Agree That You Might Understand

I struggled with the best title for this post between “Catholics Reclaiming Evangelical Churches” and the one I gave it. They’re both winners. Regardless, I think DaFedSez is the FOREMOST authority on the Federal Vision, and he’s one brilliant writer as well. By the way, I grabbed the Randy Booth pic from Cultists in Hats, so I can’t take the Photoshop compliment.

DaFedSez said. . .

Dear Mark,

While I am impressed at your attempts at attaining to true smugnanity and your impressive photoshopping skilz, you still appear to badly misunderstand the FV. I know this for certain because you do not yet appear to agree with us, and when it comes to the FV the rule is “agree that you might understand.” I would invite you once again to join us, and have been authorized to tell you that if you do so, I can offer you some of the benefits that come with the FV anointing:

1. The ability to actively tinker with core doctrines of the Christian faith that have been accepted for centuries, and reshape them at will. No prior experience or even formal theological education is necessary. We also have an assortment of adulatory blurbs already drawn up that you can sprinkle like sugar on the back of your first book as well as at least 4 conference appearances in 2008 alone! I regret to inform you that the Trinity and Justification and the Sacraments have already received the silly putty treatment at length, but a friend assures me that there are several other doctrine thingees to tamper with. I suggest you get on board soon though before the good ones get snapped up.


2. Your own sacerdotal garment and minister’s uniform designer. No aspiring visialogue is complete without a dog collar and an extensive wardrobe of polyester robes, sashes, and what we affectionately call the pointy hat. These garments have the magical power to add gravitas and divert attention away from even the worst goatee or otherwise total lack of physique. They also instantly transform tedious self-contradictory revisionist goobledegook into liturgical masterpieces. Nothing says, “I’m #1 around here and you aren’t,” like FV couture (TM).


3. A set of fill-in-the-blanks letters that will give you the power to excise and intimidate members of the church without recourse to any irritating sort of “book of so-called church order.” Also included is a copy of our new Praying Through the Imprecatories devotional.

I can also give you one of the secret keys to understanding the CREC (Catholics Reclaiming Evangelical Churches) movement. Our great hero of the Reformation is actually King Henry the Eighth. You see he recognized that the only thing really wrong with the Roman Catholic church was that the Pope had all the power (that continuing problem still keeps many of us away from our true Alma Mater.) You see what we need today is that good old medieval Romanism but with an individualized system of congregational papacies. Join us and you too can be a miniaturized version of Leo the Tenth! (Oh, and I checked about the ceiling thing but I was told Michelangelo is dead, bummerisimus eh?)

Daaaaaay-O!

A friend called the other night and asked if I’m DaFedSez, which made me laugh. I said, “He’s way too smart for me.” I’m pretty sure he agrees.

DaFedSez said. . .

Mark, I’m truly disappointed in you, have you learned nothing under my pedagogy?

By changing your header and admitting you had done so because of my advice you showed yourself to be both teachable and capable of error. When have you ever seen one of the truly great dematheagogues of the FV do such a thing?! NEVER! It is impossible that they would do so — who presumes to more accurately teach those incapable of error? (Keeping in mind we do not and never have claimed to be infallible, just that we have to date and for the foreseeable future never actually erred — neither are we untaught, as autodidacts we have learned from the best of all teachers!)

You had several viable options but you chose none of them:

1. Change the Header and Claim You Haven’t — I never actually told you to do that and don’t even think of claiming I did.


2. Refuse to Change the Header, but claim that “Federal” was in fact already Latin. If someone presented evidence to the contrary, you could easily show how the evidence came from a line of modern baptistic Latin that was an adulteration of the sacramental Latin of the early reformers. You could then have called upon other members of the FV community to independently verify this or any claim no matter how ludicrous (few people truly appreciate the many benefits of membership in Club FV, the autographed copy of the Call of Grace is cool of course but only the beginning). Then write a doctoral-length essay proving your point, being careful to use out-of-context quotations and Bible references from the Minor Prophets that don’t actually prove your point but depend on the absurd length and ponderous and pontifical style of the tract to dissuade anyone from checking your quotations or even reading beyond the first two paragraphs. I myself have profitably employed this method, sometimes even inserting pages of text from small-engine repair manuals without ever being found out. Or as Heinrich Bullinger famously said in his commentary on Obadiah, “If a coil pack dies, the car will generally quit and won’t restart, especially if the engine is warm. When first diagnosing the engine, remove a spark plug and, still connected to the spark plug wire, lay it on the engine. Crank the engine over and look for spark to jump across the plug!” I also take the precaution of noting how brilliant I am at the beginning and how mean-spirited and frankly unread the plebeian bumpkins opposing me are at the beginning, and the rest takes care of itself.


3. Simply begin an ad hominem rant featuring loud claims of small-mindedness, cronyism (some wonderful irony there, eh?) and persecution, darkly hinting that “the fix is in” and that the comments are stacked. Always use the word “sectarian” and if possible PAROCHIAL (which is a doubly delicious word because it reminds our enemies they are simpletons whilst reminding us of parochial schools and giving us warm fuzzies).


4. Claim that the Header was supposed to read “Foedero” but that Federal was inserted via a typesetting error that you never noticed before. Point out that oversights like this are bound to happen given that you publish 8 new blogs challenging conventional orthodoxy every week and can’t be expected to keep track of what they all say, after all your schedule demands that some of them were written and published while you were asleep.

By the way, Blake? What on earth were you thinking? While it appeals to our wannabeeishness it screams of Protestantism and does nothing to engender the right mood of bogus medieval asceticism. Try a Gothic cathedral, an Eastern Orthodox Icon, or something else that would have made the Puritans hopping mad.

By the way I’m working on a new liturgy for thirteenth Sunday after St. Pretsels day:

Priest: Day-O!
Celebrants: Daaaaaay-O!
All: Daylight hath Come and Our Hearts Yearn for Home!
Priest: Say You!
Celebrants: Say Me!
All: Say it Together!
Priest: That is the way it should be.
Amen.

I’m still working on it, but if you have suggestions, remember, I’m way smarter than you.

Thank you.

Simply Hilarious

DaFedSez:

Dear Mark,

How many times are we going to have to explain this to you on this so-called blog of yours?

(Incidentally, speaking of your inability to figure out how to blog properly, I have it on good authority that “Schism” might be a Latin word. If that is true all you need to do is change the word “Federal” in the blog title to “Foedero” and your blog will be on its way to being worthy. As for not agreeing with the Foedero Visum as I prefer to call it — you don’t have to change your existing content; all you need to do is to begin strenuously maintaining that you do in fact agree with the FV. Apparent contradiction is the mark of theological genius, and the greater the contradiction, the greater the genius. Please study our Magister Contradictus, Jacobus Jordanius, for details on how this works. I like to call him “big river” or “flumen magnus” because, as the philosopher sez, you can never step in the same river twice.)

Dougus . . . sorry I’m getting carried away — but O! to have been a medieval monk when things were really Reformed before the dread Baptist Plato and one and all were in unum pactus vespering the Latin of scripture . . . English is so banal and unsanctified, don’t you agree? But back to Doug, he patiently explained at length in this tape how the check you mentioned was not a payment it was a gift given by his church to repay a debt owed to a person who just happened to have run a gambling operation and NOT, NOT, NOT, a payment to a gambling house. I can understand how you may have become confused. You see in FV theology “gift” and “payment” are synonyms. For instance, salvation is a gift we earn by our works of obedience. Note well that we do not merit a gift, or strictly speaking earn it, a gift is graciously obtained in return for works performed. Understand? It’s all quite biblical and the key to understanding James and Paul and checking.

In fact, there is a salvation analogy here somewhere — a parallel or parallelogram or something — person D was owed a gambling debt by persons A, B, & C. Then organization W said persons A, B, & C are like sons to us, but they can never pay the debt they owe, but we can, so because they are members of the covenant we will give a gift that will set them free from bondage to D after which the gift will be paid for by them. The sign and seal of this transaction that rendered real satisfaction was called “the check.” This check was not merely imputed to the account of the guilty. It was delivered directly to D. Call it the new ransom theory.

There you have it. If you have problems remember, W has never been found guilty by himself, that is to say, the church court that duly oversees him. He is therefore “not guiltifiable.”

So given the lack of guiltafiability, how about ending this unjustifiable attack?

I am speechless.

Thank you.

Priceless, Indeed

With special thanks to Green Baggins and Douglas Wilson, I appended the following post from the “Comments” section. And, for the record, Mr. DaFedSez is wittier than me. There’s no contest.

DaFedSez said. . .
I’d like to appreciate your blog but unfortunately I can’t as I’ve noticed it is lacking in some fundamental things (not that I like fundamentals or fundamentalism of course) that signal people it is an important and noteworthy blog they should read and pingback constantly.

1. It doesn’t have a Latin Name. All important blogs have Latin names or are associated with Magazines with Latin Names. May I suggest something like “Add Marjerinium Morningum Gloriam.”


2. You don’t appear to have published any new books revising historic Christianity this month or even have his own church-run printing press. All-important blog authors do.


3. While occasionally sarcastic, your blog has a serious deficiency in snide and smug. The #2 and #3 qualities of all good blog posts.


4. I don’t understand the theology of your posts. None of them appear to be founded on paradox or mystery, the source of all good theology.


5. None of your posts appear to say A and Not A at the same time. How can I take you seriously when your positions are so easily nailed down? You also appear to believe that your opponents can understand what you are saying. A position we all know to be fatal to the blog conversation.


6. You appear to be against the Federal Vision. This is the surest sign that you are not right and don’t deserve to be read or listened to.

September 28, 2007 1:24 PM

Mark T. said. . .
Dear Mr. DaFedSez,

With all due respect, you clearly do not understand the things I have written, and as long as you insist upon misrepresenting me so egregiously, you compel me to defend my good reputation by disrupting the peace and purity of the Church. Therefore, in order to prove that I am the bravest, most important man in Christendom, I challenge you to a debate so that we can resolve this matter once and for all. My word stands above all church courts forever and ever, amen. And if you refuse my challenge, then that proves you are coward who is disqualified from the ministry.

Thank you.
September 28, 2007 2:32 PM

DaFedSez said. . .
Well of course I don’t understand the things you have written, as I only read them. I failed to call you up and ask you what they currently mean at this present moment in time and without doing that, as is well known, it is totally impossible to truly understand what someone means. Also, I totally failed to understand you because I did not consider your comments in their proper context of everything you have ever written or said since birth. I see though that you are learning and may someday be respectable enough to drink with at one of our bi-weekly most-important-event-in-the-history-of-Christianity conferences.

Now I will only agree to the debate if we can agree on the following ground rules:

1. I am wittier than you
2. Whatever I say must be considered Reformed no matter how unreformed it sounds. If I say it, it is reformed, because I am reformed and vice versa (that’s Latin, I’ll be using that a lot so you’ll need a stack of Veritas homeschool materials to hand).
3. The sole purpose of the debate shall be to impress the people who already agree with me and provide them with material to link to on their blogs.
4. I get to randomly use the word “covenant” as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and if I wish an angry expletive.
5. I shall be allowed to define the words I use however I wish, without being confined to their historic meaning. Additionally, if something I say is proven to be false or heretical (not that this is possible, see #2), I shall be allowed to explain the meaning of the words in such a way that it is no longer heretical. So that for instance, “Some people who have been truly united to Christ may indeed fall away” shall never be interpreted as contradicting the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.
6. All theological arguments shall follow the ad hominem abusive style of reasoning. It shall be remembered that my ad hominem arguments are witty (see #1) while yours are unkind.
7. We agree that I’ve won before the start.
8. I get to wear my robe and wizard hat.
9. We allow for frequent breaks so I can play Halo 3 in between.

Clear?
September 28, 2007 3:29 PM

Mark T. said. . .
Dear Mr. DaFedSez,

Once again you have misunderstood and misconstrued my words completely, for when I challenged you to a debate, I did not mean it in a decretal sense. Rather, I offered my challenge non-decretally in order to magnify my great valor and my even greater intellect at the expense of your puny cowardice and your even punier IQ, which point you made with your decalogue save one of demands. Therefore, since the distance between the Equator and the North Pole does not affect what size Nikes I wear, it behooves you to part your hair on the opposite side of your head from its current location, so that you may position yourself to withstand global warming, the rising price of oil, and the cost of straw hats in winter.

BTW, I will talk to you anytime as long as you extend an invitation in a Haiku chiasm.

Thank you.
September 28, 2007 6:38 PM