Monday, September 14, 2009

2009-09-14

  • The Secular Student Alliance (SSA) visited the Creation Museum, and a pastor who went with them, and wore their badge, reports he felt rejected. For those interested, the CCO of the museum gives a context-establishing report, part of which is excerpted here. “We were amazed at how tolerant our 2,000 museum guests were of the rude behavior of dozens of atheists who toured our museum. (YouTube features some of that bad behavior.) At the same time, most of the 285 atheists were, thankfully, not disruptive.” The Creation Museum Responds to Earlier Post about SSA Visit

  • Challies: “I am beginning to see more and more articles claiming things like this: "It is increasingly clear that global warming is on hiatus for the time being. And that is not what the UN, the alarmist scientists or environmentalists predicted. For the past dozen years, since the Kyoto accords were signed in 1997, it has been beaten into our heads with the force and repetition of the rowing drum on a slave galley that the Earth is warming and will continue to warm rapidly through this century until we reach deadly temperatures around 2100."” Global Warming Takes a Break

  • JT links to the audio from a discussion at SBTS on the Trinity and what the implications of authority and submission within the Godhead for discussions about human relationships between men and women. The panelists are Randy Stinson, Bruce Ware, and Gregg Allison. Trinity and Gender

  • Koinonia has a post on the context of dreams in the ANE, where they were often viewed as communication with God. i) Solomon’s experience has some commonality with other ANE dream accounts. ii) Various methods were employed for divine communication, including extispicy (entrails), libanomancy (smoke), lecanomancy (oil in water), incantation, and divination (astronomical observations, other events, dreams, etc). iii) Three types of dreams: revelatory , possibly needing interpretation, mantic , revealing the future (e.g. symbolically), symptomatic (concerns the spiritual/physical health of dreamer). iv) Dreams might include theophany or a voice. v) Revelatory dreams could function as a stamp of approval on the reign of a king in military areas, royal projects, etc; they often had divine promises of riches, honor, long life, and similar royal ideals. vi) An individual might try to provoke such a dream by sleeping in a shrine/temple; Solomon’s trip to Gideon gives no indication this is why. vii) They often intersected with temple building. viii) The account of Solomon’s temple building is often compared with the account of the Sumerian king Gudea of Lagash (ca. 2100 B.C). The blog lists a number of parallels, though with a caveat not to overstate them. ix) Solomon’s request for wisdom and knowledge connects with the ancient Near Eastern motif of "the king as sage." x) In the ancient Near East wisdom was not as much abstract as it was functional. Thus, from the perspective of the king, wisdom had functionality in important areas such as practical knowledge, decision making, and temple building. xi) Divinely endowed wisdom for temple building is stressed in a number of ANE texts. xii) Solomon’s dream experience, which included wisdom, enthronement and temple building, fit well in the context of dreams in the ANE. Solomon's Dream at Gibeon by John Walton and Fred Mabie

  • Engwer has some good advice on taking notes on books here. In the spirit of highlighting something important, I’ll note that he points out the importance of acquiring a breadth of understanding regarding the lay of the land. “As early in life as possible, spend some time reading a large variety of online forums, or consulting some similar source, to gather information about what you should be looking for when you read.” That means, before you dive into reading. How To Use A Book

  • Using Wesley as an example, Hays notes that Arminians rail against Calvinism based on the notion that doctrines like reprobation and limited atonement are an affront to God’s love, justice and mercy. However, this overlooks a whole category of beings – fallen angels – for whom no redemption is available. Why the double standard where angels are concerned – isn’t the lack of redemption incompatible with God’s love, etc? Giving the devil his due

  • Roman Catholics go after Protestants as schismatic, i.e. because they rebel against the divinely constituted hierarchy of the one true church, and no matter how corrupt she becomes, it’s still a sin to break with the church. Hays points out a number of ways that John the Baptist was a schismatic with the divinely instituted religious establishment in Jerusalem, so as to argue from the lesser to the greater – if there is a time when it is permissible to split from a divine institution, then it’s certainly permissible to split with a human institution (divine pretensions not withstanding). i) He lived in a self-imposed exile; a deliberate snub/repudiation of the corrupt religious establishment. John turned his back, not following in his father’s footsteps so as to discharge his priestly duties. ii) The Gospels place his wilderness ministry in direct contrast to the religious authorities from Jerusalem. iii) He gave a baptism of repentance – remission of sins by an alternate route than the temple. iv) He publically denounced the establishment. v) His mission taps into the OT remnant motif. vi) It was not impermissible to continue in temple attendance; it was permissible, however, to cease attendance, undergo John’s baptism and live by all that represents. John was by Romanist definitions a schismatic, yet he had divine approval. The point is that institutions are a means to an end, and we must consider the function. John the Baptist and other schismatics

  • Hays writes that all the various religions and philosophies past and present are variants on three basic worldviews: Calvinism, atheism, and Manichaeism. He argues that Arminianism is fundamentally Manichaean. The Arminian is really a bitheist or ditheist. In his theology, “God” is a code word for the good God (Zurvan/Ahura Mazda) while “Satan” is a code word for the evil God (Ahriman/Angra Mainyu). He must tip-toe through life, wondering which god created which part of the world he’ll bump into next. The Calvinist, by contrast, accepts everything from God’s hand with thanksgiving; there is only one God. This doesn’t come easily. But God brings good out of evil, and He decreed the fall for that reason. So we walk by faith, trusting His wisdom and goodness. The Calvinists sees a deeper meaning in all things. Everything is part of a wise design. Atheism, like Manichaeanism, sees no good in evil. “The Arminian wants the good without the bad, while the atheist–by disowning God–loses the good. All that’s left is irredeemable evil.” The Arminian must hold onto faith by avoiding lucid thoughts about God. The atheist just thinks soberly. Hays concludes by pointing out that when a dad gives his child a dog, he knows the dog will eventually die – after the child has come to love it – and this will cause his child great pain. He foreknows this will happen. Is it cruel then to give the dog? The neo-Manicheans

  • Swan, continuing to show how vacuous the claim is that we need the infallible magisterium in light of Roman Catholic confusions, that that Augustine held John 6 was not literal, and Catholic Answers says it is. They also are in error when they state "there is no record from the early centuries that implies Christians doubted the constant Catholic interpretation" of this passage. So who’s correct? Neither? Unless the magisterium decides, the interpretation of John 6 is up to the individual interpretation of the Roman Catholic – the very thing they criticize non-catholics of doing. We Have Apostolic Tradition - The Unofficial Catholic Apologist Commentary #12

  • Peachy. “The law, which was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and prevents same-sex married couples from receiving the same federal benefits as heterosexual married couples.” Obama, btw, promised a full repeal of it. Lawmakers To Repeal Defense of Marriage Act

  • Sola panel has a reminder to stop “deluding ourselves into thinking that we have done something good when all we have done is thought about doing something good.” “I’ll pray for you.” “I'd love to give money to support that gospel or mercy ministry.” And so on. Recognize your human limitations. Don’t commit to what you can’t handle. Carry through everything to which you commit. And Paul, in 2 Cor. 8-9, calls the church on their commitments to ensure they follow through with it. Perhaps we need to do that. The death of good intentions

  • Mounce has some good comments on Bible Translation here, in response to Mark Strauss’ invitation in his paper last year, "Why the English Standard Version (ESV) should not become the Standard English Version." Strauss predicates his whole argument on the conviction that the only "proper" and "right" translation is a colloquial translation. And he constantly asks, “would anyone actually say it?” i) Shakespeare is not English on this definition. ii) Whose colloquial English? So-cal? Texas? Deep south? English? Mounce notes how differently the members of the ESV translation committee heard words. iii) One example is Luke 17:35. "There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken and the other left." Mounce never even thought of dirty dancing, nor did the ESV translator who was a pastor and quite familiar with high school kids. The ESV had as one of its principles not to do the work of a commentary. The meaning here is perfectly obvious. iv) He wonders if a publisher would really want to invest millions of dollars in a truly colloquial publication that will be out of date within a few years, which is how fast language can change. Luke 17-35—The ESV and Dirty Dancing (Monday with Mounce 41)

  • White recalls how, after debating Barry Lynn, ACLU attorney and head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, Lynn threatened suit in the 9th Circuit (the wrong place, mind you, for such disputes) to suppress dissemination of the videos! (note again, ACLU). White found it ironic that someone who would speak so highly of free speech rights would attempt to use litigation to attempt to suppress the record of a public debate, but the lesson is clear: “free speech is only for those on the left, not anyone else. And we surely see that on every hand today as well.” Obama’s office has given Lynn a position, which ought to be no surprise, since radicalism is Washington’s new orthodoxy. You Just Gotta Love Liberals

  • 2009-09-13

  • Piper excerpts Obama’s speech to children, calling it ‘amazing’ within its spiritual limitations, and noting that headlines which reduce it to hand-washing and protecting the environment will miss the wisdom of it. I’ve Read the President’s Speech- Amazing

  • Engwer comments on the discussion at Wheaton college over whether one can be evangelical and catholic. The discussion was vague and ecumenical. Timothy George underestimates the errors of Rome, and he has an overly positive view of Romanism. While Beckwith and George agreed that 1 Cor. 15 is shared by both, the very meaning of ‘he died for our sins’ is what is in question, and Paul made it clear in Galatians that the addition of works to the Gospel nullifies what he summarized in 1 Cor. 15, and the Gospel includes the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice, which he defines in a way that made the inclusion of works as a means of attaining justification a denial of the sufficiency of Christ and His finished work. Timothy George And Francis Beckwith On Being Evangelical And Catholic

  • Hays has some interesting comments on the realistic depiction of a nihilistic and meaningless secular worldview in Alpha Dog; the way the amoral kids stay logically true to their own unbelieving worldview, where vice is typically rewarded, and virtue is penalized. One error commits them to a greater evil to try to cover their tracks. Critics panned the movie – probably because liberals like to blame poverty and oppression for crime (i.e. ‘victims’ of tragic circumstances), and yet the movie depicts a bunch of privileged yuppie delinquents doing godless things. It’s probably like looking in the mirror for much of hollywood. These kids are like them. Alpha Dog

  • Pike, amazed at this himself, writes of Camille Paglia, “I agree with almost the entirety of her latest column. She still won’t admit that Obama is the problem (it’s always his advisors who make mistakes, and never him for nominating such incompetent people), but the rest of the article savages Democrats.” After citing a number of striking quotes, he concludes, “Most of her article could have been written by a conservative. When a leftist feminist starts thinking this way, it doesn’t bode well for Democrats in 2010.” Here’s one quote: “Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.” Agreeing With...Camille Paglia-!-!

  • T-fan responds to an attempt to say that Pharez (the son of Judah’s daughter-in-law Tamar and Judah, as the result of her pretending to be a prostitute) was legitimate. Was Pharez Legitimate-

  • Leeman points to Ben Franklin’s description of his failed attempt to implement what is now considered to be a postmodern epistemic humility, often lauded by avant-garde thinkers today. Franklin found himself proud of his humility. True humility is not a product of one's epistemology; it's not a property firstly of the mind. True humility comes from the Spirit, and is a property firstly of the heart. Whenever a writer appeals to something like post-modernism as the of ground Christian humility he points to a false humility. Benjamin Franklin on Sounding Humble by Jonathan Leeman

  • JT summarizes Piper’s article on the marks of a spiritual leader, wherein he describes the characteristics of a good teacher. What Is a Good Teacher-

  • Repentance is hard. It means being actually sorry, actually grieved over your sin. It means confessing it, not excusing it. It means asking for forgiveness for the sin. And it means turning from it in the future and not tolerating it in your life. This is difficult because it is an affront to everything prideful. God commands that people everywhere repent (Acts 17:30-31). It is the call to repentance that God gave after Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead. “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 238). Repentance

  • Piper is stunned at the outcry against Obama’s speech to students, e.g. the governor of his state said its "disruptive . . . uninvited . . . and number three . . . I don't think he needs to force it upon the nation's school children." Piper calls the speech an answer to specific prayers of his. He hopes his daughter hears it. I Hope My Daughter Hears the President’s Speech

  • T-fan wonders if the Truly Reformed like R Scott Clark out at Westminster West would respond to the Lutheran charge that Calvin was an Enthusiast who separated the Spirit from the Word. It’s mistaken to blame Calvin(ism) for either Enthusiasm (emphasizing emotional experience, especially in an unguided way, as allegedly being the leading of the Holy Spirit), Pietism (focus on piety without regard for orthodoxy), or Church Growth Movements, which are largely rejected by Calvinism. T-fan notes such accusations cause him to think 1689 LBCF confessional Reformed Baptists are closer to Presbyterians than Lutherans. Would R. Scott Clark Respond to the Enthusiast-Calvinist Accusation-

  • We need to get priorities straight. In Knowing God, Packer wrote that there is a ‘gigantic conspiracy of misdirection’ from current Christian publications (1973) since from them you might think that the most vital issue for any real or would-be Christian in the world today is church union, or social witness, or dialogue with other Christians and other faiths, or refuting this or that -ism, or developing a Christian philosophy and culture, etc. So many in our day seem to have been distracted from what was, and is, and always will be, the true priority for every human being: That is, learning to know God in Christ. Christian Publishing's Gigantic Conspiracy of Misdirection

  • Interesting post from Haykin: My top twelve needed dissertations in the Greek Fathers

  • The ELCA recently approved the ordination of practicing homosexuals. The ELCA, the UCC, the PC(USA), and the RCA share an agreement that they recognize each other “as churches in which the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered to the Word of God.” DeYoung writes on the idea that "Cutting ties with the ELCA over their Assembly’s narrow decision would witness to the world that Christians will fight and divide themselves from one another, and break the bonds of Christian fellowship, over such an ethical difference.” i)) Unity is an overused trick which begs the question, unity with whom on what grounds? Unity in truth is good. Some division is indeed called for (cf. 1 Cor. 11:19). ii) visible external unity must be pursued only with those with whom we share real spiritual unity. iii) Just as there is schism that masquerades as principle, there is also faithless compromise that goes by the guise of unity. iv) And there are hardly many new converts made because a watching world can watch the unity of the World Council of Churches, for it is a unity based on doctrinal indifferentism and progressive politics. v) Are we really to believe that if the Apostle John and Philip started having sex together in a committed monogamous relationship that Peter (not to mention Jesus) would have been ok with that? It takes some massive mental gymnastics and historical revisionism, and hubris, to think the Apostles and the Church Fathers would be marching in gay parades and defending their associations with those who would. vi) Jesus, who defended the sanctity of marriage against the liberalizers of his day and the woman at the well, promised not to relax the least of the commandments of the Law, and he would not bless homosexual intercourse in direct disobedience to Leviticus 18 and 20. vii) This is a Gospel issue. Promoting homosexuality is to celebrate that from which we are called to repent. viii) Promoting homosexuality (esp. under the guise of unity) puts one at odds with 99% of the church in history! ix) When we make a decision that every Christian who ever lived would have considered unthinkable we ought to pause. x) Homosexuality is so clearly and often forbidden in Scripture that to encourage it is to call into question the very authority of Scripture: the New Testament sees it as a matter for discipline (1 Corinthians 5), separation (2 Corinthians 6:12-20), and an example of perverse compromise (Jude 3-16). xi) A true church does not encourage people in deliberate sin when it ought to call them to repentance. Those who use grace as a license to sin and sensuality are false teachers. No, Homosexuality is Not Just an Ethical Issue

  • JT: An 8 minute video of David Powlison talking about some common issues that come up in counseling married couples. David Powlison on Marital Intimacy- Part 1

  • Hays notes this attempted face-saving comment by a Romanist: “A canon of a council is not ipso facto a dogma, but conciliar canons can contain and define dogma.” But if councils and canons can contain error, they’re no good for sifting truth from untruth. You need an external source to adjudicate. If you’re dependent on them, you’re lost in the jungle. The Catholic rule of faith always devolves into a vicious infinite regress. Using an incorrect answer key to correct an exam

  • Thursday, September 10, 2009

    2009-09-10

  • [Administrator note: For those who follow this blog, it’s been sparse here as of late because there are many other things these days that are occupying my time. Lord willing, I will be a little more flexible in the near future.]

  • Hays notes the interesting scenario wherein one set of humanists, the cryonists (and other humanists who glory in the medical advances, etc) is opposed to the other set of humanists, the antinatalists (i.e. it’s immoral to have a baby), environmentalists (humans are a plague/parasite), and eugenicists (who fear the population bomb). The cryonicists versus the eugenicists

  • Noting an atheist blog which cites 2 Cor. 6:14 as forbidding Christians to have contact with atheists, Patton dismisses the separationalist mentality he sees in many believers, who avoid associating with unbelievers, as if they expect the unbeliever to already be like a believer before they’ll engage them. Patton states a stat which says that after an average person becomes a believer, he loses contact with all unbelieving friends within two years. He argues 2 Cor. 6:14 is not saying not to have unbelieving friends/associations, but rather, not to join together with unbelievers in their practices and worldview. He gives four reasons Christians should be intentional about having unbelieving friends. i) They are sick and in need of hope. Christians shouldn’t be like the religious leaders who looked down on Christ for eating/drinking with unbelievers (Matt. 9:12). [I’ll add that ‘sick’ isn’t as good a reason as ‘they are culpable criminals, rebels against God, who need a Saviour – a Saviour you know.’]. ii) They keep you real. Your folk theology (belief/practice held without understanding it), your Christian cliches, etc. will be challenges (e.g. what does ‘the Spirit moved me?’ mean anyway? Christians will all nod in approval, lest they seem unspiritual in questioning it, but unbelievers won’t). iii) They are not shy about their struggles and ask great questions. That is, they won’t let you ‘just take everything on faith’ or take a blind leap in the dark. Believers should be the first to ask the tough questions. Anselm defined theology as “faith seeking understanding.” iv) Christ had unbelieving friends, as He was on a mission to reconcile the world to Himself. He was often accused of associating too closely with them. If you want to follow Christ’s example, associate with all those in need. If You Are an Atheist, Don’t Talk to Me!

  • Bloom fills out the narrative of Luke 7, where the sinful woman becomes a model for true worship: "He who is forgiven little, loves little." This small statement reveals a mammoth truth for us: we will love God to the degree that we recognize the magnitude of our sins and the immensity of God's grace to forgive them. True worship is a passionate love for God. And, for sinners like us, the fuel of that love is a profound realization, in the words of former slave trader-turned-pastor, John Newton, "that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour." Seeing Our Shame- The Fuel of True Love for God

  • Turk continues discussing when it is ok to leave the church – i.e. whenever we talk about the local church, someone has to clarify that it’s time to leave ‘a church’. Turk notes that while God tells disciples to leave towns which don’t receive them, etc. and that God knows how to say, “leave” as shown throughout the Scriptures, He never gives instructions on leaving a church. Not in Galatia, not in Corinth, though the former had voided the Gospel, and the latter was into incest. Paul didn’t see the church the way you do - “You see the church as a place where the word is preached, the sacraments are rightly administered, and discipline is rightly upheld.” He thought it was more than that – and not more of the same. In Titus 1, Paul is saying that the way to run off false teachers is to teach what accords with sound doctrine so that people will adorn the sound doctrine through their actions. And these aren’t the bookish seminary students, who have what they think is a tidy interior, and don’t want people messing it up – they’re socially inept, not dignified and self-controlled. Church is more than your weekly events – it’s a household, and it’s a big one, and the reality is greater than this image, which means it’s harder. Thus Turk plans to discuss why he thinks the GTY statement, “However, there are times when it becomes necessary to leave the household of God for the sake of one's own conscience, or out of a duty to obey God rather than men” doesn’t make sense to him. Not Done Lightly (2)

  • DeYoung writes that When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert is the best book he’s read on ministering to the poor. Social justice, etc. is all the rage, especially among the young, but ignorance can mean a lot of harm out of good intent. The book has lots of example, doesn’t dwell on guilt trips, but rather on practical ideas on how to help and how not to ‘help’, it is balanced in recognizing that both broken systems and people contribute to poverty, and it keeps the focus on helping the poor, not just making us feel better or accomplished. Good intentions aren’t enough. DeYoung discusses Part 1: Foundational Concepts for Helping Without Hurting. i) The cross and forgiveness of sins are central, and helping the poor, etc. are important to God as well. God has chosen to reveal His glory chiefly among the weak and despised. However, the poor are not inherently more righteous are sanctified than the rich; there is no place in the Bible that indicates poverty is desirable or material things are evil. Wealth is viewed as a gift from God. ii) Poverty is defines as the absence of shalom in all its meaning, the result of one or more core relations being broken – with God, with self, with others, and with creation. DeYoung isn’t sure this can be exegeted from Gen. 1-3, but still thinks the point is good. iii) While we see poverty as material, the poor talk about it in psychological/social terms - shame, inferiority, fear, hopelessness, isolation, and voicelessness. In other words, when we march in and give the poor the stuff we think they need, we are only making them feel poorer, as they understand poverty. DeYoung anecdotally notes the failure of a thanksgiving basket program at his church to actually alleviate poverty, for this reason. Thus poverty alleviation must factor this in. iv) “Poverty alleviation, Chapter 3 argues, does not mean making the poor all over the world into middle-class Americans (a group, Fikkert notes, characterized by high rates of divorce, sexual addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness).” Rather, we’re to work to reconcile those four relations. Too often, people resort to just throwing money at them. [I’ll note that this lines up with the African economist’s negative response to Bono, see here]. People need to see that Jesus’s death and resurrection changes everything. When Helping Hurts, Part 1

  • Phillips posts part two of his testimony here. He was converted through an altar call and the four spiritual laws, along with Mere Christianity. February 11- the most pivotal day in my life (part two [requested classic re-post] )

  • Interested in church history? Check out Timothy Paul Jones book Christian History Made Easy. Christian History and the Church

  • T-fan, responding to a Romanist taking Rev. 12 as Mary, notes that it is about the ancient church, an interpretation which has the unanimous consent of the fathers. He cites a number of early Christians, and then points out that while modern Romanism teaches that the woman is both Mary and the Church, the fathers don’t make this identification. “In the 19th century we see a tenuous identification being made to Mary, and then in the 20th century we see that tenuous identification becoming the primary identification within the evermore mariolatrous religion of Rome.” Mary Crowned in Revelation-

  • Hays interacts with Reppert over tone and Reppert’s accusations of the Triabloguers. This is a worthwhile post to read. Hays notes, for example, the proliferation of the term ‘Calvinazi’ among those who oppose Calvinism – a term Reppert has tolerated on his blog’s discussion, ironically. [My own thought – don’t go making yourself an internet tone cop. Don’t impute tone to the words you read coming from others whom you’ve never met. Concern yourself with the content, rather than projecting your own emotional response onto someone’s words as a result of the ‘tone’ of those words and not the fact that someone just said (or argued) that you’re wrong.] Hays then continues to interact with a would-be church historian, who is an Arminian. Some points: i) You can incompetently read a competent author. ii) Reformed theology doesn’t take an official position on the proportion of humanity that is elect; some take a majority, by combining infant salvation with a post-mil outlook. iii) You need to have a critical detachment to be a historian. iv) If the use of invective is an indicator that one is not reborn, and there is a link between the God of Calvinism and Calvinist’s using invective (as the Arminian says, “most versions of Calvinism where God's character is concerned are so reprehensible that it is likely to incite the baser parts of one's humanity, thus giving rise to ungodly attitudes among many Calvinists”) then why doesn’t the Arminian level the same charge of unregeneracy against Wesley, Arminius, etc. on account of their invective? And what of the link to Calvinism? v) It is ironic to go after Calvinist theology by accusing Calvinists of lacking the fruits, while the same people resort to double standards, which is itself spiritually symptomatic of an immaturity, a lack of capacity of self-criticism (a mark of sanctification), and moral blindness. Jesus went after hypocrites. The Calvinazis

  • Girltalk writes that it is nearly impossible to hold onto evil prejudices, etc. while showing hospitality (1 Peter 4:8-10). Hospitality says to one another, “Your background or ethnicity, your education or accomplishments, hobbies or interests—none of that matters. What matters is that we are both undeserving recipients of the grace of God. That is what unites us in friendship.” Hospitality, as one author put it, “is a way of bringing the household into the church and the church into the household.” By showing hospitality we show that love covers a multitude of sins. Hospitality Says

  • Thabiti quotes Murray’s biography of Lloyd-Jones with respect to sermon preparation and full manuscripts, who, while adapting and changing his way of preparing, from two full manuscripts for both sermons on Sunday, to one full, then to an outline, having read through the sermon multiple times, always maintained a relentless focus on preparation. The sermons where he relied on a feeling from the text, with an inadequately thought out plan, failed miserably. “Generally his experience concurred with that of Henry Rees, one of the Methodist fathers who, when asked which of his sermons had been most honoured of God, replied, 'The ones I prepared most carefully'.” Sermon Manuscripts and Outside Speaking Engagements by Thabiti Anyabwile

  • Andy Naselli points to this article: "Maintaining Moral Purity in the Ministry", which gives five nevers: “"Never risk your moral testimony." "Never be alone with a woman not your wife." (This is where Minnick shares the answer to the opening scenario.) "Never meet with a woman by herself." "Never physically touch another woman, other than by a brief handshake." "Never compliment a woman on her appearance."” [One thing worth noting is that it’s quite something to hold one’s head up high while observing an abstract, blanket moral principle, in particular ways the Bible doesn’t require, to the exclusion of actually doing good to others. Simplistic, reduced morality may assuage the conscience but it’s not necessarily good or right, any more than the Pharisee, who ‘devoted’ things to God instead of helping his parents, while feeling righteous, actually did the right thing]. It’s worth noting that the comments indicate that its bad to impose standards that Jesus would fail. Maintaining Moral Purity in the Ministry

  • Pike writes, to the charge [which is historically falsifiable; e.g. William Carey] that Calvinism dampens evangelism and chills churches: “I’ve written a total of 30 articles on Arminianism and 35 on Calvinism (and there are some posts that are archived under both, of course). In contrast, I’ve got 157 on Atheism, including 84 on presuppositionalism alone. There are another 144 on science, 45 on math, and 52 on evolution, but these don’t all fit as apologetics against Atheism. Still, 157 articles on Atheism is more than 5x the number of articles I’ve written about Arminians.” He then asks, “what are the odds that someone who’s writing a blog called “Classical Arminianism: A FORMER CALVINIST'S CENSURE AGAINST CALVINISM AND PROMOTION OF 5-POINT ARMINIANISM” is going to dedicate five times the volume of posts against Calvinists to posts against atheism? Or even Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, or New Agers?” Calvinists and Evangelism

  • Sola Panel, in the first of ten propositions on ministry, reminds us that ministry is about making disciples, not mere believers. What ministry is about

  • Hays compares the modern tirades of Ingersoll and Dawkins against the God of the Bible to the words of John Wesley, who said, “… Nations yet unborn, or ever they have done good or evil are doomed never to see the light of life, but thou shalt gnaw upon them for ever and ever! Let all those morning stars sing together, who fell with Lucifer, son of the morning! Let all the sons of hell shout for joy! For the decree is past, and who shall disannul it?"”. New players, old playbook

  • Turk answers a question as to whether there comes a point to leave a church, given a bad scenario wherein the leadership of a church deliberately heads in a bad doctrinal path, away from the centrality of the Word. He says that while Phil Johnson, and the folks at GTY, would say that at some point you leave, he respectfully disagrees. i) How does said scenario happen in a healthy church? It doesn’t – the church picks a pastor who reflects who they already are. You can now walk into your church disabused of the notion that God protected it from being a church full of Corinthians/Galatians, etc. Some of those dirty fingerprints are yours. ii) The natural tendancy of the bloggerreadus apologeticus is to hit somebody -- theologically, of course, but with great zeal, which is wrong because, as those who pose such questions like to point out, the church is not a building. iii) You have to love someone as Jesus loved someone (i.e. you) to set him straight. The thing is that if a person doesn’t want your advice/help then, they will ask you to leave – and in that case, leave. They aren’t rejecting you then, but the one to whom you belong. Dust off your feet. iv) Try that for two-five years, and see how it works out. Not Done Lightly (2-A)

  • This post at Reclaiming the Mind (which I’d suggest one read only if one is mature enough to recognize that just because someone adamantly holds timeless propositions as part of the central core of Christianity, he is not ‘reducing’ the truth of God to cold orthodoxy, which, in my experience, is not a maturity we can take for granted), argues that a Princetonian dichotomy between head and heart represented by Charles Hodge (who had a great antipathy to the subjective nature of Christianity [though note Paul Helm’s recent blogs on this topic, I recall he was more balanced at this point that this author]) resulted in a compartmentalized faith and life, a cold creedal orthodoxy in the graduates (i.e. “The only difficulty is there is too little reverence for Scripture as the Word of God and too great an exaltation of human reason as arbiter over it””), and a disjunction between formal theology and personal piety. This results in a theology that puffs up the knower, while reducing “the truth of God to timeless abstract propositions.” Princeton and Propositions

  • Piper quotes Lewis for one of the best reasons for a man to get married and stay married. No relationship is more clearly commanded to model the death of Christ, and none is more costly, in both senses (painful and precious). “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.” The consecration is not seen in the joy’s of a man’s marriage but in its sorrows, “in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of the bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence.”. Weighty Words on the Meaning of a Husband’s Headship

  • Creation.com notes the thick Darwinism in Nazi ideology. Their systematic attempts to make the Aryan master-race (Lebensborn, ‘Fountain of Life’ program) are an example of eugenics in action. Eugenics is the application of Darwinian evolution to produce better offspring by improving the birthrate of the ‘fit’ and reducing the birthrate of the ‘less fit’. They note three factors leading to the acceptance of social Darwinism in Germany: Darwin’s Origin of Species had been translated into German in 1860, followed by his Descent of Man in 1875 (which showed that Darwin was himself a social Darwinist!). And their logical sequel, articles on eugenics, by Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, had been translated into German by the early 1900s. Ernst Haeckel (Prof. of Zoology at Jena University in Germany from 1865 to 1909) had become ‘Darwin’s chief European apostle proclaiming the gospel of evolution with evangelistic fervor. The German nation had been subjected for many years to the ‘God-is-dead’ atheism of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Nietzsche believed Darwinian evolution would produce the super-man. Hitler adopted Darwinist racism, calling the negro an anthropoid (ape) by birth. “Richard Weikart, professor of modern European history at California State University writes, ‘Since Hitler viewed evolutionary progress as essentially good, he believed that the highest good is to cooperate with the evolutionary process. … If evolution provided the ends, the Darwinian mechanism suggested the means: increase the population of the “most fit” people to displace others in the struggle for existence.’ This was the rationale for the Lebensborn program.” Evolutionary ideas infest all that is worst in Mein Kampf. Hitler justified his racism by appealing to Darwinian science. ”if Hitler and his Nazi associates had fully accepted and consistently acted on the belief that all humans are descended from Adam and Eve and so are equal before the Creator God, as taught in the Bible in both the Old Testament and New Testament, neither the Lebensborn program with all of its pain, nor the Holocaust with all of its horrors, would ever have happened.” http://creation.com/hitlers-master-race-children-haunted-by-their-past

  • Bird writes, “Over at CT-online is an article on the plight of seminaries in Sweden and how the government is threatening to withdraw accreditation from them. This shows that secularism and pluralism, far from being ideologies that promote harmony and diversity within society, can become rampantly aggressive and seek to eradicate all dissent to their political and cultural hegemony. Pray for Sweden!” Swedish Seminaries in Peril

  • Mohler comments on the Episcopal Church, which recently voted to end its commitment to a moratorium on the election of openly homosexual priests as bishops, and now one of the largest and most liberal diocese of the Church has nominated two openly homosexual clergy to election as bishop. While Rowan Williams remarkably suggests a ‘two-track’ approach which accommodates ‘both styles’ of being Anglican, Mohler notes that this is impossible: Both sides view the issue of homosexuality as fundamental. The authority of God’s word is at stake: no church can accept the coexistence of an affirmation of biblical authority and a denial of the same. http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=4177

  • People ought not to measure the quality of a ministry by how good it makes them feel. A doctor may make you happy to tell you you’re fine, but if you have a deadly disease, the doctor would be careless and hateful to do that. Pastor, Don’t Crack My Egg-Shell

  • Here’s an interview with Graham A. Cole on his forthcoming book God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom. Carson endorses it. Graham Cole's Book on the Atonement

  • Patton, noting that the words of reformer Meldenius, “In Essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity,” have become something of an evangelical credo. reiterates his four criteria for what makes a doctrine ‘essential’ or ‘fundamental’: 1. Historicity: Does the doctrine have universal historical representation? 2. Explicitly Historical: Does the history of the church confess their centrality? 3. Biblical Clarity (Perspicuity): Is the doctrine represented clearly in Scripture? 4. Explicitly Biblical: Does any passage of Scripture explicitly teach that a certain doctrine is essential? He holds that all four must be present. What are the essentials to Christianity- Four Criteria

  • Mohler writes about polyamory, which Newsweek reports is having a "coming-out-party." Advocates “define their movement in terms of the moral principle of "ethical nonmonogamy," defined as "engaging in loving, intimate relationships with more than one person -- based upon the knowledge and consent of everyone involved."” Marriage is not the issue here, hence why it’s not called polygamy. Legal theorists, etc. note rightly that the legalization of homosexuality will inevitably lead to polygamy, and once strictures against adultery were eliminated, something essentially like polygamy was inevitable. Ideas like ‘free love’, etc. abound as this is becoming increasingly mainstream. One telling word in their vocab is "polyfidelitous" -- which means that the multiple partners keep sexual activity within their own self-identified cluster. It has a feminist bent – i.e. if men can have multiple partners, woman must too so as to be equal. This is all a natural consequence of subverting marriage; the culture has largely normalized adultery, serialized marriage, separated marriage from reproduction and childbearing, and accepted divorce as a mechanism for liberation. But the culture is morally confused, and they won’t condemn polyamory as what it is – immorality. http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=4211

  • While critics of Christianity argue that the early Christians thought that Jesus had promised to return before the end of His generation, sometime well before the end of the first century, Engwer notes that Paul, in Ephesians, seems to presuppose that children born contemporaneously could live to an old age. This is inconsistent with the notion that the early Christians thought that Jesus had promised that His second coming would occur before the end of His generation. Interestingly, there are those who deny Pauline authorship because of this point, since Paul must have thought that parousia was immanent. One Of The Reasons Why Ephesians Is Important

  • Engwer recommends Dutcher’s book You Are The Treasure that I Seek, But there’s lots of cool stuff out there, Lord, which touches in a more introductory way many of the themes Piper often addresses. He defines idolatry as "cherishing, trusting, or fearing anything more than we cherish, trust, or fear God himself". Os Guinness said, “Idolatry is the most discussed problem in the Bible and one of the most powerful spiritual and intellectual concepts in the believer's arsenal. Yet for Christians today it is one of the least meaningful notions and is surrounded with ironies. Perhaps this is why many evangelicals are ignorant of the idols in their lives. Contemporary evangelicals are little better at recognizing and resisting idols than modern secular people are. There can be no believing communities without an unswerving eye to the detection and destruction of idols.” As Dutcher says, “A seminary professor of mine had a helpful saying that I've never forgotten, "You know what your idols are by observing this: When they shake, you shake." Modern Idolatry

  • Mathis concludes his 9 part series, which overviews Calvin’s life, by noting his final efforts on his Institutes (so as to leave his church a definitive edition) and years of lecturing and preaching, before dying at 52, and being buried in an unmarked grave: “He requested burial in an unmarked grave hoping to prevent pilgrims from coming to see his resting place and engaging in the kind of idolatry he'd spent his lifetime standing against.” An Unmarked Grave- Life of Calvin, Part 9

  • Hays cites Arminius at length, who rails against the Pope with some vivid language and intense polemic, which has bearing in the ongoing issue of tone (and the subsequent questions of genuine conversion on account of the T-bloggers interactions) Arminian e-pologists continue to raise. Arminian rhetoric

  • Hays has an interesting short story/dialog on prayer here. In this house of prayer

  • Reppert actually argues from the natural death of embryos that “if every fertilized egg is sacred before God, then why is God systematically killing so many of them? It seems George Tiller had nothing on the Almighty as an abortionist.” Hays writes, i) It’s a fallen world, and everyone dies sooner or later. If this is an argument for legalizing abortion, it’s an argument for infanticide and homicide too. ii) There’s an obvious difference between taking a life and nature running its course. iii) Reppert appears to have no problem with Tiller’s profession, yet he resents the accusation that he’s a front-man for baby-killers. iv) It’s rather obvious that God, the Creator and Judge, has the right to do things that we don’t have. The Almighty abortionist

  • AiG writes that most words have more than one meaning, but only one of these meanings will properly fit the given context. When someone shifts from one meaning of a word to another within an argument, he or she has committed the fallacy of equivocation. Evolutionists often commit the fallacy of equivocation on the word evolution. This word has a number of meanings. Evolution can mean “change” in a general sense, but it can also refer to the idea that organisms share a common ancestor... Many evolutionists seem to think that by demonstrating evolution in the sense of “change,” that it proves evolution in the sense of “common descent.” Also, they conflate operational science with evolution, hoping to give evolution a credibility that it does not truly deserve. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/08/10/logical-fallacies-equivocation

  • Girltalk has a reminder to practice hospitality intentionally, and not merely when you feel like it (1 Peter 4:9). How Do You Do Hospitality-

  • Payne offers a second proposition about church: Churches inevitably drift towards institutionalism and secularization. The focus shifts from the vine (the making of disciples through the prayerful ministry of the Word) to the trellis (the programmes and structures that support and enable that work). Don’t let managing the trellis take over for the vine. Pastors must be very careful not to have their view of the church reduced to mere structural and corporate terms. What ministry is about 2

  • CBMW notes that the Assemblies of God have elected their first woman to the highest office, the Executive Presbytery (they have ordained female pastors for decades), which she accepted with this most ironic statement: "The call of God is not a gender issue, it's an obedience issue. Being female is not an excuse for not fulfilling God's purpose for your life." She is clearly obeying some subjective mental impression, and not Scripture - particularly in places such as 1 Tim. 2:12, where Paul insists that "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man." We are thankful for the giftedness of women in the churches, but God never calls men or women to disobey Him. While this appointment isn’t actually to a local church, they are doing the same activity that commands in Scripture are talking about, and so, as Grudem writes, such Scriptural commands are applicable. Indeed, properly following the guiding principle here is precisely a matter of obedience and not gender. Assemblies of God Appointment - A Matter of Obedience, but to What-

  • White, commenting on the use of prolific modern Romanist scholars – who are deeply theologically liberal – by Islamic apologists, writes that “when you join the likes of Bart Ehrman as the favorite go-to-source for those denying the essential aspects of the Christian faith itself, well, that doesn't speak too well as to your orthodoxy.” Rome’s theologians have long abandoned meaningful commitment to Rome’s theology. Romanist apologists know that their theologians are not their friends. He then notes that for some reason, all that tradition, and all that "extra" help from the Pope and the "living Magisterium" didn't keep [Romanist apologists] Sungenis, Madrid, and Matatics together. The Unity and Certainty of Rome

  • For those interested in and capable of understanding such things, here’s a post, with images of the papyri in question, on a variant in Hebrews 1:1. 'God spoke to our fathers'- Hebrews 1.1 (P12 and P46)

  • Windsor at Sola Panel has a post on justification through atonement, as illustrated by the parable of the tax-collector and the Pharisee, where the former offered a prayer of atonement, while the latter offered a prayer of justification (i.e. he expected to be justified, recognized as righteous, by God). Yet the former was justified. Justification happens because Jesus Christ was presented as an atonement (Romans 3:25-26). Using your biblical word power- Justification through Atonement

  • Piper cites this: “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. (Proverbs 9:17)”, and then Augustine: “For of what I stole I already had plenty, and much better at that, and I had no wish to enjoy the things I coveted by stealing, but only to enjoy the theft itself and the sin.” The real pleasure consists in doing something forbidden. Let Augustine’s Life Illumine Solomon’s Warning

  • Creation.com debunks some myths on global warming, making the following points: i) CO2 is not a pollutant; Higher CO2 levels actually improve plant growth and productivity. There has been a substantial increase in the productivity of the world’s crops and forests due to the increased carbon dioxide concentrations, contributing to the food and fiber production to meet the needs of the growing human population.1 ii) CO2 is increasing. iii) There is a slight average increase of global increase over the last century of about 0.5 degrees C. Whether this increase is due to normal climate cycles over the centuries, changes in the Sun’s activity,3 natural CO2 emissions, or man-caused CO2 emissions is the subject of fierce debate. iv) most climate measurements appear to show a greater warming trend at high latitudes than in the tropics, which won’t necessarily get warmer. In his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore6 fails to make the distinction. Perhaps he found that particular truth inconvenient! v) The continents would not be drowned even if all the ice in the world melted. vi) Global warming is not making weather more violent. Records of storm frequency and intensity show no increase in the violence of weather events such as hurricanes/cyclones and tornados; there was been a 43% reduction between 1950 and 2006 in severe tornadoes in the USA. Creation.com goes on to argue that higher temperatures are actually likely a good thing, as indicated by fossil plants, which show the world was warmer. Plants would thrive with more CO2 and a warmer climate. Indeed, it may be that secular experts are afraid of climate change because of their theory of the Ice Age(s), and their view that the atmosphere is unstable. Instead, a creationist offers a theory consistent with the observed features of the Ice Age. Earth’s climate is not ‘triggerable’. http://creation.com/global-warming-facts-and-myths

  • Carson has a warning, in light of the onslaught of church planting strategies coming off the printing press, not to replace the foolishness of the cross with the wisdom of strategic planning. The Foolishness of the Cross and Church-Planting Strategies

  • Phillips observes that in Mark 14:31, Peter is emphatic that, while the other losers might bail, he’ll never ever, even if he has to die with Jesus. Now, we don’t doubt Peter’s sincerity, nor the intensity of intent behind his words. But what went wrong? He underestimated Christ’s words and the fierceness of Satan’s attack. And he overestimated his own strength of character and will, his resolve, his ability to withstand temptation in his own strength. Consider God’s promise in Hebrews 13:5, which is even more emphatic than Peter’s words: “'I absolutely will not abandon you, nor will I ever, ever desert you.'" Has God missed on his estimates too? Has he underestimated how difficult you would be, or how flawed you are? Has He overestimated the efficacy of His grace? Well, if you have the god of open theism, those could be ‘yes’, but if you believe in the God of the Bible, the answer is absolutely not – God has not misestimated. You can bank everything on God’s promises. Promises, promises

  • Does James 1:13 contradict Calvinism? Hays posts the response of of four NT scholars (Beale, Hamilton, Poythress, Schreiner), and the comments of three commentators (Davids, Green, Pratt). None think so, and offer varying aspects and explanations as to the meaning, such as secondary causation (God equips evil agents, but they do the evil themselves), the distinction between the preceptive and decretive will of God (which all must admit to understand the crucifixion), the fact that temptations could never get traction if it weren’t for the heart of man, comparisons to Job, where he is tempted by Satan, but all the evil comes from God ultimately – yet God is not accountable, the idea that James isn’t considered with theoretical theodicy but rather the practical, the fact that one of his Satan’s duties as “accuser” is to tempt and test human being, although God himself tempts no one (see Jas 1:13), God gives Satan permission to test believers (see Mt 4:1-10; Lk 22:31-32; Rev 2:10). Does Jas 1-13 contradict Calvinism-

  • On the same theme, Hays posts his interactions with Reppert over the question: i) the Bible distinguishes between divine agency and intermediate agency, viz. sending an evil spirit to mess with Saul. ii) Under a counterfactual theory of causation, then in Calvinism, Molinism, Arminianism, universalism, and open theism, God is the cause of sin, since He created the world. iii) To place love as always seeking the good final result for the beloved in opposition to justice, especially retributive justice, is to disregard the latter aspect of the Scriptures. iv) Hays notes non-Calvinists who offer interpretations of Arminian prooftexts which are consistent with Calvinism (e.g. Lincoln in Jn 3:16, Towner on 1 Tim 2:4, Bauckam on 2 Pet 3:9, &c.). v) If God truly doesn’t want anyone to sin, then why did he created sinners in the first place? Was creation was a metaphysical necessity? vi) Why is it outrageous for God to hate an evildoer? Even if that evildoer is related to someone God loves? vii) Reppert claims that God’s will is the eternal good of everyone, which can only be achieved via the creature’s free response, and “many pains are used by God to induce us to freely obey him.” Hays retorts, “Suffering frequently turns people against God. Take the street girl who’s gang-raped. Do you really think that’s the best way to induce her to freely obey God? And you presume to talk about coherence, do you?” viii) Reppert effectively rejects inerrancy, yet continually invokes the ‘love’ argument. But inerrancy is held because it’s crucial to our source of knowledge. If we have no reliable revelation from God, how do we know that God loves anyone? If one judges by looking at the world, it’s not a very loving place. ix) The opponents of Calvinism don’t take evil seriously; core objections, once the layers are pulled back, reveal that they can’t bring themselves to see evil as truly culpable. If everyone is guilty, there is no injustice in treating offenders unequally. No one deserves better. Hays modifies Reppert’s metaphor of grading a class too hard: Rather, all the students were cheaters on the exam. So what should be done? The teacher could flunk the whole class. That would be a just and justifiable course of action. He could also pardon every student and give every student an “A”. Or he could pardon half the students to give them a second chance, a chance to learn from their mistake–while he flunks the other half to send a message, a warning to the other students not to be presumptuous.” x) Unless Bible is a reliable source of information, that unreliability doesn’t make room for universalism or anything else. On the rabbit trail

  • Interesting: “A seminary professor I know was going blind and also went to the elders, and his eyesight was restored directly by God, to the bafflement of the Wills Eye Hospital specialists. Dr. Poythress informed me that the healing was not immediate but tarried a week or two—which is an outcome to James 5 that I had not considered.” Andrée Seu on Healing, Praying, and Waiting

  • Good quote from Packer: "The world’s idea that everyone, from childhood up, should be able at all times to succeed in measurable ways, and that it is a great disgrace not to, hangs over the Christian community like a pall of acrid smoke.” A Pall of Acrid Smoke

  • Here’s a video of the Democratic side of both houses booing the President during the State of the Union, 2005. Just for reference

  • Saturday, September 5, 2009

    2009-09-04

  • Burk reports that Zondervan is taking the TNIV off the market. There has been substantial backlash from its ‘gender-accurate’/gender-neutral approach. Those who claimed that the use of the generic masculine pronoun is not understood in the English language not only overstated things, but simply assumed their position. A new 2011 revision of the NIV will be based on the TNIV, though we still do not know the extent to which gender-neutral translations will be included. Doug Moo is chair of the Committee on Bible Translation, responsible for the translation. Let’s hope they don’t do the same thing in this next revision as the TNIV. There are opposing views on how to properly translate God’s word, and this is important for every Christian because whenever you open your Bible this issue affects you. TNIV Is Dead . . . Sort of

  • More leaves of Sinaiticus have been found! More Leaves of Sinaiticus

  • Helm writes about the pejorative application of 'Scholastic' and' Scholasticism' to later Reformers, who supposedly left the purity of Calvin’s way, going to rationalism, metaphysical speculation, leaving revelation and Christocentricity for natural theology and hair-splitting, adopting a method of theology which was inductive and foundational. Yet these charges cancel each other out. Calvinism’s later federal theology moved from rationalism to a more biblical historical method, and was sympathetic to Cartesianism. Yet high Calvinists were not. So the allegedly non-rationalistic federal theologians were rationalistic while the supposedly rationalistic high Calvinists were not. Scholars have alleged a sharp divide or even reaction to Calvin’s soteriology from the Westminster divines and Puritanism. Helm therefore considers such charges as they relate to Chapter 5 of the WCF ('Of Providence') by looking at a review of the document and the writing of Westminster Divine John Arrowsmith on the same theme. i) The framers sought to ground each assertion in the text of Scripture while recognizing the logical order of things (i.e. one can’t consider the decree of God without first establishing the existence of God, and his work of creation and providence is the unfolding of his decree). So they aren’t deducing this from an axiom asserting the existence of God. ii) The WCF is emphatic that God is in complete macro and micro control. Even the fall is not a bare permission, 'but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering and governing of them'. iii) The WCF is emphatic that sin proceeds only from the creature; God is untainted, the wicked are responsible. iv) The WCF is not merely academic in these things, but strives to connect them to practical Christian life and experience; suffering is to chastize, humble, increase dependence, and make watchful, the wicked are hardened by a withholding of grace, and God is especially caring of His church. v) They aren’t ‘scholastic’, the WCF offers no theory on how this all works together. Helm suggests this is because of their desire to remain as close to Scripture as possible. They are not imposing a set of ideas on the raw data of Scripture. vi) They don’t appeal to what is reasonable, nor to natural theology; “in asserting that God orders all things to fall out according to the natures of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently, the authors of the Confession cite Gen. 8. 22 and Jer. 31. 35 as proof of God's ordering of necessary secondary causes; Exod.21.13, Deut 19 .5 and l Kings 20.34 as his ordering of contingent secondary causes; and Isa. 9.6,7 as his ordering of free secondary causes.” Now they do distinguish between primary and secondary causes, but this is no degeneration from primal Calvinism, since Calvin himself used this distinction. vii) The men who framed the confession were learned; they employed concise and economical language to reject many errors in a single thought. viii) Armstrong’s work echoes the WCF and Calvin, though he does rely on the idea of evil as a privation, which Augustine held, and Calvin would not have liked. Providence and Puritanism

  • Helm continues an analysis of Wright’s new book on justification. We have seen that Wright’s account of justification commits him to substitution and imputation, yet he continues to rule out and ridicule the latter. Wright thinks of justification as a law-court concept which has nothing to do with moral virtue or ‘righteousness’ (in Augustine’s sense); it is the court simply finding in one’s favour. He denies the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, instead, a new relationship is reckoned – faithfulness to covenant. Wright holds there is a big difference between this and imputation of a new moral status: i) He sees Paul’s imputation in negative terms – the not reckoning of sin. ii) imputed righteousness seems to Wright like an implant of merit; for Wright righteousness is not a moral character trait, but a ‘judicial sentence on sin’. Wright thinks that what is imputed under the Reformed view is Christ’s moral righteousness, that is, his subjective moral state; he thinks that for the Reformers the righteousness imputed is an implanted virtue, and while he’ll speak of the ‘grant of the status as righteous’ he thinks this is a judicial state. iii) For some reason, for Wright, the term moral cannot imply a standard (i.e. ‘moral’ law), but the subjective, personal possession of a set of qualities or ‘virtues’. Thus he thinks the Reformers held that we have Christ’s righteousness the way I have your toothache, a concept which is a category error in Wright’s view – you can have the same sort of toothache but I can’t have your toothache. A person’s act of sin cannot become Christ’s act of sinning, and His moral character cannot be our character. Christ cannot come to possess the very condition that is a person’s act of sinning. iv) This was never the Reformed view! It was never a subjective righteousness that was imputed. Where does Wright get this?? Does he not know how crazy his view of the Reformed view is? That he’s making it up? He thinks the Reformed view is that a person is morally righteous to a degree only if he is subjectively righteous to that degree, that Reformed justification is a receiving merit from the treasury of merit, a moral, in his sense, change, an imparting of moral virtue, which he thinks is impossible. But this is deeply and crucially factually inaccurate. Helm cites Wright to show this, saying “I know that some of this is scarcely intelligible, or credible, but this is what Wright has written. Check it out for yourself.” Wright thinks of the Reformed view of justification in a distinctly medieval way, as involving both what is later called justification and sanctification, and as holding that sanctification is justification because it involves acquiring the judge’s moral virtue. Next time, Helm will show that Wright’s own view of reckoning as not imputing sin commits him to legalism, and that he has utterly misunderstood what imputing the righteousness of Christ means. Wright and Righteousness

  • If you’re new to the New Perspective on Paul debate, here’s a very quick primer on Piper and Wright’s positions. If You Are Late to the Discussion

  • More new papyri of the NT. More on New Manuscripts of the NT

  • Hays asks, why does the Catholic church come down harder on those who commit suicide that those who protect and promote homicide? What does that tell you about the moral priorities of the one true church? Hays then cites some stats on Ted Kennedy’s rabidly pro-abort position – he got a 100% rating by NARAL on abortion. Homicide, suicide, and Catholic morality

  • On that note, Hays writes that with Ted Kennedy’s passing, babies in the womb can sleep a little easier. Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child

  • Bayly comments in light of a judge ordering a ten year old girl, whose parents are divorced, to go to government school – the judge gave the child’s vigorous defence of her religious beliefs to her counselor as suggesting she has not had the opportunity to consider any other point of view as the reason! – as not only a good reason to avoid divorce; but also a good reason never to date, let alone marry, an unbeliever. Government is not growing in its respect for the family, for the sphere sovereignty of father and mother over their children. [I know that the unbelieving world simply doesn’t get how far from upholding freedom and tolerance they really are, but this is just insane]. It can all be traced back to your daughter's Facebook page

  • Oh good. Brian McLaren is observing Ramadan this year. “od readers, when you and your pastor start to refer to our only Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Only Begotten Son of the Father as "our own faith tradition," your soul is in peril and you need to get out of that church and find a true Christian church where your own soul, as well as that of your wife and children, will be guarded--not sold for fame and fortune.” Brian McLaren bloviating his shame

  • Here’s a justification for the Lord’s day:

    1. The Sabbath is fulfilled and abrogated through by the finished work of Christ (The covenant works fulfilled, including the Decalogue) ( Col 2:16, Rom 10:4)
    2. Christ rises from the dead on the first day of the week (Matt 28:1)
    3. The disciples were together on the first day of the week (John 20:26)
    4. The New Testament church was born on the first day of the week (Act 2:1-4)
    5. The church in Acts came together on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7)
    6. The church in Corinthians came together on the first day of the week (1 Cor 16:1-2)
    7. The John was in the Spirit on the Lords day, the first day of the week(Rev 1:8)"
    Covenant Theology Part 8 Misc

  • The problem with the Romanist argument using Aramaic/Hebrew cousins for Jesus’ brothers to uphold the perpetual virginity of Mary is that the NT is written in Greek, and there is a specific word for ‘cousin’ in Greek (cf. Col. 4:10). There are other words for close relative (e.g. Luke 1:36), Also, in Matthew 12:49-50 - the point would be lost, if he meant "cousins", because Jesus makes the point that His true spiritual brothers are disciples, believers; and His blood (half) brothers were not believers at that time. Tertullian argues this point very early in church history. Jesus gives Mary to John, his true spiritual brother, rather than his biological brothers. Dave Armstrong trying to argue for Perpetual Virginity of Mary again

  • Mathis points out Esther 9:1 as a narrative pattern prefiguring Christ: “On the very day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain the mastery over them, the reverse occurred: the Jews gained mastery over those who hated them.” So it was at the cross. God has innumerable ways of pointing to His Son in the universe (col. 1:16-17); if so, how much more the Scriptures. Esther & Jesus- The Reverse Occurred

  • Phillips previously asked, "What must I do to be saved?” He cited a number of popular answers. He answers that these popular answers are not really abominable, nor are they unbiblical, and though some Calvinists pour scorn on them, they offer the most unbiblical answer – telling them they can do nothing in response to the Gospel, as if it is, ‘sit there and go to hell’. i) The Bible does tell us to receive Christ, and there is no reason no to pray for this, though one shouldn’t think of it as a mystical existential encounter. ii) Believe in Jesus is exactly what the Scriptures say to do. This must be a repentant based on the truth, which must be embraced. This faith should be sincere, and Christ should come and live in our hearts (Jn. 14:23; Eph. 3:17). There is a volitional elements. Harping on the wording doesn’t make Christ appear glorious; it makes you look snotty and nitpicking. We shouldn’t make this as complex sounding as quantum physics, since Jesus doesn’t. iii) “Give me the brother who is doing the right thing imperfectly, rather than the man who does nothing but find fault — perfectly .” iv) The phrase "accept Jesus as your personal Savior” seems like a maverick mentality, but it was probably crafted to counter barren institutionalism. Indeed, Christ must be your saviour, or you’re not saved – God has no grandchildren. v) Phillips least-favorite version is "Believe that Jesus died for your sins." The Scriptures don’t make salvation the result of singling out any one fact, one statement, and then make ascription to that statement the vehicle of salvation. Remember, as evangelists we want to get our hearers to Christ, not to one fact, or a cluster of facts about Him (cf. Matt. 11:27; John 6:32; Acts 16:31). What are we to believe? Everything about Him. This starts with believing Jesus. vi) Saving us was horribly complicated for God, in order that it might not be so for us. vii) There are many ways of expressing the central truth of the sinner's need to exercise repentant faith in Christ alone, coming to Him by faith. Telling sinners how to be saved

  • Some Romanists point to the Watchtower as a ‘sola scriptura cult’, claiming this is what the doctrine leads to. The problem is that there are high-churchly cults, like Mormonism. High-church cults and heresies

  • Grimmond argues that the power of the argument from biological determinism that we’re simply wired to have lots of sex, and we have no choice, lies not so much in its deep explanatory power, but in its emotional appeal. i) As the old puritan saying puts it, “what the heart desires, the will chooses, and the mind justifies”. ii) When it comes to ethics the emotional appeal always involves reducing another’s pain, making the appeal personal. So celibacy, heterosexuality, etc. seem cruel because they cause pain to the person who desires illicit behaviour. To hold to the teaching of God about our created nature involves a great deal of courage and an acknowledgment of pain involved, so the bio argument is appealing. iii) No one actually buys the argument from biological determinism. We find that there is a genetic component to anger, but nobody thinks this justifies an inappropriate expression of anger. When something is socially unacceptable our biology is not determinative. iv) Above this, it’s likely that most people believe in biological determinism because it is ultimately dehumanizing. The power and inadequacy of biological determinism

  • T-fan notes an underused analogical or typological argument for why we should not pray to anyone but God. The use of incense in the OT is a symbol or picture of prayer in the NT (cf. Luke 1:9-11; Rev. 8:3-4, esp. Mal. 1:11, Ps. 141:2). Thus we offer prayers, not incense. T-fan then cites a number of patristic sources that reflect this understanding. So how does this tell us we shouldn’t pray to the saints? In Exodus 30:34-38, the incense is reserved for God, with death promised for other use. So the prophet Malachi declares that incense will be offered "unto my name ... saith the LORD of hosts." Analogical Argument on the Object of Prayer

  • Turk is asked the question, how do you talk to an atheist about God when he believes nothing in common? Atheists rely heavily on the problem of evil to make their evangelistic case. “There is something wrong with the world, and the atheist says that since God doesn't exist, you just have to live with it. The first time the atheist has trouble in fact and not just in theory, I think you're going to have a great evangelistic moment.” It's a new week

  • White notes that the evidence of intelligent design is plenty, and the fundamentalist atheists like Dawkins are on the short end of the argumentative stick here. So they resort to increasing invective. He then cites Dawkins simply repeating over and over that evolution is fact, with this sort of talk “Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact… No reputable scientist disputes it, and no unbiased reader will close the book doubting it.”. Richard Dawkins- the Peter Ruckman of Atheists

  • Piper asks, have you wondered why sanctification is missing from the golden chain in Romans 8:29-30? No, because sanctification (i.e. Romans 6:22; 2 Thess. 2:13) is included in glorification. In Paul’s thinking, the process called sanctification in this life, the transforming from one degree of holiness to the next, is stage one of glorification (2 Cor. 3:18). The progressive change can be describes in terms of holiness or glory, sanctification or glorification. The age to come will be one of not only great physical glory but infinite moral and spiritual glory. We are being made morally glorious now. Glorification Now-

  • Responding to an adherent to liberalism on eternal punishment, T-fan makes the following points: i) Sin deserves infinite punishment because it is an offense against the infinite dignity of God – it’s more the majesty than holiness of God that is in play here. ii) It is not necessary that God permit sin; if it is permitted, it is necessary that it offend God because of the nature of God. iii) It’s easy to label a position as ‘barbarous’, it’s harder to actually make an argument against it. iv) Folks who think hell is ‘barbarous’ are likely to think that God’s wrath in the OT is ‘beyond the pale’. Their rejection of God in the OT is their own condemnation. v) The logic this liberal uses is, ‘if something is unpleasant to us, it’s false; the Reformed doctrine of endless punishment is unpleasant; therefore, it’s false.’ The problem is not with those who hold what Scripture teaches, but those who oppose the revelation of God. It’s also illustrative that this liberal, and churches like him, are not adherents to sola scriptura, are not the offspring of it. They reject God’s revelation. Infinite Punishment and Liberalism

  • How can a sending church best serve a church planter? i) People – you can plant a church without a team, but it’s a tremendous burden. ii) Money – it won’t solve your problems,but does make things easier. iii) Connection – planting can be hard on the family. An appointed elder can make sure the planter and family are ok. iv) Encouragement – the plant is viewed as a mission of the church, not a would-be competitor. How Can a Sending Church Serve a Church Planter- by Michael Mckinley

  • Bird writes that he always wondered how to reconcile Gal 1.11-12 ("I did not receive [parelabon] the gospel from humans, neither was I taught it, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ") and 1 Cor 15.3 ("I received [parelabon] as the gospel that Christ died for our sins ..."). Jim Dunn’s resolution is that it’s not that Paul thought his Gospel differed from Peter, James, and John (1 Cor. 15:11), but he held that it was open to the Gentiles, too - the gospel he received in the tradition handed down to him at the time of his conversion (1 Cor. 15.3) was the message regarding God's Son which he had been commissioned to deliver to the Gentiles (Gal. 1.16). The Origin of Paul's Gospel

  • Here’s a warning from Lee Irons about being more interested in being right, and being very zealous about this theological perfectionism, than seeing sinners come to Christ, and having an equivalent zeal in seeing others come to know the truth. He uses an example from Westminster West of students who would fervently and critically debate the fine points of presup apologetics over all other methods, but had little zeal for using those methods in evangelizing people. The Dangers of Theological Perfectionism

  • Interesting point: “Teachability is often confused with subservience. A person is wrongly thought to be teachable if he is passive and pliable. On the contrary, teachability is an extremely active virtue.” No one is teachable unless he exercises independent judgment. The Difference between Teachability and Subservience

  • Lee Irons has these conclusions on Wright’s position on penal substitution. Wright uses traditional terms with untraditional definitions. For Wright, sin is an impersonal evil force, not personal rebellion against God; sin has bad consequences, but does not elicit God's punitive wrath against the sinner; and the cross is to be understood as some version of the Christus Victor theory in which Christ defeats evil by letting it do its worst to him, not as a penal satisfaction of divine justice. Where Does Wright Stand on Penal Substitutionary Atonement-

  • JT writes, “A lot of people wonder if there is anything practical and helpful they can do to reduce abortion and to help hurting women in need. One of the best ministries with boots on the ground is Heartbeat of Miami (started by John Ensor). But they are seriously hurting these days and they may have to close their doors.” An Opportunity to Help a Crisis Pregnancy Center in Need

  • This has an excerpt from the Screwtape letters, where a devil talks about pleasure as God’s invention, and it being His ground. Rather the devils seek to encourage people to take the pleasures in forbidden ways. An Ever Increasing Craving for an Ever Diminishing Pleasure Is the Formula

  • Reclaiming the Mind Ministries is now offering a great deal on their entire Theology Program: $359 (the list price is $714). That’s 60 DVD’s and 6 workbooks. Theology Program- 60 DVDs

  • John Murray has a charge for pastors. “Under preaching he charges the pastor (a) to have the time and energy needed to prepare well; (b) to depend on the Spirit for understanding and effectually proclaiming the Word; and (c) to think much of the privilege. Under pastoral care Murray charges the pastor (a) to shepherd the church of God; (b) always be read to given an audience to your people; and (c) to remember that you are the servant of Christ.” A Pastoral Charge by John Murray

  • Challies reviews Glory Road, a book of testimonies that describes the journeys of ten African-Americans into Reformed Christianity. He notes a dedication to R.C. Sproul in the opening pages – and how often in the testimonies Sproul’s name appeared, as the men would be saved and then, searching for something more than their current expression of faith, they would find Sproul’s teaching and come to a whole new faithfulness to Scripture. There is a similar thing with Piper and MacArthur. It’s encouraging to see God’s work. Book Review - Glory Road

  • Challies summarizes 11 points on the aggravations brought on by murmuring (in discontent). Here’s a sample: To murmur when we enjoy an abundance of mercy; the greater and more abundant the mercy that we enjoy, the greater and the vile is the sin of murmuring. When we murmur for small things. It is sometimes easier to stand up under a heavy burden than a light one. For men of gifts and abilities to whom God has given wisdom, to be discontented and murmur, is more than if others do it. Said otherwise, to whom much is given, much is required. "If what we have were earned then it would be something, but when we consider that all is from God, for us to murmur at his dispensations is very evil." Reading Classics Together - The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (X)

  • The Bible tells us repeatedly that we will eventually and inevitably begin to resemble the people we spend time with. If we walk with the wise we will become wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm (Proverbs 13:20). The Companion of Fools

  • Worship Matters links to Matt Redmond on romantic language in worship. One interesting quote: “The church has been under-fathered and over-mothered.” Matt Redman on Romantic Language in Worship Songs

  • Harris writes, “In 2008, a team of men and women from our church traveled to western Uganda to visit and be involved in the work of Kiburara Gospel Centre Church. While in Kiburara they saw the filthy drinking water and learned that waterborne diseases were the leading cause of death. Motivated by what they observed, they returned home and by the end of the year raised enough money to build three wells for the village. Today waterborne illnesses are no longer the leading killers in Kiburara.” Josh Harris

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