Dr. Bruce Demarest discovered his treasures
By Peter K. Y. Chang
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The purpose of this book is to emphasize spiritual formation, which shapes and forms Christian character and action into the likeness of Christ. Therefore, we may grow into godliness, holiness, compassion, faithfulness, and obedience.
The author, Dr. Demarest, was profoundly influenced by Thomas A� Kempis, John of the Cross, and Henri Nouwen etc. His spiritual insights helped him to deeply trust in God. This was the first time he experienced the sense of actual growth in the inner man. With these new approaches, he felt satisfied and was transformed into spiritual truth. He said, �What I was discovering was the intuitive way of engaging God; that is, learning how to open my heart as well as my head to truth.� Then he read more extensively in classic writings, and traveled to New Mexico, where he learned to balance the right beliefs, the right affections, and the right actions. There an aged pastor broke cried as he thanked God for solving his problem. This embedded in his life for many years.
It was an encounter with God. Dr. Demarest discovered his treasures in a Christ-centered orthodoxy, the commitment to community. Then, he wanted to get close to other Christians so as to encounter Christ in them. He practiced spiritual disciplines from the past. He learned different views of the ancient writers that led others into the presence of God. He found a way to honor the place and work of the Holy Spirit. Finally, he gained a most treasured gift in connecting with the classic understandings of Christian spirituality through the spiritual masters of history. He realized how important it is to give place to human longings and questions, how to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us to focus on spiritual disciplines, and to draw us into a more intimate knowledge of God. Therefore, we can ultimately rest in Him.
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Thus, Dr. Demarest has been willing with his teaching talent through this book to satisfy people�s spiritual hunger during the age of �the American Dream.� Those people, in fact, are seeking significance by turning to the spiritual world. They long to touch the transcendent, but they are vaguely touching deity before they know the true God. Yet very few average Christians understand that authentic contact with God should affect them in some meaningful, even palpable way. Moreover, the �Native American religion,� the �Old Gods of Pagan Religion,� the �Wicca and Druidism,� the �Mother Goddess of the Earth,� and the �New Age Movement,� etc. and all kinds of atheism, pantheism, polytheism, Naturism, and postmodernism have distorted true Christian belief. A. W. Tozer admitted, �For millions of Christians, God is no more real than He is to non-Christians.� They hunger for something within them, as if Augustine sought for something to love; there was a hunger within him before he became Christian.
We need to lead those who are searching, but have never met God, or gone astray with suffering to know God through His Word. They are weak and unable to stand up for Christian convictions. Their souls also suffer from emotional deadness, from moral problems. They have no enriching relationship with God. We have to find out the causes that may come from intellectualism, emotionalism, legalism, individualism, or hyperactivity. Unfortunately, many people need help, but do not know who will direct them or guide their souls in the direction of growth in Christ? C. S. Lewis addressed this problem as to personal biases that result in a closed mind. At any rate, we may enter a new era in the work of God to reach and revive others and ourselves.
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The word �spirituality� nowadays lends to varied practices. Some non-Christians and other pagan religions, as noted above, have freely misused it. The word �spiritual� functions as the inner person coherent with God�s will. It pertains to the true living God, the Holy Spirit, and it produces the quality of Christian through the Trinity God and His Word. It shapes the Christian life in relationship with Christ for the glory of God. It also renews and satisfies the soul, and extends to every aspect of Christian life before God and other persons.
However, as the definition of spirituality and spiritual are misused, we must discern between the truth and the false which includes generic spirituality and religious spirituality. For the former, it only focuses on the human self-fulfillment with little or no regard for God. It is highly eclectic, picking and choosing from a wide range of beliefs and practices. It concentrates on self, and has a passion for the satisfaction of personal needs and feeling such as C. S. Lewis described in his book �Screwtape Letters.� The fatal flaw of generic spirituality is to disregard for the God of the Bible.
Religious spirituality searches for transcendence and purpose by appealing to a higher power. It is the potent force in the non-Christian religions. Heresies gush as Gnosticism, pretending to be Christian, empower quasi-religious system such as Yoga, Transcendental meditation, and the New Age Movement. It is embodied in the self-help movement, and nourishes so-called religious spirituality relating to a higher power. It elevates human effort above God�s grace. It rejects Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life, and the reality that no one comes to the Father except through Him.
We must distinguish authentic Christian spirituality from the many non-Christian alternatives in the world. Only Christian spirituality concerns the shaping of our inner beings into the likeness of Jesus Christ. That is to say, it is unashamedly Trinitarian, revelational, Christ-centered, creational, salvational, both individual and corporate, and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
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In the Scripture, we see many saints who encountered with God, and we are told that God also is seeking us to be personally intimate with him. C. S. Lewis indicated that when we come to know God, the initiative lies on His side. God is always first seeking us. If we feel aloof from Him, it is probably because we are too busy to respond to His call, or we do not hear His voice. Our relationship with God or other Christians is not frenetic activity. Busyness has never been a virtue for serving God. Our connection with God in quietness and prayer nourishes the inner person under God�s peaceful guidance to flow into hearty relationship with Him. Thus, we may be as the branches resting in the vine without any gap.
However, the goal of Christian spirituality is not to gain information, but to be transformed into Christ�s likeness. It is not to view God as a proposition. It is as a personal engagement with the whole heart including our thinking, intuiting, willing, feeling and relating.
The intimacy with God is face-to-face, which requires us to step out from the shadow of disgrace, pretence, our head knowledge, and good works. The union of Christ and Christians is a positional union. It is a position in the sphere of redemption through Christ. The union between God and us, in Christ, does not mean that our finite being unites with God�s infinite being. It is not that of a metaphysical union as with the Gnostics do. It involves the intimate relationship of a meeting and a marriage. Our hunger for this intimacy is not self-absorption, irrational escapism, or other esotericism. It is the desire God bestows on us to fulfill and experience the fellowship with Jesus in His and our love. The only thing that hinders our union with God is unrepentant sin. The sin such as self-centeredness and unbelief eats up our faith and love to face God. The root of sin deep in heart suffocates our dialogue with God until we confess our sin entirely before Him. 5 The word meditation is also misused among all non-Christians. They practice meditation and chanting all to quench their inner thirst. Even the YMCA and YWCA both offer courses on Yoga and Transcendental Meditation. Such heretic meditation traps some Christians and they fall prey to evil. The average Christians who avoid false meditation still do not listen to the voice of God because of the noise of the outer world. They must surrender to God�s will.
God calms our hearts when we listen to His voice, and He prepares us for decent meditation and prayer. Let us focus on the word of God. We can believe that we are breathing in His grace, love, peace, gentleness and tenderness.
As we meditate on the word of God in our quiet hearts, we begin to give attention to reflecting His nature, His abilities, and His works. As we come to Scripture, we believe that God is personally listening and speaking to us. We prayerfully ponder, muse and chew His word and other Christian writings that reveal Him. The purpose of meditation is different from preparing Bible studies and sermons. It is simply permitting the Holy Spirit to activate the life-giving Word of God to transform our lives into His likeness and bring us close to His bosom.
God calls us to meditate on His word as He called Joshua to study the Book of Law and His decrees continually. Meditating on it day and night helped him to be guided by God, as he crossed the Jordan. Our achievement will be like Joshua�s remarkable success..
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Another similar way to open our soul to God is the Judeo-Christian practice of looking to the Lord Himself. It is contemplation, also known as �the practice of the presence of God.� Contemplating on the Triune God helps the soul to connect with God. It is not a luxury, but a healthy practice to meditate on the Triune God. It is the habit of living in the presence of God, and it provides the solid foundation for the whole of Christian life and service. When we are contemplating, it demands that we fix the eyes of our inner being on God Himself. When we pray, we open ourselves to God so that He can speak to our inner lives without any barrier. The prayer of the heart involves reciting a biblical word or a phrase that is one of God�s attributes, or a token of His presence. A simple prayer is called �The Jesus Prayer,� which is simply praying to God that �Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.� It is unique to cultivate the prayer of the heart. Many devoted Christians have prayed �The Jesus Prayer� for many centuries because it contains the core conviction of the gospel, the incarnation, deity, and saving action of Christ in a very simple prayer.
We need to compose our souls and focus single-heartedly on Him to experience a satisfactory connection to God. If we cannot calmly think it ourselves this way, we cannot present ourselves to Him. According to Brother Lawrence, a simple prayer such as this may practice contemplation in the presence of God. Thomas Merton also indicated that a prayer of such simplicity is rather contemplative. We look to God by faith. This opens our inner eyes with spiritual perception as David did to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. Augustine depicted the prayer of contemplation as �a loving gaze of the human spirit directed toward God.�
Contemplation is the perfect counterpart to biblical meditation.
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In a broad sense, the spiritual helper is a mature Christian who offers soul-care in the form of spiritual friendship, spiritual guidance, spiritual mentoring, or spiritual direction.
Discipleship includes teaching, training, and a helping ministry. It is an important biblical concept, which must be encouraged and supported. An effective discipleship program may enable Christians to grow in the spirit, to live out the value of Christ, and to meet the purpose of God�s Kingdom. An effective approach to discipleship involves our faith and lives. A spiritual helper who knows how to lead us deeply into God�s will, must be familiar with training in essential Christian doctrines, structuring a quiet time, cultivating Christian fellowship, and witnessing to the Christian experience.
Christian helping agents by practicing personal soul-care, build on the core issues of discipleship to achieve Christ-like souls. We should pay more attention to nurturing the life of individual Christians. Jesus approves of this in Matthew chapter twelve. Soul-care deals with dysfunction to renew Christian foundation in sorrowing Christian hearts.
Soul-care ministries recognize that variable dispositions relate to God differently. They guide growing Christians to take account of personal history and temperaments. Mentoring and offering spiritual direction must be highly personalized. Jesus gave the best model when he called twelve disciples and taught, trained, and nurtured them according to each individual need. God called Moses to guide the Israelites as a whole, and to mentor Joshua in pearticular
The spiritual helpers must have a dynamic Christian faith. They call forth new life in other Christians by closely connecting to Jesus. They must possess knowledge regarding Scripture, theology, the spiritual classics, and psychology. They also should be persons of loving concern, of experiencing some suffering and failure in life, and of knowing how to deal with it.
Dallas Willard concluded, �Spiritual direction was understood by Jesus, taught by Paul, obeyed by the early church, followed with excesses in the medieval church, narrowed by the Reformers, recaptured by Puritans, and virtually lost in the modern church.� Therefore, it is our responsibility to restore it.
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Emil Brunner�s �Law of the closeness of relation� could be imperfect, but it helped us understand the discipline concerning psychology. It includes the important aspects of truth and the distortion of truth due to the disturbance of judgment by sin. Christian counseling is to identify and welcome what is true in psychology while rejecting what is inconsistent with the biblical standard of truth.
The human being consists of an inner immaterial soul and spirit, dwelling in a material body, which is known as �dichotomy.� Soul and spirit are interactive and interrelating, but soul often refers to the self from the human perspective, and spirit, the self from the divine point of view. Our inner person cannot be divided into two essentially different parts, soul and spirit. The former deals with psychological, the latter with spiritual issues. In fact, a person engages God with the inner structure in the same as he engages himself and others. Faulty thought of self leads to misbehavior toward God. Hostile emotion toward another person leads to resenting God. A strained relationship with another person impairs relationship with God.
Therefore, we need Christian counselors to work for the soul and to foster spiritual growth by dismantling psychological barriers. The functions of psychology in the field of Redemptive Counseling include the contribution to spiritual formation, helping Christians to understand their uniqueness, showing how false images of God hinder spiritual growth from maturity, highlighting the destructive power of false guilt, and exposing the tyranny of perfectionism and being a workaholic.
A Christian who is delivered from condemnation is not necessarily healed from emotional illness. For those who are emotional wounded, God uses Christian psychology counselors to bring healing to them. Biblical-framed psychology helps to diagnose emotional and spiritual problems and offers healing solutions to re-experience God�s love, mercy, peace and grace.
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Many Christian scholars admit that reading the spiritual classics can satisfy our common hunger for experiencing and honoring God. When we read them, we enter into conversation with the great personalities of the Christian heritage. As Hebrews 12:1 said, �All these pioneers who blazed the way for us.� The classics showed the major movements of Christian spirituality. We read, as if we engage patristic, medieval, Orthodox, Reformation, Roman Catholic, and Charismatic writers. We receive the benefits of great personal blessing via the writings of spiritually wise men and women. The spiritual classics also challenge our culturally shaped perspectives on the faith. We tend to reflect the norms and values of the social context, and neglect legitimate elements of biblical faith. The spiritual classic writers help us distinguish the truth from the false in every generation.
Solomon, who experienced most blessings before he was old, found that nothing satisfies the heart apart from God. Apart from a living relationship with God, everything is �chasing after wind, everything is meaningless,� he said.
However, Paul experienced hunger in his heart as a sign of life and hope. Teresa of Avila advocated the need for believers to surrender themselves unconditionally into God�s loving bosom. Growing Christians, each in their own ways, cultivate discipline through quietness, meditation, verbal or nonverbal prayer, and spiritual reading. Our spiritual progress occurs via the synergy of God�s initiative and our trusting responses.
Before ending the book, Dr. Demarest has pled for balance in living out the gospel. He urged us that Theology and spirituality must be bound together in a mutually nourishing relationship. We must take biblical warning against doctrinal laxity. We must have our roots in the historic Christian message. We should follow the examples of faithful theologians. We must avoid antichristian heresies, which deny absolute truth and disintegrate Christian belief. Finally, Francis of Assisi, gave some mottos to encourage us. These are Christian spirituality is an enterprise, which integrates the whole person; spiritual renewal calls for self-denial, following the example of Jesus and other saints; Spiritual path requires openness to change and challenge; the spiritual restoration calls for courage, for the Kingdom�s sake etc. Thank to Dr. Demarest, we have committed ourselves to serve God. We are ready to meet the goals set in theis book.
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Crystallizing Our Wisdom | |||||||||||||
| (Book Review B) Non-Christian's Viewpoint; By Peter K. Y. Chang (1) A valuable quantitative proof At times Christians should appreciate a non-Christian�s affirmative survey of Christianity, especially when using a theory other than theology or the Christian worldview, such as social science if God inspires it. Rodney Stark with his sociological expertise finds the successful growth of Christianity to extend beyond the �New Testament and the early church fathers� claim� His quantitative proofs, although having some misinterpretation of the Christian populace in the book of Acts, strongly illustrates and extrapolates the probable growth of early Christians. However, except for a few ancient Christian data from Eusebius and others, Stark, as an unbeliever, tends to survey through the exemplars that alienate from the Christian core belief. He prefers to adopt the samples of contemporary non-Christian heresy, such as Mormonism, and fallacy, such as Moonism. Those religious beliefs are rejected by most of orthodox Christians today. Unlike his Christian population statistics, which are manual assessments of the Jewish historicity, Stark analyzes the motifs of Christian conversion and the progresses of the Christian life in accordance with the theory of groupthink. He illustrates a phenomenon in which members of the group are led to suppress their beliefs in the interests of group consensus, but entirely excludes the divine attribution. In his conjecturable example of Conversion and Christian Growth, he claims, �If, I argue that the rise of Christianity benefited from superior fertility or from an excess of females who made possible high rates of exogamous marriage, am I not, thereby, attributing sacred achievements to profane cause? I think not.� It seems he presumes that prolific Christian females will raise their religious offspring by exogamous marriage with the pagan husbands. The question is that if those children who are not converted by their own repentance who are just being baptized through the will of their parents like Catholics have done, count as Christians? Since late in Solomon�s life his pagan concubines had caused the problem of syncretism and apostasy. This problem increased and provoked God into great rage during the division of Israel and Judea monarchies, and all the prophets rebuke exogamous marriages as defiling Judaism. Even in the New Testament era God still care about the quality of Christianity. Yet, Stark continues, �Whatever one does or does not believe about the divine, obviously God did not cause the world to become Christian, since that remains to be achieved. Rather, the New Testament recounts human efforts to spread the faith.� He even infers that �following the execution of James and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem, the Christian community in Palestine seems to have died out.� There were two martyrs called James, one was the Apostle James, the brother of John, and another the author of James� Epistle, the brother of Jesus. No matter whom he was; their martyrdom had never ceased the Gospel to spread. At the time Herod executed the Apostle James and Peter was rescued from his imprisonment by the angel, he continued to exert himself to work for God under the persecution of the Romans. Besides, Paul and Barnabas also were sent off by the Holy Spirit to start their journal ministries, (Acts 12-13.) The destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies, which Jesus predicted in the Four Gospels, has no history for sixty years, but this does not mean there was no activity of Christian movement. The prosperity of Judaism or Christianity usually annexed to some catastrophes that God scattered them to exile in Assyria, Babylon and Egypt to spread Judaism or under the persecution of Rome to expand the gospel of Christ. (2) A limited outlook of an outsider Stark�s standpoint, as an outsider view, never experiences the intervention and revelation of God in one�s Christian life. He should perceive that the conversion of Cornelius and Lydia those whom God gave vision to Peter and Paul to baptize were beyond human efforts, much less the conversion of multitude at Pentecost that was entirely with the power of the Holy Spirit, (Acts 2, 10, 16.) His watch and surveillance of religious shift, finds that the possibility of conversion depends on �bring one�s religious behavior into alignment with that of one�s friends and family members.� Stark, therefore, declares that the basis for successful movements of conversion is growth through social network, a structure of direct and intimate interpersonal attachments. He asserts, �The rule extends to Jesus too, since it appears that he began with his brothers and mother.� � I doubt if Stark knows that even James and Jude did not believe their brother Jesus as Christ until His resurrection. No wonder, Jesus described Himself disappointedly in Mt. 13:57, �Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor.� Stark gives credit to the rise of Christianity, nevertheless, that credit still falls short of divine confirmation this rise deserves. During the reign of Constantine, Gibbon in his famous work on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire indicates that 12,000 men were purchased in a year at an easy rate for their salvation. At this point, many heathen were won over by adoption of pagan rites and festivals as parts of Christian worship. This similarly happened in Nu 25:1ff that many Moabite women beguiled the Israelites to worship pagan gods and caused 24,000 people, due to God�s wrath, to die of the plague. God must blot out those numbers from the book of life as Ps 69:22 said. This would be beyond Stark�s comprehension to recount his statistics while he admires Constantine for replacing Christianity with paganism as the state religion. (3) The classification of Christianity as well its cause and effect Since the Bible always rebukes the rich and affirms the poor, Erwin R. Goodnough and his kind tend to attribute the Christian movement to somewhat like a canvass of the lower classes. People somehow evaluate religious weighty by the criteria of external conditions, such as social standing and individual property. It is understandable that E. A. Judge and other scholars congenial to him must endeavor to defend high-class Christians. Their debates usually go full circle because they always argue in human sense without divine insight. In fact, the humble and the poor are much easier to accept the gospel of God rather than the rich and celebrities to do because their pride and selfishness hinder the latter from the grace of God. The characteristics of Christianity should, therefore be, exclusive of the worldly assessment and determination. We cannot even recruit a person for Christianity by our own will and struggle without God�s authority. It is that God chooses us to be His believers, not that we elect God as our worshiper. Again, Stark adopts a far-fetched proletarian theory of Niebuhr to analyze the sect and cult movements of Mormonism, Moonism, and the Free Methodists and Seventh-Day Adventists, those of heresy and fallacy for the classification of Christianity. At first, he classifies it as a low-class movement but afterward he spells out that it is not a proletarian movement. Yet, Stark does not audit any mega-church today to see how much finance that only millionaire Christians can afford, even though their money may not stand for their piety and loyalty. To mention this does not propose to offer a counterproposal but to emphasize that God cares about our heart, no matter who is rich or poor, noble or humble. Stark energetically collected all kinds of college-educated percentages in each religious group, but how do they reflect the religious truth and Christian faith? At this rate, they only show that the educated people have some tendency toward different cults and sects or different interest in religious performances. The Bible evidently tells us that we must first ask for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, and be enlightened by divine teaching but not human schooling (Eph 1:17, 18). It provides for us examples of Peter and John who were men of no education or learning, but their knowledge of God and discernment in religious truth and righteousness were greatly surprised (Ac 4:13.) In 2 Tim 3:16, Paul said, �Every holy writing, which comes from God is of profit for teaching, for training, for guiding, and for education in righteousness.� In short, neither the education nor the social rank of Christians is the causes and effects of their conversion. In reality the majority of Christians are middle-class, it only concerns the confession of individual and the salvation of God. To spread the Gospel of God is just like to sow the seeds of mustard so that God Himself will cultivate according to their faith. Evangelization neither has a connection with any class movement, nor with the so-called relative privileged conditions between converters and the church as Stark assumes. The relationship between Christians and their church is as the body to the head, (Eph 5:23, 29, 30. Co 1:24, 1 Pet 4:1.) Christ is the head of the Church and we Christians are integrated into His body. It is a whole entity, not like that of the separate members of other groups or religions. (4) Christianity is not a cult or sect movement Stark deems that Jesus� ministry was a sect movement within Judaism, and then it turned into a cult movement after Jesus� resurrection. He considers Christianity as a sect out of Judaism [not within paganism], and its new religious culture as a cult movement in the context of the empire. Stark�s inference, of course, is always drawn from Mormonism, Moonism or other religious� sect and cult movements that used to deviate from old beliefs and become new religions. However, Christianity is not of a kind. It has never purged or changed the Old Testament from Judaism. Furthermore, the New Testament is an extension and conclusion of the Old Testament to accomplish the messianic prediction as to God�s atonement and His last judgment for all human beings since Adam committed the fatal sin. This includes the result of Jews� disobedience and the justification of Judaism in the future. In the Old Testament God first legitimated the Jews to be His selected people and in the New Testament Jesus first evangelized the Jews to convert to Christianity. Nevertheless, the Jews rejected Him as prophesied in the Old Testament, then the grace of God granted by the God-fearers and at last has spread all over the Gentiles. Yet God�s salvation will come back to the Jews after their future repentance. Christianity and Judaism has been one in progress to complete God�s plan that gradually fulfills His words through both the Old and the New Testament. Christianity is not a new religion to counteract Judaism but to employ in rectifying Jewish belief as the eschatology and the apocalypse have shown. Stark�s proposition even uses the assimilation of ethnic groups in American society to turn back the wheel of history into Jews� emancipation and conversion to Christianity. It rather retrogrades from God�s revelation and all the prophets� predictions. As for the culture and ethnic context in the assimilation of religious movements, although it is true to all religions that they must retain much of both cultures and resolve the contradictions between them, Christianity is exceptional. Since God has established Christianity by His own and for His salvation and judgment, whereas human beings have created their religions by themselves, God purges all cultural and ethnic idolization that violates the Ten Commandments (Ex 20). Even though cultural or ethnic intimacy would be a great benefit to evangelization, we should not take it to bribe non-Christians. Christianity is not as cheap as a candy bar. That is why Dietrich Bonhoeffer advocates the costly grace. He says, �Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace� Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices.� John the Baptist denied baptizing the unrepentant Pharisees and Sadducees rather than dragged them in to swell the total,(Mt 3:7) Jesus went to pagan cities not to allure or compromise but to denounce the wicked because they never repent, (Mt 11:20, 24). Those examples are in contrast with Stark�s propositions that would be the best network to recruit other religions through. (5) Epidemics, chaos and sacrifice. Stark finds many resources concerning plague in the second century that other historians mostly omitted. He applies his �Interrelationship Attachments� theory to the epidemics issue during Christianity being enlarged in this period. When pagans lost their attachments, Stark supposes that the Christian social networks would provide them with much greater probability of adjustment. He cites some scholar�s arguments that a new religion often generates a new social arrangement to fit its new circumstance, and that Christianity as a new vitalized religion is efficacious to deal with epidemic problems. Thus, the knowledge of science has been overstated and the intuitional appealing to God�s grace was deprived from going into too many whys and wherefores of tragedy. In fact, when people are definitely hopeless in a fatal situation and all the efforts of pagan deities have been in vain, their radical needs will be forcibly crying out for God�s grace and His ultimate help. During the epidemics, all Christians were pressed into service by their faith and love. At this point, most non-Christians who are slow to discern God�s grace and salvation would be keen to understand the great compassion of Christian. So does Stark turn his viewpoint to confirm the teaching of Apostle Paul in 1 Co 1:2, and Jesus Christ in Mt 25:35-40, to support the sick, infirm, poor, and disabled while the pagan gods were incapable of action and the Romans avoided contacting with those who had been infected: �Indeed, as God demonstrate His love through sacrifice, humans must demonstrate their love through sacrifice on behave of one another. Moreover, such responsibilities were to be extended beyond the bonds of family and tribe.� This is most positive opinion of Stark in his survey of Christianity though his unilateral rating of Christian and pagan�s mortality does not make much sense. (6) Female Christian fertility and urban ministry It must soothe many female Bible readers that Stark ascribes the growth of Christianity to the role of women. Especially so-called the �secondary conversions,� where the Christian wives and pagan husbands raised their Christian offspring to gain religious populace. Again, this must be examined by the genuine conversion as mentioned above because Christians are not by birth and so-called the second conversion, which Stark acknowledges they are passive and reluctant acceptance of a faith, only elaborated by Christian mothers who do not exempt from abolishing pagan idolatry in such a sheer idol worship circumstance. As for the prohibition against Christian virtues, such as divorce, incest and marital infidelity, infanticide and abortion, which often cause major death of women in the Christian community, Stark deems that those are the incentives of pagan female to convert to Christianity. These actually are the cases. Even Jesus and the Apostles all emphatically took care of women, children, the poor and the outcast. However, the resources Stark uses, such as the Shakers, Christian Scientists, Theosophists, Swedenborgians, Spiritualists and Latin American Protestants that are liberationists and probably are radical feminists, to prove female primary conversion to Christianity more than male should be ahistoric and inappropriate. Since he forgets one of the major causes for lack of male Christians in the early church was due to Vespasian and Domitian, the Roman Emperors, and King Herod had slain numerous male infants and the Romans� lack of female was the encouragement of male fighters to engage in warfare. In this area, Stark still disregard the indispensable condition for converting to Christianity that should be thoroughgoing repentance but never be the status and merit of religious women. If not, the pagan females including their priestess would be attractive to Christian males in other respects, and vice versa. Rationally, the Christian genders should be developed in proportion to males and females. An area or a church being heavily populated by female Christians is abnormal. No attribution of female fertility to the Christian growth can be God� will. As Stark says, �We can therefore assume that during the rise of Christianity the Christian population grew not only via conversion, but via fertility.� Alas! What kind of Christians are they not necessarily via conversion? The elements of rising Christianity other than ethnic interrelationship are geographic and political influences. Stark lists twenty-two largest cities of the Greco-Roman world to express the Christian movement in the early churches that concerns geography. From his quantitative analysis, he finds why Christianity arose more rapidly in some areas than in others. With their sizes and locations, he compares the atlases and the Apostle Paul�s traveling ministries. Thus, he proclaims that the distance from one specific city to Rome has relative weight of Roman and Jewish influence and the inference of that city�s culture by another�s always resorts to the distance between the two cities. According to Stark, so are the influences of Romanization and Christianization. However, there was Philippi, a city far away from Jerusalem Stark did not cite, which had been least inference by Jerusalem and Jewish culture and became the first and most thriving church in Europe. In fact, this was certainly worked out by the Holy Spirit during Paul�s second ministry. Therefore, Stark�s enumerations of Gnosticism and other related assumptions would not be necessarily caused by the prosperity of Christianity. The development of Christianity can be neither materialized nor psychologized. The city, which Stark takes for an urban movement, is Antioch, but it is a very different description from what the Bible describes. In Acts 6:5, Nicolas of Antioch, became one of the deacons of the apostolic church, the city had developed into the first Gentile church and even the mother of all the others. Since Stephen�s martyrdom, many fugitive Christians scattered over Antioch and inaugurated a new era of preaching the Gospel with Barnabas and Paul and then the Disciples were first called Christians (Acts 11:19-26.) There were ten councils held in the city and from there it rose to a school of thought distinguished by literal interpretation of the Scriptures. Its importance and prosperity as such differs from what Stark said, �A city so lacking in stable networks of attachments,� and ascribes people�s accepting salvation to the geographical threat. There were two cities named Antioch, one was the capital of Syria, another was near Pisidia in southern Minor Asia. Both cities were recorded in Acts during Paul's missionary journeys. Stark has not distinguished between the two yet. (7) Martyrdom, virtue and opportunities In the Bible, we see many Christians' faith and royalty being put on trial by the all kinds of temptation and they had never failed. Even martyrdoms are rather encouraging than scaring. The increase of Christianity after catastrophes somehow resembles the revival of sprouts behind a wintry blizzard. Nevertheless, Stark points out that modern social scientists have viewed Christian sacrifices as the symptoms of psychopathology or abnormal masochism. Thanks to Stark's, he helps martyrs out of this predicament. He advocates that the Christian martyrs have earned their best religious bargain. He surmises that the Christian movement is a kind of commercial activity. In term of its costs and benefits, the martyrs will be in reward for their sacrifices and stigmas, and the compensator (God) in a win-win situation. However, he adds that the compensation is a lone-term exchange and the pending rewards become the risky unknown wager so that people would seek to maximize rewards and to minimize costs. Thus, Stark asserts his rational-choice proposition concerning a series of religious economic cost-benefit systems. In the sight of Stark, religious beliefs are sort of long-term investments, and Christianity the highest level of all. Being the best collective products in the religious markets, Christianity as a self-employed practitioner has had its significant market niche to run its effective strong organizations on its best opportunity. This is one of the major points that Stark comments on about the rise of Christianity. It should be unnecessary to refute all of his details but we need, at least, to argue that Christianity has never been that of the economic commodities. Stark definitely misunderstands what Dietrich Bonhoeffer mentioned about the costly grace. "Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares" indicates that Christ's grace is based on the invaluable purchase of His precious blood shedding for our sins and it is impossible to buy it with our own deeds or any capacities but only to entirely repent of our sins, believe in and submit to Him to obtain His grace for free. The free grace of God's salvation is for all Christians who believe in Him and have repented and been baptized. The rewards are additional to salvation. They might be as scarce and rare as Stark says but they are not because the insufficiency of the supply. God has unfathomable faith and love to soothe martyrs and even to give all saints the crowns of righteousness and the crowns of life, but their rewards are neither interchangeable by any deed nor as Stark defines that shared emotional satisfaction. Stark depicts Ignatius' fearing not able to die in the arena to earn his reward must entirely twist the motif of his insistence on never forsaking Christ. Furthermore, Stark proposes the risk of investment in Christianity is obviously a recapitulation of Psacal's wager that has been condemned in both the Old Testament and the new Testament by God's severe admonition: "do not test your God!" (Dt 6:16; Ps 4:12; Mt 4:7; 1 Jn 4:1) Christianity demands exclusive commitment but not as a religious stock firm as Stark wishes. There is no any resemblance between practitioners and clients but of a paternity relationship in Christian belief. Christianity shares in all ages of Christians but is not a department store approach to its consumers. It is not marketing technology but God's love and mercy to enrich Christian life. However, the Christian ethics must keep love and justice in balance. Christians' movements as group activities need to spread the Gospel of God and enhance their faith and love, while salvation and judgment are individually taking place by God's righteousness. At any rate, Stark's standpoint as an unbeliever never can enter into the core belief of Christianity. His propositions could be true to all kinds of organizations and other religions except Christianity, for which is beyond all human knowledge and competence of application. The only way to revise his book is for Stark to undergo a decisive life-changing experience that leads to his authentic belief in Christ Jesus. (12/31, 2003 last updated) |
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| Writing with hia/her soul, reading into your heart | ||||||||||||||
| Link to other pages of my poetry and essay: | ||||||||||||||
| In Light of God's Inspiration | ||||||||||||||
| Feeling Something Innermost | ||||||||||||||
| Some Words Deep In My Heart | ||||||||||||||
| My Chinese Biblical Literature | ||||||||||||||
| Chinese/English Bilingual Writer | ||||||||||||||
| Name: | Peter K. Y. Chang | |||||||||||||
| Email: | [email protected] | |||||||||||||