Miracles not on 119 West F Street

I try to leave John Shuck alone these days (he started deleting my comments, so what's the point of seeing him outside of a PJC?). But his recent post on miracles cuts to the heart of the disagreement that I and most other orthodox Christians have with him. Strangely enough, it's not THE GAY. It's THE MIRACULOUS.

The dividing line has already been drawn - we're just rehashing it hoping to come up with a different result. Machen, in his book title Christianity and Liberalism, showed that non-supernatural / modernist Christianity (which he termed liberalism) and supernatural / fundamentalist Christianity (which he simply called Christianity) are in fact two separate religions sharing a common source and some overlapping language. Of it, he said:

There is much interlocking of the branches, but the two tendencies, Modernism and supernaturalism, or (otherwise designated) non-doctrinal religion and historic Christianity, spring from different roots. In particular, I tried to show that Christianity is not a "life," as distinguished from a doctrine, and not a life that has doctrine as its changing symbolic expression, but that--exactly the other way around--it is a life founded on a doctrine.

Trying to be "nice" about it has let the bomb get bigger before it blows up in everyone's face. It would have been better to take a different route (especially in our denomination) 80+ years ago.

If you'd like to read on the historic and philosophical arguments that support the Bible's claims of the miraculous, visit (and support) Greg Koukl's ministry at Stand to Reason. I also highly recommend the work of Gary Habermas on miracles generally and especially on the resurrection of Jesus.