This PoMo theme aught to be a dead horse by now, but I keep finding some life in the old nag. Tim and David Bayly are two PCA pastors with a shared blog, and posted a blogburst on the use of closed-circuit TV by megachurch pastor John Piper. Now Piper is a conservative, reformed, highly respected pastor and author, and yet the Bayly's think he has stepped over a Reformed line with his virtual presence. (And if you thought finding a ban on smoking in the Bible was hard, try finding a ban on TV preaching in the Institutes!) What is a good Presbyterian to do?

Well, that's what Presbyterians were invented for. First they deduce a guiding principle from Scripture, something vague and universal, something like "as the gospel requires feet to spread it, so preaching requires a mouth to preach it". Then after beating that principle to death, citing numerous proof texts and cross referencing Calvin (and possibly Augustine and Melancthon as time permits), then they wield this new-forged sword in the battle-du-jour.

The approach is usually spot-on, that is, after the artillery have gotten their range, which is to say, after two or three years and a General Assembly or two, the problem has been resolved one way or the other. However, such an tactical approach lacks in several respects from a strategy.

First, it is constantly fighting static battles, and if the whole church or society is drifting, the battle is being fought over land long-since claimed by one side or the other. For example, the whole inerrancy issue and "Battle for the Bible (1976)" was rendered moot the moment a post-modernist hermeneutic "pick-and-choose" or "redefine the terms" was employed. It only made sense when there was a monolithic union of doctrine and scripture, and and soon as feminists or gay-activists were permitted to declare some of Paul's theology "sexist" (e.g. ordination of women priests in ECUSA 1975) or "culture-bound", then it didn't really matter how inerrant the Bible was or wasn't.

Another problem with Presbyterian artillery, is that it assumes that there is a single, correct way to exegete Scripture. The recursion problem of having Reformed exegetes find statutes that modify Reformed theology has been treated historically as a non-issue, as a matter of "perspicuity", obvious to anyone with a Princeton education. But this feedback loop is not so benign, as can be immediately observed by asking the theologians at Princeton seminary where they stand on a Reformed continuum. A partial solution to the recursion problem is to adopt the Church Father's dictum, that orthodoxy is what is taught by the Church at all times and everywhere (what some of us would call tradition). And while this might help with, say, the proper interpretation of Paul's condemnation of homosexuality, it doesn't do much for resolving modern issues like TV preaching, or incidental issues like 6-day creation.

And finally, the problem of using artillery is "collateral damage". A lot of well-intentioned innocent people end up getting hit. And the solution adopted to this problem, of making the artillery more accurate, ends up with fine distinctions and a Scholasticism that would make a Jesuit proud. Paradoxically, the more precise the criticism the less universal the approach, the more personal the attack, ultimately, the less successful the entire volley. Who today can recount the difference between "expiation" and "propitiation", or the difference between "supralapsarian" and "infralapsarian"? Come to think of it, the people on both sides of both debates would today all be lumped together as "conservatives", sort of the way Europeans view American political parties. The distinctions died as the battle front moved somewhere else, leaving the elaborate defenseworks a mute footnote in the annals of history, a testimony to uselessness.

And this might be the key to understanding the whole problem with such exchanges of shells: the real battle is somewhere else. If we are debating whether God's love is more important than God's will, or His legal versus His moral problems with sin, we have already lost the war, we have already lost the future. Why? Because we have been lulled into a defensive posture, into an asymmetric war of attrition, of reacting to terrorist acts. The essential difference between Rumsfeld and Petraus is that the first thought we could win a war with defense, and the second knew it would take offense.  In the war of ideas, the goal is to win the hearts and minds of the next generation, not fight defensive battles over fortresses of words. And the way to win hearts and minds is not by insisting on the past, by denying the present, but by affirming the future. If the future be better for our children, if the future bring us ever closer to the kingdom of heaven, then we may have half a chance at leaving a legacy of faith.

Words! Words! I have offered nothing but words in defense of the Church! What does all this have to do with TV preaching? And what has PoMo got to do with it?

We have spoken earlier about computer graphics being the telltale sign of PoMo science, because it enables all the lying to go on inside the computer, and our usual intuition for determining GIGO has been foiled by a very pretty wrapper. We are seduced by the realism of the models, just as Jurassic Park scared us with the realism of computer-imagined dinosaurs. So also the realism of a projected preacher, seduces us into thinking that this is the Church, mighty as an army with banners.

The seduction is perhaps even more powerful in America, because we have incorporated the Reformation principle of "the Church invisible" into our "corporate DNA". As we reduce the Church to the spiritual--to preaching and praise--as we reduce the Church to the individual--to the experience and the emotional--we have opened the door to the "drive-in" Church of Gnosticism, in the privacy of our car, in our bedroom, watching passively before the flickering of our wide flat-panel screen.

Now mind you, there many Sunday mornings that I have wished to replace my pastor with John Piper, there are many sermons I have edited in the pew, wishing he said this instead of that. There are many times in Sunday school when we have played a video of a famous teacher, and I have learned far more in an hour than in a semester of pious ramblings from well-meaning church members. There were even months we despaired of organized church entirely, when we had church in our living room reading from the Book of Common Prayer. Yet despite the assault on my senses--apparitions of preachers, voices of choirs, chairs lined up like pews--it was not Church.

Because we are more than a brain chained to our senses, more than a collection of eyes, ears, noses and hands feeding into the computers of our mind. If this materialist fiction were true, then like the Matrix, we could all wire ourselves into the electronic church, picking from a menu of famous preachers, dabbling a bit with Reformed, or Lutheran, or Baptist or Orthodox liturgies. We could fire up the TiVo and celebrate Church on Friday, leaving the weekend free, we could do Church 7 days a week, and make our home into a virtual monastery. We could do church all day long, and like the monks in the crypt mumbling through a hundred masses each day, we could be the most religious generation the world has ever seen!

But God was not in the TiVo, the surround-sound speakers, the 48-inch wide HDTV screen. As Elijah discovered at the mouth of the cave, God was not in the earthquake, fire and storm. But in a still, small voice He calls us, Come. Come out of the cave. Come out of your loneliness, out of the fortress of your walls. Come. You are not the only one left, indeed there are thousands who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Come join them. Come.

For the virtual is not the real. Virtual food does not remove hunger. Virtual drink does not quench thirst. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Come.

For the Church is the bride, real and distinct and separate from the groom, for what is marriage but a celebration of otherness, of completeness, of the victory of the unity of heart over the separation of flesh?  And she calls us,  Come I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb. Come.

In this final day of isolation, in this day of wedding preparation, let us unite West and East, Protestant and Catholic, piety and practice, the holy and the sacred, the Spirit and the Bride say Come. And let the one who hears say, Come. And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. Come.