“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42).

The reasons for gathering as a church have not changed since the first believers were inspired at Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. When we gather together, we are still to devote ourselves to teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of the bread, and to prayer. Three of these are easily understandable — of course we must learn how to live the Christian life from those more experienced than us, support each other in this great undertaking, and reach out in prayer to our Creator and Redeemer.

But why the breaking of the bread? Why is this so tremendously important? The Eucharist can seem like a relic of pagan ritual meaninglessly preserved into the present. Firstly, the Eucharist is a physical memorial of the concreteness, the bodiliness, of Christ’s death and resurrection. Mystery surrounds what happens during the breaking of the bread, but at the very least, physically eating reminds us that Christianity is not just a religion of airy philosophizing, but is founded on material facts about something that happened to one particular body two thousand years ago. And if the Eucharist is something more than a memorial, then here, too, there is another intermingling of the material and the spiritual and ultimately holy. The bread and the wine do not just touch our bodies, but touch our very souls, transforming us with God’s living power.

Secondly, in eating and drinking the Bread and the Wine, which literally, spiritually, or symbolically have become Christ’s Body and Blood, we enter into the body of believers that spans across the world and time. We join with all who hav ever received the Eucharist in remembering Christ’s death, celebrating his resurrection, and awaiting his coming in glory, united in our single hope under our single Lord. Because the great mystery of our faith, our salvation, was accomplished by a bodily death and resurrection, the whole physical world has been charged with significance. As we eat the bread and drink the wine, we look forward to a time when the whole church will be perfectly united, and Christ will be all in all.

Anne Goetz ’11 is an English concentrator in Pforzheimer House. She is the Books and Arts editor of The Ichthus.

Jessica Jinju Pottenger — Princeton Revisions

As humans, we suffer from forgetfulness and unfaithfulness. Without discipline and cultivated habits, our hearts stray from our commitments and we often find that our own willpower is not enough to keep us from sin. We need community to keep us accountable to ourselves and to the God in whom we profess faith.

The author of Hebrews knew that human nature was unfaithful when he wrote, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25). The Christians the author of Hebrews was addressing were suffering terribly, and needed a kind of support that could only come from the Spirit and from each other.

In today’s world, those struggling with spiritual matters often find themselves in a similar situation to that of the early Christians in Hebrews. Life is difficult, and it is impossible to endure it alone. Without having a community that meets regularly, it is tempting, often too tempting, for individual Christians to wish they were back in Egypt, to wish they were not wandering the desert waiting for God to deliver them to the Promised Land.

Going to church is, in short, a necessary part of Christian living because living cannot be done alone. Living for Christ often means enduring untidy, tangled relationships with each other, and lovingly working them out. Going to church is a necessary but not sufficient condition to such a lifestyle, as the mere act of going, while important, should only lead up to the climax of getting involved with each other and in each other’s lives so that we can truly encourage each other towards Christ. Just as iron sharpens iron, so too do members of a community sharpen each other – and it is only out in the messy and difficult world that God can work to break us and make us like His Son.

Jessica Jinjiu Pottenger ’10 is majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School of International Relations and Public Policy at Princeton University. She is a senior contributor to Princeton’s Christian magazine Revisions.

Sarah White — Dartmouth Apologia

“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:46-47)

Since the days of the early church as recorded by Luke in the book of Acts, the church has had both an internal and an external orientation. On the one hand, the church has served to present the gospel as well as to minister to the worldly needs of the entire community. On the other hand, the church has a special ministry to its members to encourage their growth in relationship with Christ. This can be seen in the verse quoted above, which describes both the intramural

fellowship of the believers and the fruits of their outreach. Attending a weekly church meeting can be beneficial to seekers who are interested in learning more about God, and it is also important for Christians desiring to grow in community with other believers.

In the modern world, one of the best places to hear the gospel message is at church. Through sermons and other Bible studies, the church provides gospel teaching for those who are unacquainted with the message as well as for those who seek continuing growth through the study of God’s word. It is also important for Christians to have fellowship with one another. Many Christians interact with other believers only at church, while most of their time at work and in their communities is spent with those who do not believe. In order to meet, interact with, and build relationships with each other, it is often necessary for Christians to purposefully seek each other out. The church is just such a purposeful community, where Christians can not only interact with and encourage each other, but also build relationships where they can disciple one another and help each other grow. Furthermore, the church organization is an effective way for Christians to gather together in order to serve each other and the larger community. As Christians strive to follow Christ in the world, it is essential that they meet together as His body to learn, disciple, encourage, and serve.

Sarah White ’11 is an English major and Russian minor. She is the Managing Editor of the Dartmouth Apologia.

Michael Giuffrida — Yale Logos

For me, the question “Why go to church?” is, on the surface, easy to answer. I am a Catholic, and we Catholics are required to attend mass every Sunday. All Sundays are holy days of obligation, and observance by attending Mass is mandated by Canon Law. Skipping Mass when one is able to attend is a sin.

This is all true, but not very insightful. Clearly, church should not be solely an obligation. In fact, we, most of whom are no longer persecuted for our Christian beliefs, ought to see church as a privilege.

Until Constantine’s Edict of Milan granted freedom of religion, Christians were put to death for celebrating the Eucharist. Yet Christians still regularly participated in worship, risking their lives for the opportunity to meet and celebrate the Eucharist, an opportunity we take for granted and sometimes pass up. Either our forebears in church history were insane, or there is something in this mode of worship worth dying for.

Church is a great opportunity to gather with fellow believers, worship together, and introduce neophytes into our community. But, more importantly, by sharing in the Eucharist, we share and become members of Christ’s Body. We take part in the sacrifice on Calvary through the Eucharistic liturgy. By obeying Christ’s commandment to “do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19) we are redeemed. To achieve this redemption and eternal life in Christ, early Christians risked and sometimes sacrificed their earthly lives.

Not to risk our lives to meet in church, not even to devote an hour of our week to God, not to wish to partake regularly in this act of redemption, is tantamount to turning our backs to Christ, which is precisely what we do whenever we sin. If we understand the redemptive power of the Eucharist, and if we hear Christ’s commandment, then we will not only attend church regularly, but do so willingly and eagerly.

We are baptized into a community, the Body of Christ, the Church. With these members we must worship, and “not stay away from our assembly… but encourage one another” (Hebrews 10:25). We go to church because we all comprise the Body of Christ, and we wish to say Yes to Him.

Michael Giuffrida is a sophomore Computer Science major in Calhoun College. He is the Executive Director of the Logos.

Let us reframe the question: Do we take the hope of Christ seriously enough actually to trust in it?

Nonviolence is a consequence of hearing the glad tidings of the Gospel. It follows from obedience to the messiah who would rather die than take up the sword of revolutionary violence, the God who does not wish for us to pursue temporal peace and justice in the way of Pharoah.

We reject the modernist compromise of Schliermacher and Niebuhr, and we will not accept a sanitized “realist” Christianity that has been run through the meat-grinder to be made palatable to the liberal democratic establishment. Karl Barth initiates this project of liberating God-talk: He puts forth a totalizing Christian vision of how the universe is and ought to be, wresting lordship from convenience and returning it to Christ Jesus. And his student, the Mennonite John Howard Yoder, finishes the fight, demanding that the Church recognize Jesus as Lord of not just our hearts, but our politics, as well.

We must believe so fiercely in this lordship and in the truth of the Gospel – indeed, to the exclusion of many things that others believe – that we adopt nonviolence in part to protect the God-breathcd lives of those who disagree with us. But even more, we must reject violence to protect ourselves from doing as sinners do: killing. We are violent creatures; avowing nonviolence acknowledges our impulse to dominate the weak and meets it head-on. A commitment to peace frees us to claim the truth of the Gospel without becoming Caesar.

Most of all, we must choose nonviolence because we bear witness to a peace that is yet to come, and so we remain faithful to that hope even as we work toward what should be right now. Active nonviolence is how we steadfastly live in anticipation of the Kingdom, already knowing how the story ends: Love wins. Such an ethic trusts in God and affirms our commitment neither to give up nor to idolize our own agency in the drama of history. And in the face of the ultimate sacrifice, as my brother says, “Christians who trust in the Prince of Peace must pray that they will be faithful when the time conics for them to bear witness to the power of God rather than to the power of violence.” Some things are worth dying for – even if for once we actually do have to turn the other cheek.

Samir Paul ’10, Editor-in-Chief of The Harvard Ichthus, is a senior computer science concentrator in Mather House.

Charles Clark, Dartmouth

The question, “When should Christians go to war?” suggests two principal readings. The first reading is, “When support a war politically?” and the second is, “When should Christians fight as soldiers?” Just War Theory, pioneered by Augustine and Aquinas, is primarily concerned with the former, that is, with the actions of nations in forming and executing policies regarding the use of force. One facet of Just War Theory is a set of principles for evaluating the justice of a nation’s entrance into war. These principles mandate that a nation going to war must possess just cause, proper authority, right intention and reasonable hope for success. I accept these principles on the grounds that they discourage self-serving, unnecessarily violent conflicts, which are contrary to the Christian’s responsibility to cultivate peace, while allowing Christians to support wars that seek to address wrongs committed against themselves and others with the measured use of force, which is in keeping with a Christian’s responsibility to enact and defend justice. Moreover Just War Theory allows cooperation on war policy between Christians and non-Christians, which is evidenced by its influence on the United Nations Charter. Christians are responsible for exercising their political rights and praying for those in authority in order that peace may be disrupted only when necessary to establish justice.

As to when individuals should participate in a war directly the New Testament presents Cornelius, a Roman centurion who becomes a Christian. Centurions were career military men with years of experience in battle. Even prior to his conversion, Cornelius is described as “righteous,” and he is not commanded to leave the military in order to follow Christ. So his occupation excludes neither righteousness nor Christian discipleship. And in 2 Timothy 2, Paul compares Timothy’s role as a servant of the Gospel to that of a soldier who dutifully serves his commanding officer. My conclusion from these passages is that the profession of a soldier is as moral or immoral as the actions of the individual soldier in the performance of his duty, which could be said for any profession. Put another way, the question of when Christians should become soldiers is little different from the question of when Christians should become doctors, lawyers, or bankers.

Charles Clark ’11, Editor-in-Chief of the Dartmouth Apologia, is a Dartmouth junior studying Literary Theory and Classical Archaeology.

Jinju Pottenger, Princeton

Murder is strongly condemned in the Bible, from the very first murder of Abel by Cain up through the Ten Commandments and countless times in the New Testament. However, does war fall under the prohibition of murder? The ancient Israelites, under God’s direction, waged wars that offend the secular reader who rejects God’s sovereignty over all life. But elsewhere the Bible comes down strongly on the side of peace, from the Psalms to the Benedictions. In fact, it appears that Ecclesiastes 3:8b, “There is a time for war, and a time for peace,” sums up our relationship with war: Sometimes, war is God’s will and waging it is part of His greater purpose and plan.

However, war as it is fought today could not be fought for purposes further from those of God. Wars of genocide and greed are clearly sinful. Wars that are fought brutally, with the maximization of suffering, are also not condoned. Jus ad bellum and jus in bello both matter.

I would go so far as to say that all wars waged in a modem nation-state system are against God’s will, and ones in which Christians should not participate. The state primarily protects its own interests, which is in radical contrast to God’s call to his children – namely, to act oppositely to our own interests for His sake. Although war is permissible when directly led by God, war for the sake of national security is the same as war for the sake of territorial expansion or other illegitimate reasons. War as nation-states wage it today is sin.

By way of analogy, a nation-state going to war is like an individual whose job requires murder. Both the state and the individual are made more secure by their actions: the former against state failure by warring with threats; the latter against poverty. However, there are other, less sinful options for the individual seeking provision and for the state seeking security.

While war may be permissible for Christians under certain circumstances, in the modern age, it is not so because of the tension between God’s command that we love our enemies and the state’s command that we kill them for the sake of national security. Human life is God-given and God-breathed and can only be taken at His command and without error – namely, not through the system we have now.

Jinju Pottenger ’10 of Princeton’s Revisions, is a senior at the Woodrow Wilson School in Mathey College.

Hans Anderson, Yale

There is a war which we Christians must wage always and in all places: Jesus announced, “I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34; cf. Luke 12:51), while Paul clarified, “We do not wage war as the world does; the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world” (II Corinthians 10:3-4). Christians wage the war of the Spirit, the war against sin and evil (cf. Ephesians 6:12; 1 Peter 2:11). This war is not one from which Christians may choose to abstain, for when a Christian gives her life to Christ, the fallen world declares war upon her (cf. Matthew 24:9; John 15:18). Nor can Christians expect this war to cease (cf. II Corinthians 6:14-16) until darkness is at last dispelled and all things are made new in Christ.

Precisely because Christians wage war against the very kingdom of darkness binding up the world, the perfect Christian life excludes war either of the world or for the world. Jesus blessed the peacemakers (Matthew 5:9), but He did not bless the warriors. Why? “My kingdom is not of this world,” He said; “if it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest” (John 18:36). When Peter cut off a man’s ear to defend Jesus, Jesus rebuked him and healed the victim (inter alia, Luke 22:50-51). If Christ would not permit Peter to fight in His own righteous defense, how could we ever presume to fight in defense of any worldly cause? Jesus healed the servant’s ear to show Christians our proper place vis-à-vis worldly war: We are to minister to the victims of violence rather than to combat even unjust violence with our own.

Of course, certain Christians hold a doctrine of “just war”, as if murder ceased to be sin whenever certain conditions are met. This doctrine is an invention foreign to the faith of the apostles, patristic writers (e.g. John Chrysostom, “On The Priesthood”), and early martyrs (cf. Acts 7:59-60, 14:19-22). There is one condition alone which supersedes God’s interdiction against murder: God’s extraordinary authorization.  Otherwise, Christ calls us to peace. More precisely, He calls us to spiritual war always and in all places against the very temptation which would draw us into worldly war.

Hans Anderson ’10, former Executive Editor of The Yale Logos, is a senior Ethics, Politics, and Economics major in Saybrook College.

The temptation in approaching the question, “Why Jesus?” is to step into the Nietzschean contest of wills that ensues when we allow power to decide truth. We might arrive at our understanding of reality by throwing our beliefs into an ideological coliseum where the search for Veritas is bloodsport and only the strong survive. But Jesus delivers us into a new model of what and who truth is, one grounded in a God willing to take on fl esh and human vulnerability that testify to the vigor of His truth. God in Jesus is the weak, the poor, and the marginalized, and thus he sidesteps humanity’s proclivity for stamping out the defenseless.

The answer to our question — “Why Christ?” — is at once beautiful and confounding, much the same as the God who created us: Jesus is the answer because unlike any other god or un-god, He responds to our cries with a shocking and perplexing hope, empathy, and call to action unmarred by our shortsightedness and sin.

The heart of God’s answer to our pain — Jesus — lies in His penchant for subverting our preconceptions of what the Divine should be. Jesus is the simultaneous fulfillment and obliteration of all human expectation. We want a king; we get a carpenter. We want a revolution; we get, “Love those who persecute you.” We want showy strength; we get a messiah nailed to a tree.

This is surprising. But Jesus sees the corruption of human desire and answers with what we really want instead of what we ask for — a God whose justice and sacrificial love transcend the violence of existence and welcome us into something bigger, righter, more beautiful: the hope of a radical peace for which God longs. This vision comes to its fullest expression yet in the resurrection, where we peer into a future promised us by God. Jesus Christ and His new breath are our most compelling such glimpses, guarantees of God’s pledge and appetizers for the feast to come.

What is perhaps most important to remember, though, is that the answer to the question, “Why Jesus?” is not just about assenting to abstract ideas or doctrines or propositional truths. It is entire lives transformed and reoriented by the majestic and unequivocal defeat of death. It is communities made whole and creation restored by the wounded healer. And it is, perhaps most of all, the surprising hope for a radical shalom sent by a God who cuts through our expectations of Him and delivers us, both confirming and confounding everything we thought we knew of Him.

For “The Dispatch,” I have been asked to address the question of why mankind even needs a Christ, a savior. A simplistic answer to this could be: to save mankind from its sin. Yet, what does it really mean to be saved from sin? Here lies at least one answer to the question of the utility of Christ.

A surface interpretation would assume that being saved from sin means we are utterly free from it. Christ vanquished sin, thus it must be completely gone from our lives. The implication of this statement is that we are free from the act of sinning itself. Clearly this is not correct. Look at the world around you. Look at the crimes, the oppression, the wars. More importantly, look at within yourselves. We are plainly still sinners.

If we are not saved from sin itself, then what has Christ freed us from? While we are not free from the act of sinning (God has given us free will to choose right or wrong and even Christ’s coming would not cause Him to take this away), what we are free from is sin’s power. Sin’s power can come in all sorts of forms, but the most visible power of sin is common guilt. This may seem to be a trivial oppressor and not worth the death of the Son of God, but in reality it is deadly, both physically and spiritually.

Under the power of guilt, we feel frustrated and worthless. Trying so hard to be righteous and good, we are disheartened with every sin we commit and the feeling sinks that we should be able to do better–why did I give into temptation? Why am I so bad–I clearly must be a horrible person because look at all of the ugly things I am doing! This is unforgivable. And the depression sinks in and then comes the feeling of unworthiness. I am too sinful for God; I am not good enough for His presence. And then the prayer ceases and in shame we distance ourselves from God until we shut Him out.

But Christ is the embodiment of the ultimate forgiveness. He died so that we would be forgiven. Forgiven of our sins, there is no use for guilt. No sin is too depraved for God’s mercy for Christ gave himself to be the ultimate Sacrifice to atone for every last modicum of man’s evil. Yet it is only through Christ that we are granted this forgiveness, thus only through Christ can we be saved from guilt.

Many claim to follow Jesus the moralist, teacher, or prophet, while others confess Him to be the Christ, the unique instrument of salvation and the sole mediator between God and humanity (I Timothy 2:5). Can we choose one of the former interpretations of the person of Jesus, or must we like Peter confess the latter, saying, “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29)? If we are honest with ourselves, there can be no reasonable role for Jesus in our lives if not Christ–Jesus is Christ, or He should be dismissed altogether.

As a moralist, Jesus is but an inconvenience. He exhorts us, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), but we surely cannot attain to the perfection of God! Nor will we ever succeed in emulating Christ, the very image of God (Colossians 1:15). Jesus commands us to forsake the sins we enjoy (Matthew 18:8-9), denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Him (Luke 9:23). Endeavoring to follow Jesus the moralist will only depress us.

Nor is Jesus more useful as a simple teacher, for not once does He appeal to our reason; instead, He calls us to forsake even the most enticing worldly wisdom and to listen to Him as if with a child’s ears (Matthew 11:25). The message of Jesus does not indulge our intellectual appetite but exposes us as fools (I Corinthians 1:18-20, citing Isaiah 29:14), imparting not a single insight which may render us wise in the eyes of the world. If we listen to Jesus solely as a pupil to a guru, we can only await the well-deserved scorn of a halfwit.

Again, if Christ were merely a prophet, He would be a laughable failure and an embarrassment: His message was utterly rejected by us humans to whom He was sent, the political leaders of the day condemned Him to suffer the death of a common criminal, and His followers are ever the object of persecution.

No, Jesus is not one of these; He claims the office Christ, the Messiahship: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). If the accounts of the early Christians to the miracles they experienced (cf. John 20:30-31), corroborated by the enduring witness of the Church to the truth of Jesus’ message, persuade us that He was neither liar nor lunatic when He spoke these words, then there is only one place for Him in our lives: Lord and Christ. Neither He nor we would have it any other way.