2009-02-03

In response to the charge that Christians should be preaching the Gospel instead of combating abortion, Hays points out that it’s hard to preach the gospel to dead babies. Saving babies or preaching the gospel-

Hays responds to Beckwith's response that Hays quoted him out of context, creating a false dichotomy between his 'deeper spiritual life' and theology. Beckwith says that it is a package deal. Hays produces the quote, noting that Beckwith himself phrased it as a contrast! “Although it may be difficult to detect from much of what I have written in this book, my return to the Catholic Church had as much to do with a yearning for a deeper spiritual life as it did with theological reasoning” What wrong with the world-

Patrick Chan writes some clarifications in response to criticisms on his interrogative post on the morality of interrogation techniques, torture, and so on. Terrible terrorists

Phil Johnson reflects on his mother's death, and how the whole experience has profoundly affirmed my conviction that God is both sovereign and good. He despises death and the sin that earns those wages more than ever, and he was also struck by the grace of God to his family. Truly, God has done all things well. Sempiternam Requiem

White responds to a criticism of the Ehrman debate, on the grounds that it shows the weakness of the evidential apologetic methodology (ironic since this isn't White's method). He says, "I suppose someone could argue, "You should have begun, 'You know the Bible is true, Dr. Ehrman, but you are suppressing that knowledge, so you must repent and recognize the existence of the one true God," but that would have led to a very short debate that would not accomplish any of the goals we had in providing encouragement and edification to the people of God." God uses means to save His people. Indeed, the Spirit does the convicting. But that happens often through reasoning, evidence, etc. Of note: "Throughout the debate, Dr. White left the main issue in order to point out that Dr. Ehrman elsewhere in his writings and interviews denies the orthodox doctrine of inspiration." White replies, "But as we have already seen, exposing the fact that Ehrman's conclusions do not follow from the evidence was part and parcel of the whole point! And, this assertion is found in the very book we were supposed to be debating! Here Joel has accepted Ehrman's own excuse for not allowing this to be the focus of the debate. I do not know how familiar Joel is with Ehrman's work, but I doubt there are many evangelicals who have read more of his work and listened more closely and fully to his lectures and talks than I have. And the conclusion that the NT cannot be the authoritative Word of God due to textual variation is not just a side theme for Ehrman. It is part and parcel of his entire presentation, not only in print, but in his debates." Second Response to Joel McDurmon

Manata offers a defeater to the violinist argument for abortion (read the post to get familiar). The essence of the defeater is that the argument attempts to distinguish between consent to sex and consent to pregnancy. Yet, pregnancy is the design or aim of sex. The sex organs are ordered for procreation. He offers an analogy to illustrate his point by saying that if the activity of spelunking, and dropping over 50 ft, caused a kidney disease in violinists, then he points out that surely many would call for abstaining from spelunking unless you agreed to take care of the violinists until they got better. The Violinist Argument

Dever gives three reasons to evangelize. 1) To obey. 2) A love for the lost: "Apart from God's grace, the sinner will never stop sinning. God's judgment will never end. Their rejection of God never ends. God will inflict extreme and unnatural pain on them forever. As preachers of the gospel, we have no business making God seem more humane to sinners who are in rebellion against him. Think about if hell were unleashed on you forever and tell unbelievers how horrible it is. " 3) A love for God, to see Him glorified. 3 Reasons to Share the Gospel

Piper makes the point in Finally Alive that vipers - hypocrites - need regeneration as bad as anyone else. Vipers Need Regeneration

Tim Jones writes about the disconnect that has happened in the church between youth groups and the rest of the congregation. "Adolescence is perceived as a developmental ideal instead of as a period of preparation for mature adulthood. It's a recent social construction in which responsibility is minimized and indulgence is maximized, and a lot of our church models have been built around it." He goes on to talk briefly about family oriented ministry approaches. "family ministry is the process of intentionally and persistently realigning a congregation's proclamation and practices so that parents—and especially fathers—are acknowledged, trained, and held accountable as the persons primarily responsible for the discipling of their children." He seems to approve of the idea of the whole congregation embracing the responsibility to move children to spiritual maturity. Real-Life Family Ministry

Dever gives five things that you might mistake for evangelism: 1) Imposition - don't think evangelism is manipulation. We can't force our beliefs on anyone. 2) Personal testimony. 3) Social action/public involvement. 4) Apologetics. 5) The result of evangelism. 5 Things That Aren't Evangelism

Kevin DeYoung: "I mention all of this because so much that passes for spirituality these days is nothing more than middle class, 20something coffee culture. If you like jazz, soul patches, earth tone furniture, and lattes, that's cool. But this culture is no holier than the McNugget, Hi-C, Value City, football culture that most people live in. Why does incarnational ministry usually mean hanging out at Starbucks instead of McDonalds? Jesus came to save Grimace and Hamburglar too." HT: 9Marks. loving Jesus but not coffee- huh- by Jonathan Leeman

Bird writes, "The most thorough study of messianic interpretation in the targums is S.H. Levey, The Messiah: An Aramaic Interpretation (New York: Ktav, 1974) which conveniently provides a list of texts that give a messianic slant to (often) non-messianic texts in the Hebrew Bible... I think where you have a Targum reading paralleled by a NT, DSS, LXX, or Philonic reading, then you have a reasonable case that the specific targumic reading is probably fairly early." Messianic Interpretation in the Targums