2010-08-21

Piper addresses the question of whether a Christian can glorify God through the enjoyment of secular music, movies, literature, etc. He notes that it is trivial to find examples of being able to glorify God with something produced by a non-Christian: 'whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.' One can savor the product of an unbeliever by giving thanks to God and recognizing that the earth belongs to God. But arts/media are morally complex. What do you do with the moral elements contrary to your faith? He distinguishes between entertainment and cultural analysis (for the sake of interaction). To bask in the moral perversions of film points to something of the heart. The world has made its view scintillatingly attractive.  We need to test our hearts: “Why are we able to enjoy hell bound, God ignoring, Christ dishonoring, false world views because we can give it a little twist at the end that it taught us this or that about the world?” Our tendency is to being entertained. Do You Glorify God in Your Movie Watching-

CMI is charged with making a basic error in chemistry in support of seeing design in the cell. Basically, an ion channel keeps out smaller ions while bringing in larger ions, and the critic says that the hydrated radius of an ion matters, which actually makes the smaller ion larger than the larger ion when hydrated, and and would therefore undercut the arguments. However, in ion channels the hydration shell is removed. Citing two leading pioneers in the discovery of ion channels: “The design of the selectivity filter was seen to be perfectly adapted to the job of desolvating potassium ions while keeping smaller sodium ions out.” http://creation.com/ionic-error

DeYoung writes that the two ditches on the path to godlliness are the dreamy danger, wherein Christians idolize their heroes, underestimate indwelling sin, and are unrealistic about how long maturity takes. On the other side is disbeliever, having no heroes, cynical about growth, underestimating the reality of the Holy Spirit – they expect nothing. Those on the path of holiness realize that growth is possible and it is also hard work. Ditches on the Path to Godliness

RBF, jumping off Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges, writes that “One of the acceptable sins among believers is that of whining or complaining.  It is interesting that this should be so when the living God has so clearly and unmistakably forbidden us to do so… Besides being direct disobedience to the clearly revealed mind of God, complaining demonstrates a lack of confidence in the wisdom, goodness, and power of God.” Whine Coolers

Turk notes that error isn’t like a sliver, it’s like leaven. BioLogos uses the idea of a diversity of readings of the OT – i.e. if guys as diverse as Origen and Augustine could read Genesis non-literally, we can too and still be in the great cloud of witnesses. Turk believes this thinking stems from the Bauer (Ehrman) hypothesis, which basically asserts that there was no Christianity in the first century, but many Christianities [i.e. the New School; see Bock’s The Missing Gospels for a response], a loosely connected body of beliefs inconsistent from place to place: there is not one orthodox faith reflected in the texts of the NT (which Ehrman thinks is supported by variation), but a diversity of confluent teachings which may or may not harmonize but are nevertheless accepted as all part of the same general faith in this fellow Jesus. When it comes to Augustine’s reading of Genesis, Biologos thinks we should see this is as part of the diversity of orthodoxy (though Augustine’s, and Origen’s, reading is much more supernatural than they represent – Origen’s view is debatable in its orthodoxy!). BEH resides among the primary supports of Biologos, and BE is a disreputable approach to the faith. Turk recommends Kostenberger’s The Heresy of Orthodoxy. Educating yourself on the history of the text and the origins of orthodoxy is important. And “don't let someone who is allegedly serious about "orthodoxy" tell you that that "orthodoxy" is about how inclusive you can be.” Weekend Extra- The Heresy of Orthodoxy

Hays continues to respond to a theistic evolutionist who raises three objections to penal substitution. i) He seems to think that Biblical teaching must receive independent philosophical justification, which overlooks the underlying principle of revealed religion: some truths are revealed truths because their truth is inaccessible to ordinary channels of knowledge. If the Bible teaches it, and it is God’s word, we don’t need independent justification. ii) As to personal responsibility for sin, the question isn’t whether one party can be punished for the actions of another, but the general question of whether Scripture includes a vicarious principle (e.g. Exod 20:5-6 (par. 34:7; Num 14:18; Deut 5:9-10; 7:9-10) for corporate responsibility; also the Abrahamic covenant, Romans 5, Moses, the killing of Saul’s sons, 2 Sam 21. etc). And where is the “clear Biblical standard” of personal responsibility–as over against corporate responsibility? If its Deut 24:16 and Ezk 18:4, we have prima facie evidence for a Biblical standard of personal responsibility alongside prima facie evidence for a Biblical standard of corporate responsibility. How then do we resolve this? Not by going to one-side. Perhaps one way to resolve this is to see the distinction in God’s prerogative to punish a man for crimes committed by a second party, and the more limited prerogatives of the human administration of justice. Even a divinely inspired law-code administers rough justice. And Ezk 18 isn’t as clearcut as popular prooftexting would suggest. For one thing, this is set in the historical context of the Babylonian exile. Yet the Babylonian exile was, itself, a collective punishment for the cumulative sins of generations covenant-breakers. Folks like Daniel were taken, though innocent themselves. Arminians have it backwards: The point is not that personal responsibility obviates corporate responsibility; rather, corporate responsibility doesn’t obviate personal responsibility. iii) To suggest that Jesus’ sacrifice was substitutionary but not penal fails to distinguish between what the Old Testament offers did, and what they signified. They don’t effect vicarious penal substitution, but they illustrate. Corporate responsibility

Beggar’s All: Apparently Ratzinger himself writes that the Romans Church lost touch with the early tradition of baptism, replacing it with "no more than a formula recited over the one to be baptized by the priest who administers the sacrament." One might ask, how, if "tradition" and especially "the unwritten traditions of the Apostles" was so important to the early church, how in the world did they lose it?" Hippolytus is highly regarded. Here is a line from him that Roman Catholics of our day are not likely to like: "He who is ordained as a bishop, being chosen by all the people, must be irreproachable." Writing on Callistus, bishop (c. 217-222), “For even also he permitted females, if they were unwedded, and burned with passion at an age at all events unbecoming, or if they were not disposed to overturn their own dignity through a legal marriage (διὰ τοῦ νομίμως γαμηθῆναι), that they might have whomsoever they would choose as a bedfellow, whether a slave or free (εἴτε οἰκέτην εἴτε ἐλεύθερον), and that a woman, though not legally married, might consider such a companion as a husband. Whence women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs for producing sterility, and to gird themselves round, so to expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing to have a child either by a slave or by any paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth (διὰ τὴν συγγένειαν καὶ ὑπέρογκον οὐσίαν).” Uggh. Saint Hippolytus, Antipope, on Pope Callistus

Challies: In 2007 three Turkish Christians were murdered. Malatya is a DVD that tells the story of these men, these martyrs: Necati Aydin, a husband and father and pastor of the Malatya church; Tilmann Geske, a German citizen, a husband and father who had served the Turkish church for 10 years; and Ugur Yuksel, a young Christian, soon to be married, who was being discipled by Necati. “Is it estimated that in all of Turkey, a nation of almost 74 million, there are only a few thousand Christians. From their infancy Turks are taught that to be a Turk is to be a Muslim and to be anything else is treason. The few Christians who stand firm in their faith are viewed as terrorists, as insurgents who wish to overthrow the government.” Malatya

Patton points to a number of articles around the web, including one where Obama is asked if he believes in heaven, to which he responds, “What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.” Theology Around the Web in 60 Seconds – 8.21.10

To the idea that blood is atoning not because it represents the just punishment for sin, but because it carries the life of that which was offered, Hays responds that we’re not dealing with blood itself, but shed blood, anda because blood represents life, shed blood represents death. Sacrificial blood signifies the death of the sacrificial victim, as in bleeding to death. Penal substitution doesn’t assume that the animal is literally innocent; the animal is a symbol. Blood atonement

To the notion that Christ had to die so he could claim to be the one truly sinned against, and therefore he could truly offer forgiveness, since he is the ‘true victim of all that injustice’, Hays points out that even in terms of Mosaic penology this doesn’t hold. If you committed murder, the murder victim wasn’t the only wronged party. Even if the survivors forgave, that doesn’t mean he was acquitted. God can refuse to forgive those we forgive, and He can forgive those we refuse to. If a woman forgives the man who is beating her, does God forgive him? [And where, praytell, does the fact that GOD crushed Jesus at Calvary fit into THAT model of the atonement?] Forgiving and forgiven

Citing Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, “Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) was a mathematician and astronomer who proposed that the sun was stationary in the center of the universe and the earth revolved around it. Disturbed by the failure of Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe to follow Aristotle’s requirement for the uniform circular motion of all celestial bodies and determined to eliminate Ptolemy’s equant, an imaginary point around which the bodies seemed to follow that requirement, Copernicus decided that he could achieve his goal only through a heliocentric model…” [it’s interesting that Copernicus’s heliocentrism put the sun at the centre of the universe – in modern terms, that’s as categorically incorrect as putting the earth at the literal centre (though I’m not sure he wasn’t just mathematically modeling things), unless we view it as merely the frame of reference. I saw this because I’ve debated someone who ironically argued in favour of his enlightenment view of the scientific enterprise that heliocentrism was correct over geocentrism. Note also that Ptolemy’s geocentrism doesn’t derive from Scripture but Greek thinking]. Philosophy Word of the Day — Nicolaus Copernicus

Regarding 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, Habermas comments, “Do critical scholars agree on the date of this pre-Pauline creed?  Even radical scholars like Gerd Lüdemann think that “the elements in the tradition are to be dated to the first two years after the crucifixion . . . no later than three years after the death of Jesus. An increasing number of exceptionally influential scholars have very recently concluded that at least the teaching of the resurrection, and perhaps even the specific formulation of the pre-Pauline creedal tradition in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, dates to AD 30!  In other words, there never was a time when the message of Jesus’ resurrection was not an integral part of the earliest apostolic proclamation. ”  Gary Habermas on the Pre-Pauline Creed of 1 Cor. 15

JT points to King’s College being headed up by a Roman Catholic – the college is a subsidiary of Campus Crusade for Christ. He cites Trueman: “Clearly, if the school can now be headed by a Roman Catholic, the Christian worldview of The King’s College presumably sees issues of authority, the Bible, the interpretation of the Bible, the sacraments, justification, and the church (among numerous other doctrines) as negotiable, as areas where there can be significant disagreement and which are, by inference, only tangential to a Christian view of the world. This is not to denigrate either Protestant or Catholic views in these areas, but merely to point out the fact that there are huge differences here which yet are not seen as impinging on the worldview being taught.” Campus Crusade, King’s College, and Roman Catholicism

Spurgeon wrote that objections to creeds are a pleasant way to conceal an objection to discipline and a desire for latitudinarianism. The very unbelief inherent in not having any creed is in itself a creed. A true creed derives from God Himself, and if true, does not separate the believer from God, but serves as a tool by which he can submit his understanding to God. On creeds and those who eschew them