Sunday afternoon musings

Lots of celebration today: Pentecost, Mother's Day, and a purely local observance, the Feast of the Nativity of the Postulant (the traditional food for which, M's incomparable lasagna, will be served this evening).

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Our Pentecost liturgy was absolutely splendid. They even brought out our red solemn set, which until today I had not seen outside the sacristy. Assorted languages were spoken with verve. The choir totally rocked "Every Time I Feel the Spirit." And honestly, how did people celebrate Pentecost before Ralph Vaughn Williams wrote Down Ampney?

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I am in the middle of writing what may well be the most tedious paper of my career. The basic plot is that A and B say C says D, but actually C doesn't say D, and D is, moreover, a stupid thing to say, and saying D would completely mess up E, F, and G, which C does say. The very careful work of showing exactly why A and B are wrong to attribute D to C is tough -- how many different ways can I find to say "look how they're just making shit up"? -- and I have to find some way to write this all up so that it doesn't put people to sleep.

Still, I'm making good progress on the paper, which I hope to present at the end of the month. And since this is the first writing to speak of that I've done in several months, I feel fairly good about it, despite the tedium.

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Over at Creedal Christian, we're asked this question:

Are there certain behaviors or sins which, if committed without repentance, can condemn a baptized Christian to hell? If so, what are those behaviors/sins?

I shouldn't spout off without thinking this through, but here's my initial reaction. The answer is either any sin, or no sin. In one mood, I'm inclined to go all "nothing can separate us from the love of God" and to talk darkly about how interesting it is that people get accused of Pelagianism if they say we can do something to gain salvation but it's apparently just fine to say we can do something to lose it. In another mood, I want to observe that there are no unrepentant sinners in heaven, and that (as blessed Anselm saith) we must "not suppose that any sin is small (though granted, some sins are greater than others). For no act of disobedience ought to be called small: disobedience alone expelled human beings from paradise."

This part, at any rate, struck me as odd:

When I was a Southern Baptist I was clear, as one who sat in the pew at least 4 times weekly up until my 18th birthday, that my condemnation to Hell was assured if I unrepentantly committed certain well-defined, scripturally prohibited sins.

All the Southern Baptists I know, including my younger self, believe(d) strongly in the security of the believer -- aka "once saved, always saved."