In my below post of Sunday, April 16, 2006, "Wright and Wrong" I said Wright's friend is not a Christian because he denies the bodily resurrection of Christ. Pamelala05 tactfully questioned my assumptions about the definition of "Christian" and rightly so. I should have been more carefully. Allow me to correct myself.

Whether one is a Christian, as I said below, is an observable thing. If one has been baptised in the Triune Name and so professes to be a follower of Christ by faith, then he is visibly in the church and so a Christian. I'm not saying that this is a fiction - there are not two churchs, visible and invisible, there is only one. What we often call the "invisible" church is the body of those who will be seen at the end of all things to have been the truly elect and persevering saints. But this is the eschatological church, the church at the end of time when it is purified of all the tares and dross. The historical church is the church now, full of tares but still the church. So one who professes to be a follower of Christ (a Christian) by baptism is in the church, though we can't know whether he will turn out in the end to be saved.

If Bishop Wright's friend has been baptized (I realize that many who profess Christ have not been baptized but that is a tragic, if common, abnormality, since baptism is clearly and Biblically the sign of entry into Christ and His church) then he is a Christian (visibly in the church); but his denial of Christ's bodily resurrection is a denial of the very faith he has professed by his baptism. So I should not have said that he isn't a Christian. I should have said that he is a bad Christian - that he is denying the faith he once professed. An unfaithful husband is still a husband, but he's a bad one and may find himself divorced, just as a Christian who is unfaithful is genuinely a Christian but may find himself cut off and cast out, ala John 15. He may be saved, or he may not be saved ultimately, but we may call him a Christian and yet also call him an antiChrist (according to John's epistle, anyone who denies that Christ *is*, not *was*, God come in the flesh has the spirit of antiChrist).

This is the historic position of most of Christianity, including Reformation Christianity as well (i.e., Calvin, Luther, most Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc.), but it is not the position of anabaptists (including modern Baptists), and therefore, as Pamela suggested, Al Mohler may not agree with me.

We have returned from Greece and Turkey.

Wow.

Ok, I'll develop that a bit more soon, but you can watch these blogs for more woohooing over the next few days, I'm sure: Molly, Karoline, DanielM, DanielA, Emily, Candace, and, um, others.

But here's the most glorious moment of the trip:

Al Mohler's blog this Resurrection Sunday points to a recent interview of N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, in which Wright is unwilling to say a friend of his isn't a Christian, even though this friend (who "loves and believes in [Jesus] passionately") denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Wright has done some great stuff (which Mohler also acknowledges), but this is bad news. As Mohler points out, in the first place, it's grossly unbiblical. I Corinthians 15 is all about the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ as essential to the faith. Furthermore, historically the definition of a Christian has always included belief in Christ's bodily resurrection - every creed and confession has included it. Wright has no business denying the biblical and historical definition of Christianity just because his friend "loves Jesus and believes in him passionately" - his friend is NOT a Christian. His friend's salvation is a different question, about which we can't speak with great certainty (although his denial of the resurrection puts his salvation is doubt, to say the least), and perhaps that's what Wright was thinking of and hesitant about; but whether a person is a Christian or not is an observable fact and we can speak about it with great assurance.

What's the point of this Sunday? Or of any Sunday?

He is risen!

The Gospel of Judas is making headlines. "Experts" are being interviewed on news shows, stories are popping up right and left, and National Geographic is deliberately orchestrating much of this flurry by planning the release of the book itself and of several other books and shows all at the same time. And the same people who bought into The DaVinci Code are buying into this too. There will be another movie. You just know it.

My daughter Emily just told me that on her way home today she heard on NPR (Hey wait a second! Emily, what were you doing listening to NPR???) some interviewer asking stupid questions of the sort that are in fact being asked everywhere. What does this mean for our view of Christianity? How will this change our view of Christian history? Now that "we have to lay the canon out on the table and reevaluate it in the fresh light this Gospel of Judas sheds on it, what are the implications"?

Sigh. In the mid '70s I read a novel called The Word in which a lost gospel is discovered and the Christian world is shaken - publishers start including it in their Bibles and so on. Sigh again. The discovery of this particular manuscript shouldn't surprise anyone - we've always know they were there, and we've always known they were heretical. Just because it claims to be a gospel doesn't mean we have to believe it. Sheesh. The early church knew these books and declared them heresy. It's called gnosticism, and it's as old as the hills.

There are some very good comments about the whole brewhaha over at Al Mohler's blog and related commentary, and I urge you to read them. His blog is good anyway; bookmark it.

How many things can you find wrong in this article? Perhaps a better question is, how many things can you find right in it? That's a lower number. Like zero. And note the comment by a teacher that parents have to be responsible for their own children (ok, that's one thing right), in response to the government wanting to give teachers power over the kids. Um. Why would anyone want to be a public school teacher?

Oh, but on a lighter note, at the very end, a deputy head teacher at one English school said, "We insist on whole sentences, such as 'Good morning, Mr Surman.' " Anyone read or seen Holes?

In an article in today's New York Times, the shady art dealer who made the Gospel of Judas available to National Geographic says ""I think I was chosen by Judas to rehabilitate him." Wow. Think about that.

It just keeps getting worse. Stupidity like this is as sure a proof against the theory of evolution as anything I've seen yet.

Here is an article that further reinforces my unflagging faith in the utter stupidity of man. Summary: Warner Bros. and other U.S. companies are suing a Brit for the name of his email service, Shiremail.com, because - now follow me closely here - they own the name "shire". Pardon me while I boggle a while.

Remember the scene in Disney's The Sword in the Stone where Merlin does some kind of hocus-pocus (and do you know where that phrase comes from?) and all his books dance around and pack themselves in his valise? Well, if I do that, do you suppose I can get the books in this chaos I'm pleased to call my study to organize themselves? Probably not; my books are far too staid for those sorts of shenanigans (hey, that's an Irish word!). Can you imagine Calvin's Commentaries doing that little jig thing? Or Josephus? Or Sir Walter Scott's Waverlies? I think not. Mine would shuffle along like those magicians in The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (one of Seuss's greatest books, by the way, and one of the very few he wrote in prose rather than rhyme. Bartholomew and the Oobleck is even better). Um, I'm not very coherent tonight. But hey, even my little sister blogs more than I do now, so I had to post something.

Not only are my daughters' blogs fun, but Mrs. Callihan is going nuts with her new camera, Photobucket account and her Xanga blog - you'll never lack for images of the Callihan household and doings around here.