2010-08-18

Mohler comments on professors who see themselves as agents of ideological indoctrination, rather than stewards of the teaching profession. All teaching involves ideology and intellectual commitments. There is no position of authentic objectivity. Some set it as their aim to indoctrinate students into their own noxious and troubling worldview. Christian parents and students ought to be aware of such secularization of most educational institutions. Many are antagonistic to Christianity. Some even openly admit their agenda. One prof argues that the college experience is the best opportunity to break down the students’ commitment to moral commitments derived ‘from their parents’ religion. One prof comments on ‘red’ states ‘outbreeding’ blue states (agreeing that liberals have lower fertility rates) and proudly claims, regarding when the ‘red progeny’ gets to college: “And then they are all mine.” They seek to indoctrinate people into their own beliefs. http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/08/18/and-then-they-are-all-mine-the-real-agenda-of-some-college-professors/

Challies now gives five reasons why e-books are better than books [i.e. they’re more convenient]. 5 Reasons E-Books Are Better Than Books

Piper’s concern in contemporary debates over justification is that some would start to build what are really the fruits of the imputation of righteousness into the instrument of justification, in addition to faith alone. The imputation of Christ’s righteousness is through union with Christ, and we are attached in that union through faith alone. Some say this disconnects justification from love and mercy and goodness and justice and kindness; they claim you can become indifferent to these things, thinking of yourself as holy. So to keep these things close (as they should be) they bring them into the instrument by which we’re attached to Christ. But this undermines the goal of justice and mercy, etc. because you cannot make any progress in holiness without a profound, deep, powerful assurance that we are accepted by God by faith alone. If you try to make the fruit of justification part of the root of justification, the fruit itself is destroyed. God has designed it such that the perception of the reality of justification serves as the fundamental driver for recapitulating God’s consideration of you in the world. The whole sense of assurance necessary to make progress in fruitfulness is done away with by turning the fruit into the root. The fruits of the Spirit truly matter. We are not born again if we aren’t producing them, if we aren’t living differently than not being born again. Justification by faith alone is the best way forward in this. Wilberforce built his anti-slave trade life on justification: "My main goal is to help England understand that transformation in life and in slave-trade is the fruit of justification, not the root." There is a clear distinction between how one is justified before God and how one becomes holy in the world. John Piper's Concern in the Justification Debate

Turk continues explaining his problems with BioLogos. i) When they call miracles rare, they don’t mean it as a cessationist. They mean that things the Bible identifies as acts of God aren’t actually miracles but can be explained better by science than the writes of Scripture. ii) To their credit, they point out the inconsistency of post-modern skepticism, in that nobody considers themselves the only measure of truth when they actually need something from another. iii) They still foreshadow a problem when they say, “scientists aren't postmodern because of their experience.” The implication here is that experience is the measure of the value of truth. First, they say that science has a self-correcting mechanism, but its not actually above science epistemologically; it is intrinsic to science specifically because of its method. This is why Turk calls BioLogos a cult: while they say they may be wrong, their human method is how they will be corrected to produce ‘enormous results’. This is a post-modern definition of science as it relies heavily on the validity of experience rather than the nature of objective reality. Second, this naturalistic view of science sells Scripture short, since it thinks all causes can be the subject of scientific discovery. They make the scientific reason the primary reference. That, and they think we can believe the historicity of the birth of Jesus because science has generously explained the star at His birth. Scripture’s take ‘is another acceptable interpretation’. Their answer to reconciling science and scripture is that science is the basis for substantiating Scripture. Doxology of the Scientific Method

Here is a list of definitions of the word "apologetics" from both presuppositional and classical/evidential apologists. Definitions of Apologetics

Carl Trueman points to a video at BioLogos which takes the Reformed/Wesleyan controversies, which both sides have thought of as vitally important throughout the centuries, and declares them matters of comparative indifference. Pastorally there are huge differences, on sin, election, sovereignty, sanctification, and this will affect preaching in and out, counseling those suffering and dying, and so on. Calvin and Wesley (Carl Trueman)

From DG: “At the same time this Friday that we're showing the film premiere to our live audience here in Minneapolis (7:30pm CT), we will also be streaming the whole thing live on the Don't Waste Your Life Sentence webpage. So this is your official invitation to join us online this Friday, August 20th, to hear some amazing testimonies about how God has been working behind bars at Angola State Penitentiary.” One Way to Not Waste This Friday Night\

Girltalk says that the biblical solution to dealing with motherly fears is to fear God more – when you fear God, there is not much else to fear. They provide a quote from Ed Welch: “If you are trained in medicine and have parented five children, you aren’t going to worry when your neighbor asks you to watch her ten-year-old for twenty minutes. If you really want to fight fear, learn to fear Someone who captures your attention in such a way that your other fears suddenly seem pedestrian and unimportant.” As per Prov. 14:26, to fear God is to protect your children. Mother Fears

Beggar’s All recommends two resources on Bioethics for protestants: “Bioethics and the Christian Life: A Guide to Making Difficult Decisions (VanDrunen) Bioethics: A Primer for Christians (Meilaender)” Two Bioethics Book Recommendations

JT points to Tom Schreiner’s forthcoming book, 40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law. [I really like Schreiner, too]. JT lists the questions. Schreiner Answers 40 Questions on Gospel and Law

Patton notes that accommodation theories are very popular with regard to Scripture. Things are often explained as saying God was simply ‘accommodating’ to the contemporary way of thinking. “Whether it be the story of creation, the flood, Paul’s admonition to women not to teach, a donkey speaking, the “fire from heaven” that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, or Christ and Paul’s reference to Adam and Eve, these all can be tagged with a nuanced view of truth: “Yeah, its true, but not really.”” Now, to some extent he says we all accept accommodation theories, such as phenomenological language [I don’t think I’d call this accommodating – well, maybe to our time!], anthropomorphisms, etc. But where is the line drawn? For example, some today say that demon possession was mere accommodation, and Christ’s miracles weren’t quite how they were described; they’re mere medical conditions that can be treated. Has Modern Science Made Belief in Demon Possession Unnecessary-

Virtual worlds are apparently quite easily exploitable should someone want to try to get at your bank accounts through them. Second Life uses Quicktime Player, which has an unpatched buffer overflow vulnerability [yes, Apple products have holes in them. Many, many holes]. Owning Virtual Worlds For Fun and Profit

Beggar’s All notes the marriage loophole Roman bishop (c. 217-22) used to deal with the demographic imbalance of more woman entering the church than men. Women from noble class would forego their status through legal marriage, so Callistus allowed them to choose partners, slave or free, and consider them husbands, apart from legal marriage: “From that time on the alleged believing women began to resort to contraceptive methods and to corset themselves in order to cause abortions, because, on account of their lineage and their enormous wealth, they did not wish to have a child from a slave or a commoner.” The woman who didn’t want to lose the title ‘clarissima’, Callistus allowed a concubinage instead. Now, Rome says she doesn’t permit divorce. But with this arrangement they called it an ‘annulment’, the marriage never existed! “if they were to use the usual sense of the language, then they would have to admit that Callistus's end-run around the usual definition of what was a legal marriage was really an instance of permitting unmarried couples to live in sin. And of course, the pope is infallible. So they're stuck defending this set-up.” The reason [rooted in history] why the Roman Catholic Church calls it annulment and not divorce

DeYoung talks about when to rebuke: The more hurtful the action or error. When sin is ruining a marriage, you’d better get rebuking. Potential for escalation, the more a person is blind to it, the more habitual, and the more you’ll be held to account for your silence, the more Christ’s name is dishonoured or the Gospel threatened, are all times to rebuke. The Ministry of Rebuke (2)

Beggar’s All: Regarding Luther saying that ‘reason’ was an enemy of the faith. he said so because it deems the things of God to be absurd nonsense. “In a “traditional” concept of faith, faith is put into something that we can empirically or rationally verify. Luther held that by looking at the God of the Bible, one comes to know a “weak and foolish God,” since this God is not known by wisdom and signs (or by a process we can control).” Luther isn’t here rejecting human reason. Rather, reason simply plays the role of the servant to theology. Luther- Reason must be left behind for it is the enemy of faith

AiG responds to an article by eight geologists, writing in Modern Reformation, which argues specifically that the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), and by inference committed Christians in all other denominations, should reject Noah’s Flood as geologically significant and adopt an old-earth view of Genesis. AiG answers the following arguments: 1) Prominent theologians accept an old-earth interpretation of Genesis. (truth isn’t determined by majority vote) 2) The Copernican Revolution is an appropriate analogy to the old-earth/young-earth debate; i.e., the church is embarrassing itself by not accepting science. (this is rehashed propaganda dating from the enlightenment) 3) Geologists have proven the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and virtually all geologists, including many devout Christians, accept that conclusion. (‘all’ geologists used to think Lyellian gradualism was the fundamental principle) 4) Naturalism, the worldview, is not required by the old-earth view. (these geologists attempt to restrict “naturalism” to a method of science, while ignoring the metaphysical commitments of secular science) 5) The geology of Lake Suigetsu in Japan demands millions of years. (the dating methods are contestable) 6) Modern plate motion measurements confirm the 180 million years of same-rate spreading of the Atlantic Ocean crust predicted by geology. (a dense grid of infallible dates would be needed to prove this – which they don’t have;  modern measurements don’t prove things have been moving for 180 million years)  7) This geological evidence of great age, if not really true, creates a serious theological problem: God’s honesty. The young-earth view makes God a “deceiver” because general revelation is so clear. (Even in the early church when battles were fought with Greek philosophy that advocated a cosmos much older than the Bible or even an eternal universe, theologians recognized that ex nihilo creation logically included an appearance of age) [if God told us how/when He made things, He’s not deceiving if we infer an age ourselves!] 8) The young-earth view is a practical obstacle to faith in Christ because it is so obviously wrong, and particularly undermines the faith of children. (indoctrination to naturalism is hardly better). Summary of a Response to “PCA Geologists on the Antiquity of the Earth”. More detail here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v5/n1/response-old-earth-advocacy

CMI has an article on the big bang. “Christians do not need Hawking’s elusive ‘grand unified theory’ of the universe to know the mind of God or to know who they are, why they exist, and where they are going. We already have access to the mind of God in the Bible… there is no better astronomic theory for the origin of the universe than the inspired explanation of the Bible.” http://creation.com/the-mind-of-god-and-the-big-bang

Hays wonders if environmentalist efforts to protect seals aren’t leaving humans at greater risk from shark attacks. Then, some of them just won’t care… Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water

Engwer discusses objections to the historicity of the slaughter of infants as recorded in Matthew. i) Herod was  a king who often had opponents (perceived or not) killed unjustly. Post-birth infanticide was common. The reason to this would be quite different than in our time. ii) Matthew 2:7 says Herod acts covertly in context. iii) Many assume that it was a large number of children. iv) Keener notes that Matthew is actually generally conservative in his citations of Scripture, if one were to begin with the standards of ancient texts in general, and not with naive fundamentalism or skepticism. v) the similarities between the accounts of Moses and Jesus are accompanied by many differences. Engwer continues with a number of other points. Is The Slaughter Of The Innocents Historical-

Hays answers a theistic evolutionist who compares the interpretation of Scripture to interpreting the claims of faith healers and naturalists, in that one must exercise reason to properly interpret. Hays notes that the presumption therein is only sa good as the example cited to illustrate it, and says, “In cases involving manifest charlatans or deluded cult-members, then of course we’re justified in dismissing their testimony. That goes to the type of witness, which also goes to the credibility of the witness. The credibility of a claim has always been tied to the credibility of the claimant. That applies with equal force to claims about ordinary events.” Critically testing miracle claims doesn’t means suspecting every one until it is proven otherwise. “Had Abraham slammed the door on the divine foot (Gen 18:1-10; Heb 13:2), he would have missed out on God’s gracious promise.” Entertaining angels unawares

Hays continues to respond to the theistic evolutionist on a number of eclectic points: i) Some say the Genesis account lacks technical specificity, but it’s true at the level of specificity it aims for. It’s speaking at the categorical level, natural kinds by category. Inspiration covers what the Bible teaches.  ii) A basic problem with the framework hypothesis is the way it overrides the explicit septunarian sequential progression by subordinating that pattern of a nonlinear, hexadic pattern. iii) That Scripture frequently uses round figures for numerological purposes doesn’t mean they don’t approximate real time (numerology sometimes occurs in literary genres (e.g. Revelation) where it does not approximate a real-world analogue, but that’s a side-effect of the genre, not the numerology, per se.) iv) The bible leaves it an open question where the cycle was instantiated, as it teaches creation ex nihilo, and that of periodic processes. v) Genesis certainly doesn’t have an evolutionary narrative (responding to the implication that an evolutionary take is more faithful!) vi) The theistic evolutionist is duplicitous, demanding biblical warrant for counterarguments to his biblically unwarranted arguments. vii) The detail in Genesis doesn’t mean that one can shoehorn evolution into it. viii) YEC doesn’t attribute the fossil record to creation a la prochronic time. It attributes the fossil record to a global flood. ix) the Bible is silent on the origin of fossils. Scripture doesn’t affirm or deny extinct species. If you grant pre-fall predation, this isn’t even an issue. x) To the disagreement with a disjunction between appearances and the external world, *scientific* analysis of sensory perception ironically shows that the observer does not and cannot directly perceive the external world. Everything is coded. “This is one of the dilemmas of scientific realism. If you accept the scientific analysis of sensory perception, then it undercuts the univocal correspondence between the distal stimulus and the proximal stimulus. ” xi) Responding to the claim then that all we’d have is a ‘mental image of revelation’, revelation is the revelation of ideas. Propositional content. If that’s garbled in process of communication, then the result is gibberish. Since, however, the Bible is intelligible, we know that God successfully communicated his message to the percipient. The process of transmission is self-confirming. xii) Starlight being created in progress involves the initial set-up conditions of a cyclical process. xiii) present. Past miracles, like answers to prayer or providential timing, affect the “course of nature” further down the line. Yet in many cases that would be indetectible further down the line. xiv) The theistic evolutionist minimizes exceptions to the uniformity of nature. But that’s not quantifiable. xv) Reducing Romans 5 to spiritual death is scarcely compatible with 1 Cor 15. Rocks of ages