Contrary to some, Phillips does not want to see Obama 'succeed' in setting back pro-life by 30 years, in punishing the hard-working and productive who keep their commitments, robbing them of freedom, and forcing them to reward and subsidize the indolent and feckless, and in weakening American defenses and emboldening enemies. He hopes that his totalitarian, anti-freedom, and anti-child, anti-freedom plots fail spectacularly. Pat Robertson! That thing you do with your mouth! STO-O-O-O-OP!
Here's something interesting: "Based on the analysis of entrapped air from ice cores extracted from permanent glaciers from various regions around the globe, it has been demonstrated that global warming began 18,000 years ago, accompanied by a steady rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. What caused this phenomenon is a matter of ongoing debate. Clearly, though, global warming and rising CO2 levels in Earth's atmosphere started long before the industrial revolution." http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/temp_vs_CO2.html
Engwer provides some comments on the notion that we have got the authors of the biblical books wrong: i) A glaring double standard appears when critics rely uncritically (accepting the text and authorship attributions of many extra-Biblical documents that have comparable or worse evidence) on less attested works like the Annuls of Tacitus or on Josephus (they nit-pick on distinctions as if an author can't vary his style, etc); ii) non-religious gullibility isn't a substitute for religious gullibility: "There's a danger in believing that Mark wrote the second gospel if he didn't actually write it, but there's also a danger in believing that Mark didn't write the second gospel if he actually did write it." iii) Engwer points to examples of how writing styles change with time - External evidence is key. iv) Many people, including scholars, are overly cynical, and often their cynicism is selective. Modern scholarship has a proclivity for applying a wide range of interpolative and composite theories to most ancient literature. v) Engwer quotes Clarke, who points out that Baur "was first to assert that antiquity regarded pseudonymity as an acceptable literary convention not undertaken with the intent to deceive... Arguments against the concept of intellectual property in antiquity have become common fair in discussions of pseudonymity, and can be found in more recent examples like A.T. Lincoln...This theory has, however, been debunked by Speyer (Die literarische Falschung, 175-76), who has clearly shown the presence of such a concept in antiquity." The Credibility Of Some Critical Theories About New Testament Authorship
Hays gives some thoughts on what he might do if he encountered a demoniac: i) He's not an apostle, nor authorized to boss demons around, so he wouldn't yell, argue, etc. but would pray to God, and continually. It's the relation with God that counts, not with the demon. ii) He would do things to make a demon uncomfortable, like reading Scripture, singing hymns, having the demoniac do the same if he's lucid at times; iii) One must not neglect follow-up ministry. iv) be careful to watch yourself. Things that go bump in the night
Perkins of Solapanel writes, "I've heard it said that, in terms of relating the gospel to culture, the mistake that traditionalists make is that they give the right answers to the wrong questions; they're answering questions that no-one is asking anymore. They're tackling issues and fighting fights that belong to a previous generation. If that is true, then there is another counter-balancing group of people who are giving the wrong answers to the right questions. They're answering the questions that people are actually asking today. " And these answers are a wholesale capitulation to culture's current mood, in their aim to be relevant. Not only must we give truthful answers to their current questions, but we must teach them to ask the right question, even if they aren't asking “How can I be sure I will go to heaven when I die?” or “How can I receive forgiveness from God my Creator?” Culture or not, they need to ask this. Exegetical preaching is a key to this. Creating the right question
Bird thinks that Paul's theology must be understood as a mixture of salvation-history and apocalypticism. Paul's theology presumes a certain telling of history from Creation to Abraham to Israel to Christ and to the Church, and at the same time in the coming of Jesus Christ there is a burst of God's power that invades human history and this event is singular and discontinuous from all that has gone before. In other words, Paul narrates an invasive story of God's dealings with the world through Jesus Christ. Christ redeems people from the old age and transfers them into the new but this is in accord with the promises that went before. An Invasive Story- Pauline Theology
Janelle of girltalk points to Proverbs 12:26, “The righteous should choose his friends carefully." i) pursue friends that mentor. Young women should be seeking this, older women should seek to impart it. ii) look for friends who need friends, in keeping with Scriptures commands to welcome strangers. Choosing Friends
Turk brings out Paul's reason for leaving Titus in Crete - and makes these points: i) We're all stupid and incompetent, so we'd better have the transcending wisdom of Scripture as our guide; ii) pastors do not get to execute their jobs as they see fit - they must do it as Scripture specifies. Why He Left You
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is trying to address the breakdown of the home in contemporary culture by addressing the unwitting co-conspiracy in evangelical churches as a result of the programmatic mindset: "The Family Equipping Ministry Model espouses a partnership between the home and the church where the church oversees and equips the members of their church, in particular parents, to disciple their children."" 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 discipleship of their children." Is Your Church Hurting Families- SBTS Calls Parents and Churches Back to Biblical Discipleship
Challies has put his twelve favourite articles over this years into a PDF. Snapshots & Screenshots
"Geology as a separate field of science with systematic field studies, collection and classification of rocks and fossils, and development of theoretical reconstructions of the historical events that formed those rock layers and fossils, is only about 200 years old." Tertullian, Chrysostom, and Augustine attributed fossils to Noah's flood. Some scoffed at the idea that they were former creatures. Niels Steensen (1638–1686) established the principle of superposition, namely that sedimentary rock layers are deposited in a successive, essentially horizontal fashion. In the latter decades of the 18th century, some French and Italian geologists rejected the biblical account of the Flood and attributed the rock record to natural processes occurring over a long period of time. Abraham Werner (1749–1817), teacher of many great geologists, believed that most of the crust of the earth had been precipitated chemically or mechanically by a slowly receding global ocean over the course of about a million years, but failed to take into account the fossils in the rocks, which tell much about how sediments are deposited and transformed into stone. James Hutton (1726–1797) proposed that the continents were being slowly eroded into the oceans. Those sediments were gradually hardened by the internal heat of the earth and then raised by convulsions to become new landmasses, which would later be eroded into the oceans, hardened and elevated. i.e., Earth history was cyclical. Charles Lyell delivered a blow to catastrophism by proposing a radical uniformitarianism in which he insisted that only present-day processes of geological change at present-day rates of intensity and magnitude should be used to interpret the rock record of past geological activit - no flood(s) ever occurred. This work did reduce belief in the Flood. In the 19th century, while some scientists and clergy, and those both ordained and scientifically well informed, raised biblical, geological, and philosophical arguments against the old-earth theories, others accepted the idea of millions of years and tried to fit all this time into Genesis. By the time Origin of Species was published the young-earth view had essentially disappeared. Spurgeon, Hodge, Scofield, and many others assumed that geologists have proven millions of years. Compromise was unnecessary, however. As atheist Ager said: "My excuse for this lengthy and amateur digression into history is that I have been trying to show how I think geology got into the hands of the theoreticians [uniformitarians] who were conditioned by the social and political history of their day more than by observations in the field. ... In other words, we have allowed ourselves to be brain-washed into avoiding any interpretation of the past that involves extreme and what might be termed “catastrophic” processes." http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/wow/where-did-millions-of-years-come-from
Jay Dyer attempts to call Calvinists pagans, by suggesting that the wrath-bearing death of Jesus is splitting up the Trinity and more akin to Zeus. Turretinfan points to Romans 8:32; Hebrews 11:17-19; Isaiah 53:4,10 and Romans 4:25 to show that the Father was pleased to crush the Son for sin, that Jesus was delivered up for sinners, but that God did not forsake Him but raised Him on the third day. There's really nothing similar to Zeus here. Zeus did not offer his onlybegotten son as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice. Zeus was generally placated with animal sacrifices and gifts to his temples and priests. The only analogy Christians would draw is that used by Paul, e.g. "in thee we live and move and have our being." However, Romanism seems to have pagan elements, such as the superstitious thinking from time-to-time that large numbers of masses with a similar purpose, seemingly, of trying to produce a greater influence than could be achieved once for all, the use of icons and statues in worship, the implicit pantheon with Mary, and the correlation of certain feasts to paganism. Response to Jay Dyer on Calvinism (Part 7 of 13)
The Palins have twice upheld life, in Bristol keeping her baby, and Sarah keeping her Down's Syndrome baby when most are aborted. However, Bristol was interviews recently, and she said that sexual abstinence for teens is "not realistic at all." This is a disappointing statement. But this isn't the real issue: The real issue for Christian teenagers and their parents is not to debate whether sexual abstinence before marriage is realistic or not. The larger and more important issue is that sexual abstinence until marriage is the biblical expectation and command. Once this is realized then everyone involved would be inclined to structure things so that it is realistic. "Premature pair dating and unsupervised liaisons, set within the supercharged culture of teenage sexuality, can put teenagers into very vulnerable situations. Asking whether sexual abstinence in those contexts is realistic can appear almost irrational." http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=3319
Here's a recommended list of 'crucial books' for the study of John. "When we write and teach from John, we also look for authors who bring some penetrating theological insight to the discussion, scholars who weave the Johannine theology eloquently. Here two books come to mind: Lesslie Newbigin’s wonderful The Light Has Come: An Exposition on the Fourth Gospel (1982) is today almost a collector’s item. But even more rare is Edwin Hoskyns and Noel Davey’s The Fourth Gospel (1947). Together these writers offer an insight and passion for John’s theology that you rarely find today. Evangelicals are often caught up with defending the historicity of the gospel (here I’m thinking of commentaries by Morris or Carson)." ... "I remember the first some time someone handed me a copy of A.E. Harvey’s Jesus on Trial: A Study of the Fourth Gospel (1976). Here for the first time a scholar was indicating that a literary motif -- Jesus on trial -- was threaded throughout the gospel. Suddenly the literary genius of John dawned on me." Crucial Books in Johannine Studies by Gary Burge
Pulpit Magazine briefly addresses a document from the National Council of Churches USA that claims that too many Christians have bought into “a false gospel that we continue to live out in our daily habits—a gospel that proclaims that God cares for the salvation of humans only and that our human calling is to exploit Earth for our own ends alone" and “In this most critical moment in Earth’s history, we are convinced that the central moral imperative of our time is the care for Earth as God’s creation." i) Nowhere in the New Testament is sin, salvation, or the gospel ever defined in terms of corporate ecological responsibility. It is defined centred on the cross where atonement is made for individual sinners. ii) Believers are told to focus on the life to come, and not to be consumed with the things of this earth. iii) Saving the world isn't saving the planet, it is saving the lost. iv) The central moral imperative for the church in this age is to take the Gospel to lost and dying souls. On Saving the Planet
More book recommendations for young girls. Girls of Character- Teaching Biblical Femininity to the Next Generation through Literature, Part
Jay Adams writes that biblical counselors believe in the put off/put on dynamic of Ephesians 4, Colossians 3 and elsewhere. i.e. a thief isn't not a thief when he stops stealing (since he's just between jobs, as it were) but rather when he gets a job. Thus, it is putting off of the old self and a putting on of the new that is necessary for counselees. No Joking
Here's some comments from 9Marks on Total Church, initially: i) Christian practice must be 1a. gospel-centred in the sense of word centred 1b. gospel centred in the sense of mission centred; 2 community centred. ii) in welcoming those unchurched folk into church relationships, how will they retain a clear distinction between what it means to be welcomed by Christians, and what it means to belong to the body of Christ? iii) They make an interesting observation: "Because people are not sharing their lives, truth is not applied and lived out... [E]merging church can sometimes be bad at community because it neglects the truth." Blogging my way through Total Church by Mike Gilbart-Smith
Commenting on 1 Cor. 4, Payne of Solapanel points out that rather than being a product of the 60's, Paul doesn't care how others judge him not because there is no such thing as judgement (as the 60s stupidly assumed), but because there is one Judge, and his verdict, delivered at the time of his own choosing, is the only one that matters, as it is final and total, encompassing all evidence, seen and unseen, even the intentions of the heart. This judgement renders every other opinion otiose (‘otiose’ being an otiose word that means ‘serving no purpose’). This should cause trembling and comfort - the former because of Who the judge is, the latter because it means total freedom from the opinions of men. The comfort of fear
Janelle of Girltalk reminds women to have friends who need salvation - that is, in the business of life, women should not neglect to make the most use of the time with outsiders and so neglect the duty to evangelize. Friends Who Need Salvation
Jay Adams doesn't want to see nouthetic counseling under one authority, but rather that, if it is biblical, it belongs to all of God's people. Who’s Next-
JT points to "tons of free lectures and courses taught by top scholars from Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale" Academic Earth
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