Certainty

Anybody else getting tired of the bloggers who like to pretend that persons with DOCTRINAL theological convictions are mouth-breathing morons? Well, rejoice...demotivational posters are coming to a blog near you.

Getting Hitched to the Greens

Churches around the country spent last Saturday doing what most Rethuglicans would like to do: hanging the Greens. I was out of town, so I didn't get to help. Nevertheless, it's well past time I joined the Green movement. Thus, I've decided to stay married.

It's not that I was thinking about getting unmarried, mind you. It's just that folks have been telling me how awful marriage is for society and and how the number one product of marriage (no, not social stability & financial freedom but children) is so bad for the environment that killing them, then sterilizing yourself is the only moral option left (VERY left).

You see, according to doctors Eunice Yu and Jianguo Liu, divorce is REALLY BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. For instance, divorced households:

• used 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water that could have been saved had household size remained the same as that of married households.
  
• spent more per person per month for electricity compared with a married household, as multiple people can be watching the same television, listening to the same radio, cooking on the same stove and or eating under the same lights.
  
• demanded 38 million extra rooms, with associated costs for heating and lighting (an increase 33 percent to 95 percent greater than in married households).

That means some $6.9 billion in extra utility costs per year, Liu calculated, plus an added $3.6 billion for water, in addition to other costs such as land use. "The research," Liu said, "shows that environmental policy is more complex than one single solution. Governments across the world may need to start factoring in divorce when examining environmental policy." (Read their article here.)

It's long been said that when the scientist reaches the top of the mountain, they'll find that the philosophers and the theologians have been there for quite some time. Thus it should be no surprise to us that God's design for family is consistent with good environmental stewardship. Christians who want to have an impact on society do their best by obeying the great commission, not by licking their fingers and seeing where the winds of change are blowing.

more research here....

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.

Pew Potatoes come from Couch Potatoes

Therapist couches, that is. I was glad to see that I'm not the only one who's had these oddball experiences.

Plant a tree or plant a question?

Senator Hillary R. Clinton's campaign chose to plant at least one question at a recent Iowa town hall meeting. It's fair to say that many campaign managers have done this over the years. Issues are complex, and candidates need an opportunity to put the questions that they've been working hard to answer out there in the public venue. However, this should never be at the expense of listening to the questions that Americans are genuinely asking.

I'm not a political strategist, but I can't help that thinking owning up to it would be a smart move, dispelling the haze of distrust that is still over her from her days with slick-Willy. It would be easy to say that she had no knowledge, but it doesn't get her anywhere. Instead, she could take a Ron Paul approach and say that we need to focus on this (or any other issue) instead of being distracted by Xxx issue.

I wish it had turned out a little better for the Clinton campaign. I think she would have preferred something like this. That would have been more enjoyable. I dunno....whatever happened to the days when being an environmentalist meant that you planted a tree and not a question?

US Climate Data Shows Cooling Trend

This site is just too cool...pun intended. It shows how the earth was warming up through the 1930s, then started dramatically cooling, then warming again (but not that rapidly). Make sure that you test both the long-haul and since roughly 1973. The differences will astonish you.

It brings to mind C. S. Lewis' critique of chronological snobbery:

Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing certain truths and especially liable to make certain mistakes. We all therefore need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.... None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books.

For more info, check out Global Warming Heartland.

Progressive Pro-Life Politics

The Charlotte Observer recently ran an interview with veteran liberal evangelical Tony Campolo. He's giving a sort of "What Would Jesus Do" response to several hot-button issues. While I resist the works righteousness he displays (particularly in his answer to Muslims), I found a shining gem in the middle of the rough:

Abortion: "I'm sure that the destruction of life in abortion would break his heart. However, I feel like if he were speaking to the church today in America, he would ask not the question, `Are you going to make it illegal and arrest women who have abortions?' I think Jesus would say, `What are you going to do to reduce the number of abortions?'

(A new survey reported that) 70 percent of all abortions are economically driven. You have a poor woman working on minimum wage with no hospitalization. She gets pregnant. She can't afford to have the kid, she can't afford to pay the hospital bills, she can't afford day care after the child is born. So she says, `I'm going to have an abortion.' Can Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives agree on one thing: that it's wrong for women who want to have their babies to have abortions? And that's about 70 percent of them. Then we can start talking about the other 30 percent."

He's the PhD sociologist, so I'm not going to go after his numbers (though I think the percentage that is purely economic are higher, in terms of "lifestyle" normally being a product of having enough money to support the rearing of a child without infringing on your current freedoms and expendable resources). But in my own reflection on abortion, this is an area that needs to be seriously addressed.

Jesus taught us to count the costs before undertaking the cross of discipleship. The interesting thing about his parable is that it focuses on the outcome, not the principles. This is an odd thing for Jesus, but he does it anyway. The Spirit has cut me to the quick more than once about this. Too often, I have contented myself with dialogging with those who are just as recalcitrant as I. It's important, but it's rare to see any change. There have been times when I have been part of responding to crises where my action made a difference. Abortion is one of those issues where concentrated Christian response on the economic issue could make a real difference.

May God help all who take purposive aims at eliminating the American Holocaust that is abortion.

Enlightened Democracys

I'm a big fan of participatory democracy. However, I don't think that democratic ideals can serve as the basis of political ideology (or even of good church government). Why? Because they assume too much to stand on their own.

Some people seem to think that if we just spread the values of the Enlightenment to other countries, that they will become freer by default. As Chuck Colson examines the discrimination against Dalits in India, he has some excellent thoughts about the necessary presuppositions that lay the substratum of true political liberalism (the good kind).

The situation in what’s called the “largest democracy in the world” reminds us that “democracy” and elections are not enough—there needs to be a commitment to the “first freedom”: freedom of religion. There needs to be a recognition that all freedoms grow out of what one of our founders James Madison called “the act of freedom by which each responds to the call of his Creator.”

Without an understanding that there is a Creator to whom we are accountable, and that that Creator made all people, freedom quickly loses any real meaning. Freedom from religion is impossible...we are homo adorans. We will worship ourselves or our ideals, our money or our power, sex or trees if we are not worshiping the true and living God. Freedom in its fullest sense cannot occur in unconverted lands...including our own.

Why Not the Persecuted Church

It seems that we PC(USA) Presbyterians can set apart a Sunday to focus on just about anything but the persecuted church. (Please remember Nov. 11 as International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.) I wonder if it could be because they are ashamed at the persecution of churches that they are bringing about right now?

This Sunday, they've chosen Stewardship Committment as the focus. I'm hearing a lot about stewardship these days from our denominational officials. We're asked to give, and told to leave something for them in our wills. All of that is fine and dandy (yes...I have a Christian organization in my meager will). But let's make sure we understand what they mean by stewardship...particularly as it relates to the property trust clause and congregations that wish to cease affiliation with the PCUSA. Let's not kid ourselves...they are so concerned with enforcing the property trust clause that they file amicus briefs on behalf of other denominations (and other religions, in the case of "Christian Scientists") when their property trust is challenged. It's all about precedent.

May God bless those who struggle for the persecuted church. May he bless those presbyteries that reject the power-politics of the "Louisville Papers."

(My spoof on the trust clause is hosted initially at the Pres-Outlook. I reproduce it here for "posterity":)

Per Capita (with apologies to Isaac Watts)
(ELLACOMBE CMD "I Sing the Mighty Power of God," PH# 288)

I sing the property trust clause
That keeps our folks in line!
Per capita and scoff'd at laws,
Yet we say "That's just fine!"
While Gospel preaching dies away,
We endorse ab'rrant views,
Headquarters gets dressed in feng shui
And empties out our pews!

The Scriptures are ignored by most,
and twisted by the rest.
The unconverted serve as hosts
and we act undistressed.
While many choose to stand and fight,
some throw their towel in.
We've chosen this unenvied plight
for lack of discipline.

Tune: Gesangbuch der H. W. k. Hofkapelle, Wurtemberg, Germany, 1784

Hat tip to JP over at Reformedville.

Millions of Afghanis Thankful for US Military Intervention

I hope this gets the press it deserves. As a conservative American, I'm against our current focus on nation building...yet I can't help but laud the freedom that George W. Bush's aggressive policies have brought into some of the darkest regimes on earth.

Putting the Mental in Fundamentalism

One of the chief problems in dialogue between fundamentalists and progressivists is a lack of proper epistemological foundations. (I know -- you probably want to change channels before I get started....). Epistemology is, in essence, the science of how we know stuff. If someone says that they know the world is going to end, a good question to ask is "How do you know that?" There are lots of people in both camps who believe they know far more than they do. But when the point is pressed, it's often the case that the knowledge rests in someone else's experience (an author they read, "the news," etc...). That's pretty much the case for all of us outside of our narrow range of familiarity and expertise.

The world is a complicated place. We don't have time to become first-hand experts on everything, so we choose to trust experts who have done that hard work. I have to trust that the guy under the hood of my car knows what he's doing. He learned from other people who spent time under the hoods of cars, who in turn learned from still others (as well as having experiences of their own). This is how knowledge works in the real world - by tradition (from the Latin trāditiō [tradō] , "a giving up, delivering up, surrender" or "pass on"). The expression "Let's not reinvent the wheel" is based on the pragmatic truth that we aren't always (or even most of the time) in a position to improve the way we do things. If you don't rely on some tradition, you'd always have to experiment (and would have no time to actually live).

People of all sorts receive traditions that they don't test, but accept prima facie (especially when there's an authority figure behind it). When I was a fledgling medico, I took it on faith that the tradition handed down in textbooks on physiology were solid and well-tested. I didn't see any need to go out and perform bio-chemical experiments to verify everything they said. The same is true for pretty much every discipline (save, perhaps, philosophy). We accept on authority what we haven't the time, skills, or necessity to pursue further. That's life, and don't let anybody shame you for being realistic.

In the arena of human religious experience, America has gone overboard with denouncing spiritual authority and tradition. While most people couldn't get past two sentences on why they believe in materialistic evolution ("well...I'm not an expert!" "Everybody knows that...so there's no need in pressing the matter further!" "It's in textbooks!"), if you dissent from that position you are expected to be an encyclopedia of refutational data. It's not fair, but that's how evolution deniers are treated. (Global Warming deniers are in the same boat, though the second the shoe is on the other foot, authority is appealed to.)

I think that the general populace has a fundamental misunderstanding of how biblicists approach the world. They seem to think that when we find conflicts or disagreements between what is encountered in one area of human experience and what is revealed in Scripture, that we just mindlessly toss out the contrary. Nothing could be further from the truth. We do not believe that we have the right to toss out evidence from either book of God's revelation (i.e., the created order and the Scriptures).

Cornelius Van Til said that there's no such thing as a brute fact or a mute fact. Every fact is tied to its creator and finds its meaning and significance in relation to God. (Mikhail Bakhtin makes much the same point in terms of literary addressivity and authorship - so you see postmodernists also acknowledging this truism.) As people who have been convinced of the trustworthiness of the Scriptures by a supernatural working of the Holy Spirit (WCF 1.1), we are intellectually compelled to align every fact we encounter in relation to its creator. We know from the Scriptures that the whole created order has fallen into disrepair. We also know that our own heart (the Biblical word for the seat of intellect and will) twists our experiences and hides the truth from us.

Because we know that we have a corrupted source of information in the fallen natural order and are incapable of perceiving the truth through our own devices, we set every truth claim against the backdrop of Holy Writ. We are not free to throw out what we find in nature, but are compelled to seek the personally-perceptable order placed therein by a rational, personal God.

As for the special revelation - the Holy Scriptures - it's not the fundamentalists who feel free to rearrange the Word to our liking (vide supra).

The GAY and the GOSPEL

John Shuck delights in deleting my comments, no matter how irenic. So if I'm to respond honestly to anything over at Shuck-n-Jive, I have to do it here.

Flycandler, who claims to be an unrepentant homosexual Presbyterian who studies at Candler School of Theology, ponders why we evangelicals in the mainlines can't admit that we really just want to be institutionally homophobic. He implies that, in addressing our grievances about what's wrong in our churches, we can't do it without mentioning THE GAY. (Funny, but I seem to remember history telling a different story about who keeps bringing the issue up.

Anyway, here's what I said:

Anybody ever notice that the Progressives can't bring up justice, the love of Jesus, etc. without also bringing up "THE GAY"?

When we forget the Gospel (succinctly stated in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8), ALL of us get sidelined and tend to major in the minors.

That's the point...we keep getting into each others shorts because we welched on the Gospel. Polity is not going to solve this problem. The only thing that will is repenting and agreeing that the Bible says what God intends for it to say!

Remember Remember the 5th of November

Since I was out of town, I couldn't blog about my favorite holiday (Reformation Day, of course)! So I'd at least like to give some lip service to another success for the Gospel.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everybody!

(Now that's some parliament funk!)

Here's to 490 years of the Gospel recovered, and 402 years of the Gospel in England providentially defended!

Mad NOW Disease?

Make sure you pay attention to countries that have already given governmental approbation to the homosexual agenda of normalizing their practice. Great Britain has already bit the bullet, and you can see the effects in the latest Telegraph.

NWAC - Mission or Misogyny

The vice-moderator of New Wineskins Association of Churches is a woman who is a pastor, and their Executive Coordinator is also a woman who is an elder. There were several female pastors I met there, as well as numerous female elders. The reason that you'll see more men in leadership within NWAC is because NWAC is all about congregations, not institutions. In the PCUSA, men outnumber women 5:1 in terms of call as pastors/co-pastors. Blame it on sexism if you like, but the truth is that women outnumber men in most "specialized ministries." NWAC isn't about schools, hospitals, or bureaucratic offices - it's about local congregations trying to follow Jesus. So when you see men outnumbering women there, it's a reflection of their mission, not misogyny.

John Shuck's statements are both libelous and inaccurate, and they reveal far more about him than they do about the NWAC.

New Wineskins Reflections

First, I want to thank the good Presbyterians of Cuero, TX. Your benevolence towards me will not be forgotten. It was such a time of refreshing and reconnecting with my call to the ministry of the Word that I can hardly express my gratitude. It was also good to meet your pastor and so many other blogging friends. I was able to pray with them, break bread with them, and smoke with them!

Second, I want to thank Gerrit Dawson for submitting to the leading of the Holy Spirit in departing from his assigned text to focus on John 18. I believe God spoke encouragement directly to my presbytery situation through that text (see around time sig 48:00). It was also exactly my experience in seminary (and here).

Third, John Shuck has started blogging about New Wineskins. Great. He says that when representative bodies decide on taking an action, then we should accept that action and obey its mandates* even if we disagree (and choose to work for change). I think it's the height of irony that a man who endorses those in willful direct violation of our constitutional standards should turn around and tell the Reformed Evangelicals of our denomination to tow the line or lose your property. Ironic...but far from surprising.

* "I think it is great that you advocate for change. I do, too. We have the best process available to enact change. Whether or not people agree or disagree with the Theological Task Force report or whatever, it was passed by a representative body. It is very different to work for change and go with the process even when your vote is not in the majority from not getting your way and then trashing the place on your way out."

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence meet the Congregation of Unending Tolerance

Because what happens in one part of the body effects the rest, I offer a link to some excellent commentary on the unfolding tragedy in the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches. This has also been an issue I've discussed with other Candidates under care of the PCUSA. Unfortunately, it was largely an exercise in missing the point.

Making a Run for the Border

This is not a post about illegal aliens crossing a sovereign nation's borders.

Rather, this is about muddle-headed officers of the PCUSA who don't seem to understand what the Bible teaches about God and the "limits" of what we can say about him.

A God without boundaries is a "god" who can be both for the oppression of people and against the oppression of people.

To say that God is without boundaries is to make God a piece of putty with which we can do whatsoever we desire. The true and living God says that WE are the clay...not Him.

Scripture or Schism?

A recent pastoral letter was sent from the Holy See...er....OGA that assured presbyteries that they should act punitivel...er...pastorally to those who find themselves under the teaching of "schismatics" like those right-wing woman-hatin' NWACs. As always, there's so much to learn about the faithfulness of our demonimation (just don't lay the white-wash on too thick or the fragile exterior might crumble).

The Office of Theology and Worship (whom I deeply respect and, in fact, interned for) was asked to write a response to the charge of apostasy. It reiterated Calvin's concern over the major heads of doctrine being agreed upon ("God is one; Christ is God and the Son of God; our salvation rests in God’s mercy; and the like"). While it didn't expand on those, it is sufficient to note that Presbyterian ministers can routinely deny even the doctrines mentioned and still maintain their credentials / posts as teaching elders. More helpful is how they flesh out a basis for deductive reasoning which leads one to say, "you should leave this particular church / institution" on pages 6ƒ.

On pages 890-891 of his A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, Robert Reymond gives a specific line of reasoning to deduce a singular reason for separation: "separation from one's church or denomination is appropriate if it will not discipline heretics." This conclusion is reached by the following line of reasoning:

1. Elders are charged to guard the church by guarding the truth
2. Apostates and heretics ought to leave the church
3. Unrepentent heretics who do not leave the church should be disciplined
4. Churches that will not discipline heretics become apostate
   

And the 4th point is painfully problematic in the PCUSA.

Towards a Theology of Invective

Michael Bauman has lots of good thoughts. Here's a snippet from his work on a theology of invective:

We Christians rightly recognize Christ as the very embodiment of love. But Christ was no bleeding heart, and He was no invertebrate. The “gentle Jesus meek and mild” never existed. He is a nineteenth and twentieth century fiction. The historical Jesus was another matter altogether. At various times, and when the situation demanded, the real Jesus publicly denounced sinners as snakes, dogs, foxes, hypocrites, fouled tombs and dirty dishes. He actually referred publicly to one of his chief disciples as Satan. So that his hearers would not miss his point, He sometimes referred to the objects of his most intense ridicule both by name and by position, and often face to face....

The objection raised by the invertebrates that Jesus spoke aggressively only to self-righteous Pharisees simply misses the point. Any sinner who rejects repentance, or any sinner who holds repentance at bay because he somehow believes it is not for him, is self-righteous.

See the rest here.