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Archive for the ‘Theology’ Category

Atheist Bullies

Posted in Scripturalism on December 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Christopher Hitchens now believes in God. I can say this with certainty, because the noted journalist and outspoken atheist died this week. News of his passing prompted me to skim through an anthology he put together a few years ago called The
Portable Atheist. And even though I haven’t made it very far, I have a few thoughts on what he wrote.

Hitchens isn’t the first writer of the “new atheist” school whom I have read. A number of years ago I read a book by Richard Dawkins called The Blind Watchmaker, in which Dawkins claimed to have overthrown the Biblical doctrine of creation, or at least intelligent design (they’re not the same thing, but that’s another article). As a Christian, I approached the book with a bit of fear and trembling, concerned that the Oxford scholar would offer some brilliant, irrefutable argument in favor of evolution that would utterly devastate my faith the Bible.

I read and read. I waited and waited.

Nothing.
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Clark on Colossians

Posted in Scripturalism on December 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. (Col.3:19)

The Biblical doctrine of marriage is among the most hated teachings of Scripture. It is under constant assault both within and without the walls of the visible church. One of the reasons for this overt hostility, perhaps the main reason, is what the Bible has to say about the relationship between husband and wife. For the Bible does not support the sexual egalitarianism demanded in marriage by feminist theory, but rather Scripture teaches the marital relationship is one of headship and submission.

Of course, some feminists are more radical than others. Emma Goldman, a prominent anarchist from the early 20th century, thought of marriage as a bad insurance policy and longed to see the institution ended altogether. She wrote,
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Confessions of an Inadvertent Thomist

Posted in Scripturalism, Theology, Uncategorized on December 5, 2011| 1 Comment »

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. (Col 2:8)

Before I came to the Scripturalism of Gordon Clark and John Robbins, my attitude toward philosophy was a mix of indifference, fear. Indifference, because I the little bit that I had been exposed to had left me baffled, fear, because I thought that I would be easy prey for deceptive teaching. So as is the case with many Christians, I labored hard to avoid the subject altogether, and Colossians 2:8 seemed make this avoidance easy to justify. “After all,” I thought to myself, “it tells us right there in Scripture not to be cheated by philosophy. So to ensure that I’m not cheated by it, I won’t study it at all.”

Of course, the verse says nothing about not studying philosophy, it simply enjoins Christians not to be cheated by it, which is a very different thing, so my conclusion really didn’t follow from the verse. But being ignorant of logic, it’s not surprising that I would fall into this common logical blunder.

Years later when I began to study Reformed theology, I met a Presbyterian fellow who intended to study for the ministry. He was in college at the time and studying, of all things, philosophy. This struck me as rather odd, since I had long considered philosophy the province of screaming atheist lunatics, not Christians. But while I was surprised at his major, I was intrigued by the fact that he believed training in philosophy would be helpful to him in his ministry. Not long after that, I was introduced to Gordon Clark’s work.
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Do Not Love the World

Posted in Theology, Uncategorized on November 28, 2011| 2 Comments »

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him.

  • 1 John 2:15

As Christians we know that the world is not our home and our call is to love God with all our heart, soul strength and mind. That is easy to say; it is not always so easy to do. The desire for the good things in this life and the wish to avoid pain can easily choke out the love of righteousness, even in those who are saved by faith in Christ. When this happens, as it did to some of the greatest saints in the Bible – think of David in his lust for Bathsheba or Peter’s fear of confessing Christ to a servant girl – our ability to be salt and light to a dying world is significantly impaired.

In the year A. D. 410 Aurelius Augustine had a problem. In fact, the whole Roman world did: a Visigoth name Alaric. Alaric, you see, had become the first man to successfully sack Rome in over 700 years, and for the Romans this was an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it moment. The pagan Romans, what you might call the conservative coalition of the day, blamed the Christians for the disaster. It was the Christians, they charged, who were responsible for causing Rome to abandon her gods and bring about Rome’s defeat at the hands of the barbarians. Augustine, who at the time was bishop of Hippo in North Africa, heard these charges coming from Romans who had fled Italy to escape the Visigoth armies. Moved to defend Christianity against the pagan’s charges, Augustine set about writing his greatest work, The City of God.

Early on in The city of God Augustine set about to refute one of the charges flung at Christians by the pagans: Why, if your God is so powerful, does he allow Christians to suffer along with everyone else? In part, answered Augustine, it was the Christians’ love of the world and their resulting ineffective witness that helped bring God’s judgment. He wrote,

“We tend culpably to evade our responsibility when we ought to instruct and admonish them, sometimes even with strong reproof and censure, either because the task is irksome, or because we are afraid of giving offense; or it may be that we shrink from incurring their enmity, for fear that they may hinder and harm us in worldly matters, in respect either of what we eagerly seek to attain, or what we weakly dread to lose…Good and bad are chastised together, not because both alike live evil lives, but because both alike, though not in the same degree, love this temporal life.”

When the events of life turn against us, some Christians become angry with God and demand, “why me, Lord?” The present author knows of at least one such individual. The answer just may be that God in his mercy takes from us those things for which we have grown too fond, so that he may give us himself, whom we have held too lightly.

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A Meditation for 9/11

Posted in Theology, Uncategorized on September 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

If there is calamity in a city, will not the LORD have done it?

– Amos 3:6

God caused 9/11.

God was not caught by surprise, as though the events of that day were something unexpected by him.

God’s intentions were not frustrated, as though he wanted to do one thing but the terrorists forced him to come up with plan B.

God did not permit the destruction in Pennsylvania, Washington D.C and New York, as though he were some cosmic bystander who could have stopped the loss of life but for some reason chose not to.

No.

The sovereign Lord of the universe, the judge of all the earth, caused 9/11.

From all eternity he decreed that awful calamity, for God, “works all things according to the counsel of his will.” (Eph.1:11)

And he deliberately, for his own glory foreordained the destruction of the twin towers.

Nevertheless, he is not responsible for the evil of that sunny September morning.

For to be responsible means to be “liable to give and answer.”

And to whom does God answer?

No one.

For as the Scripture says, “No one can restrain his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?'” (Dan.4:35)

This is a hard saying. Who can hear it?

God’s people. That’s who.

They praise him for his sovereign mercy and glorify him for his righteous judgment.

This day, may the sovereign Lord of all creation comfort his people who mourn and by his grace call many to repentance.


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Noah’s Park III

Posted in Politics, Theology on January 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday I received a comment from Mark Looy directing me to an article in the Louisville Courier-Journal. The article, written by Mr. Looy, explained the State of Kentucky’s involvement in the Ark Encounter project. Regarding the implication in an earlier Courier-Journal article that the Kentucky would be giving a large tax grant to Ark Encounter, Looy commented,

“Even if the Ark fails to meet projections, there is no risk to the state. Contrary to what The Courier-Journal has implied, taxpayers will not help pay for the construction and operation of the Ar. The only people to pay taxes related to operating the Ark will be the visitors through sales tax paid at the attraction (e.g., on tickets and food). The state will rebate a portion of that sales tax to the Ark Encounter LLC based on meeting attendance-performance marks. The incentives are not a grant from Kentucky.” [Emphasis mine]

There’s a big difference between giving the Ark Encounter a rebate of the tax revenue generated by the park, revenue which never would have been generated were it not for the construction of the attraction, and forking over tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to a privately run company. Answers in Genesis to my knowledge has never accepted tax grants, and I’m glad to hear that this is the case with Ark Encounter.

So this raises the question, if Ark Encounter is not feeding at the taxpayer trough, what real objection do the folks at the Louisville Courier -Journal, the Cincinnati Enquirer and other organs of opinion have to the construction of a privately financed project by people who have never taken a dime of taxpayer money and have a track record of producing impressive attendance results at the Creation Museum?

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Noah’s Park II

Posted in Politics, Theology on January 24, 2011| 2 Comments »

For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. – Exodus 20:11

As plans move ahead to build Ark Encounter, a historically themed attraction centered around a full-scale replica of Noah’s Ark, opposition from the usual suspects is building as well. When I first wrote about this story a few weeks ago, the local intellegensia were concerned about the constitutionality of the State of Kentucky providing tax incentives to Ark Encounter. This, they said, was a breach of the anti-establishment clause. But theirs was a weak argument. Ark Encounter is set up as an Limited Liability Corporation and managed by a subsidiary ministry of Answers in Genesis. It is not a church, and therefore the anti-establishment clause does not apply in this case. But even if Ark Encounter were a church, the Constitution’s anti-establishment clause applies only to the federal government, not to state governments, so there would still be no constitutional ground for denying the organization a tax break, or even, as appears to be the case with Ark Encounter, some sort of State funding. Not that I’m in favor of state-funded churches. I think they’re a terrible idea. But then so is misapplying the Constitution.


Having failed to dissuade Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear to dump the tax breaks on constitutional grounds, Ark Encounter opponants are now trying a new tactic: attacking Ark Encounter’s attendance projections that Kentucky used as the basis for granting the tax incentives. Here’s a few sample quotes,

  • Projections that 1.6 million people a year would visit Ark Encounter – the proposed Biblical theme park in Grant County to be financed in part with Kentucky tax incentives – are wildly optimistic, according to a half-dozen theme-park experts.
  • “Frankly, anyone who believes that this park will draw 1.6 million visitors a year really does believe that the Earth was created in just six days,” said Robert Niles, editor of themeparkinsider.com, an online publication.
  • Timothy Beal, a religion professor at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University and author of “Roadside Religion: In Search of The Sacred, the Strange and the Substance of Faith,” said Ark Encounter risks alienation many Christians if, as promised, it promotes the literal Biblical interpreetation that the Earth was created in six days. “I think there are fewer and fewer people who are interested in that debate, including Christians,” Beal said.

Fairly harsh stuff, that. But to those who witnessed the uproar surrounding the construction of the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum, it comes as no surprise. For in the years leading up to the museum’s groundbreaking, there were what seemed like endless legal challenges put forth by its opponents. If I recall correctly, their main charge was that building the museum where it was planned would result in zoning violations. All this seemed rather strange to me, for the area surrounding the museum’s property was and is largely undeveloped. I mean, it wasn’t as if AiG was going out of its way, like one local municipality did, to bulldoze a neighborhood for the noble and necessary purpose of expanding an already large shopping center, or tear down a longstanding and profitable business district in order to build a taxpayer funded football stadium that sits empty 364 days a year like Hamilton County. No, AiG was guilty of something much worse: wanting to build a privatly funded museum that presents Genesis as actual history, not as myth, magic or metaphore. In the end, the critics’ real objections were to the Christian doctine of creation, not the construction of a building on a rural section of interstate. But if you followed the story in the local press, you’d have thought the folks at AiG were real estate robber barons bent on ripping off the unsuspecting innocents of Northern Kentucky.

And just as in the case of the Creation Museum, I believe the real reason behind the move against Ark Encounter is philosophical: secularists reject the Bible as history and hate and fear those who believe it. This fight should be an interesting one.

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Being Understood by the Things that are Made

Posted in Scripturalism, Theology, tagged on December 28, 2010| 9 Comments »

Recently, I was listening to a John Robbins lecture on apologetics and something he said hit me like a ton of bricks.  Robbins was speaking about Rom.1:18-21, and his explanation of a key phrase in the passage radically altered my understanding of the text.  

The most popular method of Christian apologetics today is evidentialism.  And those who use this method argue for the truth of Christianity by appealing to sense experience.  The most famous of all evidentialist apologists is Thomas Aquinas, whose best known defense of Christianity is the cosomological argument.  In this argument, Thomas founded his case for the existence of God on the fact that, “it is certain and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion.” Many of today’s best know Evangelical apologists accept Thomas’ argument, including such respected scholars as Norman Geisler, R.C. Sproul, and John Gerstner.

Evidentialists have long considered Romans chapter 1:18-21 as a primary proof text for their position.  The passage reads

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,  because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. – NKJV

Evidentialists take the phrase “being understood by the things that are made” to refer to the non-human physical universe.  They understand the passage to say in effect that all men have knowledge of God by seeing, touching, smelling or hearing the physical stuff of this world.  For example the New Geneva Study Bible, of which R.C. Sproul was the general editor, commenting on Rom.1:20, states,

Divine invisibility, eternity, and power are all expressed in and through the created order…The invisible God is revealed through the visible medium of creation.

Evidentialist Charles Hodge states much the same thing when he writes,

This divine revelation has been made apo ktiseos kosmou, from the creation of the world, not by the creation; for ktisis here is the act of creation, and not the thing created; and the means by which the revelation is made, is expressed immediately by the words tois poiemasi, which would then be redundant.  The poiemata tou theou, in this connection, are the things made by God, rather than the things done by him.  – Commentary on Romans

But what if “the things that are made” [tois poiemasi Gk.] refers to something other than non-human creation?  Hodge himself seems not to know what to make of the words “the things that are made” when he calls them “a redundancy.”  But what if the words “the things that are made” are not a redundancy but in fact refer to something new?  What if “the things that are made” is a reference to men?

This is the point Robbins made in his lecture, and it’s the point that I missed the first few times I listened to it.  And although Robbins’ reading of the text may seem like a stretch at first blush, there is good support for it.  For while the most common reading of Romans 1:20 identifies “the things that are made” [poiema]with the non-human physical elements of the world, the only other time poiema is used in the NT, Ephesians 2:10, it clearly functions as the predicate of a human subject. The passage in Ephesians reads,

For we are His workmanship [poiema], created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. 

Here, “we” are the subject of poiema, which is rendered “his workmanship.”  And if poiema can refer to people in Ephesians, is it that much of a stretch to believe that poiema could also refer to people in Romans 1:20?  By understanding poiema in this way, we can render Rom.1:20 as , “For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the men whom He has created, even His eternal power and Godhead.”  If Robbins is correct, and I believe that he is, Romans 1:20, rather than being an evidentialist stronghold, is in truth a scripturalist citadel.     

 You can hear Robbins’ full lecture here under Collection 5:  Defending the Faith, Level 2 , Lecture 2.  The relevant portion starts at the 34 minute mark.

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‘Tis the Season

Posted in Politics, Scripturalism, Theology on December 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The preaching and belief of the Gospel changes not only individuals, but whole societies.  As Christians we understand the former, but often have a poor grasp of the latter.  As a youngster, I was taught nothing by my public schools about the great debt modern civilization owes to Christianity.  Ancient Greece and Rome, I was told, were the basis of modern science, democracy and civlization as a whole.  It’s safe to say no one in my classes, including me, had ever heard of E. C. Wine’s The Hebrew Republic or Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.  Our history books, however, did give us one or two paragraphs on a minor event that took place in the 16th century, something called the Protestant Reformation.  

Perhaps the best treatment I have ever read of the contrast between Christian and non-Christian civilization is John Robbins’ book Christ and Civilization.  In it, Robbins paints a stark picture of just how unjust and brutal “glorious” ancient Greek and Roman societies really were.  This should come as no surprise to anyone who has read even a little history.  The enormities of communism and fascism in the 20th century occurred, not in a Christian contex, but in an atheistic one.  Our own nation is rapidly sinking under the weight of similar foolish ideas, and unless Christ grants widespread repentance, we will surely experience the same sort of oppression as did the people of those societies.  Brutality is both the result of and the punishment for the rejection of Christ.  

Without further delay, I give you the opening paragraphs of Robbins’ book.  

Each December 25 and January 7 nearly two billion people celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.  The celebration is doubly ironic, for the dates are not his birthday, and most celebrants have forgotten – or, more likely, have never learned – the meaning of his birth.  One of the most enthusiastic celebrants of Christmas I have known was an atheist.  She loved the colorful decorations, the intoxicating smells, the cheerful songs, the plentiful food and drink, the smiling faces of children, exchanging gifts, and the feeling of goodwill, however fleeting.  She, like hundreds of millions of others, was a devotee of Christmas, but not a disciple of Christ.

Hundreds of millions of churchgoers, unlike my atheist acquaintance, add religious feelings to their list of things to like about Christmas:  They seek and find feelings of awe and wonder from visiting cathedrals, listening to choirs and oratorios, observing rituals and processions performed by gaudily attired priests; and they think those feelings of transcendence are somehow Christian.  The churchgoers are more deluded than the atheist.

This profound ignorance of Christ – an ignorance that does not even realize it is ignorance – is a tragedy of eternal proportions, for the life of Christ – his birth, life, death, and resurrection – is not only the most important event in the history of mankind, but far more important, the only way to Heaven.  In fact, if Christ were not the only way to Heaven, his earthly life would have no importance at all.  Christ’s life is the point from which we date all of world history, and it is impossible to understand history and Western civilization,  especially the United States, without understanding Christianity.

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A New Address for KTS Part 2: The Anatomy of a Disaster

Posted in Knox Seminary, New Perspective/Federal Vision, Theology, tagged , on December 21, 2010| 4 Comments »

– NB Last week when I began writing this post, the names of Peter Leithart and John Armstrong appeared on the Adjunct Faculty page of Knox Theological Seminary.  Since that time, perhaps in response to public outcry, these names have been scrubbed from the Knox website.  It seems that erratic administrative behavior is one of the few constants at Knox. For during the 2007 controversy involving Warren Gage, the school was treated to the absurd spectacle of the firing/suspending/and rehiring of Dr. Gage in a whirlwind of activity that was nearly impossible to follow.  In another context the Keystone Kops routine might have been funny.  But there was nothing funny about what happened at Knox.  For a seminary died, and the institution doing business under the same name is a grotesque parody of Dr. Kennedy’s dream of a new Princeton Seminary in south Florida.  Given Knox’s spastic history, I have decided to publish this post under the assumption that Leithart and Armstrong will be teaching at the school.  I could be wrong, but even if I am, Knox has tipped it hand regarding its vision for the future.  And that vision is Federal.  

Stephen Welch did us all a favor with his article Knox Theological Seminary:  A New Haven for Federal Visionists.  As a former KTS student, I’m thankful that there are discerning graduates of the school who care about the truth and are willing to state their objections to the ongoing disaster that is Knox Seminary.  But the article wasn’t the end of it.  Wes White posted it on his Johannes Weslianus blog, and this resulted in a number of interesting comments.  One in particular stood out.  Lauren wrote.

I think the FV got their foot in the door of Knox when they held the colloquium in 2004. Remember, Jesus tells us to beware of the “yeast” of the Pharisees. Paul in Galatians gives a strong warning against those who would preach another gospel. Inviting false teachers to the table and giving them a venue to spew their poison is a recipe for disaster.

The colloquium to which she refered was The Knox Theological Seminary Colloquium on the Federal Vision held in Ft. Lauderdale in August 2003.  And although Lauren made a factual error by stating that the event was held in 2004, the rest of her statement is excellent and shows a genuine insight regarding what the Bible says about the dangers of associating with false teachers and false teaching.  But not everyone sees it that way.  Dr. Calvin Beisner, who organized the colloquium and edited the book produced from the colloquium sessions titled The Auburn Avenue Theology, Pros & Cons Debating the Federal Vision, replied to Lauren,

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the colloquium was the FV’s first step into Knox–other than that it was there that Gage and Leithart met [this is a reference to Warren Gage, current Dean of Faculty at KTS and Peter Leithart, noted Federal Visionist and new KTS employee]. Rather, the colloquium was where FV proponents really got called out, had to let their true colors fly, and the resulting book has provided many scholars with some of the most important primary data as to what the FVers say, as well as what some of their toughest critics were saying at that early stage.

Now this is a remarkable thing for Dr. Beisner to say, for it amounts to an admission of Lauren’s point couched in the form of a denial, “it was there that Gage and Leithart met.” But there’s more to it than that. It wasn’t as though Gage, who’s now Dean of Faculty at Knox, just happened to show up at the colloquium and run into Peter Leithart.  No, Gage himself was an active participant in the program, presumably with the blessing of Dr. Beisner.  Not as a one of the session contributors as was Leithart, who was there explicitly to promote the Federal Vision, but as worship leader – court jester would be more accurate – preaching at services held between colloquium sessions.  Dr. Beisner described Gage’s activities in these words,

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