HARVARD DIVINES:

The Harvard Divinity School (HDS) faculty members and guests who gathered Thursday (March 18) to discuss the much-talked-about new film "The Passion of the Christ" dissented only in their choice of adjectives.

"Deeply sadistic," said Robert Orsi, Warren Professor of the History of Religion

in America. "Disturbing," he continued. "Militaristic."

"Pornographic," added Ellen Aitken, assistant professor of the New Testament, with biting contempt.

"Obscene" and "blasphemous," panelist and writer James Carroll wrote in an op-ed in The Boston Globe Feb. 24.

"Overwhelmingly bad news," said Harvey Cox, Hollis Professor of Divinity. "A celebration of apocalyptic violence."

From the over-the-top violence of the film, directed by Mel Gibson, to its infidelity to the Gospels from which it draws its narrative to its portrayal of Jews, the panel - rounded out by Frothingham Professor of the History of Religion François Bovon and moderator Kevin Madigan, assistant professor of the history of Christianity - unanimously condemned "The Passion." In the lively panel and discussion that followed, they presented reasons scholarly, political, spiritual, and visceral to loathe the film that has been a box office winner since its release.

I haven't even seen the movie yet, and I find this learned, incisive, beyond-leftist assessment laughable. Makes me want to become an Assistant Professor of the history of Christianity just to bring some sliver of orthodoxy to academia. Truly a lamentable state for this university which today stands for pride in mere human achievements, rather than the values and mission of its founding.

Harvard University was founded in 1636 with the intention of establishing a school to train Christian ministers. In accordance with that vision, Harvard's "Rules and Precepts," adopted in 1646, stated (original spelling and Scriptural references retained):

"2. Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisedome, Let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seeke it of him (Prov. 2:3).

3. Every one shall so exercise himselfe in reading the Scriptures twice a day, that he shall be ready to give such an account of his proficiency therein, both in Theoreticall observations of Language and Logick, and in practical and spiritual truths, as his Tutor shall require, according to his ability; seeing the entrance of the word giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple (Psalm 119:130)."

The motto of the University adopted in 1692 was "Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae" which translated from Latin means "Truth for Christ and the Church." This phrase was embedded on a shield as shown to the right, and can be found on many buildings around campus including the Widener library, Memorial Church, and various dorms in Harvard Yard. Interestingly, the top two books on the shield are face up while the bottom book is face down. This symbolizes the limits of reason, and the need for God's revelation.

I spent the summer of 1985 studying American government and astrophysics at Harvard. I loved it there and thought it was glorious. I wanted so badly to graduate from Harvard, but I wonder what would have happened to me had I not gone to Rice.

Needless to say, Harvard University's motto today has the 'Christo et Ecclesiae' lopped off. In our wisdom we've concluded that we can find truth completely on our own, thank you very much... the very Biblical definition of foolishness.

An attempt to recover what little is known about John Harvard the man, and more on how the college was governed in its early years, is at http://www.trinityfoundation.org/reviews/journal.asp?ID=104a.html. One thing that has always astounded me about these early Protestants was their incredible academic rigor.

Harvard sailed to America when he was 29 and died in America at 30. Despite his youth, the library he left Harvard College -- over 400 volumes, 329 titles – bespeaks a man with breadth of learning. Three-quarters of his books were theological: Chrysostom, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Philip Melanchthon, Theodore Beza, Robert Bellarmine, William Ames, Jerome Zanchius, and Henry Ainsworth, among others. There were also many Greek and Roman writers in the originals as well as translations. In comparison with English libraries, the Harvard library was not insignificant. Emmanuel College library, for example, had 600 books in 1637. Samuel Eliot Morison commented on Harvard’s library in The Founding of Harvard College: "That such a collection could be brought out to a country only seven years settled is striking evidence of the Puritan purpose to maintain intellectual standards in the New World." Most of Harvard’s books were destroyed by fire in 1764, but one survived: John Downame’s Christian Warfare Against the Devil, World, and Flesh.

Wow. Unbelievable. I don't know how you could read all that by age 29 and be married.

The original link to the Harvard Gazette came from Evangelical Outpost. The blogger, Joe Carter, is a Texas Marine.

Awesome little article from Fred Barnes who traveled through Iraq last month. The Sermon Was in Arabic:

PASTOR JULE'S CHURCH is new and not easy to find. For more than a decade after selling his business, he devoted his life to preaching about Jesus Christ, but not in public in overwhelmingly Islamic Iraq. In 1999, he started an underground Pentecostal Christian church in his home. And when Saddam Hussein was toppled a year ago, he opened an above-ground church in Karrada, a residential and retail district across the Tigris River from the heavily guarded 'green zone' of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The surfacing of his church may not seem like much of a breakthrough. Iraq is 3 percent Christian at most, and Saddam used to brag about his tolerance of Christian churches. But they were mostly churches where tributes to Saddam crept into sermons; they were no threat to his regime. Pastor Jule's church is different. It elevates faith in Christ as one's personal savior over any worldly obligations to the state. The church has ties to the Assemblies of God in America.