A movie that vamps a bit on faith....

Media Observation

Ministers are rarely depicted with any accuracy in the movies, as real human beings.

One exception I found was a movie starring Harvey Keitel as a struggling pastor. We get the sense of struggle when one of his children relates a telephone call from his church. They will hold his ministry position open until he returns. He’d given up his parish and purchased a motor home in which he and his two teenaged children were taking a road trip. He tells his kids he is not going back. At one point, there is a discussion between him and his daughter, played by Juliette Lewis, in which she asks essentially if he has lost his faith. His response is very, very human. He still believes in God and in Jesus, but he no longer loves them.

We soon find out why. His wife died in a car accident. Mr. Keitel relates almost matter-of-factly how the brakes were not so good on the car, it was a rainy night, she went off the road, and it took six hours for her to die. It is a tragic, but entirely believable story. I found the writer’s take to be very real. The pastor did not lose his faith in God or Jesus, he simply could not love them anymore, and, by extension, serve them anymore as a pastor. Harvey Keitel played a man whose faith was present but empty of any meaning. It was more poignant then to simply have the pastor just turn away from God.

I have not encountered a movie where the relationship of a pastor and the Lord is taken up in such personal terms. How can such a tragic set of circumstances, which could affect anyone in the ministry, be resolved in a way that does not seemed forced or unsatisfying? How do you deal with a situation like that?

So what’s the drawback? Never heard of this movie? That is because this story line is a subplot of the vampire gorefest “From Dusk Till Dawn”. George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino playing murderous bank robbers who kidnap Harvey Keitel and his family to sneak into Mexico.

So how does the pastor get his faith back? By recognizing evil not in God and the death of his wife but in the hoards of bloodsucking vampires threatening his family. His faith is only restored after he is bitten and he seeks to take out as many vampires as he can before he becomes undead and his will is no longer his own.

It is an interesting theological point that the body could continue as an instrument of evil after the soul has been saved and gone on from this life.

It is also interesting that one footnote has been added to the vampire lore of the movies. Protestant, especially Baptist ministers-whose churches do not have as part of their liturgy or regalia ‘holy water’-can bless and create holy water to use against the undead.
- P. Hofstra, Opiner

A Brief Statement (Amicus Brief, that is...)

What is Theology?

Well, when in doubt, Google. According to Wikipedia, theology “has been defined as reasoned discourse about God or the gods, or more generally about religion or spirituality.” It was coined by Plato, a compound word from the Greek: theos (god) and logos (rational) .

According to wordnet at Princeton University, theology is “the rational and systematic study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truth.”

The nearest thing I could find on the PCUSA website was an amicus brief by the ACLU concerning litigation in Washington State. Theological education is legally defined as “instruction that resembles worship and manifests a devotion to religion and religious principles in thought, feeling, belief, and conduct, i.e., instruction that is devotional in nature and designed to induce faith and belief in the student.”

So theology is worship with a devotion to religion and religious principles in thought, feeling, belief, and conduct i.e. devotional in nature and designed to induce faith and belief.
Who’d have thunk it, the legalese version is the best one I have seen so far! That is what I hope to provoke, something devotional in nature that, by God’s sovereign will (check the tenets of the faith), will induce faith and belief through the power of the Holy Spirit.
- P. Hofstra, opiner

Pythonesque Presbyterians...

“I’m A Calvinist”
(Sung to the tune of ‘I’m a Lumberjack’)

I’m a Calvinist and I’m okay,I know where I’m going on Judgment Day!

I was depraved, to-tal-ly
Now unconditionally elect
I received that limited atonement
Saving me from heck!

Oh, I’m a Calvinist, and I’m okay,
I know where I’m going on Judgment Day!

I’ve got some grace, irresistible,
With the saints, I’ll persevere,
Someday we’ll be in heaven,
Hey, is it getting hot in here?

Well, I’m a Calvinist and I’m okay,
I know where I’m going on Judgment Day!

I am Reformed, Presbyterian,
But no one knows what that means,
We’ve got great ecclesiology,
And TULIP’s in the green!

I guess, I’m a Calvinist and I’m okay,
I know where I’m going on Judgment Day!

Confessional, varietous,
We argue and never get bored.
That Spirit is empowering us,
To always love the Lord.

Oh, I’m a Calvinist and I’m okay,
I know where I’m going on Judgment Day.
-Peter Hofstra, opiner

Predestination: The "P" Word

In “The Presbyterian Handbook”, this page comes with extreme warning labels. It amazes me how much trouble this concept has caused. Supporters promote predestination as a good thing, the active and interventionist work of our God in creation. Deriders of the term get extreme. God picks the good people for heaven, God picks the bad people for hell, free will is giving you a choice already made, and God authored evil and sin himself. This bugs me.
I am also irritated by the debates of “foreknowledge” versus “predestination”. We totally depraved human beings-never perfected in our faith, only forgiven in it-are attempting to get our limited minds around the knowledge and action of God, the omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, unchanging, all-loving God. It never seems to occur to any of us mentally centered and omnisciently-challenged lovers of Jesus to consider the “both/neither” response.
The “knowledge and action” of God may well be indivisible. This combination of both exists at a level of perfection that is only mystery to the rest of us. To parse them like they were a legal technicality diminishes God and our faith in him. Just because we cannot get our brains around true free will in creation and true divine control of creation doesn’t limit God, just us. Perhaps we can describe another attribute of God as “omni-paradoxical”, in other words, because we don’t get it does not mean God don’t get it. Aren’t you happy to be picked?

-Peter Hofstra, Opiner

Ah, sweet theology!

At the request of WATT (what?) - Worship And Theology Team of the Presbytery - we now have an official web presence! Check this space for copies of the Elizabethan, as well as upcoming events. This is also the place to chat and debate and kvetch (not necessarily in that order).

A couple of ground rules - no anonymous posts. It's your opinion, so own it as such. Secondly, no personal attacks. Debate the issues with passion, leave the snarky comments about grammar, spelling and tie choice to your own time.

Can I hear an amen?