I lied. This post will not be a continuation of the critique of Anthony Badger, which is on hiatus. Rather, I will be discussing this.
The short answer to "who do I think won" is Joel McDurmon, the reasoning for which is below. The short answer to who I agree with at this point is "neither, entirely". Each person failed to convince me of their thesis (which both participants had, as Hall was making a constructive argument as much as he was denying the affirmative). The issues at stake, to my mind (at least the ones addressed) were four-fold: 1) the issue of Scripture, 2) the issue of history, 3) the issue of confession, 4) the issue of Bahnsen. I will try to deal with each of them briefly here.
1) The issue of Scripture. This issue was affirmed to be the most important by both participants, and I wholeheartedly agree, but this issue is why I'm hesitant to say the exchange had a clear winner. The core of McDurmon's constructive was the notion of the civil law (and its accompanying penalties and sanctions) not being abrogated unless explicitly stated to be so in the New Testament. Insofar as this was based on McDurmon's simple affirmation that "if they were just then they are just now", this strikes at the heart of an unstated presupposition on the part of JD Hall, e.g., an assumption of key Baptistic notions of substantive distinction between the covenants. There is nothing wrong with JD Hall holding this axiom per se (he would be a rather shoddy Reformed Baptist without it), but McDurmon didn't allow it to stand unchallenged, which made it a good debate. Hall, to my mind, failed to prove this (largely silent) assertion from Scripture, and this was made glaring by Hall spending a large part of a rebuttal period affirming the glory, truth, holiness and justice of the Civil code of Israel, a fact which towards the end, McDurmon pointed out meant that Hall was seemingly moving from firm didactic opposition to the Code as "obligatory", to merely asserting that it was one of a number of good governmental options. As an additional example, Hall dismissed the notion of the Puritans executing a man for bestiality by saying "pssh, do we really need the Civil code to know that bestiality is wrong?". This strikes me as a canard. It is by means of the law that men are brought to the realization of their sinfulness (witness the postmodern soup of sexual deviancy our nation is slipping into divorced from God's standard), and without the Civil code, it could be argued that the ethics of bestiality remain largely a matter of public consensus, but the societal response to it does not. In short, I remained unconvinced by the meat and potatoes of Hall's exegetical case.
This does not let McDurmon off on this front however. In the midst of all the acontextual chicanery on what Joel called "the boogeyman quotes" from North and Rushdoony (more on that in a minute), JD landed on a solid argument, albeit one I would have advanced differently: what is the soteriological implication of transmission of Israel's "penalogy", whole cloth, into the New Covenant administration? McDurmon deeply disturbed me in not providing clear teaching from the Theonomic position, even in broad strokes on key questions here. Would a Theonomic state apply the penalogy of the Civil code only to nonbelievers, and how does this jive with Paul's admonition not to judge outside the Church? If the Civil code penalties are applied to Church members, even those making a credible profession, of what benefit are the merits of Christ to professors relative to the Old Covenant? Is the "libertarian" regime pushed by North and Rushdoony merely an excuse to slip Theocratic fascism binding the consciences of the unconverted in through the largest back door possible? And what exactly would the nature of doctrinal disagreement within such a state look like? To leave these questions unanswered means that I can't say Joel "won" in this arena any more than JD did.
Verdict: no clear winner.
2) Joel, in my opinion, wasted a lot of time after a valid point had already been made spending what amounted to his entire first cross-examination on naming hosts of persons who he believed supported his reading of the Westminster standards and on the law. Even if he could have shoehorned more compelling argument into the time allotted, however, his point was made. Opinions on the standards regarding this issue have not been clear-cut or historically monolithic, and the idea that the Theonomists' usage of "general equity" stretches the bounds of credulity, as JD would have it, was adequately demonstrated to me to be in error. On that note, I believe McDurmon came out ahead here (but see below).
Verdict: McDurmon.
3) Even if the historical positions on the standards regarding the nature of general equity are multifaceted, in my personal opinion, granted the language of "expired together with the State of that people', the Theonomic (big T) camp has some hard and serious questions to answer regarding the role of the movement within historic Presbyterianism. No matter how stretched the big tent of the phrase "general equity" gets, McDurmon failed to convince me that presbyteries would not be right to sanction ministers for denial of tenets of the standards if they refused to affirm the expiration of the judicial code. While it's true that Scripture is the final and infallible arbiter, for that to be a position to which McDurmon hastily fell back ceded the point Hall was making: that on a confessional level, McDurmon is being inconsistent.
Verdict: Hall.
4) A defining moment of the debate for me was Hall's claim in 1ACx that he would refuse to believe Bahnsen if he said he had a tripartite distinction in the law. Why defining? Because this was merely the most dramatic example of a consistent cascade of misrepresentation of the Theonomic source material by JD Hall. I firmly believe if you picked a Bahnsen work remotely touching the subject material of the debate, even at random, and began to read you would identify Hall as a caviller on the actual position of Bahnsen. Full disclosure being made, I am no real fan of Rushdoony and North as men and conversationalists. It could even be that there was fleeting occasional substance in some of the accusations leveled against them by Hall (specifically as touching the aforementioned soteriological issues). But to devote this much of an entire rebuttal to the litany of deliberately de-contextualized quotes designed to scare people into (among other things) the idea that Gary North doesn't believe regeneration enables law-keeping, that the Theonomists make the moral and civil law coterminous, or that Greg Bahnsen denied justification by faith(!), is patently absurd. If you start watching the debate, the reason you should finish it is that McDurmon is allowed time to respond to this, and he picks it apart, as he should. This area of the debate is the area that would have scored the most points if I were sitting at a judges' table, as I believe that McDurmon exposed direct abuse of contrived evidence by JD. Your mileage may vary, but I suggest you delve into the authors in question yourself.
Verdict: McDurmon.
In summary this was a great match-up between two men who came prepared and stuck to their guns, and like many great debates between brothers in Christ, it leaves as many good questions as it answers. I'm still in the in-between on the issue, but I can tell you that on points, this was a contest with a winner, albeit narrowly.
Winner: McDurmon by a half-stride.
In Christ,
~JS.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
How my garden grows, or "A response to Anthony Badger, pt. 1"
The nature of this posts' titular garden is, of course, "full of tulips". And it is that set of doctrines that I am setting out to defend as regards a series of articles posted by Anthony B Badger in the journal of his own Grace Evangelical Society, the beating heart of the Zane Hodges "free grace" perspective. The faith statement of GES can be found here, and the first of Dr. Badgers' articles, which I will be addressing, here,
I will pass over the background to the TULIP acronym and the issues of church history that preface the article series, which it must be said were commendably accurate and concise, and I credit Dr. Badger for allowing Westminster and the Calvin-crowd to define their own terms as regards total depravity (pg. 42 in the article). It is immediately following that definition however, that the wheels begin to come off, and I will be focusing on a few diverse statements of Dr. Badger on the doctrine of depravity, namely his repeated assertion that faith logically (and temporally?) precedes regeneration (a key hermaneutical stance on which much of later argumentation hinges), that consistent with Dr. Norman Geislers' stance in Chosen But Free (on which Dr. Badger heavily leans), mans will, despite the Biblical testimony to sin, is at least "partially" self-determinate, (pg. 54), and the typical GES misapprehension on the nature of saving faith and the presentation of a saving faith divorced from repentance and thus reduced to a form of "assent."
Does the new birth, the regeneration of man and the promised giving of the heart of flesh (a divine action promised in Ezekiel 36:26), logically precede faith, so that the inability of man in self-determination to salvifically believe, as presented in the Westminster Standards, is upheld? Or is faith the means by which man, in his own choice, becomes regenerated? It would have been the context of Ezekiel 36, speaking of the promise to sprinkle Gods people with clean water, that Nicodemus would have had in mind in John 3. While the chapter is most famous for the exposition of faith as the means of eternal life in vs. 16, textually and in the exposition of Jesus, it is the second birth that Jesus mentions first, and this second birth is spiritual. Jesus contrasts the activities of the flesh in strict dichotomy with spiritual actions, (vs. 6), and asserts that the Spirit brings the new birth by its own power, and even without perfect human knowledge of its purposes in doing so (vs. 8). It is only in the context of the absolute necessity of a second birth, accomplished by the will of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus goes on to locate eternal life in belief in himself. Similarly, in John 6, Jesus says that all that the Father gives to Him will come to Him, and that the giving of the Father, and the Fathers will for the Son, is the grounds of those being given being raised on the last day. (vs. 36) No one, least of all Reformed theologians, would deny that the "coming" of John 6 is a coming in faith, a faith that views Christ as our very spiritual sustenance. But what is the grounds of that "coming"? A giving of the Father. Above and beyond that, in direct contradiction of "whosoever will-ism", Jesus directly asserts that no one is able to come to Him unless drawn by the Father, and that all who are drawn come! (vs 44, 65) The Greek construction there for "no one is able", udice dunatai, allows precious little wiggle room, and implies that the initiation of salvation rests solely on God and precedes the action of man.
It would seem in this regrettably brief overview of Jesus' interpretation of the ordo salutis that divine action in making people alive, does in fact, logically precede that faith, but results in it nonetheless.1 I will move on to briefly demonstrate that Paul shares this hermaneutic principle with Christ before addressing "Geisler-isms" on the human will (and one may be able to see my proverbial eschaton from the beginning).
In Romans 8, Paul sets out the same stark contrast between flesh and spirit (not in a dualistic sense, but in the idea of human deadness, which will be important later) that Christ does, but with even stronger language. While Jesus gave us a portrait of human helplessness in the analogy of the new birth (how many babies have a say in their birth?), Paul divides the world into two camps, and asserts that minds set on the flesh are dead (vs 6), and do not obey Gods law because they cannot (vs 7). Perhaps more importantly the activity of the spirit in bringing life is the grounds of the promises of Romans 8:30. In context of the gracious, life giving action of the Spirit, those who are called are said inevitably to be glorified. In this, the "golden chain of redemption", Paul continues to expand on Jesus' assertion that those who are given come, and those who come are raised. But the second birth, the giving of the Father, the life-giving call, precede, textually and logically, the response of the new heart in faith. Similarly, Paul describes, in his first letter to the Corinthians, the fact that "the natural man...is unable to understand the things of God, for they are spiritually discerned" (1 Co. 2:14). Is not Faith in Christ "a thing of God"? Must not the Spirit then, give verse 16's "mind of Christ" (along with Ezekiels "heart of Flesh") prior to the understanding of the things of God? Dr. Badger must account for texts like John 3, John 6, 1 Co. 2, and Romans 8 in order to be exegetically credible on the order of salvation.
As may be apparent, the passages I am addressing are monergistic. There is a lot about the Triune God accomplishing His purposes, about the spiritual death of men, about the sovereign bringing about of the new birth and the glorification of those called. There is very little about the intrinsic capacity of the unregenerate man to believe. I do not adhere to "The Princess Bride" theology. Man is not only mostly dead. Dr. Badger does an admirable job of providing the historical context of various theories regarding mans deadness in Adam, but then it must be said, radically departs from that context in favor of Dr. Geislers "biblical self-determination".
Dr. Geisler's analogy of self-determinism on pg. 54 reads "Self-determinism might be likened to a person acting on what he perceives to be good or desirable, to obtain pleasure, or to avoid pain. We can actually decide whether to eat junk food or a balanced meal apart from any externally compelled duress!". Simply put, Dr. Geisler protests too much. The question is not whether one desires the "bacon" of sin or the "salad" or Christ, but whether or not Jesus and his apostles consistently taught in the Scriptural witness whether our wills are enslaved to our sinful desires, for as Christ taught "everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (John 8:34). The question is not whether we are "free to want" but whether or not our "wanters" are broken by sin. It must be reemphasized that the metaphors of death and birth and slavery continue to recapitulate pictures of human inability, not of self-determined creatures "able to choose otherwise"; and let us not deceive ourselves, the battleground we are on is that of "libertarian" free will.
Geislers position on the distinction between "person and will", also on pg. 54, is question begging. Synergists: find Scriptural evidence that a human person is the first cause of their actions, contrary to Genesis 50, the witness of the book of Acts to the use of mans sin in the Crucifixion, and the wisdom of Solomon that The Lord both "directs the steps" of man (Pr. 16:9) and "turns the heart of kings" (Pr. 21:1), or retract your statement. The entire section of the article on the alleged ability of unregenerate man to believe is bereft of a single Scriptural citation or even footnote, and I submit there is a reason for it; the argument being made lacks a Scriptural witness.
Leaving aside Dr. Geisler's misrepresentation of Gospel efficacy in Calvinism (it is the Reformed position that the proclamation of the Gospel in human mouths is the secondary cause of regeneration and therefore the claim that Reformed theology "renders useless [the] gospel message to the sinner" (pg. 55) is utterly spurious), I briefly want to touch on the GES position on the nature of Faith and depravity. The analogy of the man in the well goes far farther than to assume that regeneration follow faith: it challenges the Reformed (and might I be so bold, Scriptural) definition of regeneration. The man is not waiting for our Fireman's steel cable; the man is dead. The well is filled with water, and probably sharks. But when the man is resurrected, he does not come out of the well with Wilkin's faith that is "a conviction that He is the Guarantor of eternal life"(pg 57), or rather, he does not come out of the well only with the conviction that the Fireman drew him from the well. The man, who is a recipient of resurrection power with the prophesied heart, mind and Spirit of Christ, brings the Fireman into his life, and (since the analogy breaks down as Christ is greater than any human savior), turns "the Fireman" into the model of his character and life.
Robert Wilkin, in his 2005 debate with Dr. James White on the issue of the nature of Faith was pressed into acknowledging that faith in Christ is a mere intellectual assent, comparing faith in Christ's salvation to "faith in the projector" (on which slides for the debate were appearing) being the acknowledgment of the existence of the projector. Dr. Badger, as giving the "free grace" position, must answer for what regeneration actually accomplishes in light of James 2. I submit that this "assent to the drawing of the Fireman" is not only sub-biblical in its anthropology as illustrated above, but sub-biblical in its soteriology. The ESV renders participles in James 2:14 in such a way as to render the verse "can that faith save him?" Which faith? That faith that is without works. What does that faith look like? The belief "that there is one God", which even the demons have! It is vital to harmonize the book of James to avoid imbalance. On the one hand we find Roman Catholicism and similar systems, which make 2:14 join works to faith as intrinsically justifying before God. On the other we have Dr. Wilkin, who denies that a faith without works is dead. Dr. Badger has of course, not echoed Dr. Wilkin verbatim in this article, but it is absolutely vital to question those who share Dr Badgers convictions on faith and depravity to ask: "does saving faith sanctify, or not".
Dr. Badger states that his view of depravity "... may be seen as a separation from the joys of God’s presence, a non-appreciation of His virtues, and an inclination to fall short of His character in our actions. The lost-ness of the human race, however, does not mean that man acts as badly as he is capable of, that he cannot think logically, that he cannot hear and understand the propositions of the gospel, or that he is unable to believe the truth. Man is rightly considered to be dead in sin, and by nature the child of wrath, but he still retains the image of God in his being. That image seems to carry with it an ability to believe the gospel"(pg. 60). Again, question-begging. Again, a dearth of Scriptural witness. If we are dead children of wrath, can we believe prior to divine assistance? I believe I have laid out a preliminary case to spark research but also to respond negatively. I must also conclude with the assertion that stating that logic, while marred in the unregenerate person, is not totally effaced (although the gospel itself is "foolishness to the world"), and that all men do not act as badly as they can (which is refuted in every notable Reformed systematics text), are positions I hold. These are frequent canards, which as is regrettably common in anti-Reformed polemic, are joined to true statements about the Reformed standpoint. Man is in fact incapable of understanding without the Spirit, and incapable of belief without the prompting of God. That is why there is a T in my Tulip.
Join me next time in pt. 2 of this response, regarding the infamous doctrine of "unconditional election". As we move forward, I will build on prior information in order to demonstrate that the following points of the TULIP acrostic build on each other both Scripturally and in logical order, making this something of a "cascading argument". Pressing on, I urge readers that as the Father sends the Son and gives him a people, the Son dies on behalf of those given, and the Spirit works on the hearts of men to apply that redemption, consider the question: "does the sovereign God in His Trine will save men, or make men savable?"
In Christ,
~JS.
1. Not for nothing am I only using gospel passages from the gospel of John, as it was the late Dr. Hodge's perspective that the gospel of John is the only one written to Gentiles and because it does not contain the explicit word "repent", supports most out of the four gospels his position on faith and repentance, an assertion I would sharply contest.
I will pass over the background to the TULIP acronym and the issues of church history that preface the article series, which it must be said were commendably accurate and concise, and I credit Dr. Badger for allowing Westminster and the Calvin-crowd to define their own terms as regards total depravity (pg. 42 in the article). It is immediately following that definition however, that the wheels begin to come off, and I will be focusing on a few diverse statements of Dr. Badger on the doctrine of depravity, namely his repeated assertion that faith logically (and temporally?) precedes regeneration (a key hermaneutical stance on which much of later argumentation hinges), that consistent with Dr. Norman Geislers' stance in Chosen But Free (on which Dr. Badger heavily leans), mans will, despite the Biblical testimony to sin, is at least "partially" self-determinate, (pg. 54), and the typical GES misapprehension on the nature of saving faith and the presentation of a saving faith divorced from repentance and thus reduced to a form of "assent."
Does the new birth, the regeneration of man and the promised giving of the heart of flesh (a divine action promised in Ezekiel 36:26), logically precede faith, so that the inability of man in self-determination to salvifically believe, as presented in the Westminster Standards, is upheld? Or is faith the means by which man, in his own choice, becomes regenerated? It would have been the context of Ezekiel 36, speaking of the promise to sprinkle Gods people with clean water, that Nicodemus would have had in mind in John 3. While the chapter is most famous for the exposition of faith as the means of eternal life in vs. 16, textually and in the exposition of Jesus, it is the second birth that Jesus mentions first, and this second birth is spiritual. Jesus contrasts the activities of the flesh in strict dichotomy with spiritual actions, (vs. 6), and asserts that the Spirit brings the new birth by its own power, and even without perfect human knowledge of its purposes in doing so (vs. 8). It is only in the context of the absolute necessity of a second birth, accomplished by the will of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus goes on to locate eternal life in belief in himself. Similarly, in John 6, Jesus says that all that the Father gives to Him will come to Him, and that the giving of the Father, and the Fathers will for the Son, is the grounds of those being given being raised on the last day. (vs. 36) No one, least of all Reformed theologians, would deny that the "coming" of John 6 is a coming in faith, a faith that views Christ as our very spiritual sustenance. But what is the grounds of that "coming"? A giving of the Father. Above and beyond that, in direct contradiction of "whosoever will-ism", Jesus directly asserts that no one is able to come to Him unless drawn by the Father, and that all who are drawn come! (vs 44, 65) The Greek construction there for "no one is able", udice dunatai, allows precious little wiggle room, and implies that the initiation of salvation rests solely on God and precedes the action of man.
It would seem in this regrettably brief overview of Jesus' interpretation of the ordo salutis that divine action in making people alive, does in fact, logically precede that faith, but results in it nonetheless.1 I will move on to briefly demonstrate that Paul shares this hermaneutic principle with Christ before addressing "Geisler-isms" on the human will (and one may be able to see my proverbial eschaton from the beginning).
In Romans 8, Paul sets out the same stark contrast between flesh and spirit (not in a dualistic sense, but in the idea of human deadness, which will be important later) that Christ does, but with even stronger language. While Jesus gave us a portrait of human helplessness in the analogy of the new birth (how many babies have a say in their birth?), Paul divides the world into two camps, and asserts that minds set on the flesh are dead (vs 6), and do not obey Gods law because they cannot (vs 7). Perhaps more importantly the activity of the spirit in bringing life is the grounds of the promises of Romans 8:30. In context of the gracious, life giving action of the Spirit, those who are called are said inevitably to be glorified. In this, the "golden chain of redemption", Paul continues to expand on Jesus' assertion that those who are given come, and those who come are raised. But the second birth, the giving of the Father, the life-giving call, precede, textually and logically, the response of the new heart in faith. Similarly, Paul describes, in his first letter to the Corinthians, the fact that "the natural man...is unable to understand the things of God, for they are spiritually discerned" (1 Co. 2:14). Is not Faith in Christ "a thing of God"? Must not the Spirit then, give verse 16's "mind of Christ" (along with Ezekiels "heart of Flesh") prior to the understanding of the things of God? Dr. Badger must account for texts like John 3, John 6, 1 Co. 2, and Romans 8 in order to be exegetically credible on the order of salvation.
As may be apparent, the passages I am addressing are monergistic. There is a lot about the Triune God accomplishing His purposes, about the spiritual death of men, about the sovereign bringing about of the new birth and the glorification of those called. There is very little about the intrinsic capacity of the unregenerate man to believe. I do not adhere to "The Princess Bride" theology. Man is not only mostly dead. Dr. Badger does an admirable job of providing the historical context of various theories regarding mans deadness in Adam, but then it must be said, radically departs from that context in favor of Dr. Geislers "biblical self-determination".
Dr. Geisler's analogy of self-determinism on pg. 54 reads "Self-determinism might be likened to a person acting on what he perceives to be good or desirable, to obtain pleasure, or to avoid pain. We can actually decide whether to eat junk food or a balanced meal apart from any externally compelled duress!". Simply put, Dr. Geisler protests too much. The question is not whether one desires the "bacon" of sin or the "salad" or Christ, but whether or not Jesus and his apostles consistently taught in the Scriptural witness whether our wills are enslaved to our sinful desires, for as Christ taught "everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (John 8:34). The question is not whether we are "free to want" but whether or not our "wanters" are broken by sin. It must be reemphasized that the metaphors of death and birth and slavery continue to recapitulate pictures of human inability, not of self-determined creatures "able to choose otherwise"; and let us not deceive ourselves, the battleground we are on is that of "libertarian" free will.
Geislers position on the distinction between "person and will", also on pg. 54, is question begging. Synergists: find Scriptural evidence that a human person is the first cause of their actions, contrary to Genesis 50, the witness of the book of Acts to the use of mans sin in the Crucifixion, and the wisdom of Solomon that The Lord both "directs the steps" of man (Pr. 16:9) and "turns the heart of kings" (Pr. 21:1), or retract your statement. The entire section of the article on the alleged ability of unregenerate man to believe is bereft of a single Scriptural citation or even footnote, and I submit there is a reason for it; the argument being made lacks a Scriptural witness.
Leaving aside Dr. Geisler's misrepresentation of Gospel efficacy in Calvinism (it is the Reformed position that the proclamation of the Gospel in human mouths is the secondary cause of regeneration and therefore the claim that Reformed theology "renders useless [the] gospel message to the sinner" (pg. 55) is utterly spurious), I briefly want to touch on the GES position on the nature of Faith and depravity. The analogy of the man in the well goes far farther than to assume that regeneration follow faith: it challenges the Reformed (and might I be so bold, Scriptural) definition of regeneration. The man is not waiting for our Fireman's steel cable; the man is dead. The well is filled with water, and probably sharks. But when the man is resurrected, he does not come out of the well with Wilkin's faith that is "a conviction that He is the Guarantor of eternal life"(pg 57), or rather, he does not come out of the well only with the conviction that the Fireman drew him from the well. The man, who is a recipient of resurrection power with the prophesied heart, mind and Spirit of Christ, brings the Fireman into his life, and (since the analogy breaks down as Christ is greater than any human savior), turns "the Fireman" into the model of his character and life.
Robert Wilkin, in his 2005 debate with Dr. James White on the issue of the nature of Faith was pressed into acknowledging that faith in Christ is a mere intellectual assent, comparing faith in Christ's salvation to "faith in the projector" (on which slides for the debate were appearing) being the acknowledgment of the existence of the projector. Dr. Badger, as giving the "free grace" position, must answer for what regeneration actually accomplishes in light of James 2. I submit that this "assent to the drawing of the Fireman" is not only sub-biblical in its anthropology as illustrated above, but sub-biblical in its soteriology. The ESV renders participles in James 2:14 in such a way as to render the verse "can that faith save him?" Which faith? That faith that is without works. What does that faith look like? The belief "that there is one God", which even the demons have! It is vital to harmonize the book of James to avoid imbalance. On the one hand we find Roman Catholicism and similar systems, which make 2:14 join works to faith as intrinsically justifying before God. On the other we have Dr. Wilkin, who denies that a faith without works is dead. Dr. Badger has of course, not echoed Dr. Wilkin verbatim in this article, but it is absolutely vital to question those who share Dr Badgers convictions on faith and depravity to ask: "does saving faith sanctify, or not".
Dr. Badger states that his view of depravity "... may be seen as a separation from the joys of God’s presence, a non-appreciation of His virtues, and an inclination to fall short of His character in our actions. The lost-ness of the human race, however, does not mean that man acts as badly as he is capable of, that he cannot think logically, that he cannot hear and understand the propositions of the gospel, or that he is unable to believe the truth. Man is rightly considered to be dead in sin, and by nature the child of wrath, but he still retains the image of God in his being. That image seems to carry with it an ability to believe the gospel"(pg. 60). Again, question-begging. Again, a dearth of Scriptural witness. If we are dead children of wrath, can we believe prior to divine assistance? I believe I have laid out a preliminary case to spark research but also to respond negatively. I must also conclude with the assertion that stating that logic, while marred in the unregenerate person, is not totally effaced (although the gospel itself is "foolishness to the world"), and that all men do not act as badly as they can (which is refuted in every notable Reformed systematics text), are positions I hold. These are frequent canards, which as is regrettably common in anti-Reformed polemic, are joined to true statements about the Reformed standpoint. Man is in fact incapable of understanding without the Spirit, and incapable of belief without the prompting of God. That is why there is a T in my Tulip.
Join me next time in pt. 2 of this response, regarding the infamous doctrine of "unconditional election". As we move forward, I will build on prior information in order to demonstrate that the following points of the TULIP acrostic build on each other both Scripturally and in logical order, making this something of a "cascading argument". Pressing on, I urge readers that as the Father sends the Son and gives him a people, the Son dies on behalf of those given, and the Spirit works on the hearts of men to apply that redemption, consider the question: "does the sovereign God in His Trine will save men, or make men savable?"
In Christ,
~JS.
1. Not for nothing am I only using gospel passages from the gospel of John, as it was the late Dr. Hodge's perspective that the gospel of John is the only one written to Gentiles and because it does not contain the explicit word "repent", supports most out of the four gospels his position on faith and repentance, an assertion I would sharply contest.
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Merry Christmas '14, or "back in the saddle, maybe, no promises".
Just a short* post to herald my return to the world of internet writing no one actually wants to read, but feels obligated to because they were tagged on Facebook. It has been too long.
As this is being written, we approach (three hours!) the Christian celebration of the King of the Universe needing a probably teenage girl to wipe His butt. Flippancy aside, I'd like to reiterate in order to maximize "sinking-in....ness"1. The One Who had glory with the Father before the world was2 took on a form that required Him to poop in his drawers, lay in a first-century dog dish, and be taught how to walk. The one who upholds all things by the Word of His power3 subsisted on breast-milk and bedtime stories.
Typically, Christianity of various stripes emphasizes the humiliation and self-negation of the Cross, as rightly it should (factions too busy trying not to hurt gay activists' feelings to have a meaningful doctrine of atonement notwithstanding). The unfortunate tendency is to allow that to deprive the incarnation itself of its weight as a divine condescension. In temporal order, and in priority in the mind of God, what was Christ's first "emptying"? His taking the form of a servant.4 What's more, the incarnation is not only a stooping of God to the level of men (an aspect of Christianity in which it differs from all other faiths, in which one must climb to the level of the higher power), but absolutely vital for our redemption.
Because of Christ, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness.5 Because of Christ, we have a new Adam-and the free gift is not like the trespass.6 Because of Christ, we do not have the blood of bulls and rams offered repeatedly7, or a high priest who dies8, but an eternal Savior who is both man and God, priest and victim. And without the stable in Bethlehem, we have none of it.
This makes the incarnation a dividing line between (biblical) Christianity and all other faiths, including factions pretending to the title. Rome has gone back to a system of repeated sacrifices that perfect no one-when there is nothing to go back to. Modalism preaches a sacrifice of a priest that cannot continue to intercede. Islam offers a system where there is a transcendent God, a holy law, an eternal fire-and no mediation at all (for evidence of the results of THAT type of works-righteousness, witness the desperation with which the martyrs of the Jihad seek their own unique brand of propitiation.) America is presented with a worldview that denies the existence of anything to be propitiated, a marvelous display of "Romans 1-vision" if there ever was one. Christ-as-priest necessitates Christ-as-sacrifice, which in turn demands Christ-as-infant. It is true in many senses therefore, that Christ was born to die. But it is equally true that he came to live, just as we have, and as we are, yet without sin.
Truly, then, Christmas' joy is, if anything underestimated by Christians. We are utterly dependent, totally grateful, and truly worshipful for the gift of Jesus, fullness of God in helpless babe. As you go about your business this Christmas, try to see the celebration less as a tradition and a commemoration of a precious moment in a family long ago, less as a time for family bonding or a validation of the Trinity (although it is all of those things), and more as the dawn of redeeming grace and the coronation heralding the eternal kingdom.
Merry Christmas 2014
~JS
----------------------------
* turned out to be a total lie
1 Not a real word
2 John 17:5
3 Hebrews 1:3
4 Phillippians 2:7
5 Hebrews 4:17
6 1 Co. 15:22
7 Hebrews 9:25
8 Hebrews 7:23-24
As this is being written, we approach (three hours!) the Christian celebration of the King of the Universe needing a probably teenage girl to wipe His butt. Flippancy aside, I'd like to reiterate in order to maximize "sinking-in....ness"1. The One Who had glory with the Father before the world was2 took on a form that required Him to poop in his drawers, lay in a first-century dog dish, and be taught how to walk. The one who upholds all things by the Word of His power3 subsisted on breast-milk and bedtime stories.
Typically, Christianity of various stripes emphasizes the humiliation and self-negation of the Cross, as rightly it should (factions too busy trying not to hurt gay activists' feelings to have a meaningful doctrine of atonement notwithstanding). The unfortunate tendency is to allow that to deprive the incarnation itself of its weight as a divine condescension. In temporal order, and in priority in the mind of God, what was Christ's first "emptying"? His taking the form of a servant.4 What's more, the incarnation is not only a stooping of God to the level of men (an aspect of Christianity in which it differs from all other faiths, in which one must climb to the level of the higher power), but absolutely vital for our redemption.
Because of Christ, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness.5 Because of Christ, we have a new Adam-and the free gift is not like the trespass.6 Because of Christ, we do not have the blood of bulls and rams offered repeatedly7, or a high priest who dies8, but an eternal Savior who is both man and God, priest and victim. And without the stable in Bethlehem, we have none of it.
This makes the incarnation a dividing line between (biblical) Christianity and all other faiths, including factions pretending to the title. Rome has gone back to a system of repeated sacrifices that perfect no one-when there is nothing to go back to. Modalism preaches a sacrifice of a priest that cannot continue to intercede. Islam offers a system where there is a transcendent God, a holy law, an eternal fire-and no mediation at all (for evidence of the results of THAT type of works-righteousness, witness the desperation with which the martyrs of the Jihad seek their own unique brand of propitiation.) America is presented with a worldview that denies the existence of anything to be propitiated, a marvelous display of "Romans 1-vision" if there ever was one. Christ-as-priest necessitates Christ-as-sacrifice, which in turn demands Christ-as-infant. It is true in many senses therefore, that Christ was born to die. But it is equally true that he came to live, just as we have, and as we are, yet without sin.
Truly, then, Christmas' joy is, if anything underestimated by Christians. We are utterly dependent, totally grateful, and truly worshipful for the gift of Jesus, fullness of God in helpless babe. As you go about your business this Christmas, try to see the celebration less as a tradition and a commemoration of a precious moment in a family long ago, less as a time for family bonding or a validation of the Trinity (although it is all of those things), and more as the dawn of redeeming grace and the coronation heralding the eternal kingdom.
Merry Christmas 2014
~JS
----------------------------
* turned out to be a total lie
1 Not a real word
2 John 17:5
3 Hebrews 1:3
4 Phillippians 2:7
5 Hebrews 4:17
6 1 Co. 15:22
7 Hebrews 9:25
8 Hebrews 7:23-24
Friday, May 30, 2014
Notes from the Palatinate, or "attempting this on a tablet didn't work"
So, better late than never, Notes from the Shore makes its temporary transition to the travelog genre. Currently I am typing this from my friend Andy's computer in picturesque Hutschenhausen Germany, a burgh named for its love of "little hats". Hutschenhausen is near the slightly smaller but still rustic towns of Hauptstuhl and Landstuhl and is considered a suburb of Kaiserslautern, the nearest true city. Since Andy is an armed forces nurse, the folks I'm staying with have access to Ramstein air force base (of some renown in the metal genre). These locales are all part of Rheinland-Pfalz, the Rhineland state of Federal Germany, which is historically known as the Palatinate and was the 16th century cradle of second-Reformation Protestantism (Calvinism) in Germany. The opportunity to visit sites of historical significance to the reformation and to bicycle past land defended in the Thirty Years' War is certainly going to be difficult to forget. That being said, I thought I'd jot down some initial impressions after a few days in Western Germany.
1) Climatologically, the Palatinate is strikingly similar to Western Washington. Same diverse flora (although a lot more pigeons), same clouds, same temperature range...regrettably, same allergens. In fact, first impressions driving out of Frankfurt-am-Main made it difficult to tell I had left home, minus the apparently rampant graffiti and the occasional street sign in German.
2) Germans are big conservationists, and it is more noticeable than one might think...while also being less annoying. Residents are expected to carefully sort their recycling into several types and given one infrequently emptied garbage can to encourage doing so. Almost all windows and doors are designed to open for ventilation...because the house I'm staying in has no fans. Toilets have multiple flush settings, and I showered in something reminiscent of the scrubber/crematorium from "Gattaca" this morning. The tendency towards environmental protection yields fascinating synthesis between old and new, such as a farmhouse that proudly displayed a bevy of solar panels (complete with sign crediting them to BP) alongside the markings dating the structure to 1836. Riding the train to Landstuhl, trees and massive recycling centers were on evidence next to sprawling industrial apparatus of various types. One almost wonders if the ubiquity of the industrial age urges Germans on towards more green-mindedness. Speaking of trains, seemingly every German family owns a sedan or smart-car, and the various autobahn are bereft of the "unnecessarily large trucks! 'Murica!" phenomenon, while your nearest train station even in such a rustic setting as Hutschenhausen (I am five minutes' walk from the nearest cow pasture) is a twenty minute bike ride south. Yes, bike ride. Every inter-city highway in the country has an associated separate lane with yield signs marked for bicycles. While one wonders how much tax money is required of Germans with less enthusiasm for two-wheeled vehicles, this is likely a policy that is both green and healthy for people willing to take advantage of it.
3) Kaiserslautern is frankly a rather sketchy place, with a nudey-bar close to the train station and posters that attempt to synthesize Smokey Bear type slogans with a tireless campaign against venereal disease ("only YOU can prevent genital warts!"). Despite the eyebrow-raising moments, and the sense that "K-town" has seen better days, it is a place worth seeing. I had the opportunity not only to be photographed with two storied churches, St. Martin's and Die Stiftskirche, but also to see the inside of the latter, complete with 150-foot pipe organ and Protestant unity monument (die Stiftskirche was the first church in the Palatinate [possibly all of Germany, not sure] to hold a communion service open to both Lutherans and Calvinists...and it only took until 1828!). The chance to visit a Burger King was not only valued for the bathroom (almost all "public" restrooms in Germany require either a fee or being a paying customer), but because this particular edifice stood across from Church row, and in a similarly impressive building. The interior was also humorous, as one felt that there was an attempt at American decor that was almost there, but not quite (gratuitous amounts of NBA posters!).
4) Never let it be said that Germans don't take their politics seriously. Local elections in the Palatinate and the election of Germany's representatives to the European Parliament occured over last weekend, and there were posters for parties and candidates in abundance throughout the K-town area. German law requires that all parties receive the same money for campaign signs and that said signs all be the same size, which gave the opportunity to see propaganda running from the mainstream and reserved (the CDU's pictures of Merkel and "a stable Euro helps everyone" were particularly inspiring) to the...fringe (no, thank you, Marxist-Leninist party of Germany, I don't think I will vote to "destroy the EU" or "liberate women from oppression"). Probably the most interesting headline of the weekend was the story a copy of Die Welt keyed me into on the plane into Frankfurt: the acquisition of seven EU Parliament seats by an upstart organization known as "Alternative fur Deutschland", who in a rising tide of Euroskepticism on the continent, are giving voice to a cultural trend unprecedented in post-war Germany. The world will stay tuned on that front, I suppose.
That's about all for initial impressions, but there will be more to come, as the anniversary of Ehrenbreitsen fortress in the city of Koblenz is tomorrow, and my flight for London leaves early Monday. More on all of that when I get the chance.
~JS
1) Climatologically, the Palatinate is strikingly similar to Western Washington. Same diverse flora (although a lot more pigeons), same clouds, same temperature range...regrettably, same allergens. In fact, first impressions driving out of Frankfurt-am-Main made it difficult to tell I had left home, minus the apparently rampant graffiti and the occasional street sign in German.
2) Germans are big conservationists, and it is more noticeable than one might think...while also being less annoying. Residents are expected to carefully sort their recycling into several types and given one infrequently emptied garbage can to encourage doing so. Almost all windows and doors are designed to open for ventilation...because the house I'm staying in has no fans. Toilets have multiple flush settings, and I showered in something reminiscent of the scrubber/crematorium from "Gattaca" this morning. The tendency towards environmental protection yields fascinating synthesis between old and new, such as a farmhouse that proudly displayed a bevy of solar panels (complete with sign crediting them to BP) alongside the markings dating the structure to 1836. Riding the train to Landstuhl, trees and massive recycling centers were on evidence next to sprawling industrial apparatus of various types. One almost wonders if the ubiquity of the industrial age urges Germans on towards more green-mindedness. Speaking of trains, seemingly every German family owns a sedan or smart-car, and the various autobahn are bereft of the "unnecessarily large trucks! 'Murica!" phenomenon, while your nearest train station even in such a rustic setting as Hutschenhausen (I am five minutes' walk from the nearest cow pasture) is a twenty minute bike ride south. Yes, bike ride. Every inter-city highway in the country has an associated separate lane with yield signs marked for bicycles. While one wonders how much tax money is required of Germans with less enthusiasm for two-wheeled vehicles, this is likely a policy that is both green and healthy for people willing to take advantage of it.
3) Kaiserslautern is frankly a rather sketchy place, with a nudey-bar close to the train station and posters that attempt to synthesize Smokey Bear type slogans with a tireless campaign against venereal disease ("only YOU can prevent genital warts!"). Despite the eyebrow-raising moments, and the sense that "K-town" has seen better days, it is a place worth seeing. I had the opportunity not only to be photographed with two storied churches, St. Martin's and Die Stiftskirche, but also to see the inside of the latter, complete with 150-foot pipe organ and Protestant unity monument (die Stiftskirche was the first church in the Palatinate [possibly all of Germany, not sure] to hold a communion service open to both Lutherans and Calvinists...and it only took until 1828!). The chance to visit a Burger King was not only valued for the bathroom (almost all "public" restrooms in Germany require either a fee or being a paying customer), but because this particular edifice stood across from Church row, and in a similarly impressive building. The interior was also humorous, as one felt that there was an attempt at American decor that was almost there, but not quite (gratuitous amounts of NBA posters!).
4) Never let it be said that Germans don't take their politics seriously. Local elections in the Palatinate and the election of Germany's representatives to the European Parliament occured over last weekend, and there were posters for parties and candidates in abundance throughout the K-town area. German law requires that all parties receive the same money for campaign signs and that said signs all be the same size, which gave the opportunity to see propaganda running from the mainstream and reserved (the CDU's pictures of Merkel and "a stable Euro helps everyone" were particularly inspiring) to the...fringe (no, thank you, Marxist-Leninist party of Germany, I don't think I will vote to "destroy the EU" or "liberate women from oppression"). Probably the most interesting headline of the weekend was the story a copy of Die Welt keyed me into on the plane into Frankfurt: the acquisition of seven EU Parliament seats by an upstart organization known as "Alternative fur Deutschland", who in a rising tide of Euroskepticism on the continent, are giving voice to a cultural trend unprecedented in post-war Germany. The world will stay tuned on that front, I suppose.
That's about all for initial impressions, but there will be more to come, as the anniversary of Ehrenbreitsen fortress in the city of Koblenz is tomorrow, and my flight for London leaves early Monday. More on all of that when I get the chance.
~JS
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, or "the importance of Scriptural harmony"
Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.~Ps. 139:19-22
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?~Mt. 5:43-46
As you might have heard, Fred Phelps, head of the notorious Westboro cult (to dignify it with the terms "Baptist" or "Church" would smear said terms nearly as much as shying away from them for fear of association with the organization) passed to his "eternal reward" today, a reward which, it must be said, I can only speculate consists of permanent residence in the place with which he was most concerned in life. Just now, my friend Ryan mentioned that it would be the height of hypocrisy to "hate" Fred Phelps for "hating people"; a sentiment with which I can hardly disagree. But to stop there would be an oversimplification, and dare I say, fails to explore the reasons,which I am about to defend as (conditionally) righteous, that Christians are not among those mourning Mr. Phelps (indeed perhaps the only folks who are are certain media personalities, the proverbial false prophets in whose mouths Phelps has long been a lying spirit).
Few passages spring more readily to the lips of Sunday School teachers than the above quotation from Matthew 5. While it is a marvelous example of passages violently excised from meaningful context when monotonously chanted by apostates and cafeteria Catholics, guilt by association is no reason to treat Christ's words here as unimportant or trivial. In proclamation of the standard of righteousness entailed in the Father's law, a standard He came to fulfill on behalf of the totally incapable, Jesus announces that our enemies are our neighbors, that they deserve our prayer and that if we only love those from whom we receive blessing, we are no better than pagans. This line of the Sermon of the Mount, like the rest of it, is a man-slayer. All boasting is stopped in the shadow of the Law's mountain, all proclamation of our righteousness is exposed as menstrual leavings in Christ's demand that we show perfect love for our persecutors. And while each of us fail (in the flesh) to love the way Christ loved his enemies on the cross, it is certainly the heart's desire of every sheep to see hypocrites like Phelps, a man whose flesh would likely burn on contact with the printed words of Matthew 5, called to task for flagrant scorn heaped on the Lord's words here.
Yet, some argue, there can be no joy in the perishing of Phelps so (evidently) far from the true gospel, no sense of vindication in the hearts or minds of Christians, that a pernicious false teacher has passed, for by the measure we measure out we will be judged. Surely, goes this logic, if Phelps is indeed our enemy, Matthew 5 calls for, if not sackcloth and ashes, at least silent sobriety in the face of Phelps' passing? Would it not be Pharisaical to do otherwise? And here is where Ps. 139 rears it's ugly head.
It is hyperdispensational thinking at its worst to sever the writings of David from the teachings of the Son of David. The greatest rabbi who ever lived, the inheritor of the Davidic throne, the Logos incarnate, and the guy who just got done saying he came to fulfill the law in verse 17 knew full well that David actively boasted in song and prose of his "hatred" of the enemies of God. It is easy in the modern age of pagan friends, political correctness and what I will term "voluntary illiteracy" to refuse to square the circle of these two statements, to shrug off the elder as "OT thinking" "law not grace" etc. But to a truth-seeker, that will not do.
Scripture calls to love our neighbors AND to hate evil. Praying for those who persecute us can walk hand in hand with setting our face against false teachers of every stripe. If Paul desired that those troubling the Galatians would castrate themselves, (Gal. 5:12) it is right to feel a measure of vindication at the death of a man who made an art-form of "speaking against God with malicious intent and taking his name in vain". This vindication is not for ourselves, and must not be mingled with self-righteousness. But for the restraining hand of God, we might be as bad as Phelps or worse. But we can know with absolute certainty that the judge of all the earth manifests his justice in the fate of men, and that all the vitriol and blasphemy of men like Fred Phelps cannot prevent their going the way of all flesh.
I believe that the American Church is facing a time of trial for which it is largely unprepared. When persecution increases it will be vital for us to obey the dictates of Matthew 5 and uphold God's standard of righteousness. We must treat all bearers of the Imago Dei as our neighbor, and know that our persecutors have not merited murder, repression, slander or wicked treatment: this is Decalogue 101. But it will similarly be important to know that God is fighting our battles for us, that evil is identifiable, and that the triumph of the divine justice is eternal, inevitable, holy and good. As sheep and goats separate into more distinct camps, we must know that sheep are not the only apropo animal metaphor for the redeemed, and as a certain Picard-Genevan expositor said, "even a dog barks when his master is attacked".
Bark.
~JS
O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.~Ps. 139:19-22
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?~Mt. 5:43-46
As you might have heard, Fred Phelps, head of the notorious Westboro cult (to dignify it with the terms "Baptist" or "Church" would smear said terms nearly as much as shying away from them for fear of association with the organization) passed to his "eternal reward" today, a reward which, it must be said, I can only speculate consists of permanent residence in the place with which he was most concerned in life. Just now, my friend Ryan mentioned that it would be the height of hypocrisy to "hate" Fred Phelps for "hating people"; a sentiment with which I can hardly disagree. But to stop there would be an oversimplification, and dare I say, fails to explore the reasons,which I am about to defend as (conditionally) righteous, that Christians are not among those mourning Mr. Phelps (indeed perhaps the only folks who are are certain media personalities, the proverbial false prophets in whose mouths Phelps has long been a lying spirit).
Few passages spring more readily to the lips of Sunday School teachers than the above quotation from Matthew 5. While it is a marvelous example of passages violently excised from meaningful context when monotonously chanted by apostates and cafeteria Catholics, guilt by association is no reason to treat Christ's words here as unimportant or trivial. In proclamation of the standard of righteousness entailed in the Father's law, a standard He came to fulfill on behalf of the totally incapable, Jesus announces that our enemies are our neighbors, that they deserve our prayer and that if we only love those from whom we receive blessing, we are no better than pagans. This line of the Sermon of the Mount, like the rest of it, is a man-slayer. All boasting is stopped in the shadow of the Law's mountain, all proclamation of our righteousness is exposed as menstrual leavings in Christ's demand that we show perfect love for our persecutors. And while each of us fail (in the flesh) to love the way Christ loved his enemies on the cross, it is certainly the heart's desire of every sheep to see hypocrites like Phelps, a man whose flesh would likely burn on contact with the printed words of Matthew 5, called to task for flagrant scorn heaped on the Lord's words here.
Yet, some argue, there can be no joy in the perishing of Phelps so (evidently) far from the true gospel, no sense of vindication in the hearts or minds of Christians, that a pernicious false teacher has passed, for by the measure we measure out we will be judged. Surely, goes this logic, if Phelps is indeed our enemy, Matthew 5 calls for, if not sackcloth and ashes, at least silent sobriety in the face of Phelps' passing? Would it not be Pharisaical to do otherwise? And here is where Ps. 139 rears it's ugly head.
It is hyperdispensational thinking at its worst to sever the writings of David from the teachings of the Son of David. The greatest rabbi who ever lived, the inheritor of the Davidic throne, the Logos incarnate, and the guy who just got done saying he came to fulfill the law in verse 17 knew full well that David actively boasted in song and prose of his "hatred" of the enemies of God. It is easy in the modern age of pagan friends, political correctness and what I will term "voluntary illiteracy" to refuse to square the circle of these two statements, to shrug off the elder as "OT thinking" "law not grace" etc. But to a truth-seeker, that will not do.
Scripture calls to love our neighbors AND to hate evil. Praying for those who persecute us can walk hand in hand with setting our face against false teachers of every stripe. If Paul desired that those troubling the Galatians would castrate themselves, (Gal. 5:12) it is right to feel a measure of vindication at the death of a man who made an art-form of "speaking against God with malicious intent and taking his name in vain". This vindication is not for ourselves, and must not be mingled with self-righteousness. But for the restraining hand of God, we might be as bad as Phelps or worse. But we can know with absolute certainty that the judge of all the earth manifests his justice in the fate of men, and that all the vitriol and blasphemy of men like Fred Phelps cannot prevent their going the way of all flesh.
I believe that the American Church is facing a time of trial for which it is largely unprepared. When persecution increases it will be vital for us to obey the dictates of Matthew 5 and uphold God's standard of righteousness. We must treat all bearers of the Imago Dei as our neighbor, and know that our persecutors have not merited murder, repression, slander or wicked treatment: this is Decalogue 101. But it will similarly be important to know that God is fighting our battles for us, that evil is identifiable, and that the triumph of the divine justice is eternal, inevitable, holy and good. As sheep and goats separate into more distinct camps, we must know that sheep are not the only apropo animal metaphor for the redeemed, and as a certain Picard-Genevan expositor said, "even a dog barks when his master is attacked".
Bark.
~JS
Thursday, March 13, 2014
A study of Marine Life, or "in which James fulfills the ambitions of his mother"
Once upon a time, my mother said that I should have been a marine biologist. I neither begrudge her statement nor fail to see the logic; at one time I had a great love of the wonder of God in creation, and had it not been for my constant and humbling failure at math and the natural sciences (but for which I'm sure I would have been rendered an insufferable nuisance to mankind), I may very well have embarked on such a career path. And so it is with the greatest of ironies that I explore the times and habits of a little-known specimen of marine life which I have previously referenced in these musings: the evangellyfish. (All apologies to Doug Wilson, from whom I am borrowing the term.)
The evangellyfish is a creature who similarly borrows the term "evangelical" from historical Christianity, evangelical being derived from evangelium, the term for the gospel that at one time separated Solas Christianity from pre-reformed or later Liturgical/Episcopal Christianity. However, the linguistic similarities are the demarcated zone of common ground between said sea life and the beleaguered unit known as "the Reformed". Major differences are as follows:
1) A belief that Church history begins with Billy Graham, or at the best, perhaps John Wesley.
Your average evangellyfish will have no conception of any Christianity predating America's 19th and 20th century revivals; and who can blame them? The history of American Christianity precedes these events by perhaps a generous two centuries, and given the state of Christianity, or perhaps it were better, "post-Christianity" in Europe, there is little to see as redeeming in Christian "historicism". However, the attachment, subconscious in the main, of "traditions of men" to "traditions at all" has rendered entire generations of Christians, the youth especially, impotent in the face of rank heresies such as Modalism in the UPCI, Mormonism, the egregiously humanistic wings of Romanism, the word-faith movement, and Open 'theism'. America stands poised to equip a nation of missionaries, politicians, philosophers and theologians with a deficit of tools, in that said nation will neither recognize the claims of aforementioned movements as old, nor realize that a consistent worldview from Scripture, namely Calvinism, stands in centuries-old armor to combat them. Moreover, said worldview has been paralyzed by the introduction of traditions of post-Weslyanism, unable either to move beyond human autonomy as a primary, or to understand that their views are traditional. As James White said to Dave Hunt, "there is no one more trapped in tradition than those who fail to acknowledge its impact in their lives".
2) A total rejection of God's sovereignty...except when convenient.
A dearth of Church history leads to a failure of Biblical soteriology. Statistically, the evangellyfish you encounter will likely recoil squidlike from any mention of man's deadness in sin, his incapacity to love God as he aught, and God's total freedom to love and save as he will. The questioner in Romans 9, thrusting injustice upon God, could hardly have found a better counterpart than the average American pew-sitter. The rule of faith is human autonomy...unless of course it's in the "big picture" of God. The hardening of Pharoah's heart and the opening of Lydia's, the resurrection of Lazarus and the crucifixion of Christ, the book of Revelation and the opening chapters of Genesis are open to God's utter control. The actions of men in time as moral agents, by and large, are not, Genesis 50 and and Acts 2 to the contrary notwithstanding. Evangellyfish want God to be God when Jesus is dying for them, and themselves to be God when that death is applied. They want God to be God when Ananias is slain, and themselves to be God when they go to the club (or buy shoes, or choose Robert Frost's immortal road). Many thinkers have sought philosophical justification for that road less traveled as a human creation, whether they be Molinist or classical Arminian, and yet they flee utterly from a literal reading of Acts 2 or Romans 9.
3) An eschatology that disavows alternatives.
Whether due to outright laziness on the part of preachers and expositors regarding the Old Testament as a foreshadowing of Christ, or a sincere belief that there is only one position because it is the only one one has heard, dispensational thinking latent or patent has crept into the evangellyfish mind. With it has come a dogmatic assurance that the book of Revelation reveals near-gnosis secrets incomprehensible to the initial readers of that Scripture, and a patient waiting for the end of the universe that similarly bears the gnostic fixation on rejection not only of materialism but of the material world. Political involvement, career ambition and intellectual pursuits fall by the wayside as the worst of the stereotypes of Christianity as a faith of "pie in the sky...by and by" come to fruition.
4) Man-centeredness in worship.
The average American parish consists of a dwindling congregation of the Old Guard, perceived as out of touch with the culture and unable to sustain itself biblically or procreatively, or a church that could perhaps paint the faint outline of a guitar upon its Crucifixion symbols. A game I enjoy playing is to eliminate all songs from a contemporary Christian music station (Spirit 105 is a great example) that contain the words "I" or "me" outside of a context of self-abasement , and see how much of the station is commercials. Or to put it another way, if you made a drinking game out of that, you would die. This quickest way to locate an evangellyfish congregation would be to ask the band to play in the back where no one could see them and omit songs including "I". The thought experiment is however, unlikely to happen. Similarly, an overemphasis on "community building" in Church ordinances, and alteration of parish names to conform to worldly standards are hardly infrequent. (Washingtonians: how many churches are you aware of that were named "x or y baptist" and are now some combination of "grace" "point" "way" "church" "free" "fellowship" etc.?)
This my friends, is why soteriology matters. When the law is not unkeepable by mortal hands, then eschatology and covenant theology suffer (the Jews did so much better than we did!). When the point of salvation is our response rather than God's condescension, worship is about adulation of a band and Church history is about "making a decision for Christ'...regardless of whether that was ever the gospel was presented in aeons past. I do not condemn those in the average mileau of American protestantism, or even world Christianity to perdition, and I don't claim that the modern fate of the American Church is irreversible or irredeemable, but the tentacles of the evangellyfish have wrapped snugly around the body too long to stay silent. Lest you fear the future, know that God has made you a moral actor and agent of eternal reformation. The next time you hear the same empty or infuriating platitudes, the next time you despair of American Christianity, know that there is something you can do. When you meet your local evangellyfish, shake their hand/hug them, buy them a coffee....and tell them that Jesus is bigger than they imagine, and that his gospel has been more than a pamphlet.
In Christ,
~JS
The evangellyfish is a creature who similarly borrows the term "evangelical" from historical Christianity, evangelical being derived from evangelium, the term for the gospel that at one time separated Solas Christianity from pre-reformed or later Liturgical/Episcopal Christianity. However, the linguistic similarities are the demarcated zone of common ground between said sea life and the beleaguered unit known as "the Reformed". Major differences are as follows:
1) A belief that Church history begins with Billy Graham, or at the best, perhaps John Wesley.
Your average evangellyfish will have no conception of any Christianity predating America's 19th and 20th century revivals; and who can blame them? The history of American Christianity precedes these events by perhaps a generous two centuries, and given the state of Christianity, or perhaps it were better, "post-Christianity" in Europe, there is little to see as redeeming in Christian "historicism". However, the attachment, subconscious in the main, of "traditions of men" to "traditions at all" has rendered entire generations of Christians, the youth especially, impotent in the face of rank heresies such as Modalism in the UPCI, Mormonism, the egregiously humanistic wings of Romanism, the word-faith movement, and Open 'theism'. America stands poised to equip a nation of missionaries, politicians, philosophers and theologians with a deficit of tools, in that said nation will neither recognize the claims of aforementioned movements as old, nor realize that a consistent worldview from Scripture, namely Calvinism, stands in centuries-old armor to combat them. Moreover, said worldview has been paralyzed by the introduction of traditions of post-Weslyanism, unable either to move beyond human autonomy as a primary, or to understand that their views are traditional. As James White said to Dave Hunt, "there is no one more trapped in tradition than those who fail to acknowledge its impact in their lives".
2) A total rejection of God's sovereignty...except when convenient.
A dearth of Church history leads to a failure of Biblical soteriology. Statistically, the evangellyfish you encounter will likely recoil squidlike from any mention of man's deadness in sin, his incapacity to love God as he aught, and God's total freedom to love and save as he will. The questioner in Romans 9, thrusting injustice upon God, could hardly have found a better counterpart than the average American pew-sitter. The rule of faith is human autonomy...unless of course it's in the "big picture" of God. The hardening of Pharoah's heart and the opening of Lydia's, the resurrection of Lazarus and the crucifixion of Christ, the book of Revelation and the opening chapters of Genesis are open to God's utter control. The actions of men in time as moral agents, by and large, are not, Genesis 50 and and Acts 2 to the contrary notwithstanding. Evangellyfish want God to be God when Jesus is dying for them, and themselves to be God when that death is applied. They want God to be God when Ananias is slain, and themselves to be God when they go to the club (or buy shoes, or choose Robert Frost's immortal road). Many thinkers have sought philosophical justification for that road less traveled as a human creation, whether they be Molinist or classical Arminian, and yet they flee utterly from a literal reading of Acts 2 or Romans 9.
3) An eschatology that disavows alternatives.
Whether due to outright laziness on the part of preachers and expositors regarding the Old Testament as a foreshadowing of Christ, or a sincere belief that there is only one position because it is the only one one has heard, dispensational thinking latent or patent has crept into the evangellyfish mind. With it has come a dogmatic assurance that the book of Revelation reveals near-gnosis secrets incomprehensible to the initial readers of that Scripture, and a patient waiting for the end of the universe that similarly bears the gnostic fixation on rejection not only of materialism but of the material world. Political involvement, career ambition and intellectual pursuits fall by the wayside as the worst of the stereotypes of Christianity as a faith of "pie in the sky...by and by" come to fruition.
4) Man-centeredness in worship.
The average American parish consists of a dwindling congregation of the Old Guard, perceived as out of touch with the culture and unable to sustain itself biblically or procreatively, or a church that could perhaps paint the faint outline of a guitar upon its Crucifixion symbols. A game I enjoy playing is to eliminate all songs from a contemporary Christian music station (Spirit 105 is a great example) that contain the words "I" or "me" outside of a context of self-abasement , and see how much of the station is commercials. Or to put it another way, if you made a drinking game out of that, you would die. This quickest way to locate an evangellyfish congregation would be to ask the band to play in the back where no one could see them and omit songs including "I". The thought experiment is however, unlikely to happen. Similarly, an overemphasis on "community building" in Church ordinances, and alteration of parish names to conform to worldly standards are hardly infrequent. (Washingtonians: how many churches are you aware of that were named "x or y baptist" and are now some combination of "grace" "point" "way" "church" "free" "fellowship" etc.?)
This my friends, is why soteriology matters. When the law is not unkeepable by mortal hands, then eschatology and covenant theology suffer (the Jews did so much better than we did!). When the point of salvation is our response rather than God's condescension, worship is about adulation of a band and Church history is about "making a decision for Christ'...regardless of whether that was ever the gospel was presented in aeons past. I do not condemn those in the average mileau of American protestantism, or even world Christianity to perdition, and I don't claim that the modern fate of the American Church is irreversible or irredeemable, but the tentacles of the evangellyfish have wrapped snugly around the body too long to stay silent. Lest you fear the future, know that God has made you a moral actor and agent of eternal reformation. The next time you hear the same empty or infuriating platitudes, the next time you despair of American Christianity, know that there is something you can do. When you meet your local evangellyfish, shake their hand/hug them, buy them a coffee....and tell them that Jesus is bigger than they imagine, and that his gospel has been more than a pamphlet.
In Christ,
~JS
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Self-esteem without a Self, or "Hearts don't have neurons".
This blog, after returning from a sloth-induced hiatus, continues to jump the shark by indulging in the oft-decried practice of self-reference. E.g., today I posted this on everyone's favorite social network:
"Why is it that our society has glorified humanity to a greater extent than any in the past, yet bemoans the ever-present failure of man's self-esteem? It's because a society built on moral relativism has no exterior framework, no objective values by which to esteem the self. Culturally, we have become a chorus of yes-men with no conductor, an octopus grasping for meaning with no brain to discern it, a disembodied assembly of hearts, pumped by the hand of the State. Once, the Roman Emperors wished one neck upon mankind, the more easily to cut it; millenia later, Kant and Marx have delivered it."
Some thoughts to expand on this topic, and to make it at least somewhat scripturally relevant seem in order, otherwise such statuses consist of little more than philosophizing for it's own sake. I have long noticed atension self-contradiction between two aforementioned phenomena in modern society. Everywhere one looks, the individual (or so it is said) man is elevated onto a podium, and exalted as a, nay THE God. "Rights", we cry, "rights! Marriage rights, drug rights, privacy rights, reproductive rights, rights to live and rights to die! We have a RIGHT to (x)!" One need look no farther than Texas pro-choicers chanting "Hail, Satan" to drown out the opposition, or gay marriages, e.g., covenants centered on sodomy, taking place on floats in the Rose Parade to realize that from the Christian perspective, this self-exaltation is prevalent, anti-God, and in your face. The creator has no rights, his creatures do. Moloch-worship lives, folks.
"And yet", some of us puzzle, "people don't seem to be happy this way...they provide themselves with all the reason to love their (sinful) natures and lifestyles in the world, and yet, they constantly fear the loss of their precious self-esteem. Confusing". Well, one reason is scripturally evident: all reprobate persons are "god-suppressing ones", as the Greek would have it, and the image of the Father on their souls tells them that "those who do such things deserve to die". (Rm. 1:18-31). But I think that in our time, there is a more philosophically subtle reason that this has become more and more evident in the lives and attitudes of unbelievers.
While the atheist philosophers of the Twentieth century merely inserted their ideological constructs in the place of the Most High, whether they be "science", "pure reason", "the classless state" or "racial purity", in the end, even the hollow shell of Theism and moral absolutism that these bore was not only evidently hypocritical to many observers, but repugnant to the Enemy, who abhors good and can only mock. In the end, each of these systems degenerated into the moral soup (or rather, immoral cesspool) of modern Western Civilization, a witches' brew appropriately given a catch-all term: "moral relativism". "Well that might be *your (science, reason, logic, most-good-for-the-most-people, truth, personal experience), and it's great for you, but I have mine, so butt out!", cry the relativists, all failing to realize that in doing so with no Theism they have shot all those principles, the fabric from which reality itself is woven, in the head. After all, what is "science and reason"? What is "the most good for the most people"? What is "truth"? In fact, what are people and what is mind? Who can say? Certainly no one can with finality. And herein lies the Romans rub: mankind was not made that way.
Stripped of the objective standard God gave us, (his word), but desperately urged by the residual and unceasing Imago Dei they still bear to find a substitute, the reprobate find it in each other, each failing to grasp that each man and woman they use as a distorted mirror is trying as desperately to catch the "truth" of their neighbor as they are. Ultimately, human relationships are twisted into a mix of fear, loathing and desperation, as each person's "truth" is simultaneously infallible right and deadly threat. And in our time, Satan, seeing the sort of vacuum that he most enjoys filling (a throne with no God on it), has decided to insert that most Western of tropes: the State.
"Oh, who can say where truth is!", idolaters cry, wringing their hands and ignoring their previous claims that it didn't exist, "we've got to compromise". This compromise, they say, IS the truth that does the most good for the most people, but "truth" and "good" and "people" are determined by those most unscrupulous of idolaters, the bureaucrat and the politician. Accepting the premise of relativism at face value, yet motivated by some unspoken sense that they can game the system, the charlatans of the modern state steadily introduce whatever truths afford them the most power, wealth and fame, and inevitably, moral stagnation and perversion are the result.
A brief case study of ancient Rome should suffice: 1) Men worship idols. 2) Men become idols. 3) Only some men retain the power to stay idols. 4) Divine judgement and societal ruin. And so here we are, Americans. The philosophers of the past have convinced us that we have moved beyond such petty superstition as Emperor worship and polytheism. Have we? The psychologists of the present have told us that the source of self-esteem is societal. Is it? The Historians of the bleeding edge are now telling us that any link between the end of Rome or Greece and their sex practices is outmoded and prudish (while teaming with their buddies, the philosophers and psychologists, to tell us to embrace said practices). Is it?
Christians, we know better. The Bible teaches better. God gave us minds, and he gave us selves, but he gave us a standard for our minds (his word) and a standard for our selves (his law). Don't settle for the wisdom of the world. Know that the only ethical source of self-love is love of God.
In Christ,
~JS
Some thoughts to expand on this topic, and to make it at least somewhat scripturally relevant seem in order, otherwise such statuses consist of little more than philosophizing for it's own sake. I have long noticed a
"And yet", some of us puzzle, "people don't seem to be happy this way...they provide themselves with all the reason to love their (sinful) natures and lifestyles in the world, and yet, they constantly fear the loss of their precious self-esteem. Confusing". Well, one reason is scripturally evident: all reprobate persons are "god-suppressing ones", as the Greek would have it, and the image of the Father on their souls tells them that "those who do such things deserve to die". (Rm. 1:18-31). But I think that in our time, there is a more philosophically subtle reason that this has become more and more evident in the lives and attitudes of unbelievers.
While the atheist philosophers of the Twentieth century merely inserted their ideological constructs in the place of the Most High, whether they be "science", "pure reason", "the classless state" or "racial purity", in the end, even the hollow shell of Theism and moral absolutism that these bore was not only evidently hypocritical to many observers, but repugnant to the Enemy, who abhors good and can only mock. In the end, each of these systems degenerated into the moral soup (or rather, immoral cesspool) of modern Western Civilization, a witches' brew appropriately given a catch-all term: "moral relativism". "Well that might be *your (science, reason, logic, most-good-for-the-most-people, truth, personal experience), and it's great for you, but I have mine, so butt out!", cry the relativists, all failing to realize that in doing so with no Theism they have shot all those principles, the fabric from which reality itself is woven, in the head. After all, what is "science and reason"? What is "the most good for the most people"? What is "truth"? In fact, what are people and what is mind? Who can say? Certainly no one can with finality. And herein lies the Romans rub: mankind was not made that way.
Stripped of the objective standard God gave us, (his word), but desperately urged by the residual and unceasing Imago Dei they still bear to find a substitute, the reprobate find it in each other, each failing to grasp that each man and woman they use as a distorted mirror is trying as desperately to catch the "truth" of their neighbor as they are. Ultimately, human relationships are twisted into a mix of fear, loathing and desperation, as each person's "truth" is simultaneously infallible right and deadly threat. And in our time, Satan, seeing the sort of vacuum that he most enjoys filling (a throne with no God on it), has decided to insert that most Western of tropes: the State.
"Oh, who can say where truth is!", idolaters cry, wringing their hands and ignoring their previous claims that it didn't exist, "we've got to compromise". This compromise, they say, IS the truth that does the most good for the most people, but "truth" and "good" and "people" are determined by those most unscrupulous of idolaters, the bureaucrat and the politician. Accepting the premise of relativism at face value, yet motivated by some unspoken sense that they can game the system, the charlatans of the modern state steadily introduce whatever truths afford them the most power, wealth and fame, and inevitably, moral stagnation and perversion are the result.
A brief case study of ancient Rome should suffice: 1) Men worship idols. 2) Men become idols. 3) Only some men retain the power to stay idols. 4) Divine judgement and societal ruin. And so here we are, Americans. The philosophers of the past have convinced us that we have moved beyond such petty superstition as Emperor worship and polytheism. Have we? The psychologists of the present have told us that the source of self-esteem is societal. Is it? The Historians of the bleeding edge are now telling us that any link between the end of Rome or Greece and their sex practices is outmoded and prudish (while teaming with their buddies, the philosophers and psychologists, to tell us to embrace said practices). Is it?
Christians, we know better. The Bible teaches better. God gave us minds, and he gave us selves, but he gave us a standard for our minds (his word) and a standard for our selves (his law). Don't settle for the wisdom of the world. Know that the only ethical source of self-love is love of God.
In Christ,
~JS
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