Michael Sudduth and Lord Krishna

The philosopher of religion Michael Sudduth has sent a letter to his friends and colleagues explaining that he has changed his religious/faith position from Reformed Christianity to Hindu Vaishnavism.

In 2009, Ashgate published a book written by Sudduth entitled The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology, which was positively reviewed by Alvin Plantinga, Alister McGrath and James Anderson. Anderson said in his review: "Sudduth presents a meticulously researched and compellingly argued case for the historical pedigree and philosophical legitimacy of Reformed natural theology".

During 2011, Sudduth gradually moved closer to Vaishnavism. His letter, which is full of praise for the Bhagavad Gita, explains how and why he found Krishna irresistible.

The full text of Michael Sudduth's letter is available at Maverick Philosopher.

Joe Carter has a brief discussion on the TGC blog.

Here is a website about the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition.

Here is a summary of Gaudiya Vaishnava beliefs.

James Anderson discusses Sudduth's panentheism.

Information about Swami B.V. Tripurari (the guru who guided Sudduth on the Gaudiya path) is available on these three websites:

(1) Swami Tripurari

(2) Swami Tripurari: a topical index of Gaudiya Vedanta

(3) Sri Caitanya Sanga.

Count Me Out

According to Garrison Keillor, there are basically two types of Americans:

(a) Americans who when the big smiley preacher stands in the pulpit and says, "How about everybody turn around and shake hands with the person behind you and give them a big howdy!" they all turn around and shake and say howdy and feel sort of uplifted by this.

(b) Americans who would do anything to avoid this, including staying away from church entirely.

I identify fervently with the second group.

Another irritating thing that comes to mind was the habit at certain Christian meetings back in the 1960s and 1970s; the meeting could not possibly get under way until we had gone round the circle and everybody had had a chance to say something about themselves. The one or two audible and articulate show-offs were always heavily outweighed by the stumblers and the mumblers and the whisperers and the ones who blushed and addressed all their remarks to the carpet. One fellow I knew was a stutterer, and he would far rather have had root canal work done than endure this stressful ordeal.

Sayers on Christianity

Dorothy Sayers:

"The thing I am here to say to you is this: that it is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion about what the church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ...

The task is not made easier by the obstinate refusal of a great body of nominal
Christians, both lay and clerical, to face the theological question. 'Take away
theology and give us some nice religion' has been a popular slogan for so long that we are apt to accept it, without inquiring whether religion without theology has any meaning. And however unpopular I may make myself I shall and will affirm that the reason why the Churches are discredited today is not that they are too bigoted about theology, but that they have run away from theology."

[Dorothy L. Sayers, "Creed or Chaos?": address delivered on 4 May 1940]

Old Princeton

Have a look at Andy Jones' piece on Old Princeton. Here is an excerpt:

"Though governed by Presbyterians, Princeton Seminary welcomed students from diverse backgrounds. It graduated men who became leaders in Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Baptist churches. Among Princeton's first graduates was Charles Hodge, who would become the seminary's leading influence in the 19th century. Another early graduate and Hodge's best friend was John Johns, a leader among Episcopalians and ultimately the president of William and Mary. One of Hodge's students, James Petigru Boyce, became the founding professor of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary."

Spencer's Ministry Blunders

Michael Spencer (of "Internet Monk" fame) in self-critical mode:

"In the following paragraphs, I am going to rescue those of you in ministry from the feeling you have that no one could ever be as bone-headed as you. From the annals of my own life and ministry, I share with you now the following true stories meant to encourage you to start tomorrow with a smile, saying 'I may be an idiot, but I'm still way ahead of Spencer'."

Helm on Presuppositionalism

In October 2009, Paul Helm said:

"...in Reformed theology 'presuppositionalism' is a striking novelty. Historically speaking, Reformed theology has been somewhat relaxed on the question of offering the arguments of natural theology to prove the existence of God. But presuppositionalism as an apologetic outlook is a complete novelty in the history of Reformed theology. It is strange, then, that the need to hold this outlook has come to be, for some, a test of orthodoxy, even in circles which uphold the Westminster Confession which perhaps is silent on the question but if anything appears to deny it."

I am aware that the novelty/antiquity of a particular position in the field of Apologetics has very little to do with the rightness or wrongness of that position. Nonetheless, as someone whose knowledge of the history of Apologetics and the history of doctrine is weak, I would like to know whether the claim Helm makes is a controversial one or something that everyone would happily concede.

Can some kind and learned soul throw light on this issue?

Presuppositions and Objectivity

Paul Helm:

"Sometimes one encounters the following kind of argument: (1) It is impossible to get back to 'pure objective truth' which is free from the subjectivity of personal experience and interpretation. Therefore, (2) We should not try to get back to objective historical truth, since it is impossible to do so.

But why does this follow? Why does it follow that because something is impossible to achieve we should not try to get as near to achieving it as we can? If you were a defendant in court, convinced of your innocence, it would hardly be a comfort to be told by the judge that since it is impossible to achieve 'perfect justice' the court would make no effort at all to establish the facts of the case. While pure truth and pure justice may be for us unattainable abstractions, there might be considerable advantages, perhaps even a duty, to strive to get as close to the truth as possible...

But how is it possible to make every effort to get at the objective truth, in the light of what we have learned about presuppositions? Do not the existence and the inevitability of presuppositions make striving for the objective truth a nonsense? For is not 'the truth' simply dictated by one's presuppositions? Is not all
argument and all enquiry ultimately circular? No. Because one has presuppositions it does not necessarily mean that they dictate one's conclusions...

All presuppositions, and especially those of any Christian enquirer, ought to be kept fresh and in trim by being kept under review...

It may be objected that the last thing that the Christian ought to want to be is objective. For when Christ calls a person into his service then, it might be said, he calls him to a life of commitment. And can commitment walk hand in hand with objectivity? Here I think that it is helpful to distinguish between objectivity and neutrality. They are frequently confused. Objectivity (at least as I am using the term here) is concerned with procedures, while neutrality is concerned with outcomes. Objectivity in Christian scholarship is crucial; the need to weigh evidence, to observe the appropriate investigative procedures, to distinguish what is relevant from what is irrelevant, to be self-critical about one's presuppositions, and in one's reasonings and conclusions — all these procedures are part of what is meant by being objective."

["Understanding Scholarly Presuppositions: a crucial tool for research?", Tyndale Bulletin, 44.1, 1993, pp.143-154]

Here is an earlier post (1st March 2010) by Paul Helm on presuppositions and presuppositionalism.

The Magic Roundabout

F.F. Bruce:

"Let biblical inspiration or any other aspect of biblical authority be stated in the most emphatic and all-embracing fashion: any such statement is devoid of real content unless we discover, by critical and exegetical study, what the biblical text says and means. Our theology must depend on our exegesis, not vice versa. And if we allow our exegesis to be controlled by theologoumena, we shall quickly find ourselves involved in circular reasoning. I have friends who say, 'Well, yes; but all theological reasoning is circular; let us simply make sure that we get into the right circle'. I cannot accompany them on their magic roundabout."

["Primary Sense and Plenary Sense", Epworth Review, 4, 1977, pp.94-109]

The Dark Side of Theology

Yesterday, Michael Patton put up a post entitled: "The Dark Side of Theology". Here are the first two paragraphs:

"I have come to have a love-hate relationship with theology. I love it because it can deepen one's faith, helping people to rejoice more because they understand and know God better (Jer. 9:24). There is nothing more exciting than the look on peoples' faces when they are being theologically transformed. It is the 'wow, this is really true' look. I live for that both in myself and in others."

"However, there is a dark side to theology. I see it everyday. I pray that this does not infect my students, but inevitably, there are always one or two who take their theological knowledge and create a recipe of sin and shame. These are people I call 'theologically dangerous'."

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

I have read a fair number of books and articles by the so-called Four Horsemen, i.e. the "new atheists" Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. I am most familiar with Harris' writings and least familiar with those of Hitchens. All four writers have written well-known books arguing for atheism; of these books, I think the one by Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) is the weakest.

Hitchens died of cancer on 15 December.

The Hitch was colorful, outrageous, and (to his everlasting credit) politically uncorrect. He was almost never at a loss for words. Here he is supporting the war against middle-eastern totalitarianism:

"For free expression, for women's rights, for self-determination of small peoples, for the right of Iraqis to federate and have their own show, for the right of the Lebanese not to be bullied by Hezbollah and to have a multicultural democracy, yes, I'll fight for this, and I think the 82nd Airborne Division is brave to be fighting for it too. And I think you should be ashamed, sneering at people who guard you while you sleep."

And here he is attacking George Galloway (who wins a prize as the most appalling, the most odious, and the most viciously opportunistic leftwing politician in the western world):

"Galloway looks so much like what he is: a thug and a demagogue, the type of working-class wideboy and proud of it who is too used to the expenses account, the cars and the hotels - all cigars and back-slapping. He is a very cheap character and a short-arse like a lot of them are, puffed up like a turkey. He has managed to fuse being a Baathist with being a Muslim sectarian and a carpet bagger in the East End. He's got the venomous riff-raff at one end and your one-God fanatics on the other. Wonderful. Just what we need..."

(Galloway has been on record as praising the following: (1) The Soviet Union, (2) Saddam Hussein, (3) Iraqi jihadis who killed civilians and aid workers, and (4) Iraqi Baathists who reportedly tortured trade unionists. He also said that Syria is lucky to have Bashar al-Assad as her President. For a while, Galloway supported and worked for the state-run Iranian satellite television channel, Press TV.)

Finally, Hitchens comments on Mother Teresa: "A lying, thieving Albanian dwarf... She was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty... She has gigantically increased the amount of poverty and misery in the world. The vast sums of money she raised were spent mainly on building convents in her own honour."

Christopher Hitchens should never be confused with his brother Peter Hitchens (though, amazingly, some journalists managed to do this after Christopher's death). Peter is a well-known political conservative (he is also a conservative Christian). His book The Abolition of Britain is a sustained lament for a world and a way of life that have vanished forever. He is also the author of The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me To Faith.

Arminius on Calvin's Commentaries

Jacob Arminius was full of praise for the exegetical gifts of his theological opponent, John Calvin: "After the reading of Scripture, which I strenuously inculcate, and more than any other... I recommend that the Commentaries of Calvin be read... For I affirm that in the interpretation of the Scriptures Calvin is incomparable, and that his Commentaries are more to be valued than anything that is handed down to us in the writings of the Fathers - so much so that I concede to him a certain spirit of prophecy in which he stands distinguished above others, above most, indeed, above all."

By contrast, Arminius says that when you read Calvin's Institutes, you must read them "with discrimination"...

[F.F. Bruce, "The History of New Testament Study", in New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Principles and Methods, edited by I. Howard Marshall, Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, 1977 (revised 1979), p.33]

Citizens of a Bygone Age

The historian Keith Thomas said that he tried "...to immerse myself in the past until I know it well enough for my judgment of what is or is not representative to seem acceptable without undue epistemological debate. Historians are like reliable local guides. Ideally, they will know the terrain like the backs of their hands. They recognise all the inhabitants and have a sharp eye for strangers and impostors."

This reminds me of C.S. Lewis. When people asked him how he knew that his detailed accounts of medieval religion and ideas were accurate, he said that he was a citizen of those bygone worlds. Lewis told his audience in his inaugural lecture as a professor at Cambridge that he was a dinosaur, one of the few remaining representatives of Old Western Man; mentally and culturally speaking, he belonged more to the medieval and Renaissance periods than to the twentieth century. Lewis said: "I read as a native texts that you must read as foreigners..."

A good scholar of New Testament studies will try his best to "inhabit" the late BC and early AD centuries until he gains a Lewisian familiarity with those ancient realms.

The Erosion of Inerrancy?

I understand why many evangelicals regard the inerrancy of the Bible as important, but they need to think hard about this doctrine before (in Roger Olson's words) it dies the death of a thousand qualifications. What Olson means is this: there was a time when inerrancy was defended in a straightforward and full-blooded way. As evangelicals began to take modern biblical scholarship more seriously, they gradually began to qualify inerrancy and make it more realistic. To cut a long story short, evangelical theologians who defend inerrancy today often see it as entirely compatible with biblical phenomena like the following:

(1) Lack of precision.

(2) Spelling errors.

(3) Grammatical irregularities.

(4) The topical arrangement of material.

(5) Variant selections of material in parallel accounts.

(6) The use of exaggeration (hyperbole) and round numbers.

(7) Popular and observational descriptions of nature e.g. the four corners of the earth.

(8) The accurate reporting of falsehoods e.g. the author of Chronicles infallibly reported erroneous statements which he faithfully reproduced from the sources that he used.

(9) The use of free citations e.g. the fact that the New Testament often quotes the Old Testament in inexact ways (and also sometimes interprets the Old Testament in unexpected and unusual ways).

A brief comment on the fourth item above (topical arrangement of material). Many modern evangelicals, seeing that the synoptic gospels locate the Cleansing of the Temple at the end of Jesus' ministry and that John's gospel locates it at the start of his ministry, are happy to say that there was one Temple-cleansing event which different writers located in different contexts for topical or thematic (or perhaps even theological) reasons. Many of the earlier evangelicals would have been outraged at this suggestion; as far as they were concerned, there were two separate Temple-cleansings, end of story... Similarly with Peter's denial of Christ. A number of earlier evangelicals, in order to resolve the anomalies in the four gospels' accounts about the incident, concluded that the cock crowed more than twice and that Peter denied Christ more than three times.

Let's be generous and concede that the modern evangelical view of inerrancy is still tolerably coherent. But I think that Olson is right; if inerrancy is modified any further, then terms which evangelicals like to apply to their theological opponents (fuzzy, equivocal, compromise, doubletalk) will begin to fit the evangelical doctrine of the Bible.

One of the things that challenges evangelicals to examine and clarify the doctrine of inerrancy is debates about GENRE in the biblical writings. Every evangelical Christian (even the most literalistic Dispensationalist) has always admitted freely that one can identify a variety of genres (e.g. history, narrative, prophecy, apocalyptic, poetry, psalmody, parable) in the Bible. What makes the subject of genre potentially controversial is that some evangelical scholars have recently begun to do two things that mark a departure from the longstanding (and familiar) evangelical approaches to genre:

(a) They argue that the genre of certain biblical passages has hitherto been misunderstood by mainstream evangelicals; what was previously classified as "historical" or "narrative" can now rightly be classified as something else.

(b) They have begun to extend the range of genre to include things in the Bible like religious fiction and midrash.

Please don't misunderstand me; I am not assuming that these unconventional evangelicals are correct in their various diagnoses. What I am saying is that their arguments and discussions cannot simply be dismissed as "liberal Christian betrayals of biblical truth". The unconventional evangelicals are not playing the tiresome liberal card of reinterpeting and updating the Bible to make it say something congenial to modern ears (e.g. "Jesus would have approved of marxist philosophy or multiculturalism or homosexual lifestyles", or whatever). The evangelical renegades are claiming to do what responsible evangelical biblical studies has always done: to study biblical passages in a way that is faithful to things like the author's intention and the literary genre of the particular passage under discussion.

Disagreement about genre is not something new in evangelical Christian circles; it has been around for centuries. Long before Darwin ever put pen to paper and long before modern Israel was established as a nation, evangelicals debated with each other (and with Matthew Henry!) about the proper interpretation of Genesis 1-3 or about the meanings of the term "Israel" in the O.T. prophets and in Paul's letters, and some of these disagreements have always depended on different verdicts about the genre of certain biblical passages.

One cannot short-circuit the whole debate by taking your stand on biblical infallibility; no amount of pondering about infallibility can guarantee that your understanding of Ezekiel chapters 40-48 is right and everyone else's is up the pole.

In 1959, there were probably not more than four hundred Christians in the world who supported young-earth creationism. Today, there are probably at least thirty million young-earth creationists in North America alone. In a climate where an evangelical can be bitterly attacked for defending a hallowed old position like old-earth creationism (let alone that satanic invention known as theistic evolution), the young evangelical scholar who dares to publish his unconventional thoughts about the genre of Genesis 1-3 had better have a thick skin and a robust constitution.

UPDATE: In a blog post on 7 December (entitled "Getting Inerrancy Wrong"), Michael Patton defended "reasoned inerrancy" and argued that "technically precise inerrancy" is a misleading and unnecessary modern distraction. He also supported the view that the Gospels recorded the ipsissima vox of Jesus rather than his ipsissima verba (i.e. his authentic voice rather than his actual words).

Why Jesse Left Calvary Chapel

A Cripplegate blogger tells us why he left the Calvary Chapel movement.

Post-Christendom Evangelicals

Andrew Perriman has a blog called P.OST, in which he pleads for a new evangelical way. He says: "I regard myself as an evangelical, but the social and intellectual structures that have sustained and made sense of modern evangelicalism are disintegrating, and it is not at all clear that modern evangelicalism can or should survive their collapse... How much of our sense of what the New Testament is, how it speaks, how it hangs together, how it is authoritative, is bound up with the Christendom-modern paradigm? And how much of that can survive the collapse of the Christian-modern paradigm?"

Perriman's vision for evangelical Christianity is that it will free itself from the following constraints:

(1) The stifling framework of European Christendom, which (happily) is now disintegrating. The evangelicalism of the future needs to be post-Christendom evangelicalism.

(2) The restricting legacy of the sixteenth century Reformation.

(3) The negative and claustrophobic effects of conservative Reformed Christianity.

To rescue authentic Christianity from these problematic things, says Perriman, will need courage and determination (and creative imagination). Christians will need to borrow from the New Perspective on Paul and from the Emerging movement, both of which have recast Christianity in ways that are (in Perriman's estimate) new, fresh, innovative, down-to-earth, enterprising, risk-taking, and incarnational. However, we are told that we need to be even MORE radical than these two initiatives. Evangelical Christianity does not merely need to change its theological orientation; Perriman wants evangelicals to de-theologise and deconstruct their evangelical understandings to a significant extent and view the New Testament more dialogically and historically than they have ever done. Perriman complains: "The modern gospel is the product of an excessive theological preoccupation with the salvation of the individual. It has led generally to the eclipse of scripture as historical narrative".

In a post made on 17 April 2010, Perriman said: "The Western Christian tradition, which is the contextualization of the biblical narrative under the conditions of European imperialism and rationalism, is disintegrating rapidly. We are having to repent not only of a geographical imperialism but also of a historical complacency; and we are having to ask just how much of what we have taken to be self-evidently true is really just the final clamshell packaged consumer product at the end of a long Christendom manufacturing process. This is why it is so important right now to go back and look at the unprocessed raw material again. What did the 'faith' of the re-emerging people of God look and feel and taste like before it got funneled into the Christendom machine?"

In a post made on 12 November 2011, Perriman said: "I would suggest that the church is having to - or will have to - let go of the notion that we are a religion of a text whose authority is theologically constructed. I suggest that we are having to - or will have to - work with the notion instead that the New Testament is a collection of historical texts, bound up in the messy contingencies of history, much more narrowly confined in its outlook than theology has understood it to be. And I would also suggest that by imaginatively re-entering the dialogue, we will discover how the narrative is inherently authoritative and formative."

Notice in the last sentence of the above paragraph the words "inherently authoritative". Dear me. What a curiously conventional, traditional, hidebound, backward-looking expression for a courageous and forward-looking radical like Perriman to use! That is the sort of language that belongs to stodgy old dinosaurs like James White and Al Mohler and Jason Stellman...

Further, Perriman uses words like "contingent" (and sometimes even "accidental") to describe the formation of the Bible and its relation to Israel's history (in a post made on 6 January this year, he commented as follows: "the biblical story cannot be reduced to the myth-like dimensions of the modern evangelical gospel - not without losing touch with the reality of the thing. It is a historical story and suffers from all the complexity, particularity, ambiguity, and short-sightedness that are part-and-parcel of historical existence"). Whereas traditional views of the Bible are entirely compatible with conclusions about its authoritativeness, I am not sure how Perriman's account of the Bible can consistently lead to any sort of meaningful "authority" for Christian readers.

If you are excited by Perriman's program (which I emphatically am not), you can read all the articles on his blog here. The good thing is that Perriman writes SHORT articles, so he will not take up much of your time. The unfortunate thing is that Perriman's articles are mostly too short to allow him to explain in any detail or with any clarity what his program really involves, which is convenient for Perriman but frustrating for us...

To be fair to Perriman, you can always buy and read his books, especially his latest one: The Future of the People of God: Reading Romans Before and After Western Christendom, Wipf and Stock, 2010. (Somewhere on his blog, Perriman sums up one of the purposes of this book with the words: "How to rescue Romans from the fish tank of Reformed theology and return it to the sea of history".)

P.S. The comment below is by Andrew Perriman...

Olson's Principle

Roger Olson has written a new book called Against Calvinism: rescuing God's reputation from radical Reformed theology (Zondervan, 2011). In this book Olson comes close to saying that one can decide against Calvinism regardless of disagreements about the exegesis of controversial biblical passages. There is a now-famous passage in Olson's book where he says that if it was shown to him beyond doubt that the Bible clearly teaches Calvinism, then he himself would reject Calvinism on moral-theological grounds, as the God of the Calvinist Bible would be unworthy of worship (and would indeed be a cold and unloving and morally repugnant deity). Here is the passage:

One day, at the end of a class session on Calvinism's doctrine of God's sovereignty, a student asked me a question I had put off considering. He asked: "If it was revealed to you in a way you couldn't question or deny that the true God actually is as Calvinism says and rules as Calvinism affirms, would you still worship him?" I knew the only possible answer without a moment's thought, even though I knew it would shock many people. I said no, that I would not because I could not. Such a God would be a moral monster. Of course, I realize Calvinists do not think their view of God's sovereignty makes him a moral monster, but I can only conclude they have not thought it through to its logical conclusion or even taken sufficiently seriously the things they say about God and evil and innocent suffering in the world. [Against Calvinism, Kindle edition, p.85]

According to Olson, a developed Christian conscience and sanctified common sense leave you no option but to reject Calvinism and its deterministic God.

Many non-Calvinists will sympathise with Olson's stance. Nonetheless, regardless of your theological orientation, surely what Olson is doing is a dangerous step for an evangelical Christian to take (note that Olson still describes himself as "an evangelical" and he confesses the authority of the Bible). Once you accept that moral-theological verdicts can override exegetical decisions and conclusions, then why should Calvinism be the only thing to fall by the wayside? Other eligible targets that could easily come under attack from Olson's principle include hell, divine wrath, propitiation, and a penal-substitutionary view of the atonement.

Olson is not a liberal Christian, and he may never see himself as one. But I think he has taken the decisive step that makes him a fellow-traveller of liberal Christianity, whether he likes it or not.


*******

P.S. The title of Roger Olson's book is Against Calvinism; Michael Horton wrote a contrasting volume entitled For Calvinism. Yesterday, Horton made some comments on Olson's claim that Calvinism makes God a moral monster; Horton said on the White Horse Inn blog (16 November 2011): "...everyone who affirms God's exhaustive foreknowledge [and this includes traditional Arminians] has exactly the same problem as any Calvinist".

Horton's point is simply this: Calvinists and Arminians both agree that God has infallible and exhaustive foreknowledge. If God knows that something negative will happen and God does not prevent it from happening, then the negative occurrence is just as certain as if God had predestined it.

Olson admitted long ago that God is sovereign in the sense that nothing at all can ever happen without God's permission, i.e. nothing at all can happen that God does not allow. Olson sometimes speaks of God "reluctantly" permitting certain things, but he [Olson] does not agree with the Calvinist teaching that God DECREES to permit things.

Horton's response to this is to accuse Olson of nitpicking, for two reasons:

(a) It sounds peculiar to speak of a perfect God "reluctantly" doing anything!

(b) Once Olson has conceded that God intentionally permits negative things to happen that he exhaustively foreknows, Olson cannot accuse the Calvinist God of being morally problematic without Olson's Arminian God being in some way vulnerable to the same charge.

What do you think?

Not Rocket Science

Have you heard the proverb: "As wise as atheists and as stupid as bishops"? Read the following, and all will be made clear...

Someone asked Christopher Hitchens (the well-known atheist) the following question: "I'm a liberal Christian, and I don't take the stories from the Scripture literally. I don't believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make any distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?"

Hitchens replied: "I would say that if you don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, that he rose again from the dead, and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven you're really not in any meaningful sense a Christian".

From the mouths of renegades...

In contrast to Mr Hitchens' sentiments, let us now hear from the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the USA. In 2009, Schori spoke about "the great Western heresy". This heresy is the teaching "that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God... That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being."

Enough said.

Charitable Orthodoxy

Mark Young of Denver Seminary writes:

"At Denver Seminary we believe that there's a better way for those with strong convictions to interact with others. We call it charitable orthodoxy...

Charitable orthodoxy is the third of five Core Commitments that define Denver Seminary. It means that we are committed to the core doctrines that have defined Christianity for centuries. We cling to these great truths of our faith for they frame our understanding of God, of the world in which we live, and His work in it. Furthermore, we confess these great truths as the way forward for those trapped in the mire of indifference and relativism. Around our common confession we engage in gracious and serious conversations about faith and life. Sometimes we disagree with one another about the interpretation of particular passages, about theological issues of secondary importance, about the expression of Christian ethics in public life, and about the application of Scripture to ministry. At all times, however, we are committed to be a community that relates to one another charitably, with a penchant to listen before speaking and a desire to learn that trumps the instinct to defend and to tell...

Our commitment to orthodoxy means that we believe passionately in the truths that Christians have confessed in every generation and on every continent. But passionate belief must never eclipse compassionate engagement with those who do not see the truth as we see it. In the life of a Christian, there is no room for demeaning and disrespectful behavior toward others. The integrity of our faith and witness demands charity toward all people. Being charitable toward another is more than being polite; it means seeking the good of others, even those who misunderstand you, malign you and even seek to harm you..."

Two comments:

(1) "with a penchant to listen before speaking and a desire to learn" - this is excellent advice. Karl Popper once said that before criticising a position that you disagree with, you should try and understand (and even state) the case for that position at its most powerful; then you have earned the right to oppose it with all your mental energy.

(2) "there is no room for demeaning and disrespectful behavior toward others" - a fair point. Opposing a problematic Christian by calling him "an ignorant and devious character who destroys the lives of vulnerable people and milks them for every cent they possess", sounds entirely unacceptable, but WHAT IF YOUR OPPONENT IS INDEED an ignorant and devious character who destroys the lives of vulnerable people and milks them for every cent they possess? What do you do then? - speak the truth or hide the truth?

C.S. Lewis and Roman Catholicism

Patrick Chan writes on Triablogue (12 October 2011):

The following quote is (I think) from C.S. Lewis in his book Christian Reunion and Other Essays: "The real reason why I cannot be in communion with you [Roman Catholics] is not my disagreement with this or that Roman doctrine, but that to accept your Church means, not to accept a given body of doctrine, but to accept in advance any doctrine your Church hereafter produces. It is like being asked to agree not only to what a man has said but also to what he is going to say."

A Question About the Book of Acts

Justin Taylor asks an important question (and one which is relevant to some of the disagreements between Pentecostals and Reformed people):

How Do We Know What's Normative in the Book of Acts?

Obviously there are normative things in Acts: the best example I can think of is the "kerygma" doctrines that you find in the speeches of Peter. More difficult to answer, however, is the question: "Are particular stories or events in Acts recorded because they were important (and mostly once-off and unrepeatable) phenomena in early church history, or were they recorded because they serve as valid and enduring patterns which the church down the ages is obliged to follow?"

Orthodoxy, the Gospel and Salvation

Have a look at this article by Brian LePort (on the "Near Emmaus" blog):

Is Rejection of the Doctrine of the Trinity a Rejection of the Gospel?

The Wisdom of Osteen

Would you buy a used car from this man???

Joel Osteen (relevant keywords include: shallow, smiling, feelgood, megachurch, pretty-boy) was recently interviewed by Piers Morgan.

Here are two quotes from Osteen (thanks to Al Mohler for the exact wording):

(1) On capital punishment: "You know, it's a complicated issue, Piers. I haven't thought a whole lot about it but, of course, you know, and I'm for second chances and mercy, yet, the flip side is there's consequences for what we've done and, so, I - I don't know what my total stance is..."

(2) On a moral link between abortion and capital punishment: "Well, I think there could be when you say may or may not. You know, that's the troublesome thing, if we don't know for sure and, you know."

Wow. This is the man who casually announces that he wants to write a book, and the Christian publishers savage each other to be the first to advance Osteen a million dollars before he has put pen to paper. What is the world coming to?

Nonetheless, Osteen's burblings are a model of clarity when compared with the immortal statement of Doug Pagitt. During a radio interview, Doug (who is an Emergent Christian) was asked about the doctrine of hell, and he uttered these words:

"I think that there's ... I think there's all kinds of ... I mean that, that, damnation would sort of be that ... that there's parts of the uh, life in creation that seems to be counter to what God is doing and those are the things that are eliminated and removed and done away with. And so I think that's what damnation is, and so there's people who want to live out that kind of uhm, wanna have that good judgment - the judgment of God in their life. I mean you know judge ... judgment in a biblical fashion meaning that God remakes ... that God remakes the world."

Way to go, Doug.

You Can't Be Serious . . .

I have just learned that Patricia King is qualified to teach the Glory School, because:

(a) She has experienced angel orbs (they appear in different colors, and some are "tingly").

(b) She has encountered the blue flame.

(c) She can roar like a lion (it's easier if you go down on all fours).

(d) She has met the angel called Purity (who takes the form of a white eagle with piercing eyes).

(e) She goes into trances (during which you can travel to distant places in the spirit).

(f) She trains her students to raise the dead (her students visit mortuaries to see what might happen).

(g) She sees third heaven experiences as an ordinary occurrence (like Todd Bentley and Bob Jones, Patricia regularly visits the third heaven).

(h) She promotes levitation as a sign and wonder.

(i) She has seen the great outpouring of gold (not only gold dust, but also diamond glitter, angel feathers, and sacred oil).

Where do they dig up these appalling clowns?

For more details, see this post on the "Beyond Grace" blog.

Theses For a Reformation

Mark Thompson, an evangelical Anglican who teaches theology at Moore College in Sydney, has proposed some theses for a new reformation in the Anglican Communion.