2009-04-20

Hays cautions against the social critics who bemoan the fall of western civilization whenever there is a new form of communication (e.g. Twitter) – distinguish between people-people and thing-people, and egocentric people, and understand that there is a spectrum. The Twitterati

Hays has some thoughts in response to Ehrman’s question at the debate with White – why do textual criticism if the variants are insignificant? i) One cannot take their insignificance for granted – sometimes investigation must be done to see if something is worth investigating. ii) Ehrman makes a hypocritical objection, for it is because apostates like him keep rehashing the same issues (issues already settled) with the text of the NT that Christian scholars must re-cover the same ground. iii) On a liberal view, authorship is a moving target, and an urtext never existed. Here, the objective of textual criticism is the more interesting detective work of figuring out the redaction history of the texts as a window into ‘competing Christianities,’ of which the NT is just the product of the ‘winners’. So we need to do textual criticism because this field has been politicized and popularized. iv) It’s good to check your sources. Why do textual criticism-

Here’s an interesting quote to the effect that some naturalists accept that there are abstract moral objects, moral facts that ‘govern’ human behaviour from a transcendent perspective, yet do not depend on God's existence. Yet, along with the morality of an act there is an innate sense of responsibility, something that is not caused by the abstract moral facts (they are causally inert), which is odd in a world that is in no way causally affected by the existence of these facts – it’s strange that these abstract moral facts entities exist and, by naturalist suppositions, we have come to exist by purely natural processes. Two observations about moral experience

Harris has a friendly plug for his friend Tullian Tchividjian's book Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different. It’s endorsed by Carson, Packer, and DeYoung.

Adams writes that “what is to be avoided is fasting for fasting’s sake—fasting as an attempted means of manipulating, or otherwise, controlling God. God will hear and determine how he will answer your sincere prayer whether or not it is accompanied by fasting.” Fasting

This is just worth quoting: Turk would say (speaking of Jonah) that “[God] snarks Jonah about his attitude, but it's not right to say that about God -- so we'll say that God chastizeth Jonah, and chideth him with the holy sarcasm.” He goes on to point out (this post is worth reading in full, btw), that i) Jonah is mad at God because of God’s steadfast love to His enemies; ii) Jonah cares more about a weed because it makes him feel good than a city of 120000 (and livestock) people who make him mad, and he pities the weed when it dies, having done nothing for it, but has no pity for a city where God has been working. We ought to check ourselves if we think that God doesn’t have enough love – we don’t have enough. We’re Jonah. We think everyone else is ready for the threshing floor and we’re the feet, and we find ourselves unwilling to implore anyone or imply that Christ is making this appeal to every man, woman and child. Do you care more about weeds than the people that God has created? I think the idea is that, by not making the appeal to every single person, by presuming that God only loves us – the elect – and by not telling people that God does love them, we’re denying the fact taht the only difference is that God has sent us to them. ‘You choose for you, and when Jesus comes back, we can ask Him whether we should have been more cautious about whether we could tell people that the Cross is a sign of love to all people.’ Best of -- Steadfast Love

Another edition of Ashamed of the Gospel is coming out! While the fads present (seeker-sensitive, user-friendly) have faded in relevance, their fundamental philosophy has been repackaged as the worst part of ‘missional’, in the emergenting trends. Ashamed of the Gospel is, unlike the fads, just as relevant. Preview

JT has a cautionary quote from Robert Yarbrough about formulations of ‘biblical theology’ that, while acknowledging that the richness of revelation is more than the basic Gospel in a sense, fail to keep the central saving act of God explicit in its formula of the matrix of progressive revelation: “Once we know cross-mediated entrance to the kingdom, the panoramic sweep of God’s redemptive work as biblical theology so wonderfully renders it becomes light and life. But any theological enterprise or interpretive method that claims to grasp the center, but centers something other than the cross, seems out of sync with Scripture itself seen as a whole.” The Centrality of the Cross in Biblical Theology

Turk cautions against attributing celebrity status to the heroes of the faith – and thinking that just because you’ve gone to the right conferences and listened to the right messages that you have understood and reckoned with the Gospel. Even the Reformed let one of three things happen far too often: “[1] We have stupendous doctrine, mind-blowing doctrinal content, which we have defended so well that there is nobody left standing to hear it and therefore be saved by it. We have mowed down all the enemies of Christ rather than winning them out of their captivity. [2] We have no doctrine because of the fear of being type [1] churches, so we have pointless good-works churches which are nice community centers or political outposts for either the left or the right. We have there simply put ourselves in the chains of the enemies of Christ, but at least we’re happy there. [3] We have retreated from churches altogether because they are all type [1] or type [2] churches in spite of the fact that the Bible never once calls any church perfect…” We need to take our soteriology seriously – we’re like people who walked out of our house dressed all funny, when we didn’t mean to dress like that – we need to really live as if people are  spiritually in a great deal of danger, and that if we don’t preach the Gospel to them, they will not hear, for God saves people through the preaches word. “We are not really Gospel-saved people if we aren't changed by the Gospel into people who know that love hurts but that we are commanded to love anyway.”  Can anything good come from Nazareth-

Phillips has a review of Seven Pounds. Seven Pounds- impressions and reflections

Turk weighs in with some wise words about interpreting poetry, in light of the MacArthur critique of banal treatments of Song of Songs. One way is to unpack every possible nuance of a sexually-charged poetic passage – this is not even nearly-profitable. Not only so, but what criteria do you use to map a poetic phrase to a body part? 2) Recognize that some works are didactic (e.g. Ps. 119, and can be unpacked in great detail) and others are exalting, e.g. Song of Songs. There is no singular rule for interpreting all poetry. In Other Words

Hays responds to the charge of schism leveled by Romanists against Protestantism. i) No single denomination is ‘the church’ – denominations, at best, exemplify the church in different times and places. ii) The Roman church is itself schismatic, when it broke the pattern of the NT church with a series of unscriptural innovations. iii) Authority in the abstract is neither good nor bad. Authority in the concrete is either good or bad. It all depends on who wields it, by what means, and to what ends. The church is subject to truth. It has authority to teach truth and discipline members who deviate from revealed truth. iv) Trotting out a difference between 16th century Protestants and 21st century Protestants proves nothing against Protestantism – the rule of faith is Scripture, not Calvin. The sinful sin of schismatic schism

Hays points to a parallel between the Catholic view and Protestant view of the church – the church began fairly pure and unites, and went off the rails as time went on … but not the true church – in the former, that’s Rome, in the latter, its decentralized. ii) The most striking difference between modern and NT churches is that the latter were established by apostles (for the most part). That a modern church wasn’t is no spiritual defection. iii) As for similarities, the NT ‘church’ was really a decentralized collection of local churches, or expressions of the church in time and place; denominations are really collections of local expressions of the church. Also, the modern church, like the NT church, ranges along a spiritual continuum from faithfulness in doctrine and practice to near apostasy (in both). No church is ideal, and there are many in between. What's so bad about denominations, anyway-

Kauflin has some decent advice for leading worship in a church plant. Leading Worship on a Church Plant

Ten writing mistakes (and easy fixes). http://www.holtuncensored.com/hu/the-ten-mistakes/

A local Australian newspaper called a swimmer’s accomplishment in breaking his own record a step of ‘redemption’ for his crime of effectively smashing in the face of a teammate while partying. This is a twisted use of the term redemption, having nothing to do with justice or dealing with wrong or paying for wrongs done. It just shows us how badly the world needs the Gospel. Bizarre redemption

Challies is moved by watching the worship of the deaf at the Ligonier conference, where the proceedings are interpreted for them. They worship with their whole bodies – how often do we worship with merely our lips? The Ears of the Deaf

AiG answers an alleged discrepancy in Genesis over common names pre and post-flood by observing that names can transfer (and many do, even today). http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/03/23/contradictions-location-location-location

From Challies: “Mary Kassian, author of The Feminine Mistake writes about William Young's portrayal of God in The Shack: "The Shack contains terribly wrong concepts about God. Plain and simple. If you think it doesn't, then you're well on your way to accepting the image of the Christa on the cross. In a few years, you'll be hanging her up in your church. I don't think I'm overstating the case."” 20)

White, commenting on the vitriolic and hateful treatment of a Christian girl by Perez Hilton on Miss USA, observes that for Hilton, when he says that the Miss USA should ‘inspire and unite us’, “us” doesn’t include Christians – White points out that homosexual advocates often treat those who disapprove with utter hatred and bitterness, a situation accepted because those who they treat this way are Christians. Homosexual advocates do not want equal rights – they don’t want others to have the right to express their beliefs – they want uber-rights, to be able to suppress those who disagree with them. Consider, what would have happened if a Christian judge had asked an open lesbian the same question, and then, upon the lesbian answering truthfully, preventing her from winning, and then going on to his blog and insulting the lesbian with the same kind of language – could you imagine the uproar? And the most amazing thing is that the news coverage claims ‘Miss California causes controversy with her comments!’ rather than ‘Perez Hilton lays trap for Christian girl with question on homosexuality to make sure she doesn’t win and then insults her with profanity!’ – even the media is afraid to speak the truth. Miss California’s comments would have been bland 20 years ago, indicating the decay of society and the rapid progress toward the persecution of Christians. Miss USA- Christians Need Not Apply