2010-09-14

DeYoung posts twenty thoughtful points of advice for theological students and young pastors. Some teasers: “Christian maturity entails more than theological acumen. Don’t assume the dudes reading Bavinck will be the most fruitful, faithful, and effective leaders. Could be, but that’s far from certain” and “Take advantage of opportunities to be taught by others. Get the most out of books, lectures, and special speakers in seminary, because soon you’ll be be doing all the putting out with few people to put it in to you.” Advice for Theological Students and Young Pastors

Creationsafaris: An archer fish can spit out a man’s cigarette. A paper in PNAS describes the experiments that proved archer fish possess “orientation saliency,” a “fundamental building block of vision” that allows the brain to discern a target from its background. The Scientist and PNAS were baffled by how such a complex trait could have evolved. Why? The authors of the paper explain, “Given the enormous evolutionary distance between humans and archer fish, our findings suggest that orientation-based saliency constitutes a fundamental building block for efficient visual information processing.” But if so, they did not demonstrate that all fish have this ability, to say nothing of the all animals in the evolutionary branch leading to mammals. At the end of their paper, the authors hedged their bets.  They tried to argue that either way, whether the trait evolved by homology (common descent) or analogy (convergent evolution), Darwin can’t lose. Archer Fish See Like People

Creationsafaris: Geologists were baffled. Something moved rocks up to 3,000 miles across whole continents. They found evidence in Asia and also in America. How on earth could that happen? Their list of explanations omitted one possibility: the transporting power of water. Their short list of possible mechanisms omits one that creation geologists would probably be saying is intuitively obvious: a global flood. Indeed, their list of explanations are actually consequences of a global flood. Did a Global Flood Move Rocks Across Continents- No, uh

DG: Spurgeon says, “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. (Lamentations 3:27)  This is as good as a promise. It has been good, it is good, and it will be good for me to bear the yoke.  Early in life I had to feel the weight of conviction, and ever since it has proved a soul-enriching burden. Should I have loved the gospel so well had I not learned by deep experience the need of salvation by grace? … Come, my soul, bow thy neck; take up they cross. It was good for thee when young; it will not harm thee now. For Jesus' sake, shoulder it carefully.” He writes that when the Lord lays the yoke of affliction, which is by no means to be sought for, it nevertheless frequently develops a character which glorifies God and blesses the church.  Sufferers Make Strong Believers

Calvary Grace Church blog provides a brief justification for formal church membership/partnership, in an age when it is increasingly unpopular. It is still a “vital element of church health and a key part of church organization and administration.” i) Counting God’s people is not new. God ordered it in the Old Testament, and He keeps a book of life, which lists all the righteous and names all his own. (Phil. 4:3; Rev. 3:5, 13:8, 17:8, 20:15, 21:27, 22:19). This divine “membership list” is actually also noted in the Old Testament, in Psalm 69:28. The books are used in judgment and have an administrative purpose. ii) 1 Cor. 5’s discipline of a man, and the subsequent restoration of perhaps the same man in 2 Cor, both presuppose a visible belonging. This points to another scriptural practice that logically implies formal church partnership: the ultimate negative sanction of corrective church discipline, excommunication. iii) The task to deal with sin in the church and protect its witness before the world is so important that theologians like Wayne Grudem have identified church discipline as a sign of a pure church, and even as a “means of grace” alongside worship, fellowship, and the ordinances. For this to work, however, a person so excluded needs to be aware of the difference between being in the church and out of it, lest this command lose all meaning. iv) Contra today’s sentiments, the apostolic church distinguished between themselves and the world in faith and in practice. A person was recognizably “in” the congregation or “outside.” v) Also, note the widow’s list. vi) As the examples of the censuses in Numbers and of the list of widows in First Timothy show, one practical reason to have a “list” of members is to facilitate administration, organization, and service. Church membership provides a facility so that each believer may be mobilized for service to one another and the world. vii) If elders do not have a practical method to know the shape and composition of their flock, let alone its members, how can this responsibility be fulfilled? viii) The church is to be visibly different from the world, because it reflects a perfect and holy God. Formal church membership is one practical tool that is used to guard the purity of the church. ix) That formal church membership is not explicitly commanded is no objection per se; This is a legitimate hermeneutical approach. The evidence may “not be abundant. But it is clear, and it is consistent.” (Dever and Alexander). x) Formal partnership with a body of local believers is not an option. It is a necessity driven by the real needs of the church and her ministry. The church is to be holy, after all – a concept that includes the ideas of distinction and separation. There must be a dividing line between the church and the world, and formal partnership or “membership” is an administrative reflection of that line. Why Formal Church Membership-

Some Brisbane atheist has made himself a minor celebrity by smoking homemade cigarettes using pages from the Bible and the Koran as the rolling papers (link to article). Smoking Books-

Girltalk cites Wilberforce comparing the suffering of losing his dearest daughter to the suffering his granddaughter experienced when she was vaccinated. The baby had no idea what was coming, and no idea that the subsequent pain was intended for good. William Wilberforce On God and Suffering

Trueman quotes Chesterton, “It is a fact that falsehood is never so false as when it is very nearly true.  It is when the stab comes near the nerve of truth, that the Christian conscience cries out in pain.” He then notes that modern Christianity is more than happy to welcome someone who comes near the truth; we think they’ve done well. Obvious errors are unlikely to do much damage, but errors which are nearly there are much more insidious (Matt. 24:24).  Thought for the Day from GKC (Carl Trueman)

Adams comments on the necessity of reconciliation. “Reconciliation ought to follow [forgiveness]. As we are reconciled to God after forgiveness, so too ought the counselor help counselees to develop proper relationships with one another. Two who have been at enmity, may not find it easy to do so. They ask forgiveness, seem embarrassed, and in the future avoid one another, RECONCILIATION MEANS DEVELOPING A GOOD RELATIONSHIP FOR THE FUTURE.” Pastors are exhorted to monitor such situations. Reconciliation

Phillips comments on Terry Jones and his Qur’an burning: Evidently, the associate pastor said that God told them to do it. “Oh boy, here we go. As long as I've been preaching, teaching, writing I have been trying to school anyone who will listen to take such talk seriously, and analyze it right down to the floor. I urged folks to do it with Francis Chan's irresponsible language. Now let's do it with this gent.” Are they claiming that they are receiving inerrant, morally-binding, direct, verbal revelation from God today? If they didn't obey, it would be sin? Too bad no reporter seems to have asked this question. Apparently God told them to do it, then told them not to, and they built in the wiggle room that God might change his mind, but remove it when he does. All Charismatics come in right at this point: they come in by giving this man "cover." A Charismatic has to say, “How do I know whether God told him to do this? He could have… We mustn't quench the Spirit. We can't put God in a box." Let's be more specific: the Wayne Grudem type of Charismatics — and everyone who gives Grudem cover —  "own" Pastor Jones. Howso? By their desperate re-defining and Clintoning-down of the Biblical gift of prophecy as the errant reporting of inerrant revelation. “It is precisely like the old liberal redefinition of Biblical inspiration: the writers of Scripture received inerrant inspiration from God, but they wrote it down errantly.” “The constant refrain of such folks is that God is whispering and mumbling and nudging, and the only "control" we have is whether or not it is contrary to Scripture. Well, friends and neighbors, that leaves a lot of open ground for fools to graze… Is it contrary to Scripture to burn a cult’s holy book? No. Thus it might have been God's static-riddled leading — on Charismatic/Grudemic/Blackabbean premises. ” What are those with Scripture to do then? We study the revealed call of the church, pursue that, and prayfully, responsibly, biblically, and rationally weigh decisions, and take responsibility for that decision if it does not grow from a direct statement of Scripture, rather than blaming it on God.  not-burning Terry Jones

Good question. Where Did the Mimic Octopus Get Its Amazing Abilities-

White writes on a big stumbling block for Muslims, which derives from the fact that Mohammed did not understand the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. “From the point of your earliest memories you have been told that the Trinity is tri-theistic, and that to worship in such a fashion is to commit the most horrible and unforgivable sin imaginable! And so when that Christian missionary speaks to you about “the Lord Jesus Christ” all you can hear is “idolatry, IDOLATRY, SHIRK!!!”” One of the greatest evidences of the fact that the Qur’an is not inspired Scripture is the fact that its author did not understand a doctrine that had already been fully defined at the time of its writing. It is vital to recognize that there has never been a time in Christian history when Christians have not asserted with the full force of orthodoxy the absolute truth of monotheism. There is only one true God. http://reformedbaptistfellowship.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/the-quran-in-the-light-of-god-breathed-scripture-shirk-surah-448/

JT: The verdict of The Economist on Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s The Grand Design: Not impressed. The Economist on The Grand Design

JT: Dave Helm at Southern Seminary, explaining how to teach children the whole storyline of Scripture: He tells the story of how The Big Picture Story Bible came into existence. How to Teach Your Children the Whole Story of the Bible

Challies: “Needless to say, The Power is a bad book. A really bad book. It’s so utterly stupid, so unbelievably vapid, that it boggles my mind that anyone could read it and believe it. If you could package foolishness, if you could slap stupidity between two covers, you’d end up with The Power. Read it if you must, but as you do it, you’d better generate some good feelings toward brain cells; you’ll need to attract a few to yourself if you’re replace all the ones that are sure to die as you give hours of your life to all of this drivel.” Book Review - The Power

AiG: Didn’t Darwin Call the Evolution of the Eye Absurd? Not exactly - by reading Darwin’s entire statement in context, we can see that he in no way abandoned his theory. He did, indeed, indicate that the evolution of the eye was “absurd.” Nonetheless, his “reason” led him to accept that this “absurd” thing could actually occur by means of natural selection. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2010/09/14/darwin-and-the-eye

McKinley @ 9Marks applies some advice from CS Lewis to preachers about not telling people who to feel, rather make them feel it. There's a temptation each week to settle for simply telling people about the holiness of God, the tenderness of Christ, the agonies of the cross or the hope of glory, i.e. simply describe the reality, without doing the heavy lifting of supplying the appropriate affections. The job is to preach in such a way as to help actually stir up the approriate emotional response in the hearers. “They should hear God's word and feel genuine fear, hope, sorrow, tenderness, or love.” Study the text diligently, meditate/pray about the response to the text, prayfully think about what inhibits the congregation from having the proper response (i.e. what sins/barriers), carefully choose words to help them get there, and cultivate these affections in your own heart so as to preach with integrity and genuinely model the response. Don't Make Them Do Your Job for You

Engwer cites more Neglected Evidence For The Gospels.

In light of the 2 kingdom debates breaking out over the Reformed blogosphere, Hays wonders if Kline's (the modern father of 2K) Jewish background wasn't a factor in his radical church/state separatist ideology. “He once told to me that as a boy, he attended synagogue with his dad. He seemed to indicate that his dad was a nominal Jews. Just going through the motions. But it’s possible that I misunderstood him. I’ve also read that his granddad was a pious Jew… To my knowledge, Jews have a historical antipathy to state churches because they were often persecuted by the Christian establishment…  I think many Jews harbor conscious or subconscious fears of "Christian theocracies."” He notes that ironically, while Kline may have been haunted by memories of antisemitic state churches, the Reformed tradition is exceptionally philo-Semitic by contrast. Kline, 2K, and Judaism

Hays cites Roger Penrose: “Some people take the view that the universe is simply there and it runs along–it’s a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don’t think that’s a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe. I think there is something much deeper about it, about its existence, which we have very little inkling of at the moment.” Roger Penrose on cosmic purpose

Hays cites Paul Davies comparing the unexplained meta-laws pervading the hypothetical multiverse to having the same status as a transcendent god, saying, “So is that the end of the story? Can the multiverse provide a complete and closed account of all physical existence? Not quite. The multiverse comes with a lot of baggage, such as an overarching space and time to host all those bangs, a universe-generating mechanism to trigger them, physical fields to populate the universes with material stuff, and a selection of forces to make things happen.” Big Bang of the Gaps