Tuesday, August 31, 2010

2010-08-31

  • Piper answers the question of exorcisms are a thing of the past. i) Occasionally you see a manifestation of demonic power so apparent and possessive that an extraordinary intervention is called for. ii) He has been involved in only one in his life; he hears reports from mission fields where it is much more common. iii) The steady state ordinary way of bringing people out of the clutches of evil is to teach with gentleness, correct your opponents in love. God may perhaps grant them to repent and come to a knowledge of the truth and be delivered or escape from the power of the evil one who had taken them captive. (2 Tim. 2:24-26). That is, it is by teaching and love and patience and God's sovereignty – God may intervene. iv) It’s not about doing exorcisms all the time. Satan is a liar and therefore he will not abide truth. He is a murderer, and therefore he will not abide love. So if you are a truth-giver and a deep, self-sacrificing lover, you will win. v) Revelation 12:11—"They overcame the devil by the blood of the lamb, for they loved not their lives even unto death"— you overcome the devil by the Gospel, by teaching and applying it, and being dedicated even to death to people’s lives. vi) Demon and Satan are real, and every pastor should study their ways because there is always an attack on the church in various forms. Are Exorcisms a Thing of the Past-

  • Creationsafari has a post briefly describing the complexity of OK Go’s music video (this too shall pass), which as lame as it is, serves as a metaphor for intelligent design – an irreducibly complex system, requiring increasing engineering effort the smaller the components. Intelligent Design as Entertainment

  • As it turns out, while astronomers formerly had high hopes that other solar systems would resemble ours, now that we have hundreds of examples, the reality has been far different. The number of surprises in real exoplanet systems underscores the potential flaws in building models based on a sample size of one. There are Jupiter size planets in three day orbits. One leader in exoplanet hunting compared it to going on a safari and discovering a blue lion. “That might be the level of wackiness I would attach to it.” [so much for ‘scientists now know’] Exoplanet Hunters Fail Predictions

  • Trueman continues with some thoughts on church size, and how the modern aspirational ideal of ministry has shifted from the practice of Paul – knowing his people (e.g. Acts 20:20), to criteria of success – money, numbers, celebrity. i) Trueman anecdotally relates the value of personal pastors. ii) Such personal ministry might not be able to be modeled effectively in a church of thousands or even hundreds. Also, it’s hard to see how an elder board of 30+ could be efficient. iii) It’s easier to hide from membership responsibilities in much larger churches. iv) Who says the preaching in large churches is necessarily better, or even good, compared to that in smaller unknown congregations. v) Try to go to a church where the pastor + elders can actually get to know you and you can roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. That’s closer to the NT model.  20 Vision (Carl Trueman)

  • Phillips reviews Plummer’s 40 Questions about interpreting the Bible. “Generally, how did Plummer do? Amazingly well. It's really a terrific book, and I'm glad to commend it to you.” Overview: The book is an up-to-date, yet thoroughly faithful, Christ-centered survey. Plummer says his aim is to help the reader understand the Bible, addressing himself to "any curious Christian," though specifically hoping that the text would serve for introductory Bible courses in college or seminary. Book review — 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible, by Robert L. Plummer

  • Hays critiques an overzealous assault on charismatic excesses, which goes a bit far. i) The evidentiary value of miracles isn’t their only role. They can be acts of mercy. ii) It’s true that miracles can be demonic, and as such their evidentiary value needs to be qualified – they don’t stand alone. But some of the church fathers appealed to contemporary miracles in the life of the church to challenge pagans, and we ought not to treat them as de facto marks of the anti-Christian church. We don’t automatically credit claims, but we don’t dismiss them out of hand. iii) neither side of the charismatic debate has a knockdown argument from Scripture. So we can’t predict what God will do in this respect. Wait and see. iv) Demonic miracles aren’t a just a post-apostolic phenomena. The NT church was a wonder-working church. v) Does the possibility of demonic miracles vitiate the evidentiary value of miracles? If so, what about the miracles of Christ and the Apostles (e.g. 2 Cor 12:12)? Or Moses, Elisha, and Elisha? vi) The existence of charlatans hardly falsifies the existence of miracles in the church age. Wilhelm à Brakel on cessationism

  • Challies has some comments on how to use and not use facebook for ministry. i) As a leader it lets you be where your people are. This is where people often are, and even where serious issues are occasionally discussed. ii) Use it as a supplement to the real flesh and blood contact you have with people – not a replacement. Use it to push toward face-to-face contact, not away. iii) Learn, but don’t be a stalker. You will need to guard against the temptation to be constantly trolling for information (negative information in particular), to go looking at vacation photographs to see if something is amiss (“She shouldn’t be wearing that on the beach!”), to read walls to find errant messages and responses (“Whoa! That sounded a bit snarky!”). iv) The societal rules about what we may do with information we encounter on Facebook are still being written; until they are, be careful. It may be that you will offend people even as you seek to help them. v) Be aware that much of what happens on Facebook is public (e.g. careful about posting ‘had a great time last night’ on a female friend’s wall). vi) Be present, but not always present. Don’t be on it all the time, wasting time in trivialities. vii) Don’t play Farmville. It’s stupid and it will make you stupid. How (And How Not) To Use Facebook for Ministry

  • Derek Thomas asks, should the preacher ever say I Don’t know? He notes the options in the face of this for the preacher: i) Spell out the possibilities. There likely isn’t even time for this, and “Preaching must, at the end of the day, bear the mark of authority - the authority of the Word that is, not the man who delivers the sermon. But whilst the preacher is not infallible, he is God's servant in proclamation.” The preacher needs a definite opinion. ii) John Piper told his congregation when preaching through Galatians that he wasn't going to comment on the verse (3:20) since he didn't understand how it related to the anything Paul had just said.  It is refreshing (on occasion) for a preacher to say, "I don't know what this means, but it is the inerrant Word of God." iii) It’s the preacher’s task to come to some understanding and state it. He may preface it with words of caution. Should Preachers ever say, I don't Know! (Derek Thomas)

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  • Beggar’s All: commenting on a Muslim claiming he’s refuted Christianity. i) Muslim apologetics can never refute the truth of the Bible. The truth of the Bible is what refutes the Qur’an, since the Qur’an came 600 years later and is not inspired by God at all. Whatever good is in the Qur’an is stolen from the previous Scriptures, the OT and the NT. ii) The Qur’an corrupted the message of the Bible. Mohammad did not know the details of the Bible – he only thought he did, from hearing heretics and nominal Christians. iii) The Qur’an affirms the Bible (5:46-48 and 5:68 and 10:94 and 2:136 and 29:46 and). The writes/compilers of teh Qur’an thought the Bible was perfect without knowing what it was. iv)  The 27 books of the NT were "canon" (meaning "standard", "criterion", "rule", "principle", "law", "measuring rod") as soon as they were written, between 48-96 AD. v) That there was a historical process of collecting all of them under one cover for all the churches is not disputed. Origen quoted all the NT books as Scripture, the same 27, around 255 AD. Athanasius wrote them all in a list in 367 AD. The Muratorian Canon, a fragment, dated around 160- 170 AD, attests to the undisputed 20 books plus Jude, Revelation, and probably 2 John.See Triablogue for more on the canon here: 27 book NT before Athanasius; also historical roots of the Reformation. vi) All the NT books were written separately to different places, from different places and by different authors. vii) “disputed” just means that some parts of the Christian world questioned them and were not sure. But other parts of the Christian world exhibit evidence of knowing about the rest of these books, although no one church or area or writer mentions all the books at one time until Origen and Athanasius. Some disputed books are clearly used by early church fathers like Irenaeus. viii) In sum, the gospel of Jesus as Son of God, God the Son, the Deity of Christ, the Trinity, the substitutionary sacrifice of the innocent lamb of God for the sins of humans from all the nations (Rev. 5:9; Mark 10:45; John 1:29); the resurrection of Christ from the dead; justification by faith alone, salvation by grace alone; the inherent sinfulness and blindness and deadness of all humans; ie, the doctrines of the “gospel” are all there in the undisputed NT texts, the gospel, which the Qur’an affirms (2:136; 5:46-48; 5:68; 10:94) still stand  The Bible and History defeat the Qur'an.

  • Purswell answers, “In the book of Acts there seems to be a greater emphasis on Christ’s resurrection than the cross. Shouldn’t we follow the early church’s example and emphasize the resurrection over the cross?” i) The exaltation of Christ through his resurrection and ascension is central in acts, but that must be understood in the framework of the book. ii) When one is proclaiming the message of a crucified messiah—particularly within a few years of his death—the resurrection (and, in Luke’s writings, the ascension) becomes the fundamental apologetic point for supporting the claims of Jesus. iii) This apology supports Jesus’ death as vicarious atonement. iv) The emphasis on the resurrection fits Luke’s aim to provide assurance to his readers that the foundation of their faith is secure (Luke 1:1-4). 4. Doesn’t the book of Acts stress the resurrection more than the cross-

  • Some neat quotes at DG here: e.g. “Legalism and liberalism are equally toxic." "Imperatives minus indicatives equals impossibility." "The story of Jonah is the story of all of our lives . . . That's why the message of the gospel is so crucial even after we're saved." Media from Our Interview with Tullian Tchividjian

  • Phillips has a laugh that JT and Challies get as excited as they do over “The Driscoll [telling] Francis Chan that he thought he was nuts”. Click through the links in Phillips post. His criticism of Chan regarding his ‘calling’ to leave pastoral ministry is potent. Here’s a taste: “This is what a Biblically-minded interviewer would ask Chan. "Are you likening this move to Abram's move from Ur?", I would ask. To anything like an affirmative response, I would follow up with this: "So are you saying that you received an inerrant, verbal, prophetic, morally-binding revelation directly from God, apart from Scripture, telling you that you needed to walk away from your pastoral commitment abruptly and go off doing other unspecified things?"”. “If he means anything else, Chan is drawing from some spiritual authority other than Scripture. That is what a Biblical writer would mean, unless it were Paul speaking of the effectual call to salvation (which clearly does not fit). "God is calling us" must mean that, to a Biblically-oriented Christian.” If he isn’t claiming an inerrant word, he should drop the spiritualized lingo, not put it off on God. Genesis 15:6 defines faith – There is a word from God, and an embrace of that word. That’s faith. Chan uses the language of moral obligation. “Again, Chan needs to be called on this. Christians who look up to him need him to be called on it. Should they do the same? If they "believe" God is calling them to leave their jobs in IT Support or truck-driving or whatever, the jobs by which they feed their families and pay their creditors, are they similarly morally-obliged to lurch off in that direction? How can they tell? How did he?” Justin and Challies- just kinda funny. See here for the quotes: http://bibchr.blogspot.com/2010/04/taking-step-of-faith-few-thoughts.html

  • Patton has a cautionary post about the ‘professional weaker brother’. He gives a few examples, like, “I don’t ever drink alcohol because a weaker brethren might see me and fall into sin.” Which has the often implied translation:I have scruples with this issue and you should too.” Patton writes, “When grace and liberty clash with “scruples,” more often than not, unfortunately, the scruples win. Why? Because we are so quick to sacrifice our liberty for the sake of the “weaker brethren.” Yes, this “weaker brethren” card is often pulled and legalists love it.” [I might add that the weaker brother argument is one that can only be afforded to another, never taken for oneself, for it is an admission of binding someone to more than is written to use it as a defence]. Patton says, “I don’t think we are obligated to bow our liberty to everyone who has a problem with our actions. A “weaker brother” is one who is truly weaker, not just one who has a misguided interpretation of things.” What can happen is the ‘weaker brother’ who simply hasn’t been educated is supposed to become stronger, but often they realize their power and become professionals. Patton notes Paul’s passage in 2:4-5, and how the false brethren could have played the weaker brother card under the thinking Patton is going after. “We need to be sensitive, but not to the point where we are simply fueling others’ faulty understanding and legalism. People will control you to the degree that you let them. If you allow this to go on without discernment, not only will you be immobile, but you will have lost your liberty. Lose liberty, lose the Gospel.” There are those who hate our liberty and will do anything to make us lose it. Beware of “Professional Weaker Brethren”

  • Monday, August 30, 2010

    2010-08-30

  • Phil Johnson points to an exchange of letters between an insolent congregant and Campbell Morgan, wherein the congregant attacks Morgan for receiving ‘big fees’, to which Morgan replies with candor and restraint, as well as the brilliance of simultaneously exposing the error of the congregant while genuinely handling the situation. What was never known to the rank and file was the extraordinary generosity with which Campbell used the money. Insolence Upbraided

  • Moore: “Too often, and for too long, American ‘Christianity’ has been a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it.” http://www.russellmoore.com/2010/08/29/god-the-gospel-and-glenn-beck/

  • Microsoft is releasing their Security Development Lifecycle in the hope that this will lead to more developers using the process for developing software more securely across the entire product lifecycle. “This should make it easier for others to use and distribute the principles behind SDL and for programmers to integrate SDL components into their own development processes. This has not previously been possible, as documentation and other SDL materials were under an exclusive Microsoft license which precluded such use.” [Given the security advancements and innovations Microsoft has made, such as those in Windows Vista/7, this is good to hear.] http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Microsoft-s-Security-Development-Lifecycle-under-Creative-Commons-License-1068172.html

  • Girltalk writes for those going back to high school, university, etc: “You may be tempted to join the party scene (rebelliously indulge your sinful desires, James 1:14-15), to downplay your faith (hide it under a basket, Matt. 5:14-16), to keep an open mind (question the only eternal truth, 1 John 1:1-4), or to chase your dreams (pursue selfish ambitions, James 3:13-18) instead of running after God’s commands.” “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). He Goes With You

  • Hays writes that while he has spent time defending penal substitution, it shouldn’t be necessary to do so. i) intellectuals can fall into a trap of demanding rational justification for everything; this can be a malicious use of one’s intelligence. ii) Should you require intellectual justification for a cake from your mother? That’s no way to treat a gift. Gratitude is. iii) For people to attack the logic of penal substitution is no way to treat a priceless gift. That’s an act of supreme ingratitude. iv) Penal substitution isn’t illogical. But that’s beside the point. v) It’s as if you need a blood transfusion to survive, and a friend offers to donate his blood, but you make it a requirement that he defend his generous offer to your personal satisfaction. A simple thank-you will do

  • Hays points out that while scholarship attacking a true religion is going to be false, it doesn’t follow that scholarship attacking the credibility of a false religion will be false, even if it comes from liberal critical scholars. Liberal scholarship

  • Hays points to a quote of Larry Hurtado on the historical Jesus. i) All four gospels place Jesus fully in time, place, and cultural setting. ii) This is particularly interesting in light of the differences among them, but also in comparison with the rather unlocalized way that Jesus is depicted in extra-canonical “Jesus books” such as The Gospel of Thomas, and The Gospel of Philip. iv) This emphasis shows that the Lord and Christ of Christian devotion is to be linked to, and defined with reference to, the historic figure of Jesus, and may also have been a major impetus for these texts, and an important factor in shaping their genre as narrative books about him. The quote goes into a number of specifics. Hurtado on the historical Jesus

  • Hays answers that while he doesn’t believe any of the Triabloggers are Plymouth brethren; (a) they represent an honourable theological tradition; (b) they are a limiting case of Protestant polity, which, while Hays is himself on the low end of the spectrum, he disagrees at this point inasmuch as the NT teaches church office. Plymouth Brethren

  • JT writes that words have almost everything to do with Christianity. At every stage of redemptive history, from before time and on, ‘God is there and he is not silent’. God’s words decisively create, confront, convict, correct, and comfort. By his words he both interprets and instructs. JT goes into the beginnings of a theology of words, from Genesis and Hebrews 1, and points out the connection between words and the fall, where Satan called into question God’s words, and then called God a liar. Christianity and Words- Part 1

  • DG asks the question, how can God decree sin without sinning? Edwards’ answer was that God can decree an action that is sinful for a human to perform, because he decrees it for non-sinful reasons. A sin is only sinful because of the attitude of the heart in so doing. God doesn’t rebel against himself in ordaining human sin. He ordains sins with His good ends in mind, which makes the act of ordaining them not sinful, since the attitude of his heart is not rebellious but righteous. (e.g. Gen. 50:20, Rom 11:32). God does not decree sin for the sinfulness of it; man commits it for the sinfulness of it. How Can God Decree Sin Without Sinning-

  • Mohler looks at the new interest in reincarnation. “The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported last year that a quarter of all Americans now believe in reincarnation.” The growing acceptance of reincarnation points to a retreat of Christian beliefs. Reincarnation offers an escape from that linear view of history and human destiny. The Eastern conception of time common to Confucian cultures is deeply cyclical, with events and persons appearing again and again throughout time. Mohler notes that readers may ask, Why is it that these people seem only to recover knowledge of such noble past lives? The picture looks dubious. The therapeutic application of reincarnation looks just like the latest fad. Others connect the popularity of reincarnation to the fact that Americans like their stuff, and want to delay eternity. Few views, however, are more incompatible with Christianity. The Bible states clearly that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” [Hebrews 9:27]. There is no “do-over,” and no great cycle of life. And the shift is more likely a loss of Christian conviction in the face of secularization — not a comprehensive embrace of Eastern worldviews. Mohler asks, even in these confused times, how many Americans really want to consult a psychiatrist who believes he was once a caveman who got gobbled up? http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/08/30/never-having-to-say-youre-dead-the-new-interest-in-reincarnation/

  • Here’s Mark Dever’s summer reading list: Vacation Reading 2010

  • Hays responds to a comment which calls the Triabloggers intolerant, bigoted, hateful, and declares God to be unjust and cruel if He were to send Glenn Beck to hell. “i) Folks who can’t argue for their position fall back on first-shaking adjectives like “hatred,” “intolerance,” and “bigotry.” That tactic won’t work here. ii) Whether or not Beck is sincere is irrelevant. Sincerity and veracity can lead separate lives, and often do.iii) The commenter is typically blind to his own intolerance. He’s only tolerant of those who see things his way.iv) The fact that he’d say God is spiteful and cruel for sending Beck to hell is a good illustration of folks who judge by tone and appearance rather than reality. v) I’m all for brotherly love. But Beck is not my brother. He’s a lost soul. And he’s recruiting others to his false gospel.” Hays makes some points about Mormonism itself: “Mormonism doesn’t regard the theology of other Christian traditions or denominations as essentially the same. Mormonism is a polytheistic, neopagan fertility cult with an autosoteric doctrine of apotheosis. It’s hard to think of any other Christian heresy that’s as systematically opposed to every Biblical doctrine as Mormonism.” Hays adds, ”Do unto others” is not a slogan you can uproot from its Biblical soil and transplant wherever you please. Brotherly love

  • DG blog discusses contrived humility versus the genuine humility of faith. We may be tempted to try to bend God’s will through tears and contrite statements when we feel inadequate in prayer. There is a humbleness that does not flow from the Gospel. It’s the humility of self-abasement hoping that this will cause God to hear their prayers. The humility that pleases God (Psalm 51:17) isn't an outward show, but a response of faith to Jesus' work for us and nothing else. Let us have confidence in the work of Christ alone. (Romans 5:1,2)) [Though I would be interested in teasing out the meaning of ‘humble yourself’, and to factor in the reality that seemingly contrived examples like sackcloth and ashes were counted as genuine humility by God] Contrived Humility Vs. Humility from Faith

  • Apple’s Quicktime provides a vulnerability in Windows. New QuickTime Flaw Bypasses ASLR, DEP

  • JT posts an adaptation from the section on Mormonism in the ESV Study Bible. An FAQ on the Difference between Mormonism and Biblical Christianity

  • James Anderson answers a question put to Calvinists: “If free will as uncaused choice is logically incoherent, what about God’s decision to create the world?” i) few contemporary defenders of libertarian free will (LFW) would concede that it entails uncaused choices. I suspect most Christian philosophers today who hold to LFW accept some version of agent causation. On that view, they aren’t uncaused – they are caused by the agent, with no prior sufficient cause or explanation. ii) Calvinists needn’t be committed to the idea that LFW is logically incoherent. Some do. It’s not necessary. A Calvinist could hold either of these views: (1) LFW is logically coherent, and God has LFW, and necessarily no creature has LFW. (2) LFW is logically coherent, but God does not have LFW, and necessarily no creature has LFW. He may hold (as many Calvinists do) that creaturely LFW is incompatible with divine omniscience or meticulous divine providence – since God possesses omniscience and sovereignty essentially, there is no possible world in which creatures have LFW. But there is a difference between creaturely LFW and divine LFW. However we think of the latter case needn’t cause Calvinists to blush on the former. A Short Answer to a Quick Question for Calvinists

  • Trueman discusses some of the complications of the differences between the lead pastor and elders, and the responsibilities of the pastor. The pastor is full time, the elders aren’t. The pastors specific calling is the congregation. The elders may not always be available, the pastor is. His priorities lie with the congregation. “though it may well be that all of us except for the pastor are unavailable to take that urgent call during the hours of daylight Monday to Friday, the important point is that the pastor is there. That's where his priorities lie. And that's the kind of pastor who needs to be the aspirational norm for students leaving seminary and going into the ministry. Just knowing your people by name and caring for them as individuals as you faithfully minister to them week by week: that may represent terrible lack of ambition in a wider secular culture where big is best, and fame is always the spur; but, by the logic of the cross, what the world deems lack of ambition could well be the greatest ambition to which anyone can aspire.”. On Organ Grinders and Monkeys (Carl Trueman)

  • Hays has some more comments on the issue of images. “To my knowledge, idols were fashioned to make the gods accessible to the worshiper. The idol mediated the presence of the god it depicted. That was a way of reaching the gods and even manipulating the gods. It was a two-way conduit, by which the worshiper could interact with the god, and vice versa… Pentateuchal prohibition against divine images would therefore apply to any analogous use of divine images. Does a modern-day worshiper use a divine image to facilitate contact with God? If so, then that is idolatrous. That is forbidden.” Also, “Yahweh is invisible, we cannot know what he is like apart from his self-disclosure.” “In Catholic theology, Mary is, herself, a way of making God available to the worshiper. And a statue of Mary is a way of focusing one’s prayers to and through Mary to God. In that respect, a statue of Mary is idolatrous twice over.” Idols & idolatry

  • Sunday, August 29, 2010

    2010-08-29

  • Beggar’s All: This post corrects the idea that James White goes after Muslims who quote liberal/critical Christian scholars, while White himself will quote them. White is actually saying the the Muslim use of liberal scholars against the text of the NT undermines the Muslims’ whole religion and the Qur’an, since the Qur’an affirms the Torah, Psalms, and Gospel of Jesus. (Surah 2:136; 5:46-48; 5:68; 10:94; 29:46). Islam claims it is the third in line of the Monotheistic religions and that the first two (Judaism – in “the law and prophets and Psalms”) and Christianity (Injeel = Gospel) were given truly at that time in a “dispensational” (in stages for each time period) kind of way. For example, Ehrman and Crossan affirm the historical reality of the crucifixion – contra Muslims, so is inconsistent for them to use liberal scholars specifically on the text of the Text of the Bible, as their main attack that under girds all of their apologetic method of the doubting of the Biblical text. Getting to the Specific Issue

  • Hays comments on David Waltz’s defunct argument that John Bugay and White are hypocrites because they cite liberal scholars in opposition to Islam or Romanism, but reject their opposition to Scripture. i) Waltz is to religion what Solomon was to women. ii) The analogy would only work if the arguments and counterarguments regarding Scripture were comparable those for the Koran or Romanism. iii) In sifting testimonial evidence, we don’t treat every witness the same, for some are less credibly than others. iv) Waltz would, for example, have to show that the liberal scholar’s arguments on the early Roman church are crucially contingent on their arguments regarding the NT. v) Liberal scholarship can sometimes be right for the wrong reasons. For example, it’s wrong to presume to apply methodological naturalism to religious claims. But if say, an Islamic phenomenon is a natural one masquerading as the supernatural, then naturalist methods and assumptions will coincidentally fit. vi) There’s nothing inherently liberal about redaction criticism; Blomberg and Bock use it to defend inerrancy. vii) Besides, the modern Magisterium sanctions the historical-critical method, so even if the method is wrong, it’s their yardstick. The Last Waltz

  • Moore comments on the reception of Glen Beck by evangelicals in the USA. Not because Beck, as a Mormon, doesn’t have the right to speak in the American public square with full religious liberty, but because of what it says about the Christian churches in the USA. American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk of undefined ‘revival’ hardly interested in anything uniquely Christian to get this far. Christians have tolerated heresy and buffoonery, and relied on populist sloganeering. Liberation theology on both the left and the right want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah; a Barabbas and a golden calf. Where there is no gospel, something else will fill the void. He connects the capitulation of American Christians to the temptation Satan had offered to Jesus. Satan doesn’t mind Judeo-Christian values, or ‘revival’. It’s the Gospel that he doesn’t like. Satan doesn’t mind a universe without porn or Islam or abortion. The scandalous scene at the Lincoln Memorial indicates that many of us want to exchange the rugged cross for the crown way too soon. Mormonism and Mammonism are contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. “They offer another Lord Jesus than the One offered in the Scriptures and Christian tradition, and another way to approach him. An embrace of these tragic new vehicles for the old Gnostic heresy is unloving to our Mormon friends and secularist neighbors, and to the rest of the watching world.” God, the Gospel, and Glenn Beck

  • Burk comments on the above, saying that Moore is rightly scathing in his rebuke of evangelicals who would confuse genuine revival with Mormon-American-pie-populist politics.

  • JT posts the order of service in the second century, from NR Needham’s multi-volume survey of church history. The service lasted about three hours, and usually there was standing. There were no musical instruments, and the Lord’s Supper was observed every week. The service of the word was open to baptized believers, those receiving instruction in the faith, and those curious about Christianity. The third part, the prayers and the eucharist, were only open to baptized believers. The rest had to leave. “the early church understood congregational prayer as “participating by the Holy Spirit in the glorified Christ’s own heavenly ministry of prayer”—something unbelievers could not share in since they did not have the Spirit.” What Was a Church Service Like in the Second Century-

  • Beggar’s All: Luther taught a life under the cross, which is a life of discipleship of following after Christ. Our crosses though, do not save. They serve the neighbor. Luther plainly teaches that saving faith is a living faith. Justification is by faith alone unto good works done for the good of one’s neighbor; they are the evidence of God’s complete work of justification. Luther- Only Unbelief Causes Damnation

  • Spurgeon talks about those believers who delight in new scientific discoveries which are supposed to destroy our faith, as if science makes a wonderful discovery, and we’re supposed to doubt immediately God’s word. “Considering that the so-called "science" is continually changing, and that it seems to be the rule for scientific men to contradict all who have gone before them, and that, if you take up a book upon almost any science, you will find that it largely consists of repudiations of all former theories, I think we can afford to wait until the scientific men have made up their minds as to what science really is.” False Alarms

  • Martyn Lloyd-Jones preaches a sermon series in 1969, from which Phil Johnson links to an excerpt where Lloyd-Jones is decrying the church's inordinate fear of being called "narrow." This anxiety is exacerbated in our generation, he says, because modernity has tainted our worldview. We are too easily intimidated by the feigned authority of so-called men of knowledge. The result, Lloyd-Jones says, is an unwarranted capitulation to the authority of science (falsely so called). Lloyd-Jones Saw It Coming

  • 2010-08-28

  • Dusman points to a fascinating article which provides an analysis of religious teenagers. The article cites a prof at Princeton, and says “more American teenagers are embracing what she calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." Translation: It's a watered-down faith that portrays God as a "divine therapist" whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem.” Dusman comments that while the article intimates that those who come from evangelical backgrounds are better grounded in their faith, this isn’t what he sees on campuses in Greensboro NC. He can’t tell, based on content, whether a kid grew up in the liberal UMC or the SBC. More Teens Becoming Fake christians

  • In light of critics who claim that the reported suicide of Judas in Matthew and Luke reflect independent and divergent traditions, Hays argues that both reports contain allusions to the death of the Saulides in 2 Sam 21. He then enumerates the common motifs. Numerous motifs intersect with these ones from 2 Sam. 21: i) Bloodguilt ii) Hanging iii) “Falling” iv) “Mountain” v) Silver coinage. vi) Numerology (7 sons) vii) David. Individually these may be coincidental, but the number of intersections suggest both NT accounts were written to evoke the cautionary OT precedent. The would in turn reflect a common historical and hermeneutical tradition for Luke and Matthew. The fate of Judas

  • Hays has a reflection on 2 Tim 4:6-8. He discusses the paradox – the journey of the Christian pilgrimage is long, but we’re usually young and strong when we begin, with much energy. The aging running has less ground to cover, though. But he’s bone-weary. Every step is hard. He’s fallen many times, been injured, used to sprint, etc. Some of his companions have gone on ahead. Others fell behind. Others dropped out. He doesn’t quite know where the end is. There’s no going back, but there’s no skipping ahead. Sad experience has taught him that short-cuts take longer. Whenever he feels like collapsing, something unexpected keeps him going. But one morning he gets up, and as he heaves his way up another hill, he catches a glimpse of the heavenly spires. A cloud of witnesses is standing at the finish line to welcome him. Running the race

  • Has has a satire here involving a snowglobe, and I think materialism, which is just hilarious. Well, I thought it was funny. The view from the snowglobe

  • Hays writes, “Catholic revert Francis Beckwith walked out on Mass last Sunday after encountering something “worse than you can imagine.” The offending event was nothing short of an “abomination,” which left him duly “scandalized.” And what was the unimaginable abomination, you ask? Was it the prospect of receiving communion from the hands of a child molester. Was it a syncretistic homily, a la Vatican II? No. It was some bubblegum music performed by teen celebrants.” Good to see returning to Rome hasn’t dulled his keen sense of moral priorities. A hill to die on

  • Piper: “I hope that everybody will be discerning whether John Piper has positioned himself in their heart as a faithful minister of the gospel to them or as an icon of whatever inappropriate kind. Let the church be cleansed and purified in my absence and say, "OK, it was nice to have John for these reasons, but God is God, and the Spirit is the Spirit, and the gospel is the gospel, and there are other people who can communicate those truths to us."” He wants Bethlehem Baptist to grow in their mature freedom from an excessive dependence on anything about Piper that’s not Gospel, humble and Godward. More faith in a sovereign God and less faith in John. John Piper's Desires for Bethlehem During His Leave

  • Challies posts a prayer for public worship from puritan Matthew Henry. A Prayer for Public Worship

  • AiG comments on the recent news that the sun is interfering with the decay rate of isotopes [By the way, I’ll interject at this point and say that I remember creationists saying this in 2005]. “Stanford physicist Peter Sturrock said of the discovery, “Everyone thought it must be due to experimental mistakes, because we’re all brought up to believe that decay rates are constant.” Now, the scientists have hypothesized that the sun is, in a way, “communicating” (to use Fischbach’s word) with radioactive isotopes on earth. This may occur through the transmission of solar neutrinos, which the sun radiates toward earth, although the science behind such an effect is unknown.” Radioactive decay is not as constant, nor as understood, as old-earth creationists and evolutionists have insisted. Nevertheless, radiometric dating of rocks won’t fall out of fashion yet; as long as one assumes a relatively constant fluctuation in solar activity across millions of years of history, the old-earth conclusions of radiometric dating hold up. But once again, the issue is which assumptions one begins with. News to Note, August 28, 2010

  • CMI has a helpful corrective against the unnecessary inference or argument that the world is at the centre of the universe: “it does not necessarily follow that we are at or were at the exact centre physically. Certainly we are at the centre of His attention, but our planet Earth is not at the centre of the solar system either, that would not be a good place to live, neither is our solar system at the centre of the galaxy etc. To force some preferred notion of perfection by being at the centre could well be similar to the Aristotelian notion of perfect circles in astronomy of the solar system 2000 years back, which proved to be quite incorrect.” http://creation.com/is-earth-universe-centre

  • Challies cites Nancy Pearcy: While Christians are often accused of being prudes, the truth is that Christianity has a much more respectful view of our psycho-sexual identity. The Bible elevates sex to the position God wishes it to have while Liberalism lowers it to something so much less than God wants it to be. Scripture offers a stunningly high view of physical union as a union of whole persons across all dimensions. (e.g. Matt 19:6). Liberalism treats sex as instrumental to extrinisic goals, such as physical pleasure or expressing affection. Liberals don’t object to any form of sexual relation as long as it meets extrinsic goals. A biblical worldview treats sex as intrinsically good in constituting the one-flesh relationship. In Scripture, the marital metaphor, such as Israel as the unfaithful wife, or the church as the bride of Christ, means that our sexual nature possesses a “language” that is ultimately meant to proclaim God’s own transcendent love and faithfulness. Prudes and Puritans

  • DeYoung posts an interesting video on the composition of congregational Christian music. DeYoung writes, “Considering the sad paucity of Psalm singing in our churches, this is an album pastors and music leaders  should seriously consider purchasing.” New Parish Psalms

  • Trueman has another article on Luther and the Jews. He writes, “while we today find Luther's 1543 work, On the Jews and their Lies, extraordinarily vile and offensive, it was, sadly, in many ways a rather conventional piece for the time.  I also noted that Luther was also not operating with racial categories: he consider Jews evil because they opposed the gospel, not because they were racially inferior.” The road between Luther and Auschwitz is a complicated one which defies direct and simplistic attempts to make him one of the primary historical culprits. Trueman draws the application that the whole matter should be a salutary warning that Christians need to pray continually that they will finish well. The sins of youth are terrible enough; for some, the sins of old age are even worse. Luther and the Jews III- Lessons (Carl Trueman)

  • T-fan shows here that Thomas Aquinas did not believe that Mary's conception was immaculate. He provides a lengthy quote from Aquinas and highlights clear points which deny the immaculate conception. He then shows how early church fathers also didn’t except Mary from original sin. Thomas Aquinas (and the Fathers of the Church) on Mary's non-Immaculate Conception

  • Beggar’s All: Luther's contrast between philosophy and theology is an exhortation to study the Scriptures as divine revelation. He passionatley appeals to his students that no one makes a prey of them by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition. Luther says elsewhere, Philosophy does not understand sacred things, and argues against mixing it with theology. Rather than persuing philsophical speculation, Luther exhorts his pupils to "undertake new studies and learn Jesus Christ, 'and Him crucified' (1 Cor. 2:2)." Luther-Philosophy Should Be Learned To Be Refuted

  • Helm discusses whether the idea of the eternal covenant of redemption tends to tritheism. He begins with the economy of redemption and works backwards. “If the relations between the persons of the Trinity in the economy are in harmony with the mutuality of the persons of the Trinity, then it is hard to see how the eternal covenant of redemption could fail to be an expression of the same sort of relationship.” “What of the pre-temporal situation? We may say this: if the economic relations between the persons are compatible with full Trinitarianism, then so must the pre-temporal arrangements be.” [Historically] it seems that ironically the tendency was entirely the other way, the expunging of the mystery of the Trinity in rationalistic Unitarianism.  The Covenant of Redemption and Tritheism

  • Helm continues discussion Vanhoozer’s Remythologizing Theology and The Drama of Doctrine. “we’ve been asking if the Bible itself is a theological book, or simply raw data to which we come with our theory-laden agendas.” “Vanhoozer strongly conveys the impression that is characteristic of the modern theological mood, that in regard to the theologian’s relation to Scripture, the theologian always has the initiative.” But it is impossible for the modern theologian to retain the initiative consistently. “For example, according to Vanhoozer what we need is an account of God as engaging in triune communicative agency. But how has that small word ‘triune’ slipped in?” The trinity, is that a theory? Does the Bible teach the trinity, or not? The answer is obvious. The theologian cannot start from scratch not only because there is a history of theology that we inherit, but also because the Bible itself presents us with a theology. Helm notes that the Drama of Doctrine an advance on the earlier book, one reason for which more recognition is given to the creedal language of Scripture than earlier. But it’s not enough. “His present proposal is meant to provide a theological framework in which doctrine as dramatical direction is understood, but it still goes nowhere near enough to acknowledging and giving importance to the fact that the Bible is full of what I have called‘one liners’.” Vanhoozer V - Don't Forget the Oneliners

  • Friday, August 27, 2010

    2010-08-27

  • JT summarizes Fred Sander’s critique of what he calls evangelical reductionism. He thinks that the Bible, the cross, conversion, and heaven are the right things to emphasize. He argues that ‘anemic’ evangelicalism ends up neglecting everything else, which are the things necessary for the cross to make sense. Christ’s work is flanked by His incarnation, His works, His ascension, and so on. Evangelical anemia happens when the emphatic points are treated as the whole, neglecting the full counsel of God: incarnation, ministry of healing and teaching, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and second coming. He does not argue for a change in emphasis, but a restoration of the background, for the sake of the big picture in which the rightfully emphasized elements rest. He uses the metaphor of the cutting edge of a knife. He says that while the Trinity does not belong to the cutting edge of emphatic evangelism, the Trinity belongs to the necessary presuppositions of the gospel.  How Emphatic Evangelicalism Becomes Reductionist Evangelicalism

  • Burk notes that Karl Giberson’s response to Mohler reveals his hand when he says, “Does the saving power of Jesus vanish if sin becomes something that developed through natural history?…” Burk writes, “Bottom line. No historical Adam. No original sin. No 1 Chronicles 1:1, Luke 3:38, Romans 5:12-21, 1 Corinthians 11:8-12, 15:22, 15:45, 1 Timothy 2:13-14, Jude 1:14 or the entire substructure of biblical theology. Yet Giberson somehow thinks he’s saving Christianity. Hardly.” Giberson Shows His Hand

  • Burk: “Is your doctor a believer? If not, a new study suggests that the care he is giving you may be inferior to that of believing doctors. The study appears in the Journal of Medical Ethics, and in it Dr. Clive Seale surveys more than 3,700 British doctors, of whom 2,923 reported on how they took care of their last terminally ill patient. In short, “Doctors who are atheist or agnostic are twice as likely to make decisions that could end the lives of their terminally ill patients, compared to doctors who are very religious” (AP report).” [I would add that this doesn’t bode well for claims that evolution is essential to medicine!] Is Your Doctor a Believer-

  • Hays posts his correspondence with TFan over religious art. Some points: I) Regarding the 2nd commandment, apart from God’s self-revelation (general/special revelation), God is unknowable. His invisibility is a hendiadys for his unknowability (barring self-revelation). ii) That interpretation harmonizes the 2nd commandment with the further fact that God projects images of himself to human observers in phenomena like theophanies. iii) Picturesque descriptions of God in His self-revelation appeal to the imagination of the reader or listener. iv) There isn’t a principled difference between a mental image and an extramental mental of the same image. v) What matters is whether an image is truly representational; if it corresponds to divine self-revelation. vi)  The incarnation isn’t a turning point in the above. Still picturing Jesus is not the same thing as picturing the invisible God (Deut 4). vii) A picture of Jesus reflects the theological interpretation of the artist. Hays then interacts with T-fan’s critique. The human face of God

  • “It seems to me certain that the wicked that are punished by God will continue to hate God all the while they are punished, and that their punishment, instead of humbling them, will stir up their hatred to God and make them blaspheme him. Now it is not probable that their punishment will be either taken off or mitigated whilst they do so, nor that they will cease so to do while their punishment is upon them. Those minds that are so destitute of principles of virtue, will unavoidably dreadfully hate that being that brings so much misery upon them. Therefore, the punishment of the damned will be eternal. Jonathan Edwards; Miscellanies No. 237” Edwards- An Argument for Hell's Eternity

  • AiG answers some questions about alleged refutations of their criticisms of radiometric dating. Some points: i) All AiG articles are peer reviewed. ii) Three assumptions go into all radiometric dating: “All the daughter atoms had to be derived by radioactive decay from the parent atoms since the rock unit formed. There were no additions or subtractions of parent or daughter atoms since the rock unit formed. The rate of decay had to remain constant since the rock unit formed.” iii) None of these three assumptions can be proven because there were no scientists there when the rock units formed, nor in the vast majority of time since, to make sure that the daughter atoms we measure today (1) have only come from radioactive decay of parent atoms, (2) have not been contaminated, and (3) the parent atoms had a constant decay rate through all the millions of years. iv) these three assumptions are fatally flawed, and we have impeccable evidence to show that. Numerous example in secular geological literature show inherited daughter atoms when a rock unit formed and contamination. Also, radioactive decay rates have not been constant. v) “What is not readily acknowledged by our opponents is that these same lines of evidence highlighted in the RATE research have also been documented in secular geological literature, although they have not recognized there that this confirms decay rates have not been constant.” [See yesterday’s post for secular acknowledgement that this is true] vi) None of the results of the RATE project have been refuted by the secular geological community. Geologists have not argued against it. vii) Most so-called refutations hinge on claiming they didn’t know how to collect samples or do field work, or that they didn’t know how to use the methods on rock samples. The article goes into some more technical detail. Feedback- Fallacious Refutations

  • JT posts a Q+A which answers, ‘what are we apart from Christ’, tracing Romans. He also points to Piper on why Paul would use homosexuality as a prime example of idolatry: “Piper’s most profound insight here is that Paul sees a “dramatization” of Christ and the Church in Christ-centered heterosexual marriage, and that he also sees a dramatization of idolatry in same-sex sexual behavior, as men and women unite with images of themselves.” What Are We Apart from Christ-

  • T-fan notes that one of problem identified with radiometric dating is int eh linked article (link to article). The apparent rate of decay seems to have a connection to the Earth's relationship to the Sun, and perhaps the Earth's relationship to a slowly spinning core of the Sun. The variation seems to be periodic and is small. Nevertheless, the point is that there is already some observed variation, and (so far) the cause of this variation is not known. Scientists also haven’t observed whether there are trends over hundreds of years. “They don't really know that radioactive decay is constant - that is assumed based on an apparent constancy at the present time.” That assumption is open to reasonable doubt. Radioactive Dating - a Problem

  • Purswell on Mahaney’s blog answers, “If we talk about the cross so much, won’t we end up focusing only on sin and ignoring this important aspect of the Christian life?” i) it is not only the resurrection that provides tremendous hope and motivation for a transformed life; the cross is meant to function this way as well. ii) For Paul one of the primary motivations for living a holy life is that Christ died for his sins, so 2 Cor. 5:14-15. iii) To be sure, the new birth, our union with Christ, and the gift of the Spirit decisively transform our lives. Yet our present life isn’t one of unbridled glory. And so, while we can know “the power of his resurrection,” at the same time we are to “share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10).  To isolate either the cross or the resurrection in the Christian life is to distort and impoverish it. 3- Will a cross-focus lead us to be more aware of our sin than of our new life in Christ-

  • 9Marks: The way to combat false teaching that unsettles churches is to stand firm in the faith, so we as a congregation want to continue to understand God’s ways from God’s Word. Faithful Teaching- A Congregational Responsibility

  • Dusman continues relating recent experiences evangelizing on campus. ‘In conclusion, take time to talk to people. Be calm, be nice, and most of all, try to be a good listener. People who vehemently disagree with you yet aren't overtly hostile will oftentimes appreciate a good conversation about ultimate questions.’ GTCC Outreach Report 8-27-2010

  • Hays discusses how national identity and Christian identity intersect, and how we see this happen along a spectrum. “When Christians from different cultures and subcultures come together, they don’t shed their differences but invite one another into the gallery of each other’s God-given experience. And that gives us an opportunity to take the best of each culture and make it our own.” God and country

  • JT @ Reformation21 has some solid words reminding Christians to beware of embarrassing intra-Christian dialogue in the public square. We need to be classy and careful, even in giving criticism. Some things are both impermissible and unhelpful at the same time. On Avoiding Public Self-Humiliation (Justin Taylor)

  • CMI has an article describing the biblical basis for ecology, for understanding the interrelations between different organisms in the ecosystem. CMI begins by affirming that the biblical world view is the essential foundation for an ecological worldview, a foundation which must be based on sound biblical presuppositions, like the fact that there is a Creator. “When Noah stepped out of the ark 4,500 years ago, his world had changed drastically. God’s judgment on the land and its creatures was devastating and complete. That judgment has implications for how we interpret the current mechanisms of geologic processes, organism diversification and distribution (biogeography), and complex biological interactions. Insights learned from understanding the land within a biblical creation model have biblical implications and applications in origin of life assumptions, godly stewardship, human relations, world hunger, sustainable agriculture, and energy use among many more. The following is a synthesis of creation research that contains many venues for future investigation.” http://creation.com/biblical-ecology

  • Interesting – “"Adoption means God is now my Father... I got the hottest Poppa and by the Spirit holler Abba"” That certainly is a unique way of phrasing it (not one I would have thought up!)


    HT: Atonement
  • DeYoung: The U.S. Court of Appeals recently ruled that religious groups who primarily offer radio and internet worship services do not meet the IRS definition of church. Theological Acumen from the IRS

  • Patton has a brief exegesis of 1 Timothy 2:11-12. He notes that “the parallel continues in the apodosis of the last line of the creed. If we are unbelieving, Christ is still faithful. Faithful to what? To deny us in judgment. Why? ”Because he cannot deny himself.” His own character demands that those who don’t believe be judged.” So it’s not saying that God is faithful to love us even when we falter (not that this isn’t true elsewhere; it’s just not the point here). This creed demonstrates how important it is for us to communicate both hope and warning, both heaven and hell. A Short Exegesis of 2 Timothy 2-11-14 – An Early Christian Creed

  • Thursday, August 26, 2010

    2010-08-26

  • AiG: The ‘Moa’s Ark theory’ basically says that New Zealand’s animal and plant life evolved ‘largely untouched’, i.e. isolated in New Zealand from life in the rest of the world, over a period of 80 million years. Evolutionary theory needs long, long periods of time. Creation theory coupled with the record of the flood provides an alternative. New Zealand’s fauna fits with a Creation–Noah’s Ark perspective of origins and biogeography. From that perspective, the earth’s post-Flood land areas about 4,500 years ago were completely devoid of all land animals and birds, as any creature with “the breath of life in its nostrils” (Genesis 7:22) had perished in the Flood, unless it was on the Ark. The process of repopulating the earth with land animals radiating out from the Ark’s landing site in the Middle East was made easier by the presence of land bridges. Evolutionists once believed that the giant flightless birds—moas, ostriches, rheas, emus and cassowaries—were all related and were a primitive group which had not yet evolved the ability to fly. Now they believe those flightless birds evolved from flying ancestors and are not from a common stock. This belief—no common ancestor and loss of ability (to fly)—of course fits a biblical perspective better than an evolutionary one. http://creation.com/moas-ark-vs-noahs-ark

  • CEH: This article notes the propensity of scientists to invade every other field. “Today’s science sweeps everything into its domain, including the human mind, intellect, emotions, will, creativity, and our most sincere beliefs and actions.  When not explained in terms of evolutionary impulses from some animal past, they are often described in sterile, dispassionate terms, reducing our sincerely held beliefs, choices and partnerships into matters of neurotransmitters in the brain or impulses little different than the behavior of ants. ” The article lists ten example, such as the evolution of crying, moral calorimeters, and the evolution of marriage. Who Invited the Scientist in Here-

  • Piper answers how ‘love seeks not its own’ does not contradict Christian hedonism. “It is right to want our loving to be a certain kind of gain, and very wrong to want it to be another kind of gain. If my gain comes from stepping on you, manipulating you, exploiting you, being indifferent or insensitive to you, or using you, then I'm not loving.” “The alternative is that I seek my joy in your blessing. I seek my joy in your joy. I seek my joy in your salvation. I seek my joy in loving you as I long to be loved. That is the gain that verse 3 tells us we receive when we love.” God wants us to seek our joy in loving people. Love seeks its joy in the happiness of the beloved. So seeking your own in not seeking your own. Consider whether you feel that someone is loving when they are compelled to kindness by duty, etc. and yet are begrudging. Would you not rather have them want to be kind? To take joy in it? Find your joy in the joy of the beloved, because you get the best joy that way, and they really feel loved that way. Seeking Your Own in Loving Others

  • From Mahaney’s blog: Christ has been raised, and so both the cross and the grave are now empty. In light of this, isn’t it wrong to focus on a crucified Savior when, after all, we serve a living Christ? This creates a dangerous and false choice. He is risen. And he is also the suffering servant. To conceive of Christ apart from the cross is to distort his identity and his mission, much as Peter did when he rebuked Jesus for announcing his pending suffering and death (Mark 8:31-33). We can infer God’s greatness and power from his creation (Romans 1:19-20), but it is at the cross that his love and mercy are most fully revealed. 2- Why focus on a crucified Savior when we serve a risen Savior-

  • JT: This post lists numerous ways Jesus supersedes and fulfills the types and persons of the Old Testament. The Bible isn’t about you. It’s about Jesus. The Bible Is Not Basically about You

  • T-fan notes how mitochondrial DNA is a problem for evolutionists. Passed down maternally, it’s commonly understood that there is a ‘mitochondrial Eve’, the female ancestor of all living humans. T-fan observes how a scientist simply speculates, without knowing, or evidence, that there is ‘always some other female that predates [Eve]’. How on earth would we have access to this information? Mitochondrial Eve

  • This looks useful – eight questions in moral valuation. 1) am I fully persuaded that it is right? 2) can I do it as unto the Lord? 3) can I do it without being a stumbling block to my brother or sister in Christ?  4) does it bring peace? 5) does it edify my brother? 6) is it profitable? 7) does it enslave me? 8) does it bring glory to God?  Scripture distinguishes between actions covered by moral absolutes and those that are not. Believers must make up their own minds (under the Holy Spirit’s leading) on what to do in matters of Christian liberty. Personal preferences must not be imposed on others. Eight Questions to Ask in Making a Moral Decision in the Category of Liberty

  • Triablogue: A Florida church is commemorating the 9th anniversary of September 11 by holding a burn a Qur’an day. i) A Christian does not take a stand against Islam by burning a Qur'an.  A conservative American might, yes, but the two terms are far from interchangeable. ii) Nobody seems to see the obvious connections to what's been done for centuries by Islam and decades by brainless liberals. iii) This kind of activity reveals one's heart with respect to missions and outreach to those who do not know Jesus Christ. iv) The pastor makes many true points about Islam, but others are ignorant – like judging the truth of a religion by how many smiles its adherents make. v) All the true problems with Islam are reasons to share the Gospel with Muslims. It would seem the pastor is first an American, though. Burn a Qur'an Day

  • Wednesday, August 25, 2010

    2010-08-25

  • From Discovery Channel: “the decay rates of radioactive elements are changing. This is especially mysterious as we are talking about elements with 'constant' decay rates -- these values aren't supposed to change, school textbooks teach us this from an early age.” It seems the sun is emitting a strange particle which is meddling with decay rates (from researchers at Stanford and Perdue). “The decay rates are changing throughout the year in a predictable pattern.” We either don’t understand neutrinos very well at all, or the sun is emitting something we’re not aware of. “If either case is true, we'll have to go back and re-write those textbooks.” [NOTE: one of the key assumptions in radiometric dating is CONSTANT decay rates! The article even acknowledges this, noting it would through the scientific community into a spin] http://news.discovery.com/space/is-the-sun-emitting-a-mystery-particle.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1

  • Girltalk cites Piper, who points out from Psalm 126:5-6 that there is work to do whether we are emotionally up for it or not. If you sow even through sorrow, the promise of this psalm is that you will ‘reap with shouts of joy… not because the tears of sowing produce the joy of reaping, but because the sheer sowing produces the reaping.’ Talking to Your Tears

  • Turretinfan shows that while Rome's practices with respect to the freedom of religion have obviously changed (i.e. no modern inquisitors!) Rome's view on coercion of apostates is actually set in a dogmatic definition. On the one hand, Trent says that people who reject Christianity upon coming of age, but who were baptized as infants, are to be compelled beyond excommunication. On the other, Cardinal Ratzinger says that the church’s mission is to proclaim salvation to all, following in Christ’s footsteps, while knowing that "truth can impose itself on the mind only by virtue of its own truth, which wins over the mind with both gentleness and power". T-fan asks, How is the alleged freedom of self-determination consistent with compulsion beyond excommunication? Rome and Freedom of Religion

  • From Desiring God: 13 Questions to Diagnose Your Idolatries

  • DG has some encouraging words on the work of God through Christian Hip Hop artists, who have God-centred music and lyrics. What God Is Doing Through Christian Hip Hop

  • Phillips recommends Tragdor (with the hope he starts blogging more). “For [some obscure figure] — wherein Trogdor notes that Justin Taylor opines that things are what they are... except in one particular area; and No true Scotsman would write a post like this — making short work of one particular atheist silliness.” Enjoy. Trogdor is Trogdorizing

  • Engwer interacts on atheists on resurrection witnesses. Some points: i) Under traditional authorship, Matthew saw the risen Jesus, John is the beloved disciple, who saw Him, and the belief that seeing Jesus risen was a criterion for apostleship was widespread. Peter affirms Peter’s status as an eyewitness. ii) The claim that Paul "merely saw a vision of Jesus on the Damascus Road rather than Jesus himself" is contradicted by Acts 22:14 and 1 Corinthians 9:1. iii) Even the testimony of Paul taken as a whole is just a portion of the evidence Christians have traditionally cited.  Resurrection Witnesses And Acts 26-19

  • Hays continues defending penal substitution: i) In the story of Achan, the principle of collective punishment doesn’t being with Achan’s family. It begins with Israel. God holds Israel responsible for his crime (Josh 7:1,11). ii) Israelites were killed in battle despite their ignorance of Achan’s crime. iii) The generation upon which the Mosaic covenant was enacted was pretty much all dead, yet the younger generation is help to it, though they weren’t the signatories. iv) God held Israel responsible for Achan’s sin, even though they were ignorant, so there’s no reason to think the sanction was predicated on “corruption and complicity” of his wife and kids. v) Does collective guilt punish the innocent? Not from the narrator’s perspective. vi) Finally, corporate responsibility cuts both ways. In the very same book, Rahab and her family are the beneficiaries of this principle. Corporate solidarity

  • Hays continues here: i) Unmerited suffering raises the same moral or theodicean issue as unmerited punishment. ii) Distinguishing between “punishment” and “consequences” is an artificial dichotomy, for a punishment is simply a special type of consequence. iii) The fringe benefits of punishment are secondary to retributive punishment. iv) The Bible itself doesn’t view penal substitution as contrary to its canons of justice. And extrabiblical objections have no force. To ground the objection to substitutionary atonement in an objective moral norms, while appealing to evolutionary psychology, means that one really only explains the origin of moral beliefs. It doesn’t prove they map to moral facts. Indeed, such a view of the formation of moral sensibilities undercuts their normative force. v) The human administration of justice is necessarily imperfect inasmuch as human judges aren’t privy to all of the relevant factors–unlike God. So a law code might contain measures to restrain human judicial authority. Such measures aren’t applicable to the divine administration of justice. Former Fundy's latest failure

  • Challies: At the True Woman blog is a discussion about the growing problem of girls and pornography. Not Just a Guy’s Struggle

  • Purswell answers, “Sovereign Grace churches and leaders often use the phrase “cross-centered.” Doesn’t this phrase lead to an overemphasis on the cross and a neglect of the resurrection?” ‘Cross’ functions as a metonymy for the whole complex of Christ’s atoning work. (Gal. 6:14; 1 Cor. 2:2; 1 Cor 1:17). Hence, we refer to it as ‘cross-work’. The cross and resurrection are inextricable.  1- Will focusing on the cross lead us to neglect the resurrection-

  • Edwards Sermons – Yale has made everything FREE ONLINE! Whoooot! New Jonathan Edwards Sermons Are a Blessing and a Joy

  • CMI: Our blood is not similar to seawater, contra evolutionists who make this baseless claim. The mineral concentrations are different. The claim doesn’t even make sense according to evolutionary beliefs. They hold amphibians came out of the sea more than 350 million years ago. Salt is being added to the sea all the time, by rivers carrying dissolved salts from the land to the sea, for example. It would have taken a maximum of 62 million years to accumulate all the sodium we now have in the oceans. CMI then goes into some detail on the concentrations and functions of blood. Red-blooded evidence

  • Science articles often go beyond the data. A jumble of bones found on an island is boring; people want a story of what they were, and how they got that way. Many scientists and reporters are only happy to fulfill that curiosity. This article goes into details here: Dinosaur Graveyards and Arctic Tortoises- Who’s Got the Context-

  • JT notes the slanderous and shameful responds of Dr. Giberson to Al Mohler. “Giberson’s response is, frankly, embarrassing—especially for a Christian. With hyperbolic immaturity he casts aspersions upon Dr. Mohler’s character… This piece by Dr. Giberson confirms my impressions of Biologos. They may be doing some helpful things here and there, but some of their main themes seem to be an insisting on theistic evolution, casting doubts on Adam and Eve’s historicity, and the undermining of inerrancy.”. Mohler, Biologos, and Slander

  • Mohler’s letter to Giberson is great, and it cuts to the main issues. He begins, “I will respond by means of this open letter, though your tone and chosen forum are not indicative of any serious desire for an honest exchange. Your choice of a secular website, well known for its more liberal leanings, is quite a statement in itself. Did you write this in order to gain the favorable attention of the readers at The Huffington Post? If so, presumably you have your reward. But your tone — hardly the tone of a serious scholar or scientist — is even more disappointing.” But he goes to the main issues: “Of far greater concern is your tendency to appear to agree with some of Darwin’s complaints against biblical Christianity… If your intention in Saving Darwin is to show “how to be a Christian and believe in evolution,” what you have actually succeeded in doing is to show how much doctrine Christianity has to surrender in order to accommodate itself to evolution. In doing this, you and your colleagues at BioLogos are actually doing us all a great service. You are showing us what the acceptance of evolution actually costs, in terms of theological concessions.”  On Darwin and Darwinism- A Letter to Professor Giberson 

  • From Beggar’s All: “It could be that Aquila and Priscilla, like Paul, became itinerant missionaries, and they could well have settled back in Ephesus where they seem to have started.” Aquila and Priscilla, itinerants

  • To those so interested, from AIG: Baraminological Analysis Places Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba in the Human Holobaramin: Discussion

  • Tuesday, August 24, 2010

    2010-08-24

  • JT notes that a judge has blocked Obama’s executive order to expand funding for embryonic stem cell research. Judge Lamberth wrote, in part, “ESC research necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo.” JT points to Joe Carter’s Q&A on the matter, and a number of resources on the immorality of Obama’s executive order. FAQs on Stems Cells

  • Piper couldn’t speak before groups until college, and he got C- in preaching!, but God made him a preacher. He says he learned to preach by watching his dad, and how not to do it. He learned to preach as he was so discouraged that he had to dive deep into Scripture, and God made him a preacher by shutting his mouth. He was passionately thrilled by what he saw in the Bible in seminary. Exegesis classes, not homiletics, compelled him to want to preach. He doesn’t understand preachers who go everywhere but the Bible to find something scintillating. He has to work hard to leave the Bible to go somewhere to find an illustration, because everything in the Bible is mind-blowing. Piper says thats not much you can do to be a preacher but know your Bible and be unbelievably excited about what's there, and love people, to connect them with Scripture. How Piper Learned to Preach

  • CMI points out that every NT author alludes to or quotes Genesis, with 60 allusions to Genesis 1-11, 103 in total. CMI notes how the Gospel writes, Jesus, Romans, 1+2 Corinthians, Hebrews (e.g. Abel, Enoch and Noah are heroes of the faith), Peter, and Jude treat it as history. Genesis in the New Testament

  • Beggar’s All notes that a “scholar like Thomas Schreiner (and with him, Carson and Moo) can not only say that they hold all 13 Pauline epistles as authentic (and the works of 1 and 2 Peter to be authentic as well, for example), they are able to say precisely what the theories are of the scholars who disagree with them, and in the process of stating these other theories as clearly as they can, they also argue strenuously for their own (conservative) positions.” That is the most intellectually honest approach there is. The most fundamentally honest approach that I can imagine

  • DeYoung asks, what would you write a Christian friend who is in trouble, and buckling under all manner of pressures, be it from the world and sin and social ostracization, and so on? He then takes a short on the emptyness of contemporary bleeding heart approaches that empty God of His Godliness in favour of sentimental platitudes about ‘journey’ and ‘Christianity needing to change or die’ and ‘don’t cling to outmoded views on homosexuality and eternal punishment’. DeYoung instead looks to John’s writings in Revelation 1:4-8: the first thing John told struggling Christians was of the majesty our Triune God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “What you and I need most is not the affirmation of our stories, nor content-less, shapeless platitudes about the mysterious journey of faith, nor a morality pep talk, nor the undermining of God’s sovereignty. What we need is a glimpse of God in all his terrible splendor and wonderful weightiness.” Need Help- Know God

  • Pyro: Blast from the Past- 26 ways in which doing IT Support is better than being a pastor

  • Challies reviews the Archer and the Arrow. While the Trellis and the Vine stood on its metaphor, this does not, and it seems that the metaphor is too complicated or obscure. He does not anticipate many churches speaking of arrowheads, shafts, and features in the way they speak of trellis/vine work. However, while the metaphor is not the most compelling, the book’s contents are far more so. Preachers ought to labor throughout their lives to become better in crafting sermons, in delivering sermons and even in understanding the purpose of sermons. To that end most preachers continue to read books on preaching. And this is just the kind of book that may well prove beneficial to them, as it calls them to be faithful to the task of preaching, though it offers no new techniques or understanding into the task. The Archer and the Arrow

  • JT posts a substantial comment by Wallace on the Comma Johanneum. One gem: “There is also a significant updating to the list of MSS that have the comma Johanneum. Up until a few weeks ago, scholars knew of only eight Greek NT MSS that had the comma either in the text (four MSS) or in the margins (four MSS). The earliest textual reading, as I said above, is found in a fourteenth century MS. The marginal readings are found in one 10th century MS, one 11th century MS, and then three later MSS.” Also, “The Textus Receptus differs from the Byzantine text 1838 times! The Byzantine text also differs from the standard critical text 6577 times. In reality, all of them are closer to each other than they could be; there are several MSS that are ‘out there,’ far more disparate from either the Byzantine or critical texts.” Wallace on the Comma Johanneum at 1 John 5.7

  • AiG notes that ‘NASA scientists found the missing day in the Bible’ is a bad argument: investigation reveals that this type of tale dates back to the late 1800s. The story picked up more steam after the 1936 book The Harmony of Science and Scripture promoted it. AiG points out that we have no frame of reference by which to tell if a day is missing from our vantage point. NASA Found Joshua’s Missing Day

  • Turretinfan points to a video of a Romanist priest interviewing fellow New Yorkers about the assumption of Mary. T-fan notes that though the video doesn’t go into much depth, it still messes up a few things – confusing the year of the definition of the dogma with the year of the feast, and asserting that there have been only two exercises of papal infallibility. There is a very open question about whether there have been other examples throughout history where a pope has used this alleged gift of infallibility. Basically, if you are going to evangelize Roman Catholics, you need to know their religion better than they do, rather than relying on them to explain to you what their religion teaches. Assumption or Guess-

  • Patton has a post discussing the issue of the prohibition of alcohol. He notes a preacher who makes the good points about the danger of compromise, and the point that God knows best, but whose examples are irresponsible, representing a legalistic folk-theology which is more destructive than constructive. Ironically, the preacher has compromised by failing to properly qualify his examples (e.g. Accepting a mixed drink at a party.). We must balance the warning passages in Scripture with those that speak positively about alcohol. Some encourage its celebratory, medicinal, and emotional purposes and effects. Even Christ was accused of being a drunkard. Why? Because he drank alcohol! “In the end, these things must be dealt with carefully and with much wisdom. We must understand that the possible abuse of something neither makes the abuse necessary or even likely. Most importantly, we must recognize that it is a sinful compromise to deem that which is not sinful sinful, due to misapplied folk theology, no matter how good our intentions are. Drinking alcohol is not sinful. Let us get over this legalistic fascination and represent the principle truly and with perspective.” My View About Prohibiting Alcohol

  • Burk comments on Mohler’s convocation address, saying, “Dr. Mohler argues that the evangelical movement provided the theological resources that the SBC needed to mount its conservative resurgence in the 80’s and 90’s. Now, Southern Baptists find themselves in the position of returning the favor.” He calls Southern Baptist to theological integrity, Gospel clarity, and biblical authority (Mohler takes on Peter Enns, Kenton Sparks, and others at the Biologos site). The Future of Evangelicalism and the SBC

  • CEH – apparently the moon is not so geologically dead. Moon May Be Active Today

  • Dusman of Triablogue continues to relate his experience doing outreach on campus. The story is worth a read because he models tremendous respect throughout the course of his efforts, especially in his interactions with law enforcement. He also notes an example of atheistic irrationality. “After open-air preaching for about 1.5 hours, an atheist student associated with the above group briskly walked up and stood directly in front of me such that I was literally preaching over his head for a few seconds. Once he positioned himself directly in front of me he started laughing at me while smoking his cigarette. I knew where this was going, so I immediately stepped off my soapbox and tried to engage him in a rational conversation as he continued to giggle at me like a little schoolgirl.” UNCG Outreach Report 8-24-2010

  • Jensen has seven tips for preachers: “When you preach, be as good as you can. Fledgling preachers tend to be boring. Work out how long you can preach for and still be interesting. Avoid commentaries (he writes, “Spend more time in the biblical text and thinking for yourself about it, and less time answering the problems of the commentators. Scholars who write commentaries are talking to each other, answering each others' questions. They are not the questions that the person in the pew has, and they're often not what the text is about either.” Good to know, but you can’t let it take up all your prep time). Find the logic units of the book; don’t just preach on chapters or paragraphs. Young preachers should start with bigger sections. Expository preaching is worth fighting for (but a lot of other things are not)” Tips for Young Preachers

  • Hays writes, “the Ground Zero mosque is just another attempt by Muslims to mainstream their image. Deceptive PR. When Muslims can’t subjugate the kafir by direct conquest, they resort to an incremental campaign of infiltration to gradually gain political power and dominance. We see this strategy play out in England, Europe, and Canada. And we also see it being implemented in places like Dearborn (to judge by reliable sources).” The Ground Zero mosque

  • Darrell Bock addresses a commentator who claims that Jesus accepted same-sex marriage. i) He defined marriage by Genesis 2. It is a definition of what marriage is and a description of what happened when God brought Adam and Eve together to start the helpmeet relationship that made for a marriage, a male-female design that Jesus affirms. ii) There is no biblical evidence at all for this notion. This claim says something Jesus denied by the very passage he used to define and discuss marriage. iii) To use one poorly handled moral area to open the door for another is not moral progress. iv) Not only is nowhere a same sex marriage in the Bible endorsed, but every time a sexual relationship between the same sex comes up, it is condemned. Jesus even referred to Sodom and Gomorrah as evidence of evil. Bock on homosexuality

  • Trueman has some interesting words about responses to his comments on the doctrinal significance of the appointment of the new president at King’s College, which have been seen as a result of me confusing the different roles of a seminary and a college.  “My concern for doctrinal indifferentism at a Christian College arises not out of a seminary-college category confusion but rather out of my belief that one huge mythological misconception is simply being allowed to continue unchallenged: that there is `a [singular] Christian life and world view' that can be separated as some kind of Platonic ideal from the phenomena of particular confessional commitment, whether Reformed, Anabaptist or whatever.  It is time to come clean: we need to speak of Christian life and world views (plural) and we need to acknowledge that  those who talk of such in the singular are more than likely privileging their particular view of the world (including their politics -- Left and Right) as the normative Christian one, and thus as being essentially beyond criticism and scrutiny -- whether that view is doctrinally complex or indifferent to all but being `born again.'”

  • From Aomin. Peter Stravinskas Threatens to Sue Alpha and Omega Ministries

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