Aomin: Interacting with an atheist regarding epistemology, Hubner points out that God is a game-changer: God is utterly unique, and “nothing can be compared to knowing God through the Creator's specific/special revelation; the Creator-creature relationship in epistemology bears the mark of uniqueness when compared to creature-creation relationships of knowing.” If knowledge is generally justified by true belief, then there are different types of degrees of justification. The Creator’s claim is more epistemically certain than the creature’s: There are two levels of everything: the level of creature and the level of Creator; God knows things differently than we do. Moreover, God Himself is sovereign over creation which includes both the knower, the knowledge, and the object of knowledge. The Creator can control the creature's faculties, guaranteeing the highest degree of justification for a given claim. More points: Why presuppose the impossibility of a creator? And desire of belief in God is irrelevant and objectively impossible to prove in the case of any believer (i.e. to show that its not believing out of the impossiblity to the contrary, etc). It is not mere psychological comfort; The affirmation of the existence of God is the most psychologically discomforting fact of reality for the sinful man. The biblical sense of comfort is not what’s in view here; God is a galactic inconvenience to anyone in sin. Everyone has faith in something. Everyone has presuppositions. And knowledge of the non-existence of something requires far greater justification than the knowledge of the existence of something. Christian epistemology has the edge because the Creator (Himself being beyond epistemic uncertainty) can via revelation or divine act endow certainty, for He can make truth known, He can reveal knowledge. A Response to Alonzo Fyfe- A Case Study in Epistemology
Patton has a sad and honest post on suicide (his sister committed suicide). For those considering suicide
DeYoung quotes the late Dorothy Sayers, who, on noting the failure of philosophies, science, etc. observes that it is an ample opportunity for the church to speak, for theology. She says, writing half a century ago “The task is not made easier by the obstinate refusal of a great body of nominal Christians, both lay and clerical, to face the theological question. “Take away theology and give us some nice religion” has been the popular slogan for so long that we are likely to accept it, without inquiring whether religion without theology has any meaning. And however unpopular I may make myself, I shall and will affirm that the reason why the churches are discredited today is not that they are too bigoted about theology, but that they have run away from theology.”. A Great Opportunity for Great Theology
Phillips notes that “Imam Rauf, immediately after 9/11, partially blamed America for the murderous attack, calling it an "accomplice," and saying bin Laden was "made in the USA." But he wants us to think this mosque is all about peace and reconciliation and wonderfulness.” Hither and thither 8/20/10
Daniel Wallace has an intro to the King James Only controversy here. HT: ETC. http://bible.org/article/conspiracy-behind-new-bible-translations; Dan Wallace's The Conspiracy Behind the New Bible Translations
Phil Johnson, pointing to the example of the superficial faddish concerns of a magazine like Relevant Magazine to see the inevitable trajectory of radical contextualization. “In short, regular readers of Relevant are relentlessly force-fed topics, values, and perspectives borrowed from sources like People and Us. They aren't being taught the importance of having a biblical position, even on something as central to our faith as the gospel—much less on a moral issue like gay marriage.” If they actually wanted to be relevant in a meaningful way, then perhaps they would put out articles titled "Why Our Readers Don't Seem to Care About Justification by Faith," or "Why we seldom deal with serious biblical issues." The magazine has an article on ‘why our generation doesn’t care about prop 8’ with weak [and just plain silly and wrong] reasoning like kids today are much more thoughtful and more charitable than evangelicals have ever been. [you mean the Apple iClones who walk into traffic without looking while texting, blurt all their relational bile on twitter and facebook, couldn’t be punctual if life depended on it, flake out on commitments of all sorts because the phone allows them to ‘reschedule’ everything, and waste colossal amounts of time playing video games, etc. while feeling righteous on account of mere moral alignment with certain ‘injustices’ while not lifting one real finger to do a thing about it, content to think a 2 week vacation to the third world constitutes real concern, all the while comfortable in their cognitive dissonance? Them? The ones who don’t seem to care about the 950 million aborted children worldwide? Uh huh. I know I’m convinced. /rant] Chasing Cool and Becoming Merely Lukewarm
In light of my previous rant, here’s Triablogue’s Dusman with his experience at an outreach on campus. “Please understand that I do not desire to simply demean the folks that I'm about to describe, but I'm sad to say it; these folks oftentimes cannot answer the simplest of questions nor do they demonstrate any ability to think critically.” People were confused by the question of whether a conversion could be held in two places simultaneously. He zeroes in on the problem of utter ignorance and lack of critical thinking in the pews: "If you claim to be a Christian, yet you can't explain Christianity 101, what reason do I have to believe you're really a Christian?". Dusman goes on to relate the conversations he had. Well worth the read. For example, “among the last two girls I spoke with, one claimed to be a believer and the other did too initially, then she confessed 5 minutes into the conversation that she was really an atheist. I then said, "So, you were lying to me?" and she laughed, and then "Yeah". So I said, "Why are you an atheist?" and she responded, "Well, I just feel like there's no god." So I said, "Hey, if I feel like it's okay to make up a god and claim that I must sacrifice children to appease this made-up god, would that be okay since I felt in my heart that it was true?" They both said, "No!" I then said to the atheist girl, "then how's that any different from what you are doing?"” GTCC Outreach Report 8-20-2010
Hays fields a number of objections to vicarious atonement. He points out that moral intuition is not compelling, and notes it cuts both ways, since many find the idea of an innocent party volunteering to take the rap for a friend to be morally compelling. “If Jim and John have a mutual friend in Justin, and Jim offends John, then Justin may be able to intercede on behalf of Jim, as favor between friends. Jim is the vicarious beneficiary of Justin's friendship with John. John wouldn't do it for Jim (with whom he's currently estranged), but he will do it for Justin. John is treating Jim as if Jim were Justin. As if he were entitled to the same treatment as Justin.” Moral intuition against the justice of the cross is no more than opinion; it can’t be proved, at best, illustrations to persuade may be used. Hundreds of millions of people find penal substitution intuitively compelling, so your intuition can’t pull rank on their intuition. Only a divine norm could. And no one denies the fact that the offender deserves punishment. The issue is whether a second party can punished in his stead. The notion of vicarious atonement has been quite popular in time and place. He also notes under Owen’s construct a second part can observe responsibility for the first: “"There is, therefore, no imputation of sin where there is no imputation of its guilt...therefore, which we affirm herein is, that our sins were so transferred on Christ, as that thereby he became אָשֵׁם, ὑπόδικος τῷ Θεῷ, 'reus,' — responsible unto God."” Vicarious atonement
Trueman notes that Luther’s “sixth, seventh, and eighth marks of a good preacher are… that he should know when to stop, he should be certain and diligent in his subject, and he should put his life, limb, possessions and honour into it.” He notes that the sixth is a good kick to the preacher’s ego, who tends to like the sound of his own voice, and lives under the illusion that everyone else is as interested in what he has to say as he is. He points out that few things are worse for a congregant than listening to a 30 minute preacher go 40 minutes: Get up there, say what you've got to say as clearly as you can, and then sit down again. That's all that's necessary. Now, the word is powerful because it is God’s word, but that delivery isn’t everything doesn’t mean it isn’t important at all. Lecturing isn’t preaching. Trueman heads off the rebukes from the Truly Reformed® with Luther’s ninth point: the good preacher should be willing to accept ridicule from everyone. Luther on the Marks of a Good Preacher II (Carl Trueman)
Challies talks about the medium being the message and e-books. He writes, “If there is anything we have learned from these men it is summed up in McLuhan’s little phrase, “the medium is the message.” What McLuhan sought to show people is that every medium, whether book or television or computer, carries within it some kind of ideology, some kind of idea. He wanted people to see that this, this ideology, is often as important or perhaps even more important than the message the media conveys… So the first thing we need to understand is that we cannot neatly separate the medium and the message. In many ways the medium is the message or, at the very least, it contributes to the message.” [In my opinion, Challies’ blog posts, like this one, on technology, are one of his weakest areas; the last time I pointed out the implication of this logic, in basically pointing out that there is an ideological difference between papyrus and codex, it was just dismissed out of hand. To apply ‘even more important than the message the media conveys’ to the e-book will require a substantial argument, which just isn’t there]. He gives this [less than compelling, IMO] line of reasoning: “At least in its current form, the e-book and the accompanying e-reader offer little advantage over the book except in the area of convenience. And when should we ever allow convenience to dictate something as important as the medium that carries our most important ideas?” Challies is concerned that people aren’t thinking about this. [my problem with that is that there isn’t an argument with real substance to follow!] Books & E-Books, Media & Messages
Bird, commenting on the aforementioned article, notes the difficulty in communicating with KJV-only persons, and assesses that the greatest problem is that they can’t seem to understand that Christianity is not about them – they have a particular belief that their worship style, translation, culture, sociology is the way it always has been. He notes one of his friends was fired in the 70s for using an NIV, with the reason being, "If the Queen's English was good enough for Jesus then it is good enough for me". He’s met missionaries trying to translate the Bible into 17th century Spanish so it is comparable to the KJV. He wonders, what do you do with this??? It’s beyond reason. Dan Wallace on KJV-ism
White notes the rule drawn up by the council of Trent, approved by the pope, which shows that Romanists who like to argue from Scripture did not have that freedom – unless it was given in writing from the magisterium, which held that “there will by reason of the boldness of men arise therefrom more harm than good” if the Bible was in the vernacular. Indeed, “Those, however, who presume to read or possess them without such permission may not receive absolution from their sins till they have handed over to the ordinary.” If You Love Owning and Studying the Scriptures
The Chicago Manual of Style is an excellent tool for any author. New Edition of the Chicago Manual of Style
JT: The MacArthur Study Bible—available for the first time in the English Standard Version—begins shipping from Amazon at the end of next week. MacArthur Study Bibles in the ESV
JT strongly recommends Mike Bullmore’s teaching on preaching. It is rich, practical, and doused with gospel grace. Free MP3s: Things I’ve Learned About Preaching After Having Taught It for 15 Years; Effective Sermon Preparation; The Pastor & Preaching; The Functional Centrality of the Gospel in the Life of the Local Church ; Five Convictions About Preaching, Without Which One Should Not Preach
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