Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Review of Richard Gwyn's 'The Man Who Made Us' - by Hank Smidstra

The Man Who Made Us: The life and times of John A. Macdonald, Vol. One: 1815-1867. Richard Gwyn. A review by Henk Smidstra.

John A. Macdonald was born a Scot, he revered British culture and its institutions, and was also described by a colleague who knew him well, as a “Bay of Quinte boy.” As an immigrant child in the Loyalist, Kingston area of Upper Canada, he was raised in a community in continuity with the culture of his past. Born in Scotland in 1815, John Alexander Macdonald had immigrated with his family to the Kingston area in 1820. Kingston was already a Scottish enclave, created by Loyalists after the American Revolution, and by new emigrants from Scotland. In the Highland Clearances, thousands of Scottish ancestors and clan members of Macdonald had been uprooted, as much as Canada’s Aboriginals have, to clear the Scottish highlands in the 18^th century for “improved” agriculture.  Many had immigrated to North America. John A’s mother spoke Gaelic and John A. was raised and educated in a Scottish Presbyterian atmosphere. Gwyn writes that Macdonald never perceived himself as a Canadian, but rather as a British North American. He was a Scot, a North American loyal to the British culture and its institutions, and one who was raised in Loyalist Upper Canada. From such beginnings, Macdonald grew to become a savvy politician, able to relate to the 19^th century “crazy-quilt” fabric of a largely immigrant society north of the 49^th parallel which we today we call Canada.  He genuinely liked all people and felt comfortable with everyone, states Gwyn. Important also politically in the political struggle in Canada for union, Scots, got along exceptionally well with the Catholic French.  Gwyn suggests that most possibly, if it had not been for MacDonald’s ability at the “long game” and his stubborn tenacity, we would not be Canadian today; in that sense he was the man that made us.  He had the ability to pull together the varied disparate social political elements of the time into a united will for Confederation, facilitating the main creative strategy for the formation of an “un-American”  legislative union, a nation, above the 49^th parallel remaining loyal to British values and institutions.

SATAN: Old Testament Servant Angel or New Testament Cosmic Rebel? by Richard Murray

SATAN: OLD TESTAMENT SERVANT ANGEL OR NEW TESTAMENT COSMIC REBEL? 

The problem is one of definition and differentiation. The Old Testament saints had a largely UNDIFFERENTIATED view of God and Satan. They believed Satan was God's "left hand," His "angry voice," His official "minister of wrath."

Old Testament saints wrongly included Satan in their functional definition of God. Whenever there was temptation, destruction, wrath, and death, all activities which the New Testament would later assign to Satan, the Old Testament would instead attribute these destructions to God Himself. They would not pray against the wiles of the devil, the way the New Testament instructs, but would rather beg God to stay His own wrathful hand. Satan was nowhere in their causative equation. God was the ONLY cause of both good and evil.

The New Testament, by contrast, DIFFERENTIATES the identities of God and Satan totally. What is joined at the conceptual hip in the Old Testament is separated and forever severed in the New. Jesus, it could be argued, IS the DYNAMIC DIFFERENTIATION of God's image from Satan's image. He is the refining fire which burns all the unworthy attributes the Old Testament God out and away from the pure and perfect divine nature.

Erasmus and Luther: The Final Fray -- by Ron Dart

Erasmus and Luther: The Final Fray           

The real problem, however, was not in accepting the authority of Scripture. The real problem was the authority of the interpretation of Scripture. Luther, objected Erasmus, “constantly opposes either his own revelation or his own personal interpretation”.

Edward Burger, Erasmus and the Anabaptists (1977) pgs. 7-8

I confess it is right that the sole authority of Holy Scripture should outweigh all the votes of all mortal men. But the authority of Scripture is not here in dispute. The same Scriptures are acknowledged and venerated by either side. Our battle is about the meaning of Scripture.

Erasmus, Freedom of the Will

To believe that the church is in need of reform is one thing, but to approve a particular way of reforming the Church is a very different thing. Erasmus and the Anabaptists agreed with Luther, Zwingli, and the other Protestant leaders that the Church was in need of reform, but the Anabaptists had much more in common with Erasmus as to how that was to be done  than they did with the Reformers.

I.B. Horst, Erasmus, the Anabaptists and the Problem of Religious Unity

Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) and Martin Luther (1483-1546) were, probably, the two most important reformers of the 16^th century, but their understanding of the meaning of reform was quite different. Erasmus was Luther’s elder and senior by almost twenty years, and it was Erasmus, as some have said, that laid the egg that Luther hatched. The young Luther had an immense admiration for the fine Biblical translations that Erasmus had done, and Erasmus’ criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church were something that Luther (and many others) would nod a hearty Amen to without much reservation.

Ottawa and Nazareth - by Henri Smidstra

Early in my career as prison chaplain a prison guard once said to me, “It’s Ok for you to care about them “preach,” but it’s my job to put the boots to them!” The statement, perhaps tongue in cheek, reflects a persistent belief that prisons, the last door of the justice system, must deliver the pain of punishment. We have seen it in our current government’s passing of repressive crime bills, and heard it affirmed  in the recent (Oct 16, 2013) Throne Speech, in the section entitled, “Supporting Victims and Punishing Criminals.” The assumption is that proportionate punishment must be served, the more harm done, the more harm imposed. The question must be asked: “Is this justice? Is this even biblical? Is punishment required to establish justice and achieve public safety? A close read of the bible, I suggest, will show it to major in grace, forgiveness, and a justice that restores. Current evidence will also show that formal punishment in the sense of “getting even” as reflected in our current law-and-order emphasis in Canada, is actually dysfunctional and criminogenic. 

Wine Before Breakfast (John 2:13-24) -- Nathan Wall

There was a man who had two sons. The older one said to his father, “Father, give me a staff, a cloak, some sandals and a small purse; I want to visit our family up north” The father set these things aside. The older son gathered himself and traveled north, while the younger son stayed behind to manage the father’s house.

After some time, word reached the older son that his father would be throwing himself a birthday banquet. Homesickness welled up in the son and he set out for home.

While the older son was still a long way off, the overflow of sound from the house ran out to meet him. But once he approached the house, the relief and joy of homecoming drained out of him.

He saw the long dining table crowded with bills and coin. The feast food was pushed to the side, the drinks left un-poured. Friends of the younger brother swarmed about, shouting to one another across the table, bartering and haggling for their food stuffs and homemades. Some, it’s true, had travelled a good distance to attend the party, and were anxious to acquire a gift for their host; the locals had foreseen the need and had arrived with their own carts full of goods. While some guests braved the chaos and found their way to the table, others stood at the edges, awkward, confused, and overwhelmed. Still others joined the frenzy of buy and sell.

All the while the younger son was lost in the crowd.

Worst of all, the elder son could see no sign of his father—until, that is, he spied a lone shadowed figure, sitting unnoticed in the corner of the room.

Somewhere inside the older son felt something snap. 

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Nate Wall is a prairie boy transplanted to downtown Toronto, where he studies the Old Testament at Wycliffe College. This sermon was preached at Wine Before Breakfast, an early morning eucharist service hosted by the CRC Campus Ministry on the UofT campus. If you're ever in town, come on by.