Friday, January 30, 2009

2009-01-30

  • Turk comments on Hugh Hewitt's view of the church as a means to a political end; i.e. the church has the same end as conservativism. He goes on to quote Moreland saying 1) that the first responsibility of a pastor is to enlist people to be involved in the policital process and to get people voting (to do good to society), and 2) that a theocracy and using Scripture in politics is never a good idea, and we should just appeal to 'natural law' (i.e. arguments should not depend on Scriptural premises = God's word) [incredible!]. He shows that Paul's perspective was Gospel-oriented. "May He who calls us out of the world to pass through the world as if it were not our home also call us to preach the Gospel which is the only hope of men -- and not trade it for the noises of traducers like Hewitt who don't understand that they are the problem, not the Gospel." For this reason. JT has a summary here, which also links to the transcript: Christ and State

  • Patrick Chan offers some eclectic thoughts on the issue of torture. 1) He discusses the vagueness in the 'no better than the enemy' moral objection to torture, pointing out that it begs the question as to the moral standard of the enemy, the essence of 'torture' versus 'interrogation techniques', and levels the more pragmatic question of potentially having no one to carry on such a high 'moral' legacy if the war is lost because 'torture' was not employed (or not won as well). 2) Are peacetime applications of ethics different than in wartime? 3) Wrong uses of torture do not necessarily illegitimize all torture. 4) Is, say, waterboarding unconstitutional? Are enemies entitled to American rights? Even domestic prisoners have reduced rights. Now, what's fundamentally important to Christians isn't whether something is in accordance with American values, but whether it is biblical (though there could be overlap). 5) There is a 'guilt' about mistreatment of the middle east in many, which is also fed by the enemy. 6) There is the notion prevalent that all that we really need is to communicate better. In that case, why talk about the morality of the enemy and reducing to it? Aren't we all the same? 7) For whom is it better, when it is said that it is better to let 10 guilty walk rather than harm one innocent? 8) There is a moral hypocrisy, in that those opposing torture support abortion. No better than our enemies

  • According to this, coffee is for the most part quite good for you. http://www.ecosalon.com/20-surprising-facts-about-coffee/

  • Phillips hither and tither is worth a read, and summarizing a summary seems redundant. Of note: "Obama's America: want to butcher helpless unborn babies? No problem! Want to offer help and alternatives to women about to take out the contract on said babies? GUILTY!" and "Mark Driscoll gets 'buked, but it's hard to say by whom exactly. The writer says "I," but the byline is "Staff." He has so much good to say and do, Driscoll really decisively has to step away from the naughty quip-from-the-hip, and fall out of love with the adoring laughter of his audience. If he doesn't do that, it will ruin (or sideline) the vastly more important aspects of his ministry, and that's a bad thing". 09

  • Mohler writes an article summed up well with this paragraph: "One interesting facet of the controversies over Warren and Robinson is the fact that the inclusion of the one does not placate the critics of the other.  Homosexual activists are still angry over the choice of Warren to deliver the invocation on January 20.  A host of others will be offended by the choice of Bishop Robinson.  These two responses illustrate the depth of the divide over the issue of homosexuality.  The question cuts to the heart of issues including biblical authority and the very nature of humanity.  Representation is undoubtedly symbolic, but Rick Warren and Gene Robinson represent radically divergent worldviews and incommensurate goals.  They are not two very different representatives of one religion.  They are instead two very symbolic representatives of two very different religions." http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=3100

  • Mohler points to the idea that the fact that an increasing number of Americans are unwilling to say that their unbelieving neighbour would go to hell is a natural consequence of the American political and social ideal of patriotism, a sense of fair play, equality, personal autonomy, and limitless opportunity. Those who today have personal autonomy so ingrained into them will see it their right to determine their own meaning and truth, and meet truth claims with resistance. "... a majority of American Christians pick and choose doctrines, more or less on the basis of those they like as opposed to those they dislike." This explains much of what we see in evangelicalism, and a rejection of hell. Americans now think themselves judges of God's 'fairness'. God is not running for office and heaven is not a democracy http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=3106

  • Adam's has a brief post on preaching and the importance of a pastor's library - how a well-read pastor will likely have a longer and more fruitful ministry, as "will tend to become a better exegete, he will be well-read in biblical and church history, he will be able to draw upon a wealth of systematic and practical theology, and his congregation will become the better for it." A comment of note: "Speaking of exegesis, how do you do it? Do you cobble together bits and pieces from various commentaries into some explanation of the preaching portion? Or do you do the hard work of figuring out for yourself what the passage says, using various commentaries to help you? Between these two approaches to the text, there is a large difference." The Preacher’s Library

  • Adam's asks two questions when people ask for help on how to deal with problems: "They are: “Is he/she a member of the church?” As soon as I receive an affirmative response, I find the second question coming out of my mouth almost automatically—without even thinking about it. It is: “What has the church done about it?” Too often the answer is totally dissatisfying." He says that the church has neglected its duty to shepherd its flock. Two Questions to Start With

  • Adam's exhorts believers not to fear that because you are a layman you cannot counsel, as if secular credentials qualified one to help biblically. The NT has given a mandate to all believers to counsel one another. He urges believers to study these texts and be prepared to give a biblical ground for why Christians can and should, as children of God, counsel other Christians. Objections to Biblical Counseling

  • In writing against sanitizing language, Adams says, "My counseling friend, never minimize sin. Don’t allow a counselee to do so. Sin is “sin.” Now, we don’t want to call anything sin that isn’t sin, but we don’t want to call anything that is sin anything else. To call what is sin, “sin,” is to do a counselee a favor—though some counselors must not think so. Jesus came to die for sin. That means it can be forgiven, erased, cleansed. You do no one a favor by calling sin genetic, a mistake, some sort of cultural more, or whatever. Jesus didn’t come to deal with those matters. But He did come to deal with sin." Call It What You Like

  • "There is unsettling news for Canada in U.S. President Barack Obama's economic stimulus bill, or at least in the version approved Wednesday night by the House of Representatives. It says that steel used in public projects under the $819-billion US plan must be made in the United States, an idea likely to cause trade disputes and block sales by Canadian mills." Apparently Europeans are upset too [I will note that I'd understood Obama to be protectionist well before he was elected, so this is not a surprise to me] http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/01/29/buy-american.html

  • Bayly writes, "Here’s the truth. Obama is the oppressor of children, born and unborn. But since his skin color is black, we can’t believe he’d oppress anyone. So we come out with all this blather about other social justice issues equally commanding our attention as Christians. Our goal, of course, is to obscure the fact that abortion absolutely dwarfs the death toll of all other forms of oppression around the world combined. That’s combined, brothers and sisters!" ... "It’s disgusting for otherwise educated and thoughtful men to seek to legitimize their conniving at this great bloody oppression that defines our nation by sniveling about systemic poverty and education and secondhand smoke and carbon emissions and AIDS." ... "No man who lives for justice and mercy and truth and wakes and sleeps scheming how to liberate the unborn from the present prevailing slaughter could ever pull the lever for the principal proponent of that slaughter in America today" President Obama- Meet the new boss, same as

  • Bayly thinks the obsession with weight control is indicative of the spirit of the age. He says, "In other words, Africa is normal across history in thinking a fat wife contented and prosperous. Not sinful"; seemingly indicating that being fat is acceptable while thin is not? Soft pillows, comfy chairs, and holiness

  • Piper's new book on regeneration Finally Alive is out. Here's a part of a Q & A. An excerpt: "You must be born again. It is a miracle. Many, I fear, don't even want to think in terms of "being saved" as being in the category of a miracle that only God can perform. They want it to be a decision based wholly on human power involving no necessary miracle. That is deadly." Why Finally Alive

  • Roy Ortlund is asked ten questions about preaching. Here are some highlights: "Preaching is central in the life of a church, because Jesus himself speaks savingly through the preached Word." "I often fall in love with every detail in my text, so that I tend toward excess at that level in my preaching. But I try to ask, “What is the precise pastoral burden of this unique passage?” Every detail, however fascinating, is there in the text to help construct that one overall message." "The greatest peril is forgetting what preaching is there for in the first place... [it is] for the display of Jesus Christ, according to the gospel... for him alone, as he wants to speak to the people, love them, help them, save them." http://unashamedworkman.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/10-questions-for-expositors-ray-orlund-jr/

  • For those interested in tracking Obama's opposition to pro-life and pro-marriage, this is the site: Moral Accountability

  • Joe Carter writes to a fetus, explaining four reasons why he might be aborted: 1) Don’t be the unlucky third in series of IVF induced triplets (i.e. less costly to just implant multiple embyros and kill the extra if all three go through than go for another round of IVG). They'll let the fetus live long enough for criteria two to kick in before they tear him out. 2) Don’t be anything other than "chromosomally normal"; 3) Don’t be a girl; 4) Don’t squint. "The good news is that this is not England, where doctors are granted a "license to kill" anyone who might end up looking like Clint Eastwood. The bad news is that this is America. Here a doctor can abort you for any reason at all." Oh, if you are in the womb of a white 27-year old happily married Catholic woman who has never had an abortion and has a household income of $60,000+ a year, you are fairly safe. http://culture11.com/blogs/theconfabulum/2009/01/22/four-reasons-you-might-be-aborted-an-open-letter-to-fetal-humans/

  • Evolution has selected, designed, etc. the human body. Once again, evolutionists cannot help but use teleological language and deify and personify evolution/mother nature. HT Turk: A fine point

  • Some humour courtesy of Turk: "Climate Change is now classified as "irreversible" so it will take a miracle to fix the problem. Good thing we just elected a savior for the free world. He did not choose us: we chose him." The sky has fallen. Game Over

  • Yep, someone has just argued that babies are better off dead than poor. They can do better, I think

  • Manata points out that while some may initially find the idea that since one cannot access an alternate possibility, he has no 'choice', this intuition is pre-reflection. It should be noted that people seem to find Frankfurt counter-examples intuitive, as even libertarians grant. [My own experience sounds similar to Manata's - having explained that we choose according to our desires, everyone to which I have spoken seems to recognize that this precludes the ability to have selected otherwise in an particular choice, ceteris paribus, while not inhibiting responsibility and necessitating coercion. They're All Gonna Laugh At You

  • Bird, commenting upon Crossley's desire to see a focus upon the Aramaic behind the Jesus tradition and attention given to socio-historical and anthropological explanations for illuminating the emergence of Christianity, adds that at some point in this endeavour one has to interact with the Gospels, as one cannot simple explain Christianity by reference to the socio-historical context without biography. Both are needed. He goes on to state that the claim of objectivity and the supposed lack of driving ideology on part of the Jesus Project bothers him, since it is pretty clear from their material already that this isn't true, and the myth of objectivity itself. Crossley on the Jesus Project

  • Carolyn Mahaney exhorts mothers to instruct their wives in the career of homemaking, which requires considerable skill, character, and expertise in various things. She encourages them to seize every moment, to speak of the sacrifices but moreso the joys of homemaking often, and to provide a steady diet of God's word to shape their daughters' convictions to reflect the biblical priority of the home. Consider your daughters as homemaking interns. Homemaking Internship

  • Thursday, January 29, 2009

    2009-01-29

  • Turk begins his series of words to pastors, and reminds us that a pastor is someone who Paul would call a "true child in the faith". This is an immensely rewarding thing to be called, as well as a humbling thing. We don't see Paul telling us to run from churches on account of lousy pastors. Let me introduce you to you

  • I wonder what this says about Americans: "despite its below-average numbers this season, Idol still managed to give a ratings beat-down to President Barack Obama." http://tvguide.sympatico.msn.ca/TVNews/Articles/090128_idol_beats_obama_DW

  • Hays comments on the Humean standard of evidence, popularized by Carl Sagan, according to which extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. 1) Does this require supernatural evidence? That seems viciously regressive. The evidence would suffer from the same alleged implausibility as the event to which it attests, if 'like requires like' is in view. 2) It has a superficial appeal in its compact symmetry. 3) the slogan seems to concede that a miracle is credible as long as you can furnish the right kind of evidence. 4) If it doesn't require the same kind of evidence to attest to a miracle, then by definition ordinary evidence is all that is needed. 5) unless the event already fell within your preconception of an extraordinary event, then ordinary evidence would suffice to attest its occurrence. 6) Skeptics beg the question, since they already have a preconceived notion of what is extraordinary and improbable. The premise that miracles are inherently implausible begs the question. The onus of miracles

  • Manata writes that just because you can't choose a counterfactual, doesn't mean you didn't choose what you chose. Libertarianism doesn't afford the control to choose counterfactuals anyway - given the luck, you can't choose them. His Arminian interlocuter is attempting to read a libertarian understanding of choice into dictionary definition (and use the dictionary to argue for libertarianism), and worse yet, into ancient Jewish thinking. People have held different worldviews throughout time (e.g. fatalistic Greeks), and it is nothing other than egregious question begging to claim that the biblical authors thought that libertarianism was true. Given Calvinistic interpretations of many of the OT passages, they would have held to divine determinism. The Arminian begs the question by appealing to what he thinks is the 'common man', to whom he thinks the Bible was written - while the Bible was written to everyone. That and the common man also has problems with indeterminate happenings. Merriam-Webster Said It, That Settles It!

  • Turretinfan has a series in response to Jay Dyer on Calvinism. He intends to address the following: (1) What is the actual error (or conversely, doctrine) at stake? (2) How does or doesn't Calvinism correspond to the error (or doctrine)? and (3) Does this criticism fit Catholicism better? Response to Jay Dyer on Calvinism (Part 1 of 13)  Dyer says that a consistent Calvinist must be Nestorian (The Nestorian error is (to put it concisely) to deny the hypostatic union. Nestorianism, as it is classically defined, argues that Christ was not one person with two natures, but two persons.) to which it is responded that a consistent Calvinist must hold to a proper view of the hypostatic union, wherein the divine person of Christ was fully man and fully God, not two persons. His human nature made the atonement possible, and His divine perfection and worth and dignity and righteousness made it acceptable. Also, the historicity of associating the error with Nestorian is disputed. Moreover, through its idolatrous treatment of Mary, Rome has proven Nestorius' apparent concerns over the term "theotokos" (literally "God-bearer" but often translated "mother of God") to be well founded. Response to Jay Dyer on Calvinism (Part 2 of 13)

  • Next Dyer says [unbelievably!] that Calvinists must be Manichean. "The error of the Manicheans may be succinctly described as asserting that the physical world is intrinsicly evil, having been created by an evil opposite of God. Thus, the Manicheans deny that evil has a purpose in God's plan, view the body as contemptible, and deny God's omnipotence." Now, Calvinism holds the biblical position that God has a purpose in evil, that dualism is false, that God is omnipotent, that God will redeem our physical bodies, that God created man good, and so on. "On the other hand, Manichean errors - particularly the dualism of viewing the body as intrinsically evil - have had a perceptible impact on the theology of Roman Catholicism. Thus, for example, we seen in modern Roman Catholicism things like a view that abstinence from sexual relations is more holy than normal marital relations and an exaltation of asceticism." That and Romanism doesn't have a clear answer to the question of the purpose of evil. Response to Jay Dyer on Calvinism (Part 3 of 13)

  • Swan points out that Jimmy Akin, Catholic apologist, goes to Kierkegaard - who was raised Lutheran - for interpreting Genesis 22, which reduces it to a lesson about child sacrifice. Ironically, he doesn't go to the church fathers, who interpreted it as pointing to Christ. Swan then cites Augustine. If one keeps in mind the entire Bible has Christ as it's central focus, one has found the "reason" for Genesis 22. We Have Apostolic Tradition - The Unofficial Catholic Apologist Commentary #2

  • Piper gives fifteen pro-life truths. Here's a sample: "2. Fetal surgery is performed on babies in the womb to save them while another child the same age is being legally destroyed. ... 9. Justice dictates that when two legitimate rights conflict, the limitation of rights that does the least harm is the most just. Bearing a child for adoption does less harm than killing him. 10. Justice dictates that when either of two people must be inconvenienced or hurt to alleviate their united predicament, the one who bore the greater responsibility for the predicament should bear more of the inconvenience or hurt to alleviate it. 11. Justice dictates that a person may not coerce harm on another person by threatening voluntary harm on themselves." http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2003/1690_Fifteen_ProLife_Truths_to_Speak/

  • Piper writes an interesting article on God's sovereign control over the crash of flight 1549. He says that it happened because God meant to give our nation a parable of his power and mercy the week before a new President takes office. God can take down a plane any time he pleases—and if he does, he wrongs no one. But God is longsuffering. He is slow to anger. He withholds wrath every day. This is what we saw in the parable. The crash of Flight 1549 illustrates God’s right and power to judge. The landing of the plane represents God’s mercy. The landing of Flight 1549 was God’s doing. And the Obama presidency is God’s doing. “He removes kings and sets up kings” (Daniel 2:21). http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2009/3520_The_President_the_Passengers_and_the_Patience_of_God/

  • Commenting on the acceptance by the senate of Geithner as secretary of Treasury, despite evidence of tax evasion, Hays points out that a basic function of the law is to protect the weak from the strong. "the law functions as a social and moral leveler. It brings everyone down to the same level of accountability for their actions. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. But in a land with a passive, ignorant electorate, many officials flout the law with impunity." The slogan, "no one is above the law" is only intermittently true. No man is above the law

  • Sovereign Grace has a big sale through all of February. This is a great time to pick up their music. Sovereign Grace Book and Music Sale. See also here: Crazy Sovereign Grace Music and Book Sale

  • This post gives some characteristics of the girl that fears the Lord. The Beginning of Wisdom

  • Phillips compares pre-election Piper to post-election Piper on abortion. Piper now, Piper then

  • Turretinfan provides his own thoughts, which are mostly in defence of certain points in Rick Warren's prayer at the inaugeration. 1) People wouldn't have been satisfied unless he had given a 30 minute prayer-homily; 2) The true God IS compassionate and merciful, and it may help Muslims to see that this is not uniquely Koranic but came from Christianity+Judaism; 3) The use of 'Isa' to refer to Jesus is in a line of names of Jesus in various languages, and Warren actually goes on to positively affirm that Jesus taught us to pray in a Christian way.  Rick Warren's Prayer

  • The excommunication of the Society of St. Pius has been lifted by Rome. This has implications for Rome, as it implies theological disunity between Benedict and John Paul II. SSPX is Back - JP2 heading out- Implications for Unity

  • Pink writes an article on discerning what you read: "To turn away from the lifeless preachers and publishers of the day—may involve a real cross. Your motives will be misconstrued, your words perverted, and your actions misinterpreted. The sharp arrows of false report will be directed against you. You will be called proud and self-righteous, because you refuse to fellowship empty professors. You will be termed censorious and bitter—if you condemn in plain speech—the subtle delusions of Satan. You will be dubbed narrow-minded and uncharitable, because you refuse to join in singing the praises of the "great" and "popular" men of the day. More and more, you will be made to painfully realize—that the path which leads unto eternal life is "narrow" and that FEW there are who find it. May the Lord be pleased to grant unto each of us—the hearing ear and obedient heart! "Take heed what you hear" and read!" http://www.gracegems.org/Pink2/take_heed_what_you_read.htm

  • Gilbert recounts a sermon which became dialogical (not intentionally, and the question that started it off is a little humourous). He argues briefly that Total Church has understated the case for monological preaching in the Scriptures, and that learning requires listening, so dialogical suffers from 1) being unable to convey as much information; and 2) the depth of your exhortation is also going to be much shallower for the same reason. RE- Total Church by Greg Gilbert

  • Stott has some moving comments on the centrality of church in the NT. "I trust that none of my readers is that grotesque anomaly, an unchurched Christian.  The New Testament knows nothing of such a person.  For the church lies at the very centre of the eternal purpose of God.  It is not a divine afterthought.  It is not an accident of history.  On the contrary, the church is God's new community." On Acts 2:37 he says, "He didn't add them to the church without saving them, and he didn't save them without adding them to the church.  Salvation and church membership went together; they still do." Yet many today are just this grotesque anomaly.  John Stott on Church Membership by Thabiti Anyabwile

  • Thabiti has some anecdotes illustrating some concepts about church membership, the context being Total Church. 1) That a person can come for years and love the church and even be known by many but could slip through the cracks outside of membership. 2) That a person could be a member and not want to be - it would be a mistake to just assume that such folks want to be "members" or be a part of "church belonging" just because they've shown up over a period of time. 3) That an unregenerate individual might be a member. Membership- Based on a True Story by Thabiti Anyabwile. Gilbert adds to this that in 1 Cor. 12:27 Paul explicitly uses the term members, and argues that this is an allusion to the body politic that was well understood in Greco-Roman culture. The people knew exactly who was a member of that body politic and who wasn't. If this connection is there then Paul is deliberately using a familiar picture to illustrate the body of Christ. The idea of membership isn't esoteric. RE- Membership by Greg Gilbert

  • McKinley relates this: "This week a church member made an appointment for lunch.  He wanted to ask me a question: if I imagined this were the last time I ever saw him, and I was being 100% completely honest about what I saw in his life, what criticism would I offer him?" He says that he cannot imagine a more godly question, and only pride constrains us from it. The Perfect Question by Michael Mckinley

  • McKinley rants about pastors talking about their clothing - it is certainly funny, and he touches on the feminizing of boys, etc. This is the kicker though: This does not pass the "DMLJ" test.  If you missed it, the "DMLJ" test is this: would what I am doing make Martyn Lloyd-Jones want to rip off my arm and beat me with the bloody shoulder socket?  If the answer is "yes", don't do it.   Stop It With the Clothes Already by Michael Mckinley

  • Gilbert thinks that 'internet church' is based on a misunderstanding of church: "When your fellowship after church amounts to typing some words in a chat room to "jesusgirl4567," I think you're missing something important in the whole koinonia concept.  Like human-to-human interaction, for instance---seeing pain or struggle in a person's eyes, for example, and being able to react to that; or sharing joy, which is much more powerfully communicated through the face than through a colon and a parenthesis." RE- Internet Campus by Greg Gilbert

  • Obama is giving indications of his fundamental pragmatism over principle approach - an approach that will result in the weaker and marginal groups being tosses to the side. “If you are a lobbyist entering my administration,” Obama said, “you will not be able to work on matters you lobbied on, or in the agencies you lobbied during the previous two years.” But he went on to appoint a deputy secretary of defence who lobbied for Raytheon, a treasury secretary who dodged taxes, and an attorney general who had formerly helped make possible the pardon of a blatant criminal. http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=11039

  • 2009-01-28

  • White makes a few post-debate comments on Ehrman: 1) He said he knew nothing about Islam or the Qur'an - though he is head of the religious studies department at a university! - and would not even admit - even hypothetically - that if there were variants in the Qur'an it would mean that Mohammed has been misquoted. Naturally, he is a good politically correct postmodern liberal. The following manuscripts have been dated to the second century by credible papyrologists and paleographers: P4/P64/P67 (all one manuscript), P32 (which I mentioned), P46, P52, P66, P75, P77, P87, P90, P98, P104, P108, P109. Before We Head to Sea

  • Pulpit Magazine points to this sad quote by Ted Haggard: “And I call it my sin,” he says. “That’s my sin. I’m not saying everybody is a sinner that does it. I’m just saying with my standards and my values, it was a sin against me and God. For me.” Points of Interest. JT writes, "the most important thing that stands out [in the interview] is the absence of the holiness of God, the cross of Christ, the nature of sin, and the necessity of repentance." One thing seems clear - Haggard views himself as a victim, even of his own brain, as he never sinned 'willingly'. Haggard Interview

  • That, and there is this: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi commented on Sunday that family planning, which includes abortion, will act as a “stimulus” and help the economy. Points of Interest

  • Pulpit Magazine is doing a series to address the question, why pray if God is sovereign? In Isaiah 46:9-11, God indicates that He both purposes what He desires to happen and then actually brings those purposes to pass. As W. Bingham Hunter writes, “From a biblical perspective, your world-history book should be prefaced with 2 Kings 19:25: ‘Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it. In the days of old I planned it; now I have brought it to pass’” Why Pray if God Is Sovereign-

  • Joe Carter writes an open letter to fetal humans explaining four reasons they might be aborted. Four Reasons You Might Be Aborted. HT: Challies.

  • "In 2009, Desiring God International Outreach will be launching new resource strategies to serve the Church in China. This will include a book project and an online effort, because Chinese-speakers now outnumber English-speakers on the internet." Reaching Chinese Netizens

  • Piper points to the Scriptures' presupposition that a baby in a womb is a person. John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit in the womb, Luke uses the term baby to refer to both the pre-born John and post-born Jesus, and so on. The Baby in My Womb Leaped for Joy

  • Hays responds to a brand of 'theological noncognativism', the idea "that theological terms (such as ‘God’ and ‘the supernatural’) are non-sensical, and cannot even be entertained as concepts." 1) With respect to the nature of the human mind, it confuses the difference between an abstract object and a manifestation of that object in space and time. 2) The human mind - not God's - is temporal because successive mental states are a feature of human cognition. 3) With respect to God's interaction with reality, that God effects a conversation with Job doesn’t mean the divine agent must enter into time to cause a temporal effect. 4) To the charge that the concept of a timeless God would be unable to cause a temporal event, that an effect is temporal doesn't entail the temporality of the cause. A cause isn't necessarily an event.  5) secular philosopher and physicist Quentin Smith has argued that time itself is the temporal effect of a timeless cause. 6) There was never a time when the timeless God did not love the elect - but this isn't the same as saying that God loves the elect at all times or all the time, for God's love is timeless. Theological noncognitivism

  • David Boonin has written the standard academic defence of abortion, A Defense of Abortion. It demonstrates how much moral capital one must throw away to justify it. The work is an extended defence of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s illustration of a person being forcibly attached to a master violinist so as to share kidney's - as if that has any parallel to the massive number of babies conceived by promiscuous individuals who willingly sleep around. The comparison is prejudicial, and it isn't intuitive that they are relevantly parallel. 1) While, say, a kidnapper has an obligation to provide for a kidnapped child, it doesn't follow that he has a right to the child. And if a founding were left on your doorstep, you have an obligation to care for the child rather than let him freeze - whether you consented or not. 2) Boonin blurs the difference between letting one die and killing someone. In the former case, while there are scenarios in which the two are equivalent, this isn't necessarily true. 3) Boonin just takes for granted the right to let your child die if the alternative violates personal autonomy. Hays, for example, says that a parent de facto has an obligation to save his or her child, whether he just found out that the person was his child or not. 4) Boonin uses extreme cases to challenge moral intuitions - but the fact that I might do something different in an extreme situation doesn’t mean I should do something different in a normal situation. He cannot simply extrapolate from extreme to norm. "case. On the face of it, all a borderline case would prove is that if the actual situation happens to be a borderline case, then different rules may apply. That doesn’t begin to show that different rules apply in a normal case." 5) Boonin doesn't think that a parent has any obligation to care for a child unless he consents to it. And if we don't have a social obligation without consent, why should we be obligated to respect a woman's right to abort? 6) He assumes that duties aren't really obligatory - they're voluntary! thus denying the moral force of the moral obligation. 7) Boonin doesn't seem to think we're obligated to do anything that entails personal sacrifice or hardship, but this is the test of morality - doing the right thing even when it hurts. 8) Would you want Boonin as your friend? 9) Boonin has it exactly backwards. A parent is a guardian because he’s a parent. Parental duties imply guardianship, not vice versa. 10) That some duties are voluntary doesn't mean that all are voluntary. 11) Consider a child in need. If it were Boonin's child, the prospects would be dim: "to take the child in might prevent Boonin from having the free time to write a long book on abortion rights. We mustn’t let mere human beings get in the way of human rights." 12) Don’t you love the way unbelievers treat pregnancy as if it that were an unnatural consequence of sex? 13) That Beckwith concedes that sperm donors have no obligation to the child doesn't mean that they don't - that begs the question at hand, for one of the stock objections to anonymous sperm donation is that men don’t have a right to donate their sperm in this no-strings-attached fashion. 14) He has a double standard where the law is concerned. If the law implicitly supports the prolife argument, then he discounts the relevance of the law by distinguishing between morality and legality. But if the law implicitly supports his own position, the state of the law suddenly becomes relevant to the discussion. When life begins and ends with a woman's decision

  • Commenting on this sort of statement, "The prognosis is grim. Between 2000 & 2050, world population will grow to over 9 billion people, but this 50% increase in global population will come entirely in Asia, Africa, & Latin America, as 100 million people of European stock vanish from the Earth. But the immigration tsunami rolling over America is not coming from ‘all the races of Europe.’ The largest population transfer in history is coming from all the races of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and they are not ‘melting and reforming'." Hays points out: There’s nothing wrong with the US becoming more racially or culturally diverse. There is a problem with the US becoming more secular or religiously diverse. We need a Christian common denominator. Christian diversity

  • Manata continues to discuss Arminian concepts of libertarian free will. "[1] Top libertarian theorists do not define choice as necessiating libertarianism. [2] Top libertarians have noted counter-intuitive aspects of their theory, things the ordinary, man on the street thinks about indeterminate or uncaused happenings. [3] Therefore, choice doesn't necessitate a libertarian understanding and libertarianism has its own elements that run contrary to "common sense." For example, libertarians like Kane accept 'will-setting choices' where a choice determines future choices down the chain. An Underwhelming Response

  • Here's an interesting set of comments from a Roman Catholic commentator, who thinks Vatican I was rigged and illegitimate, that papal infallibility isn't the case, that the modern pop-catholic apologists don't represent historical Roman Catholicism, nor even the majority of lay-catholics, that the magisterium is the whole people of God, and so on. The great silent majority

  • Manata shows that dictionary definitions of choice do not undermine determinism at all. There is no claim made here that the alternatives are things to which one has genuine access. Eisogeting the Dictionary

  • To Obama's obtuse comments on the Mexico City policy, Manata says, "if the conceptus, fetus, etc., is fully human, you don't get to "make a decision" to kill it unless you support this premise: Sometimes we can take the lives of innocent, fully human people, for the convenience of other people." Obama wants to empower women to be able to kill their offspring, yet he says that he doesn't have an opinion on whether those offspring are human - and if he doesn't think women should be empowered to kill people, then he should have an opinion. Obama's like the redneck hick who shoots at the sound in the leaves because taking the time to come to a settled position is "beyond his pay grade." And, Guantanamo will be closed in a year, Americans will withdraw from Iraq when they can do so "responsibly" - Obama is sounding a lot like a republican now - and they will be fighting and killing in Afghanistan. So Democrat voters didn't help stop "senseless" killing - now they are funding even the killing of newborns. People have been seduced and duped by rhetoric and oration. Rebels without a clue following a leader without a clue. Given his comments on abortion, us, can anyone imagine a president who said we need to revoke the right of blacks to vote because that was "dividing us?" Indeed, now any racist can just treat a black man as sub-human and say the question of his humanity is above his 'pay-grade.' Ethical questions on anti-intellectual premises without the attendant hard thinking. Yep- that's who is in the White House. Scary. Rebels Without a Clue

  • In his debate over the Resurrection with Michael Bird, Crossley brought up the common objection regarding Matthew 27:52-53 that the raising of the dead referred to in that passage is historically unlikely, since the other gospels don't mention it and Josephus doesn't mention it, for example. Engwer briefly critiques Bird's response as poor, and then goes on to explain a number of points. Here's the gist of it: 1) The passage doesn't tell us whether resuscitation or resurrection is involved; 2) We can't interpret the account through the grid of 20th century horror movies, for in a Jewish context, being raised would not mean walking around nude and decomposing; 3) "Many" is contextually defined; 4) Historians accept many historical accounts that come from only one source; 5) Even Matthew mentions it only briefly, early Christians writing after didn't mention it, so critics may be thinking that it deserves more thought than even the author did; 6) The claim that no other early Christian sources mention the event depends on the assumption that some passages referring to the raising of the dead don't have this event in; 7) Non-Christian sources wrote in particular genres with particular interests in particular areas. Roman political writers would hardly be talking about Christian miracles. 8) A non-Christian source wouldn't exactly have a compelling reason or desire to report such an event so favorable to Christianity. 9) Josephus and other early non-Christian sources refer to Jesus' performance of apparent miracles. Sometimes they discuss specific miracles, and sometimes they don't. They'll often suggest he was empowered by Satan, etc. but how do we know that Matthew 27 wasn't in view when Jesus was called a sorcerer, etc? 10) The testimony and evidence of this event compared to the resurrection isn't even close. Even if we were to conclude that this passage in Matthew 27 undermines the testimony of that gospel, its testimony can be diminished without being eliminated. And we still have other sources that give us information relevant to the resurrection of Christ. A Bad Argument Against The Resurrection That's Often Repeated

  • Steve Hays notes that a move to a more exegetical theology in Reformed circles over the centuries is a good thing, and a natural consequence of sola scriptura. Now, Bible scholars must still use thematic categories to logically arrange their material, and in this way it is quite systematic. After noting that these newer works are more exegetically intensive, he goes on to recommend a few OT/NT introductions from Schreiner and Waltke. Exegetical theology

  • Manata points out that a libertarian commentator will, on the one hand, say "Incidentally Kane discusses the CNC concept and problems with this kind of control in his important work on free will titled: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FREE WILL", and once it is shown from Kane that problems follow, he'll say "I would also add that any determinist who wants to prop up Kane’s view as representative of libertarian free will is presenting an intentional straw man and knows it." Special-Pleading Libertarianism

  • In this post, Manata shows how atheist Streitfeld has made a grotesque logical blunder (or is guilty of special pleading) in his attempt to show how (a straw man of) presup. thinking is self-contradictory. It's just worth reading on its own. Proof That Streitfeldian Apologetics Cannot Produce Valid Arguments

  • A key component of traditional Van Tillian presuppositionalism is the universal knowledge of God thesis. Going to Romans 1, there is diversity in the commentators, and there is some textual ambiguity in the Greek. The knowledge could either be taken to be manifest to them or in them. In the WCF, statement on natural revelation is vague. It's not clear they meant to argue for an ability or a possession of knowledge. "when interpreting Paul in Romans 1, we should beware of mapping the precisions of modern epistemology onto Paul's language in Romans 1." Bahnsen et. al. view this as actual knowledge that all men have and use it as a defeater against the suggestion that presup. means that people can't know anything. "For any human being S, S has actual knowledge of God." After some caveats for the disabled and infants, Manata opts to use this: "For any sane human being (cognizer) S, if S has propositional knowledge at t, then S knows at t that God exists." Based on whether one is an internalist or externalist as to justification and warrant for knowledge, either one sets the bar of knowledge too high - all men have access to the adequacy of the justifying grounds of the belief- such that all men do not know that God exists, or the no conscious believed defeater constraint is such that all men do not know that God exists. Therefore, not all men know that God exist. This is a problem for Van Tillians because the basis for all men’s guilt is now removed, and the rejoinder to the reductio about some unbelievers knowing nothing is back in play. Manata goes on to discuss some possible responses to this. A Dilemma For VanTillians-

  • JT exhorts people to be able to state the position of another in your own words accurately when you go to critique a book or lecture, etc. Apply the Golden Rule to critiques. Can You Say It in Your Own Words-

  • JT provides some advice on how to read a book analytically: "Adler suggests that there are three main stages for analytical reading, which can be seen in these three questions: (1) What is this book about as a whole? (2) What is being said in detail, and how? (3) Is it true? What of it?" Read it if you're interested in improving or comparing it to your own method. How to Read a Book- The Rules for Analytical Reading

  • Bird writes that he is becoming more skeptical of the existence of Q: 1) In Matthew 26:64 and Luke 22:69 both authors independently qualify the Marcan statement to the effect that 'from now on' you will see the Son of Man seated beside the power. 2) The distinctives in the narrative of the Centurion in Matt 8.5-10 and Luke 7.1-10. Getting More Sceptical on Q

  • Riddlebarger comments on Rick Warren's Connection: Saddleback's press release says: “The hollow hope of materialism has left us disappointed, empty and worried, and the economic collapse has created a hunger for a deeper spiritual connection to God and to each other."  Of course, Warren would never do anything to contribute to the hollow hope of materialism like recommend that we all buy his stuff to see us through the difficult times. Rick Warren to the Rescue

  • Here's a very brief discussion of the variant at Philippians 4:11. The more difficult reading is in the oldest manuscript - 'for the glory of God and approval for me.' The general thought would reflect Paul's conviction that his own eschatological reward is connected with the perseverance of his churches. So it isn't Pauline egotistical but eschatological. Phil 1.11- 'for the glory of God and approval for me'

  • Here's some info on the history of Roman citizenship as conferred to children from parents in Paul's time. Pay to Play- Discussing Paul's Roman Citizenship by Lynn Cohick

  • Tuesday, January 27, 2009

    2009-01-27

  • Hays responds to an individual who basically asserts a reading of the fall opposite to that of orthodoxy. Some points Hays makes: 1) Calvinism in general doesn’t say that God entered into a covenant of works with Adam. Rather, that’s the position of the Westminster Confession—along with many traditional Divines. But this is a controversial issue in 20C Reformed theology. 2) Don't confuse reward and merit - a filial duty, being obligatory, is not meritorious, yet reward may be given for compliance. But the reward is not earned. 3) Calvinism says that no one does good, not that they don't know good, and that by grace even the reprobate enjoy something of an innate sense of ethical discernment. 4) All that is needed for moral culpability in Adam is the single prohibition of not eating the fruit. 5) Knowing good and evil is most likely idiomatic for making yourself morally autonomous. 6) Adam and Eve were ashamed of God seeing them nude, foreshadowing the fear of divine retribution. The covenant of works

  • Open theism means that God can sin, since God incarnate or disincarnate is a libertarian free agent. According to open theism, God really did regret sending the flood. God makes many mistakes, of which this is one. Why freewill theism makes God the author of evil. Here's another example of Arminians failing to be consistent in their hermeneutic. Prominent Arminian Blogger Denies that Jesus is Human

  • Secularists can't help but personify nature - literal nonsense in their worldview. Evolution says absolutely nothing about moral and intellectual virtue, and humans being "adapted to fulfill a characteristic function" doesn't show how the horrid evil in our age is just an aberration. A life of intellectual and moral virtue

  • Hays commands on Genesis 6:6. He points out that the Bible uses a variety of anthropomorphic depictions of God. "Of course, a pagan—with his pantheon of corporeal or metamorphic gods—might take all of these theistic metaphors literally. However, the Bible also goes out of its way to contrast the true God with heathen divinities." This doesn't probe 6:6 is anthropomorphic but removes any necessary presumption that it is. Since God is an actor in historical narrative, in this genre (along with poetry) we would expect such the narrator to represent God similarly to human players. Certain human emotions are contingent or amplified on human limitations, and unless God shares these, limitations, his experience isn't the same. An anthropomorphic interpretation is tenable. Moreover, it is easier to explain anthropomorphic language for a transcendent God than transcendent language for a humanoid God. "I think the language is metaphorical. I think it’s designed to express God’s literal disapproval of sin in vivid terms which a human audience could relate to." Divine repentance

  • For some reason, Christians who support the democrats think that abortion is the only reason a Christian wouldn't vote for a democrat - because liberals are all for helping the oppressed and poor. " Hays argues that the Bible isn't sympathetic to those who are poor because they are sluggards, etc. Creating a social welfare system to prop up those who are poor because they made lousy lifestyle choices, such as laziness, drugs, out-of-wedlock sex, etc. isn't helpful - it creates a culture of dependence. And comparisons between fixing poverty and abortion aren't good. "Abortion is a direct act of homicide. There are fairly straightforward legal means of lowering the abortion rate. You use the same methods you use to crack down on homicide generally. You severely penalize it as a deterrent. There’s no straightforward means of reducing poverty where poverty is a result of an individual’s lifestyle choice." While these pro-dems attempt to play off the virtue of helping the poor, they really argue for what is borderline Marxism. Hays also warns against retreating into fatalism and hyper-calvinism politically. How can I call myself a Christian and vote for a Democrat-!

  • Engwer has a post on the relation of non-Christian miracle accounts to Christianity. 1) It was common for ancient sources to express skepticism of miracle accounts, such as stories about the gods. Pagans had a tendency to disbelieve the stories of miraculous accounts. Origen repeatedly contrasts the evidence for Christian claims with the lack of such evidence for pagan accounts. 2) One supernaturalist will oppose the claims of another. 3) A person gullible in one area doesn't mean that he's gullible in another. 4) Christians don't begin with the assumption that all other miracles are false, and allow for non-Christian accounts of the supernatural (e.g. demon-possession). 5) If God is the most powerful being in the universe, then we should look for the miracle worker who carries the biggest stick. 6) Engwer provides some documents to show that contemporaneous non-Christian accounts of miracles may not amount to that much. 6) The critics who draw these parallels don't know how to argue against the Christian accounts on their own merits, since those accounts hold up well by normal historical standards, so they try to dismiss the accounts by comparing them to other accounts that they assume would be rejected by Christians. Non-Christian Miracle Accounts In A Christian Worldview

  • If Christians don't participate in policy making, policy is set by unbelievers. If there are counter-terrorism lines you think shouldn't be crossed, then you need to participate in the debate: "What methods of interrogation are appropriate, and what methods are inappropriate? Are some methods appropriate in some situations, but inappropriate in other situations? Are some methods inappropriate regardless of the situation? What rights is a terrorist entitled to?" Hays points out that without the Bush administration to kick around, people have to be adults now and make some decisions. The Naked Public Square

  • Phil Johnson's mother has died, having won the battle against cancer and gone to the Lord. He "is realizing the bittersweet nature of death for the Christian, how it can be that the death of His own is precious in the Lord's eyes (Psalm 116:15), and yet death is the "last enemy" (1 Corinthians 15:26). He wrote, "In the midst of this experience, I understand perfectly how death can be such a terrible enemy, and yet at the same time be precious for believers."" What Phil is doing

  • Spurgeon on death: "Our common proverb that we use is just the expression of our thoughts, "We must live." But if we were wiser we should alter it and say, "We must die." Necessity for life there is not; life is a prolonged miracle. Necessity for death there certainly is, it is the end of all things. Oh that the living would lay it to heart!" Memento Mori

  • Spurgeon reminds us that death is inevitable, a fine fact in theory, but one that is truly impressed on the heart when we see it. Death is always acceptable to the Christian; we are not dragged into it like the rich man of Luke 12. He illustrates this with a parable, which concludes with a man saying to death personified: ""Ah, Death! I know thee, I have seen thee many a time. I have held communion with thee. Thou art my Master's servant, thou hast come to fetch me home. Go, tell my Master I am ready; whene'er he pleases, Death, I am ready to go with thee." The Christian's death is always to his gain, never to his loss, and always exactly when God wants it. A Christians death is honourable among the brothers. Death means to see the Lord, which is nothing less than bliss consumated. To Fetch Me Home

  • So many pastors, having their moment before an assembled group, blow it. Why? Because the definitional thing that they must do with their time is to preach the Word. Indeed, there may be those attending who have finally dragged themselves out. "It is literally a critical moment, a moment of crisis, of judgment. Angels attend! The Triune God is there! Endless ages will reverberate with the impact of what happens next. These people are accountable, you are accountable. All eyes are on you." So what do some do? They tell jokes, to make people like them. Others free-associate and chat. Still others tell stories. Yet others 'weave a blurry tapestry of vague, gauzy religious sentiments' that could be preached by any religion. Inoffensive. They all don't preach a 'thus says the LORD' message. What are these people even doing being pastors? Preach the Word. Carpe diem, preacherdude

  • Phillips points out that angels are interested in two things: He points out the Cherubim on the ark - who stare at the mercy seat (and reminds us to make much of what God makes much of). "Yahweh, and believers' blood-bought redemption. The turning away of Yahweh's wrath by means of blood atonement absorbs them fully, as they are depicted as frozen in rapt attention towards that spot." Out of everything they could look at - it is redemption, which they only know as spectators, that is the great mystery and object of fascination to them. "As we gather together, ostensibly in the name of Christ, what is it that occupies us, that draws us, that fascinates us? Is it the truths of redemption: its Author, its plan, its unfolding, its implications, its consummation, its celebration, its communication? Is it the Word that ALONE reveals these truths? Or is it games, pageantry, frippery, triviality, entertainment, froth, foam, and inanity?" Angels- fixed attention

  • Monday, January 26, 2009

    2009-01-26

  • A 22 year old woman in Nevada is selling her virginity to pay for college. She sees a capitalistic world, and while at one time she wanted romance, now she wants to 'capitalize', citing feminist ideology for justification. Right now there have been 10000 bidders up to 3.7 million. ""Natalie Dylan" cites "the empowerment of a woman" as at least one component of her decision, but this action leads to this woman being pressed down, objectified and used by a man to satisfy his basest peccadilloes. This is the abuse of a woman of the vilest sort. I have never understood why feminism views sexual freedom as "empowering" for women. It does nothing of the sort; rather, it destroys them, and it is seldom the man who, no pun intended, pays the steep price of the fallout that comes with this alleged freedom." Turning True Womanhood On Its Head- Young Woman Peddling Her Virginity

  • Josh Harris has some points on how the recession can be good: 1) if it opens our eyes to the folly of greed and covetous; 2) resets our definition of need; 3) makes us more aware of our helplessness and God’s faithful provision; 4) helps us see that only King Jesus and His kingdom are worth living for; 5) encourages us to lay up treasure in heaven. Joshua Harris on the Good Recession

  • JT points to several good resources on the case for life. The Case for Life, Around the Web

  • JT briefly details the circumstances of Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade, who is now campaigning pro-life. She lies and said she was raped, she signed an affidavit that she never read, and the baby was put up for adoption. Roe No More

  • Obama's speech on abortion is sickening. He is concerned about the rights of our 'sons and daughters', by which, of course, he only means those who have moved the few inches out of the womb. "Politico reports this morning that today President Obama will reverse the Mexico City Policy, which prevents federally funded non-governmental organizations from performing or promoting abortion services in other countries." Francis Beckwith says, "Apparently, the only way our daughters can be successful is if they are permitted to kill our grandchildren. So, without surgery so that women can be like men, women are unequal to men. Thus, according to Obama, women are congenitally inferior unless they can have abortions. I don't even think the worst chauvinists in the world have implied anything so outrageous." Abortion and Obama's First Few Days

  • JT and Alan Jacobs don't like laptops in the classroom because of the distraction. "In my view, the costs of emailing, being online, instant-messaging when you are supposed to be listening, writing, engaging, etc. seriously outweigh any occasional benefits." [People were passing notes before there was instant messaging - tech isn't the problem. Notebooks are a fantastic addition to the classroom given the vastly more than 'occasional' benefit of superior note-taking.] Alan Jacobs- Internet in the Classroom

  • For those in the United States looking for a practical way to help the mother and baby in situations where the mother is considering abortion, here's one way: "Option Line is a national calling center (plus IM and email) fielding calls from women actively considering abortion, taking the time to understand the pressure or fear they face, and directly and immediately connecting them to the Pregnancy Help Clinic best able to serve them locally." One Simple, Practical Way You Can Make a Difference for Women and the Unborn

  • Phillips points out the bad things that it looks like Obama will do: 1) Strengthen hate crimes legislation, so that judges and juries become mind-readers, who punish beliefs, thoughts, and emotions. 2) Provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling to ex-offenders, so that they are successfully re-integrated into society, as opposed to restitution. 3) Remove more protection for the unborn while adding affording increased civil rights to the sexually perverse. 4) force business owners to fund sexual perversity to prove that they aren't 'biased', or hire homosexuals, even if the homosexuality was not the reason for not hiring, 5) In the name of being for honest, decent, hardworking Americans, Obama plans to make life far harder for honest, decent, hardworking Americans. Unfortunately, Obama may keep at least some of his wretched promises. Here's a bunch of links to various news articles touching on these things. 09. Oh, "President Obama "stared down" a reporter who dared ask a question he didn't like, provoking a testy little whine from the Commander in Chief. They will learn not to stretch out their hands against the Lord's anointed."

  • For those interested in textual criticism: "VK 908 contains the Acts and the Catholic Epistles (Apostolos) and the Pauline Epistles. Hargis explains that Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews have been displaced between the Thessalonian letters, with the result that these three epistles were copied a second time by someone who probably thought they were missing (hence "two new minuscules in one")." CSNTM Photographs Van Kampen Collection- Unregistered MSS

  • A new catalogue of the 800 Hebrew MSS in the Vatican has been published. Vatican Catalogues Its Hebrew MSS (via PaleoJudaica)

  • "Article 3: Total Inability - Therefore, all people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin; without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform. " Fourth Head of Doctrine, Article Three

  • Turk gives a glowing recommendation of Total Church with a few caveats: 1) "it takes a swipe at Protestant models of Scriptural authority and salutes the "Anabaptist" model of "Gospel in community" over that." 2) it has a radical focus on a church without walls; Turk thinks that God's people still need a place to meet and a place to call home, at least for now. A book you should love

  • Here are some excerpts from prayers used at Capitol Hill church. Prayers at Capitol Hill by Greg Gilbert

  • Bird provides a quote from the Didascalia to exhorting and requiring believers to go to church, to learn the word, to gather with believers, and so on. Why Go to Church - The Didascalia (Eth.) View

  • Ben Witherington thinks that certain areas of Reformed theology, being all about sovereignty, have made NT ethics contemptible by their aversion to associating ethics with salvation, reducing it to acting out of mere gratitude. He adds, "there is a crucial epistemological issue to consider—how exactly can you ‘know’ a truth in the Biblical sense without living into and out of that truth? In the Bible, understanding often comes from doing or experiencing. Belief and behavior are not meant to be separated from one another into hermetically sealed off containers." Bird says in response, "this still strikes me as a Weslyan/Arminian caricature of Reformed Theology." Ben Witherington on NT Ethics

  • Bird writes that Bob Gundry asserts the presence of an angelomorphic christology in Revelation 10. After a quote to the effect that this is expected, Bird comments that while the NT certainly labours to show that Christ is much more than an angel, angelomorphic christology manifested itself without undermining His divine identity. Citing Gathercole, he says that these sayings function to demonstrate Jesus' pre-existence, his heavenly origins, and his transcendence of the heaven-earth divide. Revelation Bonanza - Part I- Angel-Christology

  • Commenting on the book The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, Bird says that the first commentary on the Apocalypse by Victorinus of Poetovis (ca. 260 AD) took a chiliastic interpretation (this is in addition to Papias, Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian), while the first amillenialist interpretation appears in the fourth century with Tyconius and Augustine (although symbolic interpretations are as early as Origen and Cyprian). Revelation Bonanza - Part 2- Reception History

  • Sunday, January 25, 2009

    2009-01-24

    [ As I am on vacation right now, I do not have regular access to the Internet, hence the lack of posts ]

  • Phillips writes that Rick Warren's prayer was pathetic - a call to niceness, not to repentance. So much for representing the one who came to bring a sword, not peace. Warren's prayer — first impression

  • Phillips agrees fully with Piper's assessment that Obama's selection of a homosexual priests to pray means that Obama is making the church a minister of destruction. But Phillips has a problem with the fact that Piper didn't throw down before the election, when these things were already clear. Now is good, then would have been better. Now Piper says something unambiguous

  • Nichole of Girltalk exhorts teenage girls to sow to the excellencies of womanhood while they are young, when the time is ripe to invest in godly character that has eternal significance, rather than the transient pleasures of the world, like popularity. Sowing in Springtime

  • Phil Johnson would decline an invite to the inauguration prayer: "Not because it’s a political event, or because I don’t agree with Obama’s foreign or domestic policies, but because Obama’s own stated intention is to make his inauguration “the most inclusive, open, accessible inauguration in American history,” and I would not want to affirm that goal, even tacitly." That's why he invited who he did. Obama's message is that truth doesn't matter, and he is very clearly his own god.  Inauguration Day Prayer #4- Phil Johnson

  • Phillips own inauguration day prayer would definitely not get him invited back. The outline is, 1) America has been blessed richly, both materially and in terms of biblical knowledge, and to those that have been given much much is required; 2) Repentance and prayer for the corruption of politicians and preachers who twist the truth; 3) Confession for the atrocity of abortion and the murdering of the weakest Americans; 4) There is no excuse, knowing God's word is not above our paygrade; 5) Acknowledgment and proclamation of the work of Christ in the Gospel; 6) Prayer for Obama's salvation and submission to God's word; 7) Prayer for renewing of America. Inauguration Day Prayer #5- Nobody Of Any Consequence

  • Turk asks a single question about Rick Warren's prayer: "is it a legitimate thing to pray to God that we as a nation be united by anything other than the cross of Christ (a la Eph 2)?" Should we pray that union be based on mere temporary civic good. Short and Sweet

  • Hays responds to a Romanist who argues that Mt 16:18, Mt 28:20, and Jn 16:13 are together proofs of a visible, infallible catholic church. Here's some notable points: 1) Not a single passage mentions the the visible catholic church, and it is a massive interpolation to read the mess of the Romanist papacy, etc. into them. 2) The 'visible' fellowship presupposed in any of these is entirely compatible with a number of protestant polities. 3) The argument mentions 'visible means' but Catholicism distinguishes between valid and invalid sacraments. While a sacrament is visible, the validity of a sacrament is invisible. It’s contingent on intangible, indetectible factors like the intent of the officiant or the intent of the communicant. So the criterion of visibility fails to distinguish between a true church and a false church, or between a pope and an anti-Pope. 4) The promise of the gates of hell not prevailing against the church speaks to its indefectibility, not its infallibility. And it doesn't say what the church is. The principled basis for determining the true church has always been fidelity to God's word (e.g. the not-so-infallible apostolic sees of Rev 2-3). 5) Things really aren't all that different now than they were back then: "there were various congregations, with various moral and doctrinal deviations both between and within various congregations" The visible church

  • Manata points out that libertarian free will is a bedrock for Arminian critiques of Calvinism (though they don't admit it). "They tell us that they don't stand upon this rock when arguing for Arminianism, I'll grant them that for argument's sake. But I cannot grant that it isn't a bedrock for launching arguments against Calvinism." He then quotes a few leading libertarian writers to show that indeterminism is equally non-intuitive in choice. Libertarian Kane writes, "The first step is to question the intuitive connection in people's minds between "indeterminisms being involved in something" and "its happening merely as a matter of chance or luck." It looks to be the case that simply saying "choice" doesn't demand a libertarian understanding of the term. It is duplicitous for Arminian epologists to act as if it does... we never hear this common and intuitive understanding of indeterminism as incompatible with control being admitted by Arminian epologists. I Chose to Write This Post

  • Manata addresses the Randian philosophers contention that the claim 'existence exists' means that 'God doesn't'. "the fact that "existence exists" doesn't tell us anything about the nature of the existents means that Peikoff can't make a direct argument from this axiom to the claim that "existence exists" means that the "supernatural doesn't." If "existence exists" just means "only non-supernatural things exist" then it appears that "existence exists" does tell us something about the nature of the existents. Moreover, to say that the nature of the existents in "existence exists" is that they are "uncreated, indestructible, eternal" seems to be close to contradicting yourself when you say that "existence exists" tells us nothing about the nature of the existents." Manata says, "by all means argue that only physical objects exist; for instance, like the laws of logic you must employ in your argument. Or the mind that forms conclusions caused by other beliefs." There is a reason why this argument doesn't appear in atheological compendiums. Existence, God, the Randians, and the Maverick

  • Hays shows the consequence of 'all means all': "i) "All have sinned and fall short of God's glory" (Rom 3:23).
    ii) All means all. iii) Ergo, Jesus sinned and fell short of God's glory." Why Jesus was a sinner

  • Hays has some chilling comments regarding Obama's inauguration: "Yesterday marked a milestone in American politics. We truly turned a corner on that day. For Barack Obama is the first black Klansman to hold the highest elective office in the land. He will single-handedly do more to achieve the venerable vision of the KKK than any Grand Wizard... Yesterday was also a benchmark in the history of racial reconciliation, as black voters and white liberal voters joined hands to further the cause of black genocide.... We can all be proud that so many Americans have finally nailed the door shut on racism and come to the view that the only good black baby is a dead black baby." While representing only 13% of the 15-44 female population black women underwent 36% of abortions. We shall overcome

  • Superstitious atheist Woody Allen is afraid, because of the void, the nihilistic outlook of his worldview. Life, for him, is entirely meaningless, accruing to nothing. The meaningless flicker of life

  • Hays comments on the identification of Obama devotees with Obama: "

    The Obamatons have a profound personal investment in the One. "Whatever happens to him, for good or ill, might as well be happening to them—collectively and individually. They take any criticism of the One as if it were a personal slight to their one person. Likewise, they fervently believe that Americans in general are somehow tainted by the Adamic sin of slave-owners who died a century ago, and the only way to atone for our corporate complicity is to elevate a racial token to the highest office in the land. " It's a parallel to original sin and vicarious atonement. Obama, original sin, and vicarious atonement

  • Swan points out that while Patrick Madrid claims that the Rosary is the strongest weapon against mortal sin. However, this is conspicuously absent from Ephesians, an epistle which is soaked in devotion to Christ, with no mention of Mary, and which includes the description of spiritual armor. Patrick Madrid's Strongest Weapon Against Sin

  • Piper asks several pointed questions of Obama regarding abortion, and intends to honour Obama by expecting straightforward answers to these straightforward questions. "You have immense power as President of the United States. To wield it against the protection of the unborn without giving a public accounting in view of moral and scientific reality would be dishonorable. We will honor you by expecting better." Being Pro-Life Christians Under a Pro-Choice President

  • Piper asks what the difference is between killing a baby a few weeks out of the womb and hiring a doctor to do it just before birth that justifies 25 years in prison for the first [and under Obama, tax-dollars paying to make the second possible]. He then quotes Abraham Lincoln's reasoning on the absurdity of arguments for slavery, which are directly relevant to abortion today (e.g. "You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.") Lincoln’s Logic on Slavery Applied to Abortion

  • Phil Johnson continues his series on clarifying Calvinism by articulating two doctrines from the massive statement on God's sovereignty, "We love because He first loved us." 1) The perverseness of our fallen state. There was a time when we did not love God. And we only love God because God loved us - we are totally unable to love Him. This is the magnitude of our perversion, since a failure to love God is the entire essence of lawlessness. Thus this verse affirms total depravity, in that our whole soul is corrupted, unable and unwilling to love God. 2) The priority of God's electing choice. Jesus told His disciples, you did not choose me, but I chose you. Though they did choose him in a real way. The point is that it is Christ's choice that is decisive. His love secures our love. The only reason we love Him while they remain at enmity with God is that God’s loving grace has worked a miracle in our hearts to enable us to return His love. "Do not think for a moment that you can take credit for your love toward Christ. If you love Him at all, it is only because He first loved you. That is the very essence of the doctrine of election." (he makes the point that historic Arminians affirm this truth). Clarifying Calvinism (Part 6)

  • Phil Johnson continues to point out three more doctrines from "We love because He first loved us." 3) The particularity of His saving work. The words express John's conviction that God has done something special for them. We love him but not everyone loves Him. Though God does indeed love every person, not all love is the same. His love for them is the highest and most sacred kind of love known to man. No greater love can possibly be extended to any creature. And that great love is manifest in a particular way. It is a sacrificial kind of love that will stop at nothing to preserve its object. (cf. vs 9-10; John 15). This love is the particular love manifested in the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ that is efficacious for every believer (which Arminians agree with). 4) The power of His loving deliverance. The love of God is the effectual cause of our love for Him. God here does the impossible, for man cannot love God, except by the grace of God. God's saving grace is irresistable to His elect, as He transforms them to find the glories of His love irresistably attractive. 5) The perfection of His redemptive plan. If our love for God is a product of God's love for us, it is secured by His love for us as well. We won't fall back. It is permanent. "We love" speaks of just this transformed heart. Clarifying Calvinism (Part 7)

  • Johnson summarizes his series on "We love because He first loved us": The perverseness of our fallen state—that’s the doctrine of Total Depravity. The priority of God’s electing choice—that is the doctrine of Unconditional Election The particularity of His saving work—that, as we saw, entails the doctrine that is often called Limited Atonement. The power of His loving deliverance—that, once more, is the doctrine of Irresistible Grace. The perfection of His redemptive plan—that is nothing other than the doctrine of Perseverance. If you are Christian, you fundamentally affirm every one of these truths. You don't believe you're better. You know it was God that brought you to Him. Clarifying Calvinism (Conclusion)

  • Solapanel asks the question, what might it mean to use the law in gospel preaching, and what does the Bible actually do with this question? The apostles, while reminding people of the OT in Acts, appear to point people to the truth that God has made them His, and that He will judge the world, so they need to repent for their rejection of Him - rather than listing off a string of commands. We also aren't easily understood in our culture - e.g. what is love, what is justice, for our hearers? Since people have lost a sense of universal authority, we can be inclined to use consequentialist ethics - but if there aren't consequences for a sin in society than it isn't considered sinful! "Our biggest issue with sin is that we sin against the God who made us and who has every right to judge us. We reject the Lord of life." The good news is that in Christ's work God has dealt with this huge problem, and more, in His death and resurrection and appointment to Lord and judge. (note that there are many levels to using the law - e.g. look at God's promises, that He is creator, commands, etc.) How do you unmask depravity-

  • Patton lists off several types of 'gods' that people leave when they leave Christianity - they didn't really abandon the true God, but rather their false conception of Him. He gives an example along with each: "The “My will be done” type of God named “Jesus”, The personal promise maker God named “Jesus”, The “I am primarily concerned about your success and stability” God named “Jesus”, The “Jesus” who said the world was flat." (i.e. false requirements to become a Christian) "If we allow people to remain undiscipled “Christians,” what do we expect? Are we about making disciples or making converts? If we continue in the same vain, we should expect more disillusionment, more doubt, and more leavers. We must teach people that God is God, his promises are his prerogative, and we do not dare add to his requirements for Christianity. We must get back to theological discipleship." Lack of Theological Discipleship- Casualties by Friendly-Fire

  • This interesting post briefly details a paper on two fascinating ancient manuscripts. 'The first papyrus (P.Oxy. XXXIII 2673) speaks of the confiscation of church property and the second (P.Oxy XXXI 2601) preserves evidence of Christians circumventing demands for imperial worship.' ... the first article 'poses a number of provocative questions concerning how the persecution played out and the ways in which Christians learned to avoid legal punishment. The second P.Oxy text demonstrates how an early Christian escaped offering tribute in a forensic setting.' Where did you put those manuscripts-

  • Jay Adams exhorts people to look into becoming nouthetic counselors, and discusses how everything in life goes to pot - how false teachers will deteriorate the faith in churches, how all material things will waste away, how movements and organizations will go astray, until the coming of the new heaven and earth. "Nouthetic counselors, who do not counsel principally for the short, but rather for the long term, know that they offer counsel about that which will never go to pot. Why? Because their counsel, when faithful, comes from the One Who is eternal, Who does not change, Who Himself is ever faithful to His everlasting Word. The ... focus .. is on the land where neither rust, nor moth can destroy, but all is eternal in the heavens waiting to be given to his Christian counselees." The counselor knows there is an imperishable city awaiting. "He seeks primarily to help counselees make decisions about things perishable that have eternal imperishable consequences, so that he always keeps in mind that which will never go to pot." Everything Goes to Pot

  • From Riddlebarger (The False Prophets Look Pretty Foolish!) "No wonder people don't understand the doctrine of justification.  It is hard to explain Christ's righteousness being imputed to us (i.e., his active obedience) if you don't believe that Jesus had any righteousness to impute.  Apparently, 1 in 3 Christians now believe that Jesus sinned.  Click here: 1 in 3 'Christians' says 'Jesus sinned'"

  • This talks about the transientness of what was once the brilliant innovation of the Palm Pilot, applying it by analogy to Brian MacLaren. "The ditches of the information highway are littered with people who started out with some good ideas about what was missing and needed to change.  It wasn’t that they didn’t understand the past and the shortcomings of the old information management systems.  It’s that they didn’t understand the future and issues like convergence." "Today you can escape the historical errors of inferior information systems without giving up the power of what they did well." He then points out that now he feels like an idiot wearing a palm pilot on his belt. Why Brian McLaren is like my Palm Pilot

  • Bayly comments on Obama's invitation of Gene Robinson, proud practicing homosexual Anglican bishop, to pray. The "church that doesn't discipline men of perverse immorality will take pride in their tolerance of diversity. They will be smug in their betrayal of the Lord Jesus Christ, accusing those calling them to repent of being arrogant, themselves." Bayly goes on to quote: '"While that is a holy and sacred text to me, it is not for many Americans," Robinson said. "I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer. This is a prayer for the whole nation."' The Bad Bishop will be careful not to be especially Christian

  • Great slightly paraphrased Owen quote: "The root of an unmortified course is the digestion of sin without bitterness in the heart. When a man has established a habit of thinking about grace and mercy in such a way as to be able, without bitterness, to swallow and digest daily sins, that man is at the very brink of turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." Be killing sin or it will be killing you. John Owen on the holy war

  • Bayly links to a quote that refutes the caricatures of unbelievers on the church and homosexuality: "we have had many brothers and sisters in Christ with the same history and present temptations as Pastor Pacht. They are loved just as those of us who fight against the temptations of gossip, greed, envy, pornography, rebellion, and anger are loved." The normal Christian life

  • Here's Gene Robinsons abysmal prayer. The deaf, dumb, and blind god of our many idolatries

  • Bayly posts a dialogue of two people critiquing John the Baptist's criticism of Herod to point out much folly in modern Christian thinking. John the Baptist's moral performance narrative

  • JT quotes Piper applying James 1:27 - visit ... orphans in their distress - to unborn victims of abortion. Their place is the womb, and their distress is the greatest, as they are torn limb from limb. Christ's command to have compassion on the helpless applies here. A Sermon on Abortion

  • JT quotes an article pointing out that the fear surrounding criticizing Obama and the media's pandering to establish their place in the election of the first black president is not helpful. They treat his mediocre speeches as if they are extraordinary. "This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise." Let's Not Celebrate More Ordinary Speeches

  • Here's Rick Warren's prayer... a notable quote: "Help us, O God, to remember that we are Americans--united not by race or religion or blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all." [So it is American freedom and justice that unites? This is like the kingdom-now American patriots at this conference]. Rick Warren's Inauguration Prayer

  • JT links to Lee Irons on Origen and righteousness: "Contra the New Perspective on Paul, Origen interprets the Pauline lexeme “the righteousness of God” as having reference not to God’s faithfulness to the covenant but to Christ himself and the status of being cleansed from sin, justified, and qualified for eschatological glory on the basis of Christ’s atonement. “The righteousness of God” is thus a soteriological status that sinful humans receive by believing in Christ. And it makes believers fit for glory, “not by their merits, nor for their works, but freely (gratis) offers glory to those who believe.”" Origen on the Righteousness of God

  • Solapanel'ist Jean Williams notes that in response to a 'redundancy' prayer, that is, for those in the UK made redundant by the economic crisis, there is a question being asked - why pray at all? Prayer, from this angle, is viewed as individualistic and valuable only insofar as it serves to increase our feelings, and God is considered to be an open listening ear, but otherwise useless - the unskilled therapist at best. Rather, prayer is a profound expression of dependence on God. "By calling out to God for his help, we are expressing that to God, and we are saying that this is how we want it. We don't want to depend on our own abilities, strengths or capacities; we want to depend on God. We want him to rule and order our lives, even in the tough times. In prayer, we say most eloquently that we are weak, but God is strong." This "is countercultural to western society, which values individualism, autonomy, strength, beauty and wealth... [and] instinctively sees prayer as a meaningless act apart from its impact on the person praying... where its value is entirely due to whatever comfort or strength a person derives from the act of praying." Redundant prayer-

  • Patton posts a testimony of a guy who experience 'prophecy', etc. for twenty years. These prophecies never came true. He is sickened by the damage done by false prophecy, even from Christians. He would love to be proved wrong with quantifiable evidence. The post is his anecdotal argument against continuing revelatory gifts as the norm. Why I am Not Charismatic (Part 4)- Excursus

  • Patton continues by reminding his readers that he is talking about the idea of normative continuation of revelatory spiritual gifts, and then appealing to church history to show the similar experience that the gifts were simply not there. Not that they were theologically cessationists, but necessarily. Chrysostom on 1 Cor. 12 says, "“This whole place is very obscure . . . but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur, but now no longer take place"; Augustine says, "In the earliest time the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed: and they spoke with tongues which they had not learned ‘as the Spirit gave them utterance.’ These were signs adapted to the time. For it was proper for the Holy Spirit to evidence Himself in all tongues, and to show that the Gospel of God had come to all tongues [languages] over the whole earth. The thing was done for an authentication and it passed away." This early church de facto cessationism is not unlike the canon of Scripture. Why has the canon “closed”? Because God stopped inspiring writers to add to it. It is that simple. This, of course, doesn't mean that God wasn't active or that miracles didn't happen. Why I am Not Charismatic (Part 5)- An Argument from History

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