black and white as Paul or many more contemporary commentators seem to indicate.

La Voix

Mon berceau s'adossait à la bibliothèque,

Babel sombre, où roman, science, fabliau,
Tout, la cendre latine et la poussière grecque,
Se mêlaient. J'étais haut comme un in-folio.
Deux voix me parlaient. L'une, insidieuse et ferme,
Disait: 'La Terre est un gâteau plein de douceur;
Je puis (et ton plaisir serait alors sans terme!)
Te faire un appétit d'une égale grosseur.'
Et l'autre: 'Viens! oh! viens voyager dans les rêves,
Au delà du possible, au delà du connu!'
Et celle-là chantait comme le vent des grèves,
Fantôme vagissant, on ne sait d'où venu,
Qui caresse l'oreille et cependant l'effraie.
Je te répondis: 'Oui! douce voix!' C'est d'alors
Que date ce qu'on peut, hélas! nommer ma plaie
Et ma fatalité. Derrière les décors
De l'existence immense, au plus noir de l'abîme,
Je vois distinctement des mondes singuliers,
Et, de ma clairvoyance extatique victime,
Je traîne des serpents qui mordent mes souliers.
Et c'est depuis ce temps que, pareil aux prophètes,
J'aime si tendrement le désert et la mer;
Que je ris dans les deuils et pleure dans les fêtes,
Et trouve un goût suave au vin le plus amer;
Que je prends très souvent les faits pour des mensonges,
Et que, les yeux au ciel, je tombe dans des trous.
Mais la voix me console et dit: 'Garde tes songes:
Les sages n'en ont pas d'aussi beaux que les fous!'

Baudelaire

The Devil

After some conversation with a friend regarding the Christian notion of hell (though of course not a notion limited to Christianity), I've decided to write about that arch-demon in charge of the place, that slithering seducer, that "accuser": Satan.

What a colourful figure this Satan has been made out to be! For some a serpent, for others a wart-covered travesty, still others an angel of light.. the portrayals are "legion".

Let's begin at the beginning (we'll follow the monotheistic tradition). First, Satan, the devil, was not the serpent in the garden of Eden. This is quite clear from the narrative of Genesis 3. Here we are introduced to what the scripture calls a "crafty serpent". Oddly, though we have just been told that everything the Lord God had made was "good" here we encounter a creature that is manifestly not good. Where did he slither from (or rather walk, since his curse was to slither, indicating that this serpent actually moved about some other way)? Of course his existence is assumed in the narrative, as in so many other mythic accounts of astonishing creatures. It's beside the point for the purposes of the story. Regardless, this crafty fellow in no way resembles that fallen angel Jesus would later speak of. He's a punk animal who is either jealous of these two dimwits (though to be sure the woman, who does the speaking, is the intelligent one here), or is a legitimate emancipatory figure (more about this another time perhaps).

It won't be until much later, until the time of the Persian conquest, that we start to hear about Satan, the naughty angel and accuser of humanity. Before the Jews were immersed in Persian culture and adopted their notion of a Good and Evil principle, there was only God as principle. The prophet Amos makes this clear for example: "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?" (Amos 3:6- evil: ra‛/râ‛âh). For the ancient Jews it was taken for granted that a sovereign and all-powerful God could alone be responsible for both good and evil. Apparently some were uncomfortable with this idea though, and once the idea of an evil principle, a fall-guy, was introduced from a brand of Zoroastrianism the Jews encountered during the captivity (Zervanism), Satan was quickly introduced into the oral and scriptural tradition. There are some pretty clear examples of this:

2 Samuel 24:1 (Pre-Persian Conquest): Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.”

and the exact same story told during/after the Persian conquest in Chronicles:

1 Chronicles 21:1: Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.

In the post-conquest interpretation, it was Satan who incited David, obviously glossing the now distasteful idea that God would incite his anointed in such a manner and then punish him for it! Satan takes the fall..

Every single Hebrew Scripture (OT) reference to Satan takes place after the Persian conquest (see also Zechariah) with the possible exception of one book: Job. The debate still goes on whether this is an ancient story or a more recent one. Perhaps it is a combination of the two.. though I disagree that the Satan story is a later addition. It seems obvious to me that this is an integral part of the tale (if you're curious ask).

By the time we get to the Christian Scriptures a lot has happened. We won't trace the origin and evolution of the notion of hell. There is, however, one interesting reference to "Tartarus" in 2 Peter 2:4: "For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell (NIV footnotes the Greek "ταρταρωσας" -Tartarus-), putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment..." Tartarus, as any classicist knows, is a Greek conception of the underworld, more hellish, it seems, than Hades (though of course even the conception of Tartarus evolved over time). It was said that if a bronze anvil falls into the earth, it would take 9 days to reach there. Interesting how Greek mythology and Christianity would bump into one another.. though not that surprising as it is obvious from recent conversations I've had that culture continues to inform a Christian reading of hell.

It should be obvious what I'm suggesting here: Satan, the devil, is not.. never was. He was a necessary evil, literally. He had explanatory power, made sense, was handy. I've heard people say, "but that's exactly what he wants you to think, that he doesn't exist!" A rather odd argument wouldn't you say?

Baptism in the Churches of Christ (Blog comment)

I will also add here the importance of baptism within this church’s soteriology. It has been typical, I think, for disillusioned members to criticize the Church of Christ’s insistence on adult baptism by immersion as too dogmatic, as missing the point of grace, as reducing the salvific act of Christ to a mechanical/automatic gesture, etc. It is ironic that it is precisely here in baptism that the Church of Christ so closely resembles a Catholic sacramentalism, an earthly/mortal gesture which somehow contains within it a divine/grace-ful/spiritual possibility. At one time the sacraments were an acute point of criticism for non-Catholic members: i.e. “it is ridiculous to think that the host literally becomes the body of Christ, that at a given point in the mass the base earthly elements transubstantiate into the body of our Lord etc.” But today I think the situation is entirely different. Are the churches not precisely embracing a sacramental understanding of Church, of the community, of nature? This is why I think it is so ironic that many disgruntled former members of the church have been so critical of baptism (and the same applies to congregational singing, precisely insofar as it too is sacramental in nature). In their pursuit of the “spiritual” they have completely overlooked the possibilities already inherent in their tradition. That baptism is not only sacramental in the Churches of Christ, but also a visible sign of a commitment, an initiation into a community, and of course an intimate gesture made in complete fidelity to the Kingdom and all its citizens (and by proxy, to the whole world as a citizen devoted to peace and the building up, rather than breaking down of humanity), all this seems forgotten in the narrow view of some who elevate human sentiment/feeling (“heavy emotion”) as an absolute, as if in a kind of gnostic ecstasy one can transcend the elemental (all the while disparaging the very thing their “spirituality” depends on and is rooted in, i.e. the human body, the waters of baptism, the basic “stuff” of the world). It is for this reason a substantial approach may be located within the Church of Christ conception. Your blog, in a somewhat more humble way, celebrates this I think.