Gilbart-Smith at 9Marks aims only to impress upon the congregation why we need to hear the message of the particular passage. The more mature believers listen anyway – it’s in the Bible. So he aims to ask one central question of interest to the immature and unbelieving, and to impress the necessity of answering it. This question must be answered by the text and close to the text’s main point. The point of an introduction- Judges 9 by Mike Gilbart-Smith.
Matt Chandler has three sermons at Genderblog on Biblical Manhood. i) Man is created to be a cultivator, to build and create and continue the growth. ii) Men must love his wife as Christ loved the church, and Christ was torn apart for her – and what’s more, He initiated it, and this is key. iii) Teaching and knowing are not the same – you can teach but knowing is not under your control. And this helpless aspect of parenting ought to drive you to earnest prayer. Matt Chandler on Biblical Manhood
Bolt at Solapanel notes the oddity of feminists saying that all Australian men need to learn to respect women (commenting on a group sex act by several players on a major football team with a 19 year old girl). i) It was apparently consensual. Bolt agrees that ‘yes’ doesn’t always mean yes, but points out that the feminists say 'her yes was really a no’, which is hardly respecting the lady’s wishes, and by their standard, the only ones who respected the girl were the football players! It’s the feminists who advocate such freedom, and this is the bankruptcy of a view of life based purely upon a person’s choice/consent. ii) Why are they objecting to the group aspect of the sex? Christians have grounds to, and must. But this isn’t the morality of western feminism. To suggest that one woman ‘belongs to’ one man is to demean women by suggesting ownership. Under their view women have the right to be promiscuous. What happened is her feminist given right, though they grind their teeth about it. The simple consistency of biblical morality is vastly superior. Is respecting women an ethical maxim or just a political slogan-
Paul Tripp: Most of our anger is dangerous and destruction because it is idolatrous, because we don’t get angry over the world’s brokenness but because your brokenness got in the way of our cravings. Jesus dies to make a people who cannot help but get angry every day – deeply distressed over sin and its effects, that is. This new anger is an unquenchable zeal for God's cause and an uncompromising distaste for sin. An anger of compassion, mercy, restoration, service, peace, forgiveness. Jesus died not only to free you from your anger, but to enable you to take up his righteous anger. Tripp- Christ Died to Make You Good and Angry at the Same Time
T-fan notes that the most significant references to Rome in Gregory of Nyssa’s writings, while saying that Peter presided over Rome, treats it as the other regional churches with their respective founders – they are something of separate entities. The church in Rome is yet another ethnic group, and Latin is not given any preference. Gregory of Nyssa on Rome
Phillips recommends that in theological debate, one does not permit himself to be constantly on the defensive, but rather goes with the flow, using the opponent’s offensive to refute him. For example, when arguing for particular atonement, and one brings up 1 John 2:2 in opposition to it, you’d note that its a problem for the general atonement scheme, in that the text says that Jesus is the propitiation (not could be, etc) – but is. But not everyone is saved. So why aren’t they saved? Unbelief is a sin. Why are they punished for it if Christ is the propitiation for every single person (i.e. a sacrifice that turns away the wrath of God for every single person)? So the passage is as much a problem for the non-Calvinist, if it’s a problem for the Calvinist. Then one might invite his interlocutor to try to think of instances in John’s writing where world unambiguously means ‘every single human ever born ever.’ Thus it goes – allow the lunge, step aside, and mayhem. Karate exegesis [requested classic re-post]
Piper observes that Adam was sinless but was able to sin. When Adam fell, sinful man was not able not to sin (Rom. 14:23). When we are reborn, we are able to not sin (Rom. 6:14). The “natural man” or “mind of the flesh” is not able not to sin (Rom 8:7-9; 1 Cor. 2:14). Free will, then, isn’t a saving power, for fallen man can do nothing but sin and, this is a devastating reality. The Gospel truth is that God overcomes our resistance, gives life, wakens our dead inclination for Christ, and freely/irresistibly draws us to Himself (John 6:44, 65; Acts 13:48; Ephesians 2:5; 2 Timothy 2:25-26). So what about praise and blame? Calvin answers this by pointing out that God cannot sin, for God is boundless in goodness, and the devil cannot not sin, for he is evil – if God is praiseworthy for good and the devil for evil, can it be said that man sins are less voluntary because they are likewise necessary? Or will one jeer at God for His necessary goodness? A Few Thoughts on Free Will
Apparently Stephen Harper slipped the host into his pocket at a Romanist funeral. http://ianhughclary.com/2009/07/08/harper-and-transubstantiation/
Up to 26% of U.S. homeowners who stop paying their mortgage may be doing so intentionally, not because they can't make the payments but because they don't want to put money into a house that's worth less than what they owe. If true, this doesn’t bode well for Obama’s approach to stabilizing the housing market, which focuses on whether they can afford their payments. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1908494,00.html
While atheists and others try to use Galileo as an example of science versus religion, the reality is that it was science versus science. i) Historians have documented that the first to oppose Galileo was the scientific establishment, not the church. he prevailing ‘scientific’ wisdom of his day was the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic theory which was of pagan origins. Galileo challenged this by promoting Copernican heliocentrism. “But there existed a powerful body of men whose hostility to Galileo never abated: the Aristotelians at the Universities…. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse.” Like the evolutionary establishment today, they reacted furiously. ii) Moreover, an Aristotelian layman was the first to challenge on religious grounds. iii) The church of the time was receptive and open to Galileo. iv) Galileo was largely a victim of his own arrogance and insulting writing style, as well as his unfortunate friendships, as he wrote a book that Pope Urban VIII, formerly his friend, saw as mocking him, and so ordered an inquisition in his anger. v) Unfortunately, the church was led astray by the scientific establishment, so tried to read the then current model into Scripture, although, as shown below, the Bible doesn’t teach it. So they actually made the same mistake as the churches that now try to read the modern “scientific” fads of evolution and long ages into the Bible. vi) In the thinking of the time, as well, the lowest place was less exalted. So the earth would be more exalted by moving it from the ‘centre’ (note that everything must be defined by a frame of reference anyway). What really upset the establishment was Galileo’s discovery of blemishes on the sun (sunspots), precisely because it undermined the idea of perfect heavenly bodies. vii) “Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.” http://creation.com/galileo-quadricentennial
Phillips points out that there is absolutely no question that the Episcopal church has jumped the shark. The question is not whether the Episcopal Church has jumped the shark
Moses wife was most likely black, since she was a Cushite from south of Egypt. Of course, this has implications for interracial marriage. Was Moses's Wife Black-
Burk writes that while one of Derek Webb’s songs, which contains an obscenity, has raised a stir, Burk is more concerned about the message. The song lampoons Christians who are more concerned about the moral status of homosexuality than they are about the tragedy of world hunger. It makes attention to hunger the remedy to Pharisaical moralizing about homosexuality. But the best remedy to Pharisaical moralizing is the gospel, and in practical, real life situations, when someone is actually struggling with homosexual attraction, parading your attention to world hunger, as important as that is, is really not going to make any sense or be of any help. However, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is helpful and is for everyone. Derek Webb- Clean or Explicit-
ETC notes an interesting issue raised on Sinaiticus that its text of Revelation may be the earliest commentary on the book, and the possibility of deliberate theologically motivated variation. The writer at ETC notes that the corrector fixed all these variants, which may reduce the latter charge, since this may have been done before it left the scriptorium. However, the post withholds judgment, “except to say that it is a rather spectacular claim that the text of Sinaiticus reflects a "concerted effort" in its transmission history to improve "the Apocalypse's message" by incorporating "scores of changes throughout."” Sinaiticus as a Commentary on John's Apocalyse-
Turk notes that El Nino is back, and asks, “Is this above global warming? Should we tax it? How do we know?” Wait - El Nino-
Hays, noting the odd infatuation that teenage girls seem to have in phases over particular famous boys, observes that while many of these boys grow into men, there’s a teenybopper subculture for whom arrested adolescence is the new ideal. Boyhood over manhood. Indeed, androgyny over masculinity. Peter Pan forever
This article at Koinonia [grain of salt] observes the following bad theology in false dichotomies in missions: i) Separating evangelism and discipleship, prioritizing the first. Evangelism is an essential part but there is mission beyond evangelism. The result of shallowness and immaturity, vulnerability to false teaching, church growth without depth, rapid withering, etc. Basically, it’s not teaching the whole counsel of God and thereby disobeying the great commission. ii) Separating word and deed, or proclamation and demonstration, with the author’s implication being that prioritizing the first is negative [I note that Paul was glad that the Gospel was even being preached in pretense, indicating that word only counts!] iii) Separating evangelism from ecclesiology, prioritizing the first, with the result that the church itself can be riddled with sin, idolatry, abuses, and disunity, but we don’t care very much, so long as evangelism carries on. The church is reduced to a container, and the only important thing is the number of people “into heaven.” The idea seems to be that this is a massive failure to represent Christ. The church is the product of the Gospel and should be the living demonstration of it. False Dichotomies in Mission pt. 2 of 2 by Christopher J.H. Wright
Hays briefly argues that Santayana’s popular aphorism, variously paraphrased, that those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it, is naive, since historical knowledge doesn’t free us from bondage to sin. Historical knowledge can even enslave as people identify with the plight of their forebears. Kids don’t listen to their parents, and not out of ignorance, do the same stupid things. History isn’t written by winners, for losers have the incentive to rewrite. Doomed to repeat the past
With regard to imputation, Peter Leithart rejects the idea of ‘legal fiction’, someone being treated as guilty who’s not, and vice versa. He means that in the Levitical system imputation is not some strange exception, but that there is some act of imputation at work in any sinful action (e.g. he shall bear his iniquity, blood on him, etc. free-floating blood isn’t an option). There there is some base distinction between the act itself and the assignment of responsibility for the act (e.g. Lev. 20:13, he argues the man bears the guilt for his crime and the guilt of his own blood being shed in punishment). If this distinction holds, then it’s intrinsically possible someone else can bear the guilt. I am guilty or innocent in the regard of the proper judge/Judge, i.e. it’s not intrinsic. This would mean there is no real inherent guilt that is cancelled by imputation of righteousness. God’s assignment of responsibility, guilt, or innocence is my guilt or innocence. (Contra individualist premises, where if I act badly, I’m guilty.) http://www.leithart.com/2009/07/08/thoughts-on-imputation/
DeYoung has the third post in his allegory here. It’s worth a read. Many are Called, But Few are Chosen (Part 3)
Hospitality is love for strangers, meeting the needs of others through the use of one’s resources, specifically in and through the context of the home. It is to show kindness to strangers in such a way that they cease to be strangers. Hospitality Equation
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