John Calvin: Lactivist?

Yep, according to TulipGirl. Apparently while Luther was thinking about tippling, Calvin was writing about, er, nippling.

". . .the Lord does not in vain prepare nutriment for children in their mothers' bosoms, before they are born. But those on whom he confers the honor of mothers, he, in this way, constitutes nurses; and they who deem it a hardship to nourish their own offspring, break, as far as they are able, the sacred bond of nature. If disease, or anything of that kind, is the hindrance, they have a just excuse; but for mothers voluntarily, and for their own pleasure, to avoid the trouble of nursing, and thus to make themselves only half-mothers, is a shameful corruption."

This was big fun for TulipGirl. If she'd been around in the 16th Century, there would have been a sixth 'sola' for the Reformation -- Sola Mammaries.

TheoBlogging: Expository Preaching

Reformation 21 has posted a good, long article on expository preaching. It'll be review for you theology mavens, but a lot of you might find it a good intro to the subject.

Also be sure to check out Fide-O's post: "Here are seven important principles of inductive Bible study that produces a genuine exposition... (lots of good stuff in-between)... In summary, just because a someone preaches verse-by-verse does not mean that they are doing expository preaching."

Al Mohler, the greatest Calvinist Baptist since Spurgeon, has written a three part series on it which starts here.

PIN(K)O -- Presbyterian In Name Only

Just when you think the mainline Presbyterians can't get any more embarrassing, they go and play kissy-face with Hezbollah.

"On October 20, 2005, the Lebanese press reported that a delegation from the Presbyterian Church USA, headed by Father Nihad Tu'meh and with Robert Worley as its spokesman,[1] visited southern Lebanon at the invitation of Hizbullah, and met there with the terrorist organization's commander in southern Lebanon, Nabil Qawuq.

During the meeting, Qawuq expressed his doubts about U.S. actions in the region and the intentions of the Bush administration. Worley, on his part, assured Qawuq that he was not defending the U.S. administration, that all delegation members had voted Democratic, and that the Presbyterian Church had been pressured by U.S. Jewish organizations because of its campaign to divest from corporations working with Israel."

Any PC(USA) folks who are sick of this, just remember the PCA is always waiting with open arms. :-)

They were followed by a delegation from the '9/11 Families.'

"Delegation spokesman Robert Worley said: "We do not wish to defend the U.S. administration. We all elected the Democratic Party against the Republican Party. Rest assured that we will return to the U.S. in order to continue our activity for peace, and we want to hear about the charity activities and the cultural and social activities organized by Hizbullah in south [Lebanon]."

Remember this the next time they pose as non-partisan. And remember, kids, don't question their patriotism!

Yes, but did he bring her TULIPs?

For those of you not up on zany Calvinist humor, click here for elaboration. Thanks go to TulipGirl for bringing it to our attention.

More Evangelical smack-down for Pat Robertson

Biblical Christianity goes after Robertson for his kill-a-caudillo-for-Jesus comments about Hugo Chavez.

Also check out our buddy PG Epps at Comment Me No Comments with Keep God and Kill the Pig.

I especially liked this graph: "Public schooling was born of the universalizing ethic of liberalism, of a fusion of American "Manifest Destiny" and the sort of political co-opting of evangelicalism represented in the lyric "Till we have built Jerusalem / In England's green and pleasant land!" (Prohibition was another such fool's errand for American Christians, a spectacular result of newborn feminism and a zeal for "visible results" going off half-cocked)."

Keywords: Pat Robertson, Stupid Christian Tricks, Evangelical silliness, False prophet, Pat Roberson, Christian Ghetto

The Bible doesn't mention wrath for Dover, PA. . . But it does for false prophets.

One of our people here asked in comments about the whole Pat Robertson thing:

"I understand that your guy Pat Robertson suggested that the heathens in Dover, PA pray to Darwin after Pat's friend God wipes the Patforsaken place off the face of the earth. But I'm left wondering about the people in Massachusetts. Presumably Pat's going to ask God to wipe out that limp-wristed state for their support of gay marriage. My question is this: When God wipes out Massachusetts who do the people there pray to, Liberace?"

This was a great comment, love the snark. But just in case anyone else is wondering, Robertson is not 'my guy.' He's the Al Sharpton of Evangelicalism -- only a fringe really listen to him, most of us think he's an embarrassment, and he's a media magnet because he's always good for an incendiary, stupid quote.

Here are some of the things I've written here about Robertson and Falwell in the past:

Needed: An Evangelical "Sister Souljah" Moment

More Politico-Clerics!

Illuminati Under the Bed

Thankfully, there are many, many, many faithful pastors for every chucklehead like Robertson.

UPDATE: To see just how isolated Robertson is, do a technorati search and try to find Evangelicals doing anything but criticizing him. Examples:

Mariner Ministries -- Call on Charles Darwin

Broken Messenger -- False Prophet: Pat Robertson?

Ordinary Everyday Christian -- Loons of the Month

Keywords: Pat Robertson, Pat Roberson, Stupid Christian Tricks, Evangelical silliness, false prophet, Christian ghetto

The Song of the Strange Ascetic

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have praised the purple vine,
My slaves should dig the vineyards,
And I would drink the wine.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And his slaves grow lean and grey,
That he may drink some tepid milk
Exactly twice a day.

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have crowned Neaera's curls,
And filled my life with love affairs,
My house with dancing girls;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And to lecture rooms is forced,
Where his aunts, who are not married,
Demand to be divorced.

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have sent my armies forth,
And dragged behind my chariots
The Chieftains of the North.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And he drives the dreary quill,
To lend the poor that funny cash
That makes them poorer still.

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have piled my pyre on high,
And in a great red whirlwind
Gone roaring to the sky;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And a richer man than I:
And they put him in an oven,
Just as if he were a pie.

Now who that runs can read it,
The riddle that I write,
Of why this poor old sinner,
Should sin without delight-
But I, I cannot read it
(Although I run and run),
Of them that do not have the faith,
And will not have the fun.

(G. K. Chesterton - 1913)

Paganism and Rome

While Barzun pulls plenty of punches in his survey of the Reformation, he does get some things right:

"To invoke the Saviour in place of works was to change reality; that is, to reshape culture and and individual behavior. Worshipping the saints had become a kind of polytheism: they were powers to entreat. Every living person, every activity and institution, every town and village was dedicated to a patron saint, and aware of living under his or her protection. . .

This distributed worship had come into being as the early church converted the pagan populations of the West. To make the new creed intelligible and congenial, Christian rites and holidays were adapted to existing customs. Saints took the place of local deities: Christmas, Easter, Rogations (the springtime blessing of the fields) re-enacted the original pagan festivals. . .

Luther was induced by overwhelming tradition to condone the worship of the Virgin Mary. The late Middle Ages, thinking of mercy as peculiarly maternal had made her, not Christ, the intercessor in forgiveness. Luther recalled that in his youth to mention Christ in a sermon was considered 'effeminate'." (Barzun, 22)

Sorry for falling back on quotes today, I'm too muddled for creative thought. Check back mañana!

Baptism.

This is a spin-off of the De Facto Baby Sprinklers thread. Anyone who wants to weigh in on baptism -- paedo, credo or other -- please feel free to jump in.

Prayer Request

The death of Communism left a vacuum that was quickly filled from all quarters -- a resurgent Orthodox Church, Western missionaries, thousands of Korean Presbyterians, and unfortunately. . . cults. The Mormons and JWs have expanded aggressively.

A Ukrainian colleague and I are organizing a cult conference for the end of March. One thing it'll cover is the marks of a cult, and how to differentiate cults from other Western churches (we often all get lumped into the sektanti pile by the average person.) We'll also be looking at the distinctives of Mormonism and the JWs, and teaching people how to defend their faith when approached by cultists.

One of the great things to come out of the Orange Revolution was a very healthy ecumenism, with leaders of the Kiev Patriarchate, the Protestant and Catholic churches all meeting and praying together. We're hoping to help further this with the conference by inviting the leaders of the various local churches to take part.

There are a lot of details still to be worked out. So please be in prayer for the conference -- especially location, turn-out and impact. Thanks!

Cat-Ma vs. Dog-Ma

Batesline Blog posts good stuff daily daily. Here's a great one:

What's the difference between dog theology and cat theology?

A dog says: "You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, you love me. You must be God."
A cat says: "You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, you love me. I must be God."

"Cat theologians don't necessarily believe that they are God; they (we, really) just act that way. We search the Bible for God's promises of blessings. We come to church to learn how to have happier marriages, how to be better parents, how to have more satisfying careers. . . Dog theology doesn't deny that God seeks to bless his people, but it puts that fact into perspective."

Pop over and read the whole post.

Design Your Own Purgatory

If I believed in purgatory, there's one group I'd send there for a nice, long time. Tetzel couldn't even save them. It's a certain category of online Christians who say cutting, ugly things to other believers, but cloak it all in pious language. They basically borrow the flaming sword from the angel which guarded Eden, dice the other person into tiny bits, and then sign off with, "Your brother in Christ. . ."

There's a related tribe of unbelievers who does the same thing but uses smiley emoticons instead. Being infidels, they don't even rate purgatory, poor souls.

Calvinism, not Fatalism

One of the perennial charges made against Reformed Christianity is that it's "fatalistic." The idea is that because Calvinists believe God actively works out everything that happens in the universe, we also believe that humans have no will or range of action. So you get comments like, "Well, prayer doesn't mean anything if God predestined everything." Or "you don't believe in evangelism, because God's just going to save people anyway."

The problem these people have is that they aren't arguing with Calvin, but with the Word of God. If their critique was true, they'd have disproved not just the great Frenchman and predestination. The Bible itself posits both human responsibility AND the total, active sovereignty of God.

"In Him we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will. . . -- Ephesians 1:11"

God is working everything that happens in the Universe according to his own divine plan and will. But He's chosen to work out this will through means. No Calvinist believes that God makes robots of us. The Westminster Confession itself says that God does no violence to our wills in predestination. Instead He works through our own actions -- both good and evil ones.

So how does this work out practically? Take prayer as an example.

God has ordained that prayer changes things. When I pray, God really does hear and respond to it. But if God has a purpose to be accomplished, there WILL be prayer for it. God ordains both the ends, and the means to accomplish it. Far from fatalism, I have the comfort of knowing that my prayers fit perfectly into the gracious plan of God's predestination.

Evangelism is the same. God has ordained the foolishness of preaching as his primary means of reaching the lost. So I can never say, "Ah, no need to evangelize. God'll save them anyway." No, He won't. I'm responsible to preach both in season and out. But it is true that if God has predestined that someone will hear the Gospel, it WILL invariably be preached to them. Again, both means and ends.

Philippians has a great example of the two elements working together:

". . .work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." -- Philippians 2:12,13

Paul is exhorting us as beings who have a will and the ability to choose our actions. At the same time, however, he shows us a second aspect of our reality -- that the will we exert and the actions we peform are actually thanks to the working of God within us. And that He's guiding them according to His "good pleasure."

Fatalism accepts what the Bible says about God's sovereignty without acknowledging the verses about human responsibility and free agency. Much of the rest of contemporary Christianity does just the opposite -- swallowing free agency without facing up to the sovereignty verses. Both approaches leave one with a truncated Bible and a distorted image of God.

Good Reads: Challies is doing some beautiful posting on Calvinism and predestination. Also pop over to Dave's Exegesis for a Scripture-chocked look at God's sovereignty and predestination.

Keywords: Predestination, Calvinism, Reformed Christianity, Calvinist, Reformed Theology

a quick theology primer

- Protestants don't recognize the authority of the Pope.

- Orthodox don't recognize the Filioque.

- Catholics don't recognize Sola Fide.

- Baptists don't recognize each other in the liquor aisle.

More on Art and the Christian Ghetto

Greg added this bit of helpful but bleak commentary:

"My job has me out this week working in our company's exhibit booth at the National Religious Broadcaster's convention. In Anaheim, CA. Across the street from Disneyland. I am not making this up.

All except the "Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" movie. It looks well-done. A gem in a septic tank."

He's not normally so reticent, but I think you can read between the lines and surmise his opinion.

You can also pop over to Winston's place and check out Christianity and the Arts. He overviews some Christian books which can help us transcend kitsch and banality.

grace and gays

Other than abortionists, no group in America is more reviled by the Church than gay people. As I've said here before, many seem to have set up barricades at the Gates of Grace and decided unilaterally that homosexuals are barred.

Yes, the Bible clearly teaches that homosexual activity is sinful. But the Church has taken it so far beyond that, elevating it above all other sins into its own category of evilness. Fornication might be evil, but homosexual fornication is "Eeevil, like the fru-its of the De-vil", as Mike Myers might say.

This is the saddest irony imaginable. Looking around contemporary America, I can think of few groups Jesus would reach out to sooner than gays. He was drawn to the outcast and the suffering.

As much as a fifth of gay men are living under the death sentence of HIV. Studies show 54% of gay men and 55% of lesbians report physical abuse in their relationships. Major Depression rates are up to four times that of the general population. Levels of alcoholism, anxiety disorders, suicide and drug abuse are incredibly high as well. These factors conspire to take twenty-five years from the average gay male's life expectancy. We're talking death statistics straight out of the 1870's.

This post isn't about the immorality of the gay lifestyle. It's about the immorality of turning a large group of people into an untouchable caste.

Yes, gays are unworthy of God's grace. So are you. That's why it's called grace.

Free the Philly Five

I wrote not long ago about the "Philly 5" -- Christian activists who were arrested for counter-demonstrating at a gay rights "Outfest."

By all accounts, they're pretty chuckleheaded -- confrontational and obnoxious rather than gracious and loving. But their actions were misdemeanors at most. They're being charged with felony counts, not because of what they did, but because of what they believe. Thought crime.

Anyone with a sense of justice or even a sense of self-preservation should be against this. Giving people prison terms for their beliefs has no place in a free society.

Here's a petition to free the Philly Five. Regardless of your feelings about them, justice should be blind.

The Indigenous Principle and the Pilgrim Principle

I'm teaching in Romans 12 for the next couple of weeks. During my research today, I came across a sermon by John Piper -- Do Not Be Conformed to This World. This excerpt is simple, but it stood out to me:

"These two impulses are always in tension with each other. At times they push in opposite directions, and the great challenge is to find the biblical balance. Andrew Walls, in his book, The Missionary Movement In Christian History, calls these two impulses the Indigenous Principle and the Pilgrim Principle (Mary Knoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2001, pp. 7-9). In other words, the gospel can and must become indigenous in every (fallen!) culture in the world. It can and must find a home in the culture. It must fit in. That’s the indigenous impulse.

But at the same time, and just as powerful, the gospel produces a pilgrim mindset. It loosens people from their culture. It criticizes and corrects culture. It turns people into pilgrims and aliens and exiles in their own culture. When Paul says, 'Do not conformed to this world,' and 'I became all things to all people,' he is not confused; he is calling for a critical balance of two crucial biblical impulses."

Pentecostals, Christian Anthropology, and Anti-Intellectualism

It was the endemic anti-intellectualism which finally drove me from the Charismatic and Pentecostal world in which I came of age (that and the naked corruption of a couple of Name-it Claim-it pastors of mine. . .) Part of that hostility to the life of the mind has cultural roots. But it wasn't until later that I realized it was also a fault of their anthropology.

Contrary to the historically dominant Christian view of man as a 2-part being -- a body and a spirit/soul, the churches I grew up in believed in a trichotomous man -- body, soul and spirit. It was an incredibly Gnostic construct. The Body is always sinful. The Spirit is always perfect. And the Soul, which is a mix of good and bad, is the deciding vote in whether man sins or not. Let's see. . . Matter=Bad, Spirit=Good. Could we even try to resurrect early heresies a little more openly?

So anyway. The Soul was the seat of reason and intellect, in their view. It's good and bad. The Spirit is unadulterated good. It's where they felt the "leading of the Spirit", and had God "speak to them in their spirit."

So which one would you trust -- the fallible soul or the perfect spirit? So naturally the soul is subordinated to spirit -- the life of the mind falls to the whims of emotion. Systematic study of the Word gives way to searches for new emotional experiences.

Is it this way in all Charismatic and Pentecostal churches? No. But certainly in a majority of the ones in which I grew up.

Some are going to wonder what I'm talking about. If the Bible speaks of both spirit and soul, how can I say they're the same thing? The Bible uses them interchangeably. They are two aspects of the same, incorporeal element of man's composition, with the differing words conveying nuance. The Bible almost universally speaks of man dichotomously -- either body-and-soul or body-and-spirit.

A natural question then is in regard to Hebrews 4:12, where it mentions the Word dividing spirit and soul. Here it means nothing more than that the Word has power even to divide the thoughts and intents of the heart. Following his analogy, we can see he doesn't portray soul and spirit as two separate elements -- he says it separates joints and marrow (the body) and soul and spirit (the second aspect, man's incorporeal element.)

If someone wanted to be hyperliteral and accept that Heb. 4:12 has to mean a 3 part man, then he's going to run into a further problem -- similar verses enumerate other elements. For example -- mind, will, heart, etc. You can end up with a nine part human by the time you're finished. . .

PCA Blogroll/Aggregator and the new Decablog

Jollyblogger has a great new project going -- a PCA blogroll/aggregator for all you edgy/rock-ribbed/cerebral Presbyterian types out there.

Also, here's another nudge for you to check out:

Remembering the 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade

Humbled by Grace?

Researching for Bible study today, I came across a sermon on Romans 11. This quote struck me:

"You can be proud or you can be Presbyterian, but you can’t be both consistently. If you’ve really seen God’s grace it always has the quality of humbling you in the dust."

This is something I'll be meditating on this week. If only I could really grasp that I was saved by grace -- that there was nothing smarter, better or fresher tasting about me than anyone else, that it was totally a free act of God's mercy. . . I think it would be life-changing. Of course, I believe it already. But I want this belief to sink deeper into my heart. It seems to me there's a cure here for spiritual arrogance, both in my relationship with God and with non-Christians.

Pravda, UFOs and Nietzsche's "Rain of Gods"

G.K. Chesterton said "When men stop believing in the one, true God, it's not that they don't believe in anything, but that they believe in everything and anything."

This quote came home to me today when a nice old woman in Intermediate English mentioned "energy vampires", and then pulled out a tabloid to prove they exist. My friend Roma, a very smart young chemist, also reads such papers and believes them implicitly. You can see businessmen on the metro intently reading rags with names like "Secret Knowledge."

Virtually every young man I work with has been involved in either the occult or Eastern religions at some point in his life. Metro stations have kiosks full of New Age books. Pravda, once the voice of the Communist Party, now features stories on Boriska -- Boy from Mars, Aliens Live on Earth, and Soviet Army Fought UFOs.

The occult was popular during the Soviet Union. Denied a traditional outlet, man's innate religious sense sought mystical experiences in psychic phenomenon and pseudo-scientific speculation. It then exploded during glasnost and immediately following, as the Communist collapse left a vaccuum to be filled.

While a bit clichéd, Nietzsche's belief that "When Christian dogma falls apart there will be a rain of gods" seems to be as prophetic as his other writings. The decline of organized religion won't usher in the secular, rationalist Utopia many would like. Instead, the post-Christian era, both in Ukraine and the States, is characterized by an ever-increasing array of irrational and superstitious beliefs.

Those who see organized Christianity as an obstacle to a free, rational society should think twice before removing it. You might like what fills the vaccuum even less.

ATheology of Suffering

One of the biggest differences between Christian culture in Ukraine and the States would be the emphasis here on suffering. This is partly a matter of Ukraine's tortured history, and partly something inherent in Orthodoxy. Many times it seems to cross over into something unhealthy -- suffering as an end in itself. But overall I think they do a good job recognizing the value of trials, the ways God uses difficulty in our life to mold us into the image of his Son.

Too often, American churches lack a theology of suffering. I grew up in Happy-Clappy churches where "the joy of the Lord is your strength," and that smile better not waver. When I moved into a conservative Presbyterian church, one of the things I came to love was their recognition that while we work to alleviate suffering, it still has a valuable place in a Believer's life. It's a sculpting tool in the hands of God.

My favorite Christian magazine, Modern Reformation, devoted this month to the theology of suffering and Blues music. I was shocked to see that U2's Bono wrote an article called The Bible & The Blues.

Two of the other articles are online:

Singing the Blues with Jesus and Aint It Hard: Suffering & Hope in the Blues

Progress in the Christian Ghetto

There are many things in the Christian subculture that make me want to hide under a rock (for example, the fact that we've allowed ourselves to decline to subcultural status.) A short list would begin with the Left Behind series, extend through the Brownsville Revivals, and culminate in the execrations of Thomas Kinkade.

So it was nice to be reminded yesterday that Christians have no monopoly on goofiness -- I was standing at the desk of the Globe Bookstore and leafed through the "Little Book of Calm" and "Chicken Soup for the Superficially Spiritual."

More good news appeared today on Opinionjournal.com -- Their Idea of a University, a play on Newman's The Idea of a University. It turns out, Christian colleges are growing like crazy, and the quality of research and instruction is growing right along with them.

Overall, my bent is toward Christians taking an active, reforming part in society's institutions, rather than enclaving. Salt needs to be mixed into the bunch to have a flavouring effect. But Christians built Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the like, and there is something encouraging in seeing them once again build first-rate universities.

Just as exciting are the developments at the school-age level -- the most interesting debates about educational theories and school reform all seem to be within Christian circles, and some dynamic schools have sprung up in recent years.

United with Christ

Theology gets a bad rap these days. As we slide back towards paganism, theology seems farther and farther from the ecstatic, individualistic spiritual ideal to which we're descending.

That's why I love the Puritans so much, and their immediate spiritual children. They had a faith that hit you both in your heart and your head.

I recently taught through the book of Ephesians. One thing that struck me was how often the phrase "in Christ" appeared. I meditated on that a lot. What is this mystical union we have with Him? What does it mean to be "in Christ"?

According to Ephesians 1, it means everything. In Him we have redemption, we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing, we've been predestined, and have been marked with a seal.

The theme is too vast for a blogging format, but I wanted to link you to a piece written by that great Calvinist "Prince of Preachers", Charles Spurgeon -- Bands of Love, or Union to Christ.

"When the eye is clear and the soul can evidently perceive this oneness between the soul and Christ, the pulse may be felt as beating for both, and the one blood may be known as flowing through the veins of each. Then is the heart made exceedingly glad, it is as near heaven as it ever can be on earth. . .

a prayer for the suffering

I have nothing of any worth to add to what others have already said about the tsunami and the resulting devastation. The mind freezes even trying to imagine the extent of the thing. So in lieu of comment I'm posting a prayer for those in danger from the sea:

"O MOST glorious and gracious Lord God, who dwellest in heaven, but beholdest all things below; Look down, we beseech thee, and hear us, calling out of the depth of misery, and out of the jaws of this death, which is now ready to swallow us up: Save, Lord, or else we perish. The living, the living shall praise thee. O send thy word of command to rebuke the raging winds and the roaring sea; that we, being delivered from this distress, may live to serve thee, and to glorify thy Name all the days of our life. Hear, Lord, and save us, for the infinite merits of our blessed Saviour, thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

-- from the 1789 US Book of Common Prayer

Silliman blogs my childhood

Daniel Silliman, of the eponymously named blog, captures so much of the wackiness that was my childhood religion. This is what every Sunday and Wednesday were like in a Word-of-Faith church:

"We prayer there, rocking back and forth in our fold-out chairs . . . like mental patients confined to wheel chairs, rocking back and forth and praying.

My dad said we would’ve swung on the chandeliers, but we didn’t have any. So we danced in our seats and on our seats and ran through the aisles around the building in a procession going nowhere. . .

We’d pray like that to exhaustion, until we’d slow down, calm down, still out into a mumble, tired by the fervor fever, worn out on the excess and you’d hear some sister sobbing and the usher at the door hissing by threes the One Name of Jezzusss, Jezzusss, Jezzusss. . .

Aaaaaa-men, and we’d rise to it, shouting Jesus Lord God Yahweh Jesus Amen Hallelujah Amen Hellelujah Jesus Jesus raising prayers to the decibel we called zealous."

I've never been able to take the Wicca-types seriously. Don't look for true paganism among a handful of patchouli-reeking LARPers gathered in a darkened city graveyard. . . REAL paganism is best found on the outer fringes of the Charismatic movement. Nothing else so captures the orgiastic loss of reason, the fetishism, the sensualism or the giving over to the Dionysian aspect of our nature than a typical Word of Faith miracle service.

Sadly, the largest Protestant church in Kiev is WoF. Imagine the cruelty of telling people making $60 a month that the only reason they aren't rich is because they don't give enough money and don't have enough faith.

Needed: An Evangelical "Sister Souljah" Moment

To my mind, the Left has lowered itself through its infatuation with Michael Moore. No matter how popular a showman, a self-promoting compulsive liar like Moore is a disgrace to any movement.

On my side of the fence, Jerry Falwell is no less embarrassing. But he's been marginalized for a long time now, kept in the same has-been menagerie as Pat "Illuminati-Jews-run-the-World" Robertson.

Now he's looking for a comeback. Fox is reporting that he's restarting his Moral Majority.

Evangelicals have a chance to do both the country and themselves a favor -- let this thing die a mercifully fast death.

Does anybody know. . .

. . .if Bill Gothard is still living with his mom?

More Papal Senility

More evidence of the senility of the current Pope Bishop of Rome.

"Earlier, a statement by the Vatican's chief spokesman called Mr Arafat the "illustrious deceased" and asked God to grant eternal rest to his soul. "The Holy See joins the pain of the Palestinian people for the passing of President Yasser Arafat. He was a leader of great charisma who loved his people and tried to guide them towards national independence. . ."

Let me get this straight -- John Paul is requesting 'eternal rest' for an embezzling kleptocrat/founder of modern terrorism? I realize the Roman doctrine of justification is a little screwed up, but didn't they once at least hold to something like, I dunno, FAITH being necessary for eternal rest? Maybe even some spiritual fruit beyond encouraging suicide bombings and pimping your own people for aid money?

Now I remember why we had a Reformation. . .

Hat tip: The Rough Woodsman

One thing you can say for Calvinists. . .

Anyone who says that man is totally depraved couldn't be all bad.

Worse than Michael Moore.

This picture is more offensive than anything I saw coming from the Left this campaign cycle. I'd like to give both of these guys a good, solid kick somewhere vulnerable -- I'm not particular. Because while Moore insults our country and our ancestors, these two chuckleheads are demeaning something infinitely more precious -- the Cross of Christ.

The Cross has one name on it, and it is NOT George Bush. Christ transcends party lines, and they are tools in HIS hands. How dare these fools seek to make a tool of Christ instead.

I'm a Republican because the things I value as a Christian find more support there. But my party loyalty is a contingent thing; my loyalty to Christ is not. And the line between the two needs to be marked out with double-thick, permanent black magic marker.

A Prayer for Our Troops in Fallujah

"O ALMIGHTY God, the supreme Governor of all things, whose power no creature is able to resist, to whom it belongeth justly to punish sinners, and to be merciful to those who truly repent; Save and deliver us, we humbly beseech thee, from the hands of our enemies; that we, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore from all perils, to glorify thee, who art the only giver of all victory; through the merits of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." --From the 1892 Common Book of Prayer

May the Lord also change the hearts of our enemies, and may He spare the lives of the civilians inside Fallujah as well. Amen.

A Homefront Christian in Wartime

In the past I've generally thought of the hard Left as well-meaning, but misguided. The Iraq War has opened my eyes. There's a subsection of the Left which is truly and fundamentally evil. They hate my faith, my way of life, and my country. They publish fawning articles in Islamist journals and give overt and covert support to those killing our soldiers. There's a special word for that -- treason.

In an insurgent war, the homefront is every bit as vital as the battlefront. The hard Left is emboldening our enemies and demoralizing our people. They came within 3% of unseating a wartime president and installing their candidate of choice. They need to be answered; they need to be exposed. We need to work for justice and speak truth, and it would be the highest moral cowardice to retreat from the enemies of one's country.

At the same time, how does a Christian reconcile that with the imperative to love, and to preach and demonstrate grace to these people? I'm not saying that there's an inherent contradiction, but it seems easy to err badly on one side or the other. So where's the balance? And what place do parody or sarcasm have in this?

Happy Reformation Day!

On this day, nearly 500 years ago, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses. God used one man’s brave action to help launch the greatest revival in the history of Christianity. Good on ya, Martin Luther. Oh, that the Lord would send us more uncompromising men.

God Gives the Increase

While being careful not to say, “I am of Calvin”, I’m curious to hear a free-willist interpretation of 1 Cor. 3:5-8:

”Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither who he plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.”

Phrases like, “as the Lord gave to each one” and “God gave the increase” become mere platitudes in the mouths of wishy-washy modern Evangelicals. If “God is a gentleman,” and regeneration is contingent solely upon the will of man, then Paul’s statements about the working of God are mere pious noises.

Arminian adoption -- Theology has consequences?

A family in Donetsk adopted a boy, and he lived with them for 8 years. He has an attachment disorder, and they decided he was simply too troublesome and they gave him back to the orphanage. Now a friend of mine is adopting the boy, even knowing just how messed up he really is. They’re committing to keep him as their son for life.

This is a great picture of the Arminian versus the Calvinist understanding of adoption. In the free willish view, God makes you his son, and then tosses you back into the orphanage if you’re a problem child. Calvinists know their Father in a different way – a God that supports, enables and loves his children all the way through to adulthood – their glorification.

In one of the perverse twists of life, the family that gave up the boy is Arminian Baptist. The new father is a Reformed pastor. Right theology leads to right practice?

The Genius of Calvinism

The focus of our devotions lately has been the presence of God -- that central Biblical thread running from Adam walking in the garden with Him through His covenant promise to us and Abraham, all the way into eternity when God will once again dwell with us in the fullest of senses. I like what Abraham Kuyper had to say in his 'Lectures on Calvinism':

"Thanks to this work of God in the heart, the persuasion that the whole of a man's life is to be lived as in the Divine Presence has become the fundamental thought of Calvinism. By this decisive idea, or rather this mighty fact, it has allowed itself to be controlled in every department of its entire domain. It is from this mother-thought that the all-embracing life system of Calvinism sprung."

While we're on theology, I have to brag on the Duchess a bit. I just popped into our bedroom and found her curled up with Berkof's Systematic. You gotta love a woman who reads systematic theology for fun.

Willing to Believe?

Continuing on with our discussion of man's (un)free will. . . I wanted to comment a bit more on those who accept that there exists a universal ability of all men to believe in Christ to their salvation. In their words, an ability to "make a decision for Jesus."

I have a question for those people -- have you ever considered what it actually means to believe? Have you ever considered that belief isn't initially a function of the will? You can't decide to believe something is true.

I'll clarify with a secular example:

Someone presents a group of people with the details of a new diet fad. These folks listen carefully, and their minds analyze what they've been told. At the end of this process, some believe this information to be true, others think it's bunk. Those who think it's blatantly foolish cannot then use their wills to decide to believe it. Nor can those who have a sincere conviction that it's true then decide to believe it's false.

This is neither controversial or complicated when we're speaking of secular subjects. But for some people, it becomes murky when we begin speaking of spiritual things.

When we share the details of the Gospel, the same process takes place. Some people will believe that there really is a Trinitarian God in Heaven, that the Father sent the Son to die for sinners, and that there really is such a thing as eternal life. Others will not believe this. And there is no choice they can make to cause themselves to believe what seems foolish to them. Apart from self-delusion, there is no act of will to make that which we find ridiculous suddenly seem true.

So even the most basic aspect of saving faith -- intellectual agreement -- is impossible for many, many of the people who hear the Good News. We saw last time that man's will is unfree. We can now add to that an intellect bound by sin.

So what makes these two groups to differ -- those who assent to the claims of the Gospel, and those who find them foolish? We'll talk about that next time.

Love the Sinner/ Disrelish the Sin?

Rong, over at The Requiest has a thoughtful post on hating sin. He has trouble hating sin while still engaging the sinners in the culture around him. God has been convicting me lately that I have a different struggle -- too often I love the sinner while having a mild distaste for the sin.

I realized that I've always taken a certain pride at not being shocked by sin. Growing up in Sarasota, a very liberal city, and spending a lot of years in the punk rock scene can make you a little jaded. And so I freely form friendships and share the Gospel with punks, Pagans, gays and a lot of other groups that many Christians recoil from. They don't shock me.

But I realized I needed to repent of that pride. In large measure my openness with them isn't because I'm just overflowing with the love of Christ (though I do care about them), but because I don't hate sin the way I ought. I hate sin in my own life, but I see now that I've been a bit blasé about its existence in the world around me.

That's not to say that I water down the Bible's ethical teachings, or that I've "gone wobbly" on morality. But knowing, believing and teaching that something is wrong isn't the same thing as hating it. There's something visceral about hate -- it touches the heart as well as the mind.

So that's been my prayer recently -- that I would hate the things that God hates, while loving those that He loves.

Man's Unfree Will

We've been discussing man's will on a previous thread, and it's reminded me of how many humanistic assumptions have crept into Evangelicalism. Man's autonomy is simply assumed by many, and then made the starting point for all subsequent thought on matters salvific. For some reason, Adam's "free will" is the portion of Scripture most commonly referenced. But how much sense does this make?

I have a friend here in Kiev, a former professional footballist footballer soccer player. He was able to play at that level. He had that freedom. Then he suffered a crippling accident that left him an invalid. While still "free" to play football professionally, he completely lost the ability to do so.

Pointing to Adam as an example of man's free will is about as sensical as me pointing to my friend's pre-accident state as evidence of his current ability to be a professional footballer. Except that the analogy is flawed. My friend would have needed to be struck stone dead by the accident for the analogy to work.

Because that's exactly what the Fall did to us. It didn't cripple us; it killed us. So when we speak of man's will, we should look to see what the Scripture says about man's nature post-Fall. It's remarkable how many Christians who claim to believe in the primacy and suffciency of Scripture completely fail to do this, and instead rely on statements that begin with "it's only logical that. . ." They then skip merrily off into semi-Pelagianism, positing a Fall that somehow managed to affect every aspect of man except his will.

As a starting point for tonight, here are a few insights the Word gives us about the nature of man:

He is spiritually DEAD. -- "And you did He make alive, when you were dead in your trespasses and sins. . ." Ephesians 2:1

He is in SLAVERY to sin. -- "Most assuredly I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave to sin." John 8:34

He has the DEVIL for a father. -- "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do." John 8:44

He drinks iniquity like water. -- "How much less man, who is abominable and filthy, and drinks inquity like water!" Job 15:16

His mind is in HATRED of God -- "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the Law of God, nor indeed can it be." Romans 8:7

He doesn't seek God -- "There is none who seeks after God. . . There is none who does good, no, not one." Romans 3:11,12

The Gospel itself is FOOLISH to him -- "For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. . ." 1 Cor. 1:18 "The natural man receives not the things of God, because they are foolishto him, nor can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned." 1 Cor. 2:14

His mind is BLINDED against the Gospel -- "But even if our Gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe lest the light of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. . ." 2 Cor. 4:3

His very nature is as a child of WRATH -- ". . .fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath." Ephesians 2:3

To read these verses and then still talk blithely about man's 'free' will is to invert Orwell's 1984 slogan to read "Slavery is freedom." Because that's what you have to believe to still hold to "free" will.

Does this mean man lacks a will entirely? Not at all. Like everything, he is "free" to choose within the limits of his nature. So he has all the spiritual freedom of a being that is dead in sin, in slavery to sin, in slavery to Satan, a child of the devil, a child of wrath, who drinks iniquity like water, whose mind is in enmity against God, who doesn't seek God, whose eyes are blinded to the very Gospel that can save him and whose mind finds this Gospel utter foolishness.

As one man put it, it's unwise to believe that water can flow uphill, simply because it has the ability to flow downhill.

As Christ Loved the Church. . .

We were studying the second half of Ephesians chapter 5 this evening. During my prep, I came across a wonderful 29-part series on the book.

Our focus tonight was on the parallels between Christ's relationship with the church, and the husband's with his wife. The series made an interesting connection between the electing love of God, and the selecting love of the husband:

"There may be a sense in which we may say that God loves the whole world (see John 3:16), but the love which the husband is to have for his wife is not all-encompassing; it is a selective love. The love of Christ which we husbands are to imitate is a love for the church. Christ, our Model, “loved the church” and “gave Himself up for her.” His love in Christ was a selective love, or, to put the matter in theological terms, it is an elective love. Christ died to save those whom the Father had chosen in eternity past (see Ephesians 1:3-14).

When a man sets his heart upon a woman whom he desires to be his wife, he sets her apart from all other women. He seeks companionship with her, with the goal of making her his wife. While he can love his neighbor, and even his enemy, his love for his wife is unique. It sets her apart from all other women. . ."

I had never really considered before how the Arminian view of election precludes Christ having the sort of love that a husband rightly has for his wife. Instead we're left with a Husband who loves all the women of the world indiscriminately, and for whom no pride of place is reserved for the Bride. Or at the very least we have a very modern Bride, who does the proposing to a rather passive Groom, who only then gives her special consideration vis-a-vis the other women of the world. . .

How Wide the Divide?

Autmom has (gently and politely) taken me to task for my recent look back at 5 years in the PCA. She disagrees with my critiquing aspects of Charismatic, particularly Word-of-Faith, theology and practice. As she states:

"I once had saved, on an old hard-drive that has long since crashed, a poem someone wrote and circulated via email about not looking at each other by our denominational label, how it only serves to divide what should be a unified body. . . arguing about theology should be reserved for salvation issues, I feel. "

The latter point, about only arguing over soteriological issues, seems untenable to me. First, God chose to give us a very large book filled with teachings on lots of thngs other than salvation. If He considered them important enough to communicate, then they're important enough to discuss and debate. Secondly, there are plenty of things equally foundational to Christianity as salvation -- the Trinity comes readily to mind. In fact, Trinitarian issues are generally the real dividing line between Christian and cult.

But what about the underlying criticism -- that it's wrong and divisive to criticize other denominations by name? I think entirely the opposite is true. It's because of the ultimate unity of the Body that we can discuss problems in other groups. While confessional boundaries are a current reality and necessity, they are entirely temporal. Christ has one Church. By viewing commentary of other groups as illegitimate, we would be treating these boundaries as sacrosanct, rather than temporal and limited.

In the end, my critiques offend not against the unity of the Body, but against the fundamental tenet of postmodern Christianity: Faith, love and tolerance, but the greatest of these is tolerance.

Reflections on 5 Years in the PCA

Apparently, I'm feeling nostalgic today. More signs of aging. Fun.

Anyway, I've been thinking back about our time in the Presbyterian Church in America (not to be confused with the PCUSA, the one which regularly ordains liberals.) We've been with them for about 5 years now, and it's amazing the changes God has worked in our lives.

It was a culture shock to come into the denonomination, after being Word of Faith. Heck, it was weird coming into ANY denomination. Denoms didn't have the Holy Spirit, after all. And the PCA is pretty much the polar opposite of the WoF -- doctrinally sound, church-planting-oriented, has a theology of suffering, oftentimes liturgical, the pastors don't wear $400 purple suits, no one gets holy laughter, etc. While I didn't miss the purple suits, it was hard at times to get used to the Presbyterian way of things. And, honestly, Reformed people are made from sterner cloth than the people I grew up with.

But I'm so thankful to God for bringing us into the Reformed faith. We had longed for a church that didn't think everything since the death of John the Beloved to the Azusa Street Revival was stupid or Spiritless. I'd even looked Romeward. But in Reformed Christianity I found a historical faith that didn't require swallowing huge lumps of heresy and silliness along with the historicity.

As a young father, the PCA was a godsend. Rather than the female-dominated piety of the Charismatics, in the PCA I found healthy families where the husbands took seriously their roles as leader and protector. Families where children were catechized and families worshiped together regularly.

I love that I've found a group of Christians who love books. Who appreciate independent films. Who aren't afraid to engage the World on an intellectual level. I'm glad to have found a church that strives to glorify God in all of life, and lives that out.

I'm also glad to belong to a church that actually takes elder leadership and church discipline seriously. On two occasions I've seen people disciplined for open, unrepentant sin. It was sobering, and a reminder to all of us that we serve a holy God. And this discipline was administered lovingly, and with a view to restoration of the individuals.

Most of all, I'm glad to belong to a religion for grown-ups. After the wackiness of my former life, the Reformed faith has proven to be a safe refuge from the tide of frivolousness and arrested adolescence that characterizes so many churches these days.

Are these strengths unique to the Reformed churches? Of course not. But the PCA is a wonderful expression of them, and I'm thankful to have found it.

God vs. The Cosmic Genie

As most of you know, I came of age in the Word of Faith movement (for those unfamiliar with WoF, think Benny Hinn, "Dad" Hagin, Ken Copeland and the rest of that money-grubbing pack of heresiarchs.) We were taught "faith formulas" that were guaranteed to bring us health and riches if properly followed. The primary ingredients for these were key prooftexts and monetary donations.

Much of my spiritual life since has been in reaction to the nauseating stupidity of my time among the WoF Charismatics. The problem with reactions is how easily they go too far. God has been showing me lately that I'd almost de facto excised some of these prooftexts from my Bible. But misuse doesn't invalidate Truth.

So now I'm trying to pray with a real recognition that a God is listening "who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think." In the WoF we believed God was obligated to answer our prayers according to the letter of what we prayed. But I serve a bigger God than that. I serve a God who answers prayers above even what I can ask or think. And that's better than the WoF's cosmic genie any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

Jesus's Death -- No Shortage of Participants

With a cheery flush of irony, I'll admit, I do care a little about the answer to "Who Killed Jesus?" While some would make it an easy four-letter response, the counsel of Scripture seems a bit more complicated to me. In fact, depending in what sense one means the question, one ends up with more suspects than an Agatha Christie novel.

Here are a few that certainly belong in the picture:

1. The Jews -- as not only I Thessalonians 2:14-16 demonstrates, but Acts chapters 2 and 3 state in quite explicit terms. These chapters also put Jesus's prayer that "they know not what they do" in perspective, as Peter says "Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. . ." in Acts 2:17.

2. The Romans -- unless you have a novel interpretation for terms like "crucified", "pierced his side with a spear" or "scourged." Also, you'll need to explain away the whole "with the help of wicked men" thing in Acts 2:23 if you want to exculpate the Romans. . .

3. The Elect -- it was OUR sin which put Christ on the Cross. Christ died suffering a penalty which we should have borne. He was pierced for OUR transgressions. He wasn't on the cross for His own sake, but because of our disobedience. It takes a twisted view of causality not to see our own culpability in this.

4. Jesus Himself -- "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life -- only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord." John 10:17,18

5. The Gentiles and the People of Israel -- "Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed." Acts 4:27

6. God the Father -- "Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer. . ." Isaiah 53:10

So that sums up my own view of things. It was a team effort.

In the end, Jesus died to redeem His elect. Those who killed Him were tools in the hands of a sovereign God to fulfill His glorious plan of redemption. Our focus shouldn't be diffused on pointless questions of culpability, but on bringing the Good News of this redemption to Christ's sheep.

Posted by Discoshaman at 01:29 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

"Father Forgive" Whom Exactly?

There's been a question of my exegesis of Luke 23:34 among a certain clique. The notion is that I've misplaced the subject of this prayer. These critics believe that only the Roman soldiers were in Christ's mind, and that my extension of this to all those culpable in His death is somehow evidence of a secret agenda on my part.

I'll certainly allow that I'm in no danger of being the next John Calvin when it comes to theology. So I'll take the next best route, and simply quote John Calvin himself on the subject:

""Thus when Christ saw that both the Jewish people and the soldiers raged against him with blind fury, though their ignorance was not excusable, he had pity on them, and presented himself as their intercessor."

If I'm following any sort of agenda, I'm indeed proud to have Calvin as my unindicted co-conspirator. Matthew Henry is also part of our cabal, along with Bishop Ryle, who says in the footnotes to Luke 23 that, "The question naturally arises, "Who were those for whom our Lord prayed? I cannot, as some do, confine his prayer to the Roman soldiers who nailed Him to the cross. I rather regard it as applying also to the great bulk of the Jewish people, who were standing by, aiding and abetting His crucifixion."

I post this in the spirit of truth-seeking, and hope my critics will respond in the same vein on their own sites.

Who Killed Jesus?

"Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.'" -- Luke 23:34

A great number of trees and electrons have given their lives in arguments over who killed Jesus -- Romans, Jews, a lone gunman, each person's sin, etc.

Given His own statement on the cross, this seems to me a pretty academic subject. Am I missing some relevent implication of the question? If our own Savior and Lord has forgiven whomever it was, what's the purpose in fingering the culprits, who are in all likelihood quite dead now anyway?

Sola Scriptura and the Rule of Law

I was just wondering to myself -- is it any coincidence that the first stable Constitutional Republic in the world also happened to be an overwhelmingly Reformed country at the time of its inception? Or that the firm establishment of the rule of law was for ages virtually congruent with the borders of Protestantism?

If the Reformers were constitutional lawyers, they'd certainly have been strict constructionists. They were committed to the original intent of our faith's Founders, and viewed the Bible as anything but a "living document." The Church's only measure was (and is) her founding document, the Word of God. In other words, the rule of law, rather than the caprices of men. Men schooled in this way of thinking must have found it easy to translate the concept into the constitutional sphere.

The Romanists, on the other hand, would seem to be ecclesiological "judicial activists." Given their view of the relation of word to Tradition, you end with the rule of men. A living Pope trumps a dead apostle.

Both Romanism and the Reformed faith were given the chance to birth entirely new nations here in the New World. And it's fascinating to see the fruit of these two grand experiments -- one a continent-sized, multi-century nightmare of autocracy, ignorance, disease and corruption; the other the world's longest-thriving Constitutional Republic.

One of the key differences between the two is the rule of law, rather than the rule of men. I'm not certain their respective religions were determinative in this, but it requires an uncalvinistic belief in coincidence not to see SOME influence.

Out of the Mouth of Babes. . .

The Duchess, AKA Tulipgirl, mentions a convo she had with our eldest son after Thursday night Bible study. . .

""Mom, there's a word I don't understand. Cir-circs. . ."

"Circumcision?"

"Yeah. Circumcision. Is that like baptism?"

I'll admit to a certain paternal pride that my seven-year-old understands the sacraments better than the Baptists. . . ;-)

Evangelism and the Fairness Doctrine, Part II

Just a quick addendum -- I don't see how this Fairness Doctrine can be maintained in light of Eph. 2:11,12 --

"Therefore remember that you (Gentiles). . . were without Christ, being aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world."

If God owes each man a "fair chance", how was it just for Him to leave Gentiles "without hope" for many, many centuries? The Fairness Doctrine has a surface appeal, but it's Scripturally untenable. God offers salvation not because He must, but out of His own mercy.

Evangelism and the Fairness Doctrine

One of the common objections when someone first studies Reformed theology, particularly predestination and election, is this -- "It's unjust and unfair for God not to give every person a chance!"

The answer, of course, is that Calvinists believe God DOES offer salvation to whosoever will come to Him.

But what's interesting is the reasoning behind the objection. Namely, that God owes each man a chance to repent and be saved. And so few stop to examine their basis for believing this; instead it's often an emotionally derived position.

If a "chance" at salvation is owed, then the Gospel isn't God's gracious gift, but rather his fulfillment of a debt. Secondly, this notion has at its heart a denial of the guilt of Original Sin. Men aren't really deserving of death for the sin of Adam, and they don't truly inherit a just condemnation because of his Fall, in this view.

The truth is, though, that man had his "chance" in Adam. God owes us no other. It was a real chance, and came with real consequences.

This is objected to by many, because they believe it isn't fair or just to punish someone for the crimes of someone else. At this point, of course, they've proven too much. They've denied not only the Fall, but Christ's atonement as well. Because that's precisely what God did -- punish one man for the sins of another. And the Bible draws this parallel, when it calls Jesus the second Adam. Just as we fell corporately in Adam, we're redeemed corporately in Christ.

And The Hypocrite Shall Lie Down With The Communist. . .

In another sign that much of the former Soviet Union is closing up again in self-destructive self-delusion, the hierarchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church joined forces with the Communists today here in Kiev. It's a perfect storm of chuckleheadedness -- two of the most aggressively obtuse organizations in the country joining forces. Lucky us.

This is the same Communist Party, incidentally, which killed tens of thousands of priests and nuns and starved several million Ukrainians during its time in power. All water under the bridge, apparently, for the ecclesiastical politicians. The fact that the CP believes the entire Christian religion to be an opiate of the masses isn't a deterrent either, somehow.

So they protested today near Parliament, denouncing the supposedly pro-Western presidential candidate, Yushchenko, denouncing the West in general, and handing out literature warning people that the government was going to make them wear microchip identification badges. This last was signed by three Metropolitan bishops.

This is the reality of Orthodoxy, as opposed to the mystical, theoretical, packaged-for-Western-consumption Orthodoxy that some Evangelicals have grown enamored with in recent years.

Thankfully, the Reformation is alive and well in Eastern Europe.

More Offal From Ezzo

I just noticed that Michael Jackson is scheduled to address the Congressional Black Caucus soon, and will be sharing his deep thoughts on foreign policy with these distinguished statesmen. One representative was quoted as saying that "It is good we show our support" as he undergoes investigation for sexually assaulting a child. As OJ Simpson, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have amply demonstrated, black public opinion is one arena in which sleaze and falsehoods are no deterrent to popularity.

Christians have their own equivalent in Gary Ezzo. Like Jesse Jackson, he runs a for-profit empire disguised as a ministry. Like Al Sharpton he demagogues his supporters, creating a hateful us vs. them mentality in which anyone not "like-minded" is a supporter of "secular mystics." He also shares Sharpton's lack of familiarity with concepts like "truth" and "accountability." Like Michael Jackson, he presumes to speak on subjects in which he's eminently unqualified -- infant development and parenting, for instance. And like OJ Simpson he. . . well, he's probably played football sometime.

Now he's releasing another line of books. They're called, I kid you not, the Let's Ask Auntie Anne How-To books. Some people are such full-blown caricatures that one seeks in vain for a suitable parody. To be released in July are: Let's Ask Auntie Anne How to Raise a Moral Child; a Secure Child; a Responsible Child; and a Trusting Child.

Future volumes include Let's Ask Auntie Anne How to Become a Self-Important Demagogue; Let's Ask Auntie Anne How to Be Twice-Excommunicated Yet Still Credible and Let's Ask Auntie Anne How to Cause Failure-to-Thrive in Infants and Let's Ask Auntie Anne How to Raise a Reactively Disattached Child.

I'll keep you posted on release dates!

Keelhauling Pelagius

I taught on the first half of Ephesians 2 tonight. It reminds me of the flourless chocolate cake the Duchess and I tried the other night -- heavy, dense and incredibly rich. After Ephesians 1, there were a lot of questions about what it means to be predestined, and how man's will fits into things. Chapter 2 really must be hateful for Pelagians, both semi- and full-blown. Before God changes us we're: dead in sins; at the mercy of the "prince of the power of the air"; fulfilling the desires of the flesh; and by nature children of wrath. Not a pretty picture.

One of the questions was on what the Bible means when it says of unregenerate man, "none doeth any good." I came across a beautiful analogy in Boettner's Reformed Doctrine of Predestination that, while limited, helped people to comprehend the idea better.

"In a gang of pirates we find many things that are good in themselves. Though they are in wicked rebellion against the laws of the government, they have their own laws and regulations, which they obey strictly. We find among them courage and fidelity. . . They do many things too, which the laws of the government require, but they are not done because the government has so required. . ."

Now it is plain that while they continue in rebellion they can do nothing to recommend them to the gov. as citizens. Their first step must be to give up their rebellion, acknowledge their allegiance to the gov., and sue for mercy. . . it is easy to see that all their actions are sin against the gov. While they continue as pirates, their sailing, mending and rigging the vessel, and even their eating and drinking, are all sins in the eyes of the gov., as they are only so many expedients to enable them to continue their piratical career, and are parts of their life of rebellion. So it is with sinners."

How Very Uncharacteristic. . .

The Duchess pointed me toward an interesting thread over on Derek Webb's Webboard. The head of the online book source, The Discerning Reader, was explaining his decision to drop Canon Press from their list of offerings. He makes a point that's good for all us Calvinists to bear in mind -- that we can be so zealous for truth and right doctrine at times as to forget to be loving.

His reason for dropping Canon Press mirrors my own experiences with a particular group of people (with a few wonderful exceptions right here at Le Sabot):

"We have noticed, over the past few years, a fairly consistent pattern: our rudest customers are the ones who buy books from publishers that have a bit of a "theonomy" lean. No 1 on our list is Canon Press."

Orthodox Arrogance and Hypocrisy

I want to draw everyone's attention to an upcoming conference on religious tolerance in the former Soviet Union. The Orthodox Church not only drew its liturgy from the Byzantine Empire, but also its politics and feeble commitment to human rights. Only a group as arrogant as the Orthodox would hold a conference on religious tolerance and then pointedly exclude every other Christian fellowship from the meeting.

"Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism have existed (in the region) for a thousand years ... the rest were exported to us," said Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church's external relations department.

Yeah. For example, Calvinism was "exported" to Ukraine about 450 years ago. Orthodoxy was also exported here, only a few hundred years earlier. This has nothing to do with historical legitimacy, and everything to do with Orthodox power. Ask any of the countless missionaries who've been harrassed or attacked by Orthodox thugs or by ROC pressure on local officials.

The Protestant Church is doubling roughly every eight years in Ukraine, and thank God for it. The Reformation is alive and well in Eastern Europe.

Christianity -- A Religion for the Romantic

We prayed together as a group today, and I thought afterward about the words we spoke. Christianity seems to me to be the last bastion for the romantic, for those with OJ Berman's "streak of the poet."

In our postmodern, irony-soaked world, where else does one utter words like duty, dedication, sacrifice, holy, courage, boldness, Calling, King, grace, or honor, and do so without irony? In the community of faith we speak these words with facility, when even in a military context they often sound archaic or awkward these days. The South still retains something of this spirit, but its unique identity is waning. The real respository of the poetic spirit is in the Church, and I consider it an honor to be a part of it.

Sheepish.

For anyone who read the RC2.0 thread and noticed me saying, "The vast majority of Presbyterians aren't paedobaptists", that was just me being chuckleheaded. It SHOULD have read, "paedocommunionists". Didn't want anyone thinking I'd gone insane. We are, indeed, proud and practicing infant baptizers. And for good reason.

R.C. Sproul, Jr. -- Presby Pope?

If R.C. Sproul, Jr., son of a better man, starts announcing things ex cathedra, I won't be surprised. I've never cared for his work terribly, and like it less through the years. He represents an insular, nitpicking strain of Christian belief that lends itself naturally to circular firing squads. And he seems to fancy himself above petty Reformed things like Christian liberty, merrily binding Christian consciences on issues like public schooling. (In case his opinion matters to you, you're "in sin" if your kids go to public school.)

His new self-generated law is that anyone who's a "Bush cheerleader" is in sin and "needs to repent." The reason? Bush supports exemptions for rape and incest in anti-abortion laws. (A stance of Bush's I strongly disagree with, incidentally.)

This is about 15,000 abortions out of 1.5 million annually. As Dave Bahnsen points out, a vote for Bush is a vote to ban 99% of all abortions.

According to whatever theological goat entrails or tea leaves R.C., Jr. uses, this makes "cheerleading" for Bush a sin. He even helps define cheerleading -- Bush yard signs and bumper stickers. Undoubtedly he found the verses on bumper stickers right next to the public school verses. . . I'm so glad the PCA denied his ordination. We're better off without him.

Speaking of abortion, Army of One has some very good links on the UN and abortion.

Perseverance and Security -- More Than Semantics?

The Reformed belief in Perseverance of the Saints seems to me to be much richer and fuller than its cousin, "Eternal Security." E.S., as it's understood by many, could be fairly summarized by "if a person says this prayer and means it, they're saved even if they never think a Christian thought again." Thankfully this isn't always the case, but this type of cheap grace is taught in too many churches.

The concept of perseverance better captures both our security in Christ, and our need to "run the race of faith." As the Bible teaches, we MUST persevere to the end to be saved. It's there in black and white. Yet, if we belong to Christ, we WILL persevere -- because God's power enables and upholds us as we persevere.

This doctrine also brings the many verses in the Bible about the necessity of good works into focus, while preserving the Bible's teaching on justification by faith. Those whom God has justified, He also sanctifies, as Romans 8 teaches us. If you are saved, you WILL do good works, and God WILL sanctify you.

I think one of the coolest passages on the place of works in our life is Ephesians 2:8-10. Too often we stop quoting at verse 9:

"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."

We're saved by grace through faith. But we aren't just saved FROM something, we're saved TO something -- good works which God Himself has prepared.

Just a Foretaste. . .

"After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb." -- Revelation 7:9,10

This afternoon I had a nice talk with Felix, a young man from Ghana who lives in our neighborhood. He's excited about visiting our homegroup on Thursday night. With Felix among us, we'll now have a group comprised of Russians, Ukrainians, Americans, Iranians, a South African, a Slovakian, a Tatar, a Turkman, and a Ghanian. It's like a Reformed Rainbow Coalition!

Our Heavenly King

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm." --John 18:36

While this isn't anything that hasn't been said before, I was struck by something today while reading John's Gospel. Jesus definitively stated that His kingdom is not of this world, yet it seems to me this is precisely the sort of King the premillenialists would make of Christ -- a literal, terrestrial king of this world. The very mistake made by many in Christ's time, who sought such a king to overthrow the Romans.

Russian Orthodoxy: A Friend to Dictators

The Orthodox Church has been the friend of autocracy since its Byzantine days. It has rarely met a dictator who didn't elicit a servile response from them. Mao said power flows from a gun; well, Orthodoxy flows to power. It was the best friend to the Tsar, helping him maintain his absolute power. Then a full 1/3 of the priesthood of the ROC enthusiastically collaborated with the KGB, with roughly another 1/3 willingly assisting, but with less eagerness. In fairness, there were cases of bravery among the priests and monks. However, their general history is typified by toadying.

One bishop in Estonia was such a productive agent that he was awarded the Order of Lenin. It's likely you've heard of him -- Alexey II, Patriarch of the Russian Church. Efforts by brave men like Father Gleb Yakunin to call the Orthodox Church leadership to accountability have fallen on deaf ears.

The trend continues today, with the increasingly autocratic Putin finding the ROC just as eager to cozy to him as any Tsar. Even the Communists are finding the ROC pliable, making common cause against Western influences (and helping the Orthodox maintain control of what they view as their religious fiefdom, despite a 450-year Protestant presence.)

Which is why it's no surprise that the ROC, friend to dictators everywhere, seems also to have been on Saddam's payroll. Not only did they accept oil from him, the article says, but:

"A delegation from the church visited Iraq prior to the war, where the head of the delegation handed Hussein a letter of support from Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Aleksii II.

You can definitely see why a guy who gasses his own population, launches wars which kill 1.5 million people, tortures tens of thousands to death and maintains a children's prison would deserve a letter of support from the "spiritual leader" of the Russian people.

Americans who read a little Franky Schaeffer and get all dewy-eyed should come over to an "Orthodox" country and see what it actually looks like in practice. Yes, I'm sounding intolerant. Now the Evangelical Niceties Brigade can come flame me in the comments section. ;-)

Common Grace and The Good Life

One often comes across statements from Christians to the extent that it's impossible for a country to be blessed or justly governed apart from Christianity. In the past, some have said on this blog that because of this, America is doomed without a revival. Growing up, I had basically the same line of thinking.

But where does God's common grace, the grace that He gives to all men, come into this?

"Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God. . . For He is God's minister to you for good." --Romans 13:1-4

This was written of the pagan Roman system. Now clearly, not all rulers in history have lived up to the commission, but they are appointed by God for our good. And we know that God has placed a conscience and an understanding of right and wrong in each man's heart. So is common grace sufficient, or is Christianity an absolute prerequisite for a healthy society, as some say?

Don't misunderstand. I do think that there are special blessings for nations where God and the Bible are honored. Christianity has brought innumerable blessings, and even the healthy secular governments of the world generally owe a great debt to Christianity. I think the ideal is a people who are united in worshiping God and building a society that honors Him.

But does Post-Christian inevitably equate to national collapse? I'm not convinced it does. Things may become so decadent that we crumble, but I don't see the process as deterministic any more. Nor do I see it as hopeless to aid other, non-Christian nations in their move toward a more free society.

Amillennialism -- Realized Eschatology

While perhaps a bit facile for some of the theology hounds who frequent Le Sabot, for the rest of us there's a great little piece over at Antithesis. It lays out a good overview of the Last Things, and has food for thought for both those who think "Left Behind" is Biblical and for the doughty "pan"-millennialists of the world.

For a concise look at Biblical eschatology, I'd also recommend Kilgore's into to Amillennialism, Realized Millennialism. For those wanting to read more, there's Hoekema's essay on the subject. If you simply have too much time on your hands, yet more resources can be found here.

Update- More for the Above-Average-Minds-Think-Alike file: Adrian Warnock is talking about the same article.

A Providential Thread

Some good questions for Christians over at Army of One.

For example:

1. If everything is governed by cause and effect where does that leave God?
2. How much does God involve Himself in our affairs?
3. He's in there but is he expecting us to do certain things or is He merely hopeful that we'll make the right decisions with the direction he's already given us?

I gave a general outline of God's Providence as seen in the Word, and some answers on prayer and the Will of God. Here's a bit of it:

"Growing up, I always held to a more mechanistic universe, one in which God set the ball spinning and then only stepped in to make periodic broad course corrections -- what we call "miracles." Thanks to the effects of the Enlightenment, this type of thought has grown popular in Christian circles, and probably holds a majority position in the broader Evangelical world.

But the Word gives us a view of a much more intimately involved God. One of the things that cemented my move to Reformed theology was a growing awareness of God's sovereign guidance. God IS transcendently outside and above creation. But He's also in and through it, as Paul teaches us -- "in Him we live, and move, and have our being."

He guides creation:

"Are not two sparows sold for a penny, and yet not one falls to the earth apart from your Father's will." - Matt. 10:29

Note it's his WILL, not His knowledge.

He's sovereignly involved in the affairs of men:

"The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water, He turns it wherever He wishes." - Prov. 21:1

He does it without turning us into robots, however. There is an antimony that we can't fully understand -- how God "directs our paths" as the Bible says, and yet we clearly have free agency.

"In Him we have received an inheritance, being predestined according to Him who works ALL things according to the counsel of His will." - Eph. 1:11

Note that it's ALL things. And it's an active working, not a passive observation.

"And we know that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose." - Rom. 8:28

This is one of the most encouraging verses in the Bible. Not only are we not lost in a careless universe and watched from afar by a distant God, He is working ALL things together for our good. In other words, to refine us and make us more like Jesus."

Anyway, some of you might like to pop over to the thread and share your thoughts. And fix anything I said wrong. ;-)

Mormonism: The Other Religion of Peace?

There's been a lot of nonsense lately among the diversity-fetishists that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Let's put that one to rest -- Christians worship a Trinitarian God who exists in three Persons -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christ is very God of very God. In Islam, Allah is radically One, and Jesus is simply a prophet. Not even THE Prophet.

Like the Sesame Street song used to say, "One of these things is not like the other."

I just read up on the young mother who blew herself in pieces for the Religion of Peace. It turns out, she did it to atone for adultery, "part of an evolving belief that women who are disgraced by sexual activity outside marriage can 'purify' themselves by becoming 'martyrs'. . ."

I thought to myself, forgiveness that only comes through death, that sounds just like Mormonism's blood atonement. Then the article ended with this:

"According to Arab affairs analyst Ehud Ya'ari, the women are promised to dwell forever alongside the husband or fiance they have left behind." Maybe they'll spend all their time making spirit babies like the Mormons as well?

Worthy of Chesterton

While I loved Orthodoxy and Heretics, my fave writings of G.K. Chesterton are his playful poems. Most of them seem to weigh about half an ounce, but carry with them tons of wry observations on the human condition.

In a similar way, Hippocampus Extensions takes a friendly poke at modern hymnody. Here's a taste:

"IV. On excessive repetition in songs

Some songs have lines we sing repeatedly

Some songs have lines we sing repeatedly

Some songs have lines we sing repeatedly

Some songs have lines we sing repeatedly ... (repeat x2).

We rightly mock the heathen's mindless chants

And then we sing ourselves into a trance

(If not into a trance, at least a daze)

Through endless repetition of a phrase.

I ask, Is this a Christian way to praise?

Why surely not! For Christians it is wrong

To babble on like pagans in our songs.

While maybe not so reactionary as they are, I'm also annoyed by the Jesus-is-my-Boyfriend tendencies of modern worship music and the mindless repetition in many of the songs.

Hat tip: Tulip Girl!

Barabbas and Me

I know it's far from a new thought, but tonight during our study I was struck by how layered the Word really is. Impressed by the beautiful symmetry wth which the Holy Spirit weaved the Bible. And also by the way in which God's grace shines through in the darkest of passages. For example, how even as He's passing judgment after the Fall, even in this darkest moment of human history, He's promising to send a Savior.

I taught tonight on Jesus's trial before Pilate. Here we have a righteous Man, and the rightful King, being falsely accused, mocked and scourged. He's about to undergo a horrible, unjust death. And Pilate takes Jesus and Barabbas out and asks who the crowd will pick to set free, as was the custom. He's thinking they'll choose the innocent man. But they ask for the thief, the murderer Barabbas to be freed. And so instead of the guilty man, the man who deserved death, Jesus goes to the cross.

The guilty man is absolved, and the righteous Man dies in his place. And there's the Gospel.

Calvinism and John 3:16, Part Deux

I mentioned that many anti-Calvinists see John 3:16 as a sort of Gotcha vis-a-vis Calvinism. As if these lines were a magic talisman that completely debunks 500 years of solid Biblical thought, preaching and scholarship.

And if Calvinistm DID contradict the Bible, they would be right. All the scholarship in the world is chaff next to the Word itself. But this verse isn't the talisman they seek. Instead, they're stuffing their own presuppositions into the verse, and then blaming us for contradicting their presupps, rather than the actual text itself. Look at what it actually says: "whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

In other words, whoever does X shall receive Y.

This verse says nothing about how one actually believes, or where this faith comes from. It also contains nothing about the state of man's will or his fallen nature. In fact, everything prior to the act of faith is left out of the verse. Which is why it's strange that anti-Calvinist polemicists want to use it to make a point about how men come to believe. It seems to me that we instead should look at the dozens of other verses in the Bible that actually speak to these points. And that's what Reformed Christianity does.

Calvinists and John 3:16

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." --John 3:16

Calvinists wholeheartedly embrace this verse.

I write this for two reasons. One, because anti-Reformed polemicists seize upon this verse with a sort of Gotcha glee, as if the Reformers were completely unaware that this verse existed. Secondly, because many people misunderstand Calvinism, and think that it's in tension with this passage. I want to reassure them that this isn't so.

When we share the Gospel, it is the same Gospel message you see written in the verse above. WHOEVER comes to Christ will be given eternal life. When we preach, it is just as Paul did -- repent and believe and be baptized.

Sometimes I think non-Calvinists picture us sitting people down and explaining the intricacies of predestination to unbelievers, and then telling them that if they're elected God will save them. This isn't the case, any more than Arminians explain the minutiae of the Remonstrants to unbelievers. We call upon sinners to repent and make Christ the Lord of their life.

Another Reason I Love the PCA

While the headline is a bit off, the WashTimes has a GREAT piece on a new PCA church that's just opened up in D.C. One of the reasons the Duchess and I joined the PCA was that it combined a commitment to Reformed theology with a dynamite missions organization and a desire to reach those that the Evangelical church overlooks -- intellectuals, artists, urbanites and others.

"It's part of a movement to plant churches in cosmopolitan, world-class cities," said the Rev. Stephen Um, whose CityLife Church in Boston has 300 members after 23 months. "We reach out primarily to post-everything professional urbanites and bohemians. . ."

"Evangelical Christians, Mr. Keller realized, by and large were not conversant with the educational, medical, media, artistic and cultural institutions that surround them in any large city. Thus, most cities had taken on a secularized, post-Christian, postmodern spiritual dynamic. "These churches want to embrace the city," said Ted Powers, the PCA's planting coordinator. "We don't want to have a posture against this big, bad city. We wish to [affect] the people who make it tick."

Unlike the highly charismatic 1970s vintage churches that brought a whole generation of baby boomers into born-again Christianity, the newer PCA brand is a far more sober milieu. Its music often includes 19th-century hymns and social action is a given.

"These people are involved in the real issues: AIDS, terrorism or the arts," Mr. Powers said. "Reformed theology brings in a world view that is deep and comprehensive that allows people to connect the dots."

Posted by Discoshaman at 01:49 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

A Populist Heresiarch and Free Software!

I have this wonderful quote (or possibly paraphrase) in my head, and I can't find a source. Anyone know who said it?:

"Charles Finney breathed in the Spirit of Democracy and thought it was the Holy Spirit."

On a cheerier and more orthodox note, E4 has a new, free Christian software CD available for the cost of shipping. It features Hodge, Edwards, Spurgeon and other great Reformed thinkers, along with some great Bible study tools. You can find out mroe about the offer here:

http://www.freebiblesoftware.com/special.asp

An Intro to Reformed Theology

In the past, most of my readership came from the Reformed branch of Christianity. With things growing the way they have lately, I'm not sure this is still the case. We toss around the words Calvinist and Reformed here regularly, and my experience has been that people outside of the Reformed world have often received a pretty 2-dimensional view of it. Before I explored it myself, I had only the caricature of Puritans that my high school had given me.

Here are a few introductory pages for anyone who's curious to learn more about it:

What is the Reformed Faith? -- Michael Horton

Reformed Theology -- James Montgomery Boice

The Reformed Faith -- Loraine Boettner

Discovering Reformed Christianity was an amazing blessing to me, and one I'm always eager to share with others. Better understanding the depth of my sin, and the holiness and majesty of God both radically changed my Christian walk.

Christians: Called to Tolerance or Love?

Tolerance seems to slip ever deeper into the thinking and dialogue of Christians these days. Even when the loaded term itself doesn't appear, there's often an unspoken "we're all just fellow passengers on this mixed-up space ship called Earth" sort of attitude. Many times this is accompanied by a spasmodic jerking of the articulato genus whenever something strikes them as judgemental.

I see little in the Scriptures calling us to tolerance. I do, however, see an unequivocal command to love.

As with everything, Christ's call to His Church is both deeper and more challenging than the demands the world would make upon us. Tolerance is often little more than a dignified term for indifference. If Hell is a real place, then tolerance from Christians is nothing more than watching in silence while a man kills himself with the sin he loves. He'll never reproach you for it, either. There is nothing easier than being tolerant.

Love is a much harder path. It can sometimes be mistaken for tolerance, because it also refuses to reject people simply because they're lost in sin. It also says, "I'm going to take you into my heart, despite our differences." But it doesn't stop there. Love isn't content to remain silent while a friend kills himself with the slow poison of sin. And when we love, we care more about the good of the other person than we do for our own popularity with them.

Christians who aspire to tolerance are aiming too low. Tolerance is cold comfort for sinners compared to the warmth of Christian love. (And yes, I'm painfully aware of how short of this mark I fall myself.)

Onward Christian Soldiers?

Antithesis, one of the more interesting Christian 'zines on the web, has posted Lorraine Boettner's article The Bible's Teaching on War. He digs past standard prooftexts on the subject, and looks at the counsel of both the Old and New Testaments. It becomes clear that the Bible is far from a pacifist document. He closes with:

"In the light of the general and pervasive Scripture teaching, it is quite evident that the objections raised against the Christian's participation in military service are based on emotional or philosophical rather than scriptural grounds. Pacifists are able to argue with some plausibility only when dealing with a few selected passages while keeping out of view the general mass of scriptural evidence bearing on the whole subject."

A Limey Trifecta!

Just to round out our British theme, here's a mostly encouraging article about the rising influence of Evangelicals in the Church of England.

". . .the evangelical wing of the Church is increasingly powerful. It has real political and financial muscle. 'By 2010, some 29 per cent of Anglican churches will regard themselves as evangelical,' says Peter Brierley, the director of Christian Research. 'Given the relative size of their congregations, this will represent nearly 50 per cent of the church-going population.'"

I found it via Kingdom Come -- a great resource for anyone interested in church life and spirituality in the UK.

More Politico-Clerics!

As if on cue, Pat Robertson and his lefty counterpart piped up yesterday after I posted on Bishop Wright.

"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," the religious broadcaster said on his "700 Club" program on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded. "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way," Robertson said. "The Lord has just blessed him," Robertson said of Bush. "I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him."

The article also features a Reverend who leads the 'Americans United for Separation of Church and State.'

It's tragic that for many of the unchurched in America, the public face of religion is the politicized cleric. From white Evangelicals they see Robertson and Falwell. In the black community the public face is oftentimes corrupt and radicalized pastors who pass the plate for Jesse Jackson in the middle of service. From the mainline the public gets a stream of milquetoasts lecturing against the war and for various left-wing causes. All three equally misrepresent the Church of Christ to the watching world.

The Very Wrong Reverend Wright

N.T. Wright, who would be considered by many to belong to a very select number of premier theologians, joined another group of celebrity churchmen on Monday. He now places with Jerry Falwell, Al Sharpton, Cardinal Martino, Shelby Spong and Pat Robertson in the ranks of those who have spattered political mud on the name of Christ in order to advance a political agenda.

Jon Barlow has posted a lengthy, thoughtful answer to the good Bishop (and I don't mean the adjective sarcastically. I differ with N.T. Wright on the issue of Iraq, but he's still a fellow Christian.)

My response is shorter: God made you Bishop of Durham so you could arm and equip the saints and preach his Word, not so to that you could mouth hackneyed political cant. Rather than pointedly alienating the large percentage of the British population that disagrees with you on this very disputable issue, perhaps you could focus on doing the job you were called to. Unless, of course, the 5% of the British population that presently goes to church is considered an adequate sum.

Incidentally, here's a link to the original story. It comes with the bonus of equally vapid remarks from another politician-cum-bishop.

Reaching out to Pagans

With the exception of gays, I think Pagans are probably the group least reached by the Church. Many of my closest friends, both Stateside and here in Kiev, are religiously Pagan. For whatever reason, God has given me a love for them. And I've been blessed to have some great discussions on Christianity and faith with them. Two things constantly come out in these discussions.

One is the threatened hostility that Christians instantly show them (which is similar to the reactions from Christians that gay friends have described.) For whatever reason, someone being a Wiccan, Pagan or Reformed Druid is viewed as much more offensive than, say, Daoism or Judaism. Just as Christians will cheerfully hang out with someone cohabitating with a member of the opposite sex, while shunning gays.

The second is the derision they receive. The single most common response is, "That's not a real religion," or a variation on the theme. But to them it is. And you lose any hope of reaching them when you dismiss what they believe as stupid or childish. Paganism is growing. I've read that it's the fastest growing religion in England besides Islam. Google brings up 342,000 hits for "Wiccan", and 276,000 for "Southern Baptist."

So if God brings a Pagan into your life, treat him with the same respect you would anyone of another religion. They're sinners in need of a Savior, just as we once were.

Evangelical Apostasy, Part Deux

I want to revise and extend my earlier remarks on this subject. Two of the more brilliant people who visit this blog both misunderstood me to an extent, which means it was MY fault for not being clearer.

When I speak of the Evangelical Church getting swamped by PoMo, I don't have in mind a purely external force striking the church. Nor do I have in mind a cabal of Deconstructionist professors. I'm speaking of developments within the life of the Evangelical Church, and particularly among its leaders and thinkers.

What I'm pointing out are parallels between our current situation, and that of the time before the great Modern falling away. I'll point out a few:

1. The advent of aggressive new philosophies such as Rationalism, Positivism, Freudianism, Darwinism, etc., which the Church was unprepared to answer. Today we have Deconstructionism, Feminism, Gay Lib, Paganism, and others.

2. A downplay of the importance of doctrine, and a descent into lowest-common denominator Christianity in the name of ecumenism.

3. A fixation on social activism at the expense of preaching the Gospel.

4. Widespread questioning of essentials of the faith by the teachers, professors and pastors of the church.

5. A downplaying of themes such as sin, repentance and Hell in favor of moralistic homilies.

6. Popular movements in the church which radically emphasized the subjective and individual elements of the faith at the expense of the corporate and objective.

7. A breakdown in respect for the inerrancy of the Word and its sufficiency for life and doctrine.

8. Loss of key seminaries and publishing houses to liberalism.

These are events that took place in the Evangelical churches over a period of 150 years or so. The theologically corrupt, spiritually ill dinosaurs that we now call "mainline denoms" are what was once simply called "the Evangelical Church." Evangelicals found themselves strangers in their own denominations, and walked.

Think it can't happen again? Think it isn't?

The Next Evangelical Apostasy?

The Modern Era saw a crescendoing apostasy within the Evangelical world (it hit the Roman Church even harder, but once you've anathematized the Gospel, then talk of apostasy becomes rather moot.)

Speaking in general terms, there was a wave which began with Arminianism, grew into Unitarianism and Socinianism, and then crashed upon the Evangelicals in the form of theological liberalism. Entire denominations and traditions fell away en masse. New England transitioned from writing about the impiety of the South to being a center of irreligion.

Can it happen again? Is Evangelicalism now somehow insulated against apostasy? I'd say the opposite is true. To paraphrase a Barna observation, the average religious liberal of the 50's had more Biblical literacy than the average Fundamentalist of today.

Many of the old Evangelical stalwarts, like Eerdman's and IVP are drifting. And other groups seem enamored with anything hip and relevant, no matter how shallow or heretical. Witness the sales figures for the Trinity-denying Benny Hinn. Further, while many pay lip service to Biblical innerancy, this is nullified by a tacit denial of the sufficiency of Scripture.

The Church was unprepared for the tidal wave of Modernism. It seems to me that we're even more flat-footed as the first whitecaps of Post-Modernism are breaking on the shore.

Step up and prognosticate -- what do the next 50 20 years look like for the church? And what would you do to affect it, if you had the influence?

Arminian Grace

I came across a fun adaptation of Amazing Grace over at Challies.com. I'm posting it with my tongue firmly lodged in my cheek, so please no one get wild-eyed on me. . .

Arminian "grace!" How strange the sound,
Salvation hinged on me.
I once was lost then turned around,
Was blind then chose to see.

What "grace" is it that calls for choice,
Made from some good within?
That part that wills to heed God's voice,
Proved stronger than my sin.

Thru many ardent gospel pleas,
I sat with heart of stone.
But then some hidden good in me,
Propelled me toward my home.

When we've been there ten thousand years,
Because of what we've done,
We've no less days to sing our praise,
Than when we first begun.

Calvinism and the Baptist Church

Brother Phil bravely sallies forth to fight the evil Calvinists in this lovely post. However, he couldn't be bothered with the 2.3 seconds required to Google "Baptist history" and do some rudimentary fact-checking.

He references this bit of pseudo-history by Prof. Humphreys of Beeson Divinity School. I've written a little doodad of a post in response:

This article shows contempt for the Baptists which Prof. Humphreys hopes to reach. How insulting to have such a blatantly tendentious polemic shoved off on one as factual. I would simply assume that Humphreys was ignorant of Baptist history, were it not for the "Professor" that precedes his name. I'm left with the inference that he was being deliberately false.

His central point is this: "The first Baptists were not Calvinists, and most Baptists for the past century have not been Calvinists, so traditional Baptists are not Calvinistic"

First of all, his "so" proves nothing. By saying "first Baptists" and then jumping to the "past century" he conveniently elides over 250 years of history. This is a cheap sleight of hand. I'll give an analogous situation to illustrate -- The first Britons were non-imperialistic. Modern Britain isn't imperialistic. So traditional Britons aren't imperialistic. This deliberately skips several centuries of foreign adventures, including their establishing the world's largest Empire.

Secondly, it's demonstrably false that the first Baptists weren't Calvinist. The General (Arminian) and Particular (Calvinist) Baptist streams grew up virtually simultaneously in the early 17th Century. Further, the General stream grew very weak, and the Particular were by far the strongest influence on American Baptists -- the context within which he is writing. The Baptist Confessions of 1644 and 1689 are both explicitly Calvinist.

Further, the Philadelphia Confession, by far the most influential among Baptists during the Colonial and Revolutionary Eras, was also entirely Calvinist. The Philadelphia area was a hub of Calvinism, and, as Prof. Ahlstrom of Yale University points out in "A Religious History of the American People",

"The most important center of Baptist activity in America was the Philadelphia area. The influences which decisively influenced Baptist life in the 18th century radiated to the north and south from this point."

So when Humphreys says that the first Baptists weren't Calvinists, he's playing very loose with the truth. Neither side can claim to be the only true tradition -- free willers and Calvinists have both been represented from the beginning.

Just in case there's a question of sources, I'll quote from this article featuring Timothy George, who's the dean of Prof. Humphrey's own divinity school. . . Perhaps the dean can give Prof. Humphreys a quick history primer over lunch sometime.

"Scholars say the debate goes back to the 17th century, when the Baptist movement was first being formed.

According to Timothy George, dean of the Beeson School of Divinity at Samford University in Birmingham, at that time there were two "streams" of thought - the General Baptist tradition and the Particular Baptist tradition. . . The Particular Baptist tradition, he said, involves a belief in "partial redemption," or the belief that God has destined some people for salvation and others for damnation. George said that when the Southern Baptist Convention was founded in 1845, the vast majority of Baptists were Particular Baptists, or Reformed Baptists.

"That was the founding doctrine of Southern Baptist life until the early 20th century, and there are some who want to recover that and see what it has to offer to us today," he added."

As for Prof. Humphrey's assertion that "traditional" Baptists aren't Calvinists, here are a few of the people he's written out of the family:

In case you're keeping score, the founders of the SBC; the author of the best-selling book in history besides the Bible; the 4 founders of Baptist missionary work; the current presidents of 2 SBC seminaries, the founder of the flagship SBC seminary; the greatest preacher in the history of the English language; the founder of Baptism in North America and a host of others aren't traditional Baptists.

We could also add the progenitors of Dispensationalism (beloved of Baptists everywhere), who were Calvinist almost to a man.

Humphreys has managed to excise most of the best that has been thought or written in the history of the Baptist church, along with the founders of the Southern, American, Reformed, Primitive, Welsh, and Regular Baptist Churches.

Which leaves me to wonder what unique definition of "traditional" he's using. Usually it means that something has a connection to history. But we've seen that Baptist history is absolutely permeated with Calvinism.

Update- Phil has posted some refinements and clarifications to his position that are MUCH more thoughtful and nuanced than his original post. The article he references has enough horse by-product in it to grow mushrooms, but Phil himself is a cool dude.

Wild at Heart?

Wild at Heart isn't just David Lynch's worst movie in an otherwise brill career. It's also a best-selling book which ostensibly turns milksop Christian men into manly men doing manly things in a masculine way.

I assumed that anything in the Christian market with such high sales and a florid title must be weird in some way. Modern Reformation has posted a good review, which looks at some weaknesses in the underlying Biblical premises of the book. They've also posted some great Trinitarian articles elsewhere on the site. As always, worth a read!

Update- Be sure to check out The Thinklings, a decidedly un-metrosexual blog. They are so wild at heart, in fact, that they have an entire category devoted to the book. In all seriousness, be sure to check it out.

The Onion's horoscope page had this fun little number:

Aquarius: (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) The stars can warn you not to argue with clergymen over predestination this week, though they are ultimately helpless to stop you.

Ecclesiastical Lampreyism

Talking with the Paedocommunion/Theonomical/Militantly Post-Mill wing of the Reformed world, I get a sense of the contempt many of them feel for the rest of us. Disagreeing with these distinctives seems to make one, at best not really Reformed, and at worst somewhat mentally defective. Amills come in for the strongest criticism. We're "defeatist", and not serious about conquering the world for Christ.

Which is funny to me, because over time I've gotten to know dozens of Reformed missionaries. Not a single one of them was theonomical. In fact, I can't remember ever meeting a Post-Mill of any stripe. That's not to say that there aren't any, but they seem to be somewhat elusive.

Further, I've never met a Paedo/Theo/Militant Post-Mill who was converted to it from the world. Every single one, and I've known many, have come to it from a Presbyterian Church. Their movement, such as it is, seems to have a parasitic relationship with the broader Reformed world. It seems to owe its continued existence to a facility for cherry-picking believers from other churches.

This isn't a blanket denunciation of the movement. Most of its representatives who I've known have been mature believers who love the Lord. I've learned a lot from them. But I do think the movement could show a bit more respect toward the rest of us. And maybe they could withold the cat-calls about defeatism until their own evangelistic reach extends beyond Idaho and Texas.

Liberal Tolerance and the Will to Power

I read The Nation almost daily, to get a view of what the Left is thinking. Well, the Left gave up thinking decades ago. Amend that to, "what the Left is emoting."

If you need another example of the naked hypocrisy of the Politically Correct crowd, read this nasty little piece by Katha Pollitt. Then try and imagine her deconstructing any other religion's holy book in a similar way. It's impossible. She would fly into a froth at any similar disrespect toward the beliefs of Muslims, Taoists, Wicca or Sikhs. But because it's about Christianity, mocking is perfectly in-bounds.

For example:

"What sets the Ten Commandments apart is not content but style: that gloomy, vengeful, obsessive, insecure authorial voice, alternately vulnerable (he confesses he's "jealous") and dissociated (he talks about himself in the third person, like an American celebrity). As elsewhere in the Bible, God looks constantly over his shoulder at the competition, threatens to visit the sins of the father on generations yet unborn, raves against those who hate him. He is equally disturbed by killing and cursing, and is incredibly possessive (I made that tree! no copying!). Granted we all know people like this, but would you want them presiding over your trial? When you consider that God could have commanded anything he wanted--anything!--the Ten have got to rank as one of the great missed moral opportunities of all time."

The Left's tolerance, with rare exceptions, is nothing about respect and everything about shaping the field of battle -- the very words we use to think about or discuss life and politics. Fairness and abstract rights matter little to them; defining conservative and Christian beliefs as hateful and intolerant seems to.

Even more amusing, the same magazine which has published this ugly attack on the Law, has an attack on George Bush's alleged "heretical" deviations from Christainity as its lead article. If you read that particular bit of fluff, see if you can spot how the author completely redefines Manicheism in order to stick it to Bush.

An Encouraging Word. . .

I just noticed over on OK Calvin that his friend, Col. John Mantooth, has been called to an interesting new position -- "He will help develop a constitution and judicial systems for Afghanistan for the next year. Yes, you read that right. A reformed believer is writing the judicial portion of their constitution and implementing their court system."

In addition, he has one of the cooler names imaginable. Colonel John Mantooth sounds straight from an H. Rider Haggard novel. On the other hand, I got named for an Arminian -- I'm John Wesley Bush II. How's that for being born under a bad sign?

John Butler is asking for our prayers for Col. Mantooth's work, and I wanted to pass the message along. What an opportunity to serve he's been given. . .

From Tulsa to Geneva, Part I

Pentamom asked me the other day how I came to Reformed Theology from the Word of Faith movement. I thought I'd give a quick overview of the journey. . .

My first experience with church was when I was seven. It was in a semi-converted barn in Lancaster, PA. The pastor literally preached over the lows of animals, and baptisms were performed in the pond out back. His wife was a 'prophetess' with a special prophecy for each baptizee. They were post-trib, and spent a healthy percentage of tithes on building shelters for the Great Trib.

We moved on to Florida when I was ten, and spent time in various AOG, charismatic and baptistic churches. I never did become a Christian, though I was wonderfully adept with the lingo. I was one person at church, and a little punk rock freakdaddy everywhere else. Then my mother got involved with a 'healing ministry' at a Word-Faith church. I got myself in a heap of trouble in school, and found myself at the Overcomers group too, getting my past memories healed and my soul delivered of demonic oppression. Then we joined the church.

It was everything you've ever heard about the W-Fers. The pastor had a bodyguard, because we mayn't "touch the Lord's anointed." Whenever receipts were low, John Avanzini, Lester Sumrall or Mike Murdoch would sweep in to stir up a tithing frenzy. The pastor constantly had "fresh words" from the Lord that steered the church exactly were he wanted it to go. Because faith was the only ingredient necessary for wealth and health, everyone kept up a front to show their spirituality. A friend died of AIDS there, convinced he just didn't have enough faith for his healing. I visited the last time I was in-state, doing some research for a future novel. The service is now basically a sucess infomercial, complete with power point.

But God is present even in the darkest of places. The youth pastor was an actual believer, and he led me to Christ in the midst of the insanity. For the first time I trusted in Christ, and meant the words I'd been mouthing my entire life. My view of God was pathetic -- He was essentially a cosmic bellhop who existed to serve me. I would never have said it that way, but there it is. But it was a start.

Over the next few years my spiritual growth waxed and waned, but I never strayed from my faith. Over time the church got weirder, and I grew ever more dissatisfied with the 3 Red Hots the preacher spoke on every Sunday -- healing, wealth and miracles. I wanted something more.

More tomorrow!

Pagan-Centered Worship, Part 2

I recently wrote on the essential chuckleheadedness of making unregenerate man the center of a church service, and then calling it a "worship" service. Especially considering that in this case the service is focused on someone completely incapable of performing the act of worship. . . Some of my near-and-dear here thought perhaps I had them in mind -- I didn't.

What motivated the post was a reflection on some of the churches I've attended over the years -- Generic North American Prot churches whose sermons were little more than a sales pitch, with the altar call being the clincher at the end; the Seeker church in Cali which refused to show crosses and never seemed to talk about sin or the blood of Christ. And others. The immediate stimulus for the post was this peach from Tall Skinny Kiwi.

"It might be better to have a party that is redemptive than having a boring service that has moments of drama/fun. More on this later. Its really important. Many of my friends start with a "service" that is, in its kernal, BORING and then try to add the fun element. But house church people start with a party in the living room - that is indeed fun and relational, and make the party work, make it useful, add purpsose and direction to the party. If church is a party . "

Unless his writing is simply opaque and I've missed something key, he isn't just one step down the winding road of asininity, but two. First, that a key element of worshiping the Holy God is "fun". As if the concept of frivolous enjoyment in any way coincides with glorifying God. As if the concept itself appears in the Bible in any form. . . But this "fun" is so vital, it turns out, that organized corporate worship needs to be chucked entirely if it fails the fun test.

Vertical, theocentric worship is out. Horizontal, 'relevant', fun worship is in. Gosh, he is SO cutting edge. No one's ever thought of this before. Except the mainline denoms in the 60's of course, and the Unitarians. And it worked GREAT for them. . . Or not.

So much of Evangelicalism is like a half-witted little brother to liberal Christianity these days. They're following in the footsteps of liberalism, yet deluding themselves that it's all somehow new and fresh. Whether it be feminism, environmentalism, "social justice", novel new ways of interpreting Scripture, the watering down of sexual ethics, the redefining of sin in psychological terms, the redefinition of salvation in relational terms, or radically redefining worship to mean hanging with the homeys, it's ALL been done before.

Tacking Post-Modern onto a silly, tired practice doesn't make it hip. It just hypes it a little.

A Eurabian Revival?

I just finished an interesting piece by Derb over at NRO. He writes on America as the last "Christian nation." He points out the widening religio-cultural divide between the US and Europe. For example, 60% of Americans say that religion plays an important role in their life, while European countries range from 11-33%.

There's fodder in the article for a dozen blogposts, but I wanted to focus on a side comment he made: "Peter Hitchens has suggested that Britain might soon become an Islamic nation. This is not at all far-fetched, though I think some kind of Christian revival is also possible. "

Muslim birthrates are off the charts in Europe, while the native population of countries like Spain hovers around 1.5 (with a replacement level being 2.1. . .) If, as many demographers predict, Europe's future is as Eurabia, how will the native population react? Particularly given that Muslims are quick to consolidate power once they achieve the ability to do so. The northern states of Nigeria are a good example of what happens to a secular state once Muslims win at the ballot box. The sharia courts are already being applied to Christians, despite assurances that they wouldn't be. If you need a starker example of Muslim coexistence, look to Sudan.

How will the population of Europe respond to this, as Muslims begin to flex their political muscle? A reaction already seems to be forming, in the likes of Fortuyn, Haider and Le Pen. But will it eventually take on a more explicitly religious cast? The last place in Europe that seemed to take religious identity seriously was Northern Ireland. There a political question (many of the original Irish nationalists were Prods) quickly turned religious. Will Europeans in a couple generations do the same?

I ask these questions in a sense of realpolitick. I certainly don't think religious nationalism is a healthy form of revival. And it's sad that Europe is so denuded of real conservatism that bigots like Le Pen are the closest thing to a response that Western Europe can mount. But it is a legitimate question to ask -- will Europeans return to at least a tribalistic sort of Christianity as they see Muslims taking over their continent?

The importation of Islamic immigrants into Europe is probably the largest and riskiest experiment in history. And the results seem predictable, even a couple generations out from the conclusion of the experiment.

Cross Pagan-Centered Preaching?

Enjoying a smoke out on my balcony tonight, I was struck by something. Cigarette butts from the upper floors. And then, by a thought.

A small one, but a thought. It was about the basic chuckleheadedness of those who center their church worship service on evangelizing the unbelievers. Many were the visitor-oriented services I sat through during my days in happy-clappy churches.

I wonder that we never stopped, even for a brief moment, and asked ourselves why we were calling it a worship service at all. Unconverted people cannot worship God. And if they're the focus, then worship isn't. And if worship isn't the focus, then God isn't.

A Religion of Peace -- Yeah, Right.

A friend of mine recently went to the Kiev Islamic Center on business. This is both the administrative HQ of Islam in Ukraine, and the spiritual center. Think of it as a Muslim embassy and you'll be close to the mark.

Anyway, my friend visited the same day that an enormous bombing took place in Israel, and a large number of Jewish civilians had been slaughtered. The staff all assumed my friend was sympatico, and started joking and praising Allah for the death of the Jews. He walked away disgusted with them.

These weren't angry, alienated Palestinians who'd been daily propagandized by the Hamas machine. They were prosperous, educated Muslims who live in a country that has treated them very well and given them opportunities they would never have at home. Yet despite their cosmopolitan experience, they seem to have little contact with the larger world. Specifically, they haven't yet learned that Islam is actually a "religion of peace" and jihad only means "personal moral struggle" rather than "go slaughter Jews and Christians."

I think a good use of our State Department funds would be to send a pamphlet to the residents of the various Muslim countries explaining to them that their religion is actually a peaceful one that loves "people of the Book." Because I've noticed our government constantly telling US that this is so, but the Muslims themselves remain ignorant of the fact.

America's Calvinist Heritage

When speaking of our national heritage, many Christians talk generically about our "Christian" heritage. While accurate, it's a pretty anemic description. It tells us nothing of what KIND of heritage we have. Serbia and Brazil also have Christian backgrounds. But not particularly healthy ones.

Re-reading Yale historian Sydney Ahlstrom's magisterial Religious History of the American People, I came across a fascinating section on Puritanism and the founding of America.

"Among other things, they (the American colonies) had become the most thoroughly Protestant, Reformed and Puritan commonwealths in the world. Indeed, Puritanism provided the moral and religious background of fully 75% of the people who declared their independence in 1776. In order to understand the new civilization that was arising in the wilderness, therefore, a sympathetic effort to comprehend the Puritan impulse is peculiarly important."

He goes on to add that when one includes those from the rest of the Calvinist family -- Dutch Reformed, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, and Swiss and German Reformed the number climbs to 85-90% of the American population.

This doesn't discount the fact that there were other viewpoints present at the time, including a Continental sort of radicalism. But if an individual wants to understand the founding zeitgeist of our nation, he'll need to get past the shallow caricature most of us were fed in university. For the Christian this is a double blessing -- we not only gain a better understanding of our national heritage, but access to the deep well of theolgical insight and 'experimental' piety of the Puritans.

Like a Black Fly in Your Chardonnay

If there was anything that characterized the reign of Generation X during its time in the crucial 18-25 year-old demographic, it was irony. We were the era of camp and self-referential parody, with our tongues lodged firmly in our cheeks. We were too cool for school.

Where does awe fit into such a mindset? How does so detached a viewpoint apprehend the Holy?

So often when I teach about the things of God, or when I worship Him, I have to almost consciously disengage an ironic reflex. Some of the struggles I have in my faith aren't so much wrong ideas or even actions, but are stylistic in nature. I spent so many years learning how to be glib, that worship entails something like deprogramming.

Damned Nice People

Paul writes about believers running the race of faith, and pressing forward toward the prize. Watching a couple of Mormon missionaries from my balcony today, I was reminded that most of humanity is running an entirely different race -- trying to work their way to Heaven on their own merit. As the Mormons tried to accost various passers-by and help speed them to Hell, I was reminded of a snatch of song from They Might Be Giants:

We came so close to Heaven;
Saint Peter gave us medals;
Declaring us the nicest of the damned...

It's a melancholy truth that those running the race of good works have only this empty prize to claim at the end.

The New Wave in Fashionable Idiocies!

Modern Christendom is never content unless it's in a tizzy about something idiotic. Whether it be Cabbage Patch Dolls, D&D or Teletubbies, we have a deep-seated need to set our faces against something frivolously and amorphously 'evil'. It's the cultural-renewal equivalent of busy-work. We get a sense of fighting the good fight, without any of the exertion of actual thought or action. With Pottermania petering out, there's a vacancy to be filled. I'd like to submit myself as the new distracting obsession for Christians. Everyone will go home a winner -- Evangelicals will have the pleasant diversion they seek, and my blog hits will skyrocket.

They won't even need Gail Riplinger to do an acrostic proving that I'm as evil as the New International Version -- thanks to The Evilfinder, the math has already been done!

**** THE PROOF THAT The Discoshaman IS EVIL ****

T H E D I S C O S H A M A N
84 72 69 68 73 83 67 79 83 72 65 77 65 78 - as ASCII values
3 9 6 5 1 2 4 7 2 9 2 5 2 6 - digits added
\_________/ \_________/ \_________/ \_________/ \_____/
9 8 4 7 8 - digits added

Thus, "The Discoshaman" is 98478.

Subtract 6781 from the number - this is the year first crematorium in the United States opened, written backwards. It gives 91697.

Add 5491 to it - this is the year Mussolini was executed for the first time, written backwards - you will get 97188.

Turn the number backwards, subtract 1930 - the year synthetic rubber was first produced, endangering the concept of intercourse for the purpose of procreation. The number is now 86249.

Add 1808, the year Turri constructed the first typewriter, giving birth to bad publicity - the result is 88057.

Turn the number backwards, divide by 38 - the symbol of slavery. The number is now 1976.

The number 1976 is the year George Harrison performed the lumberjack song with Monty Python - if you have seen it, you should understand.

This clearly proves how evil the subject is. QED.

Props to Crazy Gator for bringing this to my attention.

For Recovering Antinomians...

World Harvest has been making a splash in Reformed circles with its Sonship program. It's geared toward teaching grace to "recovering Pharisees," and emphasizes the Bible verses dealing with us being sons of God. Given the number of Fundamentalists learning to read and becoming Presbyterian, this is a much-needed resource.

But what about those on the other side of the coin? Lots of Charismatics are coming over to Reformed theology, too. I propose a sister program for Sonship -- Slaveship. It'll be designed for "recovering Antinomians." The focus will be on the Law, and verses talking about us being slaves to righteousness. I'm hoping Greenville Seminary Press will underwrite the project.

*Yes, Virginia, this is parody.

Our God is a Consuming Fire...

"11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.
13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.
14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.
15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. . .
21And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh."
--Rev. 19:11-15

It's so easy, in the era we inhabit, to fall into a 2-dimensional conception of Christ. To so focus on His immanence that we forget His transcendent majesty.

Reading this passage today, my heart beat faster. What an awesome God we serve. What a fearsome and terrible God. And what gratitude I owe Him. If not for His grace, this is the face that He would justly turn upon me.

Of Kulturkampf and the Evangelical Recession

I wanted to post a companion to my thoughts on Evangelicalism and gays to focus on something that came up in the comments section...

Several people view the hostility to gays as founded in a backlash to their left-wing political organizations. I think the 'political backlash' theory has a lot of validity (though a healthy dose of genuine homophobia explains a lot as well. By this I mean a visceral, fear/revulsion-reaction to gays.)

But while gays are the most pronounced example, I think we tend to similarly ostracize other people who aren't simpatico with our politics.

Because many Christians view religious Pagans, liberals, feminists, gays, radical enviros and the like primarily as politico-cultural enemies rather than as people in need of a Savior, we oftentimes aren't reaching out to them (though there are some great exceptions.) These people ARE the Blue Staters. If we as a church aren't reaching out to them, then the Church isn't going to grow in those areas.

So what you end up with is an Evangelical church that's shackled to a particular geographic space -- suburbia, rural areas and certain Southern cities, and a particular culture -- white, relatively conservative people.

I'll close with a quick clarification: I'm not saying, "Go befriend a Pagan so you can evangelize them." I'm not talking about missionary friendships, but rather genuine love for peope that are different from us. But while sharing our lives with people, we also share the Gospel. This is primarily a call for us to take the Gospel outside of the Christian ghetto.

Is God's Grace Sufficient for Gays?

It seems to me the church needs to make a choice: Is America primarily a battlefield? Or a mission field? Not only do we seem to judge spiritual leaders more harshly on their political opinions than their theology, but we seem to have expelled whole groups of people from the circle of God's grace. Gays, feminists, liberals and the like aren't viewed as lost souls needing to be won to Christ, but rather enemies to be defeated in a kulturkampf.

Gays are the group where this can be seen most easily. While almost no one would use racial slurs these days, Christians seem quick to call gays some pretty terrible names. Has Christ appointed us to stand at the Gates of Mercy to drive away those we don't think deserve God's grace? How else do we explain the ugliness with which we speak about and treat gays in the Christian community?

If any group NEEDS God's grace, it's the gay community. By conservative estimates, 15% of gays are living with the death sentence of AIDS. This lifestyle takes 25 years from their life expectancy, to the point where in Canada their age of death matches that of men in 1871. Gays are 6 times more likely to attempt suicide, and their rates of alcoholism, abuse, and any other social pathology you'd like to pick are off the charts.

Is homosexual behavior a grotesque sin? Absolutely. Is it an abomination in the eyes of God? Yes. Were my own sins just as grotesque? Yes, they were.

I was just as vile and disgusting a sinner as any other. Yet God picked me up from the muck and washed me clean. I am a sinner saved by grace. If anyone should grasp the significance of this, Calvinists should. God hasn't sent us here to be junior prosecutors, but rather as ambassadors of the Gospel of peace.

I volunteered for a time in an AIDS hospice. It opened my eyes to how the church overlooks or outright demonizes gays, rather than ministering to them. I'd just like to encourage all of us to see gay people not primarily as political enemies, but as sinners in need of a Savior. Just as we once were.

Open Questions for Mormons...

I run into Mormon missionaries pretty regularly around the streets of Kiev. Back in the military they were so numerous you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting one. Yet none of them have ever given me a straight answer on these questions. Could some FARMS fan please belly up to the bar and explain these apparent anachronisms in the Book of Mormon?:

1. Since no steel has ever been found in any dig anywhere in the New World predating the coming of the Spanish, how do you explain this passage in the BoM:

"Wherefore, he came to the hill Ephraim, and he did molten out of the hill, and made swords out of steel for those whom he had drawn away with him; and after he had armed them with swords he returned to the city Nehor, and gave battle unto his brother Corihor, by which means he obtained the kingdom and restored it unto his father Kib." Ether 7:9

2. Even more fun, no horse skeleton has ever been found. Nor has a wheel been found that predates the 9th Century AD, several hundred years after the end of the BoM. How does that square with this:

"And they said unto him: Behold, he is feeding thy horses. Now the king had commanded his servants, previous to the time of the watering of their flocks, that they should prepare his horses and chariots, and conduct him forth to the land of Nephi..." Alma 18:9

So how were these non-existent horses pulling the chariots, and how were the chariots rolling without wheels? Or did the Indians somehow deliberately hide all the wheels and horses far from their villages just to deceive the archeologists who would later research them? If the Book of Mormon is the "most perfect book ever written," you must have some quick and easy ways to explain these apparent defects?

My Iranian buddies for some reason seem to attract Mormon missionaries. They giggle every time they talk with your missionaries, now that I've explained about the holy underwear you guys are into. They're working up the courage to ask to see it...

You may be inhaling too much incense if...

The Buddhist monk Ajahn Chah had this to say:

"Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: You won't be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you."

Following his logic, I had a moment of clarity. It would seem that my search for a bewhiskered turtle was gone about all wrong. I've decided instead to prepare my heart, and let the little reptile come to ME.

It's plain why so many people in America are giving up linear, Western style thought in favor of the 'wisdom' of the East -- how else is one to get a mustachioed turtle around here?

Mormonism: An American Original

One day I plan to write a book with the title I've used above. It'll put the Mormon Church in its historical context as a 19th Century American creation -- for example, the obsession with health fads, the speculation about the origin of the Indians, or the inclusion of lodge elements in the temple ceremony. We are talking about a religion, after all, that has a President.

Watching the Mormon missionaries around Kiev, I was struck by their essential American-ness. In their dark slacks and tacky shirt-sleeve-and-tie look, they might as well hang a sign around their necks that reads "Middle American."

Watching them trudge around the neighborhood, to the annoyance of all those they call upon, I realized that they're essentially door-to-door salesmen -- as American as Norman Rockwell. They even have a memorized salespitch, complete with demonstrator models and pre-written responses to frequently asked questions. They engage in detailed business planning and scheduling. Mormonism is a business, and the missionaries are the sales force. It's American down to its bootstraps.

True Christianity is universal. It is called to go forth to every tribe, tongue and nation on the planet. And in each of these cultures, it adapts itself and takes on the flavor of the nation it inhabits. Mormonism, by contrast, exports middle class suburbia around the world. You don't realize to what an extent until you see them schlepping around in another society looking like overworked, underpaid vacuum salesmen.

Sanctification

While Evangelicals have a pretty solid consensus on justification, this unity frays when we move beyond it to progressive sanctification. At one extreme is an antinomian position in which one can, without peril, remain just as the Holy Spirit found you. At the other is the view of some Wesleyans that one can actually become without sin while still on this side of glory. One weakness that many of the views share is that (like their views on salvation in general) they are anthropocentric. Man is central to all of it, and it is his striving that earns his sanctification.

Modern Reformation has two good articles on the subject this month. The first, by Jerry Bridges, is called Gospel Driven Sanctification. It's in the same vein as World Harvest's "Sonship" program, focusing on the Gospel as central not only to our justification, but also to our becoming Christlike. We're not only saved by grace, we live by it as well.

The second, by Dr. John Hannah (a Calvinist at DTS, that Fortress of Fundamentalism. What joy!) is entitled John Owen and the "Normal" Christian Life.

Here's a representative paragraph that I thought a lot of:

"The presence of sin in the believer's experience mandates two responses. First, because sin is no longer extensively or intensively universal (the domination of sin has been broken), there is the ground of assurance that one has become the recipient of divine light and grace (therein is the saint's joy and confidence in the struggle with sin; that is, in our union with Christ). Second, the remnants of sin's dominance (now called indwelling sin), call for serious striving to limit its reign, realizing that the normal Christian life is one of struggle and ragings, though not to the exclusion of profound joy and advances. It is also in this context that part of the glorious hope for the Christian is magnified when he or she is aware that the fight with sin will end when we are in his presence."

Questions About Calvinism?

For several years, Calvinism has been enjoying a Renaissance, with Reformed books, churches and seminaries springing up everywhere. Calvinists are leavening congregations from every stream of Christianity, with even Charismatic churches seeing large numbers of people come to a Reformed understanding of the Word.

This growth has brought with it a pretty curmudgeonly backlash in the form of badly researched and openly biased books like Dave Hunt's most recent. Most of the objections to Calvinism I come across stem from misunderstanding, and these polemicists are often to blame. Better to go to the source instead.

If you have questions about Reformed belief or practice, I'd enjoy the opportunity to discuss them with you in a low-key way. My email address is Discoshaman@saintly.com

Supporting Sinful Sexuality Sustains Sectarian Suicide

I'm feeling alliterative today, so sue me. Anyway, the Episcopal Church has just elected its first openly gay Bishop. Undoubtedly mascara is running down stubbly-cheeks all over South Beach and the Castro District as they sob with joy for this historic first. There hasn't been anything this exciting since they outlawed transgender discrimination in San Francisco. I still remember the city councilwoman sniffling and saying, "It's not every day you get to create a new civil right."

Indeed.

While I think the Church's failure to reach out to gays and lesbians is inexcusable, this brings with it no blurring of the sinfulness of the homosexual lifestyle. It's a grievous and gross sin, like any type of fornication. The appointment of a gay bishop is only another step down the road of apostasy the Episcopals have been treading for decades.

The Episcopal Church has been on a slow glidepath to oblivion for about 30 years. They've lost 40% of their membership since 1968. Those attending out of brand-name loyalty are graying and dying, and young people see little compelling reason to get out of bed early on Sunday to hear moralistic platitudes.

In one of those schadenfreude-laden ironies of life, Bishop John Spong, author of "Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism" and "Christianity Must Change--Or Die" saw his congregation die at TWICE the national rate. Newark has lost 80% of its members in thirty years. He's DEFINITELY the man on a white horse that Christianity needs to save it. The Jack Kevorkian of church growth.

Much like the Democrats in Congress, the Episcopals have seemed to decide that since the American people have rejected liberalism, they must be hungry instead for... liberalism.

Calvinism and Israel

Outside of the initial, flustered incomprehension upon considering the concept of predestination for the first time, the most common knee-jerk objection to Calvinism among mainstream Evangelicalism has got to be over "replacement theology." The impression out there among the percentage who know of Calvinism's existence seems to be that all Calvinists think that Israel has been utterly cut off and consigned to the outer darkness. Given that a healthy percentage of Protestants ingest Dispensational presupps (along with cookies and juice) from their earliest days in Sunday School, this is quite a deterrent to accepting the truth of Reformed belief.

Reformed Christians actually maintain a balanced view between the bifurcation of Dispensationalism amd the excision of Replacement theology. Richard Pratt, of RTS, has put together a great piece entitled To The Jew First: A Reformed Perspective that's a great clarifier. A good supplement would be Fred Klett's Not Replacement... Expansion! Both of these come from Monergism.com's site. If you've never checked out monergism, take a peek. It's huge. Beyond huge. In the words of the dad in "So I Married an Ax-Murderer" -- It's a virtual planetoid! It's got its own weather-systems!

Here are Calvin's thoughts on the subject (Israel, not Mike Myers films):

"I extend the word Israel to all the people of God, according to this meaning, -When the Gentiles shall come in, the Jews also shall return from their defection to the obedience of faith; and thus shall be completed the salvation of the whole Israel of God, which must be gathered from both; and yet in such a way that the Jews shall obtain the first place, being as it were the first born in God's family."

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For anyone interested in keeping up with events in the church around the world, check out Brigada's mission mobilization newbriefs. Caleb Project and Brigada were both big influences on the Duchess and I as we considered overseas ministry.

Funny Like a Heart Attack

An aficionado of dark humor, I appreciated a recent CT interview with the new National Association of Evangelicals president Ted Haggard. The headline quote reads, "This Is Evangelicalism's Finest Hour." If he were speaking only internationally, there MIGHT be some legitimacy to the claim, at least in a gross numbers/geographic dispersion sense. But nationally? The notion is as painfully funny as watching someone belly-flop from a high dive. Haggard seems to be an ideal president of what passes for Evangelicalism these days--Charismatic, Dispensational and apparently completely lacking in historical perspective.

Let's examine this "finest hour." Over the past decade the evangelical percentage of the population in America has dropped from 14% to 8%, according to Barna. About 32% of "born-again" Christians believe in absolute truth, 45% believe that Satan is "not a living being but is a symbol of evil." 34% believe that good works can earn someone a place in heaven. "A majority of all born again Christians reject the existence of the Holy Spirit (52%)," according to Barna's fact sheet on the Trinity. The same page states that 35% percent deny the physical resurrection of Christ. From everything I've read, the data only skews worse when you look at the Tweens and Xers apart from the older generations. Add in the drift toward liberalism at many Christian publishing houses, and the fact that Evangelicalism's public face consists mainly of Hagenite Faith Movement hucksters and political ideologues like Robertson or Falwell, and the picture only darkens.

The current generation of Evangelicals seems contemptuous of the theology, traditions and practice of the preceding 1900+ years of Christianity. It's smug and self-congratulatory, and worships novelty with all the avidness of an adolescent. Anyone who would claim this as our Finest Hour is perfect for the job of NAE spokesman.

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Continuing our theme of dark humor, check out the latest Red Meat -- the crinkly caress of crenulated crevice clips.

Behind the Zion Curtain

Just learned from Aarondot.com that the Tanners are retiring. For anyone who's done counter-cult research, these guys are the Delta Force of anti-Mormonism apologetics. Both are LDS pedigreed back to the days of Deseret and polygamy. Both eventually abandoned Mormonism when they began researching the founding documents of the religion and realized the enormous numbers of contradictions the cult has amassed in only a century-and-a-half.

The Salt Lake Weekly has a well-written and surprisingly respectful interview with the two of them that gives a good overview of their testimony and work. Hopefully it will open some eyes behind the Zion curtain.

Triumphalist Kitsch

Earlier in the week I asked this question:

"Lastly, I'd like to hear from the mass of American Evangelicals why it is that non-liturgical Christianity finds beauty so repellent. While holding to the true and the good, why do they so neglect the lovely, which equally reflects the character of God?"

I'd like to elaborate on this in the form of a rant.

Modern evangelical culture is awash in what I've decided to call Trumphalist Kitsch. Go into any Christian bookstore and browse the art, clothing or Test-a-mint sections and you'll see what I mean. This phenomenon is hardly confined to commerce, our churches are choked with it too. Hymns are displaced by praise jingles that are often little more than "Jesus You're My Boyfriend" music. The decorations in many churches is garish enough to make a Bollywood Hindi movie producer blush. Our church architecture once provided a beautiful space for worship which communicated the majesty of God. Now we build souless boxes which inspire all the awe of a rec center. This one actually comes with the bonus of a 50-foot bumper ornament for a steeple.

I begin to wonder what nutrient is lacking from our intellectual nourishment. If the statistics which show an increase in evangelical education levels are true, why are we doing such a good job of hiding that fact? Why are the execrable dabbings of Thomas Kinkade the best we can muster in response to the world? We who believe that the universe is the theatre of God's glory; we whose minds are being renewed and aren't fixated on the grotesque and the wicked; why are our contributions to art so feeble compared to the secular sphere? Those of us who have eyes of faith to see the unseen, why are we so seemingly unable to imagine the unseen as well--to the point that neon-bright mediocrities like Peretti and LaHaye are our only response to Bellows, Amis, Wolfe or Roth?

Triumphalist kitsch is the right term for the sub-standard, sensationalistic schlock that typifies the modern evangelical ghetto. It's just as disposable as the secular culture it apes, only uglier. It reminds me of Rent-Boy in Trainspotting lamenting the subservience of Scotland:

"People say they hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We're COLONIZED by wankers. We can't even find a decent culture to be colonized by."

The New Perspective on Tetzel

I've decided to get rich quick. It seems by most measures to be preferable to penury. Rather than the usual ponzi schemes or work-at-home scams, I've decided to take a more subtle route. I'm going to be one of the semi-heretics. I noticed awhile ago that one of the best ways to sell books and boost your name recognition is to question one of the key tenets of Evangelical Christianity. The resulting controversy drives up sales and interest in a way no normal academic can ever hope to achieve.

The key is to attack only ONE tenet. This is important. Anything more and you could get thrown out of even the 3-ring-circus-sized tent of modern Evangelicalism. Then Family Christian Stores might not give you an end-cap. So restraint is needed. Pick one, it doesn?t really matter which?the traditional view of justification, the eternality of Hell, the omniscience of God... The reign of tolerance in Evangelical circles will ensure you get only enough criticism to bring you panel debate invitations and speaking honoraria.

I'm personally going to cobble together a revisionist history of the Reformation. I'll do a passable job asserting that Roman Catholicism wasn't actually morally bankrupt and theologically corrupted, and that the entire resulting 500 years of ecclesiastical history was a big misunderstanding. Call it the "New Perspective on Tetzel." Then I'll just sit back and wait for Christianity Today to call me for the interview. My only worry is that I get in print before the ECT people beat me to it.

3 Questions

There are three questions I'm curious about...

First, I'd like to ask Fundamentalists how the word God came to have 2-syllables: "Gaw-od!"

Secondly, I'd love to learn why whenever God gives a Pentecostal a prophecy He speaks in Jacobean English. Is this proof that God Himself is King James-Only?

Lastly, I'd like to hear from the mass of American Evangelicals why it is that non-liturgical Christianity finds beauty seemingly so repellent. While holding to the true and the good, why do they so neglect the lovely, which equally reflects the character of God?

The Perils of Pauline Interpretation...

Here's some red meat for the theology buffs out there. If you're hung over with harmartiology, saturated with soteriology and done with Dispensationalism, why not pick a new topic and study the New Perspective on Paul?

This overview is a good, brief introduction to the controversy, which gives a fair treatment to the supporters of the doctrine while at the same time answering it from a classically Reformed perspective. Many of you would undoubtedly rather stick a meat thermometer in your ear than read this. But for the masochistic few who appreciate theological debate--a real corker.

Your Place in the Great Commission

My buddy Nate Wilson, from Caleb Project, has put together a great little chart on missions mobilization. Find your place in missions--as a sender, a goer, a mobilizer or an advocate. There are no non-combatants in this war.

Tip-Toeing Beyond the TULIP

Talking with some people these days, it seems like the words Reformed and Calvinist have been emaciated to the point of simply meaning "I accept the 5-points of Dordt." While I'm an enthusiastic believer in the Doctrines of Grace, there is a great more to the Reformed theological understanding than a soteriological thumbnail.

One of the key aspects that often gets neglected is the Reformed view of the covenants. Studying about God's eternal decrees and predestination made so much of the Word that was previously incomprehensible start to "click" for me. In the same way, an understanding of the Covenants opened up wide new vistas of thought as I delved into the Word. The analogy I often use is a magic-eye puzzle. For the first time I began to see the underlying skein which structures and connects the Word from beginning to end.

A friend of mine, Dr. Gregg Strawbridge, has put together a wonderful essay on Covenant theology entitled Infant Baptism: Does the Bible Teach It?

Don't be turned off by the title. While he does address paedobaptism, he goes much farther than this. It's a great little introduction to the covenantal nature of the Bible. Even if you hold fast to your credobaptist views after reading it, you'll still come away with a great appreciation for the Covenant which binds us together. And, if you're like most believer's-only baptists, you've never given 4 seconds to actually learning the other side's view, and have contented yourself with an unthinking "that's just a residue of Catholicism" response.

Be adventurous--actually look into it.

Arminians Select Floral Motif

Tired of being without a floral motif vis-a-vis the Calvinists, the Arminians have just completed a summit in Possum Waller, Arkansas to select an appropriate symbol. Chairman Dave Hunt ruled that the Daisy faction had won over the Jack-in-a-Pulpit partisans late this afternoon in the second round of voting. The proposed acrostic looks as follows:

D- Diminished Depravity
A- Abrogated Election
I- Impersonal Atonement
S- Sedentary Grace
Y- Yieldable Justification

Pastor Eli Coots of the Backwoods Bible Institute made the announcement, "Gone are the days of acronmyical imbalance. Now we too have an easy to remember acrostic that all may freely use to oversimplify and misunderstand our system of belief! Let holy-rollers, faith healers, fundamentalists, Left Behind groupies and KJV Onlies of all stripes unite in celebrating this blessed event!" He later added that the acronym came with a bonus--the poetic symmetry between the uncertainty of one's own salvation that Arminians enjoy each day, and the petal-plucking ritual of the daisy--"he loves me, he loves me not..."

Yes Virginia, Mormonism is a Cult

The last several years have seen a massive public relations push by the Latter-Day Saints. Rather than emphasizing the essential differences (and supposed heresies) of Christianity, they're increasingly positioning themselves to be seen as just another "flavor" of Christianity. They bristle at being called a cult. Leaving aside the monstrous falsehoods they teach about the nature of God and Christ, let's just look at them sociologically a moment. Cults traditionally follow after a central, charismatic leader. It's one of their defining characteristics.

I'm going to quote from the very influential Elder Ezra Taft Benson. When you read the word "prophet", substitute in "David Koresh" or "Jim Jones" and see if it sounds even a jot creepier. I don't think it does:

First: The prophet is the only man who speaks for the Lord in everything.

Second: The living prophet is more vital to us than the standard works.

Ninth: The prophet can receive revelation on any matter, temporal or spiritual.

Thirteenth: The prophet and his counselors make up the First Presidency--the highest quorum in the Church.

Fourteenth: The prophet and the presidency--the living prophet and the First Presidency--follow them and be blessed; reject them and suffer.

Mormonism is just like the church down the street. If the church down the street is a Heaven's Gate affiliate.

Illuminati Under the Bed, Part Deux

I wrote the other day about the number of Chomsky-Lite anti-Americans that one finds on Christian forums these days. After digesting years of conspiracy theories and Dispensational fantasies in the Christian world, many of them seem to have moved on to something a bit meatier, but with the same basic outlook-- America is the locus of evil in the world.

For a good example of the kind of "thinking" that leads to these conclusions, check out Last Trumpet Newsletter. The author should take up quilting, given his impressive ability to knit together fabrication, innuendo, proof-texting and sensationalism into something relatively coherent. Some highlights:

"As a former astrologer and witch saved by the grace of God, I must say that I have watched with amazement as this current war was designed after occult patterns."

"Within that office is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA. The symbol of the agency is the satanic eye in a triangle above a truncated pyramid with the "great light" of Satan behind it while it gazes upon the United States with a glassy stare. (16) We must understand that this agency is set up to use the military power of the Pentagon, which is a five-sided death house based on Pathagoran occult geometry, to watch you!"

"In yet another fire, we see the very hand of Almighty God. A film crew working near the Glenfinnan Viaduct in Northwest Scotland was working on the third Harry Potter movie known as the Prisoner Of Azkaban. Suddenly a fire broke out and burned 100 acres forcing evacuation of the area and stopping the filming of the movie."

I'm sure there are arguments for universal literacy and sufferage. This man just isn't one of them.

Jesus is Risen!

He is risen indeed!

Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia!
Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia!
Who did once, upon the cross, Alleluia!
Suffer to redeem our loss, Alleluia!

Hymns of praise then let us sing, Alleluia!
Unto Christ, our heavenly King, Alleluia!
Who endured the cross and grave, Alleluia!
Sinners to redeem and save, Alleluia!

But the pain which He endured, Alleluia!
Our salvation hath procured, Alleluia!
Now above the sky He?s king, Alleluia!
Where the angels ever sing, Alleluia!

Happy Easter,

the Discoshaman

Shady Acres, Vatican City Branch

There have been signs lately of Pope John Paul II's advancing senility. Chief among these is his tendency to canonize virtually anyone who went to Mass in the last century-and-a-half. In the previous four centuries his predecessors elevated around 300 people to sainthood. At last count John Paul II has promoted 446, including the womanizing huckster Padre Pio.

Karol Wojtyla's defense of the victims of Communist tyranny rivaled that of Ronald Reagan at his most eloquent. Only senility can account for the pathetic moral obtuseness into which he's descended. While remaining silent for a decade as Saddam Hussein tortured and murdered tens of thousands of Iraqis and caused half a million deaths by misappropriating Oil for Food money, John Paul became amazingly solicitous for the lives of Iraqis when the time came to liberate them. Suddenly he seemed able to think of little except the victims of such a war.

Even now, when the nightmare scenarios about civilian deaths have completely failed to materialize, he returns to this theme, like an old man who retells a story endlessly. For Good Friday he picked an Iraqi family to assist him at St. Peters to show solidarity with the victims of the war. (Some whistfully remember when he used the word Solidarity to OPPOSE tyranny.) He made a veiled swipe at President Bush, speaking of ''deaths from hunger and hardship of thousands of innocent adults and children, to the insult of human dignity, unfortunately perpetrated sometimes in the name of God.'' It's interesting to watch a man whose entire position rests upon arrogating prerogatives that are rightfully Christ's take someone else to task for speaking in God's name...

Iraqi sources put the number of civilian victims at around a thousand. While this is tragic, it's about 1/5th the number of children that were dying monthly under sanctions. Age may be affecting his math skills as well.

Though hard to face, it may be time for him to consider a well-deserved rest. One imagines a papal retirement might be quite pleasant--nurses in wimples, gold-plated shuffleboard pucks, bingo games every night...

The Pot Calling the Kettle Bob

I had the uncomfortable experience of snorting strong coffee through my nostrils this evening after coming across this little morsel from Hal Lindsey. He makes fun of our friend Baghdad Bob and his (admittedly ridiculous) predictions about the war's outcome.

The audacity of Lindsey sneering at anyone else's prognosticational failings was just breathtaking. We are, after all, talking about the man who told us that the "Great Snatch", as he insouciantly called the rapture, would take place by 1981. His predictions simply shift as the sociopolitical landscape changes over the years. One constant is the income he generates with his prophetic gifts.

Lindsey believes our Bob has a future in Las Vegas stand-up. I think he'd make better money as a prophecy pimp.

Hurrah for Huguenots

The Duchess came across a Reformed theology site en français today. A very encouraging sign. While it takes great faith to accept, it does appear that even the French can be of the elect...

Take a peek at Site Réformé Confessant.

Reformed Theology--Freeing Minds Since 1517

Since the time of the Reformation, the differing effects of the Catholic and Reformed worldviews on human achivement have been marked. It's no coincidence that scientific inquiry, vast economic expansion and the development of democratic institutions followed immediately in the wake of the Reformation, while Roman Catholic countries remained mired in authoritarianism and stagnation.

The same pattern is easily observable in their colonies. The USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are in the forefront of human endeavor while the Latin American countries, the clearest example of mass colonization by Catholics, is only now climbing out of its historic morass of corruption and instability. And this only as it sheds its residual Catholicism.

The Reformed worldview has a high view of "calling"--the idea that all vocations are given by God. In other words, the average mechanic's work is just as holy as the average pastor's. There is no separation of the world into holy and profane--the entire creation is the "theatre of God's glory." Everything a Christian does is done to God's glory, from scientific research, to painting, to worship. It also has a strong view of man's depravity, and therefore places little faith in authoritarian rule, as power unrestrained is almost inevitably power badly exercised.

Catholicism, on the other hand, denigrates anything not directly church-related as profane, and places a secondary value on it. The Roman Church has generally served as the concubine of whatever strongarm leader was in place--in the modern era this has been everyone from Franco in Spain to the caudillo-of-the-week in Latin America.

The strength of progress and Catholicism in a country seem almost inversely proportional. Which is why I wasn't at all surprised to read today that while Irish economic growth in the 90's was close to 9% and it was fast becoming Europe's Silicon Valley, the Catholic Church is in serious decline. 254 men became priests in 1990. Less than 90 became priests by the end of the decade. Only 11% of those in monasteries are under the age of 50. This pattern is being seen in many countries with Catholic majorities.

The Reformation liberated minds and spirits throughout much of Western Europe. The spread of Evangelical Christianity into much of the 2/3's world gives me hope that millions now being fed syncretistic Catholicism will soon be nourished by something more wholesome.

An Epiphany From Leonardo

The Duchess and I just finished viewing The Basketball Diaries, which features DiCaprio back in the days when he was sufferable. For anyone who hasn't seen the movie, it's based on a true story and is one of the rawest portrayals of addiction I've seen since Trainspotting. For anyone who can get past the crudity and the subject matter, it's worth watching.

What came home to me as I watched the young man descend further and further into something like animalism was just how victimizing sin really is. Several months ago I read the late Harvie Conn's book Evangelism-Doing Justice and Preaching Grace. He brought out that as Christians we're ministering to people not only as sinners in need of repentance, but also as victims of sin. I still haven't fully grasped the implications of this, but another piece fell in place for me tonight.

It's easy to intellectualize sin, to confine it to a theoretical problem in need of a doctrinally-mandated absolution. Tonight I better understood the dehumanizing ugliness of sin. I was reminded both why God hates sin so fiercely, and why He has such compassion for those ravaged by it.

Illuminati Under the Bed

One thing that's struck me as I browse online Christian forums is how many conspiratorial anti-war types there are out there. Evangelicals who seem to have formed their view of the world from the Noam Chomsky Easy Reader.

It made me wonder. What set well-adjusted, church-going Americans to muttering archly about Megacorporations conspiring to take over the world? Some of these people seem to really believe that a Yale fraternity is meeting even now out on Martha's Vineyard to plot their next war of aggression... And then I realized--

--Bad theology has consequences. In the 90's we had the frisson about the New World Order sweep through Generic North American Protestantism (GNAP). People bought Pat Robertson's book in droves. Gary Kah followed with En Route to Global Occupation. Always one to spot a sound investment, Larry Burkett jumped onboard with The Illuminati. Suddenly a section of Evangelicalism was sure that Bush '41 was trying to push us into a New Age/Communist/Masonic/Big Business-led world government where we would all have 666 tatooed on our forearms and the Queen of England printed on our money.

Couple this with the speculative theology-cum-delusional fantasies passing for Dispensational Premillenialism these days. A good example of this is the Rapture Index, a site which alerts you when it's a good idea to have your fire insurance paid up. If you really believe that Old Scratch is seizing power next week, it COULD make you a little suspicious about what role the world's only superpower might have to play.

With two segments of Evangelicalism eagerly looking for signs of an impending one-world system, it makes sense that some of them would latch on to the idea of an evil Capitalist conspiracy to pollute and dominate the world. Once Communism died they needed someone to fill the role.

The Whisky Priest in All of Us

I'm finally reading Graham Greene's austerely beautiful novel The Power and the Glory. It's an interesting book to read before teaching a Bible study.

For those who haven't read it, the novel focuses on a disgraced priest who's on the run from an anti-clerical persecution in rural Mexico. This "whisky priest" can't stay away from the bottle, and he's haunted by his failure to live up to his calling.

Though my failings aren't so glaring as the priest's, I could see myself in him. There I was, about to go teach about the holiness and love of Christ, and I fall so short of both of them. There's an inescapable hypocrisy in everything we teach as Christians... We point to a perfect standard and then so imperfectly model it.

Thinking about it drives me to my knees. Only in a constant posture of repentance can I look these men in the face and say the things I do. And I take heart in knowing that God is glorified through my weakness. No one will ever be able to say that men were saved by me. They were saved by God's grace, in spite of me.

Worship Matters

Modern Reformation has a very thoughtful and Biblically-grounded look at worship. With their usual insight, they pierce through the petty legalisms and anthropocentrism that normally characterize the worship wars, keeping their eyes on the heart of the matter--the glory of God.

I especially liked this: "God is more interested in a particular kind of worshiper than in a particular kind of worship."

Calvinism and Missions

Paige Patterson is once again criticizing Calvinists within the SBC. Surprise, surprise, he's asserting with apparently no need for supporting evidence that Calvinism is bad for missions and evangelism. That old chestnut.

This accusation is on the same level as the unthinking people out there who bash homeschooling for not "socializing" young people. They have zero research to back it up. But it's something "everyone" just knows. Homeschooling doesn't socialize. Calvinists don't do missions.

PCA News does a good job of deconstructing this particular popular idiocy here. It's interesting to note that the PCA raises 3X as many foreign missionaries per capita than the SBC raises for both stateside AND domestic missions put together. And that isn't the whole story. Over 60% of PCA missions dollars go to non-PCA missionaries.

Another inconvenient fact for m. Patterson is that the founders of modern Baptists missions William Carey, Luther Rice, Andrew Fuller and Adoniram Judson were all Calvinists. Further, it's difficult to see how George Whitfield, Asahel Nettleton, Livingston, Charles Spurgeon and David Brainerd fit into his paradigm. All Calvinists, all pioneers in missions and evangelism.

Paige Patterson is an educated man. He knows all of these things. But his Reformed opponents are pretty formidable. Apparently it's easier for him to attack straw men than to refute the actual beliefs and practices of real Reformed Baptists like Al Mohler. The average Baptist has little knowledge of the Calvinist foundations of (particularly Southern) Baptist beliefs. Paige Patterson relies on this fact when he depends on stereotypes to win debate.