The Repository

DOES GOD CARE ABOUT THE FORM IN WHICH WE WORSHIP?

2011-09-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

I presently attend an Orthodox Presbyterian Church. They are proudly Reformed. In other words they take their doctrine seriously and have attempted to piece together a coherent and consistent theology based upon Scripture. They are liturgical. In other words they have thought about each aspect of the Lord’s Day (Sunday) worship service, and have structured it in such a way as to reflect their systematic theology. The sermons are typically a detailed exegeses of Scripture, so much so that we have been doing a study of Luke for about five years now and are only a little over half way through. We sing only hymns (typically written over two hundred years ago) and the psalms put to music. We sing only this type of music primarily for two reasons. One is the deep theological concepts that the words of these songs bring forth and because the church believes that the music of these songs are properly reverent for use in worship.

We are keenly aware that Sunday morning worship is first and foremost about God. He is the audience and we are the participants. It is not about us, it is about Him. We believe that there is a proper form to the worship God requires of us, and we should therefore conform our desires and our emotions to this proper form. If we don’t like this form then the problem is us, not the form. We are constantly told that we should not conform our worship to the surrounding culture. Therefore we eschew all forms of worship that attempt to contextualize the service to the culture.

I used to believe most of this and still do in part; however I now also believe that our form of worship, can become so rigid, unintelligible and unnatural to the participant’s everyday lives that it causes a stumbling block to our desire to worship. If this happens we become mere unthinking unemotional robots going through the motions of the service by rote, but never truly worshipping God. Unfortunately, Lord’s Day worship is NOT all about Him, as this neglects a key factor in worship that being the congregation doing the worship. As noted before, we are the participants of worship, and if the Church neglects this critical aspect, it will quickly find that the worship is dead in spite of our desires to truly worship, and instead of reaching the throne room of heaven, it reaches only to the ceiling. Perhaps we should not worry about the need to tweak the proper form, but we are called to worship in Spirit as well as in Truth, and we are fallen individuals who will constantly need the faith contextualized for us, or it will become so foreign that it will be unintelligible. Does God care about how we worship Him? Absolutely, but He cares more about our heart. I believe that a “contemporary” service with a praise band and praise songs, who truly believe and is singing with all their heart to Jesus is more pleasing to God, than a rigidly structured Episcopalian service (or pick your favorite proper form) where the congregation is just going through the motions. But can we have both, the proper form with the proper heart? I think we can, but we must walk a fine line, and unfortunately that line moves with the people that make up the congregation.

One of the hallmarks of the Reformation was that it made the Faith accessible to the masses. No longer would one need to know Latin to understand what was going on in the service. No longer would one need to be able to read Latin to read Scripture. No longer would the songs be chanted by the clergy in tunes foreign to the congregation’s everyday lives in a language in which no one could understand. In this the Reformers were returning to a prior notion of the early church of “baptizing” the culture. It was their desire to take the Faith from the purview of the elite clergy and return it to the everyday man. They had to do this because the Roman Catholic Church had insisted on the rigidity of their form, and had put this “proper” form of the worship in front of the needs of their congregation. In our effort to reform our worship let’s not make the same mistake.

Sunday Worship

2011-08-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

“And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.”
Justin Martyr

I must admit that for me one of the attractions of Christianity is its ancientness. When I go to church, I am participating in a rite that has been continuous for close to 2000 years. It gives me goose bumps that I am participating in something bigger than myself, and that I am passing this Faith on to my kids so that they can in turn pass this on to their kids. This passage describes the typical worship service of the early church. It was written around 150 AD by a man who was eventually beheaded by the Roman Empire for being a Christian. A number of notable things here:

A. They actually met together for fellowship.
B. They met on Sundays.
C. They read the Scriptures.
D. They listened to a sermon.
E. They prayed.
F. They administered the Eucharistic celebration (communion).
G. They took up an offering to help orphans and widows and the needy.

Is this how your church service looks? If not why not?

Here is another quote taken from the same document concerning the Eucharist.

“And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.”

I’m not really sure what this all means, but it certainly sounds like they believed that the Eucharist was something more than a mere remembrance.

TRUTH AND UNITY GO TOGETHER LIKE A HORSE AND CARRIAGE

2011-04-05T21:58:00.000-07:00

In this post I wrote that we are strongly influenced by our presuppositions and the presupposition of the times and culture in which we live. This is no less true when we come to Scripture. We read Scripture through these glasses that both shaped and are shaped by these presuppositions. While Scripture itself is inerrant, our individual interpretation of Scripture is not. It is the height of pride and arrogance to assume that the way in which we personally interpret Scripture is the only way Scripture must be read to assume that the way in which we read Scripture is Scripture itself. There is no guarantee that we are immune from error in our interpreting. If we can get this principal, we will go a long way in healing the rifts in the Body of Christ.

Therefore, if for example the Ezekiel 37:1-14 should be read metaphorically and we read it instead literally WE not Scripture are in error. (By the way, one of the worst reasons for interpreting a passage a certain way is the slipper slope argument.) We are not perfect. We are all, every one of us, corrupted by our sin nature and are not immune to error. This corruption extends to every aspect of our being including our “logical and rational mind”. If this is true why then do we all of the sudden assume when we sit down to read the Scriptures that we are absolutely reading them aright? Why do we become dogmatic about our particular spin? I quite simply do not trust myself to state on my own authority that such and such verse definitely means this and those who do not agree with me are heretics outside the faith doomed to suffer eternal torment. Get this, NO ONE has that authority; not Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Lewis or Sproul (and for you Roman Catholics out there not the Pope either.)

But doesn’t the Holy Spirit guild us individually when we read Scripture and remove these glasses and help us read Scripture alright? Either the Holy Spirit is doing a pretty poor job or this is not how the Holy Spirit works. While the Holy Spirit does comfort us and convict us individually of sin, it does not work to inform us individually of doctrine. History is replete with godly people who (and I personally know too many godly people who) have prayed for the Holy Spirit to illuminate the Scripture and have come back convinced that a particular doctrine or interpretation has the Holy Spirit’s stamp of approval, that this is what the Scripture must mean. The only thing is that each Holy Spirit inspired doctrine/interpretation has contradicted someone else’s Holy Spirit inspired doctrine/interpretation. Who is correct and how do you know? The only thing this belief does is entrench each camp in their own version of the truth, which destroys the unity of the Body.

So if we can not be certain that our interpretation of the Scriptures is the correct one due to our own failings, and the Holy Spirit doesn’t help us individually determine what is correct, then we should just throw away the Scriptures as useless and each believe whatever we want to believe, correct?

Absolutely not! While we can not be dogmatically certain of our individual interpretation, we still should seek out the correct interpretation to the best of our ability. The Holy Spirit does work through our collective efforts to help us arrive at Truth. Let’s look at the early Church’s example. The Church was split on the subject of whether or not Gentiles needed to follow the Jewish law prior to being able to become a Christian. In short the Jewish Christians were requiring the new Gentile male converts to become circumcised. Individual believers did not assume that the Holy Spirit would speak to them individually, but corporately. Through the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:28) illuminating Scripture (Acts 15:16-17) the unified Jerusalem council came to its decision. So you have even the Apostles making decisions of doctrine through a corporate effort of the entire Church.

It is therefore my belief that the Holy Spirit speaks through the Church unified and universal (universal through both space and time) and reveals Truth to us, not to each of us individually. It works through each member unified to every other member, because while we all err, we rarely err in exactly the same way. And while we all have giftings we rarely have giftings in exactly the same way. (I find it interesting that I know people who are fascinated by different aspects of theology. One in creation, another in the doctrine of hell, another in the correct practices of worship, another with the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, and another in God’s love etc.) This is why the Church is so important, for it is the Church that is the Pillar and Ground of the Truth. This is why our unity is so important. We need each other in ways we can not even begin to imagine. Christ fervently prays for our unity (John 17:20-23) and not surprisingly we see an emphasis on unity throughout the writings of the Early Church Fathers.

That being said that once a doctrine/principle has been solidified by the Church it is revealed Truth. We can not go back. We may be able to define it more precisely, but we can not retract it. For example the divinity of Christ was firmly establish by the Church at the Council of Nicaea. For us to now deny this reality is to deny the faith, and to put oneself outside of the Church. This is not my individual doctrine but the Church universal across time (throughout the centuries) and space (across geographical boundaries). This prevents us from being blown about by every wind of doctrine and keeps the cultural demons at bay. However, at the Council of Chalcedon the Church further refined what Christ divinity means. This is what is called the development of doctrine.

On the flip side if a doctrine has not been solidified by the Church we are free to believe it but I do not think we are free to be dogmatic about it. I think that this goes to being humble and treating each other with love.

There is some relationship between unity, truth and love that has something to do with the nature of the Triune God . . .

[In light of everything I have said in Ephesians Chapter 1-3] I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high, he led a host of captive, and gave gifts to men.” . . . And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carries about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ form whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Ephesians 4:1-8; 11-16

Speaking of Origins

2011-04-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting post by Ken Ham critiquing a 2006 review by Susan Wise Bauer of a Peter Enns book. Who are all these people you ask? Ham is the president of Answers in Genesis an organization which believes in a literal seven day creation of the universe. His organization owns and runs the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I have heard Ham speak once, but other than the above information I don’t know much about him. Susan Wise Bauer is one of the leaders of the “classical education” (not important what this is for the purposes of this post other than to say that she is a big wig in Christian education) movement, and the publisher of the aforementioned Enns’ book. I’ve read one book by Bauer a good primer on classical education, but other than that I don’t know anything about her. Enns is a Christian (if one may be so bold to use that term) that believes in evolution. He was the professor of Old Testament studies at Westminster Theological Seminary until writing the aforementioned book. Thereafter he was canned by the school. Before this controversy, I had never heard of him (Not quite accurate, I vaguely recall hearing about a Westminster professor getting fired over his belief in evolution a while back. I am assuming it was the same guy.). In other words I don’t know any of these people too well so I don’t have an axe to grind. I am using them as an illustration only.

A few weeks ago Ham began a war of words against Enns and Bauer over what he believes is a movement to undermine the Scripture. He “outed” Enns’s views on evolution to the homeschool community on the eve of the homeschool convention in Cincinnati, allegedly criticizing not only Enns, but also Bauer and the group that ran the convention for allowing Enns to participate. Ham was told he was no longer welcome at the convention where he was scheduled to speak. I’m not sure whether Enns or Bauer have made any statements on the controversy, but Ham is still on the offensive, this time clearly going after Bauer. I was able to track down a link to Bauer’s review in full. My comments are interspersed in hers via parenthesis.

Messy Revelation
Why Paul would have flunked hermeneutics.

[Note to the Ken Hams of the world, Bauer is not really saying that Paul was bad at hermeneutics, but that our modern hermeneutics are incorrect.]

by Susan Wise Bauer

Sometime this past year, I was reading Sumerian poetry (for work, not for pleasure) when I came across a 4,000-year-old epic describing the Sumerian paradise, a garden city free of evil and sickness where

the raven utters no cry
the lion kills not,
the wolf snatches not the lamb,
unknown is the kid-devouring wild dog.1

If this doesn't bring you up short, turn to Isaiah 11, where the prophet tells us that when the Messiah returns, the wolf will live with the lamb, the lion will eat straw like the ox, and that the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The words in which Isaiah describes the great hope of the believer, the words that inform John's own vision of the new heavens and earth: those words don't seem to have originated with, well, with God.

This is the opening dilemma of Peter Enns' Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. The uniqueness of the Old Testament as a piece of literature has been seriously dented by the discovery of more and more ancient texts that predate (and anticipate) biblical forms. Creation story, flood story, prophecy, proverb: all of these were in use in Mesopotamia long before the first biblical book was penned.

[The things written in the Old Testament are true. They are truths that everyone on earth at one time knew. They were stories told to each succeeding generation. They are yearnings that whisper in the heart of every person ever born. Why shouldn’t we expect those truths, those yearnings to echo, if only faintly and corrupted, in other cultures even prior to the time they were written down in the Old Testament? These facts far from causing me to doubt the veracity of the Old Testament, only serve to bolster it. If the Old Testament were completely unique, then I would begin to get worried . . . As if the Jews or the Christians had the corner on the Truth market . . . sheeesh.]

So how can we claim that the Old Testament - and it alone from all the texts of that pre-Christian age - is divine communication from God to man?

[Because the Incarnate Christ and his apostles said it was.]

It's an interesting question, but it turns out to be small potatoes compared with the next problem that Enns, professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, sets before us: It seems as though the Old Testament was also puzzling for Matthew and Luke and Paul. In fact, from where we sit, it looks as though the apostles were lousy at exegesis.

[For the Ken Hams of the world, she is not saying that Paul was lousy at exegesis. She is claiming that what we call exegesis is not the proper method of interpreting Scripture, and she is using the examples of the apostles to bolster her case. The key words here are “from where we sit”. Where we sit is wrong according to Bauer.]

Enns gives us a number of startling New Testament passages that use the Old Testament by wrenching the original words violently out of context and even altering them. For example, Matthew 2 tells us with confidence that Jesus' trip down to Egypt as a boy (and his eventual return to Galilee) fulfilled Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt I called my son." But Hosea 11:1 is simply describing the Exodus; it is a passage, Enns points out, which "is not predictive of Christ's coming but retrospective of Israel's disobedience." In other words, Matthew is shamelessly proof-texting, in a way that would get any student enrolled in Practical Theology 221 (Expository Skills) sternly reproved.

Or consider Paul's use of Isaiah 59:20 in Romans 11, where he winds up an argument by announcing, "And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: 'The deliverer will come from Zion.' " But Isaiah says something quite different: "The Redeemer will come to Zion," he tells us.

[Matthew and Paul had every right to make these assertions. I speculate that they were merely passing on to the reader something the Christ and the Church had always taught, and/or they were interpreting the Scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In other words he had the authority to do so. You and I do not.]

Changing the words of Scripture to suit your own purposes? Paul wouldn't get past the first week of New Testament 123 (Hermeneutics) like that. He is breaking every rule of thoughtful evangelical scholarship, which holds that the proper way to approach inerrant Scripture is with careful grammatical-historical exegesis: painstaking analysis of each word of the Scripture and its relationship to other words, the setting of the sentence in the verse, the verse in the chapter, the chapter in the book, and the book in the historical times of its composition.

[It is this method of interpretation that Enns and Bauer have a problem with, and which Ham is seeking to defend in his own unique way. Of course Ham thinks that he is not defending his interpretation of Scripture but arrogantly, he believes that his interpretation is Scripture itself. Thus in his eyes he is merely defending Scripture. This is why he does not get the point.]

Of course Paul breaks those rules, Enns says; they are our rules, not Paul's.

[Absent authority to read Scriptures otherwise, they are cautious conservative rules which in general we should follow; however, we should never automatically assume that they are correct method to use in interpreting a passage.]

Inspiration and Incarnation offers us passages from such extrabiblical texts as the Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Biblical Antiquities in order to show that, far from doing something extraordinary and super-apostolic, Paul and Matthew were doing exactly what most of their contemporaries did. Both apostles had been trained by the scholars of their day, the so-called "Second Temple" period, to come to a text looking for the "mystery" beneath the words: the deeper truth that an untrained reader might not see. Both of them came to the Old Testament already convinced that they knew what that mystery was: the incarnation, death, and resurrection of God in Jesus Christ.

[Both were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, thus the difference in outsome between them and their contemporaries.]

Paul knows, by faith, that this truth underlies all of the Old Testament. He knows that it will be in Isaiah; he looks for it in the 59th chapter, and - as we might expect - he finds it. And if he has to change a preposition or two to make this "mystery" clear to the rest of us, he is not violating any sort of interpretive rule. His own principles of exegesis allow him to "read into the prophet's words," as Enns puts it, what he "already knew those words were really about."

[And how did he know what those words were about? Hmm . . . could it be . . . SATAN?]

This is the exactly the kind of exegesis that terrifies most evangelicals. The man who admits that meanings can be "read into" Scripture stands on the fabled slippery slope, right above a sheer drop-off, while below him churns a sea of relativism, upon which floats only a single overloaded lifeboat, captained by a radical feminist gay & lesbian & transgender activist who is very anxious to make the final decision about who gets pitched overboard.

[When an apostle does it I’m not particularly terrified. When someone else does this, I ask the question by whose authority do you interpret this passage? If they have no authority to do so, then I get worried . . . or I just dismiss them as kooks.]

Nevertheless, Enns is willing to plant his feet on the slope and stand there long enough to ask two disturbing questions.

[How very brave of him. He is willing to stand there long enough to ask his questions and then he dives right over the cliff.]

The first is this: Are we really saying that the apostles used an interpretive method that was not particularly inspired, and which in the hands of many Second Temple scholars led to enormous distortions of the original texts?

[The method used in the hands of the right person was absolutely inspired.]

And that this "mishandling" of the Old Testament produced, somehow, an inspired and trustworthy New Testament? Enns' answer to this is an unequivocal yes.

[For the Ken Ham’s of the world the scare quotes are there for a reason. She really doesn’t think that the apostles mishandled the Old Testament. She is saying that it is mishandled only if you assume that the above method is always correct one to use. Yippee! Enns believes that the New Testament is inspired and trustworthy, but Bauer doesn’t explain why.]

"This makes revelation somewhat messy," he writes, "but it would seem that God would not have it any other way.

[For the Ken Hams of the world, this statement is not stating the Scriptures are messy. They only appear to be messy from our perspective.”]

For the apostles to interpret the Old Testament in ways consistent with the hermeneutical expectations of the Second Temple world is analogous to Christ himself becoming a first-century Jew."

[Context is everything but Enns gets it wrong. The context for correct interpretation is the Church, not whatever culture you happen to live in. More on this later.]

In other words, the God who spoke to man through Christ also speaks to man through Scripture, and in much the same way: he enters into our world and uses our own cultural patterns to reveal himself.

[I don’t think I understand this, but then again I don’t have a PHD. God doesn’t use our own cultural patterns to reveal Himself. He reveals Himself through the Scripture within the context of the Church.]

We cannot insist that there is a separate, ahistorical, all-divine message in any part of the Bible that somehow triumphs over all contemporary thought and custom. This, Enns writes, is a modern version of the ancient Docetic heresy, which held that Christ only seemed human.

[No Susan this is relativism, and Enns just did a half twist somersault in the pike position. Is Enns really stating that unless we embrace that the Scriptures really don’t mean anything, we are in fact claiming the human element is only incidental? Last time I checked I don’t know of any person that believes that Bible fell from the sky, leather bound and gold embossed.]

"What some ancient Christians were saying about Christ," he writes, "is similar to the mistake that other Christians have made (and continue to make) about Scripture: it comes from God, and the marks of its humanity are only apparent, to be explained away."

[Yep that’s what he’s saying.]

Which leads Enns to the next disturbing question.

[Wait a minute. That was already two questions.]

If Paul and Matthew use Second Temple techniques to interpret the Old Testament, should we follow their example

[We individually have no authority to do so.]

- beginning with what we know to be true, and taking our interpretation from there?

[What exactly do we KNOW to be true? Hmmm . . . could it be . . . . EVOLUTION?]

This question gets a conditional yes: as long as we begin with the same central mystery as Paul and Matthew, the "reality of the crucified and risen Christ, [which is] both the beginning and the end of Christian biblical interpretation."

[But . . . but . . . I KNOW to be true that virgins do not give birth and dead men don’t raise to life and God doesn’t become man. Why do these things get a pass? One of the other central mysteries that Paul and Matthew began with was that Scripture (the Old Testament) was God breathed and useful for a whole lot of things, and they were completely wrong about that. Why should I trust them on this?]

This reality, not the method which we use to affirm it, should be at the center of our doctrine of inerrancy.

[I agree that Christ is the center of the doctrine, and that no method of interpretation is inerrant - contra to Ham.]

This means, unfortunately, that we cannot cling to the comforting notion that grammatical-historical exegesis is a kind of high road to truth.

[Sorry Ken, I agree with them on this; however, it is interpreting the Scripture in, by and through the Church is the high road to truth.]

Like the Second Temple exegesis of Paul and Matthew, it is a method - the method produced by our own time and place. Like the Second Temple exegesis, it can produce both truth and error. "Our own understanding of the Old Testament - and the gospel - has a contextual dimension,"

[Sorry Ken I agree here as well. Of course the context is not our own culture, but the Church universal. I didn’t realize that PHD’s could be so boneheaded.]

Enns writes. "As subjective as this sounds, it is nevertheless inescapable.

[Wait a minute I just escaped it . . . ]

If any of this is troublesome, it may be because we have not adequately grappled with the implications of God himself giving us Scripture in context."

[The only troublesome aspect is your erroneous conclusions that context means relativism.]

Well, of course it is going to be troublesome, and Enns, who knows the evangelical community well, is perfectly aware of it.

[Obviously he didn’t know it well enough to realize that this book was going to get him canned.]

But Inspiration and Incarnation makes clear that Scripture, like the Incarnation itself, is a scandal: like Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the wise. It takes ancient and unreal images, like the lion and the lamb together, and demands that we look back on them with faith in the resurrection of Christ. It claims, against all common sense, that this faith will transform the dead pictures into a living hope. It is loaded with problems and imperfections.

[Did she just say that the Scriptures were loaded with imperfections? My orthodox alarm is going off. . . . Unorthodox alert. . . . Unorthodox alert. Danger! Danger! I could forgive her for all the other crap, but that is in fact heretical. Maybe I misunderstood.]

And it is the Word of God, which means that we must engage in as much prayer as study of Hebrew vocabulary, as much faith as reading up on the history of the ancient world, as much charity (something remarkably lacking in most of the debates over how to read Scripture) as Greek grammar.

[Agreed but no one would disagree with this . . . that is except a strawman.]

It means that when an evangelical scholar like Enns - teaching in an evangelical seminary,

[Not anymore.]

a faithful member of his local church - writes, "There do not seem to be any clear rules or guidelines to prevent us from taking [the process of interpreting Scripture] too far,"

[Only if you completely disregard the Church and her creeds, which unfortunately is all too common for evangelicals. Without Her you are indeed set adrift.]

we must recognize this as an honest and truthful statement of the difficulties

[No difficulties just very bad epistemology.]

rather than an open door to chaos.

[Why wouldn’t this lead to theological chaos. Oh yeah, because of . . . .]

It means, in the end, that we must take incarnation seriously.

[pbbbbbt Whatever that means. For the Ken Hams of the world I’m not really questioning the incarnation. I’m saying that they can not account of nor define the incarnation by their own epistemology, nor explain why this exception has been carved out of their relativistic world.]

Do we know what we are saying when we stand in an American church on a Sunday morning in 2006 and recite, "He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried"?

[Yep. That a real event happened in real time.]

This polished, grammatical, creedal acknowledgment, transmitted to us via centuries of church tradition, of liturgy and Advent custom and carols, of Bible-school illustration and triumphant hymnody, has scrubbed up and made deceptively commonplace the essential weirdness of God becoming man.

[I couldn’t agree more. Christ is all too familiar to us.]

I believe in the Incarnation, but then on the other hand I have never had to stand face-to-face with a grimy, troublemaking, blue-collar worker who claims to be God.

I do have to stand face-to-face with the Old Testament and its excessive, contradictory, harsh, alien texts.

[Did she just say contradictory? Beep . . . .beep . . . There it goes again.]

Enns encourages us to recognize the Old Testament for what it is: the anteroom of the Incarnation, the practice ground where we are brought nose-to-nose with the true difficulty of believing that God ever came to earth.

In Summary: There is no proper way to interpret Scripture, therefore the gloves are off and we can read it however we want to, except curiously that we must believe that Christ came, died, was buried and rose again, beyond that everything is relative. This cleaver attempt at epistemology does two important things. It gives us a sufficiently fuzzy view of Scripture so that we can hold our evolutionary views or whatever other contemporary views we want to hold, at the same time it allows us to avoid falling off the cliff into out right relativism regarding the person and work of Christ (al la liberal theology). It is also rot.

What’s funny at what lengths one will go to justify their beliefs.
What’s even funnier is that Ham seems to completely miss the point. He says this.
“Really—I believe the correct “review” of Enns’ book (which when understood does mean he has a different view of inspiration from that held by orthodox Christians down through the centuries including us at Answers in Genesis) can be summed up by Bible scholar Moises Silva:
If we refuse to pattern our exegesis after that of the apostles, we are in practice denying the authoritative character of their scriptural interpretation—and to do so is to strike at the very heart of the Christian faith.
– Silva, Moises. 1983. “The New Testament Use of The Old Testament: Text Form and Authority,” in D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, eds. Scripture and Truth. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, p. 164.”
Um . . . Ken . . . The whole point of the exercise was that they wanted us to be able to interpret the Scriptures just like the apostles, except whole fact that they are not guided by the Holy Spirit thing.

Origins – The debate and beyond the debate

2011-03-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

What follows is my take on this subject.

1. The study of Origins is not a hard science like say physics or chemistry, where one can conduct an experiment and determine fairly accurately whether a hypothesis is true or false. It like all other soft sciences (e.g. physiology and sociology) gathers a set of data and then attempts to piece together the puzzle. It therefore entails a certain amount of presuppositions, guesswork, conjecture and circumstantial evidence and combines them into a theory that can not by its very nature be tested. This leads to ambiguity.

2. There are usually three types of people involved in this debate:

a. The people who are the strongest advocates of a particular view, most often have an agenda that has nothing to do with the science involved. They are attempting to either bolster their own epistemology or tear down their opponent’s epistemology. The Creationists are advocates of a literal view of Scripture. Most Evolutionists are advocates of materialism. Each views the other side’s position as an attack on their deeply held beliefs. In their quest to justify themselves, they are more than willing to manipulate the data to their own ends, by either overstating their case, creating strawmen of the other side or downplaying or denying their own weaknesses. Unfortunately this is just as true of Christians as it is of non-Christians. Equally unfortunate is the fact that each side as so demonized the other that we have created barriers for any real give and take. It is like a courtroom where one side is bared from presenting its case before the jury. And both sides do this!

b. The real people in the know, the actual scientist, rarely have intimate knowledge the entire picture. They are too busy working on their own little piece of the puzzle, and leave it to the advocates of their particular side to put it all together, which they believe without question.

c. Laymen like me and most likely you, who know almost nothing about the science behind the issues and are usually the first people to argue about this. When we do this we are arguing from complete ignorance. Laymen include people who have read a few books or websites from the advocates above and think they actually “know” something about the subject, when in fact they know next to nothing. Sorry but studying the subject as a living everyday and reading a few books here and there do not equate.

3. This is more of an epistemic battle than a real search for truth.

4. Due to the facts above I have concluded that the entire subject is a morass of goobly goop and it would be extremely difficult to figure out what is and is not true. Therefore I am a functioning agnostic when it comes to origins. I quite simple don’t know. Not that I don’t care. I find the subject extremely fascinating.

Before I move on I want to clearly state that I believe there is a God, who is the tri-personal God described in Holy Scriptures and preached by the Church, and He has created the heavens and the earth. See my earlier posts for why I believe this.

I think everyone, both Christian and atheist, both creationist and evolutionist can agree that given an omnipotent God, by definition, He can create the heavens and the earth through any method He deems fit. So if it is as simple as that, why do we Christians get so hung up on the subject? And how can I as a Christian just simply walk away from the fight, when most other Christians claim that to do so is to undermine the Faith?

As always it has something to do with a difference in our respective epistemologies, our theories of knowledge.

To be continued . . .

On the use of Systematic Theology

2011-03-19T19:57:00.000-07:00

First of all what is systematic theology? Theology is the study of God and His interactions with man. (Along with philosophy (to which it is a close cousin) it used to be called the queen of the sciences not more than a hundred years ago. Theology a science you say? It was the queen of the sciences because without it one could not come to the conclusion of a rational universe in which to study. It was the foundation upon which all the other sciences rest, and why science as we know it could have only arisen from Christendom. But I digress - All of this is a post for another time perhaps.) So systematic theology is a way to systematize or order our knowledge of God in a way that makes rational and logical sense. If you look very closely at my writings you will find that I love order and step by step progression, (One of the reasons why I loved geometry in school.) it’s in my blood, and as a lawyer I was further trained to think this way. So what I am about to say as painful as it is for me to say it, is never the less true.

Our systematic theology no matter how closely we believe it is aligned with Scripture and the Faith is not reality. It may in some small way represent reality, it may dimly approximate reality, but it itself is not reality. It is a tool to vaguely describe the white shores and beyond, that far green country under a swift sunrise. ( I knew that if I tried hard enough that I could get a LOTR reference in here somewhere.) We here in this life see as through a glass but darkly. We can not comprehend the things of God for His ways are far above our ways and His thoughts are far above our thoughts. We should never lose sight of this, as it is a check against our pride. Even the Holy Scriptures are but lisping baby talk from God to His children that are too ignorant, small and weak to even begin to understand all that He is. It is like trying to put together a 100 piece puzzle when you only have ten puzzle pieces. It is fine if you keep your system in perspective, and it does help to more fully understand the things of God, but unfortunately many times the system takes on a life of its own and one begins to assume that those ten piece is the entire puzzle. However, as with all systematic theologies it will break down somewhere, as it is a poor tool at best.

Or to put it in yet another way, we live in a two dimensional world and our systematic theology is a two dimensional tool set to describe a three dimensional object. It is a tool that will describe a ball as a circle, but of course you and I know that a ball isn’t a circle. It is like a circle . . . but not really.

The problem arises when people insist that the circle is the ball, or when we emphasis our understanding of one aspect of God or His dealing with people at the expense of minimizing another aspect. What I am saying is not anti-intellectualism (I believe that we should use what God has given us to the fullest). No, it is the height of intellectualism to realize the limits of the intellect.

Look if God thought that the best way in which to learn about Him and His ways was through systematic theology then He would have given us a systematic theology textbook, and I hate to break the news to everyone, but the Scriptures are not a systematic theology textbook. So stop forcing that square peg into that round hole.

I love Reformed guys, because most of them are logical deep thinkers and they are passionate about the things of God. They have thought about all this theology stuff and generally have some pretty good answers. They have little diagrams for anything and everything that has anything to do with the Faith, but I get turned off when they insist (and they do) that their diagrams are The True Answer. I get turned off because at best their diagrams are a fuzzy approximation of The True Answer, and unfortunately a lot of times their diagrams are down right goobly-goop, because they haven’t come to grips with that reality and their pride has thrown everything off.

THE PROCREATIVE ROAD LESS TRAVELED – THE EXCEPTION THAT BECOMES THE RULE

2011-02-23T21:41:00.000-08:00

It was interesting that I started writing this series and lo and behold Doug Wilson posts this. I want to take a moment to critique Wilson here on this subject. Now I want to say that I highly respect Wilson, and will be the first to admit that I am not worthy to hold Wilson’s intellectual jockstrap as it were. He is a clear thinker amidst a morass of muddled theology and philosophy, and he is not afraid to pursue the truth and change his opinion as a result of that pursuit no matter what the cost. And I agree with most of this article; however, I do have a few quibbles.

There is this argument in some circles that says children are indeed a blessing, and a couple should have as many children as God blesses them with, but only as long as they can raise those children well. Wilson falls into this line of thinking for reasons I will not go into here at this time. I think that this is a cop out, and an exception that can very quickly swallow the rule.

I apologize for the structure of this, but I am a contracts attorney (among other things) and that is how I have been trained. :(

1. Scripture says that children are a blessing and a gift from God - period. There is no caveat to the various statements made in Scripture that say anything about the ability to raise a child well as a litmus test for having more children.

2. God never gives us more than we can handle at the time. A trial is never placed upon us to destroy us, how much more so one of his blessings. He has created us and knows exactly what we can and cannot handle. He may well bring us to the breaking point and He may give us well more than we ever thought we could handle, but His grace is sufficient for us. If we fail in anything that He has given us be it trials or blessings it is never due to our ability, for our ability is directly tied to His ability, but only due to our stubborn refusal to obey Him and His principals. Therefore OBEY HIM and you will handle what He gives you.

3. He brings trials and blessings into our lives to stretch and grow us into the people He wants us to be, this is part of the blessing of children. One refuses this stretching, this sanctification, to one’s determent.

4. The Scriptures do say that children can be a curse to their parents if they are not raised well.

5. This is placed in Scripture not to warn us about having more children than we can handle, for we can handle as many children as God gives us, but to warn that it is our obligation to in fact raise our children well. In other words Proverbs 10:5 is not a warning to parents of the risk of having too many. It is an injunction to parents to do their job.

6. A well raised child should never be defined in terms of the financial costs.

(a) We live in a materialistic culture, and it is difficult for us to view things from God’s perspective. What we really need and what we think we need are two completely different things. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills and He has promised that the children of the righteous will never go hungry. The thought should never be, I know I can’t be righteous so I should only have X kids. No the biblical injunction is to BE RIGHTEOUS! Or be as righteous as it takes to raise the children that God gives you.

(b) To raise a child well is to teach them the faith and build character in their lives. These things cost nothing monetarily. Children do not need the latest gadgets and gizmos. They do not need to live in a McMansion. They don’t need the latest fashions. They do not even need to go to college (Which is a complete scam, but that’s another post.). They definitely don’t need to go to the latest and greatest classically educated private school. Contrary to what a lot of people think, none of these things are essential. Now God knows what you need and He will provide those things to you and for any child He gives you. Consider the lilies of the field . . .

7. The problem is that with all the pressures of our lives, if we allow ourselves this false exception, we will be tempted to take our eyes off of Christ and we will begin to see the storm and all the waves, and the exception will become our excuse and then quickly will become the rule, for it’s in our nature to desire to run when God wants to stretch us.

To be continued . . .

THE PROCREATIVE ROAD LESS TRAVELED - THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

2011-02-12T19:53:00.000-08:00

“Do you honestly believe that you can thwart the will of God?” I said to a friend of mine. “Yes.” Was his simple reply. The discussion was not a deep theological conversation. I was quite simply curious why he had so many kids. Kristie and I had been married for maybe three or four years and we had had two kids at the time fairly close together, and we were wrestling with the topic of when it is ok to prevent. I was becoming more and more nervous (being the nervous sort) about the direction that Kristie was headed on this topic. My argument to her went something like this, if God is sovereign and ultimately He knows and directs what we are going to do, then it doesn’t matter if we prevent or not as whatever we do it was His will for us. He is ultimately pulling the strings and we are merely going along for the ride. Therefore if we prevent, THAT was His will for our lives. It was His will that those children we theoretically could have had should not be born because doesn’t the Bible say that He knew us before we were in our mother’s womb?

It was a thoroughly Calvinistic argument. The problem with it was I am not and never have been a Calvinist. This argument was fundamentally at odds with the rest of my theology and in fact my own experience. You see I knew I was playing fast and loose and I was grasping at theological straws attempting to deny by reason what I knew in my heart was true. I didn’t want to take the road less traveled. It was too hard and required too much trust in God. In short it scared the mess out of me. My wife wouldn’t let me off that easily, and in a loving way repeatedly challenged me. So we continued to talk. It was around this time that my friend invited us over for a meal. His simple statement got me to thinking.

I don’t want to delve too deeply here. I could write an entire book about the interplay between God’s will and man’s, and still not scratch the surface. It is sufficient to say that we do do things that God does not want us to do. For example, God hates sin. It is not His will that we sin against Him for that would make God the author of evil. Yet we still sin every day. Of course God is not surprised by our sin, and He somehow weaves that strand into His redemptive work and that is His will. (I really do want to finish my thinking on God’s sovereignty and the “Reformed” faith. . .) In theology we call what God requires of us His Prescriptive Will, and we call what God allows His Permissive Will. So in some sense everything that happens in this universe is His Permissive Will, He has the power to stop it and yet He permits it to happen. In another sense there are certain things God tells us we must do, this is His Prescriptive Will. In this sense He only wills that which is good. C.S. Lewis presents it much better than I could so I will quote him here.

“Christians, then, believe that an evil power has made himself for the present the Prince of this World. And, of course, that raises problems. Is the state of affairs in accordance with God’s will or not? If it is, He is a strange God, you will say; and if it is not, how can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power?
But anyone who has been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another. It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, ‘I’m not going to go and make you tidy the schoolroom every night. You’ve got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.’ Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate. That is against her will. She would prefer the children to be tidy. But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy. The same thing arises in any regiment, or trade union, or school. You make a thing voluntary and then half the people do not do it. That is not what you willed, but your will has made it possible.”

What my friend was saying that night is that of course we can thwart God’s Prescriptive Will, and it was his contention that we do so when we are not open to receive the blessing of children in our lives. That God sometimes desires to bless us in certain ways, it is His prescriptive will, but we always have the free will to say no this blessing, this is His permissive will. This fact in no way undermines God’s ultimate sovereignty. Of course this refusal is only to our own detriment and the detriment of those around us, even if it outwardly appears to not be the case. God’s ways are not our ways. God has placed on us a great responsibility to do the right thing and not only us but others are affected when we fail in this.

I let the remains of my inconsistent Calvinistic tendencies go. I couldn't hide in my theory of the sovereignty of God. However, I walked away still unconvinced, as I had some other arguments up my sleeve. To be continued . . .

THE PROCREATIVE ROAD LESS TRAVELED - INTRODUCTION

2011-02-11T20:17:00.000-08:00

As I write this my wife is pregnant with our eighth child. She is presently suffering through tremendous bouts of morning sickness which last all day long. Based on past experience she will be sick for at least the next 6-10 weeks. It is not easy to wake up each morning for weeks on end and feel like your world is crumbling down around you. She crawls (and sometimes it is literally crawling) out of bed to the bathroom where she dry heaves for the next thirty minutes. Then she crawls to the couch where she lays in abject misery until nighttime, futilely trying to school and get control of seven children who are running around acting . . . well . . . like children. For my part I have not been the most understanding husband. I have in the past criticized her and gotten angry at her for her lack of mobility. I have been weighted down with the burden of caring for my wife, the children, the farm and trying to maintain a law practice. Needless to say I don’t do this cheerfully or well. I say all of this to show you that what we are doing is not an easy thing. I understand why someone would look at us and say Thanks but no thanks. Year after year we repeatedly endure this every 18-24 months, and I could further go on and on about the trials and tribulations of raising a large family. It is tough hard work. Not only that, but our entire culture is geared to go against what we are doing. It is tough to swim against the cultural current.

I say all of this not to get a pat on the back from you or your sympathy, but to dispel this notion that all of this somehow comes easy to us. I am here to tell you that it does not. We are not some magical family. My wife and I are no saints. We fail our kids and each other on a daily basis. There are not too many days that goes by that I don’t question my sanity. So why do we go through this? Why we have so many children?

I first want to say that I know that this is a sensitive topic for a lot of people and I do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I can not explain the why without telling the entire truth, and the truth is divisive at times. So if you are easily offended then stop reading right now.

Now that the rest of us have tough skins, the second thing I want to say is that this is mainly written to Christians. It is not as if non-Christians will not understand what follows, you can enjoy the ride but there are several presuppositions that I will take for granted with my readers, which unless you have had the same grounding, may feel like entering a strange and foreign land.

Thirdly, this topic should not be approached willy-nilly but with tremendous trepidation and deliberateness. Aside from your personal salvation this is perhaps the most important decision you will make in your entire life. It is more important than choosing an occupation or a house and even a spouse. Those things are temporal. In procreation we are taking partnership with God in creating not a temporal life in the here and now, but an eternal and immortal being. My friend forever is a long time. If that is not weighty enough, you are also creating in this child the potential for future generations of immortal beings. The ramifications of your actions and/or non-actions will be felt not only on this earth but throughout all eternity. This is heady stuff not to be taken lightly.

To be continued . . .

Infant Baptism

2011-02-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

History:

Infant baptism was instituted by Christ and taught by the Apostles as part of the faith once for all entrusted to the saints. This practice was then carried on by the disciples of the Apostles down through the ages to the present for the vast majority of the Church. It was a universal and accepted practice of the Church and never something that was a controversy as far as I can tell until the 16th century. During the early part of the Reformation there arose a radical wing that sought to remove all vestiges of Roman Catholicism from their churches and quite simply through their erroneous epistemology threw the baby out with the bath water. These men called “Anabaptists” or “re-baptizers” held the mistaken belief that all authority should be stripped from the Church, and unless a doctrine was clearly shown (When I say "clearly" I mean "Thou Shalt . . ."; at least for their pet issues.) to be in Scripture it should be done away with (this epistemology of course led to the disunified mess we find the modern church in today). Of course they did not consistently apply this standard partly because it is logically impossible to do, and partly because they had some favorite doctrines they were unable to part with. They taught that only adult believers should be baptized, and all infant baptisms were of no effect, thus to need to rebaptize members and thus the name with which they were labeled. This radial skepticism of everything that had to do with the Church while understandable in the era in which they lived, led them to nail their theology on a chain of logical links that was attached to a hook firmly affixed to thin air. This is an excellent example and should serve as a warning of why we today must never put all our theological eggs in one historical period, but take into consideration the vast expanse of the theology of the Church as a whole.

Who Baptizes Infants:

The entire Church baptized its infants until approximately 450 years ago, Eastern, Western and Oriental. Most of the Church still does to this day. Only in the Western church in the past 450 years has there been any challenge to this practice. Most of the Western Church except Baptists, Churches of Christ and most Pentecostals (I’m sure there is more but I can’t think of anyone else here.) still practice infant baptism.

Theology:

I’m admittedly shaky on these points, but I’ll give it a go. According to the Roman Catholics baptism regenerates the individual and removes the taint of original sin, which allows the child to be received into the Church. For the Reformed Faith, the New Testament Church is merely a continuation of the Old Testament Church. Much like the Eucharist is a continuation of the Passover Feast, Baptism is a continuation of the rite of circumcision. Throughout the history of God dealing with His people, He works through covenants. Baptism is God’s sign of the New Covenant, which is placed upon all the covenant members of His Church. Since Reformed reject the notion that we come to God (And no we do not sing “Just as I am”.), baptism is not a sign for us to show God that we believe, but a sign placed upon us by God to show us that we are His. In God’s economy He always does the initiating. Since circumcision was done to infants so baptism is done to infants. As for the other parts of the Church I haven’t the foggiest notion what their theology is. I would guess that the Eastern Orthodox would claim it is a mystery and leave it at that, but I do not know.

Summary:

To be honest I haven’t delved deeply into the theology because the epistemological argument is so powerful for me, and because this part of theology doesn’t really jazz me all that much.

AUTHORITY

2011-02-01T17:54:00.000-08:00

Since everything ultimately rises to the level of a question of authority. I thought I’d quickly state mine before I move on to more controversial statements of what I believe, that way you will know where I come from. I will state that I have not found any other viable epistemological system to account for our knowledge which answers all the questions that such systems inevitably raise. For me this comes the closest.

1. There exist in the world various ancient historical documents.

2. Some of these historical documents speak about a man called Jesus Christ.

3. Through the age of these historical documents relative to their composition and the shear volume of existing manuscripts spread across the then known world, we can be sure that these accounts of Christ are more accurate than any other works of ancient history. In other words they accurately depict what real eye witnesses said they saw and heard concerning the life and teaching of Jesus. Other ancient manuscripts depict the radical result that Jesus’ teaching and life had on His followers which subsequently transformed the society in which they lived. This moment of a dozen or so peasants from Palestine so dramatically changed history that the world was never the same again.

4. Due to this testimony of the events surrounding Christ’s life, death and resurrection, I have believed what Jesus has said about Himself.

5. One of the things which Jesus claimed to do while here on earth was to establish a Church. This Church is described as both the mystical Body and Bride of Christ who will be with Him in heaven (the invisible church) and a real earthly institution with real authority to determine doctrinal issues and solve real problems within the Church (the visible church).

6. In a perfect world these two aspects of the Church would overlap perfectly; however since this world is not perfect these two aspects of the Church sometimes vary dramatically.

7. This unified Church mysteriously hears the voice of the shepherd and knows the mind of God, and just because the two aspects of the Church do not line up completely does not in any means take away from this reality.

8. We look in history for the existence of this Church, and we find through other ancient documents that this Church did indeed come into existence, and did indeed speak on a myriad of topics and has subsequently been accepted by all true followers of Christ.

9. One of the many things this Church believed it received from God was the Canon of written Scripture, and over the course of a few centuries with relatively few and minor problems that Canon became settled and universally held. Through this whole process the Church believed that it had heard the voice of her Bridegroom, and that this was a mystery.

11. We also know through ancient documents that this Church met from time to time and established certain creeds and statements to which the Church eventually universally ascribed. And even though this process appeared outwardly to be politicized and unguided, God directs His church in mysterious ways, and through all of this the Church believed that it had heard the voice of the Bridegroom.

12. It is a universal belief of the Church that man is fallen. It is my belief that if left to himself, man will twist and misapply the Scripture to serve his own ends, as we have seen repeatedly in our own time. This is why we need one another and more importantly all those saints who have gone before to counter this tendency. It is the Church both past and present which is the pillar and ground of the truth; and therefore, it is mainly in and through the context of the Church (and through its creeds, catechisms and confessions) that the Scriptures are to be correctly interpreted. This Church is the universal Church which stretches across all cultural and historical boundaries. This is the Faith once for all entrusted to the saints.

13. It is incumbent to anyone interpreting Scripture outside of these well settled universal beliefs to provide extraordinary proof of their error. The burden rests squarely on the individual who raises novel doctrines and/or beliefs to show that they are indeed correct. This should be an extraordinarily high burden to carry.

WHY I AM NOT REFORMED – Part One - Introduction

2011-01-22T12:25:00.000-08:00

Once again this is an exercise in getting my thoughts down on paper. I presently am a member of an Orthodox Presbyterian Church which is solidly in Reformed on its theology. For the uninitiated few that will actually read this, notice that I capitalized the word “Reformed”. This is because this is a particular branch of Christian theology better known as Calvinism. It was born out and developed from the teaching and writings of John Calvin and his immediate followers. The key tenant or doctrine of Reformed thinking is the sovereignty of God. Even though I attend a Reformed church, I am not Reformed in my theology. This is my attempt to explain why, and utterly bury any thought of serving my church in any leadership capacity.

Before I am labeled a heretic (for the Truly Reformed I know that’s already too late) at the outset of this post I want to affirm a few things: I believe in the sovereignty of God. I believe in God’s predestination and election. I believe that the Scriptures are God’s holy and inspired Word. I believe in all the statements made in the ancient creeds. I believe that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ to the glory of God. With that said let me briefly list why I am not Reformed, and then I will go forward in more detail in the future. Here are my ten indictments:

1. It stems from wrong epistemology and philosophy which was formulated as a medieval European overreaction to a corrupted Roman church and then misapplied to Scriptural interpretation.

2. It is quite simply not historically orthodox Christianity.

3. It fails to take into consideration the whole counsel of Scripture.

4. It sets up one doctrine against equally valid and true doctrines, and interprets the rest of Scripture through this unnatural grid.

5. It tends to make the Christianity into a system of logical diagrams to be intellectually affirmed, and fails to accept the mystery of the Faith.

6. It ironically takes the transcendent Creator and places unwarranted temporal restrictions upon Him in order that we temporally limited creatures might more adequately comprehend His ways, instead of just accepting the fact that we just cannot begin to fathom the depths of an eternal God.

7. It reduces man to a mere automaton, but in complete contradiction still treats him as a morally responsible agent.

8. It fails to adequately address the problem of evil as it inevitably makes God the author of evil.

9. It puts a chill on prayer and evangelism.

10. It tends to creates in its adherents the deadly vice of pride.

How’s that for a start. As always I’m open for debate.

IT’S NEVER AS SIMPLE AS IT SEEMS

2011-01-07T20:12:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine ask me the other day what I thought about praying to the saints, so I decided to write out my thoughts and of course place them on the internet so that all might ridicule them. First of all I want to stress that I personally do not and have never prayed to any saints (I find it hard enough to pray to God, let alone to any extra individuals.). So in the face of what I am about to say, in practice I am Protestant through and through. Part of the reason for this is that I have not completely bought the arguments I am about to express. Of course most Protestants have thought very little about the topic if at all, and I hadn’t really either until about seven years ago when I was exposed to Catholic theology. Prior to this, if I had thought about the practice at all, it was to dismiss it with a wave of the hand for the following reasons:

1.) The practice is not found in the Bible and there is no argument from Scripture for its practice.

2.) Praying is an act of worship and if we know anything about theology we know that God takes a dim view of worshiping anything but Him.

3.) It arose from the corruption of the medieval church as it began to cater to the polytheistic pagan practice of having a god for every activity, event and item; and

4.) The only reason that Catholics do it today is because they are just following the tradition of their parents and grandparents and haven’t really thought about it too deeply. Of course I could have been more wrong on all accounts.

Because I like to think things through let’s take a look at it one step at a time, and one argument at a time.

1. In Christian theology the term “saint” is used to define any person who is a true believer in Christ. The Church universal is right now made up of the saints, both past, present and even future. Saints don’t cease to be saints after they die. In some sense the Triumphant and Eternal Church Universal is even now seated with Christ in the throne room of God. (Ephesians 2:6)

2. The term “pray” is a rather archaic term that originally meant in English to ask or request. The term is still used in courtrooms to this day when we pray the court to enter a judgment in our favor.

3. So in essence, to pray to the saints is to request something from a fellow believer. Praying can be an act of worship, but it mustn’t automatically be so.

4. Why seek the prayers of fellow saints? In God’s economy, we are commanded to pray for one another, (James 5:16) and in fact the verse goes on to say that the prayers of a righteous man can accomplish much. James 5:16. So we should be seeking out the prayers of righteous men. So why not seek out the prayers of righteous men that have gone before?

5. Doesn’t the Bible prohibit communing with the dead? But Christ through His resurrection conquered both sin and death. “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me will live even if he dies.” John 11:25. God is not the God of the dead, but the living. (Matthew 22:32; Mark 12:27; and Luke 20:38) If Christ broke down the barrier of death, why do we seek to re-erect it?

6. Can the saints in heaven really know what is happening on Earth, can they hear our requests to pray for us? Absolutely! We are surrounded by a great crowd of witnesses, who are watching us and who are cheering us on to finish the race. Hebrews 12:1-2

7. Didn’t The Roman Catholic Church invent the practice some time in the Middle Ages after incorporating pagan beliefs? There is evidence that the belief that the dead do in fact pray for the living is quite an early one. Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John was one of the first martyrs of the Christian faith. He was sentenced to death by the Emperor Trajen, and was thrown to the Lions in the Roman Coliseum around 108 A.D. The believers who were with him described seeing a vision of Ignatius after his death praying for them. In fact both the Oriental Orthodox (which split with the Catholic Church in 451 AD) and the Eastern Orthodox Churches (which split with the Roman Catholic Church in 1054 AD) have the same beliefs. It is safe to assume that prayer to the saints arose sometime prior to these splits.

8. Why doesn’t the Bible come out and specifically address the issue? Mainly because the New Testament was not written as a systematic theology textbook that clearly and distinctly addresses each and every theological point of doctrine. There are hints in the verses cited above; logically it makes sense from things we do know from Scripture; the Church very early on apparently believed it; and there is nothing in Scripture that strictly prohibits it.

That in a nutshell is the Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox/Oriental Orthodox defense. You and I might not buy it, but it is worth more thought than a roll of the eye and a wave of the hand, nor I do I believe that we have any right to condemn anyone who partakes of this practice. Who knows, they may be right.

Epistemology

2010-09-12T18:25:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been listening to a CD series regarding the Scriptural defense of a concept called “theonomy”. I have also been reading a blog regarding the Scriptural defense of a concept called “two kingdoms or 2K theology”. They both entail an attempt to come to grips with just how far we as Christians impact our civil government. Both positions are diametrically opposed to one another. Never fear my purpose in raising this issue is not to discuss the merits of either. What is important for this discussion is that both of these views are espoused by individuals in the “Reformed” world, sincere God-fearing men who would agree on most fundamental precepts of the Faith and who have rigorously studied the Scriptures on this particular point and yet come to very different conclusions on the matter. I bring this up, because this is an illustration of a much deeper problem for Christianity.

It doesn’t take much study in Christianity to discover that one can find people who honestly and sincerely believe and call themselves Christians, who will disagree with each other on just about every single aspect of the Faith. Why is this? What I have found is that the differences almost always come down to differences in fundamental epistemological presuppositions. What in the world is a fundamental epistemological presupposition you ask? Well let me tell you. Epistemology is the philosophical study of the method we use to determine what is true. Presuppositions are unquestioned assumptions about how things are, that we typically inherit from our parents and the culture in which we live. So epistemological presuppositions are assumptions about how we as individuals determine what is and is not true, how we relate to the world around us. These are usually not thought through and are unquestioned. Unfortunately a wrong epistemology can have disastrous consequences, as there really is no more fundamental question than this. Everything we believe about the world and ourselves is founded upon our epistemology. Something we completely take for granted dictates to us how we think about everything.

If we do not have a clear and coherent epistemology, even the most rigorous logic is like a link of chains firmly attached to a hook which is mounted to nothing but thin air. If we don’t have our fundamental epistemology correct everything else that flows from this will be off. Like the source of a stream which can be misdirected into a completely different direction, so to if we are off on this one point it can have great and unintended consequences.

Apologetics Conclusion

2010-02-14T17:56:00.000-08:00

I’m now going to attempt to conclude my thoughts on the topic of apologetics. We have given good evidence that a Supreme Being which we call God is in fact real. We have theorized that if He is real more than likely He has in His own way revealed Himself in some way. We have further postulated that this revelation has been going on from the beginning and that if there is a revelation we should see evidence of it from the past. We have laid out several reason why the Christian Gospel could be the source of this revelation, and have looked at it more closely. We see that there is evidence that the historical written record of the events is an accurate depiction from eye witnesses of the events surrounding the life, death and resurrection of a man called Jesus of Nazareth. We have not one or two of these independent accounts but four, which remarkably agree in all but the smallest details (and even those discrepancies can be explained). These eye witnesses tell a story that by all accounts would be accurately described as a complete fairy tale or fantasy. The problem with this is that this is not a “Once upon a time” type of story. These events are firmly grounded in the history of the world, and they began a little over two thousand years ago and have dramatically impacted that history. Virtually everything we know about Jesus is derived from these four sources. Any so called scholar who has criticized the content of these four sources is doing so out of pure speculation and their own presuppositions not out of any real contrary evidence. Given the story of the gospel and its apparent reliability, what do we do with the man called Jesus Christ and further what do we do with the Gospel message itself. If anyone has really read the four gospels one cannot come to an honest conclusion that this was merely a good teacher. No one who did the things he did and said the things he said could be considered this. He quite simply claimed to be God, and was killed by the leading religious authorities of the time because of this. Therefore Jesus Christ was either an abject liar, a complete lunatic or he was who he said he was. There have been various books that have expounded on these topics in more detail, most notably Lewis’ Mere Christianity. I will not go further than this except to say that there is very good argument that Jesus was in fact who he said he was, and in fact backed up this claim by raising from the dead. The question for the past two thousand years has been: “Who do you say that I am?” If you haven’t guessed by now I believe that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of the living God.

I will not for now write further on the topic of apologetics. I just wanted to give a brief foundational summary of my views on Christianity before I build upon that foundation. I will admit that I have not given this adequate attention and have left some holes in my arguments that one could probably drive truck through and it will probably leave some with more questions, but Christian apologetics is quite frankly not my thing. If you have questions feel free to post and I will attempt to respond, but you would probably do well to read up on the topic. A good start is reading Mere Christianity by Lewis or Orthodoxy and Everlasting Man by GK Chesterton. In the future I will be dealing more with the general history of the church and attempting to answer the questions of what is this thing is that is called the Bible, where it came from and how I believe we can correctly interpret it, as well as a related question of how then shall we live in light of the gospel in the areas of government, individual, church and family. In other words from here on it will be more interesting to Christians than non-Christians. In any event I hope you come back.

Are the written records of the Gospel historically accurate? Part 2

2009-07-25T21:55:00.000-07:00

So we have now pushed back the timeline of when the Gospel message could have been written or tampered with to the earliest existing complete manuscript around 200AD. Let’s move on to the next arguments. Argument – The four Gospels were written or tampered with during the period between 200AD (the date of the last known manuscript) and 100AD (the death of the last man to actually be an eye witness of the events recorded in the Gospels). Response – If the Gospels obscured the real story of the teaching of merely a Galilean rabbi named Jesus and changed it into the religion of the Son of God during this time, it doesn’t solve the problem of the existence of the church prior to this change. If the subsequent generations of Christians believed that he was nothing more than a Jewish philosopher, what was the whole point of having a following in the first place, a following that lasted not only after His death but also the death of the His immediate followers. Logically there should have been no grand and great following to even concoct such a scheme. Secondly there would have been no motive present to the leadership of the early church to disregard the original message of Jesus and the Apostles and create something new out of thin air, other than to potentially control the laity. Typically in a cult the leadership in power seeks to control others for some kind of personal gain. What possible personal gain did the leadership get here in changing the message? They would have known that the only logical outcome of the creation of this new pseudo-religion would be to be subsequently killed by Rome. Why make up a story that is just going to get you killed, and why stick to that story even in the face of certain death? The people being put to death were not just the laity, but reached all the way up to the highest leadership. Some people are stupid, but that would really be a colossal case of stupidity on a grand scale. Additionally, they had no way of exercising any physical control over their members as they all lived in the much broader context of the Rome world. In other words they couldn’t quarantine their followers off from the rest of society and brainwash them like modern cults, as most of them where little more than slaves themselves, they quite simply had no means to do so. No, they acted as if they really and truly believed the story that they were telling others, and back that belief up with their very lives. Another problem with this theory is that the Christian following even at the end of the first century (around 100AD) was extremely broad, reaching throughout the Roman empire and into the Middle East. Again the conspiracy had to be well coordinated, leaving virtually no evidence of Jesus’ true original message, and being very very through in getting everyone to agree with the new message, with no hint of dissent among the ranks. A hundred years is not a long period of time for a wide spread, technologically inferior (where it might have taken many years to even get one message across the breadth of the known Christian world), oppressed people to create a new story, wipe out all evidence of the original story all without anyone standing up and saying “This is a bunch of bunk. That’s not the story that was originally told to me.” For this type of conspiracy to work it would have had to had taken place almost at the very beginning when there were very few followers who knew what was going on and all of those followers were in the same general geographical location. Argument – What about the other gospels and writings which the church attempted to destroy and in some cases did in fact destroy? They clearly show a different message other than the one which became the official version of the story. Response – While I don’t want to spend time debunking each and every Gnostic gospel produced during this time period (although others have), I will say that the existence of these writings do not help the skeptics’ case at all, as each one of these alternative gospels all claim even more extraordinary things about Jesus than the “official story”. The fact that these gospels were discredited shows that the early church was concerned about the purity of the real story, and not on subsequent embellishments of that story. And even the writings that were destroyed there exists evidence that they in fact at one time existed, in that we have the written record of the early church’s arguments against them. There is simply no evidence, none, that anyone believed that Jesus was just merely a man who merely had a few witty things to say.
So we have now established that for the “change the Gospel” conspiracy theory to work it must have happened very early as Christianity spread rapidly both in numbers and geographically. I believe that we can safely push the timeline back to the original Apostles. Argument – Paul and/or the other first generation Jesus followers (the Apostles) made up the story found in the four gospels to create a new religion. Response – To respond to this, one must understand the Jews and the Jewish history up to this point in time. The Jewish people were fiercely monotheistic, more so than any other culture in existence at the time. Monotheism had been hammered into to them for several hundred years prior to the events of the first century. There was a messianic expectation, but it was viewed as more of a political salvation from whoever was ruling over them at the time. It was never thought to be a spiritual messiah who would come, nor one who would claim to be the very Son of God. The Apostles as well as Jesus were steeped in this Monotheistic culture. They knew very well that if they proclaimed Jesus raised from the dead and as the Son of God, they would at the very least be completely ostracized, and more than likely they would be dead men. Why would they say these things unless they actually believed it? Why would they have changed the story at all? What motivation would they possibly have? To quote Mark Shea “[People who raise these types of arguments ask] us to believe that the Misunderstood Sage of Nazareth was a figure so riveting, charismatic, and mesmerizing that he galvanized a movement of deeply devoted disciples into ignoring everything he said and did, utterly forgetting his unforgettable oratory and replacing it with reams of quotations and stories about him having the historical value of a fever dream. It proposes that, though he never walked on water or calmed a storm, the Jesus of modernism is nonetheless a miracle worker of sorts. Simply by uttering a few sketchy epigrams about being nice, this itinerate preacher (who did not, we are assured, make claims of deity, multiply loaves, raise the dead, or even compose the “Lord’s Prayer”) managed to transform pious Jewish monotheists into men who willingly blasphemed the God he preached by deifying this Nazarene cipher. So deeply inspired by the awesome figure of Jesus were they that, out of profound reverence for Him, they obliterated virtually every trace of his memory and substituted in its place the ingenious fabrication called the gospel.”
On top of all of this, we are asked to believe that all of the Apostles spent the rest of their lives working feverishly and endlessly to promote this lie and eventually, every single one of them died for this lie that they had made up. Not only were they stupid enough to die for something that was an out and out lie, but they didn’t even have the smarts to make themselves look good in the story that they made up. I mean if one is going to change a story to one so preposterous as claiming that a mere human was in fact the Son of God to a fiercely monotheistic culture, the least they could do was make themselves out to be some sort of sub-gods or at least competent individuals. However, in the Gospel story, almost all the Apostles come across as bumbling idiots. You have Peter the leader of the Apostles, sticking his foot in his mouth time and time again. Not only that, but they created a story were he denies that he even knew Jesus on three separate occasions. In this false story, Peter is also called Satan by Jesus, Thomas doubts that Jesus actually raised from the dead, you have women (an unreliable source from the first century perspective) as the first eye witnesses to the resurrection, James and John start an ego induced grab for power, and Jesus has to repeatedly call them all out on their abject stupidity. Does this sound like a story that men would just make up about themselves to sell a new religion of which they are the leaders, unless they believed it to be true? It appears from all honest evaluations that the Gospel story is a brutally honest record of what the Apostles believed actually happened, even at the expense of portraying themselves poorly. They didn’t sugar coat anything.

So in the end we have a historical record to which all logic and evidence points is an accurate description of what the Apostles believed they saw and heard 2000 years ago. There is no other reasonable theory which can be presented, which covers all the evidence or lack thereof.

Are the written records of the Gospel historically accurate? Part 1

2009-07-24T21:55:00.001-07:00

First of all let me define my terms here. When I speak of the Gospel, I mean that story which is relayed in the four writings of the Christian Bible which are called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. There are two ways in which the historicity and therefore the accuracy of the Gospel are attacked. The first is through attacking the content of the Gospel. This method goes something like this, the historical records were actually the memoirs of the experiences of the immediate followers of Christ, but they either lied about what really happened or grossly misunderstood what Christ really said and/or meant. The second is through attacking the authorship and/or the chain of evidence of the gospels. This method goes something like this, the four written records are not written by the people who are accredited as authors, but were written well after the fact to justify the beliefs of a weird emerging Jewish sect, or that during the mists of time the nefarious church in order to retain the mind control over its people changed the historical record to cover up the truth and to more accurately fit the church’s message, al la Dan Brown.

[Before I do so I want to make one caveat. Once again I am merely treating these documents as historical for now. I am not attempting to claim that they are the very Word of God. They may contain the story of God’s revelation to man, but I am treating them as if they themselves are not that very revelation. For now I can dismiss the claim against them, that the four stories seemingly contradict one another on minor points (I do believe that one can reconcile the Gospel stories, but that this is beyond the scope of what I am attempting to do at this point in time), as they need not agree 100% in every detail to be generally historically accurate. For example one does not need to reconcile the fact that Christ is recorded to have said “X” in one Gospel account and “X + Y” in another Gospel account; if we treat the written records like we treat all other historical records, there is abundant historical evidence in the Gospels that Christ for example in fact existed. In other words the differences (if there are any at all) are petty differences in the overall arch of the historical story line. Ironing out these minor differences is important only if one is claiming that the Gospels themselves are inspired and infallible, which I am not doing at the moment. Ok I will stop beating that dead horse.]

Let’s see if these arguments stand up to scrutiny. Let’s work our way backwards chronologically. Argument - Sometime during the middle ages the Church changed what was written in the Gospels to a message more in line with its teaching. Response – We have literally thousands of written historical manuscripts (copies of the original) that date back before the Middle Ages that were located all across Europe and the Middle East. Argument – Those manuscripts must have all been tampered with in some grand conspiracy. It is helpful to know a little history for this. From about 800 AD until 1500AD (of course after 1500 the church has split even more) the nefarious Church was effectively split between two factions, which did not particularly care for one another. So in order for this to happen the two halves of the Church had to agree on the exact changes to be made across thousands of miles and inform each monastery, university and local church, some of which were at the very outpost of human civilization, in fact anywhere there was a manuscript of the Bible, to change hundreds and thousands of hand written manuscripts, of a book which these people held to be the unchangeable Word of God. Not missing a one tucked in a library somewhere forgotten. All of this must have been done without one shred of evidence of the change or of the conspiracy to the modern observer. Not only that but it doesn’t explain the existence of the church itself. If they didn’t believe that Christ was who He claimed to be what was the whole point of the Church to begin with. This is a little hard to believe to say the least. Argument – Ok so maybe there wasn’t a grand conspiracy. Maybe the monks just made small little mistakes here and there and it started to add up over the course of time. Response – We have over ten thousand manuscripts from various time periods and regions of the world all of which are 98 % accurate with each other. None of the scribal errors deal with any point of Christian doctrine. In other words the errors that did occur are on minor points, like misspellings etc. Argument – Well we must go back further before the Middle Ages to see where the manuscripts were changed. Response – The earliest complete manuscript of the Gospel of John is around the early third century that is around 200 AD, and we have portions of manuscripts that date back another 75 years to around 125AD. So if there really was a change in the message of the church it had to have happened prior to this. Argument – Ah Ha! Your complete manuscripts only go back to around 200AD, and you don’t have the originals. So they can’t be proven to be historically accurate. Response – While we do not have the originals the manuscripts we do have are closer to the date of the originals than any other book of antiquity. For example, most for books of antiquity from around the same period the closest manuscript we have to the original is around 900 years. So if we claim the Bible is not historical due to this relatively small gap in the line, then we would have to throw out virtually every book written before 500AD as unhistorical. So we have now pushed the time line of when the church could have changed the Gospel message back through the Middle Ages, back through Christianity being named as the official religion of the Roman Empire, back through even Constantine and the Edict of Milan, which prohibited the persecution of Christians, all the way back to 200AD, which is important because during this time Christians were being killed for their beliefs by Rome.

To be continued . . .

Thomas

Let’s start with one historical record in particular

2009-07-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

A quick recap, we have established that there are hints in how the universe was made and works that point to some form of Supreme Being that is a part of the supernatural realm, hints that are based upon well established scientific principles. We have established that if there is this Supreme Being it does us no good to speak about Him if He has not in fact revealed Himself to us. We postulate that He has in fact spoken to us and we have attempted to uncover how He has done so. We have postulated that the best place to look is in the experiences of all the people who have lived prior to us, and particularly in the written historic record which they have left us. We have determined that we should not dismiss this written record merely because it was written in the past and speak about supernatural events. We don’t dismiss all evidence a priori of the historic record of the supernatural without being at the very least disingenuous.

Now when one is looking for evidence of anything, one should logically go first to the most impressive and substantiated claims. There just happens to be a body of historical work that explains a story of God revealing Himself to us that has captured the hearts and minds of the people who have heard it so much so that it has changed one of the mightiest empires on earth without its adherents fighting one battle, as well as every kingdom and people group that came into contact with it, after that empire fell. It continually makes its presence felt in so many ways even to this day that to not have any knowledge of it would leave one totally unable to function in the Western world. It has been much maligned, but also much imitated, so much so that a vast majority of the people in the world have at the very least felt its influence if only in a secondary way. If there is in fact a revelation from God one could surmise that these historical records might contain at least a portion of this revelation from these facts alone. At the very least we should start here in our quest to see if this Supreme Being has in fact revealed Himself to us. Of course I am speaking about the written historic record which contains the story Christians call the Gospel.

Now note that I have not claimed that these historical records which contain the Gospel are themselves the revelation of God, but merely postulate that they tell a rather interesting story of the supernatural reaching down to us, a story that has in fact fundamentally changed millions and dare I say billions of people’s lives and the very course of history itself. These are facts no one can deny. Now there have been many people that have claimed that because they contain supernatural events and make rather extra-ordinary claims about one person in particular that they are of course not accurate as historical documents; however, let’s look at them purely as historical documents for the moment, and see if this claim holds up.

Thomas

Mistakes, Myths and Possible True Myths

2009-07-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

Ok we have determined that the automatic dismissal of the ancient witness of supernatural events merely because they were stories of the supernatural is not true skepticism. It is an intellectually dishonest refusal to even investigate a claim because of some prior predetermined heretofore unsubstantiated dogma. A true skeptic retains an open mind that the proposition one is being skeptical about may in fact be true, and remains open to all evidence presented. With that said let’s quickly pick apart and narrow down these tales of the supernatural.

I think we can separate most stories of the supernatural into three different groups. The first category I would term the stories of mistake. What do I mean by this? Certain tales of the supernatural can be dismissed due to the fact that people were merely mistaken in their beliefs. We now know that lightening, volcanoes, and earthquakes are not a sign of the angry gods, that comets are not cosmic messengers of doom etc. In other words, these tales were supernatural explanations for what we now know as natural phenomena. We can dismiss these as they are not truly tales of the supernatural.

The second category I would term the stories of myth. These stories are set in some undetermined time in some undetermined place. An example of this is the Greek myths. People may have believed them as true at one time, but they have no ground in history with no one actually witnessing any of the events. We can dismiss these as there is no evidence that they actually happened any more than the tale of Jack and the bean stalk or Cinderella.

The third category I would term the stories of possible true myths. These are the stories of supernatural events that are set in an actual place and an actual time with actual eye witnesses. It is these stories that demand a closer look.

A clue to our search in the unanimous voice of the ancients

2009-06-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

In my prior post I made the statement that if there is a possibility that God exists we have a duty to seek out His revelation of Himself, and we should do this through any and all means we have available to us. One of those means (and I would argue one of the most important means) is through experience, both individual and corporal, and I would add here both past and present. In other words if God exists and He has revealed Himself to us, one of the ways in which He may do so is through the past experiences of others. I say “may” because once again we are not limiting God here. He may not use this method, but my point is that we should at least look here for this elusive divine revelation.

Now the first thing that one will notice when one reads anything at all about history is that it is chalked full of people, corporately and individually, claiming that they have indeed both experienced and understood this divine revelation. Why don’t we all just believe this evidence and move on?

The first argument in dismissing the ancients is the assumption that they are not reliable. The thinking goes something like this: Some people in the past reported experiencing supernatural events. These people must be superstitious goat herders, or worse, they were evil men dishonestly attempting to place superstitious goat herders under their influence, because we all know that supernatural events can’t occur. Therefore they are unreliable. Ergo all people of the past are inherently unreliable whenever they report on something that has a supernatural aspect. Of course this faulty logic is circular as it assumes the very thing that the materialist is attempting to prove. Here is G.K. Chesterton’s take on this same issue:

“The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant’s word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant’s word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant’s story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism—the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence—it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, “Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles,” they answer, “But mediaevals were superstitious”; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say “a peasant saw a ghost,” I am told, “But peasants are so credulous.” If I ask, “Why credulous?” the only answer is—that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland.”

The second argument is to dismiss the ancients due to their lack of knowledge. This argument goes something like this: Since we all know that people in the past believed that disease was caused by evil spirits, we can claim with one hundred percent assurance that when a leper two thousand years ago reported that he was cured of his leprosy a) he was being dishonest b) he was too stupid to understand that his flesh had never been rotting off his bones c) he was too stupid to understand that his flesh was still rotting off his bones or c) there must be some natural explanation that he (being stupid) just didn’t understand (and of course which we don’t understand either). Once again the logic is flawed, the two don’t equate. A lack of knowledge in one area does not equate to a lack of knowledge in another area, nor a lack of intelligence or integrity. Many times we look down our noses at prior generations as if we are somehow evolutionarily superior to them because we carry around iPods or play on a Wii. Even if we assume for the moment that evolution is true, all evolutionist believe that this is a very very slow process. The people of the past that told these stories of divine revelation lived at most 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. I’m sorry but even evolutionist would agree that we have not evolved that much, if at all, in that short span of time. More than likely they were just as intelligent as we are today. The only difference between us and them is that we have been able to stand on their shoulders and build upon the civilization and knowledge they gave us. Let’s stop assuming that they were stupid and/or purposely dishonest and actually read what they have written to assess whether the events they experienced were in fact explainable via natural means or not, and if not give them the benefit of the doubt.

The third argument is to dismiss the ancients due to a lack of consistency. This argument goes something like this: The peoples of the past said different things about God and what God expected from them (except when they were saying the same things, then they were merely stealing ideas from each other). Ergo they were always wrong about every reported supernatural event and especially wrong about the one thing they all agreed on, their belief in a supernatural being.
Of course once again the logic is flawed. Just because the people of the past had contradictory stories of divine revelation doesn’t mean that all of those stories are necessarily wrong in every way. If a teacher asks his class to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and he gets twenty different answers, that does not mean that there is no such thing as the United States or a flag or even a correct way to say the pledge. In fact it may be evidence that there is a flag and country to say the correct pledge to. In the same sense our ancestors all assumed certain general facts. One of those assumed facts was that there was some kind of Supreme Being directing the course of events. We might want to stop here and ask the question why? Was it because they were all just superstitious cavemen? Why is it that men like Dawkins must explain away the “God gene” that everyone seems to have? It might be because almost everyone past and present has this sense of the supernatural. Now many of them may have gotten the specifics wrong, but that does not necessarily mean that the general premise was incorrect. In fact it may mean the exact opposite.

Which brings us to our last hurdle, if a) we should give the ancient witnesses the benefit of the doubt and b) they might not be entirely wrong on all the details; who was right on which details? Stay tuned for my next post.

Thomas

Multiverses and the Uncaused Cause

2009-06-11T15:45:00.000-07:00

I may be wrong after all about the principal of physics differing in different universes. John Wright has the explanation here. By the way he does a much much better job than I could ever dream of doing at describing the uncaused cause principal here. Check it out.

Revelation, Truth and the limitations of Logic or The Problem of the Hidden God – Part Two

2009-06-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

(Note: From this point forward I am going to presuppose the existence of God. While the evidence I have put forward may for some be weak and each individual argument may be attacked and picked apart and may only hold a hint at God’s existence, taken as a whole I think that it creates a pretty good case, and since I am the one writing this blog, I will move on for now.)

While we can’t REQUIRE God to reveal Himself, it is irrelevant to speak of God or His existence if in fact He has not revealed Himself to us and if it is not possible for us in some sense to know what that revelation is. And while, as I said in my prior post, we cannot require Him to reveal Himself in ways which we think He should (ie appearing in a ball of fire in the sky, or subjecting Himself to our lab experiments etc.), we can attempt to seek out potential revelations of Him in and through any and all means at our disposal. In fact I would argue that if we are seeking truth we have a duty to ourselves do so. For if God exists, He is more than merely the maker and creator of the universe, He is the Truth of the universe in the sense that nothing can be properly understood until we have a correct understanding of Him. Knowledge streams out from Him and never apart from Him. Therefore while we, being the created, may never have a full understanding of the Creator or His ways, we should to the extent possible understand what He has revealed to us through the means in which He has revealed it to us. This is merely another way of accepting reality.

Now for the purely skeptical materialist the only way to really know anything is through the use of cold hard logic and reasoning as it is applied it to cold hard empirical facts. This is much like asking a person who has never before seen food to describe the food set before him merely from his sense of sight. While he can describe what he sees, he does not have the full knowledge of what the food is. He must also taste, touch and smell it, and even hear it, if not then what he sees doesn’t really have any meaning to him, it is merely a blur of shapes and colors. In the same way (not exactly in the same way, as most analogies break down at some point) reducing the means of knowledge to just what we can know through our five senses and what can be deduced from this via logic, we have in effect reduced the tools we have at our disposal. It should not be surprising then that we will limit or eliminate our ability to detect God’s revelation of Himself. In fact I would argue that we have reduced knowledge to something completely unintelligible. E.g. How do we know that the very rules of logic are true in order to use them to determine anything from a purely logical standpoint? In other words we either stand on logic as well as other means of knowledge or we stand on nothing. This is why I believe that certain strains of philosophy have dug into a dry well when they have attempted to eliminate these other means as unnecessary or invalid. All means of knowledge complement each other and create in us the certain ability to “know” things. Those means include logic and reasoning, but it also includes (but is not exclusive to) community, intuition, experience (both personal and corporate), emotions and the general acceptance of the fact that we simply don’t know enough to assume that everything is temporal and empirical. To me this is a holistic and the only sane approach to epistemology (the study of knowledge).

Objections to God Part Two - The Hidden God

2009-06-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

The last objection to the existence of God that I will be dealing with for now is what I call the Problem of the Hidden God. The objection comes in many forms, but it almost always boils down to something like this: A. If God does exist; His supreme desire must be for me to believe that He exists. B. The only way for me to believe that He exists, is for Him to reveal Himself to me empirically (in other words through my five senses.) C. He hasn’t revealed Himself in such a way. D. Thus He therefore must not exist.

Let’s take each of these statements in turn and see if they stand up.

A. “If God does exist; His supreme desire must be for me to believe that He exists.” The problem with this statement is that it assumes that God’s desires would be the same as ours if we were in His place. In other words we assume that God, who we are postulating is the eternal, all knowing and all powerful being who created the universe and everything in it with a mere word, would think and behave in the exactly same way as we, who are temporal, ignorant and impotent beings, would. We are also assuming that God exists solely for our own good pleasure. Instead let’s jettison this prideful me centered thinking. I am sorry if this offends some people’s sensibilities, but if there is a God then we most certainly exist for His good pleasure and He can do as He pleases with us. We are the creatures and He is the creator. He has no obligation to us to act in any way that we think He must act. We have no right to make any demands on Him whatsoever. With that said however, the good news is that God does think about us, and wants us to know Him in an intimate way, but it is always on His terms not ours.

B. “The only way for me to believe that He exists, is for Him to reveal Himself to me through my five senses.” In other words we are requiring the God of the universe to submit Himself to our laboratory experiments and empirically prove Himself to us before we will stoop so low as to believe in Him. What prideful arrogance. First of all, do we really want a God who would do this? Would we really believe that such an entity would be in fact God? Secondly, we are assuming here that empirical testing is the only way to determine if something actually exists. This is a thoroughly modernist way of thinking that has been completely discredited and obliterated by post-modern philosophy. Is it true that if we can’t scientifically test something it really doesn’t exist? How does one test for the existence of love or beauty? How about logic or reason? How does one slice that up and look at it in a microscope? No we all believe that these things actually exist without empirically proving them. So what it comes down to for the materialist is not the objection of “The ONLY way for me to believe . . .” for as we have shown we all believe in things outside of this ridged grid, but really the statement in truth is “The EASIEST way for me to believe . . .” and we are all about easy aren’t we? Let’s not dig too deep here. Let’s not try too hard for we have another agenda. If it’s not laid out in front of me and my face shoved in it, it can’t possibly be true. Therefore I can go on my merry way and live how I have always wanted to live. However, if you are willing and do the hard work and are truely seeking out the Truth, you may realize that God has and still does indeed reveal Himself in a myriad of ways (which I will hopefully address in subsequent posts) including giving the empirical hints that I have described in my prior posts. Rarely is anything worth knowing easy to obtain, and the knowledge of God might just be the most precious thing there is, therefore it just might be a little harder to grasp than merely seeing Him with our eyes and slicing Him up for our microscopes, but it is well worth the effort.

C. "He hasn’t revealed Himself in such a way." In the prior paragraph I spoke of a God who would submit Himself to our scrutiny and asked the question would we really believe that such an entity is God. If you are a Christian you must believe that this is exactly what God in fact did. This statement is an unproven assumption which hopefully I will address in later posts.

D. Thus He therefore must not exist. Of course if this statement is based upon prior unproven assumptions and false statements then it might not be true.

The fact of the matter is that just because God can’t be detected by the five senses doesn’t necessarily mean that He doesn’t exist. But if He does exist, why would He hide Himself? I believe that if one were to come face to face with the creator of the universe one of two things would most likely happen. One, we would fall dead in the terror of our sin. We are sinful beings and He is a holy God. We would not be able to withstand even the mere glimpse of His face. So it is out of mercy that He does not fully reveal Himself to us. Or two we would fall involuntarily to our face and give Him the worship that is His due. In other words, He has given us a period of time in which to voluntarily come to Him, and He has hidden Himself (although not entirely) in order that we may still have the free will to reject Him if we so choose. This will not always be the case. There will come a time in the future when He will reveal Himself and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord, but at that time it will be too late.

Objections to God Part One - The Problem of Evil

2008-11-26T14:09:00.000-08:00

One of the most reoccurring issues raised in discussions about God is the problem of the existence of evil. How could an all powerful and all loving God, as the one postulated by Christianity, allow all the evil and suffering in the world? While I do not want to gloss over this important objection to the existence of God, I first want to point out that if there is no God there is no such thing as evil and that is a much bigger problem than the problem stated above.
I have been speaking in generalities up to this point regarding a Supreme Being/God for I believe that most if not all definitions of higher powers could satisfy the prior discussions. Now I will narrow the field of visions of various Supreme Beings put forward by religions across the world. I believe that only the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) really have a good answer for the existence of evil in this world. Once again most other religions deny that evil exists or merely state that evil is in fact an illusion. Only the Abrahamic religions deal with evil head on. I could attempt to give an answer to the problem of evil, but I believe that C.S. Lewis in his Mere Christianity sums up my thinking on this better than I could. (He is focusing on Christianity here but I think it would be fair to state that the things he says could also be applied to Islam and Judaism.)

“Christians, then, believe that an evil power has made himself for the present the Prince of this World. And, of course, that raises problems. Is the state of affairs in accordance with God’s will or not? If it is, He is a strange God, you will say; and if it is not, how can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power?
But anyone who has been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another. It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, ‘I’m not going to go and make you tidy the schoolroom every night. You’ve got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.’ Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate. That is against her will. She would prefer the children to be tidy. But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy. The same thing arises in any regiment, or trade union, or school. You make a thing voluntary and then half the people do not do it. That is not what you willed, but your will has made it possible.
It is probably the same in the universe. God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata – of creatures that worked like machines – would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom in the wrong way; apparently He thought it worth the risk. Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him. But there is the difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on. If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will – that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only move when He pulls the strings – then we may take it it is worth paying.
When we have understood about free will, we shall see how silly it is to ask, as somebody once asked me: ‘Why did God make a creature of such rotten stuff that it went wrong?’ The better stuff a creature is made of – the cleverer and stringer and freer it is – then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong. A cow cannot be very good or very bad; a dog can be both better and worse; a child better and worse still; an ordinary man, still more so; a man of genius, still more so; a superhuman spirit best – or worst – of all.”

That in a nut shell is why I believe that the problem of evil is not really a problem at all.

Tom

Foundations Part Four - Conclusions

2008-11-18T16:41:00.000-08:00

I have given you at least three reasons why I think that belief in a Supreme Being is at least rational if not out and out the only logical choice. I could (and still may in later posts) talk about how beauty, love, truth, logic, rationality and free will, virtually everything we hold dear makes no rational sense in a strictly materialistic universe. It is only though the existence of God that these things really mean anything. Let me reiterate that one cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. It is a matter of faith. For without faith it is impossible to please God. However, contrary to popular thinking, it is not a blind unthinking faith, but a faith based in the reality of creation.

Foundations Part Three - The metaphysical impossibility of deriving an "Ought" from an "Is"

2008-11-16T12:26:00.000-08:00

We all agree that there is evil, injustice and tyranny in the world, that humans from time to time behave in a way that they ought not. They sometimes lie, cheat, steal and murder even though we all know that these things are wrong. We may disagree with the relative wrongness of these actions and what we as a society should do about them; nevertheless we agree that they are wrong. We all agree that certain acts in the past have been evil. Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot for example have been pretty much universally condemned as evil incarnate. However, have you ever contemplated why certain things are viewed as wrong and evil and certain other things are viewed as right or good?

The problem for the materialist is that he has no rational answer to the question. If the materialist is consistent with his own philosophy that there is nothing outside the material universe, he must conclude that we humans are nothing more than random atoms bouncing around space, and the random atoms we label humans can no more commit evil acts than the random atoms labeled a potted plant. In fact evil and good have no meaning in a solely material world. It is ridiculous to even discuss good and evil, right and wrong. Humanity just like the plotted plant just plain is what it is and does what it does. Some random atoms called humans just happen to behave differently than other random atoms we call humans. Do we angrily condemn as evil the dirt for not behaving like most humans? Do we call a super nova wrong for exploding? In a strictly material universe, for some humans to say that other humans ought to behave in such and such a way is the height of irrationality. If he is consistent the only thing that a materialist can say is that he would prefer a person behave in a way that pleases him. Of course the other person can say “I don’t agree with your preferences. I prefer to behave in my own way.” The only way to resolve such a difference is through an exercise of power. Everything is reduced to a power struggle, with the stronger imposing his will on the weaker. If you think that I am over stating the case please remember that the saying “Might makes right” was only coined in the last few decades, as people worked through the logical ramifications of the materialist philosophy. Did you get that? Power creates what ever is good. There is no such thing as innate evil or innate good. Evil and good merely become the reflection of the preferences of the people in power. This is the phylosophy that is being taught in our institutions of higher learning.

Unfortunately for the materialist, evil is real and the materialist can’t pretend forever to live in a world where it is not. Thus even die hard materialist such as Dawkins, Harris and Hutchins condemn things as evil and wrong. They have no basis to do so, but they do so none the less. However, since evil is real, how do we answer the above question? Why are certain things viewed as evil and other things viewed as good? The only answer that makes sense of all the evidence is that there must be a standard higher than what this universe can provide. An absolute truth beyond our finite human wishes and preferrences. If there is a higher standard there must be a higher standard bearer. If there is an absolute truth there must be an absolute truth giver. This is the biggest reason I believe in God, for to believe anything less is to live in a fantasy world that just doesn’t jive with what we know about reality.

Foundations Part Two - The mathematical improbability of life arising out of a purely material universe

2008-11-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

Actually there are at least two different mathematical issues here that have baffled scientist for years. The first is the incredible evidence of the fine tuning of the laws of physics that even allow the existence of the universe as well as life. Picture yourself in a control room full of millions of dials. Each dial represents a law or property of physic or chemistry; laws such as the law of gravity, or the various properties of water. If even one of the million dials is off by one hundredth of one percent, say that gravity was a bit stronger or weaker or the surface tension of water was off just a bit life could not exist, and in many cases the universe itself could not exist. How does a materialist (someone who believes that the material universe is all there is) account for this staggering coincidence that all of these dials just happen to be set at the exact right position? This is a real scientific problem for the materialist; I’m not just over stating the facts. Once again there are many theories out there, but one of the most prominent now-a-days is again string theory. String theory recognizes the gigantic mathematical improbability that our universe is so fine tuned that it can actually exist as well as support life. So what is their answer? Remember the 11 dimensions I mentioned in my last post? In order to deal with the vast improbability, they simply say that these 11 dimensions have created not one universe, but are in the process of creating an infinite number of universes. We just got lucky and live in one whose laws of physics cause it to be able to exist and can support life. Now if you have an infinite number of universes this does solve the mathematical problem; however it raises a whole other issue. How do you prove that there are an infinite number of universes, any more than one can prove that there is say a supreme being that created a finely tuned universe for a purpose?

The second issue is the matter of life arising for pure chance. The DNA of the simplest single celled organism is much like the information contained in a 30 volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica. There was an old analogy that the odds were the same as a monkey randomly striking on a keyboard producing the works of Shakespeare. If you had enough time and enough monkeys theoretically it could happen. Here's where the analogy breaks down though, in the real life those letters that are being written would also be coming apart as fast as they were written. In other words all of the letters in the chain must form and come together randomly in exactly the right sequence AT THE EXACT SAME TIME! That mathematical improbability is astronomical. Even assuming that the earth is billions of years old, mathematically there just isn’t enough time for this to happen. Materialist realize this and have started floating theories that maybe life didn’t originate here on Earth after all, and that somehow Earth was seeded from outer space. How they go about proving something like this is anybody’s guess. The problem with even this theory is that it still doesn’t take into consideration that there is not enough time. In other words even taking into consideration the age of the universe itself at the highest scientific estimation and the size of the entire universe THERE’S STILL NOT ENOUGH TIME! The improbability is that high folks. And yet here we are . . . Maybe we just got EXTREMELY lucky or maybe there is something more going on here than meets the eye.

Tom

Foundations Part One - The Logical Necessity of an Uncaused Cause

2008-10-25T14:00:00.001-07:00

I'm going to throw some really deep stuff at you. Ready??? You and I are real. The universe is real. How's that for deep? :) You may laugh, but some people do dispute these statements. They believe that all of reality is not really real but only an illusion. I am not one of those people and chances are you are not either. Most rational people accept the fact that the material universe is real; however, the reality of the universe while benefitial to us, also raises some practical issues.

One of the questions that people have been wrestling with for ages is, where did all of this stuff we call matter come from? What caused the universe to come into existance? Before 1929 one was able to answer the question by stating that the question itself is presupposing that the universe actually had a beginning. They would say "Nothing caused the universe to come into existence it just always has existed". Unfortunately, in 1929 Edwin Hubbles findings showed that the universe was expanding and after a 1965 study by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, it was confirmed that the universe was not only expanding but it was expanding because it had exploded into existence at a point in time in the distant past. What they called the Big Bang. Observant people looked at the theories and claimed that even if the theories are true that doesn't necessarily mean that the universe is not eternal. What if after each Big Bang there followed a Big Crunch whereby everything collapses back in on itself and just keep repeated indefinately. Unfortunately our universe simply won't cooperate with that nice neat package. Science has now shown us that a Big Crunch couldn't possibly happen as the universe is not only expanding but its expantion is accelerating. It would seem that the only logical conclusion is that the universe had a beginning and it will have an end.

Which leads us back to our original question. If the universe had a beginning in a Big Bang where did all of stuff that was packed into that tiny little compressed bit come from, for it surely didn't just simply wink into existence spontaneously from nothing? This seems like on the whole a rather logical question and it is. This is what is called the logical necessity of the uncaused cause. If A had a beginning, there must be a B that caused A to exist. If B had a beginning, there must be a C that caused B to exist. So on and so forth, logically going on like this until we get to a point where one of the causes, let call it G, has no cause. Nothing has caused it to come into being, it has merely existed from all eternity. We call this G the uncaused cause.

If we now know that the universe is not this uncaused cause for we know that it had a beginning, what is this uncaused cause? While there have been numerous "scientific" theories that have been floated around in the past few years none have gained as much traction as String Theory. According to this theory reality actually has 11 dimensions. These 11 diminsions from time to time manafest themselves as different universes in the 4 dimensions that we live in. Our universe was simply caused by this 11 dimensions. Of course we can not see or empirically test to know whether these other dimensions exist, which seems to me to take the matter well out of what true science does and into a nether realm of quasi-religious belief. The other non-scientific expanation of what the uncaused cause is, is the belief in a supreme being. While I realize that ultimately belief in God (or a unverifiable 11 dimensions for that matter) cannot be empirically proven and must be taken on faith, taking the two side by side, the best that "science" can come up with and the belief in a supreme being, I will choose the latter. Of course there are many many other reasons why I believe in a God, but this to me is one of the most fundamental reasons.

Tom

Welcome

2008-10-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

This part of the blog will be a way for me to arrange my thoughts on various important issues in a more systematic way. I may also be commenting from time to time on various items that I find interesting purhaps only to me. Feel free to peruse and make comments if you care to.

Tom