DG has a program centered on gift bags that contain an ESV Share the Good News Outreach New Testament, a Good News of Christmas gospel tract, and a customizable invitation to your church's Christmas event. 50 bags for $50. Share the Good News of Christmas
White notes that Frank Beckwith never left Rome in any key or fundamental ways: the only solid foundation of justification by faith is that of sovereign grace. Beckwith never jettisoned Rome’s views of nature, man, and grace. He cites Trueman saying that not being Catholic should be a positive act of will and commitment, something we need to get out of bed determined to do each and every day. But many evangelicals lack any good reason for such an act of will. Justification keeps Trueman out of Catholicism. Those who reject it have little reason. White says there is no Gospel down the road to Rome. Did Francis J. Beckwith Ever Leave the Tiber- (Part 4, Conclusion)
CMI has a response to Carl Sagan’s attacks on Christianity in his novel/film Contact. Apparently Sagan actually brings out the ‘bible says the value of PI is 3’ objection [really? really?? that’s about the interpretive level of saying that a poet is communist because he uses the word red somewhere]. Sagan also apparently can’t grasp the summary/expansive narrative structure of Genesis. He also entirely misses the point of two genealogies. The article goes on to the story in much more detail. Sagan seems to want to find alien life so as to falsify Scripture. http://creation.com/carl-sagan-and-contact
Engwer looks at the issue of whether Luke’s census was historical. i) There may be several viable interpretations of Luke (pointing to Bock’s commentary). ii) Our default position isn’t that people are liars. They usually tell the truth. iii) Luke had access to early Christian traditions at a time when the church was under the leadership of those closest to Jesus, and even his childhood. Luke has met at least one member of Jesus’ immediate family (Acts 21:18). iv) Luke has been shown to be generally historically reliable. v) Scripture is divinely inspired. vi) Josephus wasn’t responding to Luke in writing on Quirinius and the census of 6 AD; thus the alleged inconsistencies are indirect. Thus we have alleged indirect denials of Luke's account by some ancient sources accompanied by widespread affirmation of the account among those directly addressing it. vii) Critics of Luke tend to ignore ancient affirmations of Luke’s account. What are we to conclude of their partial selection of evidence? viii) It's not as though an Evangelical must assume Biblical inerrancy without any concern for evidence, then assume Luke's reliability as a result. The conclusion can be argues. ix) A defender of Luke could argue that one or more of the sources who allegedly contradicted Luke were mistaken. And we’re all trying to explain multiple lines of evidence. Critics tend to ignore sources problematic to their position. x) Somebody could conclude that Luke was partially wrong about the census without thinking he was entirely wrong. Is Luke's Census Historical-
Trueman notes the first five of Luther’s qualifications for a good preacher: ability to teach; possession of a good head; eloquence; clarity of speech; and a good memory. This is intriguing because the focus on practicals is often lost in the romantic spiritual notions of ministry. “To put it bluntly: if you cannot put a decent, clear sentence into English and speak it in a way that others can understand, you are not called to the ministry, no matter how much that inner voice tells you that God is calling you to preach, or your mum tells you you'd make a wonderful pastor.” We must never over-spiritualize the call. Elders ought to be honoured, etc. but we must not fall into a sacerdotalism wherein we think the only true value is to hold ordained office. “That requires church officers to be true servants of the people; and to have the courage to tell someone who cannot teach that, however powerful the inner call, they are not called to be a teacher.” Luther on the Marks of a Good Preacher I (Carl Trueman)
DeYoung finishes with the how of rebuking: i) know whom you are rebuking. Know the animals of the ecclesiastical barn. The pigs aren’t worth rebuking. Sheep ought to be dealt with gently. Whack the wolves with a rod. Treat the top dogs with extra respect, but be willing to rebuke them before all. ii) Know who you are; some hate conflict. ‘If you can’t wait for your next opportunity to rebuke, take a little Sabbath from being the Holy Spirit in everyone’s life’. iii) Check your heart (Prov. 17:27; 15:18; James 1:19-20) before you wreck yourself. iv) Check your eye for planks. v) Don’t be loud if you can be soft. Rash words are sword thrusts. (Prov. 12:18). How do we receive rebuke? Consider the source. Is it coming from someone trusted? Are you in the public eye? Consider the substance, the sin, and the Savior. The Ministry of Rebuke (3)
JT points to a 2 Cor. 6:10 illustration in the Lord of the Rings, which in Keller’s words, is helpful in describing the demeanor of Christians: who will feel the fallenness of the world most keenly because they know what God created the world to be, and who know that nothing in history will ever bring about any fundamental repair of things, and yet Christians also have an unquenchable, infallible assurance that in the end, everything will be joy and glory.. Sad but Not Unhappy
Five years ago emergents were the talk of the town: “The Emergent leaders have become a niche in the Christian marketplace, and even worse, some of them have stopped asking questions and started giving us their answers. Kevin DeYoung alluded to this in his "Christianity and McLarenism" where he points out that Brian McLaren has finally arrived at the answers he was seeking, and his answer is essentially classical theological liberalism. As H. Richard Niebuhr put it in describing liberalism, "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of Christ without a cross." And isn't that really where the Emergent crowd was moving in the first place?” They are now leaderless, parasitic, and looking for a home, but their old label has lost its hipness. The church’s answer to the emergent spirit is nothing new: It is the person of God Himself, as revealed in Jesus Christ as found in the Bible. The new calvinism is a generation of Christians who have seen the futility of answerless Christianity. What emergents really wants “was for someone to do the hard work for them and answer their theological questions and to stop making them feel bad for not voting Republican.” The Post-Emergents can affirm the answers exist and get finding them, or become the same group that wrecked the PCUSA 90 years ago and who run the Anglican church today – and no one will argue they’re overflowing in cultural relevance. Have We Arrived at the Post-Emergent era-
For aging women, here’s an exhortation from Carolyn Mahaney to consider such things an opportunity for testing faith and spiritual growth. A Time to Grow
JT would recommend that every church at least be familiar with Peacemaker Ministries and the resources that they offer. JT summarizes them here. They aim for a ‘culture of peacemaking’ throughout a church. Blessed Are the Peacemakers
Turretinfan notes that the problem with starting with an a priori probability of God’s existence and tweaking it based on evidence is that one must assign a value to the significance of the evidence. But the existence of evil can be used to say God doesn’t exist, or that He does exist; the recognition of moral good particularly. Probabilities are still a good conversation starter. “Ultimately, all the evidence that exists is evidence of God's existence, because all things were made by Him, and without him was not anything made that was made. The existence of evil is not contrary evidence any more than the existence (so to speak) of darkness is contrary evidence to the sun.” Someone even mistakenly coming to the conclusion that there is a ‘problem of evil’ is evidence of their God-given sense of right and wrong. Converstation Starter - Probabilities and God
The moon is apparently shrinking. http://news.discovery.com/space/the-moon-is-shrinking-like-a-wrinkled-apple.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1
Phillips: “Challenge: If you won't call it prophecy, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, or God speaking, then what will you call my feelings, hunches, experiences, notions and impulses?
Response: That.” The but-what-about-my-holy-gizzard dodge (NEXT! #24)
Challies says of Spurgeon, who changed his preaching style: “Spurgeon was conscious of his magnetism, of his power as an orator, and he deliberately dialed it back in order to ensure that people did not miss the message behind the messenger. That takes humility.” Reading Biographies Together - Spurgeon (VI)
Hays reminds an interlocutor theistic evolutionist that he answers on his opponents terms, which shouldn’t be a problem, and not every issue in exchanges has a ‘plain position’; in questions of epistemology, and other things, we must live with ambiguities at times. i) If the Bible is authoritative, then it can rule out certain options. That’s not a direct disproof of the options. But it’s a legitimate move given the premise. This only works with an opponent who holds Scripture as authoritative. ii) The theistic evolutionists holds an eccentric, reductionistic interpretation, which posits a false dichotomy between cosmic temple motifs and factual information about the world. iii) To claim that 10,000 years simply isn't long enough to accommodate the full trajectories of all extinct species, even if there was a worldwide flood, is debatable, with many variables. iv) Hays notes again the difference between human perception of an encoded representation of part of reality and reality, like a music score to a symphony. Also, the transmission of nonpropositional information doesn’t necessarily supply the same built-in verification. All you need to navigate/function is a reliable correlation between what there is and what you perceive–like a flight simulator. v) There’s a difference between understanding a sentence and seeing a tree, so the criticism can’t be analogously leveraged against Scripture. vi) God in his providence will enable his people to know what they need to know. It’s like sense-knowledge. Our senses are generally reliable, but fallible. I don’t have to draw a line. It’s ultimately up to God to ensure that our senses are right enough of the time to accomplish his purpose in our lives. vii) divine revelation is a precondition for human knowledge, so at that transcendental level the Bible cannot even in principle be wrong. That’s like asking if a truth-condition can in principle be wrong. The divine foot in the door
Patton (whose sister committed suicide) looks at the question of whether those who commit suicide go to hell. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses (present tense; 1 John1:7) us from all sin, not just some sins. Some may say that all sins have to be confessed before death. I disagree. To say that we cannot have unconfessed sin when we die is problematic both biblically and practically. If we cannot truly be saved until we die with all sins confessed, then we cannot ever say that we are saved as Paul does. Eph. 2:8; John 6:24. The practical problem is this: If you do have to die without any unconfessed sin, how are you to be spiritually aware enough to remember all your sins? Christ’s death is a once for all remedy to our damnation. Do People Who Commit Suicide Go to Hell-
Hays has a reflection on his own father’s death 11 years ago. Our Father
Bird notes what he thinks is “the real gist of what [Hebrews] is about. First, Heb. 2.1-4 functions a bit like a propositio or central contention and it pertains to the danger of ignoring "such a great salvation". Second, there is passing remark in Heb. 12.15, "See to it that no one misses the grace of God that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many".” He notes that this indicates that the author recognizes he’s writing to a mixed audience: There are warnings of neglecting the offered salvation, and also the exhortation to make sure God’s grace will have a magnetic/pruning effect on everyone. Central Themes in Hebrews
John Frame writes on the perspecuity of Scripture. Defining Perspicuity
Sola-panel defines stress-thrower as one who blames things on others and expresses stress in anger; and a stress-absorber as one who blames things on themselves and expresses stress in anxiety. Both need this message: “Our sin is greater than we will ever know, but God's grace is greater still.” Stress-throwers and stress-absorbers
Adam’s responds here to the objection that ‘you talk about nothing else but sin’. Well, all problems stem from Adam’s sin. If you trace genetic problems, environmental factors, and poor training back far enough, you would discover that it is because of the fall that these problems exist. Adams is careful to note this isn’t a one-to-one problem to individual transaction: the cases of Job and the man born blind (John 9) are explicit examples of the fact that people do not always bring their problems upon themselves. Where no causal relationship between one’s behavior and his circumstances is apparent nouthetic counselors aim to help one face things with a biblical attitude and actions. He says, “We do not accuse every person of sin when he comes for counseling.” You Talk About Nothing Else But Sin
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