sábado, 31 de março de 2012

A máquina do tempo: Como seria um dialogo entre Lutero e um ''apóstolo'' moderno?

Suponhamos que fosse possível construir uma máquina do tempo e que alguém fosse em Wittenberg em 01 de novembro de 1517 e convidasse o reformador Alemão Martinho Lutero, a fazer uma visita ao século XXI.

Ao chegar ao Rio de Janeiro, com certeza Lutero se encantaria com a beleza da cidade, com o topografia privilegiada da capital fluminense, com a espontaneidade do carioca e com a alegria do povo brasileiro. Todavia, se fosse levado a uma igreja neopentecostal o grande Reformador ficaria apavorado.

Imaginemos então o diálogo entre Lutero e um apóstolo tupiniquim:

Lutero: Boa tarde! Estou feliz por estar aqui na cidade maravilhosa, Me disseram que o Rio de Janeiro possui milhões de protestantes. Louvado seja Deus pela salvação deste povo.

Apóstolo: Grande Lutero, eu declaro a bênção de Deus sobre sua sua vida, eu determino a vitória sobre sua vida, e ministério.

Lutero: Como assim determino? Por acaso não é Deus que possui este poder?

Apóstolo: Lutero, por acaso você nunca leu na Bíblia que tudo aquilo que Jesus conquistou na cruz é direito nosso? Ora, você desconhece o fato de que não somos cauda e sim cabeça? Não entende que temos poder para fazer o homem prosperar e crescer segundo a vontade de Deus?

Lutero: Apóstolo, Aliais, apóstolo? Estranho isso! Sua interpretação bíblica está absolutamente equivocada!

Apóstolo: Lutero, você não entende dos mistérios de "Papai", deixemos isso para lá! Bem, soube que você compôs uma canção chamada "Castelo Forte" e que nela você diz o seguinte "se tivermos que perder, família, bens, poder." Por acaso você dia isso mesmo? Meu Jesus amado, quanta ignorância! Rapaz será que você nunca ouviu falar na unção da nobreza? Deixe-me lhe dizer uma coisa: você está atrasado meu filho! Se você não tomar posse da bênção, vais morrer na miséria. Mas, veja bem, vou lhe ensinar uma coisa: Se você contribuir com o meu ministério internacional e apostólico semeando ofertas generosas de 10 mil dólares, em minha conta pessoal, sua vida mudará da água para o vinho. Você crê nisso? Então decrete a bênção!

Lutero: Como é que é? Eu que bebo a cerveja de Wintteberg e você que fica de porre? Isso é simonia!

Apóstolo: "Simo" o que?

Lutero: Venda de indulgências. Você está fazendo exatamente o que a igreja Romana fez em minha época. Isso é pecado, é heresia e precisa ser combatido.

Apóstolo: Preste atenção como fala comigo, eu sou autoridade e questionar meus ensinos e decretos é tocar no ungido do Senhor. Cuidado, porque eu tenho poder para amaldiçoa-lo em nome de Deus.

Lutero: Mas quem age assim é o papa e seus cardeais. É o Papa que toma pra si uma autoridade que não lhe pertence. O papa diz que ele é representante de Deus, vigário de Cristo e que quando ele fala "ex-cátedra" sua palavra é inquestionável.

Apóstolo: Vejo que você não entende nada! Eu sou ungido do Senhor! Eu sou apóstolo ao contrário de você que é um mongezinho. Caro Lutero, diante da sua arrogância em me enfrentar eu profetizo sua miséria até que se arrependa do seu pecado e me honre com as suas primícias.

Lutero: Como assim?

Apóstolo: É simples meu caro alemão. Tudo aquilo que receber você destinará uma pequena parte para honrar o meu ministério. Agindo assim, Deus te abençoará.

Lutero: Seu filho do diabo até quando perverterás o povo de Deus? Isso que está fazendo afronta a Palavra de Deus. Por favor me diga aonde é sua igreja? Preciso levar umas coisinhas para lá?

Apóstolo: Vejo que se arrependeu meu caro alemão. A minha igreja fica na Rua da prosperidade, no bairro da unção profética.

Lutero: Não. Não me arrependi. Gostaria de colocar na porta de sua igreja a cópia de umas teses que ontem coloquei no Castelo de Winttenberg.

Que Deus tenha misericórdia da Igreja brasileira.

Renato Vargens

Premiê Wen Jiabao defende reforma política na China Wen Jiabao disse que, se mudanças não forem implementadas, a economia corre riscos

O primeiro-ministro chinês, Wen Jiabao, afirmou nesta quarta-feira é "urgente" realizar reformas políticas tanto na direção do Estado como no comando do Partido Comunista da China, para dar continuidade ao desenvolvimento econômico do país.

- Devemos avançar tanto em nossas reformas estruturais como nas políticas, em particular na reforma do sistema de governo de nosso partido e de nosso país. É uma tarefa urgente.

O premiê advertiu durante sua entrevista coletiva anual:

- Uma tragédia histórica como a Revolução Cultural poderia voltar a ocorrer na China se não forem implementadas reformas políticas e econômicas. A influência dos erros e do feudalismo da Revolução Cultural ainda não foi completamente erradicada. Se a reforma política não for concluída, a reforma econômica não poderá ser implementada e os novos problemas que surgiram na sociedade não poderão ser fundamentalmente resolvidos.

Depois de eleições municipais sem precedentes no início do mês em um vilarejo do sul da China, onde os moradores votaram livremente poucas semanas depois de uma rebelião contra as autoridades comunistas corruptas, Wen afirmou que a China pode ter uma democratização gradual com experiências de nível local.

Na área econômica, Wen manifestou o desejo de que o crescimento do país, limitado a 7,5% este ano, se traduza em uma proteção mais eficiente dos recursos e do meio ambiente.

Ele também disse que o yuan alcançou um "nível próximo do equilíbrio", no momento em que a moeda chinesa é considerada uma divisa desvalorizada pelos principais interlocutores comerciais da China, o que para estas nações confere aos produtos chineses uma vantagem competitiva injusta.

Fonte: r7.com

sexta-feira, 30 de março de 2012

The Christian duty of boycotting

Joe Carter of the Gospel Coalition writes in opposition to organized Christian boycotts. He calls boycotts against businesses “coercion” and says that “banding together to cut off commerce to an otherwise licit venture has no obvious biblical warrant.” He says,

To clarify, the term boycott here refers to the act of refusing to use, buy, or deal with a business as an expression of protest or as a means of economic coercion. The concern, for Christians, should be with the coercion part.

Is it always concerning “coercion,” and is it always wrong for Christians to organize boycotts as a means of economic sanction against private companies on this account? I don’t think so.

Consider a reductio ad absurdum: You’re a metalworker in first-century Ephesus and you have just been converted to Christ, by grace through faith. But you have also for many years been a patron of the Temple of Artemis—that is, you’ve been fornicating with prostitutes all this time in the name of religion. Of course, the teachings of Christ forbid this, and this is exactly what Paul told the Corinthians (1 Cor. 5; 6:16–20) and the Ephesians (Eph. 5:3), and others.

So, you, and all of your Christian brethren who had formerly visited Artemis religiously, “band together”—by nature of the fact of being a body of people under the rule of Christ—and you 1) stop visiting the prostitutes, and 2) openly preach against fornication and idolatry.

Problem is, this Temple of Artemis was a major sector of the Ephesian economy. And at least one special interest group, stung by the economic shift, gets vocal about your protests—the silversmiths who build the silver shrines at the Temple. So now you have a very tense situation with political pressure to continue doing business with an industry that directly profits from prostitution, idolatry, and blasphemy.

Question: Is it wrong for you and your Christians friends announce publicly, “Temple prostitution is sin, and we can no longer in good conscience buy products from any businesses or persons associated with the industry of idol-sex-prostitution.”

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This is similar to what happened to Paul in Ephesus (Acts 19:23–27), where Demetrius the silversmith attempted to form a mob to run the Christians out because the proclamation of the Gospel was threatening their silver idol-shrine contracts. But a local official said, “If therefore Demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another” (19:38). In other words, Paul and the other Christians were engaged in perfectly legal business in the organized, public denunciation of idolatry—it just so happened that the nature and ethics of their business challenged the immorality of the local establishments.

And Paul didn’t seem to have any problem with continuing the ban or the preaching. And neither should we.

This is because in a sinful world, the true proclamation and application of the Gospel will always have economic consequences. Christians must factor these into the way we address society as a society of believers.

Now is this the same as a modern economic boycott? Essentially, yes. It is the refusal to engage in economic exchange based upon a moral imperative, and accompanied by a public justification of the act. Just as I said, the Ephesian prostitution exampe is an extreme example—it’s obvious Christians shouldn’t be buying sex with prostitutes or buying idols—but in a way it’s not, especially if you consider homosexuality and abortion as modern reasons for boycotting. Even if it were extreme, it still helps put the lie to the idea that boycotting is de facto an unjust form of economic coercion.

On the contrary, all economic decisions are decisions about the allocation of resources and power. All exchange of money for good or services involves choices that 1) empower sellers with liquid assets, and 2) withhold those liquid assets from others who might otherwise have received them in a different exchange. Thus all economic exchange is also economic sanction—that is, a form of coercion, either positive or negative.

The issue, then, is not whether we should or should not use “coercion”—a vaguely defined and vaguely applied concept in this case, anyway. For at some level, all discipline and most market forces are coercive by nature in that they promote behaviors that people otherwise would not want to engage in. (Ever felt like not going to work on Monday morning, but you did anyway for fear of losing your job, or not getting paid? This is coercion, but it is not immoral or unchristian for bosses to leverage it.)

For example, I know a man who spent his career in the women’s clothing business. He was a manly man, former military man—not what you may imagine for a man selling dresses and lingerie. It was not his “first choice” so to speak: he simply fell into it by happenstance and found himself successful. In other words, time and chance (to cite Solomon) and the market itself molded this man’s behavior into doing something he normally would not have done, and perhaps would not otherwise have wanted to do. This is a form of free-market economic coercion.

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The issue is not coercion, per se; it is about what type of coercion. And this means there must be someone who determines the morality of when we use civil, economic, or no coercion. Who has the authority to say how and when Christians should act—either as individuals or when they “band together”? When we rail against coercion, we mean State regulation in cases that God has not designed the State to be involved. This is the use or threat of violence to sway public behavior. But the use of non-violent, voluntary organization to exert pressure in society toward righteous behavior is hardly the same. So the real question is, what type of coercion is acceptable and in what sphere? And who says so?

Thus the real issue is sovereignty. Or who determines the laws by which we behave this way or that, and in this social sphere or that. Well, Christ is sovereign. He defines he moral laws of the universe. He gives the moral imperatives by which we live.

In the exchange equation between buyer and seller, the consumer is sovereign. It is the consumers’ demands that mold and shape what gets sold and at what price.

As Christians, however, we are to wield our market sovereignty in obedience to Christ’s commands to make moral choices—individually and collectively. Thus, we will by nature refuse to engage in economic exchange with businesses of which we disapprove for moral reasons. On clear moral infractions—such as companies that fund abortion, etc.—Christians must not be involved if they can at all help it. And to the extent that Christians can be publicly unified on such behavior, I don’t see how they could avoid it, or why they would want to.

Carter acknowledges this to an extent:

Simply refusing to participate in an economic transaction with an individual or company is not a boycott. Our choosing not to spend money on lottery tickets is a values-based economic decision, but it is not a form of coercion.

Except that it is a form of coercion. Withholding business due to a moral complaint is by definition an exercise of sovereignty—a signal that says, “Unless you change, you may not, will not, sell to me.” This is the withholding of liquid assets in exchange for goods and services—a withholding of greater economic empowerment of the seller and his associates and dependents.

This is the exact same signal (message) and same principle whether it involves only one buyer or 1,000.

The only thing changed by “banding together” at this point is the amplification of that economic signal. And this appears to be the point of demarcation for what Carter considers “coercion”—the visible amount of pressure and publicity.

So what he appears to be saying, is: exercise your morality in the marketplace, but don’t organize and don’t be vocal about it. In other words, Christians are not to be vocal in the public square as a group, and we are certainly not to use collective economic action as a tool of dominion in society.

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The principle that suffers under this philosophy is the biblical principle of “purge the evil from your midst” (Deut. 19:19). The law does not exist to make men righteous—Carter is right to imply this. This is true for every level of government: self-government, economic law, family government, and civil government as well. But the law does exist for another purpose, and governments do exist for a purpose. Why do they exist?

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer (Rom. 13:3–4).

Carter says, “Forcing someone to adopt our beliefs—whether by violence or economic threat—is a questionable use of our economic power.” But government—whether civil government, family or economic forces—does not even exist for the purpose of making people “adopt our beliefs.” But this also does not mean these things have no legitimate Christian purpose. As we’ve seen, they exist to purge manifestations of evil from society. Christians should embrace all God-ordained freedoms for doing so, and this includes boycotting.

All government exists for the purpose of purging manifestations of evil from society. Civil government has a monopoly on violent coercion for this purpose, and its sphere of action is greatly limited by God’s law. Family and self-governments, however, leverage economic laws as tools of dominion in society—and the “coercion” involved in those voluntary exchanges have the same purpose: to advance the kingdom of God, including the elimination of manifestations of evil. Purge the evil from your midst.

Christians have not only a right, therefore, but a duty to boycott in many cases. We have a duty to eliminate as much social evil as we can, and if organized economic abstinence is available, we should embrace it.

If you disbelieve that, consider you would like a bustling Temple full of 2,000 prostitutes down the road from you house, and a local trade union that is dependent upon it for their business. Would you or would you not join a boycott of that Temple and that union’s products?

Besides, what Christian would oppose making abortion, for example, illegal through the use of civil law? What Christian would refuse to punish abortionists under that law if it were in place? Is this not violent coercion, and the most naked and raw form of it—civil law? And yet we would embrace the advance of this type of coercion in society.

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Then why would we even begin to balk at a non-violent solution to minimizing abortion, or any such social evil?

Does this mean we should jump and join every boycott every Christian mounts over the merest trifle? Of course, not.

But if anything promoted by any business is something biblical law says should be punished by civil sanction, why would we even blink at organizing at least the lesser: private economic sanction against it? Not to makes no sense whatsoever.

I think some proper perspective is in order. But to get it requires a proper view of biblical law, the function of law, and a proper view of kingdom and eschatology as well. For some Christians, perhaps that’s where the real boycott is taking place.

By Joel McDurmon

quinta-feira, 29 de março de 2012

Mizmor Alef



אַשְׁרֵי הָאִישׁ-- אֲשֶׁר לֹא הָלַךְ, בַּעֲצַת רְשָׁעִים
וּבְדֶרֶךְ חַטָּאִים, לֹא עָמָד, וּבְמוֹשַׁב לֵצִים, לֹא יָשָׁב
כִּי אִם בְּתוֹרַת יְהוָה, חֶפְצוֹ; וּבְתוֹרָתוֹ יֶהְגֶּה, יוֹמָם וָלָיְלָה
וְהָיָה-- כְּעֵץ, שָׁתוּל עַל-פַּלְגֵי-מָיִם
אֲשֶׁר פִּרְיוֹ, יִתֵּן בְּעִתּוֹ--וְעָלֵהוּ לֹא-יִבּוֹל; וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר-יַעֲשֶׂה יַצְלִיחַ
לֹא-כֵן הָרְשָׁעִים: כִּי אִם-כַּמֹּץ, אֲשֶׁר-תִּדְּפֶנּוּ רוּחַ
עַל-כֵּן, לֹא-יָקֻמוּ רְשָׁעִים--בַּמִּשְׁפָּט; וְחַטָּאִים, בַּעֲדַת צַדִּיקִים
כִּי-יוֹדֵעַ יְהוָה, דֶּרֶךְ צַדִּיקִים; וְדֶרֶךְ רְשָׁעִים תֹּאבֵד

The Original First Amendment

You know the First Amendment, right? It’s the one about free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion, right?

Nope. I am talking about the First Amendment. That is, the original First Amendment. And it was not about these freedoms—vital as they are—but rather about adequate representation in Congress.

A primary concern among some of the framers was that we would have enough people in the House to speak for the number of people they represented as adequately as possible. For, the larger a body of people to speak for, the less one person truly represents them. This means, therefore, that if we desire more accurate representation, we should have smaller constituencies. This means more districts and more representatives.

Sure enough, under the original First Amendment, instead of only 435 Representatives in Congress—as it has been since the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929—we would have as many as 6,000. This is because the original First Amendment in the original Bill of Rights allowed for one Representative for every 50,000 people in the population ad infinitum.

Here’s the way that Amendment read:

After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than one hundred representatives, nor less than one representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of representatives shall amount to two hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred representatives, nor more than one representative for every fifty thousand.[1]

This is one of two proposed amendments in the original proposed Bill of Rights which were not adopted by enough of the States to come into effect.

So, granted, this “Amendment” cannot technically be called the First Amendment since it never passed. It was merely the First proposed Amendment. But the issue it addresses is highly important, and the fact that it fell only one State short of ratification shows that most of the early framers felt it was important as well. (In fact, only two of fourteen States—Delaware and Pennsylvania—actually refused it. Eight agreed to it, and four States simply did not return the call for any Amendments at all).

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In fact, the constitutional standard we got was 1 for every 30,000, which would mean up to 10,000 representatives! This, of course, was also trumped by the 1929 Act.

Granted, it is a valid concern whether it is desirable to have another 5,565—let alone 9,565—federal-level politicians running around, but the principle of adequate representation is vital to freedom. It was this principle that the proposed amendment sought to protect, and for this reason it is worth reviewing this original proposal: 1) it raises our awareness as to how vital the principle of adequate representation is, and 2) it forces us to question whether our relatively meager (in numbers) representative House is much more than the oligarchy so many of the framers predicted.

Oligarchy, Mobocracy, or Freedom?

What will come of this discussion is the contrast between two inevitable problems of a large centralized government as opposed to better representation under a decentralized political system. The framers abandoned the latter type of system, then spent their time arguing over which of the two problematic versions was best for the nation.

Oligarchy

The issue of representation, and in particular the dangers of oligarchy or aristocracy, formed a central objection for the anti-federalist opponents of the Constitution. For example, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia called the legislature under the Constitution “dangerously oligarchic.” He argued that “smallness of number and great comparative disparity of power, renders that house of little effect to promote common good, or restrain bad government.” The proposed Constitution, said he, provided for “a mere shred or rag of representation.”[2]

The Federal Farmer explained the principle clearly: “full and equal representation, is that which possesses the same interests, feelings, opinions, and views the people themselves would were they all assembled.”[3] He thought the proposed arrangement in the constitution lacking in this regard since it centralized too great a nation under one small legislature: “it would be impossible to collect a representation of the parts of the country five, six, or seven hundred miles from the seat of government.”[4]

The Federal Farmer goes on to argue that truer representation would exist at the State and local levels, leaving the federal government few and far removed in that regard. And yet, “as to powers, the general government will have all essential ones, at least on paper, and those of the states a mere shadow of power.” He called this “an unnatural separation of these powers from the substantial representation of the people.”[5]

And therefore, unless the people shall make some great exertions to restore to the state governments their powers in matters of internal police; as the powers to lay and collect, exclusively, internal taxes, to govern the militia, and to hold the decisions of their own judicial courts upon their own lands final, the balance cannot possibly continue long; but the state governments must be annihilated, or continue to exist for no purpose.[6]

And of course, when only a few offices are available among millions of people, and gaining those offices depends upon commanding the attention and votes of those masses, then naturally the wealthiest members of society would have the advantage in gaming the system. Thus, the Antifederalists virtually equated oligarchy—the rule of the few—with Aristocracy—the rule of the wealthy.

Thus we hear various cries against the Constitution for setting up an inevitable Aristocracy. Melancton Smith of New York argued that “the influence of the great will generally enable them to succeed in elections.” Thus, a man stood little chance unless he had “military, popular, civil or legal talents.”[7]

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Partisan politics would develop and make the masses easy to control:

The common people will divide, and their divisions will be promoted by others. There will be scarcely a chance of their uniting, in any other but a great man, unless in some popular demagogue, who will probably be destitute of principle. . . .

From these remarks it appears that the government will fall into the hands of the few and the great. This will be a government of oppression.[8]

Thus the Antifederalists warned of strong centralized government, especially for a legislature, and instead promoted the idea of leaving most power at local levels where smaller constituencies would be better represented.

George Washington, also, was on the side of smaller constituencies while at the Convention, but only because he thought it would “lessen the people’s objections to the Constitution.”[9] Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts made a motion on constituency size for the very purpose “of lessening objections to the Constitution.” In his lone comment on the actual substance of the Constitution during the Convention, Washington himself agreed:

When the President rose, for the purpose of putting the question, he said that although his situation had hitherto restrained him from offering his sentiments on questions depending in the House, and it might be thought, ought now to impose silence on him, yet he could not forbear expressing his wish that the alteration proposed might take place. It was much to be desired that the objections to the plan recommended might be made as few as possible— The smallness of the proportion of Representatives had been considered by many members of the Convention, an insufficient security for the rights & interests of the people. He acknowledged that it had always appeared to himself among the exceptionable parts of the plan; and late as the present moment was for admitting amendments, he thought this of so much consequence that it would give much satisfaction to see it adopted.

The editor makes a footnote here: “This was the only occasion on which the President entered at all into the discussions of the Convention.”[10] It must have been pretty important to him, then, at least just to get the thing passed.

Demo/Mobocracy

The problem on the other hand, however, is the problem of democracy properly so-called. In a pure democracy, the voice of the majority wins, despite how partisan or mad it may be. But people tend to congregate in the cities. Thus, a large jurisdiction may come to be dominated by a single densely-populated city. Whereas the people living in the countryside may simply want to be free and left alone, the urban area will dominate the State’s politics. Thus, the population centers rule the world. It’s called democracy, but it’s really just organized mobocracy.

This is true for the nation as well, and the framers understood the problem. It was Luther Martin, a delegate from Maryland, who reported how if representation was too accurately proportional to State population it would allow some States “undue influence” over others. He calculated that in some cases, just a few States would be sufficient to constitute a whole quorum and thus create a national legislative faction that could control the majority of the other States.[11] Being right next door to the most populous State, Virginia, Martin was rightly sensitive to being sucked into the power of its legislative vortex.

With the Constitution’s “one for every thirty Thousand” standard, this is eventually what happened. It was the problem that eventually led to the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. The government’s website says, “Gradually, however, the method for calculating apportionment caused smaller rural states to lose representation to larger urbanized states.”

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Decentralization

The solution to both of these extremes is to have decentralized government like I have discussed in my essays on “County Rights” (here, here, and here). The essential powers of government need to be taken from Washington and deposited back at the local level where they belong—and better at the county or local levels than at the State, with the State serving as a buffer between the feds and the locals.

Oddly enough, it was on this principle of decentralization, very likely, that Pennsylvania rejected the original proposed First Amendment as it did (leading to its demise). It was not that they thought fewer representatives could speak adequately for larger contingencies of people. It was rather that they supposed the Federal legislature was not so constituted as to be getting involved in the type of legislation that touched directly on individuals’ lives to begin with. Thus, the local populations would not really need large numbers of representatives at the fedeeral level, but only at the level of the State legislatures.

This was the reasoning, anyway, of James Wilson as he argued during the Pennsylvania ratifying Convention:

Permit me to add a further observation on the numbers–that a large number is not so necessary in this case as in the cases of state legislatures. In them there ought to be a representation sufficient to declare the situation of every county, town and district, and if of every individual, so much the better, because their legislative powers extend to the particular interest and convenience of each; but in the general government its objects are enumerated, and are not confined in their causes or operations to a county, or even to a single state. No one power is of such a nature as to require the minute knowledge of situations and circumstances necessary in state governments possessed of general legislative authority.[12]

Wilson was right about how the principle should work, but wrong (or lying) to assume that the nationalists and the Constitution would really function in the way he state. And of course, history—both immediately and up until today—have proven he should not have trusted them.

Conclusion

The original proposed First Amendment sought to address the problem of inadequate representation in the Constitution. Many writers rightly saw the Constitution flawed in this principle and leading to aristocracy and oligarchy. But the proposed amendment itself was fundamentally flawed as it would have led to widespread mobocracies which were no better.

We can only begin to solve the issue when we see these two problems as two sides of the same fundamental problem: centralized power on such a large scale to begin with.

And deal with this problem we must, if we are ever to be as free as we claim to be. This issue of representation was the primary concern—number one on the list—of the men who wrote the original bill of rights. Of course they held the rights of speech, assembly, and religion as high as anything, but the issue of representation was the issue of the structure of power—and that would determine how well all those other rights would be protected into the future. And for this reason, it appears, they placed representation at the head of their list to consider.

I think we should, too. But I think it is not addressed by one more top-down, centralizing amendment. We need to rethink the fundamental structure of power and law in society altogether.

(For further study on the subject, there is a website dedicate to it. I have not covered the whole site, so I am not sure I can vouch for it all, but the basic info I have seen is certainly worth studying: http://www.thirty-thousand.org/)
Endnotes:
“Proposed Amendments and Ratification 1789,” in The Founders’ Constitution, 5 vol., eds. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 5:40. [↩]
The Complete Antifederalist, 7 vols., ed. Herbert J. Storing (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1981), 5:114. [↩]
Storing, 2:230. [↩]
Storing, 2:230. [↩]
Storing, 2:232–3. [↩]
Storing, 2:233. [↩]
Storing, 6:158. [↩]
Storing, 6:158. [↩]
Clair W. Keller, “The Failure to Provide a Constitutional Guarantee on Representation,” Journal of the Early Republic 13/1 (Spring 1993): 23. [↩]
Farrand’s Records, 2:643–644. Keller incorrectly notes that this is on pages 443–444. [↩]
Farrand, 3:197–199. [↩]
Farrand, 3:160. [↩]

By Joel McDurmon

quarta-feira, 28 de março de 2012

Polícia descobre que Datena seria sequestrado nesta quarta-feira (28)

A Polícia Militar descobriu, através das redes sociais, que bandidos planejavam sequestrar o apresentador José Luis Datena na noite desta quarta-feira (28). O crime aconteceria entre 20h30 e 21h, na rodovia Castelo Branco, entre os municípios de São Paulo e Osasco. Este é o caminho que o jornalista e apresentador costumeiramente faz, todas as noites, quando deixa o seu trabalho na Rádio e TV Bandeirantes em direção a sua casa.

A polícia alertou o apresentador e, através de um cruzamento de informações, chegou ao veículo que seria utilizado para o crime. É um carro roubado, com placas de Belém do Pará.

Preocupado, Datena já está tomando providências para deixar sua família protegida.

Fonte: uol.com.br

terça-feira, 27 de março de 2012

Parlamentares licenciados incham folha do Congresso

No primeiro ano da atual legislatura, 33 parlamentares (5% dos 594 congressistas) não exerceram sequer um dia do mandato para o qual foram eleitos. Eles se licenciaram logo depois da posse e passaram todo o restante de 2011 fora do Congresso, no comando de secretarias e ministérios. Mas, mesmo exercendo funções no Executivo, esses 31 deputados e dois senadores continuaram recebendo do Legislativo. E apenas esse grupo de secretários e ministros recebeu R$ 10,5 milhões em salários da Câmara e do Senado no ano passado.
Além de um eventual conflito de interesse e da distorção da vontade do eleitor – que vê seu candidato não exercer o cargo para o qual foi eleito –, o afastamento desses parlamentares gerou, ainda, um ônus extra ao Congresso: além de pagar os R$ 10,5 milhões aos licenciados, a Câmara e o Senado gastou mais de R$ 12 milhões com os vencimentos dos 33 suplentes convocados para substituí-los.
No total, a conta repassada ao contribuinte, porém, é ainda maior. E difícil de ser calculada. É que, além dos 33 que passaram todo o ano fora, outros 28 congressistas se revezaram entre o Legislativo e o Executivo em 2011. Ou seja, durante todo o ano, 61 deputados e senadores (11% dos integrantes do Parlamento) se licenciaram para responder por secretarias e ministérios. Atualmente, 41 deputados e cinco senadores exercem funções fora do Congresso: dez são ministros e 36, secretários estaduais. Quatro deles assumiram as novas funções neste começo de ano.
A Constituição Federal garante ao parlamentar licenciado o direito de trocar livremente de Poder. E, o melhor para deputados e senadores: permite que eles escolham a fonte pagadora – o próprio Congresso ou o órgão ao qual está vinculado. Como os rendimentos dos congressistas superam, de longe, os recebidos pelos secretários estaduais e municipais, a quase totalidade deles opta por continuar recebendo os R$ 26,7 mil da Câmara e do Senado. A discrepância só não existe no caso dos ministros, que, desde o início de 2011, recebem remuneração igual à dos parlamentares. O único prejuízo para o licenciado é receber 13 em vez dos 15 salários anuais pagos a quem está no exercício do mandato.
De todos os 65 congressistas que se licenciaram nesta legislatura, apenas o deputado Sérgio Zveiter (PSD-RJ), atual secretário estadual do Trabalho, abriu mão dos vencimentos no Congresso. “Por estar prestando serviço no estado, achei correto receber o valor correspondente ao local onde estou exercendo a função”, afirma. Como secretário, Zveiter conta que recebe R$ 12,9 mil brutos – menos da metade do que ganharia se tivesse optado pelos rendimentos da Câmara.

Fonte: uol.com.br

sábado, 24 de março de 2012

Estudantes dos EUA fotografam superfície da Lua com ajuda da Nasa

Imagem feita com 'sondas gêmeas' mostra crateras do satélite da Terra.
Estudantes operaram equipamentos em projeto idealizado por ex-astronauta.

A Agência Espacial Americana (Nasa) divulgou nesta quinta-feira (22) uma nova imagem aproximada da superfície da Lua, que inclui ainda uma visão parcial da Terra.

Mas não agradeça aos cientistas por este feito e sim aos alunos da quarta série da Escola Primária Emily Dickinson, de Bozeman, em Montana.

Eles fazem parte de um projeto idealizado pela ex-astronauta Sally Ride, a primeira mulher norte-americana a ir ao espaço, que contou com a ajuda das sondas “gêmeas” da Nasa, batizadas inicialmente como Grail-A e Grail-B.

No fim de 2011, os equipamentos entraram na órbita lunar, onde devem permanecer para mapear a gravidade do satélite e determinar sua estrutura.

As imagens chegaram à agência na última semana, após operação feita pelos estudantes durante um período não-crítico da missão. Os alunos ganharam um concurso patrocinado pela Nasa e escolheram os novos nomes das sondas para Ebb e Flow.

Fonte: g1.com

Tremor de 5,3 graus sacode a zona central do Chile

Não há relatos de vítimas, danos materiais ou alterações nos serviços básicos.
Um tremor de 5,3 graus de magnitude na escala Richter sacudiu na madrugada deste sábado (24) a zona central do Chile. Não há relatos de vítimas, danos materiais ou alterações nos serviços básicos.

O abalo, que durou vários segundos, ocorreu às 4h28 e teve seu epicentro a 43 km ao nordeste da localidade de Casablanca, situada na região central de Valparaíso, segundo informou o Serviço Sismológico da Universidade do Chile.

O sismo, que teve uma intensidade de grau V na escala de Mercalli em Valparaíso e Santiago, também foi sentido nas regiões centrais de El Maule e O'Higgins.

O Serviço Hidrográfico e Oceanográfico da Marinha indicou que o tremor não reúne as condições para gerar um tsunami no litoral do Chile.

Fonte: r7.com

sexta-feira, 23 de março de 2012

MEC decide fechar universidade São Marcos; reitora anuncia mutirão para fazer transferências

O MEC (Ministério da Educação) anunciou na noite de ontem (22) a decisão de descredenciar a Universidade São Marcos, de São Paulo, após verificar irregularidade na oferta de cursos. Entre elas, o descumprimento de medidas cautelares determinadas pelo ministério em função do baixo desempenho da instituição nas avaliações da pasta.
Em nota publicada no site da universidade, a reitora Maria Aurélia Varella afirma que está "esperando a publicação oficial da medida e, obviamente, obedeceremos o que for determinado". A reitora contou que ficou sabendo do fechamento por meio de um jornalista e que depois conferiu a notícia no site do MEC. O descredenciamento significa, na prática, o encerramento das atividade da São Marcos. Os cerca de 2 mil alunos da instituição devem ser transferidos para outras faculdades. A São Marcos tem 90 dias para providenciar a mudança e entregar toda a documentação acadêmica aos alunos.
De acordo com o MEC, as irregularidades verificadas “comprometem o funcionamento” da universidade. Além de descumprir as medidas determinadas pelo ministério no ano passado durante processo de supervisão, a pasta constatou que há “inviabilidade financeira e desorganização acadêmica e administrativa”.
Segundo a nota da reitoria, "não haverá aula na Universidade São Marcos e os documentos necessários à transferência dos alunos serão providenciados por um verdadeiro 'mutirão' de funcionários e professores que, mesmo sem receber salário (já que a medida pode ter consequências sobre os pagamentos que seriam efetuados na semana que vem), ajudarão a Secretaria a providenciar tais documentos. Informações sobre descontos, bolsas institucionais e outras serão transmitidas aos alunos, assim que tivermos ciência de como será realizada a transferência".
Veja a nota da reitoria na íntegra:
A Universidade São Marcos desde a intervenção judicial ocorrida em setembro de 2011 e a nomeação de nova reitoria ocorrida em dezembro do mesmo ano tem se esforçado para reverter a situação que colocou a Universidade sob o risco iminente de encerrar suas atividades. Reitoria, professores e funcionários, a maioria sem receber salários, trabalham no sentido de diminuir o prejuízo causado anteriormente aos alunos e concretizar a continuidade da Universidade.
Apesar de vários eventos que ocorreram e que foram extremamente prejudiciais ao nosso trabalho, trabalhamos muito e o esforço foi sempre em conjunto.
Após muita procura, conseguimos utilizar um prédio que abriga os alunos de maneira satisfatória e todos puderam acompanhar o trabalho de muitos que se dedicaram e fizeram o máximo que podiam no sentido de deixar tudo de acordo com as regras públicas. O prédio existe, é real, as aulas estavam sendo ministradas e o calendário de reposição das aulas praticamente finalizado em São Paulo e finalizado em Paulínia.
Todo esse esforço teve o apoio dos alunos que continuaram na Universidade São Marcos, inclusive cancelando transferências e voltando para o curso de origem. Teve também o apoio de funcionários e professores que recuperaram documentos e informações perdidos anteriormente.
Hoje, por volta das 19h e 30min, soubemos, por um jornalista, a notícia do descredenciamento da Universidade. Logo em seguida, vimos no site oficial do MEC que a Universidade São Marcos havia sido descredenciada por esse Ministério.
Estamos esperando a publicação oficial da medida e, obviamente, obedeceremos o que for determinado.
Por esse motivo, não haverá aula na Universidade São Marcos e os documentos necessários à transferência dos alunos serão providenciados por um verdadeiro “mutirão” de funcionários e professores que, mesmo sem receber salário (já que a medida pode ter consequências sobre os pagamentos que seriam efetuados na semana que vem), ajudarão a Secretaria a providenciar tais documentos.
Informações sobre descontos, bolsas institucionais e outras serão transmitidas aos alunos, assim que tivermos ciência de como será realizada a transferência.
Lamentamos muito e agradecemos a todos que acreditaram no trabalho que estava sendo realizado por todos nós.
(Com informações da Agência Brasil)

quarta-feira, 21 de março de 2012

Putin deixa Eike Batista no chinelo

Que Eike Batista nada! Putin é "o cara". Deu no The Telegraph: russo lança livro acusando Putin de ter uma fortuna acumulada de US$ 40 bilhões! Em países com forte "capitalismo de estado" e fraco "império da lei", como Rússia (e Brasil), são os governantes ou amigos dos governantes que ficam ricos de verdade. Enquanto nos EUA os ricaços são empreendedores de setores inovadores, nesses países com mais estado que capitalismo são os políticos e seus apaniguados que fazem fortuna! E sob o aplauso dos idiotas úteis da esquerda...

Eu acompanhei as transformações russas de perto durante alguns anos, tendo visitado Moscou três vezes e conversado com muita gente local e influente. Além disso, li alguns livros interessantes, como "The Oligarchs". Cheguei a escrever no começo da era Putin alguns artigos, lamentando os rumos que o poderoso ex-KGB tomava. A seguir, vou publicar alguns desses artigos, para quem tiver interesse em entender melhor os acontecimentos no R dos BRIC.

By Rodrigo Constantino

Does the Bible Teach an Israel-Church Distinction?

Gaining a proper understanding of the Greek word ekklēsia, most often translated “church” in the New Testament,[1] is the key in answering the charge that non-dispensationalists teach that the church replaces Israel. The church is not a new thing. The Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament defines the Greek word ekklēsia, most often translated as “church,” in the following way:

Though some persons have tried to see in the term ἐκκλησία a more or less literal meaning of “called-out ones” [ek + kaleō] this type of etymologizing is not warranted either by the meaning of ἐκκλησία in NT times or even by its earlier usage. The term ἐκκλησία was in common usage for several hundred years before the Christian era and was used to refer to an assembly of persons constituted by well-defined membership. For the NT . . . it is important to understand the meaning of ἐκκλησia as “an assembly of God’s people.”[2]

Take note that the authors of this lexicon say the word was in use “several hundred years before the Christian era.” No standard lexicon knows anything about the meaning of ekklēsia that would square with how dispensationalists understand the word.

There is no Church-Israel distinction in the Bible because the Greek word ekklēsia is not an invention of the New Testament writers. Ekklēsia is a common word that is used to describe an assembly or congregation. It is used this way in the Greek translation of the Old Testament — the Septuagint (LXX) — and the Greek New Testament. This common word is use by Jesus in Matthew’s gospel (the most Jewish of the gospels):
“I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church [ekklēsia]; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” (Matt. 16:18).[3]
“If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church [ekklēsia]; and if he refuses to listen even to the church [ekklēsia], let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matt. 18:17).

No one asks Jesus, “What’s an ekklēsia?” They knew what an ekklēsia was since they were intimately familiar with the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. “[T]his Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures was the Bible of the early church. . . . Thus, when the writers of the New Testament, whose Bible was the Septuagint, used ekklēsia, they were not inventing a new term.[4] They found the term in common use and simply employed what was at hand.”[5]

Ekklēsia was used many times in the Septuagint for the Hebrew word qāhāl that means “congregation” or “assembly.” (Even modern-day Hebrew translations of the Greek New Testament translate ekklēsia as qāhāl.[6] Like ekklēsia, the Hebrew qāhāl is a general term that can refer to “the assembly of Israel” (Deut. 31:30; Joshua 8:35) or to “the assembly of evil doers” (Ps. 26:5). Ekklēsia is used in a similar way in the New Testament. It can refer to local assemblies of Christians (Rev. 2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14) or pagan assemblies of non-Christians (Acts 19:32, 39, 41). Of course, it also has the meaning of a redemptive body of believers made up collectively of Israelites and non-Israelites.

Paul’s use of ekklēsia in some of his epistles indicates “that ekklesia itself still carried a general meaning of ‘assembly’; the particular kind of assembly had to be indicated by qualifiers similar to the Septuagint use.”[7] There is no specialized definition given to the word “church” in Revelation where it refers to local assemblies of believers, a book that was written a few years before the destruction of Jerusalem which took place in A.D. 70.

The term ekklēsia describes an actual assembly, a gathering of people together. The same is true of the Old Testament term qāhāl that is translated by ekklēsia in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. The words themselves do not have the restricted meaning of the word, ‘church’. Yet, when Jesus said, ‘I will build my church’. . . , he was not simply saying, ‘I will bring together a gathering of people’. Rather, he was using a well-known term that described the people of God. The ‘assembly in the desert’ (Acts 7:38) was the definitive assembly for Israel, the covenant-making assembly when God claimed his redeemed people as his own’ (Dt. 4:10 LXX; 9:10; 10:4; 18:16).[8]

So then, ekklēsia can refer to a general gathering of people of no particular religious affiliation, or it can refer to a particular gathering of people who are identified as God’s people whether Israelites or non-Israelites. This is true for the way it is used in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Therefore it should not surprise us that the New Testament writers would use ekklēsia, both before (Matt. 16:18; 18:17) and after Pentecost (Acts 5:11; 8:1), to identify the assembly or congregation of God’s people.

The believing post-Pentecost Israelites who believed were called “the whole ekklēsia” (Acts 5:11; cp. Rom. 16:23). There is no indication that the use of ekklēsia was considered to be a new redemptive entity distinct from Israel since the “members” of the ekklēsia were “Jews from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). To claim, as dispensationalist Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum does, that “the church [ekklēsia] was born at Pentecost, whereas Israel had existed for many centuries” and that “[t]here is no biblical evidence that the church existed in the Old Testament”[9] is untrue. Since the Hebrew qāhāl (“assembly”) is translated as the Greek ekklēsia (“assembly”), this is prima facie evidence that as long as Israel existed, the ekklēsia existed.[10]

Any Jew able to read the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament would have recognized the word and understood what it meant. In speaking to his Jewish countrymen, Stephen describes the believing community in the era of the OT as “the congregation [ekklēsia] in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38). In Acts 8:1 and 3 the “ekklēsia in Jerusalem” was made up exclusively of Jews — all Israelites! If ekklēsia means “congregation” in Acts 7:38,[11] then it certainly carries the same meaning just a few verses later in Acts 8:1: “Saul was in hearty agreement with putting [Stephen] to death. And on that day a great persecution began against the ekklēsia [church] in Jerusalem,[12] and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” In Acts 8:3 we read that “Saul began ravaging the ekklēsia, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women” to “put them in prison.” The ekklēsia that Saul ravaged was made up of believing Israelites who were a living testimony to the fulfillment of God’s promises made to Israel through the fathers and prophets. These Israelites didn’t believe that they were some “mystery” parenthesis as dispensationalists contend. At Pentecost Peter told the “men of Israel” (Acts 2:22) who were in Jerusalem “from every nation under heaven” (2:5–11) that what was happening was the fulfillment of what Joel and other prophets had prophesied (2:14–47).

“Men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words. For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel” (Acts 2:14b–16).

These Jewish believers were the Church, not a replacement of Israel but the continuation of the remnant of Israel to which non-Israelites would be grafted in (Rom. 11).

This original Jewish assembly of believers post-Pentecost is the “ekklēsia of God,” the congregation and assembly of God’s people (Acts 8:1; Gal. 1:13; Acts 20:28; 1 Cor. 1:2; 10:32; 15:9; 2 Cor. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:5), a continuation of the believing community found throughout the Old Testament. Later in Acts we learn that Gentiles were grafted into an already growing post-Pentecost Israelite ekklēsia (Acts 10).[13] There is no discussion among the circumcised about a postponed Israel covenant. They were “amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also” (10:45). Note the use of “also”: “To the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16; 2:9–10). The Israelite promises were extended to the Gentiles.

Peter addressed the crowd at Pentecost as the “men of Israel” (Acts 2:22) and “all the house of Israel” (2:36). The “brethren” — Israelite brethren — want to know what they, as Israelites, must do to be saved. Peter tells them, “For the promise is for you and your children. . .” (2:39). There is nothing in this chapter that indicates that the promises first made to Israel were not being fulfilled right then and there. Peter continues to preach to his countrymen by informing them that “Jesus the Christ” was “appointed for you” (3:20). The “restoration of all things” (3:21) is the pre-ordained redemptive work of Jesus to fulfill what all the prophets had written. Peter tells them that the prophets “announced these days” (3:24). “It is you who are the sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed’” (3:25).

We read further about the fulfillment of the promise made to Israel, “sons of Abraham’s family.” The promises are fulfilled, not postponed.

“From the descendants of this man, according to promise, God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, after John had proclaimed before His coming a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And while John was completing his course, he kept saying, ‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not He. But behold, one is coming after me the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.’ Brethren, sons of Abraham’s family, and those among you who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent. For those who live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, recognizing neither Him nor the utterances of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled these by condemning Him” (Acts 13:23; cf. 13:32–33; 26:6).

Notice how Paul in Romans argues “that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all” (Rom. 4:16; cf. 9:8; Gal. 3:29; 4:28). Non-Israelite believers, the “uncircumcision” (Eph. 2:11) who are “in Christ,” are made a part of the commonwealth of Israel and are extended the promises originally given to Israel:

“[R]emember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall (2:12–14)



As a result, believing non-Israelites in Jesus as the Messiah share in the (1) “commonwealth of Israel,” as they are (2) no longer “strangers to the covenants of promise” (2:12) “but (3) “fellow citizens with the saints, and (4) are of God’s household, having been (5) built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into (6) a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit” (2:20–22). You can’t get much more Israelite than these designations. They drip of Old Testament descriptions for Israel. It’s through Jesus that “we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father” (2:18).

Promises made to Old Testament Israel are said to be fulfilled in the so-called church age, something a dispensationalist would never acknowledge: “For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. . . . And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,’ says the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:16, 18). How can this be when Paul is citing a verse that originally applied to Israel? How can the church be the temple? The temple is strictly Jewish. Second Corinthians 6:18 is a direct citation of Exodus 29:45: “And I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God.” Then there is the statement to the Corinthian ekklēsia to “come out from their midst and be separate.” This, too, is an Old Testament reference to Israel, as is the reference not to touch “what is unclean” (2 Cor. 6:17b; Isa. 52:11). Finally, Paul tells the Corinthians that God will be a Father to them, and they will be “sons and daughters” to Him (2 Cor. 6:18). Once again, Paul draws on passages that were first applied to Israel (Isa. 43:6; Hosea 1:10).

Notice how 2 Corinthians 7 begins: “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (v. 1). “These promises” were made to Israel, and yet Paul applies them to the church at Corinth (1:1).

There is no mention of a postponement of the promises, “an intercalary period of history,”[14] first made to Abraham. These Jewish believers, the recipients of the promises spoken by the prophets (Acts 3:24), made up “the church” (5:11). So then, when Gentiles were grafted into the existing all-Israelite ekklēsia, they took part in the same Israelite promises. Dispensationalists have to maintain that this was never God’s plan. Citing Isaiah 57:19, Paul assures Israelites and non-Israelites who are in Christ, “and He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near” (Eph. 2:17). The New Testament ekklēsia was always God’s plan!

Dispensationalists will still maintain that there are unfulfilled promises for Israel. Where in the New Testament does it say this? We have to ask the dispensationalist when these unfulfilled promises are going to be fulfilled. It can’t be during the so-called church age since, as dispensationalist Thomas Ice states, “We dispensationalists believe that the church has superseded Israel during the current church age, but God has a future time in which He will restore national Israel ‘as the institution for the administration of divine blessings to the world.’”[15]

It’s not going to take place during the dispensationalist’s version of the Great Tribulation since, according to dispensationalists, there will be a mass slaughter of Jews and even greater destruction to the world. Will it be during the “millennium”? Revelation 20 certainly doesn’t have anything to say about the promises being finally fulfilled during the thousand years.

Dispensationalists vehemently maintain that the ekklēsia (church) was unknown to the Old Testament writers. The so-called church age is said to be a “mystery,” a parenthesis, a gap in prophetic time, until the pre-tribulational “rapture” when the church will be removed from the earth and God will deal with Israel again. Then why does the writer to the Hebrews quote Psalm 22:22 and use the Greek word ekklēsia, translated accurately in most modern translations as “congregation,” as it should be translated elsewhere (see below)?:

“I will proclaim Your name to my brethren,

In the midst of the congregation [ekklēsia] I will sing Your praise” (Heb. 2:12).

Philip E. Hughes writes, “The proclamation of the Good News and the praise of God which accompanies it take place, moreover, in the midst of the congregation, or more literally (as in the KJV) ‘in the midst of the church’ [‘ekklēsia here is the LXX rendering of the Hebrew ekklēsia’], which in the perspective of the New Testament is God’s new temple being built up of those ‘living stones’ who are brethren with and in Christ (1 Pet. 2:5; Eph. 2:19–22).”[16]

If the dispensationalists are correct, then the New Testament writers who were under God’s direction like their Old Testament counterparts to write what they wrote (2 Tim. 3:16–17), then they were awfully confused. Of course, we know they weren’t. If they had wanted to make such a distinction between Israel and the “church” they certainly would have used a word that was not as common as ekklēsia to both the Greek Old Testament and the Greek New Testament to do it.
Endnotes:
The Greek word ekklēsia is used 115 times in the New Testament, and in most translations it is translated as “church.” Exceptions are often found in Acts 7:38, 19:32, 39, 41, and Hebrews 2:12. [↩]
J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament : Based on Semantic Domains, electronic ed. of the 2nd ed. (New York: United Bible Societies, [1989] 1996). [↩]
Fruchtenbaum writes that “when the Church is mentioned for the first time in Matthew 16:18, it is still future, as the use of the future tense clearly shows. Jesus did not say, ‘I am building,’ which would have been the case if the Church was already in existence. The only possible conclusion is that the Church was formed at Pentecost.” (Fruchtenbaum, Israelology, 466). What Fruchtenbaum does not tell his readers is that while ekklēsia is used for the first time in Matthew’s gospel, it’s not the first time Jesus’ disciples had heard the term. They were very familiar with it. Jesus describes how He will build His assembly of believers on the confession that He is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16) which is foundational to the entire Old Testament (Luke 24:27). Its newness is similar to the way the covenant is new (Heb. 8:8); it’s the same covenant but only expanded to include non-Israelites and made sure through Jesus’ shed blood (Matt. 26:28). Notice the number of passages in Hebrews 8 that are taken from the Old Testament (8:5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) and applied to the ekklēsia of the New Testament. [↩]
Following the LXX, the sacred assembly of Israel was the “ekklēsia of the LORD” (Deut. 23:1). “The people of God” are “in the ekklēsia” (Judges 20:2). Solomon took “all the ekklēsia” to Gibeon where the ark was (2 Chron. 1:3). There the ekklēsia inquired of the Lord (2 Chron. 1:5). When the temple was completed, Solomon blessed “all the ekklēsia of Israel” (1 Kings 8:14; cp. 8:22, 55; 2 Chron. 6:3). If this verse were in the NT, it would read “all the church of Israel.” When Solomon stands before the altar and prays, he is “before all the ekklēsia of Israel” (2 Chron. 6:12). The “ekklēsia of the LORD” was the covenantal assembly of Israel (Deut. 4:10). [↩]
Earl D. Radmacher, What the Church is All About: A Biblical and Historical Study (Chicago: Moody Press, [1972] 1978), 121, 132. Radmacher argues that “although the etymological associations of ekklesia have their unquestionable bearing upon the significance of the term, the deciding evidence must be drawn from the exhaustive investigation of its actual use in the New Testament. While it is true that historical continuity seems to demand that the early appearance of the word ekklesia in any new literature should simply suggest ‘assembly,’ it is also true that the Holy Spirit frequently lifts words from their current usages to a higher plane of meaning and packs into them such vast new content as their etymologies will scarcely account for. Whitney states: ‘Philologists agree that the final authority of any word does not lie in its etymological or historical connotation but in its actual use’” (132). That is the question. What is its actual use and meaning in the New Testament? [↩]
The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament and New Testament) (Jerusalem, Israel: The Bible Society in Israel, 1970). [↩]
Robert L. Saucy, The Church in God’s Program (Chicago: Moody Press, 1972), 16. [↩]
Edmund P. Clowney, “The Biblical Theology of the Church,” The Church in the Bible and the World: An International Study, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1987), 17. [↩]
Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, “Israel and the Church” in Issues In Dispensationalism, gen. eds. Wesley R. Willis and John R. Master (Chicago: Moody Press, 1994), 116. [↩]
Some dispensationalists have understood the problem of claiming the church began at Pentecost, so Acts 13 dispensationalism, or Mid-Acts dispensationalism, was born. This hybrid dispensational view argues that the church, as the body of Christ, began in Acts 13 when Paul turned from the Jews to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. J. C. O’Hair, C. R. Stam of the Berean Bible Church and author of Things That Differ, and Charles F. Baker, author of A Dispensational Theology, are proponents of this view. Then there is Acts 28 dispensationalism which states that the church began at the end of Acts (see Acts 28:17–29) when the Jewish leaders completely rejected Paul’s teaching. “Acts 28 dispensationalism is sometimes called ‘Bullingerism’ after its leading proponent, Ethelbert William Bullinger (1837–1913).” (G. R. Lewis, “Ultradispensationalism,” Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996], 773). [↩]
[1]“It should be noted that [the translation of ekklēsia as ‘church’ in Acts 7:38] is found in the King James Version. Most other translations have more correctly translated this verse to read, the congregation in the wilderness, or the assembly in the wilderness. The Greek term ekklēsia is not only used in the technical sense of the New Testament Church, but it is also used in the Septuagint as the translation of the Hebrew kahal, meaning ‘congregation.’ That was the obvious intent of Acts 7:38. Furthermore, in the Book of Acts itself, ekklēsia is used in the non-technical sense of ‘assembly,’ for it is used to describe an assembly of townspeople who were neither Jews nor Christians but Gentile pagans [Acts 19:32–33, 41]” (Fruchtenbaum, Israelology, 30–31). Of course, the Hebrew qāhāl is also used in a non-technical sense of assembly as well as an assembly of believers. [↩]
Is Luke comparing the Jerusalem of his day to the wilderness? (“the ekklēsia in the wilderness” and “the ekklēsia in Jerusalem”). Jesus predicted that Jerusalem would be destroyed (Matt. 22:1–14) and the temple would be left to that generation “desolate” (23:38). [↩]
As Marten H. Woudstra observes, “The question whether it is more proper to speak of a replacement of the Jews by the Christian church or of an extension (continuation) of the OT people of God into that of the NT church is variously answered.” (Marten H. Woudstra, “Israel and the Church,” in Continuity and Discontinuity: Perspectives on the Relationship Between the Testaments, ed. John S. Feinberg (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1987], 237.) Clarence Bass takes a similar position: “It is not that exegetes prior to his time did not see a covenant between God and Israel, or a future relation of Israel to the millennial reign, but they always viewed the church as a continuation of God’s single program of redemption begun in Israel. It is dispensationalism’s rigid insistence on a distinct cleavage between Israel and the church, and its belief in a later unconditional fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant, that sets it off from the historic faith of the church. (Clarence Bass, Backgrounds to Dispensationalism [Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1960], 27). [↩]
E. Schuyler English, A Companion to the New Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 135. [↩]
Thomas Ice, “The Israel of God,” The Thomas Ice Collection: www.raptureready.com/featured/TheIsraelOfGod.html#_edn3 [↩]
Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 108. [↩]

domingo, 18 de março de 2012

Vitória da Conquista possui quase 209 mil eleitores

De acordo com o Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE) o município de Vitória da Conquista chegou a 208.925 eleitores em janeiro deste ano.

Desse universo, 112.270 eleitoras, ou seja, 53.74% do total de votantes, contra 96.491 eleitores ou 46.18%.

Zonas eleitorais – Com o terceiro maior colégio eleitoral da Bahia a “capital do sudoeste” possui três zonas eleitorais (39ª, 40ª e 41ª).

Na 39ª zona eleitoral estão inscritos 69.310 eleitores enquanto que 73.145 são da 40ª zona eleitoral e 66.470 da 41ª zona eleitoral.

*Com informações do Tribuna da Conquista

Expoconquista 2012 começa no próximo sábado

A 46ª Exposição Agropecuária, Industrial e Comercial de Vitória da Conquista (Expoconquista) tem início no próximo sábado (24).

O evento, que tem como sede o Parque de Exposições Teopompo de Almeida, promete atrair milhares de visitantes da Bahia e do Brasil, através das exposições de animais, leilões, produtos agrícolas, rodeios, stands, Feira Coopmac-Sebrae, novidades da construção civil, dentre outros.

A expectativa é que a exposição movimente mais de R$ 100 milhões.

O evento vai até o dia 1º de abril (clique aqui para mais informações).

* Informações do Tribuna da Conquista

Coelba foi a empresa com maior número de reclamações ao Procon-BA em 2011

 A Coelba foi a empresa com o maior número de reclamações no ano passado ao Procon-BA, com 743 registros, segundo dados do Cadastro de Reclamações Fundamentadas 2011, divulgado na quinta-feira (15), Dia Mundial dos Direitos do Consumidor. A cobrança indevida foi um dos motivos mais recorrentes das queixas dos consumidores.

O ranking é seguido, nesta ordem, pelas empresas Oi (625), Lojas Insinuante (604), Ricardo Eletro (588) e a Multibrás Unidade de Eletrodomésticos (569). “Esperamos que com o lançamento deste Cadastro, as empresas se sintam constrangidas e passem, com isso, a respeitarem os direitos dos seus consumidores”, afirma o Chefe de Gabinete da secretaria da Justiça, Cidadania e Direitos Humanos, Samuel Soares, que representava o secretário Almiro Sena, durante o lançamento.

Para Moacyr Pina, representante da Coelba, o que motivou o aumento das reclamações foi a mudança na Tarifa Social, com certeza. Com as mudanças, muitos consumidores perderam direito ao benefício e sofreram aumento nas contas.

Com a nova regra, que começou a valer em dezembro de 2010, o principal critério para concessão do benefício passa a ser a renda familiar do cliente e não mais o consumo de energia. Os descontos não sofrerão alterações. Eles serão calculados de acordo com a faixa de gasto médio de energia e variam de 10% a 65%. O desconto maior é para a taxa de consumo menor (0 a 30 kWh).

O Cadastro de Reclamações Fundamentadas tem como principal função alertar os consumidores sobre maus fornecedores de produtos e serviços. “No dia de hoje, o Procon apresenta ao consumidor mais uma ferramenta para que ele exerça o seu direito à informação. Sem dúvida, o direito à informação, junto com o direito da livre escolha, são grandes poderes que nós, consumidores, temos em face dos fornecedores que sistematicamente desconhecem e ignoram os direitos dos consumidores”, destacou Soares, que também afirmou que a intenção da Secretaria da Justiça, Cidadania e Direitos Humanos é de municipalizar o Procon-BA.

Direitos
De acordo com o site da Secretaria da Justiça Cidadania e Direitos Humanos, se você deseja obrigar o fornecedor a fazer algo (como devolução do dinheiro ou troca de produto) ou quer receber alguma indenização, deve se dirigir ao Juizado de Defesa do Consumidor.

Quando a causa tem valor de até 20 salários mínimos, ou seja, de até R$ 12.440, não é necessário a presença de um advogado, podendo dar entrada à queixa sozinho. Para valores de 20 a 40 salários mínimos (de R$ 12.440 a R$ 24.880), o acompanhamento do advogado torna-se necessários. Com ações com valor acima de 40 salários mínimos, o consumidor deve procurar a Justiça Comum, infoma o site.

* Informações do A Tarde

sábado, 17 de março de 2012

A vision of freedom and world-transformation

 Sometime around AD 405, a sixteen year-old boy strolling the English seaside was attacked by pirates. They kidnapped him and sold him on the slave market to a chieftain in Northern Ireland who forced him to herd pigs. The young man endured filth, the elements, separation from family, and years of servitude.

Yet the open air and solitude gave him precious time for spiritual reflection, and he saw in his miserable condition a mirror of his own sinful soul. His nominal boyhood faith grew into a vibrant hope and a longing for freedom. After six years of bondage, he escaped. He boarded a nearby ship, but did not end up in his home country. Instead, it landed in what is today France. He came in contact with a monastery. He stayed for a while, deepening and enriching his faith. He profited so much he stayed for a few years; but he still missed his home. Eventually, he returned. There was a great celebration and he was treated as if he had risen from the dead. In a way, he had.

Around the same time, he experienced powerful dreams in which he received hundreds of letters each bearing the message, “We beseech thee, holy youth, to come and walk with us once more.” The young man interpreted the dreams as a call to missions, and he returned to the very same land where he had formerly been enslaved. This time, however, he would become a much different kind of shepherd. He preached the gospel that inspired his freedom. He made converts. He baptized thousands, ordained clergy, founded churches and monasteries. Eventually he converted rulers, confronted pagan Druids and witches, changed the laws of the kingdoms he influenced, and according to legend performed healings and miracles. He was often in peril: he was imprisoned several times by rival clans, and threatened with death by the pagan leaders he opposed; yet he was always rescued. The monasteries he founded trained the missionaries who would carry the gospel back to England and to much of the greater Western world.

The man died in peace, advanced in age. Tradition says it was on this day, March 17, somewhere in the latter part of the AD 400s.

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His name is Maewyn, but he’s better-known as Saint Patrick.

The life of St. Patrick displays the type of faith that Christians sorely need today: it is a faith that is not merely private. It is a faith lived out, that has great vision, big goals, that confronts tyrants, gives people hope, and transforms the world around it.

We, too, live in slavery, though ours is largely self-imposed. We, too, are surrounded by druids (often called “liberals”) and impinged by various herds of social swine. There are plenty of pirates, pigs, and tyrants; wiccans and warlords abound. But these are not so much the problem. The greater problem is that Christians too often fear the type of confrontations necessary to drive out these demons and change society.

Patrick didn’t. He had the vision and he took the first steps for which that vision called. The rest came in history. It would be good this St. Patrick’s to make a commitment to yourself and to God, if you have not done so already, just to begin to change your mind-set. Just begin asking the questions: What would a Christian society look like? What would it take to get there? What am I willing to sacrifice to make it happen? That would be a good beginning. I have done this exercise in detail myself. You can start reading my outline here http://americanvision.org/5562/restoring-america-one-county-at-a-time-master-index/.

And then, Go thou and do like St. Patrick.

By Joel McDurmon

quinta-feira, 15 de março de 2012

A Command Presence, or, On Looking Presidential

We are by now familiar with the list of tyrannies that God said Israel’s desired King would impose upon them (1 Sam. 8): conscription for military service and civil service, a military-industrial complex, high taxation, confiscation of property, slavery, etc. (See my previous discussions here and here.)

What we learn from the following two chapters is 1) the defective type of man who is just right for that job, and 2) the obstinacy of a population who looks past his folly, the certainty of tyranny, and cheers him on. In these ways, 1 Samuel 9–10 is a snapshot of modern politics, too.

For starters, we learn what type of person we have in Saul. This appears at various places in the two chapters. First, in 9:1 we learn that Saul comes from great stock. His father was “a man of wealth.” There is question among the commentators weather the word for “wealth” here (chayil) should be translated “wealth” (as in Deut. 8:18) or “strength” (as in 1 Sam. 2:4). It can mean both, and both may very well apply in this case.

What is not in dispute is that Saul was quite a physical specimen: he was “a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he. From his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people” (9:2). This guy was the quarterback, the star of the show. He had a commanding presence: he drew all eyes when he entered the room.

Second, we get an insight into Saul’s self-centeredness. While out seeking for his father’s lost asses, after only a short time he abandons the search. Why? Because he grows concerned that his father might be missing him: “Come, let us go back, lest my father cease to care about the donkeys and become anxious about us” (9:5). In this little vignette we see Saul’s self-concern in seed form. He had traveled no more than ten miles—perhaps long by modern standards, but really less than a day’s walk. It’s plausible a father would get concerned, but in that culture it’s doubtful, especially with Saul being the biggest guy on the block.

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Rather, as we see revealed clearer in later passages, Saul was self-absorbed in a big way. Even when his open rebellion becomes clear and he is rejected as being king over Israel, Saul is concerned primarily with not losing his standing before the people: “I have sinned; yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me, that I may bow before the LORD your God” (1 Sam. 15:30). As commentator John Gill puts it: “he seemed more concerned for the loss of honour and reputation with the people, than for his sin against God, which is always the case of hypocrites.”[1] Saul ends selfish because he began selfish.

Almost hidden in the story, we have a wonderful poetic image given to us in the side-plot of Saul hunting for the herd of donkeys (“asses” in the KJV). In one sense, the addition of this detail in the story seems only to serve as a reason why Saul journeyed to Zuph to begin with. But at another level, it is at least tempting if not correct to see here an image of the stubborn flock of God who had just rejected Him in favor of a king, and their soon-to-be king Saul was sent out looking for his father’s flock. Instead of a flock of sheep, however, they were a herd of asses.

Thus when Saul converses with Samuel for the first time, Samuel essentially says, “Hey, don’t worry about the donkeys you’re looking for. They have been found.” The actual donkeys had been found, so this was a literal revelation from Samuel and would be a sign to Saul of the divine veracity of Samuel’s message. But it is also getting further mileage out of the “God’s stiffnecked, stubborn people Israel” image: “Looking for a herd of asses, Saul? Look no further.” And what is unstated but implied: “You are about to be made King of the Asses.” Not only was it a fact, but Saul was the right man for the job.

Third, it appears Saul was something of a liar, though perhaps this time in an attempt to appear humble. When Samuel reveals to Saul that all Israel is waiting for him, Saul replies in disbelief: “is not my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin?” (9:21). Yet we’ve already learned that his father was a great and powerful man (9:1), possibly even wealthy. There seems to be some level of conflict here.

Indeed, truth seems to be a handicap for Saul later as well. Again, in chapter 15, we see Saul’s consummate sin of disobedience against God: he fails to carry out God’s command to anywhere near its fullness, but instead follows his own judgment and spares king Agag and the best of the cattle. It’s the very sin for which God rejects Saul from the throne. And yet Saul meets Samuel with the report, “I have performed the commandment of the LORD” (1 Sam. 15:13 ESV). It was an outright lie.

Fourth, we might as well tally that Saul was self-willed and not suppliant to God. This should go without saying at this point.

Finally, despite his great stature and presence, Saul turns out to be a coward who runs from his calling. Even after being anointed by Samuel, even after divine signs confirming that calling for Saul, and even after God’s Spirit changing Saul’s heart—whatever that fully entails in this case—when it comes time to stand and acknowledge that calling and consecration before the assembled nation, Saul has disappeared. He’s gone. Everyone is at a loss for Saul’s whereabouts. After consulting with the Lord, it is revealed that Saul is hiding among “the stuff” (KJV), or “the baggage” (ESV) (10:22). He was hiding in a warehouse.

So, Saul was tall and handsome, yes, but he was selfish, a liar, and a shell of a man.

In short, he had all the raw material of a classic politician.

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It is at this point that Samuel warns the nation once again of the grave decision they are making. They are literally rejecting God in setting up the rule of man over them:

And he said to the people of Israel, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you.’ But today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses, and you have said to him, ‘Set a king over us’” (1 Sam. 10:18–19).

Indeed, they were rejecting the God who had delivered and protected them from slavery, and were embracing a form of government that was destined to bring them back into slavery—all in the name of national security.

And ironically, it was at this very point that the nation which had rejected God for a king, had to ask God where their new king was hiding. The great man who was supposedly going to protect Israel and save her from all her enemies was hiding in fear of his calling. And Israel had to rely upon the God they rejected in order to find their cowering hero.

And yet, they wanted that hero anyway. When Saul was brought forth, his stature was of note among the people, who were certainly in awe of their new king. Samuel announced the obvious (almost certainly mockingly to some degree), “There is none like him among all the people” (1 Sam. 10:24). And the people, wowed, shouted, “Long live the king!” Samuel then dumped cold water on the party, repeating the “way of the king” (same phrase as 1 Sam. 8:9, 11)—the tyranny that was about to come through this man—and writing it in a book as a witness against the people.

So in short, what do we have here? We have a people moved by fear of terrorist attacks (from the Philistines and other surrounding enemies), and by this fear are moved to accept (nay, demand!) an aggressive national military leader (8:20) contrary to God’s command (Deut. 17, 22), fashioned after the standards of the very pagans they condemned. This pro-war, pro-military desire on the part of the people God considered a complete rejection of His rule.

When a self-centered, lying, cheating, coward comes along whose only asset is his appearance, this people spontaneously bursts into a praise chorus, “Long live the king!” Despite an imminent warning of tyranny and slavery from the only person in the whole nation who everyone knew had never said a single word that didn’t come to pass (3:19; 9:6), and despite having witnessed their would-be king caught hiding from them when duty called, the nation could not praise his advent loud enough.

There is a particular irrationality that attends allegiance to political solutions and political heroes. God put this lesson here for us all to see and learn. It applies just as much today as it did 3,000 years ago. God has revealed to us a government and a way of life that is peaceful, prosperous, free, and which safeguards both liberty and safety (defense). But we continually reject that way—even when we have something close to that choice before us—in exchange for imperialism and a foreign policy of war and fear.

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We break every law God gave against a strong central government, and we are too often totally oblivious to the tyranny and slavery—in biblical terms—under which we have lived for decades. Our written histories center on political personalities and the wars we’ve fought, and by these we define the greatness of a nation.

We judge political candidates by their stage presence—whether or not they “look presidential.” I even heard a woman on a news panel the other day—she was the wife of a military man—scoffing at one particular candidate for president because of his appearance. She said he has no “command presence,” and she just couldn’t imagine him as commander in chief because she couldn’t picture him leading an army.

Well, Saul had quite a “command presence,” didn’t he? And how did that work out?

Worse yet, the whole mentality of a “king” to “fight our battles” God condemned as a rejection of Him, totally. That decision in Samuel’s generation led to a militarized Jewish state which slowly, steadily declined—despite temporary revivals—until total subjection Babylon. So much for “command presence.” It took over 400 years for this process to complete, but it was the inevitable result of rejecting God’s revealed society in exchange for the false safety of a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy.
Endnotes:
Gill, Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 2:491.

By Joel McDurmon

Assembleia da Bahia aprova aumento de governador, vice e secretários

O governo gastará no exercício de 2012 mais R$ 9,8 milhões em consequência direta e indireta da aprovação do projeto de lei que reajustou em 6,5% o subsídio do governador, vice-governador e secretários de Estado. O projeto foi aprovado por unanimidade pelos 51 deputados presentes nesta terça, 13, na Assembleia Legislativa (AL).

O montante é menos pelo aumento do salário do governador Jaques Wagner (PT), que passou de R$ 17.278 para R$ 18.299 (aumento de R$ 1.021 ), do vice, Otto Alencar (PSD), e dos 24 secretários, que passam a receber R$ 14.120. Mas principalmente em razão dos cerca de 700 auditores fiscais (ativos e inativos) e aproximadamente 80 coronéis, delegados e gestores governamentais, cujos salários são vinculados ao teto do Executivo, que é o rendimento do governador. O impacto anual dos salários do governador, vice, secretários, já com o reajuste, será de R$ 4,695 milhões. Já os 780 servidores receberão, juntos, até o final do ano, mais de R$ 171,285 milhões.

quarta-feira, 14 de março de 2012

A Ceia do Senhor

O segundo dos sacramentos protestantes é a Ceia do Senhor, que Jesus instituiu na noite anterior à sua crucificação. Este acontecimento está registrado em cada um dos evangelhos sinópticos (Mt 25:17-30; Mc 14:12-26; Lc 22:7-23), porém o melhor relato e o mais completo, encontramos em I Coríntios em uma passagem em que Paulo está procura corrigir alguns abusos que os crentes estão praticando na igreja de Corinto durante a Ceia do Senhor. A passagem é a seguinte:

“Porque eu recebi do Senhor o que também vos entreguei: que o Senhor Jesus, na noite em que foi traído, tomou o pão; e, tendo dado graças, o partiu e disse: Isto é o meu corpo, que é dado por vós; fazei isto em memória de mim. Por semelhante modo, depois de haver ceado, tomou também o cálice, dizendo: Este cálice é a nova aliança no meu sangue; fazei isto, todas as vezes que o beberdes, em memória de mim. Porque, todas as vezes que comerdes este pão e beberdes o cálice, anunciais a morte do Senhor, até que ele venha. Por isso, aquele que comer o pão ou beber o cálice do Senhor, indignamente, será réu do corpo e do sangue do Senhor. Examine-se, pois, o homem a si mesmo, e, assim, coma do pão, e beba do cálice” (I Co 11:23-28).

A Ceia do senhor é similar ao batismo, pois possui todos os elementos de um sacramento. Porém se diferencia do batismo visto que o batismo é um sacramento de iniciação (é o testemunho de uma identificação primária com Cristo, identificação sem a qual não é possível se ser cristão), enquanto que a Ceia do Senhor é um sacramento contínuo que deve ser observado vez após vez (“Porque, todas as vezes que comerdes este pão e beberdes o cálice”) no transcurso da vida cristã. Esta natureza da ceia do Senhor se vê em seu significado passado, presente e futuro.

O significado passado
Este significado passado da Ceia do Senhor claramente é resultante do uso da palavra “memória”. Na Ceia do Senhor olhamos até o passado, até a morte do Senhor. Antes de tudo, recordamos Seu sacrifício expiatório como nosso substituto. O pão partido representa o corpo partido de nosso Senhor, e o vinho, representa Seu sangue derramado. A expiação está relacionada com nosso ser que agora está bem com Deus. A substituição significa que a expiação foi conseguida pela morte de um outro em nosso lugar.

Por que Jesus morreu? A Bíblia nos ensina que todos que já viveram até hoje são pecadores, pois quebraram a Lei de Deus e o pagamento pelo pecado é a morte. A Bíblia nos diz: “Como está escrito: Não há justo, nem um sequer, não há quem entenda, não há quem busque a Deus; todos se extraviaram, à uma se fizeram inúteis; não há quem faça o bem, não há nem um sequer” (Rm 3:10-12). Nos diz: “porque o salário do pecado é a morte, mas o dom gratuito de Deus é a vida eterna em Cristo Jesus, nosso Senhor” (Rm 6:23). Esta morte não é só física, se bem que o é de fato, mas também é espiritual. A morte implica em uma separação. A morte física é a separação da alma e do espírito do corpo. A morte espiritual é a separa da alma e espírito de Deus. Merecemos esta separação como uma conseqüência de nosso pecado. Porém Jesus se converteu em nosso substituto quando experimentou a morte física e espiritual em nosso lugar.

Uma ilustração viva deste princípio vemos nos primeiros capítulos de Gênesis. Adão e Eva haviam pecado e tinham agora medo de suas conseqüências. Deus os havia advertido dizendo: “E o SENHOR Deus lhe deu esta ordem: De toda árvore do jardim comerás livremente, mas da árvore do conhecimento do bem e do mal não comerás; porque, no dia em que dela comeres, certamente morrerás” (Gn 2:16-17). É possível que tivessem uma idéia muito clara do que significava a morte, porém sabiam que deveria tratar-se de algo muito sério. Em conseqüência, quando pecaram por sua desobediência, e logo escutaram a voz de Deus que se aproximava no jardim, tentaram se esconder.

Porém ninguém pode se esconder de Deus. Deus lhes falou e chamou para que saíssem de seu esconderijo e começou a tratar a sua transgressão. Que deveríamos esperar que sucedesse como resultado dessa confrontação? Aqui está Deus que havia dito aos nossos primeiros pais que no dia que pecassem nesse dia morreriam. Aqui estão Adão e Eva caídos em pecado. Dadas as circunstâncias, cabia esperar a execução imediata da sentença de Deus. Se Deus os houvesse matado nesse mesmo momento, tanto física como espiritualmente, colocando-os fora de Sua presença para sempre, haveria feito o que era justo.

Mas não foi isto que sucedeu. Ao contrário, Deus primeiro os admoestou por haverem pecado e logo ofereceu um sacrifício. Como resultado, Adão e Eva foram vestidos com pele de animais mortos. Foi a primeira morte que alguém já presenciou. Foi Deus que realizou. Enquanto Adão e Eva presenciavam, deviam estar aterrorizados. No entanto, enquanto se escandalizavam pelo sacrifício, ao mesmo tempo estavam maravilhados. Porque o que Deus lhes mostrava era que era embora merecessem morrer, no caso destes animais, eles morreram em lugar deles. Os animais pagaram o preço do seu pecado e eles foram revestidos com as peles dos animais como recordação do fato.

Este é o significado da substituição. É a morte de um em lugar de outro. No entanto, devemos dizer que segundo o ensino da Bíblia, a morte de animais nunca pode pagar o castigo do pecado (Hb 10:4). Este acontecimento era só um símbolo sobre como o pecado haveria de ser pago. O sacrifício real foi realizado por Jesus Cristo, e isso vemos no culto quando é celebrada a Ceia.

Também olhamos para trás e vemos algo que Jesus sugeriu quando falou do vinho: “o sangue da aliança” (Mc 14:24) e “da nova aliança no meu sangue” (1 Co 11:25). Olhamos até trás para essa vitória em cuja base Deus tem estabelecido uma nova aliança de salvação com seu povo redimido. Um pacto é uma promessa solene confirmada por um juramento ou um sinal. Foi assim quando Cristo falou do cálice como comemorando comemoração de um novo pacto. Ele estava sinalizando para as promessas de salvação que Deus nos havia feito sobre a base da Sua morte. Isso nos vem unicamente por sua graça.

O Significado Presente
A Ceia do Senhor tem um significado presente. Primeiro, o sacramento é algo que participamos repetidas vezes, recordando a morte do Senhor repetidas vezes até que Ele venha. Segundo, é uma oportunidade para examinar nossas vidas à luz de nossa profissão de fé em sua morte. Paulo disse: “Examine-se, pois, o homem a si mesmo, e, assim, coma do pão, e beba do cálice; pois quem come e bebe sem discernir o corpo, come e bebe juízo para si” (1 Co 11:28-29).

No centro do significado presente da Ceia do Senhor está nossa comunhão em Cristo. Daí a expressão: “Culto de Comunhão”. Ao participar deste culto o crente crê que vai encontrar-se com Cristo e ter comunhão com Ele porque está sendo convidado por Ele. O exame tem lugar porque seria uma hipocrisia aparentar estar em comunhão com o Santo e manter algum pecado em nossos corações.

O modo como Jesus está presente no culto de Comunhão tem sido tema de controvérsias e divisões na igreja cristã. Há três teorias. A primeira delas é que Jesus não está presente, pelo menos não está mais presente da forma como está presente em todo lugar. Para quem sustenta este ponto de vista, a Ceia do Senhor tem exclusivamente um caráter recordatório. É só um memorial da morte de Cristo. A segunda teoria é a sustentada pela Igreja Católica Romana. Segundo esta teoria se supõe que o corpo e o sangue de Cristo estão literalmente presentes sob a forma de pão e vinho. Antes da missa os elementos são simplesmente pão e vinho. Porém durante a missa, mediante as administrações que realiza o sacerdote, estes elementos são modificados para que, ainda que os adoradores percebam apenas o pão e o vinho, estão sem dúvida comendo e bebendo o corpo e sangue de Jesus. Este processo chama-se transubstanciação. A terceira teoria, a que sustentava João Calvino em particular e outros reformadores, é que Cristo está presente no culto de Comunhão, porém espiritualmente e não fisicamente. Calvino chamou a isto de “a presença real” para indicar que uma presença espiritual é tão real como uma presença física.

Que temos de pensar sobre estas teorias? Para começar devemos dizer que não pode haver nenhuma oposição à teoria recordatória, já que é correta. A questão é se há algo mais envolvido além da memória., além da lembrança, apenas. A divisão fundamental consiste entre as posições da maioria dos reformadores e a doutrina da Igreja Católica Romana. Os que estão a favor de uma presença física, literal (e Lutero foi um deles, se bem que não aceitou a doutrina da transubstaciação) argumentam que esta é a interpretação literal das palavras de Cristo “Este é o meu corpo” (Mc 14:22). Porém isto não é suficiente para elucidar este assunto, porque ditas expressões ocorrem com freqüência na Bíblia em sentido evidentemente figurativo ou como representação de outra coisa. Por exemplo:

“As sete vacas são sete anos” (Gn 41:26)
“Tu eras a cabeça de ouro” (Dn 2:38)
“O campo é o mundo” (Mt 13:38)
“A Rocha era Cristo” (1 Co 10:4)
“Os sete candeeiros são as sete igreja” (Ap 1:20)
“Eu sou a porta das ovelhas” (Jo 10:7)
“Eu sou a videira verdadeira” (Jo 15:1)

Que Jesus estava usando uma linguagem figurada e não realizando um milagre de transubstanciação se evidencia do fato de que seu corpo estava presente enquanto falava a seus discípulos. Agora, seu corpo ressuscitado está no céu.

Um motivo para tomar a presença de Cristo no sacramento como sendo uma presença espiritual é que este é o sentido em que se deve entender cada uma das promessas sobre a presença de Cristo conosco nesta época em que vivemos. Bannerman escreveu:

“As promessas tais como ‘Eis que estou convosco até o fim do mundo’; ‘Onde estiver dois ou três reunidos em meu nome, eu estou no meio deles’; ‘Eis que estou à porta e bato; se alguém ouvir minha voz e abrir a porta, entrarei a ele e cearei com ele e ele comigo’; e outras similares, dão pé para afirmar que Cristo mediante seu Espírito, está presente nas práticas de fé do crente transmitindo sua bênção e sua graça espiritual. Porém não há nada que nos leva a fazer uma diferença ou distinção entre a presença de Cristo na Ceia e a presença de Cristo em outras práticas, no que diz respeito a dita presença. A eficácia da presença do Salvador pode ser diferente no modo de distribuir mais ou menos graça salvadora, de acordo com a natureza da prática, e a medida da fé do crente. Porém a forma que assume a dita presença é a mesma, sendo realizada mediante o Espírito de Cristo e a fé do crente”.

Há alguns versículos muito conhecidos no capítulo 6 de João que também nos falam sobre a fé em Cristo e sobre nos alimentamos espiritualmente dele, se bem que não falem literalmente sobre a Ceia do Senhor, já que dito sacramento não havia sido instituído. “Respondeu-lhes Jesus: Em verdade, em verdade vos digo: se não comerdes a carne do Filho do Homem e não beberdes o seu sangue, não tendes vida em vós mesmos. Quem comer a minha carne e beber o meu sangue tem a vida eterna, e eu o ressuscitarei no último dia. Pois a minha carne é verdadeira comida, e o meu sangue é verdadeira bebida” (Jo 6:53-55).

Se desejamos sinônimos para “comer” e “beber”, os encontramos em João 6 na idéia de crer (vs. 29, 35, 47), vir (v. 35), ver (v. 40), escutar e aprender dele (v 45). Todos estão indicando uma resposta a Jesus. Os termos comer e beber enfatizam que esta alimentação tem de ser por uma fé tão real como comer literalmente.

O Significado Futuro
O terceiro significado da Ceia do Senhor é futuro. Paulo disse: “Porque, todas as vezes que comerdes este pão e beberdes o cálice, anunciais a morte do Senhor, até que ele venha” (1 Co 11:26). O Senhor sugeriu o mesmo quando lhe disse a seus discípulos que estavam comendo a última ceia com ele: “Em verdade vos digo que jamais beberei do fruto da videira, até àquele dia em que o hei de beber, novo, no reino de Deus” (Mc 14:25).

Falamos sobre a presença real do Senhor Jesus Cristo no culto tal como o conhecemos agora e buscamos responder a seu chamado e servi-lo. Estamos prontos a admitir que há momentos em que isto é difícil e parece ser como que o Senhor não está presente. E seja por causa do pecado, da fadiga ou simplesmente por falta de fé, Jesus as vezes parece estar distante. Mesmo que continuemos em nossa vida cristã e no serviço, anelamos esse dia em que o veremos face a face e seremos como Ele (1 Jo 3:2). O culto de Comunhão serve para lembrarmos esse dia. É um vislumbre da grande ceia matrimonial do Cordeiro. É para nos animarmos na fé e para nos impulsionar cada vez mais alto na santidade.

Por James Boice