Pike talks about God’s ‘image problem’ – i.e. that you can’t see Him when you look for Him. Arminians say that God wants to save everyone. But God’s invisible. Yet, He’s also omnipotent. So He can make Himself visible. Pike points out that he saw a person and was fully convinced that person existed, and this didn’t violate ‘free will’. So all God really has to do is show up. Even if an atheist asks God to jump through some hoops to convince him, God’s omnipotent, so it’s not as if he’ll tire – so why doesn’t He? It seems self-evident that more people would believe in God if they could see Him and He responded to them. And simply seeing doesn’t violation Free Will (TM). And with ‘prevenient grace’, everyone can believe, so sin can’t be stopping people from believing under Arminian terms. Just a Few of the Trivially Easy Ways by Which God Could Get People to Believe in Him without Vi
Challies reviews Why We Love the Church here, which is written for ‘the committed, the disgruntled, the waffling and the disconnected.’ “they offer four reasons, or perhaps four groups of reasons that people are disillusioned with the church: the missiological (the church is simply not fulfilling her God-given mission); the personal (the church is anti-women, anti-gay, hypocritical, etc); the historical (the church as we know it is a product of paganism, not Scripture); the theological (the church as an organization, institution, hierarchy, etc is foreign to the Bible).” The book offers a biblical perspective on what God is doing in the church, and how it is central to all God is doing in the world and that without her there is no Christianity. It also responds to the tires and all-to-common arguments against organized religion. Challies generally thinks it’s a good book. Here’s a quote from it: "It's more than a little ironic that the same folks who want the church to ditch the phoney, plastic persona and become a haven for broken, imperfect sinners are ready to leave the church when she is broken, imperfect and sinful." Book Review - Why We Love the Church
T-fan argues against an article which claims patriarchy is a product of the fall and should be avoided at all costs. i) Adam was created first, Eve was created under his headship, and patriarchy is not the result of the fall. ii) Human government is necessary because of the fall. iii) The powers that be are ordained by God – including parents, husbands, kings, elders. Virtually every society in history until modern times has recognized the propriety of male headship. Also, “the Husband/Wife motif is one of the illustration of Christ's role to us, believers. To the extent that you seek to undermine the husband's headship role, you are (at least implicitly) undermining its analogy. If you think it bad for the husband to rule over the wife, you are questioning the model of Christ's headship over the church.” Opposition to biblical patriarchy inevitably seeks to dethrone Jesus. Biblical Model of Family Should be Avoided--
Pile writes that though Arminians believe in total depravity it doesn't cash out the same way as it does to Calvinism. Unlike calvinists Arminians still believe that grace can be resisted by the sinner. So they say that because of a man is sinful only the grace of God can enable the sinner to potentially believe. When Calvinists speak of your resistible grace, they're only speaking about the regenerate power of God, the actual grace that must succeed in bringing the sinner to life. Thus Calvinists and Arminians are not speaking of the same thing. For it is impossible to resist being converted from death to life. The dead soul is set on death and cannot submit to God’s will (Romans 8:5-8). The living soul, however, is the slave of Christ (Romans 6, especially verses 11-14). Arminians believe that God it sets the soul to neutral. The idea is that if it’s up to man ultimately, it spares God the blame. But what kind of person would reject the grace of God? Is it not only a depraved person? The reason is that our nature determines our choices, not the other way around (Luke 7:16-20). A healthy tree can’t bear bad fruit. I one can choose to believe, then he’s already the healthy tree. If he resists, he’s the bad tree. Scripture eliminates the ‘neutral’ tree (Luke 11:23). On Why Those Who Hold to Resistible Grace Must Hold to a Strong Form of Depravity
Hays notes that animal pain is increasingly used as an objection to God, but that within secularism there’s hardly a monolithic view of animal rights. For example, “You say that some readers of Animal Liberation have been persuaded by the ethical arguments in the book, and not just by the facts and the pictures. But if so, it is probably so only because these readers do not realize the radicalism of the ethical vision that powers your view on animals, an ethical vision that finds greater value in a healthy pig than in a profoundly retarded child, that commands inflicting a lesser pain on a human being to avert a greater pain to a dog, and that, provided only that a chimpanzee has 1 percent of the mental ability of a normal human being, would require the sacrifice of the human being to save 101 chimpanzees.” God, godlessness, and animal pain
From Jim Elliot: “"Our young men are going into the professional fields because they don't 'feel called' to the mission field. We don't need a call; we need a kick in the pants. We must begin thinking in terms of 'going out,' and stop our weeping because 'they won't come in.' Who wants to step into an igloo? The tombs themselves are not colder than the churches. May God send us forth."” Calling and a Kick in the Pants
This post at Solapanel defines atonement as dealing with any obstacle to a relationship, especially between God and human beings. The two obstacles to relation with God are human sin and God’s holy wrath. Atonement happens through sacrifice in a temple. The place and means is the NT is Jesus Christ. This is different than expiation, which refers to simply dealing with sin. Some who found God’s wrath repulsive started translating ‘expiation’ at key points in the Scripture. But this begs the question – why does God need to deal with sin? The author also thinks ‘propitiation’ only focuses on the second side in those same key passages (e.g. ESV). [I’ll note that the word there is ‘propitiation’, and I refer you to Leon Morris’ Apostolic Preaching of the Cross for the cogent and thorough demonstration of this]. Improve your biblical word power 4- Atonement
Contra Arminians who just don’t like it, Gene Bridges writes that “one can cite example after example of historical instances in which Arminianism has led directly to theological drift and outright apostasy. The Socinians and Arminians were quick friends centuries ago. The Free Will Baptists nearly died out because of that union, and, if not for the New Connexion would have done so. After Francis Turretin passed on, Amyraldianism and then Arminianism arose in Geneva, and a generation later, Geneva was apostate. Today, we have Open Theists and Universalists.” Indeed, even neo-orthodoxy, a conserving movement in liberalism, is evidence that where Protestant theology moves in a more conservative direction, it tends toward more Calvinistic underpinnings. Theological Conservationism
“Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed today (Thursday) as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice by a 68-31 vote. She should be sworn in on Saturday as the 111th justice and the third woman in Supreme Court history. World Magazine has an article about it here.” Sonia Sotomayor confirmed for Supreme Court
Johnson writes that Evangelical doctrine and the evangelical movement are not the same thing: post-modern evangelicals don't really have any clear doctrinal identity. Martyn Lloyd Jones said, “One of the first signs that a man is ceasing to be truly evangelical is that he ceases to be concerned about negatives, and keeps saying, We must always be positive,” warning that doctrinal indifferentism was beginning to drive the movement. And today, the Emergent Movement signifies the triumph of neo-orthodoxy in evangelicalism. We see the demise of preaching, etc. Now, a lesson from history is that the Gospel has only rarely made great gains on the backs of massive popular movements. Whither Evangelicalism-
This posts writes of the ‘fateful’ years of Calvin, 1553-4, which involved the battle with the libertines and the Servetus affair. The libertines, unregenerate and immoral, wanted to partake of communion, and Calvin called for discipline and wouldn’t budge. This movement faltered, and then the Servetus incident took place. He denied the Trinity. He wrote to Calvin, and Calvin even risked his life to meet him in Paris, but Servetus skipped out. Servetus escaped from prison in Spain, where he was awaiting execution under the Catholics. He came to Geneva, and was there arrested. The city called Calvin to be prosecutor, because he was the expert theologian. “Servetus was condemned on October 26, 1553, and burned at the stake the following day. The details are sketchy, but some historians recount that Calvin took great pity on Servetus, visited him in prison, and pled with him to renege on his beliefs and embrace the Triune God. Calvin also seems to have asked for a lighter penalty for him in some form—whether it was no death penalty or to grant mercy by strangling him before the burning is not fully clear. It was likely the latter.” The post concludes that while this has been exaggerated and Calvin has been demonized, he did err here, as the church allowed the state to wield the sword for it. The Fateful Years- Life of Calvin, Part 8
T-fan points out that Hindus don’t think that their statue is a god, just like Romanists claim they don’t worship statues. Yet, they employ them. We don't worship statues
Peter Head has some observations on the work to put Codex Sinaiticus online, for those interested. Codex Sinaiticus Project- Some Observations
Cool! Here’s a new NT manuscript, 1 Peter 1.23-2.5 & 7-12, on papyrus, dated late 3rd/early 4th century. New fragment of 1 Peter (P. Oxy 4934)
“Sixty-four percent of American women who choose abortion feel pressured to do so by others.” DeYoung points out this is obvious. What is a 17 year old girl gets pregnant now, by her 20 year old boyfriend? He wants nothing to do with the child. He manipulates. And she is pressured by everyone to get rid of the baby. Here’s a potent point: “Prior to the legalization of abortion in the United States, it was commonly understood that a man should offer a woman marriage in case of pregnancy, and many did so. But with the legalization of abortion men, started to feel that they were not responsible for the birth of children and consequently not under any obligation to marry. In gaining the option of abortion, many women have the lost the option of marriage. Liberal abortion lawyers have thus considerably increased the number of families headed by a single mother, resulting in what some economists call the "feminization of poverty."” DeYoung concludes that restricting the choice for abortion, by societal pressure, stigma, and more limited access, actually helps the woman in the long-run. Conversely, he cites Stith, who writes "By granting to the pregnant woman an unrestrained choice over who will be born … we make her alone to blame for how she exercises power. Nothing can alter the solidarity-shattering impact of the abortion option." (Yet Another Way) Abortion Hurts Women
Apparently a mass murderer took comfort in the idea that Jesus died for every sin, even merging it into his justification for why he did what he did on his blog. Here’s what he said: “Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter. I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them.” The Pittsburg Gym Shooter's Theology
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