Castle Church Popular Posts

D. James Kennedy Back Home [Sharper Iron]

Thu, 17 May 2007 13:48:37 GMT

Here is the latest update on D. James Kennedy’s health.

A Pastoral Response to Online Dating [Josh Harris]

Thu, 17 May 2007 10:36:30 GMT

Recently, the team of pastors who lead the single men and women of our church decided to address the topic of online dating. One of the men, Isaac Hydoski, who is a very wise and skilled pastor, wrote a paper that sums up our pastoral team's counsel and concerns for those using or considering the use of online dating services. This is a longer post than we normally share here, but I hope that you'll find it helpful. This is by no means a comprehensive treatment of the subject—it's simply our local church seeking to give wise counsel to the men and women in our care.

Online Dating: A Pastoral Perspective by Isaac Hydoski

Don't you wish it was as easy for you as it was for Adam and Eve? Online dating services have been around for just over 10 years, but the idea of finding a spouse goes back to the Garden of Eden. The world looks very different now in some respects, but in other ways it hasn't changed. We still desire to get married and God is still bringing husbands and wives together in marriage. But how does the $500 million industry of online dating fit in to the grand scheme of God's plan for marriage? Does the Bible have anything to say about online dating? Can we learn anything from others' experiences with online dating? These are some of the questions we hope to bring clarity to through this paper. This perspective paper is the fruit of the application and study of Scripture, pastoral experience with counseling others and an interview with some from our community who have participated in online dating. We believe this paper is timely. We hope it serves you as you seek to obey and honor our Lord Jesus Christ. Before getting into the details it is vital to establish that Scripture nowhere forbids online dating and therefore neither should we. It is a denial of the sufficiency of Scripture to add 'laws' that God in his wisdom decided not to include in Holy Scripture. Let's all commit to not load each other's consciences with 'sins' that are not in Scripture. This was the mistake of the Pharisees. But we do want to help inform your thinking and practice related to on-line dating that is shaped by biblical principles. (Read more...)

The Assault on Reason [Cranach]

Thu, 17 May 2007 10:30:54 GMT

Al Gore has a new book coming out, "The Assault on Reason," in which he argues that American democracy is in danger because our culture has turned against logic and the use of rational thinking in our public discourse. I think he is right! Though I suspect the book will turn into propaganda against conservatives and creationists, I hope he takes on the true culprit: Our educational system, including especially our academic, intellectual elite, the postmodernists who explicitly teach that reason is invalid and that objective truth does not exist. Ironically, those folks are Gore's most ardent supporters.

Read this excerpt.

Change the World -- Donate Your Used Laptop to African Bible College [First Presbyterian, Jackson MS]

Thu, 17 May 2007 10:30:00 GMT

Request from Dr. Sam Larsen, RTS Missions Department:

Six used laptops in good working condition, primarily to be used for word processing and CD ROM course lesson playback, are needed for African Bible College alumni now enrolled in the RTS (Reformed Theological Seminary) Virtual Campus M.A.R. degree program in Malawi. If you have a laptop you would be willing to donate, or know of someone who does, please contact Ed Williford or Mary Courtney in the African Bible College office on the RTS campus (phone# 601-922-1962).

An "A" for orthodoxy and a "D" for orthopraxy? [Against Heresies]

Thu, 17 May 2007 02:56:00 GMT

Here is a short extract from a forthcoming chapter:

G. K. Chesterton once wrote that “heresy always affects morality, if it is heretical enough.” It is true to say that any form of error, and not just heresy, will show itself in some form of deficiency or delinquency in the life of the church and the Christian. If we follow the logic of Paul in the pastoral epistles we should expect false theologies to produce ungodly behavior. But there is a subtle danger with Chesterton's observation. The danger is that we will form in our minds a narrow and set idea of what that immorality could look like. And, based on that assumption, we will then expect those who are theologically compromised to be immoral only in that particular way. Yet in the history of the church there have been those who clearly and definitely embraced and taught error who were known for their personal moral integrity. In fact men as notorious as Pelagius and Faustus Socinus were respected in just this way. You would expect the opposite to be true wouldn't you? But there is more to it than a simple, straightforward, personal moral failure.

In recent writing on orthopraxy there has been a stress on the outworking of orthodoxy in terms of changed Christian behavior along the lines of the fruit of the Spirit. Sometimes this has been married with an affirmation that this kind of orthopraxy is in fact what orthodoxy is really all about. What has been neglected, in my estimation, is the stress on orthopraxy at the very point where it connects to orthodoxy. This is the kind of orthopraxy that values guarding the good deposit, of being found trustworthy with the mysteries of God, of rightly handling the word of truth, of keeping the faith, of holding firm to the trustworthy word as taught. These things are also included in biblical orthopraxy. So much so that a failure here may have eternal consequences for preacher and listener alike. It is a failure that is exacerbated when those guilty of it continue to exhibit this kind of ungodliness. A refusal to be corrected, and to hold on to views that deviate from the gospel, is itself a form of immorality and ungodliness. If we do not hold firmly to the gospel then we will have a chronically misshaped orthopraxy at a vital point. And, it should be said, it is a failure that will only be corrected by repentance.

Dialogue on Justification [Encyclopedia Kevinannica]

Thu, 17 May 2007 00:06:00 GMT

We often refer to the "dialogue" that takes place between an author and the readers of a book. Here is a chance to engage in just that:

In the interest of promoting dialogue on the important topic of justification, Westminster Bookstore, with the gracious cooperation of Justified in Christ editor K. Scott Oliphint, is providing you with a unique opportunity to engage this book's authors.

From now until May 31, 2007, we invite you to submit questions that arise as you read Justified in Christ, things you would love to ask the authors if you could sit down with them in person. We will collect these questions and pass them on to the Westminster faculty contributors to this book, who will prepare written answers. Some time in June 2007 we will post those answers online.

Sounds like fun to me. GO HERE for instructions on how to participate.

Mark Driscoll on Church Planting [Christian Research Net]

Wed, 16 May 2007 15:42:19 GMT

For those who may not have seen it here is a link to Christianity Today’s liveblog and Mark Driscoll talking about church planting.

Can we be “good” without God? [Expository Thoughts]

Wed, 16 May 2007 12:35:12 GMT

There has been an excellent exchange going on at Christianity Today’s website between Christopher Hitchens and Doug Wilson over issues related to atheism and morality. Wilson is giving a fine example of presuppositional apologetics and this exchange should be studied by seminarians and pastors who want to see how such an approach is practically flesh-out with an actual warmblooded atheist. For my money one of the touchstones of such a conversation is how the atheist can justify morality in a universe that is conceivably without God. Wilson puts his finger right on the pulse of this issue and so far Hitchens has been unable to get anywhere near an answer to such a dilemma (and to be consistent, he wont be able to). Hitchens argument is that “morality” comes from what he calls “innate human solidarity.” Here’s Wilson’s response:

“You say in passing that ethical imperatives are “derived from innate human solidarity.” A host of difficult questions immediately arise, which is perhaps why atheists are generally so coy about trying to answer this question. Derived by whom? Is this derivation authoritative? Do the rest of us ever get to vote on which derivations represent true, innate human solidarity? Do we ever get to vote on the authorized derivers? On what basis is innate human solidarity authoritative? If someone rejects innate human solidarity, are they being evil, or are they just a mutation in the inevitable changes that the evolutionary process requires? What is the precise nature of human solidarity? What is easier to read, the book of Romans or innate human solidarity? Are there different denominations that read the book of innate human solidarity differently? Which one is right? Who says?

And last, does innate human solidarity believe in God?”

Willow Creek Re-invention Announced [Kerux Noemata]

Wed, 16 May 2007 10:53:00 GMT

Willow Creek Steps Up to Feed Its 20,000 Attendants | Christianpost.com:

"Vision 2010, developed over the last 18 months, is a three-part plan that includes bolder witness to reaching people across the Chicagoland area, rethinking how to coach Christ followers and developing tools to help all churchgoers grow in Christian faith, and unleashing unprecedented levels of compassion into the world."

How was all of this decided? The same old way Bill figured out how to plant a church that people liked...

"When Senior Pastor Bill Hybels unveiled the vision two weeks ago, he highlighted church survey results that showed less satisfaction among long-time or fully devoted attendants compared to newcomers who were exploring Christianity. In the upcoming years, Willow Creek leaders will be altering the way they coach to teach attendants how to be "self-feeding individuals... An earlier experiment of the "Fuel Experience" revealed a positive response from all participants and results were consistent across age groups and spiritual stages."

The following comment is meant to be sarcastic:

So you mean, all I gotta do is poll everybody at church to see what their consumeristic, materialistic, idolatrous hearts "need" then just do that and I'll get me one big old mega church? Cool!

End of sarcasm.

kerux noemata - the blog of pastor paul w. martin
thanks for reading!

Has God Failed? [Fide-O]

Wed, 16 May 2007 01:46:00 GMT

Reacting against a perceived tendency to reduce Paul's teaching to answering the question, How can I be saved?, the trend today is to say that the real question that concerns Paul (as it did all first-century Jews) was, Who are the people of God? In other words, it's a question of ecclesiology (defining "Israel"), not soteriology (how one gets in). However, Paul's arguments in Romans chapters 9 to 11 especially demonstrate that he is interested in both questions and that,in fact, neither can be successfully answered in isolation from the other. Thus far in Romans, Paul has emphasized that since all people, Jew and Gentile alike, are "in Adam," condemned by the law, under the sentence of death and divine wrath, the only way to be saved is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Who Is Israel?

The problem is that the covenant that the people made with God at Sinai was being allowed to determine the answer to these questions. How are we saved? By fulfilling the law. Who is Israel? Those who fulfill the law. Paul held this view before his conversion, as a Pharisee and persecutor of the church, but on the Damascus Road everything was turned upside down when he encountered a vision of the very "cursed" one according to the law ("cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree") triumphantly seated at the Father's right hand in glory. Now the questions receive different answers that are, in fact, perfectly consistent with the expectations of the prophets. How are we saved? We are saved in the same way that all of the saints in redemptive history were saved: by trusting in God's promised Messiah. Who are the people of God? The children of promise-those who share Abraham's faith. The heirs of the Sinai covenant (and thus of the earthly land) are those who are ethnic descendants of Abraham, circumcised in the flesh; the heirs of the Abrahamic covenant (fulfilled in the new covenant) are all people, Jew and Gentile, who are "in Christ" through faith alone, circumcised in heart.

Throughout his epistles, therefore, Paul labors the contrast between these "two covenants," represented by two mothers (Sarah the free woman versus Hagar the slave), two mountains (Zion and Sinai), and two Jerusalems (heavenly and earthly) (see especially Gal 4). Pulling together his teaching across these epistles, we can offer a list of contrasts.

Paul has been unveiling the free grace of God in the Abrahamic covenant to all those who are "in Christ": pre-destined, called, justified, glorified (Rom 8:30-31). He has stressed the un-conditional basis of this everlasting covenant. So now, especially for those who had confused the Abrahamic and Sinai covenants, the likely question is raised: So, Paul, is this election that you are talking about a new and different one from the election of Israel? Has God failed in his saving purposes for Israel, so that now he finds himself having to resort to "Plan B" (the church)?

To answer this question, the apostle does not invent a new theology of election. Rather, he shows that all along God has fulfilled his eternal electing purposes distinct from the election of Israel as a national theocracy designed to point all the nations to Christ. It was the Abrahamic covenant (made 430 years before the Sinai treaty) that promised blessing for the nations. It was Abraham's sons, Ishmael and Isaac, who illustrate the prerogative of God's sovereign grace in election. Although both were the fruit of his loins and outwardly members of the covenant of grace, circumcised in the flesh, God had already chosen Isaac and rejected Ishmael. "And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac (for the children not yet being born, nor having done anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls), it was said to her, 'The older shall serve the younger.' As it is written, 'Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated'" (Rom 9:10-13). God is not unjust in electing apart from any foreseen virtues. Since the elect are chosen out of a mass of perdition, God would only have foreseen sin and resistance in any case. The point could not be any clearer: "So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy" (Rom 9:16).

If this is the way God has always worked, then election and grace cannot be assimilated to the Sinai covenant. God's eternal and unconditional election of individuals for salvation, hidden to us, cannot be confused with his conditional covenant with the nation of Israel. What remains unconditional in God's promises to Israel is his utterly one-sided oath to bring the blessing of salvation to all nations through Abraham's seed. The Sinai covenant, based on law, cannot annul the earlier Abrahamic covenant, based on promise (see Gal 3:15-18).

So God is not unfaithful. His Word has not failed, even if we do not currently see the Jewish people embracing Christ en masse. The prophets con-sistently taught that Israel would be saved through a remnant, and that this Jewish remnant would also include a remnant from all the nations. Together, they would form "one flock with one shepherd," in a "covenant of peace" (Ezek 34:11-31). The people resulting from this unconditional election would constitute the true Israel. Paul is simply announcing that this remnant theology of the prophets has been finally realized in the history of redemption.

Click here to read the rest of this article by Michael Horton.

Schreiner Preaching in Toronto [Kerux Noemata]

Wed, 16 May 2007 01:42:00 GMT

It was a joy to sit under Dr. Tom Schreiner’s ministry today at the SGF Annual Pastor’s Conference. Scheduling conflicts only allowed me to make it out for the one day, but we hope to have the audio of these messages posted soon on our sermonaudio site. If you cannot wait, you can download two messages here on the sovereignty of God in salvation by Tom from a couple of years ago.

Pastor Carl Muller preached an excellent message on Balance in the Christian Ministry. I highly commend it to any pastors who read this blog and will try to remember to post about it again once the audio is available.

kerux noemata - the blog of pastor paul w. martin
thanks for reading!

Sean Lucas and Me [Peter Leithart]

Tue, 15 May 2007 20:19:20 GMT

A while back, Covenant Seminary's Sean Lucas reviewed my book Against Christianity. I read the review at the time, not carefully, and quickly found other things to do. Few things are more boring that defending what I've written. With the recent release PCA statement on the Federal Vision, and Lucas's presence on the committee, however, some friends have suggested that I take a look at the review again and respond to it.

I understand that Lucas has distanced himself from the tone of his review; fair enough. But I understand that he also stands by the substance of the review, so I'll respond at that level. I don't have the patience for a complete point-by-point response, but this is still far too long.

1. The comparison to Newman mystifies me. Is Lucas claiming that I'm heading to Rome? He suggests as much at the end of his review. If so, he's wrong. Is he saying that my book aims for a "counter-reformation" in the evangelical and Reformed world?

If so, I confess it. It's true. I have a dream: That someday every week, every baptized man, woman, and child in every Reformed church around the globe would be eating and drinking with Jesus. I have a dream: That someday the whole Bible will be taught in all its fullness and power, that Reformed churches will chant and sing the Psalms, that the Bible be in our marrow and plasma as it was for the church fathers, medieval monks, and Reformers. I have a dream: That someday the Reformed churches will really be more of a threat to modern secularism than we are to one another.

Call me a dreamer. I think I share much of this dream (admittedly, not all) with Calvin and Luther and Bucer.

2. Lucas complains that I challenge "confessionally-defined" terms like "Bible" and "salvation" and "theology." I'm not sure where any Reformed confession defines "theology" or "Christianity," or where I've challenged the Reformed understanding of the "Bible." (For the record, I don't advocate the adoption of the Apocrypha into the canon.)

Yet, in general Lucas is right. I have challenged what are standard definitions of a number of terms. To some degree, these challenges are based on my reading of contemporary theology, which, at its best, tries to liberate Christian theology from non- and anti-Christian modern confinements (ie, recognizing that confining "theology" to topics that fit into the standard loci is part of the liberal policing of the sacred). Perhaps I have been seduced by postliberal theology in unhelpful ways; I hope not, but I acknowledge the possibility. In the main, my intention, if not my achievement, is to challenge definitions from Scripture. If our theological language has become brittle and narrow, it seems that refreshing it from the Bible is all to the good. That's what I, and most of my friends, aim to do.

3. As to theological influences: I have read a good bit of Hauerwas and Milbank was my doctoral supervisor. I am shamefully ignorant of Barth. I've learned more from James Jordan than from all these other contemporary theologians combined. My original influence, though, was Calvin. The Fourth Book of the Institutes was a revelation - laying out a churchly and sacramental vision of Christian life quite at odds with much of the ethos of American evangelicalism, and to some degree at odds with the ethos of American Reformed theology.

4. Lucas recognizes that my advocacy of Christendom puts me at odds with Hauerwas, Yoder, and many other contemporary theologians whose work I have read with appreciation. He summarizes my position thus: Leithart "desires a massive conflict of cities-the church polis and the secular polis locked in mortal combat with the church emerging triumphant with the assistance of Christ. Then the church would be nothing less than the City of God on earth, with a full orbed culture-an eschatological arts, science, literature, and worship fully transformed by the Church-over which Christ reigns. A
culture war, indeed. Think of him as a postliberal reconstructionist."

That last comment is fairly apt, though having never been a liberal I'm not a post-liberal. For the rest, some points: Whether I "desire a massive conflict" is irrelevant - Jesus says there is and will be a massive conflict, which we carry out with the powerful weapons of the Spirit; the church is not going to become a culture or the city of God - as I read the NT, it is already, and my book advocates that we learn to act like a city.

As to the church-as-culture, Lucas's summary is somewhat misleading. When I speak of the church as culture, I am talking about the marks of the church - Word, Sacrament and Discipline - not about art, science, or literature. I'm fine with the church-as-church sponsoring the arts - how else can we have church buildings without sponsoring the art of architecture? But I don't see that as inherent in the church's mission. Even in the most primitive situation, a church that preaches the word, celebrates sacraments, and exercises discipline is a culture. I expect and hope to see the ecclesial culture inspire and shape the arts, politics, science, and everything else. In fact, I don't have to hope; much of Western civilization is precisely the result of the penetration of the ecclesial culture and Word and Sacraments into the wider world. But I don't see those cultural pursuits as inherent in the church, or necessarily as church-sponsored.

5. Lucas claims that I aim for a "postliberal adaptation of the Reformed faith." This overstates the influence of postliberalism, strictly speaking, on my theological work. I've read my Lindbeck and my Frei, and also a number of theologians influenced by the postliberals. But I agree with Milbank's criticisms of postliberalism, and would, in any case, say that my book, insofar as it's aiming at the Reformed world, aims at a "catholic" (small-c, not Roman) adaptation of the Reformed faith.

6. Turning to more substantive theological claims, Lucas says that "Leithart somehow claims that the church is salvation in its corporate representation and (presumably) to be part of the church is to be saved. This, in turn, leads to a new (to the Reformed tradition) emphasis upon baptism as the means for entering the church's salvation, which logically leads to the idea that to be baptized is to be saved."

Lucas has hit on what I think is the crucial issue in the whole Federal Vision bruha: Ecclesiology. I think, though, that he has equivocated on some of his terms here. When I say that the church is "salvation," I am playing one of what Lucas describes as my word games.

Here's the argument, or one of them: God created man as a social being; God saved man; therefore, God saved man as a social being, restoring Him to true sociality; therefore, salvation must take a social form; if salvation is already achieved, it must have been achieved in social form; the church is that social form of salvation.

This argument must be crossed (as it is in my book) with the already-not yet: The church is the new humanity, the location where God has begun to save the human race; but the church is not yet the consummated new humanity, because God has not yet finished saving the human race. Some within the church will be cut off in time, others at the last judgment. But the presence of false sons, the presence of some who will not finally be saved, does not change the reality of the church as the restored human race.

Baptism is the induction to the new humanity. But Lucas's logic only works if when I use "saved" with reference to the church I mean "eternally saved." But I don't. So there's no logical inference to be had; and I simply don't teach that everyone who is baptized is eternally saved. Nobody, I dare say, has ever taught that, and I don't aim to be the first.

The point can be made in terms of 1 Corinthians 10. Who was saved from Egypt? All Israel. Who was baptized into Moses in the cloud and sea? All Israel. Who drank from the spiritual Rock that was Christ? All Israel. Who persevered to the promised land? Not all Israel. Many fell in the wilderness.

In sum, Lucas has defined "salvation" in his own terms, not mine, and then drawn logical inferences that only follow if he uses his definitions, not mine. He's free to stipulate his own definitions, but testing my arguments by his definitions doesn't seem exactly fair.

7. Much the same thing happens in his discussion of the Supper. Defining the reality of the Supper in terms of individual personal benefits, he complains that I confuse this "reality" with participation in the "sign." But I'm not using that narrow, individual definition of the reality of the Supper. The reality of the Supper is that people from every tribe and tongue and nation sit to eat at the same table; that's part of the (already) restoration of humanity. And, yes, everyone who sits down to eat and drink at the table is participating in that reality, even the most hypocritical racist imaginable.

8. Many of Lucas's comments are genuine differences of theological opinion. Yet, when he says that I "upraid" the view that faith is the "individual appropriation of God's gospel of grace in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit whereby an individual is united to Christ, receiving a new status before and power to obey God" as "the heresy of Christianity in a nutshell," he's being dishonest or incompetent. He's quoting from page 78, where I write that the claim that "religion is private" is "the heresy of Christianity in a nutshell."

If he thinks that my argument for an inherently public Christian faith is at odds with a demand for personal faith, then I begin to suspect he has succombed to "Christianity" as I use the term. This suspicion is strengthened by his comment that "In the sense that God has accommodated himself to our capacity by giving us warrant for his
own 'rituals,' namely baptism and Supper, we can agree. Yet the crucial thing is not the ritual, but faith in Jesus Christ." I find "accommodation" confusing and unnecessary, but Lucas is right that I'm talking about baptism and the Supper when I speak of "rituals."

But Lucas's polarization of "ritual" over against "faith" is precisely the view I'm contesting; the notion that the "crucial thing" is the (private) faith, not the (public) ritual represents, I claim in the book, an accomodation to modern arrangements designed precisely to keep Christian faith - at least its crucial aspects - safely hidden away in private.

A fair bit of Lucas's review goes on to charge that I've minimized the need for personal faith, and replaced personal faith with "ritual" that works automatically in programming us to speak Christian language and act out Christian virtues. Perhaps I could have been more explicit in talking about personal faith. But I do say, quite early in the book, that "To be a Christian means to be refashioned in all of one's desires, aims, attitudes, actions, from the shallowest to the deepest. . . . As the late liturgical scholar Mark Searle put it, everyone has a way of 'leaning into life,' and the Christian strives to 'lean into life,' all of life, Christianly." Lucas may not recognize that as a description of personal faith, but that's what it is.

9. Lucas says, "What distinguishes the New Covenant from the Old is not the difference in rituals. What distinguishes the New Covenant from the Old is that the Redeemer has come and that entrance into his community is by Spirit-wrought faith in him, the sign of which is baptism. This, as Leithart has to know, is the mainstream Reformed tradition back to Calvin; to move away from it is to move toward something else."

I do not know that. Does Calvin say that the difference between Old and New is not a difference in ritual? Was faith not required for Israelites in the Old Covenant? Does Calvin say that? I think not. Calvin says that the substance of both covenants is the same, and that the way of salvation is the same in both. They differ in "administration," which means, in large measure, in "ritual."

10. If not to Rome, then, Lucas says, I'm heading toward oldline Protestantism, where all my suggestions have been tried and failed. "Vibrant 'Christianity,'" he argues, "does not come by way of ritual
alone or ritual primarily; it comes by a whole-souled faith in Jesus."

To this, I can think of nothing better than to appeal to Luther, who, in David Yeago's analysis, turned more fully to Reformation the more fully he turned to the Catholic tradition of sacramental theology and Christology.

Here's the issue: Lucas calls the church to "whole-souled faith in Jesus." So do I. But where is this Jesus to be found? How am I to have communion with him? Can I find him in the deepest recesses of my heart? How can I distinguish between Jesus in my soul and my own urges and desires, between Jesus in my soul and indigestion? No, I need to look outside myself, to the places where Jesus has promised to meet me. Where's that? In Word and Sacrament. He's promised to be there, and when I go looking for Him there, I'll find Him.

That's the whole "program" of my book: A restoration of the primacy of Word and Sacrament (which is a restoration of the primacy of Jesus!). Counter-reformational? Perhaps; but only insofar as the Reformed churches have drifted from the original vision of the Reformation.

Theological imagination [Peter Leithart]

Tue, 15 May 2007 18:53:19 GMT

One of my recurring frustrations with recent debates in the Reformed world is a widespread failure of theological imagination. Too many seem to operate on the assumption that we have everything already figured out; we have all possible categories and positions ready to hand. All we need do is deploy these categories on whatever happens our way. It'll fit, Procrustes says.

Thus, it is seriously proposed that someone is either on the road to Rome or the Road to Geneva - with no possibility of a third (or fourth, or fifth) destination, with no possibility that there might be something in between (though in between is where much of the Christian world lives). And if I suggest that we Reformed might still have something to learn from the Bible about justification, then I must be Rabbinic or Roman Catholic - there simply is no other alternative.

Blogging - My Story [Tim Challies]

Tue, 15 May 2007 11:48:28 GMT

Last week at The Basics Conference I was privileged to lead a seminar on the topic of blogging. The topic that was assigned to me, "Blogging Your Ministry," is probably not the best title for what I delivered. I spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out what I could possibly say about blogging that would not be both tedious and boring. I soon found that there was a lot that was worth saying when I looked deeper than the simple nuts and bolts of blogging. When I dug a little bit deeper and looked at the history, value and impact of blogging, I found all sorts of interesting issues that the church would do well to think about. So over the next few days I'd like to share some of that with you. These few articles, which will be similar but not identical to the seminar, should be of interest, I think, to those who blog but also to those who read blogs or who are wondering what blogs are. There should be something of interest in this series for all Christians. I'll define blogging, share the story of how I came to be a blogger, look at the short history of blogs, suggest ways you can begin a successful blog of your own (something I did not address in the body of the seminar as delivered last week) and try to see what blogging means to the church.

Let's begin by defining this term blog. When people think of this term they usually picture a teenage girl posting disjointed ramblings about how much she hates her parents or a grumpy Christian leveling both barrels at someone who has drawn his wrath. Though these are mere caricatures, they are popular ones. Thankfully, though, they are ones the blogosphere is beginning to overcome as people begin to take it more seriously. Let me give you what I consider to be the marks of a blog: they are a personal form of communication, they are an instant form of communication, they are a time-stamped form of communication and they are a public and interactive form of communication.

Blogs are personal in that the tone of a blog post is typically informal and conversational. Where books and magazines tend towards formality, blogs tend to be written from a more personal perspective and are directed more deliberately at the reader. I enjoy reading a blog by Randy Baseler, a bigwig at Boeing who is Vice President of Marketing for that company (NOTE: Randy just retired so another Randy, Randy Tinseth). Where most communication from within the aircraft industry would be hopelessly formal and tedious, Randy gives information that is targeted at people like me, who have an informal interest in the latest and greatest developments when it comes to aircraft. We do not know the industry lingo so need someone like this to decipher it for us. He gives a personal look at an industry that is usually very impersonal.

While blogs are personal, they are also personalized, reflecting the personality of the author, perhaps through the actual look of the site, through the presentation of the content or through the content the author chooses to deal with.

Second, blogs are instant. Where a newspaper is always a day late with the news, a magazine is a week or a month late and a book may be a year late, a blog is right up-to-date. They are instant and immediate, allowing people to tell others what they are thinking at exactly the moment they are thinking it. Obviously this can be both a benefit and a drawback.

Third, blogs are a time-stamped form of communication. Blogs are organized by date so that the most recent article is at the top of the page and the ones below it are necessarily those that were posted before. Thus blogs value what is new over what is older and possibly even better. If you visit the site of an author you might find that his best book is the one featured first on his site. In the blogosphere it is always the latest article that is featured. You would also find that any archived post on a blog is likewise stamped with a date. Thus blog posts always have a wider context of the date and time they were written.

Finally, blogs are a public form and interactive of communication. What is posted online may well be available forever. As I was preparing this article I was shocked to see that I could still find copies of the very first articles I had ever written--articles I had long-since forgotten about and which were erased from my site many years ago. Content posted on blogs is meant to be public. It is possible that a blogger hopes the public will remain contained to a specific group, such as his family or his church, but sooner or later content will be picked up by search engines and other people will find it. This is the very nature of blogs.

You may have noticed that I did not define blogs as dealing with a particular subject matter. While there was a time that blogs were more consistent, today they can come in many forms and deal with absolutely any subject matter. They can be authored by a single person or by a team of people. They can represent merely a hobby or, on occasion, represent a significant income stream. When attempting to understand how blogs work, it is helpful to see them as a network where one is connected to another. Articles written by one blogger tend to be picked up and discussed by others, so that there can be an intricate web of discussion between many authors and many sites. And, while comments are not necessary to make a blog a blog, most sites to allow interaction between the author and the reader and discussion between other readers.

With that formality aside, let me briefly share my story.

In September of 2002 I decided, rather on the spur of the moment as I recall, to begin my own web site. I really knew nothing about web sites but thought maintaining one might prove to be a fun distraction for me. My parents and four siblings had recently moved down to the Atlanta area and, with a one-year old son and with my wife pregnant again, I thought I would use the site as a photo gallery to post pictures of this growing family. Since this was going to be a site by family and for family I spent thirty five dollars to reserve the family name, choosing the domain challies.com. Using some borrowed web space, I pieced together a really bad little site. I uploaded a few photos and over the next few months updated the site every now and again, adding a new set of pictures or writing the occasional personal comment.

As the months passed I continued to update the site, but did so only every few weeks. It was really a sad little site in desperate need of attention. But I found that I did enjoy posting little updates on my family when I got around to doing so. In late 2003 I heard a new word in the media. This word, blog, sounded intriguing. I inadvertently stumbled across one of these blogs, one day, while doing some research and realized that it was really not much different from my site and from what I was already doing. The only real difference was that blogs offered the ability for people reading the site to interact with the content by posting their own comments. That seemed like a great idea, so I installed some blogging software and began calling my site a blog. When I posted an article my mother or my wife would post a little "Good job!" comment for me. But I still didn't update it much.

October 31, 2003 was a pivotal day. I decided that day that I should get serious about this blogging thing and committed to either blogging every day for a year or giving up and getting rid of the site altogether. So I wrote an article on November 1, November 2, November 3...and before I knew it, it was a year later and I was still going. I recommitted in 2004, 2005, 2006. That was over three years ago and I'm still blogging every day and look forward to doing so almost every day. According to the silly little counter I maintain for my own amusement, I am nearing my 1300th consecutive day.

It came as a great shock to me that, when I began to write, people began to read the site--people I didn't know and people from all around the world. Before I knew it I had twenty people reading my site every day. Then it was fifty and a hundred and a thousand and two thousand and three thousand and five thousand...and then it occurred on day that my site had become one of the most widely-visited Christian blogs. I realized that I had been plunked into the center of something that was getting really big really quickly.

But things continued to get stranger and stranger. I soon passed my one millionth visitor. I began to receive emails from people I regarded as heroes or to read the occasional reference to something I had written in articles these people were writing. In 2005 I was asked by Desiring God to fly to Minneapolis to liveblog their annual National Conference and that was soon followed by many other invitations. Since then I've been privileged to attend major conferences across the United States. I even recently completed my first book, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, which should be available in January and which deals, obviously, with the subject of spiritual discernment. And now I've begun to receive and to accept the occasional speaking engagement. All-in-all it's been quite a ride. And it could be that it's just starting.

I've often paused to ask myself just why I continue to blog. As I've done so it has become clear over the past years that I do this primarily for the good of my own soul. I treat blogging as nearly a spiritual discipline or as an extension to the other disciplines of reading the Bible and praying. My desire to post something every day that is new and interesting and theologically-correct keeps me turning constantly to the Bible and constantly to good books. It has been very good and healthy for me.

Let me put this in perspective. I am a self-employed computer guy from Canada with no seminary or Bible college education. I have nothing more than a bachelor's degree in history and one I really only barely deserved, and I earned it from a college people only know of because Clark Pinnock taught there. I attend a church no one has heard of and, until recently, had never met any well-known Christian leaders or speakers. So while I am supremely unqualified, people continue to visit the site. When they do so, they read book reviews, they read personal reflections, and they read what I attempt to teach or share on the subject of theology. I often feel like I'm in over my head.

I do not tell you all of this to boast or to point to anything I have done. When I began my web site I had no plan for it but to post pictures of my children. When I began writing I had no plan but to give my family and immediate friends the occasional article to read. Yet it has grown into something so much more. A quick search of the Net will turn up all kinds of articles telling you how you can quickly create a blog that is widely-read and influential. Apparently there are certain shortcuts a blogger can take. The thing is, I didn't know about any of this when I began and have done very little to deliberately promote the site. I just kept writing.

I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what God is doing through this web site. Is this leading to something or is God preparing me for something? What does He want me to do with all of this? These are private wrestlings--things I hope become increasingly clear to me. But if we look beyond these private struggles I think we come to some interesting questions that the church needs to address. We'll get to this in a future article. This series will continue tomorrow.

Power vs. Principles [Cranach]

Tue, 15 May 2007 09:46:26 GMT

The Washington Times reports that a group of Christian conservatives is organizing to rally behind the presidential candidacy of Fred Thompson when he announces that he is going to run. That's fine. But this quote from the story stuck in my craw:

Of the dozen or so Republican possibilities, Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and an ordained Baptist minister, is most closely associated with the Christian conservatives, but he is thought to be especially vulnerable to liberal critics in the press and the Democratic Party. He has been ridiculed in several liberal publications and elsewhere for indicating in the recent Republican debate his skepticism of the theory of evolution, though he does not oppose teaching it in the public schools as theory.

So, these unnamed Christian kingmakers are looking for a candidate who believes in evolution? What bothers me is that these Christian activists are hanging their own people who are in the race--Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback--out to dry, delivering them seemingly no support.

If they are in the "must win," "lesser of two evils" mode, why aren't they supporting John McCain? Apparently, as we blogged about earlier, many Christian activists are supporting Giuliani over McCain. Yes, McCain once dissed the Christian right. But he is anti-abortion, tough on terrorism, and fiscally responsible. Yes, he is responsible for the campaign reform bill, which restricted the ability of some of these advocacy groups to throw their money around, but Fred Thompson supported that too! In fact, Fred Thompson WAS THE NATIONAL CHAIRMAN FOR MCCAIN'S 2000 PRESIDENTIAL BID!

Guy Waters to RTS as Prof of NT [Reformation21]

Mon, 14 May 2007 18:47:09 GMT

It is my pleasure to announce that the Reverend Dr. Guy Prentiss Waters will join the faculty of Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi on June 1, 2007, as Associate Professor of New Testament. Guy is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (B.A.), Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia (M.Div.), and Duke University (Ph.D.).

Guy is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America, and a leader in the Mississippi Valley Presbytery (PCA), where he has served as the Chairman of the Credentials Committee since 2004. Guy has been Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at Belhaven College since 2002. He and his wife, Sarah, have three children: Lydia, Phoebe, and Thomas. Guy and Sarah were a vital part of Tenth Presbyterian Church when they were in Philly, as they are now here in Jackson at First Presbyterian.

Guy is prolific, and his superb work on Paul's use of Deuteronomy is now in print: The End of Deuteronomy in the Epistles of Paul (Mohr Siebeck, 2006).

25 Ways to Help Kids Love to Read [Desiring God Blog]

Mon, 14 May 2007 17:06:56 GMT

(Author: Abraham)

Noel Piper tells the story of one of her sons really enjoying the books The Cross and the Switchblade and Run, Baby, Run. This son did not generally like reading, so it was especially exciting that he had gotten into these stories. When he finished both books, he went to the library and asked if the librarian could direct him to more stories that he might enjoy. She asked him what he liked and he replied, “Christian books about gang warfare.”

Encouraging your children in their own peculiar interests and making sure they know the neighborhood librarian are two ways to help them enjoy reading. Kathy Zahler compiles a list of other strategies in her book 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Raise a Child Who Loves to Read.

Here's a list of 25 ways to help your child love to read adapted from Zahler's 50.

Teach your child to read.
Let your child see you read.
Read aloud.
Encourage your kids to read aloud to you and to each other.
Ask your children to retell for you the stories they've read.
Have pre-readers “tell the story” from pictures.
Help your children evaluate stories.
Connect stories to children's lives.
Encourage identification with characters.
Make connections between books.
Share with your family from your own reading.
Recommend beloved books.
Own books your child will want to read.
Go to the library regularly.
Take books with you when you travel.
Suggest practical reasons for reading.
Send kids to books for answers to their questions.
Help your children find books that encourage them in their interests.
Provide a home environment conducive to reading.
Use TV wisely if you must use it at all.
Increase your child's real-life experiences.
Work with your child's teacher.
Expect great things for and from your kids.
Recognize differences among your children.
Take delight in words and let that delight show.

And, above all, let's take delight in the Word and let that delight show.

Seminary Appointments [Between Two Worlds]

Tue, 15 May 2007 01:52:00 GMT

Guy Waters has been appointed as an NT professor at RTS-Jackson.

Michael Haykin has been appointed as professor of biblical spirituality and church history at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

Sliding Fast Down the Slippery Slope [Al Mohler's Blog]

Tue, 15 May 2007 05:16:35 GMT

Just days after reporting that 90 percent of all babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are now aborted, Amy Harmon reports in The New York Times that the real reach of the question goes far beyond Down syndrome. Now, some babies are aborted for virtually any trait considered undesirable by the mother or parents -- and ethicists seem unwilling to draw any clear lines.

Read Full Blog...

What Do We Know and When Did We Know it? [The Heidelblog]

Mon, 14 May 2007 12:16:20 GMT

During the Watergate hearings, Senator Howard Baker asked, "What did the President know, and when did he know it? However important that question was in the politics of 1973, it remains an important question in theology today.

A friend writes to ask what Reformed theologians mean when they speak of humans having "analogical" knowledge. The question is whether we can know anything, even for a moment the way God knows it? This question raises an even more fundamental question: what does it mean to speak of the distinction between the Creator and the creature.

These are fundamental questions because they are among the most basic questions of human existence and if we get the answers wrong, those errors reverberate throughout our theology.

The short answer to the most basic question of the Creator/creature relations is that humans are nothing more or less than image-bearers (Gen 1:26). We are analogues of the Creator, but we are not and never become the Creator. That would seem to be a fairly obvious truth from Scripture. After all, Scripture says, "In the beginning God...." and we are nowhere to be found until God says, "let there be...and there was." We are the product of God's Word. We did not participate in the act of creation. We did not help to plan the creation. We are creatures. This is what Job 38 is all about. When God asks Job, "Where were you when...?" the answer is, "Nowhere."

We reflect God. We are like God in certain ways, but we are not God. This will come as a surprise to the anthropomorphites (an ancient heresy from the period of the early church) such as the Mormons who think God the Father and God the Spirit have bodies. God the Son became incarnate, it's true, but before the incarnation he had no body and only the Son is incarnate. This will also come to a surprise to certain evangelical theologians such as Clark Pinnock who are postulating that perhaps the Mormons have a point! (See his book, The Most Moved Mover, where he cites Mormon theologians approvingly!).

We do not exist on a continuum with God. We exist on an entirely separate plane from God. We are not on our way to becoming God or gods (this view has long been held in segments of the Eastern and Western Churches and gaining in popularity among evangelicals and even among some Reformed folk). Yes, believers will be glorified but glorification is not deification. Even Adam was not to be deified, but glorified. Deity is not something that can be transferred to

When we say that we are analogues of God we are recognizing the vast differences between God and his creatures. Isaiah recognized these differences when he said,

       For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
        neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
       For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
        so are my ways higher than your ways
        and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isa 55:8; ESV).

Moses had said essentially the same thing in Deut 29:29, "The secret things belong to Yahweh our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever...."

To recognize this difference in kind of being that humans experience and that God is Reformed theologians have said that the "finite is not capable of the infinite." Even in glorification we always remain creatures. To emphasize tis point, Cornelius Van Til used to say that humans and God exist of separate, parallel planes. We are separate AND unequal. This is why the classical Reformed theologians used to speak of "archetypal" theology as belonging to God and "ectypal" theology belonging to humans. Johannes Wollebius wrote,

True theology is called archetypal or ectypal. Archetypal theology is the knowledge by which God knows himself, which in reality is no different from the essence of God. Ectypal theology is a kind of copy (effigies) of archetypal theology which is first of all in Christ the God-Man and secondarily, to be sure, in the members of Christ (Compendium, 1).

When Wollebius said "archteype" he meant the original, the eternal, the divine, that which, by definition, only God has. When he said "ectype" he meant the copy, the finite, that which humans can have. To say the same thing in a different way, a few decades later, the Reformed theologian Johnnes Marckius spoke of the "analogy" between God's way of thinking and ours.

There are lots of folk who know longer accept these distinctions and many more who don't know they exist. Many evangelical and many Reformed folk speak as if the only way to really know something is to know it the way God does. Think about this for a moment. What if we said that the only way to exist is to exist as God does. Really? Whatever the health gurus tell you, unless Jesus comes we're going to die. Not only is God not going to die, he cannot die. It is axiomatic in Scripture that God's existence is different in kind from ours. "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever" (Isa 40:8).

We use analogies all the time with the understanding that the ultimate reality much more complex than we can say to a given audience. When a relative is dying of cancer one does not tell a three-year old all the gruesome biological and medical details. We say, "So and so is very sick." Is that statement true? Yes. Is it ALL the truth that could be said? No, but it's all the truth that can be said to a three-year old.

To be an image bearer is to be like God, it is not to be (or become) God. If we are or become God, then we're not image bearers any longer are we? An image bearer is an analogue. It's like the sacraments. The sacraments are not salvation themselves, they are signs and seals of salvation. The Passover supper was not the actual deliverance out of Egypt, it was a sign and seal of deliverance.

It is also great mistake to confuse God's accommodated baby talk for what God knows in himself. This is another mistake that many evangelical and some Reformed theologians are making today. They re-locate what God knows and when he knew it to Scripture. Then, they tell us what Scripture says and means and voilà! They think they know what God knows and they know it the way he knows it.

Have you ever tried to argue with someone who thinks he knows what God know, the way God knows it? That is the definition of frustration. How does one argue with infinite knowledge?

Well, moving God's archetypal theology into Scripture is a nice card trick, but the problem with such a move is that Scripture is itself accommodated. It isn't "what God knows, the ways he knows it" in himself. Revelation is what God wants us to know. To make Scripture "what God knows in himself" changes the nature of Scripture from an accommodation to a means of deification. That's just perverse. We do not ascend to God. God the Son, the Revelation has descended to us (Eph 4:9) in the incarnation (Phil 2:5-11) that he might take us to his Father.

What do we know? We know what God reveals to us in creation and in Scripture. When do we know it? We know it when God reveals himself to us. We are always and only the recipients of revelation. We are never the originators of revelation. Further, revelation is always accommodated to human finitude the way a sane grown-up accommodates himself to a child. This is why Calvin said that God speaks "baby talk" when he speaks to us. What God says to us in revelation is always true but it is always finite. God is always true but he is always infinite. That means that God understands what we know entirely (remarkably some Christians postulate that God can't know what we know because he's infinite!) but we can never understand things the way God does in himself, i.e., when he is not, as it were, stooping over to speak baby talk to us.

Lewis on Why We Enjoy Reading [Between Two Worlds]

Mon, 14 May 2007 00:59:00 GMT

Here is C. S. Lewis's answer to the question of why we enjoy reading:

The nearest I have yet got to answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. Each of us by nature sees the whole world from one point of view with a perspective and a selectiveness peculiar to himself. And even when we build disinterested fantasies, they are saturated with, and limited by, our own psychology. To acquiesce in this particularity on the sensuous level—in other words, not to discount perspective—would be lunacy. We should then believe that the railway line really grew narrower as it receded into the distance. But we want to escape the illusions of perspective on higher levels too. We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own. We are not content to be Leibnitzian monads. We demand windows. Literature as Logos is a series of windows, even of doors. One of the things we feel after reading a great work is “I have got out.” Or from another point of view, “I have got in”; pierced the shell of some other monad and discovered what it is like inside.

C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 137–141. Cited in Jerram Barrs's essay, Christianity and the Arts.

A Friendly Critique of the Cameron and Comfort vs. Rational Responders Debate Part I [Triablogue]

Sun, 13 May 2007 23:10:00 GMT

INTRODUCTION

Both pop-evangelical culture and the skeptical internet community are discussing the recent debate held between participants Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron versus “Kelly” and “Brian Sapient” of the Rational Response Squad. As of today (5-12-07), no comments have been offered regarding the debate from the ministry of Comfort and Cameron, but the Rational Responders have proclaimed that they believe themselves have been victorious over Christian Theism. We will get to the issue of their supposed “victory” in light of Comfort and Cameron’s performance later in this series, but it is more imperative that we first begin by turning our attention to something that Cameron and Comfort said before the debate,

"Perhaps you think that anyone who says he can prove the existence of God is a dreamer . . . we can prove that God exists, scientifically, absolutely, without mentioning faith or even the Bible,” said Comfort and Cameron. “Do you find that hard to believe? Then watch the debate.”

I already commented on this statement two weeks before the debate occurred and so what is said here will be somewhat re-worked material with the necessary post-debate commentary and observations. It is important at the outset of this critique to provide a disclaimer stating that I have no personal angst against Ray Comfort, Kirk Cameron, and The Way of the Master ministries. Instead, I and others in our church body have benefited from their respective ministries in the past and truly appreciate their efforts at building the Kingdom of God through the use and application of law in evangelism. However, although I truly appreciate their ministries, it is imperative that we provide an examination of (I) their proposed apologetic methodology and then (II) provide a helpful criticism regarding their use of classical apologetic argumentation in light of various challenges presented to them by the Rational Responders.

I. Examining a Proposed and Flawed Apologetic Methodology

Problem # 1: We do not prove the existence of the God of Christianity by first giving up Christianity.

Again, let me review what Comfort and Cameron have said,

"Perhaps you think that anyone who says he can prove the existence of God is a dreamer . . . we can prove that God exists, scientifically, absolutely, without mentioning faith or even the Bible,” said Comfort and Cameron . . . .” [1] [Bolded emphasis mine]

For Comfort and Cameron to declare that they intended to employ this type of apologetic method is irreverent, dishonoring to Christ and is downright sinful. Greg Bahnsen rightly said,

“Neutrality in scholarship, apologetics, or schooling is both impossible and immoral. No man can serve two masters, and thus one must choose to ground his intellectual efforts in Christ or in his own autonomous reason; there is no middle ground between these two authorities. Neutrality would erase the distinctiveness of the Christian position and muffle the antithesis between godly and ungodly thinking. A Christian who strives to be neutral not only denies the Lordship of Christ in knowledge and loses his solid ground in reasoning, he also unwittingly endorses assumptions which are hostile to his faith.”[2]

As mentioned with Dr. Bahnsen’s comment above, the apologetic methodology Comfort and Cameron employed is sinful because (1) it assumes that unbelievers have the ability to correctly examine, interpret, and come to the proper conclusions about hard evidence apart from special revelation, thus giving heed to their sinful autonomy versus calling them to repentance for it. (2) They verbally announced that they would defend the existence of “God” without any mention of “faith or even the Bible”,[3] and as a result, one of the traditional arguments that they sought to use (i.e., the teleological argument per the “Portrait assumes a painter” argument by Comfort) actually backfired on them somewhat as seen in Sapient’s rebuttal period. The classical arguments for the existence of God, in their traditional form, do not defend the existence of the Christian God but only an extremely nebulous concept of a “god” that could just as well be Zoroaster, Zeus, Allah, or one of the infinite numbers of supposed gods presupposed by the theosis doctrine of Mormonism. Worse yet, this “god” wouldn’t have to necessarily be theistic, especially since Comfort and Cameron would not have been able to make any reference to their “faith”, had they adhered to their original debate challenge. Such a god(s) could merely be super-intelligent extraterrestrials that created advanced life and seeded the planet earth in the distant past. As a result, had they adhered to a purely evidential-scientific apologetic approach in this debate (which they did not) they would have willingly avoided (per their own words) doing the very thing that they as Christians are commanded to do, namely, to “earnestly contend for the faith (versus giving it up) once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 3), and “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts”. However, as Cornelius Van Til has noted, the defense of the Christian worldview must necessarily have as its foundation the self-attesting Christ of Scripture. There is simply no other way of appropriately and biblically providing a rationale for the hope that abides in you (Col. 2:3; 1 Peter 3:15).

There was much ado in this debate about appealing to general revelation to prove the existence of God, (i.e., where there is a painting there must be a painter), but such a generic and non-specific approach fails both biblically and philosophically.

Biblically: General revelation (as per Romans 1) does not prove the existence of some nebulous concept of a god, but proves that the ton theon (“the God” cf. Rom. 1:21 in Greek) of Scripture exists and that the unbeliever already intuitively knows that He exists and thus needs no “proving” as it were:

Romans 1:19-21 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. ²¹ For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened..

Paul says that the creation reveals God’s existence, eternal power, and divine nature, and wrath against suppressors of said truth (Romans 1:18-20). His primary point in Romans 1 is not that unbelievers are ignorant of God’s existence and simply need to be educated via the traditional proofs and historical evidences, but that unbelievers do already in fact know about God and will intuitively recognize His creative power in nature. However, as God-haters, they will sinfully suppress the truth and knowledge that they already have about Him and as a result, they will be judged for it, regardless of their lack of special revelation. Of course, general revelation does not show man the way of salvation, the Trinitarian nature of God, and other necessary doctrinal truths, but it does show the Christian that every unbeliever has enough knowledge to damn him, but not always enough to save him, hence the need for missionaries (Rom. 10:14-17).

And so, Paul’s commentary in Romans 1:18-22 shows that all unbelievers know intuitively that God exists and that this knowledge is sufficient in and of itself to condemn them to hell. The knowledge that they possess intuitively consists in His wondrous power in creation and their moral responsibility to Him (Rom. 1:19-21). The strange theories that they concoct about the origin of the universe and man serves as further corroborating evidence that they are truth suppressors hell-bent on escaping their own moral culpability (Rom. 1:22-23). Comfort and Cameron already know this and have spoken and written about it. However, for them to proposition for a debate by giving the atheist the very thing that the word of God denies him (namely, autonomous neutrality) is to deny what Paul clearly teaches about unbelievers as outlined in Romans chapter 1.

In part II, I will provide some helpful, constructive criticism regarding the debate proper, so that we can learn how not to do apologetics.

[1] http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/152669.aspx

[2] Greg Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, (Nagadoches, TX, 1996), 51.

[3] http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/152669.aspx

Embedded in The Truth War [Christian Research Net]

Sun, 13 May 2007 22:48:19 GMT

From Introduction, page xvii of The Truth War by John MacArthur:

"We cannot sit by and do nothing while the worldly, revisionist and skeptical attitudes about truth are infiltrating the church. We must not embrace such confusion in the name of charity, collegiality, or unity. We have to stand and fight for the truth-and be prepared to die for it-as faithful Christians always have."

Democratized celebrity? [Peter Leithart]

Sun, 13 May 2007 13:01:45 GMT

With YouTube, American Idol, blogs, and a host of other new outlets for "talent," it appears that celebrity is being democratized. Appearances are deceiving, according to a new book by Jake Halpern, Fame Junkies.

Halpern points out that, though American Idol and similar shows make new celebrities, old celebrities serve as the gatekeepers of fame. Nor is the rabbles' relationship to the famous truly reciprocal. According to the TLS reviewer (May 4), "Halpern notes that our relationships with celebrities can easily become uniquely, even weirdly, 'para-social.' We daydream about giving our favourite pop singer a new song idea or coo at the television stars on the screen; but, Halpern says, they don't hear us. It is only we who hear them, via the mass media."

Halpern's book focuses on those who aspire to fame or are close to the famous - parents who try to win a modeling contract for their kids, personal assistants to the famous, truly fanatical fans. he concludes (again in the reviewer's summary) that "the more you identify with celebrities, the more you will wonder why they're the celebrities and you're not." There is no real circulation of celebrity; there are new ones, but few of the old ones fade away. Celebrities remain an elite, and few are able to elevate themselves into that stratum of society.

The reviewer, Andrew Stark, suggests that celebrities themselves are eager "to pay deference to democratic norms." They speak in "we's" instead of "I's," implicitly acknowledging that their career is tied to their fan base. They allow themselves to be photographed doing everyday things - shopping, playing with their kids: "behind what seems to be their elitist hauteur, celebrities might be haltingly, half-consciously, trying to reassure themselves, and us, of their democratic credentials."

Greg Bahnsen quotes on apologetics [Irish Calvinist]

Sun, 13 May 2007 07:36:34 GMT

In light of some of the Ray Comfort chatter these quotes by the Greg Bahnsen are helpful::

The unbeliever opposes the Christian faith with a whole, antithetical system of thought-not simply with piecemeal criticisms. His attack is aimed not merely at certain random points of Christian teaching, but at its foundation. The particular criticisms utilized by the unbeliever rest upon basic key assumptions which unify and inform his thinking. It is this presuppositional root which the apologist must aim to eradicate if his defense of the faith is to be effective.

Because the unbeliever has such an implicit system of thought directing his attack on the faith the Christian can never be satisfied to defend the hope that is in him by merely stringing together isolated evidences which offer a slight probability of the Bible’s veracity. Each particular item of evidence will be evaluated (as to both its truthfulness and degree of probability) by the unbeliever’s tacit assumptions; his general worldview will provide the context in which the evidential claim is understood and weighed. What one presupposes as to possibility will even determine how he rates ‘probability’”

An unbeliever is not simply an unbeliever at separate points; his antagonism is rooted in an overall philosophy (Col. 2.8) which is according to the world’s tradition; thus is an enemy of God in his mind (Col. 1.21; Jam. 4.4) and uses his mind to nullify or obviate God’s word (Mk. 7.8-13).

The Christian can then teach the unbeliever that all wisdom and knowledge must take Jesus Christ as its reference point (Col. 2.3). The believer’s thinking, just as the unbeliever’s is grounded in a self-validating starting-point. This ultimate truth must be an expression of God’s mind; He alone speaks with unquestionable authority and self-attesting veracity. Thus Jesus categorically claimed to be the truth (John 14.6) (Bahnsen, Always Ready), pp. 67-69.