2009-04-21

Phillips draws an analogy between porn and ‘paper pastors’, in that in the case of the former, men enjoy porn because the women aren’t ‘real’ (i.e. the man doesn’t know them, has no relation with them, they are never moody, etc.) and real women can’t compete with a fantasy; and in the case of the latter, the ‘celebrity’ pastor (i.e. famous pastor, who you listen to) knows all the right answers, will never threaten the ‘parishioner’ with church discipline, is never moody, and you can just dismiss your real pastor for something ‘famous pastor X would never say.’ Celebrity pastors aren’t your pastor. Hold your pastor in the highest esteem. Porn and paper pastors

DeYoung writes that one of our high places is prayerlessness. Do we really take prayer seriously? Do we really believe we’ll fail without prayer? Do we have a reputation for serious, importunate, long-suffering prayer? What if our churches said, let’s put prayer first, and fit in everything after that? Prayerlessness is the measure of unbelief – so often we think we need everything else but prayer. We don’t believe that God answers prayer. If the new Calvinism is really a work of the Spirit, within it we shall see many with a deep devotion for prayer. Our High Places (5)

Swan quote Hilary of Poitiers (c. 315-67), who marvels at the great revelation and understanding given to Paul, who revealed it as must as human perception could bear (yet recognizing the limitations of human ability). On Paul’s exhortation to Timothy, “The exhortation to understand is prompted by the difficulty of understanding. But God’s gift of understanding is the reward of faith, for through faith the infirmity of sense is recompensed with the gift of revelation.”  An Ancient Voice For The Day #27

MacArthur writes, “If you live by the Spirit and are headed towards eternal life because of your salvation, the Spirit in you gives the power to be killing the deeds of the flesh.” How? Truly reckon with the presence of sin in your life. Many gloss over it, attributing it to personality quirks, etc. This is very dangerous. He writes to ‘consider your ways’ (Hag. 1:5,7), to know the plague in your own heart (1 Kings 8:38), to not be deceived by your sin (Eph. 4:22), which needs no engine to run, but is intrinsic to you. If you want to kill sin, you need to examine your heart to see the reality of it. To kill something, you need to know where to aim. How to Kill Sin in Your Life (Part 1)

Challies reviews Why Johnny Can’t Preach [scan the archives of this blog for DeYoung’s treatment]. The book effectively calls conservative expositional preachers on their lousy preaching, chiding them for blaming congregant inattentiveness of attenuated attention spans when the problem is probably in their own bland, flat, non-energetic preaching. The problem under this is that preachers today cannot read or writer, having little concern for the construct, reading for content rather than form, and little ability to communicate in writing. Many sermons have no identifiable point. Challies cautions that the author is prone to overstate, that you could be quite the discouragement for your pastor if you give the book to them, even in good faith (use wisdom here), and that you should guard your heart from ill thoughts towards your pastor. But it is a good book. Why Johnny Can't Preach

Piper aims to link racism and abortion as closely as possible. Racism is hated in America because its not fashionable. That’s good – it’s helpful when the right thing happens to be P.C. “The Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case of 1857 held that Black slaves were property without rights as persons, yet today we view that as unthinkable. So the Supreme Court in the case of Roe v. Wade (1973) held that the unborn did not have rights as persons, yet we should hope and work that the day may come when that too is viewed as unthinkable.” Racism might – and did – result in deaths. Abortion always results in killing people. And in three days more black people are killed by abortion than died between 1882 and 1968 (3446) by lynchings – both at the hands of white man. Stigma Is a Good Thing for Bad Acts

WTS Books is now carrying Paul Tripp’s What Did You Expect? conference, aimed at redeeming the realities of marriage, both the DVD and the CD sets. What Did You Expect- Redeeming the Realities of Marriage

Steve Hays and James Grant have posted their revised e-book of interviews with a number of Christian scholars about how they came to faith in Christ and how they deal with various intellectual challenges to the Christian faith. Love the Lord with Heart and Mind

Here’s a short summary: “The Davidic Covenant is the final Old Testament administration of the Covenant of Grace. It promised that David seed would sit on the throne of Israel and fulfill the Covenant of works on behalf of the people. The covenant promised that upon full obedience to God the King would enter into the Melchizedek priesthood and intercede not only for the Jew but also for the Gentile.” Covenant Theology Part 5

Copan quotes atheist Thomas Nagel, who is made quite uncomfortable by the number of highly intelligent religious people, and admits that he doesn’t want there to be a God – and in so doing reveals what the root problem is—an unwillingness to acknowledge God’s lordship in his life. Copan provides a series of challenging questions connecting belief in God and acceptable of God to a willingness to accept God as Lord. God, Evidence, and the Will

Bolt writes that you read what you hear: “Bible reading takes place in a Bible-reading community. The version of Christianity that has influenced you most often gives you a framework—a set of assumptions—a language. This is what tunes your ear. Sometimes it helps. Then you hear what the Bible is saying. Sometimes it gets in the way, and then you don't.” Reading the Bible with your ears open

Engwer reviews the White-Ehrman debate. White pointed out two ways that the NT text is reliable even before we have manuscripts. i) It cannot, as Ehrman likes to do, be ripped from its socio-historical context in the infant church. The presence of eyewitnesses, etc. and the oral community is very important. ii) We would expect there is be historical evidence if there was a different version in the pre-manuscript tradition – but there isn’t. And what evidence we do have from pre-manuscript sources that discuss the text, and the beliefs held by the earliest Christians, is consistent with the text we do have. Ehrman has himself affirmed the conservative and honest intent of scribes by and large – they aimed to preserve the text faithfully, whether non-professional scribes early on or pros later. “Most scribes, no doubt, tried to do a faithful job in making sure that the text they reproduced was the same text they inherited.” This is important because Ehrman points out that more variation happened early on, because the scribes weren’t pros. But this admits that they were honest and faithful, so this tends against any wholesale corruption. So why doubt the reliability? “On the one hand, Ehrman keeps making much of the fact that we don't have any manuscripts from the earliest years of Christianity. On the other hand, he acknowledges that we have significant evidence for the reliability of the transmission of the text prior to the earliest manuscripts.” Ehrman seems to know the balance of evidence is on reliability but chooses to be vague to play on people’s doubts. Ehrman repeatedly asks why, if God inspired the originals, would He allow them to be lost? But cannot they be sufficiently preserved? That He inspired the something doesn’t de facto mean that they cannot be lost! Overall, the debate was a good start, exposing some of the weaknesses of Ehrman’s position, as well as his bias (e.g. avoiding Islam, railing on Christianity). Ehrman Debate On The New Testament Text