2008-12-11

Robert Gagnon rips into the Newsweek article on the religious case for homosexuality with a 23 page paper. "To arrive at her ideological objective Miller makes a number of bad moves. She overemphasizes discontinuity and underemphasizes continuity between marriage values in Scripture and our own values. She engages in a distorted form of analogical reasoning that elevates distant analogies over close analogies. She shows little or no understanding of the historical and literary contexts of the texts that she treats. She ignores just about every major argument against the positions that she espouses. And she extrapolates, from certain “universal truths” in Scripture, conclusions that the scriptural authors would have found appalling and that bear little logical connection to the agenda that she seeks to promote." Gagnon Responds to Newsweek Cover Story

Discovery Channel takes the time to reinforce the sensibility of creationism by way of contrast yet again. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/12/08/asteroid-life.html

Phillips writes about different preaching preparation styles. Interestingly, as one man said, his sermon prep amounted to the equivalent of two college term papers per week. Phillips relates to this experiences [me too]. Spurgeon, on the other hand, prepped on the way to church, or perhaps the day before. But he feasted on it - not to professionally analyze it. But to know it. Basically, I would say this post highlights the value of being profoundly affected by your text. I very much agree with this. Sermon preparation of lesser and greater luminaries

Hays points out that in the OT, homosexual practice was condemned as a capital offence, and in the NT, Paul identifies homosexual desire as a sin. Hays then deals with the idea that homosexual relations form the same way heterosexual relationships form, and in response to being asked why such bonding between homosexuals is problematic for adoption, "A higher incidence of disease, domestic violence, suicide, rampant promiscuity, as well as unnatural role-modeling. They are also at higher risk of sexual molestation when they hit adolescence." Loving and committed pederasty

Manata examines and refutes Damer's illustration of a logical fallacy, which employs a pro-life argument as its target. A brief, correct statement of the prolife argument is given in this post. Damer's example either proves too much or too little, and it relies upon a particular disanalogy wherein a temperature is regarded as being hot is considered to be analogous to a fetus being regarded as human, when the former is a subjective assessment, while the latter is put forward as an ontological reality. Fallacious Fallacies

Challies continues with his reading of the classics, in looking briefly at CS Lewis' defence of natural law in Mere Christianity. There isn't too much here. Reading Classics - Mere Christianity (II)

Solapanel: Grimmond writes that a postmodern observation is that there is no neutral observer. Now, as Jesus told us, our reception of truth is never neutral. Sin is the ultimate bias. Now, it seems that in the absence of a 'neutral observer' some think that we must just put everything out there in the open. "It seems that as long as every competing voice is heard equally and I am free to choose which voices to listen to, then I will arrive at the truth." Grimmond defends his review of the Shack, and why he won't just list the good points and the bad points. "My answer is no, and it is no because of the nature of truth. It is here that the limitations of the grab bag approach to truth begin to be felt. There are times when our decision about the positive or negative nature of something is not just a tallying of the pros and cons; you can't evaluate something by simply summing up the positive and negative points about something, and seeing if you get more than 50 per cent." The unity of truth means that a denial of an element of truth amounts to a denial of truth. Evaluating truth

Solapanel: This post argues that in the Proverbs and NT 'balance' as we know it today is not a virtue. In our character (being), we should seek virtues, not balance. In our actions (doing), our character may demand that we act in a balanced way. "we should be extreme in our virtuous character, but sometimes that may force us to be balanced in our actions." The ethics of a balanced life

Are small groups biblical? Apparently some (R)eformed folk argue otherwise, that the sacraments are the way this fellowship should be built. Are Small Groups 'Biblical'- by Thabiti Anyabwile

Turk writes that atheism doesn't have the philosophical clout to deny God on the basis of suffering, for without God in the picture, "We discover that even atheism will admit that it turns out that for us some things are worth suffering for -- and that somehow, one can self-determine to suffer for the benefit of something other than himself." He concludes the post by setting the stage like this: "if Joseph had never been sold into slavery, he would have never been in a position to become what he became.And in order to do that, Joseph had to get framed for rape and go to prison." You meant it for evil (1)

Turk makes some good points about government and marriage here. E.g. "Government benefits from the consequences of this kind [Christian] of marriage. Stable, moral family units require less government and produce more economic benefits than bands of loosely-confederated clans in it for self-interest (among other social arrangements)." Govn't didn't invent marriage, it has the opportunity to encourage it, etc. HT- Rhology

Phillips tears into Rick Warren's blunders on Hannity and Colmes. What-! (Rick Warren on Hannity & Colmes)

JT: Here's an interesting end to an editorial response by Christianity Today to the article for gay marriage put forward by Newsweek. "while they both claim they are arguing against exclusiveness and for inclusivity, they have managed to exclude from this crucial national conversation a significant proportion of the American population who happen to believe there is a strong biblical case for traditional marriage." CT on Newsweek

Here's some interesting quotes from AT Robinson on seminaries and preaching.

"Does the college and seminary training tend to make better preachers? If not, it is a failure. The German idea is to make scholars first and preachers incidentally. But ours is to make preachers, and scholars only as a means to that end. We have small need in the pulpit for men that can talk learnedly and obscurely about the tendencies of thought and the trend of philosophy, but do not know how to preach Christ and him crucified. The most essential thing to-day is not to know what German scholars think of the Bible, but to be able to tell men what the Bible says about themselves. And if our system of theological training fails to make preachers, it falls short of the object for which it was established. But if it does meet the object of its creation, it calls for hearty sympathy and support." A.T. Robertson- Preaching and Scholarship

"In 1 Corinthians 15:19 Paul states that without the resurrection, we Christians are to be the most pitied of all men. Why? Because Paul assumes that we Christians are laying down our present lives for the sake of a future one with Christ. He assumes that our faith is presently costing us worldly wealth, status, pleasures and ease. He assumes that we are no longer living in the patterns of this world and that our lives have taken a radical turn toward an unseen reality. Does he assume too much of us?" Our lives should look foolish to an unbelieving world. Do they? On Sensible Christianity

Somewhat interesting post on Koinonia. I mention it here because it makes this interesting point: That Jesus required faith of those people who sought health. Knowing When to Quit - and Five Other Values of Jesus by Ronald T. Habermas

Here's a reading list of books for boys. Reading is for Boys, Part II

Paul Copan has an informative post on some misconceptions around the infancy narratives. He concludes, "Keep on reading and examining the Scriptures (cp. the Bereans in Acts 17). Let us make sure that we don’t let tradition prevent us from gaining fresh insights from Scripture or from adjusting our theology when this is called for. We must be careful not to Gnosticize/Docetize Jesus—as though he didn’t or can’t really identify with us. On the other hand, we should make not Jesus’ birth more pitiful or lowly than it actually was. We can still celebrate the condescension of Immanuel—God with us—even with these adjustments in our understanding of the first Christmas story." The First Christmas- Myths and Reality

Gender Blog comments on the argument put forward by McCall and Yendell against role-subordinationism: That basically "it strictly entails that the Father has an essential property that the Son lacks, and the Son has an essential property that Father lacks" implying that they do not have the same nature. "This argument only works in a Platonic understanding of God where the divine must be the ultimate of every property - the totality of all being. But this does not lead to a personal or a Trinitarian understanding of God, so essential to Christianity. Rather, their view leads dangerously close to an impersonal monad - a flat sum of all matter. The Christian tradition should not follow Greek philosophy in this respect. Debating the Trinity, Part II "God of the Bible is not defined as a sum of all properties equally attributed to every Person. Rather, there are good reasons to hold to the distinct, personal, and relative properties of authority and submission in the Triune God. " (1) We should be instructed by the biblical names of Father and Son. 2) The kingship of Christ instructs us on how the Son and the Father relate. The title King is peculiar to the Son, not the Father. Yet, the title is bestowed by the Father. (3) If you deny the meaning and implications of the words Father and Son, then you have, as Grudem points out, only Person A, Person A, and Person A. Debating the Trinity, Part III

Gender Blog argues that in Philippians 2, the text means that Jesus refused to "grasp for" a functional equality with the Father that would have usurped the Father's role as Father. In contrast to grasping for that kind of equality, the Son "emptied himself" and took the form of a servant (v. 7). So the passage affirms the deity of Christ ("in the form of") and the functional distinction. The Son's Submission to the Father