Do not render to Caesar that which is God's

“Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.”
- from The Manhattan Declaration

The Manhattan Declaration is a document that affirms the sanctity of human life, the sanctity of marriage, and the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

You can read the Manhattan Declaration HERE.

How to Preach in Prison

John Piper recently preached at Angola State Prison in Louisianna. His post on the event gives good insights not only about ministry to prisons but how one should preach to those who will live the rest of their lives behind bars.

Warden Cain says: I am as nice as they let me be and as mean as they make me be. Given the job he is given to do, it is a good motto.

I saw the Warden’s “nice” as we sat for half an hour with G.B., a prisoner on Death Row whose death by lethal injection the Warden will oversee in January. There are over 80 on death row, some now for over 14 years as appeals go on. The Warden asked me to share the gospel with G.B. Never have I felt a greater urgency to say the good news plainly and plead from my heart. The thief on the cross is a hero on Death Row.

The Warden answered all G.B.’s questions about what the last day would be like and who from his family and the press could be there. He gave G.B. unusual privileges for these last seven weeks. He was manifestly compassionate while stating the facts with precision. I took G.B.’s picture with my phone and said I would pray for him. (Perhaps you would too.)

I preached with all my heart to those who could fit in the chapel, and to the rest by closed circuit television. G.B. (and three others on Death Row) told me they’d be watching. I pulled no punches:

For 90% of you the next stop is not home and family, but heaven or hell. O what glorious news we have in that situation. And believe me it is not the prosperity of Gospel. Jesus came and died and rose again not mainly to be useful, but to be precious. And that he can be in Angola as well as Atlanta. Perhaps even more.

Read the entire post HERE.

Another Stunning Achievement of Evangelical Narcissism

"By which He has granted to John His precious and exceedingly great promises; that through these John may become a partaker of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust." (2 Pet. 1:4)

Have you ever inserted your name as you read the Bible to make it more personal? Now you can experience the reality of God's love and promises in a way you never thought possible. In the Personal Promise Bible, you will read your first name personalized in over 5,000 places throughout the New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs, over 7,000 places throughout the complete Old and New Testaments.

As if there were not enough versions of the Bible already, now we can have our own personalized Bible. The Personal Promise Bible is another stunning achievement of evangelical narcissism.

But the Personal Promise Bible makes perfect sense if you have payed any attention to the trajectory of American evangelicalism. Quite simply, it's all about me. "What's all about me," you ask? Well, everything. As the publishers of the P.P.B. indicate, "You will read your first name personalized in over 5,000 places throughout the New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs, over 7,000 places throughout the complete Old and New Testaments." In other words, "If you thought Jesus was a big deal in the Bible wait until you see your own name mentioned exponentially more times than even that of our Lord."

This vaudevillian move is not so strange when considering how the many promises in Scripture are routinely ripped from their context and made to be my own little private arrangement with God. For instance, how many times are God's promises to national Israel under the Old Covenant concerning their prospering in the Land of Promise used by contemporary Christians to assure themselves that God wants them to have a bigger swimming pool, a better job, and successful children? How many times are God's promises to the Church personalized in such a way that they lose their true meaning? It seems that within contemporary evangelicalism a morbid preoccupation with self is not only no longer a sin but a virtue.

The Cross as Fulfillment of God's Law

The cross demonstrates the permanent, immutable nature of God's law. To save us, Jesus did not go around the law. He did not remove it. Rather, he fulfilled it. Taht is because the law is the eternal standard by which we will all be judged, and God is passionate about it. Every jot and tittle of the law must be fulfilled, promised Jesus (Matt. 5:17-20). The cross says, "There will be no lawbreakers in heaven." The cross says, "God is fervent about his law."

Verses such as "Now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law" (Rom. 7:6) have convinced many that law does not apply to Christians, that in some mysterious way it is no longer relevant or important. In one sense they are right. The law no longer enslaves Christians. We could not keep the law, so Jesus kept it for us. God has released all who put their trust in God's Son from the burden of being perfect law keepers. But the cross reminds us that we will never be released from the law as the standard for judgment.

Jesus did two things on our behalf to fulfill the law. First, he lived a perfect life. He obeyed every jot and tittle of the law so that he could impute that obedience to to unworthy lawbreakers who put their faith in him. Second, on the cross he bore the punishment that lawbreakers deserve. Jesus glorified his Father's passion for his law by both fulfilling it and atoning for its abuse.

William Farley from Outrageous Mercy

CT interviews Michael Horton

Michael Horton was interviewed by Christianity Today about his books Christless Christianity and The Gospel-Driven Life.

What is at the core of the temptation to practice a Christless Christianity?

When the emphasis becomes human-centered rather than God-centered. In more conservative contexts, you hear it as exhortation: "These are God's commandments. The culture is slipping away from us. We have to recover it, and you play a role. Is your life matching up to what God calls us to?" Of course there is a place for that, but it seems to be the dominant emphasis.

Then there is the therapeutic approach: "You can be happier if you follow God's principles." All of this is said with a smile, but it's still imperative. It's still about techniques and principles for you to follow in order to have your best life now.

In both cases, it's law rather than gospel. I don't even know when I walk into a church that says it's Bible-believing that I'm actually going to hear an exposition of Scripture with Christ at the center, or whether I'm going to hear about how I should "dare to be a Daniel." The question is not whether we have imperatives in Scripture. The question is whether the imperatives are all we are getting, because people assume we already know the gospel—and we don't.

But aren't many churches doing good preaching about how to improve your marriage, transform your life, and serve the poor?

The question is whether this is the Good News. There is nothing wrong with law, but law isn't gospel. The gospel isn't "Follow Jesus' example" or "Transform your life" or "How to raise good children." The gospel is: Jesus Christ came to save sinners—even bad parents, even lousy followers of Jesus, which we all are on our best days. All of the emphasis falls on "What would Jesus do?" rather than "What has Jesus done?"

Why is this such a temptation for the church?

It's our default setting. No one has to be taught to trust in themselves. No one has to be taught that what you experience inside yourself is more authoritative than what comes to you externally, even if it comes from God. Since the Fall, it has been part of our character to look within ourselves. And it is part of our inherent Pelagianism to think we can save ourselves by following the right instructions.

In such a therapeutic, pragmatic, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps society as ours, the message of God having to do all the work in saving us comes as an offensive shot at our egos. In this culture, religion is all about being good, about the horizontal, about loving God and neighbor. All of that is the fruit of the gospel. The gospel has nothing to do with what I do. The gospel is entirely a message about what someone else has done not only for me but also for the renewal of the whole creation.

Read the entire interview HERE

"Well Acts" and the Loss of Sin

Much armchair and professional psychoanalyzing has gone on about the Major Hasan's murderous rampage at Fort Hood. What seems to be lost in the hunt for a motive is the reality of human sin fueled by a wicked ideology.

Al Mohler writes:

Any civilization requires a stable, rational, and consensual moral framework in order to survive. Western civilization has been built on a framework of Christian morality, with the so-called "Judeo-Christian ethic" providing the moral principles that support laws, ethical reasoning, and moral impulses.

Over the past several decades, that framework has been under sustained attack by ideological opponents, subverted by a secular shift among the elites, and increasingly forgotten by the masses. In its place, the moral reasoning mustered by many Americans amounts to a mixture of moral intuitions, ideological threads, and cultural assumptions. In the main, these all add up to what Philip Rieff called the "triumph of the therapeutic." When morality collapses, all that remains is therapy.

This has been brought to our attention in the aftermath of the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas. Major Nidal Malik Hasan, arrested for the shootings that killed 13 and wounded scores of others, is now known to have yelled "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) as he was shooting, to have links to Islamic extremists in Yemen, and to have visited a mosque frequented by the September 11, 2001 terrorists. More details of his background and motivation have been revealed over the last few days. There is ample evidence that Major Hasan, a physician and psychiatrist, provided much evidence of his motivation.

The role his Muslim faith played in the shootings will require more time to unpack. There will be plenty of time for that consideration as his trial is conducted. In the meantime, we should note the extent to which some observers are doing their best to absolve Major Hasan, whatever the deepest sources of his motivation, of moral responsibility for the massacre.

Read the entire article HERE.

I am my biggest problem

From Paul Tripp:

I must face the fact that my greatest need is not environmental. My greatest need does not derive from the fact that the brokenness of the Fall fractures every situation, every relationship, and every context. Yes, all my relationships are flawed in some way. And no, the world around me does not operate as God intended. But this environmental brokenness is not my greatest, deepest, most abiding problem. No matter what I face in this fallen world, my greatest problem in life exist inside of me and not outside of me. Sure, I want to think that it is…

My spouse

My children

My neighbors

My extended family

My history

My church

My job

My friends

My boss

My community

My finances

The government

The traffic

The Internet

Society in general

And the list could go on and on.

But the Bible tells me something very different. Even though my environment has been broken by sin, my biggest problem is moral. There is something wrong inside of me, and in one way or another it influences everything I desire, think, choose, say, and do.

Reminder: Paul Tripp will be at Church of the Saviour January 10-12.

"We shall bring an untiring energy to the study of Thy Prophets and Apostles..."

I know, O Lord God Almighty, that I owe Thee, as the chief duty of my life, the devotion of all my words and thoughts to Thyself. The gift of speech which Thou hast bestowed can bring me no higher reward than the opportunity of service in preaching Thee and displaying Thee as Thou art, as Father and Father of God the Only-begotten, to the world in its blindness and the heretic in his rebellion.

But this is the mere expression of my own desire; I must pray also for the gift of Thy help and compassion, that the breath of Thy Spirit may fill the sails of faith and confession which I have spread, and a favouring wind be sent to forward me on my voyage of instruction.

We can trust the promise of Him Who said, Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you and we in our want shall pray for the things we need.

We shall bring an untiring energy to the study of Thy Prophets and Apostles, and we shall knock for entrance at every gate of hidden knowledge, but it is Thine to answer the prayer, to grant the thing we seek, to open the door on which we beat.

Our minds are born with dull and clouded vision, our feeble intellect is penned within the barriers of an impassable ignorance concerning things Divine; but the study of Thy revelation elevates our soul to the comprehension of sacred truth, and submission to the faith is the path to a certainty beyond the reach of unassisted reason.

And therefore we look to Thy support for the first trembling steps of this undertaking, to Thy aid that it may gain strength and prosper. We look to Thee to give us the fellowship of that Spirit Who guided the Prophets and the Apostles, that we may take their words in the sense in which they spoke and assign its right shade of meaning to every utterance.

For we shall speak of things which they preached in a mystery; of Thee, O God Eternal, Father of the Eternal and Only-begotten God, Who alone art without birth, and of the One Lord Jesus Christ, born of Thee from everlasting. We may not sever Him from Thee, or make Him one of a plurality of Gods, on any plea of difference of nature.

We may not say that He is not begotten of Thee, because Thou art One. We must not fail to confess Him as true God, seeing that He is born of Thee, true God, His Father. Grant us, therefore, precision of language, soundness of argument, grace of style, loyalty to truth.

Enable us to utter the things that we believe, that so we may confess, as Prophets and Apostles have taught us, Thee, One God our Father, and One Lord Jesus Christ, and put to silence the gainsaying of heretics, proclaiming Thee as God, yet not solitary, and Him as God, in no unreal sense.

- Hilary of Poitiers

HT: Martin Downes

13 Books on the Doctrine of God

Keith Mathison from Ligonier Ministries has recommended 13 books on the doctrine of God. Check out the list HERE.

I would add to that excellent list a few titles that are a bit more accessable to the lay person:

Knowing God by J.I. Packer

Behold Your God by Donald MacLeod

The Message of the Living God by Peter Lewis

A Heart for God by Sinclair Ferguson

The Pleasures of God by John Piper

"Creating Fog" - A review of N.T. Wrights "Justification"

David Mathis has written a clear and, in my mind, accurate assessment of N.T. Wright's "Justification." More than a review of Wright's latest book, Mathis offers a critique of Wright's tendency toward a less than careful exegesis of the biblical text as well as a frustrating avoidance to truly engage his critics.

Tom Wright has done it again. He has produced yet another title in addition to his esteemed and still-in-progress series Christian Origins and the Question of God. Even the growing many who question whether Wright has ventured off course in his retelling of Paul’s doctrine of justification can appreciate his productivity. Put this reviewer in that category.

Wright tackles Justification in two parts. “Introduction” addresses perspective, rules of engagement, backgrounds, and definitions in a lengthy prolegomena; “Exegesis” then aims to show his vision of Paul’s vision from Paul’s texts—first Galatians; then Philippians, Corinthians, and Ephesians; and finally, Romans. Wright says, “I am writing this book to try, once more, to explain what I have been talking about—which is to explain what I think St. Paul was talking about” (p. 21). He finds that John Piper, author of The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007), as well as Wright’s mounting list of critics, “hasn’t really listened to what I’m saying” (p. 21).

It is easy to pen a quick list of the good in this book. Wright constantly reminds us of Sola Scriptura, emphasizes the necessity of exegesis, underscores the corporate nature of Paul’s theology, highlights the role of Israel in redemptive history, wields a wonderful Christology (and registers his disagreement with the Christology of James D. G. Dunn, to whom he has strangely dedicated this book), acknowledges that Romans is primarily about God (p. 40) and that it is “one of the greatest documents ever written by a human being” (p. 175), and condemns the use of the “loose language” of salvation by faith. Wright even refreshingly admits that he, Dunn, and Richard Hays have “not always followed either history or exegesis perfectly” (p. 196), and that he is sorry for giving wrong impressions in the past (p. 180).

But despite the smattering of good, it is disheartening to find that Wright is not yet addressing the issues he must in order to move the discussion forward, thus leaving his inquisitors with the same unanswered questions. The places where Wright creates disappointment and leaves questions can be clustered into a sequence of five groupings.

Read the entire review HERE.

Ehrman's Errors

In the latest issue of Themelios, Darrel Bock reviews Bart Ehrman's latest attack on the Bible, Jesus, Interrupted.

Bart Ehrman’s Jesus, Interrupted by his own admission says nothing new. It packages what scholars have been saying about issues in the Bible in a very public way for two decades. As Ehrman points out, these issues go back centuries—and the positions he defends have been advocated for a few centuries. What the book does is put many of these well known examples in one place, laid out so anyone reading the Bible has to face up to them. In a real sense, Jesus, Interrupted is an “in your face” book for those who have a high regard for the Bible. Saying in effect, “Take that,” Ehrman tackles an array of textual issues. His chapters discuss supposed contradictions he sees in the text, the point of variant readings, debates about authorship, treatment of issues tied to the historical Jesus, and discussion about orthodox Christianity emerging later than the first century out of an originally more diverse situation.

In fact, folks like Augustine and Origen were aware of the kinds of issues he raises. Answers and debates around what Ehrman raises have been around for a long time, but one reading this book would never really know what the real conversation is about in these kinds of examples. Ehrman begins his study on a biographical note. He often does this in his books to tell how, becoming enlightened, his position changed. He notes that when he learned the historical critical method in place of the devotional method, he discovered the Bible was full of contradictions and discrepancies. He came to see it as a completely human book with Christianity being a religion that is completely human in its origin and development. His experience portrays the core thesis of Jesus, Interrupted. Ehrman has become a one-man band seeking to make clear what everyone should know about the origins of the Christian faith—its roots can be explained on completely human terms.

Read the entire review HERE.

For some reason, the word "admissions" in the first sentence of the quote above is a link to University of Phoenix. Earlier it was a link to a message that said, "Obama wants moms to return to work." I have no idea where that came from. For some reason I cannot remove the link. Anyone out there care to tell me how something like that happens?

Cormac McCarthy

There are few writers I enjoy reading as much as Cormac McCarthy. I began reading McCarthy when I picked up a copy of Blood Meridian a year or so after I graduated from University. I was hooked.

McCarthy was interviewed recently by the Wall Street Journal about his writing, God, movies, and the end of the world.

WSJ: People have said "Blood Meridian" is unfilmable because of the sheer darkness and violence of the story.

CM: That's all crap. The fact that's it's a bleak and bloody story has nothing to do with whether or not you can put it on the screen. That's not the issue. The issue is it would be very difficult to do and would require someone with a bountiful imagination and a lot of balls. But the payoff could be extraordinary.

WSJ: How does the notion of aging and death affect the work you do? Has it become more urgent?

CM: Your future gets shorter and you recognize that. In recent years, I have had no desire to do anything but work and be with [son] John. I hear people talking about going on a vacation or something and I think, what is that about? I have no desire to go on a trip. My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold and anything else is just a waste of time...

WSJ: You grew up Irish Catholic.

CM: I did, a bit. It wasn't a big issue. We went to church on Sunday. I don't even remember religion ever even being discussed.

WSJ: Is the God that you grew up with in church every Sunday the same God that the man in "The Road" questions and curses?

CM: It may be. I have a great sympathy for the spiritual view of life, and I think that it's meaningful. But am I a spiritual person? I would like to be. Not that I am thinking about some afterlife that I want to go to, but just in terms of being a better person. I have friends at the Institute. They're just really bright guys who do really difficult work solving difficult problems, who say, "It's really more important to be good than it is to be smart." And I agree it is more important to be good than it is to be smart. That is all I can offer you...


WSJ: Is there a difference in the way humanity is portrayed in "The Road" as compared to "Blood Meridian"?

CM: There's not a lot of good guys in "Blood Meridian," whereas good guys is what "The Road" is about. That's the subject at hand.

JH [director of The Road]: I remember you said to me that "Blood Meridian" is about human evil, whereas "The Road" is about human goodness. It wasn't until I had my own son that I realized a personality was just innate in a person. You can see it forming. In "The Road," the boy has been born into a world where morals and ethics are out the window, almost like a science experiment. But he is the most moral character. Do you think people start as innately good?

CM: I don't think goodness is something that you learn. If you're left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble. But people tell me from time to time that my son John is just a wonderful kid. I tell people that he is so morally superior to me that I feel foolish correcting him about things, but I've got to do something--I'm his father. There's not much you can do to try to make a child into something that he's not. But whatever he is, you can sure destroy it. Just be mean and cruel and you can destroy the best person...

WSJ: Do you feel like you're trying to address the same big questions in all your work, but just in different ways?

CM: Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way. Things I've written about are no longer of any interest to me, but they were certainly of interest before I wrote about them. So there's something about writing about it that flattens them. You've used them up. I tell people I've never read one of my books, and that's true. They think I'm pulling their leg.

WSJ: Earlier you referred to the role luck plays in life. Where has luck intervened for you?

CM: There was never a person born since Adam who's been luckier than me. Nothing has happened to me that hasn't been perfect. And I'm not being facetious. There's never been a time when I was penniless and down, when something wouldn't arrive. Over and over and over again. Enough to make you superstitious.

Read the entire article/interview HERE.

Who Made God?

Tim Challies has given an enthusiastic recommendation to Who Made God? by scholar Edgar Andrews.

Why should the Devil get all the good scientists? It sometimes seems that way, doesn’t it? We hear of scientists like Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins and others who are acclaimed as being at the top of their field and almost inevitably it seems that they are atheists or otherwise committed to explaining the world in terms of Darwinian evolution. Occasionally we find a great dissenting mind, but then we discover that that person is committed to beliefs that seem opposed to the plain account of Scripture. So we have Francis Collins who writes The Language of God but who in the book says that, though God exists, life and creation can be explained in terms of natural laws and processes that do not depend on the Divine hand of God. It is both tiresome and frustrating.

But here at last comes Edgar Andrews whose list of academic credentials include more letters than all the names in my family: BSc, PhD, DSc, FInstP, FIMMM, CEng, CPhys (which, according to a site I consulted, is together an anagram for disbenching tscpf fpsps chym- cmd ‘m). No, I don’t know what any of those degrees mean, but they sure sound impressive. He is Emeritus Professor of Materials at the University of London and an international expert on the science of large molecules (not small ones, mind you, only the large ones). His credentials include things that sound like they must set him apart; things such as this: In September 1972 he was one of four specially invited speakers at the dedication symposium of the Michigan Molecular Institute, two of the others being Nobel Laureates Paul Flory and Melvin Calvin.

Put it all together and you find that Andrews is one smart dude. He’s smarter than you and me and the rest of us put together. And in his new book Who Made God? he launches a full front assault on the new atheists. He does this not through a point-by-point refutation of their books, but by an insightful look at science and the existence of God. An excellent writer who mixes a subtle British sense of humor with a powerful intellect and a deep understanding of science, he very quickly picks apart the arguments we have for so long been hearing from the likes of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking and even Francis Collins. Yet he still crafts a book that is readable and, best of all, understandable. Even the chapter dealing with string theory is comprehensible—no small feat for a smart guy writing about what lies at the very frontier of science.

Read the entire review HERE.

Scott Oliphint on Apologetics and Scripture

Great Gift Idea

It is my wife's birthday.

To celebrate the day, a friend from church took her out to eat and do a little shopping. What struck me as a particularly good gift was the prayer journal that she presented to my wife. It was the prayer journal this lady began keeping in the days prior to the church's vote on me as pastor all the way through the early days of our arrival in Pennsylvania. There are prayers for each member of my family. Prayers for our safety and well being. There are prayers for needs of my children in their transition to a new school and church. Also recorded are specific answers to prayers. Though she had never intended to give it Karen, the journal is a profoundly moving gift.

We are blessed to be surrounded by people who pray for us. The gift Karen received today was a powerful reminder of this.

Why the church is vitally important...

Good stuff from Carl Trueman...

It is all too easy for the theological student to end up remembering God as an object of knowledge; it is quite another thing to remember him as the all-surpassing subject of existence.

This is why church is vitally important. OK, long-standing readers of Themelios know what is coming next: Trueman’s pitch for seeing the local church as the necessary context for the Christian life, not least for those called to study theology at the highest level. Well, here it comes; and just because I have said it before does not make it any less true or any less necessary to say it again. After all, some of you may—ahem—have forgotten the speech. As noted above, that’s what the Bible itself indicates as happening when predictable but important routines are abandoned or their content taken for granted.

Much modern theological scholarship, particularly—though not exclusively—in the areas of Old and New Testament studies is predicated on a culture of amnesia. What the church has said about the Bible between the close of the apostolic era and the present day can be, by and large, dismissed. These people did not have access to the documents we now have, they did not understand Judaism as we now do, some were simply naïve in how they looked at the world and how they read texts. These are the kind of arguments which pervade this culture.

Now, for the student studying for an MA or MDiv or PhD, these are not insignificant points; they have to be addressed if the student is to avoid being an obscurantist. But the student should also be aware that the framework out of which these kinds of arguments arise is not a value-neutral one; nor does it actually reflect a particularly biblical view either of the value of the past or the importance of the church as the Body of Christ in biblical interpretation, systematic doctrinal synthesis, or application. Thus, it is vitally important that such students make sure that they place themselves within a local church and under the sound preaching of the word and administration of the sacraments/ordinances on a regular basis. Why? Because otherwise their memories of who God is and what he has done over the years will slowly fade or distort as they simply accommodate to sinful, human expectations of who God is and how he acts.

To the research student, and even perhaps the one studying theology for a first degree, this all sounds terribly boring. To spend the week voyaging at the far reaches of intellectual seas of scholarship, and then the weekends listening to some person standing in a pulpit and simply expounding the text or serving bread and wine? What is the value in that? One can imagine the Israelites in the Book of Judges raising similar questions. Do we need to do that Passover thing again? Do we not all know what it means? Do we really need the law read to us so often? Surely once we know what it says, we can move beyond it? The net result in Judges is, of course, that the values of Sodom come to flourish within the very boundaries of the Promised Land and within the very practices of the Lord’s people, with fatal consequences for at least one young woman. Neglect of the boring, day-to-day routines led to absolute disaster.

It is the same today. I have yet to come across a student who struggled with, or even abandoned, the faith, who did not, at some early point in their struggle, abandon the mundane routines of the Christian life: regular attendance at the preaching of the word, prayer, etc. etc. Boring they may be, but they are God’s means of preventing amnesia; and we forget them at our peril.

Read the entire article HERE.

Grudem on Scripture's Clarity

The Bible is not locked away in esoteric mystery as theological liberals or postmoderns would have us believe. God gave us His Word (yes, I believe it is HIS Word) not to confuse or confound us but to reveal Himself to us. Belief in the clarity or perspicuity of Scripture is often miscast by the pomo/emergent/liberal crowd as arrogant. They assure us that their approach of not really knowing what the Bible means is a "humble apologetic." But I wonder. Is it truly humble to say of God's carefully crafted and fully inspired Word, "Who can truly know what it means?"

It leaves me wondering if the opposition to the Bible's perspicuity has more to do with discomfort over what Scripture has made clear than it is about Scripture being truly indecipherable.

One of the great achievements of the Protestant Reformation was that the common man should have access to the Scriptures because much of what the Bible says is readily understood by the common man. Surely this does not mean that formal training is of no use. Indeed, formal training in the biblical languages, hermeneutics, and theology are extremely helpful in deepening one's understanding of Scripture. I am deeply grateful for the fact that I was able to be formally trained in seminary. But the common layperson is not dependent upon those who are formally trained to understand those things in the Bible that pertain to salvation and godliness.

The latest issue of Themelios carries a helpful article by Wayne Grudem on Scripture's clarity. Among the points that Dr. Grudem makes are the following qualifications:

1. Scripture affirms that it is able to be understood but not all at once.

2. Scripture affirms that it is able to be understood but not without effort.

3. Scripture affirms that it is able to be understood but not without ordinary means.

4. Scripture affirms that it is able to be understood but not without the reader's willingness to obey it.

5. Scripture affirms that it is able to be understood but not without the help of the Holy Spirit.

6. Scripture affirms that it is able to be understood but not without human understanding.

7. Scripture affirms that it is able to be understood but never completely.

Read the entire article HERE.

New Issue of Themelios

The latest issue of Themelios has been released.

1.D.A. Carson Editorial
2.Carl Trueman Minority Report: Lest We Forget
3.Wayne Grudem The Perspicuity of Scripture
4.Dane C. Ortlund Christocentrism: An Asymmetrical Trinitarianism?
5.David VanDrunen Bearing Sword in the State, Turning Cheek in the Church: A Reformed Two-Kingdoms Interpretation of Matthew 5:38–42
6.Mark Rogers “Deliver Us from the Evil One”: Martin Luther on Prayer
7.Raymond C. Ortlund Jr. Pastoral Pensées Power in Preaching: Delight (2 Corinthians 12:1–10), Part 3 of 3

Sunday's Sermon

Today's sermon was part 22 in our series through Hebrews. It is entitled "Shadows and Substance" and covers Hebrews 8:1-13. You can listen to or download the sermon HERE.

A Gospel Manifesto

From
An Earnest Call For Evangelical Leaders To Recover The Gospel From Its Present Humiliation

by Ray Ortlund, Jr.

Pastors and church leaders, in particular, are under enormous pressure today to satisfy the immediate demands of the marketplace at the cost of the gospel. People want what they want when they want it, or they will drive down the street to the First Church of Where-It’s-At to get it. Are we leaders losing our nerve? Have we come to feel that the gospel itself meets people’s needs less convincingly and helpfully? But think about it. Without a clear understanding of the central truths of our faith, where will the wisdom and motivation to live godly lives come from? We are constantly offering people “Five Steps to (whatever)” in answer to their problems. But it is not working. To a shameful degree, we Christians are morally indistinct from the world. Why? One reason is that we think piecemeal, and our lives show it. We do not perceive reality from God’s perspective. We perceive reality from the perspective of our ungodly culture, and then we try to slap a biblical principle onto the surface of our deep confusion. Consequently, very little actually changes. What we really need is not to be pandered to but to be re-educated in reality, as it is interpreted for us by the gospel. We need to know who God really is. We need to find out who we really are. We need to understand what our root problem really is and what God’s merciful answer really is. And we need that new perception of reality to percolate deep down into our affections and desires, reorienting us radically and joyfully to a whole new way of life. But if we frankly feel that the plain old gospel offers very little for people’s real needs, then we have never really known it at all...

O desolate evangelicalism, what do you mean by your stylish fads and restless search for ever new “relevance”? Why are you so insecure that you long for the world’s approving recognition? They despise everything you hold dear! “All things to all men” is no license to cater to the whims of the consumer. Christ alone is Lord. Or have you yourself forgotten his majesty? And why are you so boastful of your numbers and dollars? How poor you really are! Come back to the gospel. Come back to the wellspring of true joy and life and power. Sanctify Christ again as Lord in your hearts. Wake up! Strengthen what remains, for it is on the point of death. But if you will not return to the centrality of the gospel as God’s power for the church today, then what reason does your Lord have for not abandoning you altogether?

Read the entire thing HERE.

Contending for the Truth

"An interloper who steals property must be caught and charged. Thinly disguised atheism and neopaganism are interlopers in liberated church circles. They have engaged in the theft of church property. The stolen property must be reclaimed and the thieves brought to justice.

"To point this out means raising the issue of heresy. But in the "liberated" church circles of oldline denominations heresy simply does not exist. After centuries of struggle against recurrent heresies, Christians have found a quick way of overcoming heresy: they have banished the concept altogether. With absolute relativism holding sway, there is not only no concept of heresy, but no way even to raise the question of where the boundaries of legitimate Christian belief lie.

"This is like trying to have a baseball game with no rules, no umpire, and no connection with historic baseball. Only we continue to insist on calling it baseball because a game by the name of baseball is what most people still want to see played.

"By 'liberated' church circles I refer to the sexual experimenters, the compulsive planners of others' lives, the canonical text disfigurers, and ultrafeminists (as distinguished from the great company of godly Christian women who are found at many different points along the scale of feminist reflection). The liberated characteristically understand themselves to be free from oppressive, traditional constraints of all sorts and shapes. "Liberated" is not a term applied from outside, but a term they frequently apply to themselves. By liberated they usually imply: doctrinally imaginative, liturgically experimental, disciplinarily nonjudgmental, politically correct, muticulturally tolerant, morally broad-minded, ethically situationist, and above all sexually permissive.

"The intellectual ethos I am describing is not liberal in the classic sense of that word, but intolerant and uncharitable when it comes to traditionalists of any sort, all of whom are capriciously bundled under the dismissive label of 'fundamentalists.'"

- Thomas Oden


"A large part of the New Testament is polemic; the enunciation of evangelical truth was occasioned by the errors which had arisen in the churches...At the present time, when the opponents of the gospel are almost in control of our churches, the slightest avoidance of the defense of the gospel is just sheer unfaithfulness to the Lord.

"There have been previous great crises in the history of the Church, crises almost comparable to this. One appeared in the second century, when the very life of Christendom was threatened by the Gnostics. Another came in the Middle Ages when the gospel of God's grace seemed forgotten.

"In such times of crisis, God has always saved the Church. But he has always saved it not by theological pacifists, but by sturdy contenders for the truth."

- J. Gresham Machen

Rude Dogmatism

"Religious tolerance is not always a sign of good will. It can be a sign of careless, perhaps hypocritical religious indifference of the most high-handed philosophic relativism. It can also be a mask behind which to hide down right malice. During the Nazi era, for example, arguments for Christian openness to other perspectives were used by German Christians in an attempt to neuter the church's protest against the neopaganism of Hitler and his minions. The Confessing Church in Germany found in [John 10] a theological basis to stand against Hitler. There are times in which the only way to keep alive the non-vindictive, nonjudgmental, self-sacrificing witness of Jesus Christ is to stand with rude dogmatism on the rock that is Jesus Christ, condemning all compromise as the work of the Antichrist."

- Ronald Goetz