“Some interesting stats from Christianity Today. 42% Scientists ages 18-34 who say they believe in God. 28% Scientists 65 and older who say this.” Scientists Who Believe in God
Burk writes that the YouTube video going around that claims to give biblical evidence that Barack Obama is the anti-christ (see above). may sound like it has insight on the biblical text, but it doesn’t. “It is filled with factual inaccuracies and exegetical fallacies and should be discarded onto the scrapheap of crackpot-pseudo-intellectual hooey.” Is Obama the Anti-Christ-
Reformed Baptist press notes the ease with which one may attack certain believers as thieves of liberty or Pharisaical legalists just because they don’t indulge in culture or they have questions/concerns. The progressive adoption of things formerly thought immoral, be it certain movies, music, excessive drinking, etc. by Christians and even pastors raised the question – is there any definition of the ‘world’ that all believers agree ought to be rejected. The standard is shifting. “Holiness, it appears, is culturally conditioned.” My Pharasaic Heroes or Bible Babies in Fundy Bathwater
Challies highly recommends A Lover's Quarrel with the Evangelical Church, which is "intended primarily for Christian believers, particularly those who might generally fit into the category of theologically conservative, evangelical believers. Though much of what follows is highly critical--on both practical grounds and theological grounds--of the current state of the evangelical church, it is criticism aimed to build up, not to tear down." The author, Warren Cole Smith, loves the church, and rather than rejecting the faith seeks to reform its evangelical (American) expression. Whether or not one would debate his proposed solutions, his analysis is solid, and he sees the local church as the foundation to the solution. A Lover's Quarrel with the Evangelical Church
Phillips picks up on a topic he’d railed on before – when Doug Wilson blamed Todd Palin for Bristol Palin’s sexual immorality. He says, “Who are the last people in the world you'd expect to think that Person A can cause Person B to be faithful or faithless from the heart?
Me, I'd nominate hardcore Calvinists.
” Yet, the father and mother are blamed for their child being an apostate. Many Christians seem to go into parenting thinking that a particular formula will yield particular results, yet life happens and their nifty parenting book doesn’t quite come through. “it is a pan-Biblical verity that you can never be assured of drawing a straight line between cause and effect in relationships. God has a human son (Luke 3:38) who sins in spite of perfect fathering, who has a son who is saved in spite of imperfect fathering. There's your template.” Here we go again, again- the illusion of human sovereignty among those who should know better
Hays responds to Reppert, who argues that saying that the elect will appreciate grace more in heaven if people are damned is ineffective because God can produce in them all the appreciation he wants to without damning anybody (e.g. showing a fake movie of hell). i) Hays notes that movies of hell are hardly compelling. ii) Reppert’s alternative here is called a Cartesian demon; i.e. an omnipotent being can create delusive experiences. BUT biblically God forms our beliefs through real world experience, and all the icky stuff that comes with. iii) The Cartesian demon argument cuts both ways – why wouldn’t a benevolent God then put us with simulated wives and kids, without any problems? See, a God who is both benevolent and omnipotent would create the best possible world, and as Reppert points out this is a virtual world with implanted memories - But since the real world isn’t the best possible world, as Reppert defines it, God does not exist. Calvinism or Cartesian Demonism-
Hays again illustrates, by appealing the The Matrix and Dark City, the absurdity of Reppert’s notion that reality shouldn’t put any constraints on theology. Christianity or Renderosity-. See also here. Victor Reppert's show-n-tell [I might add that God aims to actually demonstrate His wrath].
The Worship God MP3 sessions are available here. Worship God MP3 Sessions
Piper answers the question, “Do you think complementarianism is so important to some people that they deny women more opportunities than the Bible denies them?” Too Complementarian-
Wilson has some insightful comments here. i) He notes a picture of a fundamentalist women, who seems to be out of touch entirely, who is actually seeking to do the right thing, to be modest and discrete, and not trying to achieve an effect that the Bible never urges women to have – to be ‘edgy’. She’s playing the instrument poorly, but at least she’s playing the right one. ii) After pointing to Titus 2, Wilson notes that the Bible says that older women should teach younger women how to achieve that effect, an effect we can sum up with the word respectable – and that younger women are not to push the envelope until the older women finally call them on it. There is a way to try to be respectable that ends up being worldly – this is playing the right instrument badly. But there is a way to live in a disrespectable, unkept, etc. way that’s like using a totally different instrument, and how well you play is irrelevant. The Distinction Between Doing the Right Thing Badly and Doing the Wrong Thing Well
Here’s links to two articles by John Piper on the vessels of wrath. God's Patience with the Vessels of Wrath
Girltalk notes that Peter (1 Pet. 4:9) says hospitality is to be done without grumbling. It’s not enough to just do it – it must be done cheerfully. Hospitality is work and sacrifice and it take energy and even money. How do you do it unbegrudgingly? By remembering why. Hospitality Coreography
Phillips thoughts on altar calls: i) The very name should give the Christian pause, since we don’t have an altar here. We don’t call them to an altar but to Christ. And if this was changed to a ‘Christ call’ the whole practice would fall apart since no biblically-instructed pastor could ever connect walking to some geographical location with meeting Jesus. But that’s what the altar call does – and if not, why do they make it sound that way? ii) (A) no evangelist in most Christian history felt the need to do it, and (B) the first to popularize it was the heretic Charles Finney. iii) In practice they can be horridly manipulative. iv) Jesus isn’t waiting at the front of the church. v) The primary purpose of assembly is edification, not evangelism. vi) Don’t take any of that to be a disinterest in evangelism. vii) We should most assuredly be constantly extending invitations, be available after services to talk to individuals upon whom the Spirit works, and preaching the Gospel. Altering altar calls
Genderblog points to an article at DG: One of the greatest reasons for a man to get and stay married is not the rapturous flame of eros but the refining fires of holiness. No relationship is more clearly commanded to model the death of Christ. So CS Lewis: “the husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church.” “This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is-in her own mere nature-least lovable. For the church has no beauty but what the bridegroom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. ” Weighty Words on the Meaning of a Husband's Headship
T-fan has to show a Roman e-pologist what Rome has actually taught on the painlessness of Mary’s giving birth. Pope Alexander III is quoted showing it quite clearly. The roman apologist misses this point too: Aquinas reasoned that Mary didn't have birth pains because she didn't give birth through the birth canal, because she remained a virgin even despite the birth of Christ. Even the Catholic Catechism say, “Christ's birth "did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it."” Trent said, just as the rays of the sun penetrate without breaking or injuring in the least the solid substance of glass, so after a like but more exalted manner did Jesus Christ come forth from His mother's womb without injury to her maternal virginity. This all highlights a troubling question for Roman Catholics: How do they know what Rome teaches? It's nice to act as though the Catechism were an infallible canon of Rome's teachings, but it doesn't make that claim for itself. Rome Teaches-
A guest poster on Beggars All writes on Islam and Church History, and the importance of history in answering the volumes of questions muslims have on issues like canon, the Trinity. He is convinced that Mohammad and the Arabs got the wrong impression of Christianity from the combination of different beliefs and heretical sects on the border of Arabia and all over the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Empire, and moreso as they spread. They encountered Monophysite churches, Nestorians, Apocryphal heretical sects, and so on. Several indications in the Qur'an point to Muhammad getting a lot of his information from Apocryphal gospels. no doubt, the images, icons, and statues of Mary, and seeing the eastern Christians bow down and pray before pictures and icons of Mary contributed to their mis-understanding of Christianity and the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity. The guest poster, being a 26 year evangelist to Muslims, notes that still most Muslims think most Muslims still think that the Trinity is God the Father, the Son Jesus, and Mary, "the Mother of the God" (See Qur'an Surah 5:116; also 5:72-73). Eastern Orthodoxy meet
The guest at Beggar’s All continues to answer this question. “As for the presence of Nicene and Chalcedonian Christianity in Arabia in the 6th and early 7th century, it is my understanding that Arabia was a haven for non-Orthodox sects—am I correct on this?” He doesn’t think there was much Chalcedonian Christianity in Arabia at all, but there was Trinitarian Christianity from the Monophysites and Nestorians (they both agreed with the Nicean and Constantinople councils and the doctrine of the Trinity) around the borders of Arabia. “Muhammad could not distinguish between the Monophysites, Nestorians, Chalcedonians, and Apocryphal Gnostic sects, desert monks, ascetics, and the Collyridians (if they got that idea from them); -- they could not distinguish between them because of the Marian practices, images, bowing before icons, prayers to Mary, and calling her "the Mother of the God". It was a bad witness and lack of evangelical missions on the Orthodox part; combined with the heretics who were exiled to the frontiers. Cults and heresies grew up and new religions are started from a lack of outreach and witness.” He goes into some more detail. It seems incipient gnosticism, such as veneration of Mary, and other things like icons, etc. were part of the problem. Muhammad and the Arabs just did not get a credible Biblical and Evangelical witness
Ok, this is funny. I’m not this bad – you won’t find descriptions of me online that say, “Can’t resist a good Bonhoeffer quotation, Edwardsean philosophy, and a venti mocha with light whip.” - but it burns a little. :-) “So, reformed hipster/progressive/student/master-of-irony, next time you consider charting your particular coffee-related beverage of choice, next time you wear it as a distinctive identity marker, remember: everyone else likes coffee. Work harder on the goatee pattern, find another brand of undiscovered denim, dig even deeper in the alternative music shop to lay hands on the truly avant-garde musical act, because your love for coffee–it ain’t getting you there.” Poseur Coffee Drinking
Was Spurgeon KJV Only? Phil Johnson says, no, and read Spurgeon again, and then clearly, unequivocally shows that he is most assuredly not. Was Spurgeon KJVO-
Helm comments on this statement in the Times on the danger of legalizing attempted suicide. ‘The knowledge that I’m here by choice, that every breath I take I take by choice, injects into my soul a transcendent joy. That we can let go whenever we want is for me the deepest sort of thrill.’ Helm particularly notes that expression of a libertarian view of politics in the life of the author: Absolute self-autonomy (the author is an atheist and something of a Lucretian, (‘death is nothing to me’)). i) What is self-deceiving is the idea that the freedom to end one’s life is the freedom to keep it. Can we even want to let go when we have the opportunity? “The realisation that (as Parris puts it) I am no longer useful and life is no longer fun will hardly be trumped by the transcendentally joyous realisation that I can flip the switch.” ii) Am I free to keep my life? There’s an obvious plethora of contingencies that could take you out of the world. Our lives are not in our hands. We do not know what a day may bring. And so this is also a reason to go easy on the hubris. Parris at the weekend
Peter Head notes that “one of the potential dangers in eclectic texts is that the mechanisms used for indicating variants may mislead readers into isolating variants that are actually in close relationship with each other (and you do see this a lot even in scholarly writing).” He uses Hebrews 1:3 as an example in the NA27. 'the word of power'- Hebrews 1.3 (P46 et al)
Hays responds to Reppert’s idea that “we could avoid interpretations of Scripture that commit biblical authors to absurd statements”, observing that Reppert hasn’t defines absurd from the viewpoint of the author, but rather substituted a reader-response theory (a la Marxist/feminist/queer/postcolonial criticism) for the grammatico-historical method. Reppert wants to just pick his favourite interpretation out of the possible ones, rather than pick the best one (of Romans 9:22-23). Hays then quotes Moo’s commentary: i) “In v22, then, Paul is reiterating the point that he made with respect to God’s dealings with Pharaoh in v17: God works with those who are not in positive relationship with him to display in greater degree his own nature and power.” “The purpose of God’s patience here would be to allow the rebellion of his creation to gain force and intensity so that his consequent victory is all the more glorious and also (and perhaps primarily) to give opportunity for him to bestow his mercy on those whom he has chosen for his own (v23),” “This contrast would be unfairly diminished, I think, if we were to assume that the vessels of wrath could have the same ultimate destiny as the vessels of mercy.” “’Prepared beforehand,’ then, refers to the same thing as the word ‘predestine’ in 8:29; a decision of God in eternity past to bestow his mercy on certain individuals whom he in his sovereign design has chosen.” Hays then quotes Schreiner: “It is apropos to recall that the issue informing all of Rom 9-11 is salvation. The historical destiny of nations alone hardly answers the question that provoked the entire discussion: why many in Israel are unsaved.” “Thereby the reason God bore patiently with vessels of wrath is explicated…The implication is that it would have been just and righteous for him to destroy them immediately (cf. Rom 3:25-26)….Those with whom he is patient are skeue orges [vessels of wrath] heading for eschatological judgment in contrast to skeue eleous [vessels of mercy] in v23…” “God defers his immediate judgment of vessels of wrath so that he can unveil the full extent of his power and wrath on those who continually resist his offer of repentance.” “The mercy of God is set forth in clarity against the backdrop of wrath. Thereby God displays the full range of his attributes: both his powerful wrath and the sunshine of his mercy.” (read for more…) Rom 9-22-23
“A thoughtful post here by Erik Raymond, wondering why everyone is comfortable condemning Michael Vick's ruthless behavior against dogs, but it's impolite to talk about the killing of unborn humans.” [I’ve observed this too, recently up here in Canada with the outrage over some guys shooting ducks in Saskatchewan. What a country of hypocrites.] American Culture, Dog Killing, and Abortion
For those who follow this debate, from the mouth of one who holds to two-kingdom theology: “Two Kingdom Theology does hold that Christ is lord over every inch of the universe. This is not at issue in the debate between these two views. But what is at issue is how Christ is lord over both kingdoms. In other words, Two Kingdom Theology holds that Christ rules the church in a different way then he rules the secular kingdom. Christ rules the church with special revelation and Christ rules the secular realm with general revelation. But are given by God to mankind but for different spheres of existence.” DeYoung and Two Kingdom Theology
Wallace responds here to the exegetical atrocities in the video that tries to show that Obama is the Antichrist (There is a disclaimer at the end of the video that simply says the correlation is striking, but not that the narrator is claiming that the President is the Antichrist). Wallace summarizes the argument, which is basically a succession of switching between languages, random assertions and connections, to change Luke 10:18 from saying “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” into “And I saw Satan as baraq ubamah” (which is allegedly what a Rabbi today would say in Hebrew). Wallace then takes the argument apart, which makes a number of rank errors, and then says, “When all is said and done, the evidence is simply bogus. Jesus didn’t speak in Hebrew, and the Hebrew that is given here does not mean ‘lightning from the heights.’ Baraq ubamah means ‘lightning and height.’ But that can hardly be the underlying Aramaic (which is not Hebrew) for the Greek text of Luke 10.18. Thus, a linguistic leap from Greek to Aramaic to Hebrew, with the grammar and vocabulary changing along the way, is required to make Luke 10.18 mean what the narrator wants it to mean. This is hardly a case of “I report; you decide.” It is rather a case of “I’ll tell you only part of the evidence, and will use some fancy exegetical gymnastics to make everything fit; and based on the skewered evidence, you decide.”” Is Obama the Antichrist-
JT notes that the Senate Finance Committee has agreed not to include end-of-life counseling provisions from the Senate's version of the health-care reform bill. These provisions are disturbing. End-of-Life Counseling in Health-Care Reform Bill
Challies summarizes another chapter in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment here. Burrough’s gives five reasons a murmuring discontented spirit is great evil: i) It reveals much corruption in the soul. It isn’t the greatness of affliction that brings misery but the murmuring of the heart. ii) This is the sin God attributes to the wicked in a very special way. iii) God counts it as rebellion. iv) It indicates a heart in direct contradiction to the converting work of God: "This is the work of God in the soul, to disengage the heart from the creature, and how contrary is a murmuring heart to such a thing! Something which is glued to another cannot be taken off, but you must tear it; so it is a sign your heart is glued to the world, that when God would take you off, your heart tears. If God, by an affliction, should come to take anything in the world from you, and you can part from it with ease, without tearing, it is a sign then that your heart is not glued to the world." v) It is far below the Christian to be murmuring; i.e. below the dignity God has bestowed on him. Reading Classics Together - The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (VIII)
Trueman: “The professional statesman is the person who thinks and acts as if they can rise above the fray and speak to issue in a way that transcends the typical struggles involved in any leadership situation… they are those who try to defuse theological conflict by playing the moral equivalence card whereby they argue that the struggle is really petty and personal, a moral conflict between lesser men above which they and they alone can stand and see the way forward.” Trueman identifies this as the simply problem in wider society of a need to be liked, to avoid divisive decisions, and to have all the perks of leadership without the responsibilities. The Problem with the Emergence of the Professional Statesman
DeYoung comments on the two kingdom theology v. neo-Kuyperianism debate. In broad strokes, the two kingdom folks believe in a kingdom of this world and a kingdom of Christ. We have a dual citizenship as Christians. Further, the realm of nature should not be expected to function and look like the realm of grace. They aim to focus on the church being the church, not transforming the culture into the kingdom of God. neo-Kupyerianism (intellectual descendants of the Dutch theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper) argue that every square inch of this world belongs to Christ and His Lordship should be felt and manifested in politics, in the arts, in education, in short, everywhere. [see above comment on this by a two-kingdom advocate]. DeYoung tries for a third way. He highlights the strengths and downsides of both, seeing biblical elements in each. He says two kingdom theology feels more realistic/fits better with the "un-preoccupied-with-transforming-society" vibe of the New Testament. Nevertheless, he has serious issues with opposing those who want to see abortion eradicated, etc. Bottom line: let’s work for change where God calls us and gifts us, but let’s not forget that the Great Commission is go into the world and make disciples, not go into the world and build the kingdom. Two Kingdom Theology and Neo-Kuyperians
DeYoung continues to enumerate a number of things both sides agree upon, and then a few things that they disagree on, including the role of the church, versus the responsibility of faithful Christians, and whether we should expect or desire our nations’ laws to be governed by Christians laws/explicit biblical commands (i.e. is govn’t justified in letting certain sins go unpunished?) He then highlights a point made in Carson’s Christ and Culture Revisited. Christians must pay attention to the whole storyline of Scripture including Creation (lest we not see good in the world), Fall (lest we are too optimistic about the world’s chances of self-improvement, and too quick to approve every good idea as kingdom work), Redemption (lest we lose sight of the centrality of Christ, sin, the cross, and the need for faith/repentance), and Re-creation (lest we think of salvation as nothing but fire-insurance). What (Most of Us) Can Agree On
Gilbert notes a serious error in Crouch’s book Culture Making. His conception of the cross is quite emergent, that Jesus' death was the result of human evil or greed or corruption or culture or whatever reaching its absolute lowest point and then Jesus absorbing all that in his death and conquering it through his resurrection. This leaves out God the Father, making the cross about absorbing human evil rather than divine wrath, and makes humans the ultimate actors when Isaiah could not be clearer that it was God Himself who crushed Jesus. Gilbert also notes that it’s simply artificial and embarrassing to say that culture is central to the biblical storyline (e.g. Adam and Eve made clothes! is supposed to be an argument here). He goes after this ‘reductio ad absurdum’, by showing how plants are central to the Bible’s story. Culture-Making and Plant-Growing by Greg Gilbert
Swan at aomin.org points to an impressive collection of MP3’s on Islam from Iron Sharpens Iron. Do You Need To Catch Up on Islam-
“Human rights groups in South Korea say North Korea has stepped up executions of Christians, some of them in public. The communist country, the world's most closed society, views religion as a major threat.” Execution of believers in North Korea
Bayly points to the horror of the “Women on Waves” evangelists for baby-murder. “We should also think of the Dutch sending out a ship filled with women missionaries for baby-slaughter; feminists who "just" want to say, "Give murder a chance." Being quite modern, they're not dirtying their hands with surgical abortions. Rather, they're spreading the good news and distributing the weapons of chemical abortion--killing by pilling.” Of course it's a pretty sight
This post brings up the point that believers have the hope of a bodily resurrection (with continuity to the old body) to offer those who despise their bodies (e.g. obese people), a resurrection predicated on that of Christ, the benefits of which are enjoyed even now as we await consummation (such that Paul can say in Eph. 2:5-6 that believers are also made alive now with him, and are now raised with him and now seated with him in the heavenlies.) [I would add that those with disabilities have this hope as well, and this point ought to be made in evangelism – this is one of the promises of the Gospel and a way by which people will enjoy all that Christ is for them]. Beaches, Bikinis, and the Body of Christby Lynn Cohick
Phillips laments that dispensationalism (which he argues in no way contrasts with affirming doctrines of grace.) “is under Heresy and Bad Theology — along with Islam, Open Theism, Postmodernism, Emerging Church, Jehovahs Witnesses, Atheism, Roman Catholicism, and the DaVinci code” on monergism.org. He says, “Ah, I love the smell of "Reformed" humility and love in the morning.” He notes ‘leaky canoneers’ (i.e. continuationists) are represented by both sides on the site. Monergism.com lets leaky-Canoneers peddle their goods, BUT
Phillips finds Scotland ineffably sad, a land of spiritual deadness. “Now the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow has an exhibit of a Bible, with several pens and a note that reads "If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it.” Many theophobes have written obscenities, heavily featuring (of course) embracers of the day's favorite perversions. The exhibit "includes a woman ripping pages from a Bible and stuffing them into her underwear."” Let them try this with the Koran – if they’re really brave. Deface the Bible... for art!
Phillips writes on “health care. It's another one of those Funny Things. Liberals have such a reputation as being all for free speech. Turns out that's only if the speech is obscenity, pornography, treason or blasphemy. If it's dissent against our wannabe totalitarian overlords? Not so much. Hence the White House is asking for citizens to inform on citizens who won't drink the Hopey Changey. I did not make that up. On the White House's own page, we read, "If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."… When President Bush tried to solicit information to prevent criminal acts of terrorist violence, liberals were all aflutter. But when Obama wants citizens to inform on law-abiding citizens who exercise their First Amendment rights?” Hither and thither 8/7/09
An eight year old girl was raped, and what is perhaps as shocking to Westerners is that the family didn’t see her as a victim, but one who marred the family honour. “In honor cultures, a woman’s honor normally belongs to her husband or father, and the dishonor of any sexual contact outside marriage, whether consensual or otherwise, falls upon him exactly alike, since it shows him up before the world as a man incapable of either controlling or protecting her. Dishonor is more like a fatal disease than a moral failing. It requires constant vigilance and even then can strike anyone at any time. And its only end can be death.” This is another reason to love the One who bears our shame and makes us clean. “For it stands in Scripture: ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame’” (1 Peter 2:6). The Tragedy of Shame
Bayly writes, “Among the many wicked things Submergent church leaders have given us through their support of Barack Obama's presidency, we come to this: “...the Senate (defense) bill also expands the federal hate-crimes law to those attacked because of their sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability.” I'm wondering if Rob Bell will negotiate an exception for pastors preaching that sodomy is an abomination before God?” Submergent church leaders have a lot to answer for
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