2008-11-14

More documentation for general liberal hypocrisy (eighth graders saying a girl should be burned and 'crucifixed' for wearing a 'McCain' girl shirt; liberal media bias on proposition 8; etc). http://bibchr.blogspot.com/2008/11/hither-and-thither-111408.html

Here's a link to a sermon that Dan Phillips preached the Sunday after the election [I don't know what kind of sermon it is because I haven't listened to it yet] http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-i-preached-sunday-after-election.html

Pyro: God frequently dispenses sufficient grace without dispensing a surplus of grace. And hardship is perhaps often the jar into which God pours this grace. Suffering is the pathway to glory. http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2008/11/sufficient.html

Hays evaluates the Tipton' two kingdom response to Greg Bahsen's theonomy. Tipton seems to relegate the Mosaic law to practical irrelevance by subsuming it as typology. "“The civil sanctions are subservient to typology.” Why should we accept that claim? Why not take the common sense view that the civil sanctions were practical. That Israel had a civil and criminal law code because Israel was a nation-state, and every nation state must have a civil and criminal law code?" http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/11/lane-tipton-on-theonomy.html

Hays provides quotes showing the dissent and debates that went on under the hood of Trent and Vatican in the Romanist church over papal infallibility, etc. and the efforts of the church to conceal it. If the church hadn't simply told us that it is the source of divine teaching and infallible, one might think that it is just another self-contradictory hodgepodge organization. http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/11/keeping-up-appearances.html

Hays continues to respond to VanDrunen's two kingdom theology. VanDrunen argues based on typology/allegory (hard to tell?) that the Babylonian exile is the type for the church today, and Hays asks, given all the phases that Israel went through, why the arbitrary choice to use the Babylonian exile as the super-type? ... "to treat the Mosaic Law as totally unique and unrepeatable merely begs the question. True, the Mosaic Law is not our constitution. This doesn’t mean it contains no transcultural norms. The Mosaic Law is not an arbitrary fiat. It commends some conduct because some conduct is inherently commendable; it condemns some conduct because some conduct is inherently condemnable. It assigns certain penalties because they are inherently just. There’s more to the Mosaic law than ritual purities or impurities." http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/11/vandrunen-on-natural-law-pt-2.html

Here's a lengthy debate between Hays and two-kingdom proponents. Here are some interesting or noteworthy quotes. "Israel had laws regarding sex crimes, property crimes, and crimes of violence, not because they “typified” anything, but because every nation-state needs laws to regulate certain forms of social behavior. Otherwise, social life is impossible." ... "The Reformed tradition developed a theology of revolution. That was necessary because Catholic monarchs, at the instigation of the papacy, were attempting to extirpate the Protestant movement." ... "If mere disagreement entails subjectivity, then that relativizes your own alternative as well." ... "it’s a reductio ad absurdum for you to say that a law against rape or murder or sodomy or bestiality prefigures heaven. Your typology makes the most fanciful allegorist look sober-minded by comparison." ... "It’s an inspired law code. It gives you a window into God’s moral evaluation of social conduct. Rape, theft, murder, sodomy, bestiality were wrong then, and they’re wrong now." ... "The fact that they’re bundled into a covenant doesn’t mean they have no validity apart from the covenant. To the contrary, if they had no intrinsic merit, they wouldn’t be codified in the first place." ... "The covenant is not what makes something moral or immoral. Rather, the covenant codifies (to some extent) the moral law. Sodomy is not immoral because it’s illegal; rather, sodomy is illegal because it’s immoral (“illegal” according to Mosaic Law)." ... "Unless you think the Mosaic penalties were unjust, then what was just then is just now. A just penalty is a moral norm. A universal. Justice is transcultural. If you deny that, then your denial commits you to moral relativism." ... "It means that capital punishment is a just penalty for sodomy. So it wouldn’t be wrong to execute sodomites." ... " Not all sins are crimes. The Mosaic law criminalized some sins, but not others. That’s because it’s a legal code for a nation-state, and not all sins are the proper subject matter of a civil or criminal law code. Rather, the Mosaic law singles out a number of sins which are most germane to social ethics." Hays gives a three-step process for producing laws from natural law that must be fulfilled. "i) Show, from natural law theory, what forms of social conduct are wrong  ii) Show, from natural law theory, what wrongful forms of social conduct should be outlawed. iii) Show, from natural law theory, what just penalty should be assigned to unlawful forms of social conduct." Ditto for NT. "In real world situations, we’re often confronted with apparent ethical dilemmas. Appeal to conscience is useless to resolve these quandaries since the problem is generating by conflicting intuitions. When intuition is divided against itself, intuition can’t be its arbiter. You need more tools in your ethical toolkit." ... "And it’s silly to say that every Mosaic law typifies the final state. That turns the Mosaic law into an elaborate allegory of heaven—which results in any number of fanciful, arbitrary, and mutually exclusive allegorical interpretations of what a given law typifies. " http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/11/hart-to-hart.html

Piper: there is no hope for God's people unless He causes them to return from their backslidings and pursuit of sin (Lam. 5:21). And he will do this. http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1495_He_Will_Cause_Us_to_Return/

Solapanel: Grimmond contrasts Paul's looking-forward-to-heaven forgetting-the-past living for heaven perspective in Philippians with his [our?] own enamoured-with-the-present nostalgic-loving living for the weekend perspective. "God's word has left me with the uncomfortable feeling that this life feels a little too much like home. This world is becoming more like my comfy chair than the transit lounge it really is" http://solapanel.org/article/its_too_much_like_home/#When:22:00:00Z

Solapanel: "[Ray Ewers] saw church as a place where Christians go to work. Church is a gathering of God's people to hear his word and respond in faith and obedience. In this gathering, we are in fellowship with each other, through the blood of Jesus, and, because of our fellowship, we seek to serve each other. We use our gifts and abilities to strengthen one another and build Christ's Church—‘edification’ is the word often used to describe what goes on in church." So pray for where you sit because that is quite important to your work. Stop going to church as the helpee and start going as the helper. http://solapanel.org/article/factotum_1/#When:22:00:00Z

Patton asks - can you marry the wrong person? Here's a reminder that God works through sin [is this sort of a 'don't cry over spilled milk sense?']. Patton met his wife - who was a bar waitress - while approaching a drunken stupour and hitting on her. He says, "Are you supposed to meet your wife in a bar? No, not ideal. Are you supposed to love her primarily because of looks? No, not ideal. Can you make wrong decisions that lead to an important decision such as marriage? Absolutely. So, was it God’s will that I marry Kristie. You bet." Read this, and the second to last paragraph especially: "God has a purpose for Kristie and I to be together. We did not marry the wrong person. Sometimes we cannot see what is really going on and our passions are clouded by the pain, but we must keep our eyes on the sovereignty of God and find a much deeper level of satisfaction in each other knowing that God—the all-knowing God—has put us together for a reason. In this we swallow our thoughts of mistake and we let go of the humanistic “soul-mate” theory. " http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2008/11/can-you-marry-the-wrong-person/

Dan Phillips writes the conclusion to his post-election thoughts series [read it, its good]. Some points. 1) We need to repent as a nation (cf. Daniel 9). 2) We need to disabuse ourselves of unreasonable govn't and legislative reliance. 3) Prepare for the worst. Israel, in Josiah's day, had passed the point of no return, even though he was a good king. (cf. 2 Kings 23). 4) Nevertheless, hope. Phillips then exhorts people to thoughtful applications of Romans 13 rather than baseless 'I, for one, accept our new ant overloads' interpretations. He points out that the people are the source of authority in the USA (citations provided), and then says: "I'm not Obama's serf, I'm not his subject, I'm not his slave. I have no king but Jesus, nor any Messiah but He. I'm an American citizen, and our ruling document guarantees and assures methe right to express my thoughts — including my dissent" ... "This is my right. It not only is not a violation of Romans 13:1-7 but, you could plausibly argue, it is required by Romans 13:1-7. How "required"? Because, in our system of government, I am part of the governing authority. I would see a failure to voice my views, and exert such influence as I have, as poor citizenship." 5) He then exhorts people to use their electoral power to resist evil, and 6) Gives some suggestions on how to pray for Obama. http://bibchr.blogspot.com/2008/11/election-2008-theologizing-and_14.html

Al Mohler provides his comments post-election on the same-sex marriage issue and abortion. It's a worthwhile read. He says at one point. "Count me among those who believe that we cannot now step back and negotiate how many abortions we are willing to settle for in order for this issue to just go away. I reject the argument put forth by those who say we should now just step back and accept legal abortion on demand as a permanent reality and move on. Myfriend Mark Dever put that argument in its place in his comments included in the article: "It's like saying, 'Let's work to make sure they kill fewer Jews in the concentration camps this year,"' said the Rev. Mark Dever, a pastor in Washington D.C." http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=2748

Spurgeon: Roll your burdens onto the Lord. http://girltalk.blogs.com/girltalk/2008/11/roll-your-burde.html